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In the last few years, the book "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer has become overwhelmingly popular among the general population, teenagers especially. The book is about a teenage girl named Bella who moves to the town of Forks, Washington, where she meets and falls madly in love with a teenage vampire named Edward. Seems innocent, right? Not quite. So why hate "Twilight", you ask? Many reasons. For your reading convenience I've split them up into four categories: Poor Writing, Relationships, Common Arguments, and "True Love".

POOR WRITING.

Meyer writes at an amateur level- constantly abusing a thesaurus with shameless purple prose. She takes simple, elementary sentences and stuffs them with an overabundance of modifiers. Example:

"His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal."

There are 69 words in that short excerpt; 18 of which are adjectives/adverbs; 5 of which are synonyms for the same word: sparkling. But that's nothing: the word "murmur" is used 46 times in the first book alone. Nice way to use imagination instead of repetitiveness, right? Meyer's constant massacre of words is a fast way to fill up pages, but leaves absolutely no room for plot, character development, or any kind of quality.

Acclaimed author Stephen King recently gave his opinion on Meyer, comparing her to Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling. According to King, "Both Rowling and Meyer, they're speaking directly to young people... The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good." This is not an exaggeration. Meyer, who has had no previous experience in writing, is exactly that: inexperienced. Although the Twilight "saga" isn't written terribly, it is written very simply, with amateur writing style, forced vocabulary, and an over-all lack of deepness and literary quality.

In the words of an English teacher who agreed to read the first book, "The books are drivel. There's no substance."While there's nothing wrong with empty, simple writing, it should be recognized for what it is: empty and simple, and not, in any way, "the best book ever written", or even "a well written book".

RELATIONSHIPS.

Edward and Bella have a disturbingly abusive relationship, which Meyer condones and even celebrates as an ultimate form of romance. However there's nothing "romantic" about stalking and abuse. An abusive relationship is characterized by jealousy, sexual coercion, verbal abuse, control games, and power plays. Twilight proudly displays all of these. Examples:

? ? ?-Edward is jealous of Jacob, to the tune of actively preventing Bella from having even a friendship with him (which he does by stealing the engine out of her car to prevent her from leaving. He admits after the engine episode that the main reason for not wanting Bella to see Jacob was in fact his jealousy). Abuse red flag number one.

? ? ?-He bribes his sister to put Bella under house arrest while he is gone, so as to keep her under a watchful eye.

? ? ?- Edward manipulates Bella into marriage by refusing her wish for intimacy and telling her he will not allow them to have a physical relationship unless she marries him (even though Bella has expressed a strong distaste for marriage at her age, arguing that they are too young).

? ? ?-Edward is in complete control of their physical intimacy, while Bella has virtually no say. He controls when and how long Bella is allowed to kiss him, and systematically rejects Bella�s affection when she tries to act on her own. The fact that later he withholds sex, something which Bella wishes for, �for her own protection� is not only a clear example of sexual coercion, but also an insult to Bella. Is she not mature and intelligent enough to know what she wants?

? ? ?-Edward isolates Bella from her friends, and encourages her to leave them, calling them "shallow", then abandons her. At that time, he tells her "you aren't good enough", in blatant disregard for how this is going to hurt her. In abandoning her, he forbids her best friend- Alice- from seeing her.

? ? ?"I couldn't live without you." Edward attempts suicide over Bella, telling her beforehand that he's planning on doing so. Control tactic.

? ? ?-Edward encourages Bella to lie to her father about seeing him, and furthermore sneaks around Charlie's back in order to see Bella after curfew and before Charlie knew about the relationship.

? ? ?-Edward frightens Bella unnecessarily with his vampirism but does not take steps to ensure her safety. He constantly reminds her that if he wanted to, he could crush her, and she wouldn't have a chance.

? ? ?-Edward does not allow Bella to make her own decisions or to disagree with him. In the beginning of New Moon, Edward hides, takes, or destroys all her possessions that are associated with him, without her permission or even her knowledge. He takes Bella's belongings that are associated with him in an effort to control her healing process. But Bella is in charge of how she deals with the loss. Edward had no right to act for her.

?-Edward watches Bella while she sleeps (during entire nights, weeks at a time). Even before Bella is aware that he is doing so. Without so much as acquiring permission, he sneaks into her house through her bedroom window to spy on her. A violation of privacy.

Lucy Mangan wrote an article for The Guardian entitled 'Dangerous Liaisons" that explained this further:

"It sounds melodramatic and shrill to say that Bella and Edward's relationship is abusive, but as the story wears on it becomes increasingly hard to avoid the comparison, as she gradually isolates herself from her friends to protect his secret, and learns to subordinate her every impulse and movement to the necessity of not upsetting Edward and his instincts ("I could quite easily kill you, Bella, by accident"), until by halfway through she is trying to suppress her very pulse ("my blood was racing and I wished I could slow it, sensing that this must make everything so much more difficult") and planning her movements like a chess game - "I worried that it would provoke the strange anger that flared whenever I slipped and revealed too clearly how obsessed I was." Whenever she responds physically to his kisses, he immediately draws away and berates her. Supporters will call this the erotics of abstinence. I call it fear and distaste for female sexuality and a poisonous message to be feeding young women.

Edward, of course, has warned her not to be alone with him. He warns her constantly (in between praising her for the quietness with which she absorbs the latest revelation about his true vampiric nature) that she rouses him to such a pitch that he can barely contain himself. To Meyer and her legions of fans, this is evidence of his virtuous, gentlemanly nature. To those less enamoured of Meyerworld, the implication is that Bella chooses to put herself in danger and the further implication is that she must therefore bear full responsibility for the consequences (which, in the way of vampire romances, are not entirely confined to hugs and puppies). When she once confesses that she did find one of his outbursts of temper terrifying, he responds "You need a healthy dose of fear. Nothing could be more beneficial for you." To some, this counts as further proof that he wants to protect Bella from herself. To others, it all smacks uncomfortably of the "asking for it" defence. To the older and/or more savvy reader, Edward is less an ideal boyfriend than a proto-rapist.

In the book (though, naturally, less so in the film, as she is still physically present on screen), despite being the narrator, Bella all but disappears as a character. The few signs of wit and independence she exhibits at the beginning of the book, when she is starting her new school, have long been abandoned in favour of mute devotion to Edward, which by the end is so slavish that she asks him to turn her into a vampire too, so that he needn't be frightened of killing her any more. Now, teenage readers - or viewers, although the film loses much of the written detail of Bella and Edward's relationship, which in this case could be classed as a good thing - aren't idiots. But they are young, inexperienced and underinformed, and that makes them vulnerable to influences they are exposed to uncritically. And the Twilight phenomenon has not, by and large, been objected to by adults, perhaps because they are aware only of the high concept of the saga and simply assume that, because the young protagonists have to avoid sex, their relationship can only be virtuous.

Edward is no hero. Bella is no Buffy. And Twilight's underlying message - that self-sacrifice makes you a worthy girlfriend, that men mustn't be excited beyond a certain point, that men with problems must be forgiven everything, that female passivity is a state to be encouraged - are no good to anyone. It should be staked through its black, black heart."

COMMON ARGUMENTS.

-Edward didn't mean to hurt her. But he did hurt her. We can't rationalize abuse, even if it is not consciously intentional.

-Edward is jealous of Jacob because he's a dangerous werewolf- remember Emily. And remember that unnamed "singer" girl that Emmet killed? Jacob is dangerous. Edward is also, if not more, dangerous. Double standards.

-Edward doesn't encourage her to lie to Charlie- he asks her to tell Charlie that they're seeing each other. He asks her to tell Charlie so he'll have "some small incentive" not to kill her- that is, so he'll get in trouble if her hurts her. Since Bella has shown a strong disregard for her own safety, this isn't a compelling argument. Further, his actions in sneaking around Charlie's back both before and after curfew was instated demonstrate a real disregard for any sense of openness between Bella and her father.

-Edward scares Bella to make her understand the danger. No matter what the reason, it isn't right to try and frighten your girlfriend. She knows he's dangerous and can decide to take that risk for herself.

-Edward tries to act in Bella's own interests. Which he attempts by taking away Bella's independence and free will. Also, by acting against her will or, in cases, without her permission or knowledge (which he claims is "for her own good"), Edward is directly insulting Bella by insinuating that she isn't intelligent enough to make her own decisions, and is too weak-willed to know what she wants. Bella, for all her flaws, is her own person; no one, even her "lover", has the right to tell her what she thinks and what she wants.

-Edward's attempted suicide proves he loves her- it's not a control tactic. Killing yourself over someone does not prove you love them, it proves that you need mental help. And teaching a preteen that suicide is romantic will not lead anywhere good.

-Edward committed suicide because he thought Bella was dead. It can't have been an attempt to control her. But he told her that he was going to commit suicide beforehand- and that makes it a suicide threat, which is a characteristic of abusers. Some of them are unstable enough to go through with it. Plus, even if his suicide is contingent on her death rather than her absence, it's still imposing her decisions by making her re-evaluate the daily risks that she's willing to take.

-But it promotes abstinence, and that's good, right? Wrong. The only reason they stay abstinent is because Edward tells Bella that he would crush her bones with his pelvis if they even tried - once again holding the fact over her that he is stronger than her, and has the ability to hurt her. Which brings up another topic: why is it alright for them to have sex after they're married, since even after marriage, Bella will still be human and easily hurt? Edward proclaims more than once that he has no intention of turning Bella into a vampire. Which leaves his excuse for withholding sex as "for her own protection" paper thin. (Later, after they marry and have sex, Bella does, in fact, get hurt.) The mere fact that it is supposedly Edward's job to "protect Bella's virtue" (even when Bella herself has decided she is ready for a sexual relationship) furthers the stereotype that women are typical, weak-willed, seductive destroyers-of-man's-morals, who needs to be kept in line because they can't control themselves. If anything, it should be the woman who protects her "virtue", not her boyfriend. Teenage girls, especially, should learn that it is their own job to protect themselves. "Edward" may be opposed to pre-marital sex, but it's likely that most boyfriends of teenage girls are not. The message that "your boyfriend knows what's best for you and your relationship" is, in fact, a very dangerous message to be sending.

-At least it has kids reading. This argument is about as useful as giving a starving child a head of lettuce- sure, it's "food", but it has no nutritional value. Sure, Twilight is a book, but what good is it if it has no value? The action of reading isn't in itself good- it's the material being read.

TRUE LOVE?

Meyer tells us that Bella and Edward have true love. They are soul mates. Bella�s lifeblood�her very essence�sings to Edward�s soul. However a meaningful relationship is never built between them. After knowing him from afar for only a few days, Bella decides she is in "love" with Edward. However this "love" is never explained beyond Bella's fascination with Edward's good looks. Let's break it down into how many times these attributes are described in the first book alone: ?Face: 24
?Voice: 20
?Eyes: 17
?Movement: 11
?Smile: 10
?Teeth: 8
?Muscles: 7
?Skin: 7 (Note: This only contains accounts of Edward's skin being beautiful. I didn't count references to it as "pale," "cold," or "white" If I had, this number would be about ten times larger.)
?Iron Strength or Limbs: 5
?Breath: 4
?Scent: 4
?Laughter: 3
?Chest: 2

All of these are mentioned (numerously), but his personality is never listed as a reason for her love. Bella does not, in fact, ever make note of his personality. Her only describing words of him are as follows, along with the number of times each word appears. ?Hard- 109
?Angel- 84
?Cold- 65
?Perfect - 59
?White- 52
?Soft- 48
?Beautiful- 36
?Cool- 33
?Pale- 30
?Stone- 29
?Marble- 9
?Dazzling- 8
?Wry- 6
?Statue- 7
?Flawless- 6
?Godlike- 6
?Adonis- 2

Sounds like a pretty deep relationship, doesn't it?

The only conversations Bella and Edward hold together are discussions of how dangerous he is, how easily he could hurt her, and how temping her smell is. They know nothing of each other outside of the realm of physical attributes, and discuss nothing more than Edward's power. When Bella decides she is in love with Edward, she still has no idea who he is, what he's like, or what his personality is (too bad the reader never finds out either). Yet somehow she starts to revolve her entire life around him in an unhealthy fit of obsession (abandoning her friends to spend time with him, lying to her father to sneak out with him, controlling her breathing and pulse so as not to "tempt" him). The short amount of time in which Bella claims to "fall in love" with a person she knows next to nothing about creates the disillusion that "true love" is obtained effortlessly in a matter of days; further demeaning the very concept of "love".

When Edward leaves Bella in the second book, her life falls apart and she begins purposely putting herself in dangerous and potentially life-threatening situations in order to bring him back, or at the very least, bring his voice back (when she puts herself in danger she can mentally hear Edward's voice scolding her; something Meyer tries to convey as normal and even a useful way to cope with emotional pain). Eventually Edward returns after Bella throws herself off a cliff, bringing them back together again. After this happens, Meyer makes no effort to discourage this behavior as something unreasonable, but as something that will be effective. What does this teach young girls? That their lives depend on their boyfriends? That nothing else in their lives should matter as much as their relationship? That they should compromise their own safety to draw the attention of a lover? Some young, impressionable teenage girls that read these books have started to believe that this is the "perfect" relationship. This should not only concern parents, but disturb them.

So why do we care so much anyway?

Because it's indicative of a pattern in society to idealize unhealthy and abusive relationships. This book teaches our generation that abusive relationships are okay-- no, ROMANTIC, even. Not only is this book a moral threat to our youth, but an assault on literature itself. It's unoriginal, amateur, openly abusive, and dare I say it, sexist.

Educate yourself. Join the Movement. Don't support Twilight.

Thanks for reading.