A weekly column on SparkNotes
in which columnist Dan Bergstein reads the Twilight series for the first time and summarizes it, chapter by chapter, in a hilarious manner. Dan constantly bashes the Cullens (except for Emmett) for never doing anything useful and Bella for being so selfish and whiny, while he thinks the werewolves are so awesome that he really wants to be one (he still hasn't found the right muscle to flex for that to happen, though). After finishing Breaking Dawn, he started Harry Potter.
Sparknotes has rebranded and removed its entertainment content, but thankfully, this series was archived. It can be read here.
Compare with Mark Reads Twilight.
Tropes:
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Invoked by Dan, when he suggests that Bella might have brain tumors because that would explain her life-threatening clumsiness and Edward's inability to read her mind.
- Ambiguously Gay: Marcus can come off as this.
- Butt-Monkey: Marcus, with his useless power of seeing relationships, is treated like this.
- Cargo Ship: Invoked when Dan wonders if Marcus's relationship-sensing power includes seeing how much you love a certain type of food.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Dan. He often goes off-topic, thinks that he can become a werewolf if he can flex the right muscle... and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
- Dreaming the Truth: Lampshaded as lazy storytelling.
- Drinking Game: Here are the rules—
- Take a drink every time you see the word "hate."
- Take a drink every time Dan mentions jetpacks.
- Take a drink for the sarcasm hand.
- Take a drink every time there is a call-back to a joke from a previous post.
- Take a drink every time Dan's resolve to finish the series is shaken.
- Take a drink whenever Dan defends his heterosexuality.
- Take a drink for every time Dan randomly mentions Quil and his toddler girlfriend.
- Take a drink every time the Volturi Massacre comes up.
- Finish your drink any time Dan praises Bella or a member of the Cullen family besides Emmett.
- Finish your drink for a rage-quit.
- Fictionary: Dan-Latin. It's "similar to English, except you replace all the G's with P's and all the N's with the color yellow. And when you write it out, you dot the I's with very tiny pictures of a man walking a dog."
- G-Rated Sex: Treats Bella and Edward's face-touching as this.
- Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?: Dan retreats to this after every time he finds himself describing Jacob's impressive physique (in great detail).Jacob returns to his naked human form, with his warm skin stretching and moving like an ocean of pure sex, the muscle just above his thigh calling out to you as the cool forest air makes tiny droplets of dew appear on his abs, abs that look like six tiny scoops of coffee ice cream that you just can't help but…um. I was just kidding about all that. I swear. Sarcasm hand! Sarcasm hand! See? I was kidding. Sarcasm hand! Girls are great because they are attractive and female.
- Heroic BSoD: His reaction to Breaking Dawn Chapter 18.
- Meet My Good Friends Lefty and Righty: Emmett calls his arms "The Pain Train". They depart every hour, on the hour, because that's what's up.
- Metaphorgotten: From the first article: "Sorry, but people in glass houses shouldn't pose questions about outdated names."
- MST: The whole point of the blog.
- Once an Episode: His "Predictions" section. They are never right. But they are where he brings up many of his Running Gags. Highlights include Quil's girlfriend (done enough that characters lampshade it), Emmett, Mike Newton in the first two books, Emmett, Alice's inconsistent powers, and Emmett. He seemed to take it seriously early on. By about Twilight Chapter 5 he gave it up for Rule of Funny.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: According to Dan, the werewolves should have jetpacks.
- Plot Hole: Dan notices them and proceeds to criticize them in a humorous way.
- Revenge by Proxy: Points out Victoria's reason to target Bella makes little sense, as Edward didn't kill James.
- Rule of Cool: Let's just say that if Dan wrote Twilight, it would have jetpacking werewolves, vampire trucks, More Dakka, and awesome action scenes.
- Running Gag: Quite a few:
- The Sarcasm Hand
- Quil's one-liner comments about his girlfriend.
- Marcus (giggle)
- The Volturi victims, one of whom was probably a cool teacher who took a trip to Italy and promised her students she would tell them all about it, and bring back souvenirs for them. She left them with a substitute who gives tests and downgrades the students for right answers. Now the sub IS the real teacher.
- Jetpacking werewolves.
- Emmett's hobbies and weapons, which run on Rule of Cool. Stilt-swords, anyone?
- Sensitive Guy and Manly Man: Dan's perception of Edward and Jacob, respectively.
- He doesn't seem to take the news of Jacob's girlfriend as much in stride.
- Unusual Euphemism: When Jacob refers to vampires as "The Cold Ones," Dan notes that people love to use spooky-sounding synonyms for vampires. He then makes up a few of his own, including "Pretty Night Things That Bite," which he uses a few times later on.
- And when he notes how Meyer tries to avoid using the word 'sex', he comes up with his own euphemism for it: 'special hug'.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Dan makes fun of Carlisle, Esme, and Rosalie for having the powers of compassion, love, and tenacity, respectively.
- He also giggles every time he mentions Marcus, who has the ability...to see relationships.
