Didn't bother with the film, the book was horrible enough. These were my thoughts on it:
When I first read "Twilight," I thought it was okay. Overrated, but okay. But now I'm hearing about it so much that at this point…I really hate it. I have not yet read the sequels so I don't know if they improve, but…I don't really want to.
Now, I get it that the book's supposed to be romantic (which in the media seems to usually mean "beautiful people bickering with each other"). I can see why it appeals to so many girls who obsess ridiculously about their limerent object. I do the same thing with the girls I like…I get totally romantically obsessed. But the thing is…I'm a straight guy. So it's kind of hard for me to get into a book where so much of it is about obsessing about a man, with every other paragraph going on and on about how gorgeous this man is. It would be forgivable if the pace was fast and every scene had an importance to some brilliant plot, but the thing is, the first two thirds of the book don't really HAVE much of a plot. Bella finds out about vampires and falls in love with Edward. That's ALL that happens. It's only in the last third, when the EVIL vampires come, that something actually HAPPENS. Before then, so much of it is filler that it's not even funny. Of course, all that "filler" is why teenage girls like the book, because it means they get to spend more time with the hot boytoy that is Edward…even if you could make so much of the storytelling way more efficient and way shorter.
A lot of these scenes are SUPPOSED to be intense, because you're supposed to wonder, "Is he going to bite her?" But the thing is...you know he isn't. We NEVER see him doing anything horrible. To make these scenes have any tension, you need to be SHOWN that Edward is capable of killing cougars, not just told that he does so midway through (at which point you already know that he's not going to hurt Bella). So what you get are tons of scenes of: "I could hurt you!" "I know you won't." "But I could hurt you! So I have to stay away from you!" "But I love you!" "But I love you! But I could hurt you!" It's not intense because you know he won't do it. It's just whiney.
I've heard people say that guys should start taking tips from Edward, but I can't see how. My friend Dee put it best when he said, "If your would-be boyfriend told you he was breaking into your house to watch you sleep, with the pretense of protection, what would you say?" According to this book I should stalk the girl I like before I even know if she likes me or not, break into her home, bug her with a microphone so that I can hear everything she says and comment to her about it later, give her tons and tons of scowls, be vague as hell and fail to answer any of her questions, get hit by a car (and injured since I don't have super strength like Edward does), and drive so ridiculously fast in my own car that I'm quite likely to hit something myself. Bet it woulda driven MY High School crushes WILD if I'd been like that!
Seriously, the book has the logic of Homeland Security. "I'm going to give you absolutely no privacy because I want to protect you!" Oh, but Edward's goregous so it's fine for him to do that. Please...if Edward didn't look like a supermodel, his behavior would be considered CLINGY and CREEPY, but since Edward is so sexy, it's not creepy, it's ROMANTIC. This is why I don't consider "Twilight" a romantic book: it's only romantic because Edward is hot. Edward and Bella bicker a lot. Edward doesn't answer Bella's questions, though they're eating away at her. Edward cannot satisfy Bella's physical desires--no kissing! No making out! No sex!--yet constantly parades his beauty around her and shows off his amazing vampire skills whenever he can, as if to make her desire him more. How is any of THAT romantic? Oh, right, becuase Edward's hot. He's romantic because he's hot. (And they say that MEN are superficial about appearances….) Now, if we ignore that, there isn't really much left to Edward's behavior. So basically, the tip we can take from this book on how to get the girl and be a good boyfriend is: "Be sexy." How enlightening!
Now, if I was going to be stalked by some incredibly sexy vampire woman, I wouldn't necessarily mind it at first, but I'd still want SOME moments where I didn't feel like she was listening to every f*****g thing I said (or even thought, s**t!). I wouldn't want her sitting outside my house every night! That's creepy! How do I know she's not going to rape and murder me? Frankly I'm surprised Bella didn't call the cops, or get seriously creeped out by his stalking. But I guess that would have been showing too much personality and willpower, and that's not fitting for her character. Bella is designed, after all, to be an everywoman…and that means being incredibly dull with practically no personality to call her own. There just isn't anything compelling or interesting about her to me.
I don't think it's necessarily bad to have a protagonist who works as an everyman or everywoman…but it's a fine line. Harry Potter manages this by having a character who's easy to relate to and is very typical in many ways, but he's still a very special kid and that's clear from the start. Bella, on the other hand, is so hopelessly normal and average in every respect that all I can say about her is that she does a lot of those "kind" lies that I hate. You know, the ones that girls do when they don't actually like you but don't want to be rude so they say, "Yeah, I'll call you later" and then never follow through? Bella does that a LOT in the first half to her schoolmates. She lies and lies and lies some more, and it didn't make me like her character much, because she so perfectly symbolized so much of what I HATE about the modern teenage girl. To girls like Bella, it's perfectly okay to COMPLETELY DISAPPOINT someone in the future as long as you make them smile in the moment by feeding them a kind lie. This struck a nerve for me because I've been victim of such kind lies many times before and I really, really hate them. Nothing pisses me off more than a girl who says she'll hang out with you when she KNOWS she won't and just doesn't want to see your disappointed face. It's not "nice" to be like that. It's rude and dishonest and it leads people on. Had Bella had more interesting traits I would have forgiven this; had this been part of her character arc and had the plot involved her finally learning to be honest even about harsh things and not being like "OK maybe I'll go to prom with you sometime" and expect people NOT to take that literally, that would have been better. But as it is, I didn't find anything to like about her.
I can't imagine what Edward sees in her. The reason Meyer gives is just unsatisfying; she's his "type"? Um, yeah, there are a LOT of girls who are the same "type" as Bella, because she's so TYPICAL. So why hasn't Edward had luck with any of them in all his years? It's hard to believe. Had Meyer made something about Bella special or unique it would have made all the difference, but she didn't.
There are other things I found hard to believe as well. Take, for example, Bella's internet search on vampires. (God forbid Meyer should acknowledge anything to do with that weird gothic culture, so of course she's not going to mention VampireFreaks or its many clones.) Or the idea that the Cullens could stay in one town and have nobody wonder why it was that their kids looked exactly the same no matter how many grades they went through. But these are all details, and when your basic story is missing a key element (something that makes the protagonist interesting—both to the reader and to the love interest), then none of these matter. If there's one thing that kills a story for me, it's a f*****g boring protagonist. And to me, Bella was f*****g boring in this book. She is PASSIVE. She doesn't shape the plot like a good protagonist does. She doesn't even DO anything until the very end, and what she DOES do is…screw up. Yeah, that's a great character arc.
Not that Edward was that great a character to me either. Apart from his blatantly stalkerish behavior (which I guess is "romantic" since he's so good looking), the fact is that…he just isn't gothic. None of the vampires are. Now, this may sound shallow for me to say, but the gothic aspect is why I LIKE vampires. I LIKE that they wear elegant black clothing. I LIKE that they wear the goth make up and the corsets and the Victorian-era dresses. To me, that look is sexy. But the "trendy person who looks like a mainstream fashion model" look? EW! EW! EW! I LOATH that look. I don't find it sexy. Edward seemed like an Ambercrombie model to me. (All he needed was more shirtless scenes.) HE EVEN PLAYS BASEBALL. Now, I don't hate the idea of vampires playing sports, but if you're going to do that, then at least do something more fitting for a vampire than BASEBALL. The only sport wussier than that is GOLF. But I'm not surprised. I remember reading Stephanie Meyer's list for the soundtrack for the book on her website: http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight_playlist.html
1. "Why Does it Always Rain on Me?" — Travis
2. "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" [video edit] — My Chemical Romance
3. "Creep" [radio edit] — Radiohead
4. "In My Place" — Coldplay
5. "By Myself" — Linkin Park
6. "Dreaming" — OMD
7. "Please Forgive Me" — David Gray
8. "Here With Me" — Dido
9. "With You" [reanimation remix] — Linkin Park
10. "Time is Running Out" — Muse
11. "Dreams" — The Cranberries
12. "Tremble for My Beloved" — Collective Soul
13. "Lullaby (Goodnight, My Angel)" — Billy Joel
Umm, how do those fit the soundtrack to a VAMPIRE book? Of course, it's fitting for "Twilight," because "Twilight" isn't your typical gothic vampire book, oh no! Its vampires are DIFFERENT, because they're MAINSTREAM, they're TRENDY, and they like MAINSTREAM music like Stephanie Meyer does! God forbid any music that actually sounds fitting for a VAMPIRE, anything the least bit sexual or violent sounding would appear on the soundtrack. I mean, you know me. I'm not one of those purists who loves traditional goth rock. I even like some of those bands. But come on, this s**t isn't even dark. Then again, neither is the book. The only fight scene in it happens off screen, there's barely a drop of blood in the book, the notion of sex is completely disregarded in just a page where they realize "HOMG we can't do it or you might kill me by accident!", a notion that doesn't come up again ONCE in the rest of the book (I haven't read the sequels so I don't know if it comes up in them). But then again Stephanie Meyer is a mormon housewife, so what do you expect?
So, the vampires aren't shown to drink blood and don't even have fangs…the vampires can walk in the day and f*****g SPARKLE…the vampires aren't at all gothic…there's no vampire sex…the vampires have a big f*****g cross in their house so they clearly don't have problems with religion…there are no big bloody vampire fight scenes…BASICALLY, EVERYTHING THAT MAKES VAMPIRES COOL ISN'T IN THIS BOOK! Really, you can't even call these creatures "vampires," because they forgoe just about every rule in the book. It's understandable that every vampire universe has its own rules, but when you rip apart practically everything that makes something a VAMPIRE then how can you call it one anymore? I don't like mindless vampire books that just have all bloody action and no plot, but at least THEY get what makes vampires cool.
And really, is "Twilight" any better than them in the plot department? I don't think so. It has a good IDEA: a modern vampire and a girl fall in love but the vampire is afraid of hurting her because he wants to suck her sweet blood. That's a good idea! But a good plot isn't a good idea. A good plot takes an idea and forms a real PLOT out of it, complete with character arcs (which "Twilight" doesn't really have much of). "Twilight" didn't move past its idea until the last third. If it had been only 300 pages, that would have been fine, but was 500 pages. You don't need 500 pages to tell such a simple story. Meyer didn't need to spend so much time on Bella wondering if Edward's a vampire—we KNOW he's a vampire before we even start the book. She should have made the story more complex, or written it at a faster pace. I can't truly knock the book for not appealing to my sensibilities when it's so carefully geared towards the mainstream teenage girl audience, but I still think that it could have told a better story or at least sped up the story it DID tell.
I am SO SICK OF HEARING ABOUT THIS BOOK. I can't f*****g escape it. A woman was reading it on the train today; I keep seeing previews for the movie; girls were talking about it in class; a boy was reading it in class because his girlfriend made him do it (guess she wanted him to be like Edward and be a creepy stalker?); girls on gothic dating sites keep saying they want their Edward or saying Twilight is their favorite book (I don't know how anyone can call themselves a "goth girl" and want someone like Edward--he's the anti-goth!); I was asked about it today on FB (hi, Julia!); status messages of people her on FB mention it...it's f*****g ret*d. This book sucks, people, even by the standards of vampire books. The writing ability is f*****g juvenile--I've seen better writing in f*****g Harry Potter fanfiction. "Twilight" reads like BAD fanfiction for a much-better story. f**k this book. f**k Bella, f**k Edward, f**k James, f**k Victoria, f**k Jacob (YES I SAID IT), f**k Stephanie Meyer, f**k TWILIGHT.
Then again, if it wasn't the fact that the book was so ridiculously popular I'd just be like, "Meh, whatever. It was okay."
25 Dec 2008, 2:55 am
Try being a teenage girl who is expected to love the book. Then you'll know why I hate it that much. Y'know, considering I think I'm asexual.
