Why I Hate Twilight

Anyone who knows me, even just a little bit, knows that when I dislike something, I dislike it passionately. The most recent object of my discontent is that unfortunately ubiquitous franchise Twilight. Some of you out there know the exact reasons why, others know a few, still others think it's a Harry Potter fan thing, and others think I just hate the trendiness. I feel that, since I inadvertently turned poor Kate Woodin's note into a Twilight discussion board, that I should explain myself.

First and foremost, I will always maintain that my dislike of the franchise stems from the books, and that is because these books are poorly, poorly written. I read somewhere (before I actually read the first book) about how Stephenie Meyer was just an average soccer mom with no writing experience. After I read the book, I realized that it shows, and as a writer I feel like I have a leg to stand on when I complain. (And I don't mean this blog--I've won awards, so there...) Granted, I have only read the first book, but I do not at all feel spurred to read the rest of them given the quality of the writing found in the first one!



Basically, everything that Stephenie Meyer does in the first book violates all the tenets of fiction writing 101. One of the big atrocities that she repeatedly commits is something that my prof told us the very first day of our creative writing course: "It's he said, she said, he asked, she asked. Everyone here is going to want to throw in adverbs everywhere: He said dejectedly, she asked curiously, whatever. And that's not wrong, if you use it sparingly. Otherwise, it should be obvious from the dialogue and from the story how your character is speaking."

What it pretty much comes down to is that you're only supposed to add an adjective in there when it will do something to enhance the story in a way that doesn't come through in the dialogue. For instance, if someone is saying something, and it needs to be conveyed that it's a lie, you can throw in, "He said slyly." To say, however, "'I love you,' she said amorously," is redundant...And stupid besides. In that first book, I kid you not, Stephenie Meyer does this about every freaking sentence. And some of them don't even make sense! The one that sticks out in my mind (and I do not own the book, I wanted to burn the one I borrowed, so I am NOT going to be providing page references, and I don't apologize) was when she said that Edward "sat sinuously." What. The hell. Does that mean?!? I just looked up "sinuously" now on Dictionary.com, and here are the definitions they provide:

1. having many curves, bends, or turns; winding.
2. indirect; devious.
3. characterized by a series of graceful curving motions.
4. Botany. sinuate, as a leaf.
   

Of those four definitions, I suppose the one that could possibly apply is #3, though how someone sits with "a series of graceful curving motions" is beyond me. The example Dictionary.com gave was a "sinuous dance," but the difference is that actually requires movement, where as the act of sitting is, well, sedentary. :-| In any case, it's insidious how many times she unnecessarily adverbs her dialogue to no particular effect.

Next in line: Nothing. Freaking. Happens. Don't even give me any crap that Stephenie Meyer may not have been trying to tell a story in a conventional way because the story that she does tell is about as conventional as you can get. Besides, there's unconventional storytelling (which this is not), and bad storytelling, which this resoundingly IS. There's something at the heart of conventional Western storytelling called "central conflict theory." It's quite simple: Every story revolves around one central conflict, typically in the form that Person A wants something, and Person B is trying to stop Person A from achieving this.

"But wait now!" Angry Twilighters everywhere are screaming at me. "You get that! Edward wants Bella alive, and the bad vampires (I can't even remember their names) want her dead!" Yes. It's true. That happens. 18 freaking chapters into the book!!! That may be off by a chapter or two, I honestly forget, but the point is that the majority of the book is spent in unnecessary exposition. I will describe pretty much the first 150 pages to you in 5 sentences or less: Bella moves to Forks. She meets Edward, who's Hotty McHot-pants, and they fall in love. But things are complicated since he's a vampire and she's a human. Oh look, we're at the point when conflict finally enters the freaking book!!!!!!!!! And that was in 4 sentences.

So what do you get for about 18 chapters before conflict enters the story? You get 18 chapters of Bella coming up with ridiculous ways to say how hot Edward is (Seriously, "gleaming adonis"? "Male model for raincoats"? It gets more ridiculous than that), of Bella whining about how she's not beautiful and how she's so plain and boring, of Stephenie Meyer f*cking with established vampire lore for no real reason. I will get to that in a minute. 18 chapters of narration regarding how Bella goes to class. How she gets distracted by Edward's beauty during biology. How Edward is so pained by her being nearby. The research Bella does on vampires worldwide (which was just Stephenie Meyer showing that she knows how to use Wikipedia.) How vampires play baseball. I. Wanted. To. DIE. So you can imagine how excited I was when the conflict finally came around! And it was pretty exciting for, what, a chapter and a half...Until Bella gets knocked out. Then the action occurs while she's unconscious. And it's all described to her later.

In fact, now that I think about it, about half the story was told secondhand--people recounting what was told to them that happened at SOME point in the past. Edward's entire freaking chapter on Carlisle's backstory is the biggest example of this. This is a cheap storytelling device! Creative writing 101: Show us things as they happen! Constant flashbacks are boring and a cop-out.

Since we're done with the formal elements, let's move onto content. I hate what Twilight has done to vampire lore. I don't mind a little bending of established vampire legend for a purpose, á la Let the Right One In or Underworld. But Stephenie Meyer not only completely distorts the vampire mythos, she makes crappy substitions and changes! WHY THE HELL DO VAMPIRES GLITTER IN SUNLIGHT?!?!? Were they all sired by Elton John? Since when can they fly? Or get other special powers just from being a vampire (like seeing the future or telepathy)? And killing a vampire--"You can't ever know. The only way to be sure is to burn the remains." BULL-CRAP. It's always been stakes, it SHOULD be stakes, and Buffy should slay Edward and let the whole thing be done and over with.

People love to say how original this story is. But how original is it, really? A vampire man falls in love with a human woman, and the world doesn't want them to be together. Yeah, never heard that one before. Except when Joss Whedon did it. Or when Anne Rice did it. Or when Bram F*cking Stoker did it! This story isn't original at all! It's the same as every freaking vampire love story ever written! And, no, it's not clever in any of the literature it not-so-subtly parallels either. I've made it clear in a previous post my opinions on how overdone Romeo and Juliet is, and it's far too obvious even to waste anymore text on it. What's more infuriating in Twilight is the oh-so-subtle comparison drawn between Edward and Bella and Heathcliff and Catherine from Wuthering Heights. In case you don't speak the language of sarcasm, that means it wasn't subtle at all. She narrated Bella reading the freaking passages from the book, for crying out loud! That was part of the problem I had with the film Little Children; the parallels between it and Madame Bovary were obvious enough--they didn't have to beat a dead horse into the ground by having her book club read it, too! I don't want it to be a fair assumption that readers of Twilight would of course not have read Wuthering Heights and would need it spelled out, but I guess that's what Stephenie Meyer believed. I look at something like A Thousand Acres (which I hated at the time but really appreciate now) for a great parallel to a previously established work (King Lear) that isn't forced...Or 10 Things I Hate About You and The Taming of the Shrew...Or even The Lion King and Hamlet!! You don't need Simba holding a skull in his paw and saying, "Alas, poor Yorick...I knew him well, Pumbaa..." for us to get it.

Finally, we have Bella and Edward. Again, I've made it clear on at least one other occasion my opinions on Edward as the object of many a teen girl's affections. But let me reiterate in brief: He's a creeper, a stalker, and an ass besides, and Bella's insanely shallow because it's apparently his body of a Greek god that's keeping her around. (On a side note, I read an interview with Robert Pattinson where he said Stephenie Meyer told him she based Twilight on a dream she had about some guy--not her husband--and how he feels dirty basically playing out her sexual fantasies. He cites, I believe rightly, the creepily over-detailed descriptions that she gives of Edward's physique as evidence for this. *shudder*) As for Bella, I would really have hoped by this day and age girls would be reading novels narrated by strong female characters. I really did. But Bella is one of the most passive, most victimized, most pathetic female characters I've seen in text in a very long time. She never stands up for herself! How many times does she let Edward walk all over her in the book, with only a feeble protest before she does exactly what he wants? All he has to do is say, "Please, trust me!" In the beginning of the book, when Edward is apparently glaring at her and avoiding her like the plague, she never confronts him or says anything about it. I would've given anything for a Mean Girls-esque reaction right then! She doesn't even try to fight back or run away when Evil Vampire Dude corners her in the ballet studio--even the narration right at the beginning says, she just sits back and accepts that she's going to die. And my GOD, can I return to how superficial she is? Another thing to count, aside from the hyperbolic descriptions of Edward's hotness, is how often she complains about being "plain" and "not pretty" and "boring." GET A GRIP, WOMAN! That's a great example to young girls there, I mean really.

I could probably go on and on and on, coming up with more reasons the more enraged I get. But this is long enough. There you have it--the main reasons why I hate Twilight. I expect I won't be influencing anyone who wasn't already on my side of this argument. But, please, read it with an open mind, and consider what I have to say. I tried Twilight, I really did. I read the entire first book, even honestly expecting something really good, what with the 50 bazillion copies sold, and these were my conclusions. However, if you have joined me on my anti-Twilight crusade, welcome, and prepare yourself. The battle won't be easy.

~The Original Fong~
**You wish you could pull off being me**

Reactions: