The Root of All Evil.

So, as a little disclaimer, I’ve read Twilight. To be exact, I’ve read the entire Twilight saga, from the alright but totally addicting for whatever reason opener, the namesake itself, Twilight, to the dramatic and incredibly disappointing finale, Breaking Dawn. So I think I’m completely within my rights as a one-time fan to completely blast apart this questionable best seller.

Twilight, in theory, is probably pretty nice. Chicks love romance and chicks love magic stuff, so if you put the two together, you can’t blame SMeyer for turning what should have stayed fanfiction hidden in the recesses of the internet into a novel. No, you can’t blame her. Because in theory, it was pretty sweet. It was in the entire execution where it became a disaster. And you know who should take blame? The company that agreed to publish her. I have a hard time understanding the fact that she got published in the first place. As a book, it’s a literary joke.

Twilight utilizes very few words. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything with a more limited vocabulary outside of, perhaps, children’s books. That’s a little embarrassing, as a fellow writer. I myself, and any writers I know, always strive to expand our vocabularies, improving with each piece so that there can be more. A plight with most critics of Stephenie Meyer’s work is her limited vocabulary combined with an undeniable rape of a thesaurus. I couldn’t agree more. A thesaurus is not inherently a bad thing, but what Meyer does with it sure is.

Her vocabulary only further undermines her already shaky character development. I say shaky because Meyer goes against her own created parameters far too many times, hoping that readers will forgive her because “OMG EDWARD IS SEWW HAWT!” Which isn’t too far from the truth, sadly. The characters themselves leave much to be desired. First of all, every single character has one trait in common: angst. There is a problem when every single character shares one trait, considering the whole point of having multiple characters is so you can give them all their unique personalities. Someone apparently forgot to tell Meyer this little yet very important detail.

Let’s break down why all the characters in Twilight suck.

Bella – Mary Sue. For those of you who don’t know what a Mary Sue is, it’s basically a self insert female character. Isabella Swann is bland and everyone loves her. Her only flaw is that she has none. Which is the worst kind of character an author could conceive. She is dependent, boy obsessed, perpetually in danger. Not much of a pioneer female character, Bella takes female characters back to the dark ages.

Edward – Shiny. Vampire. Really? Yeah, unfortunately. And that’s about all there is to say about him because his personality is almost non-existent. He is cold, has stalker-like tendencies, and is a domestic abuse case waiting to happen. He sneaks into Bella’s room to watch her sleep, he can’t live without her, there is more than one occurrence of Bella being bruised by Edward… the list here is pretty much endless.

Jacob – really really angsty.

I really don’t think it’s necessary to actually discuss all of them because they don’t get more interesting.

Rosalie is not misunderstood - she’s legitimately a bitch. Alice is alright but she’s underused so we never really get to see much. Charlie is a typical dad in denial, Renee is an inconsistent child in a grown up’s body, Carlisle, as much as I want to like him, upon the reading of several other critiques, has become questionable… why does he only save teenagers? Sort of weird. And illegal. Jasper and Emmett just really don’t matter, Esmee sort of falls into that category as well.

Twilight is shallow, it sends all the wrong messages, teaches all the wrong morals. By the end of the series, Bella is practically a drop out, a teenage bride, a teenage mother, willing to give up everything for a boy. Bella turns her back on her friends, her family and her own safety. And when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, without any real struggle like her vampire brethren, Bella experiences no trouble fitting in to her vampire life and is now completely perfect and beautiful… which is weird because she already was a perfect Mary Sue to begin with.

You can tell me you've read all these arguments before... I don't care. After reading essays for and against this wildly popular fandom, I've decided to throw my own hat into the ring, so to speak.

Twilight creates unrealistic and unhealthy expectations for little girls in love with the idea of love and is possibly a very scary look into the future of literature.

I can’t tell you why I enjoyed Twilight, or the subsequent novels to follow, because honestly, upon review, I can’t remember why I had any good reasons too.