MILES to GO || before I sleep

So I'm watching the CW's new "The Vampire Diaries" show in an attempt to believe in the vampire genre post-Twilight. I was really hoping it wouldn't have too many (it's impossible to believe in ANY) Twilight elements, but so far, the show's not faring well.

A quick reference table, for the uninitiated:

( Spoiler mode ahead! )

So I was reading fanthropology when I stumbled across this little gem comparing the "Twilight" series to the "Harry Potter" series. In there is the exact reason why I like HP (and JKR) more than "Twilight" and SMeyer:

Twilight fans can criticize Potter for the plethora of deaths, but I'd rather have sadness that makes you grow and develop and completes a story than to completely stagnate the story so that nothing bad happens to the characters. SM could have given Edward and Bella and even Jacob a happy ending without resorting to the ridiculous.

And also, something that got me thinking about "style," and why certain books or authors with their particular style of writing, are "addictive" in nature, like you can't stop reading/can't put the book down:

Small details, minute details from the first few books became vitally important in the last several.

I like doing that with my own writing. I try and think of my stories as spiderwebs, where I'll drop a detail here, a detail there, and you won't know if it's important or not until later-- maybe not even until the next story. But I wouldn't include it if it WASN'T important, because that's a personal policy of mine. Why include extraneous stuff anyway, when it can just distract or detract from the overarching story?

Problem is, because I tend to write longer stuff, when I try and limit myself to one-shots or fluffy pieces (these days), it's difficult-- I can't make a complex "spiderweb" story with a one-shot! It's probably why I'm having such issues with ILB's fic-- the idea's all there, but when I try and translate the idea into prose, I don't know how to put it.

With WDKY26, it's similar, but not the same: see, I have the idea completely mapped out, I even have plenty of scenes written or at least vividly imagined, but I tend to think of scenes for the WDKY series out-of-order, and when I have to write in one of those scenes where the other scenes (that come before and after the scene in question) are already done, I worry about "Is the style going to be the same?" and "Is it going to read out of place?" It's not so much a matter of the scene not really being important, or me not knowing what details to drop-- often it's a choice between a lot and a little, not all or nothing. So I wonder if I should drop Detail A or Detail B here, or maybe both? How to do it? And then I get to thinking "WHY is Detail A or Detail B so important anyway? Is it worth including here when it won't get explored fully until # chapters later?"

Back to that article, I'm shocked by how many people misspelled "Stephenie Meyer" or various other elements of the "Twilight" series, e.g. "Cullen's" when they're talking about the whole family, and not a particular character's possession of something. I wonder if bad fiction breeds bad spelling?

That said, I think all the people that believe that "Twilight" is a richer/more complex plot than the "Harry Potter" series are living under a rock. Yes, the "Harry Potter" books are long, and there are many more of them than "Twilight" books, but it's the HP books that are still being discussed and examined; it's the HP books that have little details that spring up to great importance later on in the stories.

Not so with "Twilight," where Meyer takes the details she establishes in the first book and throws it away in the second or third or fourth one. And the Volturi are evil, not good, not different. They EAT CROWDS OF TOURISTS. They see themselves as the god-overseers of all vampires! WTF!? People are trying to say Voldemort is a wooden, stereotypical villain character because he kills and likes to kill, but how is that any different from the Volturi? Besides, at least Voldemort had follow-through; the Volturi in "Twilight" were like neutered vampires-- all this build-up of them being so scary and fearsome, but in the end, Bella just stood there and stared them down and THAT WAS IT. The decision to do that rather than having an epic fight only did two things: it made the Volturi look pathetic, and it made Bella even more of a Sue.

( It goes on. )

But I'm still questing to find out what my "style" is. I think you can only "learn" to write (well) by reading a lot, and so I am. I'm examining a lot of what I've read and trying to figure out what I liked and why. Fiction, non-fiction, fanfiction... anything goes.

I like JKR's writing because she makes every detail vital. Even heroes aren't perfect and don't try to pass themselves off as such, not even to their mentors, classmates, friends, etc. In the end, you have to know what really matters most: those people you cherish. You only have one life to live, and it's worth living to the fullest because of that.

I'd like to think that in my writing, my heroes and heroines have similar attitudes and personalities in that they come across as human and therefore relatable. Not just "I want to be him/her! OMG!" Even in series with a fantasy-twist, I've always liked exploring the more "human" element: the drama and the angst, the romance and the comedy that come as part of everyday life, the life without the magic.

Life is a great story just waiting to be told, isn't it?

 Cleric Preston by Klaus Badelt from Equilibrium (Rating: 0)

Not that I will, but IF I DID, any "Twilight" series fics I write would have the following plots (or answer the following questions):

* Why Bella is in love with Edward

* Bella acts more like a normal teenager: when she decides she might like Edward (note: not "irrevocably in love with" yet), she opts to try some very teenage ways of "getting his attention" as well as testing his limits around her (once she discovers the truth about him, but maybe before she confronts him about it/he tells her), including trying to seduce him.
- Does Bella even know she's doing it? Ohhh yes, especially when (by accident -er, happy chance- or some actual THOUGHT), she discovers he's stalking her in her bedroom at night.
- She also teases, which may end up answering the question "How do vampires get hard-ons?" My ideas of tease are not like fandom's, I would think, but then again, venturing too far into that fandom is like walking into the Jaws of Death, so....

* Bella had dreams of a career once... and watching [cable] TV reminds her of them. What does Bella consider being -despite being a vampire, or before, or...? (This one would obviously depend on which book/movie it took place in or between.) Bella as a CSI? A chef? A therapist? (If Carlisle can be a doctor, why couldn't Bella feasibly find a job? Or would her youthful appearance be her downfall in getting one and keeping one -at least, a live, in-person job where she DIDN'T travel, MIGHT be out in daylight, etc.?)

Fic, in this case, is not to show what wasn't seen in canon, nor does it exist to take some fascinating characters and put them in another universe (whether that's another canon or another universe altogether). It's to answer questions or explore characters in ways that SHOULD have been done in canon.

( Twilight, thematic messages, and Meyer's injections of LDS lore into the books )

You know what would be awesome? If there was a site (or if FFnet did it) where people had their fics and you could add your real-time commentary as an overlay-- a'la Nico Nico video.

Because seriously, the commentary I'd be leaving on the FFnet section of "Twilight"? So much more worth my time than an actual well-thought out REVIEW in that fandom. I'd get lambasted if I even tried to give what I consider true concrit (which, in my mind, is not a synonym for "endless praise,") and I know it's not worth the effort. But quick-play commentary with full anonymity? I'd tap that. Somebody, make it happen!
Such an idea might come back to bite me in the ass, but I think overall it would help people improve and give those readers who never review a chance to say just WHY they don't usually bother, whether or not they've got more than the usual "LOL UPDATE PLZ" one-liners.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Over 3,000 fans of the young adult vampire book series "Twilight" gathered early this morning (and that's saying something, considering it's still only 9:22 am as I'm writing this) outside San Francisco's Stonestown Galleria shopping center, vying for the chance to meet Robert Pattinson, the 22-year-old British star of the upcoming movie adaptation of the same name. After the crowds grew too unruly, police were forced to cancel the event.

Fans were reportedly crushed against mall doors until at least one nose was broken and one person nearly collapsed from asphyxiation.

The event, which was scheduled to take place at the mall's "Hot Topic" store, required fans to purchase a specific "Twilight" item (and thereby support author Stephenie Meyer in her donations to the Mormon church, which funds anti-gay rights measures like Proposition 8, recently passed in California and Arizona) before obtaining a wristband so they could return to the store to meet Pattinson at 6 p.m. Only the truly insane and hardcore were at the mall this morning, as normal folks and fun-loving Twatlighters were scheduled to show up much later in the afternoon and enjoy the LULz over fresh tortilla chips and a margarita.

Hearts have likely been broken by the event's cancellation, but in a posh hotel room somewhere within the Bay Area, Robert Pattinson is likely breathing a sigh of relief, having safely and quite deftly (vampire skillz, whut) avoided yet another encounter with fangirls who make "the sound like you hear at the gates of hell."

The lesson, ladies and gents? Never travel more than 5 miles to meet a celebrity. Never get so excited about someone or something so as to be likened to a creature squealing from the gates of hell. And for the love of God and sparkly vampires, be a Twatlighter, not a Twilighter (or Twihard, for that matter)!

Source: KCBS

Fourth and maybe final post in the "Twilight" series. I'm going to do this one more like how I wanted to do it originally, with a page-segment play-by-play, where I report on my findings (or whatever you want to call them) as I read Book 4 in Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" series, a.k.a. "Breaking Dawn."

I'm already 72 pages into the book, so... here we go!

( Red Pawn to White Queen )

I finished reading "New Moon" in one sitting last night, and I'm going to start on "Eclipse" tonight (NM kept me up until 3:30am; I wonder if "Eclipse" will do the same?).

( Vampires and werewolves, oh my! )

In order of appearance:

FanLib's going to disappear, as everyone predicted it would when it first made its bright, shiny appearance some 15 months ago (or so). I think it improved a whole lot since the wankfest first started, which is why I bothered to sign up against it, but I'm not crying over the loss. It's not like half the stuff there is any good anyway, whether that's writers or readers/reviewers. Anyone I did bother to read there I knew from other sites, namely this one, DA, and/or Fanfiction.net.

The thing that sucks is that they didn't just come out and say why they're going under, nor did they invite discussion of the topic on their homepage. Everyone on fandom_wank says it's because they're out of their $3 million (srsly!?) investment, which wouldn't surprise me, but since I haven't seen any sort of official statement regarding the "why," I'll take that with a grain of salt.

Twilight - Cause for fangirls of all ages to be bitches, mainly because the poor sap who's playing Edward in the upcoming movie is "hot." Me? I haven't heard anything good about the book series OR the upcoming movie, but my roommate (who is a few months older than me) got into the series via her (14-year-old) sister. She admits that the series is targeted toward a younger audience than even Harry Potter (thus making both her and her sister part of that oddball crowd of fangirls), but she likes it so far, as it's a "simple read." I cringed a bit when reading the back cover, but don't dare to actually explore beyond that (yet?).

Why? Well, I went to the Anaheim Public Library tonight after work and finally got myself some other books: two on the craft of writing (one's a standby favorite on the Middle Ages, which I use as a great reference for "The Rose Chronicles"), one dark rewrite of "Snow White" and other fairy tales (love those sort of stories!) and one Myst novel (because I've never read them and I thought it was high time I ought to). Oh, and a High School Musical book.

High School Musical - So, working at Disneyland means I see this High School Musical stuff every day, and I often dealt with (child) Guests who would come up to me screaming about how HOTTTTTT Troy is (If I had to pick between Zac Efron and Robert Pattinson or whatever his name is -even if he was in Harry Potter before- I'd pick Zac any day of the week. The other guys IS somewhat cute and has nice eyes/hair/smile, etc. but Zac just seems... well, more human. And this is my impression of Rob based off an interview where he WAS NOT in Vampire!Mode) and I would have NO idea what they were going on about. I took a glance at the Junior Novel and decided that it sounded fluffy enough for me to warrant getting the movie as soon as it came back into our Clubhouse rentals, so I grabbed it as soon as it did. And... it's pretty darn catchy! The acting isn't half-bad, either, which is saying something, especially when you look at some of the other Disney Channel stuff (*cough*Camp Rock*cough*) So I got the second one too, and I like it a lot! I'm really looking forward to HSM3 coming out on the silver screen in October, and I'm betting I'll get a first-hand look at some of the merchandise before it hits the shelves, too! :D

That said, I'm already half-in the fandom, but in the way a cat might be in a bathtub-- one paw in, hackles raised. At FFnet alone, the tripe level is at an all-time high; people can't seem to summarize AT ALL in the HSM section (and again, this is FFnet, so that's saying something!, and they confuse the real-life actors with their characters, so you'll often see pairing portmanteaus like Zanessa or Zashley. Uh, hello, people? Zac =/= Troy, Vanessa =/= Gabriella, and so on and so forth! Let these people have lives outside their movies, please! Besides, RPF isn't even allowed on FFnet! (If everything that was RPF got taken off there, I'm sure 75% of the section would be gone.)

But for every 100 or so horrible fics, there might just be one good fic (emphasis on the might there). I've already read a few, but usually once I do, I discover one of two things:
* I can get through the author's other good HSM fics (assuming there are any) rather rapidly, even if they're multi-chapter; I'm still left wanting more
* If the author DOES have other HSM fics, they suck, and then I'm back to square one; it's one of those "rare moments of genius" circumstances, and then I don't know what to tell the author that, moments ago, I'd been praising and now want to thwap with a Clue-By-Four

That's a dangerous place to be in, mind, because it's got me thinking "I could do better than these people!" Especially with writing challenges like those of ZAAngels (or something like that), which explore topics that Disney will NEVER EVER do, e.g. how Gabriella officially became Troy's girlfriend (because at the end of HSM1, they were just "best friends," and by HSM2, they were quite clearly in a romantic relationship, broke up, and got back together again in time for HSM3), or Troy and Gabriella's first time. ^_~