ADolsk. 18.
I just came here to party.
This is my strictly creative writing world. Stories, poems, articles, whatever - they all fit in here.
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- Created By Anomaly
Twilight: The Root Of All Evil
The Root of All Evil.
So, as a little disclaimer, I’ve read Twilight. To be exact, I’ve read the entire Twilight saga, from the alright but totally addicting for whatever reason opener, the namesake itself, Twilight, to the dramatic and incredibly disappointing finale, Breaking Dawn. So I think I’m completely within my rights as a one-time fan to completely blast apart this questionable best seller.
Twilight, in theory, is probably pretty nice. Chicks love romance and chicks love magic stuff, so if you put the two together, you can’t blame SMeyer for turning what should have stayed fanfiction hidden in the recesses of the internet into a novel. No, you can’t blame her. Because in theory, it was pretty sweet. It was in the entire execution where it became a disaster. And you know who should take blame? The company that agreed to publish her. I have a hard time understanding the fact that she got published in the first place. As a book, it’s a literary joke.
Twilight utilizes very few words. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything with a more limited vocabulary outside of, perhaps, children’s books. That’s a little embarrassing, as a fellow writer. I myself, and any writers I know, always strive to expand our vocabularies, improving with each piece so that there can be more. A plight with most critics of Stephenie Meyer’s work is her limited vocabulary combined with an undeniable rape of a thesaurus. I couldn’t agree more. A thesaurus is not inherently a bad thing, but what Meyer does with it sure is.
Her vocabulary only further undermines her already shaky character development. I say shaky because Meyer goes against her own created parameters far too many times, hoping that readers will forgive her because “OMG EDWARD IS SEWW HAWT!” Which isn’t too far from the truth, sadly. The characters themselves leave much to be desired. First of all, every single character has one trait in common: angst. There is a problem when every single character shares one trait, considering the whole point of having multiple characters is so you can give them all their unique personalities. Someone apparently forgot to tell Meyer this little yet very important detail.
Let’s break down why all the characters in Twilight suck.
Bella – Mary Sue. For those of you who don’t know what a Mary Sue is, it’s basically a self insert female character. Isabella Swann is bland and everyone loves her. Her only flaw is that she has none. Which is the worst kind of character an author could conceive. She is dependent, boy obsessed, perpetually in danger. Not much of a pioneer female character, Bella takes female characters back to the dark ages.
Edward – Shiny. Vampire. Really? Yeah, unfortunately. And that’s about all there is to say about him because his personality is almost non-existent. He is cold, has stalker-like tendencies, and is a domestic abuse case waiting to happen. He sneaks into Bella’s room to watch her sleep, he can’t live without her, there is more than one occurrence of Bella being bruised by Edward… the list here is pretty much endless.
Jacob – really really angsty.
I really don’t think it’s necessary to actually discuss all of them because they don’t get more interesting.
Rosalie is not misunderstood - she’s legitimately a bitch. Alice is alright but she’s underused so we never really get to see much. Charlie is a typical dad in denial, Renee is an inconsistent child in a grown up’s body, Carlisle, as much as I want to like him, upon the reading of several other critiques, has become questionable… why does he only save teenagers? Sort of weird. And illegal. Jasper and Emmett just really don’t matter, Esmee sort of falls into that category as well.
Twilight is shallow, it sends all the wrong messages, teaches all the wrong morals. By the end of the series, Bella is practically a drop out, a teenage bride, a teenage mother, willing to give up everything for a boy. Bella turns her back on her friends, her family and her own safety. And when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, without any real struggle like her vampire brethren, Bella experiences no trouble fitting in to her vampire life and is now completely perfect and beautiful… which is weird because she already was a perfect Mary Sue to begin with.
You can tell me you've read all these arguments before... I don't care. After reading essays for and against this wildly popular fandom, I've decided to throw my own hat into the ring, so to speak.
Twilight creates unrealistic and unhealthy expectations for little girls in love with the idea of love and is possibly a very scary look into the future of literature.
I can’t tell you why I enjoyed Twilight, or the subsequent novels to follow, because honestly, upon review, I can’t remember why I had any good reasons too.
Essay: 12/23/08 | Posted By: Anomaly | 15 comments | Twilight (Series) |
Chapter 6
Awkward is perhaps the biggest understatement I have ever used in my life in conjunction with the events immediately following that night for a myriad of reasons. Some funny, most … not so much. I woke up on your couch, my face plastered to the leather via an excess of drool. I peeled myself off and sat up, wiping my face on the inside of my shirt and running my hands through my hair. I braced myself for the oncoming wave of nausea and pain and… none came. Surprised (though not ungrateful), I proceeded to stand up and stretched. As I did so, I glanced at the clock.
“Shit!” It was late. Much much later than I had anticipated. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and clicked a button on the side to illuminate the screen, but it stayed blank. I then remembered that as the gentleman I am, I had turned off my phone last night to avoid any phone calls from my girlfriend. I sighed and held down the power button, waiting for it to turn back on. A few seconds later it did and my phone began vibrating. I was absolutely inundated with both missed calls and texts from my girlfriend. I scrolled through all the new text messages.
“Hey, where did you go?”
“Where are you??”
“Alex, call me!”
“I’m worried… please call me…”
“Alex!”
And the last one, sent at 6:43 AM
“Alex I swear to God if you aren’t dead in a ditch somewhere or you haven’t called me by noon tomorrow, I’m going to make sure you end up that way.”
I could picture her sitting in her bed, eyes puffy and red rimmed from crying and worrying about me (I later learned that this was not the case, for she had actually been fucking my friend Colton somewhere in between all those text messages, but I feel that will become more pertinent information later on). I felt bad, make no mistake about it, but my finger still hovered above the ‘Call’ button, unsure. 11:58 AM. I was supposed to be at school more than 2 and a half hours ago for my Sunday morning lab. 11:59 AM. ‘Call’.
Ring one.
Ring two.
“You fucking douche bag.”
“Uh yeah… hi…”
“Where the fuck were you? Where the fuck are you now? Why the fuck didn’t you call me?”
“Sorry… I was… I passed out for a bit and some guy from the party came outside on his way home and actually woke me up and took me to his place so I could sleep it off. I was really really out of it.” There it was again, in those big bold letters I was so familiar with. Lie. It felt very safe. “Sorry.” I said it again. Which I was. Her voice softened.
“I was really worried.” (bitch)
“I know.” I cleared my throat, not really sure what else to say.
“Let me come pick you up.” She said.
“No, no. I should go for a walk, clear my head. Plus it’s the least I deserve for worrying you so much last night.” I could hear her smile.
“Well, that’s true.”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“Alright. Bye, Alex. Love you.” I clicked the phone shut. Enough lying for now, I supposed.
“Some guy from the party, hmm?”
I turned around to see you walking towards me from the kitchen, two mugs of coffee in hand. You sipped from one as you held the other out towards me.
“Well…” I took it, sheepishly.
“Ah, say no more. I presume that was the girlfriend. All’s fair.” You grinned.
“Mmm.” I shrugged in a very non-indicative way.
“I see sobriety does nothing for your ways in the art of being specific.” You noted.
“Anything above vague when it comes to my personal feelings seems to be inexpressible.” I said. I then realized I was no longer making eye contact with you but I was simply staring. It was almost painful to tear my eyes away from your face. You were uncomplicated in so many ways. My life badly needed something uncomplicated. “I should go.” I put my cup of coffee down, barely touched.
“Wait!” you said it almost fervently. “Let me give you my number.” You grabbed my hand still holding my cell phone and gently pulled it out of my grasp. You quickly put it back into my hand after tapping your contact information into it. This item suddenly took on a lot more importance. You smiled.
“You may go, now.” I nodded.
“Well, thanks.” You waved your hand in the air nonchalantly.
“Think nothing of it.” Yeah. Right. If only.
“I’ll call you sometime.”
“That was the point.” You said, feigning exasperation. I smirked and tore my eyes off you again, making my way to the door. I jammed my feet into my shoes and opened the door.
“Bye.” I didn’t turn around as I said it.
Minutes later I was on the street, walking home. My phone began vibrating so I pulled it out to check the caller ID. It was my Father. The last person I needed to hear from, because the only time he ever called me was when I was in trouble. I flipped the phone open anyway. Better now, then later.
“Hey.”
“Alex, why did I get a call from your lab partner about 2 minutes ago asking where you were this morning?”
“Well Dad, I should think that the answer to that question is fairly obvious.” My answer was greeted by a surprising silence. A very short-lived silence.
“Alex.”
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Get your ass home, now.”
“You know, I was thinking. I know that I’ll be getting a lecture when I get home and that doesn’t seem too appealing to me right now. I’m just in too good of a mood. So how about you just stew about this for awhile and then you can be even angrier by the time I get home?” More silence.
“Listen here you little shit, if you aren’t home in – “
“Okay, see you later.” I snapped the phone shut before another venomous word could escape. I swear my phone would’ve started melting if I’d have let him continue. I shoved the phone back into my pocket, after turning it on silent mode. And then I did something surprising. I started laughing. I replayed the conversation with my Father, with my girlfriend, and then I replayed the whole night from start to finish. And I laughed as I walked, until I felt like my chest was going to burst. I hadn’t been so eager to relive a night since I lost my virginity (a tale not so exciting as you’d think. Awkward was again an understatement for this occurrence as well.) I felt like I was standing still. When I couldn’t take this slow feeling anymore, I started running. My heart beat wildly in my ears to the point where all outside sound became blocked. I ran until it hurt, and even then I was still smiling.
It’s funny in that sad ironic way that my hope for you to be the one who could untangle me from everything ended up being the one to inadvertently push me further in.
Fiction: 11/12/08 | Posted By: Anomaly | 0 comments |
Chaptah fiiive
pleeease crit, I need halp.
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Do... you remember when we first met? And not just in the way you do, when you say ‘yes, yes’ on the numerous occasions I’ve asked you. But I mean… Do you really really remember? I do. I remember it down to every little detail because that’s what set me onto this bizarre course of self-loathing and irrationality. It was one of the greatest days of my life, as weird as this sounds now and taking into consideration all of the events that led up to it. I think the most important detail of the event is that I was drunk. Well, no, not quite. But it does play a big part in the story, regardless.
I was twenty years old and hammered out of my mind. That is when you met me. I was at a stupid party for a stupid acquaintance, which my then current girlfriend had dragged me to. She felt very strongly that I needed to ‘socialize’ more. Interestingly enough, every attempt made by her to ‘socialize’ me ended up in my subsequent alienation of even more people. I was twenty but I acted like I was fifty. Pretentious and arrogant, I acted like the weight of the world was on my shoulders. Things came easily to me and I acted like these were mighty gifts that I must take seriously lest I put everyone I knew in grave danger. When I drank it became more apparent that I thought I was a gift to mankind (I didn’t but it was really a kind of spite generated thing.) I would explain to people in great detail any number of things in too many words. Then I would drink some more, generally until I puked.
The night we met was no different. You caught me in between self-important spiels on the economics of the world and in between drinks. I hadn’t reached oblivion yet, which I craved every time I realized what an asshole I was. I was sitting on the curb in front of the house, torn between nursing my seasick feeling and my need for the feeling of complete absence.
“Hey.” I felt a light tap on my shoulder, and with great difficulty, I lifted my head.
Beautiful.
That was the first word that popped into my head.
“Mmmn?” was the first thing I could actually say. You smiled.
Beautiful.
“Are you okay?” you asked.
Two things then came to mind. One: Lie. Lie literally floated across my head, in big, bold letters. And two: tell her the truth or you might actually drink yourself to death, you fucking moron. For some reason, you, a complete stranger coming over to ask me if I was okay while all the people who were considered to be my best friends and even my girlfriend, stayed inside, all telling each other the same thing – “that’s Alex for you” – made me want to spill everything. You cared, as much as my drunken self exaggerated that fact. You cared and it was enough.
“No.” I finally decided on an extremely abridged version of the truth. You sat down next to me on the curb and hugged your knees.
“Me either.” You replied. You smiled again and looked up at the sky. As drunk as I was, I still remember how perfect the sky was.
“S’wrong with you?” I failed to mask the slur of my words.
“You sure you wanna hear all that from a nobody like me?” I sunk my head down to rest it on my own knees, nearly mirroring your own position.
“I’ve got an excess of time and a buzz to kill.” You laughed.
“Just a buzz?”
“Yeah okay, drunk as hell. Guess that means you got a lot of talking to get through til I’m sober.”
“Do you want to go for a walk?” you said suddenly, and then your face fell as the music in the house behind us got louder “No, I suppose you’ve got all your friends in there, and they’ll probably come looking for you soon.” My mouth reacted before my brain could intercept the words
“They’re not my friends.” It was the truth, but I was still used to a lot of filtering before anything made it out to the ears of the public. “Whattabout you? Don’t you know people in there?” I added.
“Know, yes. Like is another story completely.” You replied and then laughed.
Beautiful. The sound was beautiful.
“Let’s go.” I recognized the necessity to break out of this fucked up cycle – this unintentional path of destruction. I recognized how absolutely tired I was of being a prick and how badly I had needed someone to ask me if I was okay. So we went. The two of us, so completely not okay and feeling better and better about not being okay because we found solace in each other. We weren’t similar, not by any stretch. But we fit together in that moment, in that little space. “Let’s go” became one of the most important phrases in the world to me, because it shaped nearly everything to come after that night. I left behind the need to be constantly pretentious (though I retained my general asshole qualities… everyone has a character) and began my first attempts at being genuine.
We staggered along streets for the better part of that night, me with my arm slung around you for support. You told me about your family being a general inconsistency in your life and the issues you’d had with being consistent with anything and I complained about being too privileged. I think you were the first and potentially only person to not hate me for that, and I told you so. You shrugged and said, “I can’t imagine it’s easy being perfect.”
“Exactly.” I nodded sagely. You stopped walking and I nearly toppled you over when I didn’t realize for a second that we had stopped. “What?” All of the sudden you were resting both of your hands on my shoulders and laughing so hard it almost sounded like sobbing. I didn’t get the joke, so I did my best to stand still and wait for you to finish. After a minute or two, the laughing subsided and you caught your breath.
“Oh Alex,” you said, “I seriously fucking hope you remember this tomorrow.” You grinned. And I did remember it the next day. There have been very few days where I haven’t remembered that. It’s a bittersweet memory. On the one hand, I can appreciate how stupid I was. On the other hand, I wish I was a lot better off now for realizing my own stupidity, than I actually am.
Sometimes I thought that the sky looked like pinpricks of white-hot light. I always associated the night sky with something painful. That night it looked like the scattering of so many diamonds and it became associated with something beautiful.
Fiction: 11/11/08 | Posted By: Anomaly | 0 comments |
Chapter 4. I think. Right?
The trip was a blur, for the most part. I vaguely recall arriving at the airport, boarding my plane and a little package of pretzels. I recall getting to Dallas, meeting up with my driver and buying new clothes. You know, the really trivial things...Fiction: 11/07/08 | Posted By: Anomaly | 0 comments |
