I hate Twilight and you should too

I'd like to take a minute to talk about something this is, disturbingly, very important. That's right, I want to talk about Twilight. Beating a dead horse? Certainly, but I still see people buying this abortion of literature every day. Good, decent people who don't know any better. They can't know how bad what they're picking up is. (Without say 3-4 minutes of solid research but this is America damn it! No one will do that.) Also, I want to be very clear, we're not going to talk about the movie. I deal with a lot of Twilight fans and not a one can defend the movie or its “acting.” That waste of several hours isn't worth talking about.

Before anyone jumps down my throat (all... one of our readers) I did read the books. All of them. Shit I even paid for Breaking Dawn since I wanted to read it and didn't feel like waiting the week before I could borrow the book from Borders to read it. I read them cover to cover. The first three I read in the span of two days (right before the midnight release party) and the fourth a few days later. And I did go to see the movie (On reflection the fact that I paid more for popcorn and a coke isn't so much of an insult in this case). I sat through the entire thing and laughed pretty hard at some of the “acting.” I've been in the the Twilight trenches, so if anyone can talk about these books, it's me.

I was going to talk about each book in turn... but I only own a copy of Breaking Dawn (somewhere... maybe... I may have set it aflame). I don't feel right talking about specifics without reference materials on hand so I'm just going to speak of generalities. They're all poorly written. Breaking Dawn especially seems like it was pushed out the door and didn't get enough attention from an editor. Hell I bet she only wrote maybe 3 drafts. Sure, they're technically written for teenagers, so maybe demanding that they be quality literature is missing the point. But on the other hand, Fuck You! Saying that you don't need to have high quality or use your full vocabulary because you're writing for teens is bullshit. If you were trying to write for ten year olds, maybe. Maybe. But on the other hand, they might read that at a young age and think that it's how books are meant to be written, how literature is supposed to work, AND THAT'S NOT RIGHT!

So it's poorly written, that can be forgiven if it has a great story right? In short, no. Because it doesn't have a great story. It has a sappy bullshit story that is drawn out and shallow. My co-workers think it's fine that the main character is incredibly shallow because, hey, she's a teenage girl, they're all shallow right? Yeah and fuck you too. It wasn't that long ago that I was a teenager, not everyone is shallow. Stupid, yes, ignorant, definitely, but shallow? I don't believe that. What I do believe is that the main character is just a shitty way for the author to try and feel young again, like a crappy fanfiction self-insert. What I do believe is that the only characters with any depth are those one the sidelines who are almost unrelated to the story and who simply have depth because their motivations aren't explored by Meyer and thus we can come up with our own ideas about them.

But I want to make a point about our friend hindsight... because... I can honestly say that after reading books three and four of the series (Eclipse and Breaking Dawn respectively) that books one and two aren't THAT bad. That really says more about the former two than it does the latter. This is particularly true of Breaking Dawn. I could spoil it, but that's been done enough. You want to know about the horrific Dhampire baby, the craptastic wedding, and the rape-filled honeymoon? Go somewhere else. I recommend Head Trip (http://headtripcomics.comicgenesis.com/d/20080915.html) Sure it's a comic, it's also completely accurate. A co-worker of mine read Breaking Dawn and we had a great conversation about how horrible it was. I can sum it up with one sentence: “You really shouldn't have read that (Breaking Dawn) so you could at least have remembered the other three books fondly.” And that's the truth. They're all crap, but in comparison to Breaking Dawn the rest is actually readable if not particularly enjoyable.

Side Note: Stephany Meyer is so offensive to my sensibilities that she makes me physically ill. I'm not talking about the Mormon crap. Well, wait, YES I AM! I read four books and not once was there a single obscenity. What the fuck? I'm sorry, was the main character just cornered by several drunken men who intended to rape and (hopefully) kill her? Yes, and her reaction was probably “Holy Crow.” At least the bitch didn't say “Holy Cow,” which is a total mockery of the Hindus and... that's another rant in an of itself. Later. I suppose “Holy Crow” mocks a pagan diety or the druids but I couldn't care less about the pagans or the wiccans. All of that aside, what really gets my goat is that the author has not read any other Vampire novels. None. She hasn't even read Stoker's Dracula. When someone told me this I didn't want to believe it although having read the books it doesn't surprise me at all. But I figured they had to be kidding me. How can you write about vampires and not have done some solid research and at least read Dracula? I can forgive not reading the more modern vampire books like all the Anne Rice shit but not reading Stoker? Come on. (http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20049578,00.html) There's the interview where she admitted she didn't read Dracula.

Although I suppose this explains why her “vampires” are so fucking stupid. Last I checked, in myth vampires were inhuman rape machines that drank blood. Even allowing for some of the shitty western conventions on Vampires that have changed over time and made the myths less interesting just throwing all the myths into the dust makes me alternatively sad and fucking PISSED! Oh, they don't die in the sunlight, they sparkle. I could cry. I really could. But can we talk about that for a minute? Please.

There are a whole bunch of myths about how vampires came to be, but the most common theme to my mind is “cursed by God Himself.” I like that. Cursed to become a soul-less beast what is literally a parasite, feeding on humans to survive. Unable to gain entrance to Heaven or Hell, forced to walk the earth until the end times. What kind of curse is it to fucking sparkle? What kind of God does this? Not mine! And unless I'm completely ass backwards essentially Meyer's “vampires” are immune to all the mythological ways to kill vampires... so why aren't they ruling humanity like gods amongst ants? Seriously, there is no answer here that fits. There is no way for humans to kill these vampires until the modern day (Nukes. They seem to be the only answer. Or 20mm Anti-material sniper rifles from several kilometers away so the vampire is completely unaware of the shot being fired and thus taken by surprise and unable to dodge.) And if we're honest if a “vampire” of her styling were to reveal itself in ancient times in all its sparkly goodness they would be worshiped as a God. Even with the blood sacrifice, it's not like that was uncommon in ancient times. It makes no sense and makes me angry.

I guess what I'm trying to say is this, DON'T READ TWILIGHT! Just don't do it. It's not worth the hours of your life... in fact it's not worth anything.


Oh, one last note, Meyer's The Host is actually worse than Twilight. It made me vomit in a mixture of loathing and disgust. I actually express pity to those who pick this book up and buy it when I'm checking them out. I'm not joking. I almost wanted to kill myself while reading the Host. Then I got to the last page and re-read The Black Company. In fact, after reading Meyer's first person crapfests I'm typically unable to read anything in the first person perspective for weeks. This even includes the Dresden Files.