Twilight: My Dinner with Vlad

Twilight, pp. 196-206.

Bella awakens the next morning, fighting the belief that it was all a dream. I don't know what was so dreamlike about it--the almost-rape seems like something that would be etched in memory--but there you go. Edward is there, ready to take her to *snicker* school.

When I first read this novel, it was Edward I hated. His emotional power games, his use of his powers to manipulate and deceive, his commanding and domineering manner, his casual disdain for everyone outside of his own family, his whiny "but I don't wanna be a monster!" bullshit, his domination of Bella's sexuality--he really is a fucking tool. But this second reading is making me hate Bella a lot more. In fact, this chapter does something I didn't think possible, which is to make me, for a very brief moment, almost kind of like Edward. Why? Because he continues to be the voice of reason when it comes to Bella's inhuman nonreaction to his vampirism.

He turned to smirk at me. "What, no twenty questions today?"

"Do my questions bother you?"

"Not as much as your reactions do." He looked like he was joking, but I couldn't be sure.

I frowned. "Do I react badly?"

"No, that's the problem. You take everything so coolly--it's unnatural."

Do you think he'll ever figure out the reason for this, that she's an empathy-less pathological narcissist who views other people entirely as tools to be manipulated for her own ends? Yeah, I don't think so, either.

In another indication of the Cullens' wealth--substantial in the first book, though it reaches positively O'Leary-an heights as the series wears on--the other Cullen kids are forced to take Rosalie's car, a red convertible that Edward tells us is very, very expensive. The vampires have this expensive car because they like to drive fast, even though later in the series it will become clear they can run faster than a car (that, or Stevenie Meyer can't be bothered to indicate the passage of time when they travel somewhere), so I don't know why they like driving a fast car. Usually the Cullens take the sweet ride (by which I mean the Volvo) to school instead of the convertible since it's less conspicuous (even though Bella noticed it immediately on her first day at Forks High), but they had to take the convertible this time since Edward took the Volvo just to pick up Bella. That's right, he tells her, "I'm breaking all the rules now". Oh, snap! I think Edward's a little too good at wooing insecure fourteen seventeen-year-old girls, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Bella has been ruminating over what she will tell Jessica when they meet, since the latter will undoubtedly want to question her further about last night's interview with the vampire. My first thought was "The truth?", but then I remembered who we're talking about here.  Jessica appears and so Edward naturally reads her mind because he's a dick. After Jessica hands Bella back her jacket--thank God Meyer didn't leave us hanging about whether or not Bella got her jacket back--Edward tells Bella that Jessica won't ask her about their situation in front of him but will do so at the first opportunity, in the trigonometry class she and Bella share.

And now it's time to play our favorite game, What Will Bella Do? Get this one right, and you move on to the next round! Here we go: When faced with this gross invasion of her best friend's privacy, What Will Bella Do? Will she

a) ...angrily demand that Edward no longer read her friend's intimate thoughts and respect her privacy?
b) ...tell Edward that, while she may be powerless to stop him from reading her best friend's mind, she doesn't want any part of using that ability against her?
c) ...not react at all?
d) ...angrily demand that he tell her more specifically what her best friend was thinking so that she can more effectively prepare responses to avoid honestly answering Jessica's questions?

D is your final answer? You're correct! What's our contestant won, Johnny? That's right, you get to continue to read snippets of Twilight!

"So what are you going to tell her?"

"A little help?" I pleaded. "What does she want to know?"

He shook his head, grinning wickedly. "That's not fair."

"No, you not sharing what you know--now that's not fair."

That's right, in Bella Swan's world, it's wrong to use your magic powers to enter without permission and steal from the most intimate space a person has--her own mind--if you don't use those powers for her benefit. That's our Bella!

It turns out Jessica wants to know if Edward and Bella are dating and how Bella feels about him. Wow, he needed vampire mind-reading powers to know that? I'd better check to see if I'm a vampire. Edward gets the last laugh, though, because he tells her he'll be reading Jessica's mind when she tells her how she feels about him, so she'll effectively be telling him, too. Of course, knowing this, Bella could tell him not to do that, or tell him her feelings right there, or refuse to tell Jessica her feelings, but then Jessica would lose her narrative function of "serve as a vehicle for Bella and Edward to play out their dominance/passive-aggressive power games", and Stevenie Meyer isn't about to let that happen.

The conversation with Jessica goes about as you expect, with Bella being evasive and telling half-truths, only this time, in what may be the most off-putting use and abuse of the Jessica character yet, she's actually talking to Edward through Jessica's mind. So she tells her things like Edward's driving is scary and drops really, really obvious hints that she wants him to kiss her when they go out on Saturday (even though she said immediately before this that "it's not like that") because she wants Edward to know these things. I thought Bella was a terrible person when she constantly ignored her alleged best friend, but now she's talking to her on the surface while in reality actually talking to Edward. A conversation between Jessica and Bella is in reality a conversation between Edward and Bella. I told you he takes over the novel. Not only does Meyer not show us any conversations that aren't about him, but now she doesn't even give us any conversations that don't involve him.

Bella makes sure to point out to us that she thinks Jessica would forgive any of Edward's flaws simply because he's, as Jessica says, "unbelievably gorgeous". And while that may be true, I'd just like to point out that that's exactly what Bella's doing. Oh, she pretends it's because he's a monster trying not to be a monster by saving people's lives (by which she means, of course, her life, because that's the only one he's ever saved or will ever save, and that's the only one that matters, so it's the same in her mind as saving "people's lives"), but really, I've been leaving out all the times she's talked about his gorgeous face, his muscled chest, his ripped torso, etc. etc.. Go ahead, go back through the novel and add up the number of times Bella talks about Edward's physical appearance, and tally that against the number of times she talks about how attracted she is to his good vampire-ness. I fucking dare you.

Bella tells Jessica that Mike asked her if Jessica said anything about her and Mike's date, and so the conversation moves to trying to figure out how much Mike likes Jessica. Of course, since this directly involves neither Edward nor Bella, we don't get any details of this, just a paragraph saying it is discussed. Remember, Jessica only speaks when it concerns Edward, and she's talking about Mike now, so her dialogue disappears. The bell rings for lunch, meaning Bella is finally free of having to talk to her best friend so she can bounce off to see her creepy stalker, and I'm finally free of this tripe for another week.

Twilight: Psychic Surveillance

Twilight, pp. 171-178.

Bella, her hunger sated by the end of a breadstick she nibbled, is ready to get down to what's really important: What color Edward's eyes are.

"Usually you're in a better mood when your eyes are so light," I commented, trying to distract him from whatever thought had left him frowning and somber.

He stared at me, stunned. "What?"

"You're always crabbier when your eyes are black--I expect it then," I went on. "I have a theory about that."

"More theories?"

"Mm-hm." I chewed on a small bite of the bread, trying to look indifferent. 

"I hope you were more creative this time...or are you still stealing from comic books?" His faint smile was mocking; his eyes were still tight.

His eyes were still tight? Okay, help me out here, people. What the hell is Meyer talking about? I've been on this Earth a few decades, and English is my tool, and I've never once see or heard eyes described as "tight", probably because it makes no fucking sense. But at least this passage explains my earlier issues with how the Cullens can get away with living in Forks under their original names for generations (not continuously, perhaps, but often enough that plenty of people who knew them would still be living when they came back) without being noticed. The people of Forks are apparently so unobservant they don't notice the radical changes in Edward's eye color (from amber to black) and the accompanying radical changes in behavior. Even more hilarious is Edward's shock at someone's figuring this out. It ain't exactly brain surgery, there, Eddie. We're not talking about eyes that sometimes look green and sometimes look blue and sometimes look grey. Forks may be a town of dullards, but anyone with even half a brain could piece that together.

Of course, a meta-explanation is that Edward doesn't behave any differently no matter what color his eyes are. So far he's been the same smug, condescending asshole in every scene. You know, like Clooney.

The "stealing from comic books" line is of course a reference to Bella's earlier speculation that Edward might be Spider-Man or Superman (which he basically is, though since dumb ol' girls don't buy books about superheroes, Meyer made the book about vampires). Bella does have a theory, and baby, it's the stupidest moment in the book yet. And that's saying something.

I glared at him and continued slowly. "Let's say, hypothetically, that...someone...could know what people are thinking, read minds, you know--with a few exceptions."

That's...just...imPOSSIBLE. Where the hell did she get that? She hasn't had any reason to believe Edward can read minds. Come on! He has never once told her anything that anyone was thinking. As I noted last week, the film has Edward say in the car that he read the minds of the four gangers, and during the restaurant scene, he allegedly demonstrates this power by telling her what some of the other patrons are thinking. (I say "allegedly" because Bella makes no attempt to confirm that what he says is in fact what they're thinking, because of course she knows, because Meyer knows.) But at least the film threw us that bone. The novel doesn't even do that. Out of nowhere, Bella suddenly starts talking about mind-reading. That didn't even come up in her vampire Googling!

And what's with the exceptions? Why would there be any exceptions? Is that the way most people conceive of mind-reading powers? They work on everybody except Catholics, or people under 5'3", or redheads? How hard would it have been for Meyer to have Edward occasionally let slip that he "heard" something that someone didn't actually say? The answer is not at all since the film seemed to do it with no trouble. Stephenie [sic] Meyer is just that lazy.

Our leads play this game of "hypothetically" while they both know it isn't hypothetical and admire each other for figuring out their little game in the way that only annoying pretentious teenagers can. Bella outlines that she came up with the mind-reading thing to explain how Edward was there to rescue her from the criminal scum. (No attempt is made to explain where the exceptions idea came from.) Okay, that's the most plausible explanation? Not that he has some sort of danger sense (I mean, she already guessed he was Spider-Man), or clairvoyance, or psychic powers? How about this one, honey? He's stalking you. See? It explains everything and doesn't require an appeal to anything supernatural.

They go over the "I'm dangerous" thing yet again (still not buying it), and then Edward says that he was stalking her. (Bingo!) Okay, I'm paraphrasing. He says that he followed her to Port Angeles, for her own protection, of course, not because he's a creep who enjoys breaking into a young girl's house to watch her sleep. Then he reveals that he constantly reads Jessica's mind in order to keep tabs on Bella.

If you're reading this sentence, you didn't fully appreciate the last one. Go back and read it again until you get it. I'll wait.

Five. Star. Creepy. Edward constantly monitors a young girl's thoughts. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy, a gross violation of a person's most sacred space, and Jessica is subjected to it precisely because she's been nothing but friendly and welcoming to Bella, so how does Bella react to Edward's morally reprehensible act of psychic breaking and entering in the service of his constant surveillance of her whereabouts? Shock? Horror? Rage? Fear of who else he might be monitoring?

I hope you're sitting down for this, because I don't want to be responsible for giving anyone the vapors: Bella...doesn't react. At all. Edward continues speaking about how he found her after she left Jessica's awareness--by "randomly searching the thoughts of people on the street", natch--until he heard the thoughts of the go-gangers, and Bella lets it all pass without comment. Edward explains that he kept her with him instead of letting her go with her friends because otherwise he would've stalked and slain the miscreants. Finishing his story, Edward is ready to take Bella home. Her thoughts "incoherent", Bella is clear that she doesn't want to leave the presence of the ambulating cadaver who's been reading her best friend's most intimate thoughts for the past week without anyone's knowledge or consent.

Remember, girls: If he doesn't use invasive surveillance techniques to keep himself constantly informed of your whereabouts, it isn't True Love.

Aaaaaand...chapter! Yep, Edward gets the check, they get in the car about to start a conversation...and the chapter ends, right after the conversation's opening line. Were chapter breaks mandated every 20 pages or something?

So...yeah. We're done for the week, I guess. Don't look at me, I didn't insert a random chapter break. Anyhow, tune in next week for more hot talking-to-each-other-in-the-car action!

Twilight: Unreliable

Twilight, pp. 152-156.

Jess drove faster than the Chief, so we made it to Port Angeles by four. It had been a while since I'd had a girls' night out, and the estrogen rush was invigorating. We listened to whiny rock songs while Jessica jabbered on about the boys we hung out with. Jessica's dinner with Mike had gone very well, and she was hoping that by Saturday night they would have progressed to the first-kiss stage. I smiled to myself, pleased.

Our Bella is glad her friend is getting on the rebound the man she herself rejected. I'm sure she finds the whole thing amusing. I'm surprised she doesn't flat-out tell Jessica that Mike only asked her out because Bella turned him down, since Mike hasn't shown any interest in Jessica at this point. You might say that we wouldn't know since Bella doesn't register any male interest in anyone except herself, but I would counter with Mike's confused reaction when Bella suggests Jessica to him.We're also back in our comfort zone of Jessica "jabbering on" and Meyer's clunky, unnatural narration ("first-kiss stage", "estrogen rush"), but I have to wonder what Jessica's waiting for, here. Honey, this isn't a blind date. You've known this guy for a long time, and you've obviously been pining for him for a while, too. I don't think one kiss is exactly moving too fast. Of course, in Stephenie Meyer's Mormon-tacular universe, maybe it's Mike who's refusing to get to first base. You know, because of his True abstinence Love for Jessica that he discovered deep in his heart only moments after Bella turned him down.

But wait, whoa, hold on a minute. "Jess"? When did she become "Jess"? Bella has never once listened to anything Jessica has had to say that wasn't about Edward. As I pointed out before, Jessica's only dialogue printed in the book is Edward-related. Any other time, she, well, she "jabbers on". Bella hasn't done anything with her outside of pretending to listen to her at school. Jessica was at the beach thing, but Bella went there on Mike's invitation and never spoke to Jessica once during the whole thing. This is a girl she's known for two months and has continually ignored over that entire period....and now all of a sudden she's "Jess"? Get real.

Oh well, to be fair, Jessica does get some dialogue here that isn't about Edward. Instead, it's about how Bella is a character who doesn't make sense on her own terms:

Both Jessica and Angela seemed surprised and almost disbelieving when I told them I'd never been to a dance in Phoenix.

"Didn't you ever go with a boyfriend or something?" Jess asked dubiously as we walked through the front doors of the store.

"Really," I tried to convince her, not wanting to confess my dancing problems. "I've never had a boyfriend or anything close. I didn't go out much."

"Why not?" Jessica demanded.

"No one asked me," I answered honestly.

That's right, it's once again time to indulge Meyer's penchant for having it both ways. Bella, the girl that every boy wants and every girl wants to be, has never had a boyfriend "or anything close" (whatever that means). And why not? Because she's uppity and judgemental and thoroughly unlikeable? No, silly, it's because no-one asked. At a (presumably) relatively large public high school in Phoenix. Sure, every male we've seen in Forks has asked or will ask her out (except Edward, but when he's ready to take her out, he'll tell her), but apparently she was a social pariah in Phoenix. I guess Arizonans have an inborn hatred for transparent wish-fulfillment author self-insertions.

I do like that Bella "answered honestly". I could lambast this as yet another example of Meyer's egregious overuse of adverbs or of her pathological fear of using the word "said" in her dialogue, but I'd prefer to think Meyer's finally starting to catch on that Bella does like to lie and so she needs to point out that Bella is actually telling the truth here. But to no avail, since even Jessica's not buying it.

[Jessica] looked sceptical. "People ask you out here," she reminded me, "and you tell them no."

I think we might have an instance of Meta-Jessica here. Somehow, despite Meyer's incredible writing ineptitude, she accidentally created a character, one that refuses to dance to Meyer's tune. Meta-Jessica recognizes Bella's passive-aggression for what it is and calls her on it. But Meyer is strong in the Dark Side of the Force, and Meta-Jessica is quickly hushed up by the power of faux-emo moping. After all, it's been two pages since Bella last moped about Edward's not being around, so we get this:

The girls'-night high was wearing off in the wake of my annoyance at Tyler, leaving room for the gloom to move back in.

Whew! I thought for a minute Bella might be able to go a few hours without spiraling into an Edward-inspired depression. Zis bullet has been, how you say...dodged!

Bella then exhibits her narcissism (or typical teen-aged selfishness, according to some comments) by interrogating the other girl on this girls' night out about whether or not the Cullens missed two days of school because of her, specifically. Not just Edward, apparently, but all of them.

"Um, Angela..." She looked up curiously.

"Is it normal for the...Cullens"--I kept my eyes on the shoes--"to be out of school a lot?" I failed miserably in my attempt to sound nonchalant.

"Yes, when the weather is good they go backpacking all the time--even the doctor. They're all real outdoorsy," she told me quietly, examining her shoes, too. She didn't ask me one question, let alone the hundreds that Jessica would have unleashed. I was beginning to really like Angela.

So, why do you like Jessica again? Oh that's right, you don't.

Meyer really needs to stop calling attention to how ridiculous it is that the Cullens have integrated themselves so thoroughly into their surrounding human society if they can't even be viewed in direct sunlight. I guess world-class surgeon Carlisle isn't on call during these "backpacking trips" to avoid the sun. How lucky for him; I'm sure many doctors in the world would love to know how he manages to avoid being on call whenever he wants. And the Cullens must miss a lot of school in the spring. Even in the Pacific Northwest, there are lots of sunny days in May. And the Cullens have somehow lived in Forks for four generations without anyone noticing that none of them ages. (Remember, Jake's great-grandfather made a pact with the Cullens, the same ones.) This just doesn't make sense on any level. But Meyer wants to have it both ways, so by authorial fiat, she gets it. The Cullens have lived in Forks for about a century, a tiny town that doesn't have nearly enough high schools for them to graduate from a different one every four years, without even changing their names, and no-one notices because Meyer doesn't resolve contradictions in different parts of her novel; she just fails to notice they exist because she doesn't bother to edit. Connor MacLeod survived in plain sight as an immortal for decades, but that was in New York City, where it's a lot easier to hide, and under different names. He didn't move to a town of 3000 and live as "Connor MacLeod" for 200 years without aging a day. Oh, and he could come out during the day.

Bella goes off alone to find a bookstore while her friends go do something else. Bella does this because, she says, she likes to go to bookstores alone. This isn't surprising, since she likes to do everything alone. The only reason she came on this trip at all was to distract herself from moping about Edward. (And of course it didn't work, because she likes moping about Edward.) If Edward had appeared in school that day, you can bet she wouldn't be on this little excursion right now.

In the Twilight film, Bella goes inside the bookstore she finds and purchases a book about folklore, as she's still doing research to determine if Edward is a vampire. In the novel, naturally, even this bit of proactivity is denied her, in part because she already knows Edward's a vampire by means of her privileged access to the author's mind, but mostly because Meyer can't bear to write her fauxtagonist actually doing things.

I wasn't paying as much attention as I should to where I was going; I was wrestling with despair. I was trying so hard not to think about him, and what Angela had said...and more than anything trying to beat down my hopes for Saturday [when Edward is supposed to take her to Seattle], fearing a disappointment more painful than the rest, when I looked up to see someone's silver Volvo parked along the street and it all came crashing down on me. Stupid, unreliable vampire, I thought to myself.

You know, that's the trouble with vampires. They're unreliable.

Twilight: Paint It, Jake

Twilight, pp. 114-122.

Well well well, my little droogies, the time is finally upon us, to meet the third piece of our sad, sick love triangle. But first, the set-up:

At least Mike was happy to see me.

"You came!" he called, delighted. "And I said it would be sunny today, didn't I?"

"I told you I was coming," I reminded him.

"We're just waiting for Lee and Samantha...unless you invited someone," Mike added.

"Nope," I lied lightly, hoping I wouldn't get caught in the lie. But also wishing that a miracle would occur and Edward would appear.

Mike looked satisfied.

"Will you ride in my car? It's that or Lee's mom's minivan."

"Sure."

He smiled blissfully[!]. It was so easy to make Mike happy.

"You can have shotgun," he promised. I hid my chagrin. It wasn't as simple to make Mike and Jessica happy at the same time. I could see Jessica glowering at us now.

So much wrong in so few lines. Then again, you could take any group of lines from this book and likely find a dozen things wrong with them. Of course we need to be constantly reminded that Mike is interested in Bella, as if we'd forgotten, since that's the only reason he's in the story. Okay, that's not fair, he's also here to be not-Edward in this first book, since the real not-Edward non-rival is still to be introduced (and doesn't become an alleged rival until the sequel). I especially like that Mike smiles "blissfully" that Bella will be riding in his car. I guess he's already assuming she'll be sitting next to him--and brother, if that isn't bliss, I don't know what is--though he's blissful before she's actually done this. Bella, ever concerned about others' feelings, squeezes Jessica between herself and Mike to placate her. We're supposed to think Bella's such a great friend that she's putting her own happiness second to that her two friends', but she doesn't want to sit next to Mike anyway! (You may notice there's a lot of "we're supposed to think, but" while reading this novel.) She wants someone else to talk to Mike so that she won't be bothered.

Notice that Mike expresses surprise that Bella showed up. As I said last week, I, too, am surprised. In fact, it's almost as if there's a hidden, omnipotent power manipulating events behind the scenes so that things happen even if they're not consistent with anything we've seen before. What's laughable is Bella's reminder that, "I told you I was coming." Is Meyer really this blind to her fauxtagonist's actions? Bella's word isn't worth anything! She lies frequently and well. I wouldn't trust her to take my order at Denny's.

The funniest part is how easy Bella is to predict. Mike's "unless you invited someone" is the last sentence on the page. As I was turning the page, I knew Bella was going to lie, and sure enough, she does (lightly, whatever that means). Anybody remember way back on page 65?

"It matters to me," I insisted. "I don't like to lie--so there'd better be a good reason why I'm doing it."

Do a search on this blog for "lie" or "lying". Click the tag at the end of this post labelled "lying". You'll come up with a half-dozen times Bella has lied in the, what, three days that have passed in this story so far? (Yes, weeks have passed off-screen, but I'm pretty sure we've only spent three or four days in the company of the characters.) And that's only the times I've mentioned it. I'm sure I've skipped over a few of the more minor lies. For someone who doesn't like to lie, she certainly does it readily, easily, and often, so much so that when this opportunity to tell a lie came up, there wasn't a question in my mind that she would take it.

Oh, and if you remembered that Bella told her "I don't like to lie" lie in reference to something that wasn't even a lie, give yourself a cookie.

Once at the beach, a few of the kids (one of whom is Mike) decide to go hiking. Bella makes the decision to go based on who she most wants to avoid (in this case Lauren, Tyler and Eric, who've decided to stay on the beach), and she gets "a huge smile" from Mike, of course, for choosing his group. (Poor bastard.) She's completely enthralled during the hike by all the wonderful sights and sounds and "wonder[ing] what Edward was doing now, and trying to imagine what he would be saying if he were here with me". When they get back to the beach, some kids from the Indian reservation are there chatting up the ones who stayed behind. We know which one of them matters because he gets a name, Jacob Black. Jacob, being a male, is instantly smitten with Our Bella, "looking at me appreciatively in a way I was learning to recognise". Remember when I talked about how Bella is alternately too jaded and too naive to be 17? Here's an example of the naive part. "Learning to recognise"? This is something I imagine most girls in the Empire start to get a handle on around age 12. Bella grew up in Phoenix, not the backwoods of Appalachia. How could she possibly have reached 17 without recognising boys' interest in her? Answer: Because Meyer, despite having been a 17-year-old girl who grew up in Phoenix, is such a terrible writer that she's less able to write a convincing 17-year-old girl who grew up in Phoenix than I am.

Lauren, of course, notices this and is (wait for it) jealous of Bella. With her "pale, fishy eyes" and "insolent tone", she's really interested in this boy who "just turned fifteen", but of course, every boy only has eyes for Bella. One of the other boys--this one doesn't get a name--says "The Cullens don't come here" when Lauren mentions Edward for no reason. Now the film more or less leaves it at that. It simply has Jacob and Bella walk on the beach with Jake expositing that the Cullens aren't allowed on the reservation and in exchange the Indians aren't allowed to--uh, go to their house, I guess. The novel, however, has Jacob straight up tell Bella that the Indians are werewolves and the Cullens are vampires. Now the film's way of handling Bella's discovery that Edward is a vampire isn't exactly brilliant; she basically does a Google search and concludes vampirism is the only possible explanation for Edward's pale skin and avoidance of the sun. (I guess her search didn't turn up "emo kid".) But it still beats the novel's having Jacob flat out tell her. I mean, a Google search isn't overly exciting, but at least Bella found out on her own. Here, even that tiny sliver of agency is absent, because she doesn't have to do anything but listen to Jacob tell her.

Wait, no, that's not quite true. She does do something: She uses her sexuality to manipulate Jacob into doing something for her. Get used to it, as it won't be the last time she does this to him. Again, this isn't my analysis. She tells us that's what she's doing.

I was still turning over the brief comment on the Cullens, and I had a sudden inspiration. It was a stupid plan, but I didn't have any better ideas. I hoped that young Jacob was as yet inexperienced around girls, so that he couldn't see through my sure-to-be-pitiful attempts at flirting.

Again, Bella is allegedly a 17-year-old girl who went to public school in a major urban area, yet we're to believe she has no experience flirting with boys. I'm going to quote these "pitiful attempts" with Jacob's part removed. Here's some raw Bella action for you:

"So you're, what, sixteen?" I asked, trying not to look like an idiot as I fluttered my eyelids the way I'd seen girls do on TV[!].

"Really?" My face was full of false surprise. "I would have thought you were older."

"Do you come up to Forks much?" I asked archly, as if I was hoping for a yes. I sounded idiotic to myself, afraid he would turn on me with disgust and accuse me of my fraud, but he still seemed flattered.

I purposefully lumped myself in with the youngsters, trying to make it clear that I preferred Jacob.

"Oh, I won't tell anyone, I'm just curious." I tried to make my smile alluring...

"I love them," I enthused, making an effort to smolder at him.

I focused on keeping the vital interest I felt out of my eyes.

Our Bella, she doesn't like to lie. Nope. There'd better be a good reason why she's doing it.

Twilight: Creative Writing

Twilight, pp. 105-113.

This chapter just...ends. There are four more pages, sure, but absolutely nothing happens. Now I know what you're thinking: Did he fire six shots, or only five? Damn, I did it again. What I meant was, you're thinking, "But Carl Eusebius, absolutely nothing happens in the whole book!" Well that's not strictly true, as something does in fact happen in the last, oh, 100 pages of this 500-page tome. But the point is well taken that not much happens in this novel. Still, for these four pages there's nothing to comment on. Our heroine and her ephebophiliac partner listen to some of their favourite music (Debussy, so we know they're pretentious clowns with no taste), Bella describes her mother ("irresponsible and slightly eccentric"), and the couple re-hash the "do you think I'm dangerous?" thing for the 387th time. The only part that perked my interest a teeny bit was when Edward asks her age.

"I'm seventeen," I responded, a little confused.

"You don't seem seventeen."

His tone was reproachful; it made me laugh.

"What?" he asked, curious again.

"My mom always says I was born thirty-five years old and that I get more middle-aged every year."

Well, that explains why Bella thinks and talks like a 35-year-old woman (though author Meyer was only 29 when she wrote Twilight). I'd have preferred, though, a 17-year-old main character that was, I don't know, believably 17. Like Juno, Twilight gives us a high-school girl who speaks mannered, overly-scripted cynicism.

It gets old real fast.

And really, what does Edward care? She's in high school. Why does he need her exact age? When you're a century old, would it make any difference to you if someone were 15 rather than 17? I'm not even half a century old, and I don't notice a difference between 15 and 17. This is just another example of our being told that Edward's 100 years old even though he doesn't act at all like someone from another century. It's also evidence for my theory that Meyer wrote only a single draft of the entire novel, with perhaps some spelling corrections here and there. She suddenly realised she's on page 105 and hasn't told us Bella's age. Solution? Well, in this scene Bella's talking to Edward, so just have him ask her! There, problem solved, moving on.

Wait, you already guessed her age? Edward and Bella are in the same biology class and he's a junior, which is enough information to figure out her age without having it spelled out for you?

Everything must be explained! No assumption of reader sentience will be made!

Anyway, on to chapter six. (Yes, we're five chapters in, and this is how little has happened.) Bella isn't looking forward to today, Friday, because...well, I don't know. She knows Edward isn't going to show up at school, true, but she later cites that as "the worst part about Friday". What else made her not look forward to Friday? She doesn't give any other reason. Well, she'll have to interact with other, non-Edward people, so I guess that's a bummer. Bella tells us that "it more than lived up to my non-expectations". What does that mean? She clearly had expectations (since she "wasn't looking forward to Friday"), and as the day does turn out badly (by Bella's standards, at least), it did, in fact, live up to her expectations.

This is probably the kind of crap Meyer learned in her "creative" writing courses at Brigham Young. "Irony," intones the failed fiction writer teaching whichever class it is, "is when you take what's expected ["live up to my expectations"] and invert it ["live up to my non-expectations"]." Creativity! Either that, or Meyer took that Alanis Morrisette song as a template for her writing. (That would explain a lot, actually.) Isn't it ironic, don'cha think? No, Alanis, I don't think. There's nothing ironic in the song "Ironic", including its being named "Ironic" even though it isn't ironic. Rain on your wedding day isn't ironic. Being married by the same judge who presided over your last divorce--that's ironic. And damn funny. This isn't the appropriate place for irony, anyway. C'mon, Steffy, the way to write that line was "it more than lived down to my expectations". I'm a talentless hack writing a blog no-one reads, and I know that.

Hey, I've got an idea. Let's do a remake of Twilight, this time without the sucking.

I know it's been a while since we had some Jessica-bashing, but don't worry, author Meyer knows what we readers crave. First, Jessica especially enjoys the story of Bella's fainting. Bella notes that Mike doesn't add to her embarrassment by revealing anything he saw or heard about her fainting spell, though of course he isn't appreciated or thanked or even acknowledged for this. (Bella declares it "lucky" that Mike stays silent. It's not luck, genius; he made a conscious decision to say nothing, presumably for your sake. The least you could do is say thank you.) Jessica then asks what Edward and Bella talked about. Bella is evasive, which annoys Jessica. Bella attributes this to Jessica's hope that Bella would give her some gossip, but I think she's just annoyed that Bella keeps dodging her questions. After all, Edward and Bella were talking in a public place, not behind closed doors. I don't think "what did you talk about?" is particularly intrusive. And Edward is someone who has refused to talk to anyone else for the past couple of years. If he suddenly started talking to someone, isn't it natural that people would want to know why? Jessica notes that Bella looked angry during the conversation. (Who wouldn't be, trying to talk to that jagoff?) Because Bella suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, she interprets this simple act of human concern as more probing into her affairs and so responds only with an arch, "Did I?"

Later, Bella notices that Lauren* has been giving her "a few unfriendly glances". Remember Lauren? No? That's okay, because she hasn't appeared before now. Yes, with all the people Bella met in chapter one, Lauren wasn't one of them. She's here now because Meyer needs someone to be jealous of Bella. No, I don't know why she doesn't just have Jessica do it, since she's taken pains to establish Jessica's jealousy in earlier chapters. (That must be why I don't write best-selling novels.) Meyer has decided to bring in another girl to be jealous of Bella, so despite this character's never appearing before, Meyer acts like she's been here all along. That's certainly some...creative writing right there.

To find out why she's getting "unfriendly glances", Bella eavesdrops on Lauren's conversation with Mike. Lauren says she doesn't know why Bella doesn't sit with the Cullens instead of with them. Oh, snap! Oh no she di'nt! We're supposed to be shocked at this betrayal by someone we've never seen or heard from before, but frankly I think it's completely fair. Why doesn't she go over the Cullens? At no point in this novel has she taken any interest in anything her "friends" have had to say or expressed any desire to spend any time with them. She's agreed to go to the beach with them, but immediately before she noticed Lauren's "unfriendly glances", she heard the weather might be good that day and thought to herself that because of this good weather, the trip might not be "completely miserable".** On her way to the beach, she doesn't speak to anyone. Not a single person. On the way back, she purposefully sits next to someone who won't talk to her so that she'll be free to think about Edward without interruption.

So Lauren, painted here as a bad person because of her dislike of Bella's favouring the Cullens over her own friends (as Lauren speaks, Bella notices "what an unpleasant, nasal voice she had"), is only reacting to the obvious implications of Bella's behaviour. And she's completely right. Bella doesn't like anyone in Mike's group of friends. She avoids talking to them, is evasive and dishonest when she's forced to interact with them, and never listens to anything they have to say because she's obsessed with Edward. And this isn't my analysis. Bella states all of these things directly to the reader. She tells us she doesn't want to talk to these people because she wants to think about Edward. She tells us she lies to them. She tells us she doesn't listen to what they say when she's in conversation with them. And she's told us the Cullens are perfect, even though she knows nothing about any of them except their names. So Lauren's question is a damn good one: Why isn't Bella sitting with the Cullens instead of with her non-friends?

Oh wait, I forgot, a proper lady doesn't talk to people to whom she hasn't been introduced. See, that would require taking an action (of her own volition!), and upper-class women in 19th-century England 21st-century high school girls in Washington state don't do that. So she'll need to wait for someone to give her permission to speak to the other Cullens. I'm sure Edward will do that, when he thinks the time is right.

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* Occasionally I've pointed out how even the crappy Twilight film is a marked improvement over this terrible book. I noted in an earlier post that the "all the girls are jealous of Bella" subplots were excised from the film version. Unsurprisingly, the character of Lauren doesn't appear at all. There's no reason for her to; her entire character is "I'm a bad person because I don't like Bella". Since the filmmakers were wise enough (I like to think) to realise this doesn't portray Bella in a particularly favourable light, they probably told Meyer that these story beats and characters had to be nixed "for time". (As noted above, Jessica is also jealous of Bella, but as her primary purpose in the story is to be less awesome than Bella, she remains in the film version, with most of her jealousy eliminated.)
** So if Bella expected the trip to be "completely miserable" until she saw the weather might be nice, why did she agree to go? Well, that would be because Meyer needs this to happen so she can introduce a plot thread that will become important in later books. This requires Bella to be at a particular beach to meet a particular character, who will then have the opportunity to exposit this plot thread to the reader. Once again, Meyer somehow manages to give us two hallmarks of bad writing for the price of one: Even though Bella is a Mary-Sue, to the extent she has a character, Meyer doesn't hesitate to violate that character for the convenience of the plot.

Twilight: Blood Appeal

Twilight, pp. 85-90.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur. It was difficult to believe that I hadn't just imagined what Edward had said, and the way his eyes had looked. Maybe it was just a very convincing dream that I'd confused with reality. That seemed more probable than that I really appealed to him on any level.

We open this week with another piece of unintentional irony. Once again, Stephenie [sic] Meyer manages to get both aspects of a particular situation wrong at the same time. She has even odds to get at least one right, but Twilight is such a masterpiece of suck that it's consistently wrong at a number of levels simultaneously.

It is true, of course, that Bella shouldn't appeal to Edward "on any level". First among these, of course, is that vampires eat people. Edward's attraction to Bella is like a person falling in love with a deer. Would you feel anything approaching romantic love for something that you hunt, kill, and eat? Now, to make the vampire mythos as sexually neutered as possible in this story, we'll eventually find out that the Cullen clan don't eat people anymore. (Come on, not even a Dexter or Morpheus the Living Vampire we-only-prey-on-bad-people thing? No. The vampires must be as nonthreatening as possible for maximum faux-bad boyness.) But as we'll discover, this doesn't in any way decrease their desire to eat humans. It's just that these are Zen vampires that hold their desires in check. So the point still stands. Edward has eaten lots of people, and he'd still eat people now if he didn't practice safe feeding. The notion that he'd have true romantic feelings toward a person is unthinkable. (Again, the Edward-as-villain plotline is just straining to come out here.)

That the prey animal Edward has a totally unbelievable fixation on is Bella makes it even more ludicrous. In all his decades of unlife, he's never come across anyone as enchanting as a 17-year-old girl he's shared probably four minutes of conversation with? I guess her high school-level command of the process of cell mitosis is pretty impressive stuff where Edward comes from! We'll be told later that Edward is drawn to Bella primarily because he can't read her mind. (Because Edward does that, you know.) Now I know I'm hardly the first to make this observation, but really, it's too easy:

Maybe he can't read her mind because there isn't anything to read.

But Meyer can't just get this wrong. No, a rich, powerful, dark, and mysterious man falling in love with the heroine for no discernable reason is part and parcel of hack romance novels. (Novels of this type written by good authors provide female protagonists who are believably irresistable to such men.) Any old crap writer can be not bothered to craft a plausible scenario in which two characters in a romantic story could actually fall in love with each other. It takes someone as monumentally untalented as Meyer to both do that and have an unbelievable scene in which the heroine recognises this fact, but for no reason at all! As noted, if you know Edward is a 100-year-old vampire, you can't believe his attraction to Bella. But Bella doesn't know this. All she knows is that Edward is a year ahead of her in school, is hot, and is kind of a creepy jerk. Why wouldn't she appeal to him? So far, every boy at the entire school has been asking her out! The most popular girl in school has made her her best galpal. And if that isn't enough, she's new to this tiny, isolated town that probably hasn't had any new blood since the Carter administration.

To cut Meyer as much slack as possible, this could possibly work if Bella were sheltered, naive, and socially inept, the way good Mormon parents like to think their good Mormon girls are. (They aren't.) In short, maybe if Bella had actually lived in Forks her whole life and been raised by Charlie, maybe I could buy that she reached age seventeen without seeing herself as attractive. But Bella grew up in Phoenix, raised by her pseudo-hippie New Age mother whose first question when she hears Bella likes a boy is, "Are you being safe?" I can't believe I'm saying this, but "he really likes me?"  is immature for high school. Think about what that means.

Even if Bella consciously rejects relationships, dating, and the high school social scene, it's not credible that she has no understanding of how it works, and since her arrival in Forks, she has shown she does know how the game is played. Once again Meyer wants to have her cake and eat it, too. She wants Bella to be popular and liked and desired even as she's standoff-ish, tragically hip, and withdrawn. She's written Bella as both naive and jaded, narcissitic and empathetic, passive-aggressive and...well, she got that one consistent. Bella has belief and understanding that she could never have formed without going through experiences that can't possibly have left her as innocent as she has to be to keep this "I don't know know why boys like me" foolishness going.

At this point Meyer informs us that Bella's mooning over whether or not Edward really said he wasn't going to talk to her because they shouldn't be friends hasn't been taking place in solitude. No, she's been doing this while--and I hope you're sitting down as you read this--ignoring the person she's with. That isn't my judgement; Bella tells us so. It's poor Jessica she's ignoring, again. Jessica, who apparently has no friends other than Bella, despite Bella's never once so far listening to anything Jessica had to say that wasn't about Edward. This time "Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans...completely unaware of my inattention." That's our Bella!

Jessica finally stops "babbling" when she mentions Edward (because all talk that isn't about Edward is babble by definition), who's sitting alone instead of with the rest of the Cullen clan. He motions for Bella to come over, and Jessica reacts to this with "insulting astonishment", even though Bella is "star[ing] in disbelief". Right, so Jessica's disbelief that Edward would want to see Bella is insulting, while Bella's disbelief of the exact same thing at the exact same time is not. That's our Bella: She's right and everyone else is wrong, even when they have identical thoughts. I mean, I can't think of a more naked sign of authorial favour. When you're wrong, I'm right, and when you're right, I'm right. Isn't this the same person who earlier on this very page declared it more likely that she hallucinated an entire conversation than that Edward would find her appealing "in any way"? Yet Jessica's "astonishment" at this very thing is "insulting"?

Edward wants to see her because he "decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly". When Bella rightly points out that he's not making sense, he says, "I know[!]" and leaves it at that. Then why did he say it in the first place? Because he's the kind of person we here in normal-people land call something that rhymes with "brass pole". He eventually says he's "giving up" on trying to stay away from her. The two then descend into a bottomlessly silly exchange in which he says it's a problem that he says too much around her, so he says it so that she doesn't understand what it means. So why is it a problem? And how can he accidentally say "too much" if it's nonsensical? Then we go over the "I'm warning you, I'm dangerous" rigamorole all over again, because we readers are too dumb to get it the first 37 times.

Or maybe Meyer thinks that if she keeps saying it, we'll believe Edward really is dangerous.

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*Okay, I know I've said that attending high school for eternity would be a horrible fate. I mean, listening to teen-agers prattle on about nothing day after day as year after year slips past....So, Edward doesn't do that. I get it. But what exactly does he do? He doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't appear to study (he just reads the teachers' minds to find out what the answers they want)...what does he do in school for seven hours a day?

Twilight: Alpha Female

Twilight, pp. 71-73.

Mike, at least, was pleased by the obvious coolness between me and my lab partner.

Of course he is, the poor sap. And if you think Bella is going to give him a polite but firm 'Still not interested, sorry', well, you haven't read the rest of this blog. Or much of Twilight. Either way, you're better off.

Now we get to The Dance. It's apparently a Sadie Hawkins Day sort of thing, though here it's called by the unappealing moniker 'girls' choice spring dance'. I suppose Meyer didn't want to associate her fauxtagonist with anything so progressive as Sadie Hawkins.

I know what you're thinking--did he fire six shots, or only five? No, no, I'm sorry, that's not it. You're thinking this dance is setting up Bella's asking Edward to go to it. But that would involve Bella, you know, taking an action, and we'll have none of that. So even though the dance is girls' choice, we still get a scene of Mike taking initiative while Bella adheres to her policy of not doing a damn thing. But first, poor Jessica, recognising Bella's superiority, has to subtly ask Bella to let her have Mike.

Jessica...called me the first Tuesday of March to ask my permission to invite Mike to the girls' choice spring dance in two weeks.

So, do women do this, too? I've never really understood why men do it, and I've certainly never done it. Why do you need to ask someone else if you can ask another person out? What has that person got to do with it? Either the person you're asking will say yes, or she won't. Surely it's her choice, isn't it? Even stranger, here we have two high school girls do it. Stranger still since there's no reason to do so. What indication has Bella ever given that she's interested in Mike? He is interested in her. So it's not even a case of asking someone if you can date a person she wants to date. It's a case of asking someone if you can date a person who wants to date her. That makes the whole scenario give off an alpha female vibe. Bella is (somehow) highest in the pecking order, so no social moves can be made without first consulting her and getting her approval.

And why does Jessica want to ask Mike out anyway? From what we've seen, he doesn't give her the time of day. He's only interested in Bella, even if he has to go through Eric (ha!) to get to her. Indeed, Mike blows Jessica off because he's waiting for Bella to ask him to the dance!

'So,' Mike said, looking at the floor. 'Jessica asked me to the spring dance.'

'That's great.' I made my voice bright and enthusiastic. 'You'll have a lot of fun with Jessica.'

'Well...' He floundered as he examined my smile, clearly not happy about my response. 'I told her I had to think about it.'

'Why would you do that?' I let disapproval colour my tone, though I was relieved he hadn't given her an absolute no.

His face was bright red as he looked down again. Pity shook my resolve.

'I was wondering if...well, if you might be planning to ask me.'

In the name of God, why? Why would you wonder that?

This scene was also cut from the film, since, again, the screenwriter probably realised how little sense it makes. How is it that Mike, portrayed up to now as a popular kid with some social skills, squirms and blushes and stares at the floor like the nerd in a bad sex comedy asking out the sorority bombshell he's sweet on? And does he not get that Bella's not really interested and never has been? If this were the unpopular, social outcast kid with no experience, his obliviousness might pass, but Mike isn't the sort of stock character who would misread Bella's plain disinterest so badly. Unless, of course, he's The Jerk in the bad sex comedy, who can't seem to fathom that there exist girls who don't find him attractive, but Mike doesn't come off as The Jerk, and The Jerk is smarmy and cocksure, not nervous and shy.

It's nice that Bella felt some pity for him, though. If she had a really big heart, she'd go ahead and ask him to the dance so he'll feel better.

Blech.

Also, note the 'clearly not happy about my response'.* Someone needs to sit Stephenie Meyer down and clearly explain to her clearly that 'young' don't mean 'dumb', clearly. That you're writing for a young adult readership is not an excuse to treat your readers like they're idiots. I think the average twelve-year-old reader has long since understood that Mike likes Bella, and that reader will understand that Mike would be unhappy when she says she doesn't want to go to a dance with him. But no, Meyer has to spell everything out in bright red letters. Mike might as well say all of his lines in Incredible Hulk-speak. (That's the speech of Dumb Hulk, of course.) 'Mike want Bella. Bella go dance with Mike? Bella say no? MIKE WANT BELLA. Bella say no 'gain. Mike sad.'

Bella gives Mike her permission to go to the dance with Jessica as well. Mike asks if she has already asked someone, momentarily eyeballing Edward when he does so. This lets us know that Mike does know Bella's not interested in him, so I'm officially clueless as to why he expected her to ask him.

'So you shouldn't make Jess wait any longer--it's rude.'

This is one of the most revolting aspects of the novel. This entire subplot exists solely to flatter Bella, the author's (and presumably meant to be the reader's) alter-ego. Mike is never a credible rival for Bella's affections. Rather, he is a tool to establish Bella's superiority over Jessica, the only other girl in the story, in the eyes of, well, everyone, including Jessica herself. She can only have someone Bella has rejected, and Bella will have the decaying corpse that rejected Jessica (as established when Meyer misused the expression 'sour grapes' on page 22). For those who were appalled at how bad the Twilight film was, it improves upon the novel again here by exorcising most of this subplot.

Ah, now I know what some of you poor souls who know something about Twilight are saying. 'But Carl Eusebius', you say, 'Mike may not be Edward's rival, but Jacob is, and he isn't here yet.' Now, I have not read the later books, but I have seen the later movies, and Oh My Brothers**, Bella never seriously considers Jacob, either. In fact, as a major character, Jacob gets treated even worse by Bellameyer. (More on that later, if I make it that far.)

'Yeah, you're right,' he mumbled, and turned, dejected, to walk back to his seat.

Poor guy. Now he's stuck going to the dance with the cute, popular, likable girl who's smart, friendly and asked him out. No wonder he's so dejected.
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*I want you to know, my little droogies, that I found it difficult to resist making a fish joke here, but I managed.
**One of my readers commented on this phrase. It's a quote from the novel and film Clockwork Orange, so I've hesitated to add 'and Sisters', since then it wouldn't be a quotation. To balance this, I've tried to use feminine pronouns whenever I'm not specifically referring to males, reversing the traditional practice.

Twilight: Enter the Cullen

Twilight, pp. 18-22

This week, we get our first exposure to Twilight's real protagonist, though at this point we will but stare pensively at him from across a school cafeteria. The rest of his 'family' is also introduced, in that they show up and are described by Jessica, who exists primarily to deliver exposition and to be less wonderful than Bella.

She performs Jessica function #1 today.

The first thing that occurred to me about the Cullens is that there are too many of them. (No, that's not a Mormon gag.) Really, do we need Jasper, Emmett, and Esme? I can't tell the difference between Alice and Esme, except Alice sees the future...kind of. Jasper is a newly 'vegetarian' vampire and so isn't very good at it. Except for the one scene in which Edward has to defend Bella from him--which doesn't occur until book #2--he doesn't really do anything. Emmett? Well, he doesn't even get the one scene. Rosalie is also of questionable necessity--oh wait, she doesn't like Bella. There's got to be somebody to grudgingly acknowledge that Edward was right about Bella all along. (This hasn't happened in either of the movies I've seen, so I'm assuming it's being saved for an upcoming film.) Alice is the one who likes Bella, Rosalie is the one who doesn't, and Dr. Cullen is the one who turned them all and taught them to be nice vampires. Really, I can't imagine why we need more in the vampire family than these three and Edward. None-the-less, we are burdened with Jasper, Esme, and Emmett (Emmett?). Forgive me if this blog doesn't deal much with any of the three in the coming months.

There were five of them. They weren't talking, and they weren't eating, though they each had a tray of untouched food in front of them.

Do they always do this? Let's leave aside the question of why five vampires--at least one of whom is over one hundred years old--would want to go to high school, or how they could stand to do so repeatedly. (It is later implied that the family replay a few years of their lives over and over again in different towns.) That's a question for another whole entry. For now, let's ask why they bother to get food and place it in front of themselves if they're not going to eat it. Isn't this more suspicious than not getting food at all? I don't know what sort of high school Mrs. Meyer went to, but my high school had plenty of people who didn't eat lunch, and nobody got suspicious that any of them was a vampire. So they're not eating food that they bothered to go and get...and they're not talking. Five people, sitting in silence over trays of uneaten food.

I'm sure no one but Bella notices this or finds it at all strange.

"They didn't look anything alike," we are told. Two paragraphs of notably vague physical description later, we are told "they were all exactly alike." I suppose Meyer is trying to do some kind of interesting dichotomy here ('their faces, so different, so similar', she writes later), but it really comes off as the author having forgotten what she wrote two paragraphs ago.

And those descriptions. For the men, we get body types and hair color. That's it. Nothing about their faces, how they dress, even how their hair is styled (unless you count "untidy" as a style). The women also get hair colors, but they are described in a very Jerry Jenkins-y way: Rather than telling us what they look like, Meyer tells us who they look like. Rosalie has "a beautiful figure, the kind you saw on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue". Like Jenkins, Meyer figures, "Why bother providing an actual image of my character, or even coming up with an honest-to-goodness metaphor? I'll just say she looks like this other hot person." At least Jenkins provided a specific person. Does every model on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue have the exact same build? I doubt it, but I can't say for sure because I've never looked at an issue of Sports Illustrated in my life.

This lends another clueless Jerry Jenkins vibe to the whole thing. Just as Jenkins offers "a young Robert Redford", as if people under 40 are likely to have an image of same leap to mind, Meyer mentions a magazine that hasn't been relevant in twenty years. (That it is a magazine primarily catering to men--the issue she cites in particular, one would think--I leave to commenters to unpack.) If you're going to let another person do your description for you, at least pick someone your reader is likely to know. Are most tweener girls familiar with the appearance of Sports Illustrated swimsuit models?

Alice is "pixielike". That's about it for her. I'm picturing a tiny woman with wings and a magic wand. That's what Meyer meant by 'pixielike', right? At least the ladies get hairstyles.

Bella reminds us that she doesn't remember Jessica's name when she asks her who the family are. Jessica gives her the names of the members and then disparages their lifestyle, in a way that starts well but that Meyer torpedoes with the dreaded adverb overuse that will pop up from time to time. (Well, it pops up all the time, but I promised to mention it only sometimes.)

"Yes!" Jessica agreed with another giggle. "They're all together though--Emmett and Rosalie, and Jasper and Alice, I mean. And they live together." Her voice held all the shock and condemnation of the small town, I thought critically.

The last sentence already adds unnecessarily to what the dialogue has already told us, and it's capped with the unnecessary adverb. Jessica's dialogue here has italics to clue us in to what she finds important in the Cullens' living arrangements. The final sentence implies Bella doesn't share Jessica's disapproval. But because Meyer doesn't trust the reader, she adds "critically" to make sure we "get" this.

Bella then defends the Cullens' lifestyle, despite knowing only what Jessica told her a few seconds ago (and conceding, though only in her head of course, that "even in Phoenix, it would cause gossip"), causing Jessica to "admit" the truth of Bella's statement "reluctantly". Before, the situation and earlier dialogue rendered the adverb redundant. Here, the word "admit" already implies that it was done so "reluctantly". And that's if you think Jessica's response ("I guess so") alone wasn't enough to imply this, which it was. As Stephen King wrote in On Writing, use "said" in dialogue unless another verb is needed. If it's already clear the character is admitting a point, there is no reason to use "X admitted" over "X said", and there's never any reason to use "X admitted reluctantly".

/adverb rant

Edward and Bella play "don't look at me looking at you" as the scene ends:

"Which one is the boy with the reddish brown hair?" I asked.
...
"That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him." She sniffed, a clear case of sour grapes.

I'm no expert on how the kidz talk deez dayz. I haven't had much of an ear for teen dialogue since the late 90s, but Meyer must have an ear on loan from the 1960s. "Good-looking"? Is that the word high school girls use to describe other pretty girls in a casual conversation? Dare I suggest "hot"?

In my first entry, we learned that Stephenie Meyer doesn't know what a preface is. Now we know she doesn't know the meaning of the expression "sour grapes", either.

Twilight: Welcome to Forks High

Twilight, pp. 11-18

This week, we'll cover the last bit of boring introductory stuff before the real meat of the story. Next week, the vampire imposters (or vamposters, as I like to call them) will make their first appearance, and then things really get bad.

Until then, though, we're stuck with Bella's first day at school, which means it's still tolerable. Nevertheless, there are a few hints of things to come.

Bella is looking around the house after her father has left for work, police work being "his wife and family". There's so much policing to do in Forks that it consumes his life, eh? It's true that he must be married to his job, since a lover is nowhere in evidence--but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Over the small fireplace in the adjoining handkerchief-sized family room was a row of pictures. First a wedding picture of Charlie and my mom in Las Vegas, then one of the three of us in the hospital after I was born...It was impossible, being in this house, not to realize that Charlie had never gotten over my mom. It made me uncomfortable.

It would make me a bit more than that. It would, in fact, make me check to make sure ol' Charlie doesn't have Mom's phone number or address. This is creepy, folks. Remember that Bella's parents divorced almost fifteen years ago. I think the time to move on went by a long time ago. It's one thing to still carry a torch for someone in a way that peeks out now and again (like, say when a special song comes on the radio or you pass a place that held significance), but it's quite another to still have pictures of your ex-wife on the mantle. The photo that also has Bella in it is understandable. The wedding photo is not. Charlie doesn't appear to have anyone in his life, nor is there any indication that he ever has. (And really, how could it be otherwise with his house like that? Imagine any woman entering a house full of pictures of an ex-wife not quickly turning around and never coming back.)

No, he has lived alone in the marital home surrounded by wedding photos of the woman who took his daughter and walked out on him fifteen years ago.

Five. Star. Creepy. Bella's actions later in the book are starting to make more sense, since mental illness seems to run in the family. (As we'll see, Mom isn't exactly wrapped too tightly, either.) At least Bella isn't the only one with abandonment issues.

Bella gets to school and immediately takes stock of the monetary value of the other students' cars. She's relieved to find that "[t]he nicest car here was a shiny new Volvo", so she will be safely ensconced in a school environment bereft of class conflict. Whew, I know that's what I was worried about on my first day at a new high school, let me tell you.

However, her knowledge that she won't be looked down on by yuppies isn't enough to assuage Bella's fears, since she then has to deal with people being friendly to her. Oh, the horror, the horror. A boy seated near her introduces himself.

"Where's your next class?" he asked.

I had to check my bag. "Um, Government, with Jefferson, in building six."

"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way..." Definitely over-helpful [sic]. "I'm Eric," he added.

The nerve of some people, trying to "help" a stranger by going out of his way to make a difficult transition easier. Bella should talk to school administration about this inhumane treatment.

Bella responds with sarcasm, which her oppressor doesn't get because he's a hick country boy and totally not because her remark was so full of unfunny it sold out a Dane Cook show.

"So this is a lot different than Phoenix, huh?" he asked.

"Very."

"It doesn't rain much there, does it?"

"Three or four times a year."

"Wow, what must that be like?" he wondered.

"Sunny."

"You don't look very tan."

"My mother is part albino."

He studied my face apprehensively, and I sighed. It looked like clouds and a sense of humor didn't mix. A few months of this and I'd forget how to use sarcasm.

Ha, small-town rubes can't use sarcasm! Oh wait, no, Bella's just a bitch. Sure, the boy's attempts at conversation are inane, but what's he supposed to ask her about? She doesn't give him anything to work with. She answers his questions with flat declarations, not bothering to elaborate even when given an obvious opening (Eric's hilariously unnatural "What must that be like?") Look, if you don't want to talk to Mr. Over[ly]-helpful, say so. Watch, I can think of how to do it off the top of my head.

"I'm headed toward building four, I could show you the way..."

"Oh no, you don't have to do that. I'm trying to find my own way around, you know, to get used to it."

That took me all of one second to think of, and I'm not exactly socially adept. But Bella says, "Thanks" and accepts the help, only she doesn't want to give anything back, even the courtesy of conversation. She does it, but she doesn't conceal her resentment at having to so. She responds with either the minimum required response ("Very", "Three or four times per year") or inappropriate sarcasm. Oh, and a mocking sigh when her sarcasm isn't appreciated.

Hey, Bella. Maybe he did get your sarcasm and looked at you like that because it was rude.

Anyhow, let's wrap this up. Bella goes through two more classes in which "mostly I just lied a lot" and then meets the girl who will soon become her best galpal in Forks, Jessica. After a brief physical description of Jessica, she talks to Bella.

I couldn't remember her name, so I smiled and nodded as she prattled about teachers and classes. I didn't try to keep up.

We sat at the end of a full table with several of her friends, who [sic] she introduced to me. I forgot all their names as soon as she spoke them.

That's our Bella. She pretends to listen when she isn't and doesn't remember the names of any of the people she's talking to. Jessica is so special that Bella will forget her name again on the next page.

I really don't know what Meyer is trying to accomplish here. There was a time, reading this book, that I thought Twilight was a brave and unflinching look into the mind of the victim of an emotionally abusive relationship. (No, really. It can be read that way, and taken that way it's a disturbing piece of writing that gets under your skin.) But once I got to about the midway point, I realized Meyer is apparently unaware of how thoroughly unlikable her characters are--self-absorbed and emotionally stunted or manipulative. It's a truly amazing feat of ignorance, considering how obvious it is in this section here. Bella reacts to a simple act of kindness by taking advantage of it and then putting down the person who offered it, ignores another person who attempts to help her integrate into the school's community, and can't be bothered to learn anyone's name.

Excuse me, sir, my protagonist seems to be broken. I'd like to exchange her for a new one.

We're soon to get a new protagonist, Oh My Brothers, and he'll sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old Ultra-Violence.