Recently, I conducted back-to-back readings of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight and the Harvard Lampoon's Nightlight. I was curious: Would the parody deconstruct the original with biting wit, until all that was left was emperor-style nudity? Or would Meyer's kajillion-selling novel brush away the satirists like horseflies, and stand on its own merits?

Below, some findings. The uninitiated should know that spoilers for both novels lie ahead. (In the interest of transparency, I ought to note that I know one of the authors on the Harvard Lampoon staff, though I have no idea which parts of Nightlight she had a hand in writing.)

Plot-Per-Page Ratio

Twilight is 498 pages long and contains approximately three events. There's a car crash that almost happens, and an exposition-heavy showdown in a dance studio. Also, some vampires play baseball. Reading Twilight with an eye for plot markers is a bit like driving through rural flatland with the radio on: every now and then you'll hear a snatch of something interesting, but for the most part it's just static.

Nightlight is only 154 pages, and manages to squeeze in a cockeyed version of almost everything that happens in Twilight, plus a blood-soaked prom and a scene where a vampire menaces a young couple in a graveyard. Advantage: Nightlight.

Characters

After spending five hundred pages in the company of Twilight protagonists Bella Swan and Edward Cullen, here's what I know about them: Bella is clumsy and prefers bookstores to dress shopping. Edward is handsome, and attractive. Lest you think he's one-dimensional, though, Meyer is careful to note that he's very easy on the eyes.

Nightlight offers parody counterparts Belle Goose and Edwart Mullen. Written less as characters than joke-clotheslines, these two are nevertheless more memorable than Meyer's swoony couple. Belle may be delusional, but she's also headstrong and sure of her own personal magnetism, a distinct improvement over passive, self-doubting Bella. And Edwart Mullen isn't actually a vampire — he's an undersocialized gamer with pronounced hypochondria. But he's not prone to inscrutable smirking or blink-and-you'll-miss-it mood shifts, like some immortals we could name.

Prose Style

Only you will know whether you want to read 498 pages of Stephenie Meyer's dialogue-attribution verbs. Lines are "said" and "asked," but they're also "encouraged," "warned," "admitted," "breathed," "nodded," "urged," "gasped" and "coaxed." This isn't the only thing that matters about a work of fiction, of course, but it's such a basic point that it's worrisome when an author can't get it right.

Not every joke in Nightlight hits its mark, but the dialogue tags are knocked down early and brilliantly. From page 11:

"So what's Phoenix like?" he beseeched.

With one word, the authors of Nightlight show they're paying more attention to what they're writing than Stephenie Meyer does in the course of a novel.

We reviewed Meyer's novel, The Host, when it came out a year or so ago. And we were pleasantly surprised: It's a cheesy beach read, to be sure, but it's also a genuinely thought-provoking, fairly original science fiction story that manages to ask some questions about what it means to be human. So we're cautiously optimistic about Niccol's adaptation, to be produced by the people behind The Road.

There aren't that many stories which start with the Earth already having been vanquished totally by alien invaders — I can think of a few, most notably William Barton's When Heaven Felll — and Meyer has a neat twist on this premise. The Earth has been peacefully overtaken by parasites that control human host bodies. They're more peaceful and mellow than we are, and Earth under their rule has become a placid, rational place — it's not unlike if the pod people from Invasion Of The Body Snatchers had won.

But Meyer adds another twist on top of that — which is really where The Host gets interesting. The alien parasites are "going native," and they're being influenced by their host bodies' desires and habits and ideas. It's not unlike the relationship between the Trills and their host bodies in Star Trek, except that the creatures in The Host are accustomed to taking over bodies that are more docile and easier to control, unlike our belligerent, adrenaline-and-hormone-ruled selves. The central love story in The Host is actually just our way into thinking about what it means for the alien invaders to go native — the invader known as Wanderer falls for the man her host body, Melanie, loves, and finds herself being subsumed into Melanie's identity rather than the other way around. She becomes a passenger in Melanie's body rather than the controller.

So... you have a story about a voyeur who lives inside a woman's body. You have a world where people are all controlled by creatures, but the boundary between controller and controlled is getting increasingly blurry. And you have a paranoid thriller about a seemingly perfect society that has cracks. It's not hard to imagine the man who brought us the panopticon nightmare of The Truman Show, the man-controlling-ideal-woman story of S1m0ne and the flawed-utopia of Gattaca making The Host into a great film. I'm actually eager to see what he does with it.

The only downside to a Niccol-directed The Host would be if it delays The Cross, the dystopian future movie he's already working on, which we ran some concept art from the other day. Here's hoping he finishes The Cross, and then creates a smarter, sharper version of Meyer's admittedly schlocky novel. It could be that rare movie adaptation that outshines the book. [Variety]

Late Friday, Summit - the studio behind the Twilight movies - announced the acquisition of the documentary Twilight In Forks: The Saga Of The Real Town, a documentary about the real-life town that's the setting for Stephenie Meyer's vampire series. According to Summit,

the feature chronicles for Twilight fans the story behind Forks, Washington, which serves as the primary setting for the popular Twilight books and films. Additionally, the documentary features untold tales of Forks' unique history, mysticism and culture... Twilight In Forks offers a tantalizing mix of real-world Forks and the fantasy that makes the Twilight saga so irresistible. Fans will get to hear from the real people living their lives in the town, including: the Chief of Police, the Forks Outfitters' employee who gets mistaken for the franchise's leading lady Bella, and the vampire transplant who plays the real-life role of Alice. They'll also visit Forks High School, hear self-described Jacob's grandfather tell the legend of how the Quileutes descended from wolves, and see many more of the people and places of Forks.

Summit plans to release the movie on DVD at the same time as the DVD release of The Twilight Saga: New Moon, in the hope that the excitement over the second movie in the series will magically bring fans to purchasing a documentary about the history of a town in the Northwest of the US.

There's Not Enough 'Twilight' Crap Already [Deadline Hollywood]

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' own book shop has decided to remove their Twilight goods, unless specifically ordered, according to The Salt Lake Tribune.

When reached for comment Leigh Dethman, Deseret Book spokeswoman, released this statement.

"Like any retailer, our purpose is to offer products that are embraced and expected by our customers. When we find products that are met with mixed review, we typically move them to special order status," the statement read."

Granted Meyer's books aren't actually Mormon literature, but they're not filled with racy prose. All of the main couples are heterosexual, and refrain from having premarital sex, for hundreds and hundreds of pages, until readers get an angst allergy. Oh and if you do have sex [spoiler, I guess] you'll get pregnant and the baby will try to kill you. This shelving decision is especially confusing, considering the praise Meyer's received form the Mormon community. What about Meyer offended the readers at Deseret so much — was it Jacob's imprinting on a baby?

In other Twinews, we've collected the Entertainment Tonight New Moon set visit tapes. Brace yourself: there's a lot of BS to wade through, to get to a few Bella and Jacob back-and-forths.

I couldn't find some parts from the second day, but I'll fill you in on what I think was said: "it's amazing, I never thought we'd go there, everyone is great, I'm single, it's going to be surprising."

The story, as reported by Digital Spy and WENN amongst others, says that Heidi Stanton, Meyer's former college roommate, claims that Twilight and sequels are actually all her idea. There are even quotes from the legal documents:

Quite frankly, I was shocked when I began watching the movie with my husband last week... I immediately told him that she got that idea from me! I wrote a fictional short story with the same ideas when we were in college together.

According to the reports, the lawsuit has forced Summit Entertainment to suspend production of the second movie in the series, pending resolution. Only problem is, it's not true. Summit have already issued a statement saying that production continues, and Meyer's agent has also announced that the lawsuit is completely fictitious. So what's going on? The website that originally broke the story has removed the entire post in question, and it's falling to fansites to try and set the record straight. So is this just a fan rumor gone mainstream? Summit's rep doesn't care:

The Internet for all of its assets can still be an easy breeding ground for such hoaxes and detractors, and we hope that people will not be duped so easily, and use appropriate diligence before perpetuating everything or anyone that claims to have information about the Twilight franchise.

Personally, I think people just wanted to believe it.

That honor goes to Meyer's surprisingly decent alien-invasion romance The Host (read our review here), which clocked in at fourteenth. Although that does depend on how you count Watchmen, which soared all the way to number nine on the strength of anticipation for Zack Snyder's big screen adaptation after being only the sixtieth best-selling book of 2008.

The list, which tracks the best-selling books for the first three months of 2009, says sales of Meyer's five novels accounted for 16% of all books sold. That sounds even more impressive when you realize Meyer was responsible for one out of every seven books sold in the last three months. I think here is where I'm supposed to say whatever gets young people reading is a good thing - but I'm not entirely sure I believe it.

This continues the trend from 2008, where the four Twilight books swept the top of the annual list. That's something not even the Harry Potter books were able to do, although Meyer has a long way to go before she matches J.K. Rowling; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and its 44 million copies sold outstrips all the Twilight books combined. Even when you consider the 400 million Potter books include three more novels and a bunch of tie-ins, it still doesn't change the fact Rowling has Meyer beat by a factor of about five to one. (I'd also mention this decade's other historically massive best-seller, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, and its 57 million copies, but I'm trying to stay positive about this whole literacy thing.)

Looking over USA Today's 2008 list, the only other even vaguely science fictional titles beyond Meyer's books are Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse book Dead Until Dark, Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox, and Watchmen. Much as I love it, when Watchmen is the de facto standard bearer for best-selling science-fiction novels, it's safe to say that all of science fiction combined is no match for the Twilight juggernaut, and it's not even remotely close.

So what science fiction books are among the top-selling books of all time? There are really only two choices. As far as individual books are concerned, Frank Herbert's Dune is probably number one, with 12 million copies sold since its publication in 1965. As for science fiction series, that honor most likely goes to Isaac Asimov's original Foundation trilogy, which has sold a total of 20 million copies in its almost six decades in print. Well, at least there's some justice in the publishing world.

The Host fan art from Zuly89 on Fanpop.

[USA Today via SFScope]

1. J.J. Abrams, Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damon Lindelof. These four guys, between them, pretty much created half the most influential works in the genre right now. On television, Abrams and Lindelof's Lost has shown how to make science fiction into watercooler-talk material. Abrams, Orci and Kurtzman's new show, Fringe, has only been on for a few months but feels like a genre classic already. Abrams is also responsible for the ground-breaking (and camera-shaking) Cloverfield.
Up next: The foursome is responsible for bringing Star Trek back from franchise purgatory. And Orci and Kurtzman have co-written Transformers 2.

2. Will Smith, star of I Am Legend and Hancock. It's hard to think of an actor who can make a project into a hit more easily than Smith, right now. Just imagine Hancock without Smith's legendary affability behind it, and you've got a mighty dud.
Up next: Sequels/prequels to both Hancock and Legend are being bandied about.

3. Jeff Robinov, president of Warner Bros. He championed the idea of giving indie director Chris Nolan the reigns of the Batman films. He's been a key figure in getting movies like Watchmen on the screen. (And he killed the Wonder Woman movie, reportedly because he doesn't think women can carry action movies. But this is the "power list," not the "people we agree with" list.)
Up next: He's in charge of the umpteenth big-screen reinvention of Superman.

4. James Cameron, director of Avatar. Cameron's 3-D space epic won't be out for another year, but it's already revolutionizing the way people think about movies. He's pioneered a whole new system of 3-D cameras, but also created new motion-capture techniques for his alien creatures. Even before the film comes out, everybody else is already playing catch-up. Meanwhile, Cameron discovered Sam Worthington, who stars in Avatar, and pimped him out as one of the leads in Terminator 4.
Up next: Avatar comes out next December.

5. Kevin Feige, President of Marvel Studios. Warner Bros. may have cornered the market on superheroes-as-serious-dramas, but Marvel owns the idea of a superhero movie universe, complete with crossovers and fan-friendly in-jokes. Between them, Iron Man and Incredible Hulk proved that the superhero punch-'em-up films can feel like pieces of a saga... and make tons of money.
Up next: Another Iron Man, plus Captain America, Avengers, Thor, Ant-Man...

6. Kanye West, rapper/singer. He helped bring a science fiction motif back to music with his Daft Punk collaborations and space-odyssey stage show. He's the reason for Beyonce's cyborg hand.
Up next: His new album, "808s and Heartbreaks," uses an "Autotune" to make his vocals sound more computery and spacey, and it's already the #1 record in the United States.

7. Christopher Nolan, director of The Dark Knight and The Prestige. The Dark Knight was the biggest movie of 2008, but it also showed that grotesque characters and people in funny costumes could be compelling and visceral.
Up next: Nobody knows. Hopefully, another Batman film, but maybe first another mindblowing non-franchise pic like Prestige.

8. Neal Stephenson, author of Anathem. We knew Stephenson's next book would be a hit, thanks to his huge following. But Anathem, with its story of a world where science and technology are separated and pure scientists live in "Maths," captured the imagination of mainstream critics. Suddenly, novels of ideas are cool again.
Up next: Nobody knows. Unless you do?

9. Andrew Stanton, director of Wall-E. Even before his lonely robot movie came out, it had already sparked a whole giant wave of science fiction animated movies. (It looks like exactly one of those movies, Monsters Vs. Aliens, will be good.) People are arguing over what was the best movie of 2008: Wall-E or Dark Knight.
Up next: He's supposed to be directing a live-action movie of John Carter of Mars.

10. Stephenie Meyer, author of Twilight and The Host. I'll be honest: I haven't read any of the Twilight books, or seen the movie. They don't sound like my cup of tea. But the Twilight movie was a huge success, one of the biggest book adaptations in ages. And Meyer's adult science fiction novel, The Host, was surprisingly good: the story of a love triangle between a woman, a man, and the symbiote that is trying to control the woman's body. The Host has been on the Times bestseller list for 29 weeks, outselling pretty much any other recent science fiction book by many orders of magnitude. I would happily go see a Host movie.
Up next: Probably more Twilight books, despite Meyer's vow to stop writing them. The Host also seems to be leading towards a sequel.

11. Guillermo Del Toro, director of Pan's Labyrinth and Hellboy 2. He's managed to bridge the gap between arthouse darling and mainstream monster-movie maker in a way almost nobody has done before. No wonder he's been tapped to take on the Hobbit movies.
Up next: Besides Hobbit, GDT is attached to 500 other movies, including Frankenstein, Jekyll, The Champions, Hellboy 3, etc. etc.

12. Bioware, maker of Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights OF The Old Republic. With Mass Effect, BioWare helped recharge the genre of space-opera RPG, following the adventures of Commander Shepard, who encounters aliens and murderous artificial intelligences. This came on the heels of success of past games like Jade Empire and Star Wars: KTOR.
Up next: A new MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic comes out next year.

13. Donna Langley, President of Production at Universal Pictures. When she was an independent producer, she produced The Cell, Austin Powers 2 and other science fiction films. And after she joined Universal, she shepherded Children Of Men to the screen, and she's worked hard to nail Del Toro down to make four movies for Universal, including Frankenstein — and she's been pushing the idea of a Hellboy TV series.
Up next: Her upcoming projects include Army Of Two, a scifi video-game movie.

14. Michael Chabon, author of The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Not only did his literary work of alternate history win Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Adventures Of Kavalier And Clay has championed the literary worth of science fiction with his book Maps And Legends and his two anthologies of science fiction by literary authors.
Up next: Supposedly the Coen Brothers are filming Yiddish.

15. Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada, Marvel Comics. It's been obvious for a while now that the competition between Marvel and DC was a lop-sided one, but maybe 2008 is the year we call it a victory once and for all. Bendis, as writer, have been responsible for series like House of M, Secret Invasion, and New Avengers. And Quesada has helped make other series, like Civil War, into sales juggernauts. DC might have Grant Morrison, Geoff Johns and Neil Gaiman writing for it, but Marvel has the readership.
Up next: Yet another big status-quo-massaging event, Dark Reign.

16. Jennifer Jackson, agent with Donald Maass and Associates. Her name comes up more often than any other agent's, when you're talking book deals. And she's the top dealmaker of 2008, according to Publisher's Marketplace, with a dozen high-profile deals in the past year. Her clients include hot writers like Elizabeth Bear, Ken Scholes, Jay Lake and Mary Robinette Kowal.
Up next: She just sold Amanda Downum's The Drowned City to Orbit Books, in a three-book deal.

17. Will Wright, Spore creator. Wright's The Sims is the best selling computer game in history, and other titles like SimCity also remain huge and groundbreaking. But his build-a-lifeform game, Spore, has sparked new levels of creativity — and debate over whether it accurately reflects evolution.
Up next: We're not sure.

18. Brian Goldner, Hasbro CEO. Who could have imagined the toy tie-in movie would become a huge force in Hollywood again? Goldner, that's who. He helped make Transformers and G.I. Joe into summer blockbuster material.
Up next: More toy movies. Says the man himself: "If you remember Stretch Armstrong, there's an opportunity to tell this great backstory of who Stretch Armstrong is, and why he's so incredible and yet funny."

19. Jeff Walker, the independent movie publicist who brought Hollywood to Comic-Con. Hard as it is to believe, Comic-Con was once a comic convention. And now it's the place where Hollywood studios unveil their latest projects and shimmy for the approval of tens of thousands of die-hard fans. Walker helped engineer that transformation.
Up next: Comic-Con keeps getting huger and more unmanageable. Are the studios going to start skipping it, like Paramount did this year?

20. Weta Workshop. The New Zealand practical effects studio came to prominence working on Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings movies, and now it's the go-to place for science fiction epics, including The Day The Earth Stood Still, Fantastic 4: Rise Of The Silver Surfer, X-Men 3, I, Robot and many others, along with its sister company Weta Digital.
Up next: Weta was supposedly hard at work on Justice League, but no longer. Still on the slate are a mooted Halo film, Avatar, Tintin and the Hobbit films.

Twilight T-Shirts: Announce your love of dazzling vampires with official merchandise from Hot Topic or fan-made shirts from Zazzle.

Bella's Engagement Ring: Sure to make girls look at their ring fingers and sigh, this ring is available as a fashion ring ($59.00), fine ring ($549.00), or genuine diamond ring ($2,199.00) from Twilight Teez.

Twilight Books: Stephenie Meyer's guide to the Twilight saga doesn't come out until next year, but a box set of all four books in hardcover is available ($45.65 from Amazon), as is Meyer's latest book, The Host.

Essence of Twilight: Attraction in Twilight is based on the scent of the characters, and the Essence of Twilight products give you the opportunity to smell like Edward, Bella, Alice, or Jacob. Various prices from Etsy.

Actually, you don't even have to go to internet fandom for some of the most entertaining critiques of Stephenie Meyer's work — Pattinson himself got the jump on everyone by mocking the series himself in an interview with Empire magazine (published in their October issue).

"When you read the book," says Pattinson, looking appropriately pallid and interesting even without makeup, "it's like, 'Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself.' I mean, every line is like that. He's the most ridiculous person who's so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect. I just couldn't do that. And the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he's a 108-year-old virgin so he's obviously got some issues there."

In another video interview with E!Online, Pattinson speaks frankly of Meyer, and proves to wish-fulfillment authors everywhere that he's got their number.

When I read it ... I was convinced that Stephenie was convinced that she was Bella, and ... it was like it was a book that wasn't supposed to be published, like reading her — her sort of sexual fantasy about some — especially when she says that it was based on a dream, and it's like, "Oh, then I had a dream about this really sexy guy" and she just writes this book about it, and there's some things about Edward that are just so specific that ... I was just convinced that this woman is mad, she's completely mad, and she's in love with her own fictional creation. And I sometimes ... feel uncomfortable reading this thing, and I think a lot of people feel the same way, that it's kind of voyeuristic ... It creates this sick pleasure in a lot of ways.

Author and blogger Cleolinda Jones compiled several much-read commentaries on each of the Twilight books at her LiveJournal, and they're a joy to read — even more so than Meyer's bad-fanfiction-esque prose. (In case you're interested, her wiki works quite well as a Twilight guide for dummies — er, in this case, the lucky uninitiated.)

Previously on As the Vampire Sparkles, emoteen Bella Swan moves to a tiny little depressing rainy town and won't shut up about it. There she meets a mysterious boy who turns out to be a 100+ year-old vampire who literally sparkles "like diamonds" in direct sunlight and reads minds (but not hers), and after three hundred pages of Bella wondering why he's so mean to her and why he's so weird and why he's not being mean to her anymore and what his deal is and if he likes her and if he actually loves her and how much he loves her and how he could possibly love as someone as Mary Sue plain and boring and clumsy as she is and if his vampire family will like her, a plot finally shows up, but it doesn't last very long. And then they go to prom. In the second book, Edward the sparkling vampire leaves Bella for her own good, and she spends most of the book trying to kill herself with motorcycles and cliff-diving. Sort of. And then her best friend falls in love with her and turns out to be a werewolf, but Bella runs away to save Edward from committing suicide by public sparkling in Italy. In the third book, Jacob the best friend/boyfriend wannabe/werewolf turns into a total asshole trying to force himself on Bella, and a vampire with a grudge from the first book is trying to kill her, but more importantly, Bella and Edward argue about whether they should have sex, get married, and/or vampirize Bella, and in what order.

Hand to God, I did not make one word of that up. Twilight means never having to say you're kidding.

After posting a scathing, funny, and dead-on accurate review of the series ("Twilight Sucks, and Not in a Good Way"), blogger Kellen Rice of PSA received the obligatory hate mail from crazed Twilight fans. They told her she, too, should write a bestselling YA fantasy series before having the gall to critique one, so she posted a write-your-own-Twilight instruction manual with some truly memorable tips.

Do not research. It is not necessary to waste time getting biology facts, cultural lore, or cultural history correct. For example, if you choose to set your novel in a real-life place, don't bother visiting it. If you incorporate the ideas of another culture, such as that of the Sioux Native Americans, absolutely do not speak to any Sioux elders or Sioux scholars-as the author, you have no responsibility to accurately portray anything. Instead, take what history you can find out on the Internet and feel free to bastardize their cultural lore so that it fits into your story. Also, if you decide to use science to explain some of your fantasy elements, don't bother making it logically or factually sound.

MSN Movies posted a copy of "Twilight": The Lost Script, and clicking through it is cheaper and less time-consuming than seeing the movie — though it may be just as hilarious.

EDWARD: You are a magnificent flower and the sweet cherry atop my ... more life's sundae. Marry me and your life will be distilled bliss, for I do not eat food that requires cooking, and I am rich enough that your chemistry grade matters not a whit.

BELLA: Um, let's not talk about what you eat.

EDWARD: Your wish is my command, fragrant blossom.

BELLA: I don't understand how you can say that. I'm just a plain, awkward girl who needs to strap herself to the commode so she doesn't fall off. Accident-prone is my middle name.

EDWARD: I will sneak into your bathroom and offer my steady, marble-like arms as your supports. No harm shall come to you, my pet.

New York Magazine has a slideshow of 28 reasons Twilight the movie is better than Twilight the book, and most of them just involve endless — and totally justified — sarcastic slagging on the book. This list is a significant achievement, though, given that this series practically mocks itself.

At no point in the movie does this scene occur.

"You ... made ... me ... faint," I accused him dizzily.
"What am I going to do with you?" he groaned in exasperation. "Yesterday I kiss you, and you attack me! Today you pass out on me!"
I laughed weakly, letting his arms support me while my head spun.
"So much for being good at everything," he sighed.
"That's the problem." I was still dizzy. "You're too good. Far, far too good."

Also, this scene was cut, thank God.

"Besides, friends don't let friends drive drunk," he quoted with a chuckle. I could smell the unbearably sweet fragrance coming off his chest.
"Drunk?" I objected.
"You're intoxicated by my very presence." He was grinning that playful smirk again.
"I can't argue with that," I sighed. There was no way around it; I couldn't resist him in anything.

In general, we're just so relieved that the movie did away with most of the 1,000 scenes in which basically this exact thing happens:

Bella: Don't go!
Edward: I should go, but I can't.
Bella: I am happy!
Edward: You're an idiot for being happy.
Bella: You are still totally gorgeous OMG OMG.

Fiction editor Yoni featured Twilight for her Bad Book Month column, where she presented a full numeric breakdown of the book's flaws. Be sure to check out the full list at her LiveJournal; it is detailed, eye-opening, and what the internet whiz kids might call "LOLarious."

Number of Pages in the Book: 498
The First Hint of a Plot that Is Not Bella and Edward's Romance: page 328
When the Plot Actually Arrives: page 372

Boys that Totally Love Bella (Including Edward Cullen): 5

Approximate Amount of Time Bella and Edward are Romantically Involved Before Bella Is Begging Edward to Turn Her into a Vampire so They Can Be Together Forever: Like, two weeks. Maybe three. The timeline's a bit fuzzy.

References to Edward's Beauty: 165

USA Today blithely invited a storm of wank from every literary spec fic nerd out there when they asked, "What's better, the 'Twilight' series or 'Harry Potter'?" That insulting question drew comment from the likes of Peter Parker ("Twilight is why MJ and I aren't married anymore"), Harvey Dent ("You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself read Twilight"), Yoda ("Bullshit the Twilight series is, and stupid you are"), Bristol Palin ("Twilight increases teen pregnancy"), and even Jane Austen ("Bitch, please"). One concerned citizen even suggested that Stephenie Meyer was a Skrull — that would explain a lot, wouldn't it?

All right, so you're convinced: the Twilight series is a festival of badness. As far as Twilight internet fandom is concerned, however, "bad" can very easily become "so bad it's good." It may have put a hardcover and a sticker on some truly unworthy literature — not to mention green-lighting a film that embarrasses its own actors — but the publishing industry will not have the last laugh.

Thanks to tipsters Ellen, Becca, Lily, and Heather!

Robert Pattinson image from RPattz Trufax.

Box office tracking site Box Office Mojo wasn't alone in comparing Twilight's midnight haul to that of Sex and The City, earlier this year. That movie, which earned $2.5 million during its midnight premiere, was chosen as a comparison because both movies are "event movies for women" - but Twilight is also a genre movie, albeit a flawed one, so how does it stack up against recent much-hyped genre movies?

The Dark Knight, of course, blows it away; their midnight opening grossed $18.5 million, with an opening day of around $65 million. Twilight's opening day is estimated around $30 million, which will also make it less successful than Iron Man, all three Spider-Man movies and the last Lord of The Rings. Most interestingly, perhaps, it also makes it less popular than four of the five Harry Potter movies (Only Chamber of Secrets was eclipsed by Twilight's bow).

All is by no means lost, however; it's a stronger start than Quantum of Solace, Wall-E and - much to the relief of Twilight's studio, Summit Entertainment, I'm sure - The Golden Compass, the last movie to be adapted from a best-selling and much-beloved series of YA novels touted as "the next Harry Potter." It's also the third most-popular advance-ticket-sales movie in Fandago's history (Again, The Dark Knight and - curiously, Revenge Of The Sith, are ahead), and - much to Kaila's amusement, I'm sure - the movie's biggest business is coming from Utah, ground zero of Twilight author Stephenie Meyer's mormon religion.

Ultimately, how successful will the movie be? A lot depends on this weekend - not just the box office haul, but also the word of mouth. The Golden Compass last year showed how quickly a fan-favorite can be killed in the marketplace by bad buzz, and Twilight's core audience's excitement over the movie was already a cautious one. What'll happen if Robert Pattinson's wooden performance is judged unworthy? We should know by Monday.

(Update: Twilight rakes in $35.7 million in its first day, which makes it the 14th most successful opening ever - and the most successful by a movie directed by a woman.)

'Twilight' shining bright at box office [Variety]

Of course Meyer should be allowed to write her own values into Twilight and its sequels, but we are doing young readers a disservice by rubber-stamping these books without a forewarning of what lies within.

Twilight, a book ostensibly about supernatural vampires, werewolves, and adolescent angst, is featured at Mormon bookstores and supported by the Church's followers. The Salt Lake City Deseret Times named Meyer its favorite author behind Orson Scott Card. While it is refreshing to see an influential religious group embracing alternative genres instead of shunning them, one has to
wonder what makes Twilight so special. Meyer has said that there are elements of her devout Mormonism in the story (it opens with a quote from Genesis), and those who have read her know she is an
unselfconscious writer. It is not hard to view many of the motifs as inspired by the author's religion: even her vampires enjoy an exquisitely gifted eternal life together as a family after choosing the path of virtue rejected by others of their kind.

All this adulation is not earned because the books are fine works of literature. I'm consistently amazed by how many critics, bloggers and reviewers have given Stephenie Meyer a free pass. Twilight
features some of the least-polished published writing I've ever read and is the sort of unrepentant Mary Sue wish-fulfillment most of us construct when we first sit down to write.

Bella Swan (because 'Lovely McGirl' was taken) moves to the foggy town of Forks for some reason. Her main personality traits are terminal clumsiness and total self-effacement, and most of her activities involve cooking and cleaning for her estranged father while Weird Things Happen at her school. Speaking of school, it turns out everyone there wants to be her friend and the male population falls all over her (Bella doesn't know how gorgeous she is, of course). The only person who's even more gorgeous than Bella is Edward Cullen, sparkly vampire extraordinaire, and the reason we've all been subject to Pattinson's face on 20-foot billboards.

We're meant to love the perfectly muscled, handsome, rich, perfect, flawless Edward, of the auburn hair and topaz eyes, as much as Bella and Meyer immediately do. And it seems that a great majority of the
book-buying public — especially female adolescents, and their mothers — have fallen for the vampire hook, line, and sinker. But they would be so much better off spending their time with seasons of
Buffy. Edward makes Buffy's boyfriend Angel seem a cheerful fellow and her lover Spike's antics romantic by comparison.

Edward and Bella fall into swoony "love," defined by little else than their declarations of it and adjectives lavished on Edward's beauty. He also wants to eat her. Along the way, Edward increasingly takes away Bella's agency: he stalks her, watches her sleep at night, drives her everywhere, isolates her from family, limits her movements, and carries her off at the drop of a hat. While critics have mostly ignored the underlying misogyny, many web comments and reader reviews have mentioned that Edward's behavior evokes that of an abusive partner. Were he not a vampire, he would be in prison.

Meyer has received infinite praise for not allowing her characters to engage in premarital sex. Twilight's "chastity buzz" is no doubt a large reason it has been given to many children as "safe"
reading material and featured prominently on display and in many book clubs. But open Meyer's books and you will not find soft ruminations on spiritual love. Instead, Bella's teenage passions are consistently
thwarted by her decades-old suitor. If she doesn't faint while kissing him, Edward will pry her off and get angry, unable to control himself. What a wonderful lesson for little girls.

Since Edward won't sleep with Bella until they're married, and will hurt her because he's a vampire, the denouement is saved for the fourth book. It's in the highly-anticipated Breaking Dawn that
Meyer goes too far pushing her personal values on unsuspecting readers. There is nothing wrong with chastity, and nothing wrong with sex, either. Science fiction and fantasy fans are used to a long
tease: we watch shows and read series for years without our favorite characters hooking up, and the relationships are often the better for it. We'll wait.

But after making readers pine for more than a thousand pages, Meyer finally gives the couple a fade-to-black: "'Forever,' he agreed, and then pulled us gently into deeper water." Then Bella wakes up bruised
and bloodied and angsty Edward never wants to do such horrible things to her ever again. Another wonderful lesson for little girls. The book then manages to completely jump the shark and become a virtual pro-life P.S.A. when Meyer falls for the easiest of amateur fanfiction traps and makes her protagonist pregnant.

The too-predictable plotline would be bad enough without statements like this from Bella: "This child, Edward's child, was a whole different story. I wanted him like I wanted air to breathe. Not a choice — a necessity." Never mind that Bella, 18, had never wanted children and had been arguing with her husband about going to college, which he summarily dismissed.

But then bad Edward wants to give Bella an abortion because he knows their half-vampire/human baby will kill her! "He leaned away and looked me in the eye. 'We're going to get that thing out before it can hurt any part of you. Don't be scared. I won't let it hurt you.' 'That thing?' I gasped...Edward had just called my little nudger a thing. He said Carlisle would get it out. "No," I whispered." You see, Bella often refers to her unborn child as "her little nudger," since it grows inside her at an unnatural rate. Yes, she does.

Once Meyer is over her anti-abortion hysterics, she has Bella endure a truly horrific pregnancy and birthing sequence, stretching untold pages. I found much of it so gruesome and awful as to be almost impossible to read — and I was in a horror film class where we watched Rosemary's Baby and The Brood for homework. I shudder to think of the preteen readers who waited on line for Breaking Dawn and found their heroine getting her ribs and spine cracked from the inside out by a hybrid vampire baby.

Is the Twilight series pushing its own kind of morality along with its love story? I think so — and it is an element that parents and teachers need to be aware is in the books. The narrative suggests that it is better to submit and sublimate yourself to a superior being than to be your own person. Having a will of one's own is not conducive to Meyer's brand of love and living. Only heterosexual relationships are explored, and (married!) sex is always a power play with painful consequences. Plus it is preferable to be a teenage mother above all else, even if it kills you.

Some fans were in an uproar over Bella's easy dismissal of Native American werewolf Jacob Black, who had long been a rival for her affection — but don't worry too much about Jacob. In what may be the most disturbing development of Breaking Dawn outside of its snapping ribs, Jacob "imprints" on Bella's infant daughter (the unfortunately-named Renesmee), meaning he'll loom around creepily all her life waiting until she's of marriageable age to claim. These are the family values that have buoyed up Stephenie Meyer's sales figures.

There's no denying that Meyer can evoke a visceral reaction, and that her writing, no matter how flat, has taken hold of the public imagination. Her ear for dialogue and capacity for action is stronger than her description, and the books will likely be that rare creature — better in film than on paper. The studio will no doubt be green-lighting sequels after the Twilight movie takes off, but I'd love to see how they'd handle Breaking Dawn's reproductive issues. The insane popularity of Bella and Edward's overwrought romance would warm my heart (kids are reading!) were it based on substance and self-respect, but both are strangely lacking in the world Stephenie Meyer made. They never needed sex; these two were damned from the start.

1: The Books Are Popular. Very Popular.
Sure, we're not talking Harry Potter levels yet - despite the many comparisons that Twilight has drawn to the wizarding series, mostly because it's a popular young adult series of novels that's transcended its target audience - but 17 million book sales in the three years since the release of the first book is still nothing to be sneezed at, and the books have collectively topped the New York Times bestseller list for close to a year. Face it; more people have read this than anything that inspired Iron Man.

Not to put to much pressure on the movie, but people are already writing about the way in which Twilight The Movie unites women of all ages in their lust for the franchise:

Let me introduce you to one of the most powerful new groups in Hollywood. It's not a group of actors, producers or directors. It's the rather interesting hybrid demographic who are getting their knickers in a twist over Twilight, due to be released in the UK next month... Teenage girls, young female adults and their mums converged at the Twilight conference at Comic-Con back in July, filling Hall H to capacity and rupturing tonsils at the appearance of their hunkalicious hero.

Believe me, this demographic is out there. They just don't have a name yet.

They're naming themselves, however; there are fansites called Twilight Moms (and its related site, Twilight Teens - and also Twilight20Somethings, just in case you don't fit into either of the previous two) as well as Team Jacob, Team Edward, Team Switzerland and even Team Twilightist amongst many others out there, each one a demonstration of obsession with the novels' familiar tale of a boy, a girl and the unspoken love that dare not speak its name.

2: The Books Aren't Very Good.
Critical reception to Twilight, the first book in the series was marginally positive (Booklist's "There are some flaws here—a plot that could have been tightened, an overreliance on adjectives and adverbs to bolster dialogue—but this dark romance seeps into the soul" being essentially the tenor of most mainstream reviews), but each successive book received poorer reviews, with Breaking Dawn, the final book getting drubbings from the LA Times ("The problem is Stephenie Meyer is no J.K. Rowling... We would have much preferred the whole thing to end in book three, "Eclipse," with yes, some happiness for Bella, but also some angst, some heartbreak, and a dark, ominous future looming"), Publisher's Weekly ("[G]randeur is out. This isn't about happy endings; it's about gratification") and Entertainment Weekly ("[You'll] abruptly lose all patience when... Meyer takes her supernatural love story several bizarre steps too far"). We may be biased, but sister site Jezebel came up with our favorite review:

It's 754 pages long, its heroine's dominant personality trait is low self-esteem, and, as Amazon reviewer Eventide points out, nobody really has to give up anything. Even the tedium of immortality is glossed over — these vampires just keep busy with their hobbies. If I had an eternity to read, I still might never pick up this book again.

3: The Writer Can Be A Bit Of A Prima Donna.
Although the Twilight series officially finished with the fourth book, Breaking Dawn, there was a fifth book planned, Midnight Sun, that would've retold the events of the first book from the hero's perspective. But then a first draft of the book's opening appeared online, and author Stephenie Meyer posted this response on her website:

I did not want my readers to experience Midnight Sun before it was completed, edited and published. I think it is important for everybody to understand that what happened was a huge violation of my rights as an author, not to mention me as a human being... So where does this leave Midnight Sun? My first feeling was that there was no way to continue. Writing isn't like math; in math, two plus two always equals four no matter what your mood is like. With writing, the way you feel changes everything. If I tried to write Midnight Sun now, in my current frame of mind, James would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn't dovetail too well with the original story. In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely.

(She's since recanted slightly, telling Entertainment Weekly that "[t]he funny thing about that statement is I didn't actually write the majority of it... in the end only the one or two sentences written by me seem really jarring [compared with everything else], and people didn't get that there was sort of a joke in there." Midnight Sun, however, is still on hold.)

Nonetheless, she's kept a tight hold on the movie, only agreeing to the project in the first place when teeth size met her approval, and having final say on casting and the length and passion of final clinches. "It's been good for me just in general to have to speak up because I am so invested in this," she's explained.

4: VINOs: Vampires In Name Only.
The vampires in the Twilight books don't have elongated teeth, and they have no problem going out in daytime in their Pacific Northwest hometown, because it's so foggy (I can't tell if that's actually funny or just a kind of crappy dodge). They also, as almost every example of vampire fiction since, what, Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire (or maybe Marilyn Ross' Barnabas Collins?), are tragic souls afflicted by a curse that don't really want to sink their teeth into humanity - and so, they eat animals and go on "hunting trips" to take care of their bloodlust. Yes, it's the Pacific Northwest Hipster Rural Lifestyle turned goth. Whatever happened to the good old days of Nosferatu and vampires who were unafraid to be vampires? I mean, if they have his pallor, why can't they have his mannerisms?

5: Remember The Golden Compass.
Summit Pictures, the studio behind the movie may be nervous about saying that they've got a hit on their hands ahead of the movie's release, but the movie is estimated to make somewhere between $20million and $50million in its first weekend, depending on how optimistic your sources are. It's worth remembering the fate of The Golden Compass, however; last year's "The New Harry Potter" had a similar amount of buzz pre-release, and a similarly impressive opening weekend... before audiences realized that the movies didn't live up to the books. Ultimately, the movie wasn't successful enough to warrant filming the second of the three His Dark Materials novels. The same thing may happen to Twilight. The figure to keep in mind is rumored to be $150 million; if Twilight makes less than that, you can forget about seeing New Moon, Eclipse or Breaking Dawn in theaters anytime soon. We can only hope.

Twilight is released in theaters November 21st.

Said McMahon:

This is an idea I hashed out in conversation with my marketing person. We really went through a whole brainstorm: What are some creative interesting ways we can approach doing this video [for “The Resolution”] as an experiment of some sort?

The record company, meanwhile, likely sensed an awesome side-effect of said experiment: thousands of potential pubescent lady-fans. Adds McMahon: “Stephanie’s interpretation was a relationship metaphor kind of thing.” Eureka!

The gist of her creation, shot in Ventura, California: McMahon plays the piano on the back of a vintage pick-up truck; then he’s walking out of a beach house with the tide rising and rising until he gives up and goes for a swim…and meets up with a mermaid. Explained McMahon:

Our goal with the video is ‘Let’s not go literal.’ I’d rather just make a music video than try to make some crazy statement, you know. We’re still in the editing process.

The song touches on McMahon’s much-publicized battle with leukemia, or as he puts it, “Running from dealing with something and reconciling [with it].” (He’s since beaten the affliction.) Meyer fans may be a bit disappointed, though:

There are no vampires in it! It’s cinematic and has dark qualities to it. The most whimsical element in it is our mermaid. That was handled in a Tim Burton-esque kind of way.

So how does an inexperienced director shoot a video? McMahon said:

Stephanie had been in the process of editing her movie when we hooked up. [On set] she had ideas of where to place things and how the visual should play out. Signing off on shots. This was kind of an effort with her and a director of photography named Noble Jones [3 Doors Down, Sevendust, Sloan].… I took a lot of my direction from Noble in the sense that it was a more of positioning and placement.

And in case you were wondering: He’s currently on page 200 of Twilight right now. But does he like it? “I tend to appreciate things that can be digested by the masses.”

Mannequin’s second album, The Glass Passenger, drops Sept. 30.