Happy New Year! Here we are back with the first strip of the new decade, and it is a lovely rendering of FT's entire cast for you. My personal favorite is probably Gina, but I seem to have a thing for the Disney Villainess Look, so.

What with the last of the major holidays out of the way this season, I think that our updating schedule will be a little less haphazard than it has been in the past couple of months. There's something about having extra days off that completely throws us out of our groove, I think, so going back to the usual grind will help a lot.

WALL OF TEXT INCOMING.

Those of you who follow my Twitter feed already know that I have completely ingested the first book of the Twilight saga, and have come to certain conclusions about it. I have always held that it is possible to disassemble any given fictional narrative by plucking bits out and stripping them of context, making them seem vapid or foolish, or by leveraging too much real world logic on something that's really only hanging on to the real world by its fingernails anyway. Twilight is no different. One can look at it and say, "Yeah, Edward's over a century old, and Bella's seventeen, and that's fucked up" just as easily as someone can say, "Why didn't the robots in The Matrix tap geothermal power and just kill all the humans, thereby saving themselves centuries of trouble?" or, "How can the Reavers in Serenity drive starships when they're supposed to be creatures devoured by raging insanity that renders them devoid of all reason?" And sure, perhaps Twilight has more of those pieces that can be nitpicked into oblivion by the scathing realist than usual, but most, like the examples I've cited above, are firmly in the realm of Fridge Logic. The only way a person is going to notice them while in the midst of the fiction is if they are actively looking for them. That means they're either a creative writing student who can't shake the critical mindset, or they're someone who went into the thing not intending to enjoy it, and I think that reading something of your own free will that you have no intention of enjoying at all is about the dumbest conceivable way to spend your time. Seriously, right up there with testing out a new staple gun on your junk. If you know you're not gonna like it, don't fucking do it.

What I'm getting at here is that Twilight just happened to strike a particular chord with a particular fanbase that happened to be extremely widespread and, as a consequence, became a very well known bit of writing. That turned what would have otherwise been a fluffy, quietly middling book with some stylistic, technical, and structural issues minding its business in some lost corner of a Barnes and Noble into the world's biggest bitch this side of furries. I'm not saying I'm a huge fan, or that I'm going to join Team Whatthefuckever (is it a shipping thing, is that what the team nonsense is about?), but I had a decent time reading the book (in spite of the sweaty mass of lameness that is vampire sparkliness), and I honestly think that the only reason people have started frothing hatred all over the series is because of some kneejerk counterculture reactive bullshit that needs to be reined in. That, and because the movie was incredibly bad and completely left out all redeeming characteristics of the book.

I would love to take credit for the phrase "sweaty mass of lameness", but it actually comes from the introduction to the first Penny Arcade collection. I figured I'd 'fess up before going any farther.

As for the adverse effect it's supposedly having on the romantic perceptions of teenage girls (e.g. "I want absolute unconditional love from a perfect boy who tells me I'm perfect all the time no matter what!")...I'm gonna go ahead and hold that, like video games and every other kind of media, books can only fuck people up so far as they were fucked up to start with. The sensible ones will realize that Bella and Edward's relationship isn't exactly the healthiest one ever, and that teenage love isn't the eternal kind, while the teenagers with their heads up their asses will think that it's all twu wuv and unicorn hiccups and that high school romance is the be all and end all of life as they know it. Both varieties existed before Twilight, and they shall continue to exist long after without assistance.

...I think I've gone on for quite long enough on this topic now. Just be glad this discourse didn't wind up as comic material. Some other webcartoonists have a habit of using their comics and characters as a soapbox and sock puppets respectively, which I find in extremely poor taste. You know who you are.

And so, in conclusion: Twilight...not so bad. The literary equivalent of a popcorn flick. Furthermore, I would totally do Alice. Seriously. I would tap that vampire ass.

If you know what I mean. And I think you do. Sex is what I mean.