books... and a half twilight review.
Oh-kay.
Let me direct your attention to my latest, most beautiful shipment of books from a beautiful used book store in the UK:
Pretty, innit?
Nevermind the Dragonlance books (I've had them forever, obviously), but aren't the Avalon books pretty? The Mists of Avalon is the 1984 first print, and it's like new, despite being older than me--the previous owner either loved it more than he loved himself or just didn't read it at all (and I can completely understand because, you know, Morgaine). It was only 4£. ♥ It is however difficult to read in bed, though, since it's huge. Anyway.
NOTICE HOW I HAVEN'T MENTIONED THE TWILIGHT BOOKS YET? Because I SHALL, starting now.
I might have mentioned before that I would be attempting to read the Twilight series just for the fun of it (I watched the movies, but made myself believe I "didn't get it" much), in my quest to understand simply why this series has such a... fanbase.
Going into any bookstore today really makes my heart ache. Have you checked the romance section in any bookstore lately? It's all sprawling with "girl meets vampire boy" stories, or such other "gothic" mishmash, with girls called Raven and all that. It's truly disheartening.
Thus, I began my quest to go into the heart of the problem, and see just what made Twilight Twilight.
I stopped at page 38. My reaction was fuck this shit right in the ear as I set the book down.
Because, dear GOD, IT'S FUCKING TERRIBLE. It's terrible and there are no redeemable qualities about it whatsoever. I don't know why I even tried.
Still, let's attempt to recap. The general premise is simple. Girl character has to move, and gets dumped into this different town. It's a more realistic version of 90s anime "high school girl gets transported into another world", really; cliché and expectable. Do you remember what the fandoms to those such anime were like when you were a teen? When fanfiction.net was just building up, and every other teenage girl was writing this sort of fanfic, with terrible writing?
Because this is exactly what Twilight feels like.
Our main character, Bella, is an irredeemable Mary Sue; it shows five pages in. There are some irregularities with that, though. First things first, she is never, ever described, which you can understand since things are written in first person, and a first person describing theirselves isn't all that common, but anyway--now I agree with another reviewer that wrote, "this [non-descriptiveness] provides the reader the perfect empty shell to squeeze herself into".
That is exactly what is being done here. I must applaud Meyer--I'm serious--because now I understand why Twilight has this teen-and-not-so-teen following. She perfectly captivates the mentality of the average 13 year old female. Let's see how this is done:
· Bella is treated like a goddess by everyone else, sign of the Mary Sue. Everyone is nice to her, because she's a gem, really. Now, this is exactly how the average 13 year old female is treated, believe it or not.
· What this average 13 year old female perceives, though, is that everyone around her hates her completely. Despite everybody being nice, friendly, and pretty much going so far as to worship her, Bella absolutely hates and disregards everything and everyone she deems unworthy. See--this was exactly what I felt when I was 13; as doing that was the definition of "cool". I loathed my peers, I thought myself above everyone else, and this is how I acted all the time, until my face was caved in by the mean girls later in high school. Only for Bella, there are no mean girls, goddamnit, everyone's nice. Nobody says a damn word to her, but she's sure that she's an outcast and all that shit anyone can identify with.
· The only individuals worthy of her attention are, of course, insert drumroll, the Cullens, you know, those vampires. Aww, teenage crush--the only thing that gets a teenage girl's attention. Basically, it's love at first sight and this is how Meyer justifies it.
And the one thing I noticed is that as soon as the Cullens enter the scene the writing (which is early fanfiction.net quality) gets unbelievably shitty, because it suddenly turns into a fanfiction.net writer attempting to write like Robert Jordan, or as if she's trying to pull off the whole green clouds sleep furiously phrase. Out of fucking nowhere Meyer starts dedicating entire paragraphs to the vampires' appearance, and it's not even a whole, full description (that she didnt even begrudgingly give the other characters previously described), it's a tiny fucking detail, such as fingers or some other body part she deems attractive, with phrases she deems beautiful: and she doesn't even seem to realize just how cliché it all comes out. Here I go reflecting again, but this is exactly how I used to write, and I sure as fuck hope I'm not still doing it, oh boy oh man oh boy.
At any rate, Meyer continues ravishing her imaginary Cullens with words, and this goes on for so long that you start realizing that it's actually the writer, not Bella, who's completely biased towards the Cullens, as it seemed earlier. The both of them are so in love with these (imaginary for Meyer) pretty boys and girls. It starts to get even more terrible when Meyer makes every other character in the entire story talk about the Cullens in the same ravishing way she does. This is where everything detaches, and you're suddenly aware that Bella isn't even a voice for the writer, she's just a terrible, terrible self-insert; she doesn't even try to hide it.
I'm going to reference something totally unrelated here, and reference high fantasy novels, but fuck me, I thought Drizzt and Elminster were bad self-inserts. At least Salvatore and Greenwood tried to mask it, holy fuck.
Mind you, I didn't even get to the part where Bella actually falls in love with Edward. MeyerBella must be describing his stiff pecs day and night when she actually does. The writing is just so incredibly bad, and it gets even worse when she tries to make it good! She attempts to make references to the Bible, and all I could do was smile and nod, aww, that's so cute. That's so cute in a way that I appreciate you trying, honey, but... aww.
You know--ehh. If Twilight appeared on fanfiction.net and gained the huge, gushing fangirl sort of fanbase that comment "omg so good!!! write more plz ^_^" after every ridiculous chapter posted it wouldn't be surprising at all. But for that to be accomplished in reality, as a goddamn international bestseller that spawned the current plague of the "vampire romance" genre, are you fucking kidding me? Danielle Steel must weep, and Bram Stoker roll in his grave.
Bela Lugosi is dead indeed.
I... I... I don't know. Maybe I should just gnash my teeth and read the whole thing through, but seriously, it's--what, let me see--434 pages of "we had a pop quiz in math today and Edward looked at me with his beautiful baby blue eyes and flexed his elegant lionlike biceps, oh god he so crazy". YES IT'S LIKE THAT.
Should I just muster my courage and take it like a man? Then perhaps I can walk the streets an enlightened woman. Maybe I can understand.
But then again, maybe not.
Oh boy, here we go.
Let me direct your attention to my latest, most beautiful shipment of books from a beautiful used book store in the UK:
Pretty, innit?
Nevermind the Dragonlance books (I've had them forever, obviously), but aren't the Avalon books pretty? The Mists of Avalon is the 1984 first print, and it's like new, despite being older than me--the previous owner either loved it more than he loved himself or just didn't read it at all (and I can completely understand because, you know, Morgaine). It was only 4£. ♥ It is however difficult to read in bed, though, since it's huge. Anyway.
NOTICE HOW I HAVEN'T MENTIONED THE TWILIGHT BOOKS YET? Because I SHALL, starting now.
I might have mentioned before that I would be attempting to read the Twilight series just for the fun of it (I watched the movies, but made myself believe I "didn't get it" much), in my quest to understand simply why this series has such a... fanbase.
Going into any bookstore today really makes my heart ache. Have you checked the romance section in any bookstore lately? It's all sprawling with "girl meets vampire boy" stories, or such other "gothic" mishmash, with girls called Raven and all that. It's truly disheartening.
Thus, I began my quest to go into the heart of the problem, and see just what made Twilight Twilight.
I stopped at page 38. My reaction was fuck this shit right in the ear as I set the book down.
Because, dear GOD, IT'S FUCKING TERRIBLE. It's terrible and there are no redeemable qualities about it whatsoever. I don't know why I even tried.
Still, let's attempt to recap. The general premise is simple. Girl character has to move, and gets dumped into this different town. It's a more realistic version of 90s anime "high school girl gets transported into another world", really; cliché and expectable. Do you remember what the fandoms to those such anime were like when you were a teen? When fanfiction.net was just building up, and every other teenage girl was writing this sort of fanfic, with terrible writing?
Because this is exactly what Twilight feels like.
Our main character, Bella, is an irredeemable Mary Sue; it shows five pages in. There are some irregularities with that, though. First things first, she is never, ever described, which you can understand since things are written in first person, and a first person describing theirselves isn't all that common, but anyway--now I agree with another reviewer that wrote, "this [non-descriptiveness] provides the reader the perfect empty shell to squeeze herself into".
That is exactly what is being done here. I must applaud Meyer--I'm serious--because now I understand why Twilight has this teen-and-not-so-teen following. She perfectly captivates the mentality of the average 13 year old female. Let's see how this is done:
· Bella is treated like a goddess by everyone else, sign of the Mary Sue. Everyone is nice to her, because she's a gem, really. Now, this is exactly how the average 13 year old female is treated, believe it or not.
· What this average 13 year old female perceives, though, is that everyone around her hates her completely. Despite everybody being nice, friendly, and pretty much going so far as to worship her, Bella absolutely hates and disregards everything and everyone she deems unworthy. See--this was exactly what I felt when I was 13; as doing that was the definition of "cool". I loathed my peers, I thought myself above everyone else, and this is how I acted all the time, until my face was caved in by the mean girls later in high school. Only for Bella, there are no mean girls, goddamnit, everyone's nice. Nobody says a damn word to her, but she's sure that she's an outcast and all that shit anyone can identify with.
· The only individuals worthy of her attention are, of course, insert drumroll, the Cullens, you know, those vampires. Aww, teenage crush--the only thing that gets a teenage girl's attention. Basically, it's love at first sight and this is how Meyer justifies it.
And the one thing I noticed is that as soon as the Cullens enter the scene the writing (which is early fanfiction.net quality) gets unbelievably shitty, because it suddenly turns into a fanfiction.net writer attempting to write like Robert Jordan, or as if she's trying to pull off the whole green clouds sleep furiously phrase. Out of fucking nowhere Meyer starts dedicating entire paragraphs to the vampires' appearance, and it's not even a whole, full description (that she didnt even begrudgingly give the other characters previously described), it's a tiny fucking detail, such as fingers or some other body part she deems attractive, with phrases she deems beautiful: and she doesn't even seem to realize just how cliché it all comes out. Here I go reflecting again, but this is exactly how I used to write, and I sure as fuck hope I'm not still doing it, oh boy oh man oh boy.
At any rate, Meyer continues ravishing her imaginary Cullens with words, and this goes on for so long that you start realizing that it's actually the writer, not Bella, who's completely biased towards the Cullens, as it seemed earlier. The both of them are so in love with these (imaginary for Meyer) pretty boys and girls. It starts to get even more terrible when Meyer makes every other character in the entire story talk about the Cullens in the same ravishing way she does. This is where everything detaches, and you're suddenly aware that Bella isn't even a voice for the writer, she's just a terrible, terrible self-insert; she doesn't even try to hide it.
I'm going to reference something totally unrelated here, and reference high fantasy novels, but fuck me, I thought Drizzt and Elminster were bad self-inserts. At least Salvatore and Greenwood tried to mask it, holy fuck.
Mind you, I didn't even get to the part where Bella actually falls in love with Edward. MeyerBella must be describing his stiff pecs day and night when she actually does. The writing is just so incredibly bad, and it gets even worse when she tries to make it good! She attempts to make references to the Bible, and all I could do was smile and nod, aww, that's so cute. That's so cute in a way that I appreciate you trying, honey, but... aww.
You know--ehh. If Twilight appeared on fanfiction.net and gained the huge, gushing fangirl sort of fanbase that comment "omg so good!!! write more plz ^_^" after every ridiculous chapter posted it wouldn't be surprising at all. But for that to be accomplished in reality, as a goddamn international bestseller that spawned the current plague of the "vampire romance" genre, are you fucking kidding me? Danielle Steel must weep, and Bram Stoker roll in his grave.
Bela Lugosi is dead indeed.
I... I... I don't know. Maybe I should just gnash my teeth and read the whole thing through, but seriously, it's--what, let me see--434 pages of "we had a pop quiz in math today and Edward looked at me with his beautiful baby blue eyes and flexed his elegant lionlike biceps, oh god he so crazy". YES IT'S LIKE THAT.
Should I just muster my courage and take it like a man? Then perhaps I can walk the streets an enlightened woman. Maybe I can understand.
But then again, maybe not.
Oh boy, here we go.