An Introduction to Twilight and Twatlight

"Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense." -Watchmen

So the Twilight movie is due to show in theaters November 21, and I’m expecting to see a renewal (and increase by way of new fans) of Twilight-related enthusiasm. So far I haven’t been disappointed; the premiere had a red carpet two blocks long and was packed with screaming fans. Sounds horrifying, right?

Well worry not my dears! For the internet has lulz to make you feel better. For Twilight, the lulz are associated with and usually originate from Twatlight. Now before I go on to explain what exactly Twatlight is, I should politely offer you a chair, some tea, biscuits and a spoiler warning. All set? Then let’s move on.

So Twilight is a teratology of books by Stephanie Meyer (more on both later). They are (debatable) romance novels detailing the trials of the human Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen.

As the books became bestsellers, they began to develop an enthusiastic fanbase. The series was very popular with young readers, leading many to compare it to Harry Potter. (Today, however, Twilight has enough public visibility that you can't get away with trying to compare the two without massive protest. For the link, read the comments, and if some of them don't make you laugh, you are very culturally deprived.) Initially called Twilighters, some of these fans began to be known as Twimoms and Twihards. Twihards (twitards occasionally) are Twilight fans who have something akin to an obsession with the series, being able to relate to it at all moments of their life. Twimoms are adult twihards who are married and/or are mothers. They have a something of an infamous reputation among other fans, as there are stories of child neglect and impersonating staff in order to get on the set and talk to the cast.

As more and more people read the books, a new faction of readers developed. (Geez, I feel like I'm describing the precursor to a political revolution.) They did not see the purported literary greatness to the books, which are filled with purple prose, near little engaging plot, and shallow characters (although some still did enjoy the books as guilty pleasures). However, for the most part, Twilighters outnumbered these dissidents. One of the biggest boosts for these dissidents was the Livejournal community oh no they didn't!, which focuses on celebrity gossip. A number of Twilight posts on the community drew a surprising amount of comments (often in sparkling text), drawing ire of other members who began to call call the book "Twatlight". This spurred the creation of a new Livejournal community, ontd_twatlight, dedicated to being above pairing wars (Team Switzerland) and the lulz that came out of the series.

At this point I should probably give more background on the books themselves. Originally planned for three books, the series ended up with four: Twilight (published 2005), New Moon (2006), Eclipse (2007) and Breaking Dawn (2008). The series began as a dream Stephenie Meyer (from here on out referred to SMeyer because the various spellings her name seems to take) had, and wrote out for her own amusement. They focus on a girl named Isabella Swan (better known as Bella), who has just moved to Forks, Washington. She finds herself bored with everything in her new life except her beautiful and mysterious schoolmates, the Cullens. Foremost, she becomes enthralled by Edward Cullen and falls in love with him. She soon discovers that the Cullens are vampires, leading to a fairly standard dilemma about vampire-human relationships. I won't continue because I'm dying of boredom. I'll just need to add one vital fact about SMeyer's vampries: they sparkle in the sun. (No, my dear reader, I'm not high. They sparkle.) Thus, sparkles in text and pictures have become a meme in the Twilight fandom. If you want to get better summary of the books, Cleolinda Jones (of Movies in 15 Minutes fame) has great recaps. (And I have to mention The Washington Post's scathing reveiw: "Reader, I hurled." But some fans still think the series is "AMAZING". )

The writing style doesn't help either. It is full of purple prose and often gets caught up in description (usually of Edward since most of the series if from Bella' point of view) that can end up rather tiring. In fact, one reader took note of the number of time various adjectives were used through out the first book. While detail in writing is always enriching for a reader, this amount tends to be a bit overboard, and I personality think it is the mark of an amateur writer. In fact, the couple pages I read of Twilight vividly reminded me of poorly written fanfiction, albeit spellchecked. Also mocked by readers is the frequent usage of the word "chagrin".

Now for a quick rundown of the characters you're likely to see mentioned in Twilight discussions (or meme spams). Bella is vapid with notable character traits of being a klutz and being in love with Edward. Edward doesn't really have much of a personality, but if forced to describe one for him, I'd say he's a cautious and protective person. (That might be a polite description of him; you could also say he stalks Bella. But it's for love so it's totally excused.) It might be worth mentioning that the pair are described as analogous to a lamb and lion respectively, and a famous line of dialogue between had Edward asking Bella "do I dazzle you?" to which she replied "frequently." The lion and lamb quote has been made into tattoos by fans, but the later is probably the most frequently quoted lines of the series.

Moving on to other characters, there's Jacob Black (occasionally called Failcob) who is a Native American werewolf. As you can expect (if you are familiar with such clichés), the werewolves have an uneasy relationship with the vampires, and Jacob also ends up as the temptation to make the love triangle that every romance novel seems to need. This has lead to shipping wars, with some fans believing Bella and Jacob should be together (Jacob has more character than Edward, and thus has more chemistry with Bella) and other fans believing Bella and Edward should be together (because they're practically fated). These fans declare themselves to be part of Team Jacob or Team Edward, depending on who they think Bella should end up with. Of course, Edward wins Bella in the end, as any person aware of clichés and tropes can tell that Jacob is just a red herring, so to speak. The rest of the character that I'll be mentioning are Cullen "children", who are all vampires part of the Cullen coven. Emmett is a big guy married to Rosalie Hale, who is very pretty. I only mention them because there is a hilarious fan rendition of Emmett and Edward, Growing up Cullen (start from the bottom post). Alice can see the future (and helps the Cullens make money) and is married to Jasper Hale, who was a soldier in the Civil War. I also want to mention I like to declare myself "Team Alice" because Alice and Bella have a good relationship, and hey, lesbianism! (So join my team!)

One character you don't meet until the last book, Breaking Dawn, is Renesmee or "Nessie" (which makes her pretty easy to make fun of, as you just need a picture of the loch ness monster). She is the half-vampire, half-human daughter of Bella and Edward, despite that she defies the world's rules that vampires are impotent. Good job at continuity, SMeyer. Anyways, Nessie is not only special in that she went against what the author said was possible, she also manages to defy the whole "stuck at one age" part of vampirism and manages to grow up to a young adult very quickly. (Yet another cliché; on TV Tropes- which I won't link you to out of kindness- they call this SORAS: Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome.) Anyways, her presence is quite horrifying to readers, and makes great material for "let's traumatize the Twilight noob", an informal game often found in comments to posts and articles about Twilight. This is because Bella's pregnancy is unnatural; the baby grows very fast, breaking Bella's hips, spine, and ribs in the process. In order to save Bella and the baby, Edward uses his teeth to cut open Bella's stomach: "Like metal being shredded apart. [...] Vampire teeth--a surefire way to cut through vampire skin." Yes, Twilight is a perfectly safe and normal series for young girls to be reading. Completely wholesome and not traumatizing at all. Jacob also imprints (a werewolf related falling in love thing) on Nessie, which is quite disturbing considering he had been considered a love interest for Nessie's mother. Yes, Chris Hansen, of "To Catch a Predator" fame, is often evoked in Twilight mockery; besides Jacob and Nessie's relationship, Edward is about a hundred years older than Bella.

On an interesting side note, Nessie wasn't meant to happen at all. The series was originally contracted to be a trilogy, and was expected to end with Bella's marriage to Edward. However, everyone loves money, and after the smashing successes of the first couple of books, SMeyer's publishing company let her extend the series to publish Breaking Dawn. SMeyer was also set to publish another book related to the Twilight series, Midnight Sun, which retold Twilight from Edward's point of view. However, she discovered that a version of an incomplete draft was on the internet, and she got upset, put the book's publishing on indefinite hiatus, and released the first twelve chapters of her current draft version on her site. Let me back up and repeat that: she got upset over the release of an incomplete draft that wasn't even the version she was currently working on. Very mature and reasonable, that SMeyer. Of course, some fans speculate that the real reason for the abandonment of Midnight Sun was because all the negative reaction to Breaking Dawn, which severely divided fans into groups of vocal criticism and praise. Anyways, from Midnight Sun we learned: Edward is a stalker and actually has a personality, and SMeyer doesn't have spell check. (I think this book also has Alice telling Bella she loves her, which is when I decide to become part of Team Alice.)

And now we get to the movie, where a lot more of the jokes and memes manifest. The film itself seems to be corny (like the book, I suppose) and shallow, and in my opinion, oddly manages to make some decent looking actors and actresses look bad.

First, let's talk about Edward. His casting was a highly debated topic among fans, as Edward had to be heartthrob. Popular choices for Edward were French actor Gaspard Ulliel and British actor Tom Sturridge (you know a guy is popular with girls when his Wikipedia picture is named "Tom Studrridge"). However, the powers that be chose Cedric Diggory, or Robert Pattinson as he was known in real life. Initially this caused some outrage, as Pattinson was not considered to be as good-looking as the other two actors. The majority of fans have been won over by now, and there are a good number of them that will riot just to get near him, which just goes to show you that fangirls are fickle and dangerous. (Poor kid, he didn't know what he was getting into with Twilight; even Encyclopedia Dramatica expressed pity for him at one point. And when that site feels sorry for you, you know you're in a very pitiful state.)

But even if some Twihards and Twatlighters alike didn't like Pattinson's looks, they were probably won over by his personality. In fact, I started following Twilight news more closely because of Robert, or Rpattz as he became dubbed. He has odd and interesting interviews (he once offered up the nickname "Spunk Ransom" instead of Rpattz, and he aspired to be a rapper when he was younger), has poor taste in fashion (leading fans to refer him to as "hobo" sometimes), and is surprisingly normal (he's horrible at action stunts, often appears strung out, and even after Harry Potter he wasn't ready for the mania of Twilight fans).

One of the best things about him are his comments about the Twilight series. An interview with Empire magazine had him saying: "when you read the book, it's like 'Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself. I mean every line is like that." He tells E!'s Ben Lyons what more blunt critics of the books had been saying for a while: "When I read it, it seemed like (grimaces) I was convinced that ... Stephenie was ... convinced that she was Bella, and uh, and you, it wasn't, 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 it's like, I was just convinced that, that this woman is mad, she's completely mad, and she's in love with her own fictional creation." (Transcript I quoted). Yes, he's badmouthing the source material for his own movie because it's the truth; don't you love him? He also has outbursts like "it's not even fucking raining!" (said in response to a set assistant opening an umbrella for him).

One other notable thing about RPattz is that he is good friends ("BFF 4 LYF") with the above mentioned Tom Sturridge, or Tomstu. The two go clubbing together, possibly share (hobo) clothes, and fans like to joke that the two hang out at RPattz's "Den of Sin" to drink and get high. Because of his relative low profile in America, Tomstu is not the focus of photographs, and appears lurking in the background of Rpattz pictures, resulting in fans also referring to him as a creeper.

Now I'll move onto two others: Bella and Jasper. Now Bella didn't have as big of a casting argument among the fans, but many fans weren't that fond of Kristen Stewart (some said she was too pretty to be the average Bella). The most notable thing about KStew I'll mention is that her other nickname is "bitchface". Jasper is played by Jackson Rathbone (their combined names gives the nickname Jacksper), who is often seen with a guitar. This has lead to memes and references to Jacksper singing songs about the Confederacy.

Hopefully that gives you an introduction about Twilight and its related lulz. For a more detailed overview of Twilight, visit Cleolinda's Cleoland wiki, where you can find more information on interviews. The lulz are harder to specifically track down, but if you look (hint google some of the things I've mentioned, click some links), then I think you'll be able to find some.

All photo shopped images used are made by ontd_twatlight. Other images were found floating around the internet. Watchmen quote is because I can.