The Kind of Girl Who … ogles 17-year-old werewolves

NTKOG #64: The kind of girl who gets all sweaty and obsessive over the pale undead and wakes up ungodly early to swoon over Edward with the rest of the acne-ridden masses.

I am: into books. Real books. With tiny little elements like plots and pacing and character development. Maybe the occasional bout of internal story logic too, while we’re at it?

I am not: a Twilight fan, in short. Sorry, dudes.

The Scene: A cinema in Fenway, ungodly early, with the rest of the Twitards Twihards and their sleepy, grimacing boyfriends. Sister, for all her other graces, is among the afflicted, and has promised me a movie-size box of Sugar Babies if I’ll sit through the movie with her without scoffing too loudly. Sugarlust and sisterly obligation prevail.

For context, I read the first book with an open mind (then became — in words that Twihards will understand — quite mellifluous with my chagrin after about fifty pages); the first movie I watched with only mocking in mind. To express my response to “New Moon,” I present you with a poem inspired by another, better teen trash flick:

Ten Things I Hate About New Moon

I hate its hackneyed premise
and its screaming preteen fans,
I hate the cinematography,
those dizzying circular pans.

I hate the cliched dialogue,
I hate Lautner’s hyped-up brawn,
I hate the logical contradictions
and I fucking hate Bella Swan.

I hate how Meyer just can’t write
and how slow the story’s paced,
the lazy trope of perfect love –
I hate that they’re so damn chaste.

I hate how Kristen Stewart mumbles
and how she gasps at Edward’s touch.
But mostly I hate how I didn’t hate it,
Not even close, not even a little — well, okay, not much.

The Verdict: Yeah, you guys heard me. I actually didn’t hate this. Okay, it was sappy and overly long, and I wasn’t totally comfortable with all the soccer mommies sitting behind us cackling with lascivious glee at 17-year-old Taylor Lautner, but the movie itself? Not terrible. Unlike the first one, there was actually some nice character development with Jacob Black, the occasional snappy line, and some pretty okay art direction (when the camera guy wasn’t trying to get too cute.) Unlike the first movie — of which 98% was comprised of Bella and Edward congratulating one another for being so hot — this one sort of had a plot. A pretty watchable one.

Don’t get me wrong, I gave myself an eye-rolling cramp from scorning the pox upon humanity that is Kristen Stewart and her mumbly scream-sobbing. And there were big plot holes. But it was better than 2012, and in this day and age, isn’t that really about the best we could hope for? So yeah. Doing stuff I think I’ll hate: sometimes a pretty okay idea. Thumbs up from this un-undead dude.

[Also, as I've once again wowed you with my pentameter, this might be an appropriate time to beamingly update you that I've now heard back from all of the poetry journals that I submitted to a few weeks ago, and announce that I was blessed with two rejections, and three acceptances! Yes! I just found out tonight that I have a sonnet forthcoming in Word Riot's May issue, and two more in the next issue of some journal nobody has ever heard of, but which I applied to because it had an awesome name. Eeeeeeee! TKOG: published poet.]

Tagged as: 10 things i love about 10 things i hate about you, bella swan, edward cullen, i guess it's okay to sort of like stuff that the screaming masses like, new moon, poetry, sometimes stuff isn't as bad as you think it'll okay, sonnet, stephenie meyer, twihards, twilight