A Matter of Opinion

Recently my dear mother, on persuasion of her boss, has taken up reading the Twilight series of books. I have not read any of them apart from excerpts, and I have no desire to read them in full.

Some of you may recall that I occasionally refer to myself as a "Recovering Goth." Everly, in particular, met me on a day when I was clad in head-to-toe black. I've read just about every piece of vampire literature in existence from the era when the genre became popular, and then some. The popularity of Twilight causes me to reflect on how vampirism was originally portrayed in literature; vampires, for all their glamour, were evil. Vampirism in the original mythos was a perversion so severe that the Devil himself would not accept a vampire's soul. In other tellings, vampires were themselves a form of visible, earth-dwelling demon.

I find it interesting that in our century something once used as a literary device to indicate ultimate evil has been "re-imagined" into something that is merely scientific; an imbalance in chromosomes brought on by infection by a certain venom. I may expand on my thoughts on this later.

I would also like to add this merely as a point of interest, and not in attempt to insult or distress anyone, but Stephanie Meyer's Mormon faith does have an effect on her writing. While this contributes some virtues, such as abstinence, it also raises issues. Her concept of the relationship and marriage between her two main characters is heavily flavored by the Mormon concept of "Sealing" a marriage. I'm no expert in theology, but I would imagine a scholar of Christian religion could find many more references amidst the pages. If you treasure the doctrines of your own denomination, this could unnerve you or raise issues; a devout Catholic (or Baptist, or Adventist, or...), for example, may perceive it to be akin to Mormon propaganda.

Not to mention as far as books go, they're quite poorly written.

This ended up longer than I thought. Hmm. Maybe I should research a bit more and write again.