http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5475912/1/Fourteen
http://twilighted.net/viewstory.php?sid=8735
Official Description: High school is brutal. It’s even worse when you’re not a size two. Worse than that? Having a major crush on the biggest, hottest jerk in high school. Even worse than that? Being paired up with him for a science project.
–
GinnyW says: I was totally honored when Kassiah emailed and asked me to do a guest review, especially after she said it was for such an amazing story as this one.
It’s common for teenagers to deal with weight issues. It’s not uncommon that they feel ostracized because of their weight, just as it’s not uncommon for them to feel as if they’re hated and avoided for who their parents are or what has happened to them in their pasts.
Let’s face it, for the majority of us, high school sucked.
That’s exactly what the story, Fourteen by crimsonmarie, is about. Bella is an overweight girl who is treated like a pariah by the social hierarchy of high school both because of her weight and her father. Just like many other stories, Edward is a jerk, but he learns. The key to this story, though, really is that he has to work for it. There are no magic fixes. A single apology does not absolve him of years of his heinous behavior. Edward has to truly fight to make amends. Even better, Bella makes him work for it.
It’s a beautiful story that I think is about far more than being a few pounds overweight. It’s about seeing a person for who they truly are. Truth and lies. Trust and deceit. It’s about repentance and forgiveness. In less than 75,000 words, crimsonmarie takes us through all of the emotions of social pariah, Bella Swan, as she slowly starts to befriend one of high school’s elite, Edward Cullen. Bella’s emotions are tangible, relatable, and real.
The biggest difference between the two characters isn’t their appearances or their backgrounds. It’s that Bella has the ability to see behind the façade and appearances, whereas Edward has to learn.
The storyline is simple and yes, we’ve all seen similar plots done. Some readers would call the basic premise a cliché. My opinion on clichés, however, is that it’s not the story idea that matters, it’s the execution. Any premise can become an amazing story if written by the right person. Crimsonmarie just so happens to have been the right person to tell this story.
Kassiah says: Ah, Fourteen. I love CrimsonMarie’s stories, so I wanted to read this one right away. From the very beginning, it’s thought-provoking:
It’s not a bad number.
It’s not that great, either.
It used to be an eighteen so really, a fourteen is pretty damn good compared to what it was a few months ago.
It was still a big number and staring at the jeans lying on my bed, they looked pretty damn big, too.
I wasn’t thin. I was moderately pretty and had more personality in my left toe than most of the girls at school had at all.
But I was a size fourteen and no one could see past that.
Maybe that hits a little too close to home for me. Maybe because I used to be one of those popular girls in high school and am now on the other end of the scale, so to speak. Maybe because I thought this would be a little too much like that movie with Gwenyth Paltrow as a fat girl. Whatever. This story is so, so completely not what I expected it to be. It is so much more than I hoped for. It’s amazing, with well-developed characters and great depth of emotion. I also really love how CrimsonMarie spun the whole “I’m not good enough for Edward to love me” that we so often see in many fics into something that would have many people asking “What does he see in her” – from an outsiders’ perspective.
CrimsonMarie shows us that characters have multi-faceted personalities where everything should not be taken at face-value. I have to agree with GinnyW and say that she is the perfect writer to tell this story. I can’t wait to see where she takes it.
Recent Comments