Anti-Spork: The Darkest Hour and Twilight - Author's Notes:
Wow, I'm on a roll today.
Anyways, this is the surprise I talked about! Reading something good really helped lift my spirits, so the next chapter for Bound For Glory should be up soon.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: The Darkest Hour is written by Mrs. Hyde, and can be found here: http://das-mervin.livejournal.com/177618.html. I do no own the story and claim no credit for it. Twilight is written by Stephenie Meyer. I do not own the story, and will not claim credit for it if someone paid me. No copyright infringement is intended, and no profit is being made from this project. This is undertaken for the sole purpose of entertainment.
Fandom: Twilight
Summary of Fic: Twilight tells about a supposedly ordinary girl, Bella Swan, who moves into the tiny town of Forks where the people have never heard of sunlight, and immediately aquires a group of admirers and minions. She angsts about the one person who did not kiss her ass on her first day of school, and whines and angsts about everyone she comes across. After the MYSTERIOUS boy confesses to stalking her, breaking into her house, watching her sleep, and stealing her personal belongings, she falls in love with him. After nine days of meeting him, she demands him to change her into a vampire (actually more like a demi-god in this universe), despite having to throw away all her human ties. He confesses to being a mass-murderer, and she falls in love with him even more. SUDDENLY, an evil vampire comes out of nowhere and is defeated off-screen. Then, everyone goes to prom. Yeah.
The Darkest Hour explains why Edward chose to leave Carlisle, and what kinds of circumstances drove him to vigilantism. It explores lost, the disadvantages of immortality, the start of darkness and fall from grace, self-delusion, morality, guilt, and redemption. It is a writing exercise that seeks to make one of the most despicable characters in the literary world into a sympathetic and likeable main character.
Rating of Fic: K+ for Twilight, because Meyer is a pussy, and R for The Darkest Hour, for mature themes, sexual imagery, violence, and language.
Warning for Anti-Spork: Lots of rambling, personal anecdotes, and shameless fangirling.
Sporker: Me, in my actual personality.
As you all know, Rebecca Sherwood and Bound For Glory are the first two fics I have ever sporked. I have read others’ sporkings before and they were terribly fun, so I wasn’t expecting this amount of hair-tearing, Capslocking, f-bombing fury that I was consumed with almost every chapter. I had no idea how much effort and pain went into sporking a fic until I decided to undertake an operation myself. And, well, I am weak.
Chapter 8 of Bound For Glory officially broke me, and I’m sure you know the reason why. And it’s really pretty tame compared to some fanfiction out there. I have no intentions of abandoning the sporking, but I obviously need some…comfort before I continue my project.
Therefore, I’ve decided to do this: an anti-spork. As the name suggests, this is the opposite of a spork. Instead of taking a badly-written piece of fiction and ripping it to pieces, I take a brilliantly well-written one and point out exactly what’s good about it.
At least, that’s what I initially intended it to be.
However, I’ve since decided to do this a bit differently. I will chose a common theme, like ‘Harry becomes incredibly powerful and turns to the Dark Side’, and pick out two fics that follow that premise, one well-written and the other not. And I will point out the difference between the two fics, and exactly what it is that makes one superior to the other.
For the first instalment of my anti-spork, I have chosen the fic The Darkest Hour by Mrs. Hyde. She is hands-down THE best fanfic writer I have ever had the fortune to read, and The Darkest Hour is definitely her best piece of work. It is a fanfiction of the Twilight series, and it takes the basic premise of Meyer’s work and shows us how every idea, no matter how stupid, can be wonderful if executed correctly. The Darkest Hour is a huge fish-slap to Meyer, in Mrs. Hyde's own words.
But it is so much more than that.
This is not just pure spite. This takes some of the most despicable characters I have ever seen, and makes me want to hug them. This takes all the great potential in the Twilight books that Meyer ‘pissed down her leg’, as Mrs. Hyde puts it, and polishes those hidden gems into diamonds.
This is probably the best piece of fanfic I have ever read, and is one of the few pieces of literature (yes, it does deserve to be called literature) to reduce me to tears, and trust me, I am not a very emotional person in real life (no matter how much raging and cursing goes on in my sporkings). And, appropriately, Twilight is one of my most hated books. It is the only book I have ever thrown across the room and given up on reading (which, considering my mild OCD with completion, is quite an achievement).
Having decided that, I quickly realised the problem with my plan. Namely, despite having roughly the same characters (sort of, maybe)…The Darkest Hour and Twilight does not share many common premises. The Darkest Hour emphasises the vitality and value of human life, whilst Twilight gleefully endorses genocide. The Darkest Hour heralds family love and the support between siblings, whilst Twilight encourages the cutting of all ties with family and friends. The Darkest Hour has strong, vindictive, and AWESOME women, whilst Twilight is one of the most sexist pieces of literature I have ever seen, if it even deserves to be called that.
But I simply couldn’t give up on the idea.
Thus, the first instalment of my anti-sporkings will be a bit…contrary to my intentions, but I hope it remains enjoyable nonetheless.
The Darkest Hour comes in six chapters, posted in 12 parts, with a short epilogue. I shall do one part at a time, probably, since I have a feeling that I will be ranting a lot.
HOWEVER, I will not be doing this in the style of a sporking, where I take every single line of the fic in question and mock it, mostly because I would like people to go to das_mervin’s livejournal and see it for themselves. It deserves to be read by more people. And Twilight is sort of published material (I still refuse to believe any sane publisher gave that book a pass), so sporking it might land me in trouble. So, I’ll be recapping the action of The Darkest Hour, telling you what’s happening in my own words. Whenever especially delicious material comes up, I’ll quote it, but I’ll be trying to limit my quoting.
Again, I recommend The Darkest Hour with everything I have. It is everything a book should be, and…well, look at how much it has me gushing. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
Note: I will alternate in posting these anti-sporkings and my actually sporkings. You will get one Chapter of Bound For Glory for every chapter of The Darkest Hour.
A Comparative Study: The Darkest Hour by Mrs. Hyde and Twilight by Stephenie Meyer:
The Darkest Hour begins with a long author’s note that details why the AWESOME Mrs. Hyde decided to undertake this mission. Since it ties into the story very much, I’ll sum it up here. I will try to be brief, but you’ve seen my sporkings. I can rant for over six thousand words on a three hundred word section of a fic. (Damn, I ramble a lot in this format.)
Mrs. Hyde opens by asking the same question I asked myself when I set out to start this anti-sporking project: can bad ideas be done well? Can you take a book that has nearly no redeeming qualities, and make it an enjoyable read? And already, we have seen one advantage she has over Meyer.
Commenting on writers personally really makes me uncomfortable. I know I rant a lot in my sporkings, and often yell at Stuthors and Suethors for being idiots, but systematically calling them out in a calm tone still…disconcerts me. However, this has to be said. Meyer wrote Twilight because of a wet dream. She admitted that time and time again, in almost every single interview I have seen her in, and…well, you can try, but you will never convince me that it wasn’t a wet dream. When she sat in front of her computer and typed down the first word, her motivation was wish fulfilment. She wrote the entire series because she wanted to relive her youth, get a hot and rich boyfriend, and one-up the people who bullied her in high school. She never intended the novel to have a deeper message, theme…hell, she never even intended to give her protagonist, Bella Swan, a personality (yes, she also admitted that). I have nothing against writing these sorts of things, but I do have a thing against PUBLISHING it and subjecting the whole world to the horrors that reside in her personal wank fantasies. In conclusion, Twilight was conceived and written for a very shallow reason and Meyer has obviously put ZERO thought into it (it’s not like she’s thinking about what she’s writing, after all).
The Darkest Hour, however, was conceived as a writing exercise - an attempt to achieve the impossible (making the premise of Twilight great) in order to test out a writer’s mettle. It was written so that the author grows as a person and develops her writing skills. When the first word of The Darkest Hour was typed, the author had a very specific purpose in mind also: to improve and develop. Mrs. Hyde has confessed to reading sections of the Twilight series over and over again, to double-check canon facts, despite planning to reconstruct the novel almost entirely, thus putting more effort into a writing exercise/fanfiction than Meyer ever did into writing her published novels. In order for The Darkest Hour to be written, Mrs. Hyde and Mervin have had to analyse the Twilight novels, identify the unintentional messages, determine how it could be improved, identify what needed to be changed, and then find the words that would convey what they had in mind and, thus, communicate their vision to the readers. Effort went into this fic. And Mrs. Hyde has clearly carefully thought about what kinds of messages she is putting in her fic, actually portraying murder as undesirable (which Twilight does not do, but I’ll get to that later).
And…I’ve ranted for over five hundred words, and we’re only one paragraph into the author’s notes. Fantastic…I may have to make the author’s notes its own section, because…well, it’s pretty long.
In the second paragraph (god, it’s only the second paragraph), Mrs Hyde says, ‘Now, I have no delusions that I am anything special in the writing arena…’ which made me chuckle a little, because if she isn’t an outstanding writer, I don’t know who is. And if anyone can succeed at making me like Edward, it’s her. She then proceeds to talk about the rise in Young Adult Literature after the success of Harry Potter, and how some of the followers of the trend are significantly less talented than Rowling. She is, of course, referring to Eragon and Twilight. I have never read Eragon, but seeing as it’s put in the same sentence as Twilight, I am very glad of my decision. Unfortunately, this means I can’t talk much about it.
Instead, I will settle for asking, ‘How the HELL is Twilight anything LIKE Harry Potter?’ Admittedly, I disliked the later books in the Harry Potter series, but NEVER have they descended to the abysmal depth of Twilight. Harry Potter was about adventure, dreams, conquering the odds…it was about a genuinely heroic group of people trying to save the world (or at least, Britain). Twilight is entirely romance based, about a mutually abusive couple manipulating each other to get what they want. WHAT ON EARTH DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON? Whoever compared those two books, whoever had the audacity to call Twilight the ‘next Harry Potter’, must be blind. That is really the only conclusion I can come to.
Mrs. Hyde sums up succinctly the biggest problem with Twilight: it is a self-fulfilment fantasy with a ridiculous Mary Sue and has no literary value. And it sucks. Yea verily, it does.
She says that Twilight does have many interesting ideas in it, which I completely agree with, and that if a decent writer had those ideas, the story could have turned out to be very interesting. And it is true. If Meyer could look away from her beloved avatar and her Eternal Twu Wuv with Edward, then she might be able to see how the Cullens make absolutely fascinating villains, how great a horror series about Imprinting can be, how Charlie is totally a vampire slayer and teams up with Leah whenever he runs into a big threat…Ahem, sorry. The point is, Twilight does have a lot of very interesting ideas in it, Meyer is just a total idiot and chose to focus on the least worthy of them all: Bella and Edward’s Epic Romance.
Mrs. Hyde says that the idea first came to her when she read Eragon, which was apparently so terribly that she got the urge to rewrite it, believing that she can do much better than that. She again says that, ‘[she’s] no great shakes as a writer…’ to which I have to say, you are a great writer. My dream is being able to write like you. Because you are AWESOME.
She apparently read the first book at a friend’s house, and simply couldn’t get through it because of how terrible it was. Seeing as she has successfully sporked Midnight Sun, I am now very scared of Eragon. I…honestly can’t imagine how much lower you can get than Midnight Sun. She gave up on the idea of a rewrite, because she can’t force herself to study the canon material, because it had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Which scares me again, since this is the person who read through the entire Twilight series. Is Eragon really that bad? I’m glad I never read it…
She only heard about Twilight when the fandom exploded over Breaking Dawn, which was exactly how I came to know about Twilight (except in my case, I was dragged into the explosion at school, with every single girl in my year trying to pressure me into reading the goddamned series because ‘it’s the best novel EVAH!’), so I sympathise. So, with a combination of support for Mervin, love of fan wank, and Trainwreck Syndrome, she read all four books and a half. I have to congratulate her, because I only got up to New Moon before I blew up, threw my book across the room, and only picked it up again to throw it in the rubbish bin. It was that bad.
And then, she says something that makes me tremble in my shoes. Twilight is better than Eragon. Even though the messages it teaches are just as bad (understatement of the year), the writing is actually BETTER. Apparently, the writer of Eragon had even worse prose than Twilight. Okay…After reading the horrible purple prose of Meyer, I am now tempted to hide under my bed with a dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar guide.
Well, because Twilight featured better writing (*Shudders*) than Eragon, Mrs. Hyde was able to read all of it (brave soul), and the idea of a rewrite occurred to her then. She spent the next few months planning and brainstorming ideas.
And thus, we have yet more evidence that she is an infinitely superior writer to Meyer. You can find The Story Behind Twilight on Meyer’s website, where she wanks to her own brilliance and brags about getting her personal porn published, and also where she snidely digs at the people who rejected her (yes, she really is that immature). By her own words, the entire novel was written, edited, and published in three months. Also by her own admission, she wrote the whole series with next to no planning. And this shows in her writing.
The prose is horrible, it is littered with basic grammar and word usage mistakes, the characterisation of central characters fluctuates wildly, and the scene transitions are...well, nonexistent. We literally skip entire days or even weeks with nary a page breaker. And you can tell clearly that she had no idea what she was going to do. Formerly bland background characters are suddenly trumped up as being Terrible and Evil, conflict comes dropping out of the sky with no warning a third of the way through the novel, characters waffle about doing nothing for chapters on end…All the books were like jigsaw puzzles of horribleness. It may be possible to write a brilliant novel in three months, but Meyer clearly does NOT have that kind of talent.
In contrast, Mrs. Hyde literally spent as long just brainstorming ideas. This preparation showed in her fics (I totally accidentally called them 'books' here, because they deserve that title much more than Twilight does) as there are overarching themes, extended metaphors, cohesive plots, and you can character growth and development. The prose flows a lot better, and the chapters come together to present the image of a beautiful story about the fall from grace and eventual redemption. Because she has a clear idea of what she wants to write, what is going to happen, and what kind of message she is trying to convey, the story has direction. There is a beginning, complication, climax, and resolution. There are foreshadowing (actually SUBTLE foreshadowing), allusions, and recurring symbolism that make the story a joy to read.
Mrs. Hyde says that despite wanting to change the story so that the characters were real and relatable, she wished for the story to remain close to the Twilight canon. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, that was what I thought too, when I first read that. Mrs. Hyde also confesses that the process was very hard. No matter what she does, the source material still sucks: the characters are still sociopathic and wooden and the messages are still unhealthy. She said that her entire purpose was not to make Twilight into a good book, just a better one; she is satisfied if she managed to produce something better than Meyer. That goal, at least from my point of view, is soundly achieved. I know it doesn’t take much to write better than Meyer (I could take a crap and wipe myself with a piece of paper, and that would be a more enjoyable read than Twilight), but I can say here that The Darkest Hour IS a good book. Hell, it’s a great book. It’s one of the most engaging stories I have ever read (I am so sorry if I sound like a squeeing fangirl, it really IS that good). Mrs. Hyde, Meyer wishes she could write like you.
As she started on her re-write, she immediately encountered serious problems. The source material had no plot, no conflict, no story, no theme…not even any characterisation to expand on. There was simply nothing. So, understandably, making it better is hard to do. Zero multiplied by infinity will still be zero. Brainstorming with her cousin, the beloved Mervin, Hammer of Sues, though, they managed to take the tiny inklings of plot in Twilight and squeeze a story from it.
But, even as the story started taking shape, there remained one insurmountable difficulty. Edward. As Mrs. Hyde said, he has no characterisation at all. He is simply an object for Bella to fawn over. Every trait he has is there solely to emphasise how awesome he is and how much he loves the Author Avatar. There were some seriously disturbing stuff in his characterisation, but he remains a cardboard cut out. There is simply nothing to work with in his case.
It was then that she and Mervin had the brilliant idea of exploiting Edward’s back story. By linking the plot of Twilight into Edward’s past, they seek to use that blank period of time that Meyer never made an effort to expand upon and develop him into a genuine character, with flaws and all.
Again, we see a marked difference between a real writer and a typist. Meyer never thought about the back stories of her characters. Sure, she had a rough idea of what went down, and she certainly crammed those stories into the books at the most inopportune moments, to provide maximum angst and drama. But those back stories are just that, generators of angst and drama. They don’t tell us anything new about the character and they don’t even affect the character in any way. The worst offender is probably Rosalie’s back story. It is solely there to reform Rosalie into a Mary Sue Groupie, to make sure that Rosalie spends the next book fawning over Bella, because how can one of the Beautiful People NOT worship the Mary Sue? There were interesting points presented in it, but that is discarded so Rosalie and Bella can obsess over BABIES, because that is what women are meant to do. Worst of all, despite having a traumatising past, it never affects Rosalie. She is exactly the same before and after the traumatic incident. She never grows. And despite knowing this piece of her background, we still know nothing about her character. When I read it, it literally felt like a Big Lipped Alligator Moment. It had nothing to do with the story, it came out of nowhere, and it went exactly nowhere.
Mrs. Hyde shows that back stories are important. Characters are what they are because of what happened to them in life. Characters grow over time and traumatic incidents cause a character to change. A back story should flesh a character out for us, make that character more whole, more human, not just suddenly flip their motives 180 degrees. I hate to toot my own horn, but whenever I create a character, I start with the back story. According to the history of my world, what events would he/she have lived through, what were his/her personal experiences in the event, and how has the event changed him/her? These questions are all answered in The Darkest Hour, where Mrs. Hyde takes the most despicable actions Edward has ever performed and makes those actions understandable, if not justifiable. None of these are answered in Twilight, because Meyer is too preoccupied fapping to her own brilliance.
Mrs. Hyde sought to make one of the most unrepentantly sociopathic character I have ever read about sympathetic. She initially intended for it to be a short one-shot, but…well, she got carried away. And I am very happy for that.
She reiterates her purpose and motivations in writing this piece and says that she, ‘very much [hopes] that it’s decent, as it’s almost entirely original on [her] part.’ Dear, it’s decent (well, more than decent) BECAUSE it’s almost entirely original. The reason this fic is good is because you are NOTHING like Meyer.
She repeats that it is a writing exercise and asks for any feedback and constructive criticism the readers have to offer. Again, we see how different she is from Meyer.
For those of you who don’t know, Meyer has her brother, Seth, screen her mail, so that no constructive criticism ever gets to her. This is a very wide-spread syndrome amongst young, immature writers who cannot separate themselves from their characters. They feel that any criticism is a personal attack or simply cannot accept the fact that they may have to improve. In Meyer’s case, the huge ego from making mountains of money and her obsession with the characters (to the point of neglecting her children, as she confessed on her website) is more than obvious. This means that she never learns that what she is doing is wrong. She is stuck writing like this forever, because she cannot wake up and see that, sometimes, people give criticism because it’s good for you. It helps you grow as a writer. It helps you become better.
Mrs. Hyde patently does not have this problem. She diligently reads all the comments on her stories, replies to suggestion by the readers in a well-thought-out, intelligent manner, and is not above changing things when a genuine problem is pointed out to her. She put prototype chapters of The Blue Hour (her actual Twilight revamp) on the website JUST to get feedback and suggestions, in fact. And she can remain objective when talking about her story, pointing out the downfalls and fatal flaws of her characters, even as she confesses to liking them quite a bit. This distance is what makes a writer brilliant. The point where they can let bad things happen to their characters in order for them to learn and grow, and not throw a shit-fest because HOW DARE ANYONE HURT MY BELOVED AVATAR, and where they are close enough to get themselves in the character’s shoes and write logical and psychologically appropriate responses and not fall into mindless violence and tragedy. I confess, this is a concept that I have yet to grasp. I have the problem of being too distant from my characters, so I cannot write believable growth. But I digress…
She ends the author's notes by thanking Das Mervin, Hammer of Sues, for dreaming up brilliant ideas and supporting her, and Kermit the Frog for editing her work, as well as the readers of her story. I would also like to point out that she maintains a very professional, polite, and calm tone throughout this acknowledgement. Her behaviour is much more mature than the behaviour Meyer displayed in her acknowledgements. She does not thank people who the readers have never heard of and are only marginally connected to the story, she does not waffle on and inject inside jokes, she does not make stupid ninja allusions. Meyer constantly gave off the impression of trying to return to her teenage years, trying to appear ‘hip’ and ‘cool’, and, needless to say, she failed utterly at it. By remaining professional, Mrs. Hyde has lent much more credit to her work and her ability as a writer. It also says more about her intelligence compared to Meyer.
She then invites the readers to start the story, and makes an awesome reference to Monty Python and their fish-slapping sketch. I love her for that. Really, I do. This was the image that stayed in my head as I read the series. Go watch the sketch if you haven’t already, and imagine Mrs. Hyde (and, to some extent, me) doing exactly that to Meyer as you follow this review.
There is a bit of introduction to the story, listing the title, author, word count, and so on. This greatly amused me as she listed her fandom as ‘Twilight Hate’. If I ever get around to writing a spite fic, that is the fandom I shall put it under. The word count is 67,000, and when I first saw that number, I confess to doing a little happy dance on my chair. Unfortunately, this also means that I will be doing this review in a lot of sections, seeing as I have already ranted for over four thousand words just for the author’s notes. The fic is rated R, for, ‘sexual imagery, language, and strong violence (<-- Ha, ha! You see that?! Ha! *fishslap*)’ and I have just fallen in love with Mrs. Hyde all over again.
Despite trying to write a series about a mass-murdering vampire, Meyer has done her very best to keep the books as chaste and clean as possible. She feared writing anything more than celibate cuddling between the main couple and mercilessly bashes any romantic couple who dares to do more than stare stupidly at each other. She shys away from any depiction of violence, not only because she’s scared that her precious avatars will be hurt, but also most likely because she has no idea how to write a scene like that. She confessed to never watching a R-rated movie (despite being over 30 years old. I was watching R movies when I was 13, but maybe that’s just me). She simply doesn’t know what she’s writing about. This is most evident in Eclipse where Bella and Edwards are rolling around on a bed, and it’s obviously supposed to be titillating, and yet the actions are so dry, bland, and utterly chaste, that I can’t feel anything at all. Meyer doesn’t want to write sex and violence, and is incapable of doing so even if she wanted to. Which begs the question: why write about vampires then? Vampires are traditionally heavily associated with sex and the loss of innocent, and given that this is a romance novel, the readers are going to want to read about more than just heavy petting eventually. And even if you remove the sex metaphor (which Meyer did not do, considering Edward’s insistence that he change Bella after they get married), the fact still remains that vampires are murders. They are predators and blood-thirsty monsters. Let one loose in society, and bloodshed will inevitably ensue. The story that Meyer tried to write called for sex and violence, and she chickened out. As a result, in every book, there isn’t so much a climax as a premature ejaculation of wasted potential. And I was very unhappy.
Mrs. Hyde does not shy away from that. If sex and violence are what is needed to make the story better and the characters more real, then she will write it. She doesn’t indulge in senseless gore and lust either. The vampires in her story are very much rape-metaphors, and she is not afraid to depict them as exactly that if the situation calls for it. And she manages to do it in a very tasteful and provocative manner. And really, when your protagonists and antagonists are both over-powered supernatural creatures, you simply HAVE to make them have a huge, awesome battle inside a burning building. Yes, it is exactly as awesome as it sounds. I suspect that if Mrs. Hyde was truly uncomfortable with writing a story with such a high rating, then she would never have attempted it in the first place. She will definitely not try to write the same story and simply cut all of the sex and violence out, because she knows that some of it is very much necessary. Screwing over the story in order to protect your own delicate sensibilities is not a good thing, and we see exactly why in Twilight.
A summary of the fic follows, and includes a quote from Ernest Hemmingway, ‘All things truly wicked start from an innocence.’ from A Moveable Feast.
Meyer also included quotes at the start of her stories. The difference here is that the quotes in this case actually apply to the stories. In Twilight, Meyer chose a quote from the Bible about the forbidden fruit. She obviously wants it to symbolise Edward and Bella’s forbidden love. This fails horribly as the whole point about the Fruit of Knowledge is that, when you eat it, terrible things happen. According to the Bible, all of human suffering can be traced back to when Eve first ate the fruit. And when Bella and Edward get together? Nothing bad happens. Nothing. Sure, Charlie disapproves a little, but that’s in the latter books, and he never presents a viable threat. Sure, James showed up. But his appearance had nothing to do with Bella and Edward’s Twu Wuv. It is a completely unrelated incident. And Bella and Edward’s romance isn’t all that forbidden either! No one, in the entire series, ever try separating them by force. No one even come out and try to persuade Bella to stay away from Edward! Apart from Edward himself, that is. Even the danger of him killing Bella is solved in a very stupid fashion in Chapter 14 of the very first book. There are no obstacles and no real consequences of their relationship. To compare it to the original sin is preposterous.
The second book includes a quote from Romeo and Juliet, about how their love is so passionate that it becomes self-destructive. I am sure this is old news by now, but it appears that Meyer still has yet to grasp that Romeo and Juliet was not a story about True Love. It is a story about two stubborn, head-strong, stupid teenagers who doomed themselves because of their rashness. Everything would have been averted if any of them were a tad more patient and logical and actually used their brains for once. Which fits Twilight surprisingly well, but I’m sure that’s not Meyer’s intention. The point is: Romeo and Juliet were idiots. That was the whole reason they died. And whilst Bella and Edward certainly are idiots, Meyer clearly doesn’t think so. So, yet again, we have quoting fail.
The pattern repeats for the next few books, which I will not discuss in detail because I am rambling way too much. The point is, Meyer almost systematically misinterprets every text she sees, deriving a conclusion that is so erroneous that I wonder if she is doing this on purpose.
Mrs. Hyde, however, chose a very appropriate quote. Edward’s limited world experience and naivety is exactly what pushed him off the slippery slope. The appropriateness of this quote becomes very evident later in the story, so I will refrain from discussing it now, in fear of spoiling anyone.
The author’s notes ends with a very formal and professional disclaimer, which makes me happy because I hate it when people joke in disclaimers. It is a legal statement and you may have to refer to it in court. Do you seriously want your lame jokes to be read out in front of a judge? Anyways, I like professional behaviour. Just because you’re an amateur writer, doesn’t mean you can fool around and not even put any effort into your hobby.
That said, the story finally begins.
I’m going to cut off my review here, because LJ has a word limit, and I am pretty sure I will not be able to do the Chapter 1 part 1 within the word limit, considering how much I rambled in the author’s notes. See you…next time.
Go Forward to: Chapter 1 Part 1, Section A
Anyways, this is the surprise I talked about! Reading something good really helped lift my spirits, so the next chapter for Bound For Glory should be up soon.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: The Darkest Hour is written by Mrs. Hyde, and can be found here: http://das-mervin.livejournal.com/177618.html. I do no own the story and claim no credit for it. Twilight is written by Stephenie Meyer. I do not own the story, and will not claim credit for it if someone paid me. No copyright infringement is intended, and no profit is being made from this project. This is undertaken for the sole purpose of entertainment.
Fandom: Twilight
Summary of Fic: Twilight tells about a supposedly ordinary girl, Bella Swan, who moves into the tiny town of Forks where the people have never heard of sunlight, and immediately aquires a group of admirers and minions. She angsts about the one person who did not kiss her ass on her first day of school, and whines and angsts about everyone she comes across. After the MYSTERIOUS boy confesses to stalking her, breaking into her house, watching her sleep, and stealing her personal belongings, she falls in love with him. After nine days of meeting him, she demands him to change her into a vampire (actually more like a demi-god in this universe), despite having to throw away all her human ties. He confesses to being a mass-murderer, and she falls in love with him even more. SUDDENLY, an evil vampire comes out of nowhere and is defeated off-screen. Then, everyone goes to prom. Yeah.
The Darkest Hour explains why Edward chose to leave Carlisle, and what kinds of circumstances drove him to vigilantism. It explores lost, the disadvantages of immortality, the start of darkness and fall from grace, self-delusion, morality, guilt, and redemption. It is a writing exercise that seeks to make one of the most despicable characters in the literary world into a sympathetic and likeable main character.
Rating of Fic: K+ for Twilight, because Meyer is a pussy, and R for The Darkest Hour, for mature themes, sexual imagery, violence, and language.
Warning for Anti-Spork: Lots of rambling, personal anecdotes, and shameless fangirling.
Sporker: Me, in my actual personality.
As you all know, Rebecca Sherwood and Bound For Glory are the first two fics I have ever sporked. I have read others’ sporkings before and they were terribly fun, so I wasn’t expecting this amount of hair-tearing, Capslocking, f-bombing fury that I was consumed with almost every chapter. I had no idea how much effort and pain went into sporking a fic until I decided to undertake an operation myself. And, well, I am weak.
Chapter 8 of Bound For Glory officially broke me, and I’m sure you know the reason why. And it’s really pretty tame compared to some fanfiction out there. I have no intentions of abandoning the sporking, but I obviously need some…comfort before I continue my project.
Therefore, I’ve decided to do this: an anti-spork. As the name suggests, this is the opposite of a spork. Instead of taking a badly-written piece of fiction and ripping it to pieces, I take a brilliantly well-written one and point out exactly what’s good about it.
At least, that’s what I initially intended it to be.
However, I’ve since decided to do this a bit differently. I will chose a common theme, like ‘Harry becomes incredibly powerful and turns to the Dark Side’, and pick out two fics that follow that premise, one well-written and the other not. And I will point out the difference between the two fics, and exactly what it is that makes one superior to the other.
For the first instalment of my anti-spork, I have chosen the fic The Darkest Hour by Mrs. Hyde. She is hands-down THE best fanfic writer I have ever had the fortune to read, and The Darkest Hour is definitely her best piece of work. It is a fanfiction of the Twilight series, and it takes the basic premise of Meyer’s work and shows us how every idea, no matter how stupid, can be wonderful if executed correctly. The Darkest Hour is a huge fish-slap to Meyer, in Mrs. Hyde's own words.
But it is so much more than that.
This is not just pure spite. This takes some of the most despicable characters I have ever seen, and makes me want to hug them. This takes all the great potential in the Twilight books that Meyer ‘pissed down her leg’, as Mrs. Hyde puts it, and polishes those hidden gems into diamonds.
This is probably the best piece of fanfic I have ever read, and is one of the few pieces of literature (yes, it does deserve to be called literature) to reduce me to tears, and trust me, I am not a very emotional person in real life (no matter how much raging and cursing goes on in my sporkings). And, appropriately, Twilight is one of my most hated books. It is the only book I have ever thrown across the room and given up on reading (which, considering my mild OCD with completion, is quite an achievement).
Having decided that, I quickly realised the problem with my plan. Namely, despite having roughly the same characters (sort of, maybe)…The Darkest Hour and Twilight does not share many common premises. The Darkest Hour emphasises the vitality and value of human life, whilst Twilight gleefully endorses genocide. The Darkest Hour heralds family love and the support between siblings, whilst Twilight encourages the cutting of all ties with family and friends. The Darkest Hour has strong, vindictive, and AWESOME women, whilst Twilight is one of the most sexist pieces of literature I have ever seen, if it even deserves to be called that.
But I simply couldn’t give up on the idea.
Thus, the first instalment of my anti-sporkings will be a bit…contrary to my intentions, but I hope it remains enjoyable nonetheless.
The Darkest Hour comes in six chapters, posted in 12 parts, with a short epilogue. I shall do one part at a time, probably, since I have a feeling that I will be ranting a lot.
HOWEVER, I will not be doing this in the style of a sporking, where I take every single line of the fic in question and mock it, mostly because I would like people to go to das_mervin’s livejournal and see it for themselves. It deserves to be read by more people. And Twilight is sort of published material (I still refuse to believe any sane publisher gave that book a pass), so sporking it might land me in trouble. So, I’ll be recapping the action of The Darkest Hour, telling you what’s happening in my own words. Whenever especially delicious material comes up, I’ll quote it, but I’ll be trying to limit my quoting.
Again, I recommend The Darkest Hour with everything I have. It is everything a book should be, and…well, look at how much it has me gushing. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
Note: I will alternate in posting these anti-sporkings and my actually sporkings. You will get one Chapter of Bound For Glory for every chapter of The Darkest Hour.
A Comparative Study: The Darkest Hour by Mrs. Hyde and Twilight by Stephenie Meyer:
The Darkest Hour begins with a long author’s note that details why the AWESOME Mrs. Hyde decided to undertake this mission. Since it ties into the story very much, I’ll sum it up here. I will try to be brief, but you’ve seen my sporkings. I can rant for over six thousand words on a three hundred word section of a fic. (Damn, I ramble a lot in this format.)
Mrs. Hyde opens by asking the same question I asked myself when I set out to start this anti-sporking project: can bad ideas be done well? Can you take a book that has nearly no redeeming qualities, and make it an enjoyable read? And already, we have seen one advantage she has over Meyer.
Commenting on writers personally really makes me uncomfortable. I know I rant a lot in my sporkings, and often yell at Stuthors and Suethors for being idiots, but systematically calling them out in a calm tone still…disconcerts me. However, this has to be said. Meyer wrote Twilight because of a wet dream. She admitted that time and time again, in almost every single interview I have seen her in, and…well, you can try, but you will never convince me that it wasn’t a wet dream. When she sat in front of her computer and typed down the first word, her motivation was wish fulfilment. She wrote the entire series because she wanted to relive her youth, get a hot and rich boyfriend, and one-up the people who bullied her in high school. She never intended the novel to have a deeper message, theme…hell, she never even intended to give her protagonist, Bella Swan, a personality (yes, she also admitted that). I have nothing against writing these sorts of things, but I do have a thing against PUBLISHING it and subjecting the whole world to the horrors that reside in her personal wank fantasies. In conclusion, Twilight was conceived and written for a very shallow reason and Meyer has obviously put ZERO thought into it (it’s not like she’s thinking about what she’s writing, after all).
The Darkest Hour, however, was conceived as a writing exercise - an attempt to achieve the impossible (making the premise of Twilight great) in order to test out a writer’s mettle. It was written so that the author grows as a person and develops her writing skills. When the first word of The Darkest Hour was typed, the author had a very specific purpose in mind also: to improve and develop. Mrs. Hyde has confessed to reading sections of the Twilight series over and over again, to double-check canon facts, despite planning to reconstruct the novel almost entirely, thus putting more effort into a writing exercise/fanfiction than Meyer ever did into writing her published novels. In order for The Darkest Hour to be written, Mrs. Hyde and Mervin have had to analyse the Twilight novels, identify the unintentional messages, determine how it could be improved, identify what needed to be changed, and then find the words that would convey what they had in mind and, thus, communicate their vision to the readers. Effort went into this fic. And Mrs. Hyde has clearly carefully thought about what kinds of messages she is putting in her fic, actually portraying murder as undesirable (which Twilight does not do, but I’ll get to that later).
And…I’ve ranted for over five hundred words, and we’re only one paragraph into the author’s notes. Fantastic…I may have to make the author’s notes its own section, because…well, it’s pretty long.
In the second paragraph (god, it’s only the second paragraph), Mrs Hyde says, ‘Now, I have no delusions that I am anything special in the writing arena…’ which made me chuckle a little, because if she isn’t an outstanding writer, I don’t know who is. And if anyone can succeed at making me like Edward, it’s her. She then proceeds to talk about the rise in Young Adult Literature after the success of Harry Potter, and how some of the followers of the trend are significantly less talented than Rowling. She is, of course, referring to Eragon and Twilight. I have never read Eragon, but seeing as it’s put in the same sentence as Twilight, I am very glad of my decision. Unfortunately, this means I can’t talk much about it.
Instead, I will settle for asking, ‘How the HELL is Twilight anything LIKE Harry Potter?’ Admittedly, I disliked the later books in the Harry Potter series, but NEVER have they descended to the abysmal depth of Twilight. Harry Potter was about adventure, dreams, conquering the odds…it was about a genuinely heroic group of people trying to save the world (or at least, Britain). Twilight is entirely romance based, about a mutually abusive couple manipulating each other to get what they want. WHAT ON EARTH DO THEY HAVE IN COMMON? Whoever compared those two books, whoever had the audacity to call Twilight the ‘next Harry Potter’, must be blind. That is really the only conclusion I can come to.
Mrs. Hyde sums up succinctly the biggest problem with Twilight: it is a self-fulfilment fantasy with a ridiculous Mary Sue and has no literary value. And it sucks. Yea verily, it does.
She says that Twilight does have many interesting ideas in it, which I completely agree with, and that if a decent writer had those ideas, the story could have turned out to be very interesting. And it is true. If Meyer could look away from her beloved avatar and her Eternal Twu Wuv with Edward, then she might be able to see how the Cullens make absolutely fascinating villains, how great a horror series about Imprinting can be, how Charlie is totally a vampire slayer and teams up with Leah whenever he runs into a big threat…Ahem, sorry. The point is, Twilight does have a lot of very interesting ideas in it, Meyer is just a total idiot and chose to focus on the least worthy of them all: Bella and Edward’s Epic Romance.
Mrs. Hyde says that the idea first came to her when she read Eragon, which was apparently so terribly that she got the urge to rewrite it, believing that she can do much better than that. She again says that, ‘[she’s] no great shakes as a writer…’ to which I have to say, you are a great writer. My dream is being able to write like you. Because you are AWESOME.
She apparently read the first book at a friend’s house, and simply couldn’t get through it because of how terrible it was. Seeing as she has successfully sporked Midnight Sun, I am now very scared of Eragon. I…honestly can’t imagine how much lower you can get than Midnight Sun. She gave up on the idea of a rewrite, because she can’t force herself to study the canon material, because it had no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Which scares me again, since this is the person who read through the entire Twilight series. Is Eragon really that bad? I’m glad I never read it…
She only heard about Twilight when the fandom exploded over Breaking Dawn, which was exactly how I came to know about Twilight (except in my case, I was dragged into the explosion at school, with every single girl in my year trying to pressure me into reading the goddamned series because ‘it’s the best novel EVAH!’), so I sympathise. So, with a combination of support for Mervin, love of fan wank, and Trainwreck Syndrome, she read all four books and a half. I have to congratulate her, because I only got up to New Moon before I blew up, threw my book across the room, and only picked it up again to throw it in the rubbish bin. It was that bad.
And then, she says something that makes me tremble in my shoes. Twilight is better than Eragon. Even though the messages it teaches are just as bad (understatement of the year), the writing is actually BETTER. Apparently, the writer of Eragon had even worse prose than Twilight. Okay…After reading the horrible purple prose of Meyer, I am now tempted to hide under my bed with a dictionary, thesaurus, and grammar guide.
Well, because Twilight featured better writing (*Shudders*) than Eragon, Mrs. Hyde was able to read all of it (brave soul), and the idea of a rewrite occurred to her then. She spent the next few months planning and brainstorming ideas.
And thus, we have yet more evidence that she is an infinitely superior writer to Meyer. You can find The Story Behind Twilight on Meyer’s website, where she wanks to her own brilliance and brags about getting her personal porn published, and also where she snidely digs at the people who rejected her (yes, she really is that immature). By her own words, the entire novel was written, edited, and published in three months. Also by her own admission, she wrote the whole series with next to no planning. And this shows in her writing.
The prose is horrible, it is littered with basic grammar and word usage mistakes, the characterisation of central characters fluctuates wildly, and the scene transitions are...well, nonexistent. We literally skip entire days or even weeks with nary a page breaker. And you can tell clearly that she had no idea what she was going to do. Formerly bland background characters are suddenly trumped up as being Terrible and Evil, conflict comes dropping out of the sky with no warning a third of the way through the novel, characters waffle about doing nothing for chapters on end…All the books were like jigsaw puzzles of horribleness. It may be possible to write a brilliant novel in three months, but Meyer clearly does NOT have that kind of talent.
In contrast, Mrs. Hyde literally spent as long just brainstorming ideas. This preparation showed in her fics (I totally accidentally called them 'books' here, because they deserve that title much more than Twilight does) as there are overarching themes, extended metaphors, cohesive plots, and you can character growth and development. The prose flows a lot better, and the chapters come together to present the image of a beautiful story about the fall from grace and eventual redemption. Because she has a clear idea of what she wants to write, what is going to happen, and what kind of message she is trying to convey, the story has direction. There is a beginning, complication, climax, and resolution. There are foreshadowing (actually SUBTLE foreshadowing), allusions, and recurring symbolism that make the story a joy to read.
Mrs. Hyde says that despite wanting to change the story so that the characters were real and relatable, she wished for the story to remain close to the Twilight canon. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, that was what I thought too, when I first read that. Mrs. Hyde also confesses that the process was very hard. No matter what she does, the source material still sucks: the characters are still sociopathic and wooden and the messages are still unhealthy. She said that her entire purpose was not to make Twilight into a good book, just a better one; she is satisfied if she managed to produce something better than Meyer. That goal, at least from my point of view, is soundly achieved. I know it doesn’t take much to write better than Meyer (I could take a crap and wipe myself with a piece of paper, and that would be a more enjoyable read than Twilight), but I can say here that The Darkest Hour IS a good book. Hell, it’s a great book. It’s one of the most engaging stories I have ever read (I am so sorry if I sound like a squeeing fangirl, it really IS that good). Mrs. Hyde, Meyer wishes she could write like you.
As she started on her re-write, she immediately encountered serious problems. The source material had no plot, no conflict, no story, no theme…not even any characterisation to expand on. There was simply nothing. So, understandably, making it better is hard to do. Zero multiplied by infinity will still be zero. Brainstorming with her cousin, the beloved Mervin, Hammer of Sues, though, they managed to take the tiny inklings of plot in Twilight and squeeze a story from it.
But, even as the story started taking shape, there remained one insurmountable difficulty. Edward. As Mrs. Hyde said, he has no characterisation at all. He is simply an object for Bella to fawn over. Every trait he has is there solely to emphasise how awesome he is and how much he loves the Author Avatar. There were some seriously disturbing stuff in his characterisation, but he remains a cardboard cut out. There is simply nothing to work with in his case.
It was then that she and Mervin had the brilliant idea of exploiting Edward’s back story. By linking the plot of Twilight into Edward’s past, they seek to use that blank period of time that Meyer never made an effort to expand upon and develop him into a genuine character, with flaws and all.
Again, we see a marked difference between a real writer and a typist. Meyer never thought about the back stories of her characters. Sure, she had a rough idea of what went down, and she certainly crammed those stories into the books at the most inopportune moments, to provide maximum angst and drama. But those back stories are just that, generators of angst and drama. They don’t tell us anything new about the character and they don’t even affect the character in any way. The worst offender is probably Rosalie’s back story. It is solely there to reform Rosalie into a Mary Sue Groupie, to make sure that Rosalie spends the next book fawning over Bella, because how can one of the Beautiful People NOT worship the Mary Sue? There were interesting points presented in it, but that is discarded so Rosalie and Bella can obsess over BABIES, because that is what women are meant to do. Worst of all, despite having a traumatising past, it never affects Rosalie. She is exactly the same before and after the traumatic incident. She never grows. And despite knowing this piece of her background, we still know nothing about her character. When I read it, it literally felt like a Big Lipped Alligator Moment. It had nothing to do with the story, it came out of nowhere, and it went exactly nowhere.
Mrs. Hyde shows that back stories are important. Characters are what they are because of what happened to them in life. Characters grow over time and traumatic incidents cause a character to change. A back story should flesh a character out for us, make that character more whole, more human, not just suddenly flip their motives 180 degrees. I hate to toot my own horn, but whenever I create a character, I start with the back story. According to the history of my world, what events would he/she have lived through, what were his/her personal experiences in the event, and how has the event changed him/her? These questions are all answered in The Darkest Hour, where Mrs. Hyde takes the most despicable actions Edward has ever performed and makes those actions understandable, if not justifiable. None of these are answered in Twilight, because Meyer is too preoccupied fapping to her own brilliance.
Mrs. Hyde sought to make one of the most unrepentantly sociopathic character I have ever read about sympathetic. She initially intended for it to be a short one-shot, but…well, she got carried away. And I am very happy for that.
She reiterates her purpose and motivations in writing this piece and says that she, ‘very much [hopes] that it’s decent, as it’s almost entirely original on [her] part.’ Dear, it’s decent (well, more than decent) BECAUSE it’s almost entirely original. The reason this fic is good is because you are NOTHING like Meyer.
She repeats that it is a writing exercise and asks for any feedback and constructive criticism the readers have to offer. Again, we see how different she is from Meyer.
For those of you who don’t know, Meyer has her brother, Seth, screen her mail, so that no constructive criticism ever gets to her. This is a very wide-spread syndrome amongst young, immature writers who cannot separate themselves from their characters. They feel that any criticism is a personal attack or simply cannot accept the fact that they may have to improve. In Meyer’s case, the huge ego from making mountains of money and her obsession with the characters (to the point of neglecting her children, as she confessed on her website) is more than obvious. This means that she never learns that what she is doing is wrong. She is stuck writing like this forever, because she cannot wake up and see that, sometimes, people give criticism because it’s good for you. It helps you grow as a writer. It helps you become better.
Mrs. Hyde patently does not have this problem. She diligently reads all the comments on her stories, replies to suggestion by the readers in a well-thought-out, intelligent manner, and is not above changing things when a genuine problem is pointed out to her. She put prototype chapters of The Blue Hour (her actual Twilight revamp) on the website JUST to get feedback and suggestions, in fact. And she can remain objective when talking about her story, pointing out the downfalls and fatal flaws of her characters, even as she confesses to liking them quite a bit. This distance is what makes a writer brilliant. The point where they can let bad things happen to their characters in order for them to learn and grow, and not throw a shit-fest because HOW DARE ANYONE HURT MY BELOVED AVATAR, and where they are close enough to get themselves in the character’s shoes and write logical and psychologically appropriate responses and not fall into mindless violence and tragedy. I confess, this is a concept that I have yet to grasp. I have the problem of being too distant from my characters, so I cannot write believable growth. But I digress…
She ends the author's notes by thanking Das Mervin, Hammer of Sues, for dreaming up brilliant ideas and supporting her, and Kermit the Frog for editing her work, as well as the readers of her story. I would also like to point out that she maintains a very professional, polite, and calm tone throughout this acknowledgement. Her behaviour is much more mature than the behaviour Meyer displayed in her acknowledgements. She does not thank people who the readers have never heard of and are only marginally connected to the story, she does not waffle on and inject inside jokes, she does not make stupid ninja allusions. Meyer constantly gave off the impression of trying to return to her teenage years, trying to appear ‘hip’ and ‘cool’, and, needless to say, she failed utterly at it. By remaining professional, Mrs. Hyde has lent much more credit to her work and her ability as a writer. It also says more about her intelligence compared to Meyer.
She then invites the readers to start the story, and makes an awesome reference to Monty Python and their fish-slapping sketch. I love her for that. Really, I do. This was the image that stayed in my head as I read the series. Go watch the sketch if you haven’t already, and imagine Mrs. Hyde (and, to some extent, me) doing exactly that to Meyer as you follow this review.
There is a bit of introduction to the story, listing the title, author, word count, and so on. This greatly amused me as she listed her fandom as ‘Twilight Hate’. If I ever get around to writing a spite fic, that is the fandom I shall put it under. The word count is 67,000, and when I first saw that number, I confess to doing a little happy dance on my chair. Unfortunately, this also means that I will be doing this review in a lot of sections, seeing as I have already ranted for over four thousand words just for the author’s notes. The fic is rated R, for, ‘sexual imagery, language, and strong violence (<-- Ha, ha! You see that?! Ha! *fishslap*)’ and I have just fallen in love with Mrs. Hyde all over again.
Despite trying to write a series about a mass-murdering vampire, Meyer has done her very best to keep the books as chaste and clean as possible. She feared writing anything more than celibate cuddling between the main couple and mercilessly bashes any romantic couple who dares to do more than stare stupidly at each other. She shys away from any depiction of violence, not only because she’s scared that her precious avatars will be hurt, but also most likely because she has no idea how to write a scene like that. She confessed to never watching a R-rated movie (despite being over 30 years old. I was watching R movies when I was 13, but maybe that’s just me). She simply doesn’t know what she’s writing about. This is most evident in Eclipse where Bella and Edwards are rolling around on a bed, and it’s obviously supposed to be titillating, and yet the actions are so dry, bland, and utterly chaste, that I can’t feel anything at all. Meyer doesn’t want to write sex and violence, and is incapable of doing so even if she wanted to. Which begs the question: why write about vampires then? Vampires are traditionally heavily associated with sex and the loss of innocent, and given that this is a romance novel, the readers are going to want to read about more than just heavy petting eventually. And even if you remove the sex metaphor (which Meyer did not do, considering Edward’s insistence that he change Bella after they get married), the fact still remains that vampires are murders. They are predators and blood-thirsty monsters. Let one loose in society, and bloodshed will inevitably ensue. The story that Meyer tried to write called for sex and violence, and she chickened out. As a result, in every book, there isn’t so much a climax as a premature ejaculation of wasted potential. And I was very unhappy.
Mrs. Hyde does not shy away from that. If sex and violence are what is needed to make the story better and the characters more real, then she will write it. She doesn’t indulge in senseless gore and lust either. The vampires in her story are very much rape-metaphors, and she is not afraid to depict them as exactly that if the situation calls for it. And she manages to do it in a very tasteful and provocative manner. And really, when your protagonists and antagonists are both over-powered supernatural creatures, you simply HAVE to make them have a huge, awesome battle inside a burning building. Yes, it is exactly as awesome as it sounds. I suspect that if Mrs. Hyde was truly uncomfortable with writing a story with such a high rating, then she would never have attempted it in the first place. She will definitely not try to write the same story and simply cut all of the sex and violence out, because she knows that some of it is very much necessary. Screwing over the story in order to protect your own delicate sensibilities is not a good thing, and we see exactly why in Twilight.
A summary of the fic follows, and includes a quote from Ernest Hemmingway, ‘All things truly wicked start from an innocence.’ from A Moveable Feast.
Meyer also included quotes at the start of her stories. The difference here is that the quotes in this case actually apply to the stories. In Twilight, Meyer chose a quote from the Bible about the forbidden fruit. She obviously wants it to symbolise Edward and Bella’s forbidden love. This fails horribly as the whole point about the Fruit of Knowledge is that, when you eat it, terrible things happen. According to the Bible, all of human suffering can be traced back to when Eve first ate the fruit. And when Bella and Edward get together? Nothing bad happens. Nothing. Sure, Charlie disapproves a little, but that’s in the latter books, and he never presents a viable threat. Sure, James showed up. But his appearance had nothing to do with Bella and Edward’s Twu Wuv. It is a completely unrelated incident. And Bella and Edward’s romance isn’t all that forbidden either! No one, in the entire series, ever try separating them by force. No one even come out and try to persuade Bella to stay away from Edward! Apart from Edward himself, that is. Even the danger of him killing Bella is solved in a very stupid fashion in Chapter 14 of the very first book. There are no obstacles and no real consequences of their relationship. To compare it to the original sin is preposterous.
The second book includes a quote from Romeo and Juliet, about how their love is so passionate that it becomes self-destructive. I am sure this is old news by now, but it appears that Meyer still has yet to grasp that Romeo and Juliet was not a story about True Love. It is a story about two stubborn, head-strong, stupid teenagers who doomed themselves because of their rashness. Everything would have been averted if any of them were a tad more patient and logical and actually used their brains for once. Which fits Twilight surprisingly well, but I’m sure that’s not Meyer’s intention. The point is: Romeo and Juliet were idiots. That was the whole reason they died. And whilst Bella and Edward certainly are idiots, Meyer clearly doesn’t think so. So, yet again, we have quoting fail.
The pattern repeats for the next few books, which I will not discuss in detail because I am rambling way too much. The point is, Meyer almost systematically misinterprets every text she sees, deriving a conclusion that is so erroneous that I wonder if she is doing this on purpose.
Mrs. Hyde, however, chose a very appropriate quote. Edward’s limited world experience and naivety is exactly what pushed him off the slippery slope. The appropriateness of this quote becomes very evident later in the story, so I will refrain from discussing it now, in fear of spoiling anyone.
The author’s notes ends with a very formal and professional disclaimer, which makes me happy because I hate it when people joke in disclaimers. It is a legal statement and you may have to refer to it in court. Do you seriously want your lame jokes to be read out in front of a judge? Anyways, I like professional behaviour. Just because you’re an amateur writer, doesn’t mean you can fool around and not even put any effort into your hobby.
That said, the story finally begins.
I’m going to cut off my review here, because LJ has a word limit, and I am pretty sure I will not be able to do the Chapter 1 part 1 within the word limit, considering how much I rambled in the author’s notes. See you…next time.
Go Forward to: Chapter 1 Part 1, Section A