FOR TWILIGHT-LOVERS: I don't suggest reading this, because this contains a fair amount of Twilight bashing in it.

    Twilight-- n. 1) The period in the morning/evening where the sun is below the horizon.
                         2) A teen-romance-necrophilia novel, written by Stephanie Meyer, which was originally rejected by fourteen agents before they finally found someone who was smoking something good enough to publish it.

Undoubtedly, you've all heard of Twilight. And yes, the above fact is true; Twilight was turned down by fourteen individual publishers before the fifteenth one finally said yes *cough* blackmail *cough*. I am going to review from the beginning of this...book to the Tyler's Van scene, and then go on from there in another post.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. He also apparently created Mary Sues, which coincidentally, is where we meet Isabella Marie Swan. Note her middle name in wonder. Bella, as she prefers to be called, starts out in Arizona with her mother, Rene, and her mother's boyfriend, Phil, who "plays ball for a living". After Bella moves to live with her father, Charlie, Phil is never mentioned again, really, and plays little to no part in the plot-less story that is Twilight.

Upon arriving in Forks, Washington, Bella despairs over the fact that the town is so small, which is contradictory if you'll remember the fact that Bella is more of a loner-type herself. A few more pages are spent with Bella staring out the window, ranting internally about how she loathes this town that she herself went to by her own volition. Okay, come on now say it with me class: Masochism.

Charlie is shown to be extremely awkward with Bella, to the point where he simply dumps her in her room after giving her an old pickup truck -- extremely durable, as we've all seen how incredibly clumsy Bella is; we wouldn't want her to get hurt, say, if she were to 'trip' and 'accidentally' fall into a fire pit, now would we?

When we meet the Truck (the ONLY character that isn't completely one-dimensional) we also meet the Blacks. Jacob is the greasy-haired teen, one year younger than Bella, and apparently forgot to take the whitening strips off his teeth. He's also proven to have pedophilic tendencies, but we'll get to that in later chapters. We also meet Billy, the wheelchair-bound childish man who good-humoredly attempts to kill Charlie by running him over with said wheelchair. Jacob shows Bella how to turn the car on, which she manages to screw up by knocking Jacob in the head with the squeaky car door.

After this, and skipping a few mindless pages, we arrive at Bella's first day of school. She angsts about how everyone wants to jump her or befriend her. By lunchtime, she has collected a little army of Poor Girls/Guys With No Life who invite her to their table. This is, inevitably, where we meet the Cullens. And they are so ridiculous that I don't even feel the need to add the plural form of their surname to my computer's dictionary.

Now, please allow me to quote here. "I stared because their faces, so different, so similar, were all devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful."

Apparently, the Cullens walked in and several students had an orgasm just by the sexiness with which they walked into a school cafeteria. Justin Timberlake's "Sexy Back" seems to be a theme here. Or Alice Cooper's "I Love The Dead"; either one works. So the Cullens walk in, a few people gape and stare, and Jessica, one of Bella's friends, says, "That's Edward. He's gorgeous, of course, but don't waste your time. He doesn't date. Apparently none of the girls here are good-looking enough for him".

Bella, of course, continues staring at Edward, who eventually catches her and gives her a Death Stare of Bipolar Vampire-Fairy DOOM. Much to her pleasure/hatred, she is seated by him in her Biology class. Did I mention that Meyer highlights her clumsiness yet again by having her trip over air? So after she sits down, Edward catches wind of her Awesome Scent Of Pure Sexy Beauty and nearly chokes to death, which if successful, would've solved our problems right then and there. However, it merely caused him to think about killing everyone in the class, including Bella (yet again, this could've been ended early, but no). At the end of class, he storms out like a fourteen-year-old girl, leaving Bella with the conclusion that either:
   A) Her hair smells
   B) Edward absolutely HATES her, despite never talking to her.

So she decides to do the one thing she seems to be remotely good at (besides every single school subject known to man because she is so incredibly advanced) which is multitasking and taking both A and B. And later she talks with Mike Newton -- just one of the numerous boys that Bella has chasing after her.

    "If I were lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you." ~Mike Newton

Around this point is where Bella says this: "Forks was literally my personal hell on Earth".

So you see, ladies and gentlemen, this wasn't just a dreary, boring place; Forks was literally HELL, with the fire and and the pitchforks, the afterlife itself. This was, LITERALLY, as Bella informs us, the abode of Satan. Oh, but of course, this Hell is her personal, individualized Hell. So this is a Hell where a polygamous relationship with a wolf and a corpse -- one of which is also fucking your underage daughter -- is illegal.

And then, of course, the Office Scene. Bella is in the office after her absolutely dreadful first day (where people were actually FRIENDLY and she has at least THREE boys lusting after her) and who does she meet but Edward. He, of course, can't even speak to Bella after she catches him trying to change out of his Biology course. He stares at her with "piercing, hate-filled eyes" and ran out the door. Bella assumes that it's because she's terrible, and we skip another few pages to save the reviewer's sanity.

So we wake up with Bella, our little Special Snowflake, to find that her second day is pretty much as awful as the first. She actually gets a WRONG ANSWER in her Trigonometry class, she was forced to play volleyball, and the person who seems to hate her most isn't there. That's right, you guessed it: Edward Cullen was too much of a pussy to return the next day.

Bella angsts about that, complains about Mike Newton bugging her, and finally goes home to discover that her father sucks at cooking and her mother is overprotective by sending three emails since Bella has been there. Wow. See, this is exactly what bad parenting looks like: actually caring about whether your daughter arrived in another state unharmed. Oh, wait, no, that's what a NORMAL parent does. When you're a parent, you don't just assume that your kid made it to wherever the fuck they're going; no, they call the kid, email the kid, send a smoke signal, whatever the time period is here. Bella apparently hates the fact that her mother cares about her safety, and we skip a little more.

We once again run across how intelligent Bella is when we find her reading Wuthering Heights "yet again, for the fun of it". So she's reading this incredibly sophisticated book when Charlie arrived, hanging up his gun by the front door.
   
"When I came here as a child, he would always remove the bullets as soon as he walked in the door. I guess he considered me old enough now not to shoot myself by accident, and not depressed enough to shoot myself on purpose."     No, we wouldn't want that, now would we?

I'm going to skim over the brief, loveliest period in this infernal book where Edward is absent, busy moping around like the little fairy bitch he is. So in this time we've got: A pop-quiz on Wuthering Heights, which Bella finds "straightforward and very easy," and snow, which ruined her good day. Then, inevitably I suppose, Edward is back. Bella immediately feels nauseated and just gets a soda. She stares at Edward and decides that he is less pale, his eyes are brighter.

Later in Biology, Edward actually graces her with SPEECH. Bella thinks that his voice is "quiet, musical". Because that's a normal male voice. My theory is that Edward had reached Justin Bieber's level of maturity when he was changed; you know, prepubescent and girly. Edward "looked like he'd just finished shooting a commercial for hair gel."
   
Oh yeah, Pansy Pussy Gel, now available at your local RiteAid; make your hair look like it hasn't been washed in centuries!

Anyway. His face was "dazzling", and by using that word over and over and over, Meyer has ruined that adjective for every single future and past author ever. Oh, and Edward has "flawless lips" which makes the reader believe that Bella is fantasizing about being glued to them. So Edward has a, "soft, enchanting laugh" which definitely proves that he doesn't wear khakis. Oh, wait...

My mind was blown when, once a-freaking-gain we see how special Bella is when she breezes through a lab because she's done it before in her advanced-placement courses back in wherever-the-fuck she used to live. So they're doing this lab on prophase and anaphase, and may I point out that while they are doing this as sophomores, my friends and I did this as freshmen?

Then we see how "ice-cold" Edward's hands are, "like he'd been holding them in a snowdrift before class." Bella is "staggered" by the brief touch, and surrenders the microscope to him. She is disappointed when Edward has the right answer -- well, Bella, you can't be better than everyone on the planet. Just the dead ones. Because everyone knows that a well-rounded character has ONE flaw; TWO if you want to get iffy here.

Bella comments on how Edward's eyes are a different color, and when he says no to her question of whether or not he got contacts, Bella says, "Or maybe Forks was making me crazy in the literal sense of the word." Once again, we see the word LITERAL here, so we know she's serious; especially after that LITERAL Hell she was going on about earlier.

Edward later asks Bella why she moved to Forks. She replies with the fact that her mother married Phil, and she sent herself here to spend time with Charlie. Edward comments that it doesn't seem fair that Bella forces herself to suffer to make her mom happy, to which she replies, "Life isn't fair."

Yes, well, Bella, hon, may I tell you something? Making personal sacrifices every so often is a good thing, yes, but when you sacrifice everything to everyone all the time, that's when you need help. I myself went through the same thing up until I was fourteen. Then I got help. Now, since you retain your masochism (remember the word, boys and girls?) until the end of this horrific series, I truly do believe that you should get professional help, too. Just wait by the corpse and the pedowolf -- of COURSE they're there, darling, of course I believe you -- and the nice men with the white coats will bring one especially for you. It'll be nice; you can hug yourself in it.

Blah blah blah, Edward's "set of perfect, ultrawhite teeth," blah blah blah, "bizarre, beautiful boy who may or may not despise me," more crap, even more crap, crap that makes the past stuff not seem like crap but they still are, another failed gym class, Bella nearly hits a car with her truck, Edward laughs. See; that was a nice little summary of a whole page and a half.

ICE. Bella moans and groans more than a masturbatory man when she sees the dreaded ICE on the ground. Imagine that: ICE. On the GROUND. Surely that's something that makes everyone's day positively meaningless. Thinking of Edward, Bella is "frightened of the hostility" that she "sometimes felt emanating from him" and yet she still loves his "perfect face". Here is where kids learn a valuable lesson. This book is chock-full of Lessons, so whenever there's one, I'll point it out. So here it is.

TWILIGHT LESSON FOR KIDS: It doesn't matter if a guy hates you and acts like a bipolar pedophile-serial-killer; as long as he's attractive, that doesn't matter. So basically, it's LOOKS over ATTITUDE. Who cares if he's a rapist, as long as he's a HOT rapist, or an ATTRACTIVE child molester.

So Bella's morning is ruined by the ice. "I almost lost my balance when I finally got to the truck, but I managed to cling to the side mirror and save myself. Clearly today was going to be nightmarish." Whatever, blah blah blah, Bella thinks about the boys in Forks, Bella compares herself to "a novelty here, where novelties were few and far between."

And then, of course, Stephenie Meyer took Bella's SOLE bad quality and turned it into a good one, setting Bella's status as an Uber-Sue in concrete. "Possibly my crippling clumsiness was seen as endearing rather than pathetic, casting me as a damsel in distress."

What. The. Fucking. Hell.

So before all this, Bella was a perfect kid who was incredibly clumsy. Her lack of coordination was the ONLY bad thing about her. And now it's "endearing" to people. So she's just a perfect kid. I'd like to introduce another word to you all: MARY SUE.

And now we're at the Car Crash Scene, one of the most memorable scenes in this book. Tyler -- yet another guy who thinks masturbation is too good for him, so therefore he goes after Bella -- and his van skids on the ice. Bella, who was noticing the chains on her tires, suddenly sees the van rushing toward her.

At this point, I know that more than half of us are at the edge of our seats, wearing our Team Tyler's Van t-shirts and chanting for more velocity for quicker impact, but we are sadly disappointed.

Edward, the other Special Snowflake, uses his Super-Vampire-Speed to leap in between Bella and Tyler's van and stops it. In the process, he knocks Bella down, where her head "cracked against the icy blacktop" -- and we're all hoping for fatal brain damage, if not a car collision. And just when she thinks it's over, the van knocks back toward her again. And again, Edward stops it with Super-Strength. Remind me, again, what HIS bad qualities are?

So we are left with a possibly-brain-damaged Bella, a dented Tyler's van, and now-useless Team Tyler's Van paraphernalia.

Until next time, readers, and I will just say this one last thing: The only way Twilight could possibly get any worse is if it collaborated with that My Immortal fanfiction.

By the way, please read the author's note!