The Twilight Saga: The Sullen Idiot Can't Make Up Her Mind

Today in the second part of my blog trilogy, I turn my attention, of course, to the second part of the Unholy Trinity, Bella Swan, the heroine, if you want to call her that, of the Twilight saga. I just refer to her as the Sullen Idiot, primarily because of the movies... where Kristen Stewart playing the thankless role seems incapable of making any facial expression beyond casual indifference.

Yes, we have Stephanie Meyer to blame for the creation of this whole series, and she's made a financial killing on it in the process. As noted in the last blog, I've never read the books. My brother has, however, and regretted it ever since. I suspect he lost a bet. He was less then impressed... and saying less then impressed is as adequate a term as calling Lake Superior a pond.

He's of the impression that if Ms. Meyer had been the screenwriter for Titanic, Jack Dawson would have lived. Regardless of the fact that every single sign through that movie pointed to Jack dying.

Admit it: this is the version of Twilight that would have been entertaining....

And so now that we're started, I give you the less then formidable Bella Swan, she who can't decide between the dead vampire and the flea bitten werewolf. Or is that were-llama?

I'm on that team!

So, let's see here... Breaking Dawn features the Sullen Idiot marrying Mr. Sparkles and having a vampire baby with him. It turns out that she's actually capable of making a decision after dragging her heels for three or four years.

Now, if I could be serious here for a moment? I do have some actual issues with the books and movies, and here they are....

First.... Bella Swan is a huge step back for female characters in fiction. She's utterly dependent on the men in her life, incapable of asserting herself. She willfully goes along with having herself isolated by the mysterious sparkly stranger she meets in the first book. It seems to me that Edward (Mr. Sparkles, I know, but I'm trying to be serious here) seeks to isolate her from everyone in her life. His behaviour isn't romantic. It comes across (at least to me) as stalker behaviour. This is a guy who's creeping into her bedroom to watch her sleep at night, who's overly possessive... all of these are signs of a potential abuser. And yet a generation of girls are growing up thinking, "OMG! Edward is so romantic! I love Edward! OMG!"

He's not, ladies... this is the sort of behaviour that results in restraining orders ten years down the line.

Contrast Bella with other fictional characters of late. Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter books is the most obvious one. She's brave, bold, decisive, and the smartest witch of her age. She finds herself at a bad place emotionally, and she soldiers on... she just gets on with it. She's an active, assertive, well rounded personality. Whereas Bella is submissive, meek, utterly lost without the supposed love of her life (who happens to be a century older then her). The way she comes across is as an emotional cripple who can't go on without the presence of a pale faced bloodsucking soulless vamp to carry her about.

Which of these two characters is someone to look up to?

Okay, serious time over.

The Count is never wrong, you know....

Like I indicated... Hermione Granger is a better character on her worst day and Bella's very best day...

That fight will only last three seconds.

Of course, there's all sorts of fan fic out there about Twilight (for some reason). Some of which speculates on just what it is that really goes on between the Unholy Trinity.

And then there's the matter of Bella's taste in baby names....Renesmee??? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Exhibit #45 in our case that Bella Swan is, indeed, an idiot. Anyone who would name a child that clearly has a low IQ.

Twilight: a true scourge on the land. With the first part of Breaking Dawn about to hit theatres, we can hope that we're near the end, but we're not. Part Two shall be showing itself in a year. Twi-hards will be screaming "OMG! OMG! OMG!" Mr. Sparkles will still be sparkling in that last film. Dog Boy will still be depressed in that last film. And Sullen Idiot shall still have only one facial expression....

I ask the fates: what did we do to deserve such a scourge upon us?

I'm with you, Gaston!

The Twilight Saga: Dog Boy Has A Flea Problem

A note before we get started here.... devoted fans of the Twilight franchise are probably going to want to skip this and the next two blogs. I'm going to be skewering the books and the movies, so consider yourselves warned in advance. And with that... on with the skewering....

This Friday sees the opening of Breaking Dawn Part One, the first half of the film adaptation of the final book in the series. Whereas the final Harry Potter book was split into two movies in a way that made sense, here it's little more then a marketing ploy to drain more money out of the Twi-hards by the studios. And so I thought I'd do three blogs, one focused on each of the Unholy Trinity, as I've come to think of them. Jacob, Bella, and Edward, otherwise known as Dog Boy, Sullen Idiot, and Mr. Sparkles.

Yes, the three actors turned up in Hollywood recently to do that whole hands and footprints in cement thing. This despite the fact that these three have only been working a handful of years and that far more deserving talent haven't had it done yet. Go figure.

The Twilight fans are a bit of a rabid, hysterical lot, for some reason. In fact, where once upon a time, Trekkies were considered strange and unusual, these days they're downright normal and very well adjusted by comparison....

The Bible tells us the story of the plagues of Egypt and the Exodus. The Pharoah could consider himself lucky. He never had to deal with the plague of tween and teen idols that we have today, after all. A few of these nitwits, and locusts, hail, and blood looks like a walk in the park by comparison.

And so, let us begin... with an examination of the first part of the Unholy Trinity, Jacob the flea bitten werewolf....

Yes, Jacob... the angry third part of the romantic triangle (or menage a trois, depending on which fan fiction you read). In these books he's the werewolf teen who supposedly wants the Sullen Idiot for some reason. This of course brings Dog Boy into conflict with Mr. Sparkles.

It doesn't help that Taylor Lautner looks like the first cousin of a llama, does it?

Admittedly, for awhile, before I was blissfully ignorant of these books (this would have been before the first movie), I would hear on occasion the words "Team Jacob" and "Team Edward". I wondered what it meant.

Believe me, there have been many times I wish I had remained blissfully ignorant of the whole franchise...

I've only seen the first film. Just to see what the fuss was about. Two hours of my life that I will never, ever get back. Damn you, Catherine Hardwicke! I have no interest in seeing more films in the series (no film reviews out of me on this one, trust me). I have no interest in reading the books. I do know that somewhere along the line, the Sullen Idiot is leaning towards Team Dog Boy rather then Team Mr. Sparkles....

Some months back, when seeing the final Harry Potter film, a trailer played in advance. There were a number of quick cuts, a brooding score... and then Billy Burke appearing on the film. He plays Bella's daddy in the films, of course. It was at that moment that I realized... Good God, no... not a Twilight trailer! A woman sitting with her friend in the row behind me muttered, "Not one of those again!" Good. I'm not the only one who finds these films profoundly annoying.

And there he was. Taylor Lautner (Mr. Llama playing Dog Boy) receives an invitation to attend the wedding of Mr. Sparkles and Sullen Idiot (I'll have you calling them that before I'm done). He looks angry, irritated, and decides to go sulk in the woods and howl at the moon. One wonders who he's more jealous of. And so, the last image of the trailer I saw (before turning my eyes away from the screen and calculating how long a trailer lasts) was Dog Boy running outside and turning into a flea bitten werewolf.

Werewolves, meanwhile, demand retribution by having their good reputation dragged through the mud by Stephanie Meyer....

Well, it's coming. This Friday, the Twi-hards will be out in force, screaming their heads off. "OhmyGod!" will be heard often (no spaces in between, just one word). Girls and women will wear shirts depicting themselves as on Team Edward or Team Jacob. Signs will be held asking for marriage proposals from Mr. Sparkles (Robert Pattinson has horror stories, by the way).

The rest of us will just hunker down, ride out the storm, and hope like hell it blows over fast.

The Twilight Saga: Will Someone Please Stake Mr. Sparkles?

And so we come to it at last... The Mr. Sparkles blog. I know, a fair number of you Twi-hards have been indulgent as I've skewered Dog Boy and the Sullen Idiot in the last two blogs, but now I'm getting down to the last member of the Unholy Trinity... and it might well be that skewering Mr. Sparkles is verboten territory.

It's a shame my face is out there in my blog comments. Otherwise I could have just as easily put up a picture of my idiot ex-brother in law with his sneer and beady eyes. I'd have said, "Yes, this is what I look like, and if you feel like murdering me because of this blog, I live somewhere in Brampton, Ontario. Just start knocking at every door. Sooner or later you'll find me!"

Oh well. Should have thought of that one sooner.

And so... let us begin. Yes, Mr. Sparkles (also known as Edward Cullen, also known as Eddie Weddie, also known as Widdle Eddie), has singlehandedly set back the reputation of vampires in fiction back into parody. Where the vampire has long been feared as a predatory monster, now these books have created a very different kind of vampire. One who sparkles. How have these monsters fallen so far?

There are actually Twilight condoms???

Folks, let me remind you... in the folklore and fictional tradition, vampires are soulless, predatory monsters that aren't interested in a relationship. All they want is your blood. Lots of it. That is, after all, what they survive on. And writing them as if they're the good guy does them no service. They really need to get some PR people on their side to remind the world that they're still bad asses. Stephanie Meyer has dealt a savage blow to their reputation.

"Lo, in that day, the Twi-hards will scream in ecstasy when the storytelling of the sparkly one begins. And those who dislike the sparkly one and all that he represents will roll their eyes in dismay and hope that the plague of sparkly vampires passes quickly, for it is truly an irritating plague, more so then the bite of the blackfly...." ~ from the Book of Kendall, Chapter XII, Verse XVI.

Yes, it's bad enough that girls are growing up reading this and thinking of how romantic it must be to be stalked by a dead guy. But some of their mothers are doing the same thing!

And what for? For this guy!

Edward Cullen, also known as Mr. Sparkles, I sentence you to be staked in the heart until you are naught but ash, for the grave offense of annoying me.....

I've already compared the Twilight franchise to Harry Potter last time out. I'll draw out one more comparison. JK Rowling brought death into the game from the start, by making her protagonist an orphan whose parents were killed by a dark wizard. That's throwing a child character into the deep end, which is a good thing. And as the series progressed, she had no problem killing characters the readers cared about in traumatic ways (with the exception of Cedric Diggory, who would be doomed to be played in the movie by the same guy who went on to play Mr. Sparkles. Nobody cares about Cedric). My point is, she wasn't afraid to kill off good characters, and indeed, by the last book, it seems half the characters die.

Contrast this with the conclusion of the Twilight books. No, I haven't read them. I thought I made that clear. Still, I know how it ends, so... nobody dies! Despite the fact that a responsible author might kill off a long time character or two as a sacrifice, Meyer chooses not to. Instead, she gives everyone a happy ending.

Well, except for those of us who dislike the series. We might have preferred an ending where Edward gets staked, Bella takes her own life out of grief, and Jacob, finding his two menage a trois playmates, throws himself in front of a silver bullet rather then face a life alone.

That would be a happy ending. Plus, it would guarantee no further books in this series. See? It's a win-win, all ways round!

Mr. Sparkles has done the vampire world no favours. None of them like how he's ruined their reputation.

The lord of all vampires does not approve of Mr. Sparkles....

Neither do Lestat or Louis....

Vampire Kiefer would like a word with Edward....

Spike and Dru... you don't like the Cullens either? Of course not. Here, here's a stake. Go get them.

Come to think of it, other immortal young fictional characters have little use for the ways of Mr. Sparkles....

When will we get back to the days of proper vamps in book or film?

We just might have to make do with other monsters for awhile.

No, I don't get this one either....

What we need is someone (or something) to rid the world of the Cullens forever. In a pinch, a dinosaur will do....

Perhaps Lord Voldemort....

Blade, come on. You spend all your time hunting vamps, buddy. Stake this one. And his girlfriend. And while it's not your usual target, get rid of that werewolf.

Professor Van Helsing, come on. You have no problem beheading vampire brides. Do us all a favour and take out the Cullens. It won't take you more then five seconds. Edward's not a challenge, after all....

Or maybe we can leave it to the other Van Helsing, Gabriel. Listen, mate, there's this sparkly vampire the Vatican wants you to dust...

I think, in the end, we'll have to leave the job to a slayer. Buffy, the world needs you. Do what you do best. Take out Edward, once and for all. We'll be ever so grateful, we will.