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Interview with Captain Awesome by some chick named Glynis
I was interviewed for some podcast or something. I think that about 1% of my answers were used. Click here to download.
1. What is your name? Greg. Or Captain Awesome. Whichever.
2. Why did you read Twilight in the first place? I tend to enjoy vampire literature (Bram Stoker, Anne Rice) and a lot of my friends were reading Twilight at the time. Mind you, this was before all of the hype and all I knew was that some of my friends loved it. I was around sixteen or seventeen (it was 2005, my Sophomore year of High School) and the storyline seemed promising. The title was intriguing, the cover was sort of pretty and I hadn't heard anything negative about it... yet.
3. What is one word to describe Twilight? Must I confine myself to one word? Is the entirety of SparklyVampires.com not enough testament to my dislike? Blehh, very well. I'll go with, "inane"
4. Was there anything at all you found when reading to make the books slightly interesting? Yes. The story is very promising, I have to admit. However, Stephenie Meyer is a terrible writer. What we have in Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn is a rough shell of an idea to a good vampire series. Take out the formulaic characters, the Mary-Sue protagonist, the blatant creepiness, the sparkling, overbearing attitude, stalking and the self-righteous tone of how virginity is approached, you have an okay idea for a story.
Let us break it down to the bare bones, exactly what Meyer said she imagined when she dreamt of Twilight. We have a male vampire and a female human. The male vampire is infatuated with the female human and the female human, by her very nature, is attracted to the vampire and doesn't fear for her life because of it. It's vaguely interesting and could be written well in the right hands. Stephenie Meyer does not have the gift of literary genius to write something like that without making it come off as a cheap romance novel. That is, however, why young girls enjoy her writing. It's stupid. It's young in style (as though written by a teenage girl with a vampire obsession), easy to comprehend and the main character is so bland that girls who read the book can easily place themselves in Bella's place.
I may have expanded past your question here but the short answer is that the book is not interesting in its own right, but it could have been if written by a skilled writer.
5. What have you studied? My major is in graphic design and my minor is creative writing. In my own time I study classic literature, poetry, and art history.
6. What is the one piece of Twilight that you hate the most? The thing I hate most about Twilight is how the author takes a subject as difficult and destructive as abuse, misogyny, jealousy and pedophilia and justifies these traits in Edward as positive. Oh, he's not abusive, jealous or misogynistic, he just loves her! Fact is, Edward controls everything about Bella. Her virginity, her friends, her schooling and even whether she lives or dies. I don't mean his choice whether or not to eat her, I mean that he controls her mortality vs her immortality. Throughout the series she has made the choice to become a vampire and doesn't vamp her until she's almost dead. Her choice doesn't matter, he thinks that she's too stupid to make the choice. He literally rules over her own life.
As for the whole pedophilia thing, while you can justifiably argue that Edward is robbing the cradle you can just as logically argue that Bella is robbing the grave.
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