Marked: Chapter 1
ZeldaQueen: Alright! Let's get started on this thing! *cracks knuckles*
Projection Room Voices: Starting Media in 3...2...1...
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Chapter One
ZeldaQueen: We start off this book with - what else - two teenage girls at a locker in their high school, both of whom are bitching about things. The one girl is our protagonist and resident Mary Sue, Zoey Redbird. Really? Redbird? Anyway, the other girl is her friend Kayla, who is a total airhead. I don't know why that's at all surprising. It seems like in books like these, friends only exist to push the Mary Sue with the Hot Male Love Interest, be totally shallow to make the Mary Sue look better, be pettily jealous of the Mary Sue, or actually lust after the Mary Sue themselves. We quickly find out why these girls are bitching. It seems that Zoey was kinda-sorta dating this football player named Heath and he got really drunk after a game and Zoey dumped him, and now Kayla is going on about how it's soooo unfair to dump a guy who had "four-I dunno-maybe six beers, and maybe like three shots" and how it's probably Zoey's fault he got drunk anyway, because her parents made her go home right after the game. By this point, we're not even five paragraphs in and I'm really not liking Kayla. I'm kinda hoping that she's one of the Boring People who gets forgotten by Zoey after Zoey inevitably goes off to frolic with the vampires (yes, that's already what I'm guessing this series is about).
Zoey is also pissed about having to go home right after the game, and apparently her mother has remarried and there is no love lost between Zoey and her stepfather (or "step-loser" as she calls him). Zoey also points out that Heath was trashed about five other times in that week alone. Now at this point, I'd understand if she dumped him because she figured dating a guy who got so hammered so often was Bad News, or even if she just got tired of him constantly getting hungover and vomiting in the gutter. No, the real reason his drinking bothered her? Heath would get fat from the beer. Really. And Kayla starts going on about this as well, about how gross a fat guy who drinks too much beer is, not to mention that kissing him tastes like alcohol-soaked feet. These girls really need to get their priorities in order. Also, and I mention this strictly so we can inevitably laugh at the irony later, Kayla keeps going on about how Heath being hot clearly makes up for his alcoholism and Zoey rolls her eyes at this. Ten bucks says that she goes on about how hot the guy she winds up with is.
Throughout this conversation Zoey keeps coughing and getting dizzy, and then she sees dead people. No, really
"Then I saw him. The dead guy. Okay, I realized pretty quick that he wasn't technically "dead.” He was undead. Or un-human. Whatever. Scientists said one thing, people said another, but the end result was the same. There was no mistaking what he was and even if I hadn't felt the power and darkness that radiated from him, there was no frickin' way I could miss his Mark, the sapphire- blue crescent moon on his forehead and the additional tattooing of entwining knot work that framed his equally blue eyes. He was a vampyre, and worse. He was a Tracker.
Well, crap! He was standing by my locker"
ZeldaQueen: For whatever reason, Kayla sees none of this and Zoey attributes it to "tragically, more evidence of my freakish inability to fit in". Keep this in mind for a second.
Also, is a "vampyre" different than a "vampire"? (Yes, I know, I'm just being a smartass)
Also-also, a teenage female protagonist has a subtle power of some sort which is actually pretty beneficial and she goes on about how all it does is make her a freak who can't fit in anywhere. Hello thar, Bella Swan! I'll also give a wave to Ever, while I'm at it.
Anyway, the Tracker-thing points at Zoey and does some bizarre ritual thing and Marks her. Basically she has a huge headache and passes out and wakes up to find that she has the aforementioned crescent moon mark on her forehead. Kayla starts crying and jabbering on about how she's been Marked - oh lookey there, a title drop - and how Zoey will have to go to an unnamed location and be "one of those things" and "Who am I supposed to go to all of our football games with?" I...I don't even. I really hope Kayla leaves the story soon.
Zoey notes that Kayla is frightened of her and won't come near her, and is upset by this. This is almost good at getting some sympathy for Zoey, except for two things. The first is that we literally just met her and Kayla and thus have no idea of how good friends they are, how long they've been friends, and so on, so Kayla refusing to go near Zoey means nothing. Given how shallow Kayla's been, I don't find it at all surprising. The other thing is that it's immediately followed by wangst about how Zoey has spent three years getting good at blinking back tears. Boo-fucking-hoo.
Anyway, Zoey stands up and notes that it's a good thing that it's after school and no one is around, and how if she hadn't gone back for her textbook, she would have been publicly Marked in front of most of the student body as they left for home. I guess the entire school, staff and janitors included, were evacuated or something, because both Zoey and Kayla were screaming their heads off in a building which was probably pretty quiet and we only hear about one person being there, "a tall thin dork with messed-up teeth, which I could, unfortunately, see too much of because he was standing there with his mouth flapping open staring at me like I'd just given birth to a litter of flying pigs". I really have to ask, why are all of these Mary Sue protagonists such judgmental bitches? I'm just asking.
Anyway, now's about as big a time to point out some major fridge logic I'm getting. So from what I've gathered, vampires in this universe just show up, pick a victim, put a tattoo on their heads, and whisk the off to Hogwarts for the Horror Genre. Given Kayla's reaction, the fact that scientists have spoken on this, and Zoey's fear of people watching her be Marked, it seems pretty clear that the presence of these vampires is publicly known. So...why is it business as usual? You'd think that with monsters wandering around, there would be paranoia running rampant. Why wouldn't there be security guards around or something? Even if they weren't able to help, I'd imagine parents demanding some sort of protection for their kids. Or heck, I could even see some mention that parents were pulling their kids from school, determined to keep them in sight and safe. So...vampires are publicly known and no one thinks twice about them? Huh?
I'm also hoping that it turns out that Trackers can somehow turn invisible while tracking prey, because it's either that or Kayla is the most vacant airhead to grace literature, not noticing a menacing person threatening her friend. Either that, or there's yet another huge plothole, since anything else would imply that most of the populace can't see vampires, but somehow still knows about their existence.
Zoey starts angsting, and apparently her turning into a vampire was the better outcome, since it's entirely possible she would have died when she was Marked. Her being Marked apparently means that she now must attend a vampire high school (seriously, vampires are considered extremely dangerous, but have their own public high school? Is this supposed to be like True Blood, where vampires are the new minority or something?) and starts getting upset over how she's got spending "the next four years going through bizarre and unnameable physical changes, as well as a total and permanent life shake-up" to look forward to. Now, to be very fair, I can give her a pass angsting over this. She was just forced into a new life and unlike Bella or Bree Tanner, she's not going "Oh great, now I'm a god and can kill whoever I want! Yippee!" Any fairness I have is quickly spent though, because the book quickly employs perhaps the two biggest Mary Sue cliches ever.
The first is her wangsting about how she just wants to be normal, dammit, and pass geometry and get into vet school. Well, at least we get some sort of career goal in mind. Ten more bucks says that it's almost completely forgotten soon.
The second thing, and by far the worst, is her family - specifically the fact that her family is apparently the most snot-faced, superficial, shallow, annoying, neglectful bunch of assholes to grace the world. Here is, I swear, how she describes them
"I just wanted to attempt to be normal, despite the burden of my mega-conservative parents, my troll-like younger brother, and my oh-so-perfect older sister"
"waiting for what my stupid Barbie-clone sister liked to smugly call 'the big yellow limos'"
ZeldaQueen: You know, making a protagonist's family so horrible that they're not missed at all as an excuse to not introduce them is just sloppy, guys. I mean, Rowling killed off Harry's parents before the series began, but it was still pretty pivotal to the plot. This just smacks of a reason for Zoey to be happy she's never seeing her family again.
Anyway, by this point Kayla has run off to ride home with her boyfriend (her cell phone ringtone is "Material Girl", if it's not obvious enough that she's shallow) and Zoey quickly starts messing up her bangs to cover the Mark on her forehead. She then sneaks outside while pretending to be poking around in her purse. As soon as she exits the school though, she notices Heath. He's standing around being hot, while "[g]irls flocked around him, posing and flipping their hair, while guys revved ridiculously big pickup trucks and tried (but mostly failed) to look cool". Oh Jesus Christ, just for once could the boyfriend or ex of the protagonist not be the one guy that every girl wants to bang and every guy gets jealous or gay for? Please? Zoey seems quite disgusted that she got involved with a guy who invokes such displays, but adds "No, to be fair to myself I should remember that Heath used to be incredibly sweet, and even now he had his moments. Mostly when he bothered to be sober". Uh huh.
Unfortunately, Heath and the many girls idiotically flirting with him are standing right next to Zoey's car, and she can't stand for them to see that she's Marked. She remembers the last time a kid was Marked at their school, and how everyone avoided him like the plague. Soooo these Trackers sneaking in and Marking kids is a common occurrence? Again, why are there no efforts to prevent this? Even if they are unable to do anything, they ought to try something!
And then, we get this. And I know it's a bit long, but you all need to see it
"She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hair-long and straight and almost as dark as my grandma's had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth-more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But my face had never been that pale. I'd always been olive-ish, much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasn't that my skin was suddenly so white…maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent lighting. I hoped it was the lighting.
I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness…as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger…more barbaric.
From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a moment-just an instant-I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother's people rejoiced"
ZeldaQueen: A few things.
First of all, there we have it. There's our infodump on what our protagonist looks like. No mention of translucent skin at least, thank God.
Second, I hope it's the florescent lighting too. Because if we get another "vampire turns native person white" thing, I might lose it.
Third of all, you want to blow the "SHE'S CHEROKEE" horn any louder there, guys? Okay, she's Native American. That's cool, it honestly is. And it's cool that she knows about her heritage. Would you mind employing a little subtly here, instead of bringing it all up out of nowhere and smacking us upside the head with it?
Fourth of all, am I the only one who sees a few unfortunate implications with her getting an "exotic tattoo" and starts feeling and acting like a stereotypical Native American, dancing around a fire in war paint? On the other hand, New Moon just might be making me overly sensitive to stuff like that.
And on that note, we end our first chapter
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Onward to: Chapter 2
Back to: Acknowledgments
Back to: Table of Contents
Projection Room Voices: Starting Media in 3...2...1...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chapter One
ZeldaQueen: We start off this book with - what else - two teenage girls at a locker in their high school, both of whom are bitching about things. The one girl is our protagonist and resident Mary Sue, Zoey Redbird. Really? Redbird? Anyway, the other girl is her friend Kayla, who is a total airhead. I don't know why that's at all surprising. It seems like in books like these, friends only exist to push the Mary Sue with the Hot Male Love Interest, be totally shallow to make the Mary Sue look better, be pettily jealous of the Mary Sue, or actually lust after the Mary Sue themselves. We quickly find out why these girls are bitching. It seems that Zoey was kinda-sorta dating this football player named Heath and he got really drunk after a game and Zoey dumped him, and now Kayla is going on about how it's soooo unfair to dump a guy who had "four-I dunno-maybe six beers, and maybe like three shots" and how it's probably Zoey's fault he got drunk anyway, because her parents made her go home right after the game. By this point, we're not even five paragraphs in and I'm really not liking Kayla. I'm kinda hoping that she's one of the Boring People who gets forgotten by Zoey after Zoey inevitably goes off to frolic with the vampires (yes, that's already what I'm guessing this series is about).
Zoey is also pissed about having to go home right after the game, and apparently her mother has remarried and there is no love lost between Zoey and her stepfather (or "step-loser" as she calls him). Zoey also points out that Heath was trashed about five other times in that week alone. Now at this point, I'd understand if she dumped him because she figured dating a guy who got so hammered so often was Bad News, or even if she just got tired of him constantly getting hungover and vomiting in the gutter. No, the real reason his drinking bothered her? Heath would get fat from the beer. Really. And Kayla starts going on about this as well, about how gross a fat guy who drinks too much beer is, not to mention that kissing him tastes like alcohol-soaked feet. These girls really need to get their priorities in order. Also, and I mention this strictly so we can inevitably laugh at the irony later, Kayla keeps going on about how Heath being hot clearly makes up for his alcoholism and Zoey rolls her eyes at this. Ten bucks says that she goes on about how hot the guy she winds up with is.
Throughout this conversation Zoey keeps coughing and getting dizzy, and then she sees dead people. No, really
"Then I saw him. The dead guy. Okay, I realized pretty quick that he wasn't technically "dead.” He was undead. Or un-human. Whatever. Scientists said one thing, people said another, but the end result was the same. There was no mistaking what he was and even if I hadn't felt the power and darkness that radiated from him, there was no frickin' way I could miss his Mark, the sapphire- blue crescent moon on his forehead and the additional tattooing of entwining knot work that framed his equally blue eyes. He was a vampyre, and worse. He was a Tracker.
Well, crap! He was standing by my locker"
ZeldaQueen: For whatever reason, Kayla sees none of this and Zoey attributes it to "tragically, more evidence of my freakish inability to fit in". Keep this in mind for a second.
Also, is a "vampyre" different than a "vampire"? (Yes, I know, I'm just being a smartass)
Also-also, a teenage female protagonist has a subtle power of some sort which is actually pretty beneficial and she goes on about how all it does is make her a freak who can't fit in anywhere. Hello thar, Bella Swan! I'll also give a wave to Ever, while I'm at it.
Anyway, the Tracker-thing points at Zoey and does some bizarre ritual thing and Marks her. Basically she has a huge headache and passes out and wakes up to find that she has the aforementioned crescent moon mark on her forehead. Kayla starts crying and jabbering on about how she's been Marked - oh lookey there, a title drop - and how Zoey will have to go to an unnamed location and be "one of those things" and "Who am I supposed to go to all of our football games with?" I...I don't even. I really hope Kayla leaves the story soon.
Zoey notes that Kayla is frightened of her and won't come near her, and is upset by this. This is almost good at getting some sympathy for Zoey, except for two things. The first is that we literally just met her and Kayla and thus have no idea of how good friends they are, how long they've been friends, and so on, so Kayla refusing to go near Zoey means nothing. Given how shallow Kayla's been, I don't find it at all surprising. The other thing is that it's immediately followed by wangst about how Zoey has spent three years getting good at blinking back tears. Boo-fucking-hoo.
Anyway, Zoey stands up and notes that it's a good thing that it's after school and no one is around, and how if she hadn't gone back for her textbook, she would have been publicly Marked in front of most of the student body as they left for home. I guess the entire school, staff and janitors included, were evacuated or something, because both Zoey and Kayla were screaming their heads off in a building which was probably pretty quiet and we only hear about one person being there, "a tall thin dork with messed-up teeth, which I could, unfortunately, see too much of because he was standing there with his mouth flapping open staring at me like I'd just given birth to a litter of flying pigs". I really have to ask, why are all of these Mary Sue protagonists such judgmental bitches? I'm just asking.
Anyway, now's about as big a time to point out some major fridge logic I'm getting. So from what I've gathered, vampires in this universe just show up, pick a victim, put a tattoo on their heads, and whisk the off to Hogwarts for the Horror Genre. Given Kayla's reaction, the fact that scientists have spoken on this, and Zoey's fear of people watching her be Marked, it seems pretty clear that the presence of these vampires is publicly known. So...why is it business as usual? You'd think that with monsters wandering around, there would be paranoia running rampant. Why wouldn't there be security guards around or something? Even if they weren't able to help, I'd imagine parents demanding some sort of protection for their kids. Or heck, I could even see some mention that parents were pulling their kids from school, determined to keep them in sight and safe. So...vampires are publicly known and no one thinks twice about them? Huh?
I'm also hoping that it turns out that Trackers can somehow turn invisible while tracking prey, because it's either that or Kayla is the most vacant airhead to grace literature, not noticing a menacing person threatening her friend. Either that, or there's yet another huge plothole, since anything else would imply that most of the populace can't see vampires, but somehow still knows about their existence.
Zoey starts angsting, and apparently her turning into a vampire was the better outcome, since it's entirely possible she would have died when she was Marked. Her being Marked apparently means that she now must attend a vampire high school (seriously, vampires are considered extremely dangerous, but have their own public high school? Is this supposed to be like True Blood, where vampires are the new minority or something?) and starts getting upset over how she's got spending "the next four years going through bizarre and unnameable physical changes, as well as a total and permanent life shake-up" to look forward to. Now, to be very fair, I can give her a pass angsting over this. She was just forced into a new life and unlike Bella or Bree Tanner, she's not going "Oh great, now I'm a god and can kill whoever I want! Yippee!" Any fairness I have is quickly spent though, because the book quickly employs perhaps the two biggest Mary Sue cliches ever.
The first is her wangsting about how she just wants to be normal, dammit, and pass geometry and get into vet school. Well, at least we get some sort of career goal in mind. Ten more bucks says that it's almost completely forgotten soon.
The second thing, and by far the worst, is her family - specifically the fact that her family is apparently the most snot-faced, superficial, shallow, annoying, neglectful bunch of assholes to grace the world. Here is, I swear, how she describes them
"I just wanted to attempt to be normal, despite the burden of my mega-conservative parents, my troll-like younger brother, and my oh-so-perfect older sister"
"waiting for what my stupid Barbie-clone sister liked to smugly call 'the big yellow limos'"
ZeldaQueen: You know, making a protagonist's family so horrible that they're not missed at all as an excuse to not introduce them is just sloppy, guys. I mean, Rowling killed off Harry's parents before the series began, but it was still pretty pivotal to the plot. This just smacks of a reason for Zoey to be happy she's never seeing her family again.
Anyway, by this point Kayla has run off to ride home with her boyfriend (her cell phone ringtone is "Material Girl", if it's not obvious enough that she's shallow) and Zoey quickly starts messing up her bangs to cover the Mark on her forehead. She then sneaks outside while pretending to be poking around in her purse. As soon as she exits the school though, she notices Heath. He's standing around being hot, while "[g]irls flocked around him, posing and flipping their hair, while guys revved ridiculously big pickup trucks and tried (but mostly failed) to look cool". Oh Jesus Christ, just for once could the boyfriend or ex of the protagonist not be the one guy that every girl wants to bang and every guy gets jealous or gay for? Please? Zoey seems quite disgusted that she got involved with a guy who invokes such displays, but adds "No, to be fair to myself I should remember that Heath used to be incredibly sweet, and even now he had his moments. Mostly when he bothered to be sober". Uh huh.
Unfortunately, Heath and the many girls idiotically flirting with him are standing right next to Zoey's car, and she can't stand for them to see that she's Marked. She remembers the last time a kid was Marked at their school, and how everyone avoided him like the plague. Soooo these Trackers sneaking in and Marking kids is a common occurrence? Again, why are there no efforts to prevent this? Even if they are unable to do anything, they ought to try something!
And then, we get this. And I know it's a bit long, but you all need to see it
"She had my eyes. They were the same hazel color that could never decide whether it wanted to be green or brown, but my eyes had never been that big and round. Or had they? She had my hair-long and straight and almost as dark as my grandma's had been before hers had begun to turn silver. The stranger had my high cheekbones, long, strong nose, and wide mouth-more features from my grandma and her Cherokee ancestors. But my face had never been that pale. I'd always been olive-ish, much darker skinned than anyone else in my family. But maybe it wasn't that my skin was suddenly so white…maybe it just looked pale in comparison to the dark blue outline of the crescent moon that was perfectly positioned in the middle of my forehead. Or maybe it was the horrid fluorescent lighting. I hoped it was the lighting.
I stared at the exotic-looking tattoo. Mixed with my strong Cherokee features it seemed to brand me with a mark of wildness…as if I belonged to ancient times when the world was bigger…more barbaric.
From this day on my life would never be the same. And for a moment-just an instant-I forgot about the horror of not belonging and felt a shocking burst of pleasure, while deep inside of me the blood of my grandmother's people rejoiced"
ZeldaQueen: A few things.
First of all, there we have it. There's our infodump on what our protagonist looks like. No mention of translucent skin at least, thank God.
Second, I hope it's the florescent lighting too. Because if we get another "vampire turns native person white" thing, I might lose it.
Third of all, you want to blow the "SHE'S CHEROKEE" horn any louder there, guys? Okay, she's Native American. That's cool, it honestly is. And it's cool that she knows about her heritage. Would you mind employing a little subtly here, instead of bringing it all up out of nowhere and smacking us upside the head with it?
Fourth of all, am I the only one who sees a few unfortunate implications with her getting an "exotic tattoo" and starts feeling and acting like a stereotypical Native American, dancing around a fire in war paint? On the other hand, New Moon just might be making me overly sensitive to stuff like that.
And on that note, we end our first chapter
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Onward to: Chapter 2
Back to: Acknowledgments
Back to: Table of Contents