The Cult Of Twilight

Now I start by admitting that I haven't actually read the books - short of the first ten pages of the first one - but I have seen the movie, didn't pay for it though. God bless friends who work in the cinema.

Now, what I have read of Twilight was not bad per se, it was just a very bland piece of literature which in fanfiction would have turned me off quite swiftly. I'm a slash fanfiction writer/reader myself and in my travels through the fandoms, I have found work which is better written and deserves more praise than this cliched prose does. Shit, I have written better work myself.

The idea of vampires sparkling in the sunlight is absurd, an idea obviously crafted to give these vampires some semblance of originality. There's only one person who should be sparkling in any situation and that is Ms. Emma Frost.

Not only are there trivial complaints like that - one of my favourite vampire shows had vampires who could enter the sun - but on the whole the series is quite dangerous.

For example, Edward Cullen seems to have been crafted to be show girls that "it's okay for a man to act like he owns you and stalk you", is this the kind of thing we want girls to be learning these days? A boy hits his girlfriend and she thinks "It's alright, Edward did this to Bella.". A young girl lets her boyfriend coerce her into something she's not ready for because Bella had a child at a young age.

I'm personally quite concerned with how obsessive the kids have become over this. I grew up in the era of the Spice Girls and suchlike, so I'm used to seeing fan psychosis but this is taking it to a whole new level. There are girls who genuinely believe that Edward is real due to this book, which to me is a serious worry. In my day (a depressing enough sentence in itself, I'm only 22), kids knew the difference between fantasy and reality. But these girls completely live in this fantasy land, they can't tell the difference anymore and it's scary.

As I said, I haven't read the book but I have seen the movie and the story was mediocre at best. Nothing in it set it apart from the countless other romantic fantasy films I've seen. If you want a good fantasy romance, try 'The Fountain'. Or try something like 'Moulin Rouge', Christian is a real romantic figure who will actually treat a girl like they deserve. But in the end, he isn't real and it's important to remember this.

On top of all this, we have the haters. The haters are as bad as the obsessive fans. If you don't like something, don't spend all your time obsessing over how bad it is and insulting it. You aren't impressing anyone with it. Why not put that energy into something more constructive? Focus on something you do enjoy rather than making all of these topics, posts, websites and spamming our forums and internet. Granted I'm being somewhat hypocritical over this, I'm not claiming I'm better than anyone else, this blog stems from my general frustration over the two camps.

Basically, what I'm trying to say is, we need to calm the fuck down. The Twihards need to understand that most of the general population aren't interested anymore and stick with their own kind. The haters need to move on and stop wasting their time.

And the rest of us? Shit, I think we all just need a holiday to somewhere that damn series doesn't exist.