“Important principles may and must be inflexible” ~Abraham Lincoln

Okay, it has to be said.  I've tried to calmly hold it in and let the chaos of emotions roil around me, like a patient driver on the Interstate who doesn't let his feathers get ruffled by the dangerous nuts cutting him off.  But I can't do it any longer.  Somebody has to say it, and so I will -- and let the righteous anger of female bloggers everywhere crash down on top of me.

EDWARD AND BELLA DO NOT HAVE A PERFECT DREAM OF TRUE LOVE!

There.  It's out.  Damn me if you must.

Now, just to show that I'm trying to be open-minded and in touch with my feminine side -- just to prove that my opinions are not unbending -- I will admit that I have changed my opinion of Edward in recent discussions.  I am willing to concede that Edward is very very old, and quite mature, and has presumably been in many relationships before that didn't work out, and has definitely watched the problems and quirks of his family's relationships.  So I'm willling to give into the fact that maybe -- just maybe -- Edward has just been waiting for all these years until he found the perfect woman to love and cherish.  That maybe his love is pure and true, and he just needed to find someone to lavish it on.  That maybe he's everything Mr. Darcy could have been, had he been bitten in the middle of the night and had his blood sucked out of him.

But nobody will ever be able to convince me that Bella has healthy emotions.  Pubescent girls should NOT feel that way about boys.  They should not burn and ache in their loins every time they hear someone's voice.  They should not freeze up and completely blank things out (often very important things) every time they feel someone's touch.  17-year-old girls should not be so infatuated and lustful about their boyfriend that they become suicidal.  Can none of the lovestruck women out there see that this is not healthy??  Do we want our daughters growing up thinking that this is what love is supposed to feel like??  Do we want them searching out their own personal "Edwards" the way my peers always longed for their own personal "Fitzwilliams?"

This craze has gone on long enough.  Let's all close our lusty books and go back to reading Stephen King, like normal children.