In the long list of things about this world that I just don't understand, Twilight and its plot and characters consume so many spaces on the list that sometimes I think it deserves its own list, "Things I Don't Understand About Twilight." I could write so many posts about these problems that I just keep finding. My plan is to go through my copies of the books (Yes, I am very embarrassed to say I own them. But in a way you should be proud of me, I read every single one before I passed all my judgments. I actually gave them a chance.) with a highlighter and deface them, marking my favorite "problems" to write about here. Trust me, there will be several posts in the future related to Twilight and the other books in the series and why they freak me out.
But the biggest, most glaring problem is something I cannot ignore any longer. Baby love. In Breaking Dawn, there is a scene where Bella has a half-vampire-half-human baby. (Don't even get me started on the baby itself. First of all, if vampires have no blood, how does Edward even get it up to make the baby??) As soon as the dumb baby is born and named after two mother figures' names smushed together (bet they loved that one), there's this moment where Jacob (the emo werewolf who's been in love with Bella the entire series) all of a sudden realizes that he's IN LOVE WITH RENESMEE, the baby. If you go "aww that's cute!" instead of immediately recoiling in horror, something is seriously wrong with you.
Teenager. In love with Bella. Suddenly in love with Bella's baby. So he's just going to sit around and take care of her like a big brother or father figure until she's a legal adult and then BOOM. Time to be in love! (Though you know, Stephenie Meyer clearly has zero understanding of how to portray love in the first place. Bella and Edward's relationship is completely unrealistic.) This is not cute. This is not clever. This is not romantic. This is terrifying. The fact that she's all but condoning statutory rape? Yeah. That's a big, big problem. I don't care if it's imprinting and there was no other way to keep the plot going and keep Jacob involved since Bella has so blatantly rejected him and he can't stand her now that she's a vampire.
I'm not sure what this says about society. There was no huge outcry against it, mostly because the preteen and teen girls reading the books were probably too occupied with thinking "Renesmee" was a cute name and being happy that Bella's voice sounded like bells and she was magically a vampire with no desire whatsoever to pig out on blood to even notice how wrong this entire concept is. The characters frustrate me so much. THIS IS NOT OKAY. Oh my goodness people, by the time she's eighteen Jacob is going to be like...in his thrirties. Well. Almost thirty I think. I forget how old he is. There is a very large age gap. Now I know the older people get the less this age gap matters, but he's only a year or so younger than Bella - he's old enough to be her father. What the hell, S Meyer.
And aside from the freakishness of the situation, how are they going to explain that to the little Nessy when she gets older? "So darling, I love you and all, but once upon a time I kissed your mother and was madly in love with her." She is going to take that one so well. Though her mother may hate her, I'm not sure how that relationship is going to go. Bella is very unpredictable. And clumsy, don't forget. Remind me to talk about that too.
See? There are already so many things I want to explain more about in this post. But I won't because I'll share them later.
Okay. Now I'm mad at the world for reading these books. Rant over. I'm going to go talk to Alex, stalk Cory Monteith on Twitter, and eat some ice cream. Delay in the morning so I get to sleep in!! And I had a smoothie. Goodness gracious it's been a lovely snow day.
Showing posts with label Romance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Romance. Show all posts
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Battle of the Hopeless Romantic
Once upon a time there was a little girl who didn't feel like doing schoolwork and wanted to write a blog post instead. So she sat down to try to write something that would be funny, but all she wanted to do was curl up in bed and take a very, very long nap. So she settled for something in between, because anything is better than doing classwork, right?
(Just a disclaimer, in case my teacher ever reads this, I am sooo caught up in my work right now that it doesn't even matter.)
I called this post Battle of the Hopeless Romantic because I thought today I could talk about what it means to be a hopeless romantic. Sometimes I think it is a disease that I am inflicted with, and I just need the magic antidote and I'll be fine. I know a boy who expresses zero emotion and makes fun of me when I talk about my feelings too much. I don't really understand him for this. All I want is a romantic gesture every now and again. Granted, he does give them to me - he does/says the sweetest things. But. All said and done, I will always be expecting something bigger or better or more fantastic.
And now there's some kid sitting at the computer next to me so I feel awkward writing about being a romantic. Damn. I'm going to hit return a lot and then write again so if he's a nosy jerk who's going to try to read this he won't get to see anything.
.
There. Sorry for the multitude of space up there. If you'd like, you can imagine that it's a picture of a polar bear in a snowstorm. I will even go back up and put a little dot you can imagine is his nose. There. Imagine that's the polar bear's nose.
Well. My plans for talking about being a romantic have been shattered. I am going to have to think of something else to talk about. Which might be better anyway becuase I mean really, no one actually wants to read about my life. They'd rather listen to me complain about things. So today I will turn my attention to something that has alays bothered me and probably always will bother me. Celebrity marriages. To quote Donkey from the movie Shrek (which I don't like and will never like), "They never last."
Some of them DO LAST. Okay? It's the ones with problems that get splashed all over the tabloids. Because those sell. Because there's this silly condition in our world where we simply want to hear about other peoples' problems. And it bothers me. I sometimes wish I could just erase tabloids, but then I'd have nothing to amuse me at the doctor's office.
Just kidding. I'm going to talk about Josh. He's telling me about his experiences at the hospital. He was watching a beligerent old man last night. He (Josh) works there. And he was watching this guy, who they all said was "pleasantly confused" but he was apparently not pleasant at all, in fact he was mean. And he (the old guy) wanted to get up. And Josh had to make sure he didn't get up because he'd hurt his foot. But he was being really dumb about it and kept trying to get up. He said he wanted cigarettes, just had to have "smokes". And actually asked Josh for a ride up town to get cigarettes, and asked if Josh smoked. He's in a HOSPITAL. You don't smoke in a hospital.
So that went on for eight hours. It was terrible, Josh said. At 7:30 one of the nurses went in and said he could go home, and then he was a mile away and got called back to watch the same patient. Who didn't remember who Josh was. He thought he was at church where he worked but he was at the hospital and tomorrow he's going to "fire" Josh. Same encounter again, cigarettes and everything.
And then towards 11:00, there's this thing called sundowners where when the sun starts to set elderly people get less all-there and mentally healthy. So he forgot who Josh was again, and was confused and thought he was someone he already knew and that he was home, so he was really nice all of a sudden! Yay! And then yeah.
And then someone came in to watch him for nightshift and Josh said, "Have fun." And he was gone. These are the reasons why I could never, ever work at a hospital. I think I'd have yelled at the man and stormed out. I have zero patience.
That is my story. Actually Josh's story. I hope it entertained you. I basically typed it exactly as he said it out loud but changed the pronouns and I ignord this awkward part about how the guy kept having to go to the bathroom, but wasn't supposed to b/c of some medical term I don't remember but made sense at the time. (Josh left to go back to class. I'm now alone again. And bored.)
This post had nothing to do with romantics. I'm sorry if you were looking forward to that. But you did get to hear a story about a "pleasantly confused" man. And about how much tabloids lie. Because they only talk about what people want to hear...Actually I should expand on that in a later post. I could do it now but I don't really feel like it, because I've probably made you read enough by now.
Toodles!
(Just a disclaimer, in case my teacher ever reads this, I am sooo caught up in my work right now that it doesn't even matter.)
I called this post Battle of the Hopeless Romantic because I thought today I could talk about what it means to be a hopeless romantic. Sometimes I think it is a disease that I am inflicted with, and I just need the magic antidote and I'll be fine. I know a boy who expresses zero emotion and makes fun of me when I talk about my feelings too much. I don't really understand him for this. All I want is a romantic gesture every now and again. Granted, he does give them to me - he does/says the sweetest things. But. All said and done, I will always be expecting something bigger or better or more fantastic.
And now there's some kid sitting at the computer next to me so I feel awkward writing about being a romantic. Damn. I'm going to hit return a lot and then write again so if he's a nosy jerk who's going to try to read this he won't get to see anything.
.
There. Sorry for the multitude of space up there. If you'd like, you can imagine that it's a picture of a polar bear in a snowstorm. I will even go back up and put a little dot you can imagine is his nose. There. Imagine that's the polar bear's nose.
Well. My plans for talking about being a romantic have been shattered. I am going to have to think of something else to talk about. Which might be better anyway becuase I mean really, no one actually wants to read about my life. They'd rather listen to me complain about things. So today I will turn my attention to something that has alays bothered me and probably always will bother me. Celebrity marriages. To quote Donkey from the movie Shrek (which I don't like and will never like), "They never last."
Some of them DO LAST. Okay? It's the ones with problems that get splashed all over the tabloids. Because those sell. Because there's this silly condition in our world where we simply want to hear about other peoples' problems. And it bothers me. I sometimes wish I could just erase tabloids, but then I'd have nothing to amuse me at the doctor's office.
Just kidding. I'm going to talk about Josh. He's telling me about his experiences at the hospital. He was watching a beligerent old man last night. He (Josh) works there. And he was watching this guy, who they all said was "pleasantly confused" but he was apparently not pleasant at all, in fact he was mean. And he (the old guy) wanted to get up. And Josh had to make sure he didn't get up because he'd hurt his foot. But he was being really dumb about it and kept trying to get up. He said he wanted cigarettes, just had to have "smokes". And actually asked Josh for a ride up town to get cigarettes, and asked if Josh smoked. He's in a HOSPITAL. You don't smoke in a hospital.
So that went on for eight hours. It was terrible, Josh said. At 7:30 one of the nurses went in and said he could go home, and then he was a mile away and got called back to watch the same patient. Who didn't remember who Josh was. He thought he was at church where he worked but he was at the hospital and tomorrow he's going to "fire" Josh. Same encounter again, cigarettes and everything.
And then towards 11:00, there's this thing called sundowners where when the sun starts to set elderly people get less all-there and mentally healthy. So he forgot who Josh was again, and was confused and thought he was someone he already knew and that he was home, so he was really nice all of a sudden! Yay! And then yeah.
And then someone came in to watch him for nightshift and Josh said, "Have fun." And he was gone. These are the reasons why I could never, ever work at a hospital. I think I'd have yelled at the man and stormed out. I have zero patience.
That is my story. Actually Josh's story. I hope it entertained you. I basically typed it exactly as he said it out loud but changed the pronouns and I ignord this awkward part about how the guy kept having to go to the bathroom, but wasn't supposed to b/c of some medical term I don't remember but made sense at the time. (Josh left to go back to class. I'm now alone again. And bored.)
This post had nothing to do with romantics. I'm sorry if you were looking forward to that. But you did get to hear a story about a "pleasantly confused" man. And about how much tabloids lie. Because they only talk about what people want to hear...Actually I should expand on that in a later post. I could do it now but I don't really feel like it, because I've probably made you read enough by now.
Toodles!
Sunday, January 9, 2011
The Trouble with Hollywood [Endings]
My dear friend Alex, who knows me better than anyone, told me a little anecdote about something that happened to her the other day. She said, "I was walking down the hall, carrying way too much stuff, and this super handsome man came and opened the door for me. This being real life, I didn't register it until I was already through the door and on my way."
We went on to talk about how this was just a jab at how "real life is not like the movies" because if it had been the movies, there would have been one of those moments where he and she looked each other in the eye and there was a connection and then he'd try to win her over with sappy songs and coffee and they'd get married and live happily ever after. Because he was attractive. And we lamented that real life is nothing like the movies because she didn't think about that nor did she make eye contact until it was too late.
THIS IS PROBLEMATIC ON SO MANY LEVELS. First of all, this is in no way an indicator of how Alex and I conduct ourselves on a daily basis. Of course we don't sit around like freaks and compare our lives to movies...we definitely do not plan out our marriages with our celebrity crushes...we most certainly do not waste valuable time daydreaming and planning and plotting how to make these things happen. We're normal..........
Second of all (because even though the first of all wasn't a real problem, I still have to follow it with 'second of all' and I really don't feel like going back to edit out the 'first of all' because I like the way it sounds. So there.) there is a serious problem with the fact that he DIDN'T look her in the eye, make a connection, fall madly in love with her, and spend days on end trying to win her heart over and convince her that his love is sincere, miraculously overcoming the pitfalls of an unnecessarily complicated life story.
Do you see where this is going? The real problem here is how movies have conditioned society to have completely unrealistic expectations about themselves. Mostly me. I started this blog to talk about how much I condemn society for being ridiculous and I'm already a failure. The problem is, I'm as much of a sucker for it as anyone. It's a flaw I will never forgive myself for.
So as I sit here eating the chocolate covered peppermint sticks I'm supposed to put in hot chocolate except I don't really feel like making hot chocolate, I ponder the problem with Hollywood Endings. It is a given that in any romance movie (Except "My Best Friend's Wedding", do NOT sit down with that one expecting an HE. You won't get it) there will be a heroine who has some kind of major crisis in her live, she will conveniently and usually by accident meet the perfect man, she will not want to believe he is perfect at first but he will be madly in love with her and court her persistently, frequently with corny and extravagant gestures of affection, and finally, they would overcome some huge difficulty and realize they're madly in love with each other.
In case you haven't noticed, I have just outlined the plot of several romantic comedies. If you're reading this going, "Oh! That sounds exactly like this movie!" then I hate to break it to you but you too are a sucker for the romcoms. Oh Hollywood, what have you done to our souls?
I don't actually remember where I was going with this post, because it's been worked on over the course of a week. Let me scroll up.
Oh yes.
Hollywood blows. We all walk around living our lives hoping that something romantic and fantastic and amazing will happen that will change our lives forever. But the reality is, if a cute guy stops and holds the door for you, he is simply a cute guy stopping to hold the door for you, not The One. And I haven't decided yet if the fault lies with Hollywood for creating such false expectations, or with life for not living up to them.
We went on to talk about how this was just a jab at how "real life is not like the movies" because if it had been the movies, there would have been one of those moments where he and she looked each other in the eye and there was a connection and then he'd try to win her over with sappy songs and coffee and they'd get married and live happily ever after. Because he was attractive. And we lamented that real life is nothing like the movies because she didn't think about that nor did she make eye contact until it was too late.
THIS IS PROBLEMATIC ON SO MANY LEVELS. First of all, this is in no way an indicator of how Alex and I conduct ourselves on a daily basis. Of course we don't sit around like freaks and compare our lives to movies...we definitely do not plan out our marriages with our celebrity crushes...we most certainly do not waste valuable time daydreaming and planning and plotting how to make these things happen. We're normal..........
Second of all (because even though the first of all wasn't a real problem, I still have to follow it with 'second of all' and I really don't feel like going back to edit out the 'first of all' because I like the way it sounds. So there.) there is a serious problem with the fact that he DIDN'T look her in the eye, make a connection, fall madly in love with her, and spend days on end trying to win her heart over and convince her that his love is sincere, miraculously overcoming the pitfalls of an unnecessarily complicated life story.
Do you see where this is going? The real problem here is how movies have conditioned society to have completely unrealistic expectations about themselves. Mostly me. I started this blog to talk about how much I condemn society for being ridiculous and I'm already a failure. The problem is, I'm as much of a sucker for it as anyone. It's a flaw I will never forgive myself for.
So as I sit here eating the chocolate covered peppermint sticks I'm supposed to put in hot chocolate except I don't really feel like making hot chocolate, I ponder the problem with Hollywood Endings. It is a given that in any romance movie (Except "My Best Friend's Wedding", do NOT sit down with that one expecting an HE. You won't get it) there will be a heroine who has some kind of major crisis in her live, she will conveniently and usually by accident meet the perfect man, she will not want to believe he is perfect at first but he will be madly in love with her and court her persistently, frequently with corny and extravagant gestures of affection, and finally, they would overcome some huge difficulty and realize they're madly in love with each other.
In case you haven't noticed, I have just outlined the plot of several romantic comedies. If you're reading this going, "Oh! That sounds exactly like this movie!" then I hate to break it to you but you too are a sucker for the romcoms. Oh Hollywood, what have you done to our souls?
I don't actually remember where I was going with this post, because it's been worked on over the course of a week. Let me scroll up.
Oh yes.
Hollywood blows. We all walk around living our lives hoping that something romantic and fantastic and amazing will happen that will change our lives forever. But the reality is, if a cute guy stops and holds the door for you, he is simply a cute guy stopping to hold the door for you, not The One. And I haven't decided yet if the fault lies with Hollywood for creating such false expectations, or with life for not living up to them.
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