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lliiraIn a story, the meeting between two (or more) important characters who will become romantically involved is something you have to get right. There are lots of ways to do this, and your writing doesn't have to be perfect, but the meeting of these characters must be interesting. It's an opportunity to show who they are and what obstacles they will face in their relationship. Ginny's too shy to talk to Harry; Mr. Darcy thinks Lizzy isn't pretty enough to dance with; Mr. Rochester pretends to believe Jane is a fairy; Aral points a weapon at Cordelia while she vomits; Rinoa teaches Squall how to dance.
When Bella and Edward met, he acted like he hated her for no reason. That could work, but Meyer gave herself an uphill battle to make Edward anything but repugnant. Mr. Darcy was proud, vain, and not good with strangers, but Edward was frightening and hateful. Meyer has created an expectation within the reader that she will deal with this. But I feel jerked around, because there's no payoff for that setup. Edward lies about his vileness and Bella doesn't bring it up. They do reveal who they are in their interaction with each other, and neither of them is likable in the smallest degree. I don't know why I should care about this lying jerk and this everything-hating coward. I guess the fact that Edward's pretty is supposed to carry the entire story.
Edward brings up the snow, saying "it's too bad" that it melted (47). Bella, honest for once, doesn't pretend she's disappointed and "normal like everyone else." As opposed to normal like no one else. Which would be closer to the truth -- who's "normal"? Bella points out that she's being honest here; she's so rarely honest, it's important to highlight this one time when she is. Edward figures out that she hates Forks and asks why she's there.
No one had asked me that -- not straight out like he did, demanding. (48)
Edward feels he has the right to demand answers of this girl with whom he's only exchanged a few sentences. Lovely.
I'll likely get into this more later, but for now I'll just say it's pretty clear to me that the reason Bella's attracted to Edward (besides his prettitude) is that he's dominant. And there's nothing wrong with this. However: 1) the level of dominance behavior Edward displays toward someone he does not know and who has not given her consent for this behavior is completely unacceptable. 2) The text treats the dominance-submission game Edward and Bella play as a male-female game, and this is bullshit. 3) They never talk about it! It's one thing to be in a dominant-submissive relationship, it's another to never acknowledge that's what you've got. It's not okay not to talk about it, it's not healthy, it's not safe, sane, or consensual, and moreover, it highlights how ridiculously boring the book is.
The unspoken stuff in this book is screaming to be told. Instead we hear about Bella hating hating hating and Edward dazzling dazzling dazzling. When there's a fantasy world through the wardrobe door, making your entire book about the grain of the wood used to make the wardrobe makes me hate the wardrobe. There really and truly is a good story buried deep in Twilight -- I can understand why it stirs the imagination. But Meyer cannot tell it. She skirts around the important stuff and dwells on things that do not matter, like Edward's gorgeousity*, or that do matter but that should not be emphasized on every single page, like Bella's hatred for all things.
Bella looks into Edward's "dark gold eyes" and decides to tell him the truth. Now I'm visualizing Edward as Data with lighter hair. Anyway, Bella's mom remarried a guy named Phil, and Bella likes Phil fine -- she claims -- though he's "too young, maybe." I wonder what kind of machinery would be needed to remove that stick from Bella's ass. Transporter technology, probably.
Bella says she moved because Phil travels a lot for his job playing "ball" (baseball, I guess?) and that "he doesn't play well. Strictly minor league" (49). This from the girl who refuses to play volleyball without injuring herself and others. Dear lord. If he can make a living playing a sport, he is excellent at the sport, you horrible snob!
Bella's here because her mom was unhappy being away from her husband. So Bella decided to move to Forks, though her mom didn't want her to. And now Bella, in her great goodness, whines and moans and complains and gripes and sneers and sighs about it. That's just how good a person she is. She will sacrifice everything that could ever make her in any way not-miserable for someone who doesn't want her to sacrifice for them, and then she will not shut up about it.
In about twenty years, Bella will be Mrs. Fidget.
If Bella had been forced into moving for some reason, her constant hate would be both understandable and a bit more bearable. But she chose it, and for a silly reason. She's going to graduate high school in a very short time, at which point her mom could be with her husband constantly. Her mom shouldn't have allowed this move, and it's pointless.
But the way Bella dwells on her implacable hatred for everything all the time, I don't think she moved to Forks to be nice to her mom. I think she moved there so she could hate while getting martyr points. For Bella, it's a win-win situation.
So blah, Bella's sighing and snarking and Edward's all intense, and they have this brainless exchange:
"But now you're unhappy," he pointed out.
"And?" I challenged.
"That doesn't seem fair." He shrugged, but his eyes were still intense.
I laughed without humor. "Hasn't anyone ever told you? Life isn't fair."
"I believe I have heard that somewhere before," he agreed dryly. (49)
None of that has anything to do with anything. Meyer obviously wanted to get to Bella being all weary worldly-wise, and decided to stick it here. Bella chose her situation with full knowledge of what would happen, she wasn't forced into it. There's nothing unfair about it unless she and Edward both think life would only be "fair" if she were always happy about everything all the time no matter what.
"Hey Mom, I'm going to stick my hand into this piranha tank!"
"What? Don't do that."
"But it will make you happy."
"No it won't."
"Yes it will. Aaggghh it hurts! Life is so unfair. Sigh."
Edward tells Bella, "I'd be willing to bet that you're suffering more than you let anyone see." Well, Edward, millions of readers have been subjected to Bella's endless hatred for everything. Personally, I would like to see her suffer more. Not only would it be fun, but then she might have an actual reason for her unremitting bellyaching.
Bella has an impulse to stick her tongue out at Edward when he commiserates with her. I -- I can't think of anything to say to that. I have no idea what's going on in this girl's head. A boy she's attracted to is being sympathetic to her, and this is how she responds. I cannot find any way to empathize with her. She makes no sense as a person.
Bella's got pages on Edward in the "wtf" stakes, but he's going to do his best to catch up. His first entry was his hatred for her for turning him on, and it was an impressive one. His second is this:
"Am I wrong?"
I tried to ignore him.
"I didn't think so," he murmured smugly. (50, emphasis mine)
What. What. Bella never told him he was wrong about any of this, she's just not answering him. Why is he "smug"? I though he was being sympathetic, but I guess he was trying to win something? That would explain why Bella wanted to stick her tongue out at him, I guess. But what is Edward hoping to win? He's not acting like he's attracted to her -- he's acting like she's on the witness stand and he's cross-examining her and just found out her alibi was faked. NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE. HELP.
Edward asks if he's annoying her. "He sounded amused." Ugh. Someone needs to stick a piece of chalk up this douche's nose. What is he, 12? Snap her brastrap, Ed, that'll really prove how big your dick is.
Then Bella, noting that she's telling the truth again, says she's annoyed that her face is "so easy to read." That contradicts what Edward said earlier, that she doesn't let anyone see her pain. So I guess Edward was supposed to be wrong there? Though he then says that he finds her difficult to read. And then Bella responds, "you must be a good reader then."
What ^3.
"I find it difficult to boil water."
"You must be a good cook then."
Edward says that yes, he's usually a good reader, and shows off his "ultrawhite [sic] teeth," and whatever, their conversation is finally over and I am freeeeeeeee. For now. I'd been looking forward to Bella and Edward talking to each other, thinking the book might pick up there, and their conversation was a little bit of a respite from Bella's hate-parade. But it wasn't any good, either.
I love books with lots of long conversations. Two people yammering for hours? Especially two people who will become romantically involved? Awesome! But only if the people aren't horrible (unless they're supposed to be villains) and their conversation is interesting and makes sense. Edward and Bella's conversation makes no sense. I guess some of it is that Meyer is maybe trying to build suspense? It took her 48 pages to get to why Bella is stuck in Forks, so I guess she's into that kind of thing. Though the payoff for that was so not worth the wait. But Meyer also has characters contradict what they just said, say things that contradict what is happening, and say things that come from nowhere and go nowhere. These aren't two people building a relationship; they're two people babbling words as they pass each other in a void.
* Which is not to say that there's anything wrong with having good-looking protaganists in your books, or mentioning how pretty they are when they're introduced and occasionally thereafter, especially when someone who's attracted to them is dwelling on how hot they are. But don't make it their main character trait or the reason someone falls in love with them. And don't simply tell me they're pretty on every single page. It's like listening to someone go on and on about how great their crush is, except instead of saying, "he's gorgeous and he's funny and he's got a great singing voice and he loves squirrels and he said the cutest thing," they're saying, "he's gorgeous and he's pretty and he's handsome and he's lovely and he's gorgeous."
When Bella and Edward met, he acted like he hated her for no reason. That could work, but Meyer gave herself an uphill battle to make Edward anything but repugnant. Mr. Darcy was proud, vain, and not good with strangers, but Edward was frightening and hateful. Meyer has created an expectation within the reader that she will deal with this. But I feel jerked around, because there's no payoff for that setup. Edward lies about his vileness and Bella doesn't bring it up. They do reveal who they are in their interaction with each other, and neither of them is likable in the smallest degree. I don't know why I should care about this lying jerk and this everything-hating coward. I guess the fact that Edward's pretty is supposed to carry the entire story.
Edward brings up the snow, saying "it's too bad" that it melted (47). Bella, honest for once, doesn't pretend she's disappointed and "normal like everyone else." As opposed to normal like no one else. Which would be closer to the truth -- who's "normal"? Bella points out that she's being honest here; she's so rarely honest, it's important to highlight this one time when she is. Edward figures out that she hates Forks and asks why she's there.
No one had asked me that -- not straight out like he did, demanding. (48)
Edward feels he has the right to demand answers of this girl with whom he's only exchanged a few sentences. Lovely.
I'll likely get into this more later, but for now I'll just say it's pretty clear to me that the reason Bella's attracted to Edward (besides his prettitude) is that he's dominant. And there's nothing wrong with this. However: 1) the level of dominance behavior Edward displays toward someone he does not know and who has not given her consent for this behavior is completely unacceptable. 2) The text treats the dominance-submission game Edward and Bella play as a male-female game, and this is bullshit. 3) They never talk about it! It's one thing to be in a dominant-submissive relationship, it's another to never acknowledge that's what you've got. It's not okay not to talk about it, it's not healthy, it's not safe, sane, or consensual, and moreover, it highlights how ridiculously boring the book is.
The unspoken stuff in this book is screaming to be told. Instead we hear about Bella hating hating hating and Edward dazzling dazzling dazzling. When there's a fantasy world through the wardrobe door, making your entire book about the grain of the wood used to make the wardrobe makes me hate the wardrobe. There really and truly is a good story buried deep in Twilight -- I can understand why it stirs the imagination. But Meyer cannot tell it. She skirts around the important stuff and dwells on things that do not matter, like Edward's gorgeousity*, or that do matter but that should not be emphasized on every single page, like Bella's hatred for all things.
Bella looks into Edward's "dark gold eyes" and decides to tell him the truth. Now I'm visualizing Edward as Data with lighter hair. Anyway, Bella's mom remarried a guy named Phil, and Bella likes Phil fine -- she claims -- though he's "too young, maybe." I wonder what kind of machinery would be needed to remove that stick from Bella's ass. Transporter technology, probably.
Bella says she moved because Phil travels a lot for his job playing "ball" (baseball, I guess?) and that "he doesn't play well. Strictly minor league" (49). This from the girl who refuses to play volleyball without injuring herself and others. Dear lord. If he can make a living playing a sport, he is excellent at the sport, you horrible snob!
Bella's here because her mom was unhappy being away from her husband. So Bella decided to move to Forks, though her mom didn't want her to. And now Bella, in her great goodness, whines and moans and complains and gripes and sneers and sighs about it. That's just how good a person she is. She will sacrifice everything that could ever make her in any way not-miserable for someone who doesn't want her to sacrifice for them, and then she will not shut up about it.
In about twenty years, Bella will be Mrs. Fidget.
If Bella had been forced into moving for some reason, her constant hate would be both understandable and a bit more bearable. But she chose it, and for a silly reason. She's going to graduate high school in a very short time, at which point her mom could be with her husband constantly. Her mom shouldn't have allowed this move, and it's pointless.
But the way Bella dwells on her implacable hatred for everything all the time, I don't think she moved to Forks to be nice to her mom. I think she moved there so she could hate while getting martyr points. For Bella, it's a win-win situation.
So blah, Bella's sighing and snarking and Edward's all intense, and they have this brainless exchange:
"But now you're unhappy," he pointed out.
"And?" I challenged.
"That doesn't seem fair." He shrugged, but his eyes were still intense.
I laughed without humor. "Hasn't anyone ever told you? Life isn't fair."
"I believe I have heard that somewhere before," he agreed dryly. (49)
None of that has anything to do with anything. Meyer obviously wanted to get to Bella being all weary worldly-wise, and decided to stick it here. Bella chose her situation with full knowledge of what would happen, she wasn't forced into it. There's nothing unfair about it unless she and Edward both think life would only be "fair" if she were always happy about everything all the time no matter what.
"Hey Mom, I'm going to stick my hand into this piranha tank!"
"What? Don't do that."
"But it will make you happy."
"No it won't."
"Yes it will. Aaggghh it hurts! Life is so unfair. Sigh."
Edward tells Bella, "I'd be willing to bet that you're suffering more than you let anyone see." Well, Edward, millions of readers have been subjected to Bella's endless hatred for everything. Personally, I would like to see her suffer more. Not only would it be fun, but then she might have an actual reason for her unremitting bellyaching.
Bella has an impulse to stick her tongue out at Edward when he commiserates with her. I -- I can't think of anything to say to that. I have no idea what's going on in this girl's head. A boy she's attracted to is being sympathetic to her, and this is how she responds. I cannot find any way to empathize with her. She makes no sense as a person.
Bella's got pages on Edward in the "wtf" stakes, but he's going to do his best to catch up. His first entry was his hatred for her for turning him on, and it was an impressive one. His second is this:
"Am I wrong?"
I tried to ignore him.
"I didn't think so," he murmured smugly. (50, emphasis mine)
What. What. Bella never told him he was wrong about any of this, she's just not answering him. Why is he "smug"? I though he was being sympathetic, but I guess he was trying to win something? That would explain why Bella wanted to stick her tongue out at him, I guess. But what is Edward hoping to win? He's not acting like he's attracted to her -- he's acting like she's on the witness stand and he's cross-examining her and just found out her alibi was faked. NONE OF THIS MAKES ANY SENSE. HELP.
Edward asks if he's annoying her. "He sounded amused." Ugh. Someone needs to stick a piece of chalk up this douche's nose. What is he, 12? Snap her brastrap, Ed, that'll really prove how big your dick is.
Then Bella, noting that she's telling the truth again, says she's annoyed that her face is "so easy to read." That contradicts what Edward said earlier, that she doesn't let anyone see her pain. So I guess Edward was supposed to be wrong there? Though he then says that he finds her difficult to read. And then Bella responds, "you must be a good reader then."
What ^3.
"I find it difficult to boil water."
"You must be a good cook then."
Edward says that yes, he's usually a good reader, and shows off his "ultrawhite [sic] teeth," and whatever, their conversation is finally over and I am freeeeeeeee. For now. I'd been looking forward to Bella and Edward talking to each other, thinking the book might pick up there, and their conversation was a little bit of a respite from Bella's hate-parade. But it wasn't any good, either.
I love books with lots of long conversations. Two people yammering for hours? Especially two people who will become romantically involved? Awesome! But only if the people aren't horrible (unless they're supposed to be villains) and their conversation is interesting and makes sense. Edward and Bella's conversation makes no sense. I guess some of it is that Meyer is maybe trying to build suspense? It took her 48 pages to get to why Bella is stuck in Forks, so I guess she's into that kind of thing. Though the payoff for that was so not worth the wait. But Meyer also has characters contradict what they just said, say things that contradict what is happening, and say things that come from nowhere and go nowhere. These aren't two people building a relationship; they're two people babbling words as they pass each other in a void.
* Which is not to say that there's anything wrong with having good-looking protaganists in your books, or mentioning how pretty they are when they're introduced and occasionally thereafter, especially when someone who's attracted to them is dwelling on how hot they are. But don't make it their main character trait or the reason someone falls in love with them. And don't simply tell me they're pretty on every single page. It's like listening to someone go on and on about how great their crush is, except instead of saying, "he's gorgeous and he's funny and he's got a great singing voice and he loves squirrels and he said the cutest thing," they're saying, "he's gorgeous and he's pretty and he's handsome and he's lovely and he's gorgeous."
no subject
Date: 2012-04-03 04:18 am (UTC)It's not necessarily bad that Bella obviously has some kind of sexual desire for Edward and appreciation of pretty men, but she would sound just as shallow if she were a male narrator, with only a slim veneer of her pretended interest in literature.
Edwina was beautiful like a Renaissance angel, like an underwear model, like a Playboy bunny, in spite of the way that these three things are not very similar. Not that I know what a Playboy bunny looks like, because I am Virtuous. Edwina's eyes were topaz sapphires melted in amber and glittered golden in the light; her skin was pale and the fairest of all and therefore the most beautiful by all clearly non-racist standards. She had perfect high raised cheekbones and deepset eyes and a long protruding nose. Her bosom was like a white flock of goats. Please note that the allusion to literature means I am very deep and intelligent. Her toenails were flawlessly shaped like pale pink shells on her bare feet, the free margin of the nails curving delicately inward like seafoam crashing over white sand, even her lunulas at the base of the toenails perfectly white and pristinely curved...
(I think I just gave Bob a bit of a foot fetish there.) The shallow self-centred whine makes it bad, and the girl whose entire life is centred around her boyfriend makes it awful.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-04 08:08 am (UTC)Yeah, there's no problem at all with Bella thinking, "wow, this guy's hot," and being nervous around him because of it. But she doesn't care about anything else at all when it comes to him, at this point anyway. Plus it's incredibly boring to read. Yes, Meyer, we get that Edward is pretty. Stop informing us of this fact constantly.
But asking Meyer to stop beating the reader over the head with something is a lost cause. At least she doesn't have Bella think about how pretty Edward is as often as Bella thinks about what a stupid terrible horrible useless person Bella is. The book would actually be more palatable if it were written like your paragraph, because in your paragraph the narrator isn't saying, "and I'm sure I she thinks I am an incompetent loser because I am an incompetent loser I hate myself I hate everything" forty-five times.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-14 01:20 pm (UTC)I think this is why Fifty Shades of Grey got written!