Unless one was to have detached themselves from society, or happened to for whatever reason, be living in a hole in Antarctica; one would most likely to have been made aware of Twilight.
In magazines, on cinema screens, in conversations, on the internet; nobody is safe. Twilight have turned from a seemingly harmless novel to something that can only be described as a malignant growth.
For those of you lucky few that have not heard of Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, the books are told through the eyes of a teenaged girl, Bella Swan. In a nutshell; she moves to a small town due to family commitments, is suddenly popularish, meets and falls in love with this perfect boy, Edward. And the twist? He is a vampire. Gasp*
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At the start of the book, Bella is described as a plain and ordinary girl, of whom noone ever payed attention to back in her home town Phoenix, but when she arrives at Fork's it seems nobody can get enough of her. Which can only mean one of two things. Girl's in fork's must have no hair and ten arms or the boys in this town must have some serious eye problems.
Then for the next part which makes up almost the entire book, we learn about Edward and his family's shady secret of being vampires, and despite that, his and Bella's love for each other over comes all.
But there is something shallow and pathetic about this so described "unconditional love". It's not romanctic, it's not passionate, it's not love. It's selfish idiocy at best.
Let's break this down: Bella as a character is insufferable. She has no ambitions, no dreams, no goals, nothing. Her whole life; her whole reason for living is tied in by her boyfriend. She is willing to throw away her family and friends because she wants nothing else besides being with Edward whom she've only known for a couple of weeks. And to top it off, she's also mind numbingly boring, the sort which makes you fall asleep while she talks. She constantly goes on AND ON about how Edward is perfect at everything and how he's so gorgeous and she is so unworthy of him, how he's strong and how he protects her. In fact, she never gave any reasons for liking him other than how totally hawt he is, but I guess that's only fair because Edward never gave any reasons for liking her other than her smelling so darn good. The romance between them is forced and trite. And it's not helped that they both have no traces of personality what so ever. There is no development of feelings, the love they seem to have for each other just happened.
Now, Edward. What can I say about Edward? He is dipicted as the perfect male protagonist - smart, rich, selfless, mysterious, dangerous - perfect AND sparkly. HawtmaXx !!!
He's also bipolar. He's serious at one time, then laughs exuberantly another. And he has this stalkerish behaviour, which is sick. He sneaks into bella's room and watches her sleep before they even get to talk. He eavesdrops on her friends' thoughts to find out what they talk about, he follows her whenever she leaves her house - that doesn't strike me as romantic nor sweet, it's creepy.
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Granted, most authors reinvent vampire legends for their works but Meyer have really topped this one. Is Edward evil? No, because vampires can live on animal blood. Crosses, garlic, silver? Nope. Ok, the ultimate; Sunlight? NAH - it only makes them glittery and pwrettiiie like diamonds.
So basically, Edward isn't a vampire at all. He's just some sort of superhuman character with no fucking flaws, who lives forever, has superstrength and feeds off animal blood. No apparent weaknesses, only godlike existence.
Spendid.
Another thing that cannot be commended on. The writing mechanics make me question whether Meyer has yet to graduate high school. Her writing makes JK Rowling look like a Pulitzer Prize winner. Her words are stilted, the narration is unexicting, dragging and redundant. Most of her words are plain and simple to digest; but for whatever reason, Meyer also occassionally uses ridiculously long AND obsure words, like Ostentacious. She could've simply used "pretencious" or "flamboyant", but it just had to be ostentatious; which do not fit with her otherwise easy and direct writing.
And the progression of the story is senseless. 90% of the book is just insane jibber jabberings of a highschool girl's obsession for her boyfriend and then Meyer gets within the last handful of pages in the book and it hits her "FUCK! I NEED DRAMA!" and throws in a random vampire fight. She then skips the part which should be the climatic blast of the otherwise mindnumbing plot, and elaborates on the prom. Then the book ends.
Though the grammar and syntax are unforvinably bad, the plot is onion skinned and the characters are uniformly uninspiring and dull - I was hooked.
I couldn't seem to be able to put the book down!
I'm afraid to say, the sequels to the series don't get much better than the first book.
- New Moon, where Edward and his Family leaves for Bella's sake and during her whiny melodrama over losing Edward, enters Jacob whom she quickly grew fond of, oh, and he also happens to be a exotic tribal werewolf hero. Then Bella jumps off a cliff for fun but Edward mistakes this as a suicide attempt and goes all emo. Bella and Alice goes to Italy where Edward has gone to challenge the Volturi to kill him since he thought Bella was dead; after Edward was saved, he and Bella picks up just where they left off.
- Eclipse, natural enemies, Werewolves and Vampires are brought together in union against Victoria who wants to torture and kill Bella to avenge for her mate, James (that's the vampire they killed in the first book). Victoria and her vampire army is defeated. Bella then realises that she is also in love with Jacob and makes everything more complicated than they should be by letting Jacob know. Then she and Edward breaks Jacob's heart by getting married. Too bad, so sad.
The eclipse is probably the book I enjoyed most from the series. Though, like the rest of the books, there s almost zero climax, in this book, the usually boring middle goes into some made up vampire war history, new born vampire bloodlust, which were entertaining to read, and I finally found my favourite character in the series. Jasper <3
- Breaking Dawn, Bella and Edward goes on their honeymoon, and stud muffin Edward manages to get Bella preggars. Despite him wanting to get rid of the parasite that is his own baby, Queen Bella, being the selfish arrogant bitch that she is, doesn't allow it and keeps the baby. Obviously, since nobody knows what monster the baby could be, the werewolves are on her heels, which forces poor Jacob to leave his pack to protect Bella. Then when the baby, Renesmee, is born, Jacob realises that it was not Bella whom he loved, but in fact the infant. Bella, dies momentarily during the delivery of the baby but is revived as she was turned into a vampire. All is well until the Volturi comes to Forks' using the baby as an excuse, but REALLY just wanting Alice's powers for themselves. And finally Bella proves to be useful when she uses her seemingly pathetic sheilding powers to prevent what would be an epic climatic vampire war. And here, the fairy tale ends, with the now supermodelsqiue Bella happily married with Edward and Jacob, finally content with being Bella's son in law.
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Frankly, i'm mystified at its popularity. if nothing else, i guess it goes to show what clever marketing and stories of wish-fulfillment and so-called 'forbidden love' can do to some women. it's made meyer a multi-millionaire, i'm sure, and turned her publisher into a cash cow. i don't begrudge anyone on his or her success, but when it comes via a turd like 'twilight,' it's well, more than a tad saddening.
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