No Fucking Point (Chapters 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and Epilogue)

The journey. Our main character, especially in narrative fiction, undergoes a journey just like every hero in any story from Grecian epics to pop manga. These stories require five basic things, as described by Thomas C. Foster in his book How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

First, there is the Quester. For Twilight, we have Bella. Lonely, anxious, emotionally handicapped and tragically clumsy. She is our heroine at the beginning of her path. Second, a place to go. The book opens with Bella arriving in Forks from Phoenix in order to make her home. So while the journey isn't necessarily one of distance, she is required to make her way in this new life. Third, a stated reason to go. Bella has plenty of these, generally all ejaculated from her martyr complex; preserve and protect her mother's happiness, take care of her father in his solitary life, and distantly to finish high school. Fourth, challenges and trials. Again the majority of these conflicts are born of Bella's own brainfarts and inability to socialize in any healthy way. Vampires are nearly secondary to this conflict, but are worth mentioning. In comparison to the living, the dead seem perfectly acceptable if not attractive. Bella is seduced by a different system of rules, a new way to be a victim. And finally, the fifth requirement, the real reason to go. This is always self-knowledge. Bella's social spasms and backwards romance should harshly, even dangerously reveal the her true self and allow her to understand that she has the choice to be strong, to be solitary, to be alive and moreover to be numbered among the actively living instead of patiently dying.

At the point I left us last, before a convenient antagonist showed up to shoehorn some conflict into the last third of the book, Bella was actively begging Edward to turn her into a vampire. Edward like any man, isn't ready for that kind of commitment with a girl he hasn't slept with doesn't want to take her oh-so fragile life away from her and pop her jugular cherry. But even when she agrees to stop hounding him to take her throatginity, Bella yearns for this eternal life of being a monster, albeit a beautiful and powerful monster with an undying hottie for a boyfriend. I read this and I see a young woman who wants to die before she even starts living. When the evilvamps blow in to murder her, she runs because she is told to. When the evilvamp finds a way to contact her, he tells her to ditch her vampire friends and come to him willingly, or he'll murder her mother. And you know what? She does.

Bella rejects every single life raft, every mote of human companionship and leadership, every instinct that encourages her to stand the fuck up for herself, and walks straight to her death.

I wanted that bitch to die nearly as much as she did.

If your reader's sensibilities aren't frothing as the mouth yet, let's continue through the climax! Meyer's evilvamp is … oh wait, she never describes him. I can't even remember his name. When Bella waltzes into her deathtrap, the bad guy can't even be given an interesting visualization or monologue. He merely threatens vaguely at the doom awaiting her mother. "Stuff will happen! There will be things! OoooooOOOOOooh!" Way to castrate your villains, Steph.

When it comes murderin' time, Evilvamp doesn't conceive of a terrifying test of her will or haunting series of questions like Anton Chuguhr in No Country for Old Men. He doesn't revel in her fear or debasement by threatening her with horrifying trauma and listening to her beg and weep, like the assassin in the book version of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. No pseudo-crucifixion like Fiore's in the Sailor Moon R Movie, no elaborate death trap the likes of any James Bond villain. The best he can do is a dance studio, a VCR and the Bobby Brown school of ho-slapping. Bella breaks her leg falling into mirrors, which may or may not be the bad guy's fault, and generally gets her ass kicked. Finally, he bites her hand to inject the excruciating vampire venom into her system.

Yes, her hand. Not her throat, not her breast, not the naughty femoral artery. Her dainty little hand. He can't even bite off a few of her fingers for good measure before Edward shows up and kills him OFF SCREEN.

Because the climax of this story isn't about the ignoramus telling it to us, it's the god of all things sexy and divine Edward deciding if he will test his own control by sucking the venom from her hand. (Her fucking hand? Really?!) If he fails, he drinks her dry and leaves her a a sad, deflated blow-up doll. Or he could wuss out and allow her three days of writhing agony before she dies and becomes a fellow vampire, just like she's been begging him all this time.

I … I can't even go on. We know what happens, despite how it should have happened. He saves her, she recovers and he fucking takes her to prom and they STILL DON'T HAVE SEX. The End. I hate you, Stephanie Meyer. Do us a favor and go eat a cannoli, fuck off and die in a fire. I loathe your book because it only teaches girls their value in is what they can sacrifice to others, specifically men, and should be thankful for what they get out of it. This is not love. This is systemic abusive control of women.

Twilight is trash beneath a sugary veneer masquerading as romance. I wouldn't use the paper to wipe my ass.