It’s ridiculous to question Harry Potter as literature. Besides, the trend now is to blindly consider anything highly commercial with a large obsessive fan following as over-rated to sound cool. Sure, it’s not Gregory David Roberts, Gabriel Marquez or Dostoevsky, but it was never intended to be. Harry Potter is supposed to be light on the language simply to market it as a book for all ages. In fact, it’s also very British youth-y. Rowling’s characters, too, are traditional in many senses – witches and wizards all seem to marry early. But, she has enough variety in her characters to not turn it into a *****ist novel. Bella is everything a woman is forced to be by a chauvinist culture, but you have Mrs Weasley in Harry Potter, who though she is very traditional, is very underrated as a character of great value – she is an excellent duellist, yet she chooses to live a homely life.

Can you ever imagine Harry Potter being the success it is if it were written in an old descriptive out-dated style of writing such as that of Rand, Tolkien or Hardy?

Also, there NO original ideas in literature, and something like fantasy borrows from the same sources: mythology and religion.

Twilight is not a compelling lovestory, but a novel that gives love a bad name. It’s an ingenuous attempt at creating a lovestory. What does anyone learn from Twilight? The protagonist, at best, has a vulgar obsession with a puritanical vampire who thinks he knows what’s best for Bella. Bella herself is a girl who is comfortable being subjugated by Edward – she shows no character or strength. She practically worships her. It’s not about Twilight being *****ist, it’s just a bad example for any human being to relate to. Female Disney characters like Mulan, Belle and Pocahantas are much more complex and endearing, with their own solid personalities, and the way they grow. In fact, Pocahantas was an existing woman and Mulan is based on a legendary Chinese woman Hua Mulan.

All the characters in the movie have shallow ideals. At best, Rosalie has some depth to her character, but it’s a depth that we understand for ourselves, and not something Meyer’s was able to bring out. She seemed like the only character with potential.

It’s cliche. The women are care-givers and the men are the brute force.

If you take Jacob and Edward’s relationship, it’s probably the weakest point in the book. It’s simply two high school kids fighting over a girl because “you don’t know him, he’s not good for you – just stay away from him”. A book that tells a compelling story really does a bad job considering Bella keeps swinging from Cullen to Black by her fancy. She essentially leads Black on, and then moves away from him, engages in reckless behaviour when Cullen moves away – this is not a lovestory, but a weakly built character. If you knew a girl like Bella, she’d be a social reject, too, and rightly so – for being a freaky, clingy, suicidal girl who has no aim in life, and blames the world for her social failures, considering she’s the kid who doesn’t seem to want to approach anyone.

She’s mean to her father who’s only trying to makes things comfortable for her, even though, he too is a weak character, and Meyer’s made him sloppy and clueless just so he doesn’t form part of the plot. Bella is very selfish. She doesn’t understand the consequences of her tantrums and immature decisions on her parents and her friends. In fact, the relationship between her and Cullen is given such singular importance, her father becomes invisible in the plot – the relationship that is supposed to be important isn’t even given worth.

Meyer’s is so obsessed with putting her chastity views out to the readers, she completely neglects people in the book that should be given a damn about. The relationships between the Cullen’s itself is so constipated. Edward Cullen himself is such a half-baked and raped representation of some cross between a wannabe Vampire D, Edward Rochester and an Edwardian gentleman. Bella literally endangers the lives of the Cullens by being a major hurdle in their lives – either you take it or leave it. She whines about what an intrusion she is, then she goes on a suicidal rampage when she’s made the Cullen’s forced to move out of their humble abode. The Natives are shown as jerks who won’t listen to common sense, but simply go by their ancient duty of ensuring vampires stick to eating deer or whatever it is that they do.

In fact, most people in the book are very self-centred, consumed by their own problems with little regard for others. Rosaline is forever despondent what with being turned into a vampire, but very glad she had an opportunity to kill the perpetrators of the crime she was victim of. For a person who has lived so long, she’s quite the bitter person to live with. It’s understandable she has a penchant for giving birth, but her story was on that could have allowed for better character development and a more complex plot that included her, but Meyer’s never bothered with that. The existence of all the other characters is just a convenience to create a plot that primarily focuses on Bella being in love with Cullen. In fact, apart from this unrealistic, kitschy, vulgar and maudlin depiction of love, Twilight has nothing going for itself.

As a narrative it is overly descriptive. In fact, she makes up for the lack of a consistent plot by filling pages with descriptions of Edward, Bella or their love for each other. Most descriptions are either of the physiognomy or some sentimental, exaggerated sentiment. The language is horrible. You can’t read the book without vomiting a little.

The movies are a constipated adaptation of the book. Whilst, everyone seems to have verbal diarrhoea in the book, everyone has verbal constipation in the movie. Any conversation with Bella or Edward is awkward. Either it’s bad script, bad acting or bad direction.

It’s so hard to learn anything from Twilight because the obsession Bella has for Cullen keeps glaring in your face. It’s like she’s shoving his giant glittery balls into your face. Cullen himself is such a naive, stupid and reckless boy sometimes – like, his stupid attempt to ‘expose’ himself, essentially causing the Cullen family a lot of problems with the Voltouri or however you spell them. And, if those tourists are being lead to their deaths, I find it fascinating nobody has reported such a large gather missing anywhere.

Twilight is not an original story. Most of the concepts are used concepts in the same way that Harry Potter or LOTR are not original works- both have stock characters, themes and derive their basics from mythologies and religious stories. That’s common for any fantasy. In fact, this what makes Phillip Pullman a great fantasy writer – the relative uniqueness of his work. I would easily consider Pullman, Rowling, Tolkein, Le Guinn, and Lewis (many others I haven’t mentioned) as great fantasy writers, and would never consider Meyers to be placed in that list.

If you want a compelling love story then you should read The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki. It’s realistic – the plot, the character, the sincere depiction of emotions. In fact, Japanese literature, though depressing, has love stories that are much more moving. If you want violent love, then read Russian literature. If you want romantic love, then read some British literature. There are so many cliched options that are still of great value all across the world than goddamn Twilight. Heck, pull out a popular manga like Bleach, and the dynamics of the relationships between Ichigo and Rukia or Ichimaru and Rangiku are so much more endearing and complex than the crap you read in Twilight. Vampire Knight itself represents the relationship between a human and vampire as both depressing, frustrating, violent, passionate and confusing in ways Twilight fails to achieve. I mean, I had a better time seeing Buffy deal with her forbidden love for vampire Angel than having to suffer the torment of seeing two lovers pretending to be Romeo and Juliet by deliberating making things difficult for them and everyone else, just so Meyer’s has an excuse to continue writing a kitschy novel.

Folk songs like “On top of old smoky” has more substance and plot than Twilight.

(Excuse any typos, I was very passionate about getting this through to you.)

Um, actually Spanish is Americas second language and there are tens of millions of people living there with Spanish heritage, names and surnames. You do know that America borders Mexico right and that a large part of the USA was once Spanish speaking Mexico?

Little tip for you. Next time at least try knowing a little about what youre talking about. Otherwise you will just continue to come off as a total moron.