Finished New Moon. Kinda disappointed. I've calmed down from the buying frenzy and I decided not to buy Eclipse (because I remembered reading an excerpt and I wasn't too happy about the style).

Some of you (Wei Qi especially) may be wondering why I'm also reading Twilight when I claimed it was completely and utterly horrible at first. One word: Curiosity. It just bugged me to know what the fervor was about and I just had to see it for myself. Thankfully I'm not a fangirl. I figured that the world does not need more of those because it is these fangirls who have insanely bad writing and no command of grammar at all who write fan fiction en masse and bombard the world with really bad writing on Quizilla/ other modems/ the Internet. And other equally blind fangirls go rate it a 5/5. It's an insult to English and the dignity of the original characters, really (in reference to bad fanfiction). One more time I am going to see a poll on whether Edward or Jacob is hotter (Thank GOD none of my friends are that obsessed), I am going to SCREAM in frustration and fury. I will not be held accountable on murders committed Jack-The-Ripper-style to these overzealous fangirls.

I figured I am going to re-read Twilight like the Literature neophyte I am and try to characterise the characters (funny phrase this one is) and identify the themes and the mini plots.

So far, this is what I've observed of Stephenie's style:

1) Dreamy prose, a bit too descriptive at times, and sometimes...vanilla.

2) She relies on conversation to help keep her characters alive.

3) Subtlety is not her thing (in comparison to other fantasy books I've read, like the Black Magician trilogy. The Age Of Five was a little bit of a letdown).

4) I find that she is uncannily alike to be as a writer. Because my characters have entire monologues in my head, and lines start popping out until I feel compelled to write them down so they won't bug me for the rest of the night.

5) And yes, I agree that having people dress up as a character you've created is utterly euphoric. (Did I just admit that out loud).

6) In comparison to he outtakes in the book, I discovered that she does have a tendency to blather on unnecessarily. As in, continue a particular scene and prolonging it. But it's the fault of a one-person perspective kind of thing, so yeah.

7) She has the Sequel Sickness. Most beginning authors do, actually. It's the slow pacing of events and little build-up (or loads of build-up and little action) in these sequels. And yes, the Black Magician Trilogy also has this fault in The Novice. Frankly I'm not surprised, considering how she wrote Forever Dawn (the original manuscript) sequel to Twilight. She just veered off course. I understand completely, because stories have a weird way of coming alive when you change a tiny detail in the pacing. It always happens to me T.T

8) 3 words, really: Words With Atmosphere. I thought I had the meaning of the title covered until I read her website, in which she wrote that 'Twilight' was within the list of possible titles and she just picked it as it had...atmosphere. You get the doom-inducing, dramatic feel right?

9) At least she's good at foreshadowing. In her epitaphs, that is. I liked the Romeo and Juliet quote =D

10) I don't know if this is a sudden, unexpected epiphany, but I realised that her method of foreshadowing (epitaphs in the beginning of the book) is eerily close to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. I mean, Romeo and Juliet started with a sonnet that had the tone of impending doom amidst the sweet love. Never mind. It's hard to explain.

11) I still can't figure out which story element is more controlling : the fantasy element or the romance element. I'm a confused, casual reader.

12) She is sometimes a little unclear in her explanations of events later in the story, and how it unravels. And her characters are really...extreme. I suppose in this context it would be fitting (One dominant, one passive) but it's a bit too extreme, yeah? Never in my whole life on vampire-loving have I seen such a Mary sue/Gary Stu (in this case of sex) vampire. It feels as if it came from Greek mythology, an Adonis or Zeus. A correct term would be 'Mary-sue'.

I took the Gary Stu litmus test for Edward, and it showed that Edward was 70% Gary-Stu.

No wonder I found him...unnerving. And this test has done nothing for me (except for a certain level of smugness) and I'm tempted to do one for Bella as well. But I don't think I should, because I was snickering my way through the test (I have a weird sense of humour, and one of them is murdering Mary-Sues).

Anyway, authors do create Mary Sues (but there's a limit to Mary-suing, yes?).

I see you staring at me in confusion, and Twilight fans coming to kill me.

AHEM. Okay, I'll go back to re-reading Twilight and dissecting it in terms of symbols and plot devices. Now that I know roughly how the story flows, I think I can spot foreshadowing more easily.

In conclusion, Twilight is a very light read. Suitable if you are lazy and don't want to move your brains much to figure out ahead of the author as it is kind of predictable. It's the typical supernatural romance between a Gary Stu and a poor, hapless human girl who has a very private mind, thus rendering the lead to be unable to read her thoughts and be interested in her.
I won't recommend buying it, though, you're unlikely to read it twice, because the first time you're gonna be reading it is just to get the story. After that, you ain't gonna re-read it, unless you are a weird person like me who over analyses every story. Do read from the beginning to the end -- Twilight, and its subsequent sequels, because Twilight is kind of the 'backbone' of the story, and without it, it's just nothing. For some reason the characters feel like cardboard pieces with lines to me. Maybe it'll be different for you.

After all, if the critics weren't agreeable with 'Breaking Dawn', it might not be that great of a book. But sometimes ordinary humans like us differ from the critics. In a way, I suppose it's better than some heavy reading like 'The Last Lecture' or 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' (I don't dare to touch those because I'm on lazy mode and lazy people have their own lazy methods which enable them to do things the lazy way.)

P.S. Le Petit Prince rocks. I want to learn French now, so that I can read the original version and appreciate it more =D