they tried to make me go to rehab. . .

Hi, my name is Stephanie, and I'm addicted to Twilight. (This is the part where you all say "Hi Stephanie! The first step is admitting you have a problem). I'm not sure what the other steps are, but then again, I'm not sure I'm ready to kick this habit just yet. Still, I can't for the life of me figure out how I can be so obsessed with something I dislike so intensely at the same time. It's embarrassing, the crazy tween urge I have to devour these books. It's un-dignifying!

As previously mentioned, I finished the first book, "Twilight," in two days. I skimmed the "good" parts of "New Moon" during the week. I did some research on "Eclipse" and decided to forgo it completely for the time being and head straight for the hot mess that is "Breaking Dawn." The last of the Twilight Saga series, it is by far the most frustrating, ten gazillion page book I have ever read. I should preface this rant/review by admitting to skipping several pages because I just wanted to get to the end.

So here's what's happened so far in the world of Twilight (spoiler alert!!!):
Bella is a geeky, clumsy, plain-Jane who falls for dreamy vamp Edward, who wants to kiss her face and suck her blood. They have some serious love/hate drama, before ending up proclaiming their love and deciding to stay 2gether 4eva, at the prom. In the second book, Edward decides the blood lust is more overpowering than the love, so he takes off, telling Bella to get over him. What does she do instead? She starts hanging out with a werewolf (apparently all that's missing from Washington state are zombies, but hey, that could be Book 5), naturally. Together they do all kinds of CRAZY shit like ride motorcycles (!!!). Some really boring crap happens with some characters I can't even remember, and Bella and Edward end up together in the end. Some more CRAZY SHIT happens in book 3, end the eternally sexy one and his getting-older-by-the-second end up engaged at 18 (what an episode of Engaged and Underaged THAT would make).

Cut to book 4. Despite Bella's anti-marriage views, she's agreed to tie the knot with Edward in exchange for immortal life. Romantic, no? Anyway, at least at this point it still makes some semblance of sense, in a Romeo and Juliet kind of way (which, btw, Meyer quotes ENDLESSLY in "New Moon." For the record, Meyer's books shouldn't be in the same LIBRARY as Shakespeare). They have a grossly romantic (but I'm a girl, so I eat that shit up) wedding and vow to live happily ever after, literally. A honeymoon on a private island in Brazil leaves Edward able to sparkle freely and the newlyweds to experiment with superhuman vamp/mortal human sex. And this is where the freaky shit starts.

Don't look, they're about to get "pulled gently into deeper water." P.S.- That's a euphemism for sex.

First of all, Edward ravages Bella, causing her to wake up the morning after covered head-to-toe in bruises but remembering only the good parts. While I can (begrudgingly) understand Meyer's desire to not describe the sex scenes in vivid detail, and to wait until they're married to go THERE (after all, she's aware of the legions of girls reading these books and hanging on Every. Single. Word.). But really, is picking up the morning after when Bella is battered as a result really the best route? Though the sex was necessary to facilitate the pregnancy (oh yes, I'm getting to that), what did she gain by adding that it was so violent? ANOTHER scene where Edward gets all broody and angry for the pain and danger he causes her, because there certainly weren't enough of those in the first 3 books. I'm just saying, it seems to send some pretty confusing messages about sex, and I'm 24!

So, anyway, the night of maniacal sex leads Bella to discover she's pregnant. Of course, since she did it with a vamp, it's not a normal baby. Instead, she's carrying a rapid-growing, super-human potentially demon baby. While everyone seems to think she'd be best to get "rid" of it (gasp!) Bella grows an immediate attachment to the parasitic thing inside her that's quickly sucking the life out of her. Without going into too much detail (seriously, I'd like to forget I ever read that part), she gives birth and is about to die, so Edward finally has no choice but to turn her. And this is where things really start to piss me off.

One of the reasons Edward gives for not wanting to turn he is how hard the adjustment to vamp life is. As someone who knows a thing or two about vampires, and different vampire legends (I'm not a weirdo, I just watch a loooot of Buffy), this makes sense to me. Edward and his vamp fam don't feed on humans, a hunger they must work at to suppress. So, Bella having just given birth to a half human, half vamp baby, and being newly vamped herself sets the reader up for some intriguing dilemmas: How will Bella deal with the vamp transition? How many humans will she eat before she learns to control her desires? Will her partially human baby be one of them? (Cue creepy horror music). All of these questions are fleshed out in about 4 pages. Apparently Bella is super special, adjusts to vamp strength in about 2 seconds, has no problem hunting animals instead of people, and never even THINKS about eating her daughter. (OK, so the mother/daughter bond actually makes sense here, but c'mon, wouldn't it have been fun if she wanted to bite her just a LITTLE? It certainly wouldn't have even made the list of Top 10 Freakiest Things that happen in the book).

Speaking of her daughter, the idea of a half vampire, half human vampire is pretty interesting. Will it suck blood or eat french fries? (Both, apparently, in case you were wondering). She will also grow rapidly, and be walking, talking and passing people visions through her touch at three weeks old. Right, OK.

So that's, like, 400 pages of the book. The other 300 deal with the vamp clan the Volturi, who supposedly think Bella and Edward's baby is an abomination and want to kill it. They both gather some vamp friends to back them up and get ready to Battle. To make a very fucking long story short, they get together, take a vote, and everyone lives happily ever after. Seriously. Seriously!

And the worst part about all of this? I kept reading. At no point did I read something and say "I can't take this crap anymore!" and fling the tome across the room in frustration, despite the fact that frustration mounts with each passing sentence. None of it makes any sense. Every time Meyer sets up the reader with a genuine plot, she craps all over it in 10 seconds, then spends 40 pages letting Bella talk about how sexy gorgeous Edward is, especially now that she's looking at him through her perfect vamp eyes.

So sparkly and beautiful. And perfect. And angel-faced. And sparkly.

So, why am I still writing about this? Mostly to attempt to justify all the time I'm spending on it by pointing out the many, many flaws and too-freaky things that go on (dude, did I mention Bella's werewolf friend, Jake, has this thing where he "imprints" on a girl involuntarily when he finds his soulmate and he does this on her baby, so now he's all protective and hanging around her all pervy-like all the time because they're supposedly destined to hook up when she's...NOT A BABY? Yeah, that's not awkward at ALL). But also because I've been trying to figure out how Stephenie Meyer could take so many genuinely good ideas and manage to mess them up so badly. It's so so so bad. And still, I can't stop. Still, it's like my own personal version of crack. I know I need to quit, but dammit it feels so good!

Really, though, these books could have been amazing. Instead, they are addicting in a hate-yourself-in-the-morning kind of way. In a SHIT!-I-wish-I-had-thought-of-this-first-cause-I-would-have-rocked-it kind of way. I read that Stephenie Meyer started writing another version of the first book, Twilight, from the perspective of Edward and his torturous love/eat feelings for Bella. For me, THAT would have been a good book. I think limiting the series from the perspective of Bella diminished any chance she had of putting together a solid story. Instead, we're stuck in Bella's whiny head listening to her drone on and on about how Edward's bringing sexy back hard and we never get any other perspectives.

So what am I going to do with all of this? I'm going to write my own damn vampire novel. And it's going to involve research, and planning, and a coherent thought process, and third-person perspective, and be interesting, and have well-developed characters, and an actual storyline. Granted I probably won't be half as obsessed with writing it as I was with reading Twilight and, if it were to ever get published, it would probably sell, like 5 copies in comparison to the 25 mil combined all the Twilight books have sold. But at least I'd still have my dignity. For the most part.

(For the record, though this probably won't be the last time I binge-blog about Twilight, I promise I have more interesting things to write about, but I should warn you I am pretty easily obsessed. Thankfully, I'm as easily distracted.)