Disclaimer: I avidly hated Twilight back in college. I read about 70% of the first book, thought it was rubbish, and never looked back. I did not think it was shitty, however, because it was a love story, because it was about vampires, or because it was written for teenagers (specifically teenaged girls). Those are, in fact, things I have always loved. I didn’t like Twilight because it wasn’t to my taste. In other words, I didn’t think it was any good. I didn’t care about the characters, I didn’t care about the stakes, and I didn’t care for the writing style. In fact, I just went back and reread some excerpts, and whoa am I surprised to learn my feelings might even be stronger in the “this isn’t good” category. But I totally concede that I should have never been such an asshole about how much I hated it. I’ll own that.
So we’re in a Twilight renaissance, as it were, and that’s great. I have grown as a person and become a huge proponent of “love what you love unequivocally.” And because of this, I have been thinking yet again about what is, to me, the weirdest criticism of the whole franchise and the thing everyone gets wrong about it. It’s not the dumbest criticism, not the meanest, not even the most deserved, but the WeIrDeSt criticism of the Twilight franchise that absolutely everyone is wrong about.
Sparkly vampires is the coolest goddamned concept, and I’ll fucking fight you if you disagree.
Okay, I’m not totally obtuse. I understand the myriad of ways people can make fun of the concept of sparkly vampires, especially when you use the word “sparkly,” but if you give it two seconds of thought, the fact that vampires don’t go out into the sun in the Twilight universe because their skin is too beautiful is the most unique world-building detail anyone has ever added to vampirology, and when Mrs. Meyer says the story idea came to her in a dream, I absolutely believe her because that is a divine fucking intervention quality idea. It’s freaking sick. Like, I fucking love that shit, yo!
Of course, just about 99% of the hate for this concept is homophobic/mysogynistic bullshit. Glitter is “girly,” and being feminine is a crime for men, and that makes Edward Cullen “gay,” and being gay is hilarious and bad and blah, blah, and here’s a hundred memes about killing this person who I perceive to be homosexual because of how he looks because that is not problematic in the least. (For clarity, I am mocking this line of thinking because it’s disgusting, and I hate it with the passion of a thousand burning vampires in the sun.)
But if you can get past those bigoted thoughts and just consider the addition to vampire lore that their skin is like diamonds or whatever, like, is that not just the most fun concept??? They can use it to lure victims, to blind enemies, just to look fuckin rad as hell. Their nemeses can out them in public on a sunny day, they can cause car accidents, probably set stuff on fire, get confused with goddamned aliens, and identify a homophobe within a 20 mile radius all by flashing a little ankle. Like, again, it’s amazing. It takes away the “I burst into flames in the sun” trope which is annoying and bad without kyboshing the whole “I need to be active mostly at night” trope which is sexy and good, and it’s unique as fucking shit, my dudes! It is my favorite thing about the whole world Stephanie Meyer created, and it’s like the number one thing people make fun of when they talk shit about Twilight. What the fuck is up with that, Kyle? What the fuck?
So maybe it’s just me and my taste, and maybe Twilight actually is really good, and I’m just the worst and like the only bad thing about the series, but I feel the need to stand up for this little tidbit that Twilight gave to pop culture. I’ll never say it was all good, or even half of it was good, or even…you get it, but I will defend vampires sparkling with my fucking life, bro. That shit is tight.
A.K. Caggiano 