18 February 2009

Twilight Review

Wanted: Male, aged 109 years, with looks of a twenty year old Greek god, raincoat model, for a clumsy, plain girl not good enough for his godlikeness.
Apparently that’s the personal millions of women and teenage girls all over the world want an answer to. How else do you explain the success of twilight? The writing sucks, the characters are characterless and the story is trite.
I daydream a lot, about the books I want to write, about the movies I want to make, and the things I want to do (awww.........hell even about the blog I want to keep). I wanted to write this book, it was buffy inspired and it was going to be brilliant. An ordinary girl falls in love with a vampire, a vampire who while also attracted to her must fight his temptation to suck the blood and life out of her. The girl was going to be kickass, the vampire suave yet tormented, sexual tension would abound, there would be witty repartee. It would not end in the conventionally happy way, the girl would eventually realize that vampires and vampirism (which are obviously subtexts for some deeper gender issues) aren’t for her, but she’d emerge a better, more confident and stronger (emotionally and physically!) person from her experience. I was going to write that book, it was going to be a best seller. My heroine was going to be the heroine to match. Millions of girls all over the globe inspired by said heroine would dump their idiotic boyfriends even before they reached the last page and millions (minus a few) of the dumped boyfriends would wonder what the entire fuss was about, a few sensitive boyfriends would get it and change themselves accordingly, the world would become, all in all, a better place.
Then Twilight happened, apparently Stephanie Meyer a mormon housewife, mother of two in America also had the same dream, and instead of daydreaming about it and writing her booker acceptance speech (they do let you give a speech right?) like I did, actually wrote the damn story and then a sequel and then another one and then another one. So there they were, four gorgeous black books with mysterious symbolic imagery and seductive titles like Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, what could I do? I bought them, all four in one go. Went home curled up in a sofa glad to have an excuse to not put the more feasible of my daydreams into action (if I went ahead now, Stephanie Meyer could sue me) and started to read, tried to read and then ultimately after several pages of descriptions of Edward “looking more like a greek god than anyone should possibly be”, and finally “so beautiful that he looked like a raincoat model standing in the porch in the rain in a raincoat” I gave up, of yeah I was about thirty pages in. Thirty pages of how beautiful Edward is, of how plain Bella is, of how clumsy Bella is and how graceful Edward is, of how dull Bella is and how interesting Edward is. I gave up! The dumb ass heroine was one of those perfectly irritating girls who say they’re skinny and whine about their pallid skin (translation: I am slender and have great porcelain skin, all the “nerdy” boys keep trying to talk to me, and I’m too nice to put them down! Boo hoo poor me). Do Bella and Edward find true love? Yes they do, does Edward display signs of an obsessive abusive possessive husband? Yes he does, are the books a success? Yes they are, and now millions and millions of girls all over the world have dumped their un-godlike boyfriends who are incapable of modelling raincoats. They sit around being perfectly dull just like Bella, waiting for a Vampire who looks like a greek god to come and bite them and control their lives completely! Millions (minus a few) of the dumped boyfriends wonder what the fuss is all about while a few who catch on go from being nice normal blokes to utter jerks a la Edward and his masterful ways . I weep. And wish that I hadn’t been so lazy. If only I had written my version first! Lesson Learnt: fuck up your Ideas before someone does it for you.

3 comments:

Spaz Kumari said...

almost WORD TO WORD what i was thinking while reading..

the AH EDWARD! OH EDWARD! (SWOON) EDWARD becomes a bit too much, really.

Punvati said...

Hahahahahaha!! Oh come on... It wasn't THAT bad.. Yeah the swooning and breathlessness and the needless whining was dumb.. but it was a timepass read ya.. MUCH better than 10 ways to kill your husband.. now THAT deserves "one long rant" about it :P

and the word moderation thingy is asking me to type out cusses.. which you girls are throwing at stephanie whatshername.. apt :P

ramsub said...

It isn't the book as much as the books success which iritates me. Apparantly there are several girls (and women) out there who don't subscribe to the F-thing (heavens! theres that word again), I don't understand how any even remotely intelligent girl could identify with Bella or want a jerkish boyfreind like Edward just because he's soo "Sparkly!". there are better books out there with actual female leads (and cute + interesting male love interests) like Tamora Pierces novels, yet I don't see anyone going Crazy about those books. It's just sad.....