BLOGGING TWILIGHT, The Rough Drafts

I'm moving in like ten days, so I have been packing up my old apartment. Now, I'm a borderline hoarder, as it turns out, and I have been coming across various scraps of paper that later became AFO episodes, essays and of course blog posts. I doubt you can read my handwriting, but it was sort of fun for me to find this shit; I'd forgotten that I wrote most of Blogging Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse out by hand, but I did. I should totally pick up that habit again, it was an affectation that impressed the hell out of most of my college professors. Do you guys still write things by hand?

After the jump I've posted a couple of rough drafts and links to the final products.

BLOGGING THE HUNGER GAMES, pt. 2: Dear Sons And Daughters Of Hungry Ghosts

Last time we met Katniss Everdeen, big sister of the year and budding domestic terrorist (probably). She and her family attended The Reaping, which is draft-day for a government-sponsored Battle Royale called The Hunger Games. Surprise, surprise, Katniss's little sister Prim got selected for the fight.

I'm very much aware of the race-bending/whitewashing controversy around the casting of The Hunger Games. Lots of readers were happy that Katniss Everdeen was, for once, a protagonist not described as a pretty white girl. But of course, when it came time for the movie adaptation they cast a pretty white girl. Shit. So the post-racial book fell victim to our present-racial times, right? Well, wait a second.

We heard in chapter one that even though Katniss and Gale are post-ethnic hybrids, Prim and Katniss's mother are blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryans. And now poor little pure, white Prim is in danger, and hardened, tough nonwhite Katniss has to go and save her. The story was, when the casting announcements were made, that the racial politics in America had been dealt another blow. Maybe we weren't as far along as we thought.

Chapter 2

Katniss is too stunned to do much of anything for a few seconds, but as her sister steps toward the stage she snaps out of it and screams: “I volunteer!” What? Very quickly she explains to us that people can volunteer if they want to go in another's place. Oh, well that's good! Prim wraps herself around her older sister and begs her not to go, and Katniss has to fight the urge to cry while she shakes the little bitch off. She notes that if people see her crying on the news, she'll be marked as an easy target; there's no crying in Hunger Games ball. Katniss's sudden presence causes some procedural confusion on the stage—I guess people don't volunteer all that much—but she is quickly introduced to the crowd as their female “tribute.” And then something interesting happens.

To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps...I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence.

Instead, nearly every person in the crowd “touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out” to Katniss. (Did you try to imitate the gesture? It's OK, I did too. Were you not really sure which fingers were your THREE middle ones? It's OK, I wasn't either.) She says it's an antiquated gesture meaning “thanks,” “admiration” and “good-bye to someone you love.” Now, we barely know Katniss, and this is a gesture we are JUST hearing about now. That this image is still powerful, moving even, is sort of unusual. I don't know why I care yet, but I care already!

And then Haymitch, the former District 12 champion, stumbles drunkenly in front of the camera and falls off the stage like Ryan Adams. Ah, well.

The bulk of this chapter is actually an extremely detailed flashback, because the name of the male tribute is called and it's a dude named Peeta Mellark, a “stocky” blonde guy with alarmed blue eyes. Let me guess, is he Polish? (I can make Pollack jokes because my old roommate Paul was Polish and here's a true story: it literally took four of him to change a lightbulb once.) Anyway, it turns out he and Katniss have a history. No, not like that, perverts. Our narrator recalls the few months after her father's death in which her family began to starve—we find out that rather than get a job to provide for her family, Mother Everdeen just retreated inside herself (and not in a sexy way). Starvation happens all the time in her district, Katniss says, but officials always list something else as the cause of death like “exposure.” Because they don't want it to look like their citizens are starving? Um, why is it called THE HUNGER GAMES then? Wouldn't THE PLENTIFUL MILK AND HONEY DEATH MATCH be a better title?

Anyway with her mom hidden away at home in her blanket-fort of sorrow, eleven-year-old Katniss was forced to act. But there's only so much an eleven-year-old can do to run a household without the annual rations provided by Hunger Games eligibility—Katniss & Prim's Homemade Lemonade only brings in a couple of nickels unless it's a really hot day, you know? So our heroine goes wandering through the negro streets at dawn with her purgatoried torso looking for an angry fix when she stumbles into the Mellark family backyard, transfixed by the smell of bread. Mr. Mellark is a baker, and Mrs. Mellark is, as it turns out, a big ol' bitch. She tries to chase Katniss away and then goes back into the house to beat her son for burning two loaves of bread. Peeta comes outside then and casually tosses the burned loaves to poor, starving Katniss.

Peeta's so discrete about the whole action that we can't tell how premeditated it was—did he burn the bread on purpose so he could give it to her? The next day, at school, Katniss sees him (with a big bruise on his face) staring at her. She looks down at her feet to avoid him and sees the first dandelion of the season, which gives her hope that she'll be able to keep her family alive. It's a heavily symbolic moment for our narrator (I mean she pretty much says “it's a pretty important motif in my story—I mean life”) and ever since, springtime and survival and Peeta and bread and pita bread are all associated in her brain. Back in the present, Katniss is pissed because she never even thanked Peeta for the whole thing and now she has to kill him. Ain't that always the way?

Stray Notes & Questions

• I'm starting to come around to the present tense thing. The overwhelming consensus last time was that doing so creates a sense of urgency. Okay, fine, but Edgar Allan Poe wrote “The Masque Of The Red Death” in past-tense and still managed, you know? Past-tense is (or was) the English-Lit, Western-Civ standard. It's also a little bit harder to do—part of me feels like writing fiction in the present tense is setting the cognitive bar a little low for your readers. Am I being a tense snob?
• This is hard to work into a re-cap, but there's a recurring jokes about odds that I'm enjoying so far. Effie Trinket, one of the HG officials, has a little catch-phrase: “May the odds be ever in your favor.” The first time we hear it, Katniss and Gale are mocking it while they hunt. Katniss references it a few more times before Effie Trinket actually says it herself. And several times in this chapter, Katniss will comfort herself with the probability that she won't have to do something only to recall that the odds are rarely, if ever, in her favor. I see what you are doing there, Katniss.

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BLOGGING THE HUNGER GAMES, pt. 1: Papa Was A Rodeo

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The Predictive Ashley Greene Profile

I read Esquire fairly often. I'm a fan of the magazine, even though some of it (most of it) is patently ridiculous. I mean, they've got a crack staff of writers, no shortage of story ideas, and their annual "What I've Learned" issue has a must-read collection of interviews. But they also fawn over $8,000 sweaters that Every Man Must Own, they've got a huge, latent gay crush on James Franco, and the real problems start when they talk about women. Esquire insists that it isn't sexist but goes about proving it in a terrible way: by acting like they are the only men who have realized women are worthy of any sort of nonsexual consideration. Every profile reads like "Holy shit, [X female celebrity] isn't just a vapid walking vagina!" And then they act like they deserve a medal for inviting Megan Fox over and talking to her about horses instead of titty-fucking her. That women are smart and interesting is a monthly revelation at Esquire, and that is often worse than, you know, the Maxim method of just putting Ashley Greene on a couch and pulling her pants off and writing a 50-word blurb about Twilight's release date. You can write about how much a girl likes brisket and how she reads Faulkner, sure, but if you're clearly doing it to make a point about how you awesome you are for not just writing "Her tits are nice," well, you should just write "Her tits are nice"! Stop beating around the (lack of a) bush!

But anyway Ashley Greene is going to be on the cover of Esquire soon, and thanks to 247Greene we have a few shots from John Russo's shoot. Her tits look nice.

After the jump, I've got a working formula for Esquire's female-centered profiles and a guess at what we might be reading in a month or two.

Five Ways To Fix The Ending Of Breaking Dawn

Say what you will about the twisted, morally repugnant insanity in the first half of Breaking Dawn, but at least it makes for a compelling read. The second half of the book leads us down a series of boring, incoherent paths, finally ending the series not with a bang but with a whatever. The most interesting moment in the second half comes when Alice Cullen abruptly bails on the rest of her family in an unexpected but plausible moment of cowardice. Unfortunately that moment is a rare bright spot in the dull gray abyss of Book 3; Bella accomplishes a series of tasks meant to protect her daughter Renesmee in the event of her untimely death, the Volturi show up to maybe make that untimely death possible,* and then Alice walks in with a new character who saves the day and changes all of the rules we've been given so far. (It also cheapens the aforementioned departure of Alice, which turns out not to be a daring move but rather a literary life vest S. Meyer gave herself just in case.)

(*Maybe. The Volturi threat is never vivid or particularly explicit; S. Meyer always tells and never shows. In fact, far more acts of violence are carried out by the Cullens in these books than are by the Volturi. But anyway.)

It could have been so much better. Well, I mean really, there's no salvaging this series, but least could have gone out on a high note instead of alienating most of its readers. Here, then, are a few suggestions.

1. Alice Doesn't Come Back

Not only is the late introduction of Nahuel a dick move in the first place, it also negates the one daring thing S. Meyer did for 400 pages. The end would be marginally redeemed, therefore, if the perpetually safe S. Meyer was willing to leave one loose end dangling and never have Alice return. So the Cullens would peaceably resolve their dispute with the Volturi some other contrived way and live happily ever after except for not knowing if Alice will ever return (either out of shame or death or having found a better family, which wouldn't be that hard). It's a messy ending that would be more satisfying than the flaccid attempt at a messy ending we get, in which S. Meyer wraps everything up perfectly and then lamely tries to tease a future Volturi threat (maybe one that has to be faced down by the new love triangle of Jacob, Nessie and Nahuel, UGH I know) that nobody is buying.

2. Alice Comes Back...As A Member Of The Volturi

Speaking of lame threats involving the Volturi, why not make good on one? Imagine: Bella watches the slow, graceful approach of the dark-hooded Volturi, and when they get into the clearing and take their hoods off, Alice is standing at Aro's side, her eyes bright red. Awesome, right? Maybe the dispute is still resolved peacefully, maybe there's a fight. Maybe Bella has to kill Alice. I'd hate Bella even more for it, but I hate her plenty already. Jasper could be in the Volturi too, or it could be presumed that he is dead. Either way, it would be a totally awesome way to double-down on Alice's seeming betrayal of and lack of real attachment to her family, rather than duck out from under it as S. Meyer does. Plus bad guys have way better sex.*

*It's such an organic possibility that people have already started (but not finished, sadly) pieces of fanfiction in which Alice joins the Volturi as a kind of sex-slave.

3. Bella Dies In Childbirth

S. Meyer is going to invoke Wuthering Heights? Why not really do it then, and kill off her female romantic lead at the end of Book 2, leaving Edward as a tragic, mourning Heathcliff? We could switch to HIS perspective from there, or maybe Bella could narrate from beyond the grave (spooky!). Killing Bella would be a wild move, and even though we've spent most of this book hating on her, we'd still be shocked and moved. And then, Edward couldn't go and kill himself as he's promised to do because he's a single dad now. So he has to live with the guilt and sadness and the other complicated, interesting emotions we never get in these books.

4. Edward kills Jacob or Jacob kills Edward

This could happen in a lot of places, but just to make me feel better lets say Jacob imprints on Renesmee so Edward murders him. Romeo and Juliet callback! You just got Tybalted! That would resolve the love triangle in a more satisfying way, and again, S. Meyer could do some complex, adult shit with it. Maybe Bella can't forgive Edward for what he has done, so she leaves him. Then we follow her as a single vampire mother trying to succeed in the world. Then, in a mirror of New Moon, she is joined in her studio apartment by Alice, who comes in from the rain and wants to take a shower and... well, you know. Then, after they've finished up, Jasper knocks on the door to install the cable...

The flip scenario is that Jacob kills Edward, maybe again because of imprinting, or maybe because Edward just accidentally vamps Bella on the honeymoon with his jizz (which is technically what should have happened) instead of knocking her up. Either way, it ends with Bella and Alice having sex, obviously. Or Bella kills herself and Alice fucks her corpse. That'd be sort of fun.

5. Go Beowulf On It

This is the craziest and best idea I've had so far. Think about the way S. Meyer stresses the amazing, unique qualities of vampire Bella. She has more control than any other newborn, she's extraordinarily graceful, and her shield power has like, nuclear force. For a few minutes, I honestly thought S. Meyer was setting up Bella to the The One. So what if she was?

Think about the promise of that preface in which Bella assesses the threat of the Volturi and is suddenly filled with joyful, bloodlusty rage. It would have been wonderful if Bella's power had an offensive element to it as well, and if she could have used to it spectacularly, violently wipe out the Volturi. The Volturi's witnesses would bow down before Bella, electing her the new queen of the damned.

And that's when we turn the page and see Book 4: Renesmee. It's a hundred years (give or take) later, and Bella rules the immortal world from her throne in Forks. What would be wonderful is if the realities of governing the vampire world had worn down the Cullens' virtue and resolve: We open with Bella killing and eating Mike Newton's great grandson; we find out that Esme and Carlisle have long-since bailed; Alice, Jasper and a few of the new characters are Bella's violent enforcers, and Edward is her subservient, spineless husband. Jacob and Renesmee, both in their early 20s, sneak off together and drink wine and complain about Bella's ways, both as an overprotective parent and as a corrupt politician. And then something happens with an immortal child being created elsewhere in the world, and when Bella goes with her guard to take care of it, she realizes that You Either Die A Hero Or Live Long Enough To See Yourself Become A Villain. And the whole series ends on that painful, dark realization.

Fucking awesome, right? Sometimes I even impress myself. The last shot of the movie version could be Bella in the back of a cab like Michael Clayton, a distant, pained, overwhelmed expression on her face—the shot held on it for an uncomfortably long time.

Special thanks to Kira, with whom I first floated a few of these ideas a couple weeks back. Anybody have some other suggestions?