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“Why isn’t Twilight more popular among vampire loving geeks?”

Because those aren’t f***ing vampires, and anyone who thinks otherwise needs to be slapped.

The vampires of Twilight are a Hollywood creation, and because of that Hollywood is doing what it always does in order to make a quick buck: It is taking something that wasn’t fully mainstream, something that we as geeks love – and it is bringing it out of obscurity and into the spotlight..

…where it promptly sparkles and twinkles like a disco ball at the Blue Oyster in order to show us how dangerous it truly is.

And it is tainting the memory of everything that came before it.

When we used to think about vampires, images of cool, calculated, merciless killing machines came to mind.

Dracula.

The Lost Boys.

Gary Coleman.

Vampires were never seen as Emo teenagers who only wanted to live in peace and be loved – they were predators stalking among us and devouring us whenever they felt a bit peckish. There were no broody looks, or moments of emotional turmoil in which the beast felt guilty for feeding…

Vampires just tore your ass up, dropped your body to the ground like an empty juice box container and moved onto the next walking buffet. End of f***ing STORY. These were predators. Fierce creatures that only looked human, living among us, hunting us and killing us for our blood.

Their origins span the globe and every society has (or had) some version of the monster. From the Malaysian Penanggal who detaches her head in order to feed upon children, to the early Roman Strix who would fly into your home at night in order to lap at your blood, vampires come in almost every shape and size imaginable.

They can be beautiful women, robust men, or even deformed troll-like creatures with clawed hands. Vampires and vampire-like creatures can be confined to the night, or able to actually live and breathe during the day. Their diversity knows almost no boundary, and while different cultures disagree on what they really are, literally EVERY BELIEF ON THE PLANET has come to the same conclusion:

Vampires should NEVER look like THIS:

TWILIGHT QUOTE: “This is the skin of a killer…”

…um. No. No it isn’t.

That isn’t how nature works. Nature isn’t a complete dick and wouldn’t do that to us. If a creature is truly deadly, nature throws us a bone by giving us a few warning signs so that we know to stay away.

Poisonous snakes get bright colors and rattles, spiders get creepy stripes and patterns, and sharks get things like “really big f***ing teeth” that teach even the slowest learners among us not to pick them up and try to pet them. What nature does NOT do is give us a “warning sign” that would inspire us to laugh at them and mock them mercilessly because they look like they just took a stage dive off of the lead float at the Rainbow Parade.

The scary always outweighs the funny so that if we DO feel the need to mock them, it is usually from a safe distance…so that they don’t hear us and we don’t get our asses eaten.

But sparkly glitter skin does not make people fear you, I don’t care HOW much of a badass undead blood sucker you claim to be. Skin that looks like your mother banged a bedazzler at a drunken frat party isn’t intimidating and it doesn’t send a shiver of terror through the spines of your prey. It makes them want to give you nicknames like “Poofy McGlitterpants”.

Sure, you might be able to rip your victim limb from limb, and you may possess the wicked teeth, agility, and strength of a hundred animals – but when you’re devouring your catch, and his last dying breath is a giggle at your expense?

That’s gotta kick your ego right in its vain little nuts.

“…so…cold…world spinning…death…coming for me.”

“…h..hehe…y-your skin sp-sparkles. Count in-DRAG-ula…ahhhaa..a..a..”
The “vampires” of Twilight are ruining the genre and forever altering how the world will remember the monster that kept entire villages huddled in fear behind those really flimsy and rickety doors that their shacks always had.

Real or not, the world once feared these creatures of darkness, and that fear came with a hefty respect. They were the boogeyman, they were unknown, and they were blamed from everything from drought to spoiled milk. And now they’ve taken that fear and turned it into a sparkly, over-sized eyebrow having love story in which these undead monsters truly have a heart of gold.

So in answering the original question:

Twilight isn’t popular among the majority of geeks, because the majority of geeks aren’t 12 year old girls who are instantly thrust into puberty by the real life version of Bert from Sesame Street.

Plus…it really sucks. (and not in the cool vampire-blood way)

-Coyote