Anti Twi-Bashing Rantisms

My friend Nome put up a picture aimed at poking fun (albeit, innocently) at Twilight, via a rather ingenious juxtapositioning of Anne Rice's vamps reading Twilight and speaking their minds, true to character, about the book.

And not to pick on you, Nomester, since I do love this cartoon of your's and all. Really, I do. But this just reminds me of the whole Twilight-bashing thing going on, and that pisses me off. The Twi-bashing, not your artwork. (I just want to make that clear before proceeding with my little rant.)

First off, weren't Rice's vamp novels written for a more, um, mature, adult, of-age audience? Meyers was writing for tweens. Of course Lestat's book was "better". Better written, more critical acclaim. Rice wasn't a stay-at-home mom freshly graduated from some second-rate literature program at a podunk university somewhere in Arizona.

As a Twilight fan (the books, at least - the movies aren't doing it for me yet), I just want to say that I'm kind of tired of the whole "let's make fun of Twilight" thing. It's "in" to tear it down, and that's just sad. I can't imagine it would have been well-received to tear down Harry Potter, or Redwall. Or Animorphs, for crying out loud. And we all know, looking back on those books, that Applegate was a shite writer. Every book was exactly the same. And there was, what - 32 of them? Gah. But no, we never said a word. But then this series comes out, and every one feels this bizarre need to bash it.

It's just irritating.

Straw man arguments, most of the time. Like, "it's written poorly" or "Edward's a bad example of a boyfriend icon to impressionable girls" or whatever. It's all bullshit though. If you don't like it, why not just ignore it? Instead of attacking everyone who does happen to like it, or find it meaningful, or inspiring, or whatever. The Bible is full of crap and poorly written and is probably setting a bad example to impressionable dopes everywhere, but it's mean-spirited to make fun of it. So just turn the other cheek and let us Twi-fans have a good time being happy about sparkles and true love and whatever else gets on everyone's nerves so damn much.

There.