People Will Shoot Me For This
I often waffle on the various superpowers I always wished I had. Some days it was flight. Others it was teleportation or psychokinesis. Most often it was the ability to speak to any animal in their language and understand what they had to say in return. (A rather useless one, I know. But I love animals!) But right now I would throw all of those over for the gift of PERFECT VISION. The power of never having to spend $360 a year on contacts again. The power of having peripheral vision when my glasses are on. The power of having eyes that are never subject to dryness when it is allergy season thus allowing me clear, non-blurry sight at all times.
Ever since I was a small child, I've had terrible eyesight. I was a seven-year-old JJ with enormous green plastic specs attached to my face. My vision has deteriorated to the point where I was legally blind in high school. With corrective lenses I think I can achieve 20/35 vision, which is to say that my eyes are 1.75 times as worse as a normal person's with glasses or contacts in. This varies from day to day because in addition to being extremely near-sighted, I also have astigmatism in my right eye.
During spring my vision gets even worse. I'm wearing my glasses today to give my eyes a break, but even so, I can't see a damn thing. Currently the text size is increased to 300% on my computer and even then I have squint pretty hard to get it in focus. Doing any sort of work is a trial and this isn't taking into account the tension headache that invariably results from straining my eyes.
The worst part of all this is that I can't do a single damn thing I enjoy because I can't see. I can't go to the gym (because I also have no depth perception either). I can't do yoga at home because I can't see the TV. I can't watch TV period. I can't write. I can't read. Ugh! I'm an intensely visual person. I learn and absorb information by seeing it. My brain isn't wired to acquire information via sound or kinesthetic memory as efficiently as sight so I'm floundering right now. It's like Beethoven conducting his Ninth Symphony completely deaf, except I'm not a Romantic genius. Ignore that analogy; it fails.
But surfing the internet with high contrast text and 3x magnification has yielded this awesome quote from the creator of Alias and Lost (found on pieces-of's journal):
From the latest Rolling Stone, a Q&A with JJ Abrams:
Which summer movie are you excited about?
ABRAMS: Definitely The X-Files.
Do you think Mulder and Scully will finally end up together?
ABRAMS: Good relationships shouldn't be this hard. If they don't end up together this time, I quit.
I feel your pain, JJ Abrams, I do. But their relationship is only hard because Chris Carter throws every possible wrench in there to gum up the works. No hanky-panky between FBI partners! Alien abductions! (Once by Scully and once by Mulder.) Cancer! Secret love-babies with possible alien DNA and/or superpowers! Meddling governments! LOTS OF CONTRIVED PLOT DEVICES IN ORDER TO MAXIMIZE ON THE UNRESOLVED SEXUAL TENSION! You can only deal with that for so long without payoff. However, if there is no romantic payoff in this movie I'm totally going to cut a bitch.
Another movie that I'm sort of excited for despite the fact that I've never finished the book and I kind of hated the premise is Twilight. I do not know why. Also, Robert Pattinson is almost superhumanly beautiful. There is no flash of sizzling loins whenever I look at him but his beauty is stunning. Almost otherworldly and ethereal. Like Elijah Wood and Daniel Radcliffe except I think Robert Pattinson is better looking (even though I like Elijah Wood and Daniel Radclfife more because Robert Pattinson seems kind of bland to me).
I feel as though I may be the only person in the world who could not finish Twilight. I may have pretentions to literary snobbishness but I read fairly broadly and have adored lots of bad books. I fully acknowledge Stephenie Meyer's cracktastic writing because there are many people in the world whose literary opinion I value who LOVED this book. However, I simply could not read it on principle. Not because I think it is trash (because I do) and not because I hate angsty vampires (because I do) but because the entire premise offends me deep to the core. My objection to Meyer's oeuvre is not an intellectual one, but an intensely emotional one. I'm not talking about star-crossed lovers (I have liked many star-crossed lovers), I'm talking about the deeply disturbing ideal that you should give up everything you know and love for the one you love.
Now, I'm a romantic, I am. I've tried to deny it for years but it did me no good because people can winkle it out of me anyway. But I always feel the need to qualify my romanticism the same why I always feel compelled to qualify my feminisim. (For the record, I am not saying the two are mutually exclusive.) As a feminist, I am NOT a Doc Marten wearing, bra avoiding, militant man-hating woman. I do not believe that Womyn has been oppressed by Man. I acknowledge that there are inequalities and glass ceilings in place everywhere. However, I do not subscribe to the notion that men and women are the same. I believe that we are different but equal and that we ought to be celebrating our differences and eliminating qualifying judgments on gender and that is why I consider myself a feminist. I hate the idea that just because a woman has chosen to give up her career and be a mother and housewife is viewed as "betraying" her fellow feminists. My problem with that is why the hell is being a housewife and mother a lesser occupation than a high-powered CEO in a company? It certainly is as much work. I would also fully get behind a woman who has chosen an alternate path and I absolutely support her getting the same pay and respect in the workforce as her male colleagues. (I have many other theories on why women don't and some ways can't attain the same type of power as men in the workforce but I won't get into them here.) I believe that she has every right to be objectively considered as an individual. She is different but not inferior.
I explain this because I feel as though my romanticism is completely off the beaten path of most other romantics even though at heart, I think we believe in the same thing. I believe in love. More specifically, I believe that all human beings have an innate need to bond and become intimate with another being in every possible way: physically, mentally, and emotionally and I think that this connection should be celebrated and nurtured. I delight in romantic stories because satisfy an emotional need within me: that two (or more) characters have found each other makes me happy. However, I do not believe in the idea that there is One Perfect Love for each person because that concept is incredibly limiting. We are each beings of infinite possibilities for love and I think love transcends gender, sex, age, and even number. I don't think monogamy is for everyone, although I will say that I think it is for me.
I'm not going to touch on the aspects that I find ridiculous (like the glittering vampires) or the fact that I think it's nothing new and adds nothing to the YA paranormal romance genre. Those opinions count for naught because everyone else in the world disagrees with me (based on her rabid fanbase). I'm okay with that. Instead I'm going to discuss the problem that is Isabella Swan.
I can't stand her. She is a classic example of a heroine who is Too Stupid To Live and a Mary Sue who is clearly supposed to be liked by everyone because she is superficially not the most gorgeous girl and is Spunky and Spirited even though none of her actions support that. Bella was created to be an avatar for the teenage girls reading Twilight, that is, she is what every girl thinks she is and wants to be. She is on the pretty side of average, has no special abilities or traits, and is "normal" in every sense of the word except for one thing: the hottest, most mysterious boy in school in in love with her. (Also, three other not-so-popular boys are in love with her. She is a font of hotness that she doesn't notice. Oh please.) Already this storyline makes me roll my eyes but that is a small quibble. In addition to being "normal," she is "extraordinary" in all the ways that count: she is snarky and "spirited." Or we are told she is spirited even if we never see it in the text.
In other words, she's a complete doormat with no personality. She is a little bit of column A, a bit of column B, and the result is a dish so muddled that it has no flavour or taste.
However, my biggest problem with Bella is her cripplingly non-existent self-esteem. Now, I'm an individual blessed with an overabundance of self-esteem; I think very highly of myself, thank you very much. I acknowledge that not everyone is like me and while I can't sympathise, I can intellectually get it. Sort of. But not in Bella's case. Like me, she wonders why the hell the supernaturally beautiful Edward Cullen is interested in her throughout the entire book. But unlike me, instead accepting it for what it is, she continually says that she can't be with him because she isn't worthy to be in the same room as his supernatural prettiness. Oh please. Doesn't she think that there are other qualities about her that Edward might like? (Except her delicious blood?)
Edward is another problem, but one I can get over. He is too angsty by half and while I love angsty characters, I hate them in my leading men. He also creeps me out with the Intensity of his Passion. While I didn't finish the book, I could see where it was going:
EDWARD: I love you! But I can't be with you! I am a vampire! I want to drink your blood! But I can't condemn you to a life of immortality! I am a danger to you!
BELLA: Oh, Edward, Edward, I love you and I would do anything to be with you, even though I don't deserve it because you are a beautiful god and I am a lowly human mortal! I will go and put myself in mortal danger another way even though I am supposedly headstrong and independent because you hurt me!
EDWARD: I cannot resist my beautiful Bella! I will come to your rescue multiple times because my love for you is strong! But alas, I cannot go near you or I will not be able to overcome my base vampiric urges!
BELLA: Even though you tell me I am beautiful I shall continue to not believe it! Do not go, Edward! Turn me into a vampire!
EDWARD: No! I cannot! I won't tell you why! I will be Cryptic and Mysterious because women find that hot!
Wash, rinse, repeat.
I've read synopses of the three published books and I'm left even more chilled than before. Edward leaves her because he is a danger to her, she becomes depressed, tries to kill herself because she can't live without her vampire love, agrees to marry Edward when this council of vampires decree she needs to be turned, has second thoughts about it, agrees to marry him anyway, and breaks her friend Jacob's heart.
My question is, where are the psychiatrists during all of this? Suicidal tendencies due to her co-dependency? That is a serious issue. Also, the fact that she agrees to marry Edward at the tender young age of eighteen is immensely frightening, although I probably shouldn't be saying anything because Bear proposed and I accepted when we were twenty. (I will say that we are not married yet and we both intend to establish our own individual lives before we consider tying the knot officially.) Had these books been set in the Victorian era, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it. But marriage at 18 in this day and age is rare and although I am technically engaged, the thought of being married right now is really creepy. I'm still only a kid and Bella's even younger than me.
All I can say is that the entire book series offends me to the very marrow. My romantic heart isn't moved by the book, it skitters away in fear. Bella and Edward's relationship is unequal at best and doesn't seem to be based on anything aside from physical attraction. By all rights I should love this book. Hello, gothic tropes! But instead it makes me disgusted at every page.
Ever since I was a small child, I've had terrible eyesight. I was a seven-year-old JJ with enormous green plastic specs attached to my face. My vision has deteriorated to the point where I was legally blind in high school. With corrective lenses I think I can achieve 20/35 vision, which is to say that my eyes are 1.75 times as worse as a normal person's with glasses or contacts in. This varies from day to day because in addition to being extremely near-sighted, I also have astigmatism in my right eye.
During spring my vision gets even worse. I'm wearing my glasses today to give my eyes a break, but even so, I can't see a damn thing. Currently the text size is increased to 300% on my computer and even then I have squint pretty hard to get it in focus. Doing any sort of work is a trial and this isn't taking into account the tension headache that invariably results from straining my eyes.
The worst part of all this is that I can't do a single damn thing I enjoy because I can't see. I can't go to the gym (because I also have no depth perception either). I can't do yoga at home because I can't see the TV. I can't watch TV period. I can't write. I can't read. Ugh! I'm an intensely visual person. I learn and absorb information by seeing it. My brain isn't wired to acquire information via sound or kinesthetic memory as efficiently as sight so I'm floundering right now. It's like Beethoven conducting his Ninth Symphony completely deaf, except I'm not a Romantic genius. Ignore that analogy; it fails.
But surfing the internet with high contrast text and 3x magnification has yielded this awesome quote from the creator of Alias and Lost (found on pieces-of's journal):
From the latest Rolling Stone, a Q&A with JJ Abrams:
Which summer movie are you excited about?
ABRAMS: Definitely The X-Files.
Do you think Mulder and Scully will finally end up together?
ABRAMS: Good relationships shouldn't be this hard. If they don't end up together this time, I quit.
I feel your pain, JJ Abrams, I do. But their relationship is only hard because Chris Carter throws every possible wrench in there to gum up the works. No hanky-panky between FBI partners! Alien abductions! (Once by Scully and once by Mulder.) Cancer! Secret love-babies with possible alien DNA and/or superpowers! Meddling governments! LOTS OF CONTRIVED PLOT DEVICES IN ORDER TO MAXIMIZE ON THE UNRESOLVED SEXUAL TENSION! You can only deal with that for so long without payoff. However, if there is no romantic payoff in this movie I'm totally going to cut a bitch.
Another movie that I'm sort of excited for despite the fact that I've never finished the book and I kind of hated the premise is Twilight. I do not know why. Also, Robert Pattinson is almost superhumanly beautiful. There is no flash of sizzling loins whenever I look at him but his beauty is stunning. Almost otherworldly and ethereal. Like Elijah Wood and Daniel Radcliffe except I think Robert Pattinson is better looking (even though I like Elijah Wood and Daniel Radclfife more because Robert Pattinson seems kind of bland to me).
I feel as though I may be the only person in the world who could not finish Twilight. I may have pretentions to literary snobbishness but I read fairly broadly and have adored lots of bad books. I fully acknowledge Stephenie Meyer's cracktastic writing because there are many people in the world whose literary opinion I value who LOVED this book. However, I simply could not read it on principle. Not because I think it is trash (because I do) and not because I hate angsty vampires (because I do) but because the entire premise offends me deep to the core. My objection to Meyer's oeuvre is not an intellectual one, but an intensely emotional one. I'm not talking about star-crossed lovers (I have liked many star-crossed lovers), I'm talking about the deeply disturbing ideal that you should give up everything you know and love for the one you love.
Now, I'm a romantic, I am. I've tried to deny it for years but it did me no good because people can winkle it out of me anyway. But I always feel the need to qualify my romanticism the same why I always feel compelled to qualify my feminisim. (For the record, I am not saying the two are mutually exclusive.) As a feminist, I am NOT a Doc Marten wearing, bra avoiding, militant man-hating woman. I do not believe that Womyn has been oppressed by Man. I acknowledge that there are inequalities and glass ceilings in place everywhere. However, I do not subscribe to the notion that men and women are the same. I believe that we are different but equal and that we ought to be celebrating our differences and eliminating qualifying judgments on gender and that is why I consider myself a feminist. I hate the idea that just because a woman has chosen to give up her career and be a mother and housewife is viewed as "betraying" her fellow feminists. My problem with that is why the hell is being a housewife and mother a lesser occupation than a high-powered CEO in a company? It certainly is as much work. I would also fully get behind a woman who has chosen an alternate path and I absolutely support her getting the same pay and respect in the workforce as her male colleagues. (I have many other theories on why women don't and some ways can't attain the same type of power as men in the workforce but I won't get into them here.) I believe that she has every right to be objectively considered as an individual. She is different but not inferior.
I explain this because I feel as though my romanticism is completely off the beaten path of most other romantics even though at heart, I think we believe in the same thing. I believe in love. More specifically, I believe that all human beings have an innate need to bond and become intimate with another being in every possible way: physically, mentally, and emotionally and I think that this connection should be celebrated and nurtured. I delight in romantic stories because satisfy an emotional need within me: that two (or more) characters have found each other makes me happy. However, I do not believe in the idea that there is One Perfect Love for each person because that concept is incredibly limiting. We are each beings of infinite possibilities for love and I think love transcends gender, sex, age, and even number. I don't think monogamy is for everyone, although I will say that I think it is for me.
I'm not going to touch on the aspects that I find ridiculous (like the glittering vampires) or the fact that I think it's nothing new and adds nothing to the YA paranormal romance genre. Those opinions count for naught because everyone else in the world disagrees with me (based on her rabid fanbase). I'm okay with that. Instead I'm going to discuss the problem that is Isabella Swan.
I can't stand her. She is a classic example of a heroine who is Too Stupid To Live and a Mary Sue who is clearly supposed to be liked by everyone because she is superficially not the most gorgeous girl and is Spunky and Spirited even though none of her actions support that. Bella was created to be an avatar for the teenage girls reading Twilight, that is, she is what every girl thinks she is and wants to be. She is on the pretty side of average, has no special abilities or traits, and is "normal" in every sense of the word except for one thing: the hottest, most mysterious boy in school in in love with her. (Also, three other not-so-popular boys are in love with her. She is a font of hotness that she doesn't notice. Oh please.) Already this storyline makes me roll my eyes but that is a small quibble. In addition to being "normal," she is "extraordinary" in all the ways that count: she is snarky and "spirited." Or we are told she is spirited even if we never see it in the text.
In other words, she's a complete doormat with no personality. She is a little bit of column A, a bit of column B, and the result is a dish so muddled that it has no flavour or taste.
However, my biggest problem with Bella is her cripplingly non-existent self-esteem. Now, I'm an individual blessed with an overabundance of self-esteem; I think very highly of myself, thank you very much. I acknowledge that not everyone is like me and while I can't sympathise, I can intellectually get it. Sort of. But not in Bella's case. Like me, she wonders why the hell the supernaturally beautiful Edward Cullen is interested in her throughout the entire book. But unlike me, instead accepting it for what it is, she continually says that she can't be with him because she isn't worthy to be in the same room as his supernatural prettiness. Oh please. Doesn't she think that there are other qualities about her that Edward might like? (Except her delicious blood?)
Edward is another problem, but one I can get over. He is too angsty by half and while I love angsty characters, I hate them in my leading men. He also creeps me out with the Intensity of his Passion. While I didn't finish the book, I could see where it was going:
EDWARD: I love you! But I can't be with you! I am a vampire! I want to drink your blood! But I can't condemn you to a life of immortality! I am a danger to you!
BELLA: Oh, Edward, Edward, I love you and I would do anything to be with you, even though I don't deserve it because you are a beautiful god and I am a lowly human mortal! I will go and put myself in mortal danger another way even though I am supposedly headstrong and independent because you hurt me!
EDWARD: I cannot resist my beautiful Bella! I will come to your rescue multiple times because my love for you is strong! But alas, I cannot go near you or I will not be able to overcome my base vampiric urges!
BELLA: Even though you tell me I am beautiful I shall continue to not believe it! Do not go, Edward! Turn me into a vampire!
EDWARD: No! I cannot! I won't tell you why! I will be Cryptic and Mysterious because women find that hot!
Wash, rinse, repeat.
I've read synopses of the three published books and I'm left even more chilled than before. Edward leaves her because he is a danger to her, she becomes depressed, tries to kill herself because she can't live without her vampire love, agrees to marry Edward when this council of vampires decree she needs to be turned, has second thoughts about it, agrees to marry him anyway, and breaks her friend Jacob's heart.
My question is, where are the psychiatrists during all of this? Suicidal tendencies due to her co-dependency? That is a serious issue. Also, the fact that she agrees to marry Edward at the tender young age of eighteen is immensely frightening, although I probably shouldn't be saying anything because Bear proposed and I accepted when we were twenty. (I will say that we are not married yet and we both intend to establish our own individual lives before we consider tying the knot officially.) Had these books been set in the Victorian era, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it. But marriage at 18 in this day and age is rare and although I am technically engaged, the thought of being married right now is really creepy. I'm still only a kid and Bella's even younger than me.
All I can say is that the entire book series offends me to the very marrow. My romantic heart isn't moved by the book, it skitters away in fear. Bella and Edward's relationship is unequal at best and doesn't seem to be based on anything aside from physical attraction. By all rights I should love this book. Hello, gothic tropes! But instead it makes me disgusted at every page.