I remember a time when I could walk into Barnes & Noble and be greeted by a giant cardboard display case featuring stuffed owls, plastic wands, and little packages of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans. This was when Harry Potter reigned, and all was peaceful and orderly in the literary kingdom. But then around 2007 the Harry Potter dynasty was threatened by an asinine yet unwavering invader: Twilight.

The Twilight saga, first published in 2005, has been steadily gaining an army of twelve- to fifteen-year-old fangirls over the past few years. The first bona fide attack of the Twilight army came in November 2008 with the release of the first Twilight film. The army of fangirls gained enough support to earn the film $384.9 million at the box office. However, the film version of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, which was released the following summer, grossed $934.3 million worldwide. I think we can all see who won that battle.

Basically, Harry Potter is better than Twilight in every conceivable aspect, from character development to cover art. But let’s begin by talking about plot.

The Twilight saga goes more or less like this:
There’s a girl named Bella. She likes a guy named Edward, who is a vampire who sparkles. (That’s right. The vampires in this book sparkle. Feel free to chortle). She also likes a guy named Jacob, who is a werewolf. Edward breaks up with Bella, but then he comes back and Bella has to take on the harrowing task of deciding which extremely attractive, supernatural boy she likes better: Edward or Jacob. Then Edward and Bella produce a demon spawn and everyone lives happily ever after.

That’s it. That’s all that happens in 2,492 pages.

Now let’s take a look at Harry Potter.
An evil wizard named Voldemort has just killed James and Lily Potter and attempted to kill their one-year-old son, Harry, but did not succeed. Harry Potter becomes the only person to have ever survived an attack by Voldemort, and Voldemort, who was once a threat to the wizarding community has lost all of his powers. Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, which Harry will eventually attend, orders that Harry, now an orphan, be taken from his house and sent to live with his aunt and uncle, the Dursleys. The Dursleys are a Muggle family (which means that they aren’t wizards) who are completely oblivious to the magical world that exists right under their nose. Hagrid, who is the gamekeeper at Hogwarts, and who is also part giant, borrows a motorbike from Sirius Black, who is Harry’s godfather (though Harry doesn’t find this out until much later), so that he can go to the Dursleys’ house and place the baby Harry on their doorstep.

And that’s just the first chapter. Of the first book.

So while Twilight is pretty much just 2,000 pages of good-looking guys with the occasional baby antichrist, Harry Potter has a plot that encompasses literally everything you could possibly imagine: Love. Death. Romance. Friendship. Drama. Humor. Adventure. War. And so on.

Then there are the characters. Bella, the protagonist and narrator of the Twilight series, is basically the biggest sourpuss you will ever meet. She whines about everything. “Oh no, you guys, it’s raining outside and they made me play volleyball in gym class. MY LIFE IS OVER.” And, on top of that, she’s also the textbook definition of a Mary Sue. She describes herself as “ivory-skinned” and “slender, but soft somehow,” but then she’s all like, “BUT I’M SO UGLY AND NOBODY LIKES ME WAAAAAAH.” On her first day at a new school, Bella gets attention from at least four different guys, all of whom she turns down because they’re not as hot as Edward Cullen. It’s hard to see why anyone would want to read a story which such an obnoxious and unrealistic narrator.

Harry Potter, on the other hand, has characters with complex personalities and flaws with which any reader can easily identify. Harry has the determination and the adamancy to defeat Voldemort, but throughout the books he struggles to learn the true meaning of love, which is the key to Voldemort’s downfall. And although most of the readers of Harry Potter have probably never had to battle a dark wizard before, the ideas that Harry has to struggle with—loyalty and courage and friendship—are problems that people everywhere have to deal with every single day. That’s what makes Harry Potter such a worthwhile read: a character who’s facing the same issues as you are.
Even the cover art on the Harry Potter books is better than that of Twilight. The first Twilight book just has a picture of a hand holding a stupid apple on the cover. Who would want to read a book with a picture of an apple on it? I know I wouldn’t. Apples are gross. The covers of the Harry Potter books, which vary depending on whether you buy the British or the American editions, have these awesome colored-pencil drawings that depict the intense and action-packed and battle scenes in the books. (That’s another thing I forgot to mention: Harry Potter has awesome battle scenes; Twilight doesn’t.)

But if you’re still not convinced that Harry Potter is superior to Twilight in every possible way, then consider this: Harry Potter has its own genre of music. The wizard rock movement, as it is called, began around 2002 when Harry and the Potters, the original wizard rock band, was formed. Since then, the wizard rock genre has spurred over 750 artists, including Draco and the Malfoys, The Remus Lupins, The Whomping Willows, The Parselmouths, The Ministry of Magic, Justin Finch-Fletchley and the Sugar Quills, The Moaning Myrtles, and so on. And while Twilight does have claim to a few musical talents (most notably The Mitch Hansen Band), it has failed to create a movement as diverse or as groundbreaking as the wizard rock movement.

So, there you have it. If, after reading all of that, you still think that Twilight is better than Harry Potter, then you obviously do not have the mental capacity to distinguish between good and bad literature and do not deserve to live in a world in which books exist. Harry Potter is better than Twilight, end of story. As noted YouTube celebrity Hayley G. Hoover says, “It’s not about six-packs or sparkly hot guys.”