Twilight - Thoughts of one who Hates the Sparklepyres II

One last thought on the book. The age thing. It's creepy. There's a psychological difference between a young person and an old person. I can't tell if Edward is actually mature or if he's frozen at teenage-hood.

So as I was watching the movie, I found myself complaining at the screen. Writing it down will prevent me from looking crazy, save for the fact that airing my thoughts to the internet at large will make me look slightly crazier. Hurray!
The book had a lot of dialogue pauses where the character would get appropriate teenage angst. In the movie, this is handled by the actors staring mournfully at each other. I bet I could condense this movie to an hour by removing mope-pauses.
In the book, the vampires are supposed to be movie star pretty. Since everyone is already movie star pretty, this is handled largely by using cues like, "dyed-blonde hair" and "fossilized in hair-gel."
I use about that much hair-gel. Clearly, I am movie-star pretty.
Oh, hey, there's Jacob Black. I didn't recognize him with a shirt on.
I'm glad they had the main villains kill some extras. In the book, the villains just appear from nowhere, and are quite polite, then suddenly the whole book is about them. The book doesn't narrate a single vampire throwdown. If they skip that in the movies, I'll claw my screen.
I'm still creeped out by the notion that Edward watches Bella while she sleeps for months, before they were actually dating even. Sure, she's clothed, but clothes shift in sleep and people scratch themselves. He didn't know she'd be okay with it when he did it. Bad sparklepyre.
Note to directors - people cannot crouch and hiss without looking ridiculous. Especially wearing designer clothing and baseball uniforms.
But hey! A villain! A chase! It's starting to feel like a movie about vampires.
Aw, Bella was just as much of a jerk towards her father in the movie as the book. I wonder if she'll actually make up with him or show more than two seconds of concern for him. In the book, she pretty much shat on him, emotionally, then gave him a big fat meh the rest of the book.
Movie climax was better, in that it occurred.

Twilight conclusion: The book was okay, but teenagers are not role models. The movie was interminable swill.

Twilight - Thoughts of one who Hates the Sparklepyres

I read the first book of the Twilight series yesterday. I try to understand things even if I'm not inherently a fan of them, and I figure I can't be a writer and ignore a book that has sold fifteen-billion copies.
The writing was alright. Captured the feeling of being a teenager, with focus consistently on little emotions and overpowering hormones. It was actually fun, reminiscent of Harry Potter's cinematic writing, with focus on a blow-by-blow.
I was even okay with vampires being gorgeous. Made some sense - pretty predator to attract stupid humans. Sparkling still sets my teeth on edge - it doesn't matter that their skin is crystalline. It's... tacky.
The want-to-drink blood as want-to-bone metaphor was pretty damn thick, and the characters make some pretty stupid teenage decisions. But anyone who looks to a fictional teenager for a role-model isn't much better off than someone deciding that an actual teenager is full of good ideas, instead of hormones and cologne.

So, I'm now watching the movie and will broadcast my resentment as it grows.

Dying to Accomplish Something

Gaming is an interesting way of exploring something that's not intuitive. In this case, the necessity of death in drama.

Years ago, the style in gaming was more comparable to a videogame. You'd kick down the door, slay whatever non-human evil was inside, and loot the magical treasure trove it was inevitably guarding. This style of gaming is falling out of favor because computers can run quicker combats, generate more interesting treasure, and have better graphics (any).

It was in the high-combat era of gaming that you could expect a character death per story, or even multiple deaths per session. Your new shiny elven wizard would saunter around a corner, step on a trap of horrible instant squishing, and you'd generate a new character as quickly as possible so as to not miss the rest of the adventure.

There wasn't much point in having a backstory or character development, as your character was more likely to end up horribly exploded than happily ever after.

More recent games try to avoid the sting of death. It's minimized with either outright avoidance or an abundance of resurrection. Death is more like time-out than dead.

I am a proponent of low death or no death gaming. In a real story, you can ensure that no character dies just because Mook #23 shot his gun extra well that day. In gaming, a character can die long before they meet the man who killed their father, save the princess, or indeed even leave the farm.

Yet games where the threat of real, non-revocable character death looms feel more thrilling, more accomplishing. The compromise is best achieved by the person running the game - it's the job of the Storyteller to warn about dangers, clarify threats, and sometimes even nudge dice a little. But it's also the job of the Storyteller not to make consequences unreal.

We've all seen what happens when a story has characters hopping back-and-forth from the grave like they're cat's not sure if they want outside or in. It just goes to prove that it's better to let a character die than to let drama itself die.