The new Twilight movie is coming out today and I just need to take a moment to vent.

Twilight sucks. No pun intended.

I admit that I could be more familiar with the source material. I've seen the movie but once, and spent the vast majority of it snarking back at the screen, thereby perhaps missing some of the finer points. I've never read the books and have no intention to unless, hypothetically, they were the only reading material I was able to rustle up from the remains of Boone's luggage after surviving a fiery plane crash on a desert island. I will also admit that I am inclined to be biased against them due to the fact that they're a Mormon allegory, and I think that Mormons are...well, I'll just keep my views on the Mormon religion to myself. Or maybe I'll write them down for you in a made up language and you can translate them with the help of some magic peekin' stones.

The fact that Twilight is a saga about vampires and I still can't stand it ought to speak volumes. I love vampires. My adult love for True Blood rivals my teenage love for the Backstreet Boys (true fact: I once saw Jason Stackhouse in an Irish dive in Atlantic City while at a bachelorette party and almost maimed by best friend out of excitement). Van Helsing, Blade, Underworld, 30 Days of Night, whatever. I've even grown mildly addicted to the Vampire Diaries on the CW, which I find somewhat embarrassing because it is geared toward 15-year-olds, but yet can't help it because a) Ian Somerhalder plays evil deliciously well, much better than he play God's Friggin' Gift to Humanity, may he RIP, and b) Paul Wesley somehow manages to be simultaneously smoking hot yet sort of...cro-magnon. I'm totally vamp-crazy.

But that brings me to my main bone of contention with Twilight. IT'S NOT REALLY ABOUT VAMPIRES. All the really interesting parts of the vampire mythology have been dispersed with. Not only are these vampires able to go out in the sunlight, they glitter! Disco vamps! Please - even in The Vampire Diaries, the vampires have to have a special ring that protects them from the sunlight. They also don't sleep. Ever. What was that I said about disco vamps? In addition to glitter, might there be amphetamines involved? Oh wait-Mormon allegory, so I guess if caffeine is verboten any stronger stimulant is definitely out. Garlic? Doesn't bother them. Stakes? Well, who knows...this is family entertainment, so stakes are apparently out. Instead of engaging in normal vampire pursuits, like, you know, marauding and terrorizing and fornicating and sucking blood, which by the way is like the central point of existence of being a vampire, they play baseball. In matching uniforms. And leap around forests, et cetera. Nothing even remotely vampirelike, except the occasional hunt, for ANIMALS, which: totally lame. Everyone knows that the reason vampires are awesome is because they're kind of like, not to get too Freudian on you or anything, but the id in (semi) human form. Blood? Check. Sex? Check. Debauchery? Check. When you make vampires adhere to human society's rules without any attempt to subvert them, that's not interesting. At all.

But it doesn't really matter because, as I said before, Twilight is not really about vampires. The one piece of vampire lore that it preserves is the idea of biting and being bitten, and the only reason that that is the case is because it's a really CONVENIENT, OBVIOUS metaphor for OMG PREMARITAL SEX.

Look, I was raised Catholic, and I probably started much too late, but hey, at least I started. And I just look at the way a lot of organized religions teach kids about sex, love, marriage, et al and all I can think about is how, I don't care who you are, there's just no way you're not going to come out of an environment like that with baggage. Which is really just fucked up, because hi: it's a biological imperative, and don't go getting all biblical on me because that's another whole can of worms that I could argue about for six hours. So I just find it really dismaying that Twilight has become this major pop culture phenomenon, because that means that bajillions of teen girls everywhere are buying into this idea of purity vs. impurity and oh my God, once you're bitten you're spoiled. Like, come on. What year is it again?

Not to mention, Bella is pretty much the anti-feminist.

Of course, I can't wait for it to come out on video...but only so I can make fun of it, of course.