Title: Dead On My Feet
Author: Cesca Marie
Rating: M
Genre: Angst/Drama
DLP Category: Other Fandoms
Pairing: Canon crap... a.k.a. ExB
Status: Complete
Summary: Recovering from a serious illness, Edward knows what it is to be invisible but obvious to everyone around him. Bella, who has watched a loved one die of protracted illness, understands the tightrope-act of life in an unpredictable body. Alienated by his disease, Edward finds a friend in Forks' newest resident. The only problem is that she sees far more than anyone else does – including the things he doesn't want seen.
Link: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6007656/1/Dead_On_My_Feet


Yes, that's right. I committed social suicide and posted *le gasp* a Twilight fanfic. What's more humiliating? Admitting that I perused through some Twilight fanfiction, or admitting that I'm familiar enough with the Twihard world to even recognise their fanfiction?


...Just lost over 90000 respect points.

To be honest, I've only skimmed through the first Twilight book and got the rest from popculture/wikipedia articles. So I don't know half the characters that appear in this fanfic. But something about this fanfic just clicked for me.

Firstly, there's a very interesting flip in the usual E/B dynamic. Somehow, the author made Mary-Sue!Doormat!Bella into a veritable bitch by shoving a spine up her back. And MrPerfection!Creepy!Edward had become the weaker/ submissive one in the relationship. Both of characters, in contrast to their "perfect" canon counterparts, are annoyingly flawed. In fact, all the usual Twilight dynamics have been flipped. Bella's mother has a legitimate reason for avoiding her daughter, Charlie is a pain-in-the-ass, Jacob isn't a possessive twerp, etc.

The reversal of roles has actually made this fanfic easier to read than Twilight. The lack of Flanderization and/or MarySue-ification of characters help. Every bloody character in this fanfic is flawed. (which could be a bad thing, but I'll discuss that later)

The second thing is fanfic has going for it is its exploration of difficult topics, mainly grief and euthanasia. Most people aren't brave enough to tackle the age-old physical illness vs mental illness dilemma (e.g. a cancer patient disliking a girl with anorexia: "All they had to do was eat, and they'd live. They didn't need strong drugs and harsh medicines, or surgeries or radiation treatments that burn the skin or whole new organs – they just needed to fucking swallow.") However, this story tackles it and damn, it gives the themes a good run that I only see in an occasional Chicken Soup book. Definitely not YA fiction like Twilight, or even a Picoult book. Cesca gives both viewpoints relatively equal weighting, and loves playing mindgames on the readers:

When you think Bella is a bitch and sympathise with Edward, she freakin' flips the story, and you sympathise Bella and hate Edward. Bloody fucking hell.

I also really enjoyed the grittiness of the story. Edward's sexual encounter with Kate was incredibly painful to read, but made sense in the context of the story. Cesca definitely doesn't shy away from the turmoils of being in remission. She know a lot about cancer, and she knows just when to pull away, because it's becoming overwhelming.

I'm biased for this story because someone close to me actually had cancer, so Edward/Bella's plot really strikes a blow with me. The bad parts of the fanfic are mainly the confusing and slow start (the first chapter is Edward's POV, btw. It takes a few sentences to grasp that) and occasional over-angst from Edward. Readers have a threshold for angst, and sometimes it can get too much.

Another facet that might turn some readers off (and attract others) is Bella. She is a bitch in this story, no doubt. Yes, she has a good excuse (which you find out a bit too late in the fanfic), but her callousness will detract many readers. Her contradictory behaviour also made me pull nails. She calls Edward "Uncle Fester", knowing how insecure he is about his body-image (E's angst over how he was a "perfect, model student" Pre-Cancer is a major plot point), and then gives him soup. Mood swings?

Then again, she actually has a spine in this story, unlike the travesty that was Twilight. And it's an interesting exploration of gender dynamics to see Edward being the pining one, instead of Bella (at least initially).

And the final thing that would turn off most readers is the fact that this is Twilight fanfiction. Fucking Twilight. Yes, I hear you.

Anyway, because of my RL bias and my like for the interesting flips applied to the Twilight mythos, I give this story a 4.5/5.

But be warned, this is Twilight. And a real life AllHuman/AU. It's definitely not for everyone.


...I'll go back into my cave now and flounder in humiliation.


EDIT: Alice likes Harry Potter in this story and actually likes HP fanfiction. She's a little fanatic, giggling when Edward gets her a Pigwidgeon puppet for her birthday. That little post-modern touch made me groan and chuckle.

EDIT2: The character Kate is also pure awesome. She doesn't appear until Chapter 11-ish, but she's easily one of the better members of the supporting cast. She's bisexual with a mouth of a truck driver, who doesn't take crap from anyone. The lesbian kiss in Chapter 19 isn't a terrible addition to the fic.

 

No, thanks :-/ I maybe could stomach reading some Twilight fanfic WITH vampires but WITHOUT Edward/Bella, but this....

 

What makes this even more humiliating is that you're a guy posting it.

And only DLP could get me to try a Twilight fanfiction, because no fool would be dumb enough to post a bad one in for review.

The one thing that I saw as a bad sign for the over 9000 reviews it got. I figured that something this realistic, by what you say and not what I read, would be the antithesis of what a twilight fangirl would read. Apparently they may have more depth than we thought?

No, because damn you were right about the angst. I got to the second chapter and could not go any further. I will admit, that it is written well, technically, and the byplay between Edward and Bella actually kept me going as far as I did. But it was obvious the point of this is the romance, and one I not that invested in without a damn good plot behind it.

The angst in those opening chapters was choking. The self-depreciation, the woe is me, the repressed anger. All of it served as a vehicle to make Edward have pity by the reader. It didn't work for me I guess because I'm a cynical bastard. The prose didn't exaggerate his symptoms at all, just dealt with it realistically....no.

Maybe it's explained later in the story, but he had cancer, just like my grandmother, so I'm not exactly talking out of my ass with this. She had to struggled, lost her hair, strength, etc. When she was 'napalmed' it was not every day. Every day was not a chore for her. Somedays, the days of chemo, she be weak and could not eat much. Not everyday damn day like in this fic. She had high moments and low, Edward only had low points. Thus the author exaggerated the illness to make us feel sympathy for him. Fuck that.

To make that worse, he's in fucking remission, which means his treatments would be farther apart. For my grandmother, it was every three months, then longer and longer. He should be growing his hair back and feeling better. (Then again, maybe some treatments are like that, but my bullshit radar was flaring while reading.)

Plus, who the hell would go to school feeling so sick all the time?

That above is small beans, I've read more contrived shit than that and liked it. What got me was he was feeling so damn low, then this girl banters with him and helps him, though she's being a bitch, study once more.

I did try and will abstain from rating, but from what I read, 3/5 for the writing be sound.

Note: How many others will now try to find twilight fanfiction for DLP approval?

 

The fic makes it clear that he's only just gone into remission. In fact, he meets Bitch/Bella when he's just begun his process of healing. The plot is about his healing, I suppose. But I suspect that it's more political than that, judging from the euthanasia/cancer subplot.

This story got better as time went on, to be honest, because as you've suggested, Edward finally pulls himself together and gets onto his "high points". Of course, the intrigue of this fic arises from the fact that the stupid idiot becomes emotionally invested in Bella that most of his highs come from her... and the girl is a bitch.

I liked the angst, to be honest, because it was well-balanced by Bella's, er, bitchiness. The crap she puts him through makes you want to slap her... and him, for letting her. A reversal of the canon-relationship, where Edward is the doormat.

The story gets much better when Bella finally spills the beans about why she's a bitch and we get into the Renee/Bella dynamic. It introduces the topic of euthanasia, which I find fascinating, and the interplay between Edward's views on that with Bella's perceptives makes for compelling storytelling.

And he goes to school because, like his canon counterpart, he's a narcissistic perfectionist; he doesn't want to "fail any more courses". Bitch!Bella actually calls him out on his self-obsessive personality.

And what I've experienced with remission (my Aunt is going through it now), it does that a few months to get back to who you were, mentally and physically. Especially when you still have kidney problems and have to get dialysis, like Edward.

To be honest, I just like this fic because it's the first story in the Twilight universe where all the girls (including Bella) aren't fawning over how great Edward is. In fact, the Forks girls plainly ignore him. Very refreshing.


...and I still feel the sting of humiliation, man.


EDIT: The author has done her research. She exaggerates a lot, but a surprising amount of the medical stuff is accurate, even from my experienced with my Aunt and my friends. It makes sense, considering Cesca based this fic off her own experiences with a friend who was in remission. All I can say is that thank God the angst starts to dwindle away for sarcasm/morbid humour when Kate arrives and Edward moves on with his life.

Seriously, that Kate/Bella moment was very interesting, when played off against the Kate/Edward moment earlier.

 

Okay, point one is that you lost your respect for having one of the gayest display pics I've seen in a while, and point two is that you had no respect to lose in the first place.

Normally I wouldn't straight dismiss a fic because of the fandom, but goddamn son, did you really think anyone on DLP would support this?

 

1.) It's nostalgia why I chose my display pic. TK reminds me of the good ole days of Digimon. It's a little gay, yes, but it has its value.

2.) The story has decent writing and a plot that I personally liked, due to my bias. Yes, it's an AU without the fantasy/action, and yes, it's sappy, but am I wrong to assume that not DLP-ers are adrenaline junkies to need a Harem-fic or someone shooting someone else with a laser/wand/MacGuffin to get their kicks?

3.) I know it's Twilight, hence my humiliation... Sometimes, however, I think that if Jane Eyre was a fanfic, some people on DLP would sandblast it. Yes, that's a flawed analogy, since the writing of this fic does not compare to Bronte's prose, but some DLP-ers would dismiss it just based off the subject matter. But my experiences prove that most of the people on DLP are reasonable people open to a decent degree of suggestion.

 

"Let's take Twilight, strip out all the supernatural elements, make the female protagonist into an unlikeable bitch and the male protagonist into a spineless, sickly doormat, and then let's have them angst for 36 chapters!"

How the hell did you come to the conclusion that this was relevant to DLP's collective interests?

 

...I realise that what I've posted isn't pertinent or worthy of this forum. As I implied in my long-winded "wall of text", this fic appealed to me primarily because of my bias, arising from real life situations. The political euthanasia/cancer plot struck a cord with me, and perhaps I've become a stupid sap from reading non-supernatural, angsty YA as of late. However, that is no excuse of forgetting that this is ultimately DLP, which prefers higher octane and engaging material.

I apologise for my suggestion. I was just being bold, I guess, and trying to post something new to the forum. Then again, if someone posted a Hello Kitty fanfic on DLP, I would rage too.

And the "vampires try to kill Bella" subplot in Twilight was introduced too late in the story; it was an obvious attempt by Meyer to instill action when the Edward/Bella plot was drying up. Keep in mind that I don't like Twilight (well, at least the series) when I say this: the reason why Twilight is such a cashcow is not because of the baseball/vampires-attack-Bella plot. It's the angst, which teenage girls buy up like hotcakes. The angst can be appealing to some people, and not appealing to others. It's a taste thing, I speculate?

tl;dr, I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I won't gtfo yet. I do need acerbic but constructive criticism for my HP fic after all.

EDIT: The automatic response to this thread is amazing. Can people channel some of this into critiquing/evaluating Lull? *shameless plug*

 

Well, you sure are daring OP - I'll give you that.

 

I fear a fatal misjudgment has been made.

 

Taste is subjective, if the OP enjoyed it, so be it. Faggot that it makes him, its his right to like the smell of coc...I mean coffee in the morning.

That said, bashing over and locked. >_> No more flaming.

OP: Lesson Learned? Some things DLP can ignore. Ginny. Kanye West being the most epic douchebag who has ever or will ever live. Twilight will never be one of those things. The canon is just too fucking dick for a nose insane.