Twilight is about a girl who falls in love with a vampire. Typically cliche. To be honest, i liked it. It's a good book. I liked the story, and the developing romance between Bella and Edward. However, it's overrated and should not deserve the fame it has right now. Here are 5 reasons why Twilight is overrated:
5.Edward is not a vampire. He's just a perfect pretty kid.
To be honest, whenever i think of a vampire, i think of Bela Lugosi scaring the shit out of me when i was kid, or the vamps from I am Legend creeping a post-apocalyptic New York at night. Edward is none of that. He roams the daylight, is a vegetarian, and he is described as the perfect guy for girls. This is bollocks, absolute bollocks really.
Stephanie Meyer should have a made Edward a mutant or a new genetic human caused by a scientific error, but making him a vampire with no characteristic of a vampire is a disgrace to vampires everywhere. Good-looking vampires like Dracula has imperfections that makes women hate him, while ugly vampires like Nosferatu has the ability to make women to feel sorry for him.
Okay, so i know that horror creatures need a 21-st century upgrade, but the core values should not be changed. Simon Pegg was right when he said that zombies makes no sense if they're running. And that goes the same with vampires. They should never roam the daylight. Do you want Godzilla to look like Chuck Bass from Gossip Girl?
4.It should not be compared to Harry Potter.
The other day I heard on the news "The best book since that one about the boy wizard named...what was his name again?"
These books are in no way comparable to Harry Potter. For two reasons.
Firstly, Harry Potter is a brilliantly written book. Twilight is not as well-written as Harry Potter. The Harry Potter books contains characters with imperfections, which gives it a sense of realism, unlike Twilight where everyone is a perfect douche.
Secondly, these books do not appeal to the masses. If you're not a gay guy or 13-17 year old girl, you most likely will not be interested. I know people from the ages of 6-73 who love Harry Potter, because the books are great on many different levels. The Harry Potter books are as brilliant as books like Lord of the Rings, The Dark Tower and graphic novels like Watchmen. There is no way that Twilight can be as good as Lord of the Rings. NO FREAKING WAY!
3.It's being treated as a teeny bop sensation rather than a book.
When i read a book, i read it as a book, i treat it like a book, and i understand it like a book. I don't treat it as a big sensation. I just treat it like a book, the same way i treat song like a song, a movie like a movie, and a rave party like a rave party. And the reason why Twilight is in my LibraryThing collection, because i treat it like a book, and nothing else.
When i see Twilight being treated as a teeny bop obsession, i was filled with disgrace that a book was treated like the Jonas Brothers. It's just wrong. A book's popularity should have some class, and anything that is treated like an obsession by teeny boppers lacks any class whatsoever. Twilight should deserve some respect, the same way the Koran, Harry Potter and American Psycho does. Heck, even Gossip Girl has more class than Twilight.
When the band Hanson was the tween sensation back in the late 90's, they did something really incredible: In 2000, they say to the world "Fuck you teeny boppers, we're going indie!" It was one of the bravest things they have ever done. The Jonas Brothers will do the same thing in the next few years, and in the next decade, when Stephanie Meyer released her new book "Afternoon", she will say to the world "Fuck these Teenyboppers, these so-called Twilight fans are a disgrace to my books, and in this time i'll make Edward as ugly as Nosferatu. You'll see"
2.Huh?
"Edward in the sunlight was shocking. I couldn't get used to it, though I had been staring at him all afternoon. His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still on the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal."
WHAT THE FUCK IS HE, a special Swarovski presentation?
Come on. I've made it through Bridges of Madison Country. I trundled through my fair share of bodice rippers. I read Mercedes Lackey, Preston & Child, and good ol' RL Stine for my caloric trash intake. This? This is really, really bad - when you realize how slimly made the main character is, you see that it is the most obvious commercial Mary Sue pandering yet. If you enjoy the books, okay, fine, everyone has their rights. I enjoyed it too, but with a writing like that it should not be popular in the first place.
1.There are better books to read
Yes, there are. Why? Because there are books with better writing, better presentation & realism. Read the following, they are better than Twilight:
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Dreams of my Father by Barack Obama
The Mist by Stephen King
Animal Farm by George Orwell
The Alphabet of Manliness by Maddox
More Joy ... : An Advanced Guide to Solo Sex by Harold Litten
Now, go ahead, flame me!
3 comments:
Oh, I'd hardly flame you, fellow Twilight-disser! It deserves every bit of criticism re: its writing and characterisation, IMHO.
So excuse me while I start a mini-rant. :P
It is pretty much, as you've described, just a Harlequin romance aimed at the young female teenage demographic, sans the sex. With it horrible articulation, over-exaggerated descriptions, the usage of every single damned word in the Thesaurus and all those countless synonyms of the word 'beautiful' when it comes to describing Edward... it's a disgrace to teen literature.
There is completely no plot. Well, towards the end, a HINT of a plot emerges. But prior to that? It's only senseless mooning over a pretty boy and the depiction of a girl's really shallow, senseless thoughts about this sparkly boy whom she is totally in love with because he's so pretty, dontchaknow.
I find it disturbing that a piece of badly written fanfiction (that's all it is, really!) such like this, with the two leads being a Mary Sue AND a Gary Stu, respectively - has garnered so much attention worldwide, and even spawned a movie and an obsessive female following.
It's rather dangerous, because the rest of the books in the series advocate and support emotionally abusive relationships, and seem to encourage and indirectly send this message to young girls on how their lives are over if that pretty boy in class doesn't notice them or if he's gone from their life. It's.. you know, their cue to fall into a coma/flop and go catatonic/start committing suicide, etc.
And yet, girls everywhere are holding it and swooning over the perfection of its protagonist and think he's THE one guy they would all love to end up with. He's so handsome, romantic, and all that jazz. I digress! He's nothing but a cardboard character that looks pretty - he's got no semblance of a personality or characterisation in any way.
Sorry for going off a bit there, but I just wanted to applaud a fellow blogger on seeing past the, ahem, sparkliness of Twilight and seeing it as it is - a lame excuse of a book that doesn't deserve all this hype. :) So, kudos to you!
While I'm at it, I salute your post on how Homophobia Must End, as well. It's very rare to find tolerant Muslim boys such as yourself - most tend to threaten the gays and lesbians with violence and murder ("Aku akan carik ko dan bunuh korang sumer cam babi, tautak!? Korang sumer abnormal! Jahanam lah korang!"). Cheers, mate.
YESH!! Hello there, fellow Twilight hater!
I find it really really over rated and my gawd, you wouldn't believe the screaming in the cinema my boyfriend and I had to put up with EVERY DAMN TIME Edward or his foster father showed on screen.
to Kimm-
don't you worry about this generation of teen girls picking up on the negativities that come in the next books. if there's one thing i know about teenie-boppers, it's that they become infatuated with something (a band, a movie, a celebrity) and forget them after little time. their obsession isn't with twilight, not with the Jonas Brothers, not with Ashley Simpson... their obsession is with whatever is currently 'in', and that changes rapidly with time.
to the original poster-
on a related note i have to disagree with you on one small thing that you said in regards to the hanson brothers. i don't consider what they did in '00 as to be "brave". it's actually very easy to change up genres once you have popularity as a foundation. i haven't heard anything by them lately (or since they've 'changed') but i still can't respect them. they just sold out to become popular, and then once they gained recognition, they decided to make the music they truly want to make, and i really don't find that a respectable way to go about one's career. when you start out, you play the music you want to play and hope people like it, and slowly gain a following no matter how long it takes... that's the respectable way to do it.
but everything else you said in regards to Twilight, i agree with spot-on 100%.
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