For the previous article, click here
Opening Thoughts:
Back again, with more fabulous Edward and Bella action. If by fabulous you mean offensive, and by action, you mean inaction. Ha ha.
I don’t have many opening thoughts, but if you have some time, you should check out “Mark Reads Twilight”, another blogger whose insightful rants will fuel the self-righteous flame of any anti. Last I checked, he has read and blogged all the way up to chapter 9 in Breaking Dawn. He’s definitely worth checking out if like my series. Plus, he updates more frequently than I do. So yea.
I think I’ll just put that link at the end of this article.
Chapter 7: Nightmare
This chapter is filler. Almost nothing plot relevant happens. Bella listens to music for a while. She has a nightmare about Edward and Jacob, filled with exceptionally obvious foreshadowing. Upon waking, she googles “vampire”. She then goes for a walk in the woods to think about vampires, and has an uneventful day at school.
This did not need to take 23 pages.
Now, before I continue with the highlights of this chapter, I’d like to show you a magic trick.
I hated using the internet here. My modem was sadly outdated, my free service substandard; just dialing up took so long that I decided to go get a bowl of cereal while I waited.I ate slowly, chewing each bite with care. When I was done I washed the bowl and spoon and put them away. My feet dragged as I climbed the stairs. I went to my CD player first, picking it up off the table. I pulled out the headphones, and put them away in the desk drawer. Then I turned the same CD on, turning it down to the point where it was background noise.
With another sigh, I turned to my computer. Naturally the screen was covered in pop up ads. I sat in my hard folding chair and began closing all the little windows. Eventually I made it to my favorite search engine. I shot down a few more pop-ups and then typed in one word. (p. 134)
Behold, as I make two of these paragraphs disappear!
I hated using the internet here. The modem was sadly outdated, and I was able to fix myself a bowl of cereal, eat it slowly, and clean up after myself in the time it took to dial up. When I finally reached the search engine through a sea of pop-ups, however, I hesitated, suddenly daunted by the empty text box. It struck me, I had no clue where to begin. This had to be a colossal waste of time. But I was committed, and there was no point dancing around the subject. With a resigned sigh, I typed in one word.
Is my writing spectacular? Probably not. But I was able to say in a single paragraph what Meyer said in three. Granted, my paragraph is a bit longer than any one of her paragraphs, but rather than describing the way Bella adjusts her headphones and chews her food, I develop her mental state. And the rub is, she still used twice as many words as I did.
It seems that neither Meyer nor her editors were familiar with the concept of word economy. Repeat after me, excess verbiage is not a good thing. Writers are told all the time “show don’t tell”, but there is a slightly lesser know corollary to this rule, which is “show what’s important”. You need not (and should not) show every unimportant detail of one’s daily routine. A few details are fine and make the story more real, but let me be unequivocally clear on this point: Meyer had no reason to narrate the consumption of a bowl of cereal. No reason. If she was being payed by the word then she should be jailed for theft, because our main character shouldn’t need three paragraphs to prepare to run a Google search.
Although this is the most extreme example of pointless narration I noticed in the chapter, there are many others. A prudent editor (or author) could probably have cut this chapter in half without harming the story.
But anyway, back to the action inaction.
Bella’s adventure in the internet turns up some vague information on Vampires most of us already knew. You know, how they’re strong and pretty and not necessarily evil. Stuff that was old when Anne Rice hit the market.
She then takes a walk in the forest behind her house so she can think more clearly, and concludes that “Edward Cullen was not… human. He was something more.”
Brilliant deduction, Bella. He only lifted a car off of you with his bare hands. And that’s ignoring the anvil-esqu hints he’s been dropping for the past month.
She decides that Edward is very possibly dangerous, but since the thought of not hanging out with him causes her physical pain— yes, I’m not kidding, “I was gripped in a sudden agony of despair as I considered that alternative. My mind rejected the pain, quickly skipping to the next option”— she decides to pursue a relationship with him anyways.
“Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted noting more than to be with him right now. Even if…” (p. 139)
Bella, were you born without an instinct for self preservation, or did Edward dazzle it from you?
In any case, with new resolve and precious little new plot, Bella walks back home. Meyer spends two paragraphs narrating this. Bella writes an English paper, and does some more boring things. She talks about how charming Charlie’s smile could be. The next day, she goes to school, and has another predictable encounter with Mike, who is still acting like a love-struck doofus. Bella tells Mike that she is writing about Misogyny in Shakespeare’s plays (I’m not sure how that line got into the book, or how intentional the irony was). Discovering that the Cullens had skipped school sends Bella “spiraling downward in misery” as she is curly forced to talk to her friends.
But by and by, the day passes without any significant plot developments. We find out that Bella reads Jane Austin in her spare time (isn’t she smart?) and there’s a brief, but sweet moment with Charlie.
There wasn’t anything on that I wanted to watch, but he knew I didn’t like baseball, so he switched to a pointless sitcom that neither of us enjoyed. He seemed happy though, to be doing something together. And it felt good, despite my depression, to make him happy.
Brief and whiny, but sweet.
After school the next day Bella, Jessica, and Angela drive to Port Angeles to go shopping. That, folks, is the entire chapter. All 23 pages of it.
Chapter 8: Port Angeles
The good news is that, for the first time in ages, Bella isn’t being horribly depressing.
It had been a while since I’d had a girls’ night out, and the estrogen rush was invigorating. We listened to whiny rock songs while Jessica jabbered on about the boys she hung out with.
However, this has not made her any less sarcastic and judgmental. Anyhoo, the three girls go shopping and buy dresses. Bella asks some questions about the Cullens. Apparently they’re always missing on sunny days to go on camping trips. A lame excuse, but whatever.
After the dresses are bought, Bella leave her friends to visit a bookstore. She doesn’t enter, however, because of the “ftifty year old woman with long, grey hair worn strait down her back, clad in a dress right out of the sixties, smiling welcomingly from behind the counter.”
Let me get this straight: you want desperately to be with a lethal vampire, but kindly hippies terrify you? What kind of a paranoid freak are you?
So distracted is Bella by thoughts of her vampire crush, that she wanders off in completely in the wrong direction, gets lost in a dockside alley, and is very nearly raped by four scary men.
Now, I must admit, this passage isn’t poorly written. It’s one of the few times when Meyer does not loudly broadcast her moves, and actually manages to build a little suspense. For about two pages, Bella tries nervously to lose the two men who might possibly be following her. It looks she’s made it to the safety of a busy street, and we are allowed to think for a moment that all of her fretting was for naught. And then Bella realizes that the men had been herding her into a trap. Overall, I think Meyer executed very well Bella’s transition from uncertain fear, to relief, to terror.
Of course, Edward swerves up in his mighty volvo to rescue our heroine.
The silver car unexpectedly fishtailed around, skidding to a stop with the passenger door open just a few feet away from me.“Get in,” a furious voice commanded.
Swept away by Edward’s authority and masculinity, Bella feels completely secure as he drives her to safety, even though Edward is feeling very angry and potentially violent.
“Sometimes I have a problem with my temper, Bella,” He was whispering too as he stared out the window, his eyes narrowed to slits. “But it wouldn’t be helpful for me to turn around and hunt down those…” He didn’t finish his sentence, struggling for a moment to control his anger again.
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, he is contemplating murder. Isn’t that dreamy? Doesn’t that just make you feel all safe and secure? And of course, like the masculine man that he is, Edward decides that he and Bella are going to dinner. He uses his “silken, irresistible voice” to get rid of Angela and Jessica. And then, although Bella isn’t hungry, Edward drives her to a restaurant. Once seated, Edward and Bella begin to talk.
“Do I dazzle you?” [he asked.]“Frequently,” I admitted.
If there is a god, may he smite me now…
Edward spends the next few pages dazzling waitress, commanding Bella to eat, and smiling “perfectly crooked smiles”. He seems unusually preoccupied with Bella’s physical comfort. Bella, meanwhile, seems unusually preoccupied with Edward’s sculpted chest, which can be seen through his tight, unquestionably heterosexual turtleneck. Bella mentions how safe she feels around him no less than twice a page (despite the fact that he was stalking her and seriously considering murder), and Edward reveals that he can read minds.
His eyes were locked with mine, and I guessed he was making the decision right then whether or or not to simply tell me the truth [….] “I don’t know if I have a choice anymore.” His voice was almost a whisper, “I was wrong— You’re much more observant than I give you credit for.”
Excuse me for a moment while I turn on the caps lock. BELLA IS NOT EXCEPTIONALLY OBSERVANT. YOU HAVE BEEN DROPPING PAINFULLY OBVIOUS HINTS ABOUT YOUR POWERS FOR THE PAST SIX CHAPTERS. A HIGH-COLLARED CAPE AND BAT WINGS WOULD HAVE BEEN MORE SUBTLE.
Anyway, as it turns out, Edward is aware of Bella’s abnormally high propensity to almost die, and has taken it upon himself to stalk her keep her safe. To that end, he had followed her to Port Angeles and was reading the minds of everyone around her to track of her movements, just like every good boyfriend should do.
Bella doesn’t seem to mind, and calmly finishes her meal. They leave the restaurant, and the chapter ends as Edward and Bella pull onto the road, with the promise of more dramatic revelations.
And that, my friends, concludes this installment of Twilight Abridged and Annotated. As promised, here is the link to Mark Reads Twilight.
Till next time, this is Artimaues, signing off.
Puppet on 25 January 2010, 15:01 said:
Brilliant, Artimaues.
applauds
Danielle on 25 January 2010, 15:09 said:
Ah! I’ve been hoping you’d get another couple chapters of this up—and dare I say these were better than the last. Not that the last one was no good; just that it keeps getting better and better. This part made me laugh:
Picturing Bella sitting in a restaurant, staring at Edward’s chest is waaaayyy too easy. Not only that, but a TURTLENECK? C’mon, SMeyer, we all know you have weird fantasies, but a TURTLEKNECK? I know quite a few straight men (among them my dad, his guy friends, my brother, his friends who are like my brothers, the senior, associate and youth pastors at my church, the advisor for my college paper and my grandpa) and I can’t recall ever seeing them in a turtleneck.
Does Edward’s turtleneck have cables in it? Is it just one color, or is it one of those multicolored ones? Did his grandma make it “with love in every stitch”? I hope it’s bright yellow. Bright yellow is a very manly color.
Pearl on 25 January 2010, 16:06 said:
My thoughts exactly.
Nicely done. I quite enjoyed it. :)
Sweguy on 25 January 2010, 16:10 said:
Thanks alot for the tag to the blogger, he seems like a hipp dude. More infantries to the anti-twilight army.
RomanticVampireLover on 25 January 2010, 17:23 said:
Bloody brilliant, as usual. Wonderful insight; I liked how you pointed out that passage about Charlie; I have overlooked it in the past. ;)
SlyShy on 25 January 2010, 18:55 said:
He’s clearly just copying Steve Jobs. ;)
Artimaeus on 25 January 2010, 20:37 said:
I’m glad you think so, and I agree. It took me a few tries to learn how to write these. Practice makes perfect, I guess :)
Bahaha! No, it wasn’t any outrageous colors, Meyer mentions how very form-fitting it was. I don’t remember the exact quote, but Bella was able to ogle his cut musculature through the turtleneck. Skintight turtlenecks are really manly, right?
Talisman on 25 January 2010, 23:34 said:
Yay! Thank you for continuing to spork this
bookthing. Very entertaining.Indeed. Also more dignified.
steph (what is left) on 26 January 2010, 01:59 said:
If you’re wearing one, call me.
;)
Jeni on 26 January 2010, 12:23 said:
Excellent article, however, end of chapter seven:
I assume you mean cruelly?
And beginning of chapter eight:
“fifty” maybe? ;)
Jolly well written, kept me interested in something I otherwi— never mind, just thank you. :D
Danielle on 26 January 2010, 13:01 said:
Me too! I’ll call back, ask for your address, and mail you a nice Fender T-shirt. (For those of you who don’t know any guitarists, Fender is a really nice brand of guitar. They make nice T-shirts, too. Very manly.)
And then I’ll never ever talk to you again. ;)
lizzie on 26 January 2010, 19:28 said:
fantastic :)
Snow White Queen on 26 January 2010, 21:40 said:
Haha, I liked the clip of the Joker with the whole ‘magic trick’ thing. Keep it up, Artimaeus!
Nimue on 26 January 2010, 23:56 said:
just wondering, what do people here think of Anne Rice?
Tolly on 27 January 2010, 03:25 said:
Wow. The more of these I read, the happier I become that I stopped reading that travesty somewhere in the middle of Chapter 2, because WHOA. That’s messed up, Bella’s a twerp, and Mister Subtlety apparently missed the bus.
Aldrea945 on 27 January 2010, 16:15 said:
Nice! I love these…
BTW, The ONLY thing I like about Meyer is the scene at the end were Bella almost dies. The “Almost” ruined it though…
~Aldrea945
RandomX2 on 27 January 2010, 22:22 said:
The [humour] is increasing per spork :)
I’m glad to see that there’s some legitimate criticism in there, as well as a handful of ideas on how she could have improved her work. Humour is good and all, but it’s amplified with content.
+42 Respect for Joker reference.