His Face Was Absurdly Handsome

I should warn you now, the formatting on this thing is almost as bad as my prose.

Bandwagon. What's the internet for, if not for chiming in, late-to-the-party, and having a dig at something everyone loves?

Many (New) Moons ago, I did my very best to describe the Twilight movie to my darling friend Niki, and finally hit upon it's genius. I'd marvelled at just how uneventful it was while I watched it, a little confused as to what made it such a phenomenon. It was a dull, cold film about a girl who does a little sick in her mouth every time she speaks. She falls in love with a vampire and angst ensues. But then, in the Story Office the next day, as I relayed what happened, it (Breaking) dawned upon me: Twilight is fucking insane. It's held together by the greyest and slowest and wettest of threads, but - as made clear by all the WTFs above Niki's head - it's still batshit. I was smitten.

So I read up. I read the myriad miserable interviews with Robert Pattinson (who had descended so deep into self-parody that the fake Twitter I set up for him was forever bested any time someone from Vanity Fair asked him anything.) I read frankly brilliant blogs on the books. I read Aziz Ansari liveblogging as he watched the movie... I read and read and then chuckled and said 'Fursplode!' a lot and it was all rather cute and unbecoming of a bearded man.

I didn't read the actual books though.

Mainly because whenever I found them in a charity shop, I felt far too self-conscious to take them to the counter. What if someone saw, and didn't pick up on my oh-so-knowing, condescending bullshit? It could be the crucial disqualifier. 'He was hott and his denim sleeves were rolled up, but then he bought the Stephenie Meyer book, so I went out with an Indie Guitarist instead.'

BUT! In new job, with new office and new friends fate decided to lend me ALL FOUR...FIVE?...BOOKS.

So. After all that preamble. Beginning today. Tonight......The Saga Begins.

TWILIGHT
By Stephenie Meyer.

PREFACE

Like an episode of Alias - we get the hook in. Somewhere, sometime, someone comes face to face with the man who might kill her. And is really calm and not really all that bothered about it.

'I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly at me.'

As well as pleasant looks, the hunter also 'saunters'. We find out that the narrator is - pretty sure it's Bella - is dying to save someone else. Or something. Might be dying. But not fussed about it.

CHAPTER 1: FIRST SIGHT.

It begins. This is Bella. She's moving from Arizona to Forks, this really rainy place in, like, Washington State. It's a big deal. First paragraph, we get the sad juxtaposition of what she's wearing now - her favourite shirt, all eyelet lace and sleeveless sleeves - and what she'll have to wear when she lands. A Parka. God.

Not sure why she's moving. Her mum, Renee, tells her she doesn't have to go. Her mum looks just like her 'except with short hair and laughter lines.' She's also irratic and harebrained and Bella worries how she will fend for herself. Then Bella's reassured: there's food in the fridge back home. I'm a little worried for Renee. That food in the fridge won't last forever. After that the poor woman might resort to cracking open birdfeeders and dustbins along neighbouring porches. Why are you leaving her, Bella? No idea. She's on the plane. The mum is as good as dead.

In Forks lives Bella's dad, Charlie Swan of the Forks Sherriff's Police Squad. I feel kinda sorry for Charlie. Bella gives a bit of thought to him, but she's got bigger issues: her winter wardrobe. Most of her Arizona clothes are 'too permeable for Washington'. She's been forced to buy wet-weather clothes. And OMG, they totally fit in the trunk of the truck without any problems. Way too few clothes going on. This is bad news.

Still, Charlie's done a nice thing and bought her a truck, off some Billy dude they knew when she used to go fishing. Bella's all 'Ooh, a car,' but doesn't really want to think about Charlie's old pal; she 'does a good job of blocking painful, unnecessary things' from her memory. Leads me to wonder what Billy got up to on them trips. Maybe he just looked old and ugly. Bella probably hated that.

Turns out the car Charlie bought is, like, a hundred years old. But Bella's not one 'to look a free truck in the mouth, or engine'. She's also not one to phrase that line so it actually works. Bella also lets us know she's like her dad in that she doesn't like expressing her emotions out loud. Probably a good thing, as when she finally sees the truck Charlie's bought her, she gets all excited and imagines it at the scenes of accidents, 'paint unscratched, surrounded by the pieces of the foreign car it had destroyed.' Best keep that one to yourself, I don't think Charlie will be much happy with 'Thanks dad, I totally plan to kill Renault drivers with this beast.'

After picturing the car carnage, Bella's mood sours. It took only one trip to get all her luggage upstairs. Ugh! Srsly? And that's without servants. That's just her carrying her bags and her parka and all that shit. Worse yet, she has to share her bathroom with her father, something she doesn't want to dwell on. I can't tell if this is because Bella has no idea what it's like to live in the same building as another person (she later calls it 'the communal bathroom'), or poor Charlie has something really wrong going on inside him. Still, 'one of the best things about Charlie is he doesn't hover.' So until Charlie Swan gets his jetpack, Bella will still forgive him.

So Bella's home. In Forks. She gets into her bedroom, unpacks. Bella's glad to be alone and doesn't have to fake smile anymore. She has a little cry, but doesn't go on a 'real crying jag' because she's too busy. Big cry she saves until bedtime. Like, she actually plans that.

Bella starts thinking about school tomorrow and is worried, because she doesn't have a tan. Being ivory skinned and slender, she anticipates the other pupils will single her out as a freak. Yup. Bella is most definitely a girl. When she finally gets to school, she seems bummed out that there aren't metal detectors on the doors, like the last place she went. I can't tell if she's unhappy because the locals can be trusted, or because she thinks hillbillies will wander the corridors with axes and revolvers. What kind of dump is this? Back in Arizona the kids had Porsches and Mercedeses. In the car lot at her new school, there's a shiny Volvo. A VOLVO, ffs.

Turns out her skin fits in. Everyone is pale. Although Bella manages to flush 'tomato red' at one point. Tomato red. Her face was the colour of - what - Spider-Man's mask? Maybe Bella is right about being a freak, if she routinely turns into Fire-Engine Face.

So Bella finds school boring because she's read all the books on the entire curriculum and these backwards country kids haven't. She meets a guy called Eric - 'a gangly boy with skin problems (worse than turning the colour of ketchup?) and hair as black as an oil slick.' He's nice to her, but being from the country, Eric doesn't understand sarcasm. Bella is exasperated. This is hell on earth. Bella smiles at him. 'Vaguely'.

Other people are nice to Bella, and she doesn't even bother remembering their names. She goes on and on about how forgettable they are. There's a girl - short, curly hair. Turns out her name is Jessica - so she's the Anna Kendrick part in the movie. The forgettable girl.

Anyway. This is the whole 'First Sight' bit coming up. Bella follows Jennifer or Jessica or whatever this boring-ass bitch is called to the lunch hall. And that's when she first sees them.

There's five of them. Not eating. Not talking. Also, crucially, not looking at her 'unlike most of the other students.' They don't look anything alike, apparently. There's three boys and two girls. Of the boys there are:

Big guy - like, weightlifter big. Dark and Curly hair.
Tall and lean but muscular also. (So, that's alike.) Honey blonde hair.
Lanky, less bulky. Boyish. Bronze hair.

And of the girls, there are:
Tall and statuesque, like a swimsuit model. Golden hair.
Thin - 'in the extreme' - small features. Cropped, black hair.

All of them are pale. Paler than all the pale people in the book so far. They have bruised eyes and angular features. Their noses are 'straight, perfect, angular'. It's obvs that these are the vampires. So who ever went round biting has a thing for noses? Or does being a vampire do something to your nose? Like, you expect the thing with the teeth, but actually, the nose gets pointy too. All of them are 'devastatingly, inhumanly beautiful.' America's Next Top Vampire.

The boyish one - EDWARD CULLEN - swoon - locks eyes with Bella for an instant, and then tears up a bagel with his fingers. Also, his 'mouth moves very quickly', his 'perfect lips barely opening.' It isn't clear if he's eating. What the fuck is he doing? This can't be attractive.

Jessica explains they are all the adopted kids of the young and handsome Dr. Cullen. Bella reflects that there are two 'Jessica's in her history class back home. What sort of boring, unoriginal nice person has just latched on to Bella? This is the worst school ever. Couldn't Jessica have had the decency to chop her name into something catchy, like Bella did? Yeah, Essica.

Bella checks out Edward. It turns out Essica has hit on Edward and been shot down, the sour grapes-eating loser. Bella bites her lip to hide her smile, but Edward doesn't look at her again. He gets out of the lunch hall pretty sharpish. But that's okay, because when Bella gets to her science class, there he is. SAT NEXT TO THE ONLY EMPTY SEAT. OMG. Bella shuffles over to him, but Edward goes 'rigid' (ummm. What?) and looks at her with 'an expression of hostility and fury'. Bella trips over, for, like, the third time. When she sits next to him, Edward averts his face, 'like he'd smelled something bad.' Bella checks - she smells like strawberries. What is this guy on?

Bella's already learned all this science shit already. Fucking shiny Volvo simpletons. Edward sits all lesson with a clenched fist, until the bell goes and he fluidly fucks off in an instant.'

He was so mean. It wasn't fair."

After class, a guy called Mike, with the spikes, is nice to Bella. But he lets slip that Edward has never been that shitty to anyone before. He must really, really hate strawberries. Mike doesn't hate strawberries. 'If I was lucky enough to sit by you, I would have talked to you.' Mike? Are you still here? I zoned out. I'm Bella and I'm used to nice and admiring types. Yawn. Next. Whatever.

Bella goes off to some office next and - I don't believe it - Edward is there too. He's noisly banging on about changing his science class because he absolutely can't go to that same class ever again. Edward's got his back to Bella, but he must haved got a whiff of that Strawberry scent, because he stiffens again and then exits post-haste. Bella gets one last glimpse of him - "He was absurdly handsome, with piercing, hate-filled eyes," and then he's gone.

We end the chapter with Bella in her gift truck mouth horse thing, fighting back the tears.

*sob*

So that's Chapter One. Poor Bella. Uprooted, and now having to deal with someone who didn't instantly like her and start following her around. Join us at some point for maybe another chapter of this. Weeks from now. Maybe.

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