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ella_mennoHi. My name is Jenna, and I own the entire Twilight saga.
Also, I kind of <3 it.
If you need a primer on this series, or just want to read some really funny commentary on such, I cannot recommend![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cleolinda's Twilight journal entries highly enough. Everything she says about these books is ‘zactly what I would say about them, were I as funny and smart as she is.
DISCLAIMER: My shameful love for this series should in no way be taken as my endorsement of any of the following:
* weepy emo clingy teenage girls whose lives have no meanings outside of their boyfriends/soul mates, whether said boyfriends/soul mates are alive or undead;
* the setting up of the above type of girl as a role model;
* the egregious overuse of mostly unnecessary adjectives;
* werewolves in love with persons other than Sirius Black.
I do, however, endorse sparkliness in all types, shapes, and forms.
I am trying so hard to keep to the positive in this post, but I have to say that if/when I try to read these books as the mother of a little girl, I am deeply troubled by many of the messages implicit in them. This is why I completely bypass the “adult” portion of my brain and give the books right to my inner 13-year-old-girl (hereby known as my ITYOG.)
Because, ohemgee does my ITYOG looooooooove them. Bella is so NOBLE, what with moving to an OVERCAST CLIMATE, and though she is BFF with her MOTHER she feels DIFFERENT and SEPARATE and NEVER TRULY CONNECTED with ANY of the NORMAL PEOPLE!
Then she meets EDWARD, who is HANDSOME and MYSTERIOUS and BROODING and PALE and OMG HAWT. Also, it seems like he kind of hates her, but SURPRISE, he does NOT hate her: in fact, he is OVERWHELMINGLY ATTRACTED to her.
And lots of stuff happens, but mostly it is several hundred pages of “DO YOU LIKE ME? CHECK ONE BOX:
___YES
___NO
___WHEN YOU SAY 'LIKE YOU' DO YOU MEAN AS AN ENTRÉE?”
And there are passages like THIS ONE:
YOU GUYS. Are you getting this? HIS IRON STRENGTH?? He just TOUCHES her and she shivers – again!!! - and he isn’t used to feeling human because he hasn’t been, not in a hundred years but Bella MAKES HIM FEEL HUMAN, in a totally “we don’t even need to kiss, how non-threatening is that?” way, and he ADMITS THINGS to her because they are SO CONNECTED and teenage boys (because he’s TOTALLY a teenage boy, he just has YEARS OF EXPERIENCE being one) are known for how COMMUNICATIVE they are, and when he says “I don’t know how to be close to you” I just GO ALL SQUISHY INSIDE.
You guys. Is it a little crazy in here, or is it just me?
And there is PLENTY of angst, too, because Bella wants to BECOME a vampire, just like Edward and the rest of his family, because he is FOREVER SEVENTEEN and she is practically eighteen which is, you know, virtually TWENTY and after that is THIRTY and after that you may as well be DEAD, which is far better than OLD because if you're dead you won't get wrinkles. Yet Edward does not want to change her because it would be STEALING HER LIFE, and once you give up your humanity you can NEVER GET IT BACK, though eventually he does agree to vampinate her provided they get MARRIED first.
I love how you can replace the word "humanity" in the above paragraph with "virginity." Wow, I wonder if that was intentional on the author's part?
I haven’t even mentioned the part where Edward SPARKLES IN THE SUNLIGHT. Yes, you read that correctly: he is not only a sensitive vampire, he is a SPARKLY, GLITTERY, SENSITIVE VAMPIRE. (Who we find out later is also a virgin, which apparently doesn’t increase his sparkle quotient THOUGH REALLY IT SHOULD.)
It’s just. *sigh* Too totally perfect for my ITYOG, who wants to curl up with these books and make covers for them out of paper bags and write “EDWARD AND BELLA 4EVA!!!” on them with hot pink Sharpies and glitter glue. WHICH I WILL NOW AND FOREVER AFTER CALL ‘EDWARD GLUE,’ THANK YOU STEPHENIE MEYER.
There are three more books, New Moon (the "Bella's BFF Jacob is a werewolf" book, from which Edward is mostly absent, thereby making it my least favorite due to the WOEFUL LACK OF SPARKLES); Eclipse (the werewolves-hate-vampires, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along, our-love-for-Bella-will-unite-us book); and then there is Breaking Dawn.
Which, OMG. My poor, poor ITYOG nearly went into PAROXYSMS OF DELIGHT over this book: at one point I am almost positive there were sparkly rainbows shooting out of my ears, or, possibly, my ass. I SIMPLY DON’T KNOW.
Because I kind of got EVERYTHING I WANTED out of it, even things that the AUTHOR had said were IMPOSSIBLE, such as VAMPIRE BABIES (okay, half-vampire/half-human, but STILL) and poor heartbroken Jacob (the main werewolf) finally got to IMPRINT, and the object of his supernatural bonding-love was of course none other than BELLA AND EDWARD’S NEWBORN DAUGHTER, (who, though she does NOT sparkle, gets a husband prior to losing her umbilical cord), and Bella FINALLY gets her FONDEST WISH of becoming a vampire JUST LIKE EDWARD, though of course she only gets vampirized when she is just upon if not slightly over the BRINK OF DEATH, thereby avoiding all those icky moral dilemmas about ending a human life for no good reason other than to be SUPERMODEL HOT and IMMORTAL and, also, SPARKLY.
(Though Bella and Edward procreating really throws a wrench in my whole “brain-off” thing, because such a big deal is made bout how the vampires are DEAD, and their hearts don’t beat and their blood has all dried up and gone bye-bye, and they don’t need to eat or sleep or breathe or, presumably, deal with any of those other nasty human bodily requirements, and no matter how much I try to beat it down, there is always a part of my brain screaming “HOW CAN A GUY WITH NO BLOOD AND THEREFORE NO BLOOD FLOW GET AN ERECTION IN ORDER TO HAVE SEX, AND IF HE HAS NO TEARS OR SALIVA OR OTHER BODILY FLUIDS WHY EXACTLY DOES HE HAVE SEMEN WITH VIABLE SPERM?????” I am doing my level best to beat that voice into unconsciousness, but it seems I'mma need a bigger stick.)
Innyhoo! I kind of RILLY LOVE MY SPARKLY VAMPIRE BOOK, and I haven’t even BEGUN to sing the praises of Edward’s sister Alice, who is OMG BEYOND COOL, and she would be even if she DIDN’T sparkle, which, fortunately, she does.
So that’s that, the story of my shame, and the TRUE REASON I have been so absent for the past few days. (All the days before that were due to the usual (i.e. non-sparkly) reasons.)
O HI HOW ARE YOU???
Also, I kind of <3 it.
If you need a primer on this series, or just want to read some really funny commentary on such, I cannot recommend
cleolinda's Twilight journal entries highly enough. Everything she says about these books is ‘zactly what I would say about them, were I as funny and smart as she is.DISCLAIMER: My shameful love for this series should in no way be taken as my endorsement of any of the following:
* weepy emo clingy teenage girls whose lives have no meanings outside of their boyfriends/soul mates, whether said boyfriends/soul mates are alive or undead;
* the setting up of the above type of girl as a role model;
* the egregious overuse of mostly unnecessary adjectives;
* werewolves in love with persons other than Sirius Black.
I do, however, endorse sparkliness in all types, shapes, and forms.
I am trying so hard to keep to the positive in this post, but I have to say that if/when I try to read these books as the mother of a little girl, I am deeply troubled by many of the messages implicit in them. This is why I completely bypass the “adult” portion of my brain and give the books right to my inner 13-year-old-girl (hereby known as my ITYOG.)
Because, ohemgee does my ITYOG looooooooove them. Bella is so NOBLE, what with moving to an OVERCAST CLIMATE, and though she is BFF with her MOTHER she feels DIFFERENT and SEPARATE and NEVER TRULY CONNECTED with ANY of the NORMAL PEOPLE!
Then she meets EDWARD, who is HANDSOME and MYSTERIOUS and BROODING and PALE and OMG HAWT. Also, it seems like he kind of hates her, but SURPRISE, he does NOT hate her: in fact, he is OVERWHELMINGLY ATTRACTED to her.
And lots of stuff happens, but mostly it is several hundred pages of “DO YOU LIKE ME? CHECK ONE BOX:
___YES
___NO
___WHEN YOU SAY 'LIKE YOU' DO YOU MEAN AS AN ENTRÉE?”
And there are passages like THIS ONE:
His fingers touched my lips lightly, making me shiver again. “There are other hungers. Hungers I don’t even understand, that are foreign to me.”
“I may understand that better than you think.”
“I’m not used to feeling so human. Is it always like this?”
“For me?” I paused. “No, never. Never before this.”
He held my hands between us. They felt so feeble in his iron strength.
“I don’t know how to be close to you,” he admitted. “I don’t know if I can.”
I leaned forward very slowly, cautioning him with my eyes. I placed my cheek against his stone chest. I could hear his breath, and nothing else.
“This is enough,” I sighed, closing my eyes.
YOU GUYS. Are you getting this? HIS IRON STRENGTH?? He just TOUCHES her and she shivers – again!!! - and he isn’t used to feeling human because he hasn’t been, not in a hundred years but Bella MAKES HIM FEEL HUMAN, in a totally “we don’t even need to kiss, how non-threatening is that?” way, and he ADMITS THINGS to her because they are SO CONNECTED and teenage boys (because he’s TOTALLY a teenage boy, he just has YEARS OF EXPERIENCE being one) are known for how COMMUNICATIVE they are, and when he says “I don’t know how to be close to you” I just GO ALL SQUISHY INSIDE.
You guys. Is it a little crazy in here, or is it just me?
And there is PLENTY of angst, too, because Bella wants to BECOME a vampire, just like Edward and the rest of his family, because he is FOREVER SEVENTEEN and she is practically eighteen which is, you know, virtually TWENTY and after that is THIRTY and after that you may as well be DEAD, which is far better than OLD because if you're dead you won't get wrinkles. Yet Edward does not want to change her because it would be STEALING HER LIFE, and once you give up your humanity you can NEVER GET IT BACK, though eventually he does agree to vampinate her provided they get MARRIED first.
I love how you can replace the word "humanity" in the above paragraph with "virginity." Wow, I wonder if that was intentional on the author's part?
I haven’t even mentioned the part where Edward SPARKLES IN THE SUNLIGHT. Yes, you read that correctly: he is not only a sensitive vampire, he is a SPARKLY, GLITTERY, SENSITIVE VAMPIRE. (Who we find out later is also a virgin, which apparently doesn’t increase his sparkle quotient THOUGH REALLY IT SHOULD.)
It’s just. *sigh* Too totally perfect for my ITYOG, who wants to curl up with these books and make covers for them out of paper bags and write “EDWARD AND BELLA 4EVA!!!” on them with hot pink Sharpies and glitter glue. WHICH I WILL NOW AND FOREVER AFTER CALL ‘EDWARD GLUE,’ THANK YOU STEPHENIE MEYER.
There are three more books, New Moon (the "Bella's BFF Jacob is a werewolf" book, from which Edward is mostly absent, thereby making it my least favorite due to the WOEFUL LACK OF SPARKLES); Eclipse (the werewolves-hate-vampires, why-can’t-we-all-just-get-along, our-love-for-Bella-will-unite-us book); and then there is Breaking Dawn.
Which, OMG. My poor, poor ITYOG nearly went into PAROXYSMS OF DELIGHT over this book: at one point I am almost positive there were sparkly rainbows shooting out of my ears, or, possibly, my ass. I SIMPLY DON’T KNOW.
Because I kind of got EVERYTHING I WANTED out of it, even things that the AUTHOR had said were IMPOSSIBLE, such as VAMPIRE BABIES (okay, half-vampire/half-human, but STILL) and poor heartbroken Jacob (the main werewolf) finally got to IMPRINT, and the object of his supernatural bonding-love was of course none other than BELLA AND EDWARD’S NEWBORN DAUGHTER, (who, though she does NOT sparkle, gets a husband prior to losing her umbilical cord), and Bella FINALLY gets her FONDEST WISH of becoming a vampire JUST LIKE EDWARD, though of course she only gets vampirized when she is just upon if not slightly over the BRINK OF DEATH, thereby avoiding all those icky moral dilemmas about ending a human life for no good reason other than to be SUPERMODEL HOT and IMMORTAL and, also, SPARKLY.
(Though Bella and Edward procreating really throws a wrench in my whole “brain-off” thing, because such a big deal is made bout how the vampires are DEAD, and their hearts don’t beat and their blood has all dried up and gone bye-bye, and they don’t need to eat or sleep or breathe or, presumably, deal with any of those other nasty human bodily requirements, and no matter how much I try to beat it down, there is always a part of my brain screaming “HOW CAN A GUY WITH NO BLOOD AND THEREFORE NO BLOOD FLOW GET AN ERECTION IN ORDER TO HAVE SEX, AND IF HE HAS NO TEARS OR SALIVA OR OTHER BODILY FLUIDS WHY EXACTLY DOES HE HAVE SEMEN WITH VIABLE SPERM?????” I am doing my level best to beat that voice into unconsciousness, but it seems I'mma need a bigger stick.)
Innyhoo! I kind of RILLY LOVE MY SPARKLY VAMPIRE BOOK, and I haven’t even BEGUN to sing the praises of Edward’s sister Alice, who is OMG BEYOND COOL, and she would be even if she DIDN’T sparkle, which, fortunately, she does.
So that’s that, the story of my shame, and the TRUE REASON I have been so absent for the past few days. (All the days before that were due to the usual (i.e. non-sparkly) reasons.)
O HI HOW ARE YOU???
