Resident Evil: Apocalypse (2004)

Resident Evil: Apocalypse is the worst movie made since Resident Evil.

Director’s Wife Kate Beckinsale is back as Selene, a spindly white woman who wears black leather and kicks a bunch of people. She’s a vampire, which is why she’s only ever seen at night shooting people with machineguns as vampires are wont to do. The Fanged Ones have a blood feud (ha) with the lycans aka werewolves, which is why Kate kills them with perfectly normal non-silver bullets and knives. In the first movie Kate killed one of the three vampire elders or gods or whatever, so now, she tells us, the vampires will come after her, too. They never do, though. It’s that kind of movie.

Kate is joined by living wax dummy Trunk Slamchest, a vampire-werewolf hybrid who was the Macguffin of the previous film. Yes, he’s a vampire-werewolf hybrid. A vamwolf, if you will. Kate exposits that Lump Beefbroth is unique, that there has never been a hybrid before, and that his power might be unlimited. (Doesn’t the first bit imply the second bit?) Because he was vamped in the last movie, Gristle McThornbody has to drink blood to survive. He’s not down with the whole blood-drinking thing, but Kate insists, “Normal food might kill you.” She leaves to do some vampire stuff and Slab Awesomefist immediately goes to a pub and orders a plate of potatoes that he barfs up after maybe 2 bites. Not the brightest bulb in the pack, our Big McLargeHuge, but I for one applaud the actor for his convincing performance as a vamwolf that eats potatoes and pukes.

Meanwhile, the bad guy from the last film brings a few goons to murder Marcus, the First and therefore Most Powerful vampire of them all. No, they don’t bring stakes or knives but instead the traditional vampire hunters’ weapon of choice: machineguns. Haven’t you read Dracula? The Count went down under a hail of automatic weapons fire. I’m sure I’m remembering that right.

“Ah ha!” I hear you shout at your phone as you prepare to smugly correct the smartass author of a blog no one reads, “the first movie had UV bullets, so they can machinegun vampires to death!” Yeah but these guys forgot to bring those, I guess, since they shoot Marcus over and over and he just kills them all. Yep, the villain of the last movie, who somehow made it to this one, is unceremoniously dispatched 15 minutes in. I haven’t seen an anticlimax like that since the last guy who went to bed with Tomi Lahren. Marcus has the ability to see clips from the previous movie people’s memories by drinking their blood, because as we all learned in Science! class, that’s where memories are stored. And no, obviously Marcus doesn’t see those events from the victim’s perspective, that would require shooting new scenes and do you know how much work it is to shoot a scene? You have to like point the camera at actors and shit, it’s hard. Marcus decides he’s going to free his brother William, the First and therefore Most Powerful of the werewolves, imprisoned lo these 800 years because Billy couldn’t control his savagery and was just eating everybody. Why does Marcus want to do this? So he and Bill can be godbros and Take Over The World. Why didn’t Marcus do this oh, say, about 8 centuries ago? Because the movie’s happening now, why did you even ask.

Marcus somehow knows Bulk Vanderhuge is at the pub, so he goes there to obtain the key to Billy’s prison. Kate somehow knows both that this is happening and where, even though she left before Rip Stigface decided to go to the pub. People just kind of know things when the movie needs them to. All three characters end up getting shot, but since they’re all vampires or hybrids or some damn thing they just shrug it off. Kate helps Smoke Manmuscle hulk up by letting him drink some of her blood (that’s…not how vampirism works), and he uses his awesome power to shoot Marcus with his machine pistol, disabling him while he and Kate flee in a truck. Guns just sort of work on vampires and werewolves, or don’t, as the movie needs them to. And man, that unlimited power sure is making itself known, eh, what with how he shot Marcus with a gun he had. No mere mortal could shoot a guy. But alas! Marcus has a winged demon form, and he flies onto the truck and there’s more fighting and more injuries that don’t actually cause any harm. “Dead or alive, you will tell me what I want to know!” Marcus screams at Kate. Genius, it might help if you told her what it is that you want to know.

Finally Marcus gets to the point in the script where it says the heroes get away, so he stops chasing them. Slate Slabrock asks Kate if Marcus is a hybrid, and she replies yes. Okay so earlier Slate was unique and there had never been a hybrid before, but now the First Vampire is a hybrid(?). Right so there was never a hybrid vampire before Slate, and the first ever vampire to exist…was a hybrid. Makes sense if you don’t think about it. Kate is slightly burned on the hand and face by sunlight, so they park inside an abandoned building and Brick Hardmeat light-proofs it for her (including one shot where you can clearly see the sunlight shining on her head and shoulder). He runs to get some first aid to treat Kate’s wounds. Treat. Kate’s. Wounds. With a first aid kit. She’s a vampire, you colossal dope! She will heal any wound. You spent the entire last movie learning this shit. Oh and you are also a vampire and at this very moment you have no injuries even though you just got shot in the chest a dozen times and run over by a truck. Christ.

Then they have PG-13 sex because even though the movie’s rated R, Kate’s not exposing her goods for this crap no matter what her hubby says. Now this is absolutely moronic for a number of reasons. First, we all know that thematically vampirism stands in for repression of sexual desire, which totally goes out the window when you have vampires having actual se—I kid, this is a Len Wiseman movie, subtlety and metaphor are right out. Okay then, second, vampires are dead and have no heartbeat or blood flow, so Crud Bonemeal won’t be performing, if you know what I mean and I think you do. And even if you posit that he’s a vamwolf so he can still rock the red rocket, Kate’s a regular vampire so she won’t have the necessary blood flow to even have sexual desire. Unless she does have a beating heart. And blood carrying hormones to her living brain. Which is affected by those hormones just as a normal human brain would be. In which case she wouldn’t be a vampire at all but just a super-powered person…hey!

Kate decides to visit vampire lore expert Tanis Half-Elven to figure out why Marcus has gone all killy on his own vampire clan. Tanis was exiled 300 years ago, and no one has seen him or heard from him since. Buck Plankchest asks how they’re going to find him given all that, and Kate replies, “I’m the one who exiled him.” Okay…and? How is that an answer to his question? Does the screenwriter—yes, this movie was actually written, by an actual human being—know what exile is? Just because you sent him away, even to a specific place, doesn’t mean he’s still there 300 years later. So they go to his house, and yep he’s still there having had contact with no one. Is it me or is this less exile and more imprisonment? The house is guarded by lycans, two of whom Kate easily dispatches with ordinary knives. Werewolves are immune to non-silver metals, or aren’t, as the movie needs them to. Then she sees two scantily clad women in a hallway and immediately murders them. Yes, they were vampires and were approaching her with the intention of defending Tanis, but how did Kate know that? She attacks them before they do anything but walk slowly toward her! It turns out Tanis Half-Elven is the one who came up with the UV bullets that helped the lycans finally start doing real damage in the vampire/lycan war. Boy, vampire-killing bullets sure will come in handy against Marcus.

(They don’t take any of the UV bullets.)

(Nor is Tanis armed with them when Marcus shows up in the very next scene and kills him.)

(Stupid movie.)

Tanis says there’s a second key and that Kate is the only one still alive who knows where Bill’s prison is, so she and Splint Chesthair absolutely must escape Marcus because he’s stronger than them and can get the first key from Punch Sideiron and the prison’s location from Kate. Tanis points them to Dad Immortal, the father of Marcus and Billy who is neither a werewolf nor a vampire but is immortal because he just is okay and don’t ask why. That's right, Dad sired both the world's first vampire and the world's first werewolf. I guess they had different mothers. Dad has watched the entire centuries-long war between the vampires and lycans and the 800-year imprisonment of Bill and has done fuck-all about it because he loves his sons and doesn’t want to kill them. Well Daddy-O, you’re clearly okay with the eternal imprisonment of one son (which seems a lot more cruel than death, frankly), so why didn’t you just lock up Marcus, too? Then stopping the war wouldn't mean killing either son. Stupid movie. It turns out Dad has the second key. Pretty convenient for Marcus that the 3 people who have the 3 things he needs to carry out his evil plan have all gathered in one place. Marc shows up, kills Dirk Hardpec, and takes his key, and instead of running away Kate attacks him and gets beat down like the 2008 Lions, allowing him to learn Bill’s location from her blood. So well done Kate, way to keep your eye on the prize. Marcus then mortally wounds Dad, takes the second key, and demon-flies off to free his wolf-bro. Dad tells Kate to drink his blood and gain his power.

What power? The power…to be killed by Marcus? Dad never displayed any power apart from not dying of old age, yet somehow Kate taking his power will make her able to beat Marcus, confirming that Dad could’ve killed Marcus but just didn’t want to. He’s okay with giving Kate the power to do it, though. I guess giving someone else the ability kill his son is different from killing him directly, but yeesh, the old geezer could’ve prevented a lot of suffering and death over the last 8 centuries if he’d had the huevos to just whack his monster-kids.

Marcus goes to the prison and frees Bill, who attacks him until Marcus says, “It’s me, Marcus!” so he stops. It turns out Bill can’t control his savagery except when he can. Kate arrives in a helicopter with Blast Thickneck’s corpse (gee, I can’t possibly see where this is going) and some Expendable Meat soldiers who worked for Dad and now apparently work for Kate because she’s their boss now she decided. One of these guys is played by Spirit of the West, the CAG in the reimagined Battlestar Galactica miniseries. That this random Canadian folk singer playing a thankless “sir-yes-sir” role turns in by far the film’s best performance physically pains me. Not because the guy’s not a decent actor (he is), but because Bill fucking Nighy is in this movie. I know Nighy is slumming it in this trash, but good god his performance is abominable. Nicolas Cage would tell Nighy that he’s a bit over the top. So thank you Spirit of the West for lending a little class and dignity to a movie that doesn’t deserve it. You left us too soon.

Let’s wrap this up. Wolfman Jack kills all the soldiers, Marcus crashes the helicopter into the prison complex (yet its rotor continues to turn as if it’s still running, stupid movie), and it looks like Kate, despite her Dad-blood upgrade, faces certain defeat, in part because the script says her non-silver bullets don’t hurt the Big Bad Wolf. Suddenly, just when we most expect it, Blast Hardcheese springs back to life and kills Werewolf of London in about 8 seconds flat. Some wolf god he turned out to be. I can see why the whole movie was about how Marcus couldn’t be allowed to let him out. I mean, he was a threat to like half a dozen people for upwards of a few minutes. The movie even gives us a replay of Kate saying Smash Lampjaw is unique and there’s never been a hybrid before. Except of course for Marcus who is currently in the same room, but who’s counting? Marcy-Marc impales Kate through the heart with blade tentacles that spring from his back, but even though he killed Dad this exact same way earlier, Kate doesn’t die and shoves Marcus into the rotors that are inexplicably still spinning. So Dad-blood gave Kate the power to survive a wound that Dad himself couldn’t survive? Whatever, Kate gets some voiceover about hope for the future and we’re out.

Lots of IMdb reviews for Resident Evil: Apocalypse say that if you enjoyed the first movie, you’ll enjoy this sequel. And man, I can’t think of a more damning statement than that.

Twilight: Couch Potato

Twilight, pp. 91-98.

Bella has obeyed Edward's summons. They sit together in the school cafeteria, not saying much. Oh, they talk constantly, but they don't say much of anything. Edward first asks if Bella is hungry. I thought it was rather cute that he even remembered what it's like to desire food. (Watch Shadow of the Vampire to see a real vampire's understanding of human food. Or a plausible interaction of a real vampire with the modern world. Or a decent film. Or a reminder of why people consider Willem Dafoe a good actor.) Edward then demands to know how Bella thinks he got his superpowers. She suggests a radioactive spider (har, har), and he says that's wrong and that he doesn't fear Kryptonite, either (ho, ho).

So Edward knows the origin of Spider-Man and Superman's great weakness. Being that he is a century old, how, precisely, did he come by this information? Since Edward never speaks a word to anyone, I picture him spending 17 hours a day watching television to stay up on pop culture. Though given that he never talks to anyone, I'm not sure why he needs to know these things, especially since he can just read people's minds to understand references.* Meyer here gives us more evidence--as if we needed any more--that she hasn't given even the briefest thought to what it might be like to be one hundred years old.

Once again, Meyer has put her characters into a potentially interesting situation, which she then immediately cocks up because she doesn't see her characters as characters but as stand-ins for herself and her adolescent sexual fantasy figure. I noted last time that there's nothing about Bella that should be attractive to Edward. But there could be, if only Meyer would write for her characters rather than herself. Edward shouldn't know anything about contemporary culture. That would mean Bella knows a lot that he doesn't know, stuff that allows her to function in the world far easier than he, and since his powers don't work on her, he can't use his mind-reading trick to fake it for her. That would make him vulnerable in front of her. She's got something he doesn't have, doesn't understand, and wants to know more about. But no, Meyer's crippling need to have it both ways manifests itself. Edward somehow just knows what any other high school senior would know, and any chance for dramatic tension is gone, as is any shred of hope that Meyer might give Edward a reason to desire Bella other than "she's me and I want vampire hunk!".

Any writer worthy of the label should be able to do something interesting and romantic with the "I can read everybody's mind but yours" trope. Think about it: Edward can't read Bella's mind, and so he's forced to figure out what she's thinking in the same way that we lowly humans do. Here's your believable reason for Edward to be attracted to Bella: She, as a socially adept high school girl (which she is, remember, even though she's also an introverted wallflower who shuts down everyone who tries to befriend her), can effortlessly read people without Edward's mind-reading powers. He, on the other hand, is helpless without them, having long ago lost the human ability to read people through body language, posture, tone of voice, and non-verbal cues. Edward would be impressed by this mundane skill that everyone else takes for granted because he's a vampire and has been such for 100 years and isn't human and isn't just like everyone else. But no, the fatal flaw of this novel is that Edward is just like everyone else. Despite his being 100 years old and a vampire, everything about his interaction with Bella plays exactly as it would if he were a typical high school student. So Edward can read Bella just as if his mind-reading power worked on her, he's not impressed by her ability to read people without powers, and I continue to wonder what people see in this series.

And now, my little droogies, it's time for more of Edward warning Bella away because he's bad. Man, I just can't get enough of that. Bella finally accepts that he's dangerous but not that he's bad. Suddenly, he proves her wrong by telling her...wait for it...he's not going to class! Whoa, I take back everything I said about Edward not being dangerous. This badness is too much for Bella, who hurries off to biology, where the teacher is telling students to stab themselves with scalpels and drip the blood onto cards so they can learn their blood types. Who went to a high school that allowed this? I can't imagine my old high school ever handing us knives and telling us to cut ourselves open with them. A few thousand pounds of lawyer would've been hurling lawsuit at the district before the blood hit the card. The teacher even grabs Mike by the hand and without warning pricks his finger! With a scalpel! I'm pretty sure that constitutes assault with a deadly weapon. What kind of high school is this?

Bella immediately feels faint at the sight of this teeny drop of blood (you, because she's a girl). Mike half-carries her toward the school nurse's office--despite his bleeding being the cause of the problem--and suddenly Edward is there. How? Why? Who knows. Well, I know, because I've read the book already. Later we find out that Edward's mind-reading powers are apparently not affected by distance. He can read the mind of any person at any time anywhere, and because he can't read Bella's mind, he constantly monitors the thoughts of people around her. If you're getting a creepy stalker vibe from Edward here, that's because he's a creepy stalker. That, I presume, is how he knew she was faint, and he personally showed up to repel Mike's challenge to his access to Bella make sure she's okay. He picks her up like he's going to carry her over the threshold, over her repeated protests (men know best), and carries her to the office. Well, at least this vampire is finally doing something a little bit monstrous, carrying a protesting girl who can't escape his super-strong grasp. Yeah, it's weak, but I'm reaching for anything, here.

Edward takes Bella into the office, continually laughing about her fainting spell, and lies to the nurse so he can stay with her while the nurse leaves. Then they have a long, boring conversation that we'll get to next week.

Yes, I know they just had a long, boring conversation two pages ago. But see, then they were in the cafeteria, but now they're in the nurse's office. Totally different.

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*Maybe that's what Edward does all day: reading people's minds for trivia he might be called upon to know at some point. One hundred years is a lot of cultural change to keep up with.

Twilight: The Abuser's Handbook

Twilight, pp. 74-84.

I know what you've been missing: Edward's controlling mind games and Bella's humiliation of romantic rivals. Well, your prayers are answered by the little spread of pages we have for this week. We've got plenty of both coming at us!

Back in biology class, E and B play peekaboo with each other, some more Bella's heart in palpitations that the creepy stalker is looking at her "for the first time in a half-dozen weeks" (half-dozen?).


I couldn't allow him to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. More than pathetic, it was unhealthy.


Occasional flashes of seeming self-awareness creep through in this section of the book. This is the sort of thing that I used to think indicated the author was intentionally portraying an emotionally disturbed young girl being tormented by an expert manipulator. Out of the context of the novel as a whole, you too, my little droogies, might think the same thing upon reading such lines. By the time we get much farther, though, it will become clear this is not the case. We are meant to be (mildly) frustrated that Bella doesn't see that only a man who truly loves you controls you. Rather than "unhealthy" or "pathetic", it's supposed to be romantic.

It's not.

Now as noted, Edward hasn't so much as looked at Bella for "a half-dozen weeks" (half-dozen?). Of course, after giving her the silent treatment for a while (Abuser's Handbook p. 121), he realises she's too passive to initiate contact herself (Handbook p. 124) and so he has to do even that for her (p. 127, sub-paragraph c). He does this by addressing her by name, which author Stephenie [sic] Meyer follows with two paragraphs of Bella mooning over how handsome he is. She then manages to say:

"What? Are you speaking to me again?" I finally asked, an unintentional note of petulance in my voice.

His lips twitched, fighting a smile. "No, not really [!]," he admitted.

I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly through my nose, aware that I was gritting my teeth. He waited.

"Then what do you want, Edward?" I asked, keeping my eyes closed; it was easier to talk to him coherently that way.

"I'm sorry." He sounded sincere. "I'm being very rude, I know. But it's better this way, really."

I opened my eyes. His face was very serious. "I don't know what you mean," I said, my voice guarded.

"It's better if we're not friends," he explained. "Trust me."


My eyes narrowed. I'd heard that before.


"It's better if we're not friends", even though I'm talking to you again for no reason other than to tell you we won't be talking. Which we haven't been talking for a half-dozen weeks (half-dozen?). But now that we're talking, I want you to know that we won't be talking. Again. You know, after this.

Mixed message much?

I also can't figure out any way to picture Bella carrying on half of this exchange with her eyes closed the entire time that isn't hilarious. Especially when she could simply look toward the front of the room where the teacher is.

She then ludicrously accuses him of regretting his decision to Superman the van away from her, at which point it's his turn to be petulant with a "You don't know anything" that, well, I guess a real seventeen-year-old might come up with. Bella drops her books (endearing clumsiness, her humanising flaw!*), and Edward uses his vampiric speed to stack them and hand them to her before she even decides to bend down to pick them up. This use of vampire powers to complete mundane tasks will be a recurring motif of this book, and it just gets more infuriating every time. I'm continuously amazed by how wrong Meyer gets everything in this book. She's somehow able both to make vampirism more appealing (by removing all the drawbacks associated with it, like drinking human blood, dying in sunlight, and oh yeah, eternal damnation of your immortal soul) and simultaneously less appealing (by making it prosaic and banal). Instead of living in castles, hiding in shadows, swooping down on unsuspecting humans to feed on, and seducing people with their mysterious powers, Twilight vampires go to high school, show up to work, commute by car, and use their powers to stack books, play baseball, and watch young girls sleep in their rooms.

After mutual icy retorts, we're thankfully spared further interaction between our main characters for a little while. Sadly, this is only for poor Eric to ask Bella to the Not Sadie Hawkins Day dance. She of course rejects him, causing him to "slouch" off, no doubt to contemplate suicide. Either that or just to accept one of the invitations from the nicer and likely cuter girls who've already asked him. For added hatred, Edward, somehow there, laughs at the poor kid, knowing that his vampiric powers (I guess?) have already made Bella his. The book is maddeningly vague on whether or not the vampires have the power of hypnotism. Considering they're described as perfectly beautiful and lacking any putrid stench of the grave or icy touch of a body with no hot blood running through it, it seems they would hardly need such a power. Bella has described herself as "unable" not to look at him, but this comes across more as inept "romance" than vampiric power. [Future Carl Eusebius: Plus, Bella will turn out to be immune to all vampiric powers.] Still, I don't know why else Edward would be amused that she turned down the invitation of one guy that she never showed any interest in to a dance she's never expressed any desire to go to. Whatever his reason, though, it doesn't seem anything other than mean-spirited and petty. Which describes, I suppose, the only reasons Edward ever does anything in this story.

Edward uses his Volvo (really?) to block Bella into the car park. She briefly considers ramming his car with her 100% red-blooded American truck--raising the tantalising possibility of making the Volvo "the foreign car it had destroyed" back on page 8--but decides not to. Then Tyler Crowley (the fellow whose van Edward Superman-pushed away from Bella, you'll remember) chooses this moment to leave his vehicle (running) behind hers to approach her truck in the middle of the car park lane and...do I even need to say it?

"Will you ask me to the spring dance?"


Quickly shut down, Tyler promises that "We still have prom" and returns to his vehicle. (Bella has now been asked to this dance by every male in the book so far except Edward, her father, and the biology teacher!) Edward is looking at Bella in his rearview mirror (but vampires don't--oh, forget it!) and "shaking with laughter". Okay, I give up, my droogies. What's so funny about a girl rejecting guys? Why is this so hilarious? A century-old vampire is amused by a couple of guys failing to take a particular girl to a particular high school dance? I know I keep banging on about this high school thing, but really, it boggles the mind. How can you live for a century and then go back to high school even for a month, much less however long Edward Cullen has been doing it? How can you take any interest in anything that happens or anyone you encounter? Maybe I was wrong about Meyer's softening of vampirism. Attend high school for the rest of eternity? These vampires truly are damned.

I can't think of any way "century-old vampire going to high school" can work that doesn't make Edward the villain. Imagine: All his vampiric powers plus one hundred years of experience manipulating people, running amok amongst a bunch of teen-agers with raging hormones, a measure of freedom, and no brains. But Twilight isn't interested in any kind of real danger, because it's born of adolescent fear of maturity: responsibility, committed love, and (ewwwww!) sex.

So its vampire is neutered, its heroine is passive, and its narrative is toothless.

The chapter ends with E and B meeting in the school car park again that next morning. E declares he wants to be B's friend, even though it's "more prudent" for Bella not to agree to this. (Spoiler: She does agree to it.)


"You really should stay away from me," he warned.


I bet Ted Bundy used that line. Of course, in his case, unlike Edward's, it's actually true.



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* Flaws not guaranteed to be genuine. Void where prohibited.

Twilight: Am I Annoying You?

Twilight, pp. 43-50

At last, twenty pages after they met, Our Heroes will speak to each other. Strap yourselves in. It's not going to be pleasant.

'Hello,' said a quiet, musical voice.

I looked up, stunned that he was speaking to me. He was sitting as far away from me as the desk allowed, but his chair was angled toward me....

'My name is Edward Cullen,' he continued. 'I didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week. You must be Bella Swan.'

Again with sitting far away from the icky girl. I guess vampires can still get cooties.

As I mentioned previously, Stephenie [sic] Meyer has a number of the bad habits of a novice writer. I hate to keep pointing them out, but really, as unprofessional a product as this deserves to be called out for this sort of thing. I noted before that Stephen King likely loathes Meyer's writing because it exhibits in spades so many annoying bits of bad writing that his On Writing warns against. This time, I won't go on about the overflowing adverbs (well, not too much). Instead, I'll go with the dialogue words.

King wrote that there is rarely any reason to use any such word besides 'said'. 'She agreed' is a word you use when you're omitting the dialogue in question, not one to be tacked onto the dialogue. Since this is a dialogue-heavy scene, Meyer's egregious misuse of dialogue words slaps you in the face with a living trout. No-one can merely 'say' anything. They must, instead, 'agree', 'disagree', 'continue', 'correct', 'command', 'challenge', 'blurt out', 'persist', 'insist', 'press', 'ask', 'answer', 'reply', 'mutter', 'murmur', 'mumble', 'admit', or 'surmise'. This is in only eight pages, mind you.

This is symptomatic of neophyte fiction writers' confusion of variety with skill. (Neophyte nonfiction writers often confuse obscure words with skill. So do many professors.) Of course, no-one wants to read repetitive writing. But writing the same old crap with different words is still repetitive. The reader should understand from context whether your characters are challenged, persisting, pressing, answering, or admitting. There are exceptions (a character just making the scene might 'bellow' rather than merely 'say' that she killed the hero's brother and is now going to kill him), but generally, less is more. Let the reader infer that a character is surmising, or pressing another character on a point. Describe characters' body language: A character admitting a point may draw back a little, while a character agreeing might nod slightly while speaking. Help the reader visualise your scene. A common mistake in writing is to think the audience won't 'get it'. Of course, being too obscure can also be a problem, but again, less is usually more. At least if you're a little on the obscure side, your reader doesn't feel insulted that you're explaining everything to her like she's in grade school. Trust your reader.

Moving on from the bad writing, let's talk about the reprehensible characters. Notice here that Edward 'didn't have a chance to introduce myself last week'. This is, of course, a bald-faced lie, since Edward had ample time to do this. He met Bella in class, and if he didn't want to talk to her during a lecture (the century-old vampire being intimidated, no doubt, by the aura of authority that emanates from your average public high school teacher), he saw her again in the embarrassing 'put me in a different class' scene. I'm not sure why Meyer wants Romeo's first words to Juliet to form a lie. Even 'We got off on the wrong foot last week' would be better, though it still ignores that Edward was a jerk for no reason. What he really should be saying is, 'I'm sorry I behaved like an utter twat before', but that would require an acknowledgement of imperfection in our Edward.

Bella, naturally, will not call Edward out on this lie since she herself is a chronic fibber. Instead, she likely files this deception away for a future passive-aggressive episode.

The soon-to-be couple then go through the tiresome Bella-Isabella rigmarole one more time and then complete a biology lab assignment together. (Well, not so much 'work together' as 'separately complete the assignment and then try to one-up each other on getting it right'.) The unnecessary adverbs come fast and thick for these two pages, and there's a hilarious bit when he grabs her hand and his fingers both are 'ice-cold' and give her a feeling like 'an electric current', which seems like it would generate a feeling of heat, if only momentarily. Our heroes finish the lab long before anyone else, without error, and correspondingly annoy the teacher, who instantly deduces from this one correctly completed lab that Bella was in advanced placement in Phoenix. Sherlock Holmes has nothing on this biology teacher!

Edward then asks Bella a series of questions, including why she came to Forks. Actually, a few times he asks questions, while at other times he makes assumptions and states them as fact. Some of these are warranted, like his brilliant 'You don't like the cold' when she says she's not unhappy that the snow melted away. Others are not, as when she tells him that her stepfather travels frequently and he assumes that her mother sent her away(!!).

Bella's stepfather is, she tells us, a baseball player. In a moment that made me laugh out loud, Edward asks, 'Have I heard of him?' Yes, Edward Cullen may drink the blood of the living and sleep in a coffin during the day, but he knows his Major League Baseball, hellish unlife or no hellish unlife! Actually, he doesn't drink human blood or sleep in a coffin or even seem affected by daylight, and his unlife, while hellish to me personally (perpetual high school in the Pacific Northwest sounds like something Satan would cook up in anticipation of my demise), doesn't seem like the fate of a damned soul. But he is a vampire. Really.

Sadly enough, that crack about Edward being a baseball fan is...well, that's coming.

Determined to make me loathe the main character further, Meyer has Bella say that her stepfather is not in the major leagues because 'he doesn't play well' (emphasis original) and is therefore '[s]trictly minor league.'

Meyer has some real cajones here, dismissing minor league athletes for being unskilled when she has the writing skills of a penguin with a concussion. Not being in the major leagues doesn't mean one doesn't play well. It means, at worst, that one isn't among the top 1% in the world for that sport. (I won't even get into the huge helping of luck anyone needs to break into the major leagues, in addition to a whole lot of talent.) Take any given player from any minor league in the country, and that person is a better player of her chosen sport than Meyer is a storyteller.

I tried to play ice hockey when I was in my early twenties. I was terrible, but nothing teaches you about any sport like playing it yourself. I played in a pick-up game with a fellow who skated circles around everyone else on the ice. Of the sixteen or so of us taking part in the game, he was clearly at the top, and no-one else was even close. He was good enough that he was eventually offered a spot on a European team. A few weeks later, I saw him go head-to-head with a player from the Columbia Inferno, the local East Coast Hockey League team. The ECHL is on the lowest tier of American professional hockey, below the American Hockey League (which is itself a minor league, below the major league, the National Hockey League). This minor leaguer made the guy from my pick-up game look like he was standing still. He beat him every time, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. The professional player was just as untouchable to him as he had earlier been to the people in the pick-up game I played it. A minor leaguer, part of the lowest level of North America's professional hockey, outclassed every amateur at the local rink by a large margin. Later he played in that rink's amateur tournament (having retired from professional play at this point), and the organisers put all the least skilled and least experienced players on his team as a handicap. His team won the tournament anyway, because he was unstoppable, even by the team the organisers put together made up of all the best amateur players so they would be sure to win.

Minor league players are no joke, and to see a hack writer like Stephenie Meyer dismiss them as untalented when she herself can barely write a grammatical sentence irritates me. Fortunately, Edward acts like a buffoon in the next couple of lines, and my irritation fades as I laugh at the idiocy of the supposedly suave vampire.

'...He moves around a lot.'

'And your mother sent you here so that she could travel with him.' He said it as an assumption again, not a question.

My chin raised [sic] a fraction. 'No, she did not send me here. I sent myself.'

His eyebrows knit together. 'I don't understand,' he admitted...

What's not to understand, you twit? Your first assumption is that a mother sent her daughter away? Sure, that happens, but should that really be your first guess? Maybe Bella didn't want to travel around. Or, as it turns out, she might leave so her mother would be free to travel around. Really, though, what's so hard to understand about 'I sent myself' in this context? Is it the best or even a sensible way to put it? No, but the meaning is pretty clear. I also got a good laugh out of the misuse of the verb 'to raise'. I'm picturing Bella's chin lifting up a giant pink fraction (that fraction being 3/4 in my imagination) against her will while she frantically looks around for someone to help push her chin back down and get the fraction off it.

More pap to make younger readers identify with Bella (that being so much easier to write than 'character' stuff):

His gaze became appraising. 'You put on a good show,' he said slowly. 'But I'd be willing to be that you're suffering more than you let anyone see.'

I swear, it's like Meyer's speaking to me.

'Am I annoying you?' he asked. He sounded amused.

We Are Not Amused.

Twilight: Guess Who's Back, Back Again?

Twilight, pp. 37-42
Edward Cullen didn't come back to school.

Every day, I watched anxiously until the rest of the Cullens entered the cafeteria without him. Then I could relax and join in the lunchtime conversation. Mostly it centred around a trip to the La Push Ocean Park in two weeks that Mike was putting together. I was invited, and I had agreed to go, more out of politeness than desire.

So we open in typical Bella fashion: pining for the missing Edward, but still keeping another guy on the line just in case. (To paraphrase Chris Rock, Mike is Bella's Penis In A Glass Case: Open in case of loneliness.) I hope you like this paragraph, because New Moon is just those four awkward sentences stretched into one awkward novel.

In the next paragraph, though, she's fine with Edward not being in Biology and feels '[m]ore comfortable than I had ever expected to feel here.' Of course, as soon as her abuser makes the scene, her heart will again be all aflutter. So she worries about having to deal with him and is happier when he's not there, but she'll be thrilled when he reappears.

I might be getting into some dangerous speculation here, but I think Bella might just be a Drama Queen.

We interrupt this examination of the protagonist's thorough unlikeability for this special look at the novel's bad writing.

Got extra adverbs you've no use for? Trying to get rid of them? Send them over to Stephenie Meyer! She'll find a way to use them, whether they're needed or not!

'I...wrote my mom a bogusly cheerful email.' (Bonus points for inventing an entirely new adverb to use unnecessarily!)
'Haven't you ever seen snow fall before?' he asked incredulously.

Try to have one per page. And hey, how about nonsensical narration?

Sure, [snow] was drier than rain -- until it melted in your socks.

What does that mean? What does that even mean? Snow, which is water, is drier than rain, which is also water. Huh? Did Paul W.S. Anderson do a draft of this novel? Snow...is drier than rain. Wow. I can't believe somebody wrote that. Mrs. Meyer failed grade school science, right? I mean, her degree is in English.* So she may not know that ice can no more be drier than water than a cow can be meatier than beef. But the editor should have cau--oh, that's right. I forget sometimes.

Anyway, back to the Bella-bashing.

So Bella, who is totally okay with Edward not being there, immediately checks his table in the cafeteria. (Again, why do the vampires sit in the cafeteria every day not-eating?) To the shock of absolutely no-one, Edward is now there, and Bella of course immediately flips out. (teh drama!) Her friends ask her what's wrong with her. They're asking with, we're told, 'unnecessary concern', even though she stares at the floor, refuses to eat, and tells them she feels sick. I'd say it's time for an intervention by the Drama Police.

[The Cullens] were laughing. Edward, Jasper, and Emmett all had their hair entirely saturated with melting snow. Alice and Rosalie were leaning away from Emmett as Edward shook his dripping hair toward them. They were enjoying the snowy day, just like everyone else--only they looked more like a scene from a movie than the rest of us.

But aside from the laughter and playfulness, there was something different....

Let's ignore yet another unnecessary adverb ('entirely'). Let's ignore the contrast between Bella's inability to remember the names of her supposed friends while she's in conversation with them and her ability to remember and recite the vampires' names after once hearing her friend list them a week ago. I want to focus on two things here: the laughter and *shudder* the playfulness.

Yes, these are two words that immediately spring to mind when I think of vampires. The eternally damned are nothing if not fun-loving types who live unlife to the fullest.

You know, I've had a few people tell me they enjoy Twilight because it's the first time they were exposed to vampires. Every time I hear this, I don't know whether to weep in despair or scream in rage. (Pretty much the same reaction I have to any given Lady Gaga song.) Imagine that you were a huge fan of Jackie Chan, and every once in a while you met another fan. Only these fans' first Jackie Chan movie was The Tuxedo. They've never heard of Police Story or Drunken Master, but man, that Spy Next Door was some great stuff. You're a little crestfallen. The spring goes out of your step. Because not only have these 'fans' only seen Chan at his worst, but now that they have, they may not be able to un-see his worst when--no, if--they ever get round to seeing Armour of God.

That's how I feel every time someone tells me their first exposure to vampires was this trash. Not because it's bad. Yes, it's bad, but that's not enough. No, like Chan in The Spy Next Door, its vampires are nothing like what made them legends. They're not dangerous. They're not menacing. They don't threaten your soul with spiritual destruction, a far greater horror than merely being killed. All the subtext is gone, and with it, all interest. These vamposters are boring.

Oh, and playful. Don't forget playful.

It's one thing to be a pale shadow of your former self. It's another to be something else entirely, with no connection to what you once were.


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* No, really! The writer of this tripe has a degree in creative writing. The mind boggles. Now, one of those screenplay classes Charlie Kaufman had to sit through to get ideas for adapting The Orchid Thief--that I could buy. Maybe.