Don't get it

You know what I don't get?

I don't get the hate for the Twilight series from guys my age. I've seen a bunch of screeds against it in the last couple of days and it always seems to be A) a Male and B) around my age or older. Now first, why is a 35 year old man even reading Twilight? That is so far out of the demographic that it makes my head hurt. I mean it’s written for 15 year old girls, isn’t it? Wishing no offense to those of you who are openly this way, all the scenarios I've been able to come up with for why these guys are reading these books and then complaining about them end with the word "swishy" or some other such pejorative.

And then they act like this is the dumbest book series that has ever been invented and then complain that now they’re making a movie out of it. Then they go on about how the character arcs are too involved and they won’t be able to fit the internal monologues into the movie and I’m back at the word “swishy” to define them.

Seriously guys, telling me how dumb they are and why they’re dumb won’t make me rethink kicking you out of Club Hetro. You read the books, you then tried to pretend you didn’t really like them, you can just stay in that closet with your shoes. You can’t complain the gay away. If you touched one of those tainted books for any other reason than to get the super manly Jack Higgins book under it, never mind actually opening and reading it, then you are lost to me.

Actually, I should be careful about that, I know at least one gay man who might just kick my ass for suggesting that homosexuals would read vampire romances instead of the Ian Fleming and Raymond Chandler he actually reads. He insists that Bond is a total closet case and he may have a point. Still, it’s an easy foil for straight men.

Also, while I’m being outrageously offensive anyway, I fucked your dad and made your momma watch.

See, I know nothing about the books besides what Syd has told me. I’ve spent all my time watching Dirty Harry movies, reading Mickey Spillane novels and playing Halo so I don’t have time to read about vampires anymore. I’ve also been lifting weights, talking to other guys about boobies and looking at naked girls on the internet. You know, manly stuff.

Actually, the reason I haven’t read them is because I’m just so totally not the demographic and what I’ve heard about them hasn’t made me want to read them. I will freely admit I don’t get the whole vampire erotica thing, that’s between ya’ll girls and those guys among you who are into the vampire thing.

It’s actually been very easy to avoid these books really. Syd borrowed some from a co-worker, and upon reading the first one declared it to be crap. She then read the rest of them because she said they were “fun crap” and that made it okay. They’re vampire romance novels, and more Mary-Sued up the ass than Harry Potter was. So why would I read them? I mean, romance novels are kind of a no-go territory in the first place and vampires haven’t been in the least bit interesting to me since the genre splintered into the “Girly-man” variety of Anne Rice and the “Kung-Fu banana” crap of the Blade movies.

So you see, I haven’t read these books because I’m a guy. However! I’ve already admitted to reading Jack Higgins books, which I’m willing to bet good money aren’t any better than the Twilight books. I’m not willing to read the Twilight books to compare, but I’ve read enough crap to be able to know something is crap just by looking at the face of someone reading it.

But what’s wrong with crap? Mark Twain wasn’t any kind of darling of the literary community until the end of his career, well after his reputation was secured through sheer volume of sales, and then he was simply looked on as a sort of National Treasure. Twain wrote what was considered at the time to be populist crap. It seems to have done quite well though. A lot of people liked it then and seem to like it now. I like all sorts of pulp stories, and there is a lot of crap there. Let’s not pretend, for every Hammett or Chandler there are at least three dozen no name guys who deserve to be forgotten forever. So long as it doesn’t make up the whole of your diet, literary crap is fine. It’s like a nice piece of cake.

I’ve gotten a little off my point here, which is okay if you’ve got that kind of time. Still, why are guys my age complaining about a book written for their daughters (holy crap! Guys about my age have 13-16 year old daughters) and complaining in such a way that it becomes obvious that they’ve read the whole series? I only find myself asking why they kept reading if it was so terrible and it was so offensively bad, and then I start to think that maybe miss thang protests too much.

Really though, I don’t get the hate. If it’s a dumb series than so what? I know a few people have put it on a pedestal, or at least I have been told. I’ve never met anyone who didn’t say that they found the books to be fun crap, but they have said they know people who took them seriously. Hey, whatever. Takes all kinds to make a world.

My point is that I don’t get the hate for this series. I particularly don’t get it because so much of it seems to be attacking the books for being what they are, fluffy insipid vampire pron for the bobby-sock set. By all reports, these books do what the audience wants and... why are you looking at me like that? Bobby-socks... yeah, it’s a real term. Teenage girls wore them with saddle shoes in the forties. Don’t look at me like that! Chicks still wear them now. You know what? Fuck it! I’m not explaining my references anymore.