The other day I watched one of the Twilight movies. My girlfriend had a real busy week and wanted to have a nice low key dinner and movie night. I told her that if she wanted to I’d watch Eclipse with her. Before then my only exposure to Twilight had been articles on Cracked.com making fun of it. She was upset that she never got to see it in the theatre and didn’t have someone to watch it with. I’m a good guy after all. Hell I’ve spent enough time making fun of Twilight might as well watch it. It can’t be that bad, right?
Wrong! The heroine was a pansy. She was only reactive to the world around her, not proactive. She deliberately hung out with a guy who was trying to seduce her, even though she knew it would bother her boyfriend, ‘the love of her life’. Were I werewolf jerk, or sparkly vamp douche, I’d find a lower maintenance girlfriend. The romantic interests were emotionally abusive and domineering to the girl. They’re both dangerous guys. If they were dating my daughter I’d be worried they were going to hurt her. Almost every scene started with one character being bitchy, snarky, mean, or an all around douche bag for no apparent reason to another. Though characters claimed to be in love with each other, no one could quantify it in anyway other than getting angry because of a love triangle. Bella is a horrible role model for girls.This is billed as a very idealized love story, and it’s geared at teenagers. I could go on about whats fucked up in Twilight, but many others before me have done a much better job of it. I understand why its popular. The novels and movies are sexualized romances without any explicit sexuality until later on. They’re escapist fantasy for horny teenagers, and who the hell wasn’t a horny teenager at some point?
I’m going to complain about something else. As many of you know I am an aspiring writer. It’s very difficult to get a book published if you’re not already famous. Literary agents are very strict with their word count guidelines and like to see a novel between 50-100 thousand words. My biggest problem with Liquid Silver is that its close to 200 thousand words. When an agent sees that in a query letter its an immediate turn off. Stephanie Meyer was a first time novelist. Her original manuscript was 175,000 words long, way over the maximum literary agents are willing to look at. The agent that picked it up mistakenly read it as 75,000, the perfect sweet spot for young adult fiction. From that humble beginning a poorly thought out teen romance was catapulted to a world wide phenomenon, teaching girls around the world its okay to be a door mat, and if a guy is clingy, domineering, stalkerish, and abusive it’s only cause he loves you. How come that trash can get published making the author a millionaire, and I cant? Wait I need to watch myself. If I get too angsty and whiny I may start to sparkle in the sunlight! Where are Buffy, Blade, and VanHelsing when I need them!
