The Twilight series is objectively trash, I know this, and despite that fact I still find watching the films extremely comforting. Yes, there was a time when I was embarrassed to admit I liked the Twilight series, but I am not afraid anymore at 27.
On the nights when I would come home from a slightly drunken night out, because I don't really do that anymore these days, I would clumsily open whatever streaming service happened to be showing the films and fight sleep until I couldn't hold out anymore. It's a nostalgic feeling for me, and one of my closest friendships has been cemented by our mutual obsession with a very mediocre story about forbidden vampire love (that friendship has lasted over 10 years). I didn't know many teenage girls at the time without at least one poster of a male actor from Twilight ripped out of J-14 magazine scotch taped to their wall. The die-hard fans really asserted their dominance by procuring cardboard cutouts of either Edward or Jacob, though personally I found that a bit creepy, especially with the lights turned out. TikTok has pointed out recently how obscenely funny the descriptions of Bella's outfits are in the Twilight books, not to mention how the themes are likely heavily influenced by Stephanie Meyer's Mormon background. My 14-year-old self must have glossed over the fact that Bella wore a long khaki skirt the first time she goes to Edward's house; that or I just didn't find it odd at all. This got me thinking about all the conversations I've had with fellow Twilight lovers about how much more interesting the story would be had small plot points been slightly altered. Remember when Edward tried to convince Bella they could stay together without her becoming a vampire? He insisted he would stay with her as she aged, and I would like to call bullshit on that. You can't tell me the second some hot piece of a vampire rolled into town he wouldn't leave middle-aged Bella to find a new man. If I could alter anything about the Twilight series to make it even more strange and ridiculous then I'd easily make Bella remain human. Can you imagine how insane it would be? Edward is walking around looking seventeen forever (like your second favorite Metro Station song) while Bella is something like 75 and they make zero sense together. This one change would make the series better in the sense that it would make it infinitely worse, and supply a dose of comic relief. Is she Edward's grandma to the general public's eye? Is she his much older sugar mama? It would be anyone's guess. I know I sound like a madwoman, but you are also reading something written by a person who made up an entire inner monologue for a minor Pride and Prejudice character, so there's that. It's Anne De Bourgh in case you were wondering, but I have jokingly called her plain Anne in the presence of some company. Bella thought she was miserable when Edward left her in New Moon, so just imagine how utterly pissed off she would be if all events in the books happened as written other than her being turned. The logistics of her remaining human would be a nightmare. After 5-10 years she would have to move with the Cullens when random people in town started questioning how they look like they haven't aged. She would have to go to family events, weddings, and all other social events alone lest she raise suspicions. At that point just let go of the obvious baggage and find another man. She would be miserable and Edward would be forced to watch her be miserable. Vampire romances will continue to be a genre for what I imagine is years to come. There were stories written about it before Twilight and we know many other books have followed in its footsteps. I will shamelessly continue to watch Vampire Academy, though it is also labeled as entertaining trash, and pine for the amazing movie it deserved to be yet never was. In the style of Carrie Bradshaw sitting at her computer reflecting on her experience with a new fling, I can't help but wonder, has the time of the teen vampire romance come and gone? I don't know, but for now I've moved onto slightly more adult stories involving faeries.
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I love traveling, but by far my least favorite part is the head rush hangover that washes over you as soon as you get back home and back to reality. After spending four days in Chicago last week I was on cloud nine, now I feel groggy, like when you snap out of a really lovely daydream in the middle of something you probably should have been paying attention to.
It's probably an unpopular opinion, but I absolutely love road trips. I don't even mind the moment you make your first stop to stretch your legs and it feels like every muscle in the lower half of your body has frozen in place when you touch the ground. I don't care if the view from the car window is nothing but trees and corn fields for most of the trek because nothing beats those random, weird family conversations born out of boredom and the need for entertainment. It doesn't hurt if you have a good true crime podcast queued up to get you through either. There's nothing that says family fun more than listening to a conversation about murder together. There's something about traveling somewhere new, or just somewhere away from home, that gives me this feeling of inspiration, and the kind of attitude where I know I can take on anything. I browsed through bookshelves at this charming indie bookstore in Evanston, Illinois called Bookends & Beginnings one night after we'd left the city, thinking about a book idea I've been chewing on for a while. Why have I been putting off writing all this time? I don't have a good answer and it just pisses me off to think about it. There is no single good reason why I haven't been sitting my ass down at my laptop and typing until my brain runs out of ideas and plot points. I'm quite literally the only thing holding myself back from something I so desperately want to do. The name of the little bug on my shoulder is self-doubt, I won't deny that. As we walked down the streets of Evanston on our first night, admiring the stretch of beach along Lake Michigan, everything troubling me and tossing around in my brain for months didn't seem to matter so much anymore. It was pretty clear, like a junebug to the face clear, that my troubles don't deserve as much brain power as I've been giving them. I'm so used to little things being boiled into big things by my anxiety that it almost felt foreign to be able to let go for a while. We wandered through Northwestern University's beautiful campus for a while before heading back to our hotel in town. Interestingly enough, the memory from that day that stands out the most to me was a dozen bicycles abandoned at various back racks outside campus buildings. It was an odd image with rust cracking through paint and wheels missing. I drank beer we'd stashed in our own cooler at the hotel that night and we ordered a pizza at almost ten o'clock. Possibly the best New York style pizza I've had came from a bar in a suburb North of Chicago. I read a few chapters of People We Meet on Vacation and dreamt that I was dating Robert Downey Jr. I'm not joking about that last bit either; the brain is a mystery. We caught a train to Wrigley Field that morning, for a tour my mom was antsy to get to (rightly so), and met a man raising his son on his own. He told us about the abortion his son's mother wanted and the three day hospital stay alone after the birth. He spoke of struggle and frustration, but mostly of the love he has for his son. I can only imagine the other stories strangers share on trains. All afternoon I imagined myself living in a city with so many people, something I was convinced I could never see myself doing until a few days ago. I knew in a couple days I would get to see Wrigleyville packed with Cubs fans, but when the team is out of town it's a quiet neighborhood right next to the L train. Everything looked different than the last time I stood in the same spot almost 11 years ago. New buildings mostly. Brand new, shiny buildings standing in stark contrast to everything else around them. Then there's Wrigley Field, the second-oldest stadium in Major League Baseball, the same old friendly confines. I pocketed some ivy trimmings on our tour and sat in the dugout where so many famous Cubs have graced the benches. What it must be like to watch a game from that spot. I can now say I've seen the world's most complete T. rex fossil at the field museum, and plenty taxidermied specimens too. Who knew there were so many different species of birds in the world? Four hours, it turns out, isn't enough time to spend in a museum that big. My inner seven-year-old was equally parts over the moon and creeped out to see real mummies inside a glass case. I probably shouldn't have know what canopic jars were before I turned ten, but my grandma let me watch The Mummy (1999) as a kid. I promptly developed an obsession with all things relating to Egypt and fell in love with Brendan Fraser in quick succession. This trip had been a long time coming, and it only seemed fitting for my mom to celebrate her birthday sitting in the crowd at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs play on home turf. I drank three beers and had my first, but definitely not my last, Chicago dog. Our entire vacation led up to the surreal moment where the whole crowd rose onto their feet, beers and beef hot dogs in hand, while the W flew high over the city of Chicago. We got to see our favorite Cubs play for what quite possibly could be the last time as soon as this week. Player trades are a bitch, and I'll leave it at that. Thank you, Chicago, for being so damn good to me. When life gets crazy I find there are usually two groups of people:
1. Those who turn to old comforts, fully embracing them and the joy they get out of doing what they love 2. The people like me, who get overwhelmed by everything and find it difficult to focus, let alone find time for old comforts I can't remember a time in my life when I wasn't reading at all, but back in March of last year my depression hit a low it hasn't seen in almost 8 years. It became difficult not to compare everything to pre-pandemic life, and that way of thinking pushed me further away from the little joys I normally find in shitty situations. I'm not going to put it lightly or nicely, this pandemic has been absolutely shit in a lot of ways. My boyfriend was facing the cancellation of a tour with his band that was meant to last almost three months, and I was finding new ways to give myself anxiety almost daily. Before the pandemic, life felt like absolute bliss; I was attending book club every month at one of my favorite local bookshops, experiencing the high of live music, and hanging out with friends almost every week. Those parts of my life have always been enough to keep me satisfied, then it was all ripped away in what felt like an instant, but was really more of a slow burn toward the inevitable. I moved back in with my mom, my job shifted to a work from home format, and the world felt like it stopped moving for a while. I spent a good five months or so doing pretty much nothing. I tried to get into a writing project started online to help people cope with the feelings of isolation, but it felt too much like a school assignment at times and I didn't connect with it after a couple weeks of trying. One night I sat in my room staring at my bookshelf packed full of unread books and just picked one. For three months I struggled to get back into reading, an activity I love more than a lot of things, but these are some methods that helped me get out of my pandemic reading slump. Read an old favorite I didn't exactly do this, but I did pick up the Among the Hidden series, which I somehow managed to miss reading when I was younger. My brother was never a big reader, but he loved the series as a kid, and it has become what I would consider a precursor to some of the dystopian fiction we all know today. Sometimes we need to read books that aren't challenging or heavily thought-provoking, and I find that books written for younger people can be a bit easier to read (not to say that they aren't amazingly written or interesting). Take a look at the stack of books you've read and loved or grab a book written for younger readers–don't think about it too much and just start reading. Forget marathon reading and set attainable daily reading goals When I sit down to read I don't generally have a time in mind when I'm going to stop. I'll read for hours if I have the day off, and on rare occasions I'll even start and finish a book on the same day. This can also be the biggest problem for readers who want to devour as many books as humanly possible. There's always a little pang of disappointment when you don't get to read as much as you hoped. Help yourself get back into a reading routine first by setting small goals like reading for 30 minutes everyday or reading a few chapters. Meeting smaller and more attainable goals feels better than being hard on yourself because you didn't finish 4 books in a month. Fit reading time into your schedule where it makes sense for you. Join a virtual book club The book club I was meeting with before the pandemic was able to go virtual by hosting monthly meetings on Zoom and staying in touch with a Facebook group for members only. A lot of independent bookstores have started virtual book clubs to stay in touch and provide a sense of a community from a distance. If you read one book a month that will be 12 books for the year and a great accomplishment! This leaves a lot of room for any reads you want to add in if you finish a book quickly or don't love the book selected some months. Not to mention, when the book club is able to resume in person you will meet others who love reading as much as you and maybe even make a few new friends. This is also your sign to go support a local bookstore and quit giving Amazon more of your money, they don't need it. Find a short book to read or a collection of works Shorter books can be more digestible than long novels, and they make reading feel less like a chore when you're struggling to get into it again. Reading a 30 page essay or short story is much less intimidating than deciding to take on a novel totaling more than 300 pages. If you like nonfiction then look for a collection of essays by a writer you admire (my personal suggestion is anything by Samantha Irby) and if fiction is more your thing there are plenty of short story collections out there. A library card really comes in handy when you're indecisive or simply looking for one book to finally stick. You can check out multiple books for free and return what you didn't like. Download the Libby app for free audiobooks I've been visiting the library since elementary school and just recently found out about the Libby app. If you have a valid library card you can use the app to check out audiobooks and e-books for free! It took me a while to get into listening to books, and I know it isn't for everyone, but it provides the flexibility of listening when you can't be physically reading. It's a great resource that offers a lot of newer releases and popular titles. If you don't have a lot of free time to sit down with a book then listening might be a better option. It doesn't hurt that using the app is free, especially when a lot of us don't have disposable income right now. I'm here to tell you that you will get out of the reading slump you're in right now, and to remind you not to compare your reading goals or habits to anyone else. I'm guilty of doing that and it doesn't do any good, trust me. |
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