Twilight: D-I-Y Characterization

Twilight Recap: Bella and Charlie have finished their almost-completely-silent dinner, and Bella has asked tentatively about the Cullen children and why they don't fit in at school. After Charlie rants extensively about how the town is lucky to have the Cullens, Bella hastily drops the subject. 

Twilight, Chapter 2: Open Book

   We lapsed back into silence as we finished eating. He cleared the table while I started on the dishes. He went back to the TV, and after I finished washing the dishes by hand — no dishwasher — I went upstairs unwillingly to work on my math homework. I could feel a tradition in the making.

I swear I'm not trying to get hung up on the division of chores in the Swan household, despite blog posts to the contrary, but it frustrates me to no end that Bella -- as the only female in the household -- is apparently expected to be involved in pretty much every stage of food production. She has bought the food, made the food, set the table, served the food, and is now washing the dishes.

The only help that Charlie is offering to this process is to take a couple of seconds to move the plates from table-to-sink, in an admittedly small kitchen. I can't even read "cleared the table" as an indication that he's putting leftovers away, because it's hard for me to imagine that there could be very many leftovers in a dinner that was simply "steak and potatoes" with Charlie going back at one point for seconds.

What is even more frustrating about this is that when Charlie gets finished with clearing the table, he heads off to watch TV while Bella continues to wash the dishes -- it's a school night and Bella has homework, but god forbid that Charlie not get his four hours straight of TV time by sticking around to expedite the washing process by, say, grabbing a towel and being the Official Dryer. If the cooking and cleaning cut into Bella's studies, then I guess that's her fault for being born a girl, right?

This attitude would make sense (while still, of course, being utterly reprehensible) if Bella lived in a family that believed a woman's education was optional-at-best, wasteful-at-worse because the woman is just going to get married and be a stay-at-home wife and then what does she need that education. As the series continues, we will, I think, hear more from Charlie on the subject of marriage and college as he starts to dig his heels in against Bella's romance with Edward -- for now, though, his attitudes towards Bella, schoolwork, and housework seem fairly consistent with that worldview.

   The rest of the week was uneventful. I got used to the routine of my classes. By Friday I was able to recognize, if not name, almost all the students at school. In Gym, the kids on my team learned not to pass me the ball and to step quickly in front of me if the other team tried to take advantage of my weakness. I happily stayed out of their way.

I've been staying away from Bella's crippling clumsiness because I'm still not sure what to think about it, but for those keeping score, this is something like the seventh or eighth mention of this "character trait" in the first thirty pages of Twilight.

On the one hand, I was a relatively clumsy teenager, and it's highly probably that "clumsiness at or around puberty" is not a particularly unusual trait. And it's worth also noting that "being bad at sports" -- i.e., hitting a volleyball and having no idea where it's going to end up and if it's going to bean a teammate en route -- is not necessarily a subset of "clumsy" nor is it either a particularly rare trait for teenagers to share. So I'm inclined to give Bella a pass for being clumsy in the little, everyday sense.

What I'm not inclined to give a pass is S. Meyer blowing this relatively normal character trait into epic proportions such that everyone around Bella fears for her safety as well as their own without at least attempting to justify the behavior somewhat in text. Is it an inner ear problem? Is it self-harming behavior caused by her co-dependent relationship with her mother? Is it triggered by some deep-seating feeling that she's worth being hurt? Is it an expression of her desire to be "saved" by the strong, caring parent figure she's yet to really experience?

I'm reading the Percy Jackson series right now, and though the series is not without flaws, I appreciate that author Rick Riordan really justifies his characters' idiosyncrasies. Since Riordan's real life son has dyslexia and ADHD, so do Riordan's characters, but those traits aren't just tossed in for some quick "here's why my character is different" distinction. Instead, the traits are justified within the narrative framework: children of the Greek gods have brains that are hard-wired for reading ancient Greek and absorbing every detail in battle, and these godling abilities are perceived and diagnosed in the mundane world as dyslexia (because English letters move around the page for them) and ADHD (because heightened battle senses that you can't ever turn off are a double-edged trait in the extreme).

Now I'm not saying that all character traits have to have some kind of deep-seated reason that ties thickly into the narrative; I wouldn't have much of an issue with Bella's clumsiness if she was merely clumsy. But Bella isn't "merely" clumsy -- she's epically clumsy. It's such a defining character trait that everyone she meets knows her for this one trait above all others: she hurts herself and the people around her at least once a day. To have a trait like this -- a One Trait To Rule Them All character trait -- it would make sense to at least attempt to explain it in narrative, and S. Meyer never does. The worst part is that, depending on why Bella is so epically clumsy, there's a good backstory there waiting to happen that instead we never get to see. It just seems like such a wasted opportunity.

   My first weekend in Forks passed without incident. Charlie, unused to spending time in the usually empty house, worked most of the weekend. I cleaned the house, got ahead on my homework, and wrote my mom more bogusly cheerful e-mail. I did drive to the library Saturday, but it was so poorly stocked that I didn’t bother to get a card; I would have to make a date to visit Olympia or Seattle soon and find a good bookstore. I wondered idly what kind of gas mileage the truck got . . . and shuddered at the thought.

I wonder if Bella had any hobbies at all in her seventeen years of life before Edward Cullen. I know that the poverty of the Swans has been established thus far, so it's plausible that she wouldn't have a suitcase full of books and movies brought up to Forks to keep her occupied, but relative poverty doesn't justify her having no hobbies at all other than cleaning and homework.

Bella isn't impressed with the offerings on hand at the Forks' library, but she can't be much of a library aficionado if she doesn't even look into the inter-library loan program. She isn't thrilled with the bookstores on hand, but in 2005 she must have at least heard of Amazon.com, and yet she doesn't appear to consider the cost of shipping a book to Forks versus the cost of driving to Seattle. She doesn't knit or crochet (yarn crafts are fairly cheap, and were very popular when I was going to college for the first time in 2000), she doesn't scrapbook, and later passages will show that she uses the internet so rarely that she doesn't even understand the concept of a pop-up blocker.

I can't decide if this is the case of an author not knowing or understanding what life would be like for her 17-year-old protagonist, or if this is a case of the author not caring because there's an epic love story to get to. On the one hand, including too many references to technology can date a book badly, and I don't blame an author for not being able to keep up with the times, but on the other hand, it's unrealistic to expect us to believe that Bella's entire life has been sitting around drying dishes and re-reading "Wuthering Heights".

Since we know that Bella doesn't spend her free time hanging out with friends, nor earning money at an after-school job, nor utilizing the local library to its fullest potential, nor doing any fabric-based or paper-based hobby, are we to assume that all her free time prior to this point in her life was spent taking care of every aspect of Renee's life? This could be plausible and might be an additional form of interesting characterization, but the implementation is so sloppy that I honestly can't be sure.

A lot of ink has been spilled over the concept that Bella is perhaps a literary null character* -- an empty shell for the reader to sink into and become the protagonist to whom all the action occurs. In some ways there is a great deal of merit to this theory; Bella has many of the characteristics of an "everyman" character: she's passably pretty but doesn't stop traffic in the street, she's acceptably good at school but isn't going to be valedictorian, she's clumsy and poor at sports which are not rare personality traits for a developing teenager, she's an obedient child while still snarking in the safety of her own mind at the perceived flaws of her parents. She has, in short, a very real personality, but it's a personality that many readers can relate to at least a little; the objection to the null character hypothesis, of course, is that Bella's personality as described above isn't going to fit everyone, and isn't as infinitely adaptable as it's sometimes presented as being.

* Not to be confused with a programmatic null character. I apologize for not being able to resist a good engineering pun in a deconstruction post.

The reason the null character hypothesis works, I think, is that Bella's character may be established in the text, but it is also infinitely contradicted. Bella tells us herself that she isn't pretty, but Edward will counter that every boy in school wants her fiercely and deeply -- is she truly gorgeous without her realizing or admitting it, or is Edward selectively hearing what he wants to hear? Bella assures us that she isn't an exceptional student, but she rarely seems to need to study in order to pass with acceptable colors -- is she really better than she tells us, or are the Forks teaching standards so low? Bella is clumsy and constantly hurting herself and others, but she can flawlessly maneuver her huge vehicle in and out of tight parking spaces -- is she self-harming without realizing it, or does her inner ear induced clumsiness not extend to her hand-eye driving coordination? Bella quietly takes perfect care of her parents, but at the same time disobeys them at every turn -- is she a good girl caught between multiple allegiances, or is she a bad girl manipulating her parents?

The vagueness of Twilight is not, I think, a vagueness of characterization. Bella is characterized, as any other character necessarily would be, every time she speaks or does anything at all. Even her narration characterizes her to us, given that it's shown as her internal thoughts and feelings. No, the vagueness of Twilight is that the many, many characterizations on the page are half-finished, barely-explored, and in many cases utterly contradictory. Once the reader realizes -- even at a subconscious level -- that not everything on the page can be true, it's easy to start picking and choosing characterization details and implied backstories and explanations, and before you know it, you have "Ana-Brand Bella", or "Kit-Brand Bella", or "Gela-Brand Bella" -- the Bella that makes sense to you, the reader, but may not be what anyone else experienced.

Twilight, I feel, is somewhat analogous to a Do-It-Yourself project. Everyone starts with the same picture on the box of what to expect, and most people will end up with similar experiences along the way, but when given vague and contradictory descriptions, it's up to the reader to put all the pieces together in the way that most makes sense to them. Whether this is lazy writing or utter genius is a choice left up to the DIYer.

32 comments:

Darice Moore said...

I think that perhaps Bella has no other interests or hobbies because they would detract from the point of her existence: meeting Edward. In which case, she is a void waiting to be filled (oh, there's a nice sex metaphor, sorry) by her love of him, which becomes her defining character trait.

(Admittedly, I haven't yet read the books. Perhaps I'll make use of my own library on this score...)

Brin Bellway said...

By Friday I was able to recognize, if not name, almost all the students at school.
[...]
What I'm not inclined to give a pass is S. Meyer blowing this relatively normal character trait [of clumsiness] into epic proportions such that everyone around Bella fears for her safety as well as their own without at least attempting to justify the behavior somewhat in text.


I want to say narration!Bella is trying to compensate for her abnormally high facial recognition skills, but I'm not sure if that's true.
I have abnormally low recognition, and I might be able to get everyone straight in time for graduation (but don't count on it). Thus, I don't know from personal experience what normal recognition ability is like, but knowing everyone in four days seems a bit much.

Bella isn't impressed with the offerings on hand at the Forks' library, but she can't be much of a library aficionado if she doesn't even look into the inter-library loan program.

Yeah, that's weird. Even when I lived in a town of seventy thousand with a pride-of-the-county library, I still had a reputation as "the interlibrary loan girl".

SkyknightXi said...

In which case, we should try to gauge how many notable character traits each important character has--Bella, Charlie, Renée, the various Cullens, Jacob, etc. I'm already worried that Edward will far outstrip even the second place finish. Which makes me wonder whether Bella should be classified as "protagonist" or "deuteragonist"...

Nathaniel said...

The whole clumsy thing is simple. Its a way of having the character be "flawed" without having any author intended personality flaws. See, she's not a snotty Mary Sue, she can barely tie her own shoe laces!

Of course, this is the equivalent of pointing out a character is short, and somehow making that a flaw. 

Gelliebean said...

Your thoughts about Bella's outside interests coincide nicely with a concept that I've been mulling over and over in my head since last week's post - wouldn't Twilight have been infinitely improved if Bella had - dundundun - a pet?  Consider the possibilities:

She could have driven herself to Forks to bring along Fluffy - an incredible independence-building experience.

She would have a focus for her attention and affection (not even touching why that isn't her dad!) that wasn't ZOMGSparkleboi.  This is the biggest one for me - she has absolutely ZERO connection with a single other person who isn't a magical flittery vampire.  She leaves her mother behind with nary a qualm except for ruminating on her own noble martyrdom, and avoids contacting her; she never gives her stepdad a second thought; she acts disdainfully toward her father, deliberately deceives him, and does everything she can to keep him out; she has no contact with friends from AZ and snubs anyone who might want to be a new friend.  She never mentions an ex-boyfriend or any dates she's ever been on, and never considers dating anybody in her new town.  A dearly loved cat or dog would be a connection to her old life and a grounding point in her new life.

It would provide a nice bit of conflict that was severely lacking -
Bella never seems to be too concerned about her own safety around said
Sparkleboi, but knowing that his entire family *feeds off animals* might
inspire her to push him away in fear for Fluffy's life.  Not to mention that in her quest to become a vampire herself, a little internal angst about how she'll be able to control herself around her pet, whether she'll have to give up a five-or-ten-year companion in order to get something else she wants, and trying to juggle those conflicting desires would have provided some desperately needed balance; where as it stands, she's losing nothing at all that she values and getting everything she thinks she wants handed off to her.

(probably contributing to this line of thought is the fact that we had two cats - brother and sister - and lost the girl a couple of weeks ago, probably to coyotes.....  We got two - a 3-month old kitten, and a fully grown 7-year old - at the shelter to keep Indy company, because he's been so lonely and miserably all by himself, but the settling-in process is taking a while.)

Ana Mardoll said...

Gela, that's a WONDERFUL idea! I love it! Not only would it have provided significantly more characterization and tension, it would also have been a great source of humor when Gertie the German Shepherd started acting strange and territorial around Jacob And Pals.

I'm all sad now that it wasn't done that way. :(

Timothy (TRiG) said...

My local bookshops rarely have any book I'm specifically looking for either, but, y'know, you can order things. And they'll even send you a text message when they're ready for collection.

(I can't buy books online, because I'm never at home when the parcel post comes, so I have to collect from the delivery office, which is in the back end of nowhere.)

TRiG.

Gelliebean said...

@ Amaryllis:  (sorry for minor derail)

As an interesting coincidence, a review for one of Jasper Fforde's books caught my eye this morning on Goodreads....  I'd never heard of him before today, but his writing looked like it might be up my alley, from the little research I did on Amazon.  Any suggestions as to which series to start with?  :-)

Back on topic, I don't remember much sign in the books that Charlie asks Bella to do all the household work - she just jumps right into it.  Now, admittedly, he doesn't seem to try very hard to prevent her or to stay in the kitchen to help her; but if I had someone come to stay who treated me from minute one the way that Charlie treats Bella, I'm not sure I'd push too hard to stick around after dinner either.

Kadia said...

You guys are making too much of Bella's domestic tasks here. Remember -- her main personality trait is her clumsiness. In this particular meal, she probably put dish soap in the stew, poisoning both herself and her father, and while she was washing up she managed to break every single dish in his house -- including the paper plates, a feat which would later defy Forks PD's top forensic analysts. After a few days of this, she'll come home from school one day to find the front door of their house locked and a polite note on the door informing her that from now on she'll be living in the garage -- which, of course, has been carefully stripped of anything sharp, breakable, or potentially hazardous.

Depending on how far you're willing to go with this, she might even be able to kill the evil vampire clan (the Volturi) during a freak accident in which Bella foolishly attempts to walk and chew gum at the same time.

Emmy said...

Yeah, Gelliebean, I think I agree with you! Bella does a lot of the work in Forks, but it really reads to me like she jumps in and takes over: "No, Dad, you can't cook properly, you don't have any food in the house, I'm going to do it, I'm doing it, God!" I just cannot see that Charlie managed to keep the house and himself in one piece if he's supposed to be so useless. Like, I've really enjoyed all the alternate interpretations, but the one I keep coming back to is that Bella is a brat who's incapable of making real connections to people (preferring to ignore, bully, or manipulate them), and her parents know it and act accordingly.

jetso said...

I suppose somewhat off topic, but I do rather find the portrayal of dyslexia and ADHD as children-of-Gods traits really annoying. The logic of it just doesn't quite work for me since one would imagine concentration is actually rather important in an actual battle situation and dyslexia is nothing like having one's brain "hard wired" for Ancient Greek (which makes very little sense, even as someone with only passing knowledge of biology).

Ana Mardoll said...

Back on
topic, I don't remember much sign in the books that Charlie asks Bella
to do all the household work - she just jumps right into it.  Now,
admittedly, he doesn't seem to try very hard to prevent her or to stay
in the kitchen to help her; but if I had someone come to stay who
treated me from minute one the way that Bella treats Charlie, I'm not
sure I'd push too hard to stick around after dinner either.


Well, for me, the key points are that:

1. In preparation for Bella's arrival, Charlie failed to procure healthy / meal-like foodstuffs (meat, vegetable, ingredients.)
2. Charlie has apparently not spoken to Bella about the cooking arrangement enough to convey to her how he intends her to be fed.

It's possible, of course, that in the "lost time" on the first day of school Charlie said, "Bells, we going to Joe's Crab Shack tomorrow as usual?" and she said, "Ew, Dad, no, I'd rather cook for you, trust me." But from what we've seen, it seems like Charlie usually hits the diner on the way home, gets home pretty late, watches TV and goes to bed. And it seems to me like Charlie didn't expect to alter this habit once Bella moved in.

To me, that seems to indicate that Charlie is playing his own version of "learned helplessness" and if Bella wants good food and a clean house, she's going to have to do it herself. And once you're already cooking for yourself and cleaning for yourself, then making food for 2 and doing laundry for 2 is just a little bit more effort. But I could of course be wrong and Bella may be bull-dozing Charlie in this regard...

Ana Mardoll said...

@250f432f64b51dd6ecd54bbdfedc8673
 
Yeah, it's kind of a "You Fail Biology" issue, but I gotta give him a pass because his kid has ADHD / dyslexia and I think it's kind of sweet to take something like that and make it into a cool character trait under special circumstances. It'd be like if my dad had written a book where scoliosis meant you *actually* had magical extension/compression spinal skills or something. Heck yeah! :D

Emmy said...

 In preparation for Bella's arrival, Charlie failed to procure healthy / meal-like foodstuffs (meat, vegetable, ingredients).

I'm still not convinced on this! Bella's reaction (ugh, nothing in the fridge, let me cram the groceries in) sounds a lot like my reaction this morning when I opened my fridge: THERE IS NOTHING HERE OH GOD I DON'T WANT TO EAT EGGS OR SANDWICHES OR FRUITS OR THAT KIND OF APPLE OR ORANGE JUICE OR LEFTOVERS WHY DOES NO ONE EVER BUY FOOD! Only, I didn't retaliate by taking my mom's wallet and going to the store.

And I definitely think it's possible that Charlie just didn't bother shopping for her (or for things she likes, which is the same thing in the end, whoever's fault it is that he doesn't know), but it reads more like Bella just...wasn't satisfied with her options. Idk.

Ana Mardoll said...

@3720f8d4005a800cbbb9ec4d7480a25e 

Well, I admit, I'm basing my "no food" assumption on the "no steaks, no potatoes" aspect. I mean... no steaks? No potatoes? Those are staples in our house. I realize, though, that they aren't for everyone. :)

SkyknightXi said...

Clumsiness? Personality trait? How does that one even work...? Low manual dexterity is part and parcel of my Asperger's Syndrome, yet you won't hear me calling that a personality trait!

I'm wondering if Bella's clumsiness only extends to her legs; she's just fine with her hands (the reason you don't want to pass her the ball is because she probably won't take it where it needs to go, and not because she's trying to make life strange for you). Which makes me wonder if her...{fails to remember the term for awareness of where one's limbs are}...is just vertically asymmetrical. Although a staff would get around that problem a little (well, not in gym class). Or would using a staff to help get around mar her image to much for Meyer's purposes?

Jonathan Pelikan said...

I've been enjoying this blog, and especially your deconstructions, immensely! So it's time to leave a comment with some praise. 

 must say, you're a far better and more charitable person than I; when Bella enters Domestic Mode, I pretty much assume it's because SMeyers knows that good, godly, submissive women make babies and sandwiches. (Same for the lack of hobbies: She exists only for her twu wuv from Day One! Her actions later in the series when we have the Standard Romance Separation Plot further drive the knife home. If you can't have your perfect, pure, faultless, -white- sex god NOW, then you are literally nothing. Not even described as worthless, but literally blank pages devoid of anything.)(Doesn't count as spoilers, right? I mean, I call it the Standard Romance Separation Plot for a reason.)Probably doesn't help that I find Bella's internal-snark so blindingly unpleasant that I build up no sympathy for her whatsoever. I've been on the receiving end of 'Chess Club Types' attitudes a couple times and that is not the association you want me making with your hero. 

Inquisitive Raven said...

While I agree that the "hard wired for Ancient Greek" bit is silly, the part about about picking up details in battle isn't that far removed from the hunter/farmer hypothesis of ADD.  Short form: hunters need ADD like traits to be able to react quickly to changes in their immediate surroundings. Such traits are potentially problematic for someone plowing a field or trying to bring in a harvest. A battlefield is going to be much more analogous to the hunter's situation than the farmer's. BTW, if you think that people with ADD can't concentrate, look up "hyperfocus."

Silver Adept said...

Bella has only been here a few days, but her Domestic Goddess routine might be that she's so used to taking care of Renee that when Charlie starts to exhibit the same signs of not really wanting to put forward the effort or by not having the skill to make material up to standards, Bella reverts to how she dealt with Renee - taking over and doing it herself. Which leads to the though that her lack of friends and hobbies might be because she's expecting to have to take care of Charlie in the same way she's taken care of Renee, and that leaves precisely zero time for anything other than schoolwork and caring for the invalid.

If Bella is that much of a shut-in for taking care of her parents, and
re-reads Wuthering Heights for fun instead of schooling, her dismissal
of the library in Forks is inexcusable.  Unless Renee has been so
wealthy that Bella has her own personal library of everything she ever
wanted to read, Bella would have been a regular at the library and be
quite acquainted with the inter-library loan system. One of the first
things she would do, since she chose not to bring her possessions with
her, would be to find the local library and get a card so that she could
continue with her reading. She should be on first-name basis with all the front-line library staff.

Which would have been wonderful to write, but S. Meyer chooses not to, such that Isabella Swan remains a null. And frankly, I think "null" in this case is quite accurate, but I think of it in terms of /dev/null/, the place in a filesystem that generates null values forever, waiting for the opportunity to suck a file into its black hole. Perhaps it's a perfect thing for Edward, the luminous, sparkly vampire, to be pulled in by the irresistable gravity and darkness of Isabella Swan...until he is crushed into a single point and his light no longer shines.

redcrow said...

>>>waiting for the opportunity to suck a file into its black hole. Perhaps it's a perfect thing for Edward, the luminous, sparkly vampire, to be pulled in by the irresistable gravity and darkness of Isabella Swan...

Cue Muse.

(No, really, I was surprised when it turned out that Bellamy didn't like "Supermassive Black Hole" being used in the movie - I thought he was intentionally trolling with his offer of the song. Did those people in charge of a soundtrack ignored the lyrics? Does Meyer secretly agree that Bella *is* "the queen of the superficial"? )

Brin Bellway said...

 {fails to remember the term for awareness of where one's limbs are}

Proprioception.

Scylla Kat said...

Dude, I score with several Aspie traits--but could I blame my poor sports skills on it?  That would be such a relief.

Bella's poor skills are too familiar to me.  My classmates learned not to throw me the ball.  I ducked away from it because the Ball Was My Enemy.  They'd put me way out in right field where I'd do little harm.

Amaryllis said...

My classmates learned not to throw me the ball.  I ducked away from it
because the Ball Was My Enemy.  They'd put me way out in right field
where I'd do little harm.

Ah, high school...right field in spring and the back row in winter volleyball were where I spent my entire time in phys. ed. Softball was better, because nobody even dreamed of expecting me to pay attention there.

In retrospect, it would have been healthier for us to get some actual exercise now and then, but no, softball and volleyball and tacit permission for some of us to to avoid the ball entirely were all we ever got.

@Gelliebean:disqus : My favorite Ffordes are the original Thursday Next series. Start with The Eyre Affair and if you like that, go on to Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots, and Something Rotten. If you don't like it, stop right there, because the rest are even more so.

The Thursday sequels, First Among Sequels and One of Our Thursdays is Missing, are still fun for the language, but they get a bit meta-meta for me to find them truly engaging.

The Nursery Crimes books are funny and punny, but not as strong story-wise as the Thursday books (and will be more fun if you've read the usual detective literature).

Shades of Gray was interesting, mixing   Fforde's it's-about-the-words stye with a visually-oriented worldbuilding model, but I found it somehow not quite convincing.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled Twilight talks.

Timothy (TRiG) said...

If we're talking about being bad at sport, I still remember the time I scored a point in primary school volleyball, and everyone on both teams stopped to clap.

True.

TRiG.

jetso said...

Jasper Fforde is amazing in all possible ways. The Last Dragonslayer, if you haven't read it, is also really brilliant. It is technically a children's book, but it is very clever, very witty and amazingly funny.

I'll admit I'm being rather flippant about it. And I can't argue from a position of having a similarly unglamorous condition (equally I'm really glad you find it charming, so I'm not really that invested in trying to convince you otherwise), but I can say that personally all arguments that try to say depression makes you special because famous poet XYZ is manic depressive really annoys me. It's the sort of level that's a bit Mary Sue-ish (if I recall correctly, I think there's a Sue-Litmus-Test in which appearing anorexic is considered attractive). As said, depression does have considerably more normal "glamour" in popular culture and perceptions of anorexia is complicated. But either way, as said, the disabilities-as-superpowers trope isn't one that I find myself able to indulge in. I suppose it's not that an author can't make it work for me, but in the case of Percy Jackson, his other accumulated powers makes it really hard for me.

Redwood Rhiadra said...

Ah, Phys Ed class. Hated it in elementary, and was the kid who was always picked last for any teams. In middle school, I was so bad the teachers actually kicked me out of the class after the first quarter. So I got to be an audio-visual assistant instead, which was actually pretty fun.

In high school, they weren't allowed to do that, since everyone has to complete two years in order to graduate in CA. Managed to muddle my way through it, but it was hell.

Moleman said...

It gets even better when they use "I Belong to You" in one of the later films- which, in its full version, has a lengthy interlude with the final line or two of "Mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix" from Samson and Delilah (specifically, the song that Delilah sings to trick Samson into revealing the source of his strength).

There's also a fan theory that the album that song is off (The Resistance) is a rock opera version of 1984- and that song works pretty well as the closer over the last chapter/"He loved Big Brother" bits.  So, I think Muse went from "Eh, whatever" to actively messing with Twilight fans.

Technocracygirl said...

Hearing that Olympia is a prime bookstore destination, I had to look up the travel times on Google Maps.  If Bella's going into town, she might as well suck up the ferry ride and the extra 30 minutes and go to Seattle, for much better (and more numerous) bookstore hopping.  Or, better yet, spend an hour less and go to Victoria, BC. 

Looking at the North Olympic Library System, it doesn't look like their ILL is as user-friendly as, for example, the KCLS or Sno-Isle systems, but it's better than Seattle Public.  And, really, just because one library branch sucks doesn't mean the system as a whole sucks.  The city of Berkeley has a small library system, and unless you're at the main branch, the libraries are fairly small.  But the system as a whole is well-stocked, so requesting books from the other branches is no big deal.  So Forks may have a tiny branch, but that doesn't mean that Port Angeles and Sequim do.

But then, I like reading, so if I were in a tiny town, I'd use the library regardless of how small it was.  Besides, small libraries can let you find books you'd never have tried if you'd have more choices.  (I stumbled across Raymond Feist this way.)

chris the cynic said...

I
haven't been following these posts regularly, and thus haven't really
been following the story so far, so this might be way off.

Has depression been considered as a possibility?  Bella has little human
contact outside of school.  Bella has no hobbies.  The only things that
Bella does on her own other than reading are things like cleaning (the
house and dishes) which could potentially function as the sort of
mindless filler tasks one does to avoid losing entire days to sitting
around doing nothing (mindless filler can keep you from dwelling in a
way that sitting in one place does not, dwelling, in my experience, is a
bad thing.)

Bella is willing to drive to another town to get books, but not willing
to actually preform the relatively simple task of asking for it on inter
library loan.  We don't know why, but here's a possibility: that would
require her to interact with the librarian a lot more than that buying a
book requires her to interact with the person behind the register at a
book store.  We already know, from what she's been doing with her time,
that she keeps human interactions to a minimum.  (Though I'm not sure if
that's a sign of depression or something else.)

As I recall she has an extremely negative view of everyone outside
herself.  That could indicate many, many things (a lot of which
contradict depression) one that might fit with the idea of her being
depressed is that this could be because her perception is skewed to the
negative, which is a sign of depression.

Her perception of her own appearance is much more negative than that held by those around her.  Her perception of her abilities as a student is more
negative than the objective evidence of how well she does based on her
effort would seem to indicate.  She takes care of her parents in what
could be an example of habit or duty, but she appears to lack an
emotional connection with them and so what she does for them only
extends to the limits of that habit/duty of taking care of them, not to
anything like obeying them or even loving them.
It feels very mood disorderish to me, though I know very little about mood disorders outside of personal experience.
I may or may not have had more to say on this topic.

-

And now I have firsthand experience of seeing one's self in Bella. 
Several of the specifics don't line up, but enough of it felt like me in
highschool for me to jump to, "Hey, that sounds like me,  Bella is
obviously depressed."And I certainly spent a lot of time in high school wishing some special
girl would suddenly show up, love me for me, and make life not suck. 
She wasn't a sparkly vampire, but I see the appeal of the general story.  Everything is awful, I have no life, wouldn't it be wonderful if some supernatrual lover could show up and I wouldn't be trapped in this crappy existence anymore?

Ana Mardoll said...

Oh, I absolutely agree that depression seems like a very valid character interpretation, and I too see a little of myself in Bella. If anything, it's one reason why I can't actually "hate" her, though I do frequently dislike her actions and attitudes.

I also think the depression tendencies really amp up in the next book... The shame perhaps is that a lot of this seems to be portrayed as a GOOD thing...

Amaryllis said...

it's up to the reader to put all the pieces together in the way that
most makes sense to them. Whether this is lazy writing or utter genius
is a choice left up to the DIYer.


Why, it's the Feedback Loop.

"Today, with the plethora of experience through increased media exposure, most books are finished by the readers themselves."

"The Feedback Loop?"

"Precisely. As soon as the readers get going, the Feedback Loop will start backwashing some of their interpretations into the book itself. Not that long ago, books could be stripped bare by overreading, but since the invention of the loop, not only do books suffer little internal wear but readers often add detail by their own interpretations. Was that a goblin?"
-Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

-----
Gelliebean, that's another good idea.

-----
Does Charlie expect Bella to do the dishwashing, or is she so used to being the household drudge for her mother that she does it automatically? Or maybe even dishwashing is preferable to the math homework-- never underestimate the power of procrastination.

I mentioned the Swallows and Amazons book in the Narnia post talking about gender roles in children's books. When the domestically-inclined Susan tells her mother that she enjoys doing the cooking, her mother promptly advises her, "If you want to go on liking it, make the others do the washing up."

Bella should have had a mother like that.

(Textual note: if you type "want to" as "wan tot," Spellchecker won't blink. And now I'm wondering whether Bella was indeed a wan tot, because she seems to be a pretty wan young woman.)

(Edited to remove an HTML error (the dreaded italics) and clarify a phrase.)

Amaryllis said...

it's up to the reader to put all the pieces together in the way that
most makes sense to them. Whether this is lazy writing or utter genius
is a choice left up to the DIYer.


Why, it's the Feedback Loop.

"Today, with the plethora of experience through increased media exposure, most books are finished by the readers themselves."

"The Feedback Loop?"

"Precisely. As soon as the readers get going, the Feedback Loop will start backwashing some of their interpretations into the book itself. Not that long ago, books could be stripped bare by overreading, but since the invention of the loop, not only do books suffer little internal wear but readers often add detail by their own interpretations. Was that a goblin?"
-Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing

-----
Gelliebean, that's another good idea.

-----
Does Charlie expect Bella to do the dishwashing, or is she so used to being the household drudge for her mother that she does it automatically? Or maybe even dishwashing is preferable to the math homework-- never underestimate the power of procrastination.

I mentioned the Swallows and Amazons book in the Narnia post talking about gender roles in children's books. When the domestically-inclined Susan tells her mother that she enjoys doing the cooking, her mother promptly advises her, "If you want to go on liking it, make the others do the washing up."

Bella should have had a mother like that.

(Textual note: if you type "want to" as "wan tot," Spellchecker won't blink. And now I'm wondering whether Bella was indeed a wan tot, because she seems to be a pretty wan young woman.)

(Edited to remove an HTML error (the dreaded italics) and clarify a phrase.)

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