Hello everybody, today I'm going to be beating a dead horse. That's right, I'm going over that brutally bludgeoned focus of many a person's hatred, Twilight. Now, don't get me wrong, it is a bad series but I'm not just going to chop it into pieces and burn the remains. No, every rant must make some kind of point, must provide something useful, otherwise its just a boring, long-winded preach to the choir. No, what I am here to do, is explain just why Twilight is so popular.
"What's this? Explain why Twilight is so popular? Surely you jest, its a completely unfathomable mystery, there is no explanation!"
Ah good sir, you would just so happen to be very, very wrong. Everything has an explanation, you just have to figure out what it is. Now, I have read the books, I always believe in keeping an informed argument, and I found them mediocre. They were poorly written, but not terribly written and I probably would have been kinder to them had they not turned vampires into fairies. No, I am not referring to fairies as in homosexual, I'm refering to fairies as in Tinkerbell.
Now, its time for a bit of backstory, I'd long had a theory about why Twilight was so popular. It started after I read them several years ago, but I wasn't able to obtain proof until more recently. Let me tell you about my cousin. She is awesome, the sister I wish I had instead of, well, the one I got. I've always liked hanging with her, she likes video games, she likes watching me play them. When I visited her recently you know what she wanted me to play? Fucking Dead Rising, she wanted to watch me play a video game where I go apeshit on a bunch of walking dead with giant stuffed teddy bears and katanas. My cousin is a cool freaking person.
However, a few years ago I stumbled into my aunt's home to witness a horrible sight. Twilight posters, Twilight posters everywhere! My Aunt and cousin were reading the books and loving them! My life had been stripped of all that was good and wholesome! Then I wound up moving away for unrelated reasons. When I came back a year or two later I was amazed to see not a trace of Twilight anywhere. My cousin, who had previously never really read anything had started reading more, spurred on by that damnable work of literature, Twilight.
Before then she was just one of the many girls and boys you have to suffer through in your High School classes. Come now, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The numberless legions of kids who take centuries to read a block of text that you could read in all of five seconds. Now, who were the big screaming fangirls? Why, screaming teenage fangirls and those insufferable twenty to thirty adults who were the same in school. Basically, people who had never really bothered reading anything before. Can you see where I'm going with this? I sure hope so.
Want to know what the Twilight books reminded me of? Goosebumps. When I was much younger, around Second Grade to Third Grade, I loved those old books. Admittedly only about two actually scared me but they were entertaining. Then I grew older and read new and better books like the works of Stephen King and Robert Jordan. Thus, did Goosebumps lose its appeal, its simplistic writing styles and relatively poor pacing just weren't as good. That's how I saw Twilight, a book designed for older audiences, but with the writing style of Elementary Schooler's first book.
My cousin is proof, Twilight got her to read more because it now seemed like a genuinely entertaining medium. She started reading bigger and better books. Perhaps one day she decided to reread Twilight and those new, better books removed the mist from her eyes. She'd become a true reader and could now recognize how shallow and poorly written Twilight was. That's the explanation. Twilight was so successful because all those screaming fangirls had never bothered to actually read. Thus when one, poorly written but easily understood, book came along with all the romance and hot pretty boys that teenage girls love, they fell easy prey to its rather pathetic charms.
Now, I know there were probably a few people who read a lot and still liked those books. I know because back when my life was a screaming nightmare I didn't care how bad a video game was as long as it would take me away from this "real world" to somewhere better for a short while. However, these people are the rarity, they are not the common. I know, I've never had low standards when it comes to books, despite my tolerance of bad video games. However, some are going to ask, "Well why hasn't Twilight died down yet if all these girls are now getting into reading?" The answer, they're not. My cousin was able to take Twilight and use it as a springboard into something much greater. All these screaming teenagers just won't, and why? The movies of course, they don't need to read more because they've got movies. Also, they could easily be going, "Oh my gosh Twilight is so good! Maybe I should read other books too! Nah, that's stupid no book could possibly compare to Twilight!"
Now, everyone should easily be able to see those screaming fangirls shouting that, so everyone should be doing a good old fashioned facepalm. I don't like it, but its the truth. Now that is the end, my personal theory on how Twilight ever managed to get so popular. I hope you enjoy it.
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