Resurfacing my vampire love

During my frosh year in Waterloo, I was in the Buffy Club. Every Monday night, I would trek across the campus to the Engineering lounge to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer on big screen.

Throughout the whole seven seasons of Buffy, it never occurred to me how unlikely that a hundred year-old vampire would fall in love with a 17 year-old high school girl; it wasn't until I read Twilight this weekend did I begin to wonder how it is likely that a person who is experienced and wise with the world after hundreds of years would want to spend their time with teenage girls who think the world revolves around them and that life is black and white.

The crux of the difference between BtVS and Twilight is that BtVS is an insanely clever and well-scripted show. The conversations and the maturity shown by Buffy was well beyond her on-screen age and the possible maturity difference between Buffy and Angel fades to the background. On the other hand, Bella, the heroine in Twilight is so childishly empty that it makes the whole premise of the book fall apart--the premise being that a 90 year-old vampire who looks seventeen who has never met anyway special enough for him, falls hopelessly in love with the new girl in town.

Nevertheless, what makes this relationship actually believable is that ALL the characters in Twilight are so underdeveloped that The Da Vinci Code reads like Shakespeare--and to think I thought Dan Brown has reached the epitome of utilizing archetypal characters. Seriously, I think the girls from Sweet Valley High probably had more complex minds.

But literary values aside, as it contains none, I must admit that as amateur as the novel reads, it does possess high entertainment value. If you are a girl who likes to see yourself as the heroine of the story, then you have the perfect tale of a girl who thinks she's not special but catches the eye of the perfect, blonde, all-capable man who has never loved anyone to be unable to pull himself away from you in spite of all the obstacles and also be your knight in shiny amour, saving your life multiple times. If you love vampire stories, then there are a lot of fantastic new qualities Stephanie Meyer create for the vampires, full of invention and imaginative and fantastic details. The plot is not too bad either.

Let me know if you want to borrow my copy, since I know I definitely won't be revisiting the book the way I do with the Harry Potter series. At the moment, I am trying to figure out how to read the rest of the saga without wasting my money on purchasing them.