7.05.2011

Disambiguation: Why True Blood is Better than Twilight

Twilight is weirdly popular, but the sparkling offends a lot of vampire fans. True Blood is full of sex and violence, but the vampires scare off some potential viewers because they are getting the show confused with Twilight. 

A disambiguation is necessary. 

How they are alike: 
  • Vampires. Sorta.
  • Prominant love triangle between two supernatural beings and one mostly human main character.
  • There is a character who is in love partly because they cannot hear the thoughts of the object of affection. In the case of Bella, they may just be lacking.

    What makes Twilight (almost) fun to watch: 
    • It is unintentionally hilarious. Mostly due to Pattinson's faces. 
    • It really brings the text to life. I avidly devoured the Twilight books through the Reasoning with Vampires blog. 
    • Shirts are against werewolf law.
    • A beautifully awkward scene in which Edward rejects Bella, modestly buttons up his shirt, and insists on abstinence until marriage. 
    • The Cullens possess the vampire superpowers that allow them to pose for half the movie.
    • Watching these reminds you how much better True Blood is. 

      What makes True Blood fun to watch: 
      • Vampires retain a sense of ferocity, and they do horrifying and immoral things from time to time, as vampires ought to do. You can't be sure that they won't flip out and drain a character.
      • There is a discussion of the socio-cultural implications of vampires. 
      • In this love triangle, Eric and Bill have a whole lot more chemistry and interpersonal feelings than Edward/Jacob. 
      • Sookie has some sass and mopes less than Bella. Downside: her name is Sookie.
      • The series is focused on the town, which gives it a much richer cast and story tapestry, whereas Twilight is a claustrophobic teen romance with some random Foreign interlopers. 
      • True Blood is Intentionally Hilarious, and incorporates more witticism.

      What could be better for both: 
      • They both suffer from overpowered male characters in love with a less interesting girl. 
      • Vampires are one thing, but these both use the PR technique of throwing in everything paranormal but the kitchen sink, which multiplies the difficulty of suspension of disbelief. 
      • Overall paucity of badass female characters. 

      2 comments:

      Closeout said...

      http://theoatmeal.com/story/twilight Hope you appreciate this

      Keisha Perry - www.judgeabook.org said...

      I wholeheartedly agree that as far at the movies and TV show go (and considering the general theme) True Blood is much more entertaining (fact: can't get enough). It would be interesting to compare the books based solely on a literary perspective.

      After all, the twilight books were at least well edited, though not intrinsically awesome(Well, maybe to the 14 year old audience). However, judging just by writing skill, The Twilight Saga is much better written.
      Charlaine just pisses me off, with not only her plot holes, but her lack of proper grammar, spelling, and the travesty of constant inconsistency. Names and facts change from book to book, and people who didn't know things in book 4 apparently knew them in book 2? Really? And they pay her to do this? Plus its really obnoxious when half of the book is just reiterating, nearly verbatim, what happened in the previous books.
      So in conclusion:
      Twilight = Fail
      Alan Ball and HBO = Win
      Charlaine = Disqualified