#remember when twilight came out and there were news articles about the quileute tribe and also if you read the books with your eyes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

yoramkelmer · 4 years

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The rise and fall of the Twilight-Craze

Let me tell you about my first encounter with Twilight - it was a “read”-week in 6th or 7th grade, and I picked up a very new book at the library of my elementary school. So I started reading it. I remember reading the first chapters, but never finishing it. I remember how I found the protagonist to be very whiny, and very disrespectful too.

Also, at this point I also didnt know that this would be a vampire-novel, as the backcover of the book - this being the first danish translation/edition of the novel - never mentioned it.

Anyway, afterwards, I forgot about it pretty quickly.

Flashforward to a year later.

I´m over in Germany, visiting my grandmother, and I buy some books - the german translation of Twilight being among them - and then I start reading it later in the fall. While I did think that the name Stephenie Meyer sounded familiar, I could not remember why. At this point I should also mention that 6th and 7th grade was a very traumatising period for me, and I had by that point pretty much blacked much of that period out of my mind, focusing on the now and future. And yeah, I was 14, so there was still much to come.

Anywway, as I start reading the novel later in the fall, I suddenly remembered that one book I never finished back in 6th or 7th grade - and am kinda amused. Yeah, anyway, I still found Bella Swan to be a very whiny girl, and I actually liked the novel, and honestly did not think that much about it afterwards. Though I did learn not long after that a movie would come out later that year, I - while I was looking forward to it - did not imagine that it would start a big craze, that I later learned from the Wikipedia article of the South Park episode The Ungroundable to be named “The Twilight Craze”.

I enjoyed the movie, actually - I watched it with my best friend (who went on to become the biggest Twilight fan I know, at least for as long as the craze lasted) and it is a memory that I like to think back on. I still think that both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson did a good job in these movies - though more on that later.

So, flash forward to the fall of 2009, where I am in Thailand with my parents. On the way to Thailand - as we went through Germany - I bought the subsequent books New Moon and Eclipse. I read these books very quickly, and my mom as well.

New Moon - and I´m talking about the novel here - did introduce some rather interesting ideas, such as the Volturi. One thing, however, already stuck me back then - it was the fact that Meyer completely distorted the actual folklore of an actual native american tribe, the Quileutes, for her own way, and it seemed really disrespectful back then already. And as for the Volturi, despite being mentioned early on, we didn´t really get that much from them - though as for the climax of the novel, I was pretty disturbed by the fact that the Volturi let in hundreds of tourists into their palace just to eat them after closing the doors. While that scenario is already pretty much horrifying, what really disturbed me was that Bella - and by extension, Stephenie Meyer herself - immediately forgot about it after it happened and moved on with the plot. That, and another thing - are we really gonna accept it as okay that one from Jacobs tribe physically hurt and mutilated his wifes face after wolfing out, because he feels sorry and he forgave her? It already seemed really wrong back then.

What I also noticed was the fact that Bella Swan essentially only hung out with Jacob so she could play with his feelings, and so she could get into dangerous situations so she could get these hallucinations of Edward. With that said - I also could not really see what was so special about the relationship between Bella and Edward.

Then I read Eclipse - and one thing stuck out to me there: it´s the fact that the mentioned backstories of the individual Cullens - Carlisles past with the Volturi, Rosalie seeking out and killing her rapists, Jaspers backstory from the american civil war (as I later learned from Das Mervins sporkings, she got a lot of stuff wrong there, to put it mildly), or how Alice was abandoned by her family in an asylum and pretended she was dead, where she ultimately got turned - all of these backstories are a hundred times way more interesting than the perks of being Bella Swan and her love life!

Also, I immediately knew that the vampire army was a work of Victoria, and that it was to kill Bella - only upon reading the sporkings by Das Mervin did I learn that it was supposed to be a “twist”.

On the way back from Thailand I bought Breaking Dawn shortly before leaving Germany, but I never finished it - you know why? Because some of my classmembers spilled the tea on the spoiler that Jacob imprints on Bellas daughter. I was just grossed out. I later learned that the book is what turned many fans off Twilight - and the imprinting thing was one of the reasons why, in many cases.

Anyway, then a few weeks after returning from Thailand, I went in to see New Moon with two of my best friends, and it is a memory that I cherish very much.

And that was the time when the Twilight Craze really, really went off - with all the cringeworthy “Are you Team Edward, or Team Jacob?” stuff, and how out of touch with reality some of the fangirls seemed - there were apparently some who really believed that Edward Cullen exists, and so much more. I still didnt think too much about it, as I had other things to look for.

Though - despite liking the movies and the books at the time - I really, really enjoyed a lot of the parodies on the Twilight Craze, like this one from Smosh. The thing is, that Twilight became the probably most parodied thing in the 2009-2010 period. And that may have been one of the things that killed the craze - but more on that later.

Then, in the summer of 2010 - one of the best summers of my life - I was in Miami with my family. And then my best friend and I got to watch Eclipse in a gigantic cinema in a very big mall in Miami Beach - that was unforgettable. And I also remember that I wasnt the only one who laughed over Taylor Lautners overacting. Good to know.

During that same summer, I remember then seeing a new book by Stephenie Meyer in the bookstores - “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner”. As this was before my friend and I saw the movie, I myself did not think that much about it; but I then later realised that Bree was the girl killed by the Volturi at the end of Eclipse, and that the novel - as the title already states - was about her time with the army of newborns. That sounded like an actual interesting plot. Shortly before watching Eclipse, the trailer for “Vampires Suck” came out - and the trailer was very funny, way more funny than the actual movie.

So....Eclipse was a huge hit that summer. But you know what that also was? The end of the Twilight Craze itself. In fact, it can also be compared with another contemporary hit of the 2009-2010 period - Avatar. While that was the biggest hit of the winter of 2009-2010, as soon as spring started, everyone forgot about it. And while Eclipse itself got a lot of mixed reviews, like the preceding movies of the franchise, it simply was the end of the craze itself.

I think here are some of the factors:

Twilight was pretty much EVERYWHERE in the media in 2009-2010, not only from advertisement, product placements, and posters, but also from parodies, not to mention how often Twilight was mentioned in actual news broadcast. In other words, people got tired of it - not just the people who werent even fans of the franchise in the first place, but also more moderate fans, like I considered myself then. And yeah - now thinking back on it, I was also pretty tired of seeing Twilight everywhere even before Eclipse was released in the cinemas.

And another thing is this: The Second Life of Bree Tanner. While the novel was released in early June of 2010, mere weeks before the movie came out, it was very bestselling, because of the Twilight Craze. And the reason why it was released was most likely because even Stephenie Meyer herself had a feeling that the craze soon would end, and had to publish something Twilight-related in advance, so she could be talked about again. Officially, the novella started as a short story to tie in with her illustrated guide for Twilight.

I bought the book later that summer while in Germany - and I found it not very well written, and forgot about it very shortly afterwards. Even my friend found it forgettable. I recently read the sporking of the book on Das Mervin to be reminded of what actually happened - and boy, does it suck! And here is my point - many Twilight fans probably realised with that book that Stephenie Meyer isnt that good a writer. (A lot of people had the same reactions to ��The Host” - including me, who never finished the novel because of that)

And then, as soon as the summer of 2010 was over, Twilight was over. People had enough.

I know that the final film was - because of Harry Potter - split in two parts (a decision that was continued when The Hunger Games were made into movies, and a decision that ultimately killed the Divergent franchise), and was released in the winter of 2011 and 2012. I watched both of them - and I was immediately struck by this in 2012: While there of course were trailers and posters for these films, there was simply not the same exposure to the franchise as back in 2009-2010.

And by the time of the release of Breaking Dawn part 2 in the winter of 2012, I had already been redpilled regarding Mary Sues, and had a field day of counting all the Mary Sue points in the movies.

Yeah, Bella Swan is one of the biggest Mary Sues in existence, and was created as a way of Stephenie Meyer wanting to live out an idealised version of her highschool years.

That, and Stephenie Meyer isnt that great a writer - just read the sporking on Das Mervin.

During the reading of the sporkings, I also realised the way how Meyer demonises every blonde - from Lauren to Rosalie, and how Leah Clearwater is demonised for being an independent woman who doesnt bow down to Bella Sue and who actually does something, unlike Bella Sue.

Now, onto the thing with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Both are very good actors, and I think it is sad to see how haunted they were in the past decade of Twilight. Many have accused Stewart of being a bad actress because of Twilight (not to mention that they haven´t seen her brilliant performance in Speak) - I disagree. Kristen Stewart showed what a spoiled, ungrateful and dull Sue Bella is, and Pattinson what a creepy, controllable Stalker Edward is. And I´m now especially happy to see how especially Pattinson is recovering now, as Kristen Stewart did get to prove herself in movies like Camp X-Ray.

Anyway, that was my rant on the Twilight Craze.

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