Unless you’ve been living as a hermit for the last five years there's a good chance you know more about the Twilight series than you probably care to. But for those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the Twilight series includes four books written by Stephanie Meyer. The main character is a teenage girl named Bella, who falls in love with a vampire named Edward, and then runs amok with vampires and werewolves and other annoying characters. For a more detailed description, Wikipedia knows everything about everything.
It’s safe to say that anyone who isn’t a twelve year old girl or acts like a twelve year old girl is not a fan of the books, and wouldn’t be caught dead watching the movies. However, it’s also safe to say that the people who are adamantly opposed to the Twilight saga have never actually read the books, and know hardly anything about them. DON’T HIT STUMBLE YET. I’m just as disgusted with the books as the rest of you, and I too have to fight the urge to vomit when I hear a 30 year old woman gush about how wonderful they are. But I’ve actually read the books. The information that follows will give you hard evidence to explain the blind rage you feel whenever you hear the word ‘twilight’, and will be enough to actually win the frequently occurring debate; “this is why loving twilight makes you retarded”, instead of just muttering something about how vampires are stupid. Best of all? You won’t have to actually read the books. Think of this as a type of sparknotes, except instead of passing the test you’ll get to psychologically destroy Twilight fans. If that’s not a win-win situation, I don’t know what is.
I read a lot, and I hold a soft spot in my heart for the Harry Potter books, which I try (and fail) to not be embarrassed by. So when I heard someone say Twilight was better than Harry Potter, I decided what the hell, I’ll go get a copy. I did read the whole series, all the while getting more and more irritated. I’ve even seen a couple of the movies, because unfortunately I love some of my friends unconditionally (and that’s the real test). But in the process I did get to find out which aspects of the books were responsible for pulling in so many fans, and why the series is so god damn awful.
This is why the four million fans of twilight out there seem to have abandoned all common sense; the story draws you in. Putting aside all of the reasons I’m about to list, the world that Stephanie Meyer invented is creative and interesting. I realized fairly early while reading the series that I hated it passionately, but I finished it because I still wanted to know what was going to happen. That is the number one reason it’s so popular. Sometimes people confuse ‘lots of cliffhangers’ and ‘quality writing’ as the same thing. Another equally important factor explaining Twilight’s popularity is its resemblance to soft core erotica. The series is wildly inappropriate for young girls, which is the exact reason they’re all obsessed with it. Here’s a book that takes a pretty intimate look at how to have sex with a vampire whose pelvic thrust could obliterate your entire skeletal structure and for some reason, is easy for preteens to get their hands on. If you weren’t allow to see PG-13 movies, you’d read the series too.
Here’s why Twilight actually deserves your hatred;
Summed up, it’s morally repulsive. The series was written for teenagers. For people whose perception skills have proved to be so horrible that they’re legally not allowed to watch R rated movies or buy lotto tickets. More specifically, the book was written to be read by one of the most impressionable demographics ever; preteen girls. Having been a preteen girl, I can attest for how inclined they are to believe what they are told. The message that Twilight sends out, however subliminally, is an awful one. Roughly translated, Stephanie Meyer is indirectly convincing millions of girls too young to know any better that finding true love is the most important and worthwhile thing they will ever do. In the books, Bella routinely stabs her family and friends in the back in order to be with the guy she loves. She pulls stunts like running away from home, lying to her mom and dad, being a bitch to all of her friends at school and generally disregarding everybody’s feelings except for those of her vampire. Towards the end of the series, she even has to make the choice between never seeing any of her family or friends again and forgoing her education, or never seeing Edward again. Guess what she chose? What’s even worse is that every horrible decision she makes ends up working out in the end, because all that matters is that she has Edward. And it still gets worse. Throughout the entire series, Bella is either miserable because she isn’t with Edward, or radiantly happy because he’s with her. There are extremely few examples of a middle ground. She has no hobbies outside of being obsessively in love with Edward, and no goals or dreams involving anything other than being with him for eternity. The depth of her character is limited to how this one guy makes her feel. Not cool Meyer, not cool.
So now we have a generation of girls who at least partially and/or secretly believe that a college degree and personal growth take a back seat to whatever hormone induced relationship they’re currently in. Wonderful. There are plenty of other less substantial reasons for why Twilight isn’t great all over the web, most likely because everybody wants to identify why they feel like punching Bella in the face. The main one being the writing is surprisingly bad for published literature. If you want a simple example of this, take a look at the name of the main character, Bella Swan. Translation of course being beautiful swan, or in my language; I spent all of 30 seconds coming up with this name. Plus the characters lack depth, the plot is often predictable, and the hundreds of pages devoted to Bella whining because Edward dumped her during the third book made me want to gouge my eyes out. I know there are more flaws, but the people who argue against Twilight by saying things like “vampires don’t actually sparkle” are more annoying than their overly opinionated counter parts.
So now you can eloquently and knowledgeably make any Twilight fan cry. Although I would try not to verbally attack the tiny ones, only the ones who should know better. And I will say this; I’m a pretty open minded person, which explains why I read the books in the first place. If anyone can intelligently and adequately prove me wrong, I’ll delete this post. (Adequately does not equal CAPS LOCKS OF RAGE)
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