Another one.

[silverflight8]

I dislike Twilight for many reasons, the stalking-is-love not one of the least reasons.

HOWEVER (and yes, this merits capslock), JUST BECAUSE MEYER'S VAMPIRES ARE NOT EXACTLY LIKE BRAM STOKER'S VAMPIRES, DOES NOT MEAN THAT THEY ARE INVALID. CAN WE DITCH THE IDEA THAT A VAMPIRE MUST BE EXACTLY TO SUCH SPECIFICATIONS? THEY'RE MYTHICAL.

Too many of the reviews focus on sparkling (heaven forbid anything sparkle, it must be too girly) rather than the actual problems in Twilight.


tl;dr. a change from an established trope doesn't mean a book's bad. zomg, people

Comments

[theo-harrison.livejournal.com]

One of my friends is very into folklore, and is published in the field. She's very fond of pointing out that acording to legend the Lesser Ubour (I think I spelt that right), a vampire from folklore, was instantly recognisable because it sparkled. That was the recommend method for spotting it so you could kill it before it turned into a Greater Ubour (which is basically unkillable and will wipe out villages.)

It gave off sparks rather than glistening, but still, SPARKLY VAMPIRE!

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

\o/

I just wiki-ed it and found this huge page on vampires (which makes me wonder why we're still insisting that vampires be one way or the other). And yay for sparkles. I'm just going to link your comment next time I come across a random "vampires sparkle, hur hur hur" comment.

[theo-harrison.livejournal.com]

:D

Seriously, I wonder why anyone insists that. L and her writing partner have been working on a story-verse where folkloric vampires are real, and getting around the differences by having there be hundreds of different kinds, and the stacks of research notes for it are humongous (they've been at it since before the recent Urban Fantasy boom.)

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

I think some readers realize they dislike the book for this or that reason--but others simply jump on the bandwagon and find that "sparkly vampires!" is an easy thing to bash. (I always associate it with glitter glue, personally, and perhaps that's why?)[second side note: why can't glitter be un-childish? D:]
...if all the different vampires are running around, I can see why so much research is required. Tell them good luck from me.

[theo-harrison.livejournal.com]

Fuck the haterz, glitter's awesome.

[silverflight8.livejournal.com]

:D It is.
I've never been able to figure out how to make the glue stay 3D, though. It always dries awkwardly. [Then again: cheap dollar-store glitter.]

[mercredigirl]

What annoys me is this lionising of Stoker's Dracula as the epitome of vampireness -- all the while ignoring the appropriation of the vampire myth from the Slavic peoples by Western Europeans (since Stoker uses Dracula to represent the British middle class's rejection of E. European aristocracy while misrepresenting and ignoring working-class E. Europeans in the discourse). Also, this ignores the historical Dracula (and the enmity between him and the Ottoman Empire), a context also appropriated by Stoker.

*gets off soapbox*

(Also: 'vampires don't sparkle' is, I agree, one of the weakest arguments against SMeyer that's possible. There's so much that's iffy about the series and people pick on this? Srsly?)

[silverflight8]

Agh, that just makes everything worse. I didn't know about the appropriation, although now that I look back at the number of different vampires in Eastern European culture, I should've. D: