The Glade 4.0

And don't get me started on what those books are teaching the next generation of girls.

In honor of this momentous occasion, maybe I should go grab some books and run a Hunter game wherein the PCs are trying to kill sparkly vampires.

Taken together, the series is the 'Manos: The Hands of Fate' of literature.

The books tell the story of the vampire Edward Cullen, who is described as an "Adonis" no more than every time the author is able to, and Bella Swan, a "plain" girl who reads "serious" literature like Wuthering Heights because she's so intelligent. Also, she is much more advanced than the students in the school that she has just moved to, but that's okay, because she makes up for it by being clumsy, since every well-developed character needs exactly one (1) flaw.

Stephanie Meyer's exemplary writing style is demonstrated in this conversation between Edward and our narrator Bella:

"Aren't you hungry?" he asked, distracted.
"No." I didn't feel like mentioning that my stomach was already full - full of butterflies.

Book One: Twilight

Despite being so plain, Bella is admired by everyone in her new hometown of Forks, Washington, especially Edward Cullen. Originally, Edward just wanted to eat her, but, disappointingly, realizes eventually that in fact what he is feeling is true love, and after a couple of days they start dating. After two or three weeks, Bella is begging him to turn her into a vampire because of true love.

This isn't made explicitly clear in the book, but Edward has been creeping into her room and watching her sleep every night since he met her. More on that later.

Also, Edward has mind-reading powers, except they don't work on Bella. This isn't really as big a part of the story as most people think it is, and in fact we can (and will) get away without ever mentioning it again.

A mere number of days after they begin dating, Edward takes her to the woods and reveals the real reason that vampires don't go out in the sun: they sparkle. This is the turning point in what until now has been just a bad book. Bella gasps and swoons, and Edward takes his shirt off to show her all of his glitter infection, and then they lie there chastely on the grass. The rest of the book is spent talking about true love and Edward's rock-hard abs. Kissing cold, marble, statuesque lips is apparently sexy.

Later, Bella kisses Edward so hard he almost "loses control", but luckily, as the man in the relationship, it's his duty to keep poor little overexcited Bella in line, so he tells her to stop kissing him.

Three hundred pages after "Oh, you like me too? No way, I thought you hated me!", the plot arrives late to the party, drunk, in a beat-up '53 Chevy pick-up truck. It drives away about fifty pages later and crashes into a tree, gets sent to the hospital, and is rarely heard from again throughout the course of the series.

Book Two: New Moon

Book Two begins with Bella angsting about reaching the old age of eighteen, which she worries will make her some sort of cradle-snatching freak because her boyfriend Edward is eternally seventeen. The fact that a 109-year-old vampire is sexually interested in an emotionally immature girl 90 years his junior apparently doesn't bother her. Edward cheers up Bella by giving her a mix tape. Unfortunately, later Edward changes his mind, takes back the mix tape, and dumps Bella. He leaves her in the forest by herself, and being a woman and thus without a sense of direction, she gets lost and almost dies.

Bella spends the rest of the book going crazy, imagining Edward's voice and partaking in ever more self-destructive activities. During this time she befriends Jacob Black, who turns out to be a werewolf but is still way better for her than Edward. She finally regains Edward's attention after she deliberately jumps off a cliff and almost dies. Edward, being a thirteen-year-old girl, thinks Bella has died and goes to Italy to commit suicide. He attempts to do this by exposing himself to the sun at noon in an Italian town. Since sunlight doesn't actually harm Twilight vampires, one must assume that Edward is hoping some macho Italians will see him in at full sparkle and beat him to death for being gay.

Bella teams up with Edward's sister Alice, who turns out to be straight and taken but is still way better for her than Edward, to rescue her ex from his emoness. After a crazy mix up that finds Bella and Edward temporarily in an Anne Rice novel, Edward reaccepts her.

This novel thus teaches two important lessons to young girls everywhere:

1) If a guy dumps you and says he doesn't love you anymore, he doesn't mean it. All you have to do is beg and destroy your life to prove that you really love him, and he'll come right back and love you even more!

2) It is perfectly cool to string along innocent but decent guys who are crushing on you and then dump them immediately as soon as your ex-boyfriend reappears, and totally normal if said ex-boyfriend forbids you from seeing your old friend. After all, your love for your ex must be far stronger, because he makes you feel 'alive' and 'dangerous' since he's always on the verge of killing you. And stalking you. We can't really mention that enough.

Perhaps this is The Time of Thin Blood? Gehenna approaches. Oh wait, they flushed all that down the drain ... I haven't played Requiem at all.

The premise of Hunter is that the PCs are mortals. It's still a WoD game, mind you, but the basic idea is that some mortals are aware of all the **** going on and have decided to kill it. I figure it's not a real stretch to turn a WW vampire into a gay sparkling Twilight vampire. I mean, there were goth kids doing that way before this ***** ever wrote her books.

Toreador. Definitely Toreadors.

Evil Toreador Strippers covered in glitter. That bite their clients while giving them lap dances.

Go.

I don't think the clan really matters to the PCs. Vampires are unholy beasts of darkness that need to die.

In honor of this momentous occasion, maybe I should go grab some books and run a Hunter game wherein the PCs are trying to kill sparkly vampires.

The premise of Hunter is that the PCs are mortals. It's still a WoD game, mind you, but the basic idea is that some mortals are aware of all the **** going on and have decided to kill it. I figure it's not a real stretch to turn a WW vampire into a gay sparkling Twilight vampire. I mean, there were goth kids doing that way before this ***** ever wrote her books.

Toreador. Definitely Toreadors.
Evil Toreador Strippers covered in glitter. That bite their clients while giving them lap dances.
Go.

I don't think the clan really matters to the PCs. Vampires are unholy beasts of darkness that need to die.

But its the flavor text that makes it wonderous.

"When you read the book," says Pattinson, looking appropriately pallid and interesting even without makeup, "it's like, 'Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself.' I mean, every line is like that. He's the most ridiculous person who's so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect. I just couldn't do that. And the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he's a 108-year-old virgin so he's obviously got some issues there."

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 and I -- sometimes you, like, feel uncomfortable reading this thing, and I think a lot of people feel the same way, that it's kind of voyeuristic, ah, and it creates this sick pleasure in a lot of ways.

You should start on what those books are teaching the next generation of girls.

I played Hunter. I've also played Mage. I haven't yet played Requiem though, I need the book, yet.

So if I set this in East St. Louis (also known as the soggy, unwashed taint of Earth) would that add to or detract from the feel?

I wish I could hate this series to death.