Much love for Mr.Stephen King, for truly he is the voice of wisdom
Or "My Twilight Rant Now Feels Valid Because I have Stephen King on My Side"
Yes, that's right kiddies. I'm going to kill time, mine and yours, with my long awaited Twilight rant, in its entirety. But first:
LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Stephen King's opinion may drive a stake through the heart of "Twilight" author, Stephenie Meyer.
In an interview with USA Weekend, the bestselling author compared Meyer with J.K. Rowling , the author of the Harry Potter series.
King, whose Stephen King Goes to the Movies collection came out last week, doesn’t know how much of an influence he had on Meyer, but he does know that Rowling read his stuff when she was younger. "I think that has some kind of formative influence the same way reading Richard Matheson had an influence on me," King explains. "People always say to me, 'Well, what about H.P. Lovecraft?' And the thing was, you read Lovecraft when you were a kid but I never felt that he was speaking my language. It was chillier than my heart was, and when Matheson started to write about ordinary people and stuff, that was something that I wanted to do. I said, 'This is the way to do it. He’s showing the way.' I think that I serve that purpose for some writers, and that’s a good thing. Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. ... The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."
But then King recalls that when his mom was alive, she read all the Erle Stanley Gardner books, the Perry Mason mysteries, obsessively when he was growing up. "He was a terrible writer, too, but he was very successful," King says. "Somebody who’s a terrific writer who’s been very, very successful is Jodi Picoult. You’ve got Dean Koontz, who can write like hell. And then sometimes he’s just awful. It varies. James Patterson is a terrible writer but he’s very very successful. People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it’s very clear that she’s writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because they’re not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet."
That. That right there made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Also, it made me realise, that with the Serial Killer/Horror kick I'm on, I should go and read Pet Semetary again.
I'm going to come right out and admit this from the get-go, just so there can be no finger pointing and taunting later. I openly admit I enjoyed the series. It's a quick, easy read, a nice way to relax the brain. It's the kind of stuff I'd read in a bubble bath with some chocoaltes and scented candles and junk. It has it's good points. (And, since they're so few, I'm going to start off with those) Bella, our 'heroine' (pun not intended, heh) reminds all of us ultra femmnists that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a stay at home mom. That is every woman's perogative. That's the beauty of equal rights. We can CHOOSE wether or not we want to do one thing, the other, or both. I do like that its a romance for teens and there doesn't have to be any actual sex for there to be sensual moments, and there are lots of them. Lots and lots and lots. (to the point of inducing nausia, but we're talking good points at the moment.)
The vampires each have a really interesting backstory. Seriously, Carlisle's is the stuff of horror movie classics. Alice could have her own suspense thriller. Hell, Even Jasper, the old fashioned civil war soldier, could tell a few cool antecdotes. Esme and Rosalie and Emmet, their stories are pretty emotionally poignent as well.
Now. My gripes.
Her writing style itself isn't so bad. She seems to be trying to convey how a teenage girl thinks. Unfortunately, she fails. Epicly. First of all, when Bella makes a snarky comment, she doesn't have to explain it to us by adding the thought "Heavy sarcasm". Its not only a sentance fragment, but it also implies that we, the reader, are too stupid to understand her poor use of sarcasm. Also, one moment Bella's inner monologue is perfectly average, the next moment she's suddenly using her 'enormous' vocabulary to bewilder her school mates with apparantly unfathomoable words like Mysogonistic. Seriously? That's not making Bella look either smart or making her seem easy to relate to. It just makes her classmates look like morons for not knowing what it means. Honestly, Bella is so bland as to have pretty much no existing personality of her own. She's a placeholder so that every prepubescant girl and sexually frustraited soccer mom can insert herself into this self indulgent mary sue fantasy. Sure, she has 'quirks'. She's clumsy so I guess that makes her endearing, relatable and human and blah blah blah. It doesn't fit. She's apparantly insanely smart and pretty and clumsy and...what? What else? Jeez man! Flan has more personality than Bella! Also, I can't help but laugh at the irony of Bella talking about wether or not Ol' Billy Shakespear was treating his femeale characters in a mysoginistic fashon when the entirety of Twilight itself is one huge trip down mysogonist road.
Then there's Edward, who also has little to no personality, unless you count all the damn signs of a stalker/serial killer/abusive boyfriend. Ooooh! But he's sooooo HOT! Yeah. And? We know he's hot and and oh! Musical! And perfect! And GLORIOUS! My dear sweet god in heaven, if I hear that word used by anoyone but Eddie Izzard ever again I swear I will projectile vomit at the speaker. Anyway, back to beautiful, perfect, musical, BLAND, serial rapist/killer/stalker, Edward OMFG Cullen. He constantly tells Bella what to do, where to go, how to think. He makes fun of her, he forcibly drags her to his car when he first drives her home. He disregards the fact that his fast driving scares her until he's reminded of the possibility that if they crashed, he could walk away and she's be road pizza. That's such loving behavior, isn't it? SO romantic! He follows her on a shopping trip with her friends. He sneaks into her room to watch her sleep BEFORE he even begons to actually talk to her. THAT'S FUCKING CREEPY! He openly admits to having killed people. Do I really need to continue? Everything about him is a read flag that screams WIFE BEATER! SERIAL KILLER! STALKER! RAPIST! None of that is even the least bit romantic. But all is forgiven because he LOVES HER WITH ALL HIS UNDEAD SOUL! Yeah. lets not even get into the implied necrophilia there, mkay?
Oh, and the 'love' the two of them share? Obviously more obsession than love. not healthy at all. When Edward dumps Bella, there are pages of..wait for it...wait for it...nothing! Yeah. Blank pages. Because HE WAS HER LIFE OMG! Are you fucking kidding me? Her high school boyfriend, who's only merits are his musical talent, his hawtness and complete lack of any personality, leaves her and it's the end of the world? Really? Please. I dated my first bf for two years. He dumped me sometime between sophmore and junior year because I wouldn't have sex with him. Yeah, it sucked, and I cried a lot, but I wasn't a fucking zombie for six months! I didn't display suicidal behavior so I could hallucinate and hear his voice telling me how stupid I am. I got over it. I dated other guys! You know what usually happenes to people who marry their high school boyfriend, nevermind their first boyfriend? Divorce. Murder. Infidelity. Sometimes they do live happily ever after, but that's about as likely as getting the chance to have a one night stand with Johnny Depp, kay sweety?
And, what about the other characters? Carlisle and Esme? Alice, Jasper, Rosali and , Emmet? Charlie? Jacob and Billy Black? Totally fridged. You get a tiny little taste of how freaking cool they are, how each of them could carry their own book with their backstories and legends and stuff. But no. They're all there as props to make Bella see how good she is for Edward and how happy she makes him and how much everyone loves her and cares about her safety and blah blah blah. Seriously? I want to hear more about Carlisle, the guy who was around in the time of vampire hunts and werewolves and witch burnings, of how he lead a mob after some vampires but got turned himself, of his struggle with his vampiric nature, how he became a suegeon and all that. A vampire who battles himself and becomes a suergeon to save the people he's supposed to kill. Now THAT is a story that is not only bound to be interesting scientifically, but the whole first half will be filled with ACTION and sandwiched in all of it is the angst that every little emo teenage girl loves. Also, Carlisle too is hot, so don't worry girls.
Give me more real action. More mean Vampires, write the actual fight. Give me tactics, give me blood. Use the romance sparingly as a seasoning. It makes it that much better. Give me a consistant writing style. Try writing it in third person. PLEASE try writing in third person. You can convey so much more.
But most of all, GIVE ME FANGIRLS WHO ARE LITERATE!
Honestly people. If someone criticises Twilight, that's their right. Allow them their opinion. If you're going to oppose it, be intelligent. Enough of the all caps, of the "OMFG ur stoopid have you ever thot of treing makup loser?" When the only way you can think to defend your petty obsession is to attack the dissenter personally, attack something about them that has NOTHING to do with what you're defending, when you can't even spell or punctuate correctly, you should realise right there you have nothing to defend. If you can't come out and say things like, oh I don't know, "I liked that Stephanie Meyer used vampirism as a metaphor for teenage sexual urges." then You really should just sign off and go do your damn homework. Don't bitch at someone and say they don't get the 'consept' of Twilight. Don't say that it's deep just because the vampire 'loves' the heroine but has to struggle against biting her. If you've ever been exposed to vampire stories before you'd know that cliche is older than freaking Dracula! So grow the fuck up. If you like the books, fine. Good for you. Stop frothing at the mouth at someone because they have different tastes. It doesn't mean they have to taste, it just means it differs from yours. OH FUCKING WELL! Its not the end of the world if not everyone enjoys everything you do. That would be fucking boring.
And just for the record, Twilight is not the only series out there. If you were introduced to reading through it and are looking at other stuff, AWESOME! Yes! That brings happy tears to my eyes! I love to see more young adults reading. If you re-read them over and over and refuse to broaden your horizons, I feel sorry for you. There are so many amazing stories and authors out there, so many that are even BETTER than Twilight. Stop limiting yourself. Don't be afraid, they wont bite. Give Holly Black a try. Check out Stephen King, or if you need more vampires, try Anne Rice. She has all the angst and romance of Twilight with far more sophisticated and chilling characters.
Thank you, that's all for tonight. *Gets off soapbox*
Yes, that's right kiddies. I'm going to kill time, mine and yours, with my long awaited Twilight rant, in its entirety. But first:
LOS ANGELES, Calif. -- Stephen King's opinion may drive a stake through the heart of "Twilight" author, Stephenie Meyer.
In an interview with USA Weekend, the bestselling author compared Meyer with J.K. Rowling , the author of the Harry Potter series.
King, whose Stephen King Goes to the Movies collection came out last week, doesn’t know how much of an influence he had on Meyer, but he does know that Rowling read his stuff when she was younger. "I think that has some kind of formative influence the same way reading Richard Matheson had an influence on me," King explains. "People always say to me, 'Well, what about H.P. Lovecraft?' And the thing was, you read Lovecraft when you were a kid but I never felt that he was speaking my language. It was chillier than my heart was, and when Matheson started to write about ordinary people and stuff, that was something that I wanted to do. I said, 'This is the way to do it. He’s showing the way.' I think that I serve that purpose for some writers, and that’s a good thing. Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. ... The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."
But then King recalls that when his mom was alive, she read all the Erle Stanley Gardner books, the Perry Mason mysteries, obsessively when he was growing up. "He was a terrible writer, too, but he was very successful," King says. "Somebody who’s a terrific writer who’s been very, very successful is Jodi Picoult. You’ve got Dean Koontz, who can write like hell. And then sometimes he’s just awful. It varies. James Patterson is a terrible writer but he’s very very successful. People are attracted by the stories, by the pace and in the case of Stephenie Meyer, it’s very clear that she’s writing to a whole generation of girls and opening up kind of a safe joining of love and sex in those books. It’s exciting and it’s thrilling and it's not particularly threatening because they’re not overtly sexual. A lot of the physical side of it is conveyed in things like the vampire will touch her forearm or run a hand over skin, and she just flushes all hot and cold. And for girls, that’s a shorthand for all the feelings that they’re not ready to deal with yet."
That. That right there made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Also, it made me realise, that with the Serial Killer/Horror kick I'm on, I should go and read Pet Semetary again.
I'm going to come right out and admit this from the get-go, just so there can be no finger pointing and taunting later. I openly admit I enjoyed the series. It's a quick, easy read, a nice way to relax the brain. It's the kind of stuff I'd read in a bubble bath with some chocoaltes and scented candles and junk. It has it's good points. (And, since they're so few, I'm going to start off with those) Bella, our 'heroine' (pun not intended, heh) reminds all of us ultra femmnists that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be a stay at home mom. That is every woman's perogative. That's the beauty of equal rights. We can CHOOSE wether or not we want to do one thing, the other, or both. I do like that its a romance for teens and there doesn't have to be any actual sex for there to be sensual moments, and there are lots of them. Lots and lots and lots. (to the point of inducing nausia, but we're talking good points at the moment.)
The vampires each have a really interesting backstory. Seriously, Carlisle's is the stuff of horror movie classics. Alice could have her own suspense thriller. Hell, Even Jasper, the old fashioned civil war soldier, could tell a few cool antecdotes. Esme and Rosalie and Emmet, their stories are pretty emotionally poignent as well.
Now. My gripes.
Her writing style itself isn't so bad. She seems to be trying to convey how a teenage girl thinks. Unfortunately, she fails. Epicly. First of all, when Bella makes a snarky comment, she doesn't have to explain it to us by adding the thought "Heavy sarcasm". Its not only a sentance fragment, but it also implies that we, the reader, are too stupid to understand her poor use of sarcasm. Also, one moment Bella's inner monologue is perfectly average, the next moment she's suddenly using her 'enormous' vocabulary to bewilder her school mates with apparantly unfathomoable words like Mysogonistic. Seriously? That's not making Bella look either smart or making her seem easy to relate to. It just makes her classmates look like morons for not knowing what it means. Honestly, Bella is so bland as to have pretty much no existing personality of her own. She's a placeholder so that every prepubescant girl and sexually frustraited soccer mom can insert herself into this self indulgent mary sue fantasy. Sure, she has 'quirks'. She's clumsy so I guess that makes her endearing, relatable and human and blah blah blah. It doesn't fit. She's apparantly insanely smart and pretty and clumsy and...what? What else? Jeez man! Flan has more personality than Bella! Also, I can't help but laugh at the irony of Bella talking about wether or not Ol' Billy Shakespear was treating his femeale characters in a mysoginistic fashon when the entirety of Twilight itself is one huge trip down mysogonist road.
Then there's Edward, who also has little to no personality, unless you count all the damn signs of a stalker/serial killer/abusive boyfriend. Ooooh! But he's sooooo HOT! Yeah. And? We know he's hot and and oh! Musical! And perfect! And GLORIOUS! My dear sweet god in heaven, if I hear that word used by anoyone but Eddie Izzard ever again I swear I will projectile vomit at the speaker. Anyway, back to beautiful, perfect, musical, BLAND, serial rapist/killer/stalker, Edward OMFG Cullen. He constantly tells Bella what to do, where to go, how to think. He makes fun of her, he forcibly drags her to his car when he first drives her home. He disregards the fact that his fast driving scares her until he's reminded of the possibility that if they crashed, he could walk away and she's be road pizza. That's such loving behavior, isn't it? SO romantic! He follows her on a shopping trip with her friends. He sneaks into her room to watch her sleep BEFORE he even begons to actually talk to her. THAT'S FUCKING CREEPY! He openly admits to having killed people. Do I really need to continue? Everything about him is a read flag that screams WIFE BEATER! SERIAL KILLER! STALKER! RAPIST! None of that is even the least bit romantic. But all is forgiven because he LOVES HER WITH ALL HIS UNDEAD SOUL! Yeah. lets not even get into the implied necrophilia there, mkay?
Oh, and the 'love' the two of them share? Obviously more obsession than love. not healthy at all. When Edward dumps Bella, there are pages of..wait for it...wait for it...nothing! Yeah. Blank pages. Because HE WAS HER LIFE OMG! Are you fucking kidding me? Her high school boyfriend, who's only merits are his musical talent, his hawtness and complete lack of any personality, leaves her and it's the end of the world? Really? Please. I dated my first bf for two years. He dumped me sometime between sophmore and junior year because I wouldn't have sex with him. Yeah, it sucked, and I cried a lot, but I wasn't a fucking zombie for six months! I didn't display suicidal behavior so I could hallucinate and hear his voice telling me how stupid I am. I got over it. I dated other guys! You know what usually happenes to people who marry their high school boyfriend, nevermind their first boyfriend? Divorce. Murder. Infidelity. Sometimes they do live happily ever after, but that's about as likely as getting the chance to have a one night stand with Johnny Depp, kay sweety?
And, what about the other characters? Carlisle and Esme? Alice, Jasper, Rosali and , Emmet? Charlie? Jacob and Billy Black? Totally fridged. You get a tiny little taste of how freaking cool they are, how each of them could carry their own book with their backstories and legends and stuff. But no. They're all there as props to make Bella see how good she is for Edward and how happy she makes him and how much everyone loves her and cares about her safety and blah blah blah. Seriously? I want to hear more about Carlisle, the guy who was around in the time of vampire hunts and werewolves and witch burnings, of how he lead a mob after some vampires but got turned himself, of his struggle with his vampiric nature, how he became a suegeon and all that. A vampire who battles himself and becomes a suergeon to save the people he's supposed to kill. Now THAT is a story that is not only bound to be interesting scientifically, but the whole first half will be filled with ACTION and sandwiched in all of it is the angst that every little emo teenage girl loves. Also, Carlisle too is hot, so don't worry girls.
Give me more real action. More mean Vampires, write the actual fight. Give me tactics, give me blood. Use the romance sparingly as a seasoning. It makes it that much better. Give me a consistant writing style. Try writing it in third person. PLEASE try writing in third person. You can convey so much more.
But most of all, GIVE ME FANGIRLS WHO ARE LITERATE!
Honestly people. If someone criticises Twilight, that's their right. Allow them their opinion. If you're going to oppose it, be intelligent. Enough of the all caps, of the "OMFG ur stoopid have you ever thot of treing makup loser?" When the only way you can think to defend your petty obsession is to attack the dissenter personally, attack something about them that has NOTHING to do with what you're defending, when you can't even spell or punctuate correctly, you should realise right there you have nothing to defend. If you can't come out and say things like, oh I don't know, "I liked that Stephanie Meyer used vampirism as a metaphor for teenage sexual urges." then You really should just sign off and go do your damn homework. Don't bitch at someone and say they don't get the 'consept' of Twilight. Don't say that it's deep just because the vampire 'loves' the heroine but has to struggle against biting her. If you've ever been exposed to vampire stories before you'd know that cliche is older than freaking Dracula! So grow the fuck up. If you like the books, fine. Good for you. Stop frothing at the mouth at someone because they have different tastes. It doesn't mean they have to taste, it just means it differs from yours. OH FUCKING WELL! Its not the end of the world if not everyone enjoys everything you do. That would be fucking boring.
And just for the record, Twilight is not the only series out there. If you were introduced to reading through it and are looking at other stuff, AWESOME! Yes! That brings happy tears to my eyes! I love to see more young adults reading. If you re-read them over and over and refuse to broaden your horizons, I feel sorry for you. There are so many amazing stories and authors out there, so many that are even BETTER than Twilight. Stop limiting yourself. Don't be afraid, they wont bite. Give Holly Black a try. Check out Stephen King, or if you need more vampires, try Anne Rice. She has all the angst and romance of Twilight with far more sophisticated and chilling characters.
Thank you, that's all for tonight. *Gets off soapbox*