The Juice Box #16

Behold--The Twilight Before Christmas...



"Jenn's Twilight Book Report"--LOLOLOLOL!

Everything old is new again.

One time, my little brother was supposed to come up with a story and illustrate it for a class at school, and it would get made into a little book, complete with a dedication page and a title page and all that, using this mini printing press that the school had just purchased for the upper elementary grades. So, Little Brother just unleashes his creative powers and "writes" 3 Ninjas, which, amazingly, was strikingly similar in plot to a movie of the same name that had just recently been released. Oh, ALSO, it was Little Brother's favorite movie. I know, right? What a COINCIDENCE! Little Brother even had the SAME NAME as one of his characters in his version of original work, 3 Ninjas! What are the odds??


It's sort of like fanfiction.net user notsomuch2say with her Twilight/The Notebook crossover, creatively entitled The Notebook. Let's just take a quick look at her synopsis:

twilight/notebook crossover. Bella is the daughter of a rich business man and falls in love with a country boy, Edward. Will their summer love ensure [sic]? BASED ON THE MOVIE. CANON PAIRINGS.

Gee, I wonder what's going to happen. I hope their love ensures. Also, I am SO GLAD there are canon pairings. I wouldn't want notsomuch2say (clearly) to be too OUT THERE with her creativity, or anything.

"I know what you are! ...OR DO I? I have some vague idea of a meadow and sparkly skin like diamonds. Say, how come you never wrote to me during the war? "

Fun with fan poetry...

The fan fiction database site Fanfiction.net instructs its posters to 'unleash your imagination.' Let me tell you, my friends, there is nothing more sweet and cringe-inducingly hilarious than teens and tweens unleashing their imaginations on the world wide web.

Takes you RIGHT BACK, doesn't it? I'm pretty sure I spent a significant amount of time in 6th grade planning how I was going to get to Los Angeles so I could dazzle Jonathan Brandis into marrying me. HOW MANY episodes of Seaquest DSV did I dutifully record onto countless VHS tapes, just so I could play them back in slo-mo and stare into his dreamy blue eyes just one more time?
Today we'll be examining a couple of poems by a Twilight fan who calls herself Darren's Wings. The first one is about hot vampire Edward Cullen's eyes, the second, about his love-interest Bella Swan's. I KNOW. Try to control yourselves. The excitement is almost too much...

Eyelashes by Darren's Wings
Bronze bars barring gold
Eyelashes flutter, dazzle
My beautiful dreams

Chocolate by Darren's Wings
Swirling feathers of
Soft chocolate brown closed eyes
Hidden from my own

Ah, haiku. I love haiku--so short and simple. I must admit, though, I'm a little disappointed by the Edward one. What exactly does 'bronze bars barring gold' mean? I mean, does that mean they're shaped like bars and they're just not gold? I fail to see how that adds to our vignette, here, but whatever. I mean, I know part of his appeal is that he's SUPERHUMANLY BEAUTIFUL, but I'm not sure I care too much about his fluttering, dazzling eyelashes. Perhaps I have more of an appreciation of traditional masculinity than Darren's Wings. Here's what I would have written:

Brute Strength by Emmy
Who cares about Edward's eyes?
Dent in the side of a truck
Hand like steel. Yes, please.

Okay, so I have read Twilight and half of New Moon (kind of lost interest after that, I'm afraid), and I will go ahead and say that Bella is my least favorite character of all. And that's pretty sad, considering she's the protagonist. I mean, can we say WHINY? Can we say CODEPENDENT? Of course, I guess Edward is both of those things too, but he's hot and he has SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH, people, so that MAKES UP FOR IT. I guess I can only wish that in the story, Edward could have written the exact same Darren's Wings poem, Chocolate, to give to Bella and she would have been all, "What the hell does this even mean?" and then he could have found someone else. I feel another haiku coming on...

Bella Swan by Emmy
Whining. Edward don't leave me.
No identity
Without you. Whining.

Ode to Guilty Pleasures

So...this isn't going to actually be an ODE. I'm not a POET, people. I mean, don't get me wrong--I probably COULD be a poetic genius, obviously...but, you know, I don't have time for the kind of fame that would inevitably bring. Anyway, I know you'll all be pleased to know that my light posting activity was brought on by two very important things: A) training for my new job and B) reading edifying nonfiction Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. ...Why, yes, I AM probably a little too old to be reading that, but you know, I'm going to need you all to not be haters, here, okay?

It's true that the writing is a little weak--sort of like high-end fan fiction. I'm pretty sure that the word 'chuckle' appears about 5,000 times in this book. And it's true that some things in it don't really make any sense. Uh, the Cullens' bodies are stone cold all the time? And no one has noticed? Ever? Hasn't anyone in Forks ever brushed up against one of the Cullens and realized they felt like marble statues? And the whole on-again-off-again Edward and Bella wangst fest is kind of tiring. I could go on. AND YET, I've finally decided that I don't really need my hot, glittery vampires to make a lot of SENSE. It's enough that they are superhumanly beautiful and have magical powers, people. Besides, we ALL need some guilty pleasures once in a while.

I mean, this one time in high school, I watched in a SINGLE SITTING, the entire trashtastic 5-hour miniseries Lace (1984) starring Phoebe Cates. The plot goes something like this: Abandoned as a child, Lili Lace first works in a labor camp, eventually prostituting herself on the streets of Paris before becoming a soft-core porn actress and finally transforming herself into a real actress making big money so she can find the three women who might be her long lost mom, gather them all in a room and say, "Which one of you bitches is my mother?" Other highlights of the series include, but are not limited to, blackmailing a school headmaster having a secret affair with his chauffer, possible incest between Lili and someone who could be her half brother, and cinematography involving a Swiss chateau. I mean, I don't even know how you can go wrong with that. LOOK at that promotional picture coupled with my synopsis and TELL me you're not interested in seeing it. No one has to know. It's called Netflix.

...Whatever. I don't believe you, and also, I don't actually appreciate your tone...

ANYWAY, those were a couple of MY guilty pleasure triumphs, so hopefully someone will comment with some of his or her own (and by 'someone' I mean YOU, Recycled Art Girl).