Please Please Do Not Judge Me For This

What I've been doing since we last saw each other:

1. work work work.  schoolwork.
2. celebrating my birthday/birthday week.
3. finishing up papers and presentations, preparing for finals.  (how's that for alliteration?)
4. going to McDonalds for their hot mustard.
5. watching Breaking Dawn, wincing and tweeting Bella's awesome/bad lines.  Laughing and ruining the experience for everyone who was there because they like Twilight.
6. secretly enjoying how dramatic it all was.
7. buying a book of Celtic wisdom in an Irish shop in Lexington.
8. Deciding on a name: Ridley Grace.
9. doing exercises in the bathroom that make my unused leg muscles sore for days.

I'll be home for break in about a week, and I'll admit that I'm so looking forward to it.  My biological clock is usually running in sync with my school schedule, because I start getting sick of school and missing home just as the semester is ending.  Or maybe it's because I know that the semester is ending that I start wanting to go home...

At any rate, I'm excited for a change of scenery.  As much as I love Virginia (note: 'love', not 'like' or 'am okay with'), I'll always have a special little place in my heart for New Jersey, especially while my family is still living there.

I'm sure I've been over Twilight with you lot before.  As an English major, Harry Potter fan, and generally intelligent person, the topic is a sore spot with me, but not for the reason you'd think.

Secretly, I love Twilight.  

But not like that.

Whoa, whoa

WAIT STOP.  SIDE NOTE.

If you spell it 'woah', I'm sorry but I might have to cease our friendship.  Although they are both correct, I absolutely hate it when people spell it that way.  Please, please change your ways.  'Whoa', not 'woah'.

....

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoaaaa, hold on, don't leave.  Let me explain myself.

I am not a fan of Twilight.  Outside the not-exactly-private privacy of this blog, I will never say that I like Twilight.  I've been vocally against it since it's popularity reached New Jersey in 2006ish.  As an English major, hopeful future editor, and creative writer, all of my blood and bones scream out in agony every time I see that font.

Did you hear that?  That was the sound of my spine breaking...  JUST LIKE BELLA'S IN BREAKING DAWN

So yes, I am, openly, very much against the idea of sparkling vampires and hormonal werewolves.  

Secretly, however, I love it.  I love it because it's dramatic and stupid.  I love it because Bella and Edward are disgustingly in love, and poor Jacob falls in love with a creepy CGI baby.

I mean, think about it.  There must be a key to Twilight's incredible popularity, and it obviously isn't the writing.  Writing-wise, I:

• feel deep sympathy for whoever had to edit that thing.  Imagine what it was like BEFORE someone introduced Stephanie to grammar and general novel-writing rules (like try not to use the same word to describe the same thing over and over and over again...  If I have to hear about Edward's amber or liquid gold or onyx black eyes one more time, I will stab them out)
• am really, really amused that she graduated from BYU.  It makes me laugh a lot.
• have nothing else to say, really.  Her writing simply isn't noteworthy.

Of course, that's the pompous writer in me coming out, and having not completed a novel ever, I probably don't have much room to talk.  However, I do believe that she improved with the later books (well, the second and half of the third, which is all I read), and I actually liked The Host well enough for a stupid love story.

Which brings me back to my point.  The key to Twilight's popularity?  EMOTION.  Simple enough.  What she lacks in writing skill she makes up for in sheer emotional power.  It's an almost purely emotional story.  (Remember when there was supposed to be that huge battle at the end of Breaking Dawn?  Remember when that didn't happen?)  Steph has a knack for latching onto the reader's emotions, even with an incredibly annoying and emotionally stunted main character like Bella Swan.  Although you may hate everything that Bella thinks and does, you can't stop reading.

I think that was it for me.  On emotional adrenaline alone, I made it through two and a half books.  The only reason I stopped was because the inner editor/writer in me was banging on the pipes and making me feel ashamed of myself.  

I mean, even the Twilight haters, which I don't consider myself to be a part of, are extremely angry people.  Probably because they read part of the series and then realized that they were emotionally invested in it, then felt betrayed by their logic and reasoning.  It's either an undisguised hate relationship or an undisguised adoration for the series.  Either way, Steph has won, because you're emotionally invested, whether in the downfall of all vampires sparkly or in the happiness of all CGI werewolves and pretty white people.

Look at all the pretty white people!

And therein lies the rub, unless you've managed to avoid the craze and stay neutral.

So yeah, I might have been giddy after Breaking Dawn.  I might have hated that Bella was stupid over Edward instead of the clearly more healthy and reasonable and right choice of Jacob.  I might have laughed loudly all of the time during the movie because it was at once comical and dramatic.  I might have almost vomited during the bizarre birthing scene.

But hey, at least I was into it, right?  You have to admit that takes some skill on Steph's part.

Please don't judge me for this.

Look, I'm not the only one.

Team Anything-But-Edward on Verbal Vomit