Epilogue: An Occasion

498 pages in....COMPLETED.

I mean really. I finished this novel. I totally did. I FINISHED TWILIGHT, from cover to...oooh...

Jeeeeeeesuuuuuusssss....

There are still quite a few pages here. Why are there more pages? It seems this is a sneak peek of the next book in the series, New Moon.

No.

No.

No.

Absolutely not.

I refuse.

No.

Do you see my face?

Yes, for those who don't know me, that is totes my face.

No.

There is no end to the noage that I just...seriously. For serious.

I mean, I am really fascinated by the IDEA of the Twilight franchise and its fans, but...that shit is long. And it just gets longer. And I have a lot of other things on my plate right now. And from what I've read and heard from people I know who've read the whole series, these stories just get more problematic and disconcerting the further you get into them, and Meyer herself improves MINIMALLY as a writer. You'd think that with Twilight you'd have nowhere to go but up but...alas...Meyer is a special star of lameness that streaks across the sky. My indulgence, one would hope, is catching the tail end of the fad.

Enough is enough, ya'll.

Meyer's epilogue is 18 pages long and features one scene in which Edward "tricks" Bella into going to prom with him (i.e., he drags her there against her will). He gets her into "silk and chiffon" with "elaborately styled curls" (481), and I got some enjoyment out of the fact that Alice has been makeup raping Bella all day. ("I'm not coming over anymore if Alice is going to treat me like Guinea Pig Barbie," Bella whines. See what a mature and grateful person she has evolved into? What a triumph.)

At the prom, Edward forces Bella to dance in her walking cast, even though she doesn't want to and is probably taking pain medication for that shit. Then Jacob shows up, Edward gets freakishly protective, and Jacob tells Bella that his dad Billy wants her to omgbreakupwithherboyfriend. Bella and Edward have another conversation about how she wants to be a vampire and he wants her to stay human.

Damn. I have to say it: Edward makes Holden Caulfield look like a SECURE ADULT. First the whole, "I can't have sex because I WILL KILL YOU," and now, "I can't let you become my equal because...um, you need to experience all these meaningless human occasions, like prom and...prom...and stuff. It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that I need complete dominance over this relationship."

It's even more of a problem for me that the novel acknowledges that the relationship between Edward and Bella is unequal (because Edward is supernatural and Bella is not). Yet it is still Edward's choice as to whether or not Bella becomes equal to him. Really, it's still in his power completely.

Also, the downside to becoming a vampire in the Twiverse is minimal. If they have no real weaknesses and can sustain themselves on animal blood without any real problem, why can't everybody be a vampire? Why do these creatures NEED to be a secret in the first place? Edward refusing Bella's transformation just seems cruel and oppressive rather than protective.

That's our Edward! ::thumbs up::

WHAT'S WORKING: The epilogue is similar to scenes I've read in books by other female authors, particularly fantasy authors, in which there's an obligatory Formal Event that forces the characters to dress nice, even if the Event is not important to the plot. This scene is typically characterized by the author describing what everybody is wearing in painful detail, and also having female characters--who typically look frumpy or don't care about nice clothes--fidget and complain about how pretty they look. Extra points if there's a moment in which the female character "doesn't recognize" her dolled-up self in the mirror and a "Who's going to be paired with who?" conundrum beforehand. (I myself am not completely innocent of this trope.) It makes one wonder: maybe all girls really want to do is look pretty and go to proms...all the time...forever.

Maybe not all girls. Maybe just Meyer. There's a super-detailed description of Bella's prom dress in a pdf file on her website, as well as a long scene in which Rosalie and Alice do a MAKEOVER!!! :: jazz hands:: Thankfully, she cut most of this gratuitous garbage (she admits it herself!) from the final draft. Meyer herself also seems to have a rather overblown, prom-style taste in fashion, which you can verify if you look at any picture of her attending formal events. It is literally like someone just soccer mommed all over Goth Lolita. Oh, is that mean? Sorry. Rock whatever you choose. You don't look at all like a middle-aged saloon girl.

The tone of Meyer's epilogue makes me think she wrote it long before she finished the novel and stuck it on the end because she was determined to have it there without making any changes to it. The fact that Bella is the same little snot she was in the very first chapter backs this up. The character has learned absolutely nothing of value from her experiences. In fact, because of Edward, it seems she might just hate herself even more now.

(FYI: Bella is both terrified of embarrassing herself on the dance floor in front of everything AND convinced that proms are nothing but a "trite human affair," because remember, if Bella doesn't like doing something, we have to discredit the validity of it. What a mature person she is!!!)

What EXACTLY does Bella learn in Twilight? She's not completely unchanged. She learns that she loves Edward and figures out how awesome he is by like Chapter 6, and then by the end of the novel, she learns that she really, really, REALLY loves Edward, and he is not just awesome, but also her own personal Jesus. Everything else she does, it seems, is something she would have done anyway. She doesn't have to work or think to reach any conclusions. Her actions never extend from what she has come to understand and experience, but rather, whatever the plot demands of her at the time.

I don't think Twilight has any genuine moral to offer us. Not that a story HAS to, though all stories SAY something, regardless of whether or not the author intends it. Fans of the novel will go on to you about "The Power of Love" or "Selflessness Gets Rewarded" or "Strive for What You Really Want" and other such nonsense, but the novel is plagued with numerous contradictory messages that blow these ideas out of the water. Edward and Bella get what they want and are treated with utmost esteem by the author--why? Because they are good people? Bella sacrifices herself at the drop of a hat and Edward refrains from eating people? Okay. Yes. We get it. What about more practical things, like treating people with respect? What about not judging? What about reaching out to those that extend themselves to us? What about behaving like a genuine adult and recognizing that our actions have consequences?

There's no real sense of morality in this novel, though I think that's kind of the point. It is STRICTLY about emotional indulgence, which is fine, only Meyer seems particularly good at manipulating readers to make them THINK that they are reading something that speaks of the power of love and selflessness. I have witnessed Twilighters argue, in the same breath, that Twilight "has a beautiful moral" but also "doesn't HAVE to have one." And yet I understand why they say this. To say one but not the other means either a) that they're making weak excuses for the novel's obvious contradictions, or b) Twilight is meaningless, self-indulgent fluff. They opt to make a full commitment to neither statement, thereby choosing to bullshit their way out of an argument rather than face any real problems with something they've developed such a deep emotional interest in.

I will offer up my final evaluation next week, but since we're down to the wire here, these are some random things that really stood out to me. Some were bothersome, and some were just interesting goings-on that I noted.

• Meyer's best passages of prose describe the setting. This is pretty consistent. For someone who wrote this novel having never been to the Pacific Northwest, she takes some much-appreciated time to slow down and devote prosaic love to the scenery.
• There is NEVER ONCE an explanation as to why the Cullen kids still hang out in high school. Meyer never even tries to address it. Never. It's strange to me, since these vampires are clearly supposed to be smart and supertalented, and yet their greatest possible contribution to society is wandering around high school learning things they already know, sitting at lunch room tables without eating and starting up rumor mills about themselves? Honestly. These people are worthless. WORTHLESS.
• Rosalie has one line in the entire book, and it's the one I mentioned in Chapter 19, in which she is the voice of reason for everybody and immediately gets shut down.
• Jasper who?
• Lauren is so obviously somebody Meyer didn't like in high school. I'd bet one of my kidneys that she didn't even change the girl's name.
• Victoria, James' mate, is referred to by the Cullen clan almost exclusively as "the female," never her name.
• The nonhuman characters in this novel get SHAT ON. I've mentioned my frustration about this before, but I'm particularly pissed that we don't even get to see the scene where Bella apologizes to her father for being a terrible, terrible person to him. Obviously, Meyer cut that in favor of the prom scene in which Bella continues to be terrible.

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Almost through. Check with me next week. Might plan something special to celebrate.
Wish me luck,

Jenchilla