I wrote a post on The Shining a little bit ago that got some fun feedback and discussion, so I decided on mentioning something I've since read that is a little less intense.
A few years ago, I was on my main Reddit account, typing out feedback for a Redditor's short story submission, when I saw a comment underneath the original post that sent me back in time:
"Still a better love story than Twilight!" from a reader.
Followed by an extremely amused:
"LOL!!!! THANKS!!" from the author.
I completely missed the bus on Twilight. I was never part of the target audience of the books, but I always remembered thinking that the backlash against a monster romance aimed at young girls was way too harsh at a time where some real stinker movies were being held up as modern classics. In recent years, I've decided to kind of go back and catch up on some of the most popular literature I missed while growing up, including Harry Potter, Ice and Fire, and others, regardless of any demographic gap.
If I could put my feelings about reading Twilight into one sentence: I didn't like the story, but I have some affection for the book.
My biggest surprise with Twilight was in regards to its length. I was expecting to read a pulpy 300 page romance fantasy aimed at the sensibilities of a teenage girl. Basically, I was expecting Anne Rice-inspired gothic horror for the Myspace generation.
The first Twilight book has 119,000 words, and boy does it ever read like it. Every time Bella decides that it's time to start providing commentary, the story itself goes into bullet time as she describes every feature of the room, every miniscule detail of her school schedule, and every minor movement of every character, complete with glib observations of glib observations. It is laboriously paced. It's genuinely shocking how verbose this book is.
But I can't really pretend that I think this book should be derided as being the worst thing I've ever read, mainly because I have read this story a thousand times on creative writing subs and forums, including my own works. It has all the hallmarks of an American Gen X or Millenial writer who was told by their public school teachers to do things like use the words 'explained' or 'exclaimed' instead of 'said.' While reading the character action sentences, I was reminded of every time a reader gave the awful feedback that Bella can't just get in the car and drive away- we must be told that she picked up her keys, opened the garage door, opened the car door, sat down, put the keys in the ignition… I could go on, but I won't.
I didn't feel the hate that so many people 18 years ago seemed to feel, because I was actually starting to empathize with the author, even moreso than any of the characters. Twilight is every first draft that every amateur author has written, but it just so happened that Mrs. Meyer's first book got absurdly popular after receiving maybe a cursory editing pass. I actually find reading about Stephenie Meyer to be more interesting than the book. I try to wonder what the reaction to one of my early writing projects would have been had one of them gotten popular for some reason, and I find the image both hilarious and terrifying.
I know this isn't a traditional review, but who honestly cares what anyone's Goodread score for the first Twilight book is at this point?
EDIT: People have mentioned it, but of course there are issues with the book's quality and some of the problematic aspects of the Bella/Edward relationship. I originally had more of an in-depth review-style post that talked about the finer details of the books, but I cut a lot of it because I mostly just wanted to touch on some personal feelings that came to me while reading it.
by AMasonicYouth
23 Comments
I haven’t read Twilight in years (and once was enough), but from what I recall, you make some good points.
A couple of things that I think need to be added:
–Twilight was subject to so much hate in part *because* it was aimed at teenage girls. Things that appeal to women are almost always mercilessly mocked in our culture–from Twilight to pumpkin spice lattes.
–One frequent criticism that I think is 100% valid and that you didn’t mention is how toxic a lot of the “romantic” things are. Romance stories often walk a really fine line between “true love” and “abuse” (“awww, how sweet, he’s only stalking her because he can’t live without her!”), and Twilight lands on the wrong side. I blame Mormonism.
I think anything (within reason) that encourages young people to love reading is a good thing. I read pleny of books aimed at teenage girls in my youth, and now I continue to love to read.
*Edit: Realized I was spoiling some (pretty obvious-to-guess) stuff from the fourth book. Spoiler bars in place now.*
I read the series years ago, and yeah, I’ll agree it’s not deserving of the hate it got. It’s wordy and slow and much of it isn’t that interesting, but it isn’t the absolute worst. It became a victim of its own success, which made it an easy target.
What I remember most about the series once I finished it was the feeling of being robbed of a climax (pun slightly intended). The series spends >!three freaking books with Bella and Edward exchanging heated looks and romantic exclamations, and finally the final book shows up and they get married and head to their wedding night… and the scene skips forward to the next day. I didn’t exactly expect the series to veer hard into graphic smut scenes, but the author spent literal books describing all the minutiae in environments and feelings, and then totally skips the scene for the (literal) climax of the protagonists’ romantic relationship!<. I felt cheated.
Other than that, I enjoyed getting to read the fairly popular fan fiction [Luminosity by alicorn](https://luminous.elcenia.com/). It made the *Twilight* story much more interesting by making Bella not the typical self-centered teen she is in the original story, but instead having her act as rational self-awareness nerd. And it dives deeper into expanded worldbuilding with a focus on explaining how vampires fit into the world at large. It’s well worth reading, especially as a foil to the original books. Best after finishing the full Twilight series, though.
I mean, I don’t know. I like Twilight because it’s pure escapism and because it’s so nostalgic of my own HS years. I don’t read it hoping it’ll match the quality of writing found in Jane Austin novels lmao. It’s literally a book for teenage girls. It was never meant to be more than that.
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I reread it recently and the thing that stuck out to me is that it’s… so cold. Bella is so profoundly unhappy, depressed about Forks, depressed about school and her mom, nothing makes her happy, only distracts her, except for Edward obviously. He’s literally the only thing mentioned positively in the book for her other than her car and sometimes the nice things Charlie does for her, and the blue fire on the beach
Twilight will always hold a place in my heart, no matter how many problems the books have.
Are they “literature?” Of course not. Are Bella, Edward, and Jacob good role models? LOL, that’s a big no.
If nothing else, the Twilight Saga got legions of teens into bookstores and many of them became life-long readers as a result. For that, I’m a lifelong fan.
It’s been about a decade since I read those books and I was an early 20’s man at the time (my wife loved them so I also read them).
From what I remember, the writing wasn’t absolutely awful but the romantic beats were extremely toxic while being romanticized by the author.
The second book was by far the worst read due to Bella’s depression arc dragging on the entire way.
Overall I think they were fine and I was still entertained but I also have a soft spot for supernatural stories so the vampire aspects appealed to me.
My biggest gripe was that the vampires held every positive element to the vampire myth with no real drawbacks but almost all vampires were mopey sadsacks acting as if they were cursed beings while living as demigods.
Still think the oddest thing of that series was that having some ancient being stalking you and watching you sleep wasn’t creepy but cute.
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/e36ae8bb-9b2e-42f8-914a-32f6d9cdc394
Put twilight in the time capsule!
I’ll be honest, I wasn’t fascinated with the story so much as the characters. It was only recently she tried telling us about why she wrote Edward to be a little creepy and Bella to be boring. I know I’ve seen a lot of people laugh about it as a “horrible way of trying to justify bad writing” but it’s like these people forgot that she was writing Vampires, a fact that they seem to forget even though their inhumaness was a constant theme. Rosalie being angry about Bella not realizing that she was doing some thing worse than playing with fire, Jasper’s constant need to be away from the house because he has far less control than the others but he’s still trying.
That being said, if I was her, I probably would’ve tried to make it a little more mature, probably making Bella a young professional at the start of her career instead of a teen girl, make it easier to see that she’s a little “boring” as a character, maybe not have her write off a lot of complements or attention like she does. I would’ve used Charlie way more, maybe with more “I don’t understand, but I care and I try my best”. Make Rosalie more heavy handed in her dislike for Bella’s lack of natural instinct, she would be better as an antagonist for a first book than her introducing James and Co. near the end. Alice, I’d say she does a great part as a “Whimsical best friend” extrovert to Bella’s introverted personality. Also, the whole “Shifter” thing seems like she added it after reading a couple of THOSE novels, I think it would’ve done better to just keep the native tribes as “knowing more than they let on”.
The list goes on actually, but her characters pop out a bit more as long as you don’t forget that they’re supposed to be blood-drinking apex predators
The Shrieking Shack podcast has been reading Twilight and Midnight sun simultaneously and it’s been really interesting to go back and hear about these books years after the hype has died down. Particularly from the perspective of one of the hosts, Xeecee, who similarly to OP had never read Twilight before. If you’re interested, it’s a great podcast.
I really think a significant part of the reason that Twilight is so derided is that it’s popular with teenage girls, and people love to shit on things that teenage girls love.
As an Anne Rice fan, I was disappointed in Twilight for leaning hard into the “good vegetarian vampire” stuff. Rice never let you forget that her vampires, however attractive and angsty, were still morally twisted predators from the human standpoint. The Cullens were vampires who pretty much never bit anyone. As a result, I couldn’t get through Twilight, although I did enjoy The Second Life of Bree Tanner which is a spinoff from the POV of a “bad vampire”.
The internet moralism around Twilight pissed me off more than the book, though. From the way the moralizers talked, you’d think teen girls were total blank slates who read Twilight just because it was presented to them and would subsequently blindly copy the “toxic” dynamics of the book’s romance in their real lives. It gave the book’s core audience zero credit for being capable of making their own choices.
The real takeaway from this post is that people still say “still a better love story than Twilight”
“…first book got absurdly popular after receiving maybe a cursory editing pass”
I may be lambasted for saying so, but this is precisely how I felt reading The Martian. I am an engineer who was working in aerospace at the time and as a passionate reader I was recommend this book up, down ans sideways from every person with a pulse. I usually do not take book recommendations but I could escape it and was really underwhelmed by the time I finally read it. It is obviously not known for poor writing like Twilight, but it suffers from a lack of editing because it has many different styles that needed to be corralled in editing.
Publishing is funny, I’m glad to know that editors are out there – teamwork making the dream work
“It has all the hallmarks of an American Gen X or Millenial writer who was told by their public school teachers to do things like use the words ‘explained’ or ‘exclaimed’ instead of ‘said.'”
Wow yeah I feel very called out
I love twilight. I am aware that it is cringe in written form. It is chaos in every page, it is so absolutely absurd, and I am obsessed with it. Stephanie Meyer had no real planning or thought to put into those books, and it shows she was a mormon emo kid who just lived angst, but couldbt actually write it. There are so many plot holes, so many just absolutely bonkers details, and I just love it. I’m so sorry.
Love this viewpoint! I am a Twilight Enjoyer (“fan” feels like too strong of a word). I was a Twilight fan in my early teen years, but I hopped on the hate bandwagon. Decided to revisit the series during 2020 (because I was on paid leave at work and it was scary to leave the house, what else was I gonna do?) and it’s fascinating to me how many ways you could examine the series. Also my tween attention span must have been waaaaay longer than my current adult one because I honestly found the books verbose and a bit dull. I think the movies did right by cutting a lot of the unnecessary inner reflections out and streamlining the story. All this to say I’m definitely not one of those people who likes it but can’t take criticism about it.
Also “glib observations of glib observations.” You hit the nail on the head, my friend.
My biggest problem with Twilight, as I mentioned to my housemate when we watched the movies, is that Stephanie Meyer had some _great_ worldbuilding which she completely failed to utilise, instead focusing on the trope-as-all-hell love story.
You know how people in abusive relationships often can’t see it? That is the brilliance of Twilight. The Author thinks that they are writing a love story, but really it is a compelling story of an abusive relationship.
Something that marked and pained me when re-reading them a few years back (as a former teenager who had loved the books but didn’t want to admit it publicly) was how sad it is. I remember how all the girls my age were fantasizing about finding a boyfriend like Edward, and I think it all goes down to him being dangerous. More than immortal / handsome / whatever, I think it’s how he’s obviously not good, and certainly not for Bella – and yet he chooses not to hurt her.
Maybe I’m reading too much into this as someone who was going through SA at the time when I was reading the books; but I fear that what made the appeal was the fantasy of a creature who could choose to hurt you, who you are told is born that way (parallel to “boys will be boys”), and yet does not, even when asked to. I don’t know if that was the author’s intent, I just thought when reading that it does paint a sad portrait of teenage romance, all in all.
You should read The Host next by the same author. I really enjoyed the story, way different than the Twilight books. I might be mocked for this, but it was really great and unique.