There is a virus plaguing our communities. It’s in our schools, our libraries, our supermarkets, even in our own homes. It’s insipid. It creeps in at night and keeps your little girl from her bedtime stories and replaces them with smut. Damn, dirty, smut. I speak, of course, about sparkly vampires.

Twilight is perhaps the worst thing to happen to vampire lore since Anne Rice went crazy and started suing all of her fans for writing unauthorized fan fiction. There is nothing good about the Twilight Saga, the movies, the insipid merchandise, or the resulting trend in body glitter. Twilight is not just a book series, it’s a disease.
Here are my main issues with the saga in a handy-dandy list:

1. Twilight vamps don’t die in the sunlight; they glitter.
   If I hadn’t actually read these books for myself I wouldn’t have believed it. The funniest part about this is that Edward, the vampire love interest, seems to think that it makes him a horrible monster. “Oh my, I’m a sparkly monster! I could totally, like, kill you right now if I wanted to. As if you could stop me.”

   This is akin to a man saying to a woman, “I could totally hold you down and rape you right now but I guess I’ll show a little restraint.” Oh, what a charming thing to say! He must love her.

2. “I really like you, but you should probably not like me. Stop talking to me, unless you want to. I mean, it’s cool if you don’t but I know that you find me attractive but I’m like, totally dangerous, so please leave me alone. See you tonight when I’m staring through your window whilst you sleep.”
   First off, that’s creepy as hell. He sits around and watches her while  she sleeps? Oh, it “fascinates him”. How the hell is that romantic or cute in any way? That’s stalking disguised as love.

   Second, Edward is playing mind games with Bella. Stephenie (it IS spelled that way. Google it) Meyer may be blissfully unaware that saying things like, “I like you, but stay away because I’m dangerous!” are exactly the kinds of things that attract stupid girls into wanting to be with a “bad boy”. It’s blatant manipulation.

3. Twilight vampires don’t drink human blood.
   Then they’re not vampires. End of fucking story. Vampires drink human blood, not gazelle or cheetah blood. HUMAN blood. Anything else isn’t a vampire, it’s a man-leech.
4. The way that Meyer represents virginity in her novel is infuriating.
   Not because she prefers to keep Bella a virgin until marriage, but because Bella doesn’t want to stay a virgin and Edward refuses to have sex with her. He literally controls every part of her life, down from who she can hang out with, when she can hang out with them, when she drives, where she goes, and now even if she loses her virginity. Poor girl. It’s not like she can get down and dirty with herself, not with her creepy stalker boyfriend watching.

   My point is, Bella starts off the saga with friends, a family, and a future. She ends the saga with a boyfriend and a baby. Feminists all over the world are exploding in anger at this blatant display of traditional spousal roles.

5. Description is terribly lacking.
   After reading four books I had a very vague idea that Bella was average-looking. That’s fucking it. On the other hand, I knew that Edward is tall, mildly muscular, very cold, very hard (don’t read too much into that, pervs), beautiful, very attractive, easy on the eyes, awe inspiring, sexy, “dazzling”.

   Yeah, Meyer actually refers to one of her characters as being dazzling. Several times. And makes a fucking point of it EVERY FUCKING TIME. Did “Dazzling” come up as the word of the day when she was writing this saga?

   Point is, Meyer’s books are mostly filled with dialogue, leaving little description of anything besides how uber hot Edward is. That leads me to my next point.

6. The characters are boring and one dimensional.
   There is no intelligent dialogue in these books, only characters who are supposed to be intelligent. Here’s the character breakdown.

   Bella is plain and clumsy. Despite all of Meyer’s efforts, being clumsy is not a character fault. It is, however, Bella’s ONLY character fault besides being incredibly dense. Bella is actually the most poorly worked out character in the entire saga, which is a bad thing considering that she’s the narrator. She has no personality, no ambitions aside from her love for Edward, she’s mildly unintelligent, and worst of all, she’s boring. The book’s interest is entirely dependent upon every character but Bella. Now, that’s bad writing.

   Edward is dark, brooding, and sexy. That’s it.

   Jacob is hot. Literally. Oh, and he’s a werewolf that doesn’t need a full moon to change. He’s basically like the hulk, just hairier and with less stretchy pants.

Please, listen to me. Twilight is a terrible novel and reading it effectively kills more brain cells than drinking a fifth of tequila. Recycle your Twilight novels, there’s a shortage on toilet paper. Don’t Google that, it’s a fact. There’s a detrimental lacking of bathroom tissue because it’s all being used to print Twilight novels.

Here, I’ll break down the saga for you as simply as possible. Here’s an argument that I had with some guy I made up for this blog post.

Some guy: Male vampire wants to eat human female.
Me: Okay, cool, I like this so far.

Some guy: Human female has no fear of male vampire.
Me: Alright, that could be interesting.

Some guy: Female human is totally in lust with male vampire.
Me: Yeah, I can see that.

Some guy: Male vampire, while still wanting to eat female human, is in love with female human.
Me: Well, that was a bit soon to fall in love, but okay. This could be interesting.

Some guy: Female human’s blood is so tantalizing to male vampire that he is ready to murder her and everybody else in their classroom.
Me: Neato.

Some guy: Female human’s blood is male vampire’s “own personal brand of heroin”.
Me: Sounds like an okay comparison.

Some guy: Male vampire’s coven doesn’t partake of human blood, just animal blood.
Me: That’s either really stupid or really noble. I can’t tell which yet.

Some guy: Despite being average in every way, every human male at female human’s school wants to have sex with female human.
Me: She must have a really good personality.

Some guy: She doesn’t.
Me: Oh.

Some guy: Male vampire doesn’t die in sun.
Me: I can deal with that, I guess…

Some guy: Male vampire sparkles in the sun.
Me: Sparkles how? As in, after getting out of the pool water glistens off of his rippling abs?

Some guy: No, his skin actually glitters.
Me: WTF?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is not a suitable replacement for dying in the sun!

Some guy: Male vampire also doesn’t have fangs.
Me: So he’s not even a vampire then?

Some guy: Yes, he is.
Me: No, he’s not.

Some guy: Is too.
Me: Is not.

Some guy: Male vampire is stalking female human to keep her safe.
Me: That’s not right…

Some guy: Female human knows that male vampire only controls everything she does because he loves her.
Me: So, this movie is about spousal abuse?

Some guy: Male vampire keeps female human from hanging around some of her friends because he doesn’t like them and he’s afraid that female human might leave him for male werewolf.
Me: Is Bella played by Valerie Bertinelli?

Some guy: Male vampire secretly watches female human from the shadows while she sleeps.
Me: You’re just fucking with me now, right?

Some guy: Female human just fell and broke her fall with her eye, okay? Male vampire didn’t push her, he really loves her! She just makes him really angry sometimes. Okay?
Me: No.

Some guy: As it turns out, female human’s blood smells just as sweet to every other vampire in existence.
Me: So there is nothing unique about his attraction to her? Her only positive attribute is that her blood smells wicked tasty.

Some guy: That’s about right.
Me: How is this girl the main character?

Some guy: Fuck you, that’s how!
Me: Whoa, that was an unnecessary escalation.

Some guy: I’m sorry, I’m just going through some things right now. My grandma just died and my girlfriend left me..
Me: Keep your troubles to yourself and continue telling me about Twilight.

Some guy: Fine, asshole.
Me: What was that?

Some guy: Nothing, nothing.
Me: That’s what I thought.

Some guy: Anyway, some other vampire clan that actually feeds on human blood really wants to feed on female human.
Me: Finally, some real vampires.

Some guy: Male vampire protects female vampire by making her convince her father that she hates him and is moving back in with her mother.
Me: So he makes her lie, too. Lovely.

Some guy: Evil vampire that wants to eat female human lures female human into a trap and tries to kill her. Evil vampire bites her and the rest of the male vampire’s coven burns evil vampire to death.
Me: So, she’s going to turn into a vampire now?

Some guy: This is my story, let me tell it.
Me: Fine.

Some guy: Male vampire can suck the venom out of female human’s wound before it vamps her.
Me: That is such a lame cop out.

Some guy: Do you want me to continue on with the rest of the saga?
Me: Maybe another time. By which I mean never.

Some guy: Whatever, asshole.
Me: So, over all, this is a story about a vampire who doesn’t drink human blood, doesn’t have fangs, doesn’t die in the sun, and falls in love with human despite the fact that said human has no redeemable attributes besides her blood and her uncanny ability to point out the obvious?

Some guy: That’s about right.
Me: What makes him a vampire then?

Some guy: What do you mean?
Me: Well, he doesn’t do anything a vampire does. How is he a vampire.

Some guy: He COULD do everything a vampire does if he wanted to.
Me: I suppose he could drink human blood if he wanted to, but he still doesn’t have fangs and he doesn’t die in the sun.

Some guy: So?
Me:He’s not a vampire.

Some guy: Yes he is! He could drink human blood if he wanted to but he abstains to keep his humanity. He’s still a vampire.
Me: No. If I really wanted to become an alcoholic but abstained for my health and my family I would not be an alcoholic.

Some guy: That’s different. The desire to drink human blood is in his nature.
Me: Okay then. It’s in my nature to eat meat to live but I don’t because of modern medicine, vitamins, and suitable vegetable-based alternatives. I am not a meat eater simply because it’s in my primal nature to eat meat, I have chosen to be a vegetarian. Therefore, I am a vegetarian despite what my nature has dictated necessary for survival.

Some guy: I hate you so much.
Me: And from a strictly literary prospective, he is by no means a vampire.

Some guy: Yeah, well, Stephenie Meyer broke down the barriers of vampire fiction.
Me: Not exactly, she just shit all over them. Stephenie Meyer isn’t a good enough writer to take literary concepts and twist them around. Even the worst writers out there will tell you that you shouldn’t fix something if it’s not broken.The Mormon Church, however, got to Meyer first.

Twilight sucks. End of story. If you think that Twilight is the best novel on earth then you’re an idiot and there is nothing we can do to save you.