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Twilight Rant

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Twilight, it seems, has taken the world by storm. The series by Stephenie Meyer has become a best seller and has even been made into a movie…Yes, the "it" thing right now just makes me weep for what has become of the world of literature. A series about a completely useless, pathetic “ordinary” girl falling in love with an, apparently, perfect-in-every-single-way-and-we-need-pages-upon-pages-reminding-us-of-this, sparkling, creepy, abusive, “vampire” which was all based upon a dream that Meyer had…someone pinch me, please, I must be dreaming. Oh, if only.

I am an avid reader, and have been as long as I remember, and in particular I love fantasy and supernatural novels. I am a huge, huge, HUGE fan of vampire novels and read as many as I possibly can and I find most of them quite enjoyable, albeit there were one or two that just made me roll my eyes at their predictability.
Anyhow, back onto my original point. Twilight. Twilight is not what I classify as a vampire novel.  No, I prefer to classify it as a "trashy-Fabio-romance-novel" aimed at teenagers. Twilight is a horrible novel and the fact that it has become so popular is an insult to the writers everywhere.

There are many reasons why I personally do not like the series and think that everyone should disown it immediately.

One of the reasons I dislike the series is the main female characters. I mean really, this book has so many negative role models for teenage girls and is incredibly sexist! Did we jump back forty-freaking-years? You would think that with the author of the series being female the female characters would be very strong willed…apparently not. So here we go;

-Bella Swan; the main character. She is supposed to be the heroine; the one that the readers are supposed to look up to! She is a very weak character and completely dependent on Edward despite how horribly abusive and creepily over-protective he is! Whenever danger arises, Bella reverts into a feeble, irrational and submissive state of mind and relies on others to save her! She is the typical damsel-in-distress and is constantly whining and crying about whatever. She just allows Edward control every aspect of her life without a single protest.
Also, she is a very rude person; another trait young women shouldn’t be developing. An example of this is the way she disrespects her father, despite the fact that he hasn’t really done anything to her…unlike Edward. Honestly, the fact that she was able to accept all of the crap he gave her; all the emotional and mental pain he put her through without any objections is horrible.
Another thing about Bella that is quite frustrating is that she isn’t really given the opportunity to choose anything for herself until Breaking Dawn, and she doesn’t even bother protesting this!

-Alice. I mean, she loves partying and material possessions. You'd think that after how many years she's been a vampire she would have grown wiser and become quite an intelligent woman...no. Albeit at first she seems like a bit of a tough girl, but if we brush away that persona we see this quite clearly. That's not what young women should be aiming for! My god, she was bribed with a Porsche by Edward to keep Bella hostage whenever he went out in Eclipse. THAT IS NOT GOOD! WHAT THE FUCK?! D< She's always obsessing over whatever new material item she has, whenever she is not of use to any of the male characters of course.

-Rosalie. Now, she at first appears to be a somewhat strong character…but alas, like the other female characters, she is a negative influence on women. Her whole character is centred around her beauty. Do we really need girls growing up to think that beauty is the only thing that matters? Also, Rosalie is obsessed with having children and is willing to give up her immortality and beauty to have them. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to want to have children, but again, that’s not the only thing women should aspire to do.

-Esme. The mother figure. I don’t really need to elaborate further on her as she never really does anything…I’ve more or less covered why aspiring to be just a mother figure is an anti-feminist ideal as women are capable of doing so much more then just standing in the background being the mum.

Another thing that I find frustratingly annoying about the Twilight series is Edward. Not just how chapters upon chapters are an homage to his “God like” beauty, but how people think he is cute and sweet and caring despite how creepy he is. A blatant example of this is how he watches Bella sleep at night. Now, in the real world, this would be considered stalking and he would have a restraining order slapped on his ass so fast (Though that makes me wonder…her dad’s a cop, why didn’t he do anything?). It is not cute in any way shape or form. If I woke up to find some guy I barely knew at the end of the bed, no matter how gorgeous he was I would grab the object nearest to me and beat the shit out of him and scream to get someone to help, etc. etc.

Edward is also quite abusive to Bella. Now, before I get any comments from anyone going “But he never hits her”, let me point out to you that abuse is more than just physical. It’s emotional and mental too. Remember kiddies; sticks and stones may break my bones…but words will hurt forever. Edward is controlling, condescending and possessive. Anyways, back to what I was talking about. In New Moon Edward leaves Bella alone for months on end and she gets to the point where she’s nearly going off cliffs just to hear his voice or whatever. She suffered massive mental trauma because of him and became depressed. That’s not the outcome of a healthy relationship people.

Another example is where in Eclipse, Edward won’t allow Bella to go and see Jacob to the point that he messes with the engine just so she can’t go and see him. That is not him being protective; that’s him being possessive. Sure, you could bring up that he doesn’t want Bella to be hurt by the werewolves, but think for a minute. Jacob cares about her too, he would protect her. I mean, when she finally did get to Jacob she kept worrying about what was going to happen when she eventually got back to the Cullen house hold. That’s usually the outcome in an abusive relationship in real life.

My final point in this rant as I feel it is getting quite long winded is the writing style in itself and character development. Twilight reads like it was written by a 7 year old that had vaguely heard of vampires and had gotten their hands on a thesaurus. The use of first person throughout the novel is further proof of it being a wish fulfillment book. And the purple prose…ugh. We do not need a million different words to describe how stunning Edward is. Using big words does not make you a good writer…in fact it makes you appear incredibly stupid if you combine it with a plot-less story. Oh, and the dialogue. Dialogue should be interesting, not just question-answer repeatedly. It gets quite boring.

Also, my final point is that any good author…any adequate author knows that character development and plot are essentials to creating a good story. The Twilight series lacks both of these as the characters are one-dimensional and there really is no plot…just cliché after cliché. You can’t write a story with just clichés!

I know that by now this rant is turning into a ramble…but hey, I’m not the first person to rant about it. There are plenty of other rants out there that have brought up other valid points and have gone into more detail than I have. Oh, and if any Twilight fans have found this offensive…then flame ahead. I actually look forward to reading your comments on how I’m stupid for voicing my own opinion.
Yes. Anyone who knows me knows how much I hate Twilight, so this was going to happen eventually. :D Though if anyone else has anything I could possibly add to it then I'm all ears ^w^

Oh, and flamers? BRING IT ON!

I give permission to the anti-Twilight clubs I'm in to post this :D
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VanAkenVerse's avatar

Also, people need to stop villainfying "ugly" women. Not only is Stephenie Meyer and EL James guilty of this, but, Disney is guilty of ugly shaming female characters as well.


In order to be a good strong, feminist role models, girls now have to starve themselves, get breast implants, lip fillers, and Brazilian butt lifts. That is what these super sexualized female role models are teaching to little girls.