Dear Mrs. Meyer,
Let me begin by stating that the contents of this letter, though meant for the best intentions, may come across as partially insulting. I want to first and foremost explain that my singular opinion does not in any way diminish the empire you have built, no matter how much this empire needs to be killed with fire. I mean, it's pretty easy to get pre-teens to find something to be obsessed about. Heck, I was obsessed with N'Sync and Hanson at separate times in my life. I'm not knocking that. Actually, I rather respect your perfect storm of the pre-pubescent rage of hormones combined with a transparent moral message - none of which that are told or learned from the main character, mind you - but I admire it no less.
That isn't the point of this letter. You receive all kinds of fan mail, I assume. Some of that could be hate mail. Nothing says I'm standing up for literature more than sending a person you've never met, who very well may be a perfectly decent and kind person, a letter that threatens their very existence. This isn't that kind of letter either. Instead, I'm here to thank you.
Yes, thank you.
Mrs. Meyer, your books paved the way for a completely unforeseen path in my life. Sure, I spent a lot of time reading and writing on my own and you didn't inspire me to be a writer, not even in that sort of 'her writing was so awful, I'm going to single handedly save the modern novel by being a million times better than her' way. No, this was simply a change in my social life, believe it or not.
See, without your books, I wouldn't have read them and formed such painfully distinct opinions. Granted, I'm likely to read anything someone puts in front of me at least once just to find out why everyone is reading it. Then there's the fact that I really, truly enjoy bad literature. And bad television. And I love bad movies. (Hey! You got me twice by that list alone!) I find it more entertaining to read something bad than good. Your teen-emo-vampire series of books gave me reason to rage and complain and laugh until I wanted to throw up and that right there is the reason I read them all. Okay, the last one took a lot of convincing to finish it, but hey, you win some you lose some. I read The Host. I had a very less interesting opinion on that one. It was decent. So, when I was done reading it, I had nothing to talk about. All I could think was, well, her vocabulary improved and the plot style was better. It was all in one book and not stretched out into a poor excuse for a saga and it followed a theme. Okay, that's good enough for me.
I swear there's a point to this.
Because your, uh, 'saga' struck such a foul chord with me, I had something to talk about with an unsuspecting girl at a college group meeting. We'd never met before and for the life of me, I can't recall why we started up on your books, but we spent over an hour recounting every ridiculous situation in those first two books. I'm not sure the third had come out yet, now that I think about it. It created this bizarre bond between me and this girl and from that first conversation a friendship was born. In fact, we spent countless hours discussing, bashing, improving on and laughing over your books in the following meetings and later into other outings. That was the very foundation of our friendship. I swear, we've talked more about the idiocy of Bella, the emotionally challenged aspects of Edward and the seriously weird situational humor of Jacob more than any other subject. We drop references from your books in regular conversation, use the creepy pick-up lines/misguided romantic comments of Edward and come up with reasons to work in our favorite character; the shirtless-wolf-mob. (Oh, please, we can't be the only ones that think the entire pack of not-werewolves have absolutely no individual identity. When we watch the movies, I swear I've never seen any of their faces. I don't even notice if they have heads above their shoulders! I just see tanned, shirtless torsos and half-torn pants all moving together like a synchronized swimming team made out of bizarrely hairless Native American men like it's got it's own fetish.)
...Where was I?
Oh... so, we've become best friends since then and regularly remind ourselves of how our friendship began. Our mutual dislike for the butchering of vampire-lore had brought us together. I spent a lot of time before meeting her being relatively alone. Not because I couldn't find friends if I wanted to, but I really didn't want to. I have a low tolerance for idiocy and she filled all the requirements that I would have listed had I made a friend requirement list; not an idiot, likes to read, hates stupid vampire romance novels but reads them anyway. I'm sure there's other things that would have been important, but they aren't important now.
In conclusion, Mrs. Meyer, you truly are an inspiration. Sure, it isn't in the way you hoped to be. I wasn't inspired by your love story (because it read more like a stalker's diary) and I wasn't inspired by your skill in creative writing (because I've read fanfiction that reads better than Twilight), but I was inspired to never, ever let myself be a writer like that and then found people who agreed with me.
Thank you, Stephanie Meyer. Without you, I'd have never met my best friend.
Sincerely,
Alexandra
P.S. - Okay, I just have to get this out. How could you run us through all that ridiculous build-up through the entire fourth book the WHOLE time and then NOT give us a blood bath? HOW COULD YOU? C'mon! That was all right there for you. All the evil vampires and the good ones that randomly existed and the not-werewolves... my God, it was a perfect set up (even if the path in which they got there was boring and dull as hell). Good Lord, Stephanie, couldn't you have thrown us a bone of some kind?? Hey, I bought all of your books. I never returned one. I get to whine about how horrible that ending was. Not that this was the worst thing that happened in the books. There is terrible, terrible plot devices and planning on your part, but c'mon! This should have been a no brainer!
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