So to pass the time until then I'm going to write this entry, because I don't know if I've ever articulated what exactly my problem is with this whole Twilight thing. Y'know, as a *feminist type*. You may find it useful, if you are also so afflicted, if you're ever accosted by fangirls or something.
The problem with Twilight is two-fold. Or three-fold, I don't know. Let's count. First of all, it's horribly written. There's no plot. The characterization is poor. There's adjective abuse everywhere, with all the chagrining and the chuckling and smirking and the beautiful glittering. Stephenie Meyer could seriously drop at least a hundred pages if she weren't so terrified of just saying "I said." And of course, the vampires fucking sparkle.
Apart from the issues of technical and artistic skill, there's the issue of the story itself. It's not really a bad story, but the problem is the dichotomy between what it is and what we're told it is. The story is packaged and sold as The Story Of The Greatest Love You Have Ever Heard Of Or Will Ever Hear Of In Your Life. And ... it's not that. In reality, it's the story of a young girl and her abusive, albeit very attractive, creepy boyfriend.
Twilight is told from the point-of-view of Human Girlfriend Bella Swan. She's not really important, though. There are dozens of other characters in the books as well, but they're not really important, either. The only character who is actually important is Edward Cullen, Vampire Boyfriend. The most important thing to understand about Edward is that he is attractive. He's really attractive. He's pretty much the most attractive person that you or anyone else has ever seen. This is the only thing that matters about him. It's certainly the only thing that matters about him to Bella. The great dilemma of the first book is that Bella loves Edward because he's so pretty, but knows that he couldn't possibly love her because she is nowhere near as pretty as he is. A good two-thirds of the book is basically this, just with more detail.
His white shirt was sleeveless [no, sleeveless, really], and he wore it unbuttoned, so that the smooth white skin of his throat flowed uninterrupted over the marble contours of his chest, his perfect musculature no longer merely hinted at behind concealing clothes. He was too perfect, I realized with a piercing stab of despair. There was no way this godlike creature could be meant for me.
Or, as the Fountain Of Gold put it: "When you read the book it's like, 'Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself.' I mean, every line is like that."
So that's Human Girlfriend's deal. Edward is pretty, making him perfect and negating any flaws he might conceivably have. She's not as pretty, and therefore can never be good enough for him. Human Girlfriend doesn't really have any interests of her own. Supposedly she likes books, but we never see her read. At one point she's asked if she's planning on going to college, and her respond is basically, 'Why? I got a man.' The entire purpose of the character, the main character, mind you, is to be a cipher for the reader so that you too can have the experience of having a sparkling Vampire Boyfriend.
Let's talk about Vampire Boyfriend for a minute. Edward is a vampire, and he has angst such as we are all intimately familiar with from watching Angel or whatever other dozen other vampire angst stories we've encountered. So he's tortured, and he doesn't eat humans, and he goes to high school. For ... some reason. It's not important. The important thing is that Bella Swan has outrageous flavor that threatens to undo all his decades of abstinence such that he kind of wants to be on her immediately and all the time. And that's why they can't have sex until they're married. Also, Edward reads minds but the only person whose mind he cannot read is Bella's. She's just special. It's not important. Due to this confluence of Mary-Sueisms, Edward becomes obsessed with Bella and imagines that she must be, like, the most interesting person to ever exist. (The obvious joke is that if he could read her thoughts, and know that they are all shallow musings on how pretty he is, the whole series could have been avoided.)
So VB's first plan of how to handle this situation is to be the hugest dick possible to HG. HG is of course very sad about this, because VB is so pretty, and must be judging her with the righteousness that the very pretty have for those who aren't as pretty. Then he saves her life and blows his asshole cover, so he has to amp his levels of dickishness up as high as they will go. HG finds him so intriguing. And pretty!
Then VB decides that they should just have a relationship or whatever already. HG is skeptical, not so much because of all his toolery, but because 'WTF he's too pretty to like me!' Anyway, now that they have a Forever Love and everything (seriously, it happens that fast), it is time for VB to come clean about how he's been breaking into her house every night for months to check out all the rooms and stare at her while she's asleep.
Of course I'm not kidding. And I'm also not kidding about the fact that HG doesn't get upset about it, because his creepy behavior is incredibly endearing. And he's pretty.
"You spied on me?" But somehow I couldn't infuse my voice with the proper outrage. I was flattered.
He was unrepentant. "What else is there to do at night?"
I let it go for the moment and went down the hall to the kitchen. He was there before me, needing no guide. He sat in the very chair I'd tried to picture him in. His beauty lit up the kitchen. It was a moment before I could look away.
Then we get three more books of VB being a controlling creeper. I'm just going to put some quotes up, and you tell me if this sounds like the story of a girl and her abusive boyfriend. I did not make these up:
We were near the parking lot now. I veered left, toward my truck. Something caught my jacket, yanking me back.
"Where do you think you're going?" he asked, outraged. He was gripping a fistful of my jacket in one hand.
I was confused. "I'm going home."
"Didn't you hear me promise to take you safely home? Do you think I'm going to let you drive in your condition?" His voice was still indignant.
"What condition? What about my truck?" I complained.
"I'll have Alice drop it off after school." He was towing me toward his car now, pulling me by my jacket. It was all I could do to keep from falling backward. He'd probably just drag me along anyway if I did."
"Turn around! You have to take me home!" I shouted. I struggled with the stupid harness, tearing at the straps.
"Emmett," Edward said grimly.
And Emmett secured my hands in his steely grasp.
"No! Edward! No, you can't do this."
"I have to, Bella, now please be quiet."
"You're kidnapping me, aren't you?"
She laughed and nodded. "Till Saturday. Esme cleared it with Charlie; you're staying with me two nights, and I will drive you to and from school tomorrow."
I turned my face to the window, my teeth grinding together.
"Sorry," Alice said, not sounding in the least bit penitent. "He paid me off."
"How?" I hissed through my teeth.
"The Porsche. It's exactly like the one I stole in Italy." She sighed happily.
[...]
Alice hopped out gracefully and went to stroke her hand along the length of her bribe.
"Pretty, isn't it?"
"Pretty over-the-top," I grumbled, incredulous. "He gave you that just for two days of holding me hostage?"
Alice made a face.
A second later, comprehension came and I gasped in horror. "It's for every time he's gone, isn't it?"
She nodded.
Like any fugitive, I couldn't help looking over my shoulder a few times while I jogged to my truck, but the night was so black that there really was no point. I had to feel my way along the side of the truck to the handle.
My eyes were just beginning to adjust as I shoved my keys in the ignition. I twisted them hard to the left, but instead of roaring deafeningly to life, the engine just clicked. I tried it again with the same results.
And then a small motion in my peripheral vision made me jump.
"Gah!" I gasped in shock when I saw that I was not alone in the cab.
Edward sat very still, a faint bright spot in the darkness, only his hands moving as he turned a mysterious black object around and around. He stared at the object as he spoke.
"Alice called," he murmured.
Alice! Damn. I'd forgotten to account for her in my plans. He must have her watching me.
[Edward does a long creepy monologue in low tones]
I listened to his musing in stony silence.
"I'll put your car back together in time for school, in case you'd like to drive yourself," he assured me after a minute.
With my lips mashed together, I retrieved my keys and stiffly climbed out of the truck.
"Shut your window if you want me to stay away tonight. I'll understand," he whispered just before I slammed the door.
And that's just the overt crap and what doesn't delve too much into boring story points. There's oh so much more. For the record, that last section was the only time in this series about vampires that I actually felt scared. So, Edward Cullen is a creepy stalker who becomes a controlling boyfriend. But it's okay, because he's very attractive. There are also other fine lessons to be learned from these books like how, if you're a woman, your value as a person is dependent on producing children, and if you can't produce children, 1. you'll be a miserable bitch for all your life and 2. you're not really even a woman. Plus, the actual literal I'm-not-kidding pedophilia. I'm not kidding.
I could go on, but we haven't even gotten to the second major problem with Twilight.
The second major problem with Twilight is that it is very popular. This, really, is why I'm talking about this at all, or why anyone talks about it at all. There are tons of horribly written books with terrible messages out there. I may have read some, most of them I haven't, and I don't really care. I probably wouldn't care about Twilight except for the effect I see it have in other people. Specifically, I'm talking about young women: millions of them, to be exact. There are millions of girls who read these books, and take them for exactly the Epic Love Story they claim to be, become obsessed with them as some sort of gospel of Ideal Love, and are completely blind to how fucking messed-up the whole thing is.
Back about a year ago, I was ambling around the internet and discovered the Edward Cullen fangirls. Most of them go by the moniker "Mrs. Cullen." And let it be known that they love Edward Cullen. What is the top reason they love Edward Cullen? Because he's so hottttt!!!!!! Now, here's the thing. I think Robert Pattinson is pretty nice looking. I have no problem if anyone else thinks likewise. Or hey, even if they don't. There are any number of actors that you can conjure up that are nice looking. But Edward Cullen doesn't exist. He is a fictional character, and these sentiments date back to before Pattinson or anyone else was physically attached to the character giving him any sort of objective appearance. (Ask me about the Transitive Hotness of Vampire Boyfriends Property.) I like the way Bill Maher put it when he said "What can't you convince people of simply by saying it?" (Of course, he was talking about the idea that Barack Obama is a sekrit Muslim, but whatever.) Edward Cullen doesn't have eyes. He doesn't have muscles. He doesn't have anything that one could objectively consider and decide is attractive because he's not real. What he does have, though, is several hundred pages devoted to talking about how goddamned attractive he is. And that makes it true.
What he also has are hundreds of pages devoted to talking about what a chivalrous gentleman he is, and how he's the epitome of what any girl would want from a boy. The pages are adamant that he loves loves loves loves loves Bella Swan, and everything he does -- whether it's putting her life in danger, leaving her for her own good, preventing her from seeing her friends, talking about how he'll kill himself without her, calling her "ridiculous" and "absurd" when she disagrees with him, having her followed, having her go places she doesn't want to go and do things she doesn't want to do, physically restraining her, and having violent outbursts all over the place -- he does because he loves her. He's so sweet and thoughtful. He's just worried about her. He cares about her. He's just being protective. He never means to hurt her. It's okay because he loves her. And because he is so very, very pretty. And that makes it true.
But it's just a story, right? And works of fiction have never influenced anyone ever, correct? Should anyone really care?
Well, when you have thousands of girls calling themselves "Mrs. Cullen" and talking about how desperately they want a boyfriend like Edward, I think that's a problem.
When you have girls who sleep with boys because they are named Edward, I think that's a problem. And when they get knocked up and name their resultant offspring after the author, that's really a problem and no I am not making this up.
When you have girls who have clearly never sorted out the difference between fantasy and reality cutting their necks and telling the actor playing Edward that they did it for him, I think that's a problem.
When you have adult women talking about how they want to take the virginity of one of the underage teenage actors in the movie because they love his character, I think that's a problem and no I am not kidding.
When you have underwear, marketed to teenagers, upon which are the words "Edward Cullen can bruise my body any day." I think that's a problem and no I am not making this up.
When you have a generation of young girls zealously devoted to the disturbing backwards-thinking mentality displayed in these books, I think that's a problem.
So that, now that we've made it here, is what's wrong with Twilight.
Plus, furthermore, the vampires fucking sparkle.
