OK, after earnestly promising to update often, this is my first post in over 2 weeks. I’m a big fat lying sack of fail.
I’m going to skip over everything bloggable, and do something really random. Shocking, I know! And I may piss some people off and get angry comments and emails. Shocking, I know!
So I’m finally getting some time to read again. I never thought that would happen, and yet here I am, having read several books in the past few months and even comprehending and remembering some of it. I’m quite proud of myself.
So a friend gave me a book and said, “Try this. It’s fluff.” And I’d heard an interview with the author on NPR and the cover was appealing (you can get a graphic designer to read almost anything encased in a flashy jacket) and it was an interesting enough subject, so I gave it a go. I read it in one night, which shouldn’t be at all surprising since it was written for 14-year-old girls. Twilight. Prudish vampires. Perfect perfect Edward. And a heaping dollop of angst.
I don’t want this post to give the impression that I didn’t enjoy it, because I did. I enjoyed it with the same guilty feeling of indulgence that I have when I snarf down too many S’mores. I enjoyed it in a way that made me feel stuffed to the point of queasiness, yet still somehow unfulfilled.
Is this the stuff of tweener lit these days? Because I can tell you that my life changed the day I found the box of Stephen King books in the shed. And I was in the 5th grade. It wasn’t “safe” reading; it scared the hell out of me, and it thrilled me. This current batch of books is so safe, you never worry about turning the page, you never worry about the themes staying with you and haunting your dreams.
And vampires, really? I bet Anne Rice sees the numbers of these books swooping off the shelves and knocks back another slug of Macallan while wondering how Lestat’s sexy legacy of sin ended up so diluted.
The newbie’s guide to Twilight goes thusly:
- Edward is perfection, an angel, a god, an adonis. These words are repeated at least 666 times. I wish I had a word counter to check the word “perfect.” He is also a vampire.
- The novel is written in the first person, which can be rather distracting. But (and I suspect this is the point) it lets preteenage girls (and guys too, remember our good fiend Lestat) slide perfectly into the role of the heroine, Bella Swan. I can see the gears turning and the light clicking on, “Why, I am clumsy too! The boys here are bumbling just like that! My parents are clueless too! Oh kiss me, Edward!”
- ANGST!
- The author is a devout Mormon housewife. There isn’t any sex. Read it again: a vampire novel with no sex. It’s the literary equivalent of going to a Beach Boys concert and not hearing any songs about surfing.
Any mention of sexual stirrings in these 17-year-old characters is subtle and indicated in ellipses, thusly: “His gaze fell on her, his deep amber eyes drank her in. She felt a tingle of electricity in her soul and also in her body …”
(please note the ellipses. “Ellipse,” it sounds like “eclipse,” which happens to the moon. That’s vampirey, right? I could WRITE THIS!) As a friend noted, “When I read a love scene, there had better be something “quivering,” or I’m not interested.”
{Note: For a primer on how to write love scenes for teenagers that might inspire some quivering, please see Tabatha King's One on One.}
- Conveniently for our heroine’s virtue, physical closeness to the godlike Edward would cause him to become so aroused that he would kill her in blood/lust.
And also she couldn’t handle him physically. I ell oh elled at that because I thought of the scene in Mallrats where they are discussing the logistics of Superman and Lois Lane having sex. I won't quote it here, since my grandmother reads this blog, but it's amusing and involves Kryptonite condoms.
- ANGST!
- Girls these days are apparently into obsessive love. This is because they must not have ever actually experienced it. Edward breaks into Bella’s house and watches her sleep. He follows her. He reads peoples’ minds to see what they think of her. It is creep-tastic. Or wonderful, depending on your age and experience level.
Hey, preteen girlies: you wait a few years and then tell me how romantic it is when you realize the psycho ex is sitting in a parking lot across the street watching you decorate the Christmas tree with your family so he can "feel close to you." Isn't obsession just the sweeeetest thing? Restraining orders, sonnets, what's the diff?
So I've only read the first book, and I plan to read the rest of them, but in the meantime I've written some fanfic of my own that I think rounds out the story nicely for those of us who are old and cynical, much past the point of being dazzled by the icy-hot stare of an immortal.
Behold:
I couldn't believe how much and yet how little time had passed since I'd arrived in Forks and met my perfect, godlike, perfect Edward and fallen madly in love. Even though we could never be together as a couple, my breath still caught in my chest when I caught a glimpse of him, as I did now, as his long alabaster fingers brushed an errant stand of stringy brown hair off my forehead.
"Bella" he whispered across our trig homework, the word scarcely more than the shadow of a breath. I shivered with delight ...
We were at his house, studying after school. Perfect perfect Edward didn't have to study, of course. He was well-learned in mathematics and music and art and practically everything else...
I didn't have to worry about his beautiful vampire family threatening me; they were a special coven of vampires who had spent years perfecting the art of hunting only animals, suppressing all their natural urges ...
I was comfortable here, as comfortable as I was anywhere, really, what with my parents being blundering, if well-meaning, children themselves.
I would do anything, anything at all to be with my love, my angelic perfect Edward, to be close to his cold chiseled body and smell the scent of the hunt on his lovely breath. He said it put me in danger to love him, but I didn't care. I would happily lie down if he wished it, prey to his predator...
(WARNING: this is the really unnecessary part that you might not want to read. It's the cynic's ending, the one that wouldn't have pulled in much money from the kidlets in book form)
"Bella," floated Edward's siren voice again across the velvet room. "Bella what is that smell? It's, it's blood isn't it?" His perfect statue's nostrils flared slightly as if tracking a scent on a breeze I couldn't detect with my mere human senses.
"Oh it's nothing," I said, embarrassed. "I just got my period today. I am a 17-year-old girl, you know."
Because he was a VAMPIRE and not actually the world's most perfect boyfriend, Edward roared ferociously and leapt across the room, tearing out my throat in one ripping mouthful. I tumbled to the floor watching sideways as the blood spurted out and soaked into the rich black velvet carpet. As the white fog encroached on my consciousness, I found myself thinking, "Why didn't I just go out with that other kid? The one who wasn't a vampire?"
