It was better than the book (duh) and better than Twilight. Two reasons: a) there's more funny (the Face Punch scene was a laugh riot) and b) less Edward (Note: Jacob's character doesn't get ruined until Book 3.)

But what this movie really taught me was that I am falling, unconditionally and irrevocably, in love. With Charlie Swan.



I hope someday you find a woman that appreciates you, Charlie. Also your stache is awesome.

I do a guest review of some special Twilight merchandise over here.

One of the things about that I find interesting about the books is that they have all the initial trappings of a fairy story or morality tale, without the usually-inevitable dark side. You can see the default pattern in stories from all over the world: a beautiful sparkly fairy world will always turn out to be some sort of trap. The weirdly handsome guy that inexplicably likes you is probably the devil; the mysterious beautiful maiden will probably drag you underground in some way or another. Obviously it's not just a Christian idea, because you can see it in Islamic (your impossibly beautiful foreign wife turns out to be a ghoul) and pagan Greek (like, um, all of the Odyssey) culture as well. In general, you mess around with unnatural beings, you pay a huge price.

In the Twilight books, it just doesn’t happen, although you keep expecting it to. The impossibly good thing that happen turn out to be... impossibly good. The whole 'price' of vampirism (that you don't get to have a normal life and reproduce) turns out to not be true, if you're sufficiently awesome enough.

What I'm wondering is: although it seems weird upon reading it, is this 'hey, there really is no catch' attitude actually such a bad thing? I mean, maybe it is a bit odd to base a such a large part of humanity's storytelling on the idea that ‘everything that looks good is really bad.’ On the other hand, could thousands of years of tradition have got it so wrong? There obviously must be some merit to this kind of story if it's so ubiquitous.

Without jumping on the 'OMG MORMON VAMPIRES' bandwagon, it'd also be interesting to know if the difference has anything to do with SMeyer's cultural background.

(In other Twilight news, I unfortunately couldn't make it to Port Angeles for the festival thing. It turned out to be a choice between taking a trip there and and going to see Woven Hand and the Old 97's in Seattle, and despite my feelings about Seattle, I would ultimately rather spend time on stuff that I actually like in a non-ironic way.)

This was kind of the weekend we were planning on going anyway.

IS IT SOME SORT OF SIGN?

(In all seriousness though, it does mess with my plans a bit because Twilight fans are actually quite terrifying. See this video for an example.

On the other hand, TWILIGHT WEDDINGS.)

In other news, the results of my scientific poll have told me that I should indeed travel to Forks. Unfortunately it's a six-hour round trip, and I want to get a bit more comfortable with driving here first. I don't want my relatives to be eternally ashamed when they explain to people the exact circumstances under which I died in a car wreck.

Not much internet presence lately. I have been very busy with the America move. More details later. For now, a poll for the 21 people who have asked me about this:

Poll #1444227
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

SHOULD I VISIT THE TOWN THAT SHALL NOT BE NAMED?

WHAT SHOULD I DO THERE? PLEASE PROVIDE EXAMPLES.

DO YOU LIKE PIE

This is one of my favorites despite all the safety rules they are breaking. Some people are just TOO HARDCORE for safety rules.

Anyway:



This is a difficult question for me, because the books don't say how tall Jasper Hale is.

...that she put up on her facebook profile. And some random dude commented that it looked like it came from the next Twilight movie.

And of course, after that, I had no choice but to do this to it:


I then suggested she send it back to her photographer with the message "Here, I made your photo even better!" but so far she hasn't listened.

I watched True Blood. Um, it's pretty good, I guess. A seven, maybe?

I don't know, I got tired of the "all conservatives are ignorant, closet homosexual bigots" thing after the first couple of times it happened on the show. (Actually, I got tired of it after the 35 000 times I saw on other shows.) I mean, I have it on good account that no more than 40% of conservatives are ignorant, closeted homosexual bigots.

I guess I will keep watching this season just in case Terry gets a bigger role.
 

YAY I AM ON THE FRONT PAGE OF CRACKED.

On a related note: last night I said to myself: "Self, I feel like reading. I think I will read this informative book on the influence of the Babylonian exile on Jewish creation myths." Of course, I then put aside the book and started reading Midnight Sun instead.

What kept it amusing for the 50 pages I got through was a) Jasper and b) keeping a mental tally of every time Stephenie Meyer uses the word 'chagrin'.


CURRENT CHAGRIN COUNT: 3

I think I will start writing Twilight fanfiction.

Supernatural is out because it doesn't have any female characters.

Just received this comment on the Twilight page on Cracked:

I mention this because now I've actually been flamed for being a Twilight fan and for being Twilight hater in the same week; I think this is some kind of record.

( This calls for my favorite Twilight image. )

You know, I think what bothers me most about extreme Twilight hate is that it reveals how little people seem to know about women.

Apparently, teenage girls in America were floating around in a state of tabula rasa innocence until Stephenie Meyer forced them at literary gunpoint to suddenly become attracted to creepy, stalker-y, alpha guys. The most fanatical anti-Twilight reactions (and of course there is also a lot of sensible, understandable anti-Twilight sentiment) therefore consist of one of two things:

1) Laughing at the fat, desperate girls that inexplicably love Edward Cullen for no reason, because they're stupid

2) Cursing Stephenie Meyer for polluting the minds of teenage girls and suggesting she should have to serve time in a women's shelter for her crime (no, really.)

The fact that Wuthering Heights (which one of the Twilight novels is based on and which has a creepy, stalkery, murder-y male lead) has endured in massive popularity for centuries doesn't seem to register, nor does the billion-dollar romance novel industry which features nothing but creepy, stalkery guys.

( Nor the fact that women are, you know, obviously biologically programmed to like this kind of thing... )

Today I had a discussion in class with my students about Twilight.

Apparently it's big in Korea.

In other news, I FINISHED BREAKING DAWN. Freaking FINALLY. Completed summary is here.

Anyway, so Stephenie Meyer has a brother. I thought if she was an only child it would at least give her an excuse not to fully understand the psychological depths of the Westermarck effect.

Not that it would have much of an effect on Jacob I guess, because he's cursed. But for the poor baby... urgh. What the hell is Bella thinking letting that guy around her? "Oh, it's not like Jacob would ever use his ridiculous size and strength to force himself on a clearly unwilling - OH WAIT."

Double ew.

(Yeah, I'm aware that I'm probably the only one that actually got far enough in the series to understand this post.)

Since before I can remember, there has been something missing in my life. I have tried to fill this hole with friends, family, love, religion, and masked crimefighting, but now I know what was really missing. It was Blingee.com.

Blingee.com, aka the pinnacle of the Internet, allowed me to make images like this :



( more... )

I love you, Blingee.com. I love you.

My updated review on Cracked.

Also, I wrote a cracked.com page on Supernatural!

I won a T-shirt for the Twilight page I co-wrote, but I am way more proud of this one! Particularly ( the Supernatural female character flow chart! )

I wrote a short summary/review of it here.