A Twilight Rant

Ladies and Gentlemen,

 I give you the much anticipated rant about Stephanie Meyer's Twilight Series.

For better or worse, I admit that I liked reading the Twilight books. I still would read them, even though the crazy fans have killed off some of my enjoyment of the series. People take the series way too seriously.

Good parts about the series:

I like the concept of there being good and bad vampires (though it’s not original at all!) because it shows that there’s always more than one point of view. I liked the fight scenes and politics of the vampire world. Overall, I do like love stories so that was appealing to me. I liked the books better than the films because my view of the characters is not well reflected by the actors, and it’s easier to ignore the angst in the books than onscreen.

As for the rest of the series…

I’m not going to lie; it worries me how obsessed people can be about these books, especially adolescents since it is technically a young adult series. I worry because of the message the books send: If you’re lucky enough to find “true love” (with a perfect person), don’t let anything stand in your way—not death, not life, not friends or family.

I may be a hopeless romantic, I may even believe in the concept of soul mates, but I don’t think any one love is truer than the next. I think people can find different soul mates throughout their lives, people that really connect, be it for weeks, months or years. People continuously change and what someone needs in a perfect partner will change over time as well.

Going back to the message from the series, it’s obvious to see why I worry. The relationship between the 2 protagonists, Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, is an unhealthy relationship. Though it’s not necessarily Edward’s fault, Bella basically cut off all ties to friends and family when she became infatuated with him. She didn’t care about anything but him. That’s not love. That’s obsession. Clearly this was dangerous to her emotions because when Edward left, she went into (6?) months of serious depression! (Even scarier, her friends and father didn’t bother to take her to a shrink to get happy pills, therapy, anything.) That’s not normal or healthy.

Also, some romantic concepts are being mixed up here. For example: Napping with boyfriend and waking up to find him watching you – this can be either romantic or awkward and slightly creepy. Napping/sleeping and finding out that some guy (no matter how cute or sexy) has been watching you sleep from the window (or even inside the bedroom). That’s called trespassing (if not breaking and entering) and stalking. It’s creepy as all get out. Not romantic. Bella should have gotten a restraining order when she found out about that, not a melting feeling in her heart! (Not that a restraining order could do much against a vampire, but if Edward were a normal human, yes, a restraining order would be good. Hell, Bella’s father is police chief and would have happily reinforced it.)

I mean, sure it has some memorable quotes, but they’re not golden. And yet, why are there so many tattoos?

People obviously don't love this series for Meyer's extraordinary writing style. It's because young adults (and many others of all ages) find the premise of the high school love interests relate-able and appealing. It's because of the vampire-werewolf part. Anyone can tell that all paranormal creatures are hot right now (or would youngsters call it "hawt" now? stupid future of America can't learn to spell harumph harumph harumph). It's just another way to make the characters cooler, more dangerous, and more sexy--an instant recipe for popularity.

I find it incredible that people, i.e. crazy fans (Twihards?), came down on Stephen King’s head when he pointed out that the books is not a literary work of art… well, King being who he is (definitely not a lovable teddy bear), he worded it a bit differently: "[J.K.] Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good." ~quote from U.S. Weekly Interview

Ouch. That’s a bona fide dis. I can understand King’s sentiment on this point, mainly because of the poor characterizations in this series. I’m all for having high expectations for a boyfriend, but Edward is an unrealistically perfect character. And Bella, though not perfect, is too much of a 1 dimensional character; she doesn’t have a lot of substance, mostly because she lacks character flaws. And being clumsy is NOT a legit character flaw. That’s a rookie mistake that Meyer should have been well aware of, having graduated with a B.A. in English from Brigham Young University.

I can only imagine the flaming comments hurled at his head by the Twihards. Fortunately, Stephen King had a wonderful rebuttal, which I highly recommend watching. Stephen King's rant on Twilight

Overall, I believe that the biggest reason this series is popular is because of the love story. Many, possibly most, of the people who read this series had never read a romance novel before so this being their first connection with a strong romance story, they flipped the lid! They think it's the coolest thing since sliced bread! *facepalm* Ugh. That’s almost as bad as people who snub the romance genre as stupid yet love to read Nicholas Sparks. Well, at least the huge popularity of the Twilight series has gotten more people to read. I’m all for a boost the literacy rate.

Fun fact: Did you know that the current literacy rate is lower than it was in the late 19^th Century and early 20^th Century?

If you’re wondering why, that’s mostly because of the popularity of dime novels. Since TV shows, movies (let alone video games) weren’t around back then, people read for entertainment. Dime novels were tales of adventure with moderately simple structure and vocabulary that people of all ages read and shared.