It is exactly, I mean exactly, like these stupid crushes I used to have in high school where I would actually be embarrassed to admit I liked the guy because he was usually kind of oddball, dorky or just plain weird. Ashamed but strangely drawn in. (Nothing, by the way, like the way I feel about my favorite founder.)
It's weird to think that one can have a crush on a book series, but looking back at the progression of the past week, it developed exactly like that. So does, I guess, my relationship with many other books/movies/tv shows that I get really into. It starts with curiosity, then denial, turns into compulsion, and finally fullblown addictive obsession. (Sooner or later, more or less, I recover.) In this case, I watched the movie over the weekend out of curiosity, to see what all the fuss was about, and then I've been sleeping at 3-4am this week because I stay up reading the books. And now all I want to do is talk about it to anyone who will listen.
I still feel pretty conflicted about it. The writing is totally atrocious - I tell people the dialogue is like reading my old AIM chat logs from high school, and the rest of the first book is like my high school diary where I would pontificate on the various perfections of some guy I never even talked to. I think that's where it really sticks in my side, and maybe that's the genius of it--Stephenie Meyer managed to make us see just how absurd and silly we all were at that age (or still are).
I don't like most of the characters either - I despise Bella Swan and I think Edward Cullen is tiresome in his tortured angst. The actors from the movie are another story; I think they are all adorable, even Kristen Stewart, whom I hated in the movie, but in real life she's like this spunky, awkward-funny amalgam of Janeane Garofalo, Alexa Chung, and Avril Lavigne (only not so bratty). And yes, the chemistry between her and RPattz is like, super hotttt!
But I read some of the first book because, I don't know, I was feeling indulgent. Then I read the synopses of the others to get the gist of what happened. I started New Moon, and then the character of Jacob Black hooked me and drew me straight into the vortex of Twilight hysteria. He's the one realistic, multi-dimensional, funny, tragic, incorrigible, naughty, beautiful, humane, immature, and wonderfully charismatic character in the whole series. Plus I've had a mild fetish for Native Americans since I was young (I know. Totally objectifying an entire culture). When I got impatient with the smarmy, saccharine, and boring vampire-Bella bits, I started flipping through and only reading the parts that involved Jacob the werewolf.
I wonder if I should start the fourth book.
I'm actually thinking of getting a t-shirt that says "TEAM JACOB: I run with wolves." When did it become okay to be this dorky? And let's not get into how dirty us women feel about the sunny, likable, and newly ripped (but not quite legal) Taylor Lautner. Control yourselves ladies, he's only 17.
And finally, the New Moon trailer: