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lliiraTW: car accidents
I've been spacing out my Twilight posts more than I originally did because it's healthier for me. But I read a teeny bit ahead, and this -- I can't not write a post about this right now. In this little section, the outrageousness level is too high. Meyer's ignorance of and contempt for her craft and for reality are too great. I either write a post, or I rant at Beroli about it yet again.
Bella wakes up to see that "all the rain from yesterday had frozen solid" (53). The driveway is covered in ice, and so are the trees. Calling this "the rain from yesterday had frozen solid" is a strange choice -- when each individual needle on pine trees is coated in ice when you wake up in the morning, there's been an ice storm.
Here are the two typical reactions a teenager who goes to public school in the U.S. has when they wake up to a world covered in ice:
1) No school today!
2) Ooh, that's pretty.
You might have school in the afternoon, after salt trucks have gotten to the major thoroughfares and the sun and salt have started to melt the ice. But not in the morning.
Bella has the #2 reaction. But not the #1 reaction. She doesn't even consider the possibility of #1. Not only that: she is worried that she'll fall down in the driveway, but she is not worried about driving on ice. For anyone who did not grow up in a climate with occasional icy roads, here's how you drive when the roads are covered in ice: you don't. Not just shouldn't. Unless you are a police officer like Charlie or other emergency professional, you don't go to work, you don't go shopping, you don't get in the car. Even if the roads are technically open and legal to drive on (which, when they're covered in ice, they usually aren't), you do not get on them in a car.
Okay, Bella used to live in Phoenix. Maybe she does not know that when the roads are impassible due to ice, schools close. Even Michigan State University closed when the roads were this bad, and both when I lived near MSU and when I went to college there, MSU was notorious for basically never closing. But they did the morning after an ice storm because, as Bella notes but thinks is unique to her, it's dangerous even to walk on ice.
Bella almost falls down walking in the driveway to get to her truck. Charlie hasn't salted the driveway, which is both irresponsible and out of character, but Meyer doesn't mention that because she did not know and did not care to learn how people who live in places like Forks adapt to the weather she made so important to her story. Bella doesn't talk about using an ice scraper on her truck, and she would not have passed up an opportunity to gripe at us about that in detail, and probably cut her hand on it, so it's clear that she did not use an ice scraper on her truck. She doesn't talk about turning the truck on and letting the heat melt the ice on the truck's windows either, and she would have whined about that in detail as well if she'd done it.
While Bella is utterly terrified about walking on ice, here's how she drives on ice, in a truck with windows which must be covered in ice:
Driving to school, I distracted myself from my fear of falling and my unwanted speculations about Edward Cullen by thinking of Mike and Eric... (54, emphasis mine)
Bella's afraid of falling, but blasé about driving on ice. She doesn't talk about driving incredibly slowly. No fallen branches. No salt trucks. No police cars pulling her over and telling her she gets a police escort home and a ticket. And she's not giving her complete attention to controlling her truck on ice.
Everything from now on -- the rest of the book and the three that follow -- must be Bella's coma dreams after plowing her truck into a tree on this page.
Lest you think that I'm being too harsh, that maybe the storm wasn't that bad, maybe the salt trucks had come out super-early and it's a warm morning with a bright sun and the roads are okay:
My truck seemed to have no problem with the black ice that covered the roads. (55)
That's a magic truck. Unbeknownst to Bella, Charlie's put snow chains on her tires, but snow chains do not enable one to drive without fear on black ice. Also, how the heck did she not notice those before getting into the truck? And if there are snow chains on your tires, driving over 30 mph is dangerous.There's no way Bella would know this. I wonder if Charlie was motivated by concern, or by something sinister.
Bella does mention slowing down, "not wanting to carve a path of destruction through Main Street" (55). She took the highway to school in the first chapter. But this "path of destruction" thing is why roads are closed when they are COVERED IN BLACK ICE!
Oh, and school's open.
Here is what Meyer did: she made an ice storm important to her story so that Bella could worry about falling, so Charlie could be shown to be a (supposedly) concerned parent, and so that we'd remember Forks is cold. Then Meyer proceeded to write the aftermath of an ice storm without bothering to 1) research ice storms for five minutes 2) talk to a person who lives or lived somewhere ice storms happen 3) watch the Weather Channel when there was an ice storm somewhere.
The "phenomenon" that is the title of this chapter is that of a person who has managed, somehow, to go through life while so wrapped up in her own tiny world that the idea that she might not know enough about something to write about it in detail, without even the slightest modicum of research, has not entered her skull.
Actually, it's even weirder than that: Meyer attended Brigham Young University. She got an English degree there. It gets cold enough in winter in Utah to snow, and the likelihood of Meyer not having seen what a community does when the roads are icy seems quite low. She either did not notice, has forgotten what it's like, or chose to write this nonsense instead for some reason.
It's insulting. Insulting to people who grow up in places where ice storms occur. Insulting to the reader, that a writer would just not bother to this extent. Insulting to the craft of writing. Meyer's not only a bad writer. She's a lazy and arrogant one.
I've been spacing out my Twilight posts more than I originally did because it's healthier for me. But I read a teeny bit ahead, and this -- I can't not write a post about this right now. In this little section, the outrageousness level is too high. Meyer's ignorance of and contempt for her craft and for reality are too great. I either write a post, or I rant at Beroli about it yet again.
Bella wakes up to see that "all the rain from yesterday had frozen solid" (53). The driveway is covered in ice, and so are the trees. Calling this "the rain from yesterday had frozen solid" is a strange choice -- when each individual needle on pine trees is coated in ice when you wake up in the morning, there's been an ice storm.
Here are the two typical reactions a teenager who goes to public school in the U.S. has when they wake up to a world covered in ice:
1) No school today!
2) Ooh, that's pretty.
You might have school in the afternoon, after salt trucks have gotten to the major thoroughfares and the sun and salt have started to melt the ice. But not in the morning.
Bella has the #2 reaction. But not the #1 reaction. She doesn't even consider the possibility of #1. Not only that: she is worried that she'll fall down in the driveway, but she is not worried about driving on ice. For anyone who did not grow up in a climate with occasional icy roads, here's how you drive when the roads are covered in ice: you don't. Not just shouldn't. Unless you are a police officer like Charlie or other emergency professional, you don't go to work, you don't go shopping, you don't get in the car. Even if the roads are technically open and legal to drive on (which, when they're covered in ice, they usually aren't), you do not get on them in a car.
Okay, Bella used to live in Phoenix. Maybe she does not know that when the roads are impassible due to ice, schools close. Even Michigan State University closed when the roads were this bad, and both when I lived near MSU and when I went to college there, MSU was notorious for basically never closing. But they did the morning after an ice storm because, as Bella notes but thinks is unique to her, it's dangerous even to walk on ice.
Bella almost falls down walking in the driveway to get to her truck. Charlie hasn't salted the driveway, which is both irresponsible and out of character, but Meyer doesn't mention that because she did not know and did not care to learn how people who live in places like Forks adapt to the weather she made so important to her story. Bella doesn't talk about using an ice scraper on her truck, and she would not have passed up an opportunity to gripe at us about that in detail, and probably cut her hand on it, so it's clear that she did not use an ice scraper on her truck. She doesn't talk about turning the truck on and letting the heat melt the ice on the truck's windows either, and she would have whined about that in detail as well if she'd done it.
While Bella is utterly terrified about walking on ice, here's how she drives on ice, in a truck with windows which must be covered in ice:
Driving to school, I distracted myself from my fear of falling and my unwanted speculations about Edward Cullen by thinking of Mike and Eric... (54, emphasis mine)
Bella's afraid of falling, but blasé about driving on ice. She doesn't talk about driving incredibly slowly. No fallen branches. No salt trucks. No police cars pulling her over and telling her she gets a police escort home and a ticket. And she's not giving her complete attention to controlling her truck on ice.
Everything from now on -- the rest of the book and the three that follow -- must be Bella's coma dreams after plowing her truck into a tree on this page.
Lest you think that I'm being too harsh, that maybe the storm wasn't that bad, maybe the salt trucks had come out super-early and it's a warm morning with a bright sun and the roads are okay:
My truck seemed to have no problem with the black ice that covered the roads. (55)
That's a magic truck. Unbeknownst to Bella, Charlie's put snow chains on her tires, but snow chains do not enable one to drive without fear on black ice. Also, how the heck did she not notice those before getting into the truck? And if there are snow chains on your tires, driving over 30 mph is dangerous.There's no way Bella would know this. I wonder if Charlie was motivated by concern, or by something sinister.
Bella does mention slowing down, "not wanting to carve a path of destruction through Main Street" (55). She took the highway to school in the first chapter. But this "path of destruction" thing is why roads are closed when they are COVERED IN BLACK ICE!
Oh, and school's open.
Here is what Meyer did: she made an ice storm important to her story so that Bella could worry about falling, so Charlie could be shown to be a (supposedly) concerned parent, and so that we'd remember Forks is cold. Then Meyer proceeded to write the aftermath of an ice storm without bothering to 1) research ice storms for five minutes 2) talk to a person who lives or lived somewhere ice storms happen 3) watch the Weather Channel when there was an ice storm somewhere.
The "phenomenon" that is the title of this chapter is that of a person who has managed, somehow, to go through life while so wrapped up in her own tiny world that the idea that she might not know enough about something to write about it in detail, without even the slightest modicum of research, has not entered her skull.
Actually, it's even weirder than that: Meyer attended Brigham Young University. She got an English degree there. It gets cold enough in winter in Utah to snow, and the likelihood of Meyer not having seen what a community does when the roads are icy seems quite low. She either did not notice, has forgotten what it's like, or chose to write this nonsense instead for some reason.
It's insulting. Insulting to people who grow up in places where ice storms occur. Insulting to the reader, that a writer would just not bother to this extent. Insulting to the craft of writing. Meyer's not only a bad writer. She's a lazy and arrogant one.
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Date: 2012-04-28 08:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 03:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-30 08:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-01 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-11 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-05-13 07:42 am (UTC)It looks to me like an ice storm in Forks would be something of a freak event; not as rare as snow in Florida (1/4 inch and the freeways close), but the kind of thing someone might see once every few years or so, if that. And most definitely not something schools and roads would stay open through.