Why I Can Hate Twilight Without Having Read It
Okay so I can think of a follower or two that really aren't going to enjoy this post... and I'm very sorry that I've offended you and I hope you still love me, but I'm not sorry for what I have to say.
1. Conceptual Hatred
There are a lot of things we all hate without having been subjected to it. Liver, for instance, or Brussels Sprouts, or your boyfriend's ex-boyfriend.
Vampires never really did it for me. While Buffy was wanking it over Angel and Spike, I was lusting over Xander Harris. Sure, David Boreanez was/is fuckhot, but that had nothing to do with him being a vampire, it had to do with the fact that he's David Boreanez. Mmm. However, I was always on team Buffy and therefore couldn't get a hard-on for a vampire if I tried. Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the only vampire franchise I've ever had any interest in, and it seems like it'll stay that way. The premise of Twilight just doesn't interest me. Nothing about a mildly boring teenager falling for a moody and socially awkward statutory rapist (she's 17, he's a zillion years old, yes?) just doesn't do it for me. Sorry bro.
2. The Fanbase
I know that this is the easiest group to pick on, but can you blame me? Y'all make it so easy. I had a few people I know try and get me into Twilight during my Chuck Palahniuk phase, but nothing at that time was going to surpass his writing. It didn't help that the girl that was trying to get me to read Twilight is generally regarded to be one of the dumbest people I've ever met. This is a girl that would yell at television commercials and not realize she was on her period, despite the fact that we could all smell it. This is a girl that didn't realize that Interior Design and Interior Decorating were two vastly different things, which is why she was failing her Interior Design courses. She ended up paying $40 Grand a year for a photography degree. Yes. This is the stereotype of the kind of girl that loves Twilight. Another person who loves Twilight? One of my bosses who is more like a 13 year old girl than her 13 year old daughter. This is the same woman who went to a Jonas Brothers concert. This is the vaguely accurate stereotype of a Twitard.
That doesn't mean there aren't any smart Twilight fans, I've met a few... but they're also not freaky-deaky obsessed with Twilight.
However, having this freaky-deaky moronic fanbase is a huge turn-off for a majority of those agnostic towards StephanieMyerism. Reading stories of Twitards breaking up with boyfriends who weren't enough like Edward/Jacob or physically attacking people who make fun of Twilight is kind of terrifying, and is enough to make anyone say "...yeah, I'd rather not be a part of that."
3. The Twilight Cash Cow
It always blows to see what a majority of people consider a mediocre product make goddamn bank the way Twilight does. More money have been sunk into Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn than into collegiate education across the nation in the same amount of time.* Hot Topic makes mad money every time a movie gets re-released in various formats or a book undergoes a reprint or yet another Edward Cullen shirt is made. It sickens me to watch people delve so much money into something that I consider to be a poor man's Buffy.
*completely made up statistic
4. Robert Pattinson is a Fucking Pussy
Yo, that muthafucka was goddamned hawt in Harry Potter. So what do they do? They give him a Jersey Shore blowout hairdo, strip him of melanin, make him lose fifteen pounds, and cover him in glitter like he drunkenly stumbled out of Ke$ha's closet, and alluvasudden he's attractive? If anything, they made him more unattractive. I swear to fuck, the film producers pay him to make sure he looks brooding and upset in all photographs in order to keep the fanbase happy. Yet all these Twitards wanna ride him like he's last years model (because it doesn't matter if he gets damaged and they can put as much mileage on him as they want.)
5. Bella Is a Cunt
Bella Swan (really? "Beautiful Swan"? Seriously? You might as well name her "Twinkle Starlight") is a perfect Mary Sue character (a generic character used to let the reader slip into the book). She's unpopular and boring (see section two, The Fanbase) yet two aged nonhuman characters fall in love with her within ten seconds? It sounds like every nerdy girls wet dream. Why would a 21 billion year old, "perfectly-toned" "Vampire" fall in love with a whiny 17 year old girl who kind of sucks a volleyball? Is her blood made of crack? If not, there's no logical explanation other than Stefani Meyer likes her gray vibrator a little too much. The fact that this book advertises abusive relationships to teenagers is disgusting. "I'll do anything for you!" "If you leave me, I'll kill myself." "...dude, I already said I wouldn't leave you." "...can I drink your period blood?"
6. Everyone Hates Stephanie Myer
Meyer? Myers? Mier? Don't care. I can't believe she didn't legally change her name to Bella Swan, considering the entire Twilight series is just masturbatory narcissism. Stephen King said in an interview that she "can't write worth a darn," and that cracked me up so hard. The Oatmeal wrote an amazing piece outlining exactly why Twilight makes money - namely by making Bella the perfect Mary Sue character. Even my parents, who are 32 kinds of dumb, watched Twilight and at the end said "...why is this so boring? It's like they left out all the good parts and left only bad dialogue!"
7. "Hold on tight, Spider Monkey"
'nuff said.
8. Abstinence
I don't know if you caught onto the series being a big metaphor for why abstinence is the shit, but it's a big metaphor for why abstinence is the shit. They can't have sex until they're married, which has got to be fucking difficult since there's no way in hell he has proper legal papers, and when they consummate their marriage on their honeymoon, it almost kills her because apparently Vampire Sex is fuckin' rad, and then she's immediately pregnant and they have to cancel the honeymoon. BUT THE FREAKY DOESN'T END THERE. From what I understand, Bella's half-vampire/half-empty shell daughter is biologically connected to be Jacobs bride when she grows up (which, by the way, happens far too fast for this daughter to actually learn anything). "Hey, so I chose this other guy over you. Is it cool if you marry my unborn daughter instead? I figured that'd be cool." WHAT THE FUCK?!
I believe I've already blogged about it (if not, I need to get on that!) but abstinence only education is, in my well-education opinion, is the worst thing to hit our country in the history of ever. I am not about it. The fact that this is peddled onto these poor teenagers like this is just horrendous.
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Okay, I feel like I could probably keep going with this, but it's 3.30 AM and I just haven't been sleeping at all lately. I need to get some rest.
Sorry, A2, I know you're an avid Twilight fan, but I am just not about it. I hope it's not a dealbreaker.
::edit::
I was half-asleep when I wrote this, so try to excuse grammatical error and misplaced thoughts. One Positive thing I meant to add about Twilight is that at least it's getting people to pick up a book. I'd rather people read Twilight than nothing.
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I agree with most of what you said. However, there are some things that Meyer does right.
ReplyDelete1. She introduces the idea of the vampire very well. Every discussion in the first book about whether Edward is or isn't takes place over food, one of the biggest questions on Bella's mind.
2. Her writing improves over the course of the four books. The same can be said for the first book of the Harry Potter series, but because HP attracted a slightly younger crowd of both boys and girls, somehow people are less averse to people dressing up like Hermione than Alice.
3. Speaking of Harry Potter, almost every argument you've made could be said for the HP series. Let's just delve into the fact that the HP series is making 8 movies, each one more expensive and bringing in even more than the last. And they split the last book into two movies? "Because they didn't want to cut anything from it." And because they can make a shit ton of money from the last book. Mhmmm.
I don't mind if you rant about Twilight, but don't think that the problems you have with it don't exist elsewhere.
1. I'm not going to pretend that Harry Potter isn't a cash-cow, but the difference is that JK Rowling isn't doing it for the money. Wasn't there a big deal at some point that Meyer wasn't going to finish writing the fourth book because someone leaked it? Yeah, I'll bet that changed once it started making bajillions.
ReplyDelete2. The difference is that the writing in Harry Potter is meant to grow not just with the reader, but with Harry himself. The novels are written from a third-person limited perspective, where for the most part, we only know what Harry knows. When she describes creatures, events, places, or people, she doesn't describe them one may describe to avid science-fiction fans, or even to hardcore fans of the Harry Potter series - she describes them the way Harry would feel them. There's a great example of it around book five or six where Harry is helping clean the Weasley's house, and they find these little pixie-bug things, and they're described in the same kind of detail that Harry would have been able to. They didn't get a huge back story, because Harry didn't have time for that - he had to stun them and collect them in a bucket or something. That's what I love about the Harry Potter series - she lets you slip into the "Harry" character without letting him be a Mary Sue character. She helps you understand him by letting you see the world through his eyes and comprehension. Harry has his own feelings and motives, and eventually you feel them too. It makes sense for the first books to be more childish, since Harry is still a bewildered child who knew nothing of magic until Hagrid blew through his door.
3. I'm okay with them splitting the last Twilight movie and the last Harry Potter movie - I hope they're doing it less for the money and more for the fanbase. If I were a Twilight fan, I'd want that last movie done to perfection. I stopped watching the Harry Potter movies after the fifth one, cuz they fucked that movie up so much I couldn't bring myself to keep being disappointed like that. I'd watch a six hour movie to make sure it was done properly.