🧛‍♀️Twlight🧛‍♂️

“No measure of time with you will be long enough, but we’ll start with forever..” – Edward Cullen (…coming from a man whos watches a girl sleep in his spare time, that would be a motive for a restraning order)

Ah, Twilight. The love story between an 18-year-old girl and a 109-year-old man, trapped in a 17-year-old body, who’s favorite past time is playing the piano and watching a girl sleep. A story about a girl with apparently no personality what-so-ever, who manages to attract a group of vegetarian vampires but is constantly at risk of getting killed because of a papercut.

But, lets start at the beginning…

Twilight was written by Stephenie Meyer’s in 2005 and follows the story of Isabella “Bella” Swan who falls in love with the dark, mysterious, vampire Edward Cullen. In the first book, Bella leaves her home in Phoenix, Arizona to live with her dad (Charlie Swan) in Forks, Washington. When attending her new school Bella gains attention from many of her classmates, along with Edward Cullen. Edward is written off as the quiet brooding type, slowly forms a relationship with Bella, despite his and his families’ better judgment. As the story continues, Bella discovers Edward and his family are vampires, but despite Edward’s advice to forget about him, Bella refuses and thus a relationship begins. Their story continues through four books which end with Edward having turned Bella into a vampire, married, and with a half-human, half-vampire child, Renesme. And everyone lives happily-ever-after…

… where to begin…

Its good to know that the word vampire was coined in 1734 in a travelogue titled Travels of Three English Gentlemen. It began as folklores that have existed for millennia in cultures such as Hebrews, ancient Greeks, and Romans and told of demonic creatures who thrive off drinking the blood of a living (or dead) creature. From there we have Dracula, a story, written by Bram Stoker in 1879 and tells the story of Count Dracula and his attempt to move from Transylvania to England, which an overall goal of finding new blood and spreading the undead curse. And now, Twilight, the world’s favorite vampire love story…

I read the series cover to cover during my seventh-grade year, and I understood the rage. There was drama, action, VAMPIRES, love; it had everything that people seemed to swoon over, but it seemed (to me) all too generic… let me explain. 

Bella (The Protaginist)

Bella in most ways can be described as a “blank canvas”, meaning she has absolutely NO QUALITIES that make her interesting what so ever. Throughout the books (and movies) she is shown to have very little personality. The only interesting aspect of Bella’s character is via her sparkly boyfriend (Edward). It feeds into the mentality that girls need to find a significant other to find fulfillment. At the beginning of the book, Bella is welcomed to the school by a friendly, extroverted girl but despite the girl’s kindness, Bella instead shrugs her off and instead spends her time staring at Edward across the cafeteria. And once Bella and Edward are officially together, she immediately loses interest in her new friends and shifts her life to completely orbit about Edward. 

Edward (The ‘Love’ Interest)

Edward displays many stereotypical characteristics of an abuser, he begins by attempting to isolate her from others. This is used by abusers so that their victim will have no way to escape after he decides he wants her, he is quick to get her alone and throughout the rest of the series, he continuously shields her away from other interactions (her father and friends included). He even goes as far as to forbid her from seeing Jacob (a potential rival) and even goes as far as sabotages her car to make sure she can’t leave. Another sign of potential abuse is extreme levels of jealousy or possessiveness, this begins to show when Bella goes to Port Angeles and he follows her there. Even when Bella is attacked and is saved by Edward, she doesn’t seem to notice that his behavior is a bit stalker-ish. Bella and Edwards relationship throughout the series even meets all fifteen criteria set by the National Domestic Violence Hotline for being in an abusive relationship.  

Twilight will forever be known as “the story that will have started a war between who you wanted the main character to end up with”, sparking inspiration for top-selling novels today such as ’50 Shades of Grey; which was a Twilight fan fiction. A story of an 18-year-old girl, in love with a vampire, admired by a werewolf, and still manages to have little to no character development throughout the entire four-book series… what’s not to love?