Wednesday, December 30, 2009

More Thoughts on the Twilight Saga

I have been reading various discussions about the Twilight books. I found this site:

http://www.twilightsucks.com

The purpose of the site is to trash the series and Stephenie Meyer. It makes for some very amusing reading. According to the first post in this discussion, "to pull a Meyer" means "to (mainly) chuck a hissy fit over nothing whatsoever." Apparently, Meyer does not react well to criticism. I also interpret "to pull a Meyer" to mean to epically fail at something.

Many discussions center around the fourth book and all of its problems. Meyer's characterization and premise shifted in the final volume, and this is a source of many complaints. During the fourth book, the werewolves are suddenly explained not to be werewolves but merely shape-shifters. I think it is odd that Meyer's werewolves are no longer werewolves. Jacob and his pack are never werewolves by definition, but that is what Meyer calls them in the first three books. I think Meyer did not realize exactly what werewolves are and made a mistake in the first three books. Apparently, Meyer has admitted that she knew little about vampires which is why her vampires are completely different from other vampires.

PLOT SPOILER FOLLOWS (Skip the rest if you do not want to know.)

I was able to accept Jacob imprinting on Renesmee even though it is creepy. I accepted it by how Meyer described it and with the expectation that no romantic relationship would occur until Renesmee comes of age. Now if I knew someone who had been molested as a child, I would not be able to accept it.

Many people have mentioned how Jacob's imprinting would come across if the fourth book is made into a movie. While I was able to accept it fine in the book, the movie would be different. Think of how it would look for a young man to be in love with a baby. At the very least, Jacob would look ridiculous. At the worst, Jacob would look like a full-blown pedophile.

On Twilight Sucks, Edward is called "Sparkles," and Jacob is called "PedoWolf." Funny.

Edward is very accepting of Jacob in the fourth book. Edward does not seem to mind that Jacob is obsessed with Renesmee. Is this the controlling Edward of the first book? I think not. Edward is mostly in the background in the fourth book except when Bella is sexually assaulting him (yuck).

I have really enjoyed reading all of the criticism of the Twilight books. I am glad that I read the books so that I could appreciate all of the criticism. It's been a lot of fun.

1 comment:

stratomiker said...

Apparently you don't read the adult paranormal romances. I do because I have friends who write them. The TWILIGHT 'formula' is their basic premise - fatal attractions to moody, distant, abusive, inaccessible males who are vampires, demons, faeries, werewolves, or other kinds of similar weird paranormal creatures.

These books are loaded with graphic sex scenes that are mistakenly called 'erotic'; what they are is pornographic. The only saving grace of these hugely popular books is that they always have a happy ending. The inaccessible male 'changes' and devotes his life and love to the heroine; which is, of course, the standard romance genre formula.

It interests me that women, who supposedly don't like visual porn, absolutely love written porn. If you check the romance shelves at any bookstore nowadays, you'll find one out of every two books is a sexy paranormal.

TWILIGHT and its clones have brought this down to the teen and preteen level. Without the sex, but hinting at it - and certainly presenting fatal obsessive love as an ideal worthy of dying for.

Yikes. What next?

Whatever happened to Red Gate Farm?

I think it's time for Nancy Drew and the Dana Girls to be declared mandatory reading to get young minds off such degrading stuff and on to something more positive.

Can it possibly have any merit that this stuff is the rage, other than that people are actually reading?

Mike