ETA: Never mind, you meant she wasn’t in JH period, not that she wasn’t in junior high YET. Because that chick is 22 years old.
There was this other chick on YouTube who wrote these awful songs like, titled “My Beautiful Vampire” and such, and made these hilarious videos of herself singing them. I was going to link to them, but she deleted them.
I would too.
~S.P.I.~
</mean>
The thing that makes Bella infuriating is that she has no qualms about being tied down. She wants to spend eternity with Edward, and not once in the entire series does she consider for a second that she might prefer to grow older as a person and then make her decision, or that she might get sick of Edward after the first nine hundred years.
The reason Bella freaks out about getting married is largely because she’s afraid of how her mom and friends will react to her getting married straight out of high school.
Since this is Twilight, Bella’s fears turn out to be totally unfounded because her mother and everyone else in the world gives their unconditional approval and adulation to her union with Edward.
Also, I saw the crappy DVD subtitles for Let the Right One In after having seen it in theaters twice, and I can vouch for them being much worse.
Well, I said a certain subset, obviously there are people like her. There always WILL be people like her to defend just about anything. I don’t think MOST people like it ironically, or even recognize all of its flaws, but there certainly is a group that knows it’s bad in a technical sense, but enjoys it for the plot or shallow romance aspect. I’m not going to pass judgment on any of them either way (except the crazy people who do long youtube rants, shame on you, even you non-Twilight ones), but I don’t think it’s fair to just discount the book’s fans altogether (I didn’t see it much in this thread, but I see it plenty in other places, so this may be partially a mis-aimed discussion).
Thank you. It isn’t in our library’s vast interloan system, which is so very rare. ARRRRRRGHHHHH!
I just found it in a whole different search for our library interloan and had some swedish gabble attached to the title, which threw off my search. DAMN YOU SWEDES!!! My copy will be coming sooooooon!
Yeah, I really hated how Bella was like, “Hi, I met you last week, but now I’m ready to irrevocably decide to spend eternity with you.”
If I had any skill in fiction, I would LOVE to write a short story featuring Bella the vampire several hundred years in the future. She would be world-weary and cynical, maybe talking to a young girl “in love” and warning her off. (This idea is based just on the first book and her desire to get vampirized - I understand later she does become a vampire, and of course is the most kick-ass awesomest vamp evah!)
As for liking them ironically, or at least as a guilty pleasure, I have friends like that.
But I also know someone who told me, with a straight face, that the first couple books are boring, but toward the end of the series, it really picks up and gets good. :dubious:
Even though I’ve never watched Buffy, that Buffy Vs. Edward video was awesome.
Since the latest part of the discussion concerns the eternal committment of the two characters, doesn’t this reflect the author’s Mormon beliefs, i.e. that people are reunited with their earthly family/mates for eternity? Yet another reason I dislike the books of course.
Sure makes it hard for me to recommend books at the high school library when I’m so out of step with the kiddies.
I read it, and my bookclub read it - and while the writing was atrocious - most of us did discover it to be very readable. I know a lot of 40ish grown up women who have devoured these things over a few days. (Had I been looking for another book, I’d have picked up the second - with a few months between me - I don’t think I ever will).
I think that the comparison to a bad - but enjoyable - action movie is really apt. Since I’m terribly fond of action movies, my tolerance for bad is somewhat lower. But there are a lot of people who find them enjoyable anyway.
However, anyone thinking its well written can be mocked for their complete lack of understanding of what well written means.
How do the women who like them get past the vile misogyny? Do that many women really think that old men who stalk and control teenage girls and threaten to cannibalize them are sexy and dreamy?
If I, a 43 year old man, climbed into a teenage girl’s window to watch her sleep, would fans of these books think that was hot? I’m only like a quarter of Edward Cullen’s age.
Growing up, our poodle use to get into our Easter Baskets and eat the chocolate eggs covered in foil. He had sparkly poop for days.
My poodle was a vampire!!!
I think you should stalk some teenage girl and control her just like Edward. You may even cover yourself in pretty, pretty glitter to help your research out. Maybe even Youtube the moment.
I’ll send you a cake in prison, maybe DVD’s of the Twilight movies, too.
This baffles me as well. I’m a woman, and everything I’ve read about the Edward/Bella relationship makes my skin crawl.
Yet several of my friends, who are generally thoughtful, intelligent gals, think Edward is dreamy.
The same way women enjoy rape fantasy. Its a fantasy and some people are capable of enjoying the fantasy. Some people read horror novels - not my thing. Hell, some people read true crime novels.
Frankly, I’ve read things that are a hell of a lot more disturbing than Twilight (Oryx and Crake springs to mind as one hell of a disturbing book. So does The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon.)
Ooh, I love Oryx and Crake.
I guess the difference is that Edward just seems so damned…douchey. Not nerdy, not dangerous. Just obnoxious. Like, I can’t even enjoy the guilty pleasure of a sexy guy obsessed with me because I’m teh hotness. It’s just…UGH. I’d want to swat the little creep. Every time I think of him, I think “Rear Admiral”! Swirlies!
Wasn’t that great?! I was tickled when I went into a Seattle bookstore and saw it on the “We Recommend” shelf.
I thought Oryx and Crake was icky. Atwood’s coming out with another dystopian novel soon. I’ll pass.
It was great. I gave it away though because while I thought the book was beautifully written, I didn’t want the thing in my house.
Oryx and Crake was icky, but very well written. I actually couldn’t read it - I listened to the audiobook. Tried to read it…couldn’t make myself turn pages.
Freudian Slit - Edward didn’t do it for me either (I am interested in Alice - but she alone of the Cullens seems interesting - and the “Dad” - he seems interesting as well). I didn’t enjoy Twilight at all as a “put yourself in the heroines shoes” book - Bella was annoying and Edward … douchey is a good word. But neither of them drove me up the wall ala Heathcliff and Catherine (another douchey and annoying couple). It was a fun little read, one I wasn’t emotionally invested in. None of my grownup friends found Bella anything other than annoying or Edward dreamy - but that didn’t make the books unreadable or unenjoyable.
I guess it’s because practically every page of the book has a lengthy description of how hot Edward is. It just goes on and on about what a sparkly Adonis he is, plus of course his equally sexy voice and even his smell. Strip all that away and I don’t think Twilight would even be a book, it’d be a short story.
It still doesn’t make much sense to me, though. I mean, I can understand how some women might be so distracted by the extreme hotness of a particular real-life guy that they’d overlook his flaws, but not when his good looks are just words on a page. Yet even before the movie was cast and there was a real human face associated with the character, a big part of Edward’s appeal for Twilight fans seems to have been that he was so very, very handsome.