Welcome, those who seek sanity and logic. And vampires who suck and bite in the GOOD way.

So, what eventually drove me to this? What got me more riled up in seething, frothing rage than anything I'd ever read? What vile abomination drove me to create a...*le gasp*...Anti-Twilight Blog??

I'll tell you, friend.

I first stumbled across Twilight in december of 2008 - half because the movie trailer had just started showing on TV and looked fairly intruiging, and half because my stories on fanfiction.net seemed to be very popular with a bunch of young girls whose profiles were smothered in praise to Stephenie Meyer. 'She sure writes hot vampires!' I remember one girl wrote.

Curious as to what fans of my work were reading, and curious to see the latest sexy vampire fad (yeah,I'm a Lestat fangirl ), I bought myself the book on Amazon with high hopes. 'Ooh!' I thought when it came 'what a beautiful cover!' I couldn't wait. I was dizzy with anticipation for reading what I believed might just be the next best thing to Vampire Chronicles.

My disappointment started with the very first paragraph. I kid you not. The very first paragraph of this supposedly gripping book filled with 'hypnotic, dreamy prose' is bland protagonist Bella Swan (beautiful swan=veeeery subtle nomenclature, Meyer. Way to make your readers gag before they even begin your crappy novel) blabbing about her clothes. It goes something along the lines of 'the temperature was blah blah blah. I was wearing blah blah blah *zzzzz*. You might think I'm pedantic, but a reader's first impression of the book, right from the very first page, is critical. It is also a good indicator of how good the rest of the book is. If the first line is something as poetic and lyrical as that of, say, Lolita ('Light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul...') then I won't want to put it down. But when it's some girl I don't care about yet wanking on about her clothes...'Urgh,' I thought, 'this isn't going to be good, is it? I could really care less whether you're wearing white eyelash lace, or whatever. Unless it's important to the plot-' (ha. I still thought there was a plot, at this point. bless.) '-shut up about your clothes'.

But Bella didn't shut up. She just kept on and on with her sullen whining and mindless drivel.

I forced myself to keep wallowing through the endless crap until the bit where Bella had just made plans with Edward to drive to Seattle...and then I put the book down and gave up. My initial impression with Twilight was simply boredom, confusion as to why it was so popular, annoyance with the flat, duller-than-dishwater writing, and slight nausea over how many times the author felt it necessary to beat us over the skulls with how beautiful PERFECT and ADONIS-LIKE Edward Cullen was. That, and a slight undercurrent of dislike that I couldn't for the life of me put my finger on.

Anyway, I sold my copy, sad that Twilight hadn't been as good as I'd heard (and honestly hoped, because I love finding new novels to immerse myself in and gush over), and didn't think anything of it. But Twilight was growing in popularity, and eventually, dismayed that something so boring and mundane could have such a massive fanbase, I began to visit Twilight and anti-Twilight websites. Suffice to say I was SHOCKED about what some of the antis had to say, and I finally understood that little nagging voice that had been bugging me about what I had been reading. The trouble was the first-person narrative - Bella is so passive and accepting of everything that happens to her that the reader is encouraged to accept it too, and to think it's ok.
But it's not ok. Here's what's going on in Twilight when you tune out Bella's inner ramblings and open your eyes:

CASUAL MISOGYNY. NORMALISATION OF PATRIARCHAL DOMINATION. ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS & UNHEALTHY, SHALLOW OBSESSION DRESSED UP AS TRUE LOVE. PAEDOPHILIA. GLORIFICATION OF STEREOTYPICAL GENDER ROLES.

And the worst part of all...

VAMPIRES WITH NO FANGS WHO COME OUT IN DAYLIGHT. AND SPARKLE.

Well all right, it's not the worst part, but it is god-awful. I'm all for new twists on vampire mythology, but seriously - if Meyer's creatures weren't called vampires, you wouldn't know that's what the hell they were. At all. They don't sleep in coffins. They aren't allergic to garlic or crosses or holy water. They don't explode/burn in the sun. They don't even have fangs, for the love of Akasha. So what do they have? Random superpowers, which are hilariously inconsistent and pander to the little thing known as 'plot convenience'. Pale skin...but so do the goths that go to my college - and as much as they wish they were vampires, they're not. Meyer's vamps do have a craving for blood, but as they don't have fangs, the whole vampire thing is kinda diminished...I mean, how do they pierce skin and suck blood in any kind of classicly vampiric, graceful way? Answer-they can't. They'd just have to gnaw and nom and chomp at it like Hannibal Lecter. Not so sexy now, right? And lest you forget...they sparkle.

And to really up the WTF factor, they have VENOM. It's if Meyer temporarily forgot she was writing vampires and started a book about sexy snakes!
*pauses to giggle*

These aren't vampires - these are Meyerpires, sparkly, superpowered vampire-lite versions of Louis from Interview, but without any of the awesomeness. Twilight is vampires toned down for teenage girls - all the scary stuff has been taken out and (literally) replaced with glittery sparkles and pretty faces, but naturally all the supernatural angst and tortured hot guys are left in to keep the fangirls panting. Except they have nothing to angst about, because they're all perfect. Perfect, hot and rich - naturally.

I hate you, Meyer.

But apart from all this utter, utter rape of vampire mythology (Meyer merrily admits she has never read her contemporaries. Yeah, IT SHOWS) the worst thing about Twilight is its insidious, horrifying degree of anti-feminism. It isn't just how Edward treats Bella that is sick and wrong - it's that Bella allows him to treat her this way, appears to enjoy being treated this way, and how she never, ever seems to even notice the lack of gender equality - even when her boyfriend is removing the engine from her car to stop her seeing her friends. This is a series aimed at teenage girls. This is a series where the fans want to be Bella, and want to date a guy like Edward. And this is why I won't shut up about how misogynistic Twilight is, and neither should anyone else. It isn't just a matter of 'don't like it don't read it', because turning a blind eyes to this kind of thing trivialises what the suffragettes fought and died for.

IT IS NOT OK FOR THIS SHIT TO BE HELD UP AS GREAT LITERATURE; FOR PASSIVE, DEPENDANT DRIPS LIKE BELLA TO BE ROLE MODELS FOR OUR YOUNG GIRLS; AND FOR GUYS TO THINK IT'S OK TO STALK AND CONTROL THEIR GIRLFRIENDS.

IT IS NOT OK.

It is so not OK that for my university mini dissertation, I wrote an in-depth essay about how not OK it is. Next time...the treatment of women in Twilight, part one.