[X] My Assistant

[shuckleking]

? pikachu will eat your brain . Brains!!!

[Bladed Darkness]

Harry Potter.

If it was Twilight or Eragon, it would be a little harder for me to pick, since I view them on almost the same level, and depending on mood and how much I want to critique them for their faults. Both ideas would have been better off if someone other than their authors wrote them.

And the Eragon movie that sucked worse than the Inheritance trilogy as it went on? The script was written by Paolini as well. How sad. He managed to botch the movie version of his own book.

Anyways, Twilight gets my no. Because:

A) I don't want to read a book where over 70% of paragraphs mention Edward's eyes as "liquid pools of gold", his chest as "perfectly sculptured like marble, and smooth to the touch", all the stone-statue references, how sweet Edward is when he's controlling and manipulating and forcing Bella to do what he wants, regardless of her wishes (which half the time are basically suicidal or stupid), when his ideas are actually just as bad as hers.

B) I don't want to read anything where the main character has something unique that makes love interest fall in love with them. I want something where chance happens to put them together and they realize the really good and lasting qualities about each other. Namely, personality. Something I feel is skimmed over in Twilight just to mention Edward's amazing good looks.

C) I read Twilight when it was uncool to read Twilight, and even then it was just okay. I only really enjoyed Alice and Jacob, Rosalie and Emmett, and Jasper. Or just basically anybody but the really main characters. That's still how I feel about it pretty much. I really could care less about Edward and Bella. And really, it's popular because Edward is supposed to be the ideal person to fawn over and fall in love with. He's not. Everyone has issues. Edward, as Rob Patterson put it, is "manic depressive".

D) I don't see why if you ask someone if they want to be in a relationship with someone who stalks them, watches them sleep, breaks into their house, they'll give you a no, but if it's Edward, they're all "OMG yes!!" and chew you out for describing him that way.

E) The website Impish Idea can probably sum up what's wrong with Twilight (and Eragon) much better than I can.

F) Why do the religious radicals not make a big deal about Twilight being about falling in love with vampires, who according to the main vampire, have no souls (even I don't believe him, and I honestly want to believe he has no soul)? Because it deals with temptation, and abstinence. You have the apple on the front to represent temptation, and throughout the series, Edward the omnipotent virgin resisting the temptation Bella is, both in blood and body.

Now, Harry Potter:

A) Why was Harry Potter a big deal to the religious radicals? Because it deals with magic. Nevermind that Harry is supposed to overcome the significant evil in our world. I could write a book about the parallels between Harry Potter and biblical stories. In fact, there is a book out there somewhere about it, and if I remembered the name, I'd gladly tell you. It's a great read as well.

B) The characters aren't flat. They aren't "I'm conflicted about this, so I must do this." They really struggle with the decisions. They do stupid things sometimes, yes, but everyone does. They're teenagers with the ability to fly a car or teleport. But, it's their thought processes and how they use reasoning with the world around them that give them dimension.

C) I don't like all the Harry Potter books. In fact, after I read the sixth one, my parents got the seventh for me on the day it came out. I never touched it until about six months ago, because I was afraid it would let me down. I really hate the sixth one, and the seventh one is a bit sub-par, I felt, in terms of the writing, but it's manageable. No long descriptions about why Voldemort is evil, we're given reasons and not just told he is (*cough* Eragon *cough*), we're shown that he is evil in his actions, his words, his motives, his destruction.

D) It's hard not to like the characters you're supposed to like, and hate the ones you're supposed to hate. I haven't met a person who actually enjoys Rita Skeeter. I have met people who hate Harry, or Dumbledore, or Ron, or Hermione, but I've met plenty more people who hate Eragon (the character), Arya, Bella, or Edward. Because the characters in Harry Potter are, for the most part, human. They make errors, they often try to correct them, they accept their failures, or obsess over them. You can sympathize with Harry, which is hard to do with Bella in between her fawning or moping over Edward or ignoring/being a jerk to her human friends. You don't have to sympathize with Harry, but it's easy to relate to him in some cases, as well as relate to the other characters (I relate to Hagrid particularly).