Wednesday, July 25, 2012

i just don't know...

it's a bleak day for twihards and robsteners. i was gonna leave this one alone (apart from my lamenting on twitter) but i have thoughts in my head i would like to dispose of. i've been awake for more than 24 hours and i'd like to get some sleep but i can't.


i won't go into the details of "the situation". we all know what it is.


but i will state my support of and love for both kristen and rob. if you've read any of my other postings, you'll know i'm fans of both and what has allegedly happened doesn't change that. i believe they are both amazing people. people... operative word. humans. real. not perfect, fictitious vampires. and people make mistakes. and clearly, if what has been said truly transpired (i'm still hoping against hope that it isn't true!), a grave mistake was made.


but, odds are, with the new "official statement" out, it's most likely true. based on that assumption, i am truly heartbroken.


not just for the reasons you would think. yes, it's horrible to be so wrapped up and invested emotionally in the happiness of another relationship (other than your own), especially of celebrities over whom you have no control, only to have them go through difficulties and/or, god forbid, split (*ouch* it hurts!).


being a famous couple, one who portrays and therefore embodies the fictional couple they brought to life, we hold them up on a pedestal. it's not fair for them, but that's life. we want them to have that pure true love we envision them possessing and we are devastated when it doesn't work out that way. we thought they would beat the odds of costar romance cliché of not being able to last. we thought they we're so in love and absolutely perfect together. mfeo! (i still think that.) but, like a kid who has just found out santa claus isn't real (what?!), reality hits. there is no perfect love that makes it through all adversity and last for eternity. bella and edward do not really exist. we just really wanted them to and projected that onto them. at least i did...


and because we are so tied up in them, we hurt for them as well. what must they both be feeling right now?! it makes me nauseous to even think about it. when i think of how i felt each time i saw rob look at kristen with all that love written plainly all over his face... to think of seeing the hurt and betrayal there instead. stop right there! i can't do it! and kristen... knowing what she can't take back and having to live with it. uh!


but all of that, the disillusionment of getting the peverbial wind knocked out of you, the pain you feel for them in their behalf, is not the only reason why i'm feeling so unbelievably sad now. it's all about my own loss. i'm a selfish person i guess.


i can not stop seeing those pictures and hearing the words. it can't be undone. how am i supposed to suspend that when i watch them together in the twilight movies now? i need a big ass bottle of bleach to wash out the inside of my head. even reading the books and hearing the music is tearing at me right now. it feels tainted.


my beloved twilight! truth be told, i don't have much else going on in my life right now and sometimes it can be a real struggle. i NEED twilight! it's my escape. it brings me happiness.


i hope the feelings i'm having right now when i think of watching the movies fade... quickly! not saying all of this has ruined twilight or anything but the emotions i experience when i read and watch, the ones i have come to rely on, the power of it... isn't the same. tainted. that's the only way i can think of to describe it.


and all before part 2 comes out...


i'm going to stop there before I start to cry (again) and try to get some sleep. maybe i'll feel better when i wake up.

edward cullen vs. robert pattinson

the following are some thoughts i posted earlier this morning on my twitter account (kmuffin88)
“before twilight, i never gave a shit about celebrities at all (except for rivers cuomo, cause i love him immensely). even when i first watched the movies, i didn't give a crap about the actors. it was the story i was there for. but delving into twiverse, watching interviews with the stars and following their non-twi careers, you almost feel like you know them.”

in fact, when i came across people who obsessed with various celebrities and invested in their personal lives, i would (secretly) make fun of them.
as i’ve said before, my need for my twilight heroin made me branch out into watching the interviews of the leads for the extra tidbits about the series they might offer or the added insight (back story, motivation, etc.). that was the original point of it.
but~ the more i watched, the more capitivated with them i became. namely by rob and kristen. cause they’re so awesome. as actors, as creative people, as human beings (imho, anyway). you really do feel like you get to know them, or at least a part of them. they both come across as so genuine and humble. (and downright cool, if you ask me!)
particularily rob.
the more i watched him, the more i was enthralled. dazzled. his mannerisms, his sense of humour, his intellect. he’s not hard on the eyes either. every single thing about him. i feel weird saying it at my age but this is the first real celebrity crush i’ve ever had. (at least since joey mcintyre when i was 9!) my thing for the lead singer of weezer, rivers cuomo, is more of an artist appreciation thing. let’s put it this way… rivers isn’t on my “list”.  (you know… the list of 5 people you’re allowed to sleep with with your husband’s blessing. your “freebies”.) 
yes, i am completely enamored of robert pattinson.
and i think i’ve already made clear the high ideal i hold edward cullen in.
those two points being said, the two are not synonymous. in interviews, rob has repeatedly said that fans like him because of edward. (always so humble!) as for myself~ in a way, it’s true but more accurately edward was a means from which i learned about rob. had never heard of him before. and as soon as i started developing my little crush on rob, in my mind he was completely separate from edward. they look different, act differently, obviously speak differently. actually, it kind of freaks me out when rob speaks without an american accent while in costume.
(btw, rob is number one on my list.)

team edward or team jacob? does it really matter? yes!

ah, the age old question. who of us hasn’t been asked it a million times? and of course, you NEED to pick a team. no twihard can be undeclared, even if you claim switzerland.
where do I stand? obviously. i am 100% team edward. from the beginning. never wavered.
BUT~
for me, i’ve always loved both jacob and edward.  
jacob is cute, funny, sweet, and all “i’ll fight for you till your heart stops beating” (and what girl doesn’t want a guy to fight for her?!). but edward… ah, edward. edward is perfection. and you can’t fight with an eclipse!
they both love bella. they both want to protect her. they both feel that compelling need to be with her. …all very romantic. but edward is the one who always puts bella first and would do absolutely anything to make her happy. even give her up. (and jacob can be manipulative and immature.)
when the first three movies were all i had seen, i would simply say “yup. team edward. why be on the losing team?” no, it wasn’t that simple (or shallow) but i didn’t feel the need to explain.  then i read breaking dawn and jacob was no longer the loser (but not until book three). the triangle had become a square, as taylor put it. or a perfect circle, as kristen said. some of my favourite moments of new moon and eclipse are the heart wrenching ones where jacob is trampled all over – not from a hurtful, condescending point of view but because of the depth of emotion and sweetness of it all. it hurt me but i loved it. how much pain can one guy endure?! i am so glad stephenie meyer gave him his happy ending. i love the way things turned out. so much so that i started dreaming up my own continuation of what would happen once renesmee reached full maturity.
so, yeah, i’m team edward all the way but i adore jacob.
on a side note~ i go to school with a bunch of youngin’s (18-20 year olds make up the majority of my program) so i get a firsthand account of things that interest them. many of them like twilight and the majority of those that do claim team jacob. it seems as though the dividing line is with age. i have yet to come across a “twibetween” who is team jacob.  hmmm…
it also makes me wonder, if taylor lautner didn’t potray jacob, or if there were no movies at all, would the dividing lines still be the same? are these girls really team jacob or are they really  just team taylor? (oh, the things i have time to ponder…)

vampire super powers

this afternoon, i was lying in bed with my ipad, catching up on my tl when, out of nowhere, my husband came in the room all melancholy and lay down beside me and said "sometimes i think i'm the kind of person who is just okay at a lot of things but not really great at anything." it immediately pulled on my heart strings. i think that of myself all the time. and i think he's the awesomest. so i told him, "i know this might not sound like what you want to hear but i think that you are really great at being super responsibile and on top of things all the time. that might not sound like a fun thing to be good at but you're the most together person i've ever met in my life and it always impresses me." he just smiled for a minute and then got up and said thanks. don't know if he felt better or not! haha
then i got to thinking about twilight, as i often do. i was thinking about how, according to stephenie meyer lore, when a person is turned into a vampire they bring their best qualities with them but they become more heightened and are sometimes turned into a supernatural "talent". i always thought, among all his wonderful qualities, my husband's best quality is that he is the down-to-earth, logical, prepared for anything, level-headed type of guy (my complete opposite in that regard!). it is really astounding. i found myself wondering how that could be regarded as a vampire talent...
i've also always wondered what my vampiric quality would be. (i've heard that question asked of the stars of the twilight movies in interviews.) i really don't know. possibly that i would be able to make anyone laugh under any circumstance? or maybe that's just what i would want it to be.
no. teleportation. that's what i would want it to be!
i'm interested to hear what other people think their heighten human quality turned vampire power would be...

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

lost? follow me!

(can't take credit for that title...)

on twitter
my regular everyday life account ~ kmah88 
my twilight-only account ~ kmuffin88

not another twilight origin story

it’s coming up on my year anniversary of being a twilight fan. (i know! only a year?! i shall explain…) i thought, in honour of that, i will post a blog about how i fell into this world ~ my beloved twiverse.
like everyone else on the planet, i heard of twilight sometime after the first movie came out. i am, in general, fiercely against anything popular. underdogs ftw! at the time, i was taking a few classes at university with a bunch on people 10 years younger than me and i didn’t want to like anything they did. i needed to set myself apart from them somehow. from the beginning, i was against it. plus, i don’t like vampires. (HA!)
i remember seeing previews for new moon on tv and scoffing at the whole vampire/werewolf/human love triangle thing (how cliché, right?) without knowing anything about it. the release of eclipse also came and went without a care from me. (i don’t remember if i knew at the time that the movies were based on books.)
now, anyone who knows me knows that i have a little problem with digital hoarding. i download movies obsessively and, for the most part, never get around to watching them. i am especially needy when it comes to franchises. even if i have no interest in the series, i have to have it in my collection. so, at some point in 2011, i downloaded the 3 twilight movies but they remained unwatched for quite some time.
i worked full time as a preschool teacher for the first six months of last year but was exhausted by the end so i wanted to take the summer off. i ended up working only 5 sporadic days throughout the summer and was really bored. i caught up on some of my movie watching. but I still refused to watch twilight.
then, on august 15th, i had run out of movies that piqued my interest and was sitting on the couch scrolling through the list and thought, what the hell… may as well just so i can prove everyone wrong. i pressed play on catherine hardwicke’s little vampire flick…
i was riveted. i thought it was the most horribly romantic thing i’d ever seen. i am a huge sucker (pun intended) for love stories, although i don’t think i realized to what extent at the time. as soon it was over, i watched new moon and eclipse in quick succession. and as soon as eclipse was over, i started with twilight again. i watched all three twice through in one sitting. that’s 752 minutes, btw.  over 12 and a half hours.
the next day, i went online to find the books. (who has time to wait for things to be delivered? i downloaded .pdf’s. illegal pirating prevails in my household. lock me up.) i read twilight. i remember having mixed feelings bout the book but when it came down to it, i was obsessed with the story and had to keep going. couldn’t put it down.
i think i read midnight sun (what there is of it! *sob*) before i moved on to new moon. i was completely heartbroken when it ended right before the good part!
i ended up reading all four books in three days. i hauled my laptop to bed with me and read all night and then slept during the day. (my husband was NOT happy.) people who know me also know it’s impossible to get me to wake up for anything other than work or school. what they don’t know is that i will also wake up to read new twilight related source material. for that first week or so, i was a twilight watching/reading zombie. seemed only fitting.
i was heartbroken all over again when i read the last page of breaking dawn. it was all over. (more on that later…) and i was mad that i had to wait 3 more months for the new breaking dawn movie to come out.
when i had watched all the movies and read all the books (and listened to the audio books as well), i was starving for more. i downloaded the dvd special features to accompany the movies (i still didn’t have my own copies yet. it didn’t take long for me to acquire the blu-rays though.) and watched all the deleted/extended scenes and documentaries. it still wasn’t enough. i went online and watched every single interview i could find. (that’s where i feel i “got to know” rob and kristen. which started a whole other obsession. but that’s for another time…) still, i needed more. which brought me to fanfiction.net. any other twihard who reads this will be thinking, ‘oh, here we go…’ but it isn’t what you think. i never really got into the whole fanfic world (yet). 2 reasons ~ #1. there’s a lot of crap to sift through and without recommendations, it can be very overwhelming. there’s just so much! a lot of it, not good. #2. i wasn’t looking for stories outside of the actual stephenie meyer created world. i just wanted more of what was already there. so i found a few continuations of midnight sun and a few epov’s of new moon and eclipse. (i have yet to find a good epov of breaking dawn. if anyone knows of any… ?!)
back to the aforementioned gloom surrounding the end of the series with breaking dawn~ there are maybe one or two continuations i came across that i’ve enjoyed but almost as soon as i put down breaking dawn (yes, by the way, i have purchased the actual books by now.) and came to terms with the fact that it may be a very long time before stephenie meyer ever continues the vampire stories, if at all, i started forming my own continuing story in my head. when i can’t sleep, i actually narrate in my head. the following night, i pick up where i left off previously. the morning after the first night, i actually got up and wrote it down with the intention of always doing that. but from there, a lot has been lost. it’s never as good when i go to write it down as when i first imagine it. but i am still working on it. my original intention was to write my own novel (well, my own using sm’s characters, of course.) or perhaps a screenplay. for now i just call it “my story” when referring to what i’m writing when my husband asks what i’m doing. in my head, i also affectionately think of it as “twilight movie #6”.
i know i’m not alone in my creative urge after reading twilight. that’s one of the things that is so great about what stephenie meyer created herself. something about it makes you want to create things yourself. no other books have ever brought that out in me. something about her world makes you want to move in and never leave it. somehow, she created these characters that you love fiercely and can’t let go of.
i’m not good at explaining on an intellectual level why i feel a connection to certain things. i can’t tell you matter-of-factly why i love twilight SO much. i can only tell you these movies and books bring out such strong feelings in me that nothing else in my life has ever done before. i have a friend who is obsessed with harry potter and we frequently have potter vs. twilight arguments. although i enjoy jkr’s books, they just don’t make me FEEL what twilight does. twilight has become my own personal brand of heroin.

not-so-closeted twilight fan

with the end of the twilight saga movie franchise looming on the not-so-distant horizon, i decided to let it all out there and enjoy the fandom while still in the thick of it. so i created this tertiary twilight-only blog apart from my main (unused) regular blog and my secondary japan trip blog.
i'll say it here. i am completely obsessive with all things twilight! yup, it's out there now. no turning back. scoff if you must but there it is.