Sparkly Vampires, or Why Twilight is the Worst Book Ever

If you know a twelve- to sixteen-year-old girl, own a television, or have low standards in entertainment, you have probably heard of the "literary" sensation currently sweeping the world: Stephenie Meyer's vampire novel, Twilight.

For those of you who either do not fall into the above categories or live under a rock, Twilight tells the story of Bella Swan, a seventeen-year-old girl, who falls in love with Edward Cullen, a one hundred and seven-year-old vampire.

That's about it.

After the initial attempt at plot (“I can’t love you! I’ll eat you!” “But I can’t live without you!” “Well, alright then”), Edward and Bella spend approximately four hundred pages cooing at each other (“I love you more” “No, I love you more” “No, I love you more!”) until Meyer remembers that something actually has to happen in the novel. I won’t spoil you, but let’s just say there’s a vampiric scuffle that ends with all the important characters coming away as alive (or undead) as they were before.

Twilight has been called everything from “the next Harry Potter” to “a scrap of tissue I wouldn’t blow my nose in”. Obviously when something gains overnight popularity there’s going to be some kickback, but Twilight is earning so much hatred that even Britney Spears fans are wincing.

(And I best not hear Britney bashing in the comments, ladies.)

Because I think it’s very unfair to bash a book without reading it first, I sat down with a cup of hot cocoa and a knit blanket over winter break to read. A decent amount of alcohol later (trust me when I say it was necessary), I put it down, found myself a lighter, and set the thing on fire. Looking past the atrocious writing, the characters are flat and oversimplified, the dialogue is painful, and the idolized relationships in the book are borderline terrifying.

Dear readers, you’re an intelligent bunch. So I’m going to state the truth for you. It might hurt some of you, but you need to hear it.

Twilight is the worst book ever written. Ever.

Why? Well, there are quite literally millions of reasons, but here’s one of them. Edward, Bella’s True Love, has become the symbol of the perfect man for millions of young girls across the world.

Which is great, right? Young girls having an ideal of perfection to aspire to with their own Mr. Right?

Only not. Because once you’ve looked past the sparkling—did I mention the sparkling? The vampires sparkle.—and get into the actual “substance” of the book, you find out that the relationship between Bella and Edward is so far over the border of abusive it’s not even funny. “But Shelly,” my Twilight-obsessed friend tells me, “he does that stuff because he loves her!”

Well, fine. I'm not against love in any manner of speaking, so long as it's all adult and consensual-like. But let’s be serious for a moment here, readers. If you heard about a guy who cut the brakes on his girlfriend’s car so that she couldn’t go hang out with her friend, what would you think? That’s not love, kids, that’s stalking, and between you and me, that’s pretty messed up.

Now, it’s only fair to get two sides to every story, so I went out and did a little research on both sides of the spectrum. I even tried to stay away from the usual fourteen-year-old fangirls so that I could get a somewhat intelligent opinion. One college freshman, when asked why she was a fan of Twilight, said, “I love the relationship between Bella and Edward. You know, if you look past the abuse. He’s just the perfect guy.”

Skeptically, I ventured, "Can we get back to the 'abuse' part?"

Of course, generally Twilight fans don’t like to get into that part at all, as it ruins their image of Edward as, you guessed it, the “perfect guy”. Unfortunately, when you consider the number of girls now looking for guys like Edward, that’s kind of terrifying. It certainly scares me.

Despite the overwhelming support of Twilight among its fans, it took two clicks on Google to find hundreds of anti-Twilight testimonials. Reasons given on the LiveJournal community ontd_twatlight included “s**t-poor writing” and “worst possible example of how to live your life”. Another user said, “I hate how the series, written by an untalented hack, has made thousands of females into mindless retards entranced by badly written, badly-conceived s**t. I hate hearing girls talk about it like its a memorable piece of literature.” The Anti-Twilight Movement summed up their entire argument by stating: “It's unoriginal, amateur, openly abusive, and horribly, horribly written.”

But back to my original argument—namely, that Twilight is the worst book ever. For just a moment here, let’s look beyond the bad writing and the abusive relationships and the atrocious characters. The real reason?

Twilight is the High School Musical of novels.

Stop, come back, I'm not dissing High School Musical. I’m not saying it’s bad because it’s like High School Musical. But think back. Remember back when that shit came out, and Disney was plastering Zac Efron’s face onto everything it could possibly plaster Zac Efron’s face on? It’s like that, but with Hot Topic. Twilight is everywhere. Everywhere. You can’t escape it.

Only instead of advertising a feel-good (if musically...interesting) movie, it's advertising a book inspiring millions of young girls to give up their hopes in dreams to fall in love with an abusive man and let him control every life decision they make, from college to pregnancy. For those of you who have sisters, daughters, any female relatives at all--that's terrifying. I've never been one to advocate banning books in any sense, but I'd certainly think twice about letting my child read something like this.

Now, there's the argument that people read the book because it's a simple work that doesn't require any thought to read. Alright, fine, I can respect that. But there's a difference, ladies, between reading something for fun and modeling your life after it, and that's where Twilight gets worrying--girls aren't reading it, they're letting it brainwash them. For God's sake, someone asked Robert Pattinson (the actor who plays Edward Cullen in the Twilight movie) to bite her. Girls, I can't make this up.

So, in conclusion: Twilight is the worst book ever written.

I mean, seriously. They sparkle.

Seriously.