Twilight MST

R

RPGenius

Look, Ma! Two Heads!
I recently finished 'MSTing' (Making fun of bad writing, in a similar fashion to how the show Mystery Science theater 3000 made fun of bad movies) the first chapter of Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer. How the fetid prose was published, let alone became a bestseller is beyond me. That said, Fallout 3 sold really well. General public clearly has no taste. I thought people on here might enjoy it, so I'm posting an excerpt from the Prologue, with links to the full thing at the bottom. Enjoy! (Servo goes "Goth" in the first host segment, to explain the change to people familiar with MST3K. Lets me get vampire joke mileage in the future.) Mike and the Bots have their comments in italics.

I'D NEVER GIVEN ANY THOUGHT TO HOW I WOULD DIE

Mike: Why is she shouting?
Tom: I've given plenty of thought to how I might one day reach Death's loving embrace...

though I'd had reason enough in the last few months – but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.
I stared without breathing

Crow: You see that's your problem. I'm sure if you had tried staring and breathing, you wouldn't be in this whole 'about to die' mess.

across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.

Mike: Ah, the pleasant look that is so often passed between predator and prey.

Surely it was a good way to die,

Tom: Any way is a good-
Mike&Crow: SHUT UP, SERVO!

in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.
I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks,

Mike: Or Knives
Crow: Don't forget Spoons
Tom: Since when were items of cutlery proper nouns?

I wouldn't be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision

Mike: I really wanted to regret the decision, I just couldn't.

When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations,

Tom: Ah, but Death offers you so much more!

it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.
The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me.

Crow: The friendly service more than makes up for the ensuing death.


http://mstwilight.livejournal.com/766.html

http://mstwilight.livejournal.com/930.html
 
Oh goddamnit how I hate this style of writing - it looks more like a bunch of one-liners instead of a coherent text. I find it difficult to read book nowadays - they look all the same to me.
 
I was reading Crime and Punishment and decided I needed a break from it's tiny (second tiniest only to the point 4 type in Atlas Shrugged) print. So I decided to read the last Harry Potter book. Who cares if I had only read about 3 of them? The writing style appalled me. i just couldn't believe that anyone wrote that poorly in a post- Dostoevsky, post-Tolstoy, post-Kafka, post-anyone-with-half-a-brain era. I don't care if you write for kids, I read Tolstoy at fourteen, there's no reason why kids can't take a good writing style.
 
Is it really that bad or does using the lines out of context make it appear that bad? My teacher said that he wasn't impressed by the book, but this is just awful.
 
It's not massively out of context. That's a complete excerpt, and is the entire Prologue to the book. It's apallingly written. Admittedly, I've done stuff like running with the bit where it reads like he's masturbating:

Just as I passed, he suddenly went rigid

Mike: Eww

in his seat. He stared at me again,

Crow: ~ I couldn’t see his hands, and the desk was moving.

meeting my eyes with the strangest expression on his face – It was

Crow: ~ really focused, and then seemed relieved for some reason.
Mike: That’s enough from you.
Click to expand...

Later on...

During the whole class, he never relaxed his stiff

All: Eww

position on the edge of his

Crow: ~palm.

chair, sitting as far from me as possible. I could see his hand on his left leg was clenched into a fist,

Mike: He is! Man, I was just joking before, but he is!

tendons standing out under his pale skin. This, too, he never relaxed.

Crow: Never? Boy's got stamina.

He had the long sleeves of his white shirt pushed up to his elbows,

Mike: Why? If it gets stained, it's a white shirt, no-one'll notice.

and his forearm was surprisingly hard

Tom: That's not his forearm!
Click to expand...

So yeah, some stuff has been taken out of context, but the novel is there, in it's entirety. It's dreadful, dreadful entireity.

Check out the terrible writing in it's entireity: http://mstwilight.livejournal.com/766.html

http://mstwilight.livejournal.com/930.html
 
Jesus, man. Only now do I understand how this MSTing works. You could have explained a little better in your first post, it's confusing as fuck for people who aren't familiar with the process.

That said: although not impressed by the original text excerpts, I'm not particularly impressed by the comments in italics either. Maybe the book is 'bad writing', but you guys turn it into 'bad writing²'. Yay! :roll:
 
Eh, it's my first attempt at it. Sorry for the lack of clarity. Message was posted as I'd just finished, and Twilight is a terrible drain on the brain. I think I lost brain cells just trying to read it the first time, let alone MST it.
 
Question: when MSTing does one always have to use the original Mystery Science Theater 3000 cast (Servo, Crowd and Nelson) or can one use, say, a cast of Greek philosophers to comment on the text?

I was reading a bad Dutch novel and all of a sudden I was "MSTing" in my head, but it was Barthes, Ricoeur and Derrida that were pulling the text apart. I laughed 'cause in my mind it was pretty funny.

:roll:

I'm gonna stop drinking next year.
 
Yes! If you stop drinking next year, then the much coveted prize of "most drunken moron of 2009" will finally be mine! And to think the most drunked moron of 2009 prize has eluded me every past year! VICTORY!


*Ahem*


I've seen some MSTs which use diferent riffers. Most MSTs seem to use the Bots and either Mike or Joel, however. Although I somehow feel that wasn't an entirely serious question. :o
 
I've done a little MSTing of short stories and found that it works better without characters (I had made-up characters since I've watched very little MST). They're an unnecessary extra step between the text and the images you want to evoke, unless you specifically want the impression of experiencing a "real" MST.
 
My wife is reading the Twilight series after dragging me to the movie.

When she read some excerpts, I started laughing, and shaking my head.

She was not amused.
 
She must have done something right. My wife and all her friends are obsessed with the books and movie.

I'm not going to bust on it, if people like it and it makes you money, mission accomplished if you ask me. Good for Meyer.
 
Herr Mike said:
She must have done something right. My wife and all her friends are obsessed with the books and movie.

I'm not going to bust on it, if people like it and it makes you money, mission accomplished if you ask me. Good for Meyer.
Click to expand...
That's a great attitude. Why be critical of something if people like it? Maybe because the shit sucks and people should learn the difference between that and Proust.
 
Meh. Proust sucks as well.

:D

Kurt Vonnegut, John Fante and Donald Barthelme. One doesn't need more than that.
 
She must have done something right. My wife and all her friends are obsessed with the books and movie.

I'm not going to bust on it, if people like it and it makes you money, mission accomplished if you ask me. Good for Meyer.
Click to expand...

By your "If it makes money, it must be good" attitude, Fallout 3 was good. You're on timeout. Sit in the corner and think about what you've done.
 
It might be the mushy 6 am brain talking, but I liked it.
Keep it up
 
Pope Viper said:
My wife is reading the Twilight series after dragging me to the movie.

When she read some excerpts, I started laughing, and shaking my head.

She was not amused.
Click to expand...

Is that your wife in your icon anyway ? Just curious
 
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