Twilight discussion thread

This movie seems to be all abuzz and has got people passionate. People arguing about the movie on facebook, people critiquing the Twilight saga and it's fans. It seems to be a rather debatable topic. So I'd like some people to chime in with their thoughts and opinions on Twilight. Good? Bad? Just entertainment? Trash? Something harmless? Something foul? Umm.... discuss.

Well Its going to be a very large argument coming up especially from what I said earlier last night.

In short? Poorly written, insipid fiction that is mostly harmless.

To expand upon that a bit, the Twilight series is really not all that different from most popular fiction. Very few of those authors have any real writing talent and instead just cater to the lowest common denominator. And there really isn't anything wrong with that. Sometimes, you just want to read some mindless entertainment. Kind of like how summer blockbuster movies work. However, that doesn't change the fact that Twilight is not a well written book series.

The biggest problem I have with the series is that the main character, Bella, is an author analogue, a reader analogue and a Mary Sue.

For people not familiar with those terms, an author analogue is a character that is a fictionalized version of the author. That is to say the author wrote this character to stand in for her. That's poor writing and given the context of the novel, somewhat creepy as well. There isn't anything really wrong on a basic level of wanting to live out a fantasy, but it certainly doesn't make for a well written or interesting character.

A reader analogue is a character that is essentially replaceable with that of the reader. It allows the reader to take the place of the character and act out the fantasy as well. Again, nothing wrong with that, but nobody can tell me this makes for a good, well developed character either.

Being a Mary Sue is probably the worst offense. Essentially it's a character with few or no flaws and even the flaws they do have only serve to make the character more "badass" or "cool". This is the worst type of character in my opinion as having a flawed, identifiable character is key to good writing in my opinion. People are, by nature, imperfect. We may strive to do good things, but we will fail. We might be an asshole to a co-worker one day. Maybe we harbor latent racist or sexist sentiment. Maybe we're homophobic. Something of that nature. Without those flaws, we really aren't human. When writing human or human-like characters, it is important to include some of those everyday flaws in order to, well, humanize the character. Bella doesn't possess those traits in my opinion. She's too perfect. All the boys love her. She has supernatural beings FIGHTING over her affections, all without her really doing anything. That's simply not a character I can identify with or even like.

That all being said, the books are harmless. Mindless, saccharine reading designed for pre-teens and teens to enjoy without thinking too much about it. They are the popcorn flicks of books. And there isn't anything really wrong with that. Are these books my cup of tea? Not a chance. Am I going to judge (outside of some mild teasing) people who really like these books? Nope. It's fine that people like these books. Live and let live.

As an added benefit, there is a whole new generation of people who are geeks about something. Being a Twlight geek is still a geek. And geeks tend to get into other geeky things. When the younger Twilight fans grow older they will find other things to be geeky about. I really think we're heading for a Golden Age of geekdom, and that's actually a great thing, regardless of how we get there.

I can't agree that it's harmless. I've lost all respect for someone I dearly love because of these books.

My aunt, the one who took me to see "Predator" when I was seven (and got me into horror in general) is in love with this series. She spent more than an hour defending it the other day while I just picked her entire argument apart...unfortunately, by doing so, I think I just reinforced her illness.

Her argument was that this is a love story (it isn't), and so that makes all the other garbage acceptable (it doesn't). I'm not gonna get into the whole thing, but it made me sad...I guess living alone with two dogs and a horse for the last decade has rendered her vulnerable to the Myerism's, and I just know she's better than that. This is the lady that got me to read "The Stand" when I was 9, you think she'd know a good love story.

Anyway, I had to walk away when the discussion turned to RPat and KStew and their real life relationship woes - I just knew there was no reasoning to be had, and had to retreat before I said something seriously offensive.

I can't even celebrate the fact that this series got even more kids to read, because the very next book they pick up after these will probably make their heads explode, and then they'll just give up on reading all over again. Unless it's "50 Shades Of Grey," I suppose.

Eagerly awaiting the Rifftrax version of "Breaking Dawn: We Stretched This Out Unnecessarily Long For Monetary Reasons" to complete my collection...although, from what I hear, this movie lampoons itself! Not sure how I feel about that. I want to make fun of this tripe myself - stop being strangely meta and doing it for me, people.


Is that a thing now? I hope not. Don't need people winking at me from the screen, as if to say "Yeah, we know this is bad." Just be in your bad movies and I'll take care of it from there.

Only Jowski would start a thread in regards to Twilight. I had you pegged for Gollum but I guess sparkling vampire pussies will do.

They suck. They're terrible. But I bet you in 10-20 years, we will have an all new look at Vampires again and it will probably be even more ridiculous and gay.