An Anti-Twihard's Dream Conversation with Stephenie Meyer via Her Interviews: What's Wrong with The Twilight Saga?

I'm very sorry, Twilight Fans... This will be a HARD post for you to get through. You do NOT need to read it. This argument is LONG over and absolutely NOBODY WON - except maybe Hollywood's tabloids (only for now, hopefully).

In fact, no one really needs to read this, anymore. It just seems that I have to 'prove my understanding' before fans will consider this 'uniting/sign the petition' thing - although I am also aware that my observations & discoveries might not matter to any of you, either - ha!

With this post, I'm trying to give CURRENT Anti-Twilight Fans a reason to unite. NONE of this mess is either Kristen Stewart or Robert Pattinson's fault. They are just the two chess pieces we use as symbols to fight over.

I came in on this argument late (November 2011 - three years after they started). Try to at least glance down the long list of side-links. Former Anti-Twilight Fans is where I got most of this information, although I had to do quite a bit of 'piecing together'.

And since I haven’t got a hope of ever having a real face-to-face conversation with Stephenie Meyer – my responses to her interview comments are probably the next best thing.

This is yet another condensed version of a much longer post that includes even more images (I did not create any of them) and extra commentary, especially at the end. But this is my ‘dream’ conversation with Stephenie Meyer. You will (eventually) see my responses mixed in with her's - but this starts out with her laying alot of foundation, first.

11/11/08: Stephenie Meyer Interview Twilight Press Conference Transcript
Question:  Did you write it with the idea of it was going to be sort of like preteens or young teenage girls? That was going to be your audience? 

Stephanie Meyer:  No, I had a very specific audience and it was a twenty-nine year old mother of three…

NON-Researched, Shallow Characters can't tell you
anything. The only place these characters were taking
Stephenie Meyer is were SHE wanted them to go.

Question:  Could you tell us a little bit, since you wrote this for yourself, what was the day you sat down and said I’m going to do this, and how did it get published and how did it all work?

Stephanie Meyer:  …I had an awesome dream and it was odd because it was coherent, because it was a really complicated conversation, and because I don’t ever dream about vampires. So that was also very odd.  And I woke up and I just was wrapped up in this idea of what was going to happen next. You know, was he going to kill her or were they going to be together, because it was fifty/fifty at that point.  And I wrote it down because there were a lot of nuances to the conversation I didn’t want to forget and I knew they would go. I forget everything.  And once I got started within that day I was completely hooked on writing, and this was something brand new to me. I had no ambitions for a writing career.  I had a career and I was really busy with it.

Question:  Being a mother?

Stephanie Meyer:  Being a mother, which is about the most full-time job you could have. And I had three little boys and there was no time to do something else, but I was obsessed with it from the first day… (see image just above this statement for proof of that).

Question:  How did you get it published? 

Stephanie Meyer:  Sheer luck or fate or what have you. I had the easiest publishing experience in the entire world.  I sent out fifteen courier letters to agents, got five no replies, nine rejections and one I want to see it.  A month later I had an agent. Another month later I had a three book deal with Little Brown.  And it does not happen that way, if you expect that going in get ready for heartbreak.

Shallow Character Writing & Shallow Storylines
are both COMMON literary mistakes amateur writers make.
BOTH of these things are usually corrected JUST SO
they don't CAUSE over-obsessions among ANYONE
- especially young, impressionable adults.
PLUS, not enough research because they're in an 'obsessive' hurry.
Not to mention, the books are barely 'professionally' edited.
Four BLACK X's against her publisher - Little, Brown and Company.
THIS is WHY Twilight was so 'special' - because NO OTHER
'professional publisher' would EVER have published it that way.

Question:  Why this enduring interest in vampires?

Stephanie Meyer:  Well my answer here has to be hypothetical because I am not a vampire fan and I never have been.  I don’t do horror.  I’m an enormous scaredy-cat. Hitchcock is about as much as I can handle and I love it, but anything more than that and you're not going to see me in the theater.  And I have never gotten it (THIS is WHY your story FAILED, Steph!)

What Exactly is Wrong with Twilight's 'Vampires'?

(Steph continuing) – why are people obsessed with vampires, you know, and I know a lot of people who are.  I'm actually surprised now I know how many more people are, and so the fact I would write about them is wildly out of character for me and bizarre, and nobody who knows me believed it for a really long time.  But this is my theory, having talked to a lot of people about why do you like vampires so much. Besides myself it seems like everybody really loves to be scared in a controlled environment.  Horror movies do really well, you know? It’s a big industry. People read a lot of scary books.  So I’m missing that gene, but clearly we like to be scared and they look at the monsters we can scare ourselves with and most of them are disgusting and, you know, gruesome and they're covered in nasty things. And we don’t want anything from them, we just want to get away from them. They're just there to scare us.  And then we've got vampires who are often beautiful and eternally youthful and rich and cultured and they live in castles.  There are so many things that are ideals in our culture that we want that they have, so there's this double-edged sword – they're going to kill us and they're terrifying and yet maybe I even want to be one.  I don’t want to be a vampire. A lot of other people do and I think it’s that duel nature – we have, you know, terrifying/intriguing. (You could NOT be more OFF with this theory - NONE of us were reading these books to get SPOOKED! Vampires have been ROMANTIC METAPHORS for ENTHRALLMENT for DECADES, especially for us WOMEN (but not just us, ha!)

Question:  What sets your vampires apart?

Stephanie Meyer:  Well in general, because I know there's a lot of varying (CHERISHED, TIME-HONORED) legends, you know, and there's the ones that turn into bats and mist and there's the ones that are more concrete.  In general, my vampires don’t have fangs and they don’t need them… (they also don't NEED BLOOD! Bloodless Vampires are an OXYMORON - DEBUNKED!).

Steph's interview will continue below... But, would you like to see how The Twilight Saga could possibly have been done BELIEVABLY and as close to Stephenie Meyer's general storyline as possible?

CLICK HERE for The Twilight Saga Story Review & Critique Along with the Twihard Fanfiction Rewrite Summary (takes a couple hours to read through it all), "The Twilight Saga: ReVAMPED & ReWOLFED"!

I may confuse you at times, because I will seem to do almost as much "sticking-up" for Stephenie Meyer as I do at ripping her writing to shreds. It's called "being honest". I know, it's a RARE thing. Stephenie's writing has a way of infuriating people to the point that she gets all kinds of barbs thrown her way - some of which IS misplaced. I'll set ALOT of things straight surrounding The Twilight Saga in here - not just HER stuff in the books.

In rewriting the summary of this saga, I also utilized ALOT of really good ideas I've read from other estranged Twilight fans from around the web. For instance, someone suggested that Bella never mentions any friends from Phoenix, so I've added a friend for Bella in this rewrite. Meredith is actually turning out to be alot more useful than I originally intended her to be - she was just supposed to help flesh out Bella's background, but she's coming in handy in New Moon, too.

So, aside from acknowledging the heavy influence of Stephenie Meyer's pretty story as *I* know it up to this point - I am ALSO including some of their really good ideas. So technically speaking - in so many ways - this is not just *my* revamped rewrite. :>

(CONTINUING) Question:  As the fan base grew for the series and then it became more of a phenomenon, did that change in any way how you approached the later look? And also what was your response to the fan response of the fourth book?

Stephanie Meyer:  Well as far as changing things, it couldn't because I actually had the first three books and a rough draft of the fourth one written before Twilight ever came out, so the story was there. (The UNRESEARCHED, OVERLY-ADDICTIVE, ERRONEOUS VAMPIRE STORY THAT WOULD CAUSE THOUSANDS IF NOT MILLIONS OF GIRLS/WOMEN SIGNIFICANT EMOTIONAL PAIN - WAS THERE and simply COULD NOT be changed. Then it should NEVER have been PUBLISHED!!)

And it’s funny, I had this conversation with a friend of mine who wrote nonfiction, like obscure historical stories, and she was saying how it must be so hard for you because when my editors come in they can't change anything. This is what happened.  And it kind of clicked in for me because that's exactly how I feel, like it’s historic, like this is what happened. It’s not like I can just change things, this is how it went down. (Sorry, Steph - it CAN and SHOULD have been changed! I can't WAIT until I get to the interview where you say, "I wish I could GO BACK and REWRITE TWILIGHT!)  And that's a kind of awkward position to be in when your editor does want you to change things. So the fan expectations, I already knew the story. (What DID you say to get your publishers to publish Breaking Dawn like this, ANYWAY?!!)

It did add a little bit of pressure and it was particularly difficult when, you know, when I’m writing I tune that out and I don’t think about it at all.  But when I’m editing, I get online and I see one blog that says if A and B don’t happen I’m burning this book, and then on another page if A and B do happen, this is going to be the worse book ever. (Your FANS were DOING THAT because you got them SO RIDICULOUSLY OBSESSED!!)

So you know going in and there is no way I can please everybody. I can't even please half the people because everybody wants things that are so different and they’ve written this story in their heads to a way that they are happy with. (NO - we were ALREADY FAMILIAR with AND LOVED Vampires and YOU DIDN'T - so we had CERTAIN PRECONCEIVED (and again, cherished!!) IDEOLOGY surrounding them BEFORE you debunked so many of us with Breaking Dawn. You could have written ANY 'ol damn ending for them - and really, that seems like what you did - and your OVERLY-OBSESSED FANS would have LAPPED it UP like HONEY!!)

I read an interview that George Lucas did about Indiana Jones and how all the fans have already written their sequel and if they don’t see that sequel, they're going to be upset. And I really found myself in that same position.  And so I was braced going in, I knew that this was going to be bad, and it was also good (for YOU!!!).  That was the thing about the fourth book, is it was so much more in every aspect. It was bigger than I ever would have dared to imagine.  It was better in a lot of ways and it was worse in a ton of ways. And it was a lot of overwhelming stuff that I couldn't really take in.  I found that it’s easier for me, when I’m at home and I don’t have to talk into a microphone in front of a bunch of people, I just forget that this is all going on and I just live my life.  And the writing’s a part of it, but I don’t think about this part because it’s too hard. (It's just TOO DAMN HARD to admit you SHOULD have put in the WORK, Stephenie. Many of us are GROWN UPS out here; and we CAN ALL SEE how BADLY your books ARE written. It's kind of hard to HIDE your "mistakes" - and obviously even HARDER to ADMIT and OWN UP to them, THEN or NOW!)

This interview revealed what an INCREDIBLY SMUG AMATEUR author she was/is. Oh Yeah, I would LOVE to have a face-to-face conversation with Stephenie Meyer, her negligent publishing company AND her GREEDY production company - a roundtable discussion, LoL!! :) 

Yeah, this is only ONE interview of Stephenie Meyer's and I know you're thinking I MUST be insane to be THIS worked up over one silly little interview - But, I've already read most of them - they're ALL this maddening!!

The Latest Ridiculous Theories Regarding Just WHO
the MEAN ‘Fans’ are out in Internetland
This post goes into extreme detail about how the obsessions of Twilight’s
different FanFactions developed and progressed. It is also the
BEST REASON for ALL Twihard & Current Anti-Twihard Fans to UNITE.

PEACE... TRUCE... PETITION
Let's gang up on the big meanies who deserve it!!

What is the Difference Between
Actual Celebrity News & Hollywood PR Assaults?
(Petition is in here for ALL celebs – sign by email or twitter)

Questions for Stephenie Meyer About Her Successful Literary Failure,

The Twilight Saga: A Post Mortem

In *My* Anti-Twihard Opinion...

The Thing that Most Clearly Debunks The Twilight Saga
The Movie Breaking Dawn Part 1

Movie Review

For those of you who don't like to read:

Link to the 'Twilight: Breaking Dawn Does NOT Suck'

YouTube Video Channel DEBUNKING BDp1 & BDp2

by 2008/2009 Twilight Fans. The 1st review is also a
BDp1 movie review by a disappointed Twilight Fan;
but she actually read all the books and it is the
most relatable review. Btw, #10 - #13 are mine. ;)