What irritates me most about this story is how they always give reply
e-mails a new subject. Who does that in real life? It's a gross
misrepresentation!
They use a Chinese bootleg email client on MS-DOS. Those will treat every reply like it's a new email, and the headers are not easily readable to people that aren't tech-savvy or intelligent.
You've forgotten that Edward ISN'T replaceable because of his wealth.
Forget the fact that he is an abusive asshole (You know, like Eel and her
brain-dead fans did) and look at the rest. He is model-gorgeous, obsessed
with Bella (pretend it's sweet, like the idiots do) and he's offered her
hundreds of thousands of dollars in clothes, jewelry, a physical trainer, a
car (later on), helicopter rides, etc. A lot of women still wish they could
marry a rich man to dote on her, and this is that wish-fulfillment fantasy.
Like Meyer, Eel just has to make Bella hate all that stuff because it isn't
proper for us to ask for or expect extravagant gifts.
So yeah, Mike, Jake or anyone else don't stand a chance with Bella. None of
them are good-looking or rich enough.
+manwithoutabody Fair enough. This Bella, though still very unlikable, is mostly unlikable for being a total doormat and complete idiot. I haven't noticed any sociopathic tendencies yet and she actually seems to care about her friends, even when one of them nearly rapes her. I'm still quite certain that Eel and her fans see his wealth as a redeeming quality, though.
A very good point. I suppose I've been underthinking his wealth and assuming it was just window dressing, when it's clearly a lot more integral to the fantasy that I realized. That said, this version of Bella seems fairly guileless, and not the manipulative sociopath she is in the original Twilight, so assuming she's not an unreliable narrator, I still say that his wealth and presents make no difference to her (even if they undeniably do to Eel and to the fans), so he shouldn't be irreplaceable. She completely admits, up front, that his good looks are his biggest draw, but there are plenty of good-looking people in the world, in spite of her contrived claim to have never been attracted to anyone before she met him.
I'd like to see a reasonably talented writer collaborate with Eel.
Obviously, she would be kept away from the plot, dialogue, pacing, and so
on, but be left in control of writing the villain. There is no character in
recent memory that I've disliked with such genuine gusto as
Edward/Christian Grey. Normally, I tend to admire artistic work, in
whatever form that it may take, that goes against the trope where the
villain is routinely defeated, but this is one of those cases where it
would be SO satisfying to see the villain get his comeuppance. If that were
the case, I'd ALMOST have to say that it made the entire book worth
suffering through, but, that would be an overstatement, as Eel, as a
writer, is garbage-tier. Tie this with the fact that I know that the
misogynistic shitlord isn't going to get his skull viciously driven into
concrete at the end makes this nearly unbearable.