My Twilight Observations

For a long time, everyone was telling me what a great series Twilight was. They were always like “Oh, it’s so exciting, she’s such a great writer, ohmigod Edward’s so hot, you’d love it”. And I’d say “okay, maybe you could lend them to me?” and they’d be all like “I’d love to, but I lent it to someone else who’s more important than you and she hasn’t read it yet she so you can’t read it”.

Jerks.

So I ordered the first book from the library, and after waiting about a month (there were about forty people ahead of me)—of course, none of my friends could bother lending it to me—I read it. And I feel the need to share my observations about it, and I know you’ll read them because Twilight’s really big right now and I’m pretty sure that I could write bad Twilight-Harry Potter crossover fanfic and people would eat it right up. BTW, I should probably add that there are spoilers, although I’m pretty sure if I tagged you you’ve already read Twilight.

So, story begins, (and I had high hopes for it), with poor Bella (last name?) heading off to Forks, which is in Washington, or maybe Oregon, one of those rainy Pacific states, to live with her father, who is a tyrannical old ogre. He’s so cold, in fact, that he buys Bella a computer and classic truck (I’d kill for that truck), and pretty much lets her lead her life as she pleases. I mean, that’s practically child abuse, but our brave heroine bears up well.

Her school is a hell on earth, too. I mean, on the very first day, she finds like five BFF’s, and three boys totally fall for her and she gets accepted into the “in” crowd immediately. And combine that with the fact that she’s really smart, you could see why she feels that she could never be happy in Forks. It’s practically like a Dickens novel at this point.

Fortunately, there happen to be a family of vampires who, uh, attend her high school, which nobody seems to find really unusual. I mean, here’s a group that has pale skin, doesn’t eat, and stays apart from the rest of the student population. So it’s pretty obvious that they’re either vampires or unusually attractive emo kids.

Bella falls for Edward, but he hates her at first because she’s too perfect and he’s afraid he won’t be able to stop himself from eating her and wow that sentence sounds perverted. But true love prevails, and it doesn’t take long to write this but Stephanie Meyer strings in out over like 300 pages. And Edward saves Bella’s life a few times. And she meets a werewolf.

Bella, apparently, isn’t a real clear thinker, because she fails to spot some holes in the whole “fall in love with a vampire” plan. First, Edward is like 106, and she’s 17, and can you say “statutory rape?” (And yeah, I know they don’t actually do anything. The principle’s the same).

And given that Bella meets Edward in biology class, you’d think she’d give some thought to the fact that Edward doesn’t have a working circulatory system, which undermines Edward’s sex symbol status significantly. I mean, when you get right down to it, Edward’s not much different from those guys in the Viagra commercials. Being a walking corpse has its drawbacks.

And Edward’s really good looking, but so what? His skin sparkles in the sunshine. Personally, I’d be ashamed to be seen with a vampire whose skin is all sparkly. You just know that he’d be the sort of guy who likes unicorns a lot and listens to a lot of George Michael and Elton John.

(I wonder how Stephanie Meyer’s husband feels about Edward? He’s probably a rotund little schlub who feels really inadequate now, and he’s probably asking his hairdresser if dying his (receding) hairline will help and putting ground up rhinestones in his body wash so his skin will sparkle).

Plus, if people’s cultural tastes are formed when they’re young, and judging from the number of oldies stations around I think they are, Edward’s and Bella’s idea of entertainment would be totally different. Bella would probably listen to *NSYNC or Madonna before watching Simpson’s reruns or reading Anne Rice, while Edward’s would probably spend most of his time listening to George M. Cohan songs on the gramophone.

Sadly, Bella doesn’t think of any of this, so she goes to watch Edward and his family play vampire baseball. And Edward’s family are vegetarian vampires (although I don’t think “vegetarian” means what they think it means), so they can’t slaughter innocent virgins, but c’mon, can’t they think of something more…vampirish to do with their time? I mean, I love baseball, national pastime and all that, but really, I mean, baseball???

And I love how they can only play when there are thunderstorms because their bats sound like thunder. Like if the townspeople hear thunder out of a clear sky, their first thought will be “hey, there must be vampires playing baseball somewhere around here”.

Anyway, the evil vampires want to play, and spot Bella, and their sinister leader wants to eat her. The leader, the bad guy, the villain of the piece, is named…James.

Let me be perfectly clear: I like the name James. If I ever have a son, it will be on the list of acceptable names. I know many people named James, and they are some of the nicest people I know. But really, James is just a bit…vanilla for a dreaded vampire leader. Couldn’t Meyer have at least called him James the Bloodthirsty or something?

Anyway, James tries to eat Bella, but (prepare to be totally blindsided here) Edward rescues her, and they think they’ll live happily ever after, even though you know they won’t for a while because there are three more books in the series.