Tess at Twilight

Twilight sucks, you guys. Well, it sucks just as much as any standard paperback romance, but yet millions seem to think that it fell out of the heavens' great literary vagina. Here: there's nothing wrong with liking to read Twilight, just like there's nothing wrong with liking to read paperback romances, as long as you can recognize them all for what they are: lush fantasy stories basically designed to get you off.

I enjoy reading Twilight because personally I get a big arrogant kick out of its shitedom, and I'm minimally entertained by it, and vampire romances make me horny. Reading Twilight is like eating Cheetos; it's indulgent, satisfying, guilt-ridden and utterly lacking in nutritional benefits. Go ahead and eat your Cheetos (I'll eat them for you if you don't want them), but don't tell yourself you're eating fine cheese on crackers. My beef with Twilight doesn't pertain to its immense popularity, but to its reputation as being totally fucking great, because that is false. Twilight isn't Great; it's not Gourmet, it's Cheetos. The writing is mediocre at best, the story is simplistic, the characters are hollow, the plot is vapid. My guess is that the raw allure buried underneath the crappy crap made everyone so goddamned horny that they grew to associate Twilight directly with intense pleasure, which might have led the layman to believe that Twilight is totally fucking great.

I'm not booing the vampire fad - in fact, my other beef is out of respect for the vampire fad. Vampire stories inherently evoke a motherload of sexual tension and symbolism, which is further pursued by the vamp-human romance. Someone setting out to write a vampire story has a lot of deep shit to work with - sex, passion, temptation, love & hate, life & death, right & wrong, what have you - but yet Twilight is so maddeningly shallow and empty. Twilight reads like a fanfiction of its own story, because Stephenie Meyer writes like a drooling fangirl. (Indeed she is, actually - she's a fan of her own dream.) I mean, you can't just stick an apple on the cover and call the deep shit dunzo. Boy, is there a difference between fandom and artistry, and stories as rich as those of vampires deserve to be portrayed artfully.

Now I'm going to deliver this verdict without a trace of bitterness: if you want a shallow, empty and cheaply arousing vampire story, read Twilight. If you want a sensual, thoughtful and intriguing vampire story, watch True Blood. Vampires are dead, long live vampires.