Twilight, Chapter 4

In which your fearless blogger contemplates the nature of assholery. Villain, thy name is Cullen!

Let's talk about dialogue attribution. In On Writing, which is the best single book on that subject since Strunk and White, Stephen King states that finishing dialogue with anything other than "He/She said," is weak, dumb, and generally amateurish. Stephenie Meyer finishes every. single. fucking. piece. of dialogue with something other than that simple, elegant combination. "He retorted…. I challenged….. He warned…. He explained….I interrupted…." And so on. She thinks her readers are idiots. That's the only possible explanation. Oh, or she's a shitty author who (correctly) doesn't trust her dialogue to be good enough to function without the attribution / adverbs. The solution, Mrs. Meyer, is to write things that actually make sense on their own, and are recognizable as something a teenager / whatever-the-fuck-Edward-is might actually say. So far, you fail.

Speaking of fuck-wit Cullen, he's a vampire, no? Likes munching on carotids? "I'm tired of staying away from you, Bella." He's tired. Of staying away. So, now, they will have some sort of relationship. Does she get any choice here? Clearly not, because destiny and all that other horseshit. This huy is simply an asshole, and the way he's treating Bella already, even before the advent of real relationshippy-relationship stuff, is disgusting. If you're dangerous to her, idiot, then say that and go away. Really quite simple. You're rich. Build a house in Antarctica or whatever and vanish. Please?

Even little things, like a theoretically innocuous girls-choice dance, feature more lovely instances of Bella's agency being taken by the parade of morons populating her highschool. Tyler hears her refusal as "Sorry about this weekend, I'd still like to bang you at the next dance." I mean, really? Bella does treat him with the annoyed disgust he deserves, but I wonder how his actions are in any way worse than those of the one and only E. Cullen. Well, Tyler wrongs Bella and trys to apologize, over and over. He seems to recognize that he did something dumb, and wishes to make amends. His methods suck, true, but the kid is thinking rationally and trying to do the proverbial right thing. Edward is…. well, exact opposite of that. He's the hero of the book. My brain hurts.

This is a bit of a repeat of last week's rant, but I think it needs to be said again; The book is glorifying superficiality, physical beauty, the posession of stuff in ways I find incredibly disturbing. Edward has cutting cheekbones, a nice car, pretty clothes, and he's irresistible. Mike (for example) seems like a reasonably nice, good-hearted highschool dude. Bella gives him no consideration, and repeatedly compares him to a dog. Is this anything to do with his personal qualities, or is it his lack of (forgive me) sex appeal? I focus on this question, because the book is making the classic dumb-ass teenager mistake of confusing love for lust. There's nothing wrong, and a lot right, with a healthy serving of lust in a relationship, but is that really how we choose our soulmates?

Food for thought! Just don't drink blood while you're contemplating. Horrible on the digestion. See you back here for Lost on thursday, my Bloods and Crips!