Twilight
I have a problem.It started a few months ago when my neighbor asked if I had read the Twilight books. I'd actually seen an article in the paper about Stephenie Meyer, the author, so I sort of but only sort of knew what she was talking about.
"Oh, you should read them," said my disabled but spunky Polish grandma neighbor. "I think you'd like them! I wish I had the books to lend to you, but I gave them to someone else!"
So, I said, "Maybe I'll check it out one of these days."
And then I kinda forgot about it and read some C. S. Lewis and Dan Brown and other ish that's been lying around in my to-be-read pile.
And then I tried to read Austen's Northanger Abbey. This is not a thing to try to do at 11:30 while falling asleep, which is my reading time. So I decided to give up on that for a while until I'm less busy. But I was still in the mood for a teenagery romance.
And then they made the Twilight movie.
And I got curious. Sure, it might be totally stupid, I thought, but I might enjoy it.
So I picked it up at B&N this weekend, tucked it under my arm, and surreptitiously made my way to the checkout. And then, I bought it, after which I casually walked out, like, I did not just by a teenage vampire romance novel. Noooooo. Not me.
Anyway, um, long story short, I'm hooked. It's bad. I've only gotten sleep this week because I didn't have the second book to start Monday night.
OH, and I saw the movie. And I want to hurt the screenwriter. During how many scenes did I think, "It was NOT cheesey like that in the book!"? For example, the Edward in the sunlight scene. In the movie, he says something awful and random, like, "You need to see what I look like in the sunlight!" And then he whisks her up the mountain. Of course the movie needs to accomplish in half a minute what takes pages (and pages) in the book. But a couple more lines would have made it seem a little less weird, for example:
Edward: [says his line about taking her up into the mountain, above the clouds]
Bella: What, in the sun? Won't it burn you?
Edward: [chuckles despondently] It'll do something. You'll see. [pulls her onto his back and does his speedy vampire run]
See how much more natural (and Edward-like) that would be? And it would take about the same amount of time.
The worst is the "my own personal brand of heroin" line. In the book, Bella came up with the metaphor and stated it lightly, as a joke, to keep the mood from going down the tubes. In the movie, Edward's monologuing and and leans down from the tree branch he's sitting in to very dramatically utter this line.
I wanted to shoot something.
See, THIS is why I should be an editor. Because I won't let things suck.
Haha, she said suck... dammit. I hate vampires. But I love the Twilight books (so far).
I'm on page 360 something of the second book, New Moon, which I will probably never reread because it is painful (because, the way it's written, you FEEL Bella's depression), but that's also one reason I actually think it's pretty good.
More on that later. I need to eat. Bc I'm human. And I manage my addictions very well. Actually, I manage WoW a lot better than Twilight so far. Ugh. We'll see how far I sink into this fandom.
posted by ariah @ 11:26 AM
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