lliira

Angry feminist writer without a publishing contract and with cramps talking about Twilight ahead. You have been warned.

Tonight, not only do I have cramps, but my sinuses are acting up and my back is killing me because I can't take Tramadol when I have cramps because it does nothing for cramps, and I don't want to know what happens if you mix Tramadol and Midol, and of course Midol does almost nothing for my back pain. Also, Tramadol has a certain cheering effect that I am now missing. I'm not gonna try for thoughtful analysis or try to give this horrible excuse for a "novel"* the benefit of the doubt. Tonight, Ms. Meyer, fuck you very much.

It's good to have some description of the way your characters move and look while they're speaking. It is not good to have description every single bloody time they say anything. Particularly when they're saying very little. If you need description every single time anyone says anything, your dialog stinks. Needless to say, Ms. Meyer's dialog is as rancid as a Porta-Potty in hour 57 of an anti-gay rally.

Also, how does this work? "The gold in his eyes blazed" (58). I guess now we know that the pupils and whites of his eyes aren't blazing. Well that's necessary information.

Since there apparently aren't tow trucks in Forks, it takes eight people to shift that van that bravely risked itself trying to kill Bella Swan. One is Coach Clapp. Hahahah! I love being reminded of his existence, because that way I remember how much I hate Meyer's immature, bigoted, overprivileged, suck-up-to-the-rich-white-powerful-men sense of "humor".

(Dang, I already feel better. Raging at horrible writing = cramp relief? I need to do science to this!)

Bella tells the EMTs that she's fine, but then big male man Edward says she was hurt. Bella then almost dies of humiliation (her words, page 58) when the EMTs put a neck brace on her. She's got a painful head injury, she almost died, but it's the "humiliation" of a neck brace that gets to Bella. Remember, girls, appearances are absolutely the only thing that matters no matter what! I don't know why they put a neck brace on her, since whiplash is not suspected -- is that normal procedure when someone has a concussion? Meh, I'll do the same amount of research as I suspect Meyer did, because I am a lazy slug.

Anycrap, on page 59, Bella thinks of her dad as "Chief Swan." She is upset that her father has arrived when she has a painful head injury and has just nearly been killed. Yep, this novel promotes family values all right. If those values include, "you hate their guts, but they're your family so you have to live with them. For a while." Our wonderful, laudable heroine, with whom surely every good girl identifies, sighs in annoyance at her father for being concerned when he sees his daughter on a stretcher after a car accident. Me, I'd probably yell "Daddy!" and insist he ride in the ambulance with me, or at least meet me at the hospital, and I haven't even said "daddy" for at least 23 years, but I guess I'm a pathetic little daddy's girl like that. Unlike our strong sociopathic heroine here. (And, to be fair-ish, my father is not a total creep, unlike Charlie Swan.)

Bella tunes out both her father and the EMT telling her father about her painful head injury to think about other stuff. Well of course. It's just her body, why should she care about it? Only the manly mens with manly penises should care about her body. It's not like she owns her own body or is responsible for it or anything -- what a silly thought!

Bella "consider[s] the jumble of inexplicable images churning chaotically in [her] head" (59). Whew, I feared Meyer might go four whole sentences without using an adverb. And didn't "chaotically" add so much to that sentence? "Jumble of inexplicable images churning" doesn't tell us enough. We must have that adverb or we would falter in a sea of being shown instead of being told. Because we have the reading comprehension of a gerbil on quaaludes.

Bella notices that a dent in one of the cars "fit the contours of Edward's shoulders" (59). (She uses the word "car" twice in that sentence.) First, there was another car besides the van? I don't remember the other car. Whatever, I'm not re-reading. That's too much to ask of this gerbil. Second, I wouldn't be able to recognize the specific contours of Beroli's shoulders in intaglio like that, though we've been living and sleeping together for... um... six (?) years. (How do people remember these things?) I guess we are not a Couple Whose Love Was Destined When the World Began, unlike Bella and Edward.

So Bella ponders about Edward having superpowers, and tries to "think of a logical solution that could explain what I had just seen -- a solution that excluded the assumption that she was insane." She does not consider the possibility that the bonk on her head did something weird to her perceptions and recollections. What does she consider? What an impertinent question! It is not our right as readers to know what's going on in Bella Swan's head. Being told that something is should be enough for us. Geez, what are we, perverts? A bunch of perverted gerbils on quaaludes, that's us.

I felt ridiculous the whole time they were unloading me. What made it worse was that Edward simply glided through the hospital doors under his own power. I ground my teeth together.

As we all know, the best foundation for a lasting romance is self-absorption and self-hatred, combined with overwhelming envy of the beloved. The fact that Bella would be much happier if Edward were also injured shows how much she cares.

Since no one bothered pulling the curtain around to give me some privacy, I decided I wasn't obligated to wear the stupid-looking neck brace anymore. When the nurse walked away, I quickly unfastened the Velcro and threw it under the bed. (60)

So Bella is so furious about the neck brace, she has now dismantled it, ripping the Velcro from it and throwing said Velcro under the bed. But I have two wonderments. Wonderment the first: wow, that's some nurse, not drawing the curtains around a patient. Would this go in the Forks people are all rubes count? Wonderment the second: Bella Swan, all alone, her head aching (I guess, she hasn't noticed it since Edward told her about it), her life almost lost, saved by the superheroics of a gorgeous but strange asshole, cares before all else that the neck brace makes her supposedly look silly.

Bella Swan, you are vile. I would say you are pond scum, but that would be an insult to organisms which provide much-needed oxygen, oxygen which you waste by breathing. I wish that van had pulped you. You deserve Edward, one of the biggest douches to ever have douched, who like all douches pretends to be good but in fact is an infection-causing ooze that hurts you while pretending to help you. I hope you get a yeast infection on your soul. And in your crotch. Because I hate you. In a choice between being locked in a room with Rick Santorum and being locked in a room with you, Bella, you win by a very short head, but only because I don't think you'd notice me enough to try to interact with me, as I am not a gorgeous and wealthy jackass with a superiority complex the size of the Andromeda Galaxy. Bella Swan, I was never before embarrassed to be very pale and dark-haired, but now I am because I share those traits with you. I will continue reading these despicable books starring despicable you in the hopes that something really, really nasty happens to you. Like being forced to spend eternity with Edward Cullen.

*"Novel" is in quotes because there is no there here. I'm 58 pages into this book. And it's been 58 pages of NOTHING. There are plot points and character points and setting points, but none of it gels into anything that makes any sense or means anything. It's like someone put eggs and sugar and flour and icing on a platter and said, "yay, it's a cake!" Only the icing is actually shit. That is what this so-called novel is.