Twilight, Chapter 4, Imperfect (p. 78-79)
Jul. 1st, 2012 12:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lliiraNothing continues to make sense.
When Bella gets home, she starts dinner. Jessica calls, happy that Mike said he'd go to the dance with her after all. Bella suggests "with casual innocence" that Angela should ask Eric and Lauren should ask Tyler (78-9). Jessica decides this is groovy, and plans to tell her friends to do as Bella directs. Thank goodness Bella is here to run the love lives of people she has just met and who have known each other for years at least. It's like Forks literally came into existence the instant Bella set foot in it.
After that severe annoyance, we come to severe confusion. Bella, in a snit, almost backed into the Cullens' Volvo on page 78. She fumed the whole way home about Edward. Now, while cooking dinner, she broods about Edward. She decides he told her they couldn't be friends because he can see she's "absorbed... by him" (79), and he isn't interested in her. "Absorbed" -- is that another euphemism for "attracted" or "turned on"? I'm not sure. It's definitely a lot creepier.
Bella decides that the reason Edward doesn't want her is because she isn't "interesting." In other words, the only reason a boy could possibly not be attracted to her is that there's something wrong with her. Of course. Because the only reason anything ever happens, ever, is that there is something wrong with her. I suppose I'm supposed to feel sorry for Bella or identify with her because of this, but I don't. It's just more evidence that she's completely, utterly, and 100% self-obsessed.
Bella has not had one pleasant interaction with Edward. Sure, he saved her life. Other than that, he has been aggressively rude, condescending, smug, and angry at her. And here is what she thinks of him:
Interesting... and brilliant... and mysterious... and perfect... and beautiful... and possibly able to lift full-sized vans with one hand.
This is not reality.
Interesting: Edward saved Bella's life. That's interesting, I suppose. But his conversations with her are always the same; in them, he does not hint at hidden depths or unusual interests or artistic talents or anything else "interesting."
Brilliant: Edward answers questions in high school biology class correctly. This does not make him "brilliant." If Bella thinks this is all it takes to make someone brilliant, then she should believe she is brilliant as well.
Mysterious: I guess. But he's only mysterious because he refuses to tell the truth. That's okay if he's obfuscating and lying in order to protect himself and others, but I don't find it particularly intriguing. If Edward were not a colossal jackass all the time, I might feel differently.
Perfect: Edwward's rude, condescending, and angry for no reason, he lies, he laughs at Bella, he just blocked her in the parking lot so that he could laugh at Tyler asking her out, he orders her around, and he's aloof to everyone else. No one is perfect, but Edward is much farther from perfect than most people. Stephenie Meyer: this word should not be here. It makes Bella look completely out of touch with reality, as well as even more creepy about Edward than she looked before, and I know that is not what you were going for. Bella is not Buttercup and Edward is not Westley. Stop giving your hero and heroine inappropriately intense feelings for each other without bothering to go through the work of showing us why and how those feelings developed. It's lazy and insulting.
Beautiful: Yep, this is true. It's also the reason Bella's interested in Edward. She has worked herself up into imagining all these other things about him because she doesn't want to believe she's almost unbelievably shallow. But she is almost unbelievably shallow.
Possibly able to lift full-sized vans with one hand: Edward used his shoulders to stop the van. I remember Bella noticing that the shape of the dent matched the shape of his shoulders. There was no lifting of vans involved, whether with one or two hands. This is the second time Bella's described what Edward did as picking up the van. The author of this supposed novel cannot even remember how her hero rescued her heroine from death, though she describes it multiple times.
This is so bad. Bella's psyche, the writing, Edward's assholery, all of it. Yet again, I have no words to describe the badness of this book. So I made a picture instead.
Looks like a migraine.
When Bella gets home, she starts dinner. Jessica calls, happy that Mike said he'd go to the dance with her after all. Bella suggests "with casual innocence" that Angela should ask Eric and Lauren should ask Tyler (78-9). Jessica decides this is groovy, and plans to tell her friends to do as Bella directs. Thank goodness Bella is here to run the love lives of people she has just met and who have known each other for years at least. It's like Forks literally came into existence the instant Bella set foot in it.
After that severe annoyance, we come to severe confusion. Bella, in a snit, almost backed into the Cullens' Volvo on page 78. She fumed the whole way home about Edward. Now, while cooking dinner, she broods about Edward. She decides he told her they couldn't be friends because he can see she's "absorbed... by him" (79), and he isn't interested in her. "Absorbed" -- is that another euphemism for "attracted" or "turned on"? I'm not sure. It's definitely a lot creepier.
Bella decides that the reason Edward doesn't want her is because she isn't "interesting." In other words, the only reason a boy could possibly not be attracted to her is that there's something wrong with her. Of course. Because the only reason anything ever happens, ever, is that there is something wrong with her. I suppose I'm supposed to feel sorry for Bella or identify with her because of this, but I don't. It's just more evidence that she's completely, utterly, and 100% self-obsessed.
Bella has not had one pleasant interaction with Edward. Sure, he saved her life. Other than that, he has been aggressively rude, condescending, smug, and angry at her. And here is what she thinks of him:
Interesting... and brilliant... and mysterious... and perfect... and beautiful... and possibly able to lift full-sized vans with one hand.
This is not reality.
Interesting: Edward saved Bella's life. That's interesting, I suppose. But his conversations with her are always the same; in them, he does not hint at hidden depths or unusual interests or artistic talents or anything else "interesting."
Brilliant: Edward answers questions in high school biology class correctly. This does not make him "brilliant." If Bella thinks this is all it takes to make someone brilliant, then she should believe she is brilliant as well.
Mysterious: I guess. But he's only mysterious because he refuses to tell the truth. That's okay if he's obfuscating and lying in order to protect himself and others, but I don't find it particularly intriguing. If Edward were not a colossal jackass all the time, I might feel differently.
Perfect: Edwward's rude, condescending, and angry for no reason, he lies, he laughs at Bella, he just blocked her in the parking lot so that he could laugh at Tyler asking her out, he orders her around, and he's aloof to everyone else. No one is perfect, but Edward is much farther from perfect than most people. Stephenie Meyer: this word should not be here. It makes Bella look completely out of touch with reality, as well as even more creepy about Edward than she looked before, and I know that is not what you were going for. Bella is not Buttercup and Edward is not Westley. Stop giving your hero and heroine inappropriately intense feelings for each other without bothering to go through the work of showing us why and how those feelings developed. It's lazy and insulting.
Beautiful: Yep, this is true. It's also the reason Bella's interested in Edward. She has worked herself up into imagining all these other things about him because she doesn't want to believe she's almost unbelievably shallow. But she is almost unbelievably shallow.
Possibly able to lift full-sized vans with one hand: Edward used his shoulders to stop the van. I remember Bella noticing that the shape of the dent matched the shape of his shoulders. There was no lifting of vans involved, whether with one or two hands. This is the second time Bella's described what Edward did as picking up the van. The author of this supposed novel cannot even remember how her hero rescued her heroine from death, though she describes it multiple times.
This is so bad. Bella's psyche, the writing, Edward's assholery, all of it. Yet again, I have no words to describe the badness of this book. So I made a picture instead.
Looks like a migraine.
