Twilight

As much as I like manga art in general, this really is too much =__=

Not to mention the title, which is a real clunker. Wait, my mistake. THREE clunkers.

"The boy whom I love is a vampire". "Blood tastes sadness". "The vampire family in the darkness". WTF?

So much for the Jap's art of exquisite subtlety. Blah.

Not like the Twilight series itself has so much to offer, but still.

Twilight

Thanks to Linh for cajoling me into reading/watching this series. I've always been the late bird, what with joining friendster and facebook and watching madagascar and a billion zillion other things. Same went for this.

I think I should have watched the movie first, then read the series. Same as what I did for Memoirs of a geisha, because novel-based movies are almost always inferior to the original, which should be the general view of half of Twilight fans out there, but I'm giving both the movie and the books a try. With very forgiving eyes.

That said, I'm sitting on the fence for this one.

Movie first.

It was average, and mildly enjoyable. The whole point was to ogle at Robert Pattison, matching him against my expectations for Edward Cullen. He passed, partially because I recently had an obsession with any English actors, of which Ed Westwick (Chuck Bass - Gossip girl) is one.

And then I found myself paying very close attention to Kristen Stewart's facial features as well (no I'm not a lesbian thank you very much). The girl bears a resemblance to Emma Watson (Hermione - Harry Potter), in this movie at least. People were disappointed with Kristen as Bella (which they also did for Robert Pattison - "the Rob effect", as dubbed by Meyer herself). Not beautiful enough, you say? Sometimes you've got to accept that real people, albeit with make-up, can hardly fare against otherworldly beauties stemming from imagination running wild. IMO she was appropriate enough; it fits with the image of a girl deemed "plain" by  fellow females, but had half (was it?) of the male population swooning (not that I would know what guys - real ones - would think).

I guess I'm now set on black-eyed black-haired English guys, and brown-eyed brown-haired for girls.

Linh said she didn't like Kristen Stewart's acting - it wasn't intense enough to express Bella's burning love for Edward. But hmm, I like. The shy and easily startled girl with very nice brown eyes isn't easy to miss. So is the slight awkwardness between their conversations, which makes it easier for most to relate ourselves (ah well, at least count me in!). You don't expect smoothly over-flowing words between the two, do you?

For the sake of preventing myself from being labelled as a lesbian, I shall input some thoughts for Robert Pattison. Which has me realise I've got nothing to say about him. Was it because his acting was just bland, or did I waste my time studying their physical appearance and forgetting everything else?

On an unrelated note, I went for the movie alone under circumstances explained in previous post. The woman at the counter was giving me this very weird look when I said "ticket for one". And surrounded me in the cinema were couples, couples, more couples, and friends going in groups and groups. Now that woman must've thought I'm either a voluntary movie critic, or a heart-broken teenage girl; she seemed to have decided on the latter. Man, must I've looked terrible!

Now is the novel.

Honestly, it felt like reading a fan-fiction - the writing with crammed adverbs and adjectives is much too familiar. And the plot. Holy cow, another damsel in distress (which Bella herself admitted)! Harp all you want; I bet 70% of the fanbase is teenage girls (no offense to male fans, although I'd like not my future boyfriend to be enjoying this). It makes (some of) us feel like Bella is all over Edward because of his looks, and maybe his vampiric abilities alone. In one word: flat, which is also the case for Edward. I wondered where is their love based on if not all these purely physical attributes. You may argue that Edward's unceasing devotion and passion for Bella is not to be ignored, but it wasn't made clear in the novel where this all is coming from either, except that he found it hard to detach himself from her for if he did she would be severely harmed - "a magnet for troubles" to quote Edward - which brings me back to "damsel in distress" point. 

And so is the whole "imprinting" thing. Love is a give-and-take process. If it's already rendered involuntary and unexplained in one way, what is there left to offer for the other? It leaves no place for personality, because to quote Jacob (I think), "it's hard to resist such a degree of devotion". The concept of "destined lovers" is hardly my cup of tea.

Meyer claimed her success despite - or should I say, thanks to - all this elements, which should - and have - hit very hard into the mind of romance-yearning teenage girls. I won't deny that I'm one, in case you all want to burn me on the stake for saying all this.

On 2nd note, I took FB quizzes revolving around "who's your best twilight guy", and the result has been much to my pleasure:

- Edward

- Jasper

- Edward

- Jasper

- Carlisle (okay that was unexpected, but bearable)

- Edward

- Edward

- Edward

- Emmett (Ew. EW.)

- Jasper

Personally, throughout the movie and books, my favourite character would be Jasper.

JASPER FTW :D :D :D

I'm not dead!

I know I've been absent for a considerable amount of time, the reason of which shall not be disclosed here, but you can be sure that I didn't intentionally ditch you all and went breathless :D

To those who knows in bits and pieces, the issue has not come to a close, but HECK I'M FREAKING FLYING HOME TOMORROW!

To be honest, this holidays has been considerably tiring, nerve-wrecking, and morally challenging, much more than the rest. It was somebody else's battle as well, but let's talk about me since I've become a selfish creature of late. We finished whatever we could do during the first few days, and I wanted to get over it already. There was a minor battle between an authority that is called school, and the other no much less authoritative that is called parents, of which I'm the messenger flanked between. And me myself torn between responsibility, selfishness, pure rationales and impulses. All my processed thoughts pointed to "going home". Alas, I stayed back thanks to the life-long authority. And I questioned myself, am I that much of a selfish individual? It was supported by rational thinking, but selfish nevertheless. And even when I'm writing this now, I still think I should have gone back so whatever you told me was pointless, I'm sorry, but I think there's only a feeble 0.5% chance that you would read this.

And the days have been hellish. Staying in a hostel devoid of any source of entertainment except the internet (which, timely enough, went down for 5 days) didn't help, and having a 10PM curfew after a series of must-attend meals renders other options impossible. Thanks for pointing out that I'm blaming the wrong authority here, but come on, this freaks me out! (And thanks for supporting me emotionally during those days, you know who you are, and I *heart* you :D

It was mugging at library alone, and shopping alone, and going to the movie alone. Wasting money therapy Shopping therapy was relieving, only temporarily. Once I stepped back into the hostel, it sank in again that I was still trapped here. And for shopping therapy to not help, this is a first, due to the lack of companionship perhaps?

SIAN

So anyway, those days from hell will technically end tomorrow, and I'm spending Christmas at home, which was already a blessing - I considered other much worse scenarios. And Friday to Saturday in Da Lat. My gosh I wish it were longer; I could shed my tan there :\

And it seems a little too late for the Da Lat - Nha Trang - Vung Tau trip you all planned :\ million times sorry!

I will be racing against time to complete the remaining part of my holidays assignments. The piano pieces I planned to practice over the holidays are out of the question; circumstances didn't allow me, it wasn't my fault. So are the 5 extra things I planned to do. I could substitute the 5 books I read with Twilight series, although I guess that's cheating because each book is only 200-300 page long.

And I think I'm getting a bit incoherent. Thanks to reading Twilight til late, not to mention on a laptop screen. This would surely screw my eyes, but I figure since I'm gonna get LASIK one of these days anyway, it doesn't matter that much because the degrees aren't that high. Only that now I'm having a slight headache; I was on and off living a nocturnal life.

My verbal diarrhea ends here. omg if I write like this for GP next year I'm screwed!

Warning: emo

Since Linh (who's like the only other person in the hostel right now. But that's not the point here) told me to update, I will. But even my life has been so painfully uneventful I don't even know what to do with it, not to mention my blog. Like, you wouldn't want things like "I'm so damn bored" entry after entry, no?

Therefore, I will rant. Emo rant. Viewer's discretion advised. If you're bored, and don't want to read this still, go here instead.

For the past 1.5-2 years, I've tried to build up my confidence. If you happen to know the me before that, or if you happen to go through the same thing, there wouldn't be much for me to say here about the difficulties.

So this is not for all the people who're already born with such huge confidence they just shove things out of their ways to advance relentlessly.

Being able to feel good about yourself times after times of failures is not easy. Sometimes I dropit. No matter, pick it up again. 

Yet it seems like the confidence that I've built up only helps turn me more extroverted. Being able to meet new people, talk to new people, befriend them, and all.

That's it.

Sometimes insecurities surface.

Like when I was wondering whether I'm really somebody's friend. Reading this and that here and there, I wonder if that's really about me. I really don't think I matter that much to some, do I?

Maybe not.

Like when I meet a new person. And then all this nostalgia comes rushing back, reminding me of my old inferiority complex. I swear I will not get tangled in that. Things will become as complicated as the new Facebook, and I don't ever want them to.

Like when I thought I've become kind of close to some, only to discover that they are not really a good listener afterall because they don't seem to understand where my rants are directed to. All of a sudden, because last time they did. Or maybe they're just stressed.

So do people under stress turn into something they're not, or simply reveal their true colours?

Ah well shall not rant anymore. Things always manage to resolve themselves in the end. The only thing left for me to do is to just bulldoze things and move forward.

People are straight lines. You converge, intersect, then diverge again. Only hoping for the world to suddenly turn non-Euclidean, so that lines can intersect again and again, would be futile. As a matter of fact, it isn't.