I am always in love with Patrick Wolf while I am listening to him
I didn't need thegreatmissjj's continuous posting on how bad "Twilight" is to mock it (the very concept of literally sparkly vampires that willingly repeat highschool over decades and decades and a heroine named "Beautiful Swan" is enough for that), but it certainly helped keep it in my consciousness. So, partly inspired by this snarky chapter-by-chapter summary of it, I decided to try a good faith effort to see what the fuss was about.
I gave up on ch 15. The summary was funny and everything, but it was pretty detailed, and the book is just BORING. Isn't the point of these trashy reads that they are supposed to be page-turners?
But no, I thought. I wasn't being fair. Perhaps it was better in the original. So I tried to read that.
I gave up just on ch 2 this time. Boooooooring. Seriously.
But boredom aside, it is really incredible how unlikeable the Mary-Sue main character is. Someone already did a dissection of the very beginning of the book, so I thought I'd go over some of the rest of the highlights of the 1st chapter.
A bit of an aside on Mary Sues--there are some books that, as soon as I read their description of their main character, I flip to the back to compare it with the author's photo. I am rarely disappointed. For instance: Bella, according to Stephenie Meyer's site, "is very fair-skinned, with long, straight, dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Her face is heart-shaped-a wide forehead with a widow's peak, large, wide-spaced eyes, prominent cheekbones, and then a thin nose and a narrow jaw with a pointed chin. Her lips are a little out of proportion, a bit too full for her jaw line."
Then here is our author: One. Two. Three. Four.
Fair-skinned? Check. Long brown hair with a widow's peak? Check. (It's curled for some of the publicity shots, but it's not naturally curly.) Wide-spaced brownish eyes? Check. Heart-shaped face with a pointed chin and too-full lips? Check. I wouldn't say that her nose is thin, but what's a Mary Sue for if she can't be an idealized version of the author? Oh, Stephenie.
But yes, the unlikeability of Bella. Bella is self-obsessed and self-consumed to the point of absurdity, she seems to value others entirely on their looks, she's judgmental and bitchy and, and... well, just read.
Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty-seven - now fifty-eight - students; there were more than seven hundred people in my junior class alone back home. All of the kids here had grown up together - their grandparents had been toddlers together.
I would be the new girl from the big city, a curiosity, a freak.
Oh for god's sake, why do you think they'll care? You might be a passing curiosity, but amazingly, these people may have other things to concern themselves with other than you! (I'm only so snappish because this is the fourth page and she's been going on like this non-stop for the first three already.)
Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should, I could work this to my advantage. But physically, I'd never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond - a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps - all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.
Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete...
Oh NO, you have IVORY skin with dark hair and are slender but not muscular! How awful! God, being delicately pale is SUCH a huge problem.
The red-haired woman looked up. "Can I help you?"
"I'm Isabella Swan," I informed her, and saw the immediate awareness light her eyes. I was expected, a topic of gossip no doubt. Daughter of the Chief's flighty ex-wife, come home at last.
Or maybe she just knows who you are because she is the one who had to do the new student paperwork, and so of course she knew you'd be coming. Why the hell do you think you're interesting enough for everyone to gossip about?
When I went back out to my truck, other students were starting to arrive. I drove around the school, following the line of traffic. I was glad to see that most of the cars were older like mine, nothing flashy. At home I'd lived in one of the few lower-income neighborhoods that were included in the Paradise Valley District. It was a common thing to see a new Mercedes or Porsche in the student lot. The nicest car here was a shiny Volvo, and it stood out. Still, I cut the engine as soon as I was in a spot, so that the thunderous volume wouldn't draw attention to me.
Seriously, do you have some kind of narcissistic personality disorder? WHY do you think you are so important to everyone? AGH AGH AGH.
The people in front of me stopped just inside the door to hang up their coats on a long row of hooks. I copied them. They were two girls, one a porcelain-colored blonde, the other also pale, with light brown hair. At least my skin wouldn't be a standout here.
WTF is wrong with you?!! Since WHEN is being pale such a huge deal?
When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.
"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.
Oh no, he has acne! Thus despite all your worries of NOT FITTING IN and being ALONE, his talking to you and attempting to be nice to you is classed as "overly helpful."
"Where's your next class?" he asked.
I had to check in my bag. "Um, Government, with Jefferson, in building six."
There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes.
"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way…" Definitely over-helpful.
What? All he did was offer to show you the way! That is common courtesy to a new student. What is your PROBLEM?
I could have sworn several people behind us were walking close enough to eavesdrop. I hoped I wasn't getting paranoid.
TOO LATE.
One girl sat next to me in both Trig and Spanish, and she walked with me to the cafeteria for lunch. [...] We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them.
Gee, so she talked to you in two classes, walked you to the cafeteria, and invited you to sit with her? Why isn't SHE classed as over-helpful? Oh RIGHT because she isn't a boy you find unattractive!
It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.
They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention.
Despite complaining non-stop about how other people are staring at you, apparently it is just FINE for you to stare at OTHER people.
I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel.
Right. You hate everyone else at this school, but these people are PRETTY, and so you immediately find them fascinating and amazing. And you apparently don't care that they all seem anorexic.
"That's Edward and Emmett Cullen, and Rosalie and Jasper Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife."
Strange, unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had. But maybe that was in vogue here - small town names? I finally remembered that my neighbor was called Jessica, a perfectly common name.
"Alice" is a "strange" name? Uh, honey, aren't you supposed to be from the Big City? For God's sake, except maybe for Emmett none of those names should surprise you, Miss Elitist Cosmopolitan.
"They are… very nice-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous understatement.
Translation: this is the ONLY reason why they are worth my time.
"Yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "They're all together though - Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together." Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town, I thought critically.
Way to project, Snobby Sophisticate! You know, being from around there and knowing them for a while, maybe Jessica has some other reason for not thinking these people are fabulous.
"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" I asked. I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, and he was still staring at me, but not gawking like the other students had today - he had a slightly frustrated expression. I looked down again.
He's HOT, so she doesn't mind him looking at her.
"That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered when he'd turned her down.
...wow. What a BITCH. Because a boring small-town girl can't say anything critical about the One Pretty Boy without it being due to jealousy. Can't be because he really is an asshole or a loner, NOOOOOOO.
Next to the center aisle, I recognized Edward Cullen by his unusual hair, sitting next to that single open seat.
Reddish-brown hair is unusual? That must have been some big city you came from.
I couldn't stop myself from peeking occasionally through the screen of my hair at the strange boy next to me. During the whole class, he never relaxed his stiff position on the edge of his chair, sitting as far from me as possible.
What was wrong with him? Was this his normal behavior? I questioned my judgment on Jessica's bitterness at lunch today. Maybe she was not as resentful as I'd thought.
Oh yeah, when you thought he was looking at you, he was awesome and Jessica was "jealous." Now that he's shown he's not interested in YOU either, NOW the problem must be that he is a weird jerk.
He was so mean. It wasn't fair. I began gathering up my things slowly, trying to block the anger that filled me, for fear my eyes would tear up. For some reason, my temper was hardwired to my tear ducts. I usually cried when I was angry, a humiliating tendency.
"Aren't you Isabella Swan?" a male voice asked.
I looked up to see a cute, baby-faced boy, his pale blond hair carefully gelled into orderly spikes, smiling at me in a friendly way. He obviously didn't think I smelled bad.
Oh good, boys are paying attention to her again so she can ignore them and act like she wants to be ignored! All is right with the world! Despite the huge fuss she made for ALL THE PRECEDING pages about not wanting attention, it is obvious she depends on it.
"I'm Mike."
"Hi, Mike."
"Do you need any help finding your next class?"
"I'm headed to the gym, actually. I think I can find it."
"That's my next class, too." He seemed thrilled, though it wasn't that big of a coincidence in a school this small.
We walked to class together; he was a chatterer - he supplied most of the conversation, which made it easy for me. He'd lived in California till he was ten, so he knew how I felt about the sun. It turned out he was in my English class also. He was the nicest person I'd met today.
Despite Mike's behavior being ABSOLUTELY no different than the previous boy's, he gets classed as "the nicest person she met" rather than "over-helpful." This is because Mike is CUTE, and thus him being friendly is acceptable.
I smiled at him before walking through the girls' locker room door. He was friendly and clearly admiring. But it wasn't enough to ease my irritation.
Irritation at... being given the cold shoulder by Edward. Because even though we had pages and pages of OMG EVERYONE'S LOOKING AT HER, the moment someone DOESN'T look at her, it is completely unacceptable.
(Before the week is out, she gains yet another not-handsome admirer, and is back to whining about how she'd "rather be ignored.")
Really, who the hell can like this girl?
In Stephenie Meyer's defense though, Edward is not too badly written for a wish-fulfillment fantasy boyfriend. A fair amount of his lines are actually cute and/or clever. I expected worse.
And finally, just something that really struck me as silly--from the initial description of the Beautiful Vampires:
Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes - purplish, bruiselike shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose.
I would like to alert Mrs. Meyer to the fact that I, too, am exceedingly pale, have extremely dark eyes, and thanks partly to genetics, partly to my nocturnal lifestyle, am very prone to under-eye circles. NEVER has that combination made me feel particularly pretty. When I wake up looking deathly pale, with purplish shadows under my "obsidian" eyes, I tend to think "Augh! I need blusher and tons of cover up!" rather than "wow I am GORGEOUS." My sister has told me that I look "scary" that way because "your eyes are so black and your face is so white, that your eyes look like holes in your face." My mother used to insist I wear make-up for social occasions because otherwise I looked like "a zombie." The idea that Mrs. Meyer might consider me unearthly beautiful because of these qualities is rather amusing.
I gave up on ch 15. The summary was funny and everything, but it was pretty detailed, and the book is just BORING. Isn't the point of these trashy reads that they are supposed to be page-turners?
But no, I thought. I wasn't being fair. Perhaps it was better in the original. So I tried to read that.
I gave up just on ch 2 this time. Boooooooring. Seriously.
But boredom aside, it is really incredible how unlikeable the Mary-Sue main character is. Someone already did a dissection of the very beginning of the book, so I thought I'd go over some of the rest of the highlights of the 1st chapter.
A bit of an aside on Mary Sues--there are some books that, as soon as I read their description of their main character, I flip to the back to compare it with the author's photo. I am rarely disappointed. For instance: Bella, according to Stephenie Meyer's site, "is very fair-skinned, with long, straight, dark brown hair and chocolate brown eyes. Her face is heart-shaped-a wide forehead with a widow's peak, large, wide-spaced eyes, prominent cheekbones, and then a thin nose and a narrow jaw with a pointed chin. Her lips are a little out of proportion, a bit too full for her jaw line."
Then here is our author: One. Two. Three. Four.
Fair-skinned? Check. Long brown hair with a widow's peak? Check. (It's curled for some of the publicity shots, but it's not naturally curly.) Wide-spaced brownish eyes? Check. Heart-shaped face with a pointed chin and too-full lips? Check. I wouldn't say that her nose is thin, but what's a Mary Sue for if she can't be an idealized version of the author? Oh, Stephenie.
But yes, the unlikeability of Bella. Bella is self-obsessed and self-consumed to the point of absurdity, she seems to value others entirely on their looks, she's judgmental and bitchy and, and... well, just read.
Forks High School had a frightening total of only three hundred and fifty-seven - now fifty-eight - students; there were more than seven hundred people in my junior class alone back home. All of the kids here had grown up together - their grandparents had been toddlers together.
I would be the new girl from the big city, a curiosity, a freak.
Oh for god's sake, why do you think they'll care? You might be a passing curiosity, but amazingly, these people may have other things to concern themselves with other than you! (I'm only so snappish because this is the fourth page and she's been going on like this non-stop for the first three already.)
Maybe, if I looked like a girl from Phoenix should, I could work this to my advantage. But physically, I'd never fit in anywhere. I should be tan, sporty, blond - a volleyball player, or a cheerleader, perhaps - all the things that go with living in the valley of the sun.
Instead, I was ivory-skinned, without even the excuse of blue eyes or red hair, despite the constant sunshine. I had always been slender, but soft somehow, obviously not an athlete...
Oh NO, you have IVORY skin with dark hair and are slender but not muscular! How awful! God, being delicately pale is SUCH a huge problem.
The red-haired woman looked up. "Can I help you?"
"I'm Isabella Swan," I informed her, and saw the immediate awareness light her eyes. I was expected, a topic of gossip no doubt. Daughter of the Chief's flighty ex-wife, come home at last.
Or maybe she just knows who you are because she is the one who had to do the new student paperwork, and so of course she knew you'd be coming. Why the hell do you think you're interesting enough for everyone to gossip about?
When I went back out to my truck, other students were starting to arrive. I drove around the school, following the line of traffic. I was glad to see that most of the cars were older like mine, nothing flashy. At home I'd lived in one of the few lower-income neighborhoods that were included in the Paradise Valley District. It was a common thing to see a new Mercedes or Porsche in the student lot. The nicest car here was a shiny Volvo, and it stood out. Still, I cut the engine as soon as I was in a spot, so that the thunderous volume wouldn't draw attention to me.
Seriously, do you have some kind of narcissistic personality disorder? WHY do you think you are so important to everyone? AGH AGH AGH.
The people in front of me stopped just inside the door to hang up their coats on a long row of hooks. I copied them. They were two girls, one a porcelain-colored blonde, the other also pale, with light brown hair. At least my skin wouldn't be a standout here.
WTF is wrong with you?!! Since WHEN is being pale such a huge deal?
When the bell rang, a nasal buzzing sound, a gangly boy with skin problems and hair black as an oil slick leaned across the aisle to talk to me.
"You're Isabella Swan, aren't you?" He looked like the overly helpful, chess club type.
Oh no, he has acne! Thus despite all your worries of NOT FITTING IN and being ALONE, his talking to you and attempting to be nice to you is classed as "overly helpful."
"Where's your next class?" he asked.
I had to check in my bag. "Um, Government, with Jefferson, in building six."
There was nowhere to look without meeting curious eyes.
"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way…" Definitely over-helpful.
What? All he did was offer to show you the way! That is common courtesy to a new student. What is your PROBLEM?
I could have sworn several people behind us were walking close enough to eavesdrop. I hoped I wasn't getting paranoid.
TOO LATE.
One girl sat next to me in both Trig and Spanish, and she walked with me to the cafeteria for lunch. [...] We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who she introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them.
Gee, so she talked to you in two classes, walked you to the cafeteria, and invited you to sit with her? Why isn't SHE classed as over-helpful? Oh RIGHT because she isn't a boy you find unattractive!
It was there, sitting in the lunchroom, trying to make conversation with seven curious strangers, that I first saw them.
They were sitting in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from where I sat as possible in the long room. There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them. They weren't gawking at me, unlike most of the other students, so it was safe to stare at them without fear of meeting an excessively interested pair of eyes. But it was none of these things that caught, and held, my attention.
Despite complaining non-stop about how other people are staring at you, apparently it is just FINE for you to stare at OTHER people.
I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful. They were faces you never expected to see except perhaps on the airbrushed pages of a fashion magazine. Or painted by an old master as the face of an angel.
Right. You hate everyone else at this school, but these people are PRETTY, and so you immediately find them fascinating and amazing. And you apparently don't care that they all seem anorexic.
"That's Edward and Emmett Cullen, and Rosalie and Jasper Hale. The one who left was Alice Cullen; they all live together with Dr. Cullen and his wife."
Strange, unpopular names, I thought. The kinds of names grandparents had. But maybe that was in vogue here - small town names? I finally remembered that my neighbor was called Jessica, a perfectly common name.
"Alice" is a "strange" name? Uh, honey, aren't you supposed to be from the Big City? For God's sake, except maybe for Emmett none of those names should surprise you, Miss Elitist Cosmopolitan.
"They are… very nice-looking." I struggled with the conspicuous understatement.
Translation: this is the ONLY reason why they are worth my time.
"Yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "They're all together though - Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together." Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town, I thought critically.
Way to project, Snobby Sophisticate! You know, being from around there and knowing them for a while, maybe Jessica has some other reason for not thinking these people are fabulous.
"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" I asked. I peeked at him from the corner of my eye, and he was still staring at me, but not gawking like the other students had today - he had a slightly frustrated expression. I looked down again.
He's HOT, so she doesn't mind him looking at her.
"That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes. I wondered when he'd turned her down.
...wow. What a BITCH. Because a boring small-town girl can't say anything critical about the One Pretty Boy without it being due to jealousy. Can't be because he really is an asshole or a loner, NOOOOOOO.
Next to the center aisle, I recognized Edward Cullen by his unusual hair, sitting next to that single open seat.
Reddish-brown hair is unusual? That must have been some big city you came from.
I couldn't stop myself from peeking occasionally through the screen of my hair at the strange boy next to me. During the whole class, he never relaxed his stiff position on the edge of his chair, sitting as far from me as possible.
What was wrong with him? Was this his normal behavior? I questioned my judgment on Jessica's bitterness at lunch today. Maybe she was not as resentful as I'd thought.
Oh yeah, when you thought he was looking at you, he was awesome and Jessica was "jealous." Now that he's shown he's not interested in YOU either, NOW the problem must be that he is a weird jerk.
He was so mean. It wasn't fair. I began gathering up my things slowly, trying to block the anger that filled me, for fear my eyes would tear up. For some reason, my temper was hardwired to my tear ducts. I usually cried when I was angry, a humiliating tendency.
"Aren't you Isabella Swan?" a male voice asked.
I looked up to see a cute, baby-faced boy, his pale blond hair carefully gelled into orderly spikes, smiling at me in a friendly way. He obviously didn't think I smelled bad.
Oh good, boys are paying attention to her again so she can ignore them and act like she wants to be ignored! All is right with the world! Despite the huge fuss she made for ALL THE PRECEDING pages about not wanting attention, it is obvious she depends on it.
"I'm Mike."
"Hi, Mike."
"Do you need any help finding your next class?"
"I'm headed to the gym, actually. I think I can find it."
"That's my next class, too." He seemed thrilled, though it wasn't that big of a coincidence in a school this small.
We walked to class together; he was a chatterer - he supplied most of the conversation, which made it easy for me. He'd lived in California till he was ten, so he knew how I felt about the sun. It turned out he was in my English class also. He was the nicest person I'd met today.
Despite Mike's behavior being ABSOLUTELY no different than the previous boy's, he gets classed as "the nicest person she met" rather than "over-helpful." This is because Mike is CUTE, and thus him being friendly is acceptable.
I smiled at him before walking through the girls' locker room door. He was friendly and clearly admiring. But it wasn't enough to ease my irritation.
Irritation at... being given the cold shoulder by Edward. Because even though we had pages and pages of OMG EVERYONE'S LOOKING AT HER, the moment someone DOESN'T look at her, it is completely unacceptable.
(Before the week is out, she gains yet another not-handsome admirer, and is back to whining about how she'd "rather be ignored.")
Really, who the hell can like this girl?
In Stephenie Meyer's defense though, Edward is not too badly written for a wish-fulfillment fantasy boyfriend. A fair amount of his lines are actually cute and/or clever. I expected worse.
And finally, just something that really struck me as silly--from the initial description of the Beautiful Vampires:
Every one of them was chalky pale, the palest of all the students living in this sunless town. Paler than me, the albino. They all had very dark eyes despite the range in hair tones. They also had dark shadows under those eyes - purplish, bruiselike shadows. As if they were all suffering from a sleepless night, or almost done recovering from a broken nose.
I would like to alert Mrs. Meyer to the fact that I, too, am exceedingly pale, have extremely dark eyes, and thanks partly to genetics, partly to my nocturnal lifestyle, am very prone to under-eye circles. NEVER has that combination made me feel particularly pretty. When I wake up looking deathly pale, with purplish shadows under my "obsidian" eyes, I tend to think "Augh! I need blusher and tons of cover up!" rather than "wow I am GORGEOUS." My sister has told me that I look "scary" that way because "your eyes are so black and your face is so white, that your eyes look like holes in your face." My mother used to insist I wear make-up for social occasions because otherwise I looked like "a zombie." The idea that Mrs. Meyer might consider me unearthly beautiful because of these qualities is rather amusing.