This week’s Entertainment Weekly delivers the ultimate guide to vampires. Read the full post.
Jul 31
2009
09:43 AM ET
This week's cover: Vampires!
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Wow, EW can take two old publicity photos, slap them together, and call it a cover? Pathetic.
LKH writes smut. Meyer writes fluff. Both books have been good at one point or another. LKH has a website with thousands of members were passionate about her at one point. Meyer has create the new fad- pretty vamps that glitter. LKH stuck with the traditional Euro vamps that seduce you before drinking your blood. When you “pioneer” anything, you aren’t supposed to be following the past trends. I wish Stephen King would critique LKH’s books the way he did Twilight. I can agree that Bella wasn’t the strongest female but she was relatable for many tweens experiencing their first crush. The lengths she went to see Edward were way too extreme but again- these books are meant to be fluff.
Hmm….why would someone read all 4 books if he/she hated the message so much? Also, reading something and comprehending are two entirely different things. It’s fun, romantic entertainment – and Bella is not a weak character in the least.
I assume you’re talking to me. I love reading. Simple as that. And for what it’s worth, I think the Volturi are fantastic.
As far as I go, I read the books so I could be able to honestly critique them. I think that everyone should be able to voice their opinion but I give extra credence to the people who have actually read the books. I didn’t want to be one of the people who says “Twilight sucks” and not have read the books at all.
I used to joke on people more about it but I’ve gotten more relaxed about it as the whole mania thing has chilled out. In the beginning Twihards were very rude & all “You can’t say anything bad or you are jealous” & all sorts of nasty things but in the past year or two people have really started to become more relaxed about it. Of course for the people who search out Twilight fans so they could bash them (not discuss the plot but going to the sites to heckle & troll) will probably say otherwise but if they are that petty then they deserve to get attacked by the Twihards.
laurel k hamilton sounds JEALOUS.
I’m sorry but I never heard of the vampire hunter until after twilight(trying to find books similar to fix my twilight need,lol)
what is so frightening about women liking edward? him being prince charming? maybe we like him because he is sexy & dangerous,yet sweet & a gentlemen, a mr. darcy. sorry but some girls still like men with manners & that old fashioned feel.
Wonderfully said! I would be willing to bet that Ms. Hamilton’s series got a boost from Twilight fans looking for other books to satisfy their vamp cravings. As did the Sookie books (which I have read all). They all have slightly different takes, but it would be stupid to not give Meyer’s her due, b/c of the popularity of her vegetarian vamps, other vamp authors have thrived even more.
Because he’s a controlling manic-depressive with stalkerish tendencies? Young girls who actually find their “Edward” are going to be in for a very rude awakening. And please don’t liken Edward Cullen to Mr. Darcy. Not even remotely close, sry2sy.
People need to stop throwing around words they don’t understand. LOL @ anyone saying Edward is “manic-depressive”.
I’ve noticed a few people mention Wuthering Heights, and these few comments have reminded me of it. Heathcliff in WH has an INCREDIBLY dark side. However, his redeeming quality is his undying love for Catherine. This reminds me of how Edward is in no way a perfect character (i.e., he’s a vampire who’s killed people), yet what redeems him is the immensity of his love for Bella. Everything that Edward does is for Bella, just like everything that Heathcliff did was for Catherine.
Hamilton didn’t pioneer anything and thinks if she keeps saying it enough people will start to believe her. Her character, Anita, is one of the weakest, dumbest, misogynistic mary-sues in literature. She uses sex to defeat the villains after bumbling around for 100′s of pages sleeping with everything that moves and having clues handed to her in dreams and visions.
Hamilton doesn’t know what a strong female character is (not saying Bella is or isn’t, haven’t read Twilight) and is a petty, ego driven hack.
LOL, so her charactor is Jane Fonda’s Barbarella only with Vampires instead of space men????
too funny
I think comparing her to Barbarella is a horrible slur to the character of Barbarella. LOL. Barbarella is actually charming! Anita Sue is not.
I know you have not read many of her books if that is what you think about the character. I bet you just picked up one of the later ones.. You should start from the beginning. No sex in the first few books. ………
I couldn’t agree more about Anita Blake. Having read many of the books, I think it’s hilarious that anyone would think of her as a strong female character. But whatever, to each his own.
Parsa, well-said and all very true!
Why wasn’t Mick St. John and Moonlight included in this issue? Alex O’Loughlin was the hottest vampire I ever saw. CBS made a big mistake cancelling this series.
I totally agree! I LOVED Moonlight! It was such a fascinating show and it could have put all these others to shame. It was, unfortunately, another victim of the writers’ strike.
Will take True Blood over Twilight anyday……Twilight is so cheesy and corny….but TB is truly a high of a good vampire serial…so lovin it…
Bella Swan is an incredibly strong character. Regardless of what others (including men) tell her that she is “supposed” to want, she goes after her own heart, even when that doesn’t coincide with the opinions of others, or what society thinks is the “right path”. That’s my definition of a strong character. It requires great strength, and a deep understanding of yourself, to make up your own mind, and stick with it, even in the face of opposition.
I’ve had this same argument when it comes to people calling Juliet a “weak” character. Juliet followed her heart and went after true love, at great personal risk to herself, and against the beliefs of others.
Whether a woman is passionate about a career, a man/woman, a family, or some combination of the three, knowing what you want and going after it makes you a strong character in my book.
In addition, I would never call Bella, or any other literary character that I love, perfect. People, real or ficitional, would be boring if they were perfect. When Edward leaves her, Bella suffers from EXTREME heartbreak. Does she handle this heartbreak in “society-approved” ways? No. However, I’m not going to judge someone for how they deal with the biggest heartbreak of their life, just like I don’t judge real-life people for the way they mourn losses and handle grief. Not everyone can deal with pain in society-sanctioned, PG-rated ways.
In addition, I always admired how, in New Moon, even though Bella is struggling to keep it together, she tries to fight through her pain for Charlie’s sake, so that he doesn’t have to suffer with her.
Also, I’m definitely NOT a pre-teen, and I’m a journalist.
OH Joy!Some one is left out there with the same views as me!!! Thank you, I agree whole heartedly!!
haha, thank you
I actually don’t mind debates like this, I think they’re entertaining, LOL.
amanda – as a journalist are you saying that your boyfriend breaking up with you at 17 is an EXTREME heartbreak which can be handled ‘outside society’s norm’ by trying to harm yourself? ARE YOU KIDDING? i know you like Bella but your argument for her strength and originality borders on ridiculous… there are teens who survive incredible abuse, rape, torture – they are strong characters – Bella is an extremely superficial character – why does she even love Edward? In book 1, why does she fall for him? is he kind, she doesnt know – is he smart, she doesnt know – is he athletic, she doesnt know – is he funny, she doesnt know – she likes him because he’s HOT, very HOT – and she lacks any self exteem or personality
with all due respect i am not a pre-teen either, but i’d like to think we have more positive role models for tweens than some love-sick, immature whiny girl who wants to live forever
carlybaby- I don’t believe in categorizing peoples’ experiences. Just because someone is 17, doesn’t mean that their relationship fits into the typical “mold” of a teenage relationship. What Bella and Edward have is true love. It’s an eternal, unconditional, and unchanging love. The fact that she happened to be 17 when she found this love doesn’t trivialize the immensity of it.
Speaking as an adult who survived one of the several horrors that you mentioned, I’m still not going to trivialize the pain that someone feels over losing their soulmate.
The reason that Bella falls for Edward is the same reason that many of us fell for him. He fights against every one of his instincts (instincts that drive him to be a monster) in order to be with Bella and to be a good person.
I personally don’t care about my favorite characters being “role models”. Catherine in Wuthering Heights wasn’t a role model at all, and she’s a fascinating character. Personally, I find role models to be interesting.
What I find “ridiculous” is your attitude, which assumes that losing true love is not as meaningful and painful an experience as any other type of grief or loss.
correction: personally I DON’T find role models to be all that interesting.
I don’t think that just because Bella wasn’t raped or homeless or set on fire that her losing her first love shouldn’t be considered extreme. I’m not saying that every teen heartbreak is extreme & sad but like Amanda says- it shouldn’t be categorized or put on a scale from 1 to 10. I’ve known teens who have had catastrophic breakups from their first loves that could be considered extreme. And they weren’t mental to begin with either.
This is pretty much the equivalent of “your problems are meaningless because there’s starving people in Africa”. Just because your life isn’t considered by others to be as traumatic as others doesn’t mean that you aren’t hurting just as much as the next person is or mean that your problems are trivial or meaningless. Yes some people are drama queens, but at some point in your life you will go through something that isn’t considered “traumatic” by other people and will be considered traumatic to you. Does that mean that your experience means less because you weren’t a rape victim or a homeless person? Or because you were a teenager at the time? Of course not. And if you really want to know, I’ve had friends that were raped as teens/kids & they agreed with this sentiment. Just because you don’t fit society’s perceptions doesn’t mean that your worries & sorrows are worth less than others problems.
And no, I didn’t like the Twilight books. I just dislike how everyone is dismissive of it because she’s a teenager and such. If Bella was an adult then people wouldn’t have been saying stuff like “her love loss wasn’t extreme”. Being a teen doesn’t mean that you aren’t able to experience heartbreak or trauma as deep as an adult can.
Audry, I am SO with you on this one! Mick St. John was something I looked forward to all week.
Twilight? I’m 31 and absolutely fell in love with it–the whole darn thing! Every last bit of it. Did I want to smack Bella sometimes? Sure. Was it pure entertinament? Absolutely!
I’ve also read the Anita Blake series up to the 10th book, but then had to bow out gracefully because it lost everything I enjoyed about the first couple of books. Whereas Anita started out with a strong core of morals and strength, she ended up losing everything she stood for and sleeping with anyone (like six guys at once) and everything (animals included). Forget the porn–give me the “old-fashioned” romance of Twilight anyday.
And just for the record, there’s nothing old-fashioned at all about wanting to “wait” for that one person. Bella knew it was Edward. ‘Nuff said. To say this is wrong just shows how demented our modern-day society has come!
Here was the EW pitch meeting resulting in this cover story:
“Hey, how do we get Twilight back on the cover for our suddenly massive tween readership? We ran the pre-release cover story, the post-mania cover story, and the OMG Twilight book is coming out cover story. I know, we’ll feature a cover story on . . . wait for it, wait for it . . . vampires in popular culture as fueled by Twilight mania!”
Don’t forget the Twilight director’s notes cover story. Seriously, a cover about someone’s notes! Someone who, even fans admit, didn’t do a good job with material. That was the moment that set me on my EW-WTF crusade… in case anyone was wondering.
crispy – love your effort – keep it up – those who speak the truth are often not appreciated by the masses lol
I think it’s really sad (and a little funny) that anyone would see Anita Blake as being an “empowered” woman. So, some people think it’s ok to have lots of meaningless sex, whereas it’s not ok to fight for true love, like Bella does?
How sad.
Also, in the style of Amanda’s comment, I’m also far from being a pre-teen.
Like some others, I have no interest in the Twilight series and am getting tired of seeing it everywhere I look. However, I understand why it’s the “it” thing right now, and have been willing to ride it out…then I got today’s issue in the mail. Cover this fad all you want, but to even consider putting it anywhere near legendary vampire characters and actors, much less in a “greatest” list? No, no, no, no, no, no…just no. Nothing from Twilight has any right to be anywhere near a Dracula, Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, or even Grampa Munster. That’s right, I said it. This fad will be forgotten is a couple of years, while those others have and will continue to live on for decades. Maybe once this thing runs it’s course, vampires will return to the revered status they once had; no longer just brooding “boyfriends.” There, I just had to vent a bit, I’m good now.
Dear Crispy,
I understand (I think) what you are trying to say. Let me mention one thing before I comment on everything you have had to say; I do not like Edward or the actor playing him.
There now i would like to make a few book related points to you. 1.) Bella choose to move to her father’s so her mother could be with her new husband (a baseball player) instead of doing the right thing of staying with her daughter – BELLA made the decision. 2.) From an EMT’s standpoint, there was no way anyone could have gotten out of the way of the van – the way it was portrayed in the movie it did look like cowering, but have you ever been confronted with only 1 or 2 seconds to attempt to move out of the way of a wildly out of control van on ICE? No, well then – go talk to some EMT’s and get some facts on that. 3.) Bella when being tracked by rapists in the city stands her ground to fight using self defense techniques – was she saved by Edward, yes. Could she have saved herself? probably not, but she would have gone down fighting. Could she have gotten away by herself? no and she had already figured that out. 4.) Bella chooses to sacrifice herself to save all of the people she loves and willingly leaves to go be killed. This, Crispy, is a re-occurring through-out life, not some fantasy that makes women subservient as men will also do the same.
These are examples ONLY from the first book. Oh, and by the way bells goes cliff diving – she does not jump off a cliff to end her life because Edward is gone. She does not IMMEDIATELY run into the waiting arms of Jacob either. She willing leads him on only once, in the first book on the First Beach. Please gets your facts straight before spouting off.
Thanks!
I understand (I think) what Crispy are trying to say. Let me mention one thing before I comment; I do not like Edward or the actor playing him.
There now i would like to make a few book related points to Crispy. 1.) Bella choose to move to her father’s so her mother could be with her new husband (a baseball player) instead of doing the right thing of staying with her daughter – BELLA made the decision. 2.) From an EMT’s standpoint, there was no way anyone could have gotten out of the way of the van – the way it was portrayed in the movie it did look like cowering, but have you ever been confronted with only 1 or 2 seconds to attempt to move out of the way of a wildly out of control van on ICE? No, well then – go talk to some EMT’s and get some facts on that. 3.) Bella when being tracked by rapists in the city stands her ground to fight using self defense techniques – was she saved by Edward, yes. Could she have saved herself? probably not, but she would have gone down fighting. Could she have gotten away by herself? no and she had already figured that out. 4.) Bella chooses to sacrifice herself to save all of the people she loves and willingly leaves to go be killed. This, Crispy, is a re-occurring through-out life, not some fantasy that makes women subservient as men will also do the same.
These are examples ONLY from the first book. Oh, and by the way bells goes cliff diving – she does not jump off a cliff to end her life because Edward is gone. She does not IMMEDIATELY run into the waiting arms of Jacob either. She willing leads him on only once, in the first book on the First Beach. Please gets your facts straight before spouting off.
Thanks!
Crispy- Bella was the one who “fed” herself and her father. She constantly protected him and her mother. Edward isn’t just a man he is a VAMPIRE with strength and urgest unlike any human man. Bella is awkward not weak…only in comparison to a imortal beings who suck human blood and are imortal beings. You can take your BS attempt to push your feminist views an shove it. It’s not only ignorant because the subject matter is clearly FICTIONAL but it’s pathetic. I suggest using your imagination. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Your argument is that because she cooked her father’s meals, she’s not a subservient female character? LOL. Fine. I’ll stop being so feminist.
Now get your butt in that kitchen and make my dinner!
You go girl. Those Twilight fans will chew your face off. The backlash here is really scary. Crazed Eric fans also seem to dig the patriarchal and proprietary behavior. I fear for our youth.
And bring me my Pabst Blue Ribbon, too!
Sorry, Carole, but Bill is equally guilty of calling Sookie “his” and presuming to know what’s good for her without consulting her. Bill just doesn’t get as much heat for it because he’s supposedly a Southern Gentleman – and was therefore part of a culture that believed women should do little except get married, have babies, run their house and cater to their husbands wishes (I’m from that culture so I think I can safely say that *g*). I think Eric gets more of a kick out of Sookie’s independence than Bill, who was usually frustrated by Sookie’s desire to do her own thing.
I think that the way Bella cares about her parents, and the way that she fights for what she wants, all speak to her strength as a character. Just as its wrong to assume that women “have” to take care of others, I also think its wrong to speak negatively of women who CHOOSE to care for others. Women should be able to choose their paths in life. To me, that’s what feminism is all about: choice.
Well, of course I agree with you about that. I just don’t think that Bella ever considered the possibility of another path. There were no other choices but Edward.
There’s nothing wrong with a woman being focused on one aspect of her life. To me, being a feminist is about having the CHOICE to determine your path. If true love is important to you, and you choose to fight for it, so be it. If your career is important to you, and you choose to fight for it, I have a lot of respect for that as well.
Eclipse is all about how Bella has the choice to live a human life, but she CHOOSES against it, because of how much she loves Edward. She follows her heart, and fights for what she wants, even when others don’t approve. To me, that’s strength.