Twilight: Bella is SUPPOSED to be a flat character.

[Bakuryukun]

That's STILL poor story writing, regardless of the reasoning. Being bland is a way you can make a character project-able sure, it just happens to be the the most shallow, uninteresting, and lazy way to do so. It's hardly a defense.

 

[Stevepinto3]

Then its on the same artistic level as porn.

Oh wait, we knew that already, didn't we?

 

[Faladorian]

OR, and this is the more likely scenario, Meyer was just trying to cover her poor writing skills by bullshitting her way out. Sounds a hell of a lot more convincing to me.

I was going to say exactly this, verbatim, even down to the capitalized "OR..." In other words, QFT

 

[Andrew Bohan]

Here's a theory, just a suggestion. Maybe it's not so much unintentionally written in that form down to just purely bad writing. It's just a possibility but it's maybe done so it registers more subconscious than conscious. You write it in first person it's more obvious you'd like the reader to imagine it being themselves right off the bat, and this might feel mildly insulting to someone's intelligence. Just a suggestion, because even I can see inconsistencies with that with the poor writing technique within.

 

[Daquin]

For more fun information on this, I would like to point out that the ACA/PCA Conference in San Antonio is going to have an entire academic panel on the modern vampire stories (Twilight and Tru Blood), so if you are a college student and really want to look deep into this, shoot them a paper and you might be the academic expert on the matter.

I openly admit this is just me nitpicking, but the Books are the Southern Vampire Mysteries, the TV Series is True Blood.

Yes, yes it is, but the conference specifically stated the panel was on Twilight and Tru Blood.

 

[Torrasque]

You are an idiot.
You do not connect to the characters by making them terrible, you connect to them because they are well made.

For example: In the book series Wheel of Time (my favourite book series ever) every character goes through an extreme amount of development, and I genuinely care about what happens to them. Hell, Robert Jordan had an amazing ability to describe a character that you had just met, in 1 paragraph, and you felt like you had known that person for years.

Another contemporary example would be Master Chief. Little is known about his past and his character development seems to be written in assault rifle bullets and the blood of Elites, but he is by no means a flat character. Yet millions of people project themselves into his suit and fight the covenant.

Flat characters deserve no respect, no concern, and no recognition.
As far as I'm concerned, the only flat characters that have no development, are street thugs you see for a whole 5 lines in a book before they are promptly beaten and forgotten completely, or characters that don't get told about in any regard.

The fact stands, that Twilight is a waste of money, time, and consideration.

 

[moretimethansense]

See, where your theory fails is that they don't make Japanese dating sims into movies (I hope)(Hentai doesn't count).

But before the films, sure!
Why not!

Actually they do, quite often and they are usually almost always written infinitely better than this tripe even before they are adapted, even in the bad ones you can sometimes see the appeal but Twilight is badly written, poorly written piece of shit story outside of the American soft core porn industry,
And even they have many, many "stories" that are better.

Frankly anyone that says that this terrible, terrible "saga" has any literary merit at all is speaking cock of the poppy-est variety.

 

[Andrew Bohan]

You are an idiot.
You do not connect to the characters by making them terrible, you connect to them because they are well made.

For example: In the book series Wheel of Time (my favourite book series ever) every character goes through an extreme amount of development, and I genuinely care about what happens to them. Hell, Robert Jordan had an amazing ability to describe a character that you had just met, in 1 paragraph, and you felt like you had known that person for years.

Another contemporary example would be Master Chief. Little is known about his past and his character development seems to be written in assault rifle bullets and the blood of Elites, but he is by no means a flat character. Yet millions of people project themselves into his suit and fight the covenant.

Flat characters deserve no respect, no concern, and no recognition.
As far as I'm concerned, the only flat characters that have no development, are street thugs you see for a whole 5 lines in a book before they are promptly beaten and forgotten completely, or characters that don't get told about in any regard.

The fact stands, that Twilight is a waste of money, time, and consideration.

I don't think anyone's debating it's cultural or artistic significance, I think it's more down to an attempt to understand a fleeting phenomena. I mean as kids most of us loved Goosebumps, they weren't artistic, or well written by adult standards but in 10/20 years it'll probably be nothing anyways. One of the best selling books of the last couple years but remember Safety Dance sold quite a few copies and the only thing it's good for these days is being mocked.

 

[Torrasque]

You are an idiot.
You do not connect to the characters by making them terrible, you connect to them because they are well made.

For example: In the book series Wheel of Time (my favourite book series ever) every character goes through an extreme amount of development, and I genuinely care about what happens to them. Hell, Robert Jordan had an amazing ability to describe a character that you had just met, in 1 paragraph, and you felt like you had known that person for years.

Another contemporary example would be Master Chief. Little is known about his past and his character development seems to be written in assault rifle bullets and the blood of Elites, but he is by no means a flat character. Yet millions of people project themselves into his suit and fight the covenant.

Flat characters deserve no respect, no concern, and no recognition.
As far as I'm concerned, the only flat characters that have no development, are street thugs you see for a whole 5 lines in a book before they are promptly beaten and forgotten completely, or characters that don't get told about in any regard.

The fact stands, that Twilight is a waste of money, time, and consideration.

I don't think anyone's debating it's cultural or artistic significance, I think it's more down to an attempt to understand a fleeting phenomena. I mean as kids most of us loved Goosebumps, they weren't artistic, or well written by adult standards but in 10/20 years it'll probably be nothing anyways. One of the best selling books of the last couple years but remember Safety Dance sold quite a few copies and the only thing it's good for these days is being mocked.

The OT was talking about the relate-ability of Bella and how she is supposed to be a non-character, so my point was to mock them by bringing up to examples of characters that are diverse and are much more relatable.
I don't really care about the cultural significance because currently Jersey Shore is a huge phenomena, and Justin Bieber is making a 3D movie biography? if that doesn't prove "culturally significant = shit" then I have absolutely no idea what will.

 

[Mechanix]

That's called shitty character development.

 

[Andrew Bohan]

You are an idiot.
You do not connect to the characters by making them terrible, you connect to them because they are well made.

For example: In the book series Wheel of Time (my favourite book series ever) every character goes through an extreme amount of development, and I genuinely care about what happens to them. Hell, Robert Jordan had an amazing ability to describe a character that you had just met, in 1 paragraph, and you felt like you had known that person for years.

Another contemporary example would be Master Chief. Little is known about his past and his character development seems to be written in assault rifle bullets and the blood of Elites, but he is by no means a flat character. Yet millions of people project themselves into his suit and fight the covenant.

Flat characters deserve no respect, no concern, and no recognition.
As far as I'm concerned, the only flat characters that have no development, are street thugs you see for a whole 5 lines in a book before they are promptly beaten and forgotten completely, or characters that don't get told about in any regard.

The fact stands, that Twilight is a waste of money, time, and consideration.

I don't think anyone's debating it's cultural or artistic significance, I think it's more down to an attempt to understand a fleeting phenomena. I mean as kids most of us loved Goosebumps, they weren't artistic, or well written by adult standards but in 10/20 years it'll probably be nothing anyways. One of the best selling books of the last couple years but remember Safety Dance sold quite a few copies and the only thing it's good for these days is being mocked.

The OT was talking about the relate-ability of Bella and how she is supposed to be a non-character, so my point was to mock them by bringing up to examples of characters that are diverse and are much more relatable.
I don't really care about the cultural significance because currently Jersey Shore is a huge phenomena, and Justin Bieber is making a 3D movie biography? if that doesn't prove "culturally significant = shit" then I have absolutely no idea what will.

I didn't mean so much that it was a case of it being significant. I mean if twilight's what the naughties are remembered for, holy fuck we wasted a decade. I meant more, the point isn't moot, but it's not necessarily defending twilight. I reckon it's more of a "this might be why" than a "don't hate D=".

 

[Torrasque]

You are an idiot.
You do not connect to the characters by making them terrible, you connect to them because they are well made.

For example: In the book series Wheel of Time (my favourite book series ever) every character goes through an extreme amount of development, and I genuinely care about what happens to them. Hell, Robert Jordan had an amazing ability to describe a character that you had just met, in 1 paragraph, and you felt like you had known that person for years.

Another contemporary example would be Master Chief. Little is known about his past and his character development seems to be written in assault rifle bullets and the blood of Elites, but he is by no means a flat character. Yet millions of people project themselves into his suit and fight the covenant.

Flat characters deserve no respect, no concern, and no recognition.
As far as I'm concerned, the only flat characters that have no development, are street thugs you see for a whole 5 lines in a book before they are promptly beaten and forgotten completely, or characters that don't get told about in any regard.

The fact stands, that Twilight is a waste of money, time, and consideration.

I don't think anyone's debating it's cultural or artistic significance, I think it's more down to an attempt to understand a fleeting phenomena. I mean as kids most of us loved Goosebumps, they weren't artistic, or well written by adult standards but in 10/20 years it'll probably be nothing anyways. One of the best selling books of the last couple years but remember Safety Dance sold quite a few copies and the only thing it's good for these days is being mocked.

The OT was talking about the relate-ability of Bella and how she is supposed to be a non-character, so my point was to mock them by bringing up to examples of characters that are diverse and are much more relatable.
I don't really care about the cultural significance because currently Jersey Shore is a huge phenomena, and Justin Bieber is making a 3D movie biography? if that doesn't prove "culturally significant = shit" then I have absolutely no idea what will.

I didn't mean so much that it was a case of it being significant. I mean if twilight's what the naughties are remembered for, holy fuck we wasted a decade. I meant more, the point isn't moot, but it's not necessarily defending twilight. I reckon it's more of a "this might be why" than a "don't hate D=".

lol, I'm sorry if it seemed that I was taking offence to what you said, it just seemed like you were confused with what I was trying to say.
And yeah? if Twilight is one of the defining movies of this era, then we seriously fucked up. Bad enough Bieber will be remembered >.>

It seems I have had my debater's hat on since wednesday morning and forgot to take it off.
My bad! =X

 

[spartan231490]

I read the books and I don't percieve bella as a flat character. I liked the books, still do in fact.

 

[Jzolr0708]

I just realized that CAPTAIN FUCKING SHEPARD would be a better Bella then Bella herself

 

[Something Amyss]

You know, that thought is neither particularly new nor profound.

You know, this comment isn't particularly helpful..................

OT: I've read the first book, I didn't like it and this theory doesn't make me like it any more

Complaining about it, however, is completely helpful. Go you.

OT: Unless you're a tween girl, I don't think you're supposed to like it.

 

[Something Amyss]

Hey, if Twilight was published that way then it would be the most awesome vampire book ever.

I thought it already was....

*flees*

 

[Snownine]

Movies are not an interactive medium like the dating sims you mentioned. Therefore this is a piss poor excuse for having such a bland character.

 

[SideburnsPuppy]

Of course. Everybody knows this.

I was watching the Twilight movie today in French class, and know what's a fun game to play? Whenever anybody says the word "vampire," replace it in your mind with "rapist" and replace "blood" with "asshole."

"Bella! I want you so badly...I want to be with you...but I can't! I'm a rapist! A monster! There will always be a horrible, animalistic part of me that lusts for your asshole, and will do anything to get it!"

 

[Sorafrosty]

Then how about I publish book consisting of nothing but blank pages?

Then the audience can project as much as they want... It's genius!

I'd buy it. ^^

OT: Yes, but the problem of the fact is, that she WROTE IT ALL WRONG!
If you REALLY wanted the person (let's cut the crap...) girl reading to be the main protagonist, you should make it to an action-novel where there's more than one way to end the story, more than at least 1 path to choose, since all girls won't always want the vampire to marry them.

Sadly, the book contains no such thing. So it fails. She wrote it ALL wrong. Good job, you newbie. Better luck writing next time.

That reminds me of those old time machine books my sister used to read to me when I was a kid... Wonder how these would fit with Twilight, though?

OT: Personally, I find her very boring, flat and bland. She is quite generic in her reactions... to absolutely everything.