So today's edition of The Snowball Effect is going to be a bit different. Remember those book reviews I did of The Great Gatsby and Brave New World? Well...we're not going to be doing that exactly today...today's going to be just me ranting about something that's been on my mind. Hopefully you guys will enjoy it!
Right, so the topic on my mind is one that's been circulating for a while now--Harry Potter vs. Twilight. DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNN! Yes, I know it's a touchy subject, and you're free to argue among yourselves about it, but this is my honest and unblemished opinion on the subject.
I've read Harry Potter for years, ever since Goblet of Fire, and because of this, I may play the part of the angry fanboy who just rages at anybody who says Harry Potter sucks. That being said, I honestly and objectively think that Harry Potter is, at the end of the day, a good series. Here's some of the things that I like about it: First off, it's got great character development. You've got Harry, who goes through all levels of the snot-nosed, whiny, Luke Skywalker-esque personality to eventually become a hero who has other people's best interests at heart; you've got Ron, who basically undergoes the same change into a brave young man; you've got Hermione, who goes from upturned-nose, "I'm-better-than-you-because-I'm-super-smart-and-I'm-the-personage-of-the-feminist-nature-that-naturally-resides-in-most-young-girls" Hermione to "I'll-stick-by-my-friends-because-I'd-be-horribly-screwed-if-it-weren't-for-them-and-I-kind-of-sort-of-maybe-like-hanging-out-with-them" Hermione; you've got Draco, who at the beginning of the series is a stuck-up brat, and at the end is still kind of a stuck-up brat but you realize that he was under loads of pressure the whole time so it's okay; you've got my favorite character, Neville, who takes a complete 180 from "so sorry for myself because my mum and dad are vegetables" to "what the heck did you just call me, giant spider"--the list goes on and on.
So, excellent character development is one reason.
Secondly, there's a definitive battle between good and evil, a line that's kind of hard to draw in Twilight, which I'll talk about in a moment. In Harry Potter, you can usually tell the difference between a good wizard and an evil wizard. Namely, most of the good wizards (the Aurors {for the most part, anyway} and the Order) are trying to protect Harry and the bad wizards (Death Eaters and their entourage) are trying to kill Harry. Kind of like a magical game of football, except only one person is allowed to score, and the only way you can prevent him from scoring is to kill him. With wands. And giants. So, actually, nothing like football.
Thirdly, the writing is pretty good (after the fourth book). She puts great detail into every scene, even ones that aren't ultimately important to the plot, because Rowling knows what every good writer does: EVERY SCENE IN A GOOD BOOK HAS SOME UNDERLYING PURPOSE TO IT. This is why you can spend hours picking apart The Grapes of Wrath or To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn in your AP English class--because, quite literally, every scene can have a good two or three layers of significance to them. Now, whether or not every one of those layers actually exists and/or needs to be expounded upon is a subject for another blog post. ;)
So, I'm limiting what I like to three things: Excellent character development, difference between good and evil and a struggle between the two, and good writing technique (for the most part). The one complaint I might have about Harry Potter is that the first three books are undeniably kids books. They were written with kids in mind, and as such, they are not very good books. Sorry, they just aren't. The first two movies are pretty good, but the books aren't.
So...Twilight...
I've never actually read Twilight, but I did listen to a guy on YouTube read through the first book, which was probably the most fun I've had making fun of a book aside from freshman English. As such, you should take my opinion with a bit of salt; however, I do mean what I say.
Okay, so basically the whole premise of Twilight is that this girl meets a guy who happens to be a vampire and she falls in love with him and he protects her from all sorts of catastrophes and she has to make up her mind about whether or not she wants to spend the rest of her life with him. Meanwhile, things are pretty much literally going to hell around them as vampires come streaming out of the woodwork and the "good" vampires (???) and werewolves (???????) try to fight them off. Correct me if I'm wrong, but from what I've seen of the movies (which, admittedly, is the two-minute long trailers that keep getting shoved in my face), that seems to be the gist of it.
Right. First off--the characters suck. The two most notable characters, Edward and Bella, are stupid. Mainly Bella is the stupid one, but Edward's kind of a soppy, sentimental idiot as well. Plus, "good vampires"? Good vampires!? Really? Basically, you've just taken a creature whose sole purpose is to kill us all and drink our blood, and you've given it a sense of morality and the sanctity of human life, which is impossible. If a creature needs to drink human blood to survive, chances are it's probably not going to view us as creatures whose lives are valuable as anything other than a food source. Certainly not a life companion.
But back to the stupidness of the characters--in the first book, Meyer says pretty much nothing about Bella except that she whines a lot about everything and is incredibly self-centered. Which, to be fair, is how a lot of good characters start. For instance, Ron Weasley--he was incredibly self-centered at first. And Edmund from The Chronicles of Narnia--the ultimate brat (not to mention, of course, Eustace, from the same series). But in all these other books, a definite change ultimately takes place in these characters. Again, I haven't read the Twilight series, but from what I see from the movies, she's just as self-centered and hormone-driven as she was in the first book.
Second--the point of the book is not the battle between "good" and "evil", if a distinction between the two even applies here. The main focus of the book is on the relationship between Bella and Edward, and later, between Bella and Jacob. The problem is that their relationship is UTTER GARBAGE!!!!! Honestly, when you read it, it's the most uninteresting, unimaginative drivel you could imagine. It's so horribly corny. It's like Romeo and Juliet level of corny, except Shakespeare had the excuse of being the first person to come up with it, not to mention that Shakespeare was actually an awesome writer. Stephanie Meyer is just plain bad. Seriously. Her writing is painfully awkward, there's just no way to splice it.
Finally (I know, this is getting kind of long), it would seem from my limited exposure to the books that Bella's main purpose is to worship Edward. Now, I have even more limited experience with relationships than I do with Twilight, but I will say that any relationship where one person is worshiping the other is always going to be unhealthy for both sides. Plain and simple. Sadly, I see too many young girls that actually think this is the way love works, and I'm starting to think that maybe Twilight is the reason. Because let's face it--it's much simpler to blindly devote yourself to a person than to actually reason with yourself about loving them. It's much easier, and I think that appeals to a lot of people.
In conclusion, the answer to the question of Harry Potter vs. Twilight is "Harry Potter, without question". At least in Harry Potter you have some good characters and role models, whereas I'm not seeing anything of the sort in Twilight.
This whole thing has got me rather interested, to say the least...I might actually pick up a copy of the last book of Twilight, just to see what it's like. Anyway, I'll keep you posted if my opinion changes.
Oh, I should probably put up something funny to reward you for reading all the way through this.
Until next time,
--CommanderSnowball
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