Bah, haters!

Granted the Twilight series is not exactly my type of novels (I found Meyer's novel The Host to be vastly superior to the Twilight series in both creativity and style) but you can say just about anything is being a "bad role model." Harry Potter teaches kids breaking the rules is a good thing, Scooby-Doo teaches kids it's good to be a coward, Batman teaches kids that being a vigilante is cool, Artemis Fowl teaches kids to be evil geniuses bent on world domination, blah blah blah. Teach kids how to filter the good messages from the bad because that's something they're going to have to do for the rest of their lives (and what many adults have yet to learn).

Sorry, these types of arguments strike me a silly. There's nothing wrong with disliking the books but using the position "The main character is a bad role model!" is weak.

My problems with the story were the pacing (four books were completely unnecessary, the middle two could easily have been combined into a single novel and shortened), Jacob (who they spent way too much time on considering how annoying he was), similar plotlines (book 1: Bella is hunted by local vamps, book 2: Bella is hunted by Italian vamps and the vamps from the first one, again, book 3: Bella is...hunted by vamps, I don't know, I don't really remember the third book, book 4: Bella is hunted by ALL the vamps, along with her kid and entire extended family.), and yeah, Bella is somewhat retarded as a main character having seemingly no sense of self preservation whatsoever. The last book was my favorite but mainly because Bella was much better as a vampire than a human (sorry if I ruined the plotline even though they were talking about turning her in the first book and didn't actually do it until a third of the way into the fourth book).

You can tear apart the series just fine on its own merits, bringing in its social commentary is sort of silly. That being said I enjoyed the novels overall, even though I skimmed heavily (and I thought I wrote too much) and enjoyed the last book far more than the other three.

As for this being some unusual type of vampire story it's not really unusual at all. Heck it's pretty close to Buffy just with the vampires being more powerful but similar amounts of relationship drama. Dracula involved a romance too you know. And the Anne Rice novels have vampires as being something very different from Wes Craven's really-fast-zombies-who-drink-blood. I don't think Meyer really tread much new ground other than being popular with teen girls who find the idea of a super hot, super dangerous, immortal gentlemen who's totally into her normal girl self appealing. You don't have to take Psych 101 to get why this is popular.

It's too bad Meyer is going to be forever known for her Twilight series as The Host was actually a very entertaining book (in my opinion). It had an unusual premise, good characters (even if they did skirt of Meyer's obsessive romance side), and definitely a neat twist to the whole "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" genre (if it can be called that). It's also the first four-way romance I've ever read involving three bodies. It's rather different from Twilight so if you've avoided it thinking it's another teen girl novel you might be surprised.

Sorry, had to jump in with somewhat of a defense of the Twilight series as it isn't that bad. It's not that good either but I wouldn't condemn it.

Feel free to rip on the movie, though, it was horrid. It's like they just looked for people they thought appeared like the characters and didn't give a crap whether or not they could act. Or maybe they just picked a random director who couldn't do that either. I don't know. Ugh.

Jacquesne