well behaved women

I know it was naive. I know it was foolish. I haven't even read the books all the way through myself! But I honestly thought my shock and horror at Stephenie Meyer was tapped out; that she had gotten all of her 'WHAT THE FUCKING HELL NOOOOO's out of me.

I was wrong. Mark of Buzznet has been reviewing Twilight, and it's a fairly stress-reducing ride, at least for those that have read the books previously and are just relieved to see somebody sane react. The gifs help.

Then we get to chapter thirteen of Eclipse, where I thank the lords I didn't read it and we get to read SMeyer writing about how Mexicans are violent awful people (as opposed to the "civilized" north), and how being a vampire automatically makes you white.

Gods above and below, how the hell is this woman too fucking stupid to understand how offensive she is?

Picked up from randomsome1

I need to purge my brain of this ugliness.

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I am astonished by how clearly Vampire Diaries is trying to imitate Twilight.

They've white washed the cast, which pisses me off. And then what they did to them on a simple characterization level; no longer is Elena the fierce, intelligent young woman who pursued her love interest and worked to solve crimes and rule her school; no longer is Stefan the intelligent, gracious Italian gentleman. They've destroyed Elena's character in order to make her life revolve around Stefan. She is passive and bland; he is now the only reason she looks forward to the day--literally. They've destroyed Stefan's character to make him a 2D Edward ripoff, only with even less personality, and compounded this by whitewashing him into an actor that is a painful imitation of the movie's Edward, whatever that actor's name was. Damon is now a blustering, featureless bully that somehow manages to be totally disgustingly evil at the same time. Damon was a predator. Not totally evil.

Oh, and Stefan gives Elena a copy of Wuthering Heights, which she loves.

Also? No woman with brains would fall for the snide, ham handed remarks about an ex from some stranger who claims to be a close relative. Some stranger who is obviously an asshole.

They've erased her female friends in order to make room for extraneous male characters, replacing them with a couple of girls completely lacking personality who are only there to egg their bland relationship on. Seriously. The only thing they get to do; the only reason they exist. They completely destroyed the tight, complex female relationships that were so interesting. THEY DON'T HAVE MEREDITH, YOU GUYS. WHAT THE FUCK. And Caroline is now a sex-obsessed groupie of Elena's. They gave Elena a little brother instead of a little sister, and he's a total asshole. Not to mention what they did with the parental figures.

And....they have a daddy!figure now! How precious! How stupid. Just because Meyer's vampires act like adolescent assholes does not mean that ancient vampires in a competent narrative do. Oh--wait, there's my mistake. Calling it competent.

"Texting is an important step in every relationship!" Yes. We get it. You're ~gritty~ and ~hip~. Now please, let it rest.


They've turned it into a) a sitcom and b) a Twilight ripoff and completely obliterated any trace of original characterization that ever existed.

So: if you liked the book's originality, characters, freaking badass girls and female friendship, suspense and romance and adventure? Don't watch. For the first time, Matt is more appealing than Stefan. Vastly so.

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The best thing to ever come out of Twilight fandom. **dies laughing**

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Just to be a further downer, I would like to link you to this, which compares all the ways Meyer pretty blatantly ripped off Charlaine Harris. I knew she had, of course, but I hadn't bothered to compare it to this extent.

Meyer’s lead squee-inducing male character, Edward, is a telepathic vampire who hears people’s thoughts all the time & who’s driven nuts by them. Then he meets Bella, whose thoughts he can’t hear. Then he saves her life a few hundred times and they get together.

Harris’s lead female character, Sookie, is a telepathic waitress who hears people’s thoughts all the time & who’s driven nuts by them. ...Then Bill the vampire walks into the bar, and . . . miracle of miracles, she can’t hear him thinking. Then they save each other's lives, fight crime, and get together.

Quote is just the stuff I noticed. How much more there is is sort of hideous.

Hopefully my last Twilight post! Like, ever!

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I've pretty much moved beyond thinking about Twilight unless someone tries to sell it to me, but this post really hits home on so much of the bigger issue.

They seek out books that reflect gender roles because we teach them from birth that women and men are opposites and can only function when divided into separate boxes. They adore these roles because our media tells them exactly what they need to look like, be like, and act like. People like to laugh when I tell them that our media is teaching young girls that they should grow up to be saved by men, and then I point out shit like Twilight. Throughout the entire series, Bella doesn't do a damn thing for herself. Meanwhile, Edward controls her, operantly conditions her be with him, renders her utterly dependent on him, and Meyer portrays this as love. Teenage girls think this is love.

If I didn't see this every time I hear people talk about these books, every time people insult other female characters simply because they have a vagina, I would simply dismiss the Twilight series. Bad writing. Uninteresting characters. That's all; not even worth the time it takes to think about it. But it's a symptom of something else, and that something can manifest in a hideous way.

It's natural to obsess over a partner in a new relationship and part of the process. It's self-serving, because we constantly think about them, constantly want to be with them, which protects and promotes the relationship. This is fine, in and of itself. Where it becomes dangerous is when we combine this obsession with gender roles and effectively give the male-identified individual in the relationship more power than the female-identified individual.

We teach girls to obsess, to focus all their energy on being in a relationship. We. Teach. Them. We do this to them, we tell them that this is who they should be. And we tell them over and over and over again. Obsession might not be inherently negative, but when a girl/woman trades in her identity and free choice for a boy/man's and does so because society has been telling her she should since could walk, we have a gender-based problem.

Haha. Hahaha. Seriously: most awesome thing ever, or most awesome thing that ever awesomed? A bit of meta on it here, at it's origin.

Hellboy II lost to Twilight for Best Fight Scene.

Wow. Um. Since anybody was allowed to vote online, this is painfully obviously another case of 'something having an excess of fans does not equal quality'.

Okay. I know I said I was abstaining. But seriously, guys, what the fuck? Vampire Diaries casting.

What part of 'gorgeous Italian young men' means ugly white bread boys? I know I have odd tastes sometimes but they are not attractive or even passable by any sense of the word. Just...what?

Oh. I understand. I looked at one of the other photos--they're going for an imitation Robert Pattinson (I had to look up his name, whoops) look. You misunderstand; Stephenie Meyer ripped off Vampire Diaries, not the other way around. FUCK YOU. I wanted this to wipe that skeeze-tastic series from my mind. And...I don't find Robert Pattinson at all attractive, but even he was better than that.

Yeah. Um. I'm stressed out and cramping viciously and this is not helping.

Man. Eragon sucks. I realize this is old news--and this is a polite mention of it, meganbmoore has an honest and explicit summary of its horror just look in her tags--but I just had to say it. MY OBNOXIOUS OPINIONS, LET ME SHARE THEM.

This is how you stop criminals. Piss of the ladies. Totally awesome, am I right or am I totally right?

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA first of all who would want to write a novel based on Stephenie Meyer? PEOPLE LIKE THIS. No, I'm sorry, I know some perfectly nice Twilight fans...

Next, though I ditched Heroes long ago, I had to share this. ( spoiler cut for a spoiler I do not, by the way, for a second believe in )
Some deep quotes about the show:
weaselistic:I can't get over the fact that Dexter, the show about a serial killer, is 200% more heart-warming and filled with genuine emotions than this thing called Heroes. And Dexter himself isn't just better at relationships than Sylar, he's also better at them than Peter "I forgot my GF in a future I erased" Petrelli, WHO IS VERY EMPATHIC REALLY, A KIND, GENEROUS SOUL, A HERO!!!

and

According to Tim Kring, we're not supposed to hold it against him. We're not supposed to remember Caitlin. He said that it'd be too much for the viewers to have to remember Caitlin, after two episodes of absence. It was in the same Q&A, I believe, where he complained about being saddled with this TV format and this cast, and called the TV audiences "saps and dipshits". Tim Kring is a classy man.

And goblin summaries my feelings on Peter: Peter is also a Company experiment--they took a squirrel brain, added a dash of self-righteousness, and stuck it into his skull.

Okay. WOW. I just officially lost all hope for The Vampire Diaries. First of all? He's hideous. Second of all? HE'S NOT FUCKING ITALIAN. DAMON WAS NOT FUCKING CAUCASIAN. Okay, yeah, I'm mostly just whining because this thing is not attractive by any measure of the word and Damon was supposed to be magnetic, but yeah.

Okay, I officially have a reason to hate Stephenie Meyer now. I didn't really before--yeah, she's a bad writer, yeah, she's telling young girls that a horrific, abusive relationship is TWU LUV, not really my business--but OHBOY.

Now people's response to hearing about books that involve vampires seems to be 'yeah, read Twilight, never going near that again.' Yes, I think it's kind of a stupid way to behave in any circumstance, lumping everything within a certain genre together and this pushes my buttons especially hard because I'm so goddamn tired of people comparing people much more skilled and predating her to SM, but still. Because she's so goddamn horrible, she's actually managing to narrow the pool of potential consumers for other authors.

I once read an observation (and even I, myself, who rarely ventures out into fandom have seen this trend) that while people who read Harry Potter tended to widen their horizons and ask for advice on further booklists once they'd finished the series, Twilight's more vocal fans flaunt the fact that 'I don't read...' (whut? I've seen this about four times and it never fails to garner a double-take) 'twilight is the only book I've ever read!' Paraphrased for atrocious grammar and spelling. I've seen this more than ten times in discussions of books that venture into Twilight territory.

....like this is something to be proud of. Yeah.

ETA: On IJ, my mood image for infuriated has Yubaba with flames roaring out of her mouth. It cheered me up miraculously. If I'm easy to get down, at least I'm easy to cheer up.

Man, Emily Browning grew up pretty.

She was auditioned for the role of Bella Swann, apparently because she was a fan favorite online, which is kind of amazing if you think of it--that people actually pay attention to the voices of their fans in that way sometimes, and that the internet has that kind of voice at this point in time. Obviously not to all people--and sometimes people listen to them when they shouldn't, like in the case of all the whining SPN fanbrats who couldn't stand the thought of a pretty protagonist girl interacting with the boys--but still, proof there. I couldn't care less about the Twilight movie, but that it happened is still kind of awesome.

(She declined. Making her a smart cookie, too.)

PLAGIARISM. DON'T DO IT, BITCHES, AND WHEN IT'S POINTED OUT DON'T THROW A TEMPER TANTRUM AT THE PEOPLE WHO SPOKE UP CALLED SOMEBODY ON THEIR LOATHESOME SHIT.

Also: Twilight blatantly stole Nina Ricci's bottle design and GUESS WHAT GUYS GUESS WHAT:

THEY GOT CALLED ON IT

HAHAHAHAHAHA

MILK 'EM, NINA RICCI. THEY'RE RICH OFF OF POSSIBLY THE WORST BOOK IN THE HISTORY OF EVER, MILK 'EM FOR ALL THEY'VE GOT.

And I'm not watching The Tudors, but Natalie Dormer is temptingly fierce as Anne Boleyn. WOW.

Also: need to be studying for French now.

OMG FINALLY HOME~

It was nice and all, you know? I like California, and I love my aunt and we have a collection of really awesome friends down there. But sometimes it's just good to be home, you know?

Our cat sprayed all over my sister's bed, and she was in a fine fettle over it indeed. He has no survival instinct whatsoever. He got some tuna during the vacation, as well, so he's been insufferable in his loudly voiced demands for more, given while standing pointedly at the plate that got set down.

Also, I just realized that when Stephenie Meyer said she hadn't read or entered the vampire genre previously to writing her awful, soul-sucking series, she was lying through her teeth; she ripped off not only Charlaine Harris but also L.J. Smith. She got the whole 'terribly rude to lady-love because of attraction to lady-love' from L.J. Smith's Vampire Diaries, and she got the 'telepath whose love interest is the first one they can't hear' from Charlaine Harris. And they each respectively did an exponentially better job on it, of course.

Ben Barnes. Wants to be in Twilight. **brain explodes**

How could you? I had such a good opinion of you! I could respect someone who founded his accent off of Inigo Montoya and was dedicated to his job! I thought you were an actor with integrity! Maybe with taste. HOLYSHITOMFGNO.

Because you know I might have to, like, watchitorsomething if he's in it. HOCRAP. Just bits. Just bits. **pets frenzied soul** I'm not selling you yet. And I suppose monetarily speaking, it's a potentially very wise decision. Though that studio creeps me the heck out. They ditched a director because she wanted to spend the time necessary to actually make the movie good on it, never mind that she was enough of a brainless vapid twit to think the book was excellent.

Okay. Just in case anyone, ever, wanted to know what my opinion on Twilight was; a quote from the comments of THIS:

And ANYONE who seriously thinks Twilight is something great, go work in a battered woman's shelter. Talk to the women who were in relationships with men who watched them while they slept, who took the engines out of their cars, who cut their brakes. See how DAZZLED they are.

That sums it up. Also, Bella Swann's snobbishness is intense.


Seriously, though, all solemnity aside, these comments are fucking hilarious.


I read Twilight and now I can't get into Narnia. D:
Posted by: Susan Pevensie

Twilight raped me.
Posted by: The Good Name Of Literature

Turns out they've redone the final circle of Hell. Those in Cocytus aren't frozen; they're forced to listen to Satan reading Twilight. For eternity.
Posted by: Dante

You have nothing, nothing to threaten me with. Nothing to do with all your rolls.
Posted by: The Joker
I have Twilight.
Posted by: The Batman

I hate Utahraptor. He gave me Twilight to read and now I must take out my aggression by stomping on things, like this cabin and small woman.
Posted by: T-Rex

Ancient Vampire kit. If only I'd had the money to outbid! Or known about it! Or needed to kill any vampires! Still.

28 reasons the Twilight Movie was better than the book. Oh man. GOSPEL. SING IT.

Not that I've bothered to see the movie. But the remarks they made on the book are utterly true. Also: I was very nearly tempted to go see it just for Rachel Lefevre, but not quite. She wouldn't have been in it enough anyway.



That guy is actually pretty smokin', too. Too bad you couldn't induce me to see anything based on that book with electroshock therapy and a lobotomy. Odds are I'd still claw my eyes out in the opening credits.