I’ve only read the first book, though I’ve seen the first and third movies. (I saw the third one because I was in America volunteering at the time, and one of the volunteers was a fan so…)
I actually found some of the back stories interesting in the third movie, and the acting was certainly better. Though Edward is still a horrific misogynistic stalker who I could never like. Bella is just this kid I just would otherwise laugh in my head at if I met her IRL, because she’s just not as mature as she thinks she is.
To be honest I despised the book and first movie, but the third movie had some interesting things- like that one girl dressing up in a bride dress and killing the men (including her fiance) who raped her. Or that one guy who fought in a war setting as a vampire. And the idea of a secret organisation of vampires trying to keep vamps underwraps or whatever is not a bad one, even if it’s been done before (but then what hasn’t?).Twilight does have a few interesting things in it- yet we have larger focus on the two worst characters and has horrific purple prose in the books. Sometimes protagonists aren’t meant to be liked, or be nice people, but they should at least be interesting (unlike Edward or Bella) and the author should acknowledge their awfulness in the text in some form.
Reinventing vampires has been done before anyway, and the things we commonly associate with vampires aren’t exactly ‘pure’ to the very very original source material anyway. Though of course sparkling is ridiculous.
Granted I guess it means people will write their own in some cases. In my own works vampires aren’t the main focus at all, but they exist. However they rarely if ever actually live that much longer than incredibly healthy/lucky humans would, and even then that’s a rarity- the average I’ve got is 10 years between becoming a vampire and being destroyed. If you do it for the immortality, you’re going to get disappointed. It’s mainly kind of a hazard in of it self being a vampire, especially if you keep their weaknesses and the fact people wouldn’t be too cool with someone drinking their blood- with some of those people being rather handy with a weapon no matter how fast you might think you are. Some incredibly CAREFUL vampires managed to reach the triple digits in my world, but that’s very rare, and not something to bet on.
I think what also bothers me about Twilight is that there seems to be little downside to being a vampire, if you ignore Eddie’s ridiculous angst (though if I had to live with him forever or be like him I really would hate being immortal). I mean glittering would make me feel ridiculous and all that, but what about some of the other disadvantages of being immortal? There’s more problems than just severely outliving your loved ones which are still mortal- though that’s still pretty bad. But Bella doesn’t seem to have THAT much anguish over leaving her mother and father etc IMO. Vampire are interesting in the sense that its a source of temptation for a human to become a vampire, since some can have a fear of death or at least hate the idea of aging- but if they do go through with it there is a high cost or at least distinct disadvantages to it if you do make that leap. Twilight really doesn’t have much of this. Thus removing a lot of the interest. I don’t mind vampires being ‘good’ as it were, but it has to seem like a difficult way to go all the same!
(How about the rest of you, any vampires in your stories, or just because, any recommendations for good vampire stories out there in the published world?)