No Twilight spoilers, I promise... even I'm not talented enough to achieve that more so that Stephanie Meyer has...

Lately all I seem to see ANYWHERE (dA, the rest of the internet, RL) is Twilight stuff.

I cannot comprehend how this happened. Seems like almost everyone I have asked HATES either the book and/or the movie or just hasn't seen it. But it must have a (real) fan-base, since I rather doubt that the advertisers spent the time going into random chatrooms and squealing "ZOMG i want to have edward cullen's babies!1!!1"

Now I know from previous events that whenever I insult anything that the person I'm talking to likes, their first response is "Don't knock it till you've tried it". This happened with romance books - which a friend of mine likes, and which we were discussing.

But the thing is..? I usually HAVE tried it. I have in fact read Twilight (only the first book) and seen the movie. And after all that, I can safely say that the only difference between trashy romance novels and Twilight is the lack of sexual romps. Everything else, the unrealistic scenario where a regular and unremarkable girl-next-door suddenly gets noticed (for no logical or likely reason) by the hot guy everyone wants - it's exactly the same.

And so follows the plot full of other men who suddenly discover they too want our buck-toothed, boring, plain heroine. (simply because HE does, there MUST be something to her... right?) Then follow the jealous girls, and of course somewhere along the line, while playing out her teen-hood fantasies, the author (not too far in similarity to the heroine) will suddenly decide that she really SHOULD put in an actual PLOT, because she's not writing EROTICA/(her own wishful thinking), she's writing a BOOK. We can't have people accusing her of THAT.

And of course that plot, like in Twilight (book 1, anyway, I couldn't have stomached more of that) will be forced, unnatural, rushed and full of angst... but in the end, the heroine will survive, even though she would GLADLY have died for her Edward/*insert some other wannabe classy first name + menacing surname that sounds like culling*.

(on a side note, i wonder if anyone has ever called Edward Cullen 'Eddy'...)

Now, I am in no way paying out the Vampire genre. I love a (well written) vampire book. Which is why when my SO's friend of a friend recommended and lent me the book, I actually took it seriously for a while. Right up until Stephanie Meyer watched an episode of My Little Pony or Bratz and decided to invent SPARKLY VAMPIRES.

In conclusion, it horrifies me that things that should be labeled with a health warning (something akin to "nuclear waste", maybe) could make the millions it probably has. I am horrified, and weep for the future of the human race and the thing that passes as "culture".