Breaking Ally: My Relationship with Twilight

Nearly two years ago, while I was still studying abroad in London, an insufferable phenomenon swept through the house. It was...the Twilight phenomenon...and all the girls were enchanted by it. Now, for those of you that have been living in Amish-ville for the last couple of years, The Twilight Saga is a series of four vampire-based (yep...vampires) romance novels written by American author Stephenie Meyer (who's a Mormon, btw). The books track the lives of Bella Swan, a girl who lives in Forks, Washington (whaddup!) and how she falls in love with a vampire named Edward and how she deals with her best friend Jacob, who happens to be a werewolf. The books have sold over 100 million copies worldwide and now they're making movies about the books.
Now that you are caught up on how ludicrous (or Ludacris, if you prefer) this entire concept is, you know just how annoyed I was that all of these girls that I was living with were practically wetting themselves over these books. You know how there's a Team Edward and a Team Jacob? Well I was on Team I-Don't-Give-A-Crap. For serious, every one of the other fives girls living in my room were obsessed. They would stay up until all hours of the night so that they could read the novels. Some went to the Twilight movie premiere, hoping to get a glimpse at Robert Pattinson (who is not attractive at all, sorry!), the guy who plays Edward. One of my roommates even stole a Twilight movie poster from the side of a phone booth...not unlike the one you see to your right...and put it up in our room. It was then and there that I vowed never to read a Twilight novel nor see any of the Twilight movies. I was very proud of myself for making this seemingly unbreakable resolution.

Fast forward to the summer of 2009 and my non-Twilight pact was still going strong. That is, until one day was I was at home absolutely bored out of my mind, I found myself on our DIRECTV On-Demand channel. Low and behold, the Twilight movie was one of the options. It was at this point that I was just so damn curious as to what all the fuss was about that I had to watch it...and I did. And let me tell you, the movie was absolute GARBAGE!!! Poorly acted, poorly directed...just plain poor. I was upset with myself that I had broken my vampire fast on much a crappy movie. But then I renewed my vow to never watch another movie nor read a book from the Twilight Saga.

Fast forward to November of 2009, and the second Twilight movie, New Moon, is about to be released. At this point, I had begun and finished watching the first two seasons of the HBO series, True Blood, a vampire-base TV show (and if you haven't watched it you totally should because it is AMAZING!), so I was somewhat looking forward to the release of the new movie. So I went with my friends, thinking that I wouldn't like the movie at all because it would be as bad as the first one. My experience at the theater was one that I wish to never experience again. My friends and I were probably the oldest one there, quite definitely the only ones that drove themselves there at any rate. Everyone around us were little 12- and 13-year-olds. Then once the movie started, they all started screaming as loud as they could, like they had seen a picture of Pau Gasol or something. Then, whenever Taylor Lautner, the guy playing friend Jacob, would take his shirt off (which was often) they would all scream again. Although, really, what's not to like...except the fact that he's jail bait? Aside from the screaming tweens, it turned out that while New Moon was by no means Oscar-worthy, it definitely wasn't as bad as Twilight. It was then when I lost control. I felt that since I had already broken my promise to never see the Twilight movies, I might as well just be completely over it and read the books. So I went out and bought them.
At first I didn't even want to read the first two books since I had already seen the movies, but all my friends were like, "No Ally you have too...so much stuff happened in the books the weren't in the movie." So I read them anyway...in a matter of two days. Let me tell you, for someone who does like to read like AT ALL, these books were the easiest read. Mainly because the font was of adequate size and because the "prose" made it seem like a 10th grader had written it. One thing that my cousin Kristin said about the Twilight novels was that they were like crack. Actually, I would rephrase that and say that the Twilight novels are more like meth. One you have the first hit, you keep coming back for more. And the more you have, the more it rots your brain out.

This is your brain...This is your brain on Twilight

Nevertheless, I finished them and decided to wait and read the next two books until Christmas break. Well, Christmas break turned into spring semester, which inevitably turned into summer break, so then I decided to read up on the last two novels. Now, these ones took me a little bit longer to read, mainly because they were like over 700 pages. Why they were that long I do not know.

Well...I am happy to say that I finally finished the entire Twilight Saga last night, and all I can say is that the books were a huge piece of crap. I wasn't satisfied with them at all. The story was mildly interesting, at least enough to keep me reading. But after a point I just really didn't care about the characters anymore, but I had devoted so much time to reading this filth that I might as well finish it. And Stephenie Meyer (the Mormon)...you are atrocious at writing. Like literally, my 12-year-old cousin could have written Twilight and made a hundred million dollars. I mean, that's the best a BYU education can get you? Although, maybe it is. And I'm sure the Church is happy to be getting 10% of whatever she earns. But seriously, I am embarrassed for myself, as well as America, that we somehow enjoy these kinds of books. I mean, I am ashamed that I spent a better part of this week reading and learning about something that doesn't exist. I will never get my last 750 pages of my life back. At least True Blood comes back in a couple of weeks..wahoooo!!!

Oh well...next stop: Bill Simmon's Book of Basketball. It may not have vampires or werewolves in it, but at least I can learn about something that pertains to the work I want to go into. Anyone else have some reading suggestions that I can tackle this summer???