This is amazing.
One part in particular that summed up a lot of the thoughts that went through my head when read the first half of Twilight before deciding that I'd rather play Drakkhen for its plot is the following:
Bella has decided that she's willing to take a bullet (or a werewolf, at least) for a boy she has gone on .5 dates with.
That's a good lesson for young girls: Form intense emotional attachments at the first sign of interest.
Especially if they're mixed in with neglect and lies.
Also if a boy tells you to stay away from him, it's because he's totes into you.
This book only has two speeds: Dull and infuriating.
...
are you serious stephenie meyer.
Bella's paper on Macbeth is about "Whether Shakespeare's treatment of the female characters is misogynistic."
I'm willing to suspend my disbelief quite a bit for this book. Vampires and werewolves? Sure. No prob.
But lady, if you want me to believe that Bella Swan can spot misogyny without a magnifying glass and a tour guide...
Chris describes it more eloquently than the book does.
Basically, the entire time I was reading, all I kept thinking was how fascinating Bella could have been as a character if Meyer had presented her as a terrible person instead of trying to make the reader believe that the person doing all these horrible unredeeming things was supposed to be some kind of heroic figure that we're supposed to root for.
If the book wasn't written as 'Beautiful Romance story between Girl and Vampire' but instead as 'A Girl on the path to Self-Destruction', we'd actually have something here. Meyer has unintentionally created one of the most terrifying glimpses into misogynistic victimization that I've ever read, but she totes it as a dramatic romance (and her fans are even worse about it).
As someone who worked in a bookstore and got to meet fans of many different writers and engage in exciting discourse with them, it depresses me that Meyer is allowed to continue breathing, let alone getting paid to write this drivel and influence a generation of young women.
