kill her in every book of the Twilight series.First of all, I feel completely foolish admitting that I have ever read these books because
1. Let’s admit, I’m not exactly the core demographic here
2. I cannot help but cringe and yell out loud due to the terrible content of some of these books
3. I have openly made fun of saga story readers my entire life (Ahem! Harry Potty!)
Most of my time spent reading these books, (sadly, right after the first was published and my mother mailed me a copy to Los Angeles) I hid them. People would glance at the black glossy cover in my hands and ask “Oh, that what’s that book you’re reading about?” I wasn’t sure quite how to answer... “Eeeerrr vampires?” “Lovesick teen girls?” or better yet “I’m getting really into this scene where the vampire and werewolf battle it out over the love of the mortal girl!” I usually managed to come up with something more along the lines of “it’s sort of like a modern Anne Rice sorta thing...”
Lies. These books are not even close to the dark loveliness and complexity of an Anne Rice novel, but somehow I was engrossed. Despite Miss Meyer’s repetitive linguistics and predictable story lines involving mythical creatures, I could not stop reading. Even as the last book made me squeal in pain at how terrible the plot had become, I felt it necessary to trudge on.
Quite simply, I cannot quite put my finger on what makes these books appealing to so many people, and perhaps that is why I am baffled by both their, and the film’s popularity. But somehow, Miss Meyer has managed to infiltrate our sex-laden society with a romance story contained to virginal kissing and her wholesome Mormon ideals... and this is appealing to young girls and their mothers alike. All I have to say is that Stephenie Meyer is a clever fucking beast, and that she is the queen of blue-balls teen writing, and somehow she had me hooked.
Shortly after completing the third book in the series, and realizing that there was still no steamy vampire sex to speak of, I heard that the first installment, Twilight, was being made into a movie. Dear God, I thought to myself. My horrible vampire secret is about to be revealed to the entire world, and all of my friends who I had explained the books to (in a much different manner) will know the truth!!! Fuck. That’s when the first billboards starting going up around North Hollywood. True to the story, a worried brunette girl with big brown eyes was plastered there, held tightly by a ghostly pale boy with an intensely square jaw and creepy golden eyes.
“That’s soooo not what Edward (the vampire boy) looks like!” I found myself saying aloud in the car one day.
“What?” my friend asked.
“I mean, the guy on the billboard’s kinda hot, but he looks a little old to be a teenager, no?” I snapped back, worried. I was going to be found out. Damn you, Stephenie Meyer!
I was forced to pass by those creepy golden eyes every day as I commuted to work, looking over the 101 and piercing into my silver Scion, telling me that soon everyone would know my dark cheesy vampire book-loving secret. And of course, those ads would start conversations among my friends and coworkers. “Isn’t that movie based on a book or something?” “I heard it’s supposed to be terrible. It’s got vampires and werewolves and crap like that.” I cringed, sitting quietly aside, waiting for the accusations to come...someone remembering the ridiculously fat book perched on my car seat, or the saga’s permanent resting place on my bedside table. Surprisingly only a few of my close friends ever made the connection, and they were strangely more curious than their usual sarcastic selves. Well, that is except for my darling roommate...
“Tell me what I am... VAMPIRE!” He would hiss the line from the trailer at me during quiet lulls in conversation. I couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous it sounded, but he promised me after weeks of humiliating torture that he would go with me to see the film adaptation of my deep, dark secret; the only rule being that we not see it the first couple weeks that it was in theaters, so as to miss the truly crazy (and mostly ten-year-old) Twilight fanatics.
As promised, we eventually saw the film, along with another friend of ours who ridiculed me to no end as we walked back to the car. Thank god we had decided to go against Miss Meyer’s wholesome ideals and throw back a few drinks before the 10:15 showing or
my friends’ otherwise sharp tongues would have surely killed me.The movie was better than expected, this adaptation somehow managed to be a little more grounded than the books (and Miss Meyer’s hokey imagination) will ever be and the film managed to only briefly touch upon the weird vampire world depicted in the books, instead focusing more on the character’s emotions and trying to make everything feel a little more “human.” However, as I recently finished the fourth and final book of the series and news came of the sequels already set to be filmed, I couldn’t help but laugh with a mix of excitement and horror. You may have gotten away with one decent film, Miss Meyer, and you might somehow manage to pull off the next two, but when it comes time for the fourth installment to be made into a film, you’d better believe that I will have advance tickets to that shit-show.
You may have sold us on the virginal vampire concept and Native American werewolf clans, but I will pay good money to see how a film adaptation of a demon vampire baby chewing itself out of its teen mother’s womb and a twisted romance developing between said demon baby and an adult werewolf can still seem so touching and “human.”
Oh Stephenie Meyer, revenge is a bitch.
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