"While in general I prefer the minor character stories to the main characters in Twilight, and while Rosalie is actually one of my favourite characters (though that concept is relative with this series,) I get irrationally annoyed by the fact that her brief story contains so damn many factual errors and common sense errors for such a short chunk of text.
I lived in Rochester for awhile.
Rosalie was planning an outdoor wedding in April! Um... riiiight. I mean I suppose you could, it's not like you would freeze to death, but it wouldn't be particularly pleasant for anyone. She seemed genuinely bothered by the possibility of having to move indoors. Plan for a different time of year, then, perhaps? I helped plan an outdoor wedding in the Rochester area for August and we almost had to use our rain plan but it cleared up in time. April? Nuh-uh.
The weather is implied to be unseasonable (again in April) because Rosalie was chilly walking home. No, that's normal, actually. It could even possibly have snowed, some years. It was weird to me that someone who had alleged grown up there found that weather unusual.
Does Meyer not have any idea what the climate of Western NY is? She seems to think it's the same as the Southwest! It definitely isn't!
Meyer also seems not to realize that our beloved Flour City/Flower City was actually a significant centre of industry early in the 20th century, home to Eastman Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, and quite a lot of garment manufacturing. Of course Rochester was affected by the Depression like everywhere, but the social strata were very different than what Meyer imagines, particularly with Eastman Kodak as an economic player.
*sigh*
If Rosalie's story was set elsewhere, I probably wouldn't have noticed. But once again Meyer's lack of research took me right out of the plot."
Obviously, Meyer has zero to no research skills.
If I were her, I would have double-checked on the historical data of weather and climate conditions in April for Rochester, New York. I live in New York City, but upstate New York (especially the western parts) is an entirely different area as you move further inland from the Hudson River and further up towards Lake Ontario. It would be quite reasonable to assume that the April weather in Rochester, New York would be colder than in, say for instance, New York City.
I would have gone to www.weather.com, entered "Rochester, NY, United States" in the search bar, scrolled down, clicked on a link on the right-hand side of the screen that says "Historical data" (located underneath the section "Today's high and low temperatures") and then looked at the average high and average low temperatures.
This page, for instance, tells you a whole lot of information for not only the average temperatures, but also the record temperatures and the usual daylight/sunset times:
http://www.weather.com/outlook/health/fitness/wxclimatology/daily/USNY1232?climoMonth=4
Then I would have clicked on the tab that says "April" and looked at the average daily and monthly temperatures for that month in Rochester, NY.
It took me less than two minutes to pull up that information. (The link might not work, so if you want to re-conduct the search, you may have to do the search manually, as I had just described.)
Based on that information, an outdoor wedding in April in Rochester, NY would not be a very bright idea. Everyone would still have to wear thick coats. What's the the point of having an outdoor wedding if you and your guests are only going to freeze and maybe catch pneumonia from sitting through an entire wedding ceremony?
A summer wedding, perhaps anytime between June through August would have been a better alternative.
Unfortunately, it never crossed Meyer's mind to do a simple research task in regards to setting and average weather conditions.
As for the historical discrepancy that Rosalie's family survived the depression because her father was a banker, Meyer should have known better. If she did not have an inkling as to the circumstances surrounding the Great Depression, the least that Meyer could have done was do a quick search on Google or Wikipedia on the topic.
I pulled these bits of information up in less than two minutes as well from this Wikipedia entry on the Great Depression:
There were multiple causes for the first downturn in 1929. These include the structural weaknesses and specific events that turned it into a major depression and the manner in which the downturn spread from country to country. In relation to the 1929 downturn, historians emphasize structural factors like massive bank failures and the stock market crash. In contrast, economists (such as Barry Eichengreen, Milton Friedman and Peter Temin) point to monetary factors such as actions by the US Federal Reserve that contracted the money supply, as well as Britain's decision to return to the Gold Standard at pre-World War I parities (US$4.86:£1).and also this
...The Federal Reserve allowed some large public bank failures – particularly that of the New York Bank of the United States – which produced panic and widespread runs on local banks, and the Federal Reserve sat idly by while banks collapsed... If the Fed had provided emergency lending to these key banks, or simply bought government bonds on the open market to provide liquidity and increase the quantity of money after the key banks fell, all the rest of the banks would not have fallen after the large ones did, and the money supply would not have fallen as far and as fast as it did. With significantly less money to go around, businessmen could not get new loans and could not even get their old loans renewed, forcing many to stop investing. This interpretation blames the Federal Reserve for inaction, especially the New York branch.
If banks failed, then Rosalie and her family should have been poor. They would not be living in a comfortable house, throwing parties, or affording a lavish-style outdoor wedding.
Further internal and interpersonal conflict could have been infused into Rosalie's back-story and made the character have more depth had Meyer done any proper research at all.
All of it is failure and wasted potential because Meyer refused to get over her laziness and conduct proper research before or during the writing process. Even if Meyer was originally writing the story for her own entertainment (as most writers do anyway), then she should have considered that her storytelling could improve considerably with accurate historical data and basic knowledge of her chosen real-world settings.
Laziness should not be an acceptable excuse for poor writing, especially when any Sherlock with a modem or router connected to their computer can easily access any necessary information vital to the storytelling via the Internet.
Stephenie Meyer fails at not only simple concepts of biology, history, and research methods, but she also lacks common sense. How the woman ever managed to pass her classes in high school and college, the world may never know.
