Daisho Con

So, I did it. I manned up and read Twilight even though so many people tell me it's terrible, the main character's a Mary Sue, et cetera. I finished it a couple of days ago, and I give it a resonding 'eh'. It wasn't great, really wasn't terrible. All in all, just okay. It was very evident that this is the author's first novel. There were plenty of eye rolling moments for me throughout the story, but I think it's okay if remembered that it is intended for the "Young Adult" audience. There were some good ideas sprinkled throughout the story, enough to get me to read the whole book and not burn it or something. Here are some of my replies to statements made by people against Twilight.

Bella's a Mary Sue character. Truly, I don't agree with this. I feel that Bella is a developed character, with a personality and a set of character flaws. That said, I think she's about as dumb as a brick. I mean, really, really stupid. That's why she annoys me, personally. Truth be told, I've known people about as smart as Bella seems to be, so I guess she's realistic enough...and the portrayal of an angsty teenager is pretty good, as far as I remember.

Vampires don't sparkle/REAL vampires do...[fill in the blank]! Alright. My question to this is: How do you know what vampires do or do not do in the sun? Honestly, I've never met one. I doubt I will, factoring in the whole 'element of fiction' part of the myth. That said, how can I decide which version of the vampire myth is the properly told one? I honestly can't. To me, this is like arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, it really doesn't matter (it's fourty-two, by the way).


All in all, the book is okay. I can't speak for the rest of the series, but I imagine the writing improves at least a little. I can understand why the series is quite popular, and hope that it gets more people to start reading books.

I'm tempted to actually read the book all the way by your crusade. Once upon a time I read the first 2 chapters, and decided it was not worth my time.

I am more opposed to the rabid fanbase of the Twilight books than the books themselves. There are thousands of poorly written angsty teen romance novels out there, and hell some of them probably have vampires in them as well, but generally those are regarded for what they are, cheap thrill fun books. Its like going to see Bad Boys 2, you probably won't learn anything from it or be brought to question anything because of it, but you'll probably have fun.

The assertion that Twilight is some sort of great epic literary romantic saga though, I cannot accept.

I'll withhold further rantings on the book until I meet the Tom challenge and actually read it all the way.

I offer one counterpoint to What Tom says though about the vampires not sparkling thing: By your logic Tom, since vampires are fictitious there can really be no absolute traits about them. By this logic I coudl say that Vampires are pink unicorns that poopy blue ice cream, and since none of you have met a real vampire you could not contradict me

Generally I try to maintain the Bram Stoker image of vampires, because IMO he's the only author who's really wrote an interesting vampire book, but that's just my opinion.

Ejir wrote:I offer one counterpoint to What Tom says though about the vampires not sparkling thing: By your logic Tom, since vampires are fictitious there can really be no absolute traits about them. By this logic I coudl say that Vampires are pink unicorns that poopy blue ice cream, and since none of you have met a real vampire you could not contradict me

Your point? They could very well be! The real challenge is getting that into a publishable story...

What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter if a vampire in a fictional story sparkles in the sun as opposed to turning to dust. I've never seen a vampire, sparkling or otherwise, so it's not worth using as a argument over why another piece of literature sucks. There are plenty of other elements in Twilight that are far more worthy of a compelling argument against it. My point is that I think there is a distinct difference between saying a novel sucks because it depicts something in a different way than I like, and actually reading said novel and critiquing it for literary value. That said, most of the arguments presented to me before actually having read it myself didn't really hold water.

I do agree about Stoker's novel though. Pretty damn great, in my opinion.

And I am aware that I have said all this to you in IMs, but I felt I should post it up here for the sake of public discussion!

How does Twilight differ from Harry Potter? I mean it was a book about Witches and though I have read them all the first one or two were not that greatly written. I enjoyed them, I like them, I will read them all again. I intend to read Twilight simply because I love vampyres. Yes that is how I spell it. That said, I don't get why anything that has a huge fan base is automatically put in the "it can't possibly be good" category. If that was true where would Star Wars be? Where would Indiana Jones be? Think about it people, give it a chance, if you don't like it fine. Let's not just bash something because your "too old" for it, or it is too popular. What the hell is too popular anyway?

Sorry, rant done.

Tom and Ejir I am not say that this is what your doing, just seeing the Twilight hate everywhere and find it ridiculous.

Yep, I agree with you. I place Potter and Twilight in the same category of literature, the area intended for younger people.

I don't think that Twilight brings anything groundbreaking to the genre or literary style. And honestly, that's fine. It does play with the legends and myths of vampires, and that's pretty cool. I found the Mormonisms that shined through the writing to be annoying, along with the really, really, really bad vampire puns. All in all though, I don't understand what the hate is about. It's popular, that's cool. Fans doing stupid things to other people is definitely not limited to this fanbase, I think we can all agree.

Tom, I read these books before they became so popular from the movie. They really aren't the greatest books in the world but nor the worst.

Granted, I know you didn't say you hated them but, I enjoyed them, and am probably going to reread them soon enough. But I for me, I have never read the Harry Potter books nor am I going to.

I am not hating on Harry Potter it's just that I don't want to read them. They are for the younger generation and Twilight does fall into the same category of literature. But I wanted to read the Twilight series.

So, in closing, read through the series. It won't take long time to do but if you read the last one, you might change your mind a little.

On the shiny part, and the vampires in general, it takes away everything I have ever liked about vampires. The darkness of the stories, the not too superhuman part where they are somewhat killable, the inhuman part. All of that is gone replaced by pretty sparkly kryptonians with random mutant powers too. And they have all the wrong kinds of sexy. I like the goth look, Twilight has them being arrogent elitist jerks in alot of ways.

For a good example of how I like vampires look at the Dresden Files.

And Mary-Sue may be the wrong word for Bella. Generic useless Twit without logical motivations is better.

Aminar wrote:On the shiny part, and the vampires in general, it takes away everything I have ever liked about vampires. The darkness of the stories, the not too superhuman part where they are somewhat killable, the inhuman part. All of that is gone replaced by pretty sparkly kryptonians with random mutant powers too. And they have all the wrong kinds of sexy. I like the goth look, Twilight has them being arrogent elitist jerks in alot of ways.

For a good example of how I like vampires look at the Dresden Files.

And Mary-Sue may be the wrong word for Bella. Generic useless Twit without logical motivations is better.

Aminar your first problem is that you liked something as corny and steriotypicaly as vampires in the first place . The books were not all that bad. No How to Kill a Mockingbird but still not bad.

Read the Dresden Files Allen. Trust me, it makes vampires cool(although you'll have to make it through 6 books to get the whole story on vampires). And there is nothing wrong with liking corny stereotypical things, like say comic books. Dear lord are they corny and stereotypical. Still fun though. Your problem is that you hate vamp-goth, which does in fact suck(mainly because it's whiny-emo not goth). However as a general rule the dark of goth(true goth like War of the Flowers) fascinates me.