The story so far: my floor of my dorm is coed. It's called an "LLC", or "Living Learning Community", and the idea is that since all freshmen have to take a First Year Seminar, you'd get to know the members of your FYS if you live with them. This has worked fairly well, as we all know each other's names and such, but it has brought an unfortunate side effect.
My floor is infested with Twilight fangirls (and one gay male. My roommate)
These girls rave about Twilight all the time, and will defend its splendor at a moment's notice. Worse, they only accept arguments about the book's weaknesses if one has read the books. So, in order to properly debate them all, I've decided to risk insanity and read the Twilight Saga.
Ooooooooooooh boy.
So far, things aren't as bad as I feared. The writing is fine, but it has this strange fan fiction feel to it, like it was written by a sixteen year old high schooler. It has these strange tendancies to explain every detail of what a character is doing, such as explaining that Bella is drinking milk from the carton, not using a glass at all (the slob). While some may cite this as great scene and action development, I find that it all breaks flow somewhat. I've only ever found such microdetailing in, as I've said, fan fictions. One moment that made me groan audibly was a scene in which Bella comments on how small a classmate is by saying that she's "well below my five feet four inches". I didn't need to know that! I wasn't picturing Bella as some Amazon giant, nor was I thinking to myself, "Stephanie, this is nice, but how tall is Bella? Tell me, woman!" This gripe may only apply to me, but it all just seems like it was written by a skilled teenage writer in her spare time, not by a woman who has chosen writing as her chosen profession.
And then we get to Edward, who I'm pleased to notice has "reddish-brown hair" in the book (just like me). So far I'm not minding the man too much; his dialogue is usually pretty interesting in that so far it's really provided a psycholical profile of a vampire then anything else and hey, I'm a psych major. However, Edward brings me to the biggest problem I'm having with the book, and that is:
They never stop talking about how gorgeous Edward is.
On almost every page or so, Bella has to mention at least once how Edward is lovely and beautiful and pretty and handsome and manly and statuesque and perfect and muscular and good looking and all sorts of other compliments. Okay, Bella, we get it. The guy's got a cute face and a killer bod. Now, will you kindly shut up?
My problem is that this really breaks the flow and pulls me out of the novel. I'll be reading the book, slowly starting to lose myself in the dialogue, and then Bella will glance at Edward, and talk about how his face is better looking then any face should be, and I'll be jerked out of the immersion like I'm on a catapult. Now, I have little tolerance for high school teen drama, so just reading the good writing in Twilight is like pulling teeth. But when Bella feels the need to remind the reader that she's falling in love with the best looking kid in town, it really just makes me dislike her. A lot. Maybe this changes later on in the book, but so far she's fallen "irresistably and irrevocably in love with him" based solely on his physical beauty. And is that really the way love is born? I mean, I know that Hollywood has tried its best to say the answer is yes, but for pete's sake, Bella's a high schooler! We've all had that one high school crush who we liked based on looks alone, but we never fell head-over-heels for that person only because they were hot! I like to think it takes a little more then good looks to win eternal love, but hey, maybe that's just me.
Anyways, those are my first opinions of Twilight. If enough people care to hear more of my opinions I may write about what I think about what happens next (Bella's going to the beach, everyone!) If not, hey, I'm not a vain guy. I'll kindly shut up and stop taking up space.
Till next time (maybe),
-Tigg
01 Dec 2009, 1:27 pm
