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People who read William Shakespeare voluntarily:
2009 – 0.5 million
2030 – 0.5 million
my god … that too much of volunteers
i akshully liked such old skool stuff back in school…
I’m sorry, you must have clicked the wrong link.
Lolcats is five links to the left.
Graph Jam, Lolcats, I can see where you got confused.
*gähn*
You must be a high school student.
Who the hell is Stephanie Meyer?
Exactly
Twilight
win
that just made my day lol
Win, just… win.
OMG YES I LOVE U!!!1! WIN WIN WIN!
So true
what a shame. just shows how terribly uncultured people are. you know, shakespeare invented the word ‘eyeballs’.
i am also happily one of those .5 million people. and happily not one of those stephenie meyer.
They may still be reading him in 2030, but that doesn’t mean he’s not overrated and only mildly talented. I believe RS had it right.
And clearly someone choosing to call himself “DangerFart” is a qualified literary expert.
^ This comment wins 4 internets
that it does. that it does.
totally agree with john, john is correct
I have a book of Dangerfart’s sonnets, I found them trite and pretentious…who would have thought poems about farts could warrant such big, descriptive terms?
True famous golf announcer gaffe: “He’s got a lot of wind coming from his rear.”
Another true TV gaffe: Woman golfer drove her ball next to a plant. As she tries to take her stance, announcer said “It looks like she’s got a big bush between her legs.”
I’m glad someone collects these for posterity.
WAHAHAHAHA!!!!1! Golf announcer win
Unless… he’s “Rodney DangerFart”, then he simply gets ‘no respect’. I tell ya, I asked my dentist about my yellow teeth; he said buy a brown shirt…
I tell ya, no respect… My wife and I had a big fight that almost came to blows and I said ‘go ahead, make your best move!’ She packed up and moved to Florida… When I was kid playing the sandbox the cat kept trying to bury me! No respect! 
Ha ha! That was the best reply ever!
And yet,-somehow- he managed to get to 2009 before he was high school required reading.
Really? The time test accounts for nothing? If the majority of the world says that he was the greatest, then they are as correct as an opinion can get. It is an opinion but it is the vast majorities opinion. I personally dislike French impressionism but I have to give props to Monet.
Shakespeare’s asscention to the level of respect he currently holds is quite recent. Much of Victorian England hated him. These things go in fads.
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He was a talented man, for sure, but yeah – not the best thing to ever happen to Literature. Still worth reading though.
lol. Shakespeare haters.
also lol. Twilight haters.
lulz all around.
Twilight is so STUPID. Only middle school girls with the IQ of cheese read twilight.
And my ex-husband. Which is really pretty insulting to the middle school girls, when I think about it.
Lol…IQ of cheese!
Oh, but haven’t you heard? Recent discoveries have proven that cheese has a previously unknown extraordinary amount of brain power!
oh you must LOOOOOVE twilight then mr cheese council!
Twilight is awesome. You just don’t like it because you’re too lazy to read a good series, so you figure that you should make fun of it. Loser.
Oh, we read good books alright. That’s why we don’t read Twilight. You’re too lazy to go out and broaden your horizons, and discover a new book or five.
I was recommended Twilight by a friend. I read a lot. She doesn’t. I hated Twilight. Says a lot about ratio of number of books regularly read to how much one can tolerate Twilight.
There is an entire WEBSITE dedicated to hating twilight, it’s fans, and especially Ms Meyer. There are probably several others as well. Twilight sux. End of discussion.
P.S. HP’s American sales is more than Twilight’s entire worldwide sales.
We win.
Excuse me? Middle school girls should NOT be discgraced that way.
“Mildly talented”? My brain stopped because of all the swear words and counter arguments that popped up all at once.
DangerFart had a counter agrument once. It happened when apparently the customer told DangerFart “no pickles.”
^^^
Clerks for the win.
Yeah, that is pretty horrible to say, considering how timeless Shakespeare’s writing has proven to be.
I’d hardly call it timeless. Pretentious, boring, and using deliberately confusing language are more like it.
If by “deliberately confusing” you mean witty and poetic…
Unless, of course, you mean “Middle English” and then it’s hardly his fault for writing in his own language.
Also, I believe the fact that his plays have lasted as long as they have a sign of how timeless his works actually are.
Hundreds of years is timeless. I can and do read middle English and it is not far off from Shakespearean English. Shakespeare was only about 150 or so years after Chaucer. This is where an education makes all the difference. If you can’t understand the writing then you will never like it. That is why they teach Shakespearean English in college. The fact that they think that they don’t get that education makes them ignorant. The fact that they think that they don’t need one (and call us elitist for having one) does make them morons.
Them, they, who are they anyway?
Also, calling ‘them’ morons for calling you all elitists is ironically elitist.
Thinking you don’t need to learn DOESN’T make you moronic..?
Actually, the direct definition of a moronic is doing something twice and expecting different results. In others word Failing to learn from mistake. So yes you are a moron if you don’t learn.
twilight is really no different from lord of the rings, harry potter, etc etc…just another fad book. i liked it very much but it could never be considered a classic. it´s just cute. if shakespeare did cute, we wouldn´t have any idea who he was today.
I strongly disagree on that one.
While it’s true that Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings aren’t exactly comparable to Crime and Punishment or The Great Gatsby, they still have much more content than Twilight.
The Potter series has many allusions to work of literature both classic and modern. Themes of bravery, friendship and perseverance teach young readers lessons about inner strength, instead of undying love and other foolishness.
I can’t even start on Lord of the Rings, but if you’ve read the book (or even seen the movies) you’ll know that it’s anything but cute.
And to top it all off, these books are actually semi-well-written and not grammatically incorrect, poorly-edited, whiny glorified fanfiction like Twilight is.
Are JRR Tolkien and JK Rowling the next Shakespeare? No.
But are they just like Stephanie Meyer? Absolutely not.
Not
I’ll admit that I was turned off by the whole Harry Potter craze, and therefore, never read any of the books or saw the movies, but you brought up some very valid points to support why it’s a better series. I’ll also admit that I never read the Lord of the Rings, but I did watch the movies, and it is at least a modern classic in its own genre of fantasy, at least. Though I have never read, nor seen the movie Twilight, everything I’ve heard from both fans and critics alike turns me off from ever wanting to do just that. However, Kelly did have a valid point, and that is that Shakespeare’s writing was much more than just cute, and that is why it is timeless.
Thanks for the interesting insight into the books that you haven’t read as well as the movies you have not watched.
Actually, I did watch Lord of the Rings. Thanks for not reading my comment and responding with some uninteresting, uninsightful words.
Actually, Lord of the Rings is, when taken in context, part of an amazing achievement.
Most fantasy of that sort is junk. It’s a simple story where every character, every village, every magical artifacts exists only to aid the main storyline in some way. There is no backstory, or if there is one, it is made up on the spot, told in a paragraph, and forgotten. All the heros are always heroic, and all the villains are cowardly, cruel, and incompetent.
Tolkein’s work, on the other hand, seems to have been to create, as fully as he could, a living, breathing world, with its own languages, its own history nearly as fleshed out as the Lord of the Rings itself. Then he set his world in motion and told us what he saw the characters do. Not all his villains are bumbling fools, and not all his heros are destined to be kings. There are grand scenes and there is subtlety. Much of this was lost in the movies, I’ll admit.
I will include here just a small passage from Return of the King. This is from the book only, not the movie. I think it illustrates Tolkein’s master storytelling ability well, an ability barely hinted at by many of his imitators. An excerpt of his text follows (the ellipsis is mine):
Then the Black Captain rose in his stirrups and cried aloud in a dreadful voice, speaking in some forgotten tongue words of power and terror to rend both heart and stone. Thrice he cried. Thrice the great ram boomed. And suddenly upon the last stroke . . . In rode the Lord of the Nazgul. A great black shape against the fires beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In he rode, under the archway that no enemy ever yet had passed, and all fled before his face.
Did you know that LOTR and Narnia are both based on the Bible? JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis were good friends, too! In fact, Tolkien helped Lewis return to Christianity!
Well Gandelf (spelling?) and Aslan are basicly Jesus. The whole coming back from the dead thing I mean.
Actually, Tolkien tried not to become influenced by Christianity. Any resemblance was just C.S. Lewis rubbing off on him a little bit.
Did Crime and Punishment and The Great Gatsby pretty much create a genre of fiction?
What, like Twilight did? Damn, Ayn Rand will be PISSED. Not to mention Bram Stoker.
But yeah, you’re right, Stephanie Meyer definitely created vampire fiction. Yes.
Pretty sure Eric was talking about Lord of the Rings, there.
Tanya Huff wrote a very good series of books about a vampire, but it’s not as popular as it should be, sadly.
Putting The Lord of The Rings and Harry Potter on the same level? Please…
Rowling completely lost touch with her books after the third Harry Potter. The reason the serie is so popular is because the majority of the population has poor knowledge of literature and just likes reading simple stuff.
Get kids who usually read comics (at best), force them to read a novel, and you’ll have a whole generation of people reading Harry Potter.
Lord of The Rings was more complex and of better literary value than Harry Potter (but it wasn’t great literature either). That’s why it was only appreciated among people that were known as “geeks” at the time, and that’s why it became popular only recently.
Harry Potter met success much faster, which indicates the average, uneducated person, could easily understand it.
I hardly believe a novel that becomes so popular in a society that cares about TV reality shows and celebrity scandals more than politics, the environment, and problems around the world, is of great literary value. Especially when this popularity starts among teenagers (which are of course not the most educated people in society).
That’s like thinking cavemen built space shuttles.
Tolkien “wasn’t great literature either”? Funny to hear this, when Tolkien is considered one of the most important british authors of the 20th century. The Lord of the Rings started a literary genre, one that kept evolving but, so far, no author has even got close to Tolkien. Hence the reason why all new Fantasy authors are inevitably compared to the old British teacher.
Comparing Tolkien with Shakespeare is pointless. Shakespeare was a playwriter and a poet – an immortal one. Comparing with Dostoievsky is funny, especially because Tolkien is not worse than Dostoievsky when it comes to writing technique. Both dedicated themselves to diferent subjects. Dostoievsky stands among my favourite writers, just as Tolkien, and I dare not compare one with the other.
I can tell you though that not only nerds read Tolkien. As not only nerds read Science Fiction – and here’s a genre that had excellent writters who are, generally speaking, frequentely underrated.
Tolkien made a great contribution towards a literary genre, no doubt. That only doesn’t make it a great literary work, however. I know a lot of people with in my major who find Tolkien’s writing to be tedious (and these are people that love Spencer). I think he has merit as a linguist, by far the best of his time, but that his novels suffer from his technical writing and style. Of course, this is all opinion. There is plenty of room for dissent!
Shakespeare is better loved than people want to believe, I think. He really was a talented writer. Down here, we have a Shakespeare’s Tavern that was next to a sex shop. During the recession, the sex shop closed, but Shakeapeare’s Tavern (even though it suffered some) managed to stay open. Shakespeare beat a sex shop.
Shakespeare beat a sex shop ftw!
Mmm, yes, and the average Elizabethan watching Shakespeare’s plays at the Globe in the penny pit was highly educated, and was never just there to see the scandalous play.
You’re going to want to go a bit higher in the comments if you want to complain about Shakespeare. The person you’re trying and failing to chastise is explaining why Harry Potter is nowhere near on par with the Lord of the Rings.
Nice try though.
i think you missed the point winter was making, it was less about authors and more about the poster’s attitude.
oh, you, so proud of your geek cred, in such disdain of anything popular, unless you liked it before everyone else. so smug in your choice of reading materials and superior in your own intelligence.
not that i think ‘harry potter’ is a great work of literature, but it is an engaging story. a derivative, simple story, but engaging nonetheless. i didn’t like ‘lord of the rings’, i thought it was boring. does it make me a mouth- breathing moron that i like ‘harry potter’ and dislike ‘lord of the rings’? apparently so, according to you.
i love william shakespeare, albert camu, william faulkner, stephen king, agatha christie, lewis carrol, carl sagan, marion zimmer bradley, neil gaiman, and thomas hardy. are they all literary masters? not even by a stretch, but they are what i like. i certainly don’t look down on people who don’t read what i like. i do, however, hold people with a superior attitude lower in my esteem than the 45 year old half-wit who works as a janitor for the fast food joint because he’s not smart enough to take orders. that guy is nice, happy, and even fun to talk to, whereas the superior snob is a know it all who considers himself better than everyone else, and a cold fish.
Exactly. I love Shakespeare, Lord of the Rings, and yes, gasp, Twilight. Don’t care who knows it. Don’t care if you like it or not.
Oh, and I still thought the graph was funny.
It’s not good to compare lord of the rings to twilight. It gets you flamed.
Just saying.
Check your stats. Lord of the Rings has been around for AGES, with actual fans. It’s one of the very few FANTASY books that has outlived its author with a great amount of fans to this day. That, along with Narnia. 20 years from now people will still remember Lord of the Rings and Narnia as household names. Will people remember twilight like that?
No, not at all.
Yes, yes at all.
I’d like to disagree. Although I’m not too much of an LOTR fan, it has lasted more than long enough to be a fad book.
Harry Potter… a fad book…?
Out of my sight. Now. Before I go Avada Kedavra on you.
WIN!!!
Sparkly vampires do not literature make.
Thanks Yoda.
Yodafication = win
Oh, and for your information, those of you who say “Oh, teenagers are stupid”. I’m 14, and I’m honestly offended by your remarks.
Oh please. Hormones, youth, and lack of experience create a demographic of people who are positively notorious for there idiocy and bad judgment.
Just wait a few years. I can almost guarantee that you’ll look back and think “wow, I was really stupid when I was fourteen.”
Not everyone is stupid as a teenager though.
Hormones don’t do much (in my experience, and I suspect the same goes for others), youth is not a reason why you’d be stupid (even if you can prove correlation, correlation is not causality), and lack of experience can be outweighed by information gathering and reasoning.
Thank you, Nash!
*hugs*
No need to thank me for stating some opinions and facts. Though your thanks are appreciated nonetheless.
I’m really, really sorry, but teenagers are stupid. At 23, only 5 years out of teenager-dom, I’ve finally realised why most adults are frustrated by teenagers. It’s not a judgement on you or other teenagers. It’s science. Teenage brains are not fully developed. They’re still growing. The human brain doesn’t fully mature until 25 (women) and 30 (men). Some research suggests even later. So… I’m still stupid too :/
Erhm. I’ve met MANy a 23 year old that’s stupid as well. They act just like the teenagers you’re describing, some, *gasp* are older than 23! The human brain is done at 27(average, I don’t know where you got this male/female stuff), and after that, begins the ‘scraping process’ (making itself more efficient for coming old age). It very rarely keeps going after 30.
Just because a brain isn’t fully developed (which most happens by the age of 12) doesn’t mean they are ‘stupid’. They are capable of making good decisions and doing what is best for them. If anything, lots of teenagers make bad decisions because of their adult parents (bad role-models). Most behavior done by teenagers IS based off of what is considered normal for them or lack of normal.
I’m not frustrated with teenagers. I’m more frustrated with people who are older and ‘should’ know better. (and I’m 25- that’s a lot of people)
But common sense seems to be something only about half the population develops.
Part of it is also trying to redefine boundaries in life: the rebellion is trying to become more of an adult, peer pressure creates fads, and in experience makes them unable to understand the idea of good works of fiction and bad works of fiction. This has always been the case and is what make young people so exploitable.
Maybe you should cite your sources…? You certainly don’t seem very reputable.
23-5=18
Nineteen isn’t considered teenaged? Guess your last sentence is confirmed.
I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of how stupid you are
To be fair, a lot of teenagers are stupid. So are a lot of people. You seem intelligent and insightful for your age, much to your credit. Faith for the future!
And all of Shakespeare’s plays are paragons of virtue, unlike the EVIL Twilight books.
When Juliet was being forced in to marriage with someone against her will, that was just good, clean fun. And the fact that both Romeo and Juliet were probably around 13/14 when they had sex is just childish innocence. When Prospero kept his daughter in secluded slavery so she wouldn’t be infected by the evils of the world, that was just him being a good father (much like Joseph Fritzl was a good father).
If you’re going to re-interpret books, at least do it evenly. Don’t get so distracted by having your tongue so far up Shakespeare’s arse that you can’t see how some of his stories can be taken to have truly appalling messages. (Juliet disobeys her father and ends up dead. What a message to send to kids!).
Or re-read the Twilight Saga and re-read it properly. Edward was born at the turn of the century. A time when sex before marriage was almost (if not entirely) unheard of. This is reflected in his discussions with Bella.
And Jacob, Edward, Carlisle, Esme – all arguing for abortion, and yet the mother chooses to keep it. This is EXACTLY the argument that liberals should celebrate. She has a choice, and she makes it. She isn’t FORCED to keep it by the father, by the state or by god – she makes her own choice – the mother of the child chooses the fate of the child. Which is what pro-choice means.
And it’s not abstinence until marriage, it’s abstinence until “turning”. Edward won’t sleep with her until she is turned, because he fears it will hurt her. And he won’t turn her until they marry, because he wants her to enjoy being married as human, rather than as immortal.
From a certain point of view (even if it is warped), Twilight can be viewed as right-wing propaganda. But from a certain point of view, so can Shakespeare. And from different points of view, Stephanie Meyer is the champion of the liberal left, as is Shakespeare.
Finally – given that all four Twilight books are written from the point of view of an (apparently) over-emotional 16/17/18 year old girl, and a really passionate werewolf, I thought they were written brilliantly.
You think liberals should “celebrate” this book? Seriously?
Twilight is riddled with ALL THE WRONG messages, ESPECIALLY for the demographic it caters to! Young women shouldn’t think it’s okay to go comatose for months on end because a guy they’ve known for about a year broke up with them. They shouldn’t think it’s okay to be psychologically abused as long as the one doing the abusing is really hot. And they DEFINITELY shouldn’t think that someone breaking into their house to watch them SLEEP is ROMANTIC!
That was the chief problem I had with Twilight: not the writing, not the content, but the MESSAGE. Meyer should be ashamed of herself for putting such horrible messages to a 12-15 year old female demographic.
Where did I say they should celebrate the book?
The ONLY part where I used that word was about Bella’s choice to keep her child, when others were telling her to get rid of it. That’s the very definition of pro-choice, and yet somehow the previous poster twisted it in to a right-wing propaganda fest.
It is a book. I can’t speak for the author, but I didn’t find any political messages in it at all when I read it (except maybe that vampires and werewolves should learn to get on, but I’m not entirely sure that will help in day to day life. Unless, you know, I have to be an envoy to a peace conference between vampires and werewolves, and what are the odds of that?).
And again, you are missing the point.
No where does it say that Bella is right to go in to the slump she does. It is saying that sometimes it happens though. Teenagers do over-react. They do think every little thing is the end of the world.
Bella is 17, and full of hormones. And the way the book is written reflects that. She is not completely self-aware and in control of her life, and I think that makes her a better character.
Meanwhile everyone in her life – Charlie, Renee, Jacob, Billy – they all try to get her out of it, because they know it’s not good for her. And even Bella – as she goes on – admits she wasn’t living, she was just there. That she is much better off being with Jacob and being happy. (The horror film chapter, for example).
And if you want a message from Twilight then try this….
Family is good. The Cullens live as a family, and are stronger for it.
Racism is bad. The wolves and vampires distrust each other because of what they’ve learned about the other, not because they know the people involved. Edward is worried about Jacob without getting to know him, and when he does, he learns Jacob is a good guy, even to the point he entrusts Bella’s safety to him.
Tradition is not necessarily a good thing. On the same lines as above, The Cullens loath The Pack because they always have. The Pack loath The Cullens because they always have. And yet when they actually work together, they find out that they are both on the same side, and only the “traditions” kept them from knowing that.
Peace is better than war. They confront the Volturi with no intention of fighting, instead they are going to ensure they get their message across peacefully.
These are messages that kids should learn. And I think the world would be a better place if more people took them to heart.
Or are you SO obsessed with finding the bad, you don’t want to see the good?
She chose to keep the baby. Her one real choice in four books. Wow! What an achievement!
“These are messages that kids should learn.”
Family is good. Racism is bad.
If kids need to learn those lessons, they can watch Sesame Street.
If you can’t see political content in a book (I won’t say novel in this case), then you have no leg to stand on as far as criticism goes. Everything has political and social context.
@ poodle_face
Shakespeare was a writer of his time.
The Romeo/Julet age issue was a non-issue at the turn of the 17th century. You can’t argue that Shakespeare’s morality is warped and then turn around and claim Edward’s is NOT because he was born at the beginning of the 20th century.
“Juliet disobeys her father and ends up dead. What a message to send to kids!” Juliet ends up dead because of the prejudices of her parents. This play wasn’t written for young teens but rather for the adults of the day, so the message isn’t being sent to the 13 year-olds here but the parents. Shakespeare intended a different audience than Smeyer.
“From a certain point of view (even if it is warped), Twilight can be viewed as right-wing propaganda. But from a certain point of view, so can Shakespeare. And from different points of view, Stephanie Meyer is the champion of the liberal left, as is Shakespeare.”
I highly disagree. Meyer’s views are, in the majority, conservative. It has to do with her religion and upbringing. Such views tend to come through in a writer’s work, even unconsciously. Plus, I have never heard ANYONE on the left claiming Smeyer as their champion. While Shakespeare wrote to please a more conservative audience, the underlying messages in his plays were incredibly liberal for his day.
And if you think that because a book is written from the view of a 16 year old it justifies shoddy writing, shame on you. I’ve read books where the narrators/main characters were prepubescent that blow the quality of Twilight out of the water. =)
You do realise that Shakespeare doesn’t present things like beating your daughter as positive, right..? Do you read R&J thinking ‘good on you, Capulet!’? If not, then your point is void. Shakespeare was incredibly liberal in a lot of respects for the time he was writing in.
Twilight is religious propoganda. It is riddled with errors and Meyer hardly manages to substitue the word ‘said’. A book shouldn’t be allowed to be lacking just because the imagined narrator is.
LMAO
You just regurgitated a load of crap your teacher fed you, even down to the ‘Point Quote Comment ‘ writing frame. I love SOME of Shakespeares works but I understand that he is the equivalent to a modern day soap opera writer.
I don’t consider myself fully mature, I don’t doubt I’ll look back at myself in five years time and think ‘what a moron’ but spewing up someone else’s ideas is not intelligent….think for yourself.
Books do.
Don’t lump me in with the LOTR geeks, but LOTR is not a “fad” book. It has been read by millions of kids/adults for decades. It will still be read by people for another century at least, unlike stories about twinkly vampires.
WIN!
I always get her mixed up with the Green Bags lady.
Who the hell is “Stephenie Meyer”???
She is the “author” of Twilight.
Quote: Who the hell is “Stephenie Meyer”???
Darn. Beat me to it…
Yet another case of “Googlephobia”. Is it really that hard to type it into a search bar?
Googlephobia, or a clever illustration of how fleeting the Twilight fad really is?
Actually, it’s a case of “if I haven’t heard of this person in the normal course of my life, she, he, or it is not worth googling up”.
I’m an idiot when it comes to pop culture-which, I assume, she’s a member of.
Yeah, I hadn’t a clue who this person was either… Instead of bothering to google, I decided to read the comments. So much more entertaining.
You guys are all vusses, anybody vant a real vampire, look me up.
Can we just drop by your mom’s basement anytime or do you need us to call first?
I highly doubt that is the “real” Todd. I have not seen the Troll Todd since I exposed it as a bunch of different Trolls. Granted, I don’t read all of the posts, but I read enough to know that if it was back, it certainly isn’t as prevalent here as it used to be. This is just someone making fun of Todd.
Giggle.
…and I hear he’s usually in the back corner, right next to the microwave, heating up cheeze wiz. Again.
Do you sparkle? ‘Cuz ya know, only REAL vampires sparkle. Really.
Bram Stoker disagrees.
Bela Lugosi disagrees. Christopher Lee disagrees. Max Schreck disagrees.
Don’t forget Anne Rice.
By the way, this graph is full of win. The “Twilight” fad will die down eventually. At least, we can only hope so.
Don’t jinx it.
YES. I thought I was the only one who had read that.
Because he was writing about REAL vampires – the type you see on the streets of every major city….
Oh no. Wait. He was just making it up too. So basically what this argument boils down to is your version of a made up thing is different than someone else’s version of a made up thing, and you think your version is better.
Tell me something – have you ever actually stopped to think about what you’re writing when you write it, or are you one of the several million people who seem to be missing that ability, going instead for just writing the first inane comment that pops in to your brain?
Now, you seen the problem with the “your version of a made up thing is different than someone else’s version of a made up thing, and you think your version is better” argument is this: up until Twilight, there was one standard format for a vampire. This is coming not only from Bram Stoker and his like, but from folklore and mythos dating back over a thousand years.
And then Stephenie Meyer, who by her own admission (or pretension. It’s hard to tell which) had never read a vampire book in her life, decided to make up her own version, which was completely alien to the standard, tried and true vampire format.
This had two effects. First, it has warped the perception of Vampires in popular culture, from a mysterious, frightening thing to something that closely resembles your average euro-pop band. Second, it has caused an entire generation of deluded 13-year-old girls to think that this is the original vampire mythos. I have literally been told by the teenaged daughter of a friend of mine that Bram Stoker could really “Use, like, an editor, and should take some cues from Stephenie and write about real vampires!”
This is what bothers me the most about this fad…
I heard that she didn’t even like vampires…so why the hell did she call her invention a vampire?
She needed something to stick her author surrogate story to..?
“up until Twilight, there was one standard format for a vampire”
May I suggest looking up a film “Razoblade Kiss” (I think it’s called that. It’s about a vampire assassin who doesn’t sleep in a coffin, is reflected in mirrors and can walk about in the sunlight. And no – it’s not written by Stephanie Meyer, but by a whole other person who dared to think that maybe vampire fiction needed a change).
Buffy/Angel had vampires with souls. Again, not a Stephanie Meyer invetion, but the work of someone else.
And if you look up all the legends across the world, I am pretty sure that they don’t all fit in to the same rigid cookie-cutter definition of a made up thing that you seem to think is the ONLY permissible version.
Can you imagine how dull life would be if people never took a chance? If people never thought “Well – I want to create something that will let me fly across that river, but since no one else has done it, I guess I shouldn’t either”.
And, just to go one step further, you sound a lot like some friends of my parents, who think that all this singing and clapping in church is an affront to god, and that young people should worship like they did, with dignity and reverence.
Vampires are mythical, non-existent creates who don’t exist. And since we have had 200 years of one type of vampire fiction, what is wrong with having a change? What is wrong with kids getting a different idea of what a vampire is?
Now – if vampires were real, and we were potentially leading kids to think that the evil monster who lived down the street was actually nice and fluffy, I would be the first to say “Maybe that’s a bad idea”. I wouldn’t want kids being torn to bits by vicious, bloodthirsty demons from hell just because a book said they were nice and kind. That would suck.
But what’s the worse that happens? A kid grows up with a different image of a vampire than you do? A generation of children have a new perspective on an ancient myth? Is that really going to bring about the end of civilization as we know it? Is the world going to end because not everyone believes the same thing you do?
I’m going with – probably not.
tl;dr, along with the rest of your posts.
you say in a thousand words what most could say in less than one-hundred.
I think that if werewolves turned into sparkly popsicles under the full moon, a lot of people would have a problem with that, too.
People wouldn’t have such a issue with the Meyerpires if she just didn’t call them vampires. Call them “Cold Ones” or “Cold Vampires” but please, don’t claim they are true vampires.
And I have nothing against experimenting with vampire-formats. For instance, the series The Dresden Files feature a breed of vampires that don’t even suck blood, but rather emotions. The author calls them “White Court” or “Psychic vampires.” Now that’s the way to do it.
What’s wrong is that a good artist does research first. It’s fine to do something new and toss out all conventions, but when venturing into an established genre, one should know what they are rebelling against.
It’s just lazy writing. Kids are already becoming lazy in their research for school (don’t get me started about how many kids think that Wikipedia is a perfectly valid resource.)
At it’s very core, a good horror, sci-fi, or fantasy novel is a metaphor for something in our lives now. Even Buffy was a metaphor for high school life (what kid doesn’t think their HS is over the mouth of hell?). The original Dracula was very much about Victorian life. What does Twilight tell us about our times?
It tells us we’re screwed.
Because it disgraces the original. That is why.
Seriously people… The more you hate on Twilight, the more credit you give it.
I have an idea…. it’s not complicated.
If you hate Twilight, don’t read it. If you like Shakespeare, there is plenty of stuff out there to keep you busy for a long time.
I do hope you are aware that the majority of people who hate twilight have to read it to even get an opinion on the book.
Personally, people who hate a book/food/anything when they haven’t even tried it are horribly annoying, how can you hate something you never tried?
In truth, we do give it credit. But the only fun in not liking something is it being there to poke fun at. When the fad dies down we will find someone else that’s popular to poke at.
im not “hating” on the book.. i think anyone that actually reads a book of any sort is better off than most of todays teens. but, having said that, i saw the movie and i really wish i could get those lost minutes of my life back.
Not having read a book does not mean you don’t have any information about it. The information you do have may be sufficient to form an opinion, depending on what your criteria are.
For example, I don’t need to listen to white power music to know I would hate it. It’s white power music; the whole concept is disgusting. I hate racism, and that music is racist is enough for me to conclude I hate it.
“Don’t knock it ’til you try it” and such statements are moronic, implying that only first hand experience is valid, and any kind of second hand experience and deduction is pointless.
I have never shot myself in the head, but I can still understand it’s not a good idea. If you don’t, I’m sure you can get a Darwin Award.
Nash,
You have never shot yourself in the head, you kno wits a bad thing…but do you understand what it feels like?
You never listen to ‘white power’ music, but you hear about people saying how they hate it…but do you understand why YOU don’t like it..or just the concept of it?
I mean… it’s one thing to say you are dis-interested in something. Don’t want anything to do with it. Completely fine, great. But to say you HATE something and to bash it…that’s very judgmental. Except judgmental.
Let’s say your friend told you that everyone who wears all black are freaks. You read about it in newspapers, you know that there are facts where people who wear all black are freaks. So then you see someone, wearing all black, who comes up to you. You don’t like freaks. You walk away, because you know you already won’t like them. You 1. Judge them for what you heard, and not for who they are and 2. hurt their feelings.
Books are completely different, I know….but that’s why you shouldn’t “Knock ’til you try it” or in the case I used, …until you know it.
OOh and another thing. If you hate the Twilight series so much..Why the hell do you even BOTHER to write about how horrible it is?! I mean, if you really want to pin-prick it so much…read the freaking book and then bash every single word, letter, phrase of it and put it online.
THAT may be a better use of your time..considering you wish to conform everyone to NOT like Twilight. Now I’m not talking to just you…but everyone who bashes something they haven’t read/listened to/given an opinion of that they didn’t hear from someone else.
And don’t even bother saying “Why should I listen to someone who is grammatically incorrect?” Who gives a crap? It’s the internet. Irritation = Typos. Get over it.
The real question is whether it’s truly a good idea to be participating in a debate online when you’re irritated.
Food for thought.
Lots of text, but not really countering what I wrote. You just compare it to the hasty generalization fallacy for no real reason, and assume I bash Twilight. I don’t, that would be caring too much about it.
Well I don’t need to be shot to know I’ll hate it.
Your prediction amuses me. Well done.
Meh, I am not a big fan of the Twilight books…tried to read the first and could not finish it. However, series such as this that get people into book stores and reading BOOKS, is pretty good.
I prefer the Warriors series, myself.
Hey! Those bastards killed Cyrus!
I don’t remember any cats named Cyrus in the Warriors books…
The book and movie are completely different…
There’s a movie?! Must watch!
And, the cats don’t sparkle!
… Well, except for Starclan… But they’re dead, and like ghosts, so they can shimmer and twinkle if they want.
*StarClan
What does that have to do with New York street gangs in the 70′s?
Nothing at all. Why should a series of books about wild cats living in the forest have anything to do with New York street gangs in the 70s?
It appears there are two series called Warriors… cats and NY street gangs. I personally prefer the cats.
Ones a movie made in 1979 not a book…
Well, I’ve never seen that movie. I haven’t even played the game based on the movie.
The Warriors cat series probably isn’t too impressively written because four different people are writing it, in order to create as much revenue as possible while the fad lasts. “Erin Hunter” is a pen name.
I know Erin Hunter’s a pen name, there’s four authors – Kate Cary (who I follow on Twitter), Cherith Baldry, Tui Sutherland (who wrote, uh, one book, and made about twelve mistakes in it) and Vicky someonewhosesurnameIcan’tremember who edits. It is pretty understandable that there are going to be continuity errors (Gorsepaw/Gorsetail, anyone?).
The main character of the first six books, Fireheart, can be viewed as a bit of a Gary Stu – but most readers are actually aware of this and we don’t really fangirl about the characters. The books themselves have some semblance of plots, which is far more than Twitards can claim. Not all characters were 110% taken with Fireheart’s arrival, which is another thing that they do better than Twilight.
Yes, Warriors is a bit of brain candy, but at least the brain candy has a plot.
(I was going through my computer and I found a short essay by my friend defaming Twilight. She starts off saying how she once liked it but upon closer inspection found, to be blunt, that it’s crap.)
Normally I would agree with you, about almost any book. But the fact that the Twilight books portray an abusive relationship and mask it as “true love” makes me worried about the ideas 13-year-old girls who’ve never had a real relationship will get about how dating is supposed to be. Seriously, Edward even dismantles her truck at one point to keep Bella from visiting her friends. That’s pretty sick and not at all romantic, but Stephenie Meyer keeps pointing out how romantic it is that he cares so much about her and how much he wants to “protect” her, even from herself.
Wait, what?!
O_O
I know, man. I know. The freak apparently decided that a life size fleshy rag doll is fine too.
How in the name of god is it an abusive relationship? And could you be writing MORE Of a revisionist version?
Seriously – you are an idiot. And pretty pathetic one at that.
Seriously? You’ve never heard of emotional abuse? Ok, he doesn’t smack her around, but he controls her every movement, tells her who she can and can’t be friends with, constantly tells her she’s wrong about everything, insults her, etc. It’s abuse. Granted, she’s written as a very weak, submissive character, but that doesn’t make it ok.
Hold on….. are we talking about the same book?
Yes, he stops her from seeing Jacob. Not all her other friends, just Jacob. And that’s because he truly, honestly believes Jacob is dangerous. And he has good cause to believe that (Emily, for example). In the same way that most parents don’t let their kids play with guns and vodka, he is trying to prevent her from being killed by something that is entirely unstable.
But he doesn’t stop her seeing Angela, Jessica, Lauren, Mike – he doesn’t prevent her from going out with her friends. Just the friends who might well rip her face off and eat it. Which I can’t help but think is a good thing.
(The fact he is wrong about Jacob is a whole other issue, and that is more about racism than about emotionally controlling his girlfriend. And as the book goes on, he realises that – realises he is wrong – and relents and lets her visit Jacob more and more often, even trusting her safety to him in the end).
So – I apologise about the idiot crack. I just think you’ve either not understood it properly, or you are just trying to find something wrong with it.
Okay. He controls her, prevents her from seeing Jacob, because he has a gut feeling. Guns and vodka are one thing, someone she trusts is another. Parents may hide the vodka and lock up the guns, but if the kid wants to shoot things and get drunk, they’ll do it anyway.
Angela, Jessica, Lauren, Mike – how many of these characters have personalities? One. Mike. Sort of. Therefore enforcing that girls are weak. As is a normal aspect of the book.
Isn’t it great that Edward is not only a paedophilic stalker, he’s racist and controls his girlfriend too? Okay, so this goes away. Probably a good sign that Stephanie Meyer’s work has gone from below rock bottom to rock bottom.
It isn’t that hard to find something wrong with these books. Come on. New books smell nice, but Twilight just smells funky.
Apology accepted, thank you.
I really don’t think I’ve misunderstood the books, and I’m definitely not just trying to find something wrong with them. I used to dislike them because I had heard that they were poorly written and generally not very good, the way you might dislike, say, squid – something you’ve never had an overwhelming desire to try, have always been kind of iffy about, and have heard from other people that it’s not too good, but hey, if someone else wants to eat nothing but squid, no skin off my nose. (Just an example, obviously, you may love calamari; I do.) I never had an issue with them until I started reading portions of the books and started picking out passages that stood out to me as symptoms of an abusive relationship. For example, when Edward tries to convince Bella to go to Florida. She says she doesn’t want to talk to Charlie about it right away because she doesn’t want to fight, so Edward, instead of respecting her wishes or being truthful with her about why he wants her out of the state, just goes ahead and does it anyway because he’s positive his way is the right one, and then lets Bella have the fight she didn’t want to have. Then he calls her a coward for not bringing it up in the first place. If you love someone, you don’t call them things like “coward.” Them’s fighting words, sister. People who love you don’t put you down, hide the truth from you, or do things that are against your wishes, even when they’re “for your own good.”
You need a dictionary. Or someone to teach you what words actually mean, as opposed to taking a very, narrow, literal meaning and entirely skipping over the subtext.
Or you just need to shut the hell up about stuff you don’t appear to be intelligent enough to come close enough to understanding.
That’s a pretty broad statement. Could you elaborate?
I am so wondering when the world will get the memo that Stephanie Meyer doesn’t write for adults, so of course you think it’s crap.
A demon child claws its way out of its mother’s womb and you think that book is for someone other than adults?
I like you
It’s not a demon child and well its written by an adult.
Please tell that to the “Twimoms” out there, who think it’s an excellent series, and that Edward would be an excellent boyfriend, and that Bella is a good role model for their daughters.
…actually, I don’t know if they do think that about Edward and/or Bella, but if you’re a mother who reads the Twilight books and like it as more than as cheap romance absitence porn, then you might as well.
IMO.
The target audience has nothing to do with us thinking it’s crap. There are beautifully written books whose target audiences are 5 years old.
i am wondering when the world will get the memo that people of all ages hate the twilight series. not just adults. im 16 and the literary homicide she did to the vampire series kills me. and i know im not the only one who thinks the same and is the same age(or younger).
ainda bem q n eh obrigado a ler crespusculo \o
Predictable graph is predictable.
Amen.
… and true …
Give meh… MY WASTED PIXELS BACK!!!
I agree with Polonius. You hate it, yet u still dedicate time in your day to it instead of saying “it’s out there, oh well, I’ll stay away from it.”
We love to hate Twilight almost as much as we hate it. There’s something almost therapeutic about raging against it. Not that I’ll be sad to watch it fade into obscurity.
Who the hell is Stephenie Meyer!?
I went from liking you…. TO LOVING YOU!
I frickin’ despise Stephenie Meyer.
THANK YOU!!!
THANK You.
Jaysus… it’s going to take until 2030????
My sentiments exactly! Surely it will dissipate within 6 months of the last film??
It’s a cheering notion… but I’m not hopeful.
i really would love to buy this music
I am prepared to get flamed by many for finishing LotR, Twilight, Harry Potter in about a sentance each. Harry Potter/Im a Wizard and i dont know whats going on. Lord of the Rings/Are we done Walking yet? Twilight/ Look at how perfect Edward is no matter what his problems are. Although i didnt particularly enjoy any of them, there are fans who enjoy crap like this. The fact is that none of them are going to be popular, ever. If you ever want to read something amazing, look for books that havnt become a movie yet. Underrated writers are usually the best. Just in my opinion to bring something up, Robert Jordan was an awesome writer at the Wheel of Time series.
The Wheel of Time was a great read the first few books, but then it just became tedious. Is there something wrong with minor characters not reappearing later as sub-main characters.
Have you lived with your head wedged under a rock the last century? All of those books are wildly popular, for better or for worse. Even Lord of the Rings maintains a steady fan base, despite being decades old.
I agree with Winter, the series you (Dragonous) named are all wildly popular. I think that you meant they won’t ever have literary value. I don’t know if I agree with you on that.
Jane Austen must be a pretty crappy writer, then. Almost all of her books have been made into movies.
She isn’t the best.
Implying that Robert Jordan is underrated is a laugh. He gets much more credit than he deserves. I’ll agree with you that his writing style is very nice. I find it combines correct technique with flow better than the authors of the books that you mentioned. All the same, LoTR created a world much better than Wheel of Time did.
He is much better than Rowling of Meyer, though. At least in my opinion.
You might enjoy David Gemmell, as well. Along with Jack Whyte and a few others.
Wow, not only is this graph a big fat “no duh” but the indignant nature of it is just way too much. So what, Shakespeare’s better than Stephanie Meyer? No duh, does that mean no one should read anything lesser than Shakespeare? Grow the hell up and get off the bandwagon, everyone and their mother whiens about Twilight these days. For the record I haven’t even read the books and I thought the movie was below average, but only idiots and trolls go around whining about these things making everyone else’s day more miserable.
Also, giant LOL at the idiot saynig Shakespeare is overrated.
Need a tissue?
I think it’s not so much a graph saying “Look guys Meyer’s not as good as Shakespeare HAHAHA” as a graph in response to the bratty tweens who think Twilight is great literature and Shakespeare is tedious crap. That would kind of suck, but they are fixated on that, and will stick by it come hell or high water, and will flame you for saying otherwise. That’s why the graph is funny– it puts all the tweeny rage into some perspective.
Well this is easy to understand..
Shakespeare RULES
Stephanie Meyer is horrible.
The end.
this was punk’d off a roflrazzi lol
Who the heck is Stephanie Meyer?
It warms my heart to see so many people with no idea who Stephanie Meyer is. It gives me hope for the world.
Mine too. Their innocence makes me happy. I, unfortunately, have been scarred by them not even bothering with a graphic sex scene. What a waste of ten trees per novel.
“Great” riters is a fickle and general term. In some cases, people can say that the best writings come from when the authors life is going through a bit of a bumpy patch. Tolkein wrote much of his novels in a trench in WWI. Its hard to think of hobbits and rings when some Germans have a great interest in their bullets making contact with your head. Shakespeare had to use a fairly new language for the time, and then dumb it down to the point where the lower classes could understand it, but not be offensive to the upper classes that would have watched it as well. This tricky procedure, coupled with his obviously great writing talent, gave birth to the writing that the likes have never been seen since. Stephanie Meyer, however, was not involved with a war, was not using a new language, did not go where no writer had gone before, like Arther C. Clarke’s Space Odyysey, and definetly did not come up with a anythin new and interesting, except for the faintly amusing Sparkly Vampires. Comparing her to any great writer, or indeed one great writer to another, would be a horrendous mistake. Twilights first fans were teenage girls, who through obeservation and samplings of their text, (short samples, I dont wanna have my brain turn to mush.) I have come to the conclusion that the uneducated masses like the sort of books that have every emotion and every facet laid bare before them. No mystery, no intrigue, as that might cause “unhealthy mental fatigue.” Twilight is pretty much one long book with 2 pages of something happening and 20 pages of what this makes Bella feel. (Just right “Bella feels deppressed and confuzed no matter what happens,” and the book would have been much shorter.) Thanks for reading, and feel free to call me something rude if you disagree. Heres one sample u may like. GO LICK A DEAD RACCOON ON THE SIDE OF THE ROAD YOU VAMPIRE HATING BASTARD!! go crazy people. *ducks behind cover.*
You, my friend, are amazing.
Except for the inability to use the Enter key, and some poor spelling.
Endarkened5 casts Wall of Text. You suffer 10 brain damage and become confused.
Aside from what Nash replied, I have to applaude Endarkened5′s comment. We need more people in this world like you. Not exactly though, otherwise there would be arguements everywhere comparing books and eventually everyone’s brains would be fried.
I apologise for the bad spelling. As well as the incredibly long comment. Soz
but yes, my enter key is a little glitchy…
This graph is completely wrong. I mean, yes it’s meant to backstab the Twilight series…but if you even read ONE of the books you would realize that there is no literary value…but it is VERY entertaining, so by the time its 2030…there will be about 20 million new people who have read it. More than likely grand-children of the twilight fandom but still. It will NEVER be Shakespeare. Not literature at all.
It was written for entertainment…and it is entertaining. That’s it. That’s all the book is for. Which is all a lot of books are for..if not most.
Backstab was the wrong word…you would have to be friends to be backstabbed. I meant BASH.
1970s fiction New York Times Bestsellers:
1. Love Story, Erich Segal
2. The French Lieutenant’s Woman, John Fowles
3. Islands in the Stream, Ernest Hemingway
4. The Crystal Cave, Mary Stewart
5. Great Lion of God, Taylor Caldwell
6. QB VII, Leon Uris
7. The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight, Jimmy Breslin
8. The Secret Woman, Victoria Holt
9. Travels with My Aunt, Graham Greene
10. Rich Man, Poor Man, Irwin Shaw
How many of those have you read? How many series that were popular in the age of your parents/grandparents do you WANT to read?
The thing is, it’s not even entertaining. Read the first one, was bored the whole way through it (read it so I could see what my 21 year old friend was gushing over) It was poorly written, which killed it, just plain boring, and I spent the whole time reading it wondering what the hell he saw in her, and why she was such a flat, boring person.
Sooo true lol.
I still think ANYTHING that gets kids to read instead of watching the movie version of it or playing the video game for the movie can’t be too bad….
But at least you would possibly read a book, yes?
Books inspire imagination. If you sit and watch (say) an episode of “Enterprise”, then you have everything spelled out for you. You know what the crew look like, what the aliens look like, what the ship looks like (etc/etc/etc).
But if you have never seen “Enterprise”, and you read one of the novels, then you have to imagine what the crew, aliens, ship, etc look like. It lets you be creative.
And while video games do teach hand-eye co-ordination, logical and lateral thinking (esp adventure games), and even team work (rpgs), they still lay out everything visually – the look of things.
Where as the RPGs I played as a kid (D&D etc) were just “You walk in to a forest and see a red monster with three legs”. No pictures, no 3-D graphics, no CGI monster – just what I could see in my mind. And if the guy sitting next to me saw a different thing in his mind, all the better.
Books inspire (or should inspire) imagination. Which is something kids need. And if children (as a whole) stop reading, and they lose their ability to imagine, to make stuff up and to be creative, the world will be a lot, lot worse off.
Not to mention the /language/, which I think is the best thing about books. Video games, television–they just don’t use the English language the way books do, and they have no chance of using it as beautifully and masterfully as the best books do.
Even if its anti-feminist propagander that promotes controlling, abusive relationships and moping for months over a break-up… no, the “at least they’re reading something” argument is null and void…and clearly being used by people who A) have never read the books, or B) if they have, to try and redeem it in spite of itself…
That’s like saying that a teenager reading a smutty PWP novel is better than them not reading…sorry, I’m not one to commend people for reading trash as though they were a classic novel.
A book is there to entertain, to distract, and to provide enjoyment. Why do you think Barbara Cartland sold so much drivel in her lifetime? Because she was a literary genius the likes of which even god had never seen? No – because she knew how to write stuff people wanted to read.
If someone reads a book, and they enjoy it, then does it matter if that book won’t be read in 100 years time? They enjoyed it while they read it, and so the book served its purpose.
Stop being such a snob.
When the biggest argument going for the Twilight books is “no matter how full of crap they are you still have to read them to experience that crap…”
That’s just a sad state of affairs.
On an entirely unrelated note, 35 million is less than half the population of the UK. If that’s ALL the people you think will read Shakespeare, you really can’t think that highly of him as a writer…..
*Applause* Yah for reading!!! More Creativity!!! but you poodle face, I do not agree with. The Twilight saga does not make kids read more. Many of my friends have read the Twilight saga, and NOTHING else. Also, Twilight, as I mentioned before, doesnt have too many descriptions, except “He made my stomach feel all fluttery,” (uuuggghhhhh….) Ie, nothing to visualise, nothing to get creative about. and if you dont agree with me, then you sir or ma’am, are WORSE than Hitler. (redeye ftw!)
If they are reading Twilight, and they’ve read nothing else…logic and mathematics says the DID read more…
=) I never refer to the Twilight series as a Saga…because in reality, it is just a plain old series like most other books… Good point about them only reading it though, and nothing else…Do they use the old ‘Nothing is as good as Twilight…’ argument?
Then prepare to draw a little moustache on me, because I have to disagree
“I stared up in horror as Victoria stalked towards me, red hair blowing in the wind” or “Edward flung James across the room, and I couldn’t help but wince as the mirrors shattered as the younger vampire crashed in to them”
Wouldn’t you say that you can picture that in your head? The red-hair blowing around Victoria’s head? Or the mirrors breaking, glass going everywhere, as James’ head smacks in to them?
And when Bella says that “He had the most beautiful face I’d ever seen”, I would say that my version of “most beautiful” and your version will be completely different.
Then, as the books go on (Eclipse and Breaking Dawn especially), the scope gets even bigger. The fight in the field between the Cullens and the army of vampires? The face off between Nessie’s family and Aro’s? (And wow am I trying to avoid large spoilers here, which is pretty difficult at times).
The wealth of material for imagination is almost limitless, and since New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn are not yet films (or not yet released films), kids (and adults) still have the chance to make their own versions in their minds, rather than simply relying on what they’re shown.
“I stared up in horror as Victoria stalked towards me, red hair blowing in the wind.”
The wind sent Victoria’s scarlet locks whipping about her face as if she were Satan’s own slavemaster, and I gazed upon her riveted in my horror.
—
“Edward flung James across the room, and I couldn’t help but wince as the mirrors shattered as the younger vampire crashed in to them.”
Edward’s strength propelled the younger vampire so quickly across the length of the room that I only had time to wince as the once-ornate mirrors shattered, the glittering shards a testament to the force of a vampire’s arm.
You win 500 internets for knowing the difference between “show” and “tell”.
On the site fanfiction dot net, there are over 100 times as many Twilight based stories as there are Shakespeare stories.
And while even I am not optimistic enough to believe that every one of the 104,336 Twilight based tales is a work of genius, or is even readable, the fact it has got so many people wanting to write – wanting to create their own stories – can’t be a bad thing.
So even if Twilight (and Harry Potter, and other such “kids” stories) are just a flash in the pan, they are getting people reading, and getting them writing NOW. Which I don’t see as anything other than a positive thing.
You do realise that your post is probably longer than a good 50,000 of those fanfics and more articulate than another 50,000?
Twilight fanfiction is like those bad sequels to a fanfic. More crappily written than the first fanfic, crappier plot, barely discernable from the original, etc.
It is a good thing that there are books that are getting kids reading and writing. Harry Potter conjures a world in a reader’s imagination – I’m rereading the series and I just love the magic of it. But Twilight has a gloomy village (what else could I describe it as?) that a bunch of emo vampires pose in, complete with emotionally abusive relationships. A great influence. And while both series’ may have an uncountable amount of fanfics, who says they’re all readable? This isn’t teaching kids to write, this is teaching kids that it is acceptable to write in chatspeak.
I’m going to go and read real books, thank you very much.
If only a sizeable percentage of those Twilight-based tales was vaguely well-done, or even well-thought-out. Mind you, I haven’t been to the Twilight section of ff.net, but I’ve been around long enough to know what happens when a book/movie/etc suddenly enters popular culture: There’s an explosion of horrible, horrible writing. Oh, the good ones are there. But there’s just not enough of them to justify the book based on the idea–no, the fact–that it gets kids writing. Which is only to say that justification must be sought elsewhere.
It bears note that the exact same thing happened to Lord of the Rings, when the movie came out.
It also bears note that of the much fewer Shakespeare fics, the ratio of good fics to bad fics is probably much, much higher. If only for the fact that, if you’re willing to write for Shakespeare, you’re probably pretty interested in literature anyway. In other words, if you’re reading Shakespeare in the first place, you’re probably a pretty decent writer by default.
“On the site fanfiction dot net, there are over 100 times as many Twilight based stories as there are Shakespeare stories.”
We now have empirical evidence that it is 100 times easier to duplicate the writing style and characterization of Twilight than it is to duplicate Shakespeare’s.
I love you!
And finally….
There will be some who read Twilight (and probably the next three books), then read nothing else. But there will also be some who will read it, and think “Wow – that was good. I wonder what else there is like that”, and move on to other books…..
I invoke Godwin’s Rule!
Who cares whether Twilight has content? Who cares that Shakespeare is awesome or isn’t? If you don’t like it, don’t read it. That simple. If someone tells you that you have to, either suck it up and deal or don’t read it. I could understand if someone put a gun to your head and told you to read Twilight. But complaining that a book you don’t even like isn’t as good as Shakespeare? It’s a waste of time. Good grief.
So is posting on the internet! But everyone’s doing it?
Very true. We have lost sight of the graph (under the massive wall of all these comments. *raises hand.* partly my fault.) But we must remember. The graph says that Shakespeare is better than Twilight. WELL OBVIOUSLY!! It makes no comment whether twilight is good or bad, merely that shakespeare is VERY good. (which it is.) Also, it ridicules the people that say that Twilight is as good as Shakespeare. Perfectly reasonable in my veiw. And if you dont agree with me, then you sir or ma’am, are worse than Darth Vader.
Jesus, people! Love it or hate it, it’s still just a book! Get a grip…
An ass-kissing, irreverent, /perverted/ hack, and a bloody Catholic! He was also to literature what Bach was to music.
If you’re going to insult Shakespeare, make sure you don’t leave anything out.
Vivi, you ma’am, are worse than Darth Vader. We are so upset over this book because of the plain fact that someone in their right mind would compare Twilight to such great fantasy novels as Lord of the rings, or Shakespeare. And its not “just a book.” It is in fact a portal to hell. Trust me, I know.
Stand by my statement. It boggles my mind to think what could be accomplished if this much thought were applied to something that actually MATTERS! You know – poverty, hunger, the state of the environment, racism, genocide, sexism…and the list goes on.
I think this graph makes a great point. How many bestselling series from the 70s can people here name, or even claimed to have read recently?
“Thou clay-brained guts, thou knotty-pated fool, thou whoreson obscene greasy tallow-catch!”
Nobody insults like Shakespeare.
And for the record, Twilight does not make illiterate people literate. You have to be literate already in order to read the book.
As a high school girl who DOESN’T like Twilight, I will say that this graph makes me hopeful for the future.
Oscar meyer just did it for the money, but she won’t get as much as Rowling. I still think someone should hang her by her toes for writing sparkly vampire fanfiction…
Ima kick this guys as so hard.
Pardon?
That Shakespeare was overrated. All he did was string together a load of cliches and well-known sayings into plays and stuff. To be or not to be my arse. Now Dan Brown, now we’re talking literature…
O_o literature? he writes thrillers.
Dracula would kick every so called Twilight “vampire’s” ass!!!
ITT: People with spectacular amounts of free time arguing about books in the comments for a graph intended to be funny.
First P0st!!!
When Twilight is being read 500 years from now then you can say she’s as good as William Shakespeare.
This gives me hope.
2030 IS TOO FAR AWAY! WHAT ABOUT 2020? OR EVEN BETTER! 2010! I hate Twilight so frickin much x.x, worsts books eva. But then of corse, the books are about love-drunk idiots. How do people like them?!
Maybe they’re sleep deprived? o_O
I read the first and second books while I was sleep deprived and I liked them until I finally caught up on my rest. o_O
What’s sad is that “Demon In My View”, which Meyer basically ripped off to make “Twilight”, has next to no readers, despite being at least three times as good and a fifth as long.
Shakespeare sucks…
TWILIGHT RLZ!! Go Team Edward! ^_^
who is stephanie meyer??? shakesperes okay, for his time ya know? im guessing meyer sucks?? I like kurt Vonnegut. best writer since Edgar Allen Poe!!!
I just rose from my computer chair and gave this graph a standing ovation.
Both are amazing authors. Shakespear(even tho I <3 twilight) was a LOT better and..WTF is up with the novels people wrote as comments..psst this is a graph about books not submissions for one