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jedibuttercup*perplexed expression* So I'm 75 pages into the Twilight novel (which at one time I'd sworn never to read, but-- well, blame ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
maevebran for this one) and I think I already understand some of the love/hate, is-she-a-Sue-or-what, fannish relationship going on with this text.
It isn't the writing. Meyer uses a lot of short, declarative type sentences, which can come off a little choppy sometimes; but the descriptions are evocative, and the teenagers behave like teenagers, and the high school feels like a high school, and the technical sentence structure is pretty good, and so on. No-- I think it's the tension between narrative style and substance.
In the first place, Bella is supposed to be shy, clumsy, awkward, etcetera; and her actual behavior so far, in fact, is; but her inner monologue is very much not. She describes herself as acting in a way that her inner thoughts do not at all mirror; her mental voice comes across instead as a more mature, decisive, matter-of-fact person, aka probably more like the author herself than the girl she's writing about.
And in the second place-- there's no wonder, at all, to the handling of the supernatural aspects of what's going on. Yay, beautiful people; huh, Edward's saved her from crushing death in an impossible fashion. But Bella doesn't even bother trying to come up with theories on her own on how he could possibly have done so; despite whinging about having read so much that she'll have to go out of town for a bookstore rather than to Forks' library, she must have read mostly boring non-imaginative stuff, because most normal teenagers would be wondering about aliens or elves or a thousand other improbable ideas already. Not to mention, aside from sniffing her own hair, she doesn't theorize about possible non-teenage-drama-related reasons for Edward's other weird behavior, either; she just asks, and-- waits, frustrated, for answers. This is fairly unusual for fantasy heroines of any stripe.
(I know much of this series-- especially later on, and in later books-- is reportedly heavily influenced by the author's religious faith, but I expect that will come out more in non-Bella characterization and worldbuilding, which aren't directly related to the issues I've mentioned above; others have commented on that aspect in depth, and I won't mention it any further).
Anyway, it's-- kind of off-putting, that dual disconnect. And strangely fascinating; I don't usually come across that sort of dissonance in my regular reading. If I thought it were a deliberate choice on the author's part, I would be pretty amazed, and wondering what surprise she's setting up; as it is, I'm just really curious to see if it stays constant. *turns page to read on*
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maevebran for this one) and I think I already understand some of the love/hate, is-she-a-Sue-or-what, fannish relationship going on with this text.It isn't the writing. Meyer uses a lot of short, declarative type sentences, which can come off a little choppy sometimes; but the descriptions are evocative, and the teenagers behave like teenagers, and the high school feels like a high school, and the technical sentence structure is pretty good, and so on. No-- I think it's the tension between narrative style and substance.
In the first place, Bella is supposed to be shy, clumsy, awkward, etcetera; and her actual behavior so far, in fact, is; but her inner monologue is very much not. She describes herself as acting in a way that her inner thoughts do not at all mirror; her mental voice comes across instead as a more mature, decisive, matter-of-fact person, aka probably more like the author herself than the girl she's writing about.
And in the second place-- there's no wonder, at all, to the handling of the supernatural aspects of what's going on. Yay, beautiful people; huh, Edward's saved her from crushing death in an impossible fashion. But Bella doesn't even bother trying to come up with theories on her own on how he could possibly have done so; despite whinging about having read so much that she'll have to go out of town for a bookstore rather than to Forks' library, she must have read mostly boring non-imaginative stuff, because most normal teenagers would be wondering about aliens or elves or a thousand other improbable ideas already. Not to mention, aside from sniffing her own hair, she doesn't theorize about possible non-teenage-drama-related reasons for Edward's other weird behavior, either; she just asks, and-- waits, frustrated, for answers. This is fairly unusual for fantasy heroines of any stripe.
(I know much of this series-- especially later on, and in later books-- is reportedly heavily influenced by the author's religious faith, but I expect that will come out more in non-Bella characterization and worldbuilding, which aren't directly related to the issues I've mentioned above; others have commented on that aspect in depth, and I won't mention it any further).
Anyway, it's-- kind of off-putting, that dual disconnect. And strangely fascinating; I don't usually come across that sort of dissonance in my regular reading. If I thought it were a deliberate choice on the author's part, I would be pretty amazed, and wondering what surprise she's setting up; as it is, I'm just really curious to see if it stays constant. *turns page to read on*
~
