Why I Think Twilight Sucks

by *BeccaDePrisco

The majority of my non-working summer draws to a close today, and what better way to waste time than write?  I must admit I’ve been drawn to writing a little bit more over the past week, sparked by the visual consumption of Anti-Twilight rants.  Many of the points I plan to bring up have been covered in every other Anti-Twilight rant that I’ve read, but if this is the only one you ever plan on reading, than for the sake of sparing you the humiliation of liking Twilight, I’ll cover them ALL as best I can.

Let me start right off the bat with the most obvious flaw in Twilight; the characters’ personalities (or severe lack thereof).  Don’t worry, I’ll get to Eddy and Bella’s dysfunctional relationship soon enough, but for us twihaters it’s obvious enough.  For you Twitards, stick around.  It’ll save your life.

Let me start by listing a few of Bella’s key attributes:

1. Clumsy
2. Kind
3. Brave
4. Apparently smart (though Edward often insists otherwise)
5. Stubborn

Now, any other good author would consider these the “bare bones” of a personality, using them to build up the real personality.  For example, how is she “kind”?  Does she donate to charities a lot, or help out at animal rescue centers or nursing homes?  Or is she only kind as in would stop and help a kid collect his books that he’d dropped in the hall?  Does she aspire to use her kindness as a career, such as on the city’s board or as a nurse?  This is just a little depth into ONE trait.  But is this performed on Bella or any other character?  Not in the least.  Case in point; everyone’s favorite sparklepire, Edward.

1. Hot
2. Sparkling
3. Looks like a Greek god
4. Cold
5. Pale
6. Strong
7. Fast
8. “Noble”

Now, does that sound like a personality or a physical description?  Any time SMeyer decides to grace us with a description of Edward (every.  Other.  Sentence.)  it’s always describing how he looks.  We never hear Bella think “I just loved the way he could always make me laugh.  He always knows the right thing to say or the right way to act to cheer me up.”  That’s something you’d find if you entered the mind of someone in REALISTIC love.  I’m tempted to flail off into a tangent, but I’ll wrap up this point first.  Bella is always thinking about how he looks, or how gracefully he moves, or something else lame and fluffy.  

(I’m totally transitioning points right now into how Bella and Edward’s “relationship” shouldn’t work out…)  We never hear them just talk, like in a normal relationship.  The only thing close to a real “moment” was with Edward and Bella on the couch, with Edward reciting Romeo’s lines in Bella’s ear.  If it were me, I’d look at him with the stink-eye and ask what the heck he was on.  Romeo and Juliet is NOT a romance story as SMeyer so foolishly thinks it is, it’s warning kids not to fall in love too quickly, as there are ALWAYS negative repercussions (except for in Twilight of course), so the scene wasn’t even as romantic as it was intended to be.   Whenever they hold a conversation, it’s Edward warning Bella to keep away from him (only to have Bella refuse and tell him she loves him and that he’s beautiful), Bella telling Edward he’s beautiful, them thinking up a scheme to get away from bad vampires, or Bella whining to him about becoming a vampire.  Their lack of personalities makes their relationships (and not just B+E’s, but every other relationship - regardless of intimacy - in the book) utterly worthless.  

Let us move on to my first tangent in the point of Edward and Bella’s relationship… Edward.  The most you’ll ever hear from fans (and SMeyer) is “he’s hawt, lyk OMG I’M so gelus of bella cuz hse gtz edwrd omg she’sd so lucke thy luve each uthr soooo much!!!1!apple I weesh I culd haff hiz vampyr-heeyuman babys!1313!*I(”.  That’s the basis of his personality right there.  But, SMeyer also gave him such an ADORABLE trait in an attempt to give him a personality- the extent of his love going so far as to stalk Bella and abuse her.  Twitards often try to write this off as “true love”, but my dad never once stalked my mother or prevented her from visiting one of her friends she used to have a crush on, and they’ve now reached their 18th anniversary.  

First off, abuse.  

Wikipedia: “Abuse refers to the use or treatment of something (a person, item, substance, concept, idea or vocabulary) that is harmful. It can be classed by the target of abuse or the type of abuse.”  

When we think of abuse we immediately think physical (in regards to abuse and personality, SMeyer and her cult only think that way and refuse to think about minds because they’re so sad that they don’t have one).  

Now, let’s look further, shall we?

Wikipedia (on Abuse subcategories): “Psychological abuse: coercion, humiliation, intimidation, relational aggression, parental alienation or covert incest:  Where one person uses emotional or psychological coercion to compel another to do something they do not want, or is not in their best interests; or when one person manipulates another's emotional or psychological state for their own ends”.

Wikipedia: “Coercion … is the practice of compelling a person or manipulating them to behave in an involuntary way (whether through action or inaction) by use of threats, intimidation, trickery, or some other form of pressure or force.”

Coercion works pretty good.  And since it’s classified under Psychological Abuse, what does this say about our dear sparklepire?  He’s mentally abusive.  He took Bella's engine out of her car to stop her from visiting Jacob even when she wanted to go, just because HE didn’t want her to go, not to mention destroyed her truck that she loved so he could give her a fancier one.  He dragged her against her will to some hotel to “save” her from James (which wasn’t an act of LURVE).  He’s yelled at her because she did something he didn’t want her to do.  I could go on but I’m wasting your time here.  You can fill in the blanks if you’ve read it.  

Saying that he does all this for her is false.  Y’all know Alex, right?  (Hi, Alex!)  He’s a very shy little dude, but I think it’s kind of adorable.  However, being TOO shy isn’t good for him.  I perform a few acts of psychological abuse by dragging him along on things he doesn’t want to do, but it’s for an actual reason - to help him get over at least a little of his shyness.  Why does Edward do things for Bella?  To keep her around, because he wouldn’t like her to be gone.  After all, she’s a “drug” to him.

Which leads us to how their relationship is bound by lust and not love.  Edward was interested in Bella because of her scent, even though blood at most only smells metallic and will NEVER smell like flowers.  He talks to her a few times, most often saying how dangerous he is, then they somehow end up dating.  Stop right now and pick up a volume of Twilight if you have it.  Look through the first few chapters and find me one example of them “building a relationship”.  They never just chat about music for extensive periods, or talk about shows they’d seen in TV, slowly realizing that they were compatible and liked spending time together.  No.  There was none.  It was just hi, nice to meet you, BAM! we’re a unit now.  

This all promotes unhealthy relationships.  They consider suicide when they break up.  Do you know how often the average 13-year-old breaks up with someone?  What if she was convinced that they were like Edward and Bella, and without him she couldn’t bear the thought of living?  Teenage suicide would go up rapidly.  Suicide is not true love.  If anyone has read DNAngel, the story of Freedert and Elliot is a fine example.  The moral Freedert told Daisuke was that in order to show true love you don’t have to kill yourself, you must live and protect that person’s memory.  Bella goes into a mini-depression whenever Edward leaves to go hunt and can’t sleep well unless he’s perched on her windowpane staring at her (I’m sorry, but no matter how adorable a guy is, it's just plain wrong.  Would it be the same if Eddy actually LOOKED one hundred years old?  Of course not).  Anyway… Bella gave up her future, her education, her family, her life, humanity and her soul just to be with Edward.  Oh, but wait, now that she’s a Mary Sue-pire she can go to college as many times as she wants!  She’s still gonna watch her family members die.  She was the last one of her generation in her family.

And “Nessie” (I keep using her nickname ‘cause her real name is too much of a bother to spell) is just plain weird.  Enough Twitards hate her too that I won’t need to go into it.  Her “genes” shouldn’t give her half-vampire powers, though… they should give her down syndrome or some other genetic disease.  Again, this is more in the science field, and plenty of Twihaters have covered it amazingly, so go check them out instead.  Back from my tangent-within-a-tangent to the main point of this tangent, Bella, she only married Edward because she wanted sex.  Simply lust.  MOVING ON from my sudden tangent….

Edward is puzzled about how Bella thinks it’s okay with him being a vampire.  To be totally honest, if a guy could prove to me that he was a (non-sparkling) vampire, I’d get down on one knee and propose right there, and I’m sure all of my friends would do the same (ISMERYS.).  And if you’ve read the excerpt of Midnight Sun you’ll find that he’s constantly wondering how no one is afraid of him.  “Oh, gee, why are they near me?  Can’t they tell how DANGEROUS I AM?!”  One look at Edward is not gonna deter you from him.  After all, he’s “built to draw in prey with his BEAUTY”.  If he was short and fat with a large bald spot, moles all over his face and teeth jutting every which way, then and only then would we feel a bit unnerved by one look.  But if we were to turn and see a Greek god shining in the middle of the school courtyard, it would certainly not send a girl screaming to her mother.  It’s almost as if he’s as oblivious to his “dazzling” as Bella is to all the students of the school throwing themselves at her feet.

A lot is revealed about Edward in Midnight Sun but I won’t go so far as to saying it gave him a personality.  For one, the story felt more like a bad fan fiction and never once described the scenery expect for rain or snow.  Besides that, it shows a few reasons behind some of Edward’s actions and actually explains a tiny portion of some things, but that wasn’t enough.  I can’t describe it well, but let’s put it this way; in a grayscale there are two extremes, black and white.  The shades in between are various shades of gray, which represent varying personalities.  In Twilight, Edward’s personality is in the black, completely void.  Yet in Midnight Sun, his personality is in the white, still void of personality, but completely different from Twilight’s Edward, in some way.

One unrelated fact about Edward and his stalking: every character seems to notice it, including Edward, at which point he feels slightly disgusted with himself.  However, a few scenes prior in Midnight Sun he spent his whole class time thinking up the perfect way to kill Bella and all her classmates in case of witnesses, and did not once regret these thoughts. Not to mention his PMS throughout the series.

Bella’s situation is the most extreme blowing-out-of-portion of the “new-kid” syndrome I’ve ever seen.  There is no small-town high school so deprived of outside contact that a new student’s arrival will be the biggest point of their year.  New students arrive one every other month at the least for my school, and I live in a town with a small teenage population (Florida = retired people central).  It’s no big deal; a few people approach the kid if they look nice enough, while others ask amongst themselves who the kid is and where they’re from, then everyone loses interest and the kid dissolves into our regular life.  If Bella is supposed to be an “average” teenage girl she won’t be so OMGPRETTYFUL that three guys will ask her to the girl’s-choice dance.  Not to mention that at this point the HAWTEST guy at school is already convinced that he’s madly in love with her.

Not to mention that Bella is the embodiment of women’s-rights (circa the 1800's).  She is constantly having to be saved by Edward, be it her tripping like a retard over a tree root or being mauled by an evil vampire.  She cooks for Charlie which, even though she wants to do it, is something trivial in comparison to her doing anything else helpful around the house, like mowing the lawn or painting a fence or other things her dad would normally do.  So what if he just microwaves a TV dinner every day?  It's probably better than how most college kids eat.  Save him breaking his back by cleaning out the garage for him, don’t just fatten him up with chicken and spaghetti.  Her mom is ditzy as well, and Bella felt sorry for leaving her alone, proving her mom to be a helpless female.  Bella’s act of “bravery” to face James alone was stupid and resulted in her (shockingly) being rescued by Edward.  She could have clued them in and they could’ve hidden in the shadows, ready to jump James before he attacked Bella.  It was one vampire against the whole Cullen coven.  It could’ve ended a lot easier but hey, SMeyer just tacked that part onto the end in a desperate attempt at plot, so it obvious wasn’t well-though out anyway.  She doesn’t think when she writes anyway.

I don’t even need to cover this in my mind, but for those who don’t think it already- Bella is a Mary Sue.  Mary Sue’s are “perfect” characters.  “Oh but Bella’s clumsy, so she’s not perfect!”  Actually, again in Midnight Sun, her clumsiness is a partial reason to why Edward “falls in love with her”.

Unrelated thought about Bella: it is mentioned a few times in both Twilight and Midnight Sun that Bella was uncomfortable in the sense that she was cold, yet she has no problem with Edward’s body temperature being below zero (which is not optimal conditions for sperm, just saying, because they need to be warm to survive for even three weeks and that causes “Nessie’s” conception to be all the more ridiculous).  *ehem* Moving on….

Let’s stop for a moment and focus on characters other than Bella and Edward.  Like… Alice, or Jasper, or even Jessica, how ‘bout her!  …Nah.  They were all swept under the rug to make room for Eddykin’s luv for Bellabear.  However, one character is focused on a little bit and is more than a wallflower; JACOB.  I don't have many complaints about the Meyerwolves (at least not as many as the Meyerpires), but Jacob himself is a starnge character, and the "plot" surrounding him is scarce at best.  

Bella is in her comatose state (telling girls to withdraw from the world and consider suicide if your boyfriend ever leaves you) and ends up spending more time with Jacob Black.  He even ends up revealing his tribe's secrets and introduces her into his world.  She smiles and laughs but inside remains dead to him, not thinking about him as she runs off to save the sparklepire who'd left her.  Then - in Eclipse, was it? -  he kisses her (and this is when Edward was around, people,) and she OMGrealizes that she's ALSO in love with JACOB.  GASP.

Does that make any sense whatsoever?  Let's say that you'd been dating a guy for, I dunno, years and years and years, and you find he cheats on you or something and he dumps you and you end up in a state similar to Bella's coma.  In such a situation you might be hesitant to find love, but for hypothetical reasons let's say you're still lonely, or still love the guy (dumb).  You meet this really nice (HAWT) guy who shows general interest in you and eases you out of your shell, and you're smiling and laughing like the old days.  You have lots in common and he can always make you smile no matter how depressed you're feeling.  Slowly your feelings toward him grow until he admits he loves you, in which case you accept and return those feelings and your life is whole.

That's what it would've gone down as.  She wouldn't be so cold to the outside world that she could not have any feelings for the guy who HAS a personality.  Not to mention he's HAWT, so I'd think it was a two-for-all.  But no, she doesn't realize she loves him, she still loves Mr. Heartbreak Sparklepire and runs off without a care in the world about Jacob, who's shown her all this affection, shared massive secrets, and nursed her back to her old self.  She falls back into Eddykins arms and they live happily for a while.

Then OMG she falls in love with Jacob AFTER Ed's back.  WTH?!

On the subject of werewolves, I'll briefly touch on imprinting before jumping to the next subject.  Imprinting is suppose to mean you find your partner for life who will insure the perfect children gene-wise.  The man instantly falls for the woman, but what say does the woman have?  What if the woman doesn't like the man?  The tribe marries 'em off and expects little pups anyways.  And Leah (the only female character with potential at being strong but it written off as harpy and annoying by the author and that influences the reader's opinion) is a female werewolf, but she's sterile.  She can't have kids.  So she can't imprint and find her soul-mate, because that would put the woman in control of that relationship.  And with vampires too!  Somehow Eddy can keep his sperm alive despite being colder than the North Pole, but it's revealed that girl vampires are sterile.  Why can girls never reproduce in these species?  It's never that way for vampires in other vampire literature; y'know, the good ones?

Therefore, in terms of reproduction and imprinting, the guys (for lack of a better saying) are always the ones wearing the pants.  And Claire and Nessie... they never will get a chance to date other guys because the tribe will be raising Claire to have little Quil-pups and Nessie is already in love with Jacob somehow.  Quil is gonna be an uncle-figure to Claire, so how awkward would it be knowing someday you'd be having the children of a man you felt was an uncle your whole life?  Child-grooming.  It's illegal and disgusting.  So not only does Twilight promote feminism, poor relationships, necro- and pedophilia, it accepts child-grooming as well!  

I feel like jumping to the plot, or lack thereof.  There’s a lot of lacking thereof-ing in this book, get used to it.  There are two arguments about this; A) the plot is about Bella and Edward’s relationship (which would make the evil vamps at the end some kind of awkward fifth wheel) or B) the bad vamps at the end ARE the plot and Bella and Edward’s love is a sub-plot of some sort (even though it’s the focus of the book).  

Whichever one is what SMeyer intended (she wasn’t thinking when writing, though), the plot is, in reality, C) non-existent.  James ripped it to shreds, assuming there was one in the first place, and a few shreds landed in the end of the book.  My assumption is that there was no evil band of vamps in the first draft and when SMeyer received another rejection letter they added “you might want to add some actual conflict besides your gay sparklepire’s whining.”  If some one did actually tell her that, MARRY ME PLZ.  There were hardly any hints to their existence throughout the book, though thankfully the movie raised it to attention a bit more the way it probably should’ve been.

Let’s look at a basic model my dearest English teacher taught us last year; the “bare-bones” of plot:

Basic Situation - Setting, characters, and conflict introduced
Complication - Something happens that causes rising action
Turning Point - The characters decide something that dramatically changes things
Climax/Denouement - The action reaches its peak, the conflict is resolved, and the result is revealed.  


If the vamps had been the main plot, then things should’ve been centered a bit more around the bad vamps.  Maybe Bella ran into one of them and Edward appeared and led her away, and within that she realizes she loves him or something.  The romance could’ve been toned down to make room for the actual plot and it would’ve worked out fine.  

Here's my interpretation of  the plot SMeyer... thought up...

Basic Situation - Bella moves to Forks where she meets Edward and they're both interested in each others' confusing attributes (Bella's smell, Edward's... looks)
Complication - Bella finds out about Edward being a vampire, which would normally cause rising action as the main female character struggles with this knowledge and the love for the main male character; however, there is no rising action.  Bella just writes it off and says "ilu anyways".
Turning Point - ...I really didn't see one.  If Bella hadn't accepted Edward right off the bat, instead thinking it over and coming to the decision that she didn't mind, THEN that would be a turning point.
Climax - Bad vamps appear and try to kill Bella, Bella does something dumb, Edward comes to save her, they go to prom.  The end.

...my 6th grade Language Arts teacher always said that in a good story, the conflict must be resolved by the main character; Bella.  However, who kills James (somehow the antagonist)?  That's right, Edward.  Bella didn't do anything.

Here’s how I think it should’ve played out…

Basic Situation - We meet Bella Swan in the sleepy town of Forks, Washington, where she meets the dreamy yet mysterious Edward Cullen.  But, as soon as she gets there, she ends up finding out about mysterious killings throughout the town.
Complication - Bella Swan gets lost in the woods after her walk with Jacob Black, where she stumbles upon Edward hunting.  Upon seeing this, Bella instantly suspects Edward is the murderer loose in the town.
Turning Point - Edward lets Bella in on the Cullen’s secret in an attempt to keep her from revealing them to her chief-of-police father, and with these new bonds of trust they find themselves falling in love.
Climax/Denouement  - Bella is discovered by the band of evil vampires, and results in a horrendous fight between the covens.  The smaller group is sent running after their leader James is killed, while Bella watches from the safety of the trees.  Edward is afraid that after seeing them fight, Bella would be scared of him, but Bella reveals her love for Edward and they live happily ever after (until the sequel).

If the book had been written like that, I might have liked it.  At least in my mind it was better laid out than the spontaneous acts of sparkling the original held.

Now, as much as I have to say about the other characters, let’s move on to my favorite subject; THE SPARKLES DESU.  SMeyer apparently doesn’t think while writing, but couldn’t she have thought before writing?  Good authors spend much time brooding about possible plotholes or revisions to the story before sending it off to the publisher.  SMeyer just dreamed it up, slapped it on paper and shipped it out a hundred places “not hoping” that it would get published.  She somehow never learned all the attributes of vampires and proceeded to fail at researching them thoroughly, deciding instead to be “unique” and create her “OWN” vampires.  Too bad all she ended up doing was besmirching the vampire name and creating plotholes bigger than galaxies.  The way she tried to explain it, I hear, would end up causing the vampire’s skin to harden in the sunlight, which in reality would immobilize them.  I’m not gonna bother with the rest because I’m not as savvy with her scientific failing.

Now as I sit here on my right foot which is growing cold from blood loss, I’m at a loss for where to go now besides the actual way the story is written and the “author” herself.  Let’s start with the obvious abuse of Word’s ‘synonyms’ feature.  In the meadow scene she managed to describe Edward with the same word in four or five different ways.  They all meant sparkly.  And also, just because Edward is old (and a pedo…), it doesn’t mean he can use words no one can understand, yet somehow these Juniors in high school can.  I’m a sophomore at the time I"m writing this and some words they used casually (such as ostentatious, which means fancy or showy,) are words I’d never have understood had someone my age spoke it to me.  Who knows?  Maybe the demographics there cause the word to be popular or it’s something I’m s’posed to learn in a year.  Possible, albeit unlikely.  I use large words every now and again, but not frequently like those guys did. It took the connection away and made it feel like I was reading a children’s book about adults.  SMeyer sounds like she had some weird teenage years.

The scenery was practically as developed as the plot throughout the series, and is beyond ignored in Midnight Sun.  The thing that got the most description (besides Edward) was probably Bella’s ratty old red truck.  There was no mention of the “concrete bricks of the school’s walls with little chips of long-since worn-out paint still clinging to the bare surface” or “the thin clouds like murky cotton balls stretched out over the pallid blue morning sky”.  It was just “STUFF HAPPENZ”.  It felt like things were happening over a bare white canvas.  Only good authors can describe the scenery scarcely and make it seem like they described it thoroughly.  Better ones (STEPHEN KING) can go on lengthy descriptions that just wrap you up into the scene and set the mood for whatever’s about to happen, actually drawing you into the up-coming scene just by mentioning the weeds scattered amongst the bare trees.  SMeyer was just lazy and a crappy writer.

Bella is a self-insert.  She’s exactly what SMeyer wanted to be (with guys groveling at her feet, a PERFECT man at her side, and everything she could ever want in the end).  Continuing with the Mary Sue thing, Bella
A) apparently gets good grades,
B) has all the guys swarming her instantly,
C) has all the GIRLS swarming her and she totally disregards them later on in the stories and they apparently don’t notice or care,
D) gets the hottest guy in school,
E) thinks she’s not pretty even though she IS,
F) has some strange and never explained super-special ability that is never explained,
G) gets everything she wants eventually (Eddykins, sparklesex, and vampism)
H) is accepted from universal rules (the newborn-vampire thing) which is NEVER EXPLAINED,
I) becomes more powerful than the others (even though she’s somehow a newborn vampire despite the fact that she didn’t go through the murderous, bloodthirsty part), and
J) gets a baby and doesn’t have to raise it or teach it, which destroys the purpose of even having the baby, because though it’s difficult, helping the baby learn to do things is necessary to form bonds between parents and infant.

Still don’t think she’s a Mary-Sue?  Then that’s very sad.  

Now, on to Mrs. Meyer.  She is just plain evil.  She is snotty, big-headed, whiny, and obnoxious.  She regards criticism (which is vital to an author’s growth) as “mean”, and refuses all mail that offers her “tips”.  Ever send her hate mail?  She’ll never read it.  Her whipping boy- I mean, brother, Seth, who’s just like his sister, reads all her mail, only giving her the “good” letters that won’t hurt her poor, delicate feelings.  She revels in the attention her fans give her, but refuses to give any to her fans from what I hear.  She just nods, smiles and dismisses any questions with a “thank you, next?”.  She thinks Edward Cullen could kill Harry Potter in “0.16 seconds” and bashes all other romance novels (plus Romeo and Juliet which she stupidly thinks is a romance novel even though it’s warning kids against relationships like Edward and Bella’s) and their main characters, ones that at least HAVE personalities.

She photoshops all her pictures to make herself look better.  She thinks that Edward and Bella are the personification of “true love” and that anything not like their love isn’t “true”.  She wrote the book based on her own sad fantasies, she hears her characters talking in her head, she has a massive obsession with Edward, telling her poor husband that she’d leave him without a second thought if Edward (or Jacob she said, but I’m sure if it were both she’d chose Edward) appeared at their door, and many other insane qualities.  I’ve never heard the saying “don’t judge a book by it’s author”, but both are horrible enough on their own planes that I hate them to their own extremes.  Especially the book because it’s regarded as such an amazing piece of literature.

Now as my lids are more than ready to close for a good six hours and I must rest before I start by baby-sitting job tomorrow, I’m forced to give y’all a hasty good night.  I have more to say on the subject of Twilight, but I’d rather not for fear of sounding as obsessed as SMeyer.  ‘Night, all.  Check under the bed for sparklepires.

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Written by Becca D. (niah-miyoki.deviantart.com)