[This blog is for cinematic and televisual musings, book rantings, geek glees, and media reviews, and true to its name, there are spoilers here, so consider this your warning: SPOILER ALERT!]
Howdy, y'all. Welcome back. I was originally intending on making my next blog post my review of the book Twilight by Stephanie Meyer and the following post my review of the movie Twilight directed by Catherine Hardwicke, but I'd like to an extra step to write a separate post, dedicated specifically to those of you who have found it necessary to bombard me online with comments about my choice in reading these books and watching these movies.
In my exposure thus far, you can be divided into two different categories.
The first, and in my opinion the far more infuriating, are those of you who find it necessary to point out to me that vampires are evil and that this is somehow going to corrupt me.
There are so many things wrong with that assumption, I don't even know where to start.
Let's begin with the first objection I have to you guys. 99% of y'all who are mauling me online about the evil nature of vampires and commenting on how this is going to lead me down a wrong path (whether or not you state this outright, it's more than implied) HAVE NOT READ THESE BOOKS. Or, if you have, you've only read the first two, and find it necessary to throw me cautionary tales of the book's characters and what vampires are.
Even if you've only read the first two books of the four-part series, you should have MORE than enough exposure to the type of "vampires" that Stephanie Meyer describes to be laughing at your own arguments. As a friend of mine put so aptly, these "vampires", with superhuman strength, good looks, agility, telepathy, and wealth are more like demigods than actual vampires.
In traditional vampire mythology, they are portrayed as human bodies occupied by a demon spirit that stalks humans for their blood to either kill them or make them vampires themselves, or they are human-esque, with some memories of their past life but are damned because they are now monsters.
Meyer's vampires are more of the modern view, the more sympathetic look at this race of "monsters", AKA, the repentant vampire. They have consciences, they (usually) have a set of morals, and they go about their lives trying to regain some of what they lost when they lost their humanity. (Meyer isn't the only one to do this, by the way. Many authors and television producers have portrayed the repentant vampire, and have done it much better. Anne Rice for books and the British TV series "Being Human" come to mind). Even so, Meyer has managed to create a vampire that is more laughable than it is terrifying. Given the more modern-leaning towards making villains sympathetic and understandable, or to making heroes villains and vice-versa, it isn't surprising that this route was taken, but it was more in how Meyer executed these "vampires".
Guys. THEY FREAKING SPARKLE.
They smell good.
They form family units and certain groups of these "vampires" in Meyer's world with (usually) loving, communicable relationships with each other that attempt to feast on animals instead of humans.
They feel remorse and guilt for their actions.
Ahem. THEY SPARKLE.
Literally, the only things tying them to other vampire tales are their fangs, their (virtual) immortality, and their desire for human blood. But in Meyer's world, it is possible to not feast on human blood (something else she wasn't the first to do; check out the Disney movie, "The Little Vampire", for an excellent example and a freaking cute movie), and they just have to avoid temptations that lead to their feasting on humans.
There is virtually no draw-back at all with this kind of a life. Like I said, demi-god. Not vampire.
They're not possessing humans' bodies. They're not sacrificing virgins on a stone tablet for the coming of the end of the world. They're not transporting themselves back and forth between Hell in order to torment people. They're more akin to the life of an immortal from a fantasy tale than they are from a horror story.
My friend put it perfectly: "A friend of mine is reading Twilight for the first time, mostly for the purposes of satirical research, but now she keeps actually getting flack from people for reading books about 'evil vampires.' EVIL VAMPIRES. What is this, 2004? I repeat, and will always repeat: being intimidated by Twilight vampires is like being intimidated by Count Chocula. OH NO LOOK OUT, IT'S THE MOST EVIL OF ALL BREAKFAST CEREALS. Or the muppet Count from Sesame Street. DON'T LISTEN TO HIM CHILDREN, HIS MATH COMES STRAIGHT FROM SATAN. Y'all need to chill ok? Ok."
(Another friend of mine made this meme, and I think it's hilarious).
And even if they were "evil" as y'all are so eager to cajole me with, what is the issue? Don't stories need villains? Isn't the fight in life all the more interesting because there's someone that is threatening others? You're the same people that freaked out over Hunger Games because it was children killing children. If that was your biggest issue with those books and not the institution behind what caused those children to be killing each other, you have a bigger problem than arguing with me over vampire stories and need to look around our world a little more.
Now onto the second group of y'all annoying online critics of my reading choices: the lit people who find it their duty to look down their nose at me and judge me for reading these books, even when I'm very obviously critiquing these books myself as being some of the worst words to have ever been printed together on joining pages.
The way I see it, either you don't believe the incessant posts I put online about my hatred, annoyance, and blinding laughter towards it, or you don't think these books are worth reading at all. I don't believe that there isn't a book that is ever truly worth not reading. Even if it is trash (cough cough Fifty Shades of Gray), we can learn from it. We can take what it is awful about it and learn why it is so terrible, how to avoid that in the future, and try to remedy that with our own works or critiques. Silencing a book, any book, for being terrible is akin to banning Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird because some people find those books poorly written or offending. To allow for free speech and expression, we have to allow those words to be written. (The fact that these books were published at all speaks to a terrible editorial choice on the part of their publishers, but my point remains).
And when I happen to like a whole three chapters out of the entire first book of this godawful series, I'm suddenly labeled as being uneducated, uncouth, illiterate, and appalling. Good grief people, your reactions to my liking a plot twist at the end of the book was akin to if I had just announced my electing to get a sex change surgery. Y'all need to chill, too. I will get into the gory and gritty details in my following review posts of why I hated the book and its movie adaptation, but I am being hounded nonstop online for this project I am working on.
At the end of the day, please STOP TROLLING ME. I know what ACTUAL vampires are, I know what these Twilight "vampires" are, and I know what good and bad literature are.
Get over yourselves, and let me have fun.
See you next time, when the bloody mayhem that will be my Twilight book and movie reviews will commence.
Peace out.
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