This chapter is conspicuously long, I think that the editor of the book dropped the ball here because the tone and ‘plot’ of the chapter abruptly switch around pg. 142, I would have broken it off there but maybe the next chapter would have been too short? In either case all it means for us is that this entry may take longer than usual, I don’t know because as this is the first paragraph I haven’t written it yet.
“Making decisions was the painful part for me, the part I agonized over,” isn’t this is the case for everyone? To remind the reader Bella has just had her faith struggle with whether or not Edward is a creature not human. She’s decided that no matter what he turns out to be she’s going to stick with him…obviously. Thomas Harris wrote in the book Hannibal that decisions aren’t made in momentus sequences. They are made almost instantly from the point where the decision is first pondered. Everything else is just posturing or fictional.
The whole reason Bella ducks into the forest to make a decision is for dramatic device. She knew all along whether or not she cared what Edward turned out to be. The only reason that anyone needs to indulge themselves in such activities is to back up the decision that they have already made. They need to convince themselves to do what they want to do, that isn’t making a decision that’s working up nerve. Harris’ detective in Florence at least confronted the idea of taking a bribe honestly.
That’s why Bella finishes her sojourn into the woods with this, “This decision was ridiculously easy to live with. Dangerously easy.”
“Dangerously”? I’m still trying to work around the progression of the story. When the last section ended Bella wasn’t positive what it was that Edward happens to be, so what is so dangerous about the decision? If you put yourself into her shoes, at this point the only thing you have decided is that you are going to stick with this guy (if he’ll have you, he is still ambivalent about that) even if he is possibly something other than human. Which, for Bella, is a hope shrouded in a fear.
So, living with her-hard-to-make-but-easy-to-deal-with-decision (wow just like Heidegger) she goes back to sketching out her Shakespeare paper for the English class we know nothing about. I mentioned before, and this will be the last time, but since English class isn’t the crux of the relationship between Bella and Edward it’s not important for us to know about it. The plot Meyer has established so far means that as far as the reader is concerned Forks HS, should contain a cafeteria, Biology, and Gym. Even gym is a stretch, but Bella’s clumsiness must pay off later since she’s stressed it so much. Bella’s homework should be Bio, and it should be about blood typing since that was the last time she was in class. Like the doomed fat guy pilot at the end of A New Hope, we need to stay on target.
The only point to mentioning English class is to show once again that Bella is smarter than anyone else in the school. This does become the running theme of the end of the chapter though, while emotionally she’s completely out of touch Bella is going to over compensate by lording her intellect over us the reader. She however must think we’re idiots. First off she’s at the school, early, by herself obviously trying to catch the Cullens coming in.
“My homework was done—the product of a slow social life—…” This is just a flat lie. What more does she want in her social life? She’s the newest kid in the school, been invited to the dance by three different people, went to the beach party, and has a good deal of friends,* and sits at a reasonably popular table in the lunch hall. In prison terms, she’s part of a decent gang. She sits down to work on her trig and Mike comes to flirt with her.
No matter how much I try, I just can’t hate Mike. He’s wearing shorts and a rugby shirt because the temperature has spiked to 60, we call that early summer in the North. He speaks to her a little bit, they talk about English class. Even though it comes up again, and is now part of the super trite side plot involving Mike and Bella, it still should have been about, again Biology. Since Bella fainted and Mike carried her out of the room, it makes it seem like there is a legitimate connection between them even if Bella doesn’t think so. Plus it gives Mike a great opener, “here’s the notes/assignment you missed when you fainted…”She’s finished the Macbeth paper, Mike hasn’t started so he asks her the topic. Which, is groan inducing but here it is, “Whether Shakespeare’s treatment of female characters is misogynistic.”
Based on Macbeth!? Not get all Assistant Professorly on her but the only conclusion that she can really draw is “no.” The only female characters in Macbeth are the murderous then remorseful wife, the witches, and then Hecate. All of them pull the strings for the title character, I guess they’re the ultimate villains but the only point for Bella to be writing that paper is for the author to make the character a feminist. Which would be oddly contradictory for her since she spends all of her time pining over Edward and never once really asserting herself. Currently, she only defines her life by the guy she wants to date, I’ve known many feminists and I think they would consider her not among them. Though, if I were to be honest I would like to read that paper.
Bella turns Mike down, but instead of asserting herself she deflects, “Really Mike are you blind?” She tells Mike to go out with Jessica, and Mike seems perplexed. Apparently he hadn’t read the guide to women yet (it’s on my list), or he had, noticed that Jessica liked him but wanted Bella more. Never mind, that minor plot detail is now settled. Mike is with Jessica and Bella who is alpha ascendant in their group can go back to having no social life.
This is a two pronged section which has nothing to do with Bella’s confrontation with herself in the forest. The first is to deal with Mike once again showing that Bella is supremely intelligent. That, however, didn’t need to happen on its own. It could/should have taken place at the beach where it wouldn’t seem so out of place. Take it out and nothing changes. The second is to set up the trip to Port Angeles to buy dresses for the dance that she isn’t going to with the girls that aren’t her friends further establishing the utter lack of social life that she experiences.**
There’s an odd couple scenes with Charlie that I’m skipping discussion about now, but reserve the right to bring up later. It concerns their interaction as Bella acts like mother to him and it begins to progress beyond her advanced maturity.
She grabs a book, which is of course “The Collected Works of Jane Austen.” I tend to pick on English majors just because I’m in Philosophy but the women tend to fall into a stereotype that I just love to exploit. The biggest one is that they love love love Jane Austen, and it’s such a clichéd stereotype that I’m guessing that Bella has a collection of Buckowski right next to it.
Ultimately she decides after her second incursion into nature to go along with the girls to get the dresses. The motivating factor behind this is that she sees the Cullens aren’t back from their camping trip and she needs to get out of town to keep from looking for Edward all of the time. Feminist indeed.
*Not to her, because she must maintain the loner persona, but everyone else would think she was rather popular.
**Your sarcasm detectors should be in the red right now.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Doubt (Pg. 135-139)
I wasn't always an Atheist, my religiousness (religiosity?) could be considered Orthodox at one point, I was probably never so far that I could be considered fundamentalist, but since this is subjective memory ten years after the fact it's really hard to tell. I do remember one day sitting in my parent's house and a thought hit me, it hit me so hard I literally had to leave the house to work it out in my head.* Which brings me to today's section which I feel is the most honest selection from the book so far, it's also an example of the great writing that Meyer is capable of which makes me lament that it's only four pages and inconsistent within as well. I mentioned in the first post that I would give credit where it's due, that I wasn't one of those people opposed to the book on some misguided principle. This is a good section in concept with some flaws in execution but so far it is easily my favorite.
Bella has finished doing her vampire research and has apparently come to the conclusion that Edward is a vampire. Frustrated (or something) she turns off the computer to sort out her thoughts and flees into the forest of Washington. Why? Because she's angry and what she's doing, "Through my irritation, I felt overwhelming embarrassment. It was all so stupid I was sitting in my room, researching vampires."
This is the most honest she's been so far. She's told us how smart she is then proceeded to act entirely contrary to that assertion. Yes, this is stupid. A kid, whom she knew from back when, told her a vampire story, she completely bought it and now she realizes that maybe this isn't the most rational response. The best part of this is that she's embarrassed for herself without any other prying eyes or social atmosphere. All alone she begins to come to the realization that Edward could just be a normal person because certainly vampires do not really exist.
She retreats into the forest along a trail because, "my sense of direction was hopeless."
Sigh, yet another example of her telling us how useless and helpless she really is. It's frustrating to read sentences like this especially now when she is actually asserting that intelligence we've been expecting but never experiencing. Meyer, does a good job describing the setting. She's either been in the Northwest forest or really done her research here because for a person who has spent some time among the trees her words really put me there. Anyone who has followed foot paths through the woods knows that Meyer has it pefectly. An example, "The trail wound deeper and deeper into the forest, mostly East as far as I could tell. It snaked around the Sitka spruces and the hemlocks, the yews and the maples."
All that's really missing is Bella stumbling over fallen branches and tree roots.
Sitting down on a fallen timber, careful to keep her raincoat to cover her butt from the wet wood she contemplates the recent knowledge, "I forced myself to focus on the two most vital-questions I had to answer, but I did so unwillingly. First, I had to decide if it was possible that what Jacob had said about the Cullens could be true."
As an atheist I criticize religion and religious people for many things. One thing that I don't dare touch are passages like this, the struggle with doubt. Reading those visceral confrontations that are entirely internal are fascinating because they try to communicate that "a ha" moment by describing the incredible doubt as it clashes with a wholly new realization. The personal reflections of C.S. Lewis or Augustine and their conversions are amazing. The struggle between the worldview that once was versus what it is going to be is what Bella is going through right now. I can't think of one example of secular writing that comes close to those two men.
Bella explains that Jacob's story is completely absurd and silly. This is all true, the idea that the kid she has a crush is much much older than he appears, and that their father whom she saw at the hospital is centuries old...that's simply foolish. She almost gets there too, I would have liked it more if she questioned whether she was following the evidence or merely indulging in wishful thinking but that's nit picky. I don't know how this scene could be filmed as internal struggles are the hardest to make known on celluloid.
As she struggles with faith versus reason, reason almost wins but then she comes to a completely erroneous conclusion, "There was no rational explanation for how I was alive at the moment."
Well, Bella, the fact is that there is a completely rational explanation. It's tough to make this criticism because we know that in the long run she is right. Her perception of the accident was factual, but the important thing is that she can't know that. The simple explanation is that she was wrong about where Edward was standing. The evidence for this is that no one else in the parking lot, who witnessed the whole thing, noticed the incredible speed that she posits must have occurred for her to be alive. It's unreasonable for her to hold on to her theory with the grip of a zealot in light of this fact. Especially in this scene where she's supposedly going through her own personal Cartesian doubt experiment.
She takes a breath and then lists the properties of Edward so far: the speed, strength, shifting eye color. All purely subjective to her and perhaps that is the whole point of her feigned superior intelligence in the beginning of the book. Although I feel that it is wrong because no one else notices any of this, maybe her intelligence is the reason that only she does. It's a stretch but I'm trying to help out the author here because I like the section so much. Also with the deftness of a Creationist trying to shoehorn science into supporting their view she brings up other evidence that also supports the "Vampire hypothesis."
One by one here they are:
1: "Along with never eating," this is mentioned several times. It is odd, especially for the Cullens. Why don't they bring empty plastic bins. In my high school you could have skipped the lunch room for the library or claim some odd religious/health dietary restriction that compel them to not eat at school. The Cullens are just stupid for this, which does bring us to the question of why they are in high school to begin with.
2: "the disturbing grace with which they moved." Other than the stark attractiveness of the group this isn't really mentioned, and nothing in the vampire literature/cinema portrays this, I don't think it proves anything.
3: "And the way he sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel that that of a twenty-first-century classroom." My biggest problem here is that there has been no evidence of this, this is the fault of the writer. Meyer hasn't given us any of this 19th century dialogue to bring it up is just cheating the audience.
4: "He skipped class the day we'd done blood typing." So? He skipped class, and said that it was good to do so once in awhile. This is hindsight evidence and wouldn't hold up in court at all.
5: "He hadn't said no to the beach trip till he heard where we were going..." Actually, no this isn't the case at all. He said that he wasn't invited and Mike certainly hadn't done so. Bella invited him, but Edward explained that he probably wouldn't be welcome because Mike didn't like him. False evidence.
------------
Therefore: "Whether it be Jacob's cold ones or my own super hero theory, Edward Cullen was not...human." The conclusion falls apart, she can't know this and her theory isn't worth entertaining. It only enlightens us that the book was written during the influx of superhero movies in the early millennium.
Accepting the conclusion she now has to realize what to do with it. Leaving Edward crosses her mind but she decides against it. Because she loves him? No. But because even if he is a monster, "he'd done nothing to hurt me so far." Good idea, and the words of every potential victim. It's true with a caveat, he'd done nothing to hurt her physically although he has threatened her and forced his will on her, but it's not physical so I guess we're ok.
"Now that I knew--if I knew--I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now." It should probably read "right then" but this is again the most honest we've seen Bella. It's not about the excuse of him not hurting her, she's willing to overlook all of her objections because of her infatuation. It's honest, and at least in honesty she's sympathetic. To bad given who Edward is, that delusion is going to be trouble.
*The thought (which I know I have to mention) was what one does to stay interested during infinity. I reasoned that life is tolerable in a way, because we know it ends, but afterlife does not. It still shakes me once in awhile.
Bella has finished doing her vampire research and has apparently come to the conclusion that Edward is a vampire. Frustrated (or something) she turns off the computer to sort out her thoughts and flees into the forest of Washington. Why? Because she's angry and what she's doing, "Through my irritation, I felt overwhelming embarrassment. It was all so stupid I was sitting in my room, researching vampires."
This is the most honest she's been so far. She's told us how smart she is then proceeded to act entirely contrary to that assertion. Yes, this is stupid. A kid, whom she knew from back when, told her a vampire story, she completely bought it and now she realizes that maybe this isn't the most rational response. The best part of this is that she's embarrassed for herself without any other prying eyes or social atmosphere. All alone she begins to come to the realization that Edward could just be a normal person because certainly vampires do not really exist.
She retreats into the forest along a trail because, "my sense of direction was hopeless."
Sigh, yet another example of her telling us how useless and helpless she really is. It's frustrating to read sentences like this especially now when she is actually asserting that intelligence we've been expecting but never experiencing. Meyer, does a good job describing the setting. She's either been in the Northwest forest or really done her research here because for a person who has spent some time among the trees her words really put me there. Anyone who has followed foot paths through the woods knows that Meyer has it pefectly. An example, "The trail wound deeper and deeper into the forest, mostly East as far as I could tell. It snaked around the Sitka spruces and the hemlocks, the yews and the maples."
All that's really missing is Bella stumbling over fallen branches and tree roots.
Sitting down on a fallen timber, careful to keep her raincoat to cover her butt from the wet wood she contemplates the recent knowledge, "I forced myself to focus on the two most vital-questions I had to answer, but I did so unwillingly. First, I had to decide if it was possible that what Jacob had said about the Cullens could be true."
As an atheist I criticize religion and religious people for many things. One thing that I don't dare touch are passages like this, the struggle with doubt. Reading those visceral confrontations that are entirely internal are fascinating because they try to communicate that "a ha" moment by describing the incredible doubt as it clashes with a wholly new realization. The personal reflections of C.S. Lewis or Augustine and their conversions are amazing. The struggle between the worldview that once was versus what it is going to be is what Bella is going through right now. I can't think of one example of secular writing that comes close to those two men.
Bella explains that Jacob's story is completely absurd and silly. This is all true, the idea that the kid she has a crush is much much older than he appears, and that their father whom she saw at the hospital is centuries old...that's simply foolish. She almost gets there too, I would have liked it more if she questioned whether she was following the evidence or merely indulging in wishful thinking but that's nit picky. I don't know how this scene could be filmed as internal struggles are the hardest to make known on celluloid.
As she struggles with faith versus reason, reason almost wins but then she comes to a completely erroneous conclusion, "There was no rational explanation for how I was alive at the moment."
Well, Bella, the fact is that there is a completely rational explanation. It's tough to make this criticism because we know that in the long run she is right. Her perception of the accident was factual, but the important thing is that she can't know that. The simple explanation is that she was wrong about where Edward was standing. The evidence for this is that no one else in the parking lot, who witnessed the whole thing, noticed the incredible speed that she posits must have occurred for her to be alive. It's unreasonable for her to hold on to her theory with the grip of a zealot in light of this fact. Especially in this scene where she's supposedly going through her own personal Cartesian doubt experiment.
She takes a breath and then lists the properties of Edward so far: the speed, strength, shifting eye color. All purely subjective to her and perhaps that is the whole point of her feigned superior intelligence in the beginning of the book. Although I feel that it is wrong because no one else notices any of this, maybe her intelligence is the reason that only she does. It's a stretch but I'm trying to help out the author here because I like the section so much. Also with the deftness of a Creationist trying to shoehorn science into supporting their view she brings up other evidence that also supports the "Vampire hypothesis."
One by one here they are:
1: "Along with never eating," this is mentioned several times. It is odd, especially for the Cullens. Why don't they bring empty plastic bins. In my high school you could have skipped the lunch room for the library or claim some odd religious/health dietary restriction that compel them to not eat at school. The Cullens are just stupid for this, which does bring us to the question of why they are in high school to begin with.
2: "the disturbing grace with which they moved." Other than the stark attractiveness of the group this isn't really mentioned, and nothing in the vampire literature/cinema portrays this, I don't think it proves anything.
3: "And the way he sometimes spoke, with unfamiliar cadences and phrases that better fit the style of a turn-of-the-century novel that that of a twenty-first-century classroom." My biggest problem here is that there has been no evidence of this, this is the fault of the writer. Meyer hasn't given us any of this 19th century dialogue to bring it up is just cheating the audience.
4: "He skipped class the day we'd done blood typing." So? He skipped class, and said that it was good to do so once in awhile. This is hindsight evidence and wouldn't hold up in court at all.
5: "He hadn't said no to the beach trip till he heard where we were going..." Actually, no this isn't the case at all. He said that he wasn't invited and Mike certainly hadn't done so. Bella invited him, but Edward explained that he probably wouldn't be welcome because Mike didn't like him. False evidence.
------------
Therefore: "Whether it be Jacob's cold ones or my own super hero theory, Edward Cullen was not...human." The conclusion falls apart, she can't know this and her theory isn't worth entertaining. It only enlightens us that the book was written during the influx of superhero movies in the early millennium.
Accepting the conclusion she now has to realize what to do with it. Leaving Edward crosses her mind but she decides against it. Because she loves him? No. But because even if he is a monster, "he'd done nothing to hurt me so far." Good idea, and the words of every potential victim. It's true with a caveat, he'd done nothing to hurt her physically although he has threatened her and forced his will on her, but it's not physical so I guess we're ok.
"Now that I knew--if I knew--I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now." It should probably read "right then" but this is again the most honest we've seen Bella. It's not about the excuse of him not hurting her, she's willing to overlook all of her objections because of her infatuation. It's honest, and at least in honesty she's sympathetic. To bad given who Edward is, that delusion is going to be trouble.
*The thought (which I know I have to mention) was what one does to stay interested during infinity. I reasoned that life is tolerable in a way, because we know it ends, but afterlife does not. It still shakes me once in awhile.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Research (Pg. 128-135)
First, we need to place our setting. Bella is home from the beach trip after receiving an odd story from the poor young man she manipulated about ancient Vampires at war with his tribe of Indians who may or may not be descended from wolves. In no way does she view this with skepticism, after all no 15 year old boy would make up a story just to impress a girl. He's already got that mysterious exotic ethnic thing going for him, so he wouldn't just run with it. Not to mention that he's not supposed to be talking about such things either. So far Jacob is the best character we've met so far, and I don't mean for anyone to think that I'm attacking him (yet), it's just that I've had the unpleasant experience of being a 15 year old boy and no matter what the background they will embellish a bit when a cute girl is flirting with them. She wants solace from her thoughts, the thoughts that she so desperately tried to not think about on the ride home.
Her first solution is to play a CD to her given by her step-father. When that doesn't work, she takes a shower, then she decides that she is going to look up some things on the internet. This is obviously easier than going to the library, and who knows what kind of information that the small library in Forks is going to have. It also shows that Meyer does have a finger on the pulse of her audience, the internet is the first place anyone goes to now. An older writer would definitely have used the library or some mysterious book or something like that.
"My modem was sadly outdated, my free service substandard; just dialing up took so long that I decided to go get myself a bowl of cereal while I waited." She doesn't just get that bowl of cereal, she fixes it up, eats it, then cleans up the dishes and finally gets back to the computer. You people that are the intended age group for this book, will never know what it was like but it sucked. Clicking on the wrong link meant waiting and waiting and waiting to find out that it was the wrong link, then clicking back, then starting over. Dial up sucked, but once you got that 28.8 modem it was faster than light. Meyer is very accurate here.
Once loaded, "naturally the screen was covered in pop-up ads" 2005 was a tough year for internet use. Pop-ups had hit their stride, it just seems that if her computer is so outdated it's surprising that it didn't crash under the weight of the ads. It's a bit pedantic for me to make this gripe but it seems as if the author is making this complaint and not Bella as narrator.
Searching for Vampires on the internet is like trying to eat at a mall, sure the food court is there but do you really want to eat at any of those places? Here's an experiment, go to Google/Bing and type in the word "Vampire." Ok, now that you've done that skip over the wikipedia entry (as we are supposed to be in 2005 and it wouldn't have been number 1 then) and how many of those entries look like they would be worth checking out?
Skip the forums where people pretend they are vampires, the gothic clothing sites, and you are still left with tons and tons of garbage. At least in our simile we've decided not to eat at Sbarro, but we're left with Manchu Wok and Burger King. Finally she finds something that has an academic look to it and is first greeted with two quotes. One of these quotes is from French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and among the vampire community is pretty popular the quote runs as follows "If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates: the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?"
What the websites, forums, and communities won't mention is that the quote comes from Rousseau as he was defending his work "Emile" from the fires of censorship because he had the gall to criticize religion. The quote above is offered not as proof that vampires exist but that authority figures (either religious or political) will make appeals to the supernatural in order to instill fear in the populace. It's been argued by Phillip Cole that the "vampire craze" of the 17th and 18th centuries is no different than the witch hunts of the 15th and 16th. Answer Rousseau's question for yourself, who really believes in Vampires? No one, all of those people on the internet know that they are posers and are merely indulging in wishful thinking.
The thing is that the vampire web page that Bella finds, is real. I don't know if the book preceded the page or vice versa, but it's there if you want to take a look at it. She clicks away and becomes rather insightful, "It seemed that most Vampire myths centered around beautiful women as demons and children as victims; they also seemed like constructs created to explain away the high mortality rates for young children, and to give men an excuse for infidelity."
It seems as though Rousseau was probably right all along. The only people that really believe in Vampires are the people that have a reason for doing so. Calling upon the myth of the Succubus, not actually a Vampire, makes as much sense as all of those ancient Greek women knocked up by Zeus. The myth is ready made for the excuse, who can really resist the demonic powers of the succubus? Here, Bella is really intelligent here she looks at all of the myths and begins seeing a pattern. That however isn't good enough.
The odd thing about Bella at this point is that she has completely bought into the story. If she's so smart, she needs to rationalize more that's what smart people do when they don't understand something. The first explanation she comes up with is superhero, then Jake gives her the Vampire story that isn't necessarily about Edward but she shoehorns him right into it. This whole list of Vampires is nice, but she needs something that works with Edward, "Speed, strength, beauty, pale skin, eyes that shift color; and then Jacob's criteria: blood drinkers, enemies of the werewolf, cold-skinned, and immortal."
"Pale skin?" just like Bella was so fond of reminding us that she has in the beginning of this book. They live in Washington state, everyone should have pale skin. Aside from that her list is simple perception, but then she shifts over to Jacob's list and none of that makes sense. She's never seen him drink blood, he's not fought a werewolf and more importantly she hasn't established their existence aside from a dream, and then there's "immortal."
By immortal she means "deathless." Vampires aren't immortal, never were never are because of one fact: they can be killed. Every vampire movie/story establishes this. Greek gods are immortal. By most people's misuse of this word Zombies are immortal and no one will stand by that. Bella, again, has no proof of this and neither do we. Just that Jacob said Dr. Carlisle could be the same thing that made a deal with his great grandfather. Bella is worse than a Creationist in the respect that she's already arrived at a conclusion and now she's making up evidence to fit the proof. There is however a snag:
"And then another problem, one that I'd remembered from the small number of scary movies that I'd seen and was backed up by today's reading--Vampires couldn't come out in the day time, the sun would burn them to a cinder."
Well no, that's not even remotely true. "Haven't you read the Irishman's fable," asked Dracula to Blade in Blade III while standing in the sunlight. There isn't the consistency that Bella finds here and it's unclear whether any Vampires are killed by the day or the sun, and as Meyer placed our story in an area with little sunshine she doesn't have that proof either. The research she does is understandable but completely useless if she already has a conclusion in mind.
Her first solution is to play a CD to her given by her step-father. When that doesn't work, she takes a shower, then she decides that she is going to look up some things on the internet. This is obviously easier than going to the library, and who knows what kind of information that the small library in Forks is going to have. It also shows that Meyer does have a finger on the pulse of her audience, the internet is the first place anyone goes to now. An older writer would definitely have used the library or some mysterious book or something like that.
"My modem was sadly outdated, my free service substandard; just dialing up took so long that I decided to go get myself a bowl of cereal while I waited." She doesn't just get that bowl of cereal, she fixes it up, eats it, then cleans up the dishes and finally gets back to the computer. You people that are the intended age group for this book, will never know what it was like but it sucked. Clicking on the wrong link meant waiting and waiting and waiting to find out that it was the wrong link, then clicking back, then starting over. Dial up sucked, but once you got that 28.8 modem it was faster than light. Meyer is very accurate here.
Once loaded, "naturally the screen was covered in pop-up ads" 2005 was a tough year for internet use. Pop-ups had hit their stride, it just seems that if her computer is so outdated it's surprising that it didn't crash under the weight of the ads. It's a bit pedantic for me to make this gripe but it seems as if the author is making this complaint and not Bella as narrator.
Searching for Vampires on the internet is like trying to eat at a mall, sure the food court is there but do you really want to eat at any of those places? Here's an experiment, go to Google/Bing and type in the word "Vampire." Ok, now that you've done that skip over the wikipedia entry (as we are supposed to be in 2005 and it wouldn't have been number 1 then) and how many of those entries look like they would be worth checking out?
Skip the forums where people pretend they are vampires, the gothic clothing sites, and you are still left with tons and tons of garbage. At least in our simile we've decided not to eat at Sbarro, but we're left with Manchu Wok and Burger King. Finally she finds something that has an academic look to it and is first greeted with two quotes. One of these quotes is from French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and among the vampire community is pretty popular the quote runs as follows "If there is in this world a well-attested account, it is that of vampires. Nothing is lacking: official reports, affidavits of well-known people, of surgeons, of priests, of magistrates: the judicial proof is most complete. And with all that, who is there who believes in vampires?"
What the websites, forums, and communities won't mention is that the quote comes from Rousseau as he was defending his work "Emile" from the fires of censorship because he had the gall to criticize religion. The quote above is offered not as proof that vampires exist but that authority figures (either religious or political) will make appeals to the supernatural in order to instill fear in the populace. It's been argued by Phillip Cole that the "vampire craze" of the 17th and 18th centuries is no different than the witch hunts of the 15th and 16th. Answer Rousseau's question for yourself, who really believes in Vampires? No one, all of those people on the internet know that they are posers and are merely indulging in wishful thinking.
The thing is that the vampire web page that Bella finds, is real. I don't know if the book preceded the page or vice versa, but it's there if you want to take a look at it. She clicks away and becomes rather insightful, "It seemed that most Vampire myths centered around beautiful women as demons and children as victims; they also seemed like constructs created to explain away the high mortality rates for young children, and to give men an excuse for infidelity."
It seems as though Rousseau was probably right all along. The only people that really believe in Vampires are the people that have a reason for doing so. Calling upon the myth of the Succubus, not actually a Vampire, makes as much sense as all of those ancient Greek women knocked up by Zeus. The myth is ready made for the excuse, who can really resist the demonic powers of the succubus? Here, Bella is really intelligent here she looks at all of the myths and begins seeing a pattern. That however isn't good enough.
The odd thing about Bella at this point is that she has completely bought into the story. If she's so smart, she needs to rationalize more that's what smart people do when they don't understand something. The first explanation she comes up with is superhero, then Jake gives her the Vampire story that isn't necessarily about Edward but she shoehorns him right into it. This whole list of Vampires is nice, but she needs something that works with Edward, "Speed, strength, beauty, pale skin, eyes that shift color; and then Jacob's criteria: blood drinkers, enemies of the werewolf, cold-skinned, and immortal."
"Pale skin?" just like Bella was so fond of reminding us that she has in the beginning of this book. They live in Washington state, everyone should have pale skin. Aside from that her list is simple perception, but then she shifts over to Jacob's list and none of that makes sense. She's never seen him drink blood, he's not fought a werewolf and more importantly she hasn't established their existence aside from a dream, and then there's "immortal."
By immortal she means "deathless." Vampires aren't immortal, never were never are because of one fact: they can be killed. Every vampire movie/story establishes this. Greek gods are immortal. By most people's misuse of this word Zombies are immortal and no one will stand by that. Bella, again, has no proof of this and neither do we. Just that Jacob said Dr. Carlisle could be the same thing that made a deal with his great grandfather. Bella is worse than a Creationist in the respect that she's already arrived at a conclusion and now she's making up evidence to fit the proof. There is however a snag:
"And then another problem, one that I'd remembered from the small number of scary movies that I'd seen and was backed up by today's reading--Vampires couldn't come out in the day time, the sun would burn them to a cinder."
Well no, that's not even remotely true. "Haven't you read the Irishman's fable," asked Dracula to Blade in Blade III while standing in the sunlight. There isn't the consistency that Bella finds here and it's unclear whether any Vampires are killed by the day or the sun, and as Meyer placed our story in an area with little sunshine she doesn't have that proof either. The research she does is understandable but completely useless if she already has a conclusion in mind.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The Cold Ones (Pg. 117-128)
We’ve been kind of waiting for this section, because it’s part of the explanation of what exactly Edward and the Cullens are. On the other hand it’s difficult because Bella has no reason to believe that Edward is anything more than a dreamy sociopath who is paying out random compliments and affection like a sentient slot machine. Before we get down to it let’s look at the “proof” that Bella has: she perceives a color transition in his eyes that is correlative with his mood, he sits isolated with his family from the others, he is convincing when he needs to be, and there is the miraculous way in which he saved her from the accident…which again is a great leap of logic that she makes. None of this points to him being anything other than a normal person aside from the certain personality traits that he shares with Ted Bundy.
All the kids are at Mike’s party at the beach. They have just returned from the tidal pools (and an example of a great description) when Bella notices that the number of kids have swelled. It seems that some of the locals from the reservation (you Jacob fans can inhale now) have joined the other kids at the beach. None of them are given much attention, the leader of the group is noticed because he is older and obviously there leader in a way that Mike is for the Forks kids. One of them is given some particular attention because he notices Bella who for once does a good job at catching a name, “…and the one that noticed me was Jacob.” (Now you can exhale)
They have history together, it seems that Bella’s father bought the truck off of his father and as young children they used to hang out together. A nice reunion but something is amiss. The jealous catty girls don’t like that Bella is getting attention again and one of them mentions that they thought Edward and the Cullens were going to show up. The older reservation kid snaps back, “The Cullens don’t come here,’ he said in a tone that closed the subject, ignoring her question…his tone had implied something more–that they weren’t allowed; they were prohibited.”
That’s one interpretation, and reluctantly I have to admit it’s realistic. Bella has dreamed up some fantasy around Edward and since the Cullens don’t come to the reservation it’s actually consistent that she would think they were barred for some reason or another. We are spared her magical reasoning, but not her intense curiosity regarding the situation. She eyes up Jacob, who is showing a great deal more interest in her than anyone else. She seeks him out, in a sense of inconsistent confidence luring him to a private walk on the beach like a creep in a van with promises of candy or puppies in order to extract information from him, and I wish I was just making assumptions about her but I’m not. “I hoped that young Jacob was as yet inexperienced around girls, so that he wouldn’t see through my sure to be pitiful attempts at flirting.”
Jacob, who is 15, takes the bait. Bella certainly has learned something from Edward, unfortunately it’s how to manipulate people into telling them whatever she wants though. However, she doesn’t need magical super powers to do so, in the end that means she’s better at it at the age of 17 than Edward is at around 100. Still, it does mean that I feel sorry for poor Jacob, a sentiment that I’m told is going to be consistent throughout the book series, he’s just a poor kid being led around by feelings that he barely has a grasp on. The first thing he does is betray his people’s tribal secrets which aren’t supposed to be shared with the pale faces (his words not mine).
The first story, “The ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the Ark.” The above quote is a bit out of context, Meyer doesn’t imply that Noah and his family did the same thing, but that’s how the indigenous people survived the flood. It’s a nice bone to throw because it explains how a group of people that are older than the flood but didn’t originate in the Middle East exist at all. I wonder two things though: how did Aboriginal Australians do it and save the Koala at the same time? And secondly does this mean that God’s plan at worldwide genocide wasn’t fool proof?
The second story he tells is that his people are descended from wolves, consider them relatives, and that is why it is illegal to kill a wolf for a Quileute. He says that the original people of his tribe would be called werewolves by Bella’s people.
The third story revolves around the “cold ones.” We know what they are, it’s unclear if Bella does but Jacob isn’t that great a story teller no matter what Bella says to goad him along. His label has no context, he never explains why they are called “cold,” but we know what to expect so we just skip over it (which is why I read each section twice…I missed it the first time), it needs context because there is no reason thus far in Meyer’s world to think they exist other than that we read the back cover of the book before we purchased it. In movies this is called, “breaking the fourth wall,” an appeal to the audience. C3P0, in the Star Wars saga does this repeatedly.
Like every story that has Vampires and Wolves, “the cold ones are traditionally our enemies,” says Jacob without, again, explaining why this is the case. He might be nervous about betraying the trust of his tribe, and he’s clearly not thinking with the bone atop his shoulders, but this is the “big reveal” and one of the few times pages and pages of explanation are actually permitted in a story. He should go on, and Bella should be encouraging him for more information but she doesn’t. She doesn’t because in her head Jacob is just confirming something she suspects, Edward is even more dreamy because he’s actually different.
Meyer though rescues herself. Jacob explains that a truce exists between the cold ones and his people as long as the Cullens stay the hell off the reservation. It seems that Dr. Carlisle isn’t descended from that original pack of cold ones, his is the exact same pack with two new additions–a man and a woman. Predictable, as to who one of the new ones are, but not trite so we let it slide. Finally he explains what a cold one is, “Blood drinkers,’ he replied in a chilling voice, ‘Your people call them vampires.”
“Blood drinkers?” Sigh, a good writer should do her research and come up with something like this, “uno’nu okwe.”* Which means “cold person” in the language of the Seneca Nation of Indians. The whole thing about her people calling them ‘vampires’ is moot because Jacob’s people don’t seem to have a word for them. It wouldn’t really matter if there is no actual word in Quileute for the concept, but if she’s getting her information from the cliche of the wise native it should sound like it’s coming from them, just come up with something from one of the languages or choose the one that sounds/looks the coolest. They did in the movie Stigmata, where the Gospel of Jesus was supposed to be written in Aramaic but the movie used Ancient Hebrew because it looked better on film. The real “pale faces” reading the book aren’t going to know, and I wouldn’t have taken the time to look it up if there was something there.
Jacob, though, has outlived his usefulness and Bella promises to see him again but she’s full of shit. She’s teased enough information out of him that she’s satisfied and it is coincidentally time for them to leave. She lays her head down in the car and tries not to think about everything. Which is nice because it shows how gullible she really is, some kid looking to hook up tells her exotic stories of his people and she buys every single word of it. We know Jacob isn’t lying, so far he’s the least manipulative character in the story, but she isn’t even the least skeptical. Even the odd story of the flood didn’t raise an alarm in her. I know people that have used unique ethnic backgrounds and weird ancestral stories to impress girls, and it’s very similar to what happened here. The only difference is that Jacob, so far the most like able character, didn’t want to say anything. However now he has gotten a taste of it, Bella might have unwittingly doomed large numbers of women to an attractive man with unique stories when he gets older. The damage this book does just keeps going up.
___________________________
*Elapsed time in looking that up: ~5 minutes
All the kids are at Mike’s party at the beach. They have just returned from the tidal pools (and an example of a great description) when Bella notices that the number of kids have swelled. It seems that some of the locals from the reservation (you Jacob fans can inhale now) have joined the other kids at the beach. None of them are given much attention, the leader of the group is noticed because he is older and obviously there leader in a way that Mike is for the Forks kids. One of them is given some particular attention because he notices Bella who for once does a good job at catching a name, “…and the one that noticed me was Jacob.” (Now you can exhale)
They have history together, it seems that Bella’s father bought the truck off of his father and as young children they used to hang out together. A nice reunion but something is amiss. The jealous catty girls don’t like that Bella is getting attention again and one of them mentions that they thought Edward and the Cullens were going to show up. The older reservation kid snaps back, “The Cullens don’t come here,’ he said in a tone that closed the subject, ignoring her question…his tone had implied something more–that they weren’t allowed; they were prohibited.”
That’s one interpretation, and reluctantly I have to admit it’s realistic. Bella has dreamed up some fantasy around Edward and since the Cullens don’t come to the reservation it’s actually consistent that she would think they were barred for some reason or another. We are spared her magical reasoning, but not her intense curiosity regarding the situation. She eyes up Jacob, who is showing a great deal more interest in her than anyone else. She seeks him out, in a sense of inconsistent confidence luring him to a private walk on the beach like a creep in a van with promises of candy or puppies in order to extract information from him, and I wish I was just making assumptions about her but I’m not. “I hoped that young Jacob was as yet inexperienced around girls, so that he wouldn’t see through my sure to be pitiful attempts at flirting.”
Jacob, who is 15, takes the bait. Bella certainly has learned something from Edward, unfortunately it’s how to manipulate people into telling them whatever she wants though. However, she doesn’t need magical super powers to do so, in the end that means she’s better at it at the age of 17 than Edward is at around 100. Still, it does mean that I feel sorry for poor Jacob, a sentiment that I’m told is going to be consistent throughout the book series, he’s just a poor kid being led around by feelings that he barely has a grasp on. The first thing he does is betray his people’s tribal secrets which aren’t supposed to be shared with the pale faces (his words not mine).
The first story, “The ancient Quileutes tied their canoes to the tallest trees on the mountain to survive like Noah and the Ark.” The above quote is a bit out of context, Meyer doesn’t imply that Noah and his family did the same thing, but that’s how the indigenous people survived the flood. It’s a nice bone to throw because it explains how a group of people that are older than the flood but didn’t originate in the Middle East exist at all. I wonder two things though: how did Aboriginal Australians do it and save the Koala at the same time? And secondly does this mean that God’s plan at worldwide genocide wasn’t fool proof?
The second story he tells is that his people are descended from wolves, consider them relatives, and that is why it is illegal to kill a wolf for a Quileute. He says that the original people of his tribe would be called werewolves by Bella’s people.
The third story revolves around the “cold ones.” We know what they are, it’s unclear if Bella does but Jacob isn’t that great a story teller no matter what Bella says to goad him along. His label has no context, he never explains why they are called “cold,” but we know what to expect so we just skip over it (which is why I read each section twice…I missed it the first time), it needs context because there is no reason thus far in Meyer’s world to think they exist other than that we read the back cover of the book before we purchased it. In movies this is called, “breaking the fourth wall,” an appeal to the audience. C3P0, in the Star Wars saga does this repeatedly.
Like every story that has Vampires and Wolves, “the cold ones are traditionally our enemies,” says Jacob without, again, explaining why this is the case. He might be nervous about betraying the trust of his tribe, and he’s clearly not thinking with the bone atop his shoulders, but this is the “big reveal” and one of the few times pages and pages of explanation are actually permitted in a story. He should go on, and Bella should be encouraging him for more information but she doesn’t. She doesn’t because in her head Jacob is just confirming something she suspects, Edward is even more dreamy because he’s actually different.
Meyer though rescues herself. Jacob explains that a truce exists between the cold ones and his people as long as the Cullens stay the hell off the reservation. It seems that Dr. Carlisle isn’t descended from that original pack of cold ones, his is the exact same pack with two new additions–a man and a woman. Predictable, as to who one of the new ones are, but not trite so we let it slide. Finally he explains what a cold one is, “Blood drinkers,’ he replied in a chilling voice, ‘Your people call them vampires.”
“Blood drinkers?” Sigh, a good writer should do her research and come up with something like this, “uno’nu okwe.”* Which means “cold person” in the language of the Seneca Nation of Indians. The whole thing about her people calling them ‘vampires’ is moot because Jacob’s people don’t seem to have a word for them. It wouldn’t really matter if there is no actual word in Quileute for the concept, but if she’s getting her information from the cliche of the wise native it should sound like it’s coming from them, just come up with something from one of the languages or choose the one that sounds/looks the coolest. They did in the movie Stigmata, where the Gospel of Jesus was supposed to be written in Aramaic but the movie used Ancient Hebrew because it looked better on film. The real “pale faces” reading the book aren’t going to know, and I wouldn’t have taken the time to look it up if there was something there.
Jacob, though, has outlived his usefulness and Bella promises to see him again but she’s full of shit. She’s teased enough information out of him that she’s satisfied and it is coincidentally time for them to leave. She lays her head down in the car and tries not to think about everything. Which is nice because it shows how gullible she really is, some kid looking to hook up tells her exotic stories of his people and she buys every single word of it. We know Jacob isn’t lying, so far he’s the least manipulative character in the story, but she isn’t even the least skeptical. Even the odd story of the flood didn’t raise an alarm in her. I know people that have used unique ethnic backgrounds and weird ancestral stories to impress girls, and it’s very similar to what happened here. The only difference is that Jacob, so far the most like able character, didn’t want to say anything. However now he has gotten a taste of it, Bella might have unwittingly doomed large numbers of women to an attractive man with unique stories when he gets older. The damage this book does just keeps going up.
___________________________
*Elapsed time in looking that up: ~5 minutes
Not Important (Pg. 104-117)
Last week I was a bit hard on Edward, but from what some people are telling me, it gets much worse. I haven’t gotten to those points yet, so I have to let the proof stand as it is. This week it’s back to making Bella seem worse, which is unusually easy because I don’t have Edward for comparison. These two are sort of made for each other in a morbid train wreck sort of way.
Bella has made it home from school, her truck so far has not. She’s sitting in her room, “…trying to concentrate on the third act of Macbeth…” which is odd for a variety of reasons. First off, she’s already claimed to have read everything. I dealt with this early on as she glanced over the English reading list and commented that she had already read everything on it which included Shakespeare. Let me help out Bella, it’s the third act of a tragedy, the plan begins to unfurl. The second odd thing is that she’s doing something for English, not intrinsically odd, but odd because nothing has happened in English class. All of the action in the school thus far has taken place in the cafeteria and in Biology, so why bring us a setting and plot point that thus far hasn’t been important? This is like the horrible movie “The Fast and the Furious” where the Asian gang is only introduced to distract the audience.
Thirdly, why Macbeth? To be fair, if she had been reading Dracula I would have rolled my eyes so hard it would have made a noise, but a well placed allusion would have been nice here. Why not read Lord Byron or Polidore, the lesser known Vampire writers and well placed in the Literature canon? However this sort of thing isn’t important to the plot, which is the theme of this section.
I’m also confused about “Trig class,” that thus far also hasn’t played any significant role. People still take Trigonometry? In my experience Trig was lumped in with mathematical logic, but since this is the case I just feel bad for the students. A whole year of right triangles? No wonder people hate math. Again if Meyer is trying to beat us over the head that this is a normal high school, it’s redundant because not only do we get it we also don’t care.
Then there’s the infusion of new characters, Bella having deemed the plebians worthy of her presence at the beach party is dreading the experience, she’s also worried because Edward has said that he and his family are skipping this day to go camping true to form his brood is absent. This is friday, and we are still at school. The whole day is in preparation for Mike’s, the ringleader of this clique, trip. All is going well until Bella perceives something, “I intercepted a few unfriendly glances from Lauren during lunch…” and then she overhears, “Don’t know why Bella‘–she sneered my name–’doesn’t just sit with the Cullens from now on,’ I heard her muttering to Mike. I’d never noticed what an unpleasant nasal voice she had, and I was surprised by the Malice in it.“
Two things are important here: first off, who the fuck is Lauren!? Meyer again introduces a character we know nothing about, have never met before, but is apparently jealous of Bella. I’ve checked my notes (yes I take notes for this) and there isn’t a Lauren until now. She could have been one of the girls that Bella was introduced to but then quickly forgot about but we don’t know this. Meyer never gave a description of them, all we know about Lauren is that she dislikes Bella and has blond hair. Unless the entire school, save the Cullens and the nerds, sit at this table it would make more sense if this girl was part of the cheerleader/jock clique that would not only be jealous but full of hate for the sudden social promotion of Bella up the scale.
The second important feature of this scene with Lauren is that it again shows the inconsistency in Bella. A person hates her and she is surprised, which she shouldn’t be considering all of the ink that was wasted in her telling us that this was to be expected. People have to hate her on her terms, not when there is even the remotest reason for that feeling. I really don’t like this girl.
Saturday rolls around and it’s time for the Beach trip. Her father seems to be more than happy that she is getting along in the town, since she doesn’t pay any real attention to him neither can I. She does notice the sun and this part is just weird, “It was in the wrong place in the sky, too low, and it didn’t seem to be as close as it should be, but it was definitely the sun.”
I ask, “why even bother with it?” There’s a television trope, called Chekov’s gun, which comes from Russian writer Anton Chekov and it is summed up as: if you put a gun on the stage then it must be fired.
It’s the principle of the conservation of plot resources, which I think I learned in Fiction writing in Grad school, don’t be unnecessary. If the sun is odd, there better be a reason for it. It should either be that the sun is odd, or that Bella’s perception of it is either really wrong or really right. This perception of the Sun does nothing, it’s not like Tolkien who related the travels of Gandalf to the South, “where the stars are strange” as a way of describing exactly how far South he traveled. The sun is dropped as quickly as it is introduced, which probably means that an editor screwed up.
Since we are on Chekov’s gun, we are also reminded of Bella’s clumsiness…twice. Once when one of Lauren’s bitchy friends makes a snide comment, because Bella fell over her in Gym and again when an expedition to the Tidal pools at the beach because some of the boys are jumping from rock to rock. She reminds us again that she is prone to falling over, even at the age of seven with her father. At some point Meyer is going to have to pull the trigger on the clumsiness, or else it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to constantly bring it up.
Finally, Bella’s self-importance becomes forefront in her dealing with the underlings that she calls “friends.” To be fair, Mike obviously has the hots for her and Jessica for him, Bella believes that it is her role to make sure that they get together. Which is awfully pretentious of her, she “arranges” that the two sit near each other repeatedly and avoids any chance to be alone with Mike. Normally this would be the mark of a decent friend, staying away from a person that your friend has a crush on. However this line in reference to it says enough, “I hid my chagrin.” She feels that her station is being offended by having to lower herself to these actions. She’s not a queen, she’s just a person who doesn’t feel the intrinsic worth of others. We’ll see more of this in her interactions with Jacob next week, because it gets much worse as this time it’s deliberate.
Bella has made it home from school, her truck so far has not. She’s sitting in her room, “…trying to concentrate on the third act of Macbeth…” which is odd for a variety of reasons. First off, she’s already claimed to have read everything. I dealt with this early on as she glanced over the English reading list and commented that she had already read everything on it which included Shakespeare. Let me help out Bella, it’s the third act of a tragedy, the plan begins to unfurl. The second odd thing is that she’s doing something for English, not intrinsically odd, but odd because nothing has happened in English class. All of the action in the school thus far has taken place in the cafeteria and in Biology, so why bring us a setting and plot point that thus far hasn’t been important? This is like the horrible movie “The Fast and the Furious” where the Asian gang is only introduced to distract the audience.
Thirdly, why Macbeth? To be fair, if she had been reading Dracula I would have rolled my eyes so hard it would have made a noise, but a well placed allusion would have been nice here. Why not read Lord Byron or Polidore, the lesser known Vampire writers and well placed in the Literature canon? However this sort of thing isn’t important to the plot, which is the theme of this section.
I’m also confused about “Trig class,” that thus far also hasn’t played any significant role. People still take Trigonometry? In my experience Trig was lumped in with mathematical logic, but since this is the case I just feel bad for the students. A whole year of right triangles? No wonder people hate math. Again if Meyer is trying to beat us over the head that this is a normal high school, it’s redundant because not only do we get it we also don’t care.
Then there’s the infusion of new characters, Bella having deemed the plebians worthy of her presence at the beach party is dreading the experience, she’s also worried because Edward has said that he and his family are skipping this day to go camping true to form his brood is absent. This is friday, and we are still at school. The whole day is in preparation for Mike’s, the ringleader of this clique, trip. All is going well until Bella perceives something, “I intercepted a few unfriendly glances from Lauren during lunch…” and then she overhears, “Don’t know why Bella‘–she sneered my name–’doesn’t just sit with the Cullens from now on,’ I heard her muttering to Mike. I’d never noticed what an unpleasant nasal voice she had, and I was surprised by the Malice in it.“
Two things are important here: first off, who the fuck is Lauren!? Meyer again introduces a character we know nothing about, have never met before, but is apparently jealous of Bella. I’ve checked my notes (yes I take notes for this) and there isn’t a Lauren until now. She could have been one of the girls that Bella was introduced to but then quickly forgot about but we don’t know this. Meyer never gave a description of them, all we know about Lauren is that she dislikes Bella and has blond hair. Unless the entire school, save the Cullens and the nerds, sit at this table it would make more sense if this girl was part of the cheerleader/jock clique that would not only be jealous but full of hate for the sudden social promotion of Bella up the scale.
The second important feature of this scene with Lauren is that it again shows the inconsistency in Bella. A person hates her and she is surprised, which she shouldn’t be considering all of the ink that was wasted in her telling us that this was to be expected. People have to hate her on her terms, not when there is even the remotest reason for that feeling. I really don’t like this girl.
Saturday rolls around and it’s time for the Beach trip. Her father seems to be more than happy that she is getting along in the town, since she doesn’t pay any real attention to him neither can I. She does notice the sun and this part is just weird, “It was in the wrong place in the sky, too low, and it didn’t seem to be as close as it should be, but it was definitely the sun.”
I ask, “why even bother with it?” There’s a television trope, called Chekov’s gun, which comes from Russian writer Anton Chekov and it is summed up as: if you put a gun on the stage then it must be fired.
It’s the principle of the conservation of plot resources, which I think I learned in Fiction writing in Grad school, don’t be unnecessary. If the sun is odd, there better be a reason for it. It should either be that the sun is odd, or that Bella’s perception of it is either really wrong or really right. This perception of the Sun does nothing, it’s not like Tolkien who related the travels of Gandalf to the South, “where the stars are strange” as a way of describing exactly how far South he traveled. The sun is dropped as quickly as it is introduced, which probably means that an editor screwed up.
Since we are on Chekov’s gun, we are also reminded of Bella’s clumsiness…twice. Once when one of Lauren’s bitchy friends makes a snide comment, because Bella fell over her in Gym and again when an expedition to the Tidal pools at the beach because some of the boys are jumping from rock to rock. She reminds us again that she is prone to falling over, even at the age of seven with her father. At some point Meyer is going to have to pull the trigger on the clumsiness, or else it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to constantly bring it up.
Finally, Bella’s self-importance becomes forefront in her dealing with the underlings that she calls “friends.” To be fair, Mike obviously has the hots for her and Jessica for him, Bella believes that it is her role to make sure that they get together. Which is awfully pretentious of her, she “arranges” that the two sit near each other repeatedly and avoids any chance to be alone with Mike. Normally this would be the mark of a decent friend, staying away from a person that your friend has a crush on. However this line in reference to it says enough, “I hid my chagrin.” She feels that her station is being offended by having to lower herself to these actions. She’s not a queen, she’s just a person who doesn’t feel the intrinsic worth of others. We’ll see more of this in her interactions with Jacob next week, because it gets much worse as this time it’s deliberate.
Get In The Damn Car! (Pg. 88-104)
First a bit of correction, last week I only really covered to P. 88, initially the plan was to end the chapter but those three pages gave me some real traction so for brevity’s sake I ended where I did. This is what would have been the rest of the chapter.
I said last week that my mind constantly switches between the feelings of hate and pity with Bella. In Edward I have no such issue, he is the epitome of a douche bag and I loathe him. Having never been a teenage girl I can’t understand what the draw is, I get it with Romeo Montague–a gangster who is willing to over look the rival blood coursing through Juliet Capulet’s veins in order to love her, but Romeo treats Juliet well, like a lady and suffers for her. Edward…well he likes to play games.
Bella and Edward, are not Romeo and Juliet despite what various blogs may say on the issue. I know that initial meetings, and the courting phase of any relationship is supposed to be awkward but it shouldn’t be uncomfortable awkward bordering on the creepiness that oozes from Edward Cullen. Sitting together at lunch Edward spends most of the time hinting toward Bella that he’s bad and dangerous. The mark of a truly heinous person. The “bad boy” types that undoubtedly my daughter will eventually bring home don’t sit around and brag about it like this. They flaunt authority, develop their own rule systems, and have a generally stoic demeanor. The person who brags isn’t bad, he’s overcompensating. In all likelihood he’s not the dangerous type that a 1950s sitcom dad would tell his daughter to stay away from, he’s just a shy meek introvert that is going to kill himself overcompensating. Most women that I have met can see right through this bullshit…especially the smart ones which Bella claims to be but simply isn’t.
Bella admits that he could be dangerous “But not bad,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No I don’t believe that you’re bad.”
–”You’re wrong.”
No, she’s not. A truly bad person, who was aware of their own ‘badness’ wouldn’t warn someone else. They would say it once and then let that person just find out for themselves. This is the guy in college who will sleep with a girl, and tell her that she’s not going to find a boyfriend with him. Hugh Jackman played this character very well in a movie called Someone Like You: “I don’t pretend to be the white knight.” He then goes on to explain that whatever expectations they bring to him, are their fault not his. He, at least, was honest in the beginning.
It’s a way of removing guilt from the inevitable future break up. Tell them this isn’t going to last, and you can feel that they are on borrowed time. They should relish the experience because all they are really doing is taking a trip on the Titanic, you know how it ends but isn’t the trip worth it?
Well it depends on who the captain is, or more importantly how many times the captain has been in the sea. Most of the time both the man and the woman are around the same age, which makes our normal “bad boy” better ethically. If I’m 21 and the girl I’m telling this to is 19, we don’t have that much of an experience differential, I can’t completely take advantage of her because at that point in my life I’m pretty much just guessing too. In Bella’s case this is much worse because she’s 17 (she finally tells us this in these pages) and he’s over a hundred. He’s had years to practice which makes him bad for two reasons.
The first is that he has to resort to these sorts of games to attract a woman in the first place. At 100 and still in possession of his wits, he should be able to just charm the hell out of this girl drawing from a life experience with women, this is “incompetent bad.” The second version is “morally bad,” because he is purposely seeking out the victim and then treats her like a victim.
Edward skips Biology, Bella goes and this is the day the Bio teacher is going to have the class determine their blood types. A simple process made more complicated by the oddly coincidental fact that Bella is a hemaphobe, that is, she’s afraid of blood. She faints in class, because she can smell blood and Mike escorts her to the nurse’s office. Along the way Edward sees the goings on and interrupts. Which leads me to the question: if he skipped class why is he still hanging around the school? Obviously he needed to be there to forward the plot but without another excuse it’s just lazy writing.
Edward takes over and notices that Mike doesn’t like him. Well, duh, but this allows him to explain it to Bella furthering his own cause to be viewed as the bad boy. The proof breaks down like this, Mike doesn’t like me, Mike likes a lot of people, therefore I’m the bad boy. Which is faulty logic even for a hypothetical syllogism, Mike may not like idiots, or the pretentious, or whatever. Yet this all works on Bella who is now absolutely smitten and agrees to let Edward take her home.
Remember earlier when I said that Edward was ethically bad as well as incompetent? Well here comes the proof. Edward is walking Bella in the parking lot after using his magic powers to convince the school nurse to excuse a pale, 110 pound girl, who fainted twice out of gym class (which is like my magic ability to predict the outcomes of the Superbowl on Monday). Bella notices that they aren’t walking toward her truck but to Edward’s Volvo. She protests, she’s going to drive herself home, because she’s a strong independent girl who just fainted twice at the sight of a drop of blood.
Edward disagrees, he insists then after her further protests he orders, “Didn’t you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you think I’m going to let you drive in your condition?’ his voice was still indignant.”
On one hand he has a point, she did just faint twice. On the other hand this attitude is about him not her, (I should point out that this is being said to her standing outside of the car while he is sitting down. If he cared so much about her, then either he would have opened the door for her and placed her in the passenger’s seat or they would be standing beside her car), “Didn’t you hear me promise…”
It reads like the excuse an abusive boyfriend gives to his crying girlfriend in the corner, “do you think I want to do this…” I’ve had experiences with girls in abusive relationships, I have heard them make excuses for them and it’s always like Edward here. "He never wanted to hit me, sometimes I just frustrate him and he loses it," etc. It’s about ownership and Edward feels entitled.
Bella considers running to her car but decides against this because, “He’d probably just drag me along anyway if I did.”
“I’ll just drag you back,” he threatened, guessing my plan."
By the arm no doubt, twisting it until it spiral fractures and she dreams up an excuse to tell Dr. Cullen at the hospital. All that’s remaining for him to say to her is the title of this post. Yeah he’s bad alright, just not in any good way, yet millions of teenage girls are idealizing this relationship? I wonder how the abuse help lines are going to handle the call volumes in five years?
I said last week that my mind constantly switches between the feelings of hate and pity with Bella. In Edward I have no such issue, he is the epitome of a douche bag and I loathe him. Having never been a teenage girl I can’t understand what the draw is, I get it with Romeo Montague–a gangster who is willing to over look the rival blood coursing through Juliet Capulet’s veins in order to love her, but Romeo treats Juliet well, like a lady and suffers for her. Edward…well he likes to play games.
Bella and Edward, are not Romeo and Juliet despite what various blogs may say on the issue. I know that initial meetings, and the courting phase of any relationship is supposed to be awkward but it shouldn’t be uncomfortable awkward bordering on the creepiness that oozes from Edward Cullen. Sitting together at lunch Edward spends most of the time hinting toward Bella that he’s bad and dangerous. The mark of a truly heinous person. The “bad boy” types that undoubtedly my daughter will eventually bring home don’t sit around and brag about it like this. They flaunt authority, develop their own rule systems, and have a generally stoic demeanor. The person who brags isn’t bad, he’s overcompensating. In all likelihood he’s not the dangerous type that a 1950s sitcom dad would tell his daughter to stay away from, he’s just a shy meek introvert that is going to kill himself overcompensating. Most women that I have met can see right through this bullshit…especially the smart ones which Bella claims to be but simply isn’t.
Bella admits that he could be dangerous “But not bad,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No I don’t believe that you’re bad.”
–”You’re wrong.”
No, she’s not. A truly bad person, who was aware of their own ‘badness’ wouldn’t warn someone else. They would say it once and then let that person just find out for themselves. This is the guy in college who will sleep with a girl, and tell her that she’s not going to find a boyfriend with him. Hugh Jackman played this character very well in a movie called Someone Like You: “I don’t pretend to be the white knight.” He then goes on to explain that whatever expectations they bring to him, are their fault not his. He, at least, was honest in the beginning.
It’s a way of removing guilt from the inevitable future break up. Tell them this isn’t going to last, and you can feel that they are on borrowed time. They should relish the experience because all they are really doing is taking a trip on the Titanic, you know how it ends but isn’t the trip worth it?
Well it depends on who the captain is, or more importantly how many times the captain has been in the sea. Most of the time both the man and the woman are around the same age, which makes our normal “bad boy” better ethically. If I’m 21 and the girl I’m telling this to is 19, we don’t have that much of an experience differential, I can’t completely take advantage of her because at that point in my life I’m pretty much just guessing too. In Bella’s case this is much worse because she’s 17 (she finally tells us this in these pages) and he’s over a hundred. He’s had years to practice which makes him bad for two reasons.
The first is that he has to resort to these sorts of games to attract a woman in the first place. At 100 and still in possession of his wits, he should be able to just charm the hell out of this girl drawing from a life experience with women, this is “incompetent bad.” The second version is “morally bad,” because he is purposely seeking out the victim and then treats her like a victim.
Edward skips Biology, Bella goes and this is the day the Bio teacher is going to have the class determine their blood types. A simple process made more complicated by the oddly coincidental fact that Bella is a hemaphobe, that is, she’s afraid of blood. She faints in class, because she can smell blood and Mike escorts her to the nurse’s office. Along the way Edward sees the goings on and interrupts. Which leads me to the question: if he skipped class why is he still hanging around the school? Obviously he needed to be there to forward the plot but without another excuse it’s just lazy writing.
Edward takes over and notices that Mike doesn’t like him. Well, duh, but this allows him to explain it to Bella furthering his own cause to be viewed as the bad boy. The proof breaks down like this, Mike doesn’t like me, Mike likes a lot of people, therefore I’m the bad boy. Which is faulty logic even for a hypothetical syllogism, Mike may not like idiots, or the pretentious, or whatever. Yet this all works on Bella who is now absolutely smitten and agrees to let Edward take her home.
Remember earlier when I said that Edward was ethically bad as well as incompetent? Well here comes the proof. Edward is walking Bella in the parking lot after using his magic powers to convince the school nurse to excuse a pale, 110 pound girl, who fainted twice out of gym class (which is like my magic ability to predict the outcomes of the Superbowl on Monday). Bella notices that they aren’t walking toward her truck but to Edward’s Volvo. She protests, she’s going to drive herself home, because she’s a strong independent girl who just fainted twice at the sight of a drop of blood.
Edward disagrees, he insists then after her further protests he orders, “Didn’t you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you think I’m going to let you drive in your condition?’ his voice was still indignant.”
On one hand he has a point, she did just faint twice. On the other hand this attitude is about him not her, (I should point out that this is being said to her standing outside of the car while he is sitting down. If he cared so much about her, then either he would have opened the door for her and placed her in the passenger’s seat or they would be standing beside her car), “Didn’t you hear me promise…”
It reads like the excuse an abusive boyfriend gives to his crying girlfriend in the corner, “do you think I want to do this…” I’ve had experiences with girls in abusive relationships, I have heard them make excuses for them and it’s always like Edward here. "He never wanted to hit me, sometimes I just frustrate him and he loses it," etc. It’s about ownership and Edward feels entitled.
Bella considers running to her car but decides against this because, “He’d probably just drag me along anyway if I did.”
“I’ll just drag you back,” he threatened, guessing my plan."
By the arm no doubt, twisting it until it spiral fractures and she dreams up an excuse to tell Dr. Cullen at the hospital. All that’s remaining for him to say to her is the title of this post. Yeah he’s bad alright, just not in any good way, yet millions of teenage girls are idealizing this relationship? I wonder how the abuse help lines are going to handle the call volumes in five years?
I Can't Even Come Up With Something Clever (Pg. 85-100)
I was seriously looking forward to both this entry and the chapter. The hope was that it would be the “big reveal” that Edward would tell Bella that he was a Vampire, and then Meyer would have to explain how the undead work in her little world. So with disappointment, I must tell you that entry will have to wait. After last week it was all I could do to not plod ahead reading forward. The worst part about it is that I know that I am going to have to wait at least three weeks before I can write the “vampire post,” but enough about that.
This section makes me worry about Bella. I find odd that I vacillate between two emotions with her: disgust and pity. I know that people who are actually depressed can’t just snap themselves out of it, I’m up enough on the subject of psychology to understand this, but certain things that she does seem so self-imposed that it leads me to roll my eyes at her self-pity. The trouble is that the person that who undergoes self-imposed exile, an undeserved air of superiority at the rest of their peers, and an unrealistic image of advanced maturity can start to believe themselves. This will lead them to actual exile which then turns into unwanted loneliness. Ask any guy, we all knew someone in highschool who wanted to be left alone and by the end of our senior year that person was alone–all the time. The trouble for these guys is that they become so needy that they will take anything after awhile just to have some human contact. This usually manifests itself in drug use, it’s not really the drugs so much as the feeling of being in a group. It always amazes me how those people always knew where to find them, it didn’t matter what city they were in, they could sniff out a dealer. Too bad that cops don’t have the same ability.
Anyway, that’s the male experience. I know because for a good part of the time I was like that in school. I was lucky that at the time I viewed drugs as a moral issue and not merely a legal issue as I do now. With women I imagine the scenario to be much worse. Instead of just being in the wrong crowd, they can often fall to the wrong type of guy. Dr. Drew, from Loveline, used to say that he wanted “predator vision” which was the ability of abusers to instantly find the victim. He wanted to know what they look for because intervention would be a lot easier if you could see “victimhood” in a person before they were abused/raped. Chronic abusers seem to know, according to him, what type of person won’t talk.
I’m beginning to get that from Bella. Certainly Edward is a predator, he has to be because he is a vampire that’s just his nature. In 2002 a little known, but fairly good movie, called Roger Dodger was released. It was about a womanizer who takes his teenage nephew out in New York City because the young lad wants to get laid. They meet two women and Roger (Campbell Scott) asks them what they find most attractive in a man. Elizabeth Berkeley replies that the sense of humor is the most important thing.
Which is total bullshit, I know plenty of funny guys who haven’t had a date in years, so Roger calls her out. He tells her that the first guy she slept with probably had a tattoo, or a leather jacket or something. And she answers that he was a married guy with a motorcycle. Danger is the best aphrodisiac, never mind romantic comedies or period pieces, horror movies are the best date movies.* The danger aspect is good but coupled with mystery and it’s better than a half bottle of tequila and a hot tub. Edward knows this and he ferments it in Bella who has been drawn to him even though any being with even an iota of Kantian intrinsic value would see that he’s wrong. He treats her terribly, ignores her whenever he pleases, lords himself over her, and returns her affections like a slot machine. So of course she’s smitten.
After ignoring her, then half-heartedly apologizing for being a douche, he tells her that he will drive her to Seattle for her impromptu-yet-planned trip. She agrees, then it’s lunch time. The dance is approaching, as well as the beach party that Mike was planning. We’ve been given clues that there was a beach thing coming up, but that was before the accident and we still don’t know what month/season we are in. Bella tells us that there was probably going to be no rain but the temp would be at the most in the 40s. Being from Western New York, that puts our possible time period between January 1st and May 30th, or September 30th and December 31st. I have nothing to work with here.
The beach party is awfully impertinent because it doesn’t allow us to concentrate on picking on Bella for not going to the dance. This is inconsistent with her character: she won’t go to the dance for some reason but she will go to the beach party that will contain (and this is important): THE EXACT SAME FUCKING PEOPLE! She has told her father that she doesn’t dance, well neither do a lot of people who attend those things, I just don’t get it.
The other thing is that for someone who claims that she never fits in, she sure has taken the alpha role at lunch which is, again, the most important discernment of social order in high school. Bella is sitting with all of her “friends” disappointed that Edward isn’t there at his usual table, not eating, and ignoring her. Her “friends” are gabbing away about normal stuff, stuff that she deems beneath her: “Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans– Lauren and Angela had asked the other boys and they were all going together–completely unaware of my inattention.”
In other words Jessica, Lauren, and Angela are being girls while Bella has more important things to do. Who are Lauren and Angela? Since Bella doesn’t pay them any regard or view them as in possession of any importance we don’t know. They are apparently not important enough to even be “Red Shirts” they’re more like the people that walk on to the bridge hand the captain the iPad and then walk away without so much as a nod from Kirk/Picard/Sisko. Then Jessica notices something odd, “Edward Cullen is staring at you again.”
“Again”? No Jessica, Edward is staring at her. This is the first time that anyone has ever noticed it outside of Bella. The odd thing that Jessica should have noticed is that Edward isn’t sitting with his pretentious aristocratic family, he’s by himself. Using his finger to order Bella to him. Jessica is surprised, and probably more surprised that she goes over. Further adding to the surprise is that the other girls are jealous, which I’m not going to complain about since it is normal girl behavior.
Taking a look at Edward’s motioning, it’s pure entitlement. It displays an attitude that she should be honored to be asked to his table. He doesn’t come over and politely interrupt. He sits by himself, stares, and then motions. It’s creepy and disgusting, I’ve known high school football stars that acted with more humility than this smug bastard. The worst part: she goes over delighted at the opportunity to grovel at the Duke’s feet hoping for a scrap of affection. He’s a sociopath alright but now I’m getting that confused feeling towards her: I really don’t know if I should pity her or hate her.
__________________________________
*And actual horror movies, not the bullshit torture porn/snuff movies like Saw or Passion of the Christ. Those aren’t scary so much as anatomical.
This section makes me worry about Bella. I find odd that I vacillate between two emotions with her: disgust and pity. I know that people who are actually depressed can’t just snap themselves out of it, I’m up enough on the subject of psychology to understand this, but certain things that she does seem so self-imposed that it leads me to roll my eyes at her self-pity. The trouble is that the person that who undergoes self-imposed exile, an undeserved air of superiority at the rest of their peers, and an unrealistic image of advanced maturity can start to believe themselves. This will lead them to actual exile which then turns into unwanted loneliness. Ask any guy, we all knew someone in highschool who wanted to be left alone and by the end of our senior year that person was alone–all the time. The trouble for these guys is that they become so needy that they will take anything after awhile just to have some human contact. This usually manifests itself in drug use, it’s not really the drugs so much as the feeling of being in a group. It always amazes me how those people always knew where to find them, it didn’t matter what city they were in, they could sniff out a dealer. Too bad that cops don’t have the same ability.
Anyway, that’s the male experience. I know because for a good part of the time I was like that in school. I was lucky that at the time I viewed drugs as a moral issue and not merely a legal issue as I do now. With women I imagine the scenario to be much worse. Instead of just being in the wrong crowd, they can often fall to the wrong type of guy. Dr. Drew, from Loveline, used to say that he wanted “predator vision” which was the ability of abusers to instantly find the victim. He wanted to know what they look for because intervention would be a lot easier if you could see “victimhood” in a person before they were abused/raped. Chronic abusers seem to know, according to him, what type of person won’t talk.
I’m beginning to get that from Bella. Certainly Edward is a predator, he has to be because he is a vampire that’s just his nature. In 2002 a little known, but fairly good movie, called Roger Dodger was released. It was about a womanizer who takes his teenage nephew out in New York City because the young lad wants to get laid. They meet two women and Roger (Campbell Scott) asks them what they find most attractive in a man. Elizabeth Berkeley replies that the sense of humor is the most important thing.
Which is total bullshit, I know plenty of funny guys who haven’t had a date in years, so Roger calls her out. He tells her that the first guy she slept with probably had a tattoo, or a leather jacket or something. And she answers that he was a married guy with a motorcycle. Danger is the best aphrodisiac, never mind romantic comedies or period pieces, horror movies are the best date movies.* The danger aspect is good but coupled with mystery and it’s better than a half bottle of tequila and a hot tub. Edward knows this and he ferments it in Bella who has been drawn to him even though any being with even an iota of Kantian intrinsic value would see that he’s wrong. He treats her terribly, ignores her whenever he pleases, lords himself over her, and returns her affections like a slot machine. So of course she’s smitten.
After ignoring her, then half-heartedly apologizing for being a douche, he tells her that he will drive her to Seattle for her impromptu-yet-planned trip. She agrees, then it’s lunch time. The dance is approaching, as well as the beach party that Mike was planning. We’ve been given clues that there was a beach thing coming up, but that was before the accident and we still don’t know what month/season we are in. Bella tells us that there was probably going to be no rain but the temp would be at the most in the 40s. Being from Western New York, that puts our possible time period between January 1st and May 30th, or September 30th and December 31st. I have nothing to work with here.
The beach party is awfully impertinent because it doesn’t allow us to concentrate on picking on Bella for not going to the dance. This is inconsistent with her character: she won’t go to the dance for some reason but she will go to the beach party that will contain (and this is important): THE EXACT SAME FUCKING PEOPLE! She has told her father that she doesn’t dance, well neither do a lot of people who attend those things, I just don’t get it.
The other thing is that for someone who claims that she never fits in, she sure has taken the alpha role at lunch which is, again, the most important discernment of social order in high school. Bella is sitting with all of her “friends” disappointed that Edward isn’t there at his usual table, not eating, and ignoring her. Her “friends” are gabbing away about normal stuff, stuff that she deems beneath her: “Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans– Lauren and Angela had asked the other boys and they were all going together–completely unaware of my inattention.”
In other words Jessica, Lauren, and Angela are being girls while Bella has more important things to do. Who are Lauren and Angela? Since Bella doesn’t pay them any regard or view them as in possession of any importance we don’t know. They are apparently not important enough to even be “Red Shirts” they’re more like the people that walk on to the bridge hand the captain the iPad and then walk away without so much as a nod from Kirk/Picard/Sisko. Then Jessica notices something odd, “Edward Cullen is staring at you again.”
“Again”? No Jessica, Edward is staring at her. This is the first time that anyone has ever noticed it outside of Bella. The odd thing that Jessica should have noticed is that Edward isn’t sitting with his pretentious aristocratic family, he’s by himself. Using his finger to order Bella to him. Jessica is surprised, and probably more surprised that she goes over. Further adding to the surprise is that the other girls are jealous, which I’m not going to complain about since it is normal girl behavior.
Taking a look at Edward’s motioning, it’s pure entitlement. It displays an attitude that she should be honored to be asked to his table. He doesn’t come over and politely interrupt. He sits by himself, stares, and then motions. It’s creepy and disgusting, I’ve known high school football stars that acted with more humility than this smug bastard. The worst part: she goes over delighted at the opportunity to grovel at the Duke’s feet hoping for a scrap of affection. He’s a sociopath alright but now I’m getting that confused feeling towards her: I really don’t know if I should pity her or hate her.
__________________________________
*And actual horror movies, not the bullshit torture porn/snuff movies like Saw or Passion of the Christ. Those aren’t scary so much as anatomical.
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