The story needed to be very simple so simple people could understand it. That’s one of the very brief struggles I had with my blog. I could have either written simple, short stuff that simpletons could grasp and share with their friends or I could have written what I felt like writing and interacted about it with people equipped with reading comprehension skills and the desire to read articles that are actually thought out and targeted at more intelligent people.

I think in watching the movie, I got how “Bellaish” it was, as you describe. When Edward was gone, he was GONE. No sign. No development. He would appear when he appeared and then he was gone again. Same thing with the peripheral characters. Bella doesn’t want to go to the prom with her homeboy so she tells him to ask their mutual girlfriend to go. Next thing you know, the girlfriend appears and she’s all happy, telling Bella that their friend asked her to the prom. I think that added to the feeling of “This is the impossible adventure of a girl just like you that doesn’t have anything going on in her life and would love to live a fairy tale in the small-ass-town you live in”.

I think that’s very funny that Bella looks just like the author, or at least what the author felt she looked like in High School. I’m sure she honed this fantasy over many years.. many, many years. Again, this added to the authenticity and is one of the reasons the movie was eaten up so well by young girls. It was written from their point of view.

Actually, the same thing happens with movies for guys. They take some dude that looks like Jack Black and make it so that somehow, he pulls this ridiculously fine chick. Somehow, The King Of Queens bagged Leah Remini. Yeah. Right. :/ The whole concept is “Remember how nobody thought you were going to be able to pull a fly chick? Here’s a fantasy for you! Enjoy!!! :D”

Also, “all boys in High School” don’t fall in love with girls at first sight. They want to bang them at first sight. Like my boy Al mentioned to me about this topic, “This is the type of material that keeps women dumb”.

I love your concept of Victim!Sues. One of the reasons I found Edward’s interest in Bella to be completely unbelievable is that there’s NOTHING to that chick AT. ALL… *NOTHING*! She doesn’t DO anything extraordinary. She doesn’t THINK anything extraordinary. She doesn’t LOOK extraordinarily good. The only explanation I’ve received so far is what Jennifer said about Bella’s scent being intoxicating to him. Um… How in the hell did THAT happen? Is that just the luck of the draw? She ‘found true love’ because she smelled a certain way that no other girl smelled? Is that supposed to be a self-esteem boost for females?

I’m gonna try that. I’m going to tell some chick that I couldn’t help falling in love with her because of the way she smells. If I end up getting some, I’ll make sure to credit Jennifer in the blog post…. Well.. Unless it works on HER, in which case, I’ll just keep it under the hat. :D

But yeah, Bella doesn’t do JACK. Nothing. I could understand if Edward found out that Bella was the key to something important for his people and he chose to defend her to save them all or make a better life for them. Bella’s nothingness speaks again to the female fantasy of guys ‘falling in love with them’ for no apparent reason. Mystical. Magical. Meant to be. GEEEEEEEET THE **** OUTTA HERE! :D

Buffy’s a different type of fantasy which is way healthier for girls, I agree. “What if a girl could defend herself AND other people? :D” instead of “I’m never going to do jack in this life anyway, so hopefully someone else will show up to make my life worth living”. I also agree that her sole focus on Edward as being the source of her entire life is unhealthy and ultimately devastating if that situation were to ever end (I only saw the first one since they just now released it on cable, so I don’t know if they broke up in later movies).

The part about Edward’s beauty probably speaks to the way women choose men to stay with. Women can’t afford to select via looks like men do. There are so many more important considerations that women often end up with a guy that looks good enough, does a decent enough job in bed, is a nice enough guy and makes enough money. It’s a nice, convenient fantasy that your boyfriend is immortal and powerful and rich and handsome and loving and caring WITHOUT him even having sex with her. Everything’s taken care of financially, AND she ends up with the flyguy that all the other girls in her school were drooling over before she even transferred in. So it’s not necessarily an ugly-duckling issue.. It may be a “Settle for the middle-of-the-road guy and never know what it’s like to be with a guy that really turns her on” issue.

As far as the cold thing. Yeah. I found that odd too. When she touched his hand in the car, she mentioned how cold it was, yet acted like it was regular. Like, she had no reaction to the concept of laying up with this cold item in a bed somewhere. :)

I think eternal love and passion is possible, but “effortless” is the problem. Without character development, I just can’t go for Edward being “in love” with Bella because she smelled a certain way. That’s such a cop-out. He didn’t even see her save a butterfly or anything. He was just “in love with her” all of a sudden and willing to put his family at risk over it. Ridiculous.

As far as listening to former lovers’ thoughts.. AWW HELLLLLZ NAW!!! :D That would be CRAZY!… Especially if your ex is a sex fiend! hahaha :D

First thing I have to admit: The Twilight series is addictive. Each volume lasted about 2 days, and during these 2 days, I was so absorbed reading that I must have been really bad company.

BUT it is also true that Twilight, even by the standards of the Young Adult genre, is badly written. Especially the first volume. I can not remember the last time I have read a book with that simple a structure. First person narrative from first page to last, the point of view always Bella’s, the story told strictly chronologically, no sub plots. There is the main plot line, and that`s it. The language repetitive to the point that even I as a non-native speaker (I read it in English) felt annoyed. The author uses the same verbs or adjectives for the same person over and over again, for example the combination “Esme flitted (down the stairs)”. Of course, that makes Stephenie Meyer`s style easy to copy, I bet fanfiction writers all over the world are grateful for that (just for fun, do a Google search with the words “Esme flitted”, and you’ll be surprised at the number of fanfiction stories that appear.

I guess the repetitive language and the stereotypical descriptions of the main characters are kind of inevitable, since all characters in the book are wooden and two-dimensional. The average TV series offers more character development than Twilight. And Bella herself…. She is described as a brunette with long hair and chocolate brown eyes. Clumsy and shy, but obviously attractive enough so that almost all boys in her high-school fall in love with her at first sight. Now look at this picture of Stephenie Meyer:

http://images2.fanpop.com/images/photos/3100000/Stephanie-Meyer-books-to-read-3130133-353-500.jpg

Hm….. Inserting an improved version of oneself into a story is a great temptation, but Ms. Meyer could have checked out some fanfiction sites that teach beginning authors how to avoid writing a Mary Sue character:
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/318759/how_to_avoid_writing_a_mary_sue_fiction.html?cat=38

Bella is especially annoying, because she belongs to the subcategory of “Victim!Sues” (the Victim!Sue is your whiny, wimpy, pathetic female character who can’t seem to do much of anything except cry and get herself into trouble that the romantic interest of the fic has to rescue her from). As a die-hard fan of the explicitly feminist “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, I found Bella`s helplessness, lack of self-esteem and blind admiration for Edward hard to bear. Bella is like a 19th-century damsel in distress, and I thought we had finally gotten past that cliché role for female protagonists.

When asked how he came up with the character of Buffy, Joss Whedon always says he wanted to subvert the cliché of “the little blonde girl who goes into a dark alley and gets killed in every horror movie”. And that is one of the things I love about Buffy: She is the little blond girl who goes into a dark alley and kicks the monster’s ass. Bella does not even make it to the alley. She trips over her own feet and breaks her neck before she ever reaches the front door of her home.
Buffy is about female empowerment, Twilight is about Bella finding the perfect man to save her from an otherwise boring life of mediocrity. Bella`s relationship with Edward is unhealthy in its exclusivity (in the sense that Bella does not have other interests in life, NOT in the sense that Edward only wants to be with her), and their love is unrealistic because it is just there like some magic thing, never changing, never challenged.

Buffy does fall in love with a handsome vampire, too, but as Laura Miller puts it in her brilliant review for Salon.com:
“Buffy wrestled with a series of romantic dilemmas — in particular a penchant for hunky vampires — but her story always belonged to her. Fulfilling her responsibilities as a slayer, loyalty to her friends and family, doing the right thing and cobbling together some semblance of a healthy life were all ultimately as important, if not more important, to her than getting the guy.”

I don`t mind the fact that Bella has no superpowers or that she can not do kung fu. But does she really have to be bad at everything? When Edward drags her to the prom, she can not even dance by herself, noooh, only by standing on Edwards feet and letting him carry her does she manage not to make a fool of herself. (Okay, her leg was broken at the time. But even if she is healthy, she is a lousy dancer.) Buffy starts in season one of the series as a shallow cheerleader, but she slowly matures, and by the end of season 3, she gets accepted into Northwestern, and she sent in the application all by herself. Bella lets Edward do this for her, she does not see the point in applying for college, since she wants to become a vampire right after graduation anyway, to ride into the sunset with Edward.

Found this post by a Buffy fan on the site “Whedonesque” that is absolutely spot on:

“I don’t think every heroine has to be Buffy, but I listened to the second book in this series with my teenage daughter last year while we drove to school, and boy was I glad that I had raised her on Buffy. All of her friends are obsessed with these books, but my daughter spent the whole time complaining about how whiny, wussy, and useless Bella is, and she didn’t bother to read the third book. It warmed this mother’s heart.”

As is this one from the same site:

“But she’s no Buffy, that’s for sure. I always compare the Prom, where Angel announces his intention to leave Buffy, to New Moon, where Edward leaves Bella. Buffy sobs on Willow’s lap, and then she gets up and saves the day, depressed as hell. Bella does exactly what the article describes. No, Stephanie Meyer, not everyone is capable of delivering a roundhouse kick, but we are all capable of aspiring to be more than just a vessel for someone else’s existence, which is what Bella essentially is. We can all WANT to get up out of that bed when we are done crying.”

Okay, enough of Buffy vs. Bella.

Other things that I found annyoing:

That Stephenie Meyer never tires of describing Edward’s beauty and perfection, almost on every single page of ALL FOUR VOLUMES!!! As another reader put it: “There’s only so many adjectives for “pretty” one can read before one wants to kill something.” Sometimes I thought the author must have been a really ugly duckling in high-school and complex-ridden to the present day, to be so obsessed with physical beauty.

The fact that vampires are described not only as cold, but also as “hard as marble” Who wants to cuddle with a piece of rock?

The fact that I had to endure 3 volumes full of romantic scenes that culminate in chaste kisses, and when Bella and Edward finally get married, all I get as a reward for my patience is this: Edward carries Bella to the bedroom – cut – Edward and Bella wake up the next morning. I felt sooooo betrayed!!!
See this little piece of college humor. It is no substitute for the missing sex scene in the book, but at least it is funny:
http://www.hollywoodgrind.com/deleted-twilight-sex-scene/

So, what did I like about Twilight?

Well, the idea of eternal, effortless love and passion is intriguing, despite the knowledge that this does not happen in real life.

For personal reasons, I could identify with Bella`s pain after Edward leaves her in New Moon. I could really relate to those vivid descriptions of feeling empty and missing someone to the point where it physically hurts.

I was fascinated by the Bella – Edward – Jacob love triangle, the grey zone that is explored here: If you can not get the one, true love of your life, is it okay to settle for something smaller? Or could it even be a wise decision to choose the warm, stable, healthy kind of love over the crazy, addictive, overwhelming kind? I think in her description of Bella’s and Jacob’s feelings and thoughts, Stephenie Meyer really outdoes herself. As far as I know, for the biggest part of her life she has been a mormon housewife and mother of three, who had married her highschool sweetheart. That probably means she has no firsthand experiences with separation, break-ups or loving two men at the same time. However, she does a great job describing the pain and anxiety these experiences bring about. Hats off!

Needless to say, I was disappointed when all this was solved by Jacob imprinting on Bella’s daughter Renesmee. Bella gets Edward, Jacob gets Renesmee, everybody is happy, problem solved. A little too contrived and convenient for my taste.

But there is still Leah, the she-wolfe who leaves her pack because she can not stand listening to her former lover’s thoughts about his happy home life with the new girlfriend (through the telepathic bond of the wolf pack). Isn`t this a great consolation for all unrequited lovers who have to see the object of their desire every day? Now you know it could be sooo much worse. :-)

So these are my thoughts on Twilight. Feel free to comment.

To be clear, I don’t typically go for vampire stuff. It was more the lusty edibility that caught me with this story.

And Bill, we usually agree on most things in this arena of discussion. :)

Edward’s character was really well created, technically. I understand from Jennifer that the book explains that Bella’s scent was what made him “fall in love” with her. Unfortunately, that’s as flimsy as falling in love with a chick because she has a great ass. You see why it works for women though, because you can’t be held accountable for your natural scent and someone else can’t be held accountable for being attracted to your scent -> supernatural -> “love”.

Had Edward been like “Damn, She’s good-looking”, made out with her under the bleachers the first day and hit it soon after, he would have been accused of being about “only one thing”, and the spell would have been broken.

Similarly.. You have to know WHEN to break out the Slow Jam Tape. Start playing R&B at the wrong time and you’re trying to get some… Start it at the RIGHT time, and all she notices is that she’s suddenly in the mood to do all those nastily delicious things she’s thinking about doing with you right now…