I've been trying really, really hard to ignore it, but I have to confess that the numbers are annoying me. How can people keep sucking into this complete and utter BULLSHIT?!?!?!
Twilight -or as I have affectionately dubbed it-Twitlight, has done to literature what Totinos Party Pizza has done to pizza. Pizza was meant to be larger than life - crispy yummy crust, overflowing with pepperoni, mushrooms, black olives and so much cheese that you choke on it. Even so, you would have to take a Totino's Party Pizza, dip it in urine and then run it over with a 18 wheeler to equal the defilement that Twitlight has done to literature - not to mention vampire lore. Vampires are not to supposed to eat Bambi's mother, they are not supposed to go out in sunlight and they are NOT SUPPOSED TO SPARKLE!
Do you hear that sound? It is Vlad the Impaler rolling over in his grave.
There is so much that is horrid about Twilight, things that no respectable writer could ever ignore. Stephenie Meyer uses dashes and comma's to such a degree that one has to wonder if she doesn't have an orgasm every time she touches the - and , keys on her keyboard. Certainly she must have SOME motivation for excessive use. The woman has an ENGLISH degree and she is punctuating at the level of a seventh grade fan-fiction writer. Please, please, let's not talk run on sentences- Meyer and Michelle Duggar could have a contest see who has more missed periods.
Even that isn't what truly annoys me about Twilight. It isn't the Cullens, with their glitter covered PERFECT BEAUTY, or the shape-shifters who run about with sweatpants tied around their wolfy shanks with no explanation for exactly how they manage this with paws and razor sharp teeth. I can stomach Mike, Eric, Jessica and Angela - the 1D background players who are there for the sole purpose of giving Bella Swan someone to abuse in her private thoughts.
Charlie gets a marginal pass, even though he encourages sexual assault on his daughter and is so oblivious that for two years he doesn't even realize that a vampire/stalker is sneaking into his daughters bedroom at night. I understand this perfectly - there was a game on that he wanted to watch and, hell - the fish were biting. I'll even give Billy a slide, even though he knew his best friends daughter was hanging with a coven of vampires who lust for blood and could, at any minute, give in to their lust and kill his daughter. By all means, let's protect her right to privacy, she's 17 now, ALMOST an adult. Who is a grown man to decide what is best for an impressionable young girl? Renee - well, Renee is a child herself. Why should she grow up just because she got herself pregnant and didn't see a need to stick around to see to it there was a mature adult around to see to it the child was properly fed? Thank heaven Bella finally got off the bottle and learned to cook.
I can sit back and laugh at the ludicrous villains, attempt to buy the idea that Bella is such a hot commodity that Victoria would start a war over her, and that James would be so captivated by her that he would go up against an entire coven to kill her. God, don't even get me started on the Volturi.
Bella Swan - ugh.
If ever there was a 2D paper doll cut out of a Mary Sue - Bella Swan is it. The most obvious bit of self-insertion if ever there was. She is clumsy, she is average, she spends an excessive amount of time cooking and doing the laundry - so much that it amazed me that her special vampire gift wasn't super folding and making the sheets line dried fresh with just a brush of her glittering marbled fingers. And this clumsy average girl becomes the obsession of a 109 year old vampire and her best friend Jake the whipping boy who lives to be her emotional kicking bag.
I think I just vomited in my mouth a little.
It is 2011, women are astronauts, CEO's of major corporations, doctors who cure disease, and lawyers who sue the shit out of just about anyone who moves - and Bella's main goal in life? To marvel over Edwards angels face, his marbled skin, and to chose a new word to describe the color of Edwards eyes every other paragraph. Bella, honey, they are gold. Okay? Get over it already and shut the hell up. But as sick as it makes me - I can even get past Bella Swan.
Twilight in a nutshell:
My mom didn't want to be a mother so I moved in with my fishing-sports obsessed father, and then he ignored me. I met Edward and he had two honey-ocher-golden-honey-onyx-honey-ocher-oh shit I think I already said that- eyes and a rockin marble body that didn't quit - I became obsessed with him. EDWARD SAVED ME! YAY EDWARD! I fell down a lot, went shopping and nearly got raped because I was stupid. Edward saved me- YAY EDWARD! I went to a party and met Jacob then I found out Edward was a vampire. OOO scary! I met his family and we went to play baseball. A bad, bad vampire tired to kill me but Edward SAVED ME AGAIN! YAY EDWARD! We went to prom.
The End.
And people are sucking this shit up! They are ignoring the fact that Edward Cullen is a stalker, that he is abusive and controlling, that Bella has no life and wants no life outside of Edward - in fact she becomes suicidal when he leaves her. They ignore the schmaltz, the pedophilia, the sexual assault, the out and out neglectful parenting, and far reaching bullshit that is Twitlight.
What gets me - what truly, truly gets me? While I am slogging away at the keyboard everyday, struggling and trying to create something new and fresh - something worthy of being called literature - people are spending billions of dollars on Stephenie Meyer's sex dream. They are buying Totino's Party Pizza dipped in urine.
THAT is the thing I can't past. What happened to the days when readers demanded something from their literature? Where are the To Kill A Mockingbirds and Gone With The Wind for our time? Thank GOD for Harry Potter - thank God future generations will have a reason to look back at this era and not laugh at us for our choices in reading material.
Stephen King summed it up best when he said:
'Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend."
I always knew there was a reason he is one of my favorite writers.
