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 Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 2:09 am
HOLY CRAP SABATA IS POSTING IN THE DEBATE SUBFORUM!
There are many people all over Gaia hating on and loving on Twilight alike. My question to you is this: what do YOU think about Twilight?
My opinion based on what I've heard from haters and lovers alike:
Stephanie Meyer, while not innately a bad writer, seemed to have failed on the description of a vampire. Hell, vampires are harmed while in sunlight, they don't sparkle.
I don't disagree with the basis of her writing, however. Like Twilight, my story 'Sibling Rivalry' was based off a dream I had. However, I don't feel I've failed on my description of a zombie. Call me the male Stephanie Meyer.
I'm on the hater's side about the love thing, though. A female human, while the possibility of falling in love with a vampire is there, can not have a baby with a male vampire.
I feel I've explained myself enough. Now, what is your side? Why do you love or hate Twilight?
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Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 5:11 am
 "Seriousness is the refuge of the shallow."
I think Twilight is one of the worst things ever to be published. Stephenie Meyer is a terrible writer, I've honestly read better fanfiction. She's overly descriptive, and writes paragraph after paragraph of "filler". In the book she spends more time describing what Bella cooks for dinner than she does on advancing the plot. A plot which, by the way, is rather silly. The good guys "win" almost instantly, so she can go back to describing Edward's marble skin and butterscotch eyes.
Her characters lack dimension, as well. Bella is too average, and Edward is too "dreamy". Not to mention the poor research behind it. She describes Edward as a glittering vampire, yet later on it's revealed that he is an incubus. An incubus is not a blood-drinking vampire. It's a demon. A demon that goes into peoples' rooms at night, paralyzes them and forces nightmares upon them, and rapes them to drain their energy. Let's look back on Twilight now - hasn't Edward been going into Bella's room at night to "watch her sleep"?
That's beyond disturbing.
But it's just a book, right? It's not doing that much harm!
WRONG.
Here's a list of why it's damaging culture and society.
1.Tithing. SMeyers is mormon, therefore 10% of her cash goes to the mormon church. The mormon church is one of the biggest sponsors for the Prop8 campaign, for example. So basically, by giving SMeyers your money you are also oppressing people!
2. Young girls read this book and usually just fall in love with Edward. Edward is a creepy ********, and guys like that in real life should be arrested. If these girls start going out with guys like that, they are probably going to end up being abused in some way.
3. Wasting resources. There is now twilight candy, clothing, jewellery, books, cds and dvds, to mention a few products. It's pretty much taking over the industry. The twilight book is killing lots of trees.
4. Badfic. THERE'S A LOT OF IT.
5. Screaming crazy fangirls. Some fangirls have attacked those who disagree with their love for twilight. It's gone as far as attempted murder. Obviously, twilight makes people stupid and aggressive.
I could go on and on about this, but it'd take forever! There're so many issues with this book - the mormon overtones, the sexism, the abuse, ***** etc. - Oscar Wilde.
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Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 12:22 pm
I've never read the books, and I don't plan to, because I don't care for vampire stories. However, I have watched the movie, and based on that and some other stuff I've heard, it's not so much a story about vampires as it is a story about romance with vampires thrown in for a twist. That said, I'm even less interested in reading the books.
It's not even so much about romance as it is about obsession. This chick Bella apparently spends every waking hour thinking about this guy. That's not love, or at least not true love. If anything, it's puppy love.
I won't even bother going into the canon of vampires. Like I said, they're not my thing, so it's not my place to say whether her description is right or wrong. I will say I don't like the sparkling. I realize it's yet another tool designed to make Edward more "beautiful", but seriously? Sparkling?
On the "Edward is beautiful" topic, that seems to be what the majority of the story is about. Page upon page describing how his skin or his eyes or his whatever is the most perfect thing ever. I'm sorry, but that's not good story-telling to me. I don't want to read a book that spends 80% of the time explaining why the main character is awesome/hawt. That's just boring.
My father actually attempted to read one of the books a while back. He'd heard a lot about them, and he wanted to know what all the fuss was about, so he grabbed a copy from the library. He got maybe a tenth of the way in and gave up. He said it was the some of the most horrid writing he's ever seen. This is a man who spends a good portion of his time reading all sorts of things, so I'm inclined to believe him when he says the writing sucks.
I once saw an argument claiming that since Twilight was on the top of the NY Times best sellers list, it must be good, because bad books don't make it to the top. I wanted to kick this person. Thankfully for her, the Internet separated us. If enough angsty preteen and teenage girls buy a copy, any book will make it to the top of a best sellers list. That doesn't mean it's good. It means it sells. Frankly, the majority of the audience for this series probably hasn't done a lot of serious reading, so I doubt they'd know a good book if it came up and bit them.
No, that's not a vampire joke.
So yeah, that's my opinion of Twilight. Let it be said again that I haven't read the book, but I have watched the movie, and the only reason I did that was so I could justify my disgust with it. I was not disappointed; it was exactly what I expected.
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Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2009 7:56 pm
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Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 10:41 am
I'm one of those rabid antis people are worried about. Don't worry, I haven't flamed anyone in a while, which is great for me. It's starting to seep into my friendships and though they like Twilight and such, they don't obsess in front of me. They help me to not obsess as well. I'm cool with that.
There is a HUGE split between the lovers and haters. From my perspective, I can see only a few things that might be right with the series, but most of my hate started from the Grammar of the books. I've read them all and can't understand the hype either. Stephanie Meyer is determined to use every single adjective in the Thesaurus to describe two things: (1) Edward and (2) the love he shares with Bella.
What I think set off a lot of people here is the massive amount of fangirls who would gladly leave their current boyfriends--possibly kind and caring beings--if a weird, emo, anti-social, possessive guy with apparently flippy hair started stalking her. Meyer has sparked a twitch in the lives of many women with a statement that it's okay to just put everything down, leave everyone you love, just for a guy who will kill you in a very bad way.
I can see how the book sparks some serious feminist issues.
~~~~
As for the vampires, I think they're cute at best in modern fiction. They have a perspective on many issues I have concerning life that make me understand what we're supposed to see in life. I may think they're romantic, but I find their knowledge more sustaining than eternal life/love.
~~~~
Another note, if you will. . . ^_^. As an anti, I've always flocked to the idea of an historically accurate character. The writer had an idea, he read the books, he did his homework, and then he interpreted the story in his language. What Stephanie Meyer did was have a dream, did no research, read no books, and wrote a story without historical vampires. She also plainly stated that she'd based the characters off of superheroes more than actual vampire lore.
All the while, people who haven't picked up a decent book since they were forced to read in school, or haven't set foot in a library since their youth, are suddenly seeing the movie because of the actors, and then get pulled into the hype by picking this one book as their first honest read in ages. Not having read anything decent lately, they cling to this knowledge and claim it superior because it made them open their eyes to literature.
It's my problem when it's the only thing they want to read afterwards. I know I've reached my limit in writing when all I can come up with is dialogue. I know this because I've done it enough times and said, "Okay, that's enough for today, lets wait until tomorrow to continue and re-read what we've come up with in case something dumb and useless seeped into the text." I don't use adverbs or descriptive words in a profuse manner, and if I can show the reader what I'm saying instead of just saying it, I feel I've accomplished something.
I'm really hoping you're not implying I dislike vampires at all. I love vampires. Twilight merely has no vampires, and Twilight was poorly written. Too many negatives.
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Posted: Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:09 pm
 I'd like to think of myself as a big critic. If it's main stream, I'm not going to say I love it. Which is what I think so many rabid fans out there do.
I could care less about the whole "Stefanie Meyer ruined vampires" thing. Every writer has their own idea about everything and has a right to make their own. There are too many different descriptions of mythical beings to pinpoint one perfect description. Why not make one up? But the sparkly thing was definitely just dumb.
"Oooh! Look! It's pretty diamond man!" NO.
For the books: I agree with Saffron about it being overly descriptive. I thought I would die reading 587(made up for dramatization) adjectives and comparisons of other adjectives to describe the colour of someone's shirt. I'd say at least 60%(if not more) of the book was just that: adjectives.
I must admit though, I did somewhat enjoy the basic idea of the book. The first one. The second one was about the main character saying how much she wanted to die or whatever because Edward left her. It was horribly boring until perhaps the last sixth or seventh of the book. The series should have ended there.
I don't really remember much about the third book because it was too descriptive for something that probably should have taken no more than one chapter to describe the entire thing. Too boring to stick out in my mind. This should have never been written.
The fourth: Again, this book should have never been made. They have a child? Great. The book spends the entire time describing how the child is killing it's mother as a fetus and then it spends time picking up unnecessary characters for some war that never really happens. This also should have never been written.
I under stand the whole dragging book series out to make more money, but really? This series should have been one book total. Smoosh the first two books into something and get rid of all the bloody detailing. Or just smoosh the first, second, and fourth books together. Because the third really was pretty useless. And I just don't remember anything but something about wolves and fighting over Bella.
The movie: Horrible casting, unenthusiastic acting, monotone voices, unfitting background music, etc... I was glad I didn't pay to see it. The movie had even less plot than the book. The over-detailed and short-plotted book was faaaaar better than that.
And I just spent way too much time criticizing it all... gonk
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Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2009 12:16 am
I'm not a rabid fangirl, but I've read all four books and I liked them.
I'm not going to overanalyze about the writing and the plot and the likes.
Is Stephenie Meyer the best writer in the world? No.
Was some of it rather cheesy? Yeah.
But the books entertained me and that's good enough for me.
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Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 9:05 pm
i read the books (dealing with a bunch of family drama made it better than anything), and liked them to a point. i'm sort of straddling the fence here. maybe it was just a bunch a drama outside that made the inside drama good. it was really syrupy with the love (like anybody's love is really like that), bella seemed like too much of an airhead (since it was from her point of view and it was all about how wonderful and handsome edward was and how she possibly couldn't deserve him) and i even got mad with the edward stuff (i'm in utah, and stephenie meyer is close to god here) with the team edward/ team jacob thing (i don't really like to admit it, but i was on team jacob. i don't like admitting it because it's admitting i got caught up in a craze like that). and later, after doing some incubus research (since it implied edward was somewhere in that potential category), and they can impregnate, but they don't make their own semen (succubusses collect it for them from wet dreams and actual sex with males), so the logic that he could make his own and have it be half vampire is weird and kind of stupid. it would be a complete human (although there are dhampirs, which are half vampire children, but apparently, they possess completely human traits, but can see vampires and know their world and stop the bad ones)
so in the end, it completely irritated me. the only weird thread i still have to twilight is the part with alice (where they explain she doesn't remember life before she was a vampire, and was revealed she was a mental patient sort of hit me, because at the time i read it, everyone was trying to get me to talk about my life before i was schizo, and i don't remember anything before). and for that reason, i knew if it wasn't in the movie, it would piss me off to no end and i didn't want what was left destroyed (since that was all that was left)
but whatever floats the public's boat. it did entertain me, so i guess it did its job. but i really won't support it any furthur.
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Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 5:26 am
My reasons for hating Twilight:
1) Vampire breeding: I heard somewhere online that a half vampire half human was mentioned in the books. This is impossible as vampires cannot have children due to being dead bodies reanimated via magic sustained in the blood. Because they are dead their blood doesn't flow stopping them getting sexually aroused. Also a male vampire wouldn't be able to produce sperm due to this reasoning.
2) Sparkling in sunlight: As was mentioned in a previous post, Vampires are harmed by the sunlight. The only way they would be "sparkling" in the sunlight is from the flames as they started catching on fire from the effect of the sunlight on their bodies.
3) The vampires are pansies: Edward watching Bella as she sleeps? If he was a true vampire he would have just killed her and moved on to the next person. Vampire's are driven by their thirst for blood and would never care about a human.
That is my main reasons. If your wondering how I know all this stuff its cause for the last 7 years I have studied all this type of thing. And still I'm learning more and more. Its helping me get ready to write my own novel.
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Posted: Sat Oct 10, 2009 10:07 am
I've read all four books of Twilight...it was a rather unmemorable series, 2000+ pages of it and I can remember 1984 by George Orwell(my alltime favorite book) better, and 1984 actually seems LONGER then twilight, and it was like 350 pages. Twilight built up alot of suspense(especially in the fourth novel) but to no avail, there was no great battles, there was nobody close to the main character dieing(I wanted to see the whore cry for a good reason >.<), no suicide(got close but no dice), there wasn't anything except a creepy-a** stalker who smelled sweet with topaz eyes and perfect hair and blah and blah and oh so perfect blah, and some over-emotional chick who did an no-no and lusted after her stalker.
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Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2009 7:42 pm
I feel a little lazy for not putting my opinion directly on here, but it would be a little bit too much for copy pasta. I got so tired of arguing my points repeatedly to Twilight fans who attacked me, I ended up writing a very long pseudo-essay about why I don't like it. It's all up on this website here: http://twilight-essays.webs.com/theessays.htmSorry if I'm breaking any rules here... :C
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Posted: Thu Oct 15, 2009 11:02 am
I hate it. It lacks good story telling. I've suffered though all four books and it's aweful. I find it stupid. The vampires are what tick me off. They are not vampires. They're just liars wearing body glitter. Also, the book has no plot. It's page after page of how "dreamy" Edward is. Edward is nothing more than a human stalking a ignorant girl. Bella is just a human, who likes a boy. Twilight, is poorly written, with no plot.
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Posted: Thu Oct 29, 2009 7:39 pm
Sorry fans, but vampires don't sparkle. And they don't follow around human teens unless they're planning for dinner. It seems like the vampire family is actually really well thought out, but to claim them as vampires doesn't work. I tried... I TRIED to watch the movie...but I couldn't watch the second half... -we were in a plane at the time- I was curious...but I couldn't watch it... at this time, I was completely obsessed with the Angel series... sweatdrop
http://images.icanhascheezburger.com/completestore/2009/1/16/128765971613398832.jpg
love this pic.
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Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 12:58 pm
twilight sucks!!!! he's like ''this is the skin of a killer'' sparkle sparkle XP
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Posted: Fri Nov 20, 2009 1:08 pm
I'm kind of in the middle. Her writing is definitely not the best. And, her inspiration is almost as bad as this one writer my Mom met who became a writer because a psychic told her she would become one. Her boyfriend writes vampire novels. Anyways, I think the idea for the story is ok though. But, it was overdescriptive, minor mistakes drove me crazy, as did the denial and low self esteem of the female lead. I've read all four, I like the characters opposed to the story, except the leads. I wish the other characters were much more developed than they were. They were just kind of there. Also, I don't feel that the characters change gradually, but have sudden large changes, or none at all. I personally have distaste for Edward, he is too dramatic, and a little obsessive, even creepy. I wouldn't want someone watching me sleep. Or bossing me around. Or, for that matter telling me how I'm not careful enough. Also, the relationship was too perfect, no bumps, except the baby, and that was just... not right.
EDIT: For Sabata, You know what would've made the fourth book? A death. That would've perfected it. Also, the third was one of my favorites, just because she actually considered not being absolutely obsessed with Edward. That was nice.
For Lemon: I'm about the same, I like the characters more than the storyline.
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