Twilight: Bella is SUPPOSED to be a flat character.

[Casual Shinji]

Then how about I publish a book consisting of nothing but blank pages?

Then the audience can project as much as they want... It's genius!

 

[Dorian6]

Ok, so it's like I said before. The entire Twilight "saga" is basically just Stephanie Meyer's sexual Dracula fanfics from middle school and she just changed the names after she somehow got her binder scribblings published into a series of books.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

actually they DO make dating sims into movies and other media. Fate/Stay Night and Lunar Legend Tsukihime are such examples (there are a SLEW of others, but believe me when I say there are too many to count)

 

[Soushi]

SSSSSSSHHHHHH!!!! That's one of the best tricks we authors have to use! Now your ruining it, RUINING IT1!!

 

[CrashBang]

The reason she's such a bland, uninteresting, burlap sack of a character is because the target audience is intended to project themselves into her shoes

I thought everyone knew this already. I hated Twilight from the moment I heard of it but I'm not one for unconditional hatred and so I read the first book and saw the first film. From this it was plain to see that Bella is a blank canvas. The book is written in the first person and her name is Bella (beautiful)! How more obvious could it be? The book is aimed at lonely, ugly teenage girls who feel loved by a sparkly vampire when reading the book because it's almost literally from their own point of view! In a literary sense it's both very clever and very sad

 

[Jadak]

I suppose I understand the point if this is true... (hint source hint) but the whole point of a book from a third person perspective or a film is to tell someone elses story.

First person books allow you to project yourself, but I just don't see films as a medium that allows you to put yourself in the characters shoes. Maybe some people can but I personally don't see it.

You really don't need to list a source when you're just referencing a random theory you wanted to discuss, doesn't really matter where it came from, would probably just be a link to a different post somewhere just like this one.

 

[R.Nevermore]

If they protrayed her as a fat 13 year old girl it would have the same effect.

 

[Nyquisted]

Well there's also the author avatar concept to consider.
I can't find the link, but I read somewhere on the net of a single vague description of Bella's facial features and then compared to a picture of Stephanie Meyer herself.
It was quite convincing actually.

I think it was on TV Tropes.

 

[the_pleasure_is_mine]

You really don't need to list a source when you're just referencing a random theory you wanted to discuss, doesn't really matter where it came from, would probably just be a link to a different post somewhere just like this one.

Oh I was sleepy earlier... I thought it was an actual quote from someone who worked on the film.

 

[Monkfish Acc.]

No. Truly? Alert the fucking presses.

Bella is designed to let Meyer live out her creepy fantasies about hunky teenage boys vampires. A convenient side effect of this is that it allows other girls to live out their fantasies also.

I would have figured this was common knowledge.

 

[Diablini]

Sooooooo you're saying that...


Twilight is a Japanese dating sim? My god! How couldn't we think of that before!
Quick, message the world goverments! We know how to defeat them!

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

I'm pretty sure it's just due to terrible writing and Kristen Stewart as an actress. Go watch another movie she's in. She's the same character every time.

 

[iLikeHippos]

Then how about I publish book consisting of nothing but blank pages?

Then the audience can project as much as they want... It's genius!

I'd buy it. ^^

OT: Yes, but the problem of the fact is, that she WROTE IT ALL WRONG!
If you REALLY wanted the person (let's cut the crap...) girl reading to be the main protagonist, you should make it to an action-novel where there's more than one way to end the story, more than at least 1 path to choose, since all girls won't always want the vampire to marry them.

Sadly, the book contains no such thing. So it fails. She wrote it ALL wrong. Good job, you newbie. Better luck writing next time.

 

[Mr.Amakir]

Are you sure that you are not talking about Gordon Freeman now?

 

[KnowYourOnion]

You know, that thought is neither particularly new nor profound.

You know, this comment isn't particularly helpful..................

OT: I've read the first book, I didn't like it and this theory doesn't make me like it any more

 

[ChaosDemon]

For more fun information on this, I would like to point out that the ACA/PCA Conference in San Antonio is going to have an entire academic panel on the modern vampire stories (Twilight and Tru Blood), so if you are a college student and really want to look deep into this, shoot them a paper and you might be the academic expert on the matter.

I openly admit this is just me nitpicking, but the Books are the Southern Vampire Mysteries, the TV Series is True Blood.

 

[Homebrewdm]

the entire point of the series is to prepare young women for a fundamentalist mormon lifestyle. abandon all feelings of independence, define your life with your husband, and if he ever hits you, he must be protecting you from something you don't understand. if your family disagrees with your decision to join this strange new group of people, they just don't understand.

or it might just be the author contextualizing her own feeling from her youth. either way, ugh.