My blog is now two years old. Dang. *deep breath* Here’s to many more years!
Here is some lols (all found thanks to the Impish Idea Forums except the chem test pics):
1. Twilight Review on Cracked.com – I don’t think I’ve read anything so funny in a long time, and I’ve read many funny things concerning Twilight.
2. More Twilight Lulz – A wonderful, concise, and accurate comic summarizing New Moon.
3. Whale Chem Test and Owl Chem Test – Courtesy of Perla. I have never loled so much at one time. I was almost crying. If ANYONE does anything like this on a chem test, he/she will automatically become my hero.
4.
Oh Paolini. You are so nerdy and amusing in a sad way.
The New Moon trailer’s out. *GIGGLESQUEEGIGGLE* /sarcasm. In case you haven’t seen the joyous masterpiece yet, here it is (what a great default video picture, a half naked Taylor Lautner >.<):
Okay, dissection time. This dissection/critique is a little long because for some reason, I took it upon myself to comment on everything possible. If you are a hardcore Twifan reading this and take it upon yourself to try and refute everything I say/mention, please note that I will most likely not reply, and your opinions will not change mine. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinions, and this is mine about Twilight in general and the trailer. However, if I made mistakes concerning the trailer or the books, corrections for them are welcome.
Side note: TTM stands for Twilight the Musical, which is the most amazing parody of Twilight I have ever seen. I will be randomly quoting it throughout this, so if you want to understand what I’m talking about, check it out at: http://www.twilightthemusical.com (it’s still a work in progress).
Okay, so the trailer starts out with a panning over of scenery, blah de blah who cares. There’s ominous music playing in the background. It doesn’t take a really pretentious person to figure out that there’s a premonition of something bad. Scene change to nighttime, where Bella’s red truck drives into the scene (TTM: “I got you a truck. It was really cheap, like you”).
0:14
Bella: “It’s my birthday, can I ask for something? ….Kiss me.”
And then proceeds what has to be the most unemotional kiss that ever existed in the history of movies. Seriously, I thought Edward and Bella had no compatibility on paper, and now on the big screen, every time they get together it seems like the compatibility factor decreases by ten. It’s probably hit the negatives by now. I mean, I understand that this was supposed to be an “aww such a loving couple” scene, but the lack of emotion from both sides just makes it extremely bland.
0:22
Bella: “I love you.”
Those three words probably had even less emotion than the kiss, if possible. This is turning out to be a great trailer already…
0:24
Edward: “You’re my only reason to stay. Alive, if that’s what I am”
You say that, but you really don’t look like you mean it. In fact, you’re practically emotionless. Here the Twifans go “but he’s a VAMPIRE!! He has an excuse for being practically emotionless!” Well that may be true, but seriously, Edward/RPatts looks like he’d rather be anywhere but there, and thus the romance aspect of the whole movie starts to fall apart since the actors/actresses don’t even sound/look like they’re in love.
0:30
Scene change to Bella’s birthday party at the Cullens. All the Cullens are there (TTM: “Edward, Emmett, Alice, Jasper, Carlisle, Esme, Rosalie”) Alice is all excited about the party, informing Bella about her presents and her cake. At least Alice is portrayed by an actress who can show emotions. Kudos to you, Ashley Greene.
0:36 Bella: “Alice, that cake could feed fifty, and you guys don’t even eat.”
Oh Kristen Stewart, I love how you even carry out even potentially humorous lines with the same monotonous voice that you proclaim your love for Edward with, although it does fit Bella’s monotonous personality in the books (EDWARD I LOVE YOU MARRY ME), so maybe KStew’s doing a good job. *Shrug*
0:42
Bella: “Ow, papercut.”
OH NO Bella gets a paper cut (TTM: “I’m so clumsy and begrudgingly in love!”). There’s a closeup of KStew’s face, emotionless as ever (wait, is that a slight grimace I see? Oh, good job KStew, progress!). The music gets darker and louder, signaling soon-coming action. A drop of Bella’s blood falls ever-so-dramatically to the carpeted floor. Jasper freaks out and starts vampysprinting towards Bella, Edward goes D: and pushes Bella away (a little forcefully I might say, it seems she fell into the table) while whirling around and throwing Jasper back, resulting in him crashing into the piano (the poor piano!). Oh, joyful action. Actually, I think the only thing that made the scene suspenseful was the music. The rest was just like “…okay wow, lame, next.” Insert the Twifans who go “but they’re VAMPIRES, and Jasper can’t control himself, so it adds to the suspense!! Bella could have seriously gotten hurt!” Yea, seriously, stop playing the vampire pity card. I think Bella got more hurt by being shoved into a table than by what Jasper might have done. And honestly, come on, we ALL knew Edward would be there saving her sorry, clumsy ass. There’s no suspense if you know the outcome.
0:52
Bella: “What happened with Jasper is nothing.”
Edward: “Nothing compared to what could have happened, and I promise to never put you through anything like this ever again. This is the last time you’ll ever see me.”
Scene change to a forest. Okay first off, I have to comment on the facial expressions through this whole conversation. Good old RPatts has his constipation face back on. KStew, on the other hand, has a face that says “okay let me attempt to look heartbroken so that we can end this scene already, and then I can go home at long last and get the hell away from this set and movie.” No emotion whatsoever, as usual. No wonder her only friend is a cactus (TTM reference). But yea, back to the trailer. Edward leaves Bella with yet another unemotional kiss on the head and leaves. And all the Twifans start to bawl.
Seriously, I think I’m going to go into the movie theater when New Moon comes out with a jar to collect change. Donate your tears of sadness and longing to charity! Ten cents for every tear that falls because you miss your Edward. Twenty-five if it’s just a single tear.
1:09
Good job Edward, you left your ex girlfriend standing in the middle of a forest, where potential predators *cough* could be lurking. Now Bella’s all heartbroken (or pretending to be at least, on KStew’s part) and is reduced to a crying wreck on the forest floor. I have a feeling this won’t turn out well.
1:13
Laurent: “How much could you mean to him if he left you here, unprotected? But I can’t help myself. You are so… mouthwatering…”
Woo, my feeling turned out to be right, though I suppose it was a rather obvious prediction. So yea, Laurent somehow finds Bella, and now they’re in the middle of some sort of clearing. Bella’s standing there looking impassive and dumbfounded as usual. And now Laurent wants to eat her. Literally. Blood-red eyes and all. Way to go Edward, what good judgment you have! …Wait, I thought vampires’ eyes got black when they were bloodthirsty? Oh well, who pays attention to the details in the book anyway? And uh, Bella why are you just standing there while he’s fondling your face? What happened to the flight stimulator in your body that should have been urging you to get out of the dangerous situation? Here the Twifans go “but she was rooted to the ground by fear! And she’s heartbroken!” Okay, really? She had enough courage (and stupidity) to go try and fight James in the first movie, who was much more potentially dangerous I believe. Now she can’t even try to get away from Laurent? Also, I highly doubt there is one person here that would not at least attempt to get away from or fight a person who was threatening to kill you. Heartbroken or not, I’m pretty positive there’s some intuition inside you that would tell you to freaking RUN, no matter how scared you were.
Oh wait, this is the world of Twilight, I forgot. Since Mary Sues can’t die, I suppose somebody will just have to come and save Bella.
1:25
Cue TLaut to the rescue! My prediction was correct, yet again, and he has his regular hair back. I guess the producers got flooded with letters complaining about his fake hair. Good thing too because it looked ridiculous anyway.
So Jacob appears and sprints toward Bella, Laurent gets distracted, Bella turns and flees while yelling at Jacob to run, and Jacob dramatically shifts into a werewolf and lands on all fours, snarling at Laurent. Cue Team Jacob screaming. I guarantee you when I go see New Moon, this will be one scene that results in a mass of screaming females. And that’s why I’m reminding myself to bring earmuffs.
I have to admit though, as much as I don’t like Twilight or the rest of the trailer, those last few seconds were actually somewhat gripping.
Anyway, thus ends the wonderful New Moon trailer. New Moon is unfortunately coming to a theater near you on November 20, 2009. I can’t believe I just spent an hour of my life writing up this three page long critique. I think I shall go off to do something useful, like perhaps my history homework, and try to get rid of this Twilight madness from my brain.
I shall leave you all with one last TTM quote: “Cold things can’t feel love.”
I was perusing the April 2009 edition of Nintendo Power when something caught my eye. ‘Lo and behold, was it true? An anti-Twilight fan had written in to Nintendo Power? As I looked closer, my glee was confirmed. Here is what a part of the reader’s letter said (in a section asking what movie people would like to see as a Wii or DS game):
“The movie I would want turned into a game is Twilight…NOT! I know this is a bit off topic, but I can’t stand that book/movie. Nothing against fans of Twilight, but I can’t imagine a gamer liking the awful thing…” -Twilighthater
There was a little more to the letter, but that was the part that made me one very happy camper. Twilighthater, whoever you are and wherever you are in the world, keep on hating. Many kudos to you for getting anti-Twilight into Nintendo Power, which is an extremely impressive feat.
While I’m on the topic of twihate, check out http://www.impishidea.com I’ve advertised them before, but I feel like doing it again anyway. If you’re a Twilight hater and you don’t know about Impish Idea, you have no idea what you’re missing out on.
I got bored and happened to glance upon the back of Eldest. There I saw a plethora of “praise” for Eldest’s prequel Eragon. I had never bothered to read the “praise” before for any book, so I skimmed through them, and some of the lines I felt I just had to comment on.
“Unusual, powerful, fresh, and fluid. An impressive start to a writing career that’s sure to flourish.” -Booklist, Starred
-Let me just say that the four adjectives used to describe Eragon contain a little too much bravado for the book itself. Unusual and fresh? I think not; the book was littered with all the usual clichés. Powerful? Yes, Eragon was a rather powerful Gary-Stu. Fluid? The book flowed like mud – if Eragon were a movie, the use of the “fade out” transition would be a little overused …oh wait…
“Will appeal to the legions of readers who have been captivated by the Lord of the Rings trilogy.” -School Library Journal
-I don’t think many Lord of the Rings fans will be “captivated” by Eragon because they will open up the book, see the millions of LOTR parallels within the book, and be slightly annoyed. I mean, seriously, Arya is clearly Arwen (speaking of Arwen, there’s also a lake called Ardwen Lake), the history of the elves is extremely similar to LOTR, Orik is Gimli, Brom is Gandalf, Eragon has the weight of the world on his shoulders much like Frodo…all you need is a ring instead of Saphira and a few short humans and you’d have LOTR in a nutshell in Eragon. Also, the last time I checked, the average age of the LOTR fan base is quite a bit higher than the average age of the Inheritance fan base.
“An auspicious beginning to both career and series.” – Publishers Weekly
-Too bad the “auspicious beginning” never proved to be very auspicious, well, at least the series didn’t. It got from the alright to the bad to the ugly. I at least could walk through Eragon and crawl through Eldest, but I was drowning in seas of flamboyant description and boredom in Brisingr.
“Christopher Paolini make[s] literary magic with his precocious debut.” – People
-*Snort* *Choke* What? Literary magic? Precocious? A much used saying around the land of the anti’s is that Eragon is published average fan fiction, which I agree with. Precocious indeed. And now he’s what, 23 I think, yet his writing style hasn’t matured at all. Then again, I don’t think he has either, so I guess I can’t blame his writing style solely then. As for literary magic, I have nothing to say to that. The word choice does make me giggle though.
I then went on to my next least-favorite series: Twilight. One glance at Breaking Dawn’s back cover had me lose faith in humanity very fast.
“[A] near-genius balance of breathtaking romance and action,” -VOYA
-Hm…my memory isn’t the best, but from what I remember, New Moon was where Edward became a dick and thought his actions would be the best and thus moved away for most of the book, was it not? Therefore “breathtaking romance” is not the first way I would describe New Moon because it was the one book in the series that lacked the gooey, sappy romance (for most of the book anyway). Action: oh yea there was definitely some action going on when Bella tried to commit suicide. Anti’s were probably cheering and jumping for joy during that part, but unfortunately she lived. Ah well, you can’t always get what you want in life. Otherwise New Moon was rather monotonous – Bella hung around with Jacob, started to cheat on Edward in her mind, and then became all angsty. I think I summed up a good portion of the book right there, and “breathtaking romance and action” was definitely not used anywhere.
“Move over, Harry Potter.” – USA Today
-’Scuse me? Harry Potter will not budge, thank you very much. Whoever thinks that Eclipse is even slightly capable of overtaking Harry Potter needs to start opening their eyes and looking at reality. Harry Potter is a phenomenon; Twilight is lucky fiction.
“[Meyer is] the world’s most popular vampire novelist since Anne Rice.” – Entertainment Weekly
-Only because Meyer combined aspects of fantasy with drama and the typical teenage girl’s dream. What if Edward had an unsightly mole on his nose? What if he were disabled? What if he actually looked like he was 100? What if he didn’t sparkle? What if he just wasn’t …perfect? *gasp* Do you think Twilight would have the same amount of readers then?
“An exciting page-turner….This tale of tortured demon lovers entices.” – Kirkus
-Ahahaha. They called Bella a tortured demon. Loool. And yea, it definitely is a page-turner, especially when you’re flipping through the pages really fast because you can’t endure the brick of a book any longer and you just want it to end.
What a nice note to end the day on (I wrote this last night before I went to bed). Inheritance and Twilight hate, yay!
PS: I find it funny that people will put “I don’t read” in the “Favorite Books” section of Facebook. Clearly you definitely don’t read because you don’t read anything for school, you don’t read instructions, you don’t read labels at shops, and you don’t read signs while driving your car. And you’re definitely not reading this.
Okay so I saw the Twilight movie last night and I have to admit, it was the biggest failure and waste of my time. Since the books aren’t too great I kind of saw this coming, but even my expectations were ever so slightly higher than the performance that I received. I couldn’t help but try not to laugh throughout the whole thing. I also boo-ed at the end. If anyone else did, kudos to you.
First off, before I address the actual movie, I have to address the fanbase. WHY CAN YOU NOT STOP SCREAMING OVER EDWARD?! Honestly people, he may be the amaaazing guy of your dreams, but chill out! The whole beginning part of the movie I was ready to shoot some people in the back of the theater. The movie starts: *AAAAAAAAH* Bella appears: *AAAAAAAAH* (who’d scream for her? She’s an asshole. Haha Sam you let me see the light). The Cullens appear: *AAAAAAAAAAAAAH* And Edward appearing: hooooly crap. My ears blew out. That and when they kissed – those had to be the two worst screaming parts.
Seriously though, it’s a wonder how you people don’t lose your voices. I don’t understand either why the fans HAVE to scream at everything. Yes, Robert Pattinson’s good looking, and yes Twilight may have been the book of your wildest fantasies, but then again, in Harry Potter, Daniel Radcliffe’s good looking, and the HP book series were to some people the books of their wildest fantasies, and yet whenever I go to a Harry Potter movie the crowd is quiet, respectable, and DOESN’T SCREAM OVER EVERY LITTLE STUPID THING. Grow up and shut up people.
Alright, now to the actual movie. The main reason the movie sucked, besides it being based off a sucky book, was because of the acting. Kristen Stewart had the same apathetic acting throughout the whole thing. I don’t know if she was bored or if she didn’t really want to play Bella, but whatever the case may be, her acting was ridiculously horrible. She never seemed to portray ANY emotion whatsoever to dear old Pattinson, and her smiles were all “oh I don’t really want to smile but I guess I’ll force myself to for the camera”-type smiles. Even Bella in the books had a more diverse ensemble of emotions than Stewart. She had the same “I don’t care” expression on her face throughout the whooole thing. The parts where she attempted to be upset and mad were extremely unimpressive. Pattinson’s performance was not much better, but he hates Twilight so his awesome level negates his bad performance. Plus he mentioned that he deliberately tried to portray Edward as “as a manic-depressive who hates himself,” which I believe he managed to get down. However, Kristen Stewart has no excuse for being horrible. All the other characters, such as Emmett, Alice, and Charlie, were very well portrayed by their actors/actresses (Charlie was amazing), but the main characters were not. How ironic.
Next off: the whole entire movie seemed like a giant soap opera. It didn’t really have a movie feel. I know it was intentionally made with a “different” feel, but it gave off such an alien feeling at the end that I think it became a little too different. It jumped from point A to point B all the time without a really full transition to link the scenes together. If I hadn’t read the books, I honestly think I would have lost the actual plot before the movie was even half over. Oh wait, Twilight has no plot. It’s just all sappy romance and EDWARD I LOVE YOU. My bad.
I’m not going to compare the book to the movie because books are always better than their movie counterparts (and, grudgingly, in Twilight’s case as well). I think the movie followed the book pretty well (horrible romance: check, Bella being an obvious Mary Sue: check, Edward being a creeper: check, “epic” fight scene: check), so fans of the book who are going to see it for the sake of the novel won’t be displeased.
Overall, the movie was just ridiculously humorous in my opinion because it sucked so much. Anyone who sees it and honestly thinks it’s good really needs a nice whack in the head that will hopefully put their brain cells back in the right place. Even if you’re a fan of the book series, I don’t see how in the world you would have considered the movie remotely good. I think most fans like it because they got to see their beloved Edward and Jacob on the big screen, but quite honestly, if that’s what you go to see a movie for and if that’s what you base your rating of the movie off of, that’s slightly sad. Then again, that’s what most of the Twilight fanbase is like. Screw the plot and writing style, we just want hot guys and romance!
Oh I nearly forgot, THEY PUT IN THE SPARKLING, although I was expecting more than a slight shimmer. They should have dunked his head in glitter or something. Now THAT would be the sparkling I expected. However, since they did include the sparkling, the movie gets a +1. It was already at around -9000 in my opinion though, so the +1 doesn’t help it very much.
One last thing: I did not hear River Flows in You by Yiruma anywhere in the movie. I don’t know how it got spread around that it was going to be used, but the song I heard in the Edward’s Lullaby part definitely wasn’t it. I also noticed Pattinson’s a little clumsy at the piano, whereas he’s supposed to be graceful and at ease in the books. It made me giggle inside.
There you go. My general views on the failage that is the Twilight movie. At least the performance was consistent with the books: they both sucked!
–
EDIT: Kristen Stewart, your bad performance has now also been compensated for due to this:
‘Even as small crowds of the books’ fans would follow from one outdoor location to another, she says she “kept her head down the entire way.”
“I just didn’t pay attention,” Stewart recalls. “I was like, ‘You guys are celebrating something that has not come true yet. So, you are really retarded and have nothing to do with this creative process and I really don’t want to hear you celebrate in front of me. Get out of here! It’s my responsibility!’”
Already an industry veteran at 18 with roles in films such as “Panic Room,” “Zathura” and “Into the Wild,” the actress says she first realized how intense the fan base was when she sat on the film’s Comic-Con convention panel this past July.
“You can go online and it’s very intangible. I mean, who knows how many of these girls there are? It’s probably just the same five girls going on every message board and gabbing on about it,” Stewart says. “But to have literally, like, a room of over 5,000 people screaming at you makes you want to cry. It’s not like, ‘Oh, this is so great.’ I think it’s literally like an instinct. To have that sort of energy forced at you? You start to wither.”‘
I found one reply on the Twilight fanforum that I saw this on when I was looking for fans’ reactions to the movie rather hilarious: a person was disappointed that none of the actors were “embracing the fandom.” Well uh, hello, maybe if most of the fandom didn’t act like rabid animals and scream at every sight of them they might be a little more accepting. Maybe if you acted a little more MATURE and less OBNOXIOUS.
He also introduced me to an amazing site called Impish Idea that ranks at the top with Anti-Shurtugal. It’s pretty much a site like AS, with criticism and critiques on Inheritance and Twilight along with tips for writing and other excellent articles. The mass of writing articles they have are helping me think about how to write better, though none of them are giving me idea sparks. I want to actually try NaNoWriMo this year (not just sign up and forget about it), but November’s approaching fast, and though I have a small handful of plot bunnies, none of them are big enough to write a 100,000 word novel about. I hate that I can’t think of original story ideas anymore. I used to have tons of plots in my head when I was younger, but they were all completely clichéd and stolen off books I read. Now, after changing my writing style, I’m so cautious about writing clichés or stealing themes from other books that I can’t think of anything innovative at all (which may say a bit about my originality). Darn you karma.
Kudos to MQ for telling me that River Flows In You by Yiruma is now Bella’s Lullaby in Twilight. I learned to play that song several months ago after a friend introduced me to it, and I absolutely love the piece. Knowing that it’s being used in Twilight makes me slightly sad though. It’s like the song is being degraded by being used in a book (and possibly the movie?) as badly written as Twilight. I would find it highly amusing though if Edward was playing the piece and sunlight shone onto his face through a window, thus creating a flowing river (oh I’m so ingenious) of sparkles that made Bella permanently blind, which in turn would nullify all the sappy, gooey descriptions of Edward for the rest of the series since Bella wouldn’t be able to describe what she couldn’t see. One can only dream…
Once again, Rune Beast0 needs to update his blog. Kthxbai.
EDIT: After writing this post I came up with some sort of prologue to some sort of story. C&C will be appreciated XD
—–
Officer Travis Wagner drove down the highway at twenty miles over the speed limit, possibly a little too fast for his own good, but despite this he didn’t seem heed the white numbered sign to his right as he continued on the road. His eyes were shadowed and his forehead was scrunched as he stared straight ahead at the flashing scenery. His hands gripped the steering wheel at six o’clock, not even inching close to the nine and three positions that he had been taught in driving school. Driving school… oh what Officer Wagner would have given up to be sixteen again! He wouldn’t have needed to deal with any of the crap that was currently going on that made him lose sleep and weight. He would have given up his badge, his house, his money (or maybe just half of it), and he might even have gone as far as to think about giving up his wife had he not remembered the reason for his weary looks. The thought of his wife rejuvenated some sense in him and he applied more pressure to the pedal, cranking up his speeding to thirty over the limit.
Most of the cars gave leeway to Officer Wagner’s shining white jeep. They saw the siren up top and, with some intuitive sense, immediately switched over from the left to center lane. Officer Wagner didn’t mind, for it meant that he would be able to get to the station faster. Those who didn’t switch lanes fast enough would extract a curse from the cop before he changed lanes himself and sped past them. During one of these hasty lane switches he nearly rammed his car into the front of a tractor-trailer, as he hadn’t bothered to look out his side-view mirror before jerking the wheel.
A few times he passed other cop cars, early birds (probably wanting to impress a higher-up) who had snuck themselves into the middle of some trees on the median. They ignored Wagner though, taking him to be an official who was on the tail of some chaotic chase. So as they sat there with their speed-measuring devices and caught Wagner going at 105, they simply shrugged, wished they were of a high enough rank so that they could go on wild pursuits of wrong-doers, and continued to spy on other less-fortunate driving citizens.
Wagner’s speed didn’t let up very much, not even when he pulled into an exit off the highway. He slowed ever so slightly to round off the road clover and then screeched to a halt at the light that had just turned red as he turned around the last curve. His fingers drummed impatiently on the steering wheel as the cars in the perpendicular intersection crossed the road, and then as soon as the light turned green, his foot jammed again onto the pedal and his engine roared to life as he took off at ninety.
The innocent civilians driving behind him got rather annoyed at the times when Wagner’s jeep screeched again and again as he turned onto smaller roads. Those damned policemen, they thought, silently shaking their fist at the police car. They do whatever they want, go as fast as they want, and they never get pulled over for it. And yet what happens when we go five or ten above? We get ticketed.
After a half hour ride, Wagner arrived at the station. He pulled into the parking spot closest to the door (the spot was still open since it was the weekend and all the other lazy-ass officers hadn’t bothered to show up yet). He grabbed his briefcase from the shotgun, readjusted his collar quickly in the mirror, and then stepped out into the brisk fall wind. The sudden change in temperature chilled him, so he quickly grabbed his keys, locked the car doors, and power-walked the ramp that led into the station. At the door, he looked around him warily, then punched in his six digit passkey on a digital device near the doorknob. When the light on the device turned green, Wagner pulled out his ID from his right pocket, slid it through the machine, and the door automatically opened. As he stepped into the building, the door closed behind him.
The station was a bit of a mess. On each of the desks were numerous folders and papers, most of them stacked haphazardly with papers leaning off the side. Filing cabinets were still half open, cups of coffee were only half drunk, and most of the work was only half done. Chairs were everywhere – in the middle of aisles, in front of desks, on the side of cubicles – very few were actually positioned correctly behind the desk. The secretaries’ desks didn’t fare much better than their officers’ counterparts. On one of them a phone lay, still not put back on the receiver from some unknown call. Wagner went to put it back in place and wondered why that annoying sound wasn’t going off when he looked to the side and saw that the line was pulled out. With a grunt, he stooped down and put it back. As he straightened and cracked his back, he sat down at one of the secretary’s desks where the computer was still turned on. The auto-logout hadn’t worked, Wagner noted to himself. Despite this, he logged the secretary out and logged himself in.
As he waited for the system to load his files, he opened his briefcase and pulled out a large manila envelope. It had once been taped shut, but Wagner had pried it open with his hands and the back now lay in a torn, disfigured mess. He ripped off some more of the envelope and pulled out the papers that it held. One contained a picture of a woman, slightly older than Wagner, with brown curly hair and a jaunty smile. The others were forms and applications of some sort. Wagner disregarded the papers behind the printed picture and instead took the picture into his hands. On the bottom of the picture he had scribbled two letters – AE – and some smaller words underneath the two prominent figures.
When Wagner looked back at the computer, he saw that it had loaded. With two quick mouse clicks, he opened up Firefox and went to Google. Taking a breathe, he typed the two letters and the words he had written on the woman’s picture in Google’s search engine and hit enter.
A gunshot rang out and Officer Travis Wagner fell out of the chair, dead.
I’m not going to be retarded like I was in my Breaking Dawn post and make everything white to prevent spoilers. I’ll take it to hope that people who see “SPOILERS!!” in the title will connect the dots and think “hm, well I shouldn’t read that post if I haven’t read Brisingr!” Anyway, on to the juicy stuff.
I’m not a fan (ironically, since I work on Shurtugal), but I’m not an anti. I’m floating around the neutral line on my opinions of the Inheritance trilogy. Therefore, what I’ll write in this post will be my unbiased opinion.
All in all, I view Brisingr as an unneeded filler. Unlike Eragon and Eldest, who both had a purpose for being books (Eragon: introducing the whole plot and showing the growth of Eragon/Saphira, Eldest: showing Eragon’s schooling and the fate of the Varden/Carvahall), it seemed that Brisingr was just a mesh of events that didn’t really connect with each other, not to mention not many of the events were pertinent to advancing the whole series’s plot. Here are the basic important events:
-Defeating the Ra’zac
-Roran+Katrina’s marriage
-The election of the new Dwarf king
-Revealing Eragon’s true father (no, it is not Darth Vader, although I’m sure many people would be giddy if it was)
-Eldunari, aka the Deathly Hallows of Inheritance
-Oromis/Glaedr’s fate
-Eragon’s new sword
I believe that’s it, so that’s what, seven events of importance, all smushed around in a 750 page book. The problem I had with Brisingr was that there was a lot more unneeded information. Paolini’s lengthy descriptions took up at least half the book. The beginning 500 pages or so went so slowly that I got bored very often while reading it. There was very little action that happened, and most of the action that did happen ended in a handy dandy deus ex machina (ex: Eragon conveniently getting attacked and then Orik conveniently being able to track down his attackers which led to everyone agreeing to make Orik the king). The Ra’zac’s defeat seemed too quick and easy for the length of the books that Eragon had pursued them. Eragon managed to get back to Varden unharmed except for a quick skirmish with a group of soldiers. The battle with Murtagh and Thorn was won so easily that I had to reread it twice to make sure I was actually reading what was written. And as for the rest, well, as I said, it was all just filler.
The last 200 pages or so also lacked the suspense the other books had. There were no surprises in the “revelations” revealed. Everyone guessed Brom was Eragon’s father and that something would happen with Oromis and Glaedr. Katrina’s pregnancy was also long guessed (who else could it be, not to mention Roran’s “the man”). The “God” was a rather big letdown (to me anyway). The sword was no big surprise either, although I guess the one surprise was that Eragon named it “Fire.” Angela should have whacked him in the head. The Eldunari were something different, but it was so reminscent of Harry Potter that it didn’t surprise me very much. Oromis and Glaedr’s death seemed all too fast, and the battle with the Shade at the end was also way too quick.
Overall I guess there was just a lack of climax. True, there was the “big epic battle” at the end, but it wasn’t nearly as great and broad as the ones in Eragon or Eldest. There was just nothing really to look forward to in this book since Paolini spoiled most of the events in his Shurtugal interview and stated that there would be no Rider. I felt this book was unneeded, despite what information it did contain.
To point out on Paolini’s writing, I do believe overall his writing slightly improved. He actually showed more depth to Eragon and Roran in this book (ex: their brotherly talk and comparing war scars) and made events seem more realistic (ex: Nasuada gaining trust by the Trial of Long Knives). That Paolini made his characters seem more human in this book was something I liked. The dialog, however, I thought could use some work. Many times I felt like I was listening to Yoda talk because the sentence structure was a bit messed up. The chapter from Saphira’s point of view also nearly made me wet my pants. Honestly, I think Paolini’s hyphen key was stuck or something so he had to compensate for a way to write. Really now, “sharp-pointy-trees”, “big-round-fire-in-the-sky?” …I appreciate Paolini’s attempt to be unique when writing from a Dragon’s perspective, but I think he could have been a little more creative than replacing nouns with rolled out hyphenated words.
To sum things up, I feel Brisingr was unneeded, as it revealed little information no one could have already guessed. Whether released for money or truly because the next book would have been too long I don’t know, but despite what the reason was Brisingr still feels like a filler to try and quench our parched throats. The writing has very slightly improved, which is a plus for Paolini, but that gets buried under the mounds of description and idle narration which bored me to no end. I am not impressed or satisfied with Brisingr, but I guess for now it will have to do.
Oh yea, one more thing: Roran killing 193 men with a hammer and not suffering any major injuries. Wtf? If that scene doesn’t make Roran look like a Gary Stu, then I don’t know what will.
WARNING. THIS POST WILL HAVE BREAKING DAWN SPOILERS. DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DON’T WISH TO GET SPOILED. THIS IS YOUR ONLY WARNING.
Anyway, my thoughts. To be blunt, I didn’t like Breaking Dawn. Granted I just finished it about 20 minutes ago and I’m rushing to get out a somewhat coherent copy of my first impressions, but I doubt my opinion of the book will change even after a reread.
The very first thing I didn’t like about it was the sex. There were way too many hinted nights where Bella and Edward had sex. It made it seem like the only reason they got married was to have an excuse that they could have sex. Especially in the first half, I was wincing whenever it got close to nighttime because half the time there was something that Bella would say that implied sex, or something of the sort. If I’m wrong ignore me – I have a rather short term memory. I know technically they are a married couple now and they can do what they want and yada yada, but Bella is still a teenager, without a college degree and without a job. I also didn’t like how she turned away all thoughts of pregnancy just because Edward was a vampire. I mean, he is still a guy with guy …functions that don’t change just because he’s lived for a century.
Which leads me on to my next irritation – the baby. It just made me cringe at how, well, perfect she was. “Renesmee” was a bit of a Mary Sue if I do say so myself, with her beautiful appearance and her ability to act as mature as a young adult even though she was what, three/four months old by the end of the book? Vampire or no, it’s extremely hard for me to imagine someone not even a year old communicating effectively to others in not one but TWO ways, understanding what others have to say, and being able to interpret feelings. It was a bit unreal to me, especially after reading about her thirst and how much blood Bella had to drink in order to satisfy it. She nearly killed Bella while inside the womb and then she comes out and is absolutely harmless and adorable and mature? What on earth?
Next point of irritation – Jacob. Imprinting on the baby. WTF?! To me this seemed like a very convenient excuse for Edward to accept Jacob and for Bella to stop being torn about him. He and Bella were both taken by surprise when Quil imprinted on Claire, but now he imprints on an infant and everything’s all nice and dandy after a short confrontation between him and Bella. To make things worse, not much is said about how Jacob feels about this imprint. I know it probably would have just been something along the likes of how Bella/Edward are described, but I was curious to see how he felt about imprinting on a newborn child.
Which leads me to my next point – the complete lack of werewolf/vampire rivalry in the second half. One thing that always kept me on my toes through the other books was the feelings that these two supernatural beings had for the other. Now, suddenly all those feelings disappear with Jacob imprinting on a baby, because taking away the person someone’s imprinted on isn’t allowed. So instead of harsh feelings between each other, everyone’s all friends towards the end of the book, and that seems to be wonderfully accepted. Even when the other vampires come to the Cullen’s, there is not one thread of animocity between the two groups when before it seemed like had a vampire/werewolf come within a mile radius of another there would be some feuding. The whole werewolf pack is just lounging around on the yard for part of the book. Gahhh.
Probably the thing that annoyed me the most was the letdown at climaxes. Jacob breaking away from Sam’s pack and forming his own – I expected there to be a nice werewolf showdown after that, or at least something more than a “Okay lets just let Jacob/Seth/Leah run around with the vampires a bit, even though we wanted to kill the vampires two seconds ago, and decide a new plan for getting rid of the Cullens – OH WAIT JACOB IMPRINTED ON ONE OF THEM? Never mind, we can’t do that anymore! Let’s go chill and make peace.” Honestly, that was a big climatic letdown for me. And to make things worse, the whole resolvement between Jacob’s pack and Sam’s pack was explained in about two sentences. I know the reasons for the resolvement make sense, but seriously that had to be the biggest climatic dupe of my life.
The other climatic letdown was the Volturi meetup at the end. I was all pumped for the biggest vampire/werewolf showdown in history, especially since Meyer made such a big point about Carlisle and the others finding witnesses to prove Renesmee was innocent. I mean, that basically took up a good fifty page chunk of the book. Bella and Edward were constantly stressed, and Bella was so worried about Alice and the cryptic messages she left behind. Everyone was pretty much in panic mode, and Bella was just learning about her new skill of “shielding” she had and was trying to somewhat get it to expand, but she was having such a hard time, and then GUESS WHAT?! The Volturi arrive, and BAM Bella gets blazing mad and magically gets complete power over this skill she was struggling so hard over a day ago. Not to mention all these skills that the Volturi have, which when Edward described them sounded rather frightening, are all brilliantly repelled by Bella’s shield and no one is hurt. And then in what would have been the big epic battle scene, there is nothing but some talking, a resolvement, and peace, which was a very very big letdown. I mean at least in the other books there was some sort of action! But in Breaking Dawn, there was nothing but waaay too much built-up anticipation which led to ….nothing.
Overall I would give Breaking Dawn 2/5 stars. There were too many conveniences that occurred so that everyone could have a happy ending. Jacob imprinting, Alice showing up at the showdown between the Volturi and the Cullen’s with a half-vampire she just so HAPPENED to find, Bella suddenly getting control over her shield, Renesmee getting born and being an angel, etc etc. It seemed like Meyer was just pushing for a way to have everything be nice and calm and happy, so she threw in whatever she could that, while still making sense, would lead to nice resolutions. That, to me, is what brought the book down. Don’t call me emo for not liking happy resolutions – I do to some extent, as long as they’re real and possible. The happy resolutions in Breaking Dawn did not seem at all possible to me before reading the book. I had been spoiled about Edward/Bella having a kid and Jacob imprinting on it a few days before Breaking Dawn released, and I had really hoped that they were false (even though I knew they were true because I trusted the poster of them). But no, it was all true.
One big letdown indeed. Breaking Dawn was far from what I had hoped and expected the book to be.
So after a rather broad announcement yesterday, amazing amazing AMAZING (slight sarcasm) news has come out from CP.
THE ONCE-WAS TRILOGY IS NOW A QUARTET! (zomg)
And…the third book’s coming out on 9/23/08.
AND A MAJOR CHARACTER’S DYING AT THE END!! (omgomg)
First note: I am a (somewhat) fan of the Inheritance Trilogy. I am aware that from a seasoned writer’s point of view it is NOT a very well-written and uncliche-ed book. However I read the book and got hooked when I was rather young and didn’t know about all that said above, so now I just read it to find out what happens.
Anyway. I don’t see why CP put out a 5-minute or so long video just to explain that the trilogy is now a quartet and someone major dies. Oh well, that’s just me. I also don’t really see how much more plot can be unraveled (there wasn’t a lot to begin with… ) that it needs to take another book unless some new plots get introduced in the third book (which I’m hoping will happen). As for the death of a major character, considering we all thought it was going to be the last book I’m pretty sure no one was surprised that someone major will die. It always happens. It’s cliche.
As for the release date…God can you pick a WORSE time in the year to release it? September 23rd of next year is a Tuesday, aka a school day, aka I don’t have all day to read it like I normally do with hyped books. I’d rather writers take their time than to rush to get a book out, but at least it could be a few weeks earlier in the summer when we don’t have school (and it would probably make more sales too).
Ah well. At least it wasn’t a newsletter about an ink-dip pen.
Oh yea, National Novel Writing Month starts November 1st. You have to try and write a 50,000+ word story by the end of November. I’m doing it this year and I have a small plot planned out…hopefully I’ll finish =x
Haunted High School was today. The Anime/Manga Club I’m in did a scary room, and I had fun whipping a sword at people for two hours xD. The Band Room looked freaking sweet as usual (they have a TON of space). I wanted to go down there after it started but we weren’t allowed to leave the room I don’t like little kids with attitude who go up to you and say “This is stupid” or “That was lame lets go somewhere else.” Meh..it took a long time to put up the decorations! We did manage to get a lot of scares on little kids and some older ones xD. Little Emo Riding Hood was sweet.
Posted by bluebrisingr 
Posted by bluebrisingr 
Posted by bluebrisingr 
I don’t like little kids with attitude who go up to you and say “This is stupid” or “That was lame lets go somewhere else.” Meh..it took a long time to put up the decorations! We did manage to get a lot of scares on little kids and some older ones xD. Little Emo Riding Hood was sweet.
