failing like never before

Twilight and More

I read all the rest of the Twilight books and even Stephanie Meyer's draft for Midnight Sun. It was like a sickness, I wanted to throw the terrible stuff away but I simply couldn't get over how bad it was. But now after reading more of Meyer's writing, I feel I need to rant again. Once was simply not enough.

Lets start with Meyer's newest Twilight book, Midnight Sun, which is basically just Twilight but written from Edward's perspective. Apparently, realizing just how successful Twilight has become, Meyer's decided the easiest way to make more money and sell some more books was to rewrite the series from a different perspective. That's marketing genius right there, since rabid Twilight fans are probably willing to buy anything that Meyer decides to pull out of her butt right now. I'm not going to tear into Midnight Sun too much since I realize its still only in draft stage right now, but after reading the draft I can predict with high certainty that the book is going to be pretty bad. Seeing Meyer's sickingly stupid story through Edward's eyes doesn't make it any better then seeing it through Bella's eyes; it was a lame story to begin with and Edward's mind isn't much more complex then Bella's.

I simply cannot get over how amazingly stupid and boring Bella is. Throughout the Twilight series, Bella can be characterized by two attributes: her clumsiness, and her love for Edward. In my lifetime, I've had to have stitches on my head three times, once from hitting my head while jumping on my sister's bed, another from running into a gate, and another from slipping and hitting my chin while playing capture-the-flag. So I think I definitely deserve to be classified as clumsy. But Bella takes clumsiness to a whole new level, she hits people in the head with a tennis racquet when she tries to hit a ball, falls off motorcycles, and manages to even trip over her own feet numerous times when walking on perfectly flat surfaces. Meyer's takes great strides to point out just how clumsy Bella is, how needy she is for Edward the Perfect to come and save her and be her guardian angel. When Bella became a vampire, I wondered whether her special mutant superpower was going to her mind shield thing, or super clumsiness. Super clumsiness would be an awesome power if one could control it. Just imagine, that faced with a terrifying foe, Bella attempts a roundhouse punch but instead trips and punches a hole in the ground all the way to the earth's core, sending her opponent sliding to a fiery death. Or when playing vampire baseball, Bella attempts to hit a home run, but instead throws the bat into the pitcher's head and knocks him unconscious (yeah, I know, Edward the Perfect doesn't get concussions), forcing the opposing team to play a human as their pitcher. Disappointingly, Bella's mutant vampire power turned out to be an ability to shield her mind and others from external intrusion.

And then there's Bella's other defining attribute, her love for Edward the Perfect. Even as a male, I think Bella's puppy-dog love for Edward and her inability to keep herself safe, are demeaning to the female population. Half of one book is devoted to Bella longing after her departed (but not dead) vampire boyfriend and moaning about her horrible it is without Edward's perfect bod lighting up her world (almost literally too, since Eddie is shiny). Let's face the facts, Bella's strong love for Edward isn't admirable or even vaguely desirable, its disgusting and shows just how weak Bella's personality is. And Perfect Eddie isn't much better, what with the creepy ways he stalks Bella around. Not to be crass, but I think Stephanie Meyer was looking for some "loving" in high school and never found it, and tried to create her idealized boyfriend in Edward.

In my previous rant, I mentioned how I hate the way Meyer's makes her vampires super powerful and impervious to all things except total immolation. But by the fourth book, Meyer produces vampires with even more unbelievably powerful mutant powers. Powers like the ability to make others feel pain with crazy mind powers, manipulate the elements (the elements apparently being earth, wind, water, and fire), to make others see whatever you want them to, or even the ability to give others a strong electric shock. There are very few comic book super heroes that possess such fantastic powers as Stephanie Meyer's vampires. In a fight between Wolverine and Edward the Perfect, my money is definitely on Eddie; Wolverine may have been created to be the perfect weapon, but Edward is pretty much Superman + mind reading - flying - kryptonite vulnerability. It seemed to me that the books just got more and more far-fetched and stupid as things progressed.  Like Bella's little half-vampire baby daughter for example. In about seven years, Bella's daughter will be fully mature, both physically and mentally, and ready to merry her soul mate, Jacob the werewolf.

I had some hopes that the plot would improve as Meyer wrote more, but if anything, the plots got worse. Even reading Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was more exciting then drudging through endless chapters of Bella's teenage angst and descriptions of Edward. The main conflict of the series is: will Bella become a vampire and gain amazingly cool vampire powers so that she can have mad vampire sex with Edward and live happily for ever, or will she stay human and live a boring mortal existence and only get to have boring human sex?

It took me about an hour and thirty minutes to skim through Twilight, and less then a day to flip through the sequels. And yet I still missed absolutely nothing important in the novels. I could go on a little longer about this book, but I think its time for me to stop and get ready for class.