Update: Half-way through, Twilight is still god-awful.

I’m nearing the half-way point in Stephenie Meyer’s first Twilight novel, and Bella is still incessantly going on about how gorgeous and wonderful and amazing Edward is. I get that real life teenage girls can be insufferable like this – my bff and I spent many hours our sophomore year dissecting every aspect about our crushes – but this is also why novels are not written about real-life teenagers. It’s as though Meyer, in all the stream-of-consciousness mind-diarrhea that is this novel, can’t figure out how to round out a paragraph that’s nothing more than a series of sentences describing what Bella is doing (“I left the cafeteria…” “I made my way to the gym…” “I walked into the locker room…”). So she frequently throws in some line about Bella being dizzy. Bella dear, spending most of your waking hours on the verge of fainting is not normal; go get your blood pressure checked.

Furthermore, this whole butterflies-constantly-in-Bella’s-stomach portrayal of Twue Wove is starting to get to me. I understand authors and screenwriters often choose to expedite the falling-in-love portion of the plot in order to get to the action, but when nearly every book and film relies on this love-at-first-sight trope, it does a disservice to us all. While I’ve said before that learning the difference between fictional trope and real life is part of growing up (and I stand by that), I also can’t help but think there’s something fundamentally incoherent about a plot in which chaste teenagers fall in love at the drop of a hat. The phenomenon of LAFS (a.k.a., infatuation) is based on physical attraction and desire, and the feeling doesn’t persist in most relationships. Cracked columnist John Cheese recently wrote some wise words regarding healthy relationships:

And please, please note that when I talk about enjoying the girl’s company, I am not referring to that breathless worship where you think she’s a magical goddess, where you feel the gut butterflies every time she walks past and you go aaaawwwww every time she farts. Pop songs have taught you this is what it’s all about (“Every Little Thing She Does is Magic”? Fuck you, Sting, your songs are full of bad relationship advice). If you’re still in “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” mode, you don’t even fucking know this person. You’re still treating them the way you would treat a celebrity, projecting onto the real person a fantasy that lives in your head. Anyone who says they’re still feeling the butterflies after fifty years of marriage needs to see a cardiologist because there’s some serious medical shit that needs fixed right goddamn now.

Bella is constantly “woozy” or “dizzy” or “dumbfounded” because of how gorgeous Edward Cullen is. In real life, kiddos, hotness gets old, fast. As Rosie O’Donnel said in one of the greatest movies about the quarterlife crisis (NSFW): “No matter how perfect… unless there’s some other shit going on in the relationship besides the physical, it’s gonna get old.“

The face of true love is a cheap James Dean knock-off.