RE: Twilight Rant Thread
August 15, 2014 at 1:07 pm
(This post was last modified: August 15, 2014 at 1:16 pm by Clueless Morgan.)
GAH!!!!! YOU STARED A TWILIGHT RAGE THREAD!!! NOW I MUST RAGE!!!
Confession: I have listened to all the audiobooks (curses be upon my sister) and seen all the movies (curses be upon my mother) so I know what I'm talking about.
Following SS's format, I shall attempt to list 5 not so awful things about the series and then 5 of my biggest peeves regarding the series, but first I must state my disagreement with SS:
#1: It got kids to read.
No. Harry Potter got kids to read. Twilight merely kept them occupied until all the HP movies were done and the Hunger Games was released.
Twilight wouldn't have had a leg to stand on without the fanbase of Harry Potter that primed the world for stories of reimagined cliches and catered to a similar audience.
The Top 5 Not Entirely Shitty Things About the Twilight Saga
#1: The idea of the book is actually not a bad one.
What would happen if a human and a vampire legitimately fell in love?
Too bad the entire premise of these books immediately loses all jeopardy when it turns out that Edward has the self-control of a saint (or a Greek god...)
#2: ...
#3: ...
Um... yeah, I think #1 is it.
The Top 5 Shittiest Things About the Twilight Saga
In no particular order.
No one but Bella is responsible for her shitty life.
Bella’s mother should never have been included in this series. She serves no purpose whatsoever. This would have given Bella a more believable reason to be sullen and withdrawn than simply, “I hate the rain.” If she had been excluded from the series, then Esme could have had a useful role as being a sort of surrogate mother for Bella, to replace the one she lost.
As it is, though, Bella's mother lived, got married to a baseball player and Bella decides to exile herself to a place she detests. I really detest Bella's imposed self-pity for this reason. "I moved to a place I hate so that my mother could be happy with the man she married therefore I have every right to be a boring, sullen brat and hate my life." Get over yourself, Bella. You didn't have to make that choice.
Which is why killing Bella's mother off would have been a FAR BETTER CHOICE for Meyers. It would have given Bella a legitimate reason to move to Forks that might actually make her a sympathetic character, it would have given her a reason to be sullen and withdrawn from all the people who inexplicably want to be her friends, given her a reason to reject offers of going to beach parties or whatever, and wouldn't have made her into such a bitch.
Bella and Edward have ZERO reasons to fall in love.
Task number one in a rewrite would be to give the main characters a plausible reason to fall in love with each other.
What makes no sense about Twilight and the reason the rest of the books fail so miserably to me: why are Edward and Bella attracted to each other in the first place? : For no reason at all. He sees her as a tasty snack, she sees him as a bonze-haired Roman god-boy. That does not a basis for a relationship make.
If Bella had gone to Forks and been rejected by her schoolmates, it would have made more sense for her to be attracted to an equally isolated Edward (who should have been some kid living in the woods, rather than Mr Too Cool For School). But Meyer chose to make Bella unrealistically popular and fascinating to the Forks student body, for no credible reason. It's not much of a reason for them to be attracted to each other, but it's better than the superficiality of the relationship as presented in the books.
They don't ever talk about anything other than how much they love each other or why one or the other doesn't need to be worried about Jacob lurking outside Bella's window - that is, when Edward isn't the one out there. They don't share any common interests aside from their attraction to each other. Bella isn't interested in anything, and neither is Edward (so I guess they do have something in common).
In this respect, while I maintain that there is no healthy relationship present in any of these books, the one approaching that ideal is Bella and Jacob. They actually talk about stuff. They actually do things together that friends (let alone lovers) would do. If (and this is a big, wishful thinking if) the beginning of New Moon had really been the end of Bella and Edward and Bella hadn't've turned into a mopey little shit, she and Jacob could plausibly have developed a good relationship.
OR
Meyers could always have, you know, given Bella and Edward something in common. She could have made Bella into someone who loves classic literature and who appreciates history, someone who one might describe as "and old soul" and thus make her attraction to a guy who died in 1918 make a little bit of sense. That would also mean that Bella and Edward could at least talk about their shared interests circa the turn of the century and how the culture was so much less depraved than it is now...
SOMETHING.
Noooooooooothiiiiiinnnnnnnng haaaaaaaaapppeeeeeeeennsssss.......
Generally speaking, when you're writing a novel you want to include some kind of conflict early in the story that will sustain the plot through the end of the book.
So...
Where is that conflict in Twilight?
What I find most disappointing about Twilight (the first book, not the whole series) is that there's no purpose to the narrative until two thirds of the way through the book. The first two thirds are spent clumsily portraying Edward and Bella "falling in love" with no real plot to be found. Only when they go out to play baseball during the storm is a plot introduced which is bad, bad writing IMO. The story question that drives the plot becomes "Will the new vampires kill Bella?" which is answered in the climax of the book - up until the baseball game there is no story question.
The whole Cullen introduction and baseball game thing should have happened in, like, the second or third chapter. All of the "falling in love" stuff, the endless "questions" game and the explanation for Edward's inexplicable interest in her could have happened after Bella's life is put in danger. At least then Edward wouldn't come off as such a worry wart and control freak because he would, to the reader, have valid reasons for fearing for Bella's life - because she would actually be in mortal danger throughout the book. It would also provide a more plausible reason for some of Bella's friends to want to hang out with her - she's got the inside scoop on the Cullens and Jessica might think she could get Bella to spill the beans on them. This stuff on top of killing off Bella's mother as previously suggested might have make for an interesting book.
The hard part about that rewrite would be figuring out a reason Edward would invite Bella to a baseball game with his family in the first place, especially since, at this point in time, Bella would probably need to not know Edward is a vampire and the baseball scene is all about throwing their superhuman abilities in each others' faces.
And in the rest of the series there is little to no actual conflict. Renesmee doesn't kill Bella at birth, the Volturi don't kill anyone who counts, and especially not the Cullens, Bella never has any problems with uncontrollably blood lust after her transition, Bella's mother is completely fine with her daughter marrying right out of school, her father is okay with his son-in-law being a vampire...no conflict, no one has a problem with Bella's teenaged pregnancy. Even the whole choice of becoming a vampire is neutered. There's no downside to being a vampire and no upside to remaining human. By becoming a vampire, Bella loses nothing and gains everything.
So... let's reiterate:
Twilight - Bella and Edward immediately fall in love no reason other than the way he looks and she smells. She's almost universally accepted by virtually everyone 1- at school, with the exception of Lauren who's is irrelevant to anything in the series in any case, and 2- by the Cullen family, aside from Rosalie, who eventually becomes her devoted protector anyway. The only threat comes from James, who logically should not be a threat, since he's one vampire pursuing someone protected by an entire family of vampires, who easily kill him. Edward constantly tells Bella that he's dangerous, but she doesn't mind and he never bites her.
New Moon - The supposedly romantic lead brutally dumps Bella, for reasons that are bewilderingly stupid. This leads to the Jacob storyline where our female lead and supposed heroine uses him as little more than a nicotine patch after her cigarettes have been denied to her. There's never any doubt that she will eventually pick Edward, so the supposed "love triangle" drama never gets off the ground. Laurent poses a threat to Bella, which makes no sense, even with the internal logic of the Twilight universe, and then he's easily killed. A comical misunderstanding leads to the conveniently wealthy Cullens being able to take Bella to Italy, where the supposed main antagonists, the Volturi, present Bella with the oh-so-threatening choice of death (which we know will not happen), or being a vampire (which she wants anyway). It's like the villain of a story giving the hero a choice of death, or to eat chocolate, get a foot massage, and watch their favorite TV show.
Eclipse - The entire book builds up to a war which is easily won by the "good guys". Victoria, the character who is supposedly a great danger to Bella (and who's revenge plot is based on nothing rational) is easily killed.
Breaking Dawn - Bella has a perfect child and becomes the greatest ever vampire that ever has ever lived (ever!) and also has the power to create shields, and thus ends any possibility of drama because she is now the SuperMarySue. Her comically inept father is oblivious to this. The Volturi arrive and....then leave.
The only person not 100% enamored with Bella is cut from the movies:
Lauren.
Nuf said.
Booooooring characters
The most interesting character in the entire series to me is Jasper because he does seem to struggle with his choice to be a :cough: vegetarian and he does think it's natural for vampires to kill humans. So his struggle is foisted on him by an outside force - Alice - and his personal choice to be with her. I wish the story would have focused on Jasper because he seems to be where the real story is. What if Jasper, who believed it right for a vampire to kill humans, fell in love with a human? That would be an interesting story. Not Edward and Bella.
I think the only character that gets anything akin to "growth" is Jacob. He begins the series as a kind of goofy 15-year-old kid with a big time crush on Bella and during the course of the books ends up become a werewolf, overcoming major jealousy and becoming, literally, the leader of the pack. That's why I like Jacob the best out of all the characters, even with his pedophilic creeperness and his own control issues where Bella is concerned.
You call that a sex scene?!?!?
The entire books are about how mind-numbingly and unhealthily obsessed Bella and Edward are for each other. Hundreds of pages are wasted away with Bella giving Edward goo-goo eyes and contemplating the rosy smell of his shits. So, YAY!!! They're finally gonna fuck! This is what the entire series has led up to! You waded through three previous books of teenage angst over how attractive you look to your vampire boyfriend while you're drooling on your pillow asleep, happily fantasized about grinding on him because he can't read your mind and doesn't know that's what you're thinking about, and he finally conned you into marrying him because he's apparently "old fashioned" and doesn't have a single hormone in his body, and now you're gonna do it--
W-wait.
What happened?
Where was the fucking?
So.... the one scene most looked forward to in the entire series is the one scene that's entirely skipped over?!?! We get, what? Some chaste making out, Edward sweeps her up into his arms, carries her to bed and then Meyers only gives us the aftermath!?!?!? WTF!?!?!?!? In a novel featuring attempted sexual assault, murder and the abuse of women, it seems odd that a sex scene between the two lead characters on their honeymoon is excluded, particularly since the entire novel series is based on the supposed passion and epic love between them.
And this happens REPEATEDLY!!!!!!!
I totally get why sexually frustrated soccer moms would turn to 50 Shades of Grey after this bullshit.
WTF was up with that ending?
So you've slogged your way through almost 4 books of utter, mind-numbing bullshit and FINALLY something is going to happen.
Or not.
WTF?? So the Volturi are pissed that Edward is going to make Bella a vampire, and that he's repeatedly thwarted their attempts to lull them into their coven, and so when they hear that Bella has given birth to a demon baby they're going to go to Forks and kill it. Aiight. I'm down with that. At least something interesting is happening.
Until, that is, Nothing. Interesting. Happens.
The Volturi come. The Cullens are stupidly outnumbered about a zillion to 20. They're gonna get creamed, but something awesome is going to happen and Bella and Edward and their little shit will prance off, all sparkly, into the sunset...
What actually happens? They stand around and talk.
BULLSHIT.
I didn't know it was possible to be more disappointed in these books than I already was.
Next to nothing in these books is original
Edward was a poorly written, less sympathetic Louis from Interview with a Vampire and the first time I read (*ahem* listened to) the books that's all I could think. "Edward is a crummy version of Louis." And, later, "Renesme is a crummy version of Claudia." The various "bad vampires" take turns as the Lestat figure, including all of the Cullens once Bella becomes a vampire herself, and the Volturi represent Armand and his coven. Edward may as well have turned to Bella and said, "I'm going to give you the choice i never had."
Been there, done that. Just read Interview with a Vampire, it's a far better book.
It also greatly bothers me that Meyers quotes passages of famous books in order to explain why Bella and Edward love each other. "Why do I love you Bella? Well, as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights on page 274 of the 1992 US paperback edition says, ________." This is lazy writing. It's okay if she uses a famous story as an outline for her book, as she kind of does equating Jacob to Paris in Romeo and Juliette, but to simply lift whole passages from other books and put them in hers is... lazy. There's no other way to say it.
Do vampires even have sperm?
How the fuck did Bella even get pregnant? If Edward's body can manufacture sperm, then why can't a female vampire become pregnant? If Edward has sperm then female vampires would have eggs and there's no plausible reason why they couldn't procreate; even if it's a "perfect vampires can't be marred by imperfect pregnancies!" thing, just make the pregnancies perfect!
Which brings me to another disturbing aspect of these books:
Women in the Twilight series
Bella’s mother is an airhead. Bella has to be a mother to her parents. Bella assumes stereotypical housewife behaviors and does all the cooking and cleaning, in addition to holding a job and doing all her schoolwork. Bella has no interests outside of her boyfriend until she has a demon baby, then she has no interests outside her warped little family. Esme tried to kill herself after losing a baby. Rosalie’s life revolves around her desire for a baby. Leah’s transformation into a werewolf comes at the cost of her fertility. Emily is a mother figure to the wolf boys even after her werewolf boyfriend ripped off half her face when he was angry, behavior which, of course, Emily forgives, because in the Twilight all abusive behavior from men is overlooked and forgiven by their female victims.
I wonder how much of the portrayal of women in this series has to do with the Mormon overtones of the books. The men can father children with mere mortals (Vampires and werewolve), but the women can't even get pregnant by their super hot vampire stud muffins and women who become werewolves become sterile, but the men don't.
When confronted with accusations that Twilight is anti-feminist Meyer defends herself by saying that some feminists scorn women who make the decision to be mothers and wives, which she says is Bella's choice. But Bella doesn't choose to be a mother; she has no clue that pregnancy could be a possibility by having a relationship with a vampire. Her decision to have the child, is also not really based on ambitions of motherhood, which she never expresses in the novels before the pregnancy occurs, but rather a desire to elevate Edward (or in this case, his offspring) to sacred status. When Edward comes up with the plan to remove the demon spawn and let Jacob father a child with Bella instead, Bella makes it very clear that merely having a child isn't the point, but having Edward's child specifically. She is not enamored with motherhood, it's all merely part of the further worship of Twilight's male Mary Sue. Additionally, as far as marriage is concerned Bella doesn't show any indication of marital ambitions until she is practically blackmailed into a wedding as part of Edward's price for turning her into a vampire. Again, no "choice" is made. It's coercion, and since the coercion is being instigated by the male Mary Sue, the lead female character submits.
Meyers clumsily tries to defend her books and say imply that they are pro-feminist but Bella doesn't make any positive or "pro-feminist" choices. She is blinding following after Edward and being completely servile to him. She chooses marriage not because she wants to be married at the age of 18 but because it's the only way she can keep Edward and get what she wants from him: to be with him forever as a vampire. She chooses to have the baby not because she has always wanted to be a mother but because it is the spawn of Edward, her Adonis, her Greek god. She didn't choose to keep the baby because she thought abortion was wrong, she kept it because it was Edward's.
The Twilight Series is not feminist. It is Bella's choice but she is not making those choices from a place of being informed. She didn't have to time to come to terms with her pregnancy before she decided that she did or didn't want to keep the baby, she realized it was Edwards and immediately decided she had to have it.
The Twilight books as terrible examples for teenage girls
Meyers is basically subverting Bella and having her life be decided by which boyfriend is the bigger asshole. I like Jacob more as a character than Edward, he has more redeeming qualities and is more believably likable and more believably flawed than Edward is, but they both have serious control and abuse issues. So long as Edward is around Bella would be in an abusive, controlling relationship, either with Edward who won’t allow her to see Jacob or with Jacob who won’t allow her to see Edward.
In addition, Bella is made out to be a servile Stepford wife, only sallow skinned and sulky. Not a very good character to have carry a book whose target audience is teenaged girls.
I think that Edward is a terrible leading man character to present to the target demographic forthese books: middle school and high-school age girls. I'd venture to say that 80-90% of kids at that young an age wouldn't recognize the dangers, flaws or drawbacks in Edward's (or Jacob's) behavior toward Bella because they have virtually no experience with romantic relationships.
What baffles me is that grown women read these books and find Edward (and, again, Jacob's) behavior towards Bella acceptable - and not only acceptable but desirable. That scares me.
Maybe I'm just cynical, or a pessimist or am too independently minded but I never found Edward desirable as prospective boyfriend or husband and while I do think that I may have had a different impression of the books had I read them when I was younger (I read them in my mid-twenties), I know from experience with other clingy, needy, dictatorial or domineering "romantic leading man" type fictional characters that I still might have had an issue with Edward (see Wolf from the mini series The 10th Kingdom for a start; a sweet, funny, charming character but at age 15 I knew for a fact that I could never deal with a guy as clingy and single-mindedly obsessed about his mate as Wolf was.)
Eeeehm... plot hole??
Why don't animals turn into vampires? Presumably when the Cullens bite a mountain lion, they inject venom into their bloodstream. So why aren't there vampire lions? If Meyer is able to use garbled gibberish pseudo-scientific bullshit to explain how a 100 year old vampire can father a child with an 18 year old human, and why female vamps and werewolves cannot bear children, despite male vamps and werewolves being fully capable, then I demand answers.
The Cullens a a bunch of hypocrites
Meyer makes it very clear that the visiting vampires hunt people. Bella is so wary of the danger they pose to human beings that she will not allow her human father to visit the Cullen home while the vamp-visitors are staying there. The only compromise they offer the Cullens is that they won’t hunt anyone in the state of Washington (since it would attract unwanted attention from law enforcement and the werewolves, who regard human-hunting as an act of war). So basically the Cullens are willing to sacrifice countless human lives in order to defend ONE demon baby. Which makes the entire Cullen clan and Bella complete hypocrites. They may as well go back to hunting humans themselves if they are condoning their vampire friends’ hunting habits.
Edward is a hypocrite
The greatest danger posed to Bella is from Edward. He constantly uses predator/prey analogies when talking about them being together and much of the "plot" is based on his fear of injuring her in some form or another. She'd have been much safer had he turned her into a vampire immediately after meeting her, or staying away from her entirely since all the jeopardy she is placed in (from Victoria, from James, from Laurent, from the Volturi etc...) comes about entirely due to her relationship with Edward.
Ooops, I think that was more than 5 things...
Confession: I have listened to all the audiobooks (curses be upon my sister) and seen all the movies (curses be upon my mother) so I know what I'm talking about.
Following SS's format, I shall attempt to list 5 not so awful things about the series and then 5 of my biggest peeves regarding the series, but first I must state my disagreement with SS:
#1: It got kids to read.
No. Harry Potter got kids to read. Twilight merely kept them occupied until all the HP movies were done and the Hunger Games was released.
Twilight wouldn't have had a leg to stand on without the fanbase of Harry Potter that primed the world for stories of reimagined cliches and catered to a similar audience.
The Top 5 Not Entirely Shitty Things About the Twilight Saga
#1: The idea of the book is actually not a bad one.
What would happen if a human and a vampire legitimately fell in love?
Too bad the entire premise of these books immediately loses all jeopardy when it turns out that Edward has the self-control of a saint (or a Greek god...)#2: ...
#3: ...
Um... yeah, I think #1 is it.
The Top 5 Shittiest Things About the Twilight Saga
In no particular order.
No one but Bella is responsible for her shitty life.
Bella’s mother should never have been included in this series. She serves no purpose whatsoever. This would have given Bella a more believable reason to be sullen and withdrawn than simply, “I hate the rain.” If she had been excluded from the series, then Esme could have had a useful role as being a sort of surrogate mother for Bella, to replace the one she lost.
As it is, though, Bella's mother lived, got married to a baseball player and Bella decides to exile herself to a place she detests. I really detest Bella's imposed self-pity for this reason. "I moved to a place I hate so that my mother could be happy with the man she married therefore I have every right to be a boring, sullen brat and hate my life." Get over yourself, Bella. You didn't have to make that choice.
Which is why killing Bella's mother off would have been a FAR BETTER CHOICE for Meyers. It would have given Bella a legitimate reason to move to Forks that might actually make her a sympathetic character, it would have given her a reason to be sullen and withdrawn from all the people who inexplicably want to be her friends, given her a reason to reject offers of going to beach parties or whatever, and wouldn't have made her into such a bitch.
Bella and Edward have ZERO reasons to fall in love.
Task number one in a rewrite would be to give the main characters a plausible reason to fall in love with each other.
What makes no sense about Twilight and the reason the rest of the books fail so miserably to me: why are Edward and Bella attracted to each other in the first place? : For no reason at all. He sees her as a tasty snack, she sees him as a bonze-haired Roman god-boy. That does not a basis for a relationship make.
If Bella had gone to Forks and been rejected by her schoolmates, it would have made more sense for her to be attracted to an equally isolated Edward (who should have been some kid living in the woods, rather than Mr Too Cool For School). But Meyer chose to make Bella unrealistically popular and fascinating to the Forks student body, for no credible reason. It's not much of a reason for them to be attracted to each other, but it's better than the superficiality of the relationship as presented in the books.
They don't ever talk about anything other than how much they love each other or why one or the other doesn't need to be worried about Jacob lurking outside Bella's window - that is, when Edward isn't the one out there. They don't share any common interests aside from their attraction to each other. Bella isn't interested in anything, and neither is Edward (so I guess they do have something in common).
In this respect, while I maintain that there is no healthy relationship present in any of these books, the one approaching that ideal is Bella and Jacob. They actually talk about stuff. They actually do things together that friends (let alone lovers) would do. If (and this is a big, wishful thinking if) the beginning of New Moon had really been the end of Bella and Edward and Bella hadn't've turned into a mopey little shit, she and Jacob could plausibly have developed a good relationship.
OR
Meyers could always have, you know, given Bella and Edward something in common. She could have made Bella into someone who loves classic literature and who appreciates history, someone who one might describe as "and old soul" and thus make her attraction to a guy who died in 1918 make a little bit of sense. That would also mean that Bella and Edward could at least talk about their shared interests circa the turn of the century and how the culture was so much less depraved than it is now...
SOMETHING.
Noooooooooothiiiiiinnnnnnnng haaaaaaaaapppeeeeeeeennsssss.......
Generally speaking, when you're writing a novel you want to include some kind of conflict early in the story that will sustain the plot through the end of the book.
So...
Where is that conflict in Twilight?
What I find most disappointing about Twilight (the first book, not the whole series) is that there's no purpose to the narrative until two thirds of the way through the book. The first two thirds are spent clumsily portraying Edward and Bella "falling in love" with no real plot to be found. Only when they go out to play baseball during the storm is a plot introduced which is bad, bad writing IMO. The story question that drives the plot becomes "Will the new vampires kill Bella?" which is answered in the climax of the book - up until the baseball game there is no story question.
The whole Cullen introduction and baseball game thing should have happened in, like, the second or third chapter. All of the "falling in love" stuff, the endless "questions" game and the explanation for Edward's inexplicable interest in her could have happened after Bella's life is put in danger. At least then Edward wouldn't come off as such a worry wart and control freak because he would, to the reader, have valid reasons for fearing for Bella's life - because she would actually be in mortal danger throughout the book. It would also provide a more plausible reason for some of Bella's friends to want to hang out with her - she's got the inside scoop on the Cullens and Jessica might think she could get Bella to spill the beans on them. This stuff on top of killing off Bella's mother as previously suggested might have make for an interesting book.
The hard part about that rewrite would be figuring out a reason Edward would invite Bella to a baseball game with his family in the first place, especially since, at this point in time, Bella would probably need to not know Edward is a vampire and the baseball scene is all about throwing their superhuman abilities in each others' faces.
And in the rest of the series there is little to no actual conflict. Renesmee doesn't kill Bella at birth, the Volturi don't kill anyone who counts, and especially not the Cullens, Bella never has any problems with uncontrollably blood lust after her transition, Bella's mother is completely fine with her daughter marrying right out of school, her father is okay with his son-in-law being a vampire...no conflict, no one has a problem with Bella's teenaged pregnancy. Even the whole choice of becoming a vampire is neutered. There's no downside to being a vampire and no upside to remaining human. By becoming a vampire, Bella loses nothing and gains everything.
So... let's reiterate:
Twilight - Bella and Edward immediately fall in love no reason other than the way he looks and she smells. She's almost universally accepted by virtually everyone 1- at school, with the exception of Lauren who's is irrelevant to anything in the series in any case, and 2- by the Cullen family, aside from Rosalie, who eventually becomes her devoted protector anyway. The only threat comes from James, who logically should not be a threat, since he's one vampire pursuing someone protected by an entire family of vampires, who easily kill him. Edward constantly tells Bella that he's dangerous, but she doesn't mind and he never bites her.
New Moon - The supposedly romantic lead brutally dumps Bella, for reasons that are bewilderingly stupid. This leads to the Jacob storyline where our female lead and supposed heroine uses him as little more than a nicotine patch after her cigarettes have been denied to her. There's never any doubt that she will eventually pick Edward, so the supposed "love triangle" drama never gets off the ground. Laurent poses a threat to Bella, which makes no sense, even with the internal logic of the Twilight universe, and then he's easily killed. A comical misunderstanding leads to the conveniently wealthy Cullens being able to take Bella to Italy, where the supposed main antagonists, the Volturi, present Bella with the oh-so-threatening choice of death (which we know will not happen), or being a vampire (which she wants anyway). It's like the villain of a story giving the hero a choice of death, or to eat chocolate, get a foot massage, and watch their favorite TV show.
Eclipse - The entire book builds up to a war which is easily won by the "good guys". Victoria, the character who is supposedly a great danger to Bella (and who's revenge plot is based on nothing rational) is easily killed.
Breaking Dawn - Bella has a perfect child and becomes the greatest ever vampire that ever has ever lived (ever!) and also has the power to create shields, and thus ends any possibility of drama because she is now the SuperMarySue. Her comically inept father is oblivious to this. The Volturi arrive and....then leave.
The only person not 100% enamored with Bella is cut from the movies:
Lauren.
Nuf said.
Booooooring characters
The most interesting character in the entire series to me is Jasper because he does seem to struggle with his choice to be a :cough: vegetarian and he does think it's natural for vampires to kill humans. So his struggle is foisted on him by an outside force - Alice - and his personal choice to be with her. I wish the story would have focused on Jasper because he seems to be where the real story is. What if Jasper, who believed it right for a vampire to kill humans, fell in love with a human? That would be an interesting story. Not Edward and Bella.
I think the only character that gets anything akin to "growth" is Jacob. He begins the series as a kind of goofy 15-year-old kid with a big time crush on Bella and during the course of the books ends up become a werewolf, overcoming major jealousy and becoming, literally, the leader of the pack. That's why I like Jacob the best out of all the characters, even with his pedophilic creeperness and his own control issues where Bella is concerned.
You call that a sex scene?!?!?
The entire books are about how mind-numbingly and unhealthily obsessed Bella and Edward are for each other. Hundreds of pages are wasted away with Bella giving Edward goo-goo eyes and contemplating the rosy smell of his shits. So, YAY!!! They're finally gonna fuck! This is what the entire series has led up to! You waded through three previous books of teenage angst over how attractive you look to your vampire boyfriend while you're drooling on your pillow asleep, happily fantasized about grinding on him because he can't read your mind and doesn't know that's what you're thinking about, and he finally conned you into marrying him because he's apparently "old fashioned" and doesn't have a single hormone in his body, and now you're gonna do it--
W-wait.
What happened?
Where was the fucking?
So.... the one scene most looked forward to in the entire series is the one scene that's entirely skipped over?!?! We get, what? Some chaste making out, Edward sweeps her up into his arms, carries her to bed and then Meyers only gives us the aftermath!?!?!? WTF!?!?!?!? In a novel featuring attempted sexual assault, murder and the abuse of women, it seems odd that a sex scene between the two lead characters on their honeymoon is excluded, particularly since the entire novel series is based on the supposed passion and epic love between them.
And this happens REPEATEDLY!!!!!!!
I totally get why sexually frustrated soccer moms would turn to 50 Shades of Grey after this bullshit.
WTF was up with that ending?
So you've slogged your way through almost 4 books of utter, mind-numbing bullshit and FINALLY something is going to happen.
Or not.
WTF?? So the Volturi are pissed that Edward is going to make Bella a vampire, and that he's repeatedly thwarted their attempts to lull them into their coven, and so when they hear that Bella has given birth to a demon baby they're going to go to Forks and kill it. Aiight. I'm down with that. At least something interesting is happening.
Until, that is, Nothing. Interesting. Happens.
The Volturi come. The Cullens are stupidly outnumbered about a zillion to 20. They're gonna get creamed, but something awesome is going to happen and Bella and Edward and their little shit will prance off, all sparkly, into the sunset...
What actually happens? They stand around and talk.
BULLSHIT.
I didn't know it was possible to be more disappointed in these books than I already was.
Next to nothing in these books is original
Edward was a poorly written, less sympathetic Louis from Interview with a Vampire and the first time I read (*ahem* listened to) the books that's all I could think. "Edward is a crummy version of Louis." And, later, "Renesme is a crummy version of Claudia." The various "bad vampires" take turns as the Lestat figure, including all of the Cullens once Bella becomes a vampire herself, and the Volturi represent Armand and his coven. Edward may as well have turned to Bella and said, "I'm going to give you the choice i never had."
Been there, done that. Just read Interview with a Vampire, it's a far better book.
It also greatly bothers me that Meyers quotes passages of famous books in order to explain why Bella and Edward love each other. "Why do I love you Bella? Well, as Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights on page 274 of the 1992 US paperback edition says, ________." This is lazy writing. It's okay if she uses a famous story as an outline for her book, as she kind of does equating Jacob to Paris in Romeo and Juliette, but to simply lift whole passages from other books and put them in hers is... lazy. There's no other way to say it.
Do vampires even have sperm?
How the fuck did Bella even get pregnant? If Edward's body can manufacture sperm, then why can't a female vampire become pregnant? If Edward has sperm then female vampires would have eggs and there's no plausible reason why they couldn't procreate; even if it's a "perfect vampires can't be marred by imperfect pregnancies!" thing, just make the pregnancies perfect!
Which brings me to another disturbing aspect of these books:
Women in the Twilight series
Bella’s mother is an airhead. Bella has to be a mother to her parents. Bella assumes stereotypical housewife behaviors and does all the cooking and cleaning, in addition to holding a job and doing all her schoolwork. Bella has no interests outside of her boyfriend until she has a demon baby, then she has no interests outside her warped little family. Esme tried to kill herself after losing a baby. Rosalie’s life revolves around her desire for a baby. Leah’s transformation into a werewolf comes at the cost of her fertility. Emily is a mother figure to the wolf boys even after her werewolf boyfriend ripped off half her face when he was angry, behavior which, of course, Emily forgives, because in the Twilight all abusive behavior from men is overlooked and forgiven by their female victims.
I wonder how much of the portrayal of women in this series has to do with the Mormon overtones of the books. The men can father children with mere mortals (Vampires and werewolve), but the women can't even get pregnant by their super hot vampire stud muffins and women who become werewolves become sterile, but the men don't.
When confronted with accusations that Twilight is anti-feminist Meyer defends herself by saying that some feminists scorn women who make the decision to be mothers and wives, which she says is Bella's choice. But Bella doesn't choose to be a mother; she has no clue that pregnancy could be a possibility by having a relationship with a vampire. Her decision to have the child, is also not really based on ambitions of motherhood, which she never expresses in the novels before the pregnancy occurs, but rather a desire to elevate Edward (or in this case, his offspring) to sacred status. When Edward comes up with the plan to remove the demon spawn and let Jacob father a child with Bella instead, Bella makes it very clear that merely having a child isn't the point, but having Edward's child specifically. She is not enamored with motherhood, it's all merely part of the further worship of Twilight's male Mary Sue. Additionally, as far as marriage is concerned Bella doesn't show any indication of marital ambitions until she is practically blackmailed into a wedding as part of Edward's price for turning her into a vampire. Again, no "choice" is made. It's coercion, and since the coercion is being instigated by the male Mary Sue, the lead female character submits.
Meyers clumsily tries to defend her books and say imply that they are pro-feminist but Bella doesn't make any positive or "pro-feminist" choices. She is blinding following after Edward and being completely servile to him. She chooses marriage not because she wants to be married at the age of 18 but because it's the only way she can keep Edward and get what she wants from him: to be with him forever as a vampire. She chooses to have the baby not because she has always wanted to be a mother but because it is the spawn of Edward, her Adonis, her Greek god. She didn't choose to keep the baby because she thought abortion was wrong, she kept it because it was Edward's.
The Twilight Series is not feminist. It is Bella's choice but she is not making those choices from a place of being informed. She didn't have to time to come to terms with her pregnancy before she decided that she did or didn't want to keep the baby, she realized it was Edwards and immediately decided she had to have it.
The Twilight books as terrible examples for teenage girls
Meyers is basically subverting Bella and having her life be decided by which boyfriend is the bigger asshole. I like Jacob more as a character than Edward, he has more redeeming qualities and is more believably likable and more believably flawed than Edward is, but they both have serious control and abuse issues. So long as Edward is around Bella would be in an abusive, controlling relationship, either with Edward who won’t allow her to see Jacob or with Jacob who won’t allow her to see Edward.
In addition, Bella is made out to be a servile Stepford wife, only sallow skinned and sulky. Not a very good character to have carry a book whose target audience is teenaged girls.
I think that Edward is a terrible leading man character to present to the target demographic forthese books: middle school and high-school age girls. I'd venture to say that 80-90% of kids at that young an age wouldn't recognize the dangers, flaws or drawbacks in Edward's (or Jacob's) behavior toward Bella because they have virtually no experience with romantic relationships.
What baffles me is that grown women read these books and find Edward (and, again, Jacob's) behavior towards Bella acceptable - and not only acceptable but desirable. That scares me.
Maybe I'm just cynical, or a pessimist or am too independently minded but I never found Edward desirable as prospective boyfriend or husband and while I do think that I may have had a different impression of the books had I read them when I was younger (I read them in my mid-twenties), I know from experience with other clingy, needy, dictatorial or domineering "romantic leading man" type fictional characters that I still might have had an issue with Edward (see Wolf from the mini series The 10th Kingdom for a start; a sweet, funny, charming character but at age 15 I knew for a fact that I could never deal with a guy as clingy and single-mindedly obsessed about his mate as Wolf was.)
Eeeehm... plot hole??
Why don't animals turn into vampires? Presumably when the Cullens bite a mountain lion, they inject venom into their bloodstream. So why aren't there vampire lions? If Meyer is able to use garbled gibberish pseudo-scientific bullshit to explain how a 100 year old vampire can father a child with an 18 year old human, and why female vamps and werewolves cannot bear children, despite male vamps and werewolves being fully capable, then I demand answers.
The Cullens a a bunch of hypocrites
Meyer makes it very clear that the visiting vampires hunt people. Bella is so wary of the danger they pose to human beings that she will not allow her human father to visit the Cullen home while the vamp-visitors are staying there. The only compromise they offer the Cullens is that they won’t hunt anyone in the state of Washington (since it would attract unwanted attention from law enforcement and the werewolves, who regard human-hunting as an act of war). So basically the Cullens are willing to sacrifice countless human lives in order to defend ONE demon baby. Which makes the entire Cullen clan and Bella complete hypocrites. They may as well go back to hunting humans themselves if they are condoning their vampire friends’ hunting habits.
Edward is a hypocrite
The greatest danger posed to Bella is from Edward. He constantly uses predator/prey analogies when talking about them being together and much of the "plot" is based on his fear of injuring her in some form or another. She'd have been much safer had he turned her into a vampire immediately after meeting her, or staying away from her entirely since all the jeopardy she is placed in (from Victoria, from James, from Laurent, from the Volturi etc...) comes about entirely due to her relationship with Edward.
Ooops, I think that was more than 5 things...
Teenaged X-Files obsession + Bermuda Triangle episode + Self-led school research project = Atheist.
