Rabble Blogging

Throughout Eclipse, we’re presented with some of the most damaging, dangerous, and utterly offensive themes I have ever seen in popular culture. Women need men to be whole people. Marriage is an institution that demands respect, not because it is an act of love, but because it is a necessary transaction to complete the soul. There are distinct roles that men and women must follow or there is something deeply wrong with who they are.

Racism. Transphobia. Misogyny. Sexism. Xenophobia. Homophobia. Classism. It’s the worst of the worst. It’s like a buffet of all the terrible things that hurt this world and directly affect those who are oppressed by these institutions, by the minorities who lack the privilege that a rich, white, Mormon author exerts on a daily basis. And, at heart, that’s what a lot of this book felt to me: A person who holds nearly every privilege in the world (no male privilege) rubs this in our faces at every single moment she can.

You aren’t a real woman. You aren’t a real man. You aren’t worthy without a nice car. You aren’t worthy unless your skin is white. You aren’t worthy unless you believe in God, in marriage, in traditional gender roles, in the subjugation of the woman to the man, in everything that makes ME a worthy part of this world.

Fuck you, Stephenie Meyer.

Because on top of all of this wankery and bullshit, you cannot fucking write. If we remove every bit of wank you’ve subjected us to in the 629 pages of Eclipse, you have one of the most poorly written novels ever committed to paper left over. You lack an invigorating vocabulary. You have multiple errors that any amateur editor should have caught. You cannot develop and maintain interesting and consistent characters. You have no idea how to introduce a plot in any of your novels and, even if you were trying to experiment with an alternative narrative technique, you absolutely can’t do that well either.