Well, I've done it.
That's right.
Over the course of the last five or six hours, I read Twilight.
I hate that it took me so long but you have to understand that yes, while it does read easily, that's still about five hundred pages of easy reading. And even "easy" might be too strong a term, because I kept having to go back and reread small passages due to Smeyer's ineptitude.
Verdict? It's like paying $11 to read glorified fanfiction. Now, I knew it was going to be as much going into it, because really. But having now digested five hundred pages of it, I fell justified, and also slightly annoyed.
I think every person in the world that loves Twilight should just pay me $11 to write them their very own personalized, vampiric love story piece of garbage. I think we'd all be happier with ourselves and the state of the universe that way.
Since I was so staunchly against Twilight (and frankly, I still am, if not so vehemently), then I should probably start from the beginning on this and why it happened:
I read it because it was available for me to peruse for ~free, and I didn't want to think about the glaring hypocrisies that come with shitting all over something you know is a piece of crap without actually having experienced it for yourself. I mean, you can know something, and know that your opinion is right, but people are going to continuously tell you you're wrong, or you can't know, until you've gone and tried said thing.
So I tried it.
And it was awful.
Surprisingly, it was not the worst thing I've ever read. [The title of The Worst Thing I've Ever Read still goes to a James Patterson atrocity I read about three years ago, the name of which I can't even recall because I pushed it out of my brain in order to avoid suicide.] But it was terrible. Like I said, it was like logging onto fanfiction.net and reading pretty much any romantic story written by a fourteen year old, and starring themselves. Eventually, as I got past the first couple chapters of bullshit (which were more interesting than anything else, to be honest), I just found myself laughing out loud, literally loling, because the only people that care about a seventeen year old girl falling in love with the "perfect" guy are seventeen year old girls!
The exposition to the romance was amazingly the best part. The first few pages were awful, but then as ~Bella~~~~ adjusts to her new surroundings and makes an ass out of herself over a boy more than once, it got bearable for a few chapters. I mean, who can't relate to feeling like an asshole over a boy? Except, you know, how EVERY OTHER BOY IN THE SCHOOL WANTED TO DATE HER EXCEPT ***EDWARD***. Poor brooding, thirsty, dazzling, sparkling ***Edward***, who played hard to get, and then gave in because apparently no one in her town with a penis can resist her. Seriously, can I just tell you how I've read this story in the LOTR fandom, and the Harry Potter fandom, and EVERY OTHER FANDOM EVER? Thank you for making note.
It was like "Who are you, you're so mysterious, you're a jerk! No it's okay, YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL, ABRUPT ABRUPT ABRUPT, RUSHING INTO THINGS, really stupid awful cliche teenage romance things that never happen in real life, everything's awesome! SUDDEN CONFLICT! RUSHED AND CRAPPY CLIMAX! Everything's okay! We are in love and just because one of us isn't really seventeen it is the most profound thing ever! FOREVER IS A PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE LENGTH OF TIME TO WANT TO BE TOGETHER, PLZ TURN ME INTO A VAMPIRE BECAUSE I WILL NEVER EVER GET SICK OF YOU. Oh, you won't? Well, maybe next book."
Quite frankly, I'm very displeased at the way this book played out. I prefer building conflicts, where you can sense what the problem is going to be and how it might play out when you begin reading. It's sometimes a disappointment when you can figure it out ahead of time, but then you at least know where things are probably going, and you can be prepared for how things will go. The way it begins, you're wondering how they'll get over ... whatever it is going on between them and get together. Then they do, and you look down at the page numbers and realize you have about four hundred pages left to read, and no discernible conflict/resolution in sight. A large chunk of the book is about I REALLY LIKE YOU and then WE ARE IN LOVE LOOK AT HOW HAPPY WE ARE, which gets boring pretty quickly. There are about four lines of witty dialogue in the whole thing, and they occur during this period, surprisingly. Then, suddenly, ~Bella~~~~ is meeting ***Edward's*** family, all of whom are very vapid and 2-D despite the backgrounds Smeyer tried to give them, and then even more suddenly, we have a conflict unrelated to anything else ever. I'm pretty sure that the climax covers about two chapters, followed by one that should have been edited out of the book completely, and one long ridiculous conclusion chapter.
Some smaller notes? The sparkling in daylight thing was probably the most absurd thing I've ever read, which is saying a lot, because I've read some absurd things. The dazzle thing? Honestly, now that I've seen it in context, not a big deal. It got blown out of proportion. So that whole dramarama, I'm okay with (as okay as I'll get given that it's Twilight). Also, I was pretty miffed at how frequently ***Edward*** was compared to A) an angel and B) a Greek statue. Can we get some other metaphors please? What's so beautiful you can't believe it, GO! UM UM AN ANGEL! What's always still like stone, GO! UH UM A GREEK STATUE! CONGRATULATIONS YOU JUST WON THE $10,000 PYRAMID.
Also I'm pretty sure Smeyer abuses adjectives. She throws a whole bunch at you in the beginning, and then she sticks to the standard formula of two-at-a-time. It gets absolutely grating. And I am positive the woman pretty much rapes the shift-F7 function; either that or she finds the longest, most "intelligent" sounding words in her thesaurus and just throws them in there to look good. I swear, some of the words that ~Bella~~~~ either says, or thinks in order to describe things ... NO ONE would use, let alone a seventeen year old girl, mkay? I doubt my friend that graduated from Harvard and is currently sitting in Yale grad school has even had some of those words float through her brain in every day situations.
Needless to say, I won't be reading any of the other books. It's not necessary, seriously, nor is it worth the time (or the money, if I couldn't get them for free).
Moral of the story is: DON'T FEED THE TWILIGHT MONSTER.
Over the course of the last five or six hours, I read Twilight.
I hate that it took me so long but you have to understand that yes, while it does read easily, that's still about five hundred pages of easy reading. And even "easy" might be too strong a term, because I kept having to go back and reread small passages due to Smeyer's ineptitude.
Verdict? It's like paying $11 to read glorified fanfiction. Now, I knew it was going to be as much going into it, because really. But having now digested five hundred pages of it, I fell justified, and also slightly annoyed.
I think every person in the world that loves Twilight should just pay me $11 to write them their very own personalized, vampiric love story piece of garbage. I think we'd all be happier with ourselves and the state of the universe that way.
Since I was so staunchly against Twilight (and frankly, I still am, if not so vehemently), then I should probably start from the beginning on this and why it happened:
I read it because it was available for me to peruse for ~free, and I didn't want to think about the glaring hypocrisies that come with shitting all over something you know is a piece of crap without actually having experienced it for yourself. I mean, you can know something, and know that your opinion is right, but people are going to continuously tell you you're wrong, or you can't know, until you've gone and tried said thing.
So I tried it.
And it was awful.
Surprisingly, it was not the worst thing I've ever read. [The title of The Worst Thing I've Ever Read still goes to a James Patterson atrocity I read about three years ago, the name of which I can't even recall because I pushed it out of my brain in order to avoid suicide.] But it was terrible. Like I said, it was like logging onto fanfiction.net and reading pretty much any romantic story written by a fourteen year old, and starring themselves. Eventually, as I got past the first couple chapters of bullshit (which were more interesting than anything else, to be honest), I just found myself laughing out loud, literally loling, because the only people that care about a seventeen year old girl falling in love with the "perfect" guy are seventeen year old girls!
The exposition to the romance was amazingly the best part. The first few pages were awful, but then as ~Bella~~~~ adjusts to her new surroundings and makes an ass out of herself over a boy more than once, it got bearable for a few chapters. I mean, who can't relate to feeling like an asshole over a boy? Except, you know, how EVERY OTHER BOY IN THE SCHOOL WANTED TO DATE HER EXCEPT ***EDWARD***. Poor brooding, thirsty, dazzling, sparkling ***Edward***, who played hard to get, and then gave in because apparently no one in her town with a penis can resist her. Seriously, can I just tell you how I've read this story in the LOTR fandom, and the Harry Potter fandom, and EVERY OTHER FANDOM EVER? Thank you for making note.
It was like "Who are you, you're so mysterious, you're a jerk! No it's okay, YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL, ABRUPT ABRUPT ABRUPT, RUSHING INTO THINGS, really stupid awful cliche teenage romance things that never happen in real life, everything's awesome! SUDDEN CONFLICT! RUSHED AND CRAPPY CLIMAX! Everything's okay! We are in love and just because one of us isn't really seventeen it is the most profound thing ever! FOREVER IS A PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE LENGTH OF TIME TO WANT TO BE TOGETHER, PLZ TURN ME INTO A VAMPIRE BECAUSE I WILL NEVER EVER GET SICK OF YOU. Oh, you won't? Well, maybe next book."
Quite frankly, I'm very displeased at the way this book played out. I prefer building conflicts, where you can sense what the problem is going to be and how it might play out when you begin reading. It's sometimes a disappointment when you can figure it out ahead of time, but then you at least know where things are probably going, and you can be prepared for how things will go. The way it begins, you're wondering how they'll get over ... whatever it is going on between them and get together. Then they do, and you look down at the page numbers and realize you have about four hundred pages left to read, and no discernible conflict/resolution in sight. A large chunk of the book is about I REALLY LIKE YOU and then WE ARE IN LOVE LOOK AT HOW HAPPY WE ARE, which gets boring pretty quickly. There are about four lines of witty dialogue in the whole thing, and they occur during this period, surprisingly. Then, suddenly, ~Bella~~~~ is meeting ***Edward's*** family, all of whom are very vapid and 2-D despite the backgrounds Smeyer tried to give them, and then even more suddenly, we have a conflict unrelated to anything else ever. I'm pretty sure that the climax covers about two chapters, followed by one that should have been edited out of the book completely, and one long ridiculous conclusion chapter.
Some smaller notes? The sparkling in daylight thing was probably the most absurd thing I've ever read, which is saying a lot, because I've read some absurd things. The dazzle thing? Honestly, now that I've seen it in context, not a big deal. It got blown out of proportion. So that whole dramarama, I'm okay with (as okay as I'll get given that it's Twilight). Also, I was pretty miffed at how frequently ***Edward*** was compared to A) an angel and B) a Greek statue. Can we get some other metaphors please? What's so beautiful you can't believe it, GO! UM UM AN ANGEL! What's always still like stone, GO! UH UM A GREEK STATUE! CONGRATULATIONS YOU JUST WON THE $10,000 PYRAMID.
Also I'm pretty sure Smeyer abuses adjectives. She throws a whole bunch at you in the beginning, and then she sticks to the standard formula of two-at-a-time. It gets absolutely grating. And I am positive the woman pretty much rapes the shift-F7 function; either that or she finds the longest, most "intelligent" sounding words in her thesaurus and just throws them in there to look good. I swear, some of the words that ~Bella~~~~ either says, or thinks in order to describe things ... NO ONE would use, let alone a seventeen year old girl, mkay? I doubt my friend that graduated from Harvard and is currently sitting in Yale grad school has even had some of those words float through her brain in every day situations.
Needless to say, I won't be reading any of the other books. It's not necessary, seriously, nor is it worth the time (or the money, if I couldn't get them for free).
Moral of the story is: DON'T FEED THE TWILIGHT MONSTER.