Reading Into it All

Thanks for the link Anonymous, I finished reading the story today.
As someone who has read Flatland I am hoping he got to copyright first, which he probably did.

I am a sworn enemy of the Twilight series. Everything I have read about it reinforces my resolution not to read it, especially Edward's line "You're like my own personal brand of heroin". What girl actually wants to hear that? Well, apparently many, many teenagers these days, but still. It doesn't help that my usual reaction to romance scenes is to skip them unless I'm reading a classic or it's a very good book. And here is my problem with most fantasy novels:

1.) Guy meets girl, guy and girl fall for each other. Cool.
2.) Guy and girl go through tribulations together, keep love to themselves. This is realistic.
3.)Guy and girl confess love and then get married/spend eternity together shortly thereafter. Wait, what? No?

First love sells, which is just a matter of fact. But these novels include only the honeymoon phase and none of the ecstasy or pain that comes with real love or spending a significant amount of time together. A partner is a person whom you know for years and will still be a surprise sometimes and totally predictable in others. These saccharine, unrealistic portrayals are not doing anybody any favors, ultimately. Why would you want a love like that if you could have the real thing?
Also, as far as I understand Bella follows Edward to the exclusion of everybody else and then gets pregnant right after high school. What a great example. Also, talk about communication issues between Bella and Edward. As far as I understand, in the second book he leaves without telling her why.
I know that people are going "it's a book for teenagers, you shouldn't expect better". And there are plenty of examples of other books where the characters meet, fall in love, and get married soon thereafter. It's usually their saving grace that this is not the central pillar of the plot which excuses this.
Ok, so people in my generation were reading Harry Potter in middle school, and I would love to say that nobody took them too seriously, but it's Harry Potter. I have read all of those books, and while they are entertaining and do use actual mythology/characters from history in them(eg Nicholas Flamel) they are entertainment and nothing more. I do not get why so many other just as good or better books did not gain the popularity of this trilogy. Maybe it was a changing climate in regards to fantasy, or the series was simply extremely accessible to people, or a bit of both. Either way, LOTR was then produced, which I approve of. Then there was Wicked. I never finished the book, but it is dark and graphic and I'm willing to bet most people don't actually read it. I've heard some of the songs from the musical and read the Wikipedia entry on the play. The songs are very simple musically and tap into generalized emotions. "I'm not that girl" is something most, if not all of us, have felt in the past before and probably associate with deep emotions, but it's not exactly brilliant writing. The whole the popular girl and the outcast can get along! and the popular girl has problems and can feel like an outcast too is good. Of course, I believe most of us learn this immediately after high school if not before then.

Today's speed run: 12 minutes to the end of 6-3(got killed by the world boss).

One of the differences between photographs and paintings, at least, to me, is that, in a painting the subjects are beautiful shells waiting to be filled with meaning, but a photograph is of someone extant, a person who's shoes we may attempt to step in but can never replace. In fact, completely replacing the person in a photograph dehumanizes the model in a way, because they become simply tools, vehicles for ourselves. Of course, many fashion photographers attempt to take the image of a model and make it their own in the way painters made model's images a work of art. One could argue that the ending photograph is as far removed from the model as a painting, but this is not intuitively extant to me. Perhaps because when looking at a painting, the first "person" considered is the painter, but when looking at a photograph, it is the model. Or perhaps it's my perception of models then and now.

After reading this article on horrible, horrible US companies that again throw the phrase "first world problems" into harsh reality, I had a heart attack when Nesquick was #1 on the list. Child slave labor, some of it from human trafficking, harvests the cocoa in their drinks. I love chocolate milk and consume vast quantities of it. I am never buying Nesquick again. The Kirkland milk I buy is organic, certified by the American Humane Society and obviously sold by the awesome Costco, but where does the cocoa in it originate? Here is a site called "Rountable for a sustainable cocoa economy". Declaration of Trinidad and Tobago?! This hits much too close to home. But I can't find out where the cocoa is from. Most likely a middleman.