I had a student write in a paper once, "break-ups don't end nearly as sweet as they begin." I'm not sure what exactly she was going for, maybe "break-ups" was supposed to be "relationships" or maybe she was really really looking forward to dumping someone and it just didn't work out the way she planned. Like all of life's little problems nothing ever goes the way we assume that they would. That's cliche of course, if things always went the way we planned, we wouldn't have problems. What we ought to see however, or perceive, is that deep breath before the plunge. Seeing the decline before the drop off is one aspect of intelligence, not to say that we should always be able to prevent it but that we should be prepared for it.
To Bella's credit I think she sees what is going to happen, but she has that most horrible of human tendencies--hope. She sees the break up coming but she has hope that it's something else--what else it could be is anyone's guess but Edward has gotten distant since the birthday party, since he, made a paper cut much worse than it needed to be. She's home with Charlie and Edward watching the sports highlights on television, she's in her room looking at the camera she received for her birthday, "trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach as I thought of the strange distance I didn't want to see in Edward's eyes."
While she's being paranoid and whiny fretting about something that is so far only in her head, this is entirely normal. In fact the only abnormal thing about this is how accurate the portrayal is. I've been there, I am sure we all have. The train of thought was the entirety of an episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza thinks he can keep his girlfriend who wants to dump him if he can only avoid her until the dinner party that he wants to bring her to. Bella's avoiding Edward and only interacting with him in happy things, like expending a significant amount of film in her camera.
"You don't have to use the whole roll now." I just wanted to point out the word "roll," and how there is a segment of the population who will never have to know what that word refers to in the sentence. "Is it like memory or something" I'm sure I'll be asked if my daughter ever reads these books. This book was written in 2006, so the idea of a film camera had long been lost to anyone that wasn't holding on for nostalgia purposes, however the book takes place around 2002 (the latest I've seen is 2004) so film is beginning its decline as a medium of choice. I think a 2mp camera in 2002 would have cost around 500 hundred dollars. Nothing to fault here, I'm just saying that technology can really date a story that was set only 9 years ago. We can also ask why does she have a camera that isn't part of her phone, or where is her phone?
Moving on...sort of. See back in the old days it was more than just plugging your phone into your laptop to get the pictures, or doing the same with the memory card, or through bluetooth or whatever. The thing is she has to get the film developed. She has to drop the camera off and then return later to grab her pictures. It's pretty needless and in this section there is a lot of needlessness. The whole deal with the camera, for me anyway, is to see whether or not he would show up on film. It's important because vampires aren't supposed to give off reflections, that goes back to Dracula, whether or not they show up on film is a different thing altogether.
"When I pulled it out, I gasped aloud," there's a lot of unintentional porn dialogue in these books, and I do like to quote out of context to emphasize it. Here Bella is commenting on Edward's image in the photograph. Yay, mystery solved after so much waiting. What follows is some more bullshit about how good looking he is, which my new policy is to ignore from now on except for this interesting piece of information she observes about herself in comparison to Eddie, "I looked very average even for a human."
It's subtle but it's there. First off we can ignore the self-deprecating comments regarding her appearance. Edward has said that every guy in the high school wanted her when she first showed up, she's played by Kristen Stewart who isn't exactly average, but we set that aside. The problem is that she views the Cullens as having "otherworldly looks" i.e. that their striking appearance is because they are vampires. The problem with that is that their appearance is entirely based on the fact that they were human. Vampire fiction tends to do this the vampires are all horribly sexy in appearance wearing the most revealing or figure hugging clothing possible, I think the world latex supply almost ran dry for the filming of the Underworld series. Yet there isn't too much in the world that gives us ugly vampires. Which is odd because Count Dracula was portrayed as being very ugly in Stoker's Novel, and Count Orlock from "Nosferatu"--the very first Vampire movie* was bald and hook nosed. Let's actually take a look at Stoker's description, "His face was a strong-a very strong-aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor."
Dracula looks sickly, but with an Eastern European bent. Every vampire since Bella Lugosi and Christopher Lee have been attractive. If the Cullens are hot now as vampires it's because they were hot as humans. Bella entirely misses the connection, if the one of the Cullens turns her into a vampire she won't suddenly be hot like they are, she might lose some color in her face but that's it. She'll still be miserable Bella, only she won't be able to go backward. If she looks average now she'll look average in the future. Being a vampire isn't going to make her life better but it will give her what she wants, a permanent connection to Edward.
______________________________
*And the source for the fact that sunlight kills them.
To Bella's credit I think she sees what is going to happen, but she has that most horrible of human tendencies--hope. She sees the break up coming but she has hope that it's something else--what else it could be is anyone's guess but Edward has gotten distant since the birthday party, since he, made a paper cut much worse than it needed to be. She's home with Charlie and Edward watching the sports highlights on television, she's in her room looking at the camera she received for her birthday, "trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach as I thought of the strange distance I didn't want to see in Edward's eyes."
While she's being paranoid and whiny fretting about something that is so far only in her head, this is entirely normal. In fact the only abnormal thing about this is how accurate the portrayal is. I've been there, I am sure we all have. The train of thought was the entirety of an episode of Seinfeld where George Costanza thinks he can keep his girlfriend who wants to dump him if he can only avoid her until the dinner party that he wants to bring her to. Bella's avoiding Edward and only interacting with him in happy things, like expending a significant amount of film in her camera.
"You don't have to use the whole roll now." I just wanted to point out the word "roll," and how there is a segment of the population who will never have to know what that word refers to in the sentence. "Is it like memory or something" I'm sure I'll be asked if my daughter ever reads these books. This book was written in 2006, so the idea of a film camera had long been lost to anyone that wasn't holding on for nostalgia purposes, however the book takes place around 2002 (the latest I've seen is 2004) so film is beginning its decline as a medium of choice. I think a 2mp camera in 2002 would have cost around 500 hundred dollars. Nothing to fault here, I'm just saying that technology can really date a story that was set only 9 years ago. We can also ask why does she have a camera that isn't part of her phone, or where is her phone?
Moving on...sort of. See back in the old days it was more than just plugging your phone into your laptop to get the pictures, or doing the same with the memory card, or through bluetooth or whatever. The thing is she has to get the film developed. She has to drop the camera off and then return later to grab her pictures. It's pretty needless and in this section there is a lot of needlessness. The whole deal with the camera, for me anyway, is to see whether or not he would show up on film. It's important because vampires aren't supposed to give off reflections, that goes back to Dracula, whether or not they show up on film is a different thing altogether.
"When I pulled it out, I gasped aloud," there's a lot of unintentional porn dialogue in these books, and I do like to quote out of context to emphasize it. Here Bella is commenting on Edward's image in the photograph. Yay, mystery solved after so much waiting. What follows is some more bullshit about how good looking he is, which my new policy is to ignore from now on except for this interesting piece of information she observes about herself in comparison to Eddie, "I looked very average even for a human."
It's subtle but it's there. First off we can ignore the self-deprecating comments regarding her appearance. Edward has said that every guy in the high school wanted her when she first showed up, she's played by Kristen Stewart who isn't exactly average, but we set that aside. The problem is that she views the Cullens as having "otherworldly looks" i.e. that their striking appearance is because they are vampires. The problem with that is that their appearance is entirely based on the fact that they were human. Vampire fiction tends to do this the vampires are all horribly sexy in appearance wearing the most revealing or figure hugging clothing possible, I think the world latex supply almost ran dry for the filming of the Underworld series. Yet there isn't too much in the world that gives us ugly vampires. Which is odd because Count Dracula was portrayed as being very ugly in Stoker's Novel, and Count Orlock from "Nosferatu"--the very first Vampire movie* was bald and hook nosed. Let's actually take a look at Stoker's description, "His face was a strong-a very strong-aquiline, with high bridge of the thin nose and peculiarly arched nostrils; with lofty domed forehead, and hair growing scantily round the temples, but profusely elsewhere. His eyebrows were very massive, almost meeting over the nose, and with bushy hair that seemed to curl in its own profusion. The mouth, so far as I could see it under the heavy moustache, was fixed and rather cruel-looking, with peculiarly sharp white teeth; these protruded over the lips, whose remarkable ruddiness showed astonishing vitality in a man of his years. For the rest, his ears were pale and at the tops extremely pointed; the chin was broad and strong, and the cheeks firm though thin. The general effect was one of extraordinary pallor."
Dracula looks sickly, but with an Eastern European bent. Every vampire since Bella Lugosi and Christopher Lee have been attractive. If the Cullens are hot now as vampires it's because they were hot as humans. Bella entirely misses the connection, if the one of the Cullens turns her into a vampire she won't suddenly be hot like they are, she might lose some color in her face but that's it. She'll still be miserable Bella, only she won't be able to go backward. If she looks average now she'll look average in the future. Being a vampire isn't going to make her life better but it will give her what she wants, a permanent connection to Edward.
______________________________
*And the source for the fact that sunlight kills them.
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