In honor of New Moon

[habibti]

I'm posting some quick diatribe thoughts about the entire twilight enterprise. A warning: this contains almost entirely negative views on the entire Twilight oeuvre. Please excuse the grammatical and other errors - I can't bring myself to go back over it for review

Comments

[scrollgirl]

Since you're new to the Twilight phenomenon, you probably wouldn't have seen the awesome Buffy versus Edward vid that came out over the summer. I think you'll enjoy ;)

[habibti]

Oh, that video is too cool. Buffy does the perfect smackdown - the stalking, the smelling thing - hilarious! Thanks for that!

[habibti]

Agreed, the books are unreadable. I skimmed them through and was disturbed that this was what my niece was reading. When I went back over some parts to start thinking about how to frame my objections when talking to her, the books became even more incoherent.

The reason my niece recommended the books to me was that she had read that the author was a Buffy fan and thought that I would be interested. I knew after reading that she wasn't a thoughtful Buffy fan. And my urgency to get across the troubling sub-text in this work became even greater.

Yeah, I'm wondering what Joss' private thoughts are about Twilight. You're right, maybe the name of his S8 villain is indicative.

[habibti]

I've been reading more reaction now that I got my own opinions on Twilight out there and I do see a lot of cross-over from the Buffy fandom to Twilight. I find it similarly incomprehensible unless one understands that their understanding of Buffy had to be shallow, similar to their understanding of Twilight.

Based on what I'm reading of why so many girls and women love Twilight, I'm coming around the the viewpoint that perhaps it's about fulfilment of a sexual or romantic fantasy. Just like many women have rape fantasies that they would never dream of enacting in their real sexual lives, maybe this is another erotic fantasy - the strong man who sweeps you off your feet and cares for you tenderly blah blah blah. Maybe most of these women would not willingly erase themselves in real life but find it an attractive element of their fantasy life.

Okay, maybe I'm reaching but I'd like to be as charitable as I can about this and not conclude that millions of women are just idiots!

[christeos_pir]

Or as some wag put it, "Let's see - he looks like he sleeps in a tree, doesn't bite anyone, and he twinkles... That's not a vampire, that's a fairy!"

[habibti]

Well said.

And nice to see you.

[londonkds]

I don't know given the conflicting comments here about Meyer's reading/viewing, but an awful lot of people thought the first book read like a high school era Willow/Angel fic with serial numbers filed off.

I haven't read them, but was astonished by the revelation about the caesarian section with teeth.

[habibti]

Meyer does strike me as someone whose work should be up on fanfiction.net rather than be published. Your comment got me curious and I googled both her and Joss to see if she was a Buffy fan. She denies having seen Buffy but is a Joss Whedon fan. Go figure.

There is ickiness galore in this piece - there's so much I didn't mention because my mind just didn't want to go there again. But the caesarian birth with teeth did take the whole oral incorporation theme to a whole new 'sub-text rapidly becoming text' level.

[atpolittlebit]

Well, now you know why I suggested reading all four. Because just the one doesn't give you the depth of the subtext or the incredible squickiness of what was apparently Jacob imprinting on Bella's ova. Blech!. Or the pregnancy, labor and birth. I (not very) occasionally wonder if SM even realizes what that said about her

[habibti]

I don't think you could accuse me of really reading all four novels - it was skimmming with a bit of going back over bits in shock to really find out if what I thought happened actually happened.

Thanks for your help on approaching my niece. I had to just get past all my horror at this piece of work and you gave me a good way to do that.

I agree about Alice and Angela. Alice kept saying the things I wanted to say - like when she told Edward to hit Bella after they escaped from the Volturi.

I think we'd better now prepare ourselves for a whole lot of books and movies with similar regressive themes because that's what sells. Grrr.