Smeyer and Bella

[limelightqueen]

It's a topic we've all talked about a thousand times, Bella is Stephenie's author avatar. But I wanted to ask a new question, are the failings in Bella's story due to failings in Meyer's own life?

This came up today when I found out that Lifetime made a movie about JK Rowling's life. When I thought about it, yeah, her life does kinda sound dramatic. It's a story everyone loves. The image of a single mother who is faced with insurmountable circumstances pulling herself up by her bootstraps and penning an international best seller in a coffee house because there is no heat in her flat, come on, that's a great image. It's one people want to believe in. You fight for what you want and eventually you are rewarded.

On the other hand, we have Meyer. Before Twilight was written she was a stay at home mom in a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. From what I know, she's never had a real job, aside from a short stint as a receptionist. This is no slight to stay at home moms, I know that it is a tough job, but is it surprising that Bella has no aspirations outside of the hearth and home?

But then, one night, Meyer has a dream. She gets up from bed and starts writing. Two months later she has a first draft. She starts sending it off to agents and publishing firms and someone likes in. Just over one year later the book is published. People love it. She had already been penning sequels and by the time the hype had caught up with her, she was three books in. The book that was hands down the worst, Breaking Dawn, was the only one written after the hype had hit in full. Because for the first time, there was something on the line. And Meyer cracked under the pressure. While her stories were shit before, they became shit on bedazzled crack in Breaking Dawn. Most likely? Meyer knew she couldn't accurately write a conclusion that would satisfy her and all the fans. But if she wanted the money, she'd have to.

I'm reminded of a web FAQ with Libba Bray, who is fabulous in everything she does and whose Gemma Doyle Trilogy I prescribe to anyone who needs an antidote to Twilight.

Q: Okay. I’ve written a book. How can I get it published?

A: Huzzah! That is awesome. The first thing you should do is put it in a drawer for a month, then come back to it and read it again. It should make you cringe in parts. If it doesn’t, leave it in the drawer for another month. When you read it with both love and disdain, you’re ready to revise. Work on your revision. THEN you can send it out.

While Meyer has admitted to hating some of what she's written, it is generally followed by a story about how you shouldn't second guess yourself and really, her work was awesome all along. She can't divorce herself enough from the story to see it for its faults- which is exactly why Ms. Bray tells readers to put their first draft in a drawer. Because first drafts almost without exception suck. Second drafts suck marginally less. You got to keep going to get to the good stuff*

And then we have Bella. She never asks for anything. She just goes with the flow. A vampire happens to fall for her. It wasn't anything she did. She had good smelling blood and a badly wired brain. Had Edward been able to read her thoughts and her blood smelt like pennies just like the rest of us, we'd all have been saved four books, five movies and endless grimaces from KStew. Same goes for the "triangle." Bella loves both Edward and Jacob and she agonizes over hurting Jake by choosing Ed. Luckily, by pure happenstance, a solution just falls out of the sky (or more accurately, is chewed out of her uterus) and presto change-o instant happiness!

Even her saving of the Cullens at the end of BD isn't truly because of her skills. It is because of the magic powers she was bestowed. She doesn't do anything. She never tries. Just like Meyer. Oh yes, right at that one point she concentrates super hard for a bit and is then bestowed a lifetime of riches. Where have I heard that before?

And it's not just boys. Take school for instance. Bella earns herself a special place in Forks High for being super-duper smart in Bio. Why? Not because she is actually gifted, but because she happened to have learned it the year before. But her talent of retaining info she already learned is so prodigious that her teacher gets a boner for her underage ass. Clearly the girls at Forks are all ugly slackers.

Meyer too has admitted that she had it easy in school all without trying. She says so when she talks about how in college she wrote "a bunch" of essays from a feminist perspective on how The Princess Bride totally sucks for the simple reason that it was easy. Try to contain your rage here Florinites, now is not the time. If she was able to write those essays and still come away from it thinking that, she clearly had cracked out teachers who didn't give a fuck. Or she didn't give a fuck. Either way, she managed to earn a bachelor's degree in English without realizing that The Princess Bride is a satire. I didn't even get out of fifth grade before I figured it out (okay, my older sister told me, but whatever I was ten).

It's simple as this- Meyer seems to have had everything in life handed to her. This is the foremost way that Bella's story is her own, with a few sequins added.

*I want to believe that this next paragraph from Libba's same answer was directed at Meyer-alikes:

SPOILER: Click to show

if an agent says he/she is only interested in dark, edgy novels and you send him/her your light-as-a-three-egg white-omelet novel about a girl who sings at a nursing home and suddenly becomes an overnight sensation and falls in love with the boy next door and they save puppies and plant daisies in everybody’s yards so the world will be filled with bright, bright color, you’re shooting yourself in the foot. (Actually, if you write that book, there might be a line of people wanting to do the shooting for you.)

[annabellamy]

Were I a plagiarist, I'd copy this and hand it in as my introductory essay for uni ( )

[Mia Garossa]

Quoting Meyer: "Well, write what you know."

There has been evidence of her limited imagination as of late. Rowling toiled on HP for the sake of her kids who liked the bedtime stories becoming a series. Meyer's wet dream had no direction from the start. Guess who is the more admirable of the two authors here. And as if Bella getting married then knocked up weren't proof of Meyer cramming her own life experiences into her self-insert, thus a self-insert.

[annabellamy]

"Write what you know"? But she doesn't KNOW vampires.

[shiko]

Posted by annabellamy on Today at 10:24am
"Write what you know"? But she doesn't KNOW vampires.

She did not research, but I learned from her mistake and do research if I have too. A writer has to look shit up so it makes sense! I would love to see Meyer take a writing class.

[vampirekites]

I think Meyer knew her life was pretty uneventful, so she tried playing up that same sob story of being a "wallflower" (only to negate that in the same breath by saying what good stock she became when she moved to Utah). There's nothing wrong with having an average life. Hell, my life is average, save for a few out of norm events. What the biggest problem with Smeyer is, she doesn't have that drive to push herself to the limits. She only goes in her comfort zone, and uses the most cliched tropes imaginable. She admits herself to using only the briefest of research, and that really hurts her writing, even with the success. She just got lucky to be involved in a niche that doesn't get catered to very often (see WolfGod's rants about how and why Tyler Perry is so successful).

With Bella, she is both the Author Avatar and the girl SMeyer wishes she would have been. Bella does get everything easy because that's what Smeyer wants. A vampire falls in love with Bella merely because she exists, save for some quirks that she herself has no control over. It's another instance of Smeyer's laziness, plus that fantasy of not having to lift a finger to get what you want. Bella's also only limited to being a housemother to her dad, just like SMeyer is a housewife herself. She has no hobbies, save for reading, and instead complains about her life yet does jack shit to change it. It only does change when she meets...heh...a MAN and then all of a sudden her life becomes interesting by proxy. Even when she becomes a vampire, she doesn't do anything outside of the basic domestic lifestyle. (For all of their super hero powers and high moral grounds, they sure don't try to USE that to help anyone else except for themselves.) It's basically just Smeyer's fantasy of being young and beautiful forever, humping another young and beautiful person forever and not have to worry about taking care of kids. I still hold on to the belief that Smeyer really regrets getting married and having kids, because it seems like Bella gets everything that Smeyer wishes she had.

[reniefuwa]

Aug 8, 2011 6:36:55 GMT -8 shiko said:

Posted by annabellamy on Today at 10:24am
"Write what you know"? But she doesn't KNOW vampires.

She did not research, but I learned from her mistake and do research if I have too. A writer has to look shit up so it makes sense! I would love to see Meyer take a writing class.

I would love to witness her taking a literary analysis class from the same prof I had. She would have taken one look at Meyer's "essays" and gone, "Yeah, but what claim are you making here? All you've done is made observations about the text."

[shiko]

Aug 8, 2011 11:30:10 GMT -8 reniefuwa said:

Aug 8, 2011 6:36:55 GMT -8 shiko said:

She did not research, but I learned from her mistake and do research if I have too. A writer has to look shit up so it makes sense! I would love to see Meyer take a writing class.

I would love to witness her taking a literary analysis class from the same prof I had. She would have taken one look at Meyer's "essays" and gone, "Yeah, but what claim are you making here? All you've done is made observations about the text."

What about her book?

[reniefuwa]

Aug 8, 2011 17:21:34 GMT -8 shiko said:

What about her book?

What about it? What are you asking, exactly?

[shiko]

Aug 8, 2011 17:30:06 GMT -8 reniefuwa said:

Aug 8, 2011 17:21:34 GMT -8 shiko said:

What about her book?

What about it? What are you asking, exactly?

Well would the prof say about the characters and plot?

[reniefuwa]

Aug 8, 2011 18:34:48 GMT -8 shiko said:

Aug 8, 2011 17:30:06 GMT -8 reniefuwa said:

What about it? What are you asking, exactly?

Well would the prof say about the characters and plot?

Probably the same as another English teacher I asked about who liked it. She said she liked it "for what it is" i.e. a fluff piece. Actually, I don't know if she would like it. At very least, I bet she would see Bella for who she really is, much like most on this site, and that the books/stories themselves are pretty shallow with themes that are weak at best and squicky and disturbing at worst.

[watersheerie]

Meyer always struck me as being a very boring person. And it shows in Twilight. A boring, bland girl with a boring, bland life desperate to do anything to escape mediocrity. Perhaps this is why Meyer had such a hard-on for her dream initially. A boring girl with a hot, rich, fantastic vampire boyfriend. Bonus: Boyfriend has the ability to transform the boring girl into something, someone extraordinary.

Which is why it's so funny that the books remain boring. The Cullens are boring; rich super-powered vampires that waste their time and talents going to high-school over and over again. The 'love' story is cliched and bland, the villains and dangers to Bella are easily dispatched and pose no real threat. And ultimately we find out in the end that Bella is as boring a vampire as she was a human.

Meyer fails to understand that the most interesting elements in a story, and the most interesting characters, are often formed from strife and tragedy. Luke Skywalker is an orphan that loses the only family he's known in a horribly tragedy, he goes off and finds out that he has power to right the wrongs done not only to him, but the rest of the galaxy. Along the way, he also loses his friend and mentor, Obi wan. But by far, the most memorable and spectacular moment of the Star Wars trilogy comes not from a time when Skywalker succeeds and gets everything he wants. Instead it is the moment when he is hanging over a pit, wounded and emotionally distraught, as the big bad of the movie tells Luke that he is his father. People remember this scene, it's gut-wrenching and powerful, a climax to the second movie and a turning point to the entire trilogy.

Watching a girl who has everything and gets everything she wants is not interesting. It's boring, vapid and shallow. Then again, Meyer really wasn't interested in writing a good story that would resonate with her readers. She wanted to write a wish-fulfillment piece of fanfic wank that would make her forget, if only for a little while, how pathetically boring and suburban her life is. And because her life is so dull and average, I suppose it's hard for us to find fault with the fact that her imagination is so limited, and her idea of what constitutes as being 'interesting' is so very mundane and self-centered.

[Lady Phoenix]

You know, I'm reminded a bit about Beauty and the Beast.

Belle had a boring life and wanted more . . . she got what she wished for (albeit, probably did not want the beginning part where she was a prisoner, chased out of the castle, attacked by wolves).

However, let us see the difference between Bella and Bella

Belle:
*Has a likable, warm personality
*Actually PROVES she is a bookworm (walks around town with a book, hates it when book are abused, etc)
*Has spunk and a backbone (tries to fight the wolves off, tells off the Beast)
*Is actually clever (the way she kicked out Gaston)
*Actually cares for her family (she sacrificed her freedom so her dad could get home where it is warm and safe, actually LEAVES the Beast when she find her Dad sick in the woods)
*Does not string people along

Bella:
*Is a flat-out bitch
*Only claims she's a bookworm when all the reading she has done is mandatory -- which proves nothing
*Has no backbone
*Is not clever and anytime she tries either falls flat on her face or makes her a bigger bitch instead of "charmingly witty"
*Gives fuck-all to her family unless they're "convenient"
*Strings multiple men along for personal gain

So yeah, when Belle got her "happy ending", she actually deserved it and we were more interested in her getting it. When BELLA gets her ending, it's half-assed and we're not interested because she acts the exact same way she acted in the beginning -- a self-entitled brat.

[vampirekites]

Aug 8, 2011 19:46:00 GMT -8 watersheerie said:

Meyer always struck me as being a very boring person. And it shows in Twilight. A boring, bland girl with a boring, bland life desperate to do anything to escape mediocrity. Perhaps this is why Meyer had such a hard-on for her dream initially. A boring girl with a hot, rich, fantastic vampire boyfriend. Bonus: Boyfriend has the ability to transform the boring girl into something, someone extraordinary.

Which is why it's so funny that the books remain boring. The Cullens are boring; rich super-powered vampires that waste their time and talents going to high-school over and over again. The 'love' story is cliched and bland, the villains and dangers to Bella are easily dispatched and pose no real threat. And ultimately we find out in the end that Bella is as boring a vampire as she was a human.

Meyer fails to understand that the most interesting elements in a story, and the most interesting characters, are often formed from strife and tragedy. Luke Skywalker is an orphan that loses the only family he's known in a horribly tragedy, he goes off and finds out that he has power to right the wrongs done not only to him, but the rest of the galaxy. Along the way, he also loses his friend and mentor, Obi wan. But by far, the most memorable and spectacular moment of the Star Wars trilogy comes not from a time when Skywalker succeeds and gets everything he wants. Instead it is the moment when he is hanging over a pit, wounded and emotionally distraught, as the big bad of the movie tells Luke that he is his father. People remember this scene, it's gut-wrenching and powerful, a climax to the second movie and a turning point to the entire trilogy.

Watching a girl who has everything and gets everything she wants is not interesting. It's boring, vapid and shallow. Then again, Meyer really wasn't interested in writing a good story that would resonate with her readers. She wanted to write a wish-fulfillment piece of fanfic wank that would make her forget, if only for a little while, how pathetically boring and suburban her life is. And because her life is so dull and average, I suppose it's hard for us to find fault with the fact that her imagination is so limited, and her idea of what constitutes as being 'interesting' is so very mundane and self-centered.

Exactly. Smeyer is boring and so is Twilight. I think that's the biggest offence in the books: nothing actually happens. And when it does, it's either off screen or done in a few sentences. There are so many things that could have been explored in the books, but Smeyer took the easy way out and instead wrote about how beautiful vampires are (P.S. Smeyer, that becomes redundant) or what Bella made for breakfast.

[Mia Garossa]

Aug 8, 2011 23:44:24 GMT -8 @vampirekites said:

Exactly. Smeyer is boring and so is Twilight.

That right there sums up the reason for the hate.

[Chaotic Neutral]

Twilight honestly is boring. Perhaps a key issue is that Bella, being our supposedly reliable (read: apparently near omnipotent) narrator truly has nothing to strive for, or at least nothing that feels like it's worth striving for. She has no goals, no hobbies (and don't give me that "reading" bs, she's not a reader if she doesn't spend any time actually READING), and no one she actually gives a damn about. We're reading this from her point of view, but it doesn't feel like it's really her point of view and when it does, she seems like a horribly whiny person. We don't get to really read about her making important discoveries and what discoveries are played as important are horribly quick and simple compared to other works--so much so that it is much too easy for the reader to figure out the "secrets". So easy that it's almost painful trying to read through the three or four chapters it takes Bella to finally get a clue.

Gee, Edward's a vampire? I never would have figured--what with the pale skin, adverse reaction to blood, stooping a car with his bare hands, and--oh yeah, IT WAS WRITTEN POINT BLANK IN THE BOOK SUMMARY.

[vampirekites]

Any kind of plot point is mentioned in long dialogue dump from other characters, or Bella all of a sudden has ESP and can figure things out without much help. Other than that, yeah it goes on FOREVER to figure out things that the audience all ready knows, just to build up suspense. It's not suspense if everyone but the main character knows the whos and whats in the story.

[Mia Garossa]

One classic case of her ESP is in Eclipse after Riley swipes her red shirt and the Cullens couldn't figure it out. CUE THE MARY SUE!

You're useless, Meyer.

[Deleted]

I hadn't really thought about it like that before, and that's definitely a good point. Let's face it, if you take a person with little to no ambition or anything similar in her life, what are the chances that we'll get a character that isn't, especially when it's such an obvious self insert? Bella does not have to work for anything, she has no great tragedy in her life, like mentioned above, that helps give her motivation. Meyer only wants to get everything she wants, and she's never really had to endure any major trials, at least not on a scale comparable to people like Rowling.

[watersheerie]

^
^

They say to 'write what you know.' Never is this more apparent then in Twilight.

[Mia Garossa]

Just to clear things up for those who are in the dark here, the quote "Well, write what you know" came from an interview from a Youtube link given days ago in this forum about Meyer's preference to writing more about love than sex. I don't know why the interviewer chose such a meaningless question considering who the target audience is here, but there you go.

Interviewer: You write more about love than sex.
Meyer: Well, write what you know.

The answer is hilarious and too sad to pick apart, but it does have several meanings where Meyer, Bella Sue and the rest of Twilight are concerned.

[watersheerie]

^
^
The question is equally lulzy. Meyer writes about love. I'm sorry Meyer, I must have missed the 'love' and romance in the books. It was probably buried beneath the mountains of purple prose and odes to Edward's epic beauty.

[Mia Garossa]

It's like Romeo and Juliet all over again. People hear about the story and the word "love" and the name "Shakespeare" and they think it's the ultimate romance. Yes dears they died for love, but they were 12/13 years old when they decided this for themselves and it wasn't even for the sake of ending the family feud but to elope like the unthinking lovebirds that they were. It just happened to have been the case.

[Chaotic Neutral]

What really bothers me is how Meyer stated that she wrote about all the different kinds of love.

Really? Where? Because with the sole exception of the lowly, unimportant humans, the only love we get from ANYONE is the instantaneous, obsessive, one look and suddenly you are my world kind of love. I've long believed that love has three parts: passion, commitment, and friendship.

I see the passion in the lust and appearance focus and desire for sex. The only real commitment I see is in regards to imprinting where once these guys see these girls that's it for them and the rest of their lives are bound to that one girl, which is really sad. No CHOICE for commitment, just some higher force nobody really knows or can even explain MAKING these guys obsessed about these girls. Hell, I can't even tell if that's really commitment at all or just obsession. Or maybe obsession is the commitment, in which case, it's a lame and creepy one. And as for friendship--oh who are we kidding? NONE of those guys actually knew the girls they ended up with. Not Edward, not any of the wolves. NONE of them. There is no friendship, no basis, no knowledge or understanding of the other person's likes or dislikes or even ANYTHING about them.

But apparently, this is the end all be all true love. How any other types of love are represented here is beyond me, since no other type of love--not familial, not friends, not even love for the self--is actually shown, much less shown to MATTER.

[Tim Willard]

That she claims "I write what I know" in regards to sex really is sad.

If you want to be kind of a douche (Like me) you can just take that mean she's in one of those marriages where sex is seen as a duty or something to be done now and then. No whirling passion where you chase each other around in the bedroom. No touching and kissing until higher thought shuts down and all that is left is need.

She claims she knows love, but I have yet to see any in her books. I haven't seen one person in real love, just infatuation and a serious Electra Complex.

[Mia Garossa]

^Oh God! Please don't mention the Electra Complex, I don't even want to think anymore ever since Breaking Dawn's vampire!Bella and her sniffing her Dad's bl--

Halt the 3rd process and CUT.

Halt the 1st process and CUT.

Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. Just CUT. jUst CUT CUT CUT CUT CUT KATTO KATTO KATTO KATTO KATTO KATTO KATTO KATTO!!!!!!!!!!

[Chaotic Neutral]

^Shh! Shh! It's okay, Mia! It's okay. We'll get you some free cake and therapy.

[limelightqueen]

Mia, whatever you do, don't go into the entire thread I created on Bella's Electra Complex in the characters section

On love trumping sex in her books or whatever: bull fucking shit. Does no one else remember that after she was turned Bella was so busy humping Edward she forgot all about Nessie's existence?

[Mia Garossa]

*huff huff huff!*

I'm okay! Nanaya mode is now over, guys. >8|

Aug 12, 2011 18:52:26 GMT -8 limelightqueen said:

Mia, whatever you do, don't go into the entire thread I created on Bella's Electra Complex in the characters section

I...I'm sure I'll just be reduced to tears instead of going berserk. It's so full of fail that I'm sure that's what will happen to me. (TT^TT ) *obligatory crying face*

On love trumping sex in her books or whatever: bull fucking shit. Does no one else remember that after she was turned Bella was so busy humping Edward she forgot all about Nessie's existence?

HAHAHA! Raise your hands if you thought Edward was meant to be Bella's sex toy all along after reading that in BD! *raises finger to the heavens and God because he knows it's true*

[limelightqueen]

I'm afraid I can't raise my hand. See, I knew that Edward was meant to be Bella's sex toy well before then.