"And ow Jacob’s all like STEP OFF MY GIRL, YOU BITCH, I DON'T CARE IF YOU BIRTHED HER."
Beware f-list, although I don't think you'll eat me alive, this post is not Twilight friendly. Not even a little bit.
I've only read the first two books in the Twilight series. I read the first one because a girl in choir was and it was about vampires. That was all I needed to know. I finished reading it because I just can't leave-off in the middle of books. Anything else, oh yeah, definitely, but books? I don't know why, but I can't. Fastforward a year later, my choir class is going on a trip to California, and on the plane I sit next to the girl who let me borrow her Twilight book, and I find out there's a second one and she has it with her. Thank God, because I'd forgotten my reading material at home and I've got a four hour plane ride to sit through and nothing to keep me busy. It takes me an hour, but I finally annoy her enough that she lets me borrow it and I don't put it down until we land (by which time I have finished it) and even before I step away from the books and start to actually consider them, I know the only redeeming characters in those books are Jacob (who I continue to love until this day) and Alice (who's awesomeness is physically impossible to deny.)
Then the last two books come out, and I don't bother reading them because by then I've already discouvered why I always found reading the Twilight series to be so... weird. There's no plot until the last 100 pages of the books, the other 350 pages are full of nothing but Bella whining and thinking about Edward, and when I finished reading New Moon, it finally hit me how many signs there were of an abusive relationship between Bella and Edward.
This beautiful, professional article sums up what has always been my biggest problem with the Twilight series: the abusive relationships between not only the main characters, but also some of the minor ones.
I understand that the writing is horrible and there is little to no substance in the books, and that most of the rest of the world understands this too. The Twilight series is plain old escape-fiction and is nothing more than fantasy, and most of the human race above the age of sixteen understands this. But in a story about an abusive relationship and a girl who's A-O.K. with that, filled with attempted rape, violence, and the most disgusting and truthfully disturbing birth-- NO, that's not even a birth, death scene, I have to point out: it's not the sixteen year olds and the twenty year olds and the 'Twimoms' who are the targeted age group; it's tweens. Girls between the ages of eight and thirteen present the largest age group reading this and you are fooling yourself if you really believe they know how to separate the book's fiction from reality.
But never mind that; who in their right mind would let their ten year old daughter read the attempted rape scenes in Eclipse, or the scene where Edward callously rips off Victoria's head? Or the so-called 'birth' scene that literally left me horrified? Me, a horror movie vet who's seen everything there is and has more Stephen King and Darren Shan (even if you don't know him, trust me, I'm still to this day disturbed by the death scene of the protagonist in Bec and he's written the most gruesome deaths I've ever read) books under my belt then I should be able to stomach? And friends, sisters, adults, moms are encouraging their tween and pre-teens to read these books?
It scares me how obsessive people have become with these books, and how oblivious and/or quickly to brush the inappropriate actions in these books under the rug. Shivers.
I'm not saying this is the most horrible series in the world, because I have unfortunately read worse, and I'm not trying to attack anyone. I very much have a love-hate relationship with Twilight, and have never really expressed my feelings on the books because I'm seen what they can do and have thus become quiet terrified of the fandom, but after reading the most hilarious individual chapter recaps of New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn ( 1, 2, 3) and I got over the humour, my frustration with the series reared its ugly head and I had to get it out some how.
To sum up my feelings, allow me to quote cleolinda:
"It's not so much that the books themselves are dangerous or horrible or bad influences or [insert feminist/sociological complaint here]; it's that we need to talk about those issues in hopes of neutralizing them. A lot of girls and women read these books, enjoy them, and walk away unscathed, because they're just books. Unfortunately, we've also seen a number who don't. I'm not saying that there's any one truth here, in terms of whether these books do or do not harm whoever in whichever way. I'm just saying, clearly they've eaten society's brain at this point, and it's the sheer number of people who read them that give them their power. It's the zeitgeist now, so we need to be having these discussions, and it's the discussions themselves--there are no "answers"--that will keep us on stable ground. So, I'll say it again: Parents, talk to your kids about Edward Cullen. And drugs, if you get around to that."
(Fair warning now, if anyone gets ugly about this, post will be comment-locked.)
<3
I've only read the first two books in the Twilight series. I read the first one because a girl in choir was and it was about vampires. That was all I needed to know. I finished reading it because I just can't leave-off in the middle of books. Anything else, oh yeah, definitely, but books? I don't know why, but I can't. Fastforward a year later, my choir class is going on a trip to California, and on the plane I sit next to the girl who let me borrow her Twilight book, and I find out there's a second one and she has it with her. Thank God, because I'd forgotten my reading material at home and I've got a four hour plane ride to sit through and nothing to keep me busy. It takes me an hour, but I finally annoy her enough that she lets me borrow it and I don't put it down until we land (by which time I have finished it) and even before I step away from the books and start to actually consider them, I know the only redeeming characters in those books are Jacob (who I continue to love until this day) and Alice (who's awesomeness is physically impossible to deny.)
Then the last two books come out, and I don't bother reading them because by then I've already discouvered why I always found reading the Twilight series to be so... weird. There's no plot until the last 100 pages of the books, the other 350 pages are full of nothing but Bella whining and thinking about Edward, and when I finished reading New Moon, it finally hit me how many signs there were of an abusive relationship between Bella and Edward.
This beautiful, professional article sums up what has always been my biggest problem with the Twilight series: the abusive relationships between not only the main characters, but also some of the minor ones.
I understand that the writing is horrible and there is little to no substance in the books, and that most of the rest of the world understands this too. The Twilight series is plain old escape-fiction and is nothing more than fantasy, and most of the human race above the age of sixteen understands this. But in a story about an abusive relationship and a girl who's A-O.K. with that, filled with attempted rape, violence, and the most disgusting and truthfully disturbing birth-- NO, that's not even a birth, death scene, I have to point out: it's not the sixteen year olds and the twenty year olds and the 'Twimoms' who are the targeted age group; it's tweens. Girls between the ages of eight and thirteen present the largest age group reading this and you are fooling yourself if you really believe they know how to separate the book's fiction from reality.
But never mind that; who in their right mind would let their ten year old daughter read the attempted rape scenes in Eclipse, or the scene where Edward callously rips off Victoria's head? Or the so-called 'birth' scene that literally left me horrified? Me, a horror movie vet who's seen everything there is and has more Stephen King and Darren Shan (even if you don't know him, trust me, I'm still to this day disturbed by the death scene of the protagonist in Bec and he's written the most gruesome deaths I've ever read) books under my belt then I should be able to stomach? And friends, sisters, adults, moms are encouraging their tween and pre-teens to read these books?
It scares me how obsessive people have become with these books, and how oblivious and/or quickly to brush the inappropriate actions in these books under the rug. Shivers.
I'm not saying this is the most horrible series in the world, because I have unfortunately read worse, and I'm not trying to attack anyone. I very much have a love-hate relationship with Twilight, and have never really expressed my feelings on the books because I'm seen what they can do and have thus become quiet terrified of the fandom, but after reading the most hilarious individual chapter recaps of New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn ( 1, 2, 3) and I got over the humour, my frustration with the series reared its ugly head and I had to get it out some how.
To sum up my feelings, allow me to quote cleolinda:
"It's not so much that the books themselves are dangerous or horrible or bad influences or [insert feminist/sociological complaint here]; it's that we need to talk about those issues in hopes of neutralizing them. A lot of girls and women read these books, enjoy them, and walk away unscathed, because they're just books. Unfortunately, we've also seen a number who don't. I'm not saying that there's any one truth here, in terms of whether these books do or do not harm whoever in whichever way. I'm just saying, clearly they've eaten society's brain at this point, and it's the sheer number of people who read them that give them their power. It's the zeitgeist now, so we need to be having these discussions, and it's the discussions themselves--there are no "answers"--that will keep us on stable ground. So, I'll say it again: Parents, talk to your kids about Edward Cullen. And drugs, if you get around to that."
(Fair warning now, if anyone gets ugly about this, post will be comment-locked.)
<3