subscribe3 weeks
Saturday February 14, 2009
Three weeks to the wedding. We have an appointment today with the wedding coordinator at the restaurant and another on Tuesday with the florist. I feel like the florist is going to be overpriced. I’m not looking forward to that.
I’ve been spending my time in these last weeks not worrying about the wedding with as much enthusiasm as possible, instead writing and reading. The draft now has 76,000 words and I’m on target for a really nice-sized first draft. I’m almost done with it. I’m currently procrastinating writing the climactic scenes and the denouement, but I figure those will get done this week. I’m excited to get through them, though. I’m still not entirely sure how the details will play out given what’s in my outline. We’ll see.
I finished Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand by Carrie Vaughn on Wednesday (which was good and thematically appropriate, with Kitty getting married) and started Watchmen that night. I am now halfway through Watchmen, the graphic novel, and I am addicted to it. I’ve actually (gasp) never read a graphic novel before. I’m seriously enjoying it, though its form did take my novice eyes a few pages to get used to. The film trailers are only heightening my anticipation of finishing the novel — as well as seeing the movie. When I see images in the trailers that seem to have been lifted from the page, I get very antsy about seeing the movie version. The casting, furthermore, seems to be very excellent. I’m loving the choices for the various main characters — I’m a fan of the other work of Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan), Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl II), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian), and Matthew Goode (Ozymandias). Even Malin Ackerman, whom I loved to hate in 27 Dresses, is a surprising but intriguing choice for the Silk Spectre II. Knowing the cast as I’m reading the graphic novel — images on the pages aside — is definitely making this a bit more interesting.
The wedding is the day after the opening day of Watchmen, incidentally, so the night-before-the-wedding mayhem with my Maid of Honor might have to include seeing Watchmen. My sister and I are admitted nerds, which makes this an ideal sisterly activity. Even more ideal is that going to see a cult comic movie the night before the wedding sounds so un-stereotypical, making me even more enthusiastic about it. (Anything that sounds un-stereotypical regarding the wedding makes me excited, because the stereotypical things are stressful, or so the stereotype tells us.) I would go to the Thursday-into-Friday midnight show, but every time I’ve done that — the Star Wars’ prequels, Spider-Man 2 & 3, one or two of the Harry Potter movies — I drag for the next three days. Dragging on the day of the wedding is no good.
In less exciting wedding-related news, I finally went ahead and ordered some favors and things. Apparently these are crucial elements for the event, these favors. Sigh. Plus a few gifts — gifts make sense to me in a way favors don’t. TheKnot.com has some interesting stuff but I managed to stay away from unnecessary kitsch, I hope. I am still very much anti-wedding establishment. I’ve relented on a few fronts (grumble, guestbook and flowers and candies) but I’m still fighting being too commercially traditional. At the end of the day, though, a wedding is still a show, and it’s hard to not want that show to have a few minor flashy touches.
Chrestomanci is like Gatsby! Minus the tragedy…
Friday November 21, 2008
It has FINALLY occurred to me who the character of Chrestomanci in Diana Wynne Jones’ Charmed Life reminds me of, both physically — the dapper outfits, the mysterious descriptions of his past and mysterious power — and I swear, it’s Gatsby. As in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The similarities between them (polar-opposite genres aside!) are mostly through the feeling I have gotten from them through readings. (I just finished listening to the audiobook version of Charmed Life the other day, thus Chrestomanci has been kicking around my subconsious.)
In both novels, these men are not the “narrator” character — Cat/Eric in Charmed Life and Nick in The Great Gatsby — and both men without doubt dominate any scene in which they appear. Also, the time period (and by extension, the costumes and settings) are also similiar. Charmed Life is set in this strange time period that is at once late nineteenth century, 1911, the 1920s, or some other vague time (hints of the ’40s/’50s, maybe), mostly because it’s set in an alternate reality that diverged from ours some time in the past and because of the existence of magic has inherently evolved differently. Gatsby is of course very straightforwardly a Roaring Twenties novel of society, classes, money, power, lost love, etc. Really. The suits, top hats, dressing gowns, big houses, and stuff… they really remind me of one another. Is that really strange?
I know. These characters are more different than they are alike but they remind me of each other. The same way Disney’s Beast in the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast evokes Robin McKinley’s Corlath from The Blue Sword. (Robin McKinley’s personal novel affair with the Beauty and the Beast retellings notwithstanding.)
On the NaNoWriMo front, I am struggling to get to 50,000 words by next Tuesday — before I leave for Thanksgiving. Oh, dear. I hope I can write 15,000 words (or slightly less) by then.
NaNoWriMo, Day 14
Friday November 14, 2008
My NaNo novel is an unwieldy beast. And by that I mean it’s going well but its plot can easily go in four directions and I’m conflicted but only really conflicted because I am sort of getting to the point of procrastination. I KNOW, it’s day 14, I can’t afford that. But even so. I’m at 16,890 words last night/this morning and I really do need to get a move on to catch up to where I have to be. (1,667 x Day # = Where I Ought To Be.) I am confident I can get there today or this weekend, but that hinges on my getting down to work. That’s where I’ll go right after this.
I actually spent a lot of Tuesday/Wednesday (and the few days before it) reading the first two books of Trudi Canavan’s Black Magician Trilogy, called The Magicians’ Guild and The Novice. I started the final book The High Lord but early on I shut it and said, “No. You will not get wrapped up in this book. This is bound to be an awesome book. You do not want to read this. NO.” Thus, I stopped and started working again. I actually never meant to read those books in November. I actually – gasp – bought them the last week of October, intending to read them all in 3 days, as is customary usually when I finally break down and buy a book I’ve never read. So I started The Magicians’ Guild… and read it… and read it… and forgot about it… and forgot… and guiltily picked it up again… and pushed and pushed… and then I got to one scene, mid-book – MID-BOOK! The hook of a good book never takes that long for me! — and THWWWP. I finally, finally saw possibilities branching out for this world and its plot and I dove head-first after them. By then it was the first week of November and I’d been casually reading a chapter here or there before bed or while bored because, well, it was not a hooking but a diverting book. So I finished the book with the stunning final scene’s revelation and I… well. I went right over to the shelf and picked up The Novice and went right into it.
I’ve already learned a ton about myself because of NaNo. Firstly, when I’m in the zone, I can pump out thousands of words easily. When I’m not, a hundred is torture. Getting in the zone take as little as rereading the last stuff I wrote, or honestly working to immerse myself in the word by doing world-building stuff in my extraneous documents or pumping up the music. (I write to mindless pop and/or musical soundtracks I can sing along to. I usually prefer to write to musical soundtracks because I like that each musical’s song evokes a part of a plot with character motivation, desires, and stuff like that. Musical songs bring a character or characters from Point A to Point B through their singing, and that’s more interesting usually than a plain old pop/rock song. Though I occasionally do like me some rock. Or lyricless movie scores.)
Next, reading a book when trying to meet a deadline is clearly just a Bad Idea. Thus the rather large and intimidating pile of constantly renewed library books (I am keeping them around for Thanksgiving’s train ride, I tell myself). Next, I am easily conflicted — ooh, not really a surprise — and I am, or can be, really creative. I am proud of myself, actually, for some of the things I’ve come up with. When creating two important secondary characters, I deliberately chose new and interesting character directions for them and came up with some dynamics I’ve never written before — but the kicker is that they work so beautifully in conjunction with the main character and the plot. I get a bit gleeful sometimes when I surprise myself and I find myself doing that a lot with some of the blundering decisions I’ve made because of time constraints with NaNo. I do not, however, think that it’s solely because of NaNo. I knew I did that in one of my novels ages ago (when 80K words in a document was me not finishing the book and realizing that I’d written some behemoth of no coherent villain motivation and a lot of necessary-but-not scenes of world-building).
Oh, back to the grind I go.
House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones
Tuesday October 28, 2008
Last night I finished House of Many Ways, Diana Wynne Jones’s most recent book and the third book set in the world of Howl’s Moving Castle after Castle in the Air. I read both Howl’s and Castle in college, and I am a huge fan of the Miyazaki film adaptation of Howl’s Moving Castle, despite the plot differences (I actually really do enjoy Miyazaki’s interpretation and story, and it pretty much has the same themes/conclusion anyway). Considering that in the last month I’ve read both Conrad’s Fate and her Dalemark quartet — and thus have been high on her style of storytelling — it was only natural that I raced through this book gleefully.
And I did love it. It was such a fun, clever book. The plot is simple: The sheltered, teenaged Charmain is volunteered to look after her Great-Great-Uncle-by-marriage’s house while he recovers from an illness. While living in and exploring this house, Charmain discovers a door that has many ways to it and encounters several crazy, funny, and fascinating characters, including, of course, Mrs. Sophie Pendragon and her family. Hilarity, magic, and life lessons ensue culminating in a satisfying, classically Diana Wynne Jones style of revelation-conclusion. (In that regard it was very Conrad’s Fate.)
I have to say, though, this book felt more like a Chrestomanci book than Castle in the Air did. Had Howl (and yes, he of course has a role in the book) not been so very… Howl, he would have been very Christopher. (For those of you who have read the book: Christopher would never have pulled the Twinkle stunt. Never. He’s much too haughty.) Even so they’re very similar characters — both somewhat selfish and self-important, both powerful magic users (in different worlds with different systems of magic; Howl is a wizard, Christopher is a nine-lifed enchanter) — but also distinctly different. Howl is obsessed with his appearance in a vain, almost endearingly self-conscious way; Christopher is fastidious and prim. What’s interesting too is that these men capture the attention and admiration of those around them but their wives are very simple, compared to them. Though Sophie is certainly a spitfire compared to Millie (in Charmed Life Millie, not the younger versions of Millie).
Charmain was an interesting protagonist, as was Peter as the sidekick/counterpoint character. I’ve never really encountered a character who is really a cleverly, well-drawn “sheltered” character who nonetheless thinks she can do anything she puts her mind to — and fails and fails at it. Her successes are brilliant accidents. Then there’s Peter, also sheltered but much better and more practically educated but anything he sets his mind to — with perfect form, perfect methodology — ends up going hilariously awry. Together they make a bumblingly real pair. I saw them so vividly in their arguments, their pitfalls and disasters, and their terrific successes. Talk about terrific characterization.
Then there’s Sophie, Morgan, Calcifer, and Howl. There is something to a series (or companion books) when you know certain characters already so you can appreciate the riotous one-liners that the author throws out there. And there are a lot. They are terrific. I laughed out loud the most reading this book than I have reading any book in a long while. Witty banter is all well and good but sometimes it’s just a really well-timed one-liner that can bring you to giggling tears. That, and Diana Wynne Jones is absolutely excellent when it comes to the set-up and pay-off. She sets up a lot quickly and drops clever details constantly, but you can never tell when a set-up will pay-off — but when they do… they are perfect. Maybe these books are simply perfectly in line with my particular brand of humor? (I absolutely did find myself laughing a lot while reading the Chrestomanci books and the Dalemark books — The Lives of Christopher Chant and The Crown of Dalemark probably involved the most laughter of their respective series.)
One aspect I really enjoy about the Howl’s and Chrestomanci books are the fact that the kids and teenagers involved as protagonists and supporting cast are always at the point in their plots where they’re still learning how to do things and they make mistakes. Frequently. Neither are they usually “in school” but they’re usually outside of a consistent structure (or fight to escape that structure) and they find themselves in a place where they have to create their own structure, goals, and discipline. (Thank God for an alternative to the “school story”-driven plot of Harry Potter.)
A lot of the plots involve the children/teens making the very mistakes that grow into the problem of the novel itself that they have to solve. (Or, as in Christopher’s case in The Lives of Christopher Chant, finding his loyalties divided and all of his “good” intentions making everything worse.) These characters must take responsibility for their own mistakes and must bring themselves to ask for help, even when they think they don’t need it … these are themes that really resonate. They feel so particularly real. In Dalemark, for instance, there is a distinct element of fate and things beyond one’s control but even so the kids/teens are the ones who make the big choices and who must live with the consequences of those choices. Unlike in adult epic fantasy where sometimes the protagonist is forced along a path he/she doesn’t want nor choose, the element of choice is so vitally crucial to the plot of Diana Wynne Jones’s books. The kids/teens are the ones who convince and win others to their cause, who see the truth that some of the partisan, selfishly greedy adults can’t see. But these kids aren’t pure and innocent either. Dalemark’s Mitt, by fourteen, is a several-times-over criminal and manipulator; Eric Chant, called Cat, in Charmed Life, is almost cripplingly meek and shy; Christopher is so self-motivated and self-centered for so much of The Lives of Christopher Chant, almost every negative event in the book can be traced to decisions or neglectful actions Christopher has taken to make it so — all of which he has to then work to correct. Even Charmain, in House of Many Ways, finds that burying herself in a book whenever something goes awry doesn’t magically make the problem disappear; wishful thinking isn’t what changes things — taking action is the only way to change things.
So in conclusion to this rambling entry… Diana Wynne Jones’s House of Many Ways was a terrific book, though you’ll appreciate it a lot more if you’ve read both Howl’s Moving Castle and Castle in the Air first.
The Crown of Dalemark by Diana Wynne Jones
Saturday October 25, 2008
I just finished The Crown of Dalemark, the fourth and final book of the Dalemark Quartet by Diana Wynne Jones. I think this is going to be one of those books — series — I’ll need to re-read. Gosh, add these books to the to-buy list! I read the first two books — Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet — nearly two weeks ago now, and I finally, finally finished The Spellcoats, the third volume, yesterday. I started the fourth yesterday and finished it this evening. There was just enough space between the first two books, focusing on the characters of Moril and Mitt, respectively, and the fourth that I was eagerly able to tear through the fourth with only a little bemoaning of the lack of easy book reference. (When I finish a series book quickly I often need it at hand to reference something when a supposition about the plot of the subsequent books comes into my head, so I can verify and/or dismiss it.)
I took so long reading The Spellcoats because it’s written in a completely different, foreign voice from the others (first person, too) and it takes place hundreds of years before the events in the first, second, and fourth books — but its events help explain and illuminate the others, as well as provide the foundation upon which the fourth’s plot is built. I’m glad I didn’t skip it! (I admit, I was tempted. I saw Mitt and Moril’s name in the blurb of the fourth and I was almost — almost — off like a shot, skipping book three. Good completionist me, though! Saved by my own obsessive compulsive completionist nature. Also, looking back, the third book is unusually wonderful. The way it’s written is… beautiful. Its narrator, Tanaqui, is a clever thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl whose narration is actually her weaving. She weaves coats, on which she weaves the story of her and her family’s adventures, and so the book is actually the “translation” of this weaving. It’s a wonderfully unusual way to tell a story — and naturally has consequences for the story’s conclusion and the way the story is discovered and found later on in that world. How fascinating!
Which brings me to the point I found I’d come to after finishing the fourth book: I love Diana Wynne Jones’s stories. So, so much. Every novel of hers (and short story) I’ve read demonstrate a terrific efficiency of language, consistent — and quick! — characterization, and an imaginative level of storytelling that astounds me. Even this, her “epic fantasy quartet” was as good and wonderful, fully, as any of her Chrestomanci books or those set in the world of Howl’s Moving Castle. I obviously need to read more of her works, though I think I’ve hit the “big” “famous” ones.
But back to The Crown of Dalemark and the whole quartet. These aren’t perfect, to my sense, but then again, I am a completionist. I finished the fourth book and thought, “Oh, no! There’s no fifth book is there? Is there? IS THERE?” and moaned about it for a good ten minutes of frantic pacing and cleaning. (I do that when I finish a book. I need to extract my mind; I need to clean and moan about the bereft feeling I’m too often left with after leaving a terrific world. If Bryan is around I jump and try to give him the five minute plot summary and he looks at me, annoyed, and says, “You know I haven’t heard any of the words you just said at me, right?”)
Diana Wynne Jones leaves out a level of detail (and completion) that I wish I could see, but to some degree it fascinates me. These are, in truth, children’s books, and it gives a greater depth of the “what if” to leave a lot unsaid. I know as a kid I always asked myself (and when my parents read with me, they encouraged these questions, and I recall this vividly) about all of the detail left un-detailed. I noticed there’s a lot of lack of particular inflection after each character’s dialogue. Some authors use the dialogue to show the character’s personality (through a lot of particular adjective and verbs attached to the dialogue) but Jones (Wynne Jones? Diana? Ha.) has a knack for characterizing through short bursts of personality demonstration or anecdote more in general. She’ll demonstrate a character arguing back unnecessarily in an annoying manner and make a comment like, “And he was always doing nettlesome things like that” or “He was the last person you wanted to start an argument with” or the like, to demonstrate that person’s nature, so when you see dialogue pop up with a particular line of, say, “No I certainly will not” then you automatically find yourself inflecting the dialogue with an irritated tone and you can imagine the other characters making faces like, “Oh, not again!” And it’s so naturally implied! Maybe I’m simply an imaginative reader. Maybe I naturally thicken characters who on the page are simple structures of basic traits. But I think I can credit Diana with a lot more than that. She develops a richness in her simply-yet-complexly plotted children’s (and young adults’) books that is undeniable. And that’s why I love them.
Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
Tuesday September 16, 2008
Reading the day away hurts the brain.
I just finished Breaking Dawn. Gasp. I’m still on hold for it from the library… which I should go cancel. My friend lent me her friend’s copy — haha — and so I devoured that between last night and this morning (while managing, might I add, to get a full night’s sleep). I’ve got an awful lot to say on it but in the interests of spoilers, I won’t say it all here.
I suppose I liked it. Some parts of it I somewhat hated. Some I said “Finally!” about. Overall, I think I am “bleh” about it.
Actually I think I would have preferred Books 2 and 3 to be a heck of a lot shorter and sweeter and this book to be tidier, and then just, you know, have that. Or, well, maybe Book 1 shorter, too. I think they’re just awfully long and filled with lots of stuff that doesn’t need to be there. Efficiency of language and all of that. It would have been an excellent trilogy. If the POV had been different I would have liked it more, too. I grew to dislike the first person the longer the series went on as Meyer seemed to have more and more trouble keeping a rein on her writing style to keep it within the bounds of the perspective she chose… I mean, she even switches perspectives (at the end of 3 and a part of 4) and that’s just… not… well, I just didn’t like it. Write it in third person if you can’t contain it in one, I think. I’ve read some really, really successful first persons that play up on the inherent tunnel-vision-ness of the first person POV by which Meyer kept seeming stifled. Or be more consistent in the POV switches. I’ve read successful chapter-switching first person POV novels, and those are great if a bit complicated when done well. Oh, well.
I’m going to go spoiler lite and speak in (annoying) generalities for the rest of this, but as a general warning, stop reading if you don’t want any surprises spoiled.
I liked Bella’s character a heck of a lot more in Book 4. But that’s also because she changed significantly (which I incidentally didn’t like; if Bella in Book 4 was the only Bella, it would have been great. But I’ll get into that later.) The change wasn’t a gradual thing, like it should have been. I didn’t like the sudden, sharp shift in personality. It made sense given what happened — I doubt Meyer could have done it differently and had it still be convincing without reworking some of the plot or timeline, at least — but I didn’t like how weak Bella’s personality was all along, leading to this. Book 2 Bella is a miserable nuisance. Book 3 is all… oy. Better but still not ideal. She’s more authentically teenagerish in Book 3, though. I get that she’s not a modern heroine, she’s a throwback to the nineteenth century’s gothic heroine period (has Meyer read any of those early nineteenth century gothic novels? Did she expect any of her teenaged readers to have read them?) and maybe a bit of Austen. (The man-must-save-me-from-my-circumstances Austen, not the strong-willed, self-determined woman Austen; I don’t believe Bella had Elizabeth’s Bennett’s fire. Maybe something of Anne Elliot’s moping. Actually, some of that, yes, I see that. But probably only because I’m throwing Anne onto a Book 2/3 Bella and seeing if it might stick. It might.) Anyway.
The whole plot of Book 4 was sort of, well, unsurprising. I guessed every leg of it a few hundred pages before it occurred, and when it did, I was still shocked that I was right, because when I’d made those predictions to myself, I said, “Wouldn’t that be hilariously ironic? Because that would make this book long! And look how long it is!” And it happened. And I was… bitter? Annoyed that I figured it all out? For one of the predictions I actually thought to myself, “Too bad it’s going to turn out in Way A, because Way B would totally make things crazy! If that were to happen, then this and this and this could happen… But Way A is totally going to happen so there’s no use in further speculation.” And guess what. Way B happened. My speculation was correct. I was shocked because I had never thought Meyer would… do that. I do personally love figuring out the plot of books but… but… there were no surprises. None. Even the swooping-in-at-the-last-minute moment at the end was unsurprising. I was sort of “Sigh.” I suppose not every author can pull a fast one on me. I love it when they do, though.
But really, was I expecting this book to be amazing? No. I was expecting it to be just on the wrong side of tolerable. I am surprised that it was better than tolerable. Enjoyable, diverting. Fun. Was it because Meyer finally embraced more fantasy than she had ever used? Probably. She took risks and ran with them, trusting we’d follow. I think in doing so she lost some readers, those who followed her books for the love story and not the fantasy. (Though if they survived the werewolf revelation, I am surprised to think that they wouldn’t be able to survive anything. Vampires are one thing; shape-shifting can be something else entirely, but what came in Book 4 is no more shocking, really, than anything else — fantasy-wise. It was shocking for other reasons, which I can get into at another time.) And I was surprised too that I was in the vampire camp so firmly from Book 1. I am so often in the werewolf/shifter camp that I was surprised when Book 3 came down to it, forcing me to ally with Edward or Jacob, that I was unhesitatingly Edward.
And so anti-Bella. Really, I was fed up with her by the end of Book 3. The choice, ugh. Maybe I was more irritated with the marketing? Maybe. I am glad she was redeemed in part in Book 4 but in doing so she really wasn’t Bella. I mean, I can’t name it precisely. I think I felt condescension toward Bella in Books 2 and 3. The vast majority of my female friends and acquaintances are stronger women, plain and simple, than Bella was. I’m talking strength of character, of purpose, of will. You can’t feel so “meh” about a character for so long and then immediately cheer with her and enjoy her without stopping and thinking, “Wait. This is not the same character.” The changes she went through were abrupt and rough and told to me (ugh, telling versus showing) and I don’t think Meyer convinced me of why Bella changed except for the excuse of the new balances of power. She spends so much time on really strange moments and details but not enough time, space on the page, on this change of Bella’s that is so unbelievably crucial to the plot. I mean, if my life with the man of my dreams shifted that abruptly for the same reason tomorrow, my personality would not change that much in a few days and I can say that with absolute certainty. I know my loyalties and heart would change and grow appropriately, but I would not suddenly become a different person. Change takes time that Meyers did not make me feel I was living through with Bella emotionally. Additionally Meyer made it seem like Bella’s character jumped from 18 to 35, from self-conscious to ferociously self-assured, and I’m supposed to believe that easily, just like that. I don’t think so. She changed Bella too falsely, too rapidly, given what had transpired so recently in book time, in Books 2 and 3. If the change had been gradual, from the start of the series to the end of it, I would have bought it. But Bella was so eighteen years old in Book 3. Devil’s Advocate: I realize the events of the first half of Breaking Dawn were so earth-shattering, so life-altering that Bella really does have to change. But Meyer failed to convince me of the emotion, of the grounded-in-reality-truth of that change from Character A to Character B.
Other writers have done it and blown me away. To use a few fantasy examples from other authors whose books could be classified as “coming of age” or “young adult”: Robin McKinley’s Deerskin does it shockingly well. Heart-breakingly well. Lissar changes completely while retaining her sense of self and I believe every moment of it because of how grounded in raw emotion and power her experiences are. McKinley’s Aerin in The Hero and the Crown has a similar forged-in-the-fires-of-hell life-changing experience, and she changes because of it, too. I mean, hell, one of the best character changes ever has to be Frodo’s in The Lord of the Rings. Harrowing experiences over approximately the same time frame as Bella’s (actually Bella’s is more, I believe) and he is irrevocably altered in a gut-wrenching, proud, and really profound way. (Robin Hobb’s Malta in her Liveship Traders Trilogy is another character who changes sharply and realistically, as is Fitz in the Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies, though his change is over the course of years.) Bella’s change didn’t hit me like that at all. It didn’t feel real.
Getting more and more spoiler-ific here, I thought the events and moments in the series were certainly enough to have moved Bella to discover that sort of power of character on her own but Meyer made Bella’s humanity such a handicap, made being a vampire so perfect and desirable, it’s so hard to compare it. I don’t know how I feel about humanity being a handicap. How being painted as utterly frail and breakable and not… well, in any other way, is any way… relatable? I mean, we are breakable, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen humans painted that way in a fantasy series with supernatural characters. Humans are so much more than that. But then again, her vampires are so human — she doesn’t make them very different — I suppose I can see why she would malign humanity so much when her vampires are that unrealistically cool. In a way, that’s one thing I profoundly do not enjoy about the series. Bella cannot embrace herself as who she is, she has to become someone else — something not entirely human — to finally love herself. I don’t know how that settles with me. The analogy is imperfect, of course, to real life — as all fantasy should be imperfect, not one for one, analogies to real life — but even so. It’s discomfiting.
I sit uneasy with a message that in order to be able to love and be proud of yourself have to both find someone else to complete you and to fundamentally change (in essence, your genetics) in the process.
But of course, cynics will say that about any kind of all-consuming love, or that lots of life-changing events seriously alter the people they happen to. I’ve been asked to my face why I need Bryan to love, cherish, and marry me, when I have to sacrifice my single, individual self to become the us that comprises us? And it is a sacrifice to become an us. You are no longer your own entity in a couple. You are who you become together. You can change and grow and become wiser together. But… I’m also still irrevocably myself. Bumbling faults and all. Gah. It’s such a web of tangled thoughts, that. I could discuss that for a long time.
There are a lot of aspects of the book I’d want to discuss more but in the interests of remaining vague, I won’t. You can talk to me about it, if you like.
I suppose that’s how I think of the Twilight Saga. It’s good, it’s fun; it has its moments of utterly asinine melodrama that make me want to cry with frustration, and it has its moments of beautiful, really adorable romance. It also is pretty good with action and politics; its characters are varied, intriguing, and engrossing. I was without a doubt constantly engaged with the book. Will I buy the series and read it again and again like I do many others? No. It just wasn’t worth it. But I am glad I have read it.
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