Stuff Smart People DON'T Like: Twilight: Final Post

I finally finished this collection of writing the other day. The last third did not offer anything in the way of redeeming value. That being said, I'll just summarize it up with a few main critiques as to why people should not read this book, much less require it as reading in a COLLEGE level class. Looks like the football team isn't the only shameful thing in Columbus.

I can't take full credit for my first big critique. This was first summarized on The Oatmeal's site a couple years ago. That point is that Bella's character is intentionally vague and nondescript. We know nothing about her except that she's whiny, and apparently just sucks at life in general. This point is so blatant that you have to assume that Meyer wrote it that way so that every 12-16 year old girl who listens to Dashboard Confessional and hates life at middle/high school can insert themselves into Bella's character. For the life of me I can't understand why; the only thing worse than reading about Bella would actually imagine being her. I'd rather shoot myself in the face.

Related to this critique is the notion that Bella is a bit of an anachronism. She has no desire in life besides being devoted to Edward. College? Career? What for? She'd rather be at home barefoot, sparkly, and fat with vampire spawn in her banal belly. Apparently in the Twilight universe, the feminism movement never happened and the image of the 50's housewife lived on. I wonder if Meyer will throw in a reference to Joseph McCarthy eventually becoming president in a future book. But I digress; is this what young girls (and middle-aged women) look for in a female role model? For these women, please read something better, like The Hunger Games. It's well-written, and the lead character actually has a personality that is not hopelessly pathetic.

In closing, I will say one good thing about Twilight. It's actually better than the movie. Yes, I did watch the movie way back when I was trying to be a supportive boyfriend. That's two hours of my life I will never get back. I will also never be able to get the worst movie line I've ever heard out of my head. "Hold on tight spider-monkey." It was almost like they approached screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg and asked her "Is there anyway you can make this shittier than the book?" To which her reply was "Are you kidding me, I wrote the screenplay for Step Up, shitty is my middle name, right after Anne."

So, that's it for my reading of Twilight. If anyone has read the remaining books in this series and wants to give us a brief synopsis of each, let me know and we'll publish it. I'm done with this self-flagellation and will not be reading them unless someone pays me a substantial sum of money.

Stuff Smart People DON'T Like: Twilight: Post #2

Too....many.....adverbs...

Well, I'm about two-thirds of the way through this...thing. I feel dirty reading this thing, surreptitiously (adverb!) carrying this thing around; careful to keep the bag that it's in zipped up, lest anyone see. Anyway, I won't spend too much time writing about how terrible the writing is. I will say that Edward needs some way to appear besides "smoldering" in anything he does. But I digress, back to some content issues.

Someone commented to me in the first post that people read the book is for the relationships between the characters and the politics between the werewolves and the vampires. So far there hasn't been much interaction between Team Edward and Team Jacob, so I can't comment on that much. So it looks like I'll have to talk about the characters themselves and their relationships.

Let's start with the narrator, Bella. Quite simply, Bella is one of the most annoying story characters that I have ever encountered. She is whiny, self-absorbed, dependent, uninteresting, and shallow. At some point Edward remarks how he can't fully explain the attraction that he has for Bella. I can empathize; I can't see how anyone would be attracted to her. She has no discernible hobbies, ambitions, or motivations (besides wanting to never leave Edward's side). The one positive thing I can say for the Twilight franchise is that Kristen Stewart was perfectly cast as Bella, I can't imagine someone who embodies these qualities any more in person *bites lower lip*.

What about Edward? Well, Edward isn't all that bad so far. In fact, if you take away the fact that he loves Bella for who-the-fuck knows what reason, he's moderately likeable as a character. Until he falls for Bella and the pathological co-dependency sets in of course. As for the movie casting, I wasn't too sure about the choice made in the film. Edward is supposed to be breathtakingly handsome, and Robert Pattinson is just patently unattractive.

Which brings me to the relationship between Bella and Edward. The biggest problem I have is that there is no real buildup at all. It kind of moves from them seeing each other in the lunchroom, Edward all smoldering like, and Bella all "woe is me, I'm plain and uninteresting," and then BAM! Now we're spending days and nights together sharing our deepest thoughts and desires. Although in Bella's case, she doesn't really have any deep thoughts. Really, it just seems like childhood infatuation, not love in the book. You just want to sit them down and make them watch MTV's "16 and Pregnant" so that they will see what happens when young people "think" that they're in love. Simply, there's no buildup in the romance. Don't be fooled by this girls; he may say that he loves you with his smoldering stare, but in real life he's just trying to sleep with you. Or, more simply for the Twi-tards EDWARD CULLEN DOESN'T EXIST!. He's fictional ladies.

Ok, just one more section left. Maybe something interesting will happen. I've already given up hope of Bella dying, so my #1 hope has already been dashed. Until next time, oh and let me know if anyone actually went out and watched the new movie this weekend.

Stuff Smart People DON'T Like: Twilight: Post #1

Hello Dear Readers. Today I present you with the first of several installments that will follow my undertaking to try and make it through "Twilight." Notice that I did not say "the novel" or "the book" in describing this...collection of words, for that would be grave misnomer. I decided to do this now to coincide with the release of whichever installment of this franchise is released this week. To start off with, you may be saying "you're not a writer, what right do you have to critique this?" To that my answer is, I'm also not a chef, but I'm pretty sure I could tell if someone laid a pile of shit on a plate before me and asked me to eat it. So, without further ado, enjoy my ordeal, so that you don't have to.