Twilight Discussion, For or against? Options

[Another Morning]

Alright, so I know there are topics for Twilight fans, and that's fine, have fun. Since I am not a Twilight fan, I tend to avoid them, because I don't want to storm into a place for people to talk about the book/movie they like and trash it. So this is a topic for fans and non-fans to discuss what they love or hate about the books and movies.

IF YOU FEEL VERY STRONGLY ONE WAY ABOUT TWILIGHT AND DISLIKE PEOPLE NOT SHARING YOUR OPINION ABOUT IT, THIS TOPIC IS PROBABLY NOT THE BEST FOR YOU.

Just getting that out of the way.

And now, I rant.

Okay, so I've already said that I don't like Twilight, but I've never really said what I dislike about it. Well...here is my in-depth view of the series and the movie.

First of all, as it has already been pointed out, the things in Twilight are not vampires or werewolves. My dad suggested I refer to them as "glampires", and I rather like it. There are some things I can let slide, but on the whole, I'm a big fan of the original vampire. Must live on HUMAN blood (but they don't go OMFGCRAZY when somebody gets a papercut, hint hint Meyer), weakened/harmed by sunlight (sparkling does not factor in at all), must sleep in native earth, cannot enter homes uninvited, fetid breath (they are CORPSES, people, it's only a glamour that helps them lure in victims), unable to kill themselves (sorry Edward, no manipulation or emotion abuse for you), repelled by garlic and the cross, don't show up in mirrors, killed with fire-hardened ash stake to the heart or with flames, obedient to their master who created them, all that jazz. And, most important of all, vampires are MONSTERS. They have no soul. They cannot fall in love, they don't care about people. Humans are food to them, nothing more. And as monsters, they should be killed. That's the best kind of vampire to me. Like I said, I can be lenient on some of those things, but when you totally disregard all of them, you don't have a vampire anymore. Same with the werewolves. If you want to change things so bad, just make an entirely new species. And I do feel really bad for the Native American tribe that had their heritage and mythology so blatantly warped and ignored.

Second, the characters in the story, for the most part, I either hate or don't care about at all. Edward and Bella, for example, I hate. Edward is a possessive, abusive stalker who controls Bella with threats and displays of power. He takes the engine out of her car so she can't see her friends, and he threatens to kill himself if she ever leaves him. Bella doesn't exist outside of Edward, even the entire second book is just her complaining that he's gone, she is supposed to be all mature and old for her age, even though she acts like a total teenagers, running headfirst into doing anything as long as she can stay with Edward, and she complains all the time about being such an outcast when it's actually mostly self inflicted. She looks down on any classmates that try to be nice to her. All we hear from her regarding Edward is how beautiful he is, she never mentions liking him for his personality (not that you can blame her, he doesn't really have much of one). For both of them, most of their character traits we only know because we're told what they're supposed to be, they never actually display them. The other characters all have as little personality as Bella and Edward. There are a few that I like, though. Jacob is actually cool when he's not doing anything related to Bella, and Charlie made a good effort to be there for Bella, even if she didn't really acknowledge or appreciate it and just dismissed him all the time. Billy was cool, too, and Rosalie had her moments. Movie-wise, all the people at her school seemed much more cool and interested than Bella did, I would have rather watched a movie about them. I feel bad that they're all trapped in such a horrid book/movie.

Finally, even the writing itself isn't good. Smeyer is repetative and never leaves just one adjective where three will fit, some of which don't even make sense. Her purple prose turns what could be dramatic situations kind of funny. The stories all seem like she made it up as she went, and I lose interest quickly in whatever is going on. She goes into intense detail about things nobody cares about, like how Bella eats her breakfast, but when it comes to things like actually developing characters and relationships, she skips over it.

The movie bored me to tears. Even with the hilarious RiffTrak by the MST3K guys, it still felt like it lasted 8 hours.

This being said, I hate when people dis a book or movie without reading it, so let it be known that I have read the first the books and half of the last one, and seen the movie twice (first time without the riff, second time with). So I'm not just assuming any of this.

Now, discuss away! =D