Twilight in a Nutshell

So, basically, I burned through Twilight faster than I really think it was advisable to do for the sake of my mental acuity. Oh well.

Since... there really isn't that much for me to write about, I thought I'd take up more space on your monitor by interjecting nice doodles into my post inbetween tiny paragraphs of text. If you've ever perused the blog "Hyperbole and a Half," you know the sort of thing I'm talking about.

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Once upon a time, a teenager named (Isa)Bella Swan moved from Phoenix, AZ, a place she loved and wanted to live in forever, to Forks, WA, a place she hated, by her own free will.

She spent the first hundred pages of her story complaining about how much Forks was not like Phoenix.

 

But wait! It's not all bad! Her first day at school she meets a handsome devil of a man to distract her from her abject misery. So she also spends the first hundred pages of the story agonizing over whether he likes her and whether he'll be her boyfriend or not.

(Okay; I confess I can't help liking the development of Edward's character. Would I want him as a boyfriend? No freaking way. But he appeals to the hopeless-romantic part of me that refuses to die.)

Goffik Recap: We have our helpless female character (if you've forgotten that Bella is extremely clumsy and accident-prone, don't worry -- you'll be reminded on the next page; same goes if you've forgotten that Edward is beautiful, gorgeous, glorious, scintillating, captivating). She feels trapped in this tiny "backwards" town of Forks with all of its rain and cloud-cover and lack of sprawl and general rainy cloudy oppressiveness. Not to mention all of the other boys won't leave her alone.

Now we have our mystery in the form of the Cullens -- they look human enough, but something about them is just different. Basically; they're all really pretty. But Bella is obsessed intrigued, and she's our narrator, so we have to take an interest, too.

After Edward and Bella agree that he's a vampire, most of the rest of the book is pretty much hyper-sensualized smut.

[Insert erotic makeout scene here. Cos I'm not gonna learn how to draw those here of all places.]

Edward's family (except Rosalie) loves Bella. Charlie accepts him as her boyfriend. Bella gets put in mortal danger because she listened to her hormones when she's old enough to know better.

There is presumably an epic vampire fight at the end, but Bella spends that part of the novel dying, so we don't get anything awesome there.

Stephanie Meyer, we are unapprove

And then Bella goes to prom with a leg cast.

The End.

Goffik Recap 2: Um... Helpless female character who has a near-death experience... Danger... Handsome male character who comes to the rescue... Supernatural abilities... Oppressive setting (like a city three times the size of Seattle wouldn't be oppressive?!)...

Umm... Yeah, okay; I'm admitting here that there are some elements that are in common with Gothic fiction. But honestly, I don't see Twilight as a Gothic novel at all, not compared to everything else we've read this semester. There is too much focus on how Edward's touch makes Bella's heart stop for it to be taken seriously as a Gothic work.

Compared to other vampire-human-forbidden-love things I've seen (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Moonlight)... Really, I don't feel like the Twilight vampires are proper vampires at all. They're just not scary. Okay, when I stop to think about them, they are scary -- anything that can outrun you and kill you before you can blink is terrifying. But Meyer doesn't describe them scary. Not even James and Victoria are remotely frightening. I read and I thought "Oh; antagonists. Look at that." Dracula; Dracula was scary; he didn't wear any of his emotions on his sleeve. You never knew where he was going to be. Twilight doesn't have enough mystery to keep me intrigued. The novel functions on eroticism, really. That's the only reason I can see for someone to keep reading. It's smut.

I'll probably have more to say when we discuss the novel properly in class, but for now, this is my two cents.

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PS: Read "Hyperbole and a Half" here!