pepper | (no subject)

Things I've been involved in the design concept of, recently (i.e. wouldn't-it-be-great-if...):

- Antigravity bra: a small device which sticks to the underside of the boob - no more red marks!
- "Space trays": again with the antigravity - baking trays that hover next to you when you have no work surfaces available.
- Vampires that bake: because no one is going to suspect a baker of being a vampire, right? And, if they're like Spike, they'll like a little something to crumble into the blood, give it a bit of texture (ew). No, really - it'd be awesome! Hollywood blockbuster material.

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People who have read Twilight: does any character, at any point, tell Bella to stop being so whiny and self-absorbed? Or do they all enable her personal pity party, like Edward seems to be doing so far? I'm nearly 100 pages in, and dear god do I need someone to tell her to shut the hell up. Oh noes, her parents divorced (without any apparent acrimony, when she was a baby)! Oh noes, she has to live with her father (who loves her a lot and has bought her a car)! Oh noes, she has to leave behind, uh, no friends that even merit a name! Oh noes, she misses her mother (although not enough to remember to email her until three days after she arrives)! Oh noes, she's the new girl in school, and only makes half a dozen friends straight away, including three boys who fancy her! Oh noes, it... rains a lot!

Cry moar, emo girl.

And her reaction to seeing snow for the first time ever?

"Ew." Snow. There went my good day.

Did Stephanie Meyer make Bella the world's wettest blanket on purpose, or am I actually supposed to like her? Enquiring minds want to know.

I'm reading it for my Book Group; it's not by personal choice. It's also suffering in comparison to Sunshine, by Robin McKinley, which I also just read, and which is infinitely better. I want to throw Bella to Robin McKinley's vampires, see how long she survives with them. Gah.

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Okay, for REAL, I read your idea about Vampires that Bake and immediately thought of Sunshine (which, no, not the same thing, but it has vampires and baking!). *g*

But no, no one ever calls Bella on her wet-blanket personality. IF ONLY. Honestly, I wouldn't re-read those books or inflict them on anyone. (I read all four, Cthulu only knows why.)

And damn, but I could use an anti-grav bra.

Hee! Yes, that was what inspired the baking vampires idea - I was trying to explain Sunshine to someone, and she got the wrong end of the stick. :D

Ohhhhhhh, I so hope I don't end up needing to read the others. I can't stand Bella, Edward is a mere cipher based on a juvenile idea of the ideal man... I'm entirely failing to understand why Twilight is so huge, and Sunshine isn't. Or why Twilight is so huge, period.

And, yes. All it needs is for someone to invent antigravity... d'oh.

Whatever you do, DON'T READ Breaking Dawn. It's by far the most frustrating one of them all. However, DO read Cleolinda's Twilight recaps. :-)

Ah but Breaking Dawn has the most awesome caeserean section scene in the history of fiction. Rigel told me I was going to be disturbed and when I laughed my way through it I think SHE was disturbed :p

Hee. I've read Cleolinda's recap of that. I might have to read the others just so I can read that book. Meyer would feel totally at home with the crowd on on samandjackalwaysandforever, wouldn't she?

Heh, yes, I read the one for Breaking Dawn, and pretty much decided then never to read the series. Damn book group...

My guess on why it's so big amongst teenagers and some women is that Edward is one of those safe, brooding heroes they can fantasize about when real life is being really scary. He's completely focused on Bella to a degree that some find alarming, but to an awkward teenager who is beginning to face sexual feelings, that would be really reassuring. Bella doesn't have to DO anything to keep Edward interested. There's no actual pressure about sex, because Edward is the one who denies it. He's completely dedicated and obsessed, but because it's a romance the reader KNOWS he's safe, unlike the same thing in real life. It's true love. It's an immortal life. It's having power and being admired.

Jesus. I'd have been all over that guy when I was 14 or 15. The grown women who love him are a little harder to explain, but I'm guessing it's the same thing. Just... maybe they haven't had as much experience as many other women. Or they just like vampires, I guess.

But good lord, those books could have been written better. The last book especially... I wanted to kick Meyer, because her writing got better in some ways, and yet... so, so far away.

As someone who read the entire twilight series in, like, three days, yes I totally agree someone needs to kill Bella.

But the supporting characters in that book are AWESOMESAUCE. The Cullens (ALICE IS AWESOME), and the werewolves, and Charlie (Charlie rocks hard and Bella is such a bitch to him).

I want stephanie meyer to go back and write all their stories instead of the boring one she did write.

(Yes I loved twlight defriend away!)

Oh, I'm feeling so sorry for Charlie, having such a pain in the ass for a daughter. He's been absolutely great to her - he put up with her tantrums for years about not coming up to Forks, he bought her a car, he doesn't fuss her too much, he tries in his inarticulate way to show her he loves her - and she's just such an ungrateful brat! She's an ungrateful brat towards her mother, too, but I'm getting the impression that it's partly her mother's fault that Bella is how she is.

I keep feeling sorry for Lauren, who was perfectly nice at first, and then suddenly became "fishy-eyed" and "nasal" as soon as she took a dislike to Bella. As if disliking Bella is some kind of severe character flaw.

My daughter who will turn 15 this month loooved the Twilight series when she was at the absolute height of middle school woe-is-me angst. Based on that and the list of her friends who loved it too, I decided that I would wait for a very cold day in Hell before I cracked the cover. My sympathies.

When they market the anti-grav bra, I am so going to disgrace my mother's careful manners instruction by elbowing all the other women to be first in line to buy one.

Edited because if you substitute for the results are really irritating to read!

Edited 2010-06-09 01:49 (UTC)

Yes, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more (or at least loathed it less) if I'd been the target age. But even for a teen book, it's bad - I'm just glad it wasn't around when I was a teenager, and I read Diana Wynne Jones and Robin McKinley and Terry Pratchett instead.

Although Twilight is (unintentionally) quite funny, too. *g*

I know I should read Terry Pratchett. The bits and snatches I've been exposed to have been wonderful. They are on my to-read list for a while, but first I have to pry them out of the warm, live hands of my college age son.

Otherwise, it sounds as though we must have a large mutual list of beloved authors. I've always been glad that I grew up in a home surrounded by Alan Garner, Lloyd Alexander, Tove Jansson, and C.S. Lewis, rather than having to be stuck with the problems-of-growing up literature that my friends seemed to revel in when I was a kid. Tolkien was one of the obligatory and beloved family literary rites of passage. I must admit, though, that getting old enough to see the Narnia books as Christian allegory kind of sucked the fun out of them, and I haven't been able to read them since, because now I am unable to un-see that.