I've always been a fan of vampire fiction. It started with Buffy when I was a teen, and Anne Rice (Yes, I was a teen dressed in black and chains reading "Interview with a Vampire" and "Lestat"), but more recently I almost hate to declare my love for the undead, since it always leads to the inevitable "Oh! So what did you think of Twilight?"
I will say this, having an internet account and moving in literary circles has made it impossible to avoid the anti-Twilight movement, the meme's, and the rants of people who did not like it. To be fair I did try to read summaries, and read the first chapter before making up my mind, but besides my innate desire to avoid 'book fads', I just found I could not suspend my disbelief, my ideals of vampires, long enough to want to read fully.
When I was a teen I spent much of my time in a vampire RPG
chat. A lot of free-form character building, a lot of teens, and all the angst
and drama of vampires. This is a big part of why I simply cannot fall in love
with Twilight. After having seen every hackneyed vampire cliche, every angsty
vamp/mortal romance played out by (mostly) flawed writing, I've no more room
for the drama of "I'm undead, and your a teenager, but I love you enough
not to kill you, or any other human being, because I’m a PG vampire in LOOOVE.”
This may not be fair, considering I haven’t read the books,
but I think I’m just too old for the target demographic. Hell, I was bothered
by the age and mentality of the twenty-one year old Anastasia in "50 Shades of
Gray", the idea of a girl at the mentally and physically immature age of 16
dating and becoming obsessed with a man who looks her age but is centuries
older bugs me. He is both old enough to know better, and yet we are supposed to
view him as this romantic ideal man, wiser and stronger… Yet dumb enough to
embroil her in a world of life or death vampire politics, werewolf games, and
ultimately kill her at 19.
Then there’s Bella. Confused, lonely, typical teen. If they
presented Bella as a more complete person, as a mature, self-contained
individual (More like Buffy, or Katniss. Someone with inherent life experiences
to lend her maturity) then the impossibility of the romance would make more
sense to me as a reader.
Yes, Edward is breathtakingly lovely. Yes, any teenager with
self-esteem issues would give her left hand to be worshiped by a male Adonis who
thinks she’s amazing and special. (After all, that is how many sexual predators
work.) Thing is, it’s all just too good to be true.
The appeal of vampires was always the trade-off of
supernatural ability with deadly weakness. Vampires are super strong,
beautiful, and seductive. They live forever, but they can never see daylight
again, and they have no choice but to kill living, sentient human
beings to continue their stolen immortality. The idea of feeding off animal
blood so you can have a more sympathetic vampire is cute, but that’s not the
point. Vampires are supposed to be deadly.
They are supposed to be liars and seducers, stealing blood from the living so that they will
not die. You can make the vampire sympathetic despite those issues, but it doesn't change the truth, vampires are dead. Vampires are predators. Vampires
are murderers.
That’s what’s wrong with Twilight to me. Making vampires, all vampires capable of walking in the
sunlight (except for fear of looking a little odd), and giving them phenomenal
powers that they can obtain without being a danger to a human, takes all the drama away. It leaves you with
a shiny sparkly all too perfect hero with nothing to prevent a happy ending
except for the possibility that he’ll snap his girlfriend in half in the
bedroom, or that he’ll get the munchies while they snuggle in a sunlit field of
daisies.
This is why I never got into Twilight. Bella is too young,
too uncertain, too ordinary, and Edward is a shiny ideal without the deeper
flaws that should be found in an immortal killing machine. I expect more from a vampire than stalking a teenager out of love. Stalking her for a snack makes much more sense.
Perhaps I am too jaded. I’ll stick to
Underworld and True Blood. Even Buffy was a better tale for teens.
