SarahZ discusses the Twilight phenomenon, including its current renaissance

[Aaron]

I get that popular criticism at the time was shallow, overtly misogynistic and dismissive because the primary audience was young women.

But also, fuck Stephenie Meyer. The blatant racism, the white nationalist mythologizing, the fact she explicitly didn't want POC portraying her vampires, the right-wing moralizing, glorifying grooming, glorifying the confederacy, the fact Breaking Dawn is an extended "abortion is bad" metaphor.

Meyer is a right-wing fundamentalist Mormon who wrote the books from that perspective - It's not a coincidence she previously singled out Orson Scott Card as an inspiration.

The misogyny and vitriol directed at the Twilight series because of its audience deserves to be examined and critiqued, but unless someone wants to play the "separate the artist and intent from the art" card, the series itself and the Meyer don't deserve an apology or a redemption arc.

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One of Edward's brothers literally served in the Confederate Army (and proudly!) and it always surprises me this never gets brought up whenever I see people talk about the series. Did the movies cut this detail? It was a throwaway line in the books from what I remember.

Apparently Mark's host deleted everything. :( That was an incredible series.

He did sell them as e-books, but they weren't the same without the GIFS lol.

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His journey through reading Harry Potter was also a lot of fun, especially given he did it right after reading Twilight and constantly compared those experiences (very much in HP's favor). It makes the whole saga with Rowling even more painful when you realize what an impact those books had on marginalized people.

 

[AnansiThePersona]

All the movies were released on streaming services so my sister and I finally watched them. That's probably the case for a lot of people

 

[Leeness]

His journey through reading Harry Potter was also a lot of fun, especially given he did it right after reading Twilight and constantly compared those experiences (very much in HP's favor). It makes the whole saga with Rowling even more painful when you realize what an impact those books had on marginalized people.

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Yeah :( I had a good time reading those back when they were being released. It was all so good.

 

[Deleted member 7051]

I never really understood the fascination with Twilight and the funny thing is I was the target age group (I was only 17 when the first book came out) and love dark fantasy stuff with werewolves and vampires and witches. It just never really hooked me and I hated the movies so much that I think I'd rather watch Queen of the Damned. At least that one was sexy and had great music, y'know? I think everyone that likes Twilight should, really, watch Interview with the Vampire and maybe they'll have an epiphany and realise just how much better Anne Rice novels are (were? I dunno if she's still writing them or if they're any good after the first few) compared to Meyer's.

 

[Bradford]

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be readily available but there was an amazing blog series called "Mark Reads Twilight" chronicling a guy's journey through the series chapter-by-chapter where he does an amazing job digging into the series' racism, misogyny, pedophilia, Mormon propaganda etc. and general toxicity that kind of gets glossed over by the go-to "LOL the vampires sparkle" commentary you'd see from non-readers.

Spoiler

Edward chagrinned

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This is fascinating, and I would have loved to read it.

His journey through reading Harry Potter was also a lot of fun, especially given he did it right after reading Twilight and constantly compared those experiences (very much in HP's favor). It makes the whole saga with Rowling even more painful when you realize what an impact those books had on marginalized people.

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This is also one of the more interesting takeaways, and I'm glad that Sarah got into it a bit in this video; very rarely do we have people really critically examining fandom history and rivalry in this way, and I think it gives a very interesting historical perspective of how the fandoms interacted and where people were at back then.

 

[Naijaboy]

I never really understood the fascination with Twilight and the funny thing is I was the target age group (I was only 17 when the first book came out) and love dark fantasy stuff with werewolves and vampires and witches. It just never really hooked me and I hated the movies so much that I think I'd rather watch Queen of the Damned. At least that one was sexy and had great music, y'know? I think everyone that likes Twilight should, really, watch Interview with the Vampire and maybe they'll have an epiphany and realise just how much better Anne Rice novels are (were? I dunno if she's still writing them or if they're any good after the first few) compared to Meyer's.

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Then again, Anne Rice probably wouldn't be as palpable to making memes out of her characters.

 

[Lobster Roll]

Thanks for pointing out this video, OP. Just finished watching it, and I think it does a great job of covering Twilight from when it was first written to how it went through a revival in 2020. I was particularly drawn to the talking points about how people went through phases of making fun of it for having the audacity to exist to people looking back on it now as just a silly, teenage-aimed series that has problematic themes but is lazy comfort food at the same time.

 

[Kyougar]

Never read the books or watched the movies, but read some long fanfictions (mostly fix-its OC or SI; or "real" dark fantasy interpretations)
But is there really a resurgent of the fandom? Not just aftereffects of the recently released book?

At least in the biggest fanfiction circles/sites, there is no visible uptick in new Twilight stories. Just like HP, they were always... there, but nothing else.

You could always tell if something blew up in the fanfiction fandom, because all of a sudden hundreds and thousands of new stories were released. Either by an established fandom (Star wars) or something completely new (Worm)

 

[Dennis8K]

This is all Lindsay Ellis' fault.

You had to go and rehabilitate Twilight, didn't you.

 

[Darkmaigle]

And let's be real, Twilight vampires would curbstomp most other vampires in fiction, even the modern ones like Vampire Diaries and True Blood.

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especially in baseball

 

[Dennis8K]

At least we got some good memes out of it

 

[King Kingo]

Wasn't 50 Shades of Grey originally a poorly-written Twilight Fanfiction?

 

[Santerestil]

Wasn't 50 Shades of Grey originally a poorly-written Twilight Fanfiction?

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It was.

By the way, here is a playlist by Dominic Noble were he eviscerate the original tetralogy of books: Twilight: Breaking Down.