Imagine when you were Embry's girlfriend but had to break up since one of his pack mates Imprinted on you

hey, i fluff idea, maybe emmet(cullen) is trying to learn how to do the readers 4c hair, maybe a like a afro bun and he gets really frustrated because he wants to perfect it but each time he tries it’s a little lopsided but the reader explains what he’s doing wrong and then he gets it right so he feels so accomplished

Hair day!

Warning • none

Pairing • Emmett Cullen x Black coded Reader

a/n: ignore the title idk 🤣

“Ow…ow-OW! You know what wait just wait” you outburst startled him making him quickly let your hair go. You let out a laugh trying not to make him feel so bad. Emmett has seen you do your hair multiple times and he was just so curious on how well you slicked up and brush through it when there’s so much of it. And it’s obviously not the same as his hair so that made his urge even stronger to try and style it.

“Oh baby I’m sorry am I hurting you?” He let out a nervous chuckle “I was trying to do it like you, you make it look so easy.” You smiled at his nervous state.

“It’s ok baby” you looked in the bathroom mirror and let out a snort. “you tried at least” you reached up and pulled your hair out of the lopsided bun. You took a glance at Emmett, he was looking a little sad and frustrated. You turned around and cupped his face in both hands.

“It’s ok stinka, look let me show you ok?” He nodded taking a few step back letting you have some space.

“Ok so you grab a hair tie preferably a big stretchy one so it won’t pop and you also have to wrap it around a few times” you picked up the hair tie stretching it showing him and he nodded understanding.

“Now for the gel and brush, you take a scoop of gel rub it in your hands and smooth up the sides, front and back of my hair so no curls are left out” after demonstrating that you wipe the residue from the gel off your hands and then grabbed the brush.

“Now you just brush it straight up and…voila!” You exclaimed showing him you perfect bun. “You can be extra and add baby hair but that lesson is for another day.”

“Ok ok I think I got it now” you giggled at his determination. “Ok give it a try” you took your bun down “also you don’t have to add anymore gel” he nodded getting the brush and going to work.

Five minutes later and a few mistakes he finally did it. “Good job baby!” You cheered giving him a hug.

“I did good?”

“Yes! Baby you did good!” He smiled feeling proud of himself.

“Now what did you say about edges?” He asked looking confused as ever.

“…oh lord.”

Visual

Twilight Masterlist

©heejayy 2022 — any reposts or translations of my works are strictly prohibited unless granted permission

Do you think Twilight could have happened in a place other than USA without changes? Your post about lack of parking lots made me think about it. In my country you legally cant obtain a license until you're 18, and most people finish school at 17, so there aren't any school parking lots. In many countries there aren't blood taking days, in some people can't pick and choose their classes or their seat arrangements in class, or they have solitary tables. Could all these small things add up to not having Bella dead or undead until her natural end? /well, except for "Bella lives in Iraq and gets married off at ten" scenarios

Twilight's very American.

Being American myself, it's hard to judge, so @therealvinelle should probably weigh in with her non-American opinion. Or perhaps regale us with a Norwegian version of Twilight.

(Though for the record, I never did blood testing in class, though I also did comparatively little Biology and only did basic cell things. So perhaps it's standard and I just didn't go advanced enough.)

But yes, I imagine changes would have to be made. Whether they're changes we'd call in any way "significant" I doubt. Most of those things you mentioned are just plot devices used to give Bella information and to move the story along.

Bella nearly being hit by the van in the parking lot makes Edward reveal his supernatural abilities. If he hadn't done that, then Bella wouldn't have as much reason to question him/eventually question Jacob and believe him when he says "lol vampire". The blood testing was to give more clues, Edward purposefully avoids the class on the day they're doing it, knowing in advance and knowing it's a bad idea, and also reveal that Bella smells super extra delicious to Edward specifically. It got Bella and Edward talking after the van incident when Edward had been trying to avoid her and helped make "vampire" sound less silly.

Bella's taking gym as a required class is mostly so we the audience can laugh at her sympathize. It also reveals she's stupid clumsy which has plot relevance in that she will never ever win a fight ever. And she never does.

The prom is just so Edward realizes he has rivals and so at the end we get Bella in a hot outfit dancing with Edward in an equally hot outfit.

But they can all be replaced easily with other things.

Instead of a car, a light fixture can nearly fall on Bella's head, but Edward pushes her out of the way in time when he'd been across the room. For some reason, no one else noticed. The blood testing bit can be dropped altogether and be replaced with Jasper staring weirdly at someone's split lip. Bella on grilling Edward about what's up with that says something very vague and enigmatically mysterious. We can drop the upcoming dance and just have boys asking Bella out normally, and her avoidance of it becoming increasingly ridiculous to avoid drama, which intrigues Edward of course. And we can replace the Quileutes in the know with pick your group of people who are very insular/have a poorly recorded history/and are somewhat separate from the place Bella's in who can get weird about the Cullens.

The important thing is not necessarily 'what' happened but what it enabled and how it affected the characters. If the cultural is similar enough to America 2005 that Edward and Bella can get together in a very similar manner, then it's green lights go.

I can't think of a single thing that can't be replaced and keep the heart and soul of the story, every major plot point, intact.

Now, culturally, Bella and the Cullens as non-Americans could be significantly different, but Edward's mysterious hot charm would probably be culturally universal to Bella. And non-American Edward would still be Edward underneath the hood, he just has different cultural trappings.

🍎 Twilight

❀ Seth Clearwater x male reader ⚣︎

A/N: ok, I'll admit it.. I've had a crush on this cutie since like forever and I have daydreamed many scenarios with him. XD

(Maybe I could write down a few more.)

tags/warnings: plays after the last movie, reader is a hybrid like renesme, he has siren-powers, including the headcanon that the vampires don't sparkle but their skin becomes "see through" when the sun hits them so you can see black blood swirling beneath it etc., I tried to make Edward a bit less suffering drama queen and a bit more comical/happy

side ships: Renesme x Jacob, Bella x Edward, etc. (Cullen coven & Quileute pack canon ships)

So, you’re a siren

"Hello", Carlisle spoke with his soft tone to the wolf pack, "We're glad you came." He signaled for them to get inside the big house with floor-length windows. The sunlight shone through them for a few seconds and caught on the vampires' skin.

Some of the wolves still flinched at the sight of the swirling black blood, frozen organs and white bones under the translucent pale skin. It was something shocking, even horrifying. It made the fact even clearer that those people infront of you were undead. Caught it this body, this age and state, forever.

Edward heard all their thoughts. He had gotten used to the nonverbal comments, the mental shiver going through them at this scene. But as always he wasn't prepared for some of the more comedic things some of the boys thought from time to time when it came to his family of immortal beings.

He let out a snort and turned away to hide his growing grin as he surpressed the fit of giggles rising in his chest. The try to restrain made his organs visibly twitch and fortunately the sun went to hide behind a cloud again so that it was only noticable for a second.

Carlisle who had yet again been very observant smiled softly. "Apologies for making you a bit uncomfortable with this sight but we like to have one place where we don't have to hide."

"Don't worry", Sam answered just as calmly, "You don't have to apologize. It's just a bit surprising seeing it happen in real life. We'll get used to it eventually."

They had greatly detailed stories about the translucent skin of vampires and they had heard them a few times already. But as good as a storyteller can be, even if it's an old sacred legend, seeing it in person can be slightly terrifying. It made it much more real what actually happens around you.

"Tell me about it." Bella stood in the doorway to the kitchen and made her way towards them to hug her best friend Jacob. Just in time before her daughter walked out of that room too to hug her soulmate.

"So", the older alpha started, "Why did you want us to come over?" He had not missed the fact how Esme had placed a grounding hand on her husbands shoulder, how both Rosalie and Emmet seemed to stand guard on the stairs leading up towards the living room or how Renesmee stayed glued to Jake's side with a worried look on her face.

"We have something to show you. Or rather someone to introduce to you. We wanted to inform you properly of our newest family member since.. well, follow me and see yourself."

Sam quickly exchanged looks with some of his pack members before moving. They followed the vampired up the wooden stairs. Emmett, Rosalie and Jasper stood infront of the sofa purposely blocking the view to the person sitting there. When everyone stood in place Carlisle gave a signaling nod to the wall infront of their newest member.

"May I introduce (Y/N) to you. The reason why we wanted to do it this way is beacause he is like Renesmee. He is half vampire half human." The vampires moving to the side revealed a boy looking around the age of 19. You seemed worried and clearly anxious looking up at them and Emmett stayed close to you - just in case.

You looked into each new face trying a nice smile even though you knew it looked more like a forced grimmace.

When you came to a certain boy's face with warm eyes, cute features and a welcoming curious gaze everything stopped. The wolves tensed up slightly as they felt and saw the change in the room and Edward shoot up from the armrest of the chair Bella sat on.

The young wolf's eyes widened just like yours. And on top of that you also blushed as you couldn't turn your gaze away from him. "At least you can be sure now that he won't get hurt by us", Jake jocked earning a slap from Nessie.

Carlisle looked at Edward questioningly even though he was quite sure what was going on. Ed sighed and then grinned. He was happy for Seth who had become a good friend and almost like a brother to him. And he was happy for (Y/N) too. You had been so anxious the whole time with your thoughts racing around constantly and imagining almost every possible bad scenario.

"Seth imprinted. On (Y/N)", Eddie finally said out loud. Seth let out a heavy breath and looked at his sister anxiously. But she smiled when she catched his look even though she was still suspicious of this new boy they didn't know anything about yet.

Carlisle smiled calmly again. "Well then, I guess we get to the part of explaining a bit more." He gestured for everyone to get more comfortable. Seth immediately went to the sofa (Y/N) sat on making them both blush when he realized that his body had moved entirely on its own. Most of the others sat down or leaned against something while hardly suppressing giggles.

„Alright, another reason for that is the fact that he has powers too“, Carlisle continued. Every wolf‘s gaze went to the new hybrid trying to figure out if you had mental powers like Edward or Alice. „Do you want to explain them yourself?“, the oldest vampire asked you softly. You considered it for a moment before nodding. He smiled and signaled you to start.

“Uhm.. so, my dad, the vampire, had the powers to lure people in so that they would do what he wants them to do. That‘s how he managed to impregnate my mom who was apparently a very good singer. And well, my powers are basically a mix between those. I can hypnotize people through singing.“ You looked down at your hands feeling insecure with being so exposed to all those new people. „So you‘re basically a siren“, Seth said. You looked up at him with wide eyes.

You could only nod slowly and blushed again when your eyes caught his again. You had never thought of it this way. This term made your power seem really cool to be honest.

“Sorry“, Sam said to get your attention, “May I ask how you came to be here with the Cullens.“

Your eyes instantly went to Carlisle and Esme. They had been the most calming parts to you from the start. As well as Jasper of course who used his power a tiny bit so you wouldn‘t get another panic attack.

Esme gave you a warm smile. So, you gave them a short summary of your not so pleasant life.

How you were born and your mother had died immediately. That you were ‘raised‘ by her boss - the owner of a strip club. You didn‘t really have a choice or chance to get somewhere else. Then your so called father had shown up when he heard of your powers and wanted to take you with him.

Well, jokes on him because you had researched in secret, had heard from the Cullen clan and actually managed to run away. Bonus point that your ‘dad‘ had followed you and was.. removed with the help of the Cullens who had took you in when they heard your story.

It was quiet for only a few seconds but it was enough for your heartbeat to pick up again as you started to tense up.

Untill warm fingers brushed over yours. Seth didn‘t take your hand entirely but it helped you calm down. You looked at him and saw the small smile he gave you. It was warm, sweet and sunny. And you noticed that he had a cute dimple.

You gave a smile back, almost not noticeable. But Seth‘s senses were already fully focused on you. Every little change in your handsome face, those pretty eyes or your body was as clear as day from the moment you had linked eyes.

“Thank you for telling us“, Sam said with a warm voice. “I guess it is already clear that we will protect you as well. And you‘re always welcome on our land.“ He looked at Seth and then at your liked fingers laying on the cushions.

After that you all relaxed much more. Emmett still stayed close to you - he was pretty sure that you weren’t in danger anymore but he couldn’t deny that he had immediately had the urge to be like a big brother to you. And like with all his family, he wanted to protect you no matter what.

Leah came to you and introduced herself. She was still a bit cold and reluctant at first but soon warmed up to you. You really seemed like a good choice for her little brother - though she still swore to give you at least a light shovel talk once you felt better and safer. She didn‘t want to scare you off, just give you a little warning with care.

i do hope the new twilight series doesn't actually get made because twilight is racist pedophilia apologist slop and i don't want stephenie meyer making another massive pile of money by continuing to exploit the quileute tribe without consulting or compensating them. but can i just say. the fact that it's apparently going to be an animated series is the only encouraging thing i've heard. i've already seen people mocking the fact that it's animated and acting like that's the bad part of this news, and like....when will you people realize that a good animated series is literally best case scenario when adapting most pieces of media?

Paul Lahote x F!reader Last Gift TW: death

“My love, my life, 

It is a sad day for you to have to read this. I had hoped that we would spend forever together, but it seems the universe had other plans. These past 10 years have been the best years of my life. 17 year old me could never have imagined finding her soulmate in the small town of Forks. Forks was a place where I wanted to start a new life, a new start where no one knew me. After meeting you, I wished we had known each other earlier. 

I know you well enough, Lahote, that you’ll want to mourn for my loss and waste away your life since I’m no longer by your side. You’ll want to find someone to be angry at and you’ll push away your pack family. So instead, I leave you a gift, a gift that will let you mourn, but move on and live. 

Over the past few years, when I first discovered my time was running out, I put together a plan that will allow you to learn about me from before we met. I have planned a trip that will allow you to explore all of the places I have been before I met you. Each destination has a letter, a personal friend as a tour guide, and a couple of tasks for you to complete at each destination. 

The first destination is where I had my childhood, Traverse City, MI. You will find the box of letters buried at our secret meeting place. I snuck away from time to time, writing those letters, hoping no one caught me. It was hard hiding this from you and sometimes I wanted to tell you all about my letters and why I was writing them. However, in the end, I knew that this was for the best. 

My hope for you is to find appreciation in life and become amazed at how we ended up together. Slowly, I hope you start to hate life less and less each day. Instead, I hope you learn to fall back in love with the sunrises, the sunsets, the crisp falls, and the coziness of our first home. It’s no one’s fault that I’m gone. I don’t expect you to easily accept my passing, it took me months to even accept this myself. I want you to know that I loved you more than my own life. I know that you would have done anything to stop the inevitable, which is why I hid it from you. I didn’t want you to waste your life away with hospital bills. Instead, we got to live our best lives. We had amazing camping trips, picnics, parties, and weddings to attend. We were carefree, happy, and in love. I know that enjoying those events will be difficult to do but I don't want you avoiding them forever. The pack will give you time to heal, however, you can't keep them away forever. 

I enjoyed the years I got to spend with you and the pack. They became my family. I’ll miss each of them dearly, but I’ll miss you the most. Life sure does have a funny way of letting people realize just how much they love the idea of life. After my diagnosis, every sunrise and sunset became more breathtaking than the last. With each breath you took in the mornings and each heartbeat that pounded in your chest, they became a cloak that surrounded me in your warmth. Your smile that made your eyes close and your nose scrunch up, stopped my world every time. It was the smile that you only showed me. You saved it for the things that truly made you happy, like the day I said yes to being your girlfriend and the night I officially became Mrs. Lahote. Each moment I embraced, fearing it would be the last. 

Now it is time for you to re-fall in love with life. My wish for you is to learn about the old me that I wasn’t able to share with you. Through this journey, I hope that you understand just how important meeting you was for me. 

My love, my life, please do not fall apart because of me. Time will heal you. I would do anything to be here with you now but what has been done is done. Take your time, I’ll see you on the other side.

Your love, your life”

Tears flowed down Paul’s cheeks and snot ran into his mouth. He didn’t care. The letter was crumpled against his chest, almost as if he was holding onto his wife for dear life. However, he held it gently enough to not ruin it. The sobs rocked Paul’s body, shaking him back and forth from his position on the floor. His house, correction, their house seemed empty as the loud sobs echoed off the walls. Today had just been her funeral. He hid his emotions during the ceremony and during the after gathering. As soon as he stepped inside the vacant house, he collapsed on the floor beside their bed. The thump he made falling to the floor released her letter hidden on the bedside table. It was only after reading the letter did Paul let loose all of his emotions. Amidst the sobs, a loud yell escaped his mouth. The pain, anger, and misery showed through that one yell. 

Finally, after sitting on the floor for what seemed like hours, Paul stood up and kissed the letter gently. After placing the letter back in the envelope and tucking it safely away in his back pants pocket, he grabbed a shovel and a rain jacket before heading outside his front door. Throughout Paul’s mind, all he could think was, ‘hang on my love, we’ll start this journey together soon’.

Just had a thought about why the Cullens ended up staying in Forks (it’s more insidious than you realize)

I just had a thought that pertains to some research I did during my last year of gradschool. Smeyer’s portrayal of Bella being included in the Quileute rituals and knowledgable about (falsified and bastardized) folklore and tradition and through Bella’s friendship and the horrific imprinting on Bella’s daughter, serves as representation of the colonizer’s desire to be legitimized as the rightful people of a land. 

In early American literature, we see this trope as “the adopted white man” or the native person who has a white parent and native parent in which the white relatives of the half native person (who also have shunned this person for their nativeness if this person hasn’t been forced to assimilate) usually takes a hold of this land because this rightful heir either dies and the land goes to the next of kin (in this case, white folks).This exact scenario happens in the adopted “native trope” where the white person has a bond with said local tribe and intermarried with the tribe and the scenario explained previously follows in most cases or the distant descendents take an advantage of their ancestor’s good will with the local tribe and use that to force the tribe give up more of their land with no intention of maintaining a mutual relationship that the ancestor established.  Simply, it’s the creation of “my great so and sos native, thus I am and I have a right to this land or this thing” mentality.  This mentality is very dangerous in Twilight due to Jacob’s imprint on Reneesme because it suggests that Renessesme and her children with Jacob (ew) will have the same rights within the Quileute tribe as the other members as result of the imprint. Obviously that idea is disgusting and problematic as the Cullen family is their sworn enemy, has exploited the tribe many of times, and has forced them into treaties that the Cullens blatantly ignore. Bella is both oblivious and slightly malicious in all of this because the way she uses the information she gets from Jacob to aid the Cullens, and the fact that Stephenie Meyer wrote the concept of imprinting in a very specific way that makes Jacob pretty much subservient to Renessesseme every need is well....a benefit to the white colonizers in the story, especially as Jacob is the alpha to the pack and probably will grow old to be a tribal leader like his father, Billy. I can’t help but see that choice in writing as intentional to allow Bella and Renessme to have the best of both words: the riches and power(s) and prestige of whiteness (because of the vampire mythology being fucked up). Renesssee being human and vampire gains her father’s prestige with the vampire-ness but her mother’s (former) innocence and naivety, and through Jacob being her mate (ew, again), Renesseme gets a specifc and special privilege and access to native culture that white people crave as a way to legitimatize their colonization. She can’t be “stealing” from a culture that she has been adopted into/married into. She can’t “steal” land that she will inherit from her husband if something happens to him. If Renesseme were to be able to become a vampire like her family members and her descendants pass on, and she survives them. She would still keep the land. If something happened to her well.....her immortal family members would end up with land that is not theirs especially have breaking a treaty and everything being written in their favor. BIG YIKES, STEPHENIE!  If you’d like to read the paper I wrote,  I would gladly send it to you.  Thanks for reading. If you have any questions or need clarifications, feel free send me an ask.

Cutting Hair as Punishment in the Twilight Saga

Okay, I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts around this into a sort-of-essay format for a while, because I find it disturbingly mean-spirited: Meyer has a pattern of using hair-cutting as a form of punishment for characters, especially female characters, who fail to embrace Bella and the Cullens with open arms. I’m talking particularly about Leah and Lauren, both of whom, while not outright antagonists like Victoria or James, are situated along with Rosalie as “against” Bella throughout the series. The Quileute pack, meanwhile, is situated largely “against” the Cullens, meaning Jacob and the rest of the pack get the Haircut of Shame, too.

(Also, I’ve been creeping through @panlight ‘s blog because I thought she had a recent post relating to this -- I was probably thinking of this submission and her addendum, which does discuss Meyer’s “punishment” of certain characters, but that post was about characters suffering for not waiting for True Love, or daring to do the Devil’s Tango before marriage. Still, it’s on-theme and very much worth reading, like all her stuff!)

So here’s the general outline: first I’m gonna talk about the shapeshifters and how their overall lack of choice frames cutting their hair as something forced on them and therefore punitive. Then I’m going to discuss Meyer’s FAQ response where she reveals that Lauren was tricked into cutting off most of her hair over the summer before New Moon, and how this adds an extra fun misogynistic element to the hair-cutting theme with respect to Lauren and Leah. I also use way too many words to do it, sorry.

Punishment | The Shapeshifters Are Given No Other Option

I don’t have the background or knowledge to discuss the significance of long hair to indigenous culture and identity in detail, and my understanding is that different tribes ascribe different meanings to it. What I’ve read it about it suggests that, generally, long hair represents strength of one’s individual spirit and of the community. It’s a source of pride, and is only cut off voluntarily in extraordinary circumstances, often as an expression of grief, or to mark a significant life change.

This sort of works in the context of the shapeshifters all cutting their hair -- phasing into a giant wolf, discovering the existence of the supernatural, and assuming the role of protectors is a major life event for these characters. But the negative associations make it a troubling choice on Meyer’s part, and that’s without even getting into the problem of her imposing her own worldbuilding onto the legends and culture of a real tribe. Because of the lack of choice involved in becoming a shapeshifter, the whole situation feels like a scenario in which the Quileute characters have their hair forcibly cut -- a degrading and traumatic act that (depending on their particular tribal belief) might symbolically sever them from their sense of cultural identity and connection with the rest of their tribe.

It all kind of begs the question: why does Meyer even have shapeshifting work this way? What narrative utility is there in having the length of their hair in human form determine the length of their fur as wolves, thereby compelling the shapeshifters to cut it so it isn’t a physical impediment? It’s another sign of the changes in Jacob, sure, but he’s already being uncharacteristically cold and distant, plus suddenly has the physique of a fit twenty-five-year-old; Bella already knows something’s very wrong. His short hair is just another jarring thing for Bella to notice and mourn, like the loss of Jacob’s “baby face” and general sunniness.

It does work as a symbolic thing, representing another sacrifice Jacob has to make and the change in how he now has to perceive himself -- but he’s already got a literal giant wolf form to represent that change in identity/self-perception. Forcing him to cut his hair too just feels like piling on. My argument here, which I hope will be supported when I discuss Lauren and Leah further in, is that it’s not just piling on, but actively punitive -- because much like Leah and Lauren are “against” Bella, the pack at large is “against” the Cullens pretty much through the end of the series.

The Quileute pack is definitely not a Cullen fanclub. The entire purpose of their existence is to destroy vampires, and the truce they have with the Cullens isn’t friendly. They still don’t particularly like or trust the Cullens even after allying with them in Eclipse, and in Breaking Dawn Sam is fully prepared to go to war against them to enforce the treaty. Bella expresses frustration with Jacob and the pack for not appreciating the Cullens more, yet is curiously less willing to scold Alice, Edward, or Rosalie when they call the Quileutes dogs and complain about their smell. (I think she might reprimand Edward for it at some point, but I don’t remember the exact passage.) Bella even starts throwing around “dog” and “mutt” as an insult herself -- I think we know whose side ol’ “Switzerland” is on, here, and whose side Meyer is on as well. The Quileutes aren’t exactly enemies, and in fact are crucial to the Cullens’ survival in both the newborn and Volutri conflicts, but they’re punished nonetheless because they aren’t wholeheartedly Team Cullen from the get-go.

So to explain why I’m so convinced that there’s a link between hair-cutting and punishment in particular, let’s talk about Lauren. There’s a definite gendered element to it this time, too -- by being tricked into cutting her hair, Lauren isn’t just diminished/shamed, but rendered (*thunderclap*) unfeminine.

Lauren Was Rude To Bella Like Twice, Let’s Humiliate Her

I think Meyer’s answer to the question “What happened to Lauren’s hair?” on her FAQ page speaks for itself:

Ha ha. I had fun imagining this one—I only wished that it had fit into the book somewhere. Lauren fell victim to the “model discovered in the mall” scam. An alleged modeling agent approached Lauren in a mall in Victoria, B.C., and told her she was a natural model. Lauren ate it up. The agent told her that if she did something edgy with her hair, and took some high quality head shots, her future was assured. Lauren followed the instructions—dropping fifteen grand on the pictures taken by the agent’s partner—and waited for her career to begin. She’s still waiting. Snort.

It’s pretty obvious that this was done spitefully. Here’s the list of Lauren’s crimes against humanity Bella at this point in the series: 1) she was jealous of the attention Bella was getting as the new girl; 2) she talked behind Bella’s back once, saying Bella might as well just sit with the Cullens now (and she isn’t wrong); 3) she eyed Bella “scornfully” the day of the La Push beach trip; and perhaps most damningly, 4) she’s blonde.

Post-haircut, she has the gall not to be thrilled that Bella’s deigning to speak to the lowly non-Cullens again, then sides with Jessica after Bella uses Jessica to make a point to her dad, is shitty company, and then risks getting them both raped and murdered in Port Angeles so she could get off on her hallucination of Edward’s voice.

I think it’s pretty common knowledge that long hair is tied to patriarchal notions of femininity and attractiveness. Women with short hair are still derided for being ugly, or assumed to be lesbians in a derogatory sense, or simply considered less feminine and therefore less desirable/worthy (because a woman’s worth depends on her desirability, after all). For many women and girls, losing their long hair -- whether because of illness, or gum getting stuck in it, or whatever -- is very upsetting and a hard blow to their self-esteem. Just look at Alice as an example of Traumatic Short Hair; her hair was shorn like that because she received electroshock “treatments” in an asylum. (Although in Alice’s case, I don’t think her having short hair is punishment, but a facet of the traumatic backstory all female characters in Twilight have to have for some reason. Plus, she started the series with short hair, which distinguishes her from the pack and Lauren, who were tricked or compelled into cutting their long hair during the series.)

But Lauren’s so bitchy, so she deserves it, right? Ha ha, she was mean to Bella and cared about her appearance too much, so now she’s ~ugly!

Leah Has It the Worst and It Makes Me Want To Burn Everything

The misogynistic aspect of hair-cutting as punishment is taken up to like, twelve with Leah. Not only does she suffer for being “against” the Cullens along with the rest of the pack (and Bella, too, so extra sinning), but she suffers uniquely for being the only female shapeshifter. A bunch of teenage boys regularly see her naked body against her will. Her previously devoted boyfriend imprints on her cousin/best friend, Sam dumps her and can’t even explain why, and the whole pack -- including her own brother -- resents her for being upset about it, even though she can’t help the lack of mental privacy. Because of that same lack of mental privacy, she has to hear every gripe the boys have about her, plus every enthralled thought Sam has about Emily while she’s still deeply wounded by their breakup.

She blames herself for her dad’s death, because she phased at the wrong time. We don’t get any indication that her fellow shapeshifters or the elders are trying to reassure her otherwise.

And of course, because she’s a shapeshifter, she has to cut her hair. In addition, because Leah’s a woman, this has the same misogynistic connotations as it did with Lauren. In Leah’s case, though, the de-feminization is compounded by her sudden infertility. It’s clear that Leah attaches her sense of womanhood to her fertility, rightly or wrongly -- she bitterly calls herself a “genetic dead end” in Breaking Dawn and thinks of herself as a freak. She feels like there must be something wrong with her, some un-womanly flaw, that made her one of the shapeshifters at all.

Then, just when Jacob starts to see her as a human being worthy of compassion, he imprints on Renesmee and doesn’t give a shit about anyone or anything else anymore. No more bonding with Leah, no blooming friendship to help her heal and come to terms with the new realities of her life. (This is one of those dropped threads that aggravate me to no end -- what was the point of having Leah opening up to Jacob, or starting Jacob on the path of realizing he was being a dick to her this whole time and that she’s a person with  value, if he was just going to spend the rest of the book as Renesmee’s love-zombie and never think about it again? Disgusting.)

Leah was a lot more forgiving of Jacob than he deserved at that point in the story, for all the good it did her -- I think she’s mentioned maybe once in Book 3 of Breaking Dawn. At least she got her god-tier moment of yelling at a deranged, pregnant Bella Swan.

Speaking of Bella...

I’m just going to note, for no particular reason, that in Breaking Dawn we get to hear explicitly that Bella’s got hair that falls “almost to her waist” and that she looks like “a freaking supermodel” because she’s so “beautiful and pale.” It just strikes me as a telling contrast at this point.

You've posted before about how, originally, the Volturi were more neutral and weren't the evil dictators that they ended up being. How do you think an actual trial would have gone down in BD? Would they still have killed Irina? She didn't LIE, she was mistaken. Would the Cullens get the same witnesses--the Romanians probably wouldn't show up for a trial? Who would be the witnesses for the Volturi? What would a neutral punishment be for the Cullens, since they DID break a bunch of rules?

You could pretty much solve all the problems with the ending of BD (wouldn’t solve the Renesmee and imprinting problems, though) by actually framing the Volturi confrontation as a trial and not a “they would fight, we would fight, and we would all die.” The non-fight feels like an anti-climax and a let down because she built it up to be a fight! Characters were fight training, characters were picking out which adversary they wanted to personally take on, and then she avoided the fight and it felt like the air was let out of balloon. If she didn’t want it to be a fight, then build up to it as a trial. At the end of a trial, if the parties are found innocent, everyone goes home! That’s the ending she wanted and she had the perfect means to do it without this fake-out non-fight. She was half-way there with calling them ‘witnesses!’

Firstly it would make way more sense to summon to the Cullens to Volterra. There is literally no reason this has to happen in Forks. It would spare the younger Quileute boys from phasing, for one, and it would just be more like a trial in the first place. [I’ve always wondered if the weird “NO EVERYTHING MUST HAPPEN IN FORKS! THEY MUST MOVE THERE! THEY CAN’T LEAVE!” thing comes from the original title of the first book being ‘Forks’ before they settled on ‘Twilight.’]

So they are summoned to Volterra, and pick up witnesses along the way, I guess. Jasper and Alice bail--they aren’t Carlisle’s creations so I guess they have a loophole that they aren’t “really” part of the coven--but they are actually looking for a final witness: Nahuel. 

With a trial it would be pretty clear right away that Renesmee was not what Irina claimed, and so the Cullens did not commit the crime (creating an Immortal Child) of which they were accused. They did do some other iffy stuff, but they weren’t on trial for that, so I guess they could let them go? The other major crime was letting Bella in on the secret, but she’s a vampire now so it’s okay. My guess is Caius would list their other crimes and Aro would be like “no no, they are not on trial for this, dear brother!” and everyone goes home and lives happily ever after, yay! 

I doubt Irina would be killed in this scenario. But Aro would still want to get Alice (and Bella and Edward but mostly Alice) and now also Benjamin, but he needs to wait for a rock-solid case. There were too many witnesses who were too powerful to convict the Cullens on the obviously-false Renesmee charge. Carlisle has too many friends; they would revolt. 

And yeah, I doubt the Romanians would show up for a trial. They weren’t friends of Carlisle’s and didn’t care about the baby, they were only interested in the “inevitable” fight. 

Masterpost: What If Something Completely Bizarre Or Impossible Happened, Or Canon Was Completely Different?

Last updated: 24th of December

Aro, Carlisle, and Edward are each granted a miracle. What do they wish for?

What if the entire cast of Twilight fell in love with Bella? + What would Bella think of it all? + What about the Quileutes?

How would a meeting between Edward and Edythe go?

What if Caius and Bella were subjected to a hokey fanfic cliché?

What if Edward and Marcus went on a road trip?

What if Bella was possessed by a demon, like Reagon in The Exorcist?

What if Edward caught Bella drowning puppies?

What if Edward knocked Bella up in Twilight?

What if New Moon Bella came to suspect Edward had been a figment of her imagination?

What if sex pollen attacked Forks?

What if Bella ghosted the Cullens?

What if the cast of Twilight realized they were all figments of a woman's imagination and their lives are the plot of a book? + Emmett writes his own book about vampires

What if Didyme was resurrected?

What if Carlisle decided to father his very own hybrid, or: what if Esme was abducted aliens? (Bonus "What if someone else had Bella's gift and they had a gift-off?")

What if Marcus' gift went off the rails and tried to convince him Aro was in love with the Romanians?

What if the Cullens swapped powers?

What if Bella and Edward suddenly became human?

Subcategories because some of these scenarios are shockingly aligned:

Various characters time travel or become precogs:

What if Breaking Dawn!Edward was implanted into Twilight!Edward’s body?

What if Aro in New Moon knew what would happen In Breaking Dawn?

What if Jacob from the end of Breaking Dawn time travelled to the beginning of Twilight?

Various apocalyptic asks:

What if the end was nigh?

What if all the humans disappeared? Poof.

What if an evil AI took over the world?

A dome is placed over Forks

Someone is turned human again:

The entire vampire cast of Twilight is made human again, chaos ensues

What if all the vampires turned human? (cont.)

What if the Volturi randomly turned human again In New Moon?

What if Edward became human again, and there was no turning back?

What if canon was completely different?

What if Twilight vampires were Harry Potter vampires?

What if Renesmée was an eldritch monster?

What if animals could be turned into vampires?

What if Jake could turn Bella into a shapeshifter?

What if Bella was killed by Edward and reincarnated?

What if Edward never existed?

What if Charlie was a vampire at the beginning of Twilight?

Things I Would Change About Twilight Pt. 6: Jacob

1. Why? Why did he have to imprint on Renesmee? Not only is he stuck waiting on her to grow up, he has to live forever. I'm not saying that's a bad deal necessarily, but he does have to watch all his friends die. And that's the best case scenario, considering she does choose to fall in love with him.

2. Jacob and Edward should not have pressured Bella into an abortion. Even though it was never gonna happen, it's Bella's body, and therefore her choice. She obviously wanted the baby, and there should have been no further discussion. Of course they want her alive, and that's a valid feeling. But she wouldn't have been happy if she didn't know how her child would turn out.

3. Jacob should have been nice to Leah from the get go. He understood a lot her pain more than he realized. Even if she wasn't his love interest (or anyone's), they still could have connected. They did start to in Breaking Dawn, but I'd have liked to see it throught the books. Leah needed to be stood up for.

4. I should have brought this up in an earlier post, but why is the whole Quileute thing anger based? I get they first transformed to protect their people from vampires. But they should just transform when they feel like they're ready to.

5. Jacob shouldn't have imprinted at all. He could have met a nice girl, or not had anyone for a while so he could focus on himself. He could have imprinted a little further down the line when he went to college. Anything but a literal child.

Hearing Damage (Chop and Change, Part 7.)

Series descriprion: Twenty years ago, you’ve given a promise to a boy who claimed to imprint on you. Against your will, you decided to keep it and to visit La Push just to see if anything has changed.

Part summary: With Seth asking you to marry him, there was a new danger arising on the horizon. A problem named the Volturi. For that, you started to train the new generation of La Push shapeshifter while loosing a piece of yourself in the woods. 

A/N: Obviously, a huge shout-out to the Victoria chase scene ( ✨ CHEF'S KISS ✨) from New Moon, because the scene's iconic at this point (camera play be hard in this scene), and it inspired me for this whole chapter. I have some cool ideas in my mind... So let's watch me fuck 'em up, shall we?

Warning: It’s highly recommended to read the Football Time miniseries first since this contains an unlike pairing which is explained in the series, also the circumstances are given there.

Word counter: 4.4 K

Tagging: @nemodoren​. @missdictatorme​

Spotify playlist:  ✨ Twilight Crackheads ✨

Series masterlist: H E R E

It was the end of August - and even if the temperatures were still high, the rainy season was coming in full force. The storms were an everyday occasion, drowning the forest grounds in La Push with gallons of cold water every second. This, quite obviously, made the soil soaked in water and it also made all of the smells mix into the smell of the typical woods. You could smell the trees, the typical stale and water in the air; and nothing else. The lack of smell and footprints made it quite hard to track you down. Harder than normally, you'd say. Especially as you preferred to stay on the tops of the trees, or at higher places, where the smell could be tracked a bit harder than usual.

Now, you were putting to use everything you've learned on your stay with the Volturi. They taught you how to be unseen, quieter than the silence itself, barely recognizable by your smell. Also, it was one of the reasons why you were never caught by them - yes, there were times when they breathed on your back, but you always figured your way out by any means necessary. Your only luck was that Aro usually sent his less trained guards after you, not someone like Jane or Alec, who would wipe you out before you'd have the chance to think about what you were standing against.

With these shenanigans, Aro was sending you a clear message - whether the vampire was still fond of the times you've spent in his services or he just didn't want to offend Carlisle, he did want to put you down - yet you weren't his priority. To name it correctly, he didn't care that much about your destruction. Which, let's be honest, was probably changed at the moment you agreed to marry Seth. Now both Caius and Marcus had a real reason to put you down for good after you've fled their hunters countless times. Not only you've been packing with the werewolves, or 'consulting' with them, as Caius would most likely put it, but you were marrying one of their kind. This was overstepping every imaginable boundary set by the Volturi, straightaway asking them to destroy you.

There was a small possibility that the trio won't want to go against the Quilete pack, so Aro won't listen to Caius' pleadings. But your hopes in these scenarios were low, almost unexisting. They had to come, sooner or later. These Volterra vampires didn't consent to see the Quileute reservation as a sacred place, they didn't agree to respect the boundaries of the land, as the Cullens did previously. You couldn't be safe when it came to Aro and his underlings.

That was why you were sitting high up in a tree, watching the ground below you with a smile playing on your lips. The whole time, ever since the hunt started, you've been watching him from the shadows and he hasn't noticed. You had it in you the whole time. Sometimes, you misguided him on a wrong path ending nowhere and there were multiple occasions on which you almost won. Yet you didn't want to end the game so soon. You've been enjoying yourself... And he needed the training as well.

You've heard a small rock kicked over the ground and a small sigh. That was all it took to know he's near. Your eyes searched for him frantically just before you gazed at the huge, graceful animal. It was slowly walking down the path you've traveled through roughly eight hours ago - just before another big storm came again. Seth seemed to know you're near him, yet he wasn't able to locate you. Maybe if it wasn't as much fun, you'd revealed yourself a long time ago and provoked a fight. But seeing him clueless was making you stare at him with sparkles in your eyes, waiting before he figures out once more.

The revelation about Aro, Caius, and Marcus, or 'The Holy Trinity' as you called them, fell on you the very same evening Seth had proposed to you. He just fell asleep with his head on your chest again, as usual, when your eyes widened in horror. Your fingers petrified inside his hair, you weren't able to breathe. You couldn't anything, just to think about the danger arising on the horizon. How long could it take you to prepare for a wedding? Alice was quite handy with this, especially with Esme and Rosalie's help, so it won't take you more than a year before your surname will be changed to Clearwater. And what then? If they'd hear about the inter-species marriage, they'd immediately send someone to look after you. Whether it will be a spy or someone who will send you a clear warning, there was this paranoid, irrational fear on the back of your head.

Both the Cullens and the shapeshifters said they'll come to protect you against Aro and his underlings, you called Carlisle and Sam the following morning, there were no buts and no questions, even Sam and Embry quite hot-headedly promised they'll shift if they'll have to protect a part of their family... But the image itself was vividly burned into your brain. How stupid you've been for not realizing it sooner? At the start, it was nothing, but at this point, it could hurt a lot of people. Alice didn't see them coming in every version of the future she went through, but maybe they hadn't heard of the news yet or they didn't decide to come. But decisions can be made from second to second, especially when Aro knew how Alice's gift works.

A vampire marrying a werewolf. What a joke to be told. There always existed the possibility they already knew what was about to happen and they simply didn't care. Yet it was keeping you restless at nights. And one day, you've come up with the idea. Well, it was more or less a conjuring of coincidences... But it was working in the end.

After the whole Cullen clan came by to visit Forks to see if it's safe to attend your wedding as a whole family, all of them were creeping in the shadows, of course, some boys started to shift just like their fathers before them. It was all repeating itself, playing out exactly like the last time. They've been remorseful, yet everyone found a light at the end of the tunnel in this situation since now, everyone was experienced with shifting, controlling it and the men even knew how to stop it. Sam, upon realizing Cullens have made it happen again, said he's old to lead a pack - asking Jacob to be the new ultimate alfa of La Push. Jacob, not like how much of the kids - both girls and boys - shifted, agreed to start a new pack. He just widened the two-men pack which already existed. Since you were a vampire, an old an experienced one, you decided to let the werewolves hunt you... Whether for fun or training. At first, it sounded too dangerous and crazy, to let a pack of teenage, unruly werewolves hunt you down in the woods with their teeth ready to bite the limbs of your head off if they lose their focus.

Yes, you were aware that the werewolves were naturally good in tracking and hunting vampires down, yet not every vampire was that straightforward as the newborns, with who the pack already had experience with. Some of them could hide in the shadows, attack at the least expected moment, come up with better tactics than the pack. When Seth and Jake set with the pack on a group hunt, they usually found you and 'took you down' in less than a day. With each training, the pack consisting of teenagers got better. They've been coming up with better tactics, surprising you at times you were sure they'll never find you.

This was a new adrenaline rush for both you and your boyfriend. One of which you couldn't have enough. You and Seth sometimes got lost in the woods for the weekends, just you and him and any other werewolf. This was what you sarcastically called a 'romantic weekend'. Sometimes, you betted for dishes or cleaning the room, if you wanted the hunt to be spicy. But no matter who won, there was this certain despair which made Seth search for you more intensely than any of the other werewolves would - the feeling was based on having you slipping just a small bit past his radars, the feeling that you're just slipping past his fingers when he's doing all he possibly could just to keep you by his side for a little longer... That was what made these hunts exciting.

The quicker he'd find you, the quicker you could get home and think of a way to appreciate his efforts. It wasn't physical every time, not most of the time. Sometimes, you've prepared him a really special dinner, sometimes you did things that you hated to do - like cleaning the bathroom after he came from the forest muddy and dirty. It was always fun.

After a moment of watching him circling in small proximity from where you've been sitting at, you elegantly jumped from one tree to another. You've been so careful that Seth didn't notice a leaf moving from the sudden movement and waves of air you've caused. For some time, you've followed him around and watched him carefully searching the whole perimeter. You've been in the woods for three days - if he'd like to give up the hunt, all he had to do was to howl out loud three times. And with anticipation, you've seen as he's thinking about doing just that. This made you jolt with excitement. You've been so close to winning... It was just seconds away.

Yet in the next second, you notice the expression in the wolf's eyes change as the animal shifted his gaze in another direction. Someone from the pack just joined you. Usually, when the younglings needed to change for a while, they were instructed on where they weren't supposed to go. It was just for not ruining the sport. But this gaze meant something different, yes, this meant that another hunter joined Seth.

'Where have you been?' - Seth heard inside his mind as Jake approached him from the northern perimeters. - 'Do you know what day it even is? It seems that you lost yourself to the game.' - With a scoff, Jacob was running closer. - 'Did something happen?' - Seth asked back, running through the wet soil at a racing speed just to meet his wolf brother in the middle. Jacob started to laugh almost, a peal of pure amusement was sinking through the sound. - 'I just came to put an end to this. Let's find the soon-to-be wife of yours, shall we?' - Jacob asked back, nodding his huge head at Seth.

You've been following both the wolves all along. Sometimes, you'd love to have Edward's gift to read minds. Oh, you'd give anything to hear what was the pack talking about. But you could work only with barks, as you called it, sights and growling to read their signals. Which wasn't easy, but you managed.

'Have you seen her this weekend?' - Jacob asked as both of them searched through the woods at a calm pace, both taking one side of the river. The rain was getting worse, but they'll surely find you in no time. - 'She's trying to blend in this time - I've caught a few scent paths, but they never led anywhere. I'm sure she's close and giggling somewhere in the trees. She always is.' - Seth said with sureness in his voice. He did respect your skill to blend in with the woods, if he hadn't been falling asleep on your chest every day of the past three years, you'd be able to convince him that maybe, you could be just a dream. - 'Someone should remind her she'll come late to her wedding. What a woman.' - The bigger, brown wolf sighed. Seth stopped to look at him, the inner chaos was screaming inside Jacob's ears. - 'They're already here?' - 'Everyone's here. There are things like bachelor and bachelorette parties. Sam and Emily already prepared yours.' - Jacob laughed at Seth's out-of-touch realization. - 'I didn't know we've been here that long,'

He wanted to continue, yet suddenly, his head spangled in a direction of the waterfall. As once again, he sighed at the sight of you. You were squatting on the tallest rock, teasingly smiling at him. Seth couldn't but adore your appearance once more, this happened every time he hadn't seen you in a while. All you were wearing was a tight top and old jeans; nothing else, not even shoes, was necessary. Your hair had been untidily styled as if you didn't care at all, and yet you've been the most beautiful person he had ever seen. His hands already knew every small inch of your body, but he was eager to re-memorize it all. - 'She's all yours, brother.' - Jacob said internally and growled in your direction, so you'd know they're coming for you. - 'Tell me if you need help and... Don't be soft on her.' - 'Tell her that. Last time, she bumped my ankle.' - Seth answered, but ran in your direction like a greased lightning.

Sure, you could just jump down from the cliff, into the water, misleading him again. But if Jake interrupted your weekend, something must've been happening. Which was the fact that made you reveal yourself in such a clear way? How Jake came to search for you wasn't as important to made Seth call the hunt off, but it was a sign that you should speed the things up. So instead of leaping off, you ran in Seth's direction with the same force, as if you planned on meeting him in the halfway. Jacob knew how much you loved each other; there was still the shared consciousness inside their mind, so even if Seth didn't want to show them, they've seen... Everything.

And even though you've been one of the most loving couples inside the borders of La Push, Jacob would swear that he had never seen two people going against each other with such aggression. You were capable of going into one-v-one with Seth in the blink of an eye. The physical fights weren't just some... Teasing. You didn't hold anything back and neither did he. When you started to fool around with each other, you were growling from the depths of your chest, your eyes suddenly became wilder and your whole body changed into a weapon. Seth didn't hold back - each time, he was going in with full force, biting you and scratching you. Well, when you could accidentally break his ribs during your first time, he could bite your forearm, right? Those were the rules.

Yet when the smaller wolf tried to catch you with his teeth, you've bounced off the riverbed and flew just inches above him, dodging him masterfully. As he turned on his feet paws to run after you, he saw you sending him an amused grin over the shoulder before you giggled and went into the woods. Jacob followed immediately. It took you some time before you realized they're closing you between them, preparing to take trap you. You've had a plan for this - but as soon as you bounced off the wet soil, you felt Seth's snout pulling you back. The wolf threw you on your back, surmounting you. You could feel the smell of his breath when you laid under him. Quite uncomfortably, he pressed his front feet with claws next to your head and dear Lord, you could hear him saying 'you're not escaping from me now'.

It almost seemed that Seth had won. And with a blink of an eye, you were gone again. Seth didn't know what happened, all he could tell was that he was covered in the soil as you dug yourself from under him. The wolf didn't have even a time to look around to find out where you've disappeared -suddenly, something knocked him off his feet as you jumped down on his back. You've been careful enough not to hurt him, but you did surprise him. You've shown him who's the boss here, knocking him on his side.

At that moment, Jacob, who wasn't supposed to take action, jumped at you and bit into your shoulder, throwing you into the nearest tree. It could seem like a lot and as unnecessary aggression, it could be seen as excessive violence, something that shouldn't happen between lovers and friends. It was just for sports, to be honest. As long as you didn't crack or neither of them had cracked, everything was alright. Over time, Jacob realized how far he can go before seriously hurting you - once, he knocked a finger off your palm. At that, you stopped the training and you were very mad with him. That day, you showed them how vampires put themselves back together when they're not destroyed properly, but you also told him to go gently with you. They didn't need to tear you apart. From that moment on, he understood how to tackle you without tearing your arm off.

Your back crushed the tree you've landed on - the curve of your spine could be perfectly seen. Slowly, you picked yourself up on your knees and growled, slowly getting more and more pissed. Without any further signal, you sprangled against Jacob, mounting him with a sadistic smile. The wolf jumped around as if you were on a rodeo, your palms held islets of his fur as you tried not to get kicked off. As you held the fur, there was something that couldn't be described in your grip, some sort of tenderness. It was for good fun - you didn't want to hurt him, but you still reminded Jacob that you were capable of being dangerous.

Seth was now on his feet, ready to take you down - yet you were faster. Before both of them figured out what you were about to do, you were on your way forward, running through the woods. The trees as if moved out of your way, nothing could stop you at that moment. Jacob and Seth were running next to you the whole time. At first, it didn't seem that the two tried to achieve something - just before you realized they've pushed you into a tight corner. They've led you to one side of the big cliff. It was a high wall of stone massive - and definitely, you could climb it and escape. But what was enough, was enough. You've looked on the wall, still hearing the two wolves standing behind you. With grace, you put both your palms on your hips and tried to move into a civilized level. No growling, no abrupt attacks, nothing.

They knew that you needed a moment to become human again. The first rule of these weekends was to... Let go of the civilized humanity you've learned yourself throughout the last four centuries. Something wilder appeared in your eyes each time you've prepared yourself for an attack as if there was some animal trapped inside. After two minutes, you finally turned at both of them with a smile. - "Good job, boys. You have me." - Gently, you approached Seth and dug your fingers inside Seth's fur. - "I'll wait for you at the house, okay?" - And with that, you were gone.

Both Jacob and Seth appeared out of the woods behind you not too long after that, with big smiles and jokes airing one after another. Another grin appeared on your lips as you walked to meet Seth just to feel his warmth on your body. Jesus. You've forgiven that your body was warm at moments - especially in the morning when Seth climbed out of the bed. Usually, you were almost warm like a normal human being. Yet now, throughout the weekend, you've coldened even more thanks to the wind and rain. - "Hey there, handsome." - You smiled and wrapped your arms around his back, bringing him closer.  - "I almost got you, didn't I?" - "You know you had me. For two days." - Jesus, you were so sweet that Jake had to look everywhere but not at you.

"Guys, can you stop?" - Jacob asked with a burst of laughter. You didn't let go of each other, but you stopped stealing kisses. - "Do you even want to get married?" - Oh. Suddenly, you stiffened in Seth's arms as you realized why did Jake come for you. The wedding. OH. The guests had arrived. What day it even was? - "Did we missed the date?" - You let out quietly, almost being frozen in place. Seth started laughing. - "We almost did. Jake came to pick me up because of the bachelor party." - "Are the others here already?" - You looked at Jacob - the man didn't say a word, he simply nodded at you.

"Be careful, yeah?" - You mumbled to Seth, kissing his shoulder with your ice-cold lips. Dear Lord, could you get more beautiful than you were at the moment? He couldn't touch you for three days almost and now, he let you go for another one. - "Yes ma'am." - Your man answered solubly, planting one last kiss on your forehead. - "And you. Try to capture everything. I want to see him drunk." - You whispered to Jacob and he gave you a sinister whisper back. - "Well, you saw him drunk multiple times. Why is this different?" - "That wasn't his bachelor party. He might say he doesn't want to marry or whatever." - Just like that, you were gone.

Alice was standing at the back of your small residence with both palms on her hips. Bella was there too, hugging Alice's shoulder with a smile your way. Everyone was there - Esme, who was waiting at the Cullen residence, Rosalie, Sue, Emily, and someone, who was a surprise for you. Two women with whom you hadn't met personally yet. Well, you met your sister-in-law once. You've met her on the football match - but she hadn't been in La Push ever since you've moved in. Sue told you that Leah was visiting her regularly, but she never drove to see you and Seth. Yet now, she was there to celebrate your last night of freedom - she was there with her fianceé Samatha and they've been smiling the whole time you were walking to them. Emmett wanted to spend the night with you as well, but they told him he can't. This was meant to be a 'wellness ladies night', as planned by Alice. - "Where have you been? We've been here for ages!" - Alice cried out, barely keeping her shit together. - "I... I..." - For real, you wanted to tell her you're sorry, but Rosalie was there to dismiss everything Alice said.

"We're here for twenty minutes at the top." - The blonde vampire rolled her eyes, walking to you for a hug. - "Yeah, you're a bit overdramatic, Alice. Chill out." - Bella mumbled and kissed her cheek just before she walked to you to hug you as well. - "You didn't organize the whole wedding, you two, don't you take her side now. She's late." - Alice huffed angrily, but she calmed down in the next moment. Sue and Emily joined the two vampires as they bickered. With a shy grin, you approached Leah and Sam standing in front of the door. - "You're looking rough." - Leah noted as she looked at your muddy jeans and the clothes soaked in rain. Each of them wore wearing raincoats, so once again, you were the only one dressed inappropriately. - "Did he at least take you down, would be his first." - Leah muttered and to your surprise, the woman offered you her arms for a light hug. It wasn't any of the warm, passionate mom hugs Sue was giving you, but it was something. This was way better than the gazes Leah was giving you back then.

Leah stepped aside as if she had an allergic reaction on your skin, but still kept the friendly expression on her face. Leah was a beautiful woman, that needed to be said. You loved her long, wavy black hair, and full lips curled in a big smile. Her gaze and dark eyes were reminding you of Seth - these two were alike. And Sam, dear Lord, she was beautiful as well. - "Sam, this is... Y/N, my brother's soon to be wife. Y/N, this is Sam, my fianceé." - With eagerness, you shook Sam's hand. She noticed that you're cold as ice, but Leah told her something about this beforehand - she told you that you're Carlisle's sister and that your whole family had problems with blood circulation, which lead to your body appearing cold all the time. It was, of course, to protect Sam - yet the lie was kind of ridiculous.

The men, whether you were talking about Jake's pack or the rest of the Cullens, gathered at Sam Uley's house, where Sam planned on making another of his famous grill parties. But your evening was about to be way more painful - Alice made her main goal to prepare you for tomorrow. While the rest of your bridesmaids and their kids were chilling in the living room, drinking wine, talking, and laughing, Alice threw you into a bathtub. The whole night, she was playing with your hair, preparing it, making sure your skin will look nice, tried a few make-up looks. You were sure that soon, she'll bring sandpaper.

If Bella became a mermaid due to exposure to vampires, what impact would that have on the plot?

Oh my god.

What a concept

"Would that have any impact on the plot?" I mean... yes? Yes it would? Would we think that it in some way wouldn't?

Caveat

Obviously, this depends when this happens. If this happens during New Moon then Bella is presumed dead, Alice can't see her as she's a mermaid now, per the town of Forks she disappears (as she has to swim in the ocean), and Edward goes to Volterra to kill himself.

No one realizes that Bella just turned into a fish.

As one does.

That said, if it happens in Twilight, Edward is utterly horrified that he has stolen the humanity from this girl anyway. She's a fish now, she can't even live with the Cullens (who stay predominantly on land and have material possessions on land and no one wants to move into the ocean). He has ruined her just as he knew he would if... in a different way than he thought he would.

He grills Carlisle who is just as flummoxed. He's never heard of this.

But most vampires don't hang around humans very long. They either turn them or eat them fairly quickly. So far as he knows, none of the Denali's lovers have turned into fish.

(They have, per this universe, the Denali just never realize it as suddenly their phone calls aren't return. They always assumed that the lad got married, moved towns, or was politely turning them down.

It didn't occur to them that the boy's now a merman.

How they flop their way to the sea from the interior of Alaska is anyone's guess. It's a long way to go, boys.)

I imagine Edward mercy kills Bella, who can no longer live as a human being nor turn into a vampire even if she wanted to. In fact, Bella probably asks him to do it, as one last romantic tragic gesture of their love.

Edward then goes to Volterra to kill himself "My girlfriend turned into a fish!" Caius thinks the moral of this story is to not waste your time waiting for your human girlfriend: she might just turn into a fish.

But What About Eclipse?

Let's say Bella's scent, somehow, doesn't change. She'd likely smell awful, being a mermaid now and not a human, but we're in imagination land.

Edward has now tried and failed to kill himself, to live in a world without Bella's sweet scent love, he's determined to marry her and spend the rest of her natural life with him and now...

She's turned into a mermaid.

Nevermind that this is a complete disaster given the newborn army on their doorstep and will show up any minute now. Or that Bella needs to be turned into a vampire or else the Volturi will kill them all. Or that their truce with the Quileute tribe is incredibly fragile and Bella suddenly turning into a mermaid will probably be blamed on them.

And the Volturi, mysteriously, has not shown up yet.

This is not good.

Edward, of course, panics as he's turned her into a monster, completely stolen all semblance of a natural human life from her (as they have to dump her in the ocean, no more college or wedding for Bella), but he can't live without her. He now knows he's too weak to live without her or even kill her for her own good.

He can't live without her.

In this scenario... This is a little different than Bella still being human. She literally cannot be turned. As this is before Eclipse, where we learn that the Volturi were there but didn't show up til the last second, making it clear they hoped the Cullens would be wiped out or at least thinned, they're just mysteriously not there.

Carlisle bites the bullet and calls Aro.

Look, Bella's turned into a mermaid, there's an army on our doorstep, everything's a mess, please fix this.

Aro gets on the plan with the force, along with Caius and Marcus as Caius is not letting him go alone, and while the death squad wipes out the army (as Caius now can't get away with wiping them out behind Aro's back) they go to see Bella the fish.

And she is indeed a mermaid.

Aro has never heard of this before.

But, well, either Bella has a gift for being a mermaid on top of her other gift or... she's a mermaid. He's not sure turning her is a good idea, but at least she's part of the supernatural world? So long as she keeps her mermaidism and vampires a secret, and doesn't kill people left and right... Seems legit.

(Caius just dies.)

Edward vows to live in the ocean with Bella, nobly sacrificing himself for the woman he loves and her tragic condition. (This turns out to be much worse than he thought, as the ocean is a very boring place and he and Bella can't talk underwater and neither bothered to learn sign language.)

The Volturi end up still there for the wedding/Bella and Edward's swimming away into the ocean and sunset ritual. It's weird. The Cullens hope that Edward will visit, he didn't take a cellphone with him and Alice can't see him when he's around Mermaid!Bella.

They didn't realize he was tragically saying goodbye forever, and that being able to visit them would make this all less romantic and more mundane.

The rise and fall of the Twilight-Craze

Let me tell you about my first encounter with Twilight - it was a “read”-week in 6th or 7th grade, and I picked up a very new book at the library of my elementary school. So I started reading it. I remember reading the first chapters, but never finishing it. I remember how I found the protagonist to be very whiny, and very disrespectful too. 

Also, at this point I also didnt know that this would be a vampire-novel, as the backcover of the book - this being the first danish translation/edition of the novel - never mentioned it. 

Anyway, afterwards, I forgot about it pretty quickly. 

Flashforward to a year later. 

I´m over in Germany, visiting my grandmother, and I buy some books - the german translation of Twilight being among them - and then I start reading it later in the fall. While I did think that the name Stephenie Meyer sounded familiar, I could not remember why. At this point I should also mention that 6th and 7th grade was a very traumatising period for me, and I had by that point pretty much blacked much of that period out of my mind, focusing on the now and future. And yeah, I was 14, so there was still much to come. 

Anywway, as I start reading the novel later in the fall, I suddenly remembered that one book I never finished back in 6th or 7th grade - and am kinda amused. Yeah, anyway, I still found Bella Swan to be a very whiny girl, and I actually liked the novel, and honestly did not think that much about it afterwards. Though I did learn not long after that a movie would come out later that year, I - while I was looking forward to it - did not imagine that it would start a big craze, that I later learned from the Wikipedia article of the South Park episode The Ungroundable to be named “The Twilight Craze”. 

I enjoyed the movie, actually - I watched it with my best friend (who went on to become the biggest Twilight fan I know, at least for as long as the craze lasted) and it is a memory that I like to think back on. I still think that both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson did a good job in these movies - though more on that later. 

So, flash forward to the fall of 2009, where I am in Thailand with my parents. On the way to Thailand - as we went through Germany -  I bought the subsequent books New Moon and Eclipse. I read these books very quickly, and my mom as well. 

New Moon - and I´m talking about the novel here - did introduce some rather interesting ideas, such as the Volturi. One thing, however, already stuck me back then - it was the fact that Meyer completely distorted the actual folklore of an actual native american tribe, the Quileutes, for her own way, and it seemed really disrespectful back then already. And as for the Volturi, despite being mentioned early on, we didn´t really get that much from them - though as for the climax of the novel, I was pretty disturbed by the fact that the Volturi let in hundreds of tourists into their palace just to eat them after closing the doors. While that scenario is already pretty much horrifying, what really disturbed me was that Bella - and by extension, Stephenie Meyer herself - immediately forgot about it after it happened and moved on with the plot. That, and another thing - are we really gonna accept it as okay that one from Jacobs tribe physically hurt and mutilated his wifes face after wolfing out, because he feels sorry and he forgave her? It already seemed really wrong back then. 

What I also noticed was the fact that Bella Swan essentially only hung out with Jacob so she could play with his feelings, and so she could get into dangerous situations so she could get these hallucinations of Edward. With that said - I also could not really see what was so special about the relationship between Bella and Edward. 

Then I read Eclipse - and one thing stuck out to me there: it´s the fact that the mentioned backstories of the individual Cullens - Carlisles past with the Volturi, Rosalie seeking out and killing her rapists, Jaspers backstory from the american civil war (as I later learned from Das Mervins sporkings, she got a lot of stuff wrong there, to put it mildly), or how Alice was abandoned by her family in an asylum and pretended she was dead, where she ultimately got turned - all of these backstories are a hundred times way more interesting than the perks of being Bella Swan and her love life! 

Also, I immediately knew that the vampire army was a work of Victoria, and that it was to kill Bella - only upon reading the sporkings by Das Mervin did I learn that it was supposed to be a “twist”. 

On the way back from Thailand I bought Breaking Dawn shortly before leaving Germany, but I never finished it - you know why? Because some of my classmembers spilled the tea on the spoiler that Jacob imprints on Bellas daughter. I was just grossed out. I later learned that the book is what turned many fans off Twilight - and the imprinting thing was one of the reasons why, in many cases. 

Anyway, then a few weeks after returning from Thailand, I went in to see New Moon with two of my best friends, and it is a memory that I cherish very much. 

And that was the time when the Twilight Craze really, really went off - with all the cringeworthy “Are you Team Edward, or Team Jacob?” stuff, and how out of touch with reality some of the fangirls seemed - there were apparently some who really believed that Edward Cullen exists, and so much more. I still didnt think too much about it, as I had other things to look for. 

Though - despite liking the movies and the books at the time - I really, really enjoyed a lot of the parodies on the Twilight Craze, like this one from Smosh. The thing is, that Twilight became the probably most parodied thing in the 2009-2010 period. And that may have been one of the things that killed the craze - but more on that later. 

Then, in the summer of 2010 - one of the best summers of my life - I was in Miami with my family. And then my best friend and I got to watch Eclipse in a gigantic cinema in a very big mall in Miami Beach - that was unforgettable. And I also remember that I wasnt the only one who laughed over Taylor Lautners overacting. Good to know. 

During that same summer, I remember then seeing a new book by Stephenie Meyer in the bookstores - “The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner”. As this was before my friend and I saw the movie, I myself did not think that much about it; but I then later realised that Bree was the girl killed by the Volturi at the end of Eclipse, and that the novel - as the title already states - was about her time with the army of newborns. That sounded like an actual interesting plot. Shortly before watching Eclipse, the trailer for “Vampires Suck” came out - and the trailer was very funny, way more funny than the actual movie. 

So....Eclipse was a huge hit that summer. But you know what that also was? The end of the Twilight Craze itself. In fact, it can also be compared with another contemporary hit of the 2009-2010 period - Avatar. While that was the biggest hit of the winter of 2009-2010, as soon as spring started, everyone forgot about it. And while Eclipse itself got a lot of mixed reviews, like the preceding movies of the franchise, it simply was the end of the craze itself. 

I think here are some of the factors:

Twilight was pretty much EVERYWHERE in the media in 2009-2010, not only from advertisement, product placements, and posters, but also from parodies, not to mention how often Twilight was mentioned in actual news broadcast. In other words, people got tired of it - not just the people who werent even fans of the franchise in the first place, but also more moderate fans, like I considered myself then. And yeah - now thinking back on it, I was also pretty tired of seeing Twilight everywhere even before Eclipse was released in the cinemas. 

And another thing is this: The Second Life of Bree Tanner. While the novel was released in early June of 2010, mere weeks before the movie came out, it was very bestselling, because of the Twilight Craze. And the reason why it was released was most likely because even Stephenie Meyer herself had a feeling that the craze soon would end, and had to publish something Twilight-related in advance, so she could be talked about again. Officially, the novella started as a short story to tie in with her illustrated guide for Twilight. 

I bought the book later that summer while in Germany - and I found it not very well written, and forgot about it very shortly afterwards. Even my friend found it forgettable. I recently read the sporking of the book on Das Mervin to be reminded of what actually happened - and boy, does it suck! And here is my point - many Twilight fans probably realised with that book that Stephenie Meyer isnt that good a writer. (A lot of people had the same reactions to “The Host” - including me, who never finished the novel because of that)

And then, as soon as the summer of 2010 was over, Twilight was over. People had enough. 

I know that the final film was - because of Harry Potter - split in two parts (a decision that was continued when The Hunger Games were made into movies, and a decision that ultimately killed the Divergent franchise), and was released in the winter of 2011 and 2012. I watched both of them - and I was immediately struck by this in 2012: While there of course were trailers and posters for these films, there was simply not the same exposure to the franchise as back in 2009-2010. 

And by the time of the release of Breaking Dawn part 2 in the winter of 2012, I had already been redpilled regarding Mary Sues, and had a field day of counting all the Mary Sue points in the movies. 

Yeah, Bella Swan is one of the biggest Mary Sues in existence, and was created as a way of Stephenie Meyer wanting to live out an idealised version of her highschool years. 

That, and Stephenie Meyer isnt that great a writer - just read the sporking on Das Mervin. 

During the reading of the sporkings, I also realised the way how Meyer demonises every blonde - from Lauren to Rosalie, and how Leah Clearwater is demonised for being an independent woman who doesnt bow down to Bella Sue and who actually does something, unlike Bella Sue. 

Now, onto the thing with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Both are very good actors, and I think it is sad to see how haunted they were in the past decade of Twilight. Many have accused Stewart of being a bad actress because of Twilight (not to mention that they haven´t seen her brilliant performance in Speak) - I disagree. Kristen Stewart showed what a spoiled, ungrateful and dull Sue Bella is, and Pattinson what a creepy, controllable Stalker Edward is. And I´m now especially happy to see how especially Pattinson is recovering now, as Kristen Stewart did get to prove herself in movies like Camp X-Ray. 

Anyway, that was my rant on the Twilight Craze. 

How Midnight Sun Adds to Twilight Canon

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The following contains spoilers for Stephenie Meyer’s Midnight Sun.

As discussed in the review, by dint of being a retelling, Stephenie Meyer’s Midnight Sun doesn’t drastically change Twilight canon. (For that, check out Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, Meyer’s gender-swapped rewrite of the first book that concludes with Beaufort Swan turning into a vampire to be with his immortal lady love Edythe Cullen.) However, it does expand our understanding of vampires through Edward’s perspective of his family: how each of the Cullens was turned, how they found each other, Edward’s personal struggle to follow Carlisle’s code of ethics, and how each Cullen interacts with Edward regarding Bella.

What Bella didn’t see in Twilight was how much Rosalie pushed back against Edward bringing a mortal into their family and tempting her to give up her humanity, and how Alice’s visions directly impacted his every move around Bella. In these Midnight Sun interactions, we also get a hint at Edward’s love life pre-Bella… or rather, his potential love life, as—surprise!—there’s not nearly as much as you would expect from a sexy vampire. Finally, Edward reveals more about his struggle with his vampire nature, and how he has made some peace with his bloody past.

Edward’s Talent and its Limits

One of the things that most draws Edward to Bella is that hers is the only mind that he can’t read, so he constantly feels off-balance around her. While he tells her as much in Twilight, in Midnight Sun he ponders what her parentage might have to do with it. It turns out that he also has difficulty parsing Charlie Swan’s thoughts; he can only get fleeting impressions or a few words here and there, as if there is a similar (though more permeable) shield. With Renée Dwyer, however, things are loud and clear—perhaps too loud, as Edward considers that even non-telepaths can probably at least intuit Renée’s thoughts and needs, the way that people seem naturally drawn to attend to her.

Alice’s Visions and Edward’s Dramatic Irony

The biggest “change” that Midnight Sun makes to the Twilight canon is the reveal that Edward knew almost from the beginning that Bella might one day become a vampire. Among the Cullen/Hale siblings, he and Alice are especially close due to their shared mental powers: As he can read her mind, that gives him a direct look into her visions. Concerning Bella, Alice sees a myriad of potential futures, but a few distinct paths stand out: Edward kills Bella. Edward leaves Bella, a blow to her emotional and physical well-being. Bella becomes a vampire.

The way Alice’s visions work is to first provide all potential futures, and then to quickly whittle down options, or clarify the major ones, through present actions. In real-time, through their arguments and debates over the Swan girl, Edward and Alice collaborate to figure out what is most likely to happen. While his taking Bella to the meadow eliminates the potential future in which he kills her—Edward has the attack of bloodlust that Alice predicted, but pushes through it—he can’t shake the likelihood that Bella will someday be a white-skinned, red-eyed, immortal creature.

This knowledge lends a dramatic irony to Midnight Sun, as Edward is constantly questioning whether his every action with Bella might tip the scales in one direction over the other. He, of course, does not share this dilemma with Bella, not wishing to encourage her toward the vampirism she claims to want. While Alice does let slip this vision by the end of the book, Edward struggles for as long as possible to give Bella as much free choice concerning her fate as he can.

With that in mind, Edward resolves by the end of Midnight Sun that he will live in the present in their relationship and resist the urge to peek at Alice’s visions:

I was taking our relationship one day at a time, one hour at a time. I didn’t look into the future. It was enough that I could feel it coming. When I promised her forever now, I meant as far as I could see. And I wasn’t looking.

But that’s simply a temporary solution to a permanent problem, and includes Edward trying to hide information both from Bella and himself. As he reflects to himself, he anticipates that something will happen to make him leave, and he doesn’t let Bella in on this fear. Instead, he tells her aloud that he will stay with her, then adds to himself:

As long as I can, as long as it’s allowed, as long as it doesn’t hurt you. Until the sign comes, until it’s impossible for me to ignore.

Which would seem to imply that he is not at all surprised at the events of New Moon, the “sign” to leave that he was already waiting for.

Edward’s Missing Week with Tanya and the Denali

After their bizarre first meeting in Twilight, Bella notices Edward’s absence from school for close to a week, before he reappears and saves her life in the parking lot. Midnight Sun reveals that Edward fled to Denali, Alaska, the Cullens’ former home and where their fellow vegetarian vampire coven still resides. It’s meant as a respite from Bella’s intoxicating scent, but it causes complications when vampire Tanya wonders if it means that Edward might have changed his mind about her romantic interest in him.

Alas for Tanya, despite her exquisite beauty, Edward has (amber) eyes for only one face. While they have a wistful conversation about how she wishes he would see her that way, ultimately Edward apologizes for “toying with [her] expectations” and actually draws inspiration from her relationships. After all, Tanya isn’t called a “succubus” for nothing; she’s had plenty of human lovers, many of whom lead long and healthy lives once Tanya learned to curb her bloodlust.

Though Bella eventually meets Tanya and the rest of the Denali coven in the later Twilight books, her cameo here fills in more of her one-sided romantic and sexual tension with Edward.

Cullen Family History

A lot of the Cullen family history comes out either during Twilight or certainly throughout the rest of the series, but because so much of Edward’s dilemma in Midnight Sun is about losing one’s humanity, he recalls how each of the Cullens and Hales joined the family.

To that end, the Cullens are unusual for having a family unit, as opposed to the more typical vampire coven. Covens might come together temporarily for a shared purpose and disband over disagreements, but a family is bound by deeper promises to one another: to lead a “vegetarian” lifestyle and maintain their treaty with the Quileutes by not draining human blood, but also to make decisions for the good of the family.

In contrast to how his telepathy makes him closer to Alice and her visions, Edward’s strained relationship with Rosalie gets explored more in Midnight Sun. As readers know, Carlisle turned her intending for Rosalie to be Edward’s mate, as Esme was for him, but despite her beauty, Edward wasn’t attracted to her. Instead, he saw her as a sister—at first in name, but then in action, the night she brought Emmett to the Cullens, near-death from a bear mauling, and begged Carlisle to change him to be her mate.

Despite this, they still clash over Edward’s choice of love in Midnight Sun—primarily because Rosalie is jealous of Bella. Left for dead by her ex-fiancé, immortality was the only option that Rosalie had, and she would give anything to have another chance at a human lifetime. So, Bella’s fervent desire to be turned feels to her like an utter waste. While these are sentiments that Rose expresses to Bella over the course of the Twilight series, Edward’s perspective delves deeper into his sympathy for Rosalie’s position, even if he resents her for not being willing to stick her neck out for Bella like the rest of the Cullens.

Edward’s Innocent/Guilty Victim

Edward understands Rosalie’s struggle with their vampire identity, and longing to be human, as he too has grappled with their bloodthirsty nature. As he tells Bella in Twilight, he had a bout of “rebellious adolescence” about ten years after becoming a vampire, in which he rejected Carlisle’s pacifism and left the family for a few years, to explore his baser instincts. Edward thought that because he could read humans’ minds, he could choose to kill only the guilty—rapists, murderers, moral monsters—and therefore “have it all” as a vampire with a conscience.

But while he admits as much to Bella, what he leaves unsaid is a big flashback upon which Midnight Sun expounds: September 1930, and his one victim who was technically innocent. In Milwaukee, Edward came upon a human man who was plagued with evil thoughts concerning a young girl in the tenement. Even as he repeated to himself, I can’t. I can’t. I can’t, he put together the resources and a plan to kidnap the young girl—the book doesn’t go graphically into his plan, but it’s easy to intuit that he intended to rape and murder her.

In the past, Edward had killed predators to ensure that they would not have a next victim; this time, he would be stopping a would-be monster before he took his first victim. Right as the man prepared to kidnap the girl, Edward captured him and killed him—serving the justice that the man had always subconsciously known he deserved.

In the end, Edward decided, even stopping humans from enacting evil on others was not enough to justify his killing them, and so he returned to Carlisle and the rest of his family.

Saving Bella

Readers get Edward’s side of the frantic chase after Bella and the tracker who lured her to a dance studio in Phoenix to kill her slowly in order to torture the Cullens—Edward, of course, but also Alice, his onetime victim who got away.

While Alice’s visions are the group’s lodestar for locating Bella before James kills her, Edward is so seized by vengeance that he could potentially alter their future to one of the scenarios where Bella dies. During their high-stakes chase scene in Phoenix, Jasper uses his talent of manipulating emotions to give Edward the empathic equivalent of a shot of novocaine: cold, numbing, and pushing aside pain so that he can focus on the job at hand.

Edward and Jacob

In contrast to his disdain for Mike Newton and the other human boys sniffing around Bella, Edward finds that he likes reading the mind of her friend Jacob Black: he considers the Quileute boy’s thoughts “engaging,” “pure and open,” and “restful.” Clearly he doesn’t see Jacob as a threat in Midnight Sun—at least, not at the beginning of the book. By the end, when Jacob cuts in to their dance at prom (to warn Bella that the Quileutes want her to break up with Edward and that they’ll “be watching” her and the Cullens), Edward notices with some surprise that the boy seems to have had a sudden growth spurt.

He also catches a curious thought from Jacob, about Bella having a weird perfume smell—something that Edward certainly didn’t notice. It’s all foreshadowing for Jacob’s werewolf transformation in New Moon, but it’s especially curious that Edward never catches on to the fact that his eventual rival for Bella’s heart is also a supernatural creature.

Persephone and the Pomegranate

The cover imagery for each side of the Twilight story provides some insight into the narrator’s impression of vampirism. For Bella, it’s an apple: the symbol of temptation, yes, but also of knowledge. A pair of hands hold the apple out, as if they have plucked it from the tree but haven’t yet worked up the nerve to take a bite. Bella’s journey in Twilight is taking that irreversible step toward knowing, because once she does, she won’t want anything else.

Where Bella sees potential, Edward sees consequence: Midnight Sun replaces the apple with a pomegranate that has already been split in two. Throughout the novel, he likens Bella to innocent Persephone, who eats half the pomegranate seeds and curses herself to spend half her life in the underworld with Hades, her (depending on the telling) lover and/or captor. Spurred on by the knowledge, via Alice’s vision, that there is a very possible future in which Bella becomes a vampire, Edward cannot stop obsessing over this metaphor and how, he believes, it would rob Bella of the joys of mortal life.

The Meaning of “Midnight Sun”

The first time that Edward realizes Bella is dreaming of him, and it’s not a nightmare, it challenges his self-perception the way nothing or no one else has in his near-century of life. He reflects:

My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?

It… reads like pretty bad teenage love poetry, but what he’s trying to say is that when he was turned, every part of him was frozen, including his sense of self and his desires. As the sun permeating his midnight, Bella is making him reexamine what he’s allowed to want.

It’s not quite as poignant as the meaning behind Twilight: “It’s the safest time of day,” he explains to Bella. “The easiest time. But also the saddest, in a way… the end of another day, the return of the night.” But perhaps, as he seems to realize, if he pushes through to the deepest part of night, he’ll find a bright light to illuminate new parts of it he hadn’t noticed before.

The post How Midnight Sun Adds to Twilight Canon appeared first on Den of Geek.

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addiction ver 2.0 patch notes

addiction has been FULLY EDITED!

if you haven’t read the fic yet, now is the PERFECT time to dive into it! if you have read it and you’re wondering if it’s worth a re-read, let me give you the low down on what’s changed

addiction can be read on ffnet or ao3

(please let me know if you see any glaring errors, i.e., repeating chapters, major typos, and the like! ESPECIALLY on ao3! re-upping the fic was WAY harder on there, and i could have have copy-pasted the wrong thing into the wrong chapter)

patch notes under the cut!

typos and grammatical errors have been fixed. pretty self explanatory. i think and type quickly and sometimes things get left in the wrong tense or words are entirely missing, so i did my best to correct all that. if you spot anything odd, let me know!

sentence structure has been changed in certain places, and some new segments and paragraphs have been added. sadly, i wasn’t able to add as much new content to the fic as i hoped. this is really just an update to my own prose, as i’ve improved a lot over the years. i tried to fix things that were repetitive and add in some more enlightening sections of description. overall, the fic should just... read better

efforts have been made to curb the cultural appropriation present in canon. i decided to subtly? or not so subtly? insert a small detail that makes the pack’s werewolf gene NOT EXCLUSIVE to the quileute tribe. werewolves are no longer an integral part of their culture; they just happen to have a historically high concentration of this shifter gene, which can be possessed by ANY person, regardless of their gender, ethnicity, etc. unfortunately, while i’d like to expand on this concept and introduce new shifters from outside the tribe, it’s not in the cards for the current outline that i have. there are already too many subplots that don’t get enough time, but this is something i want to expand on in the sequel! if ever get to that point... anyways, i just wanted to throw this in to get rid of some of stephenie’s bad choices. because this fic is “canon friendly”, not much is going to change, but i wanted to try to get rid of the idea that the indigenous characters’ entire culture was centered around this lore that she made up

dehumanizing insults against the pack have been removed. unfortunately, as i have been reading and writing twilight fic since i was like 11, the use of the canon “dog” and “mutt” insults ended up in the fic. i have removed MOST of them, save for a few instances where characters were legitimately very angry and intended to be hurtful with their words, but i’ve taken out every instance where they were used as “jokes”. the tense relationship between the pack and the cullens is important to the narrative, but i’ve tried to represent this more by portraying the vampires in a negative light rather than the wolves, as the vampires ARE the actual dangerous monsters in this scenario, and not the shifters who are doing their best to protect humans

there’s more seth and leah this time around! again, i wasn’t able to add as much new content as i would’ve liked, but i knew i needed to add in more of the clearwaters. they get introduced in the beginning as bella’s close friends, and then they kinda... fall out of the narrative? things get busy and i just didn’t come up with many scenes for them. i managed to give them a SLIGHTLY larger presence, but it’s not that big of a change. i plan on including more side characters in part III, especially since the cullens are allowed in la push now!

SOME of the chapter titles have been changed. i want to change all of them but that’s gonna take some brainstorming. re-uploading all the chapters was very tiring and i would like to take a break now please

that’s all the major (well... maybe minor) changes for now! i want to get back to writing soon, but i just got a new laptop and i need to transfer some important things (like the fic outline) over from the old one this weekend. expect a new chapter in a few weeks!

with that new chapter will come something i’ve been considering for a while: a title change! while “addiction” definitely suited the story that i set out to write, this fic is NOT that story anymore. the title won’t change with the next update because i don’t want the fic to lose name recognition right as it comes back from hiatus; i’ll probably change it on the second new update, and i’ll be changing all of my tags on this blog to reflect the change!

what’s the new title? you’ll have to wait and find out!