Mr. Collins Explains Twilight:
A Realist's Look At How Stephenie Meyer Destroyed
Iconic Classic Horror Archtypes For Us All
I was inspired to write this while watching "Vampires Suck" the other day, and though it does an alright job spoofing what is possibly the worst movie series sense they thought it was a good idea to make more then one Weekend At Bernie's film, I felt in what seemed like their rushing to get it out while it was still topical, they pulled alot of punches and fell abit short of actually making true fun of this film series. So I thought, in the spirit of all that is fun and truthful, and the fact that I'm snowed in at the moment, oh, and for the good of the world, I would explain to those of you who either have avoided, or are clueless to all things Twihard, the ins and outs of the series that according to Ms. Kayla Patterson of Santa Barbra California, is the creation of vampires and werewolves, you know, because those hundreds of years of folklore and literature before the first Twilight book was published, never happened, and everyone knows Stephenie Meyer created vampires and werewolves, zomg for serious, how can you not know that?? .... god I wish I was making that up.. I really wish I was, so help me, I wish I was. I fear for the future.
So I guess the best way to start this out is to sort of deal with the elephant in the room, which is ofcourse the most asked question about the series; "Whats the point of it all?" And well thats pretty simple. Publishers know that angsty tween and teenage girls, milfs, cougars and middle aged women that aren't married and don't have massive collections of living cats or teddybears or living cats dressed as teddybears, all like a good mediocrely written bit of emotional wank material. To publishers, this kind of drivel pays the bills and puts their kids through whatever community college they're going too till their parents hand them a publishing company. Publishers don't care about prestige of honored and celebrated authors anymore, they just care about making money. Twilight and its following books were published for the same reason John Grisham keeps writing the same novel over and over again for about 20 years, because publishers know it'll make money. Lots and lots of money. After all thats all that matters, like Wu-Tang Clan said Cash Rules Everything Around Me, get the money, dollar dollar bill y'all.
No one is really sure why the target demographics felt the need to make the twilight series so popular, maybe its because deep down, every woman in the demographics want to live out their fantasy where they turn their gay BBF straight and they take them to the prom and get married and buy them a pony and have little babies and a misbehaving puppy that stays in the yard. Maybe they all deep down want to have fatalistic relationships that deep down they know are doomed to end in ruins, but somehow magically don't. Or maybe its the other reason, the one reason that no one ever really wants to think about, the fact that deep down, all its readers wish nothing more then to be treated like shit by two hot guys with mental and social issues, apparently its every woman's secret dream to be in a lovelorn and love torn story of courting between two lovers who both love the same woman, one who is mentally abusive and loves to toy with a woman's feelings and emotions, which is ok because he's a loner with a deep soul, and the other is a physically abusive douchebag who is prone to fits of rage, anger and violence at time, but its ok because deep down he really cares about her.
Seriously does this shit read like a lifetime original movie or what? Honestly, all it needs is a rape, kidnapped children or the woman or her kids being held against their will somewhere, and either star the mom from Growing Pains, Valerie Bertanderny, or Meredith Baxter Bernie, and its a lifetime original movie, just with alittle sci fi, you know, because chicks dig vampires and werewolves, or whatever the hell kind of Furry that Vincent from Beauty and The Beast was.
Its not just the hacked together and horribly written and plotted story that makes these films and the books that spawned them so unbearable, its the characters, I mean honestly, betwixt their lazily created names, and fanfiction like backgrounds that would make a guy that writes serious Smurf fanfiction cry in pain at how horrible and angsty they are to get through. Here, take a look at the three main characters to see what I mean...
Bella Swan:
"I've never given much thought to how I would die. But dying in the place of someone I love seemed like a good way to go." - the first quote of Bella from Twilight, yes even the first page is angsty.
Bella is basically your average lonely misunderstood girl who is misunderstood and lonely because she's misunderstood. Chances are she spends her free time that doesn't involve being stalked by faux-werewolves and vampires who watch her sleep, watching Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill and probably downloads episodes of Hollyoaks, Shortland Street and Packed To The Rafters because she just needs more angst in her life. When she's not being an angst magnet or dreaming about creatures of the night taking her to the prom and buying her a pony, a castle and a Mazda Miata, she probably spends her time listening to My Chemical Romance, Echo And The Bunny-men, and her secret love, Kraftwerk, some of her angst comes from not being able to tell her friends of her secret love of German industrial/techno for fear she'll be kicked out of the fake wiccan coven the goth kids accepted her into after she drank that tomato juice they claimed was blood.
Bella is your basic idiot emokid thats emo for no reason at all. She has a good life with a father that might have made alot of mistakes, is attempting to try and make up for it, even if he buys her a shitty old truck he got from local indians that fixed it up when they weren't gambling or guilting white people about things that happened a hundred years before any of them was ever born and shouldn't really have any baring on modern society, but atleast he's trying to bridge the gap. Bella's just an emokid and wants to feel depressed because people notice the depressed girl, they don't notice the girl that is devoid of all personality and social skills doodling things in her notebooks like "I heart Vlad Teppes" where in closer inspection you find out Vlad Teppes is her cat or some other wanna be emo/goth shit. Bella, like every other emogirl like her that doesn't slut it up with pleather, corsets and kneeboots and the like, has no real idea what relationships are ment to be like, and she, ofcourse gets herself stuck in a love triangle between two abusive teenage boys, who are damaging in different ways, something Bella doesn't mind because it really just feeds her angsty angstastic angstarific angst, which is really all Bella's got going for her. She's kind of like Keira "skinnypants" Knightly in that respect, just with big girl boobs, not a training set like Keira has.
Edward Cullen:
"I'm the world's most dangerous predator. Everything about me invites you in. My voice, my face, even my smell. As if I would need any of that. As if you could outrun me. As if you could fight me off. I'm designed to kill."
If that quote didn't atleast wound you with its attack of emo and angst, then you are a more powerful person then I am. Seriously, if you thought Bella was angsty with all her angst and depression and super mega ultra angst, then wait till you see Edward, the main "hero" of the books and the films and spends 90% of the first three books in the series in a fight to the death turned bromantic relationship with Jacob Black, his rival for Bella's one dimensional soulless version of "love". Edward is your basic post Anne Rice vampire who instead of being the ultimate in predatory creatures of the night, has been turned into what basically counts as every girl's gay best friend thats still hot enough to allow for girls to dream about him going straight for them, except instead of how a gay best friend has to struggle with their constant unending love of the cock, Edward must struggle with his eternal thirst is for human blood.... and his unending love of the cock. In a sense he's a female masturbatory aid if you're into dark loner types who chances are have an ipod full of Atrayu, Fall Out Boy and Hawthorne Heights.
I feel at this point I should mention that though he shares the many traits of post Dark Shadows movie and television vampires; being able to be outside in the daylight, ice cold skin that no one seems to mind for some odd reason, special powers, mood swings caused by a desire to be human again so you an feel emotions, depression caused by having everything you could ever want except "true love", caring about the innermost feelings of depressive lonely girls, ect, with Edward its taken one step farther away from the ultimate apex predator, and pushed closer to wacky gay sidekick by making him sparkle in the sunlight. Yes, you read that correctly, apparently now vampires sparkle in the sunlight, which not only makes them easier for vampire hunters and snipers to find, but it makes them as threatening and scary as your average one hit wonder rapper. Yeah, thats right, as far as vampires go, Edward Cullen is about as scary as Count Chocula and Count Von Count. Though to be fair, among vampires Count Chocula is seen as kind of an Uncle Tom, so I guess that really isn't a good reference point, but whatever, you get the idea.
Jacob Black:
"I know how you're unhappy a lot. And, maybe it doesn't help anything, but I wanted you to know that I'm always here. I won't ever let you down. I promise that you can always count on me."
If you haven't figured it out by now Jacob Black is kind of creepy. He's a werewolf thats not really a werewolf in a pack of not really werewolves who just act like werewolves because they're native american and can get away with odd shit like that because they're native american. Jacob in the books and films is kind of like a puppy, not the cute take them to the park and pick up girls kind of puppy, the kind that when you leave for work gets mad and rips up your couch and shits on your bed out of anger that you had the nerve to leave them for any length of time, kind of puppy. He is constantly trying to get Bella to notice him as more then just a friend, which accounts for why his shirt is off 90% of the entire film series, though its best to forget about his "pack" which are all just creepy dead eyed guys with the same build as Jacob and the same weird need to be shirtless, maybe its a not really a werewolf even though we act like werewolves thing...
Jacob is the character that really makes me laugh the most out of this whole horrible series, really he is, Jacob spends the better part of the books and films stuck in Bella's Friendzone until he becomes a wolf and then forgets how to wear a shirt, it speaks volumes about him and about Bella when you realize that the only reason she even gives this guy any notice is because he goes from dorky loser to that teenage boy that cleans your parents pool and does their lawn work every summer that you find out years later was having sex with all the hot housewives in the neighborhood. It basically says that Bella's kind of shallow abit because she didn't notice the idiot till he took his shirt off to show her that he had a six pack and a VIP ticket for her to the gun show. Now this might seem kind of cute and all, but you have to understand one thing, Jacob Black is wolfshit crazy and violent beyond what you'd expect in a book turned film series like this. All of his lines are either super creepy stalker lines to Bella or lines to Edward about how he's going to kill him in a jealous rage, even after him and Edward start their bromantic relationship. In a sense, Jacob is every girl's exboyfriend turned stalker that used to knock them around abit. And he serves as the female masturbatory aid for those women that like it rough or dangerous, or have a thing for the teenage boy that cleans pools in your neighborhood, who probably has an ipod full of thrash and death metal that he likes to play when he's doing the hot lady across the street, or smacking a girl around for not doing what he says. Because you know, thats how he rolls.
And thats basically all you need to know about who's who and what goes on in Twilight, oh sure I could go into depth about how silly the plot is in general, how its so predictable that Edward takes Bella to the prom and they become Prom King and Queen, and how they get all angsty about sex, and how they get vampire married and have a vampire baby and how Bella becomes a vampire, and all the idiotic angry stuff Jacob does, and just the general wrongness of all the things the films teach the youth of america and the world, but so many have covered that already, and really, I just wanted to make fun of something cuz I'm snowed in at the moment. And well I've done that! So, I hope you all have enjoyed my lampooning of this global juggernaut that really shouldn't be, as much as I enjoyed writing it. So, until next we meet, blessid be.
Oh and also, one last thing, Team Belmont (the vampire/werewolf/monster hunters from the castlevania video games) for the win!
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BC
