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Tag Archives: characters

Poor Ron, Part 2: In Which I Explain That Ron Is Perfect For Hermione

01 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by IfByYes in Shhh, I'm Reading

≈ 34 Comments

Tags

characters, dominance, feminism, Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, love, relationships, Ron and Hermione, Ron Weasley

In honor of Ron’s birthday today, it’s time I finished this post!

I actually started my previous post about Ron’s virtues months before Rowling admitted that she had made a mistake pairing him with Hermione. But it was that shocking announcement which spurred me into finishing it.

Because, like many of us, I also had my doubts about the couple at first, so my last couple of re-readings have focused on Ron’s character.

Rowling is wrong.

Ron is actually a good fit for Hermione, and vice versa. We’ve just discussed Ron’s many overlooked virtues. Now, let’s talk about why those virtues are what Hermione needs most.

Continue reading →

Rowling vs Meyer, Round 4 – How Can I Describe Meyer’s Writing?

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

Posted by IfByYes in TwiBashing

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

adjectives, adverbs, books, characterization, characters, criticism, description, Harry Potter, jk rowling, literary criticism, literature, reviews, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, writing

Remember how I talked about cramming the universe into a teaspoon when it came to comparing J K Rowling with Stephenie Meyer? Well, when I actually started on discussing the writing, I discovered that I had to split it into two. This is the second half of round 3. The reason it took so long was that it was STILL getting out of hand. Therefore, there will also be a Round 5. It’ll probably stop there. Probably.

In this round, we will look more closely at the way these two ladies write – specifically, their use of description and their ability to create unique characters… or the lack thereof.

(A note about spoilers: I will keep Harry Potter spoilers to a minimum, only letting go the kind of information that you could pick up from your standard movie trailer and have probably picked up on already, unless you live in a world without other people. Twilight spoilers, on the other hand, abound, because I can’t “spoil” Twilight any more than I can “spoil” a compost heap.)

Continue reading →

Round 1: In Which Stephenie Meyer Confuses Feminism With Kung Fu.

31 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by IfByYes in TwiBashing

≈ 64 Comments

Tags

books, characters, feminism, Harry Potter, j.k. rowling, literary criticism, literature, protagonists, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, women in fiction

(A note about spoilers: I will keep Harry Potter spoilers to a minimum, only letting go the kind of information that you could pick up from your standard movie trailer and have probably picked up on already, unless you live in a world without other people. Twilight spoilers, on the other hand, abound, because I can’t “spoil” Twilight any more than I can “spoil” a compost heap.)

The main protagonist of Harry Potter is a boy, while the protagonist of Twilight is a girl, so you’d think that Twilight would be more feminist in its message.

But anyone who has read that series would laugh hysterically at the suggestion that it was anything other than unempowering anti-feminist sludge. Well, anyone except the author.

Can you FEEL the girl power?

Stephanie Meyer doesn’t agree with the rest of the Western World that Twilight is sexist codswallop.

Sure, Bella is pretty weak and useless. And sure, Edward tends to make all of the decisions. And yeah, Edward frequently ignores Bella’s preferences (drags her to the car/prom/house/birthday party/altar against her will, hides information that he doesn’t think she should hear, steals the engine out of her car to keep her “safe” from his rival…) in the name of knowing what is best for her.

Well, and ok, she is constantly needing her butt saved by someone, and she does do all the cooking and shopping around her house (because her father, after being a bachelor for 16 years, can’t even cook pasta, apparently). And she does attach all of her life’s value to the presence of a man.

But, Meyer doesn’t understand why we make such a big deal of all that.

Just because she doesn’t do kung fu and she cooks for her father doesn’t make her worthy of that criticism.

Ok, Steph.

Meyer has also pointed out that there are other strong female characters in Twilight other than, er, Bella.

I am all about girl power—look at Alice and Jane if you doubt that.

Okay, let’s run through your other female characters, shall we? We’ll start with Alice and Jane.

Continue reading →

TwiBash Part II: “New Moon”, New Psychoses.

17 Thursday Feb 2011

Posted by IfByYes in Shhh, I'm Reading, TwiBashing

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

auditory hallucinations, Bella Swan, books, characters, Edward Cullen, Jacob Black, literary analysis, literature, New Moon, psychology, psychosis, schizophrenia, Twilight

Oh. My. God.

It took a couple of false starts, but I did eventually get through New Moon. I’ll say the positive stuff first.

It’s better than Twilight.

Never mind that the list of books that are better than Twilight can (and does) fill entire libraries. It’s a start.

It starts out awful, continues awful, then Edward leaves and things get a hell of a lot better for a while. I almost got caught up in the story, until things devolved again with Edward’s return.

To summarize, the parts without vampires in them are almost decent.

Except for Bella, who continues to be

a) Stupid

and

b) Schizophrenic

Let’s start with the first point, shall we?

(Beware! “Spoilers”)

Continue reading →

Jane Eyre Versus Bella Swan – Let the Bash Begin!

20 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by IfByYes in Shhh, I'm Reading, TwiBashing, Well, That's Just Stupid

≈ 48 Comments

Tags

books, characters, grammar, heroines, Jane Eyre, literary criticism, literature, Twilight

VS

Now, to anyone who has read Jane Eyre, this comparison may seem ridiculous… and it is.

But there is a need, mostly because Stephenie Meyer has put Jane Eyre in the same sentence as Twilight several times (trivia I could have lived without: originally she named Rosalie “Carol”). She said that she got Edward’s name from Mr. Rochester, and has listed Jane Eyre as one of her “inspirations” for Twilight.

“I read it when I was nine,” says Meyer, ”and I’ve reread it literally hundreds of times. I do think that there are elements of Edward in Edward Rochester and elements of Bella in Jane.”

You heard it right folks – literally hundreds of times. So, she must know Jane better than I do, because I’ve only read it a couple of times a year since I was 13 years old; sometimes I read it more often and sometimes less. That means I’ve probably only read it between 20 and 40 times, but Stephenie Meyer has read it literally hundreds of times. Yikes! She must read it at least seven or eight times a year to get that number.

There is a parallel between the creation of both characters:

  1. It is said that Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre to prove that a heroine doesn’t need to be rich or beautiful to be interesting. Similarly, Meyer has said that Twilight was based on an idea about a “normal” teenage girl and a vampire.
  2. They are both teenage (17 and 18, respectively) brunettes who are exceptionally pallid in complexion.
  3. Both Bella and Jane have somewhat weak constitutions, with a tendency towards fainting episodes.
  4. Both Bella and Jane closely resemble their creators. Bella looks like Stephenie Meyer and Jane looks like Charlotte Bronte.
  5. Both of them get to experience the fantastical love of a Byronic hero which their authors never had in real life. I feel fairly safe in saying that Meyer probably never actually got to be worshipped by a vampire and I also know that Bronte’s real-life Rochester, Constantin Heger, probably never loved her back and definitely never married her.

When I list it like that, it seems like they’re practically sisters, doesn’t it?

Nevertheless, Jane could kick Bella’s ass from here to eternity using the sheer force of her awesomeness.

[Beware of spoilers]

Continue reading →

TwiBash

13 Thursday Jan 2011

Posted by IfByYes in Oh The Inanity, Shhh, I'm Reading, TwiBashing

≈ 49 Comments

Tags

book reviews, books, characters, grammar, literature, mary sue, Twilight

Santa gave me Twilight in my stocking, and I was pleased.

Because I hated Twilight.

Allow me explain:

I have long been opposed to Twilight, but had never actually read it or seen the movies. I objected to it on principle.  I read that teenage girls were dumping their boyfriends for “not being enough like Edward”. I also heard that Edward was an obsessive creep who stalked Bella and couldn’t decide whether he wanted to eat her or kiss her. That he tried to physically stop her from seeing people he was jealous of, and that he bossed her around constantly.

This offended me.

So I wanted to read Twilight so that when I got aerated about it, I could actually have something to go on other than sheer hearsay. I asked for it for Christmas, but with the condition that it had to be a used copy, so I didn’t end up funding the publishers. This way I could give it a chance. Much the way I gave caviar a chance, even though I hate both eggs and fish. I was right, I did hate it, but it was worth a try, right?

So I read Twilight, and I came to three conclusions:

  • That Twilight is even bigger literary garbage than I had expected, and consequently hilarious.
  • That Edward is not so bad, if you give him leeway for being undead.
  • That I hate Bella.

Perfect Husband said it best. On page 2 of Twilight he looked up and said, “My gawd, this reads like Mary Sue fan fiction. It’s fan fiction of itself.”

That’s totally what it is.

It’s written about as well as the standard fanfic slush you’ll find on the net. The characters are about as three-dimensional. It’s just… garbage. I wasn’t surprised by that, although I was a little baffled. Considering how successful these books were, I was expecting them to be entertaining, if vacuous. Like a Dan Brown novel. Instead I had to read it in segments, filling in with a Stephen King book when the awfulness became too much (as an aside, King once said, “Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn” and I trust Stephen King’s judgment . I like children’s fiction best, so his subject matter doesn’t usually appeal to me, but GAWDDAMN, that man can write well).

I had also read that Twilight is loosely based on Pride and Prejudice. Whoever said that is off their nut, because Twilight bears the same resemblance to Pride and Prejudice that a turd bears to a diamond. If you want a good modern re-telling of P&P, pick up a copy of Bridget Jones’s Diary. But Twilight doesn’t come anywhere close. If anything, it’s closer to Jane Eyre, and by “closer” I mean the proximity of the Earth to Pluto as compared to, say, Betelgeuse.

On the bright side, Edward didn’t piss me off nearly as much as I expected him to. I mean, he is a terrible model for a boyfriend – the man suffers from such radical mood swings that he might benefit from lithium, and he is possessive, insultingly bossy/condescending, and a creepy stalker, but actually he has a couple of redeeming features.

First of all, I feel obligated to cut him some slack because after all, he is an undead creature. But barring the wants-to-drink-your-blood issue, he seems like a decent person. For one thing, he is aware of the fact that he is a creepy, obsessive, undead monster and frequently warns Bella that she really should try to stay as far away from him as possible.

Now, I am a bit of a sucker for a Byronic hero, and Edward fits the mold so well that Meyer might as well have drawn his character directly from the Wikipedia definition (and she very well may have). The love of my literary life when I was an impressionable thirteen year old girl was Mr. Rochester from Jane Eyre (for whom Stephenie Meyer named her male hero). These two Edwards could go head-to-head when it comes to passionate, obsessive love… which is extremely attractive to pubescent girls for some reason.

Edward Cullen’s love for Bella is selfless, passionate, and unreasonably unconditional. He is about as two-dimensional as you could ask for. He’s pretty much written to spec: *Insert Female Fantasy Here.* Characters like him are to women what porno women are to men – a fantasy object, not a person. That is what sells the Twilight books. It certainly isn’t Meyer’s writing ability.

So here’s what pisses me off: Unlike Jane Eyre, who is awesome, Bella deserves no such attention.

Bella is a self-centred, melodramatic, self-martyring twatwaffle.

While I can suspend my disbelief cling to the supposition try to pretend that an extremely sexy and selfless vampire with extraordinary willpower is attending high school in small town Washington, I can’t believe I refuse to accept I find it impossible to imagine that he would choose Bella to fall in love with.

If you haven’t read Twilight, but aren’t afraid of spoilers (and I assure you, spoiling Twilight would be like trying to spoil last year’s fish heads) or if you have already suffered through this book, read on: Continue reading →

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