Isn't it a typical adolescent female thing, the desire for something powerful tamed by your hand?

Or the myth that will never die -- "He'll change for ME!" Seen in (among other movies/media) City of Angels. He changed his entire fucking existence FOR A WOMAN. Or the bad/"misunderstood" man who changes for a woman. (Beauty and the Beast [not the TV show], anyone?)

Who doesn't want to be that woman? Or so the myth would have you think.

It's got a strong, strong pull, I have to admit.

wrod.Although the myth that I hate the most personally is the one that you hate a man intensely based on some sexual attraction you are suppressing.

I'm still mad at Stephenie Meyer for taking time on her website to write why it "sucks"

Among the many, many reasons I dislike her intensely-- I don't care if she thinks the book sucks or that Edward thinks the book sucks or whatever, but that the book was chosen as a "Twilight Book Club Selection" and she then presented the question as: "So let's discuss why Edward thought Wuthering Heights sucked."

Bitch, please-- if you don't like the book, fucking own it. Don't hide behind your characters.

I should mention I haven't seen the Fiennes/Binoche version of Wuthering Heights, so my suggestion of Fiennes as appropriate for Heathcliff is based solely of my impression of him from other roles.

It really is terrible. Throughout the movie, I kept sputtering, "but... it's Ralph Fiennes! And Juliet fucking BINOCHE! How could this be so bad? HOW?"

Talking about the adaptation-that-should've-been, I've always felt it was a crashing shame that nobody cast Alan Rickman as Edward Rochester when he was in his late 30's or early 40's. We've got some decent adaptations of Jane Eyre (I rather liked the most recent BBC version with Toby Stephens as Rochester, although Stephens was not swarthy enough for my liking. But I LOVED the young actress who played Jane.) Now, there's your *other* prototypical romance novel cliché! Oh, Brontës.

I'm mulling the difference between hate and strongly dislike/despise, basing it on people/things I hate. It feels like there needs to be an element of betrayal to push the dislike all the way to hate, either the betrayal of something that actually exists between the two or a betrayal of something that was advertised.

Or be woman enough to call it "Yes, I Really Am This Much of A Philistine and Bite(ha!) The Historical Hand that Feeds" Edward thinks everything sucks cause had to go through high school, like, twenty times without getting laid. Once was enough for me, personally, even being a girl who was not as beautiful as the sun and stuff.(I would have liked Edward so much more as a Kerouac or Burroughs fan. Everything about him was really quite girly, except for the patriarchy thing.)

(Which is to say - the passionate intensity of the relationship between the brothers Winchester, which I do not read as UST myself, mirrors the passionate intensity of the Heathcliff/Cathy relationship. Including the whole digging-uu-the-grave, come-back-and-haunt-me craziness. And, really, I don't know that you have to read Heathcliff/Cathy as lovers, unconsumated or otherwise, or their relationship as sexual - it's just THAT FUCKING INTENSE. And the reason that so many slashers have embraced the Wincest thing is very closely akin to the reason that the majority of the readers of Wuthering Heights read it as a heterosexual romance. But I think that the kick of that relationship ISN'T rooted in UST - it's the intense, obsessive, passionate relationship that those two form in childhood, just them against the world. Sexual desire is almost incidental - it's just the easy shorthand for pigeonholing the relationship.

::nodding so hard my head falls off--see it roll across the floor? loving Fay for speaking my mind. you know, since my head fell off and I'm apparently no longer capable of speech::

he he ... I still remember in college having someone from the local school asking me to explain Wuthering Heights to her. On the 20-minute train ride into town. um ... NO.

And it's still a great book and I'm still mad at Stephenie Meyer for taking time on her website to write why it "sucks"

You are shitting me.

...

...

...wow. I kind of pretty much want to beat her to death with one of her own tomes, just for the sheer, irony-free HUBRIS.

Ah, Stephen King. How much I would like to give you a nice cool beer.

You are shitting me.

Honey, you know we've got some good writers around here, but no, we couldn't even begin to make that shit up. She thinks it sucks. So no doubt, Twilight is her way of making it "right."