DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIES!
So foks... PLEASE join me in wishing a swift and possibly horrible death on the upcoming cinematic tragedy: TWILIGHT.
I speak with the background of having read the first two books and the weight on my psyche of seeing unceasing trailers for the movie. This THING is SAD and rubs me utterly the wrong way. I can barely begin to describe my visceral revulsion to the sight of those books being given MORE publicity. As if the hordes of tweens screaming over the books and book stores devoting whole window displays to dozens of identical copies were not enough.
Rather respulsive acting choices aside, my biggest complaint about this whole phenomenon is what it is teaching young people (girls only, hopefully) about relationships. To those not in the know, here's the gist of the epic romance:
Girl goes to live with her estranged dad in remote town in cloudy Washington state. After bemoaning her fate, patronizing her father, and deciding to refuse all the friendly gestures from the new classmates (then being depressed by it) she spots the table full of vampire students, who are living somehow incognito. They're all ridiculously beautiful, so girl decides they must be her new crowd, and takes a special interest in "male lead vampire", teenage and inexplicably fickle.
After a weirdly roundabout ice-breaking period, girl comes to learn all about boy vampire and his vampire family. I'll skip all the parts about the author's take on vampires, their descriptions and whatnot, and get right to the romance. As soon as the big secret is found out, girl and boy are instantly obsessed with each other. Girl single-mindedly devotes herself to becoming boy's soul mate, being physical with him, becoming a vampire like him so that she may too live forever and thus dedicating the rest of her life to him. At one point when boy leaves girl for her own protection, (or for some gawdawful angsty reason) she completely shuts down, as if her world has ended, and goes through life like a near-catatonic zombie for several months.
Oh, the WEREWOLF friend she makes gets her out of it a bit, but as soon as boy vampire re-enters the story, she's back to her one-note mission.
Theirs is a one-dimensional, unreasonable, unrealistic, and wholly unbearably angsty love. How the movie will handle this, I can only speculate, but I shudder to think it will continue the message that when you find a cute boy in high school, who tells you you're the most perfect girl in the world, you should realize that he's worth dedicating your life to, at the exclusion of friends, family, future opportunities, and common sense.
Now to add a bit more, in the oppostie vein. At first, I managed the reading of the novels. I'm a hopeless romantic at heart, so sometimes true love stories are okay with me, and I didn't mind the author's depiction of vampires and even her werewolves. Every supernatural author needs a new take on them, and hers wasn't terribly sucky. In fact, I kept going because her male lead vampire kid wasn't all that bad either. He actually made some sense. He fell for the girl, sure, but he was more practical and tried to convince her to wait to become a vampire, if she was set on it. He wanted her to wait and experience more life as a warm, breathing, interracting human being before halting her age and pulse forever. (Keep in mind that although these guys don't sleep in coffins, they can't go in the sun, because their skin will sparkle like a drag queen's dress under a Vegas spotlight.) So I was muddling through with the guy character. And even the werewolves she felt the need to introduce were decent. She gave them a good reason to exist and took away that pesky only-on-the-full-moon aspect. And all the vampires had various powers special to them. And they had histories that explained their behavior, for the most part. So I was trudging through it, thinking it was gonna pay out eventually.
But between the overwhelming, unreasonable angst that mounted through the story, the fact that the girl was an idiot that took months to figure out her friend was a werewolf (AFTER becoming acquainted with the idea of vampires existing), and the fact that the boy vampire too easily succumbed to the same single-minded I'll-die-for-you mentality, turned me off so much that I could not bring myself to pick up the third book when it came out.
It was only later, when a friend pointed out the almost blinding MARY-SUEdom of the main character, that I realized my mistake too late and was retroactively disgusted with myself for reading as much as I had. It was even pointed out that if one looked at a picture of the author and aged it down a dozen years, one would clearly see the girl's description. Usually, while reading fanfics, I'm on guard for Mary Sues. They're easy as hell to spot. Somehow this one snuck up on me, and now I cringe with contact-shame that I ever derrived enjoyment from the girl/boy vampire romance. And it is perhaps this self-shame that drives my intense hatred for the popularity of this franchise. I must impress, however, that the protrayal of this pair as "idealized" romance is revolting, and WRONG. I do not like thinking that so many kids are being suckered into thinking that this is how love works. It's horrific!
I can only hope that this movie shall follow in the trend of Harry Potter, in the sense that they will change so much that it will not give the same message as the books, and it will serve to alienate fans. Please, please, please... they can hardly make it much worse...
In conclusion, Twilight movie = BAD. But although it appears to be a hideously undesirable blight upon the world, the movie cannot possibly do anything other than improve the books.
If you are somehow a fan of these books or are looking forward to the release of the movie, I will understand if you realize we shall forever have nothing in common and decide "friend"ing me here was too big a step.
Hm... if fact, I think I'll repeat this journal on Y!G. Just to vent a bit more. So to those who watch me there, sorry for the repeat!
I speak with the background of having read the first two books and the weight on my psyche of seeing unceasing trailers for the movie. This THING is SAD and rubs me utterly the wrong way. I can barely begin to describe my visceral revulsion to the sight of those books being given MORE publicity. As if the hordes of tweens screaming over the books and book stores devoting whole window displays to dozens of identical copies were not enough.
Rather respulsive acting choices aside, my biggest complaint about this whole phenomenon is what it is teaching young people (girls only, hopefully) about relationships. To those not in the know, here's the gist of the epic romance:
Girl goes to live with her estranged dad in remote town in cloudy Washington state. After bemoaning her fate, patronizing her father, and deciding to refuse all the friendly gestures from the new classmates (then being depressed by it) she spots the table full of vampire students, who are living somehow incognito. They're all ridiculously beautiful, so girl decides they must be her new crowd, and takes a special interest in "male lead vampire", teenage and inexplicably fickle.
After a weirdly roundabout ice-breaking period, girl comes to learn all about boy vampire and his vampire family. I'll skip all the parts about the author's take on vampires, their descriptions and whatnot, and get right to the romance. As soon as the big secret is found out, girl and boy are instantly obsessed with each other. Girl single-mindedly devotes herself to becoming boy's soul mate, being physical with him, becoming a vampire like him so that she may too live forever and thus dedicating the rest of her life to him. At one point when boy leaves girl for her own protection, (or for some gawdawful angsty reason) she completely shuts down, as if her world has ended, and goes through life like a near-catatonic zombie for several months.
Oh, the WEREWOLF friend she makes gets her out of it a bit, but as soon as boy vampire re-enters the story, she's back to her one-note mission.
Theirs is a one-dimensional, unreasonable, unrealistic, and wholly unbearably angsty love. How the movie will handle this, I can only speculate, but I shudder to think it will continue the message that when you find a cute boy in high school, who tells you you're the most perfect girl in the world, you should realize that he's worth dedicating your life to, at the exclusion of friends, family, future opportunities, and common sense.
Now to add a bit more, in the oppostie vein. At first, I managed the reading of the novels. I'm a hopeless romantic at heart, so sometimes true love stories are okay with me, and I didn't mind the author's depiction of vampires and even her werewolves. Every supernatural author needs a new take on them, and hers wasn't terribly sucky. In fact, I kept going because her male lead vampire kid wasn't all that bad either. He actually made some sense. He fell for the girl, sure, but he was more practical and tried to convince her to wait to become a vampire, if she was set on it. He wanted her to wait and experience more life as a warm, breathing, interracting human being before halting her age and pulse forever. (Keep in mind that although these guys don't sleep in coffins, they can't go in the sun, because their skin will sparkle like a drag queen's dress under a Vegas spotlight.) So I was muddling through with the guy character. And even the werewolves she felt the need to introduce were decent. She gave them a good reason to exist and took away that pesky only-on-the-full-moon aspect. And all the vampires had various powers special to them. And they had histories that explained their behavior, for the most part. So I was trudging through it, thinking it was gonna pay out eventually.
But between the overwhelming, unreasonable angst that mounted through the story, the fact that the girl was an idiot that took months to figure out her friend was a werewolf (AFTER becoming acquainted with the idea of vampires existing), and the fact that the boy vampire too easily succumbed to the same single-minded I'll-die-for-you mentality, turned me off so much that I could not bring myself to pick up the third book when it came out.
It was only later, when a friend pointed out the almost blinding MARY-SUEdom of the main character, that I realized my mistake too late and was retroactively disgusted with myself for reading as much as I had. It was even pointed out that if one looked at a picture of the author and aged it down a dozen years, one would clearly see the girl's description. Usually, while reading fanfics, I'm on guard for Mary Sues. They're easy as hell to spot. Somehow this one snuck up on me, and now I cringe with contact-shame that I ever derrived enjoyment from the girl/boy vampire romance. And it is perhaps this self-shame that drives my intense hatred for the popularity of this franchise. I must impress, however, that the protrayal of this pair as "idealized" romance is revolting, and WRONG. I do not like thinking that so many kids are being suckered into thinking that this is how love works. It's horrific!
I can only hope that this movie shall follow in the trend of Harry Potter, in the sense that they will change so much that it will not give the same message as the books, and it will serve to alienate fans. Please, please, please... they can hardly make it much worse...
In conclusion, Twilight movie = BAD. But although it appears to be a hideously undesirable blight upon the world, the movie cannot possibly do anything other than improve the books.
If you are somehow a fan of these books or are looking forward to the release of the movie, I will understand if you realize we shall forever have nothing in common and decide "friend"ing me here was too big a step.
Hm... if fact, I think I'll repeat this journal on Y!G. Just to vent a bit more. So to those who watch me there, sorry for the repeat!