Nightlight , theHarvard Lampoon‘s send - up of that other novel about undead high schooltime scholar , has beengetting some good press late . But how does the parody heap up against the original ? Maybe these bullet points will help .
https://gizmodo.com/girl-stalks-fake-vampire-in-harvard-lampoons-twilight-s-5396423
Recently , I comport back - to - back version ofStephenie Meyer‘s Twilight and the Harvard Lampoon ’s Nightlight . I was curious : Would the parody deconstruct the original with burn humour , until all that was pass on was emperor butterfly - style nudity ? Or would Meyer ’s kajillion - selling novel brushwood away the satirists like horseflies , and stand on its own merits ?
Below , some findings . The uninitiated should know that pillager for both novel consist ahead . ( In the interest of transparence , I ought to note that I lie with one of the authors on the Harvard Lampoon staff , though I have no estimation which constituent of Nightlight she had a hand in writing . )
Plot - Per - Sir Frederick Handley Page proportion
Twilight is 498 Page tenacious and contains approximately three events . There ’s a gondola clangour that almost happens , and an exposition - hard showdown in a dance studio . Also , some vampires bring baseball game . Reading Twilight with an eye for plot markers is a bit like driving through rural flatland with the radio on : every now and then you ’ll hear a pussy of something interesting , but for the most part it ’s just static .
Nightlight is only 154 pages , and deal to squeeze in a soaked version of almost everything that happens in Twilight , plus a parentage - soaked prom and a scene where a lamia menaces a immature match in a graveyard . Advantage : Nightlight .
Characters
After spending five hundred Page in the company of Twilight protagonists Bella Swan and Edward Cullen , here ’s what I know about them : Bella is clumsy and prefer bookstores to garment shopping . Edward is handsome , and attractive . Lest you think he ’s one - dimensional , though , Meyer is deliberate to remark that he ’s very easy on the heart .
Nightlight offer burlesque counterparts Belle Goose and Edwart Mullen . save less as characters than jape - clotheslines , these two are nevertheless more memorable than Meyer ’s swoony couple . Belle may be delusional , but she ’s also headstrong and sure of her own personal magnetic attraction , a discrete advance over passive , self - doubting Bella . And Edwart Mullen is n’t really a vampire — he ’s an undersocialized gamer with pronounced hypochondria . But he ’s not prone to cryptical smirking or eye blink - and - you’ll - miss - it modality shifts , like some immortals we could name .
Prose Style
Only you will know whether you want to record 498 page of Stephenie Meyer ’s dialog - ascription verbs . Lines are “ said ” and “ asked , ” but they ’re also “ encouraged , ” “ discourage , ” “ intromit , ” “ breathed , ” “ nodded , ” “ urged , ” “ gasp ” and “ coaxed . ” This is n’t the only thing that weigh about a work of fable , of course , but it ’s such a canonical point in time that it ’s perturbing when an writer ca n’t get it good .
Not every joke in Nightlight hits its scar , but the dialog tag are knocked down early and bright . From varlet 11 :
“ So what ’s Phoenix like ? ” he beseeched .
With one Holy Scripture , the authors of Nightlight show they ’re paying more aid to what they ’re writing than Stephenie Meyer does in the course of a novel .
BooksStephenie Meyer
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