There is No "I" in Team Edward

There are schisms among the Twilight fans that never cease to tickle my cynicism over my generation. Primarily, the camps are as follows, Team Jacob, devoted to the persona of werewolf Jacob Black played by Taylor Lautner, and Team Edward, lauding the sullen Cullen played by Robert Pattinson.

The differences between both groups of fans seem insuperable.

In the process of writing this blog, I’ve risk sanity lurking among some of the countless forums dedicated to the textual chatter of twilit banter. Discussion boards, which “go on like an argument of insidious intent,” are zealously focused to address the superior personality traits of two fictional characters. It sounds like an English teacher’s dream! Readers invested in reading and talking about a text! Yet, when readers find Edward wanting, they make a cult-following out of Jacob much to my disgust for all the same reasons.

We have to remind ourselves, they’re not cerebrating over a great tome. They’re attempting to justify their fictional attractions to fictional characters, arguing as if across a lunchroom table.

Causal discussions within either camp are often interrupted by guerilla tactics from others.

I remember reading through an eloquent disquisition on whether or not Taylor Lautner was gay. The issue was: how it would jeopardize the reader’s feelings towards their own fantasy. This post started a conversation, which was broken by “Go team Edward!” from some rouge user. A stream of arguments and rebukes followed and eventually involved both sides.

I tend to enjoy a good argument. But, nothing about Twilight being fulfilling, the argument sloshed back and forth between the fans in a vacuum. Neither Team Edward nor Team Jacob scored any points in my eyes. The entire ordeal seemed rather puerile, I laughed though: this is exactly how people talk about politics or religion. I’m glad these fans are getting their education in how to debate.

What’s ironic is instead over uniting over a common literary experience, fans of the same book are finding reasons to split from one another. Though geeks rip on each other for preferring Kurk to Picard, Obi Wan to Darth Vader, I find the Twilight Teams amusing. If there was ever a novel of my generation it would be ripped to pieces! The text wouldn’t rally us around a Holden Caulfield, as much as make us bicker over whether or not he was sexy enough to make the novel worth reading.

To show how far this team business has gone, I will let Tyra Banks illustrate my point.