Top Five Reasons Why Twilight Is Horrible

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the Twilight series (a series of “Rom-action” books by Stephanie Meyers). While the books, and subsequent movies, have found commercial success among teens and young adults (mainly young women), these are still, in my humble opinion, some of the worst books ever written. In this article, I’ll give you the Top Five Reasons Why Twilight Is Horrible.

On paper, the characters of Edward and Jacob are too similar for a love triangle to be plausible. Having Bella (or any character, for that matter) choose between the two lovers, should say as much about her character as it does the two guys. In this case however, there really isn’t a choice to be made since the two are almost identical. Let’s face it, both are supernatural creatures, both are head-over-heals in love with Bella, and both are above average in the looks department.

Gone with the Wind may be set during the Civil War, but it’s a love story. Moby Dick may be set on the ocean, but it’s a tale of obsession and the human spirit. Twilight is a book about a girl who falls in love with a Vampire, and that’s it. Again, that’s fine to a certain extent, but you need to accept it for what it is, and write accordingly. Not every book has to be Wuthering Heights, or The Divine Comedy, there is actually a very large market for “fast food literature”, but let’s at least be honest about it.

Twilight is written for the least common denominator; it was designed to appeal to young girls, period. Any deeper meaning or underlying themes are in the minds of the readers. Meyers seemingly went to great lengths to avoid any subtext, whether by design or not, only she knows.

This formula gets shot all to hell however, when the character is just as weak and helpless at the end of the story as she is in the beginning. Even after her transformation into a Vampire, Bella is still just as awkward, and just as clueless as ever. When Edward leaves Bella for her own safety, what does Bella do? She curls up in the woods, and then spends the next few months in an almost catatonic state. Gloria Steinem would be so proud.

Had the story been told as Edward dealing with reconciling his love for a mortal with the restrictions of his life as a Vampire, the lead character would have at least had some credibility as a “hero”.  Even the love triangle between Edward/Bella/Jacob would have been better served by having Edward as the focus. There is no aspect of the story that would not have been better told by Edward, plain and simple.

Again, not every book needs to be a classic, but when such a horrible series of books garners the type of following that the Twilight Saga has, I just have to wonder why. If anything, it tells us that there is a desperate need for a female heroine. Not just a brainy sidekick, or eye candy for a male lead; a real, honest to goodness female bad-ass to fill the pop-culture void.