Twilight

Stephenie Meyer's book series for teenage girls. The first novel was good distracting trash reading with excellent mind-candy (Edward and his vampires) but ultimately spawned three increasingly crappy follow-ups. The main character and protagonist is Bella Swan, who lives in the middle of nowhere, Oregon (modern day), and is 16-18 throughout the series.

Despite being the narrator, Bella cannot be considered the heroine, or even a likable character, to due her frequent acts of falling in front of cars, throwing herself off cliffs, threatening suicide, and other dumb shit.

She has the typical "not your normal teenage girl" qualities, like clumsiness, academic intelligence, bookreading, and other traits that supposedly distinguish her from her peers. For example, she jokes that she is an "albino" and even reveals her knowledge of the word "misogynistic" (so witty! so clever!) but really, is overall an empty shell in which any other teenage girl can project her personality into and "identify" with. Also bears an uncanny resemblance to the books' author, Stephenie Meyer. Twilight would be a hell of a lot more readable without her running around, shrieking, fainting, and having seizures all over the place, and generally screwing things up.

She falls in love with the hot, mysterious guy at her school, and naturally, the hot guy becomes obsessed with her. His name is Edward, he's a vampire, and he craves her blood, which creates a fascinating dynamic between them, but a petty excuse to justify love on his part. (More like after 108 years, Edward woke up one day, realized he was the oldest virgin on the face of the planet and realized that he needed to tap that fast)

THe author asks the readers to believe that an intelligent and insanely hot vampire like Edward has never looked at any other girl, and plain, clumsy Bella is the only girl that has ever attracted him. Readers with sense roll their eyes, but the implausibility of the hot dangerous guy falling for the quiet, unattractive girl makes young virgins and bored housewives everywhere shriek. Twilight books fly off the shelves, and SM makes an instant fortune writing bad teenage high-school fantasy fanfiction.

The writing itself is also pretty terrible. While admittedly addictive, SM should be fined for her use of thesaurus-rape, and the endless descriptions of Edward's physical beauty is enough to make anyone hurl onto the book cover. It's sexy as hell, but more often than not proceeds like this:

Bella: I love you.
Edward: I like you too, but I might kill you and I need time to brood (instant fainting and sighs occur)
Bella: But I want you.
Edward: You're a moron for wanting me.
Bella: I dont like CARE YOU'RE SO GORGEOUS, stay with me or i'll like kill myself, your hair is so bronze and sexy OMG OMG

Then after reading the book you're amazed to find out that the whole series serves to present the overarching theme of Mormon chastity. Thus Edward and Bella doesn't get down and dirty until the fourth book, to everyone's disappointment (sexual tension is always better than doing the nasty, in which we dont even WANT to know how rock-hard Edward and delicate Bella get it on). The ending is of course, happy and shit. SM tries to get all Anne Rice/LOTR by writing about the Vulturi, a secret vampire order and shit, but it becomes very lame and in the end you don't care who they are.

Oh, and Bella gets pregnant with a half-vampire, half-human fetus, and upon birth Edward has to tear it out of her stomach with his teeth. True story.

It is hard to pick which one was more traumatizing, the gross mutant baby birth or this passage from Twilight:

"You....made...me faint" I accused him dizzily.
"So much for being good at everything," he sighed.
"That's the problem." I was still dizzy. "You're TOO good. Far, far, too good at everything"

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