Twilight Turns Ten: At Least 15 Reasons It Became a Global Mary Sue Phenomenon | QDaily Business History

The first Twilight book came out in 2005, which makes this its tenth anniversary. Plenty of people know the books and films were huge without understanding what makes them good. Let us explain.

Ordinary article

1. The male lead is a vampire — the Western equivalent of a Qing-dynasty prince in our costume dramas.

The male lead, Edward Cullen, is a vampire. Don't take that identity too seriously. In the Western Mary Sue universe, a vampire is roughly what a Qing-dynasty prince is in ours.

Edward comes with the upgraded vampire package: he lives on blood (cool diet), has golden irises (cool looks), is a superb athlete (cool fighting skills), never sleeps, can't die, and can read minds (drop him into Marvel and the Avengers would sign him immediately).

His one small flaw is that he can't go out in sunlight — not because it kills him, as it would other vampires, but because he sparkles, like a glow effect stamped on by the Meitu photo app.

He's also a "vegetarian": he feeds on animals, not people. (Which gives untold numbers of human girls a reason to forgive him.)

2. Now the female lead. Every boy in school likes Bella, the new transfer student. She's beautiful and has no idea.

Her name is Isabella Marie Swan. She has everyone call her Bella (even she finds the surname Swan a bit too princess-like).

At the start of the story she is an aggrieved teenage girl: her parents are divorced, her mother has remarried, and she tactfully goes off to live with her father, transferring to a school in an unfamiliar small town. (Which could just as easily be the opening of a story in a Chinese pulp romance magazine.) She has her mother's beauty and her father's shyness, and without meaning to, she draws the attention of every boy around.

Yi Shu, the queen of Hong Kong Mary Sue romance novels, once described Brigitte Lin as the most beautiful woman she had ever seen: "The most beautiful thing about this woman is that she has not the slightest confidence in her own beauty. That trait leaves her expression permanently dazed and longing, her eyes forever waiting for someone, for something — for whom, exactly? Even other women want to know."

That is exactly what Bella is like.

3. The vampire and the transfer student meet. He can't read her mind, which is what makes it destined love.

As noted, Edward can read minds. He notices Bella precisely because he can't read hers.

Her blood also happens to smell wonderful to him.

4. The supporting cast isn't so much playing vampires as playing supermodels.

Edward Cullen and his "family" live in Forks, a town near Seattle where it rains all year. The point, naturally, is to stay out of the sun.

The Cullen siblings work hard at keeping quiet and unnoticed at school, and are the center of attention anyway, because they are so beautiful they seem to walk around under their own soft lighting.

Later installments add plenty more: European vampires, drifter vampires, villain vampires.

5. A love triangle between a human girl, a vampire and a werewolf.

On one side is a pale, brooding blood-drinking species with a lot of little secrets. So the other side has to be a wild, uninhibited muscleman who keeps taking his shirt off.

6. The first book and the first film really are good.

Because the first one is simple: a high-school romance where people fall in love and mean it.

Without the affection people felt for the first one, you could never sit through the rest. Other vampires want to kill Bella: boring. The war between the carnivores and the vegetarians: boring. The way the two leads, once in love, do nothing but tell each other how beautiful and handsome they are: boring. Bella keeps wanting to become a vampire and Edward keeps refusing: boring.

In short, this is nothing like Harry Potter.

7. The soundtrack is very good.

In the first film, the Cullen family's baseball game is scored to Muse's "Supermassive Black Hole," and it burns.

8. Bella and Edward's daughter pairs off with Jacob — her mother's spare tire — the moment she is born.

This is not a witty series. (Another way it differs from Harry Potter.) But it does have its laughs, and the business between Bella's daughter and Jacob is the funniest of all, because it is so preposterous.

9. Bella becomes a vampire — and the important part is that she's the strongest one.

Put simply: other vampires can't control their minds right after turning, and Bella can.

Her reason for insisting on it is that otherwise she would age and Edward wouldn't. (Really it's just that being a vampire is cooler.)

The female lead, in other words, is exceptional wherever she goes.

10. A romantic beginning. Here we mean the writing.

Stephenie Meyer was a full-time homemaker. The book came out of a dream she had on June 2, 2003, about a vampire and a girl. She wrote a chapter almost at once, finished the book three months later, and signed a contract worth $750,000.

11. Mary Sue essence, extracted from the classics.

Meyer has said each book takes a little inspiration from a classic novel. Twilight borrows from Pride and Prejudice: two people opening up and coming together. New Moon borrows from Romeo and Juliet: love blocked at every turn. Eclipse borrows from Wuthering Heights: on the edge of collapse. Breaking Dawn borrows from A Midsummer Night's Dream: misunderstandings cleared up. Anne of Green Gables was another big influence on her.

But she says the Cullen family came from no classic at all — she based them on her own family. (The things people will say.)

12. When you finish the saga there is a mountain of fan fiction waiting, including Fifty Shades of Grey.

Is there anyone who doesn't know this yet? In its first version, the two leads of Fifty Shades of Grey were named Bella and Edward. The names were changed only later, when it was published as a book of its own.

13. There is also a real-life spinoff to enjoy: Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson.

They were Hollywood's golden couple back then.

14. Kristen Stewart's defining traits: not quite awake, smoky eyes, artful mess, and never just saying things straight.

Aside from the times she looks too worn down and it falls apart, she's still beautiful. Without that face, though, you can't copy it.

15. Other vampire material. The American series The Vampire Diaries, built on nearly the same premise. The adult version, True Blood. And the Japanese anime Vampire Knight.

16. Sequels.

Stephenie Meyer had been writing Midnight Sun, a version of the story from Edward's point of view; the first 12 chapters are already online. Now she plans to write a gender-swapped novel in which a female vampire protects a male student. We wish her luck.