Am I alone in my utter disgust and bafflement of this garbage?
Until about a week ago I'd never heard of this "Twilight" crap. Then I started hearing people (read: teenage girls) absolutely FREAKING out over it, screaming, carrying on, etc. Then ads, commercials, billboards, posters, etc. start appearing EVERYWHERE, practically overnight. Twilight books, Twilight shirts, Twilight shoes, Twilight CDs, Twilight lipstick, Twilight dinner deals at McDonalds, Twilight shoe polish, wilight plungers, Twilight dildoes: the works. A massive underground ad & merch campaign the likes of which I haven't seen since Jurassic Park.
I finally asked someone what the fuck was going on, and after several people confused me for some kind of luddite neanderthal, I finally got an answer: "it's about vampires. HOT vampires." "Oh," I said, thinking it was nothing more than the teenage version of 'Underworld.' You know, the usual pop culture depiction of vampires: hot, pale goths in black leather that run around shooting werewolves in bullet-time. Another flash-in-the-pan adolescent teenage girl book series translated into a movie, where's the harm in that?
Then I actually had to read the thing.
Apparently my Political Science prof is a closet sadist and gets off on the torture of the innocent, because she had us take a look at the series (we're doing a unit on popular culture, specifically the idea of the 'opiate of the masses'). So go read it, she says. See what kinds of messages pop culture is feeding to young, female North America. It'll be a sociology experiment, she says.
This is the most nauseating piece of garbage I've read in months, and I had to read the current Conservative government's defense of Canada dropping the Kyoto Accord. Who the hell pays for this shit? It reads like someone's god-awful anime fanfiction - the characters are vapid, trite and two-dimensional, the premise is borderline retarded, and the style is grossly cliche'd and filled with thesaurus-whoring, purple prose and meandering descriptions that make J.R.R. Tolkein seem to-the-point.
Basically, it's about a snarky, conceited Mary-Sue of a teenage girl who meets and falls in love with a vampire at her highschool. Forget the fact that this Edward kid's over a hundred and nobody seems to notice he's still in highschool, year after year, continuity is right out the window. Stephenie Meyer obviously thinks her reader base is possessed of single-digit IQ anyways (I have no proof to the contrary). Meyer spends probably 75% of the book describing how attractive Edward is; she must have exhausted a room full of thesauruses in her writing because she uses the world 'perfect' (and synonyms of it) about a hundred thousand times.
The characters were extraordinarily trite and two-dimensional, making even the worn-out stereotypes found in most fantasy or adolescent literature seem unique and interesting. Bella is about as Mary-Sue as any protagonist you'd find in a piece of fanfiction - she's portrayed as being somewhat of a prodigal genius without displaying any real evidence of intelligence in the story (aside from her love of classic literature and ability to do well in class). She also displays a complete inability to take care of herself by any means throughout the story - but we'll get to the sexism later.
Edward is Bella's vampiric lover, and he's basically a collosal douche. He's arrogant, abusive, possessive and domineering, but it's okay because "he really loves Bella". Oh, and he's hot. Really, really, fucking hot. You don't understand how hot this guy is, and I guess I don't, either, becayse descriving how PERFECTLY, OTHERWORLDLY, INSANELY, INCREDIBLY, ALL-ENCOMPASSINGLY, UNFORGIVINGLY HOTTTTTT this fucking kid is takes up three quarters of the book.
... That's sort of it for Edward, actually. He's a vampire, and he's hot. If there's more depth to his character I missed it in all the purple prose and straight-up thesaurus rape.
The other characters? Might as well not exist. Meyers could have named every other character "PLOT DEVICE NUMBER ONE" "PLOT DEVICE NUMBER TWO" etc, and the impact on the novel would have been the same.
The best part of this book is that it's terribly sexist. Like, really, really, terribly, horribly sexist. And being marketed towards teenage girls. Awesome. Bella is straight-up useless 100% of the time, blundering repeatedly into situations that would get her killed if it weren't for - surprise! The hot guy rescuer. Thank GOD for having a hot guy with superpowers hanging around 24/7 'cause she sure as hell can't look after herself by any means. Her only pursuits are typical femenine gender roles (cooking and cleaning), she's physically and emotionally weak, and despite being a supposed genius suffers from a complete lack of intelligent thought - all she ever thinks about is "ohmigawd Edward is soooooooo dreeeeamy..." Edward is, as noted above, possessive to the point of paranoia. Oh, and abusive. Horribly, horribly abusive. Won't let her see other friends, gets violent when he's angry, pretty much writes her opinions off whenever she ventures one (which she, admittedly, is too busy going "ohmigawd Edward is soooooooo dreeeeamy..." to do very often).
Basically, this series (and movie) is just the logical progression from Harry Potter for teenage girls. They're "like, totally too old" for J.K. Rowling, and want something 'darker' (sic) and more 'mature' (double sic) to obsess over and write terrible fanfiction about. There's nothing innately wrong with that, it's as I said a natural progression, and has been happening since literature began to be marketed towards younger audiences. What I am constantly baffled by is how anyone could make the transition from good writing (J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, to name a few) into terrible writing (Stephenie Meyer), but then again, teenagers, as anyone above the age of 25 will tell you, are assholes.
What disturbs me is that a series like Twilight would ever be allowed to be marketed towards young, impressionable females despite it's obvious sexism. How a book with no strong female characters could possibly appeal to a female audience is beyond me, but of course that seems to be the point - play to those with low self-esteem and/or abusive, overly possessive boyfriends. Portraying such outdated views on gender roles and relationships in general as socially acceptable behaviour is repulsive to me, as is profiting off of it.
In a society where women are already indoctrinated in their own supposedly rightful submission before me, portrayed as the "weaker" sex (both emotionally and physically), considered to be reliant on men for their survival and well-being, urged to concern themselves with their appearance and 'traditional' domestic roles, and plagued with self-esteem and self-confidence issues , this series of novels is potentially harmful female-submission propaganda, especially for young women unsure about about their appearance, their place in the world and their role in relationships and society. Meyer's characters have nothing positive to offer society and glamourize ideals and opinions that are more at home in medieval Europe than the modern world.
An abusive, obsessive older man and a vapid, submissive teenage girl with self esteem issues as the 'perfect couple?' Get real. This is badly-written fap-fiction and nothing more.
),big baggy pants, a nice double chin and glasses. On top of that it seemed that this fuck hadn't found out that you can shower more than once a week! There was absolutely no arm room for me because of him so i had to sit uncomfortably while he was having a nice stretch with a damn laptop. He also played ultra-loud music through his headphones(He seemed to be making somekind of fucking computer music that sounded like shit anyways),he had to occasionally move his damn laptop bag and answer his cellphone and every goddamn time i had to move. He seemed exhausted when he had plugged his laptop into the charger aswell 
fucking breathing so heavilly.
