I can't believe I'm about to admit this in a public setting-even if it's in my own blog, which I am absolutely, 100% convinced no one I know is actually going to read-but ever since I broke down and went to see "Eclipse" I've found myself getting hooked on the "Twilight" series.
Considering how low my opinion of that series is in the first place, that's saying something. Before I roll into raptures and you sit there with this, "Oh God, she's almost 30, what the hell?" look on your face, let me break it down. I think the series was poorly written. Reading it was like watching a train wreck. You knew it was a disaster, it was going to end badly and there was nothing you could do to stop it, but you just couldn't look away. You HAD to know what happened.
It wasn't because the characters were particularly loveable. Edward was...well, in my personal opinion there was nothing redeeming about Edward. He was an overbearing freak who manipulated Bella left, right and sideways. And Bella was a spineless pushover who stayed with the manipulating freak over, and over, and over again when she should have walked away. In the first two books it was easy to excuse her stupidity. She was young, and that type of devotion is incredibly flattering when you're in high school. She hadn't seen any of the real world, she wasn't old enough to make decisions that would last forever, and you assumed that sooner or later she was going to grow up and get over it.
Oh, don't I wish.
The catch is, I found myself REALLY liking Jacob. It was funny, because as I saw in another post, Jacob was only ever meant to be a supporting character. There was never meant to be a sequel to "Twilight", so he didn't play a huge role in the first book, and it was supposed to be incredibly obvious that he was always second best to Edward. I get that. The problem was, he was so much more LIKEABLE than the leech. He had personality, strength of character, and he made Bella seem more like a person and less of a porcelein doll, standing there with a blank smile on her face as she waited for someone to take her arms and tell her where to move. I honestly, truly saw Bella that way for the entirety of the series except when she was with Jake in New Moon, and I have to admit, I wasn't impressed.
The way they made "Eclipse", however, shifted the focus from the whole Bella and Edward and Bella's going to die (again) to the way Jacob felt about her, and how they were together compared to how she was with Edward, and I began to see a little bit of hope. What if you rewrote the series, and Bella could actually learn to love what was good for her? What if she decided to kick Edward's ass to the curb, which we were all just dying to see her do? Because really, who just welcomes their boyfriend back after he walks out on them like that? Who doesn't kick him in the ass for trying to kill himself after he screwed things up in the first place?
And oh, personal rant, because you have to look at the way Edward threatened suicide to get the girl back and see how that affected teenagers across the planet. Millions of teenaged girls swooned over the fact that he didn't want to live in a world without Bella. What kind of message does that give teenaged boys? That suicide makes them this dire, romantic hero? Oh. My. God. There's really nothing I can say to that. He was immature and stupid, and Bella let that influence her choices.
But what if she chose Jake? Suddenly these great, romantic possibilities open up. A whole future she could enjoy as a person rather than an automaton. Don't get me wrong, I love me some vampires. If she had a good relationship with Edward then we could have cheered when he came back, but Jake was SOOO much better for her. I look at that, consider what Jacob Black would be like when the boy became a man, and find myself captivated by the possibilities and the happily-ever-after none of them are ever going to get.
And so, I've been Twilighted. I've found myself digging for fanfictions that put Jacob and Bella together, just to see the story go the way it should have gone if Stephanie Meyer had decided to give Bella a REAL relationship instead of the tragic father-daughter, Romeo and Juliet thing she had going with Edward. I've figured out what the obsession is. I hate to see things end without a happy ending. I was sucked into Stargate SG-1 fanfic because they never put Jack and Sam together. I got sucked into Buffy fanfiction because, let's face it, when it's Joss Whedon NOBODY gets a happily-ever-after. And now I'm reading Twilight fanfic because Bella had a choice to make, and she's choosing wrong.
I guess somewhere, deep down, I'm still just a hopeless romantic at heart.
No comments:
Post a Comment