Awesome!
So every now and then i HAVE to talk about Muse because they're always in my thoughts somewhere - moreover there's a Muse picture on my wall and a Muse badge in my display case in front of me(thank you, my fellow member of PWTTAMS-BAEMM) and sometimes I wear my Muse shirt, so yea, it's hard NOT to think about them. My wallpaper till a while ago was a Thom Yorke vs. Matt Bellamy one, which Matt wins of course, though I do adore Thom. (And I've recently changed my wallpaper to The Painted Veil - Ed Norton is love!)
But real news this time. Possible new Muse album in September this year! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
I've been waiting 2.5 yrs since BH &R PLEASE come out in September. (Or earlier, but don't thk that's possible)
It would be a really really good way to start Year 2 at NUS. :)
And very very strangely, Island Creamery was playing Thoughts of a Dying Atheist just now. Which really surprised me. A Muse song that is not Starlight, Supermassive Black Hole or Time is Running Out (aka the songs that are closest to mainstream) playing in public still surprises me. Omg, I hope this isn't a result of Twilight.
So maybe now I should have the Twilight post I've been wanting to have (AND WHY AM I DOING THIS I"M SUPPOSED TO BE DOING MY ESSAY NOW)
Ok very quickly. Twilight. I surf Amazon constantly to find new books in the genres I like - and I love urban fantasy (because non-urban fantasy is difficult to relate to but urban fantasy facilitates escapism very nicely), which of course Twilight sort of falls into. So I discovered it sometime in May 2007, found out it had massive popularity and was maybe kind of like Buffy AND the author loved Muse to death so I was curious and picked up the first book, open to possibly becoming a fan.
Now I remember first reading it in Toa Payoh library with Zoe next to me (and we were both struggling with some kind of Math homework as we always used to struggle with Math homework) and Zoe read the back and looked a bit dubious while saying "It's a love story."
And I was like "Yea, but it's kind of like Buffy and I miss Buffy a lot." Which was only half-true because I do miss Buffy but Twilight cannot possibly compare to it. It's a whole different level, like somewhere, I don't know, a million levels lower.
What Twilight is, I can honestly say, is simply rambling fluff, disguised with a dose of action. (Bad action btw, I thought the plot with James and Victoria was contrived and didn't fit in with the earlier part of the book at all) No one said rambling fluff can't be entertaining though, and I do admit that Twilight offers a kind of brainless entertainment, and I was curious enough after the first book to finish the whole series just to see how the story ends, but I made it a point to try to skip as many parts with only Bella, Edward and Jacob as possible because the only characters I enjoyed at all were Alice and Jasper (So you can imagine how much I actually skipped. But Twilight being rambling fluff, you only have to read something like one line per 50 pages and still catch the gist of it.) If this was a series with Alice as the protagonist, things might have been different. The girl used to be kept in a sanitorium because of her visions, her boyfriend Jasper used to go around on murderous rampages. Now THAT is something interesting.
Edward and Bella, is just...not very believable to me. And it's even worse in the movie when after a few scenes with him she's all ready to love him even though he's a vampire. And one of my pet peeves in books, films and tv shows is relationships that are not believable, I'd rather the relationship NOT be shown. It's kind of like Maria and Tony from West Side Story I guess. I don't enjoy watching/reading about relationships with no build-up that are founded more on the "love at first sight" idea, that is not romantic at all, that's just inexplicable.
And that's just the problem in Twilight. The writing goes downhill until it becomes little better than fanfiction in Breaking Dawn, which was utterly painful. (SPOILERS!Whiny Bella wanting to bed Edward, the pregnancy, the Super!Vamp Bella, and freaking Jacob Black imprinting on Bella's DAUGHTER) Breaking Dawn is not rambling fluff that is brainless entertainment. Breaking Dawn is...something that I wish had not been published.
So back to Muse.
I've been really annoyed (and trust me, I'm hardly the only one and I'm hardly the one with the most intense reaction) by the number of Twilight fangirls who have decided to like Muse just because of Twilight and are going on to Muse's videos on Youtube to leave comments like "OMG, I love Twlight. Edward is so hot." oooommg indeed.
Argh.
If people really want to read some good urban fantasy of the YA genre, they should read Tithe. That, is good. That, is not fluff. That's the way I like my books.
And now back to my essay I must run...