At 14 I was dimly aware of Stoker's Dracula, starting to read Stephen King, and already fully steeped in YA and kid novels about small plucky bands of good guys (and the token good girl, which irritated me no end) fighting against some secret monumental evil. And oh, how I grooved on those tales, and, like Buffy, I liked my evil Evil. The emo woes of sparkly vampires and their mortal Mary Sues would have just enraged me.

(Er, uh, yeah, I also groove on Angel and Spike. But they're pointedly exceptions to the rule, not revocations of it. And at least they're exceptions who still love the hunt and the kill and all; they're like the Hungry Tiger in Oz, who's gone all good and will never permit himself to eat a baby but who will never bullshit himself or anyone else by pretending that babies aren't in fact the most delicious things ever and that he doesn't crave them every minute.)

Cleolinda's recaps are so delightful, in a gleefully mean nuh-uh! you're-shitting-me! sort of way.

how can she be his beard if she's actually fucking him

Jason finally got her into bed?

All I know is what the book jacket said, and it used the phrase "sometimes lover" to describe Jason in relation to Anita.

Honestly, it would be easier to list the people/creatures/whatever that she *hasn't* had sex with.

Hungry Tiger and Cowardly Lion 4EVAH! (gayest couple in Oz)

Cleolinda's recaps are so delightful, in a gleefully mean nuh-uh! you're-shitting-me! sort of way.

The Hub was chiding me as he was getting ready for work. "You're cackling entirely too much. It's really shockingly immature of you."

However, he conceded that I have, indeed, hated these books since their initial publication and that I'm not dissing on Stephenie just because the books are popular.

BTW, for those who wouldn't know, Eclipse was entered into the YA category of the RITAs and didn't final. And Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely ultimately won the big one. I was quite pleased.

At 14, I was reading Norton, Heinlein, Clarke, Simak and other SF; Rosemary Sutcliff; Alcott; a lot of old-fashioned series books; and quite a bit of non-fiction, particularly about science and history. Because of Rosemary Sutcliff, I was reading rather obsessively about Roman Britain. I was also still in my project to read all the fiction in the library. I was probably around H. (It was a crazy plan, but I did live in a small town.) Probably Norton's fantasy was about as close as I came to Twilight. I didn't much like books about teenagers, generally, unless they were in outer space or a very different time period.

I need to digress briefly from The Sparkly Vampires And the People Who Love to Mock Them to express (once again) my writerly crush on Nathanel West:

********

Tod liked to hear him talk. He was master of an involved comic rhetoric that permitted him to express his moral indignation and still keep his reputation for worldliness and wit.

Tod fed him another lead. "I don't care how much cellophane she wraps it in," he said, "nautch joints are depressing, like all places for deposit, banks, mail boxes, tombs, vending machines."

"Love as a vending machine, eh? Not bad. You insert a coin and press home the lever. There's some mechanical activity inside the bowels of the device. You receive a small sweet, frown at yourself in the dirty mirror, adjust your hat, take a firm grip on your umbrella and walk away trying to look as if nothing had happened. It's good, but it's not for pictures."

*******

I need to work that (very Coen Brothers-esque) line into my conversation: "It's good, but it's not for pictures."

the Hungry Tiger in Oz, who's gone all good and will never permit himself to eat a baby but who will never bullshit himself or anyone else by pretending that babies aren't in fact the most delicious things ever and that he doesn't crave them every minute

OMG, you've just brought the Oz books back in a rush! Fabulous!

Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely ultimately won the big one.

Splendid! I liked it a lot - certainly WAY more than Twilight. Was patting the hardback sequel fondly only this afternoon, and promising it that I would buy one of its little paperback brethren as soon as they showed up on the shelf.

Honestly, it would be easier to list the people/creatures/whatever that she *hasn't* had sex with.

Let's see, no women, because I'm sure she thinks that's icky . . .

At fourteen I was reading mostly Harlequin Romances and whatever other romances I could find on mom's bookshelf that I wasn't supposed to be reading.

At 14 I think I was starting at one end of the Andre Norton shelf in the library and digging in.