In my review of the vile Daniel X, I mentioned watching Twilight for a lesson in what not to do in my story's love interest subplot and thought it was just as lame as everyone else said it was. The relationship between Bella and Edward is creepy. First and most obvious, he's a vampire. He gawks at her, he sneaks into her room to watch her sleep, he stalks her, he knocks her up at 19 (did I mention he's a fucking vampire?), and yet Bella can't get over him and thinks her world revolves around him, yes, those are all great points. But there is one criticism I don't get, and that's "It's disgusting Bella is dating a man who's a hundred years old!" Actually, the people who make this criticism seem to always say he's hundreds of years old, even though he explicitly states he was transformed in the early 1900's, when he was dying of malaria and Dr. Cullen bit him to "save" him, but that's besides the point.

Yeah, I guess she's dating a much older man, but he's still biologically 17, right? What's the problem? Are people just saying that to keep the (not undeserved) Twilight hate train rolling?

What if Edward was still 100-ish, but biologically 30, and Bella's true age was also 30? She's still be dating a considerably older man, but would these same people still think it disgusting? Actually, think to Alucard from Castlevania. Dracula had to have been hundreds of years old by the time he met Lisa and impregnated her with Alucard, but nobody called that disgusting. Yes, Symphony of the Night was a much better game than Twilight was a movie/book, and perhaps it's more acceptable for a mentally mature adult to be in a relationship with somebody who's much older though biologically the same age, but I still think picking on the age difference of Bella and Edward's relationship is lame.

To steal a line from my good friend MaskedShiek, there's enough in Twilight to keep the hate train rolling without resorting to badly thought-out shit-flings.