![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
{several rounds of helping people pack for a move, LJ's political issues with its demographics, the phone service for the ENTIRE BLOCK going out, and the technoparanoia of login quirkiness later...} So, um, the Twilight thing, yes, I've struggled on all the way to the end of the fourth book. I think that the experience can be summed up thusly:
Which, aside from that it wasn't RE sexual content, is more or less the look I could feel settling onto my face as I read. 'Cos, no matter what you've heard about it... these books are actually even weirder in person. Much, much weirder. Towards the end it's as if the writer is looking around for walls that she hasn't yet rammed the story into and backing up for a good running start. I think I can honestly say that I've never seen anything like it that wasn't done on purpose, because, damn, it's hard to squeeze ten pounds of WTF? into a five-pound sack like that.
In the final analysis I think that what I found to be bothering me the most about these books, leaving the issue of basic writing-quality aside as something of a red herring, was the mindset of the writer. It's clear that she's reasoned out her story from first-principles that are different from values that I happen to hold; the impression that I'm also left with is that she is unaware of the boundaries of her box, or indeed that she's in one and it's not necessarily the same box that everyone else is. She presents as givens ideas that should be arguments, and by making no attempt to engage with the implications renders her vision of the world curiously flat even for YA literature, which isn't always the most nuanced storytelling simply because of its intended audience but at its best does at least usually try to present more than one viewpoint.
What I found particularly, well, offensive, I guess, in a philosophical sense, was the constant emphasis on perfection. And that Bella saw herself as lesser because, as a human, she was not perfect. She can only be content once she has died to her human life and ascended into a more desirable state.
I am not even going to freaking get into the message this sends to adolescent girls about body image. (Hopefully, the internet being the internet, that's already been covered elsewhere, because if I'm the only one seeing it then I really do weep for the future.) No, actually, the thing that bugs me is that this is a familiar old theological argument. Humanity is flawed, and fallen, and not to be mourned once one has got shut of it. And... where does that leave the rest of us?
I suppose the bloody Left Behind books would be a logical segue from here, but I'm not nearly that much of a glutton for punishment. So I went ahead and got The Fountainhead out of the library after all, because if this is going to be the summer of reading things that annoy me so I can blog about them, that's at least a contrasting sort of WTF? to have a go at. Pray for me...
Which, aside from that it wasn't RE sexual content, is more or less the look I could feel settling onto my face as I read. 'Cos, no matter what you've heard about it... these books are actually even weirder in person. Much, much weirder. Towards the end it's as if the writer is looking around for walls that she hasn't yet rammed the story into and backing up for a good running start. I think I can honestly say that I've never seen anything like it that wasn't done on purpose, because, damn, it's hard to squeeze ten pounds of WTF? into a five-pound sack like that.
In the final analysis I think that what I found to be bothering me the most about these books, leaving the issue of basic writing-quality aside as something of a red herring, was the mindset of the writer. It's clear that she's reasoned out her story from first-principles that are different from values that I happen to hold; the impression that I'm also left with is that she is unaware of the boundaries of her box, or indeed that she's in one and it's not necessarily the same box that everyone else is. She presents as givens ideas that should be arguments, and by making no attempt to engage with the implications renders her vision of the world curiously flat even for YA literature, which isn't always the most nuanced storytelling simply because of its intended audience but at its best does at least usually try to present more than one viewpoint.
What I found particularly, well, offensive, I guess, in a philosophical sense, was the constant emphasis on perfection. And that Bella saw herself as lesser because, as a human, she was not perfect. She can only be content once she has died to her human life and ascended into a more desirable state.
I am not even going to freaking get into the message this sends to adolescent girls about body image. (Hopefully, the internet being the internet, that's already been covered elsewhere, because if I'm the only one seeing it then I really do weep for the future.) No, actually, the thing that bugs me is that this is a familiar old theological argument. Humanity is flawed, and fallen, and not to be mourned once one has got shut of it. And... where does that leave the rest of us?
I suppose the bloody Left Behind books would be a logical segue from here, but I'm not nearly that much of a glutton for punishment. So I went ahead and got The Fountainhead out of the library after all, because if this is going to be the summer of reading things that annoy me so I can blog about them, that's at least a contrasting sort of WTF? to have a go at. Pray for me...