Twilight (novel)/Headscratchers/2

"All hope abandon ye who enter here"

—The Divine Comedy

Twilight 2: Twi-Harder

Please try to poke around both this page and the now-filled first Twilight page before editing. There have been a lot of repeated issues, and if the one you're adding has already been mentioned, respond to that if there is still something you would like to say about it, rather then from a new bullet.

• The fact that Bella can smell blood. It's given an entire chapter of focus in the first book, comes up *once* in the third, but other than that just... disappears. It's so irrelevant that I've never seen one pack of Twilight hating people looking for something to rip into address it. Anyone remember when people pricked their fingers in Bella's science class, and she could smell the rust and salt of blood just from a few of her classmates? This is something Myers pointed out normal humans can't do, by the way. She then feels faint and has to be dramatically carried to the nurse's? No? Anyone? If not, then why was it there? A plot point that got cut but wasn't removed by an editor? An excuse to make Bella the melodramatic sick girl for a chapter without the hassle of an actual illness? Was it only there for the irony that heh, she's going to go out with a vampire? WHY?
  • And the fact that this treated like it's somehow unique or special. Most people can smell blood; that's why it tends to be described as "coppery". That's like being amazed somebody could hear rain.
• How would Edward sparkling in public cause people to realize he's a vampire?
  • In general, it would probably just tell them something was off about him. I'd be more afraid about vivisection than being shredded and burned, but then again I haven't been an angsty, sworn-to-secrecy vampire for the last century. If you mean at the Festival of Marcus, at least in the movie (I haven't read the second book, in case the Volturi managed to suppress that information locally), the villagers probably pass down the information that vampires sparkle in sunlight and are immune to garlic
  • I go out in public with my sheen lotion glittering and no one gives me a second glance.
    • Oh but do you look emo and utterly beautiful while at it? ;)
    • Not the same thing. In the movie, Edward shimmers at most. In the book, he sparkles like a disco ball. And you're telling me that wouldn't merit the kind of attention that the Volturi would consider over the line?
      • It might get attention, but how many people would think "OH NO, VAMPIRE!" and not "Great, some stupid kid is being a public nuisance". As for the information on sparkling being known in the village, this troper is a bit befuddled as to how that would be the case. The world of Twilight is supposed to be ours, but with the "hidden" world of vampires. In other words, people in the world of Twilight believe the same legends and myths about vampires that we do. Edward is constantly going on about how all of the folklore about vampires is incorrect. One would think that if there was one place in the world where the people knew the biggest trait to identify "real" vampires, wouldn't the Volturi do anything to suppress that? After all, they were perfectly willing to shred their old friend's son into bits to hide the existence of vampires.
        • My question is that this was a festival celebrating getting rid of vampires, even if people knew of the legends wouldn't they just think Edward was DRESSING UP? Its about vampires so would it be entirely unreasonable if someone dressed up as one?
      • My guess: Twilight books exist into the Twilightverse. After the first book and the editorial boom, everyone knows that the sparkling boy is an immortal aberration against God and literature.
• Jasper goes berserk at the scent of a single drop of Bella's blood, yet Good Vampire Carlisle seems to have no issues sending him to a school where someone is bound to get a bloody nose or a cut at some point. Now, Alice can keep an eye on the future and possibly get him out of there, but then why didn't she forsee the paper-cut disaster?
  • Didn't James say that Bella's blood smelled better than most others (he said it was almost floral)? Also, wouldn't nose blood be unappetizing?
    • Nose blood tastes exactly the same as regular blood. A little less salty, I guess, but the same. And the only excuse for vampires not wanting period blood is that it's dead blood so unappetizing never seems to be an issue.
      • I believe the above troper was referring to the snot mixed in with it.
    • Although Smeyer's "dead blood" explanation makes no sense, there is some argument that menstrual blood could be unappetizing, if not downright revolting. Menstrual blood is actual blood and tissue, so it's possible that the tissue might turn them off, like eating a hamburger with buns made of leather.
  • Alice's powers are based on decisions. She can only see the outcome of something that someone decided, and I doubt that Bella simply decided to get a paper-cut. Jasper going to a place with potential for spilt blood is still a mystery, however...
  • Jasper's reaction was instinct, not a decision, so there was no way Alice could see it. She probably saw that Bella was going back home since in the end the events didn't kill her.
    • But then, If she saw that, wouldn't Alice see that Bella went home with a bandaged arm, and maybe put 2 and 2 together? Seriously, the information from the bandaged arm alone should tell you there's about a 99% chance of Bella's blood being spilt before she can get away from Jasper.
    • No, because, as was said before, Alice's visions are based on decisions. Bella didn't decide to get a paper cut, and so Bella going home in bandages was also not a decided future since it was caused by the as-of-yet undecided paper cut.
    • Actually Alice sees the path people are on based on the decisions they have/will most likely make and the path changes when a decision that wasn't previously foreseen is made. That is why Alice's predictions are more accurate the longer she knows a person since she can better predict the choices they will make. Bella would not have to decide to get a paper cut for Alice to see her getting a paper cut since the cut is an effect of her opening the gift. For instance, Alice see's Bella getting her butt whooped at the ballet studio once James decides to go there and pull his little trick because Bella's whooped butt is a result of James' decision. Or Alice sees Bella and Edward's reactions to the wedding she has planned even though they didn't decide how to react to everything. Now, if their taste preferences suddenly changed I'm sure their reaction would be different and the future she sees would change. So, in short, Alice should have seen it coming but this is only one of the many plot-holes in Alice's power.
  • Also, why in the world didn't he go crazy in the first book when Bella's delicious blood is splashed all over the ballet studio after James' attack?
    • It might be down to an instinct to attack...and James was right there. And all Bella can see is some fighting, Alice might've fought him off.
• Wasn't Jasper the newest Cullen to the "vegetarian" diet? Carlisle was on it longest, so that would explain why he was the most controlled. Still, the series is pretty inconsistent about whether or not the Cullens can hang out with Bella cheerfully or be driven mad with the desire to nom on her.
  • Actually its not a matter of time. Carlisle's compassion was so big that he never was able to bring himself to kill another human being for their blood and the other Cullens were turned by him so they were introduced to respecting human life from the get go so is easier for them to resist to be around humans. Alice was an exception given that with her power she always knew she will be a vegetarian. Jasper has problems because he was turned by a normal vampire and all he knew was to feed on humans since the very beginning so his first reaction is to think of them as prey, he needs to control himself no to act on those feelings and it doesn't help that he was a military man that was pretty much commissioned to train newborn vampires and kill them as soon as they serve their purpose.
• Bella becomes a vampire. Nothing is explained as to how her human friends and family take this or her crazy pregnancy.
  • Charlie's reaction to the news is to basically pretend it's not happening and say he doesn't want to know how it happened - so that's one reasonable reaction to the events. And she wasn't really planning on ever trying to see her human friends (or mother) again, bless her heart. Although that's going to be kind of hard considering that they still live in the same town and Esme built them a little fairy tale cottage and everything. And that Carlisle was having trouble passing for 30 at his job by the second book...
    • Which leads to another issue - the Cullens left Forks in New Moon partly because of the Jasper incident but also because they apparently had been there too long and would start to raise suspicions. At the end of the book, they all come back like it's nothing. No one questions this and apparently there's no issue with Carlisle going back to work or Alice and Edward starting up at school again.
    • It's been a while since I read the book, but I thought that was just Edward straight-up lying to Bella (again).
      • Which still leaves the question of how the Cullens were able to reclaim their house, property, job, and places at school, even though they were gone for months, with no intention of returning.
  • Actually, to Stephenie Meyer's credit, she did seem to grasp that writing Bella's pregnancy from Bella's pov was not a good idea. Other than that, though...
• What bugs me is how the did a very average book like Twilight get so much psycho fans. I'm not talking about the pre-teen girls squealing 'OMG Edward's so hot", I'm talking about actual mental problems caused by Twilight alone. I've heard a lot of stories and I personally know two girls, who, being perfectly normal, happy teenagers read Twilight and got depressions, insomnias and FREAKING SUICIDAL ATTEMPTS just because, quoting, 'they don't fit into the reality without true vampire love and their lives are miserable without a romantic, beautiful lover like Edward'. WHAT. THE. FUCK.
  • This has personally happened to me. I've done a lot of rapid growing up since then, but I was 13 at the time and already extremely depressed and on the verge of suicide, and I believe at least a part of what contributed (aside from kids at school encouraging me) to me finally attempting it publicly was Twilight. Aside from getting the public stunt idea from Edward, the whole series (at least what was out at the point - don't care to remember) influenced me in other aspects. I remember being quite literally obsessed with a boy who only flirted with me (in extremely sexual manners) as a joke because I was the laughingstock of the school. He would string me along and I would cling to his every word, and I would go on endlessly about his wonderfully enchanting smell (which I now know was just Axe, and I actually find that a bit hilarious). Then I managed to connect another random boy to Jacob, and convinced myself I was in a huge tragic love triangle. Of course, I now see the ridiculousness of it all, but at the time it was extremely serious to me and I was genuinely prepared to kill myself in a school full of people due to the influence of a book (of course I was then introduced to the wonderful world of asylums...)
  • Same thing happened with Avatar but on an even wider scale. It even got a name: Pandora Depression.
• Upon reading Edward's mind in Breaking Dawn, Aro finds out everything... except that Bella has a powerful shielding power which she has been using pretty successfully on others. Bella even mentions several times how good it is that Aro hasn't figured it out yet, basically pointing out the Plot Hole.
  • In the first book, why did the Cullens think it was a good idea to take Bella to Phoenix? They jumped through hoops to ensure that her dad wasn't attacked, wouldn't someone think that hiding in the same city as Bella's mother was not such a good idea? If they wanted to get her to another location, why not fly her to somewhere in California or the East Coast? Cost isn't exactly an issue for the Cullens and James probably wouldn't have had enough money for an airplane.
    • Not to mention that, at least in the movie, and maybe even in the book, one of the big reasons she wants to go to Phoenix is so the Cullens do not get blamed for her disappearance, by not going anywhere and trying to act as surprised by her absence as everyont else. Their "brilliant" plan is to pretty much all scatter around? That kind of sense is the non-sensical variety.
  • Let's not forget Jacob's excuse for loving Bella, claiming that he had imprinted on Nessy whilst she was still in the womb, despite him being in love with her for the whole damn series, and Nessy being there less than a forth of the time.
    • No no no! Jacob's feelings up until Bella gets back from the honeymoon were genuine, if inexplicable. Once Bella got back from Esme's Island, pregnant with Nessie, Jacob found himself not just attracted to her, but unable to make himself leave her side. He assumed that it was because his feelings were growing stronger but when Nessie was born he realized it was because he had imprinted on the her while she was in the womb.
      • Jacob didn't like Bella, he just thought he did because he was already imprinted on one of the eggs in her ovaries.
        • That's still both stupid and insulting. First off, if he had imprinted on an egg, why did he not imprint on Edward? What if that particular egg had been shed during menstruation? What if Edward's sperm had been a Y carrier and the baby had been a boy? Secondly, it's insulting to Bella. While she is a nasty bitch and an unrepentant user, it suggests that her sexuality is the only thing remotely attractive about her. Edward is only attracted to her because her smell is so sexy. Jacob is only attracted to her because of her eggs. Either way, Bella herself is not a person, she is an object. There is nothing to like about her but her functioning genitalia, and Bella as a person might as well not exist, because she could be any random person on the street. How's that for Twilight objectifying women?
        • But that's how it's supposed to be. Wish Fulfillment, anyone?
        • I don't have an answer to the first point because there are not male imprintees so far on the books. But in the second case Edward adored Bella and he found her interesting, unique, sweet, a bit tempered, prone to danger and selfless, regarding what you think of her Edward genuinely liked her as a person, he said it himself several times and you can read that clearly on Midnight Sun, both Bella and Edward are readers and even though they don't have the same taste on books they can debate over them and both have the same musical tastes, they both prefer small intimate places an nature and I think they mentioned liking the same paintings at one point. Her scent was not the atraction it was the roadblock, given that it made him run for the hills for at least two weeks before coming back and was part of the reasons he didn't spoke to her after saving her life, because he was afraid he would kill her. If her sexual atractiveness had been her only hold on Edward, he would had being trying to bed her from the very begining and the only reason they had a phisical relationship at all is because Bella herself wanted it. Not because he was trying to hump her, in fact he was pretty much planning to have a chaste relationship till Bella convinced him otherwise. Not sure about Jacob, tough his actions are indeed confusing, I think he did liked Bella but his behaviour was also part from his hate for vampires so he had the idea that he had to save her from becoming one (and what better way than offering himself being him an awesome werewolf and all that) and his Alpha Male competition genes. I try to be fair to him but Jacob never actually stated why he loved Bella on the books, they really never had any meaningful conversation aside from vampire and werewolf stuff and the only hobbie they shared was the bike riding that it was not a hobbie for Bella just a way to connect with Edward and something they never did again once he came back, I don't think they ever talked about music or books. Maybe movies? All we can do is guess.
          • To be fair to both you can´t point out to what reasons other people hang out with and loved each other on the books. Alice is the complete opposite of Bella (she likes fashion, big parties, shopping and is very perky) and they loved each other like sisters almost from the very begining.
          • You're reading into things that are not in the books. Edward and Bella never have a conversation that is not A) an argument or B) undying declarations of love. They do not talk to each other and they know nothing about each other, beyond Edward once relentlessly questioning Bella on every minutiae of her life. This has way more to do with him being an obsessive control freak than being interested in her as a person. They never discuss books or music - in fact, Bella does not really qualify as a reader, since we barely ever see her reading, and she never talks about it after she gets together with Edward. And even when she was talking about it, all she says is 'I've read sooo many books and small libraries are no good!'. Bella hates nature, as she whines constantly. Edward doesn't care, and insists on dragging her into it. They literally have nothing between them but Hawtness - him physical, her smelling like yum. Their relationship is 100% lust-based, and the only reason Edward claims to like her as a person is because he can't read her mind and sneer at her like he does other people. With every other person, he claims that they're horrible and awful because their thoughts aren't always kind and charitable. Bella is a very mean, very self-centered person, but Edward does not know this because he can't read her mind, so he assumes that she's kind and loving. God knows why, but he does. The Bella he "loves" is a Bella that doesn't exist - and even when he can read her mind, the only thing she's ever thinking about is sex. That's healthy.
    • I think you are the one forgetting parts of the books. Bella and Edward do discuss books, they talked about how Romeo and Juliet and about Heatcliff and Catherine and they talked about the kind of music they liked like classic one, and she certainly keeps mentioning books when something reminds her of them. Bella also loved to go to La Push an watch the natural pools, she hated Forks green forest but surely liked the beaches. Its called diferent taste on nature. Also Edward likes the thoughs of Alice, Carlisle, Emmet and Esme. He feelt sorry for Jasper's position and he dislikes Rosalie's thoughs. He also liked the thoughs of Ben and Angela and considered them both kind and brave. And he didn't fell in love with any of them because of their kind thoughs. All this is on the books. Do you want me to point you at the pages they are so you can check them out? I would copy paste the quotes but the page will get too crowded. Also when she finally mastered her power to let him in, she was showing him their entire relationship the sexy parts were just an added bonus, because you know people in love usually also lust for each other. Bella also liked him because he was the most selfless, brilliant and kind person she would ever know so she was indeed atracted to her body but also his other traits. I mean Smeyer didn't had to have Bella listing to everything given that the readers could actually see his traits at work.
      • Here's the thing, though: the books are only mentioned for the purpose of comparing the relationships in them to Bella and Edward's. And as for the music thing, you cannot build a relationship on the shared liking of Debussy. There have to be other things, and for Edward and Bella, there aren't.
        • I beg to differ. Who's to say what can and cannot be used as a way of forging relationships? Heck, some people like the same kinky things and videogames and they can still relate. Even people with totally different likes and tastes can still function as a couple.
        • She tells us once that Edward is selfless, though his actions throughout the book series completely negate that (deliberately putting Bella in danger because he couldn't stand to be away from her, forcing himself into her life, mind-raping everyone she knew for more details on her). She tells us he is brilliant, but this is also negated through the books (he listens to Debussy and composes on the piano. Okay, what else? He is never shown as remotely logical, rational, or even clever. Also, she refers to him as "brilliant" three times over the course of the series. Twice she was referring to his teeth). And Edward is not remotely kind. He is rude, arrogant, self-absorbed, and mean. He never laughs unless he is laughing at other people. He breaks Bella's things deliberately. He is absurdly controlling. He sneers at everyone around him, his mood changes on a dime, he has violent explosions of temper, and whines and sulks when he doesn't get his way. The only person he doesn't seem to think he's better than is Carlisle. Edward is never once described doing anything even slightly nice, let alone kind.
• If Bella has a Magic Mind Shield that makes it so no vampire powers work on her how does Alice keep seeing her future? For that matter why does Jasper's emotion control work on her (as seen, at least in the movie, when he makes her happy about her Birthday party)?
  • In the books, it explains that she's only immune to mind powers. Alice doesn't get inside her head, she just sees what's coming for her. Jasper effects her body chemistry, not thoughts. Granted, the line between mind and body is blurry at best but this is never brought up in the books.
• Okay, so depressed Edward wants to rip open his shirt and sparkle in public, thus revealing the existence of vampires and goading the Volturi into killing him. It's sort of a roundabout and melodramatic way to commit suicide, but whatever. What I want to know is this: who the hell is going to look at someone glittery and think 'vampire'? I mean, seriously, if I saw some guy glittering in the sunlight, I'd think he had too much of a thing for body glitter. Vampires aren't exactly noted in lore for their sparklyness, so why would the Volturi (or Edward) find the idea of him sparkling so terrible? He'd just look like some stoned kid with leftover rave herpes (i.e., glitter). No average person is going to look at some prismatic teenager and go, "Gasp! He's sparkly, he must be a vampire, guys!" They'd probably be more likely to ask him how much he had to drink before he went crawling through a glitter factory.
  • This is a fair complaint in the movie, where Edward's "Look" can easily be achieved with enough glitter lotion. But bear in the mind that in the book, Edward didn't just sparkle. He was like a human diamond that you could use to blind people in the street if you wanted to. No cosmetic products can produce the same results, so even if they don't realize that he's a vampire, they're going to be elbowing their buddies going "Dude, that guy is sparkling, WTF?" which is more attention than they Volturi want. His choice of suicide makes more sense in the book as well. The only way to kill a vampire is to tear it apart and set it on fire. The only thing strong enough to pull a vampire apart is a werewolf or another vampire. Edward didn't know the wolves were around again, his family clearly wasn't going to kill him, and the whole "kill it with fire" aspect made it impossible, or at least really hard to do it himself. The easiest way to find other vampires was to go find the Volturi. It was also said, or at least implied (I think, it's been awhile since I read the books) that he tried just explaining his reasons for wanting to die and asking them to kill him, but they said no, which was why he resorted to making a scene.
• How do you look at someone like they're something to eat?
  • Physically: I think it's like looking at someone you want to bone, but with more drooling.
  • Emotionally: I think this what you actually meant, but I guess it's similar to looking at a woman you randomly woke up with. It's weird, freaky, and he's just trying to keep a straight face.
  • Metaphorically: We get it, Smeyer, eating=sex! Smeyer must think that men have nothing but sex on their minds 24/7 and Bella just has to ignore it.
    • Hey, Freud Was Right. Also, I think you'd look at someone you'd want to eat as if they were a hamburger. Or something else for the vegetarians out there.
      • Freud may have invented the field but he was largely "right" only for the people he worked with emotionally repressed Victorian women.

• How can Eddie be contantly cold to the touch? Things are cold in real life because they are drawing heat from their surroundings; such as your hand. He'd have to dissapate the heat somehow in order to stay cold... or does magic not obey the Laws of Thermodynamics and I'm just reading too much into this?
  • This is simply the only time Meyer showed anything resembling scientific knowledge. Theoretically, something frozen in time will be extremely cold, because the electrons wouldn't be able to vibrate. However, she ignores the fact that this would prevent dispersion forces (which keep chemicals together). What's more, every piece of matter around Edward would cool down very rapidly, to the point where he should be freezing the entire planet, because Meyer's vampires should, technically, be colder than any atom-based matter in the universe.
  • I honestly don't think this of all things is impossible (as opposed to the stuff about chromosomes). Some metals and rocks feel cold to the touch because they're good conductors.
    • Upon reading this comment, I hereby declare Edward Cullen to be a lightning rod.
  • I thought Edward was cold because, being a vampire, he's actually dead. One of the few things the Meyerpires have in common with your average idea of a vampire.
    • It does explain why his body temperature is below average (i.e. way below 36°C). I does not explain why he's apparently cold as ice and doesn't really seem to get warmer. For that matter, it bugs me that Bella gets suspicious because his hands are cold. My hands are freezing right now. Doesn't mean I'm a vampire, it means that I should turn on the heater.

• I don't care if this is Twilight, I have to vent this somewhere. WHERE IN THE HELL DO THE WEREWOLVES GET THE ENERGY NEEDED TO TRANSFORM?! All I ever saw was four of them eating muffins! True, a large pile of muffins, but is that it? Is that where the food budget for this poor tribe goes? And what happens to their bones, their muscles over the years of transformation? And you know what, while I'm at it, SPARKLES?!?! WHAT BASIS DID YOU GET SPARKLES FROM!!! I don't care if they are undead monsters, human skin isn't normally in possession of the same qualities as prescious quartz! And another thing! The tourists taken in by the bad vampires in Rome just disappear? What about their families, what about the investigations that would have to be done in order to find out why so many groups of people keep disappearing! And what is it with the vamps! Do they ever once question the reason they were transformed or why they are the way they are in the first place? And before anyone asks if I've ever read the books or seen the movies, I have, my little sister has seen to that.
  • I advice to check Twilightlexicon Q and E for many of this questions that were answered to Smeyer. Except for the Volterra tourists that one looks like a plot hole so far and as for the one about if they ever question their existence and the way they are. Nope they don't. They were actually completely on the dark about many things, like the Volturri real motivations and that vampires could get human women pregnant. I get the feeling that the accepted their existence as being damned and didn't questioned the rest. I guess is a leftover from Carlisle religious upbringing (have faith in X and don't question anything else). And on Bree Novella it showed that normal vampires are usually controlled by their thirst so as long as they have plenty of blood and entertainment they are happy, lazy and unconcerned: Bread and circuses was Riley's method of control them till the right moment.
    • There's still the sparkling though. Meyer says that it's a result of their cells turning to crystal, but the way she describes it, she seems to think that crystals act as mirrors with light, reflecting it back.
      • Well, these are MAGIKUL crystals! How else would they only sparkle in direct light from the sun? Edward's skin supposedly looks "like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface." My mom's diamond ring glitters everywhere, not just in direct sunlight. Sorry, Smeyer, but if their skin is really crystal, your vamps should look noticeably sparkly pretty much everywhere they go.
• So the whole dumping in the woods thing in 'New Moon'. If you found your daughter alone in the woods, curled up in the fetal position, repeatedly muttering to herself "He's gone", and she then proceeded to barely talk for four months, what would you think had happened? After all, the same boyfriend who you know she snuck around with, who you know got her so angry that she ran away from home, and who has returned her home battered all to hell twice (once by way of a lengthy hospital stay) is the one she went into the woods with. Honestly, I would be convinced that the little bastard had raped my girl, and when he came back, I would press charges, not give him her hand in marriage.
  • Charlie believed them when Bella said she fell because a) she does it all the time and b)she was cared for by the best doctor he knows. Also she didn't snuck around with Edward they were dating formally and she picked it at home, cooked for her and was always nice to her and you. I mean how about asking your daughter what happened first and get a doctor to take a look at her before you ruin a teenage boy's life with such a serious accusation? Really aside from Bella dumping him and wanting to get home Charlie has no reason to think ill from him till New Moon. Also he asked her hand on marriage after months of them being back together he behaving like an ass towards him and he respecting the boundaries he placed because she was grounded and hanging around the house and helping her with their homework. I mean whatever dislike he might had (that he has all the reasons too BTW) he has nothing on Edward that would make him think of him as a rapist.
    • Yes, she falls, but based on her own descriptions, she usually just ends up bumped and bruised, not dripping blood and not in the hospital. Based on the fact that she was obviously traumatized, why doesn't the idea that Edward has raped her ever enter anyone's heads? Edward has always behaved in a controlling manner, in front of Charlie and in front of the other kids at school. The other kids at school noticed that Edward was monopolizing Bella's time and acting like he owned her, and have always noticed him as being the school's resident threatening creep. Edward took her off into the woods and disappeared, leaving her in a near-catatonic, suicidal depression. She has night terrors and suddenly begins indulging in multiple dangerous activities, and cliff-diving not withstanding, she did attempt suicide at least once. That is not normal behavior for being dumped, but it is consistent with sexual trauma.

Also, Edward asking to marry her within months would not prove that he had not raped her, and really, neither would Bella's insane clutching to him. Their relationship is already emotionally abusive, Edward is already manipulative and controlling, so why would it be far fetched to assume that he was sexually abusive as well?

• • • Did you read the books? Because all you mentioned didn't happened like you say it did. In Twilight Charlie and Renee bought her fall over the stairs and through a window, on New Moon she came home with her arm bandaged and Charlie didn't though that was weird (in fact she mentions that he is used to see her banded), so her story of past injures most be big enough for them not to think something beyond her own clumsiness was happening, if not both Renee and Charlie would had received a visit or two from child services given that she got hurt a lot on Arizona and at home too, her classmates also noticed how easily she tripped walking over a flat surface so again if she is clearly that clumsy getting hurt its not something they would think it was done by someone else besides herself. Bella didn't had any bruises when they found her on the woods, she was completely dressed and there was not sign of physical violence at all on her. Also the only person that though that Edward was a creep were males of High School age in general and Mike Newton on particular the girls had all crushes on him and though that Bella was lucky to have him so its more about sexual competition that real creepiness even that adult teachers liked him and though of him a model student. Till their nasty break up Charlie liked Edward, and hanged around him watching TV once in a while. Also Bella never attempted suicide, she got involved on risky behavior but that is not the same and that was not known to anyone but Jacob, so not one would make an assumption over things that were not happening according to them. Edward started to sit with Bella's classmates (something he never did on the two years previous) when they were dating to please her and he even managed to make friends with Angela and Ben and even Mike was more civil towards him even though he was just waiting for them to break up to make his move, so they dropped the idea of him being creepy once they started to hang out with the normal kids. Even if Charlie or anyone else was reading their relationship wrong, pressing charges of rape over assumptions is something that no one should do. Bella surely went straight to the hospital given how long she was missing after their break up and a doctor surely is trained to find signs of rape. False rape accusations, based on the fact that you have ill thoughts towards someone's behavior on a relationship do no one any favors. At least asking for advice to a counselor might be a better way to aproach the issue than accusing someone of such a serious crime, IMO.
      • Yes, I read the books, and even if Charlie didn't have enough evidence to accuse Edward of rape, he had more than enough circumstantial evidence to forbid Sparklebutt from the house and get Bella into therapy. And yes, she did attempt suicide. Her jumping off a cliff and neglecting to swim is suicidal behavior, even if she knew the fall from the cliff alone wouldn't kill her. When she decided not to swim, she had resigned herself to death, and Jacob yanking her out of the ocean does not constitute a conscious thought on her part. It constitutes a thwarted suicide attempt. If someone repeatedly engages in deliberately dangerous behavior, with apparent intent to cause themselves bodily harm, that is considered suicidal behavior. No matter what, that is not normal behavior for the ending of a relationship that hadn't lasted even six months, and it is sick that it is being promoted as true love.
      • Well Charlie did attempted to get Edward out of his house. Bella told him that she was 18th and more than able to get her own place if he didn't allowed her to continue her relationship with him. I think they mentioned therapy on NM but Bella wouldn't go either. Not sure if you can call resignating yourself to drawn as an attempt suicide, she was already on the water and she fought against them for a while till she though it was pointless and decided to give in she didn't went into risk behavior as way to harm herself physically, but to get an adrenaline rush that allow to hear Edward. Do you think that skydivers, bungee jumpers... that do it for the same reasons are suicidal? You are not taking in account that Edward is Bella's soulmate (in the books universe at least) losing him was devastating (and he was in even worst condition than her) On all works of fiction where soulmates are used this is the standard: Xena and Gabrielle, Superman and Lois Lane, Jean Grey and Scott Summers...Soulmates are usually depicted as suicidal and/or destructive: Superman and Jean had become mass murderers after losing their respective soulmates on many stories, (in fact it has been depicted many times that Superman can't even exist without Lois Lane) in the movie What dreams might come Robin William's character chooses to stay in hell with his soulmate if that is what it takes for them to be togheter after she killed herself, so you can hate the concept of soulmate/true love on fiction, but its has been properly used on this books and had been around longer than Twilight and I could predict it will stay around after the fever passes too.
      • I don't think any alternate universe stories where Superman went insane after Lois' death portrayed it as okay, though. Meyer appears to genuinely believe that what Bella went through was normal and healthy, when anyone who understands people in any way can tell you that it's not.
      • I would say they consider it okay given that usually the happy ending involves Lois being brought back to life and he getting back as a sane superhero. He also remained faithful to Lois Lane on an alternative universe where he spent 1000 years and rejected Wonder Woman's offering to ease his lonely, so their soulmate bond is portrayed as beyond good and evil and any "normal and healthy" relationship behavior, which is the standard treatment of soulmates (Other soulmates did things that hard to be considered healthy at all as well). Now if you think the concept of soulmates on fiction is not normal of healthy on real life that is a different idea entirely. It would be more accurate for you to hate on the whole concept than to hate on Twilight specifically for using it.
• It just bugs me that the Meyerpires are at risk of being discovered, not by their Kaleidoscope Eyes, or that they never eat, never age, always look like a supermodel, or even because Ed can stop a car with his bare hands with bystanders, but because they sparkle like a diamond coated in fairy dust. What. If it's such a threat, why can't they put on concealer, face paint, foundation, etc.?
  • Their skin would "eat" this human products I'm sure Rosalie would had found a way to use make up if she could get away with it.
  • How do, to quote Meyer, "cells with a singular facet of crystal with vampire venom lubrication" "eat" makeup? If venom is acidic, and Edward inseminates Bella with venom, injects Bella with it, and every vampire on EARTH is injected with it THROUGH TEETH... AAAHHHH!!
    • "...cells with a singular facet of crystal...". We must either revive the wizard or start a petition to let SMeyer go back to high school... or at least give her a couple of books on geometry, geology, and (to satisfy the Department of Redundancy Department's requirement for appending the most common complaint to any list of two items) composition.
  • The venom destroyed Bella's contacts, so it looks like it applies to inorganic material (maybe not even all of them or on the same way), but when in contact with human living blood cells it transforms them, or when the venom that is mixed with sperm is transformed into vampire sperm. So that one shouldn't be acid to make sure that in the hypothetical case it finds a human egg it fertilizes it, instead of destroying it. Of course I'm not saying is perfect science I'm speculating how it works according to the events of the books.
    • The biggest problem with that, though, is she should have just been vamped from the sex. No way sex that rough didn't provide some vaginal tearing, and if kissing open-mouth was too dangerous for fear of getting vamped, sex should definitely be. I think the possibility of Edward tearing Bella a bit is a lot more likely than her having a nasty case of gingivitis.
    • Well if Bella was properly lubricating, even if the sex left her bruised it doesn't mean her lady parts are going to get teared up (Vaginas are very elastic a baby comes out of it!), also I don't think Edward knew at the time that his gentleman parts had also venom, he was working under the impresion that his saliva was the only poisonous part of him (ha so going down on Bella for the first time). It looks like they didn't really researched vampirism at large given that they didn't knew about the hybrids, not even the Volturi that are more ancient than the Cullens.
    • But they know that the eyes contain venom as well. And yeah, the vagina is elastic, but extremely rough sex will cause at least microscopic tears in the vaginal canal. If the sex was enough to leaves bruises, it was enough to leave tears.
• For that matter how do they get their Kaleidoscope Eyes past everyone?
  • -->Jessica/Angela/Mike/Tyler Hey Edward.
  • -->Edward What?
  • -->Jessica Weren't your eyes yellow this morning?
  • -->Edward No.
  • -->Jessica Yes they were, I saw them. Angela, Mike, and Tyler say them. All of our teachers saw them!
  • -->Edward No they weren't. Do not doublethink EC. Doublethink EC doubleplusungood. Goodthink EC doubleplusgood. Oldthinkers thoughtcrime EC.
    • Its stated that they didn't got close to humans before Bella entered Forks, no to mention that I'm sure they told everyone that sometimes they use contacts, the only reason Edward forgot to tell her the simplest lie is because he was too busy accessing the "urges he never felt before on a century", why many people miss is that Edward is a somehow of a dork when around Bella, that is why he keeps babbling too much about him around her that leads to the discovery of their secret. Imagine Superman not having a handy lie to tell Lois when he comes out of nowhere...Edward seriously needed some secret identity training for love interests 101.
    • It doesn't matter how close he gets to humans. At least one person has to notice that his eyes go from bright yellow to obsidian black.
    • If you know a person that has different eye colors would you think they like to play with contacts or do you think there is some sort of supernatural explanation?
    • At an average high school, someone will be with you at any given moment other than lunch and break. Are telling me all of Forks High think Edward and all the other Cullens just happen to have contacts for every individual shade between bright yellow and dark black and he just happens to wear them in quick succession? Unless he kills animals during passing period. (Which would be very creepy.)
    • To be fair, there is a documented human phenomenon known as 'change blindness' (look it up). Human beings can not acknowledge all the sensory detail they are exposed to at any given moment. The brain creates a basic idea of whatever you are looking at, but it doesn't actually remember a photographic image of what is in front of you. So, when you turn away from an image or a scene, you probably won't notice if something about that image has changed when you look at it again. There have been studies that show that most people don't notice change in font color on a computer even when it changes while they're still reading it, provided the change occurs when the eyeball is actually in motion (at this point the brain turns off your vision to prevent the nauseating 'shaky camera' effect of watching the world fly past). More astounding than this, in psychological experiments where a person behind a counter ducks down and out of view to retrieve an object, a different person can stand up in their place and 75% of the time, the subject on the other side of the counter doesn't notice that they're talking to a completely different person than the one they were talking to just seconds before. However, there ARE people who notice the change in front of them immediately and repeated exposure to the eye color changes in the Cullens would make it more and more likely that people would notice it. Especially since, whatever the Cullens might hope, their unnatural beauty and unusual grace draws a LOT of attention from the people around them.

• So, you know how S Meyer says that female vamps can have sex with human men, but not get pregnant, because their bodies don't change? If their bodies don't change and can't stretch, then the vaginal canal can't tent, meaning it's about two inches deep. Her vamps also are freezing cold, and all their bodily fluid has been replaced with acidic venom. How's that for a treat, gentlemen? A smoking hot babe with two whole inches of freezing cold, acid-filled lady bits just waiting for you!
  • Not to come to defense of Meyer, but you're being entirely too literal to prove a point. "Their bodies don't change" is more of a "they don't age and the biological functions required for conception no longer occur". It doesn't mean things don't bend, stretch or tent (otherwise it would be impossible for them to do things like walk or smile). Also, I think it's bizarre that so many people are willing to accept walking, talking, blood drinking, corpses just fine, but immediately burst into disbelieveing histrionics if someone suggests the magical corpse is capable of *gasp!* a boner or vaginal sex.
  • And yet another plot hole - it was implied in Breaking Dawn Tanya and her sisters usually killed the men that they slept with. And no one notices that men go off to some remote part of Alaska and are never heard from again? In this day and age? Not to mention the fact that it sort of undermines their clan being "good" vampires for abstaining from human blood, since they're still providing death by screwing (arguably a more pleasant way to die, but still...)
  • Actually that was long time ago they didn't lived in Alaska all the time that was a setlement they got after they became vegetarian and they haven't killed men for at least as long as Carlisle had known them. They are good "reformed" vegetarian vampires.
  • The thing with the science of sparklepire sex is suspension of disbelief. You tell me for your story that you have a living corpse who feeds off the blood of the living, I can accept it. You tell me it takes place on Planet Earth, so everything should be what Earth would be plus what would happen with corpses feeding off the blood of the living. You tell me they are as hard as crystal and their bodies are eternally unchanging, but they can move because "venom" lubricates their cells, I'm going to roll my eyes at how bad that explanation is. You then tell me that the female's bodies are completely incapable of stretching to accommodate pregnancy, which would then mean that they are incapable of vaginal tenting or of movement. If she had left the explanation that vampires are dead, and dead things can not get pregnant, that would be fine... though her having explained them as apparently generating cold and having no body fluid but acidic venom would still exclude them from having sex with living humans. No human could tolerate sex with a sparklepire.

• Bree Tanner's death, and the way the Cullens just let it happen. Almost every other hero ever, unless they were an Anti-Hero, has stood up to such impossible odds to protect innocent lives. I mean, really, they just fought against an army of newborns, who are supposed to be stronger due to them being turned shortly beforehand. Bella, and possibly Bree if Jane didn't start torturing her again, could run off and get some of the wolves, who were probably moving slower because they were carrying Jacob. Now, I know what you're going to say Jane and Felix's powers are Game Breakers, and the Volturri would not like them resisting Jane's decisions. They would be fighting them at the risk of their own lives. However, the Cullens risk their lives and come up with complex plans to protect Miss Mary Sue (and later her daughter) ALL THE FRIKKIN' TIME!!! They practically do so on a DAILY BASIS! In fact, THEY JUST DID! If you're going to use The Dulcinea Effect, don't have it just be in regards to one character and not the other! I used to think that the rest of the Cullens were okay characters compared to Bella, Edward, and Post-New Moon Jacob. Now I'm not so sure.
  • Different situations entirely. They risked their lives to save Bella but they never defied the Volturi and their laws specially in front of them. They tried to convince them but that would meant suicide and they were following the rules they imposed them, and for nothing they would die and the Volturi would kill Bree anyone in the case of Bella they had way out of it without dying or killing unnecessary and specially following their laws. Up to what Bree told Edward mentally the Cullens though the Volturi were fair rulers and given the amount of chaos the vampire world was before their rise (vampire wars) they surely respected them. After all the Volturi let them go with the promise of turning Bella, if they were that ruthless they would had killed them all right away and they allowed Carlisle to live his vegetarian lifestyle. So it was different protecting Bella from evil vampires than protecting Bree from fair rulers not even when they were trying to protect Reneesme they went ahead and fought but tried to get a diplomatic solution first.
    • But even in the series, the vampires seemed to mostly do whatever they pleased. As for the Volturi, they seemed to do whatever they wanted, including letting a lot of people in Seattle die and risk revealing the vampire world, just to kill off the Cullens. Anyway, the fact remains that the Cullens could have probably hidden Bree quite easily. Why did they even need to keep her in the meadow? They could surely have found some way to get her out of there in time, especially given the super-speed the vampires are supposed to have. In the novella, there was apparently enough time for Jasper to march Bree through some woods and force her to sit on the ground with her eyes closed and ears covered. Anyway, even if the Volturi did suspect Bree was being hidden, what could they do if they wanted to look fair? They weren't supposed to know about the army, so they couldn't say if one newborn was missing or not.
  • What bugs me about that scene is that it's just so unnecessary. I'm sure Carlisle wouldn't mind taking Bree under his wing; if not permanently, then at least until she could control herself. I don't know about the books, but in the movie he actually offers to do so. The Volturi demand that Bella be turned into a newborn, but they kill Bree for the exact same thing? Adding that Bree didn't even participate in the big battle, and that she seems to have controlled her thirst so far... Freakin' Volturi.

• How are the Twilight vampires vampires? They don't act like vampires or quack like vampires. My friends and I were discussing how they're more like snakes. I mean, they shine in the sunlight, they eat animals, and they inject venom into people. I see nothing vampire-y about them.
  • Well vampire lore has different subspecies of vampires but as long as they drink blood and pass vampirism to others they fit the baseline(Check Our Vampires Are Different), but this vampires have indeed reptilian characteristics, they remind me more to Komodo Dragons than snakes tough, they have a keen sense of smell, they regurgitate what they don't eat, their bite is poisonous, they hiss to establish power among them, specially males and they also form pair bonds.
  • Dracula was originally described as mustachioed, pointy-eared, and hairy palmed. Dracula could walk openly in the daylight. Everyone acts like Stephenie Meyer is the first person to add a change to the vampire mythos; she's not. It may be a stupid variant, but it's hardly a new thing.

• In the new novella, Victoria is apparently hiding in a house in the woods. A house that's painted bright pink and blue and green and white and has elaborate trim and looks like a gingerbread cottage. For God's sake, why??? Why is there a house like that in the middle of the woods of Washington? Are there fairy tale LAR Pers or something? And why would Victoria live there? It sounds like a house like that would just attract a ton of unwanted attention. Or was it Victoria the one who made the house look like that? Because again, why? That's just stupid! It makes no sense at all!
  • Makes perfect sense to me. Who would be expecting someone to be hiding there?
    • But why is it there to begin with? Are there a lot of abandoned cottages in the woods around Forks? At least Bella and Edward's dream home had the excuse that Esme fixed it up for them. Either someone built a brightly-painted storybook cottage in the middle of the woods, or Victoria painted it that way. Which leads again to the question of why? Did she take time out of her meticulous revenge scheme to make her hideaway look like a Easter egg?
      • It could also be someone's vacation house, with her super sense she could had known how long there had not been humans around and she is smart making some questions, and doing some digging she might had know for how long the house was safe or in any case she could had just looked for a home of someone that would not be missed (and elderly couple, a loner that had few or none family and friends or with a habit of disapearing often enough that their loved ones wouldn't go looking for them till months passed, a drug dealer's hideaway...) and ate them to make space for herself. There are many ways to get a house once you are a mercyless, smart and powerful killer.
    • There's a lot of oddballs living in the pacific northwest, not all of whom keep reliable contact with civilization in general. If the house isn't on a major road, it might be days or weeks between other people seeing it. Victoria eats people. I see no reason to assume that the cottage was abandoned when she found it, and if it's unreasonable to think she'd take time to make her hideout look like an Easter egg, it also seems like a good bet that she wouldn't take much time to make her hideout not look like an Easter egg, especially if she already chose a spot that was out of the way.
    • The question that still must be asked is: Why??? What's the point in even writing that crap?
• So, how is it that James can't smell Bella until he's downwind of her, and then can suddenly follow her scent all over town despite the fact that she drives everywhere? No one leaves that much genetic residue, which is why bloodhounds can't follow a trail if the person gets into a car. Even with SOOPER SPARKLEVAMP SENSES, if he couldn't smell her five feet away, he also can't smell her in a car.
  • I assume that James could smell her before, he just didn't remark upon it because he assumed the smell was just a residual from someone who had passed through before, until he realised that she was right there. This still doesn't make much sense, because if her smell is so fantastic, why wasn't he going, "Hey guys apparently there's a real hottie in town, let's go find her" or something? But it makes at least a little more sense. And he still shouldn't be able to smell her in the car, either.
    • Is clearer on the books James and his coven were not even close to town they were passing by when they hear The Cullens playing and even if they had a few minutes to talk before noticing that Bella was there they didn't though it was posible for a human to be alive among 7 vampires so they probably though they just had eaten someone very delicious right before starting the game and probably that someone was buried nearby.
      • That is just garbage. Smeyer spends gobs of time in all the books reiterating that the vamps can not only smell humans a mile away but can hear their heartbeats even better. You can't tell me they didn't hear Bella's fickle little heart right up close and personal.

• Why does Edward Cullen pass around as a 17-year-old when he could pass himself himself as a an 18-year-old with full legal rights? If I were a 100-something-year-old vampire with the body of someone in his late teens, I would still prefer to be treated as a young adult than as a teenager.
  • The books state that the Cullens started to study there two years before Bella arrived so Edward 17th year old person passed himself as a 15th year when he first entered school, and has been "aging" acordingly. So he will legaly reach 18 at some point, guessing he can play a slowly aging young adult he might be able to graduate from college, again, and pretending to be 23 or 24, before starting all over again. You have to wonder how did he passed as just 15 years old and Rosalie and Emmet passing as 16 year old ones, specially Emmet that is already big for his age.

• This could probably go under Wild Mass Guessing but this really does bug me! If the object of a werewolf's imprinting were to become a vampire, would the werewolf reject his imprintee? Since canon makes out that they truly hate each other, because they smell awful to the other and somehow a biological impulse to kill is triggered , but then Breaking Dawn has Jacob imprint on a half-vampire and be totally cool with it? (Besides the completely obvious??)

WHAT IS THE LOGIC???

• So, we all are saying Smeyer didn't pair up Leah because she's infertile. But Renesmee(Oh God, that name...) is not only HALF-DEAD, but also a hybrid. Now, I'm not 100% on the laws of the damphyr, but normally, hybrids are infertile(mules, ligers, etc...). Plus, being rushed into puberty, stopping at eighteen, etc, wouldn't SHE be infertile? Or should we just call "dead blood" on this one?
  • Well we need to take in account that all this are speculations on the part of the characters, no one really knows what is the purpose of imprinting (how come the elders didn't knew either is beyond me) Leah surely stoped menstruating because she stoped aging but she is too bitter to make the logical conection and can't talk to any other girl that might get to the same conclusion and obviously the boys of the pack are not comfortable enough to talk about it. So we have no idea if Reneesme would be infertile or not or if the books will get to a point where that issue is brought up, or another generation gets out of the characters, something that I really doubt it. Part of the birth of Reneesme was to use the whole shock of it for the books (the emotions are the plot after all) so having Reneesme having a surely less traumatic pregnancy and childbirth would be lackluster, and without shock given that they already knew there is the posibility of hybrid births on the universe, being there done that.
    • That argument would only hold water if there was an alternative theory given, or if it was ever presented as being anything else. This theory has been presented multiple times in the series and Jacob takes it as truth, as does Leah and basically all the werewolves. Saying 'it's speculation' only works if the author has succeeded as presenting it as speculation, but the narrative doesn't do that. The complete lack of other theories about it within the Twilight universe makes it evident that the author is TELLING us that this is what imprinting is for. There's no reason to include that theory at all if it doesn't actually explain the process of imprinting, and Meyer made sure to beat us over the head with it and failed to provide any other reasonable theory to explain it. That's why people treat it as in-universe fact, because Meyer wrote it in such a way that we know it's her personal theory about imprinting which, as the author, makes it true.
• It just bugs me that when the Truck is delivered to Bella upon arriving in Forks, the Jacob and Billy Black don't bring a ride home. They... walk, erm, wheel there?
  • Wasn't Jacob only 15 at that point? He wouldn't have been old enough to drive, at most he'd have had a learner's permit. And the reason Bella gets the truck is that Billy can't drive it any longer because of his accident, isn't it? Perhaps they didn't bring another vehicle because they couldn't actually drive it home. Maybe Charlie took them home? I can't remember :P
• There's so much on the first page, so I'm not 100% sure if this has been covered, but why do they call the vampires "vegetarian" just because they drink animal blood rather than human blood? Maybe this is just my inner Granola Girl talking, but vampires drink blood, and since there isn't any such thing as plant blood, vampires cannot be vegetarian.
  • It's more of a injoke between vampires than an actual scientific definition. Normal vampires see humans as little more than food (or blood), and have no qualms sucking them dry. "Vegitarian" vampires see people as living, sentient beings and thus only eat things they percieve to not be intelligent, self aware beings. In other words, it's taking an incredibly simplistic view of meat-eaters and vegetarians and apply it to a vampire perspective; from their point of view sucking you dry is no different from you enjoying a nice steak, and drinking animal blood is not that different from refusing to eat meat for moral reasons. Or in short, just apply the MST3K Mantra and don't think about it too much.
• I don't know if this has been mentioned before (I'm a n00b here), but how come The Second Life of Bree Tanner is told in past tense and first person if the narrator dies at the end?
  • I don't think S Meyer knows how to write any other way. >_<
• So, Aro keeps Marcus on because he has a useful power. Aro himself is a mastermind who also has a useful power. Then...there's Caius. He doesn't show any useful power; in fact, he seems to have no special power at all. On top of that, he's extremely belligerent. You'd think that a group whose plan relies on subtlety wouldn't pick a total hothead as one of its leaders. And if he does have some awesome power that we don't know of, what could possibly be Meyer's motive for not telling us?!
  • I don't know about the first half of the question, now that you mention it, but a possible motive could be leaving herself a backdoor to come up with a good explanation for keeping Caius on hand. Y'know, somewhere down the line.

• Question - If Edward can foresee that leaving Bella will make her do insanly stupid crap to get herself killed and/or to see Edward again, why in the flying fuck does he decide that that's a better plan then running the risk of having another experiance like the birthday party? Seriously, worse thing that could happen with the latter is that Bella gets turned into a vampire, and that's pretty damn unlikely from what we've seen of her resiliance, and the fact that most situations like that would have her be near a FUCKING VAMPIRE DOCTOR. Probable case of the former is that both Bella and Edward DIE. Also, shouldn't Edward know that, no, Bella really isn't going to forget about him, after she's ready to be turned into a vampire simply to have him forever? Nope, who cares about that at all, he just says "See ya, Bella, and don't do any stupid shit to get yourself killed!"

• Of all the reviews I've seen and read of the movie, no one notices the flashback scene with the Native Americans wearing ridiculous plastic party hats that were obviously bought at a Halloween store.
• Bella's sudden moral to do this the right way at the end of Eclipse. As someone who doesn't seem really want to save herself till marriage it annoyed me right at the end of Eclipse that she only wanted to have sex after they were married? WTF? She never cared before why now? It really felt like Meyer was throwing down her own message which clashed against her bland characters personality. Not to mention actually wanting a child in BD.
  • For this troper, it wasn't so much that Bella wanted the baby so much as the fact that she wanted the baby two seconds after finding out she was pregnant, after openly admitted that she never, ever wanted to be a mother.
• What was up with the contrived climax of New Moon? So Alice has a vision that Bella was dead, and immediately decides to tell everyone that it already happened, even though it was a vision of the future. She then sees that Bella is very much alive, and decides to hang around for girly time, instead of calling her family and letting them know, oops, her bad, Bella didn't die! And then, when they find out what Edward would do, why didn't they call the Volturi and give them warning of Edward's plan? She said the Volturi were fond of Carlisle and would possibly spare Edward out of charity, plus they want him to join their group. Why not tell them that Edward is suicidal and misinformed, and could the Volturi just restrain him when he goes to expose himself? (Yeah. If a vampire can move so fast that they can kidnap people from a movie theater with no one noticing, why can't a number of old and powerful vampires, one of whom can make people numb, hold back one idiot vampire instead of ripping him to bits?)
• If newborns are so much more powerful, then why couldn't Bree protect herself when the Volturi tried to kill her?
  • I don't think they're necessarily more powerful than any other vampires, they just have less control. They go into violent rages and are almost incapable of stopping themselves (at least, that's what we were told for three books before Bella became the Most Awesomest Wonderful Vampire Ever). As a result, they tend to inflict a lot more damage than older vampires that will pick their battles and feed with discretion in order to avoid being exposed to humans or get into that next big fight that might end with them being torn to pieces. Vampires as a whole are often represented as having a strong self-preservation instinct and most of Meyer's vampires fit this as well, unless they're holding the Idiot Ball in order to give the illusion of the story moving forward by focusing in on two completely unremarkable entities in order to threaten their True Love. Anyway, most older vampires would be trying to make as little notice of themselves as possible, in order to keep from getting into trouble with other vampires and especially the Volturi. Newborns don't yet have the ability to resist their every impulse. On top of this, it seems that the Volturi are so feared specifically because they are so much more powerful than the average vampire and nearly all have special abilities. Bree's death was still completely pointless and basically nonsensical, but not because as a newborn she should have been able to take out the entire Volturi (if that were the case, no one would have any reason to follow their rules).
• A rather minor thing, or at least comparatively... Bella is wondering in New Moon what would happen if Juliet married Paris because, essentially, Romeo ran away. Remember how she loves' Wuthering Heights? Add in an Ax Crazy Romeo and that would describe the plot. And Edward was already showing signs of Heathcliff-type obsession with her. Okay, maybe it's a Retcon, but still...
• One problem that I just cannot get out of my head is that of the werewolf origin myth, specifically the actions of the wife. First, she kills herself rather than, say, slicing her palm or cheek or some other non-fatal area. If the vampire was so bloodlusty as to have slaughtered an entire village, you'd think it wouldn't take all that much to distract her. Second, there are literally bodies piled up around her (In the film at least, not certain about the book). She has to have spilled liters of blood by now, and still be smelling it, and yet the addition of just a tiny bit more distracts her from her fight long enough for the werewolf to kill her. Although, maybe the wife just had the same Fresh Steak Blood™ as Bella.
  • If Meyer showed any signs of being Genre Savvy in regards to mythology or fairy tales, it might be handwaved as just being in line with a typical fable sacrifice. Considering that it's supposed to be real though...yeah.
• I just watched Twilight (with Riff Trax commentary). My question is what's Bella's appeal? The first couple of minutes we see her in Forks High school and she's given almost an overwhelming welcome. The girl makes friends in like three minutes. A guy even came up to her a stole a kiss from her. How does she react? She acts dull and unattached. I can understand she doesn't really wanna be there but come on. There's even the prologue at the beginning where she talks about dying... Who says stuff like that?
• James is said to have supernaturally keen senses and his sense of smell is acute enough to tell that a vampire wearing Bella's coat brushed against a tree to try and throw him off. If his sense of smell is THAT good, hitting him in the face with Mace or Pepper Spray should have overloaded his senses and sent him into catatonia or unconciousness.
  • Vampires can't lose consciousness.

• As a parent, it really, really bothers me how irresponsible and ineffective a father Charlie is. Sure, he loves his daughter and means well, but he lets Bella walk all over him, and any parent who was actually paying attention to their child wouldn't let them go through four months of zombie-like (Bella's exact expression) depression without taking her to a therapist. Teenage break-ups suck, but if it's hitting someone that hard for that long, something is severely wrong. Sure, Bella would protest like hell, but he is her father. A parent worth their salt wouldn't leave their child so dangerously miserable no matter how the kid protested, and how did Charlie miss her adrenaline junkie/quasi-suicidal mental state? Even if he was unaware of the behavior itself, he should have paid enough attention to spot her incredibly fragile and downright disturbing mindset. Then again, with how frequently she injures herself, he probably would have wound up investigated by CPS after a while, cop or not. That Meyer herself is a mother makes me boggle at how poor a father Charlie is.
  • In all fairness to Charlie, Bella never gives him a chance to be an effective parent. She does almost nothing but manipulate and lie to him, when she takes him into consideration at all. The scene where he tried to bring up counseling pissed me off so much, because here he--a man who she herself describes as a person of few words--opens up to her about how painful his divorce from Renee was. And how does Bella respond? Her narration is the most petulant, childish bit of complete B.S. Apparently the loss of his marriage doesn't compare to her loss of a high school boyfriend she dated for all of six months. If I was him I would have followed through on sending the ungrateful, whiny brat back to Renee. Despite what she says to him, she obviously has no actual intention of trying to move on and regain her life; her narrative even says she's only hanging out with Jessica to shut Charlie up. It boggles me that we're clearly meant to side with her on the whole situation, and be as dismissive as she is about Charlie's very reasonable concern for her welfare.

• Is "Carlisle and Esme adopted five teenagers" really the best plan they could come up with? There are other reasons for moving in together. Rosalie and Emmett, who apparently look older than 17 anyway, could probably pass as a young couple that is forced to live together with Emmett's cousin/sister Esme, due to unexpected cirumstances. Jasper can be Carlisle's younger brother, who cannot leave the house because of an "illness". Etc. It would be kinda like Full House.
  • The fact that Rosalie and Emmett do look older makes it really bug me that they think they have to go to high school over and over and over, especially since they hate it so much. Why can't they do what Carlisle did, and get degrees so they could get actual jobs? For that matter, why doesn't Edward do that? He loathes high school and is planning to go to college once he's graduated, so why the hell doesn't he just skip the bit he hates and just keep switching universities? Oh wait, because they we wouldn't have a plot.
    • It says in the book they like to start as young as they can so that they can stay in one place longer. Which is actually pretty smart.
    • They've never heard of homeschooling?
• Did I miss something or will Bella will live her eternity with her bloody stomach in pieces? I mean, Smeyer told that when someone becomes a vampire, their body freeze in time somehow, which means they can't heal, and didn't Bella became a vampire when Edward was tearing her belly apart to make her give birth?
  • Nah, the venom conveniently heals everything. That's why Esme, who jumped off a cliff, is not eternally confined to her bed. And Emmett was mauled by a bear, but he's fine now, obviously.
• In Breaking Dawn, Renesmee's bites are described as non-venomous. However, Nahuel, another Dhampyr, is said to have Turned his aunt. So does the status of a Meyerdhampyr venom differ on a case-by-case basis or is this another example of inconsistencies?
  • When did he turn her? Dhampyr venom may manifest post puberty or maybe only in males.
  • Original Tropette here: According to the Twlight wiki (no way I'm rereading that book), Nahuel turned his aunt soon after birth.
  • This is explained in the book as a gender thing. Male Meyerdhampyrs are venomous, but females aren't. Another thing that males can do that females can't in Twilight. [[Sarcasm Mode Go, Meyer. What a great female-empowerment your books are.

• Why do the Cullens even associate with humans at all? I mean, no one goes to their house (or anywhere near there), they never age, which does end up bringing some awkward questions (as evidenced by New Moon), they don't need food, they don't need to keep buying clothes, etc. so the money is almost pointless. And, as an added bonus, keeping the kids away from humans will prevent anything from going horribly horribly wrong! Other vampires do this. What makes the Cullens so soicably special that they have to?