Boxing Up, Moving Panic and WTF: Twilight?

We are six days from our anticipated moving day, and things are going along well, in spite of two little girls with sore throats. I’m packing in earnest, trying to get as much done before Mr. B gets back to New York on Friday to help load everything on the truck and drive across country.

Both of the girls have been incredibly stoic over our past two months with Mr. B in Washington. They are always delighted to talk to him, of course, but we’ve had remarkably few tears. Then, two nights ago, a feverish Sparkle broke down at bedtime, climbing into my lap and moaning, “I miss my daddy. I want him to come home now.”

I reassured her that he would be home in just a few days, and that we would greet him at the airport with gigantic hugs. It wasn’t good enough.

“I want him home now – tonight,” she cried.

It broke my heart. And I know that Bee, with her natural reluctance to cry, must be grieving for him even more profoundly. Just a couple more days, and we’ll be back together.

Vampire, um, Love?

Although I am not coming anywhere near the daily word count targets, I have been writing almost every day on my NaNoWriMo project. I’ve also been listening to the audio version of “Twilight,” because I decided that my protagonist would be a fan of those books.

The writing is the kind of writing that assumes YA audiences are pedestrian readers. And some of them are, of course. But what is more disturbing about the book’s popularity is that the relationship between Bella and Edward is rife with the kinds of red flags for abuse that teenage girls should be running from, not aroused by.

In spite of the sparkly Edward’s supernatural ability to drive and park a Volvo, as a boyfriend, he’s the douchiest kind. The kind who tells his girlfriend that he has a jaw-clenching, sexy temper problem. The kind who never lets his girlfriend forget that he could kill her – that his natural impulse is to kill her – but that he’s always exercising the self-control to resist that urge. The kind who eavesdrops on all her conversations and watches her every move, you know, so he can “protect her.” The kind who laughs at her notion that she would be capable of protecting herself.

I read somewhere that Stephen King’s assessment of the difference between Harry Potter and Twilight is that Harry Potter is about confronting your fears and standing up for yourself, while Twilight is about getting a boyfriend. I would add that it’s about getting a bad boyfriend.

This works well for the purposes of my story and for my protagonist. But I don’t think I can stomach the other two books, even in the name of research. Maybe I’ll just catch the films.

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