Anti-Spork: The Darkest Hour and Twilight - Chapter 1 Part 1 (Section C):
I've just realised...but this fic has the exact same theme as our Area of Study this year...I wonder if I'm allowed to use fanfiction as related reading. I can write any number of essays on this fanfic, but I have a feeling our English teaching is not going to let me.
Damn.
Ooh…this is fun. Apparently, Carlisle has a subtle ability to heal! This explains his interest in medicine, and also fixes a number of plot holes in the Twilight series. No, Carlisle wouldn’t be stupid enough to perform surgery in his own kitchen with unsanitary tools, he’ll just use his ~healing~ magic! And it completes the mythological lore of Twilight a lot more. ‘Compassion’ is not a superpower. You cannot have one character with the ability to mind rape people into feeling exactly what he wants them to feel and have another character whose ability is being really, really nice. This keeps with the theme of Carlisle having a weak power, but makes it much more legitimate and negates a lot of questions about how superpowers work in Twilight.
Esme has an ability, too! How convenient. So…practically all the Cullens have powers?
I wonder if all vampires in Hyde!canon have powers…this seems a bit too...well, I always figured powers would be more rare.
But Esme’s power is AWESOME. ‘…Esme was quite the formidable mover and shaker. She could take charge of any situation and command obedience, a skill that was made only more powerful upon her change to a vampire…’
SHE COULD TAKE CHARGE OF ANY SITUATION AND COMMAND OBEDIENCE.
Is it just me or is that the dream superpower of every evil overlord ever? Seriously, this was the meek, maternal, gentle, weak Esme of Twilight, and she has the power to instantly command OBEDIENCE! This is just…words cannot describe the Awesome.
It’s a pity that we don’t have a fic focusing on her. Even though she wouldn’t be the type to regularly take advantage of her power, I still want to read about her because DAMN, SHE IS AWESOME. Seriously, Meyer, this is how you write awesome females.
Ahem. Sorry, my inner fangirl went on a little rampage there. Moving on…
Esme is continuing her job as a nurse, helping Carlisle, which is awesome, because it actually shows them working together and complimenting each other, as well as demonstrating that not all married women immediately start living in the kitchen.
Edward is posing as Carlisle’s younger brother, which makes sense because Carlisle is canonically said to look young, so this is a lot more believable than saying that he is his son.
Edward proposed to re-enter the local high school and actually finish his education, because he’s a little nerd like that. Also, this helps him catch up with the new scientific discoveries, which he would need to know if he wants to become a doctor. See? That is a much better reason to go to high school.
Meyer tries to say that the Cullen children HAVE to go to school because they look too young, but home schooling has existed for hundreds of years, and plenty of people in their twenties look like teenagers. The Cullen would only have to go to school if they actually wanted to. And, frankly, this is a very in-character reason. Edward is characterised as a bookworm, so of course he would want to have an actual high school diploma, whether he would be able to use it or not. People like that take actual joy in learning. But of course, he is not JUST going to high school. He sometimes helps Carlisle in his work, and, later, he finds jobs on his own (in another fic).
If I were a vampire, that is actually exactly what I would do. First of all, finish my high school education, then enrol in college for a few years, skipping around from subject to subject, learning whatever took my fancy. When I get bored of that (thought I doubt I will any time soon), I’ll go travelling and use my awesome powers to walk on the bottom of the ocean or run across the arctic. And I’ll constantly be going back to college because SO many topics interest me that I will never be able to learn about them all.
Whatever happens, no one, absolutely NO ONE on earth, is going to spend ETERNITY in high school, repeating the same curriculum over and over and over. NONE. Even if they have to get plastic surgery to make themselves look older.
Interestingly, he also wants to complete his education because he has apparently been interested in medicine as a small boy, influenced by his father and his grandfather. This is another element of Edward’s backstory that is changed. He wasn’t into being a soldier. This makes a lot more sense than the soldier idea because America wasn’t that involved in World War I! They were pretty isolationist back then and did not join the war until the very, very end, and even then, there weren’t as much propaganda, because the war was not romanticised! I could see someone wanting to be a soldier in WWII, but WWI? No. And this fits his bookworm, gentlemanly personality (which Meyer also tried and failed to cultivate) more. A bookworm-y gentleman does not lust after violence and blood. In fact, it’s a very bad idea to make your character have any interest in slaughtering people when he actually has the ability to do so and brags about it regularly. By having him aspire to be a doctor, someone devoted to lessening people’s suffering, Mrs. Hyde makes the character far less psychotic and relatable. We can’t sympathise with your character if we are preoccupied with wanting to bash his face in with a shovel…or run the hell away, Meyer.
It’s also interesting in that we can see his desire for scholastic achievement as him desperately trying to maintain his last link to humanity. Becoming a doctor has been what his parents wanted for him and his childhood dream. It’s one of the last remnants of his human life, so of course he is going to latch onto it.
Of course, things aren’t going to be that easy (because Mrs. Hyde knows what conflict is). Sure, it’s rather jarring to be pressed into a tiny room with two dozen teenagers, filled with blood and decidedly awkward thoughts, but the hardest part is definitely how he cannot fit in anymore.
Okay, it doesn’t sound quite that bad when you put it that way, but it’s actually quite heart-wrenching. Going to school is his way of clutching at his humanity, and the realisation that he is so different from everyone around him, and that no matter how hard he tries, he will never be fully accepted in human society, is just heartbreaking.
Actually, throughout this chapter and the next, we will see a gradual a deliberate cutting off of his human connections. Every human identity, every human connection he may still have will be ripped away from him, and this disconnection is what will drive him down the road to darkness. The loss of his humanity is what made him a monster, and we are seeing the very first step here: the loss of the ability to participate in human society.
The girls in his class are as obsessed over him as before he went to Maine with Esme and Carlisle…only now, he doesn’t enjoy it anymore, because the high has worn off, and he’s starting to see reality as it is. He found that he is all but incapable of making friends with girls because he doesn’t even have to get close to them before his head is filled with various lewd fantasies featuring him. It’s awkward. Not only is it awkward, it is another stark reminder that he is not human. He can never interact normally with these girls because he already knows everything there is to know about them before they open their mouths. What hurts the most has to be the fact that he knows that they don’t like him because he’s funny or witty or intelligent or charming…in fact, they know nothing about him at all. They don’t like him, they like the twisted version of a human that the vampiric transformation has made him. When they look at him, they only see the glamour, the dazzling effect. They’re loving an illusion. Most of them don’t even bother to get to know him! That is…horrible. Just…horrible. I’m sure, at this stage, he’s realised that he will never be able to enter a romance.
This is actually a lot better than the Twilight explanation for why Edward remained a virgin for over a century, despite being in the body of a teenager. He didn’t think that the human girls weren’t good enough for him. He may be gay, but that’s not the real reason. He had no idea he was supposed to be waiting for a true love…he didn’t love because he couldn’t love. Hell, he can’t even ever become friends with a human anymore, thanks to his curse (and yes, in this case, it’s an actual curse, not a gift).
And this is precisely why I’m looking forward to The Blue Hour so much. Mrs. Hyde has revealed that not only will Bella be immune to Edward’s mind-reading, she will also be immune to the dazzling effect vampires have, seeing as that is a psychological manipulation as well. Thus, he can be almost assured that she is not loving him because the vampire in him is mind-raping her into doing so. And he will actually have to talk to her, get to know her, instead of just knowing things right off the bat. It would also prevent awkward situations where she thinks something she probably shouldn’t be thinking, as teenagers are wont to do. The Bluest Hour isn’t even published yet, and it’s already shaping up to be [insert insanely large value here] times better than Twilight.
The vampire in him attracts prey to him…but it also repulses the prey as well. Humans around him are freaked out by him instinctively, because they still recognise him as a predator on a very subconscious level. So, this makes it even harder to make friends with girls, because he can almost sense the discomfort and anxiety lurking beneath the artificial attraction that marks him as a monster, a being born to murder.
Seriously, being a vampire SUCKS. Edward, in this verse, actually has a legitimate reason to hate his existence as a vampire.
‘He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that his efforts to open up with the boys among his classmates had been an equal failure.’ Oh, poor Edward. He gets rejected every time, doesn’t he? First Carlisle, and now his class mates…Seriously though, what was he thinking coming out of the closet to his classmates in the twenties?
He didn’t have many friends as a human because his parents had children late, so their friends’ children were far older than Edward, and he had been content with his books. See? A lovely non-angsty reason why someone is a loner that still deepens and expands their character. If every writer on earth knew how to do this, the world would be an infinitely better place. Anyways, he wasn’t really hoping to make friends, but was still hurt by the degree to which the boys hated him. Apparently, the boys in the class saw him as a rival because of how much the girls were obsessing over him, and because his dazzling didn’t have as much of an effect on the boys, the instinctive distrust and aggression is even more obvious in boys. They really treat him like he’s the dangerous predator he is.
I wonder why the dazzling doesn’t work on boys. Surely, if the dazzling was designed to attract prey, then it wouldn’t care the gender of the prey it lures in? After all, it’s not like there’s a difference between female and male blood. Why would a biological weapon designed for hunting be tuned so that it only worked with heterosexual people?
And would he have the same dazzling effect on lesbians? What about gays? Does the dazzling only work if his prey has a possibility of being attracted to him? This is a very interesting topic…I hope it gets expanded on in The Blue Hour.
Anyways, Edward ends up finding himself a complete social outcast, caught between irrational lust and overwhelming hatred, the whole school having tangled itself about him in a web of social drama. Looking upon the mess he’s caught in and reflecting on how childish it all was, Edward suddenly realises something: he had aged.
He hadn’t noticed because he was away from human society from so long, and for a long time, his only companion was literally centuries old. But he had aged.
Carlisle had promised to him that he wouldn’t age when he offered Edward the choice, but now Edward realises that aging wasn’t just a physical process.
He was an adult forever trapped in a child’s body.
He changed.
I cannot emphasise enough how much this change thrills me (not in that way). Meyer has specifically said in her illustrated guides that vampires don’t change. They remain exactly the way they are when they are first transformed. As well as their bodies, their minds freeze in time as well, and that is STUPID. STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. A person’s mind has to change. The longer they live, the more things they learn, the more complete a world view they have. As they come upon new information, they have to rethink their prior values and assumptions. As long as they are alive, they are bound to change infinitesimally in their thinking each day. People live because they grow. And in a purely literary sense, this is stupid as well. Static characters are not good. Static characters are exactly the type of thing writers everywhere try to avoid at any cost. Writing your story so that your characters are almost GUARANTEED to be static characters is STUPID. You have all but said that character development is IMPOSSIBLE for your main characters, and words cannot describe how much FAIL that is. People read stories to experience the characters’ journeys with them. People read stories to watch these characters learn, grow, and mature. Outright saying that your characters never change is so STUPID that my brain almost exploded when I saw it. Most of all, having characters be never-changing would violate your own canon.
Let’s have a look at Rosalie for an example. She was transformed just after she had been BRUTALLY ASSAULTED BY HER TRUSTED FIANCE AND HIS FRIENDS AND FREAKING GANG-RAPED TO DEATH. She woke up vulnerable, scared, violated, and confused. Does she behaved like this at all in the story? No! We’re even outright told that she and Emmett have a very healthy sex life! That is not what women who have just been gang-raped by their fiancés do! She had to have grown in the intervening years and gotten over her trauma at least somewhat! It is blatant canon rape to say that vampires have static minds, because Rosalie would still be behaving as if, just minutes ago, her love had gang-raped her with a group of his friends, beat her up, and left her to die by the side of the road!
I am so happy that this aspect is changed. And I am so guilty that I feel so happy that Edward will have to suffer more. I like Hyde!Edward. He needs good things to happen to him once in a while…
Anyways, at first, he loved the idea of being un-aging, remaining young forever. Despite being a prolific reader, it seems that Edward is still very Genre Blind. Seriously, how many immortals in fiction actually enjoy their immortality? Especially the ones who had been mortal once? Well, the point is, despite his initial enthusiasm, he has grown to hate the idea of immortality, especially the concept that he would be stuck looking like a child forever, when he is adult in mind. He can’t fit in with his peers, because he thinks differently from them.
But the point is, he can’t fit in with people ‘his own age’ (his own mental age, that is) either, because he looks like a kid to them. Elder women, though attracted to him as they are, treat him as a child and never consider him seriously as a contemporary. Older men are much the same, quizzing him as a father would his son, whilst still being very cautious of him. Looks are deceptive, and even Esme sometimes slips and treats him like a child.
This provides a very non-creepy explanation for why Esme acts the way she does in canon. I like this, yes. I mean, at least she isn’t doing this because this is what is appropriate for her, as a woman, to do.
Anyways, because he looks younger than he actually is, he will never be able to find a place where he can just belong, except Esme and Carlisle’s house. As time passes, this problem will only becomes worse, as he becomes a middle-aged, old, ancient…and yet, all the while, people around him will still treat him like a child.
And there’s just no possible way to get out of this situation. A human may become a vampire, but a vampire will never be able to become a human again, and right now, that’s exactly what he wants.
He’s startled out of his thoughts when the clock strikes five (I’ve never actually heard a church clock strike the hour before). I was a bit surprised when I read this, because I always assumed far more time had passed. He heard the thoughts of a milkman when he first got on the high school roof, and around my parts, newspaper deliveries are made at 4:30, I assume the milkmen worked the same hours. I was convinced that more than half an hour had passed…
Meh, at least it’s far better than the non-existent time transitions in Twilight.
He decides to head home, figuring that Carlisle and Esme must be done by now, which makes me confused again. Just what time did he leave the house? Obviously, he’s been out for more than half an hour, so just what time do the milkmen make their rounds in America? Anyway, he starts walking back home slowly.
His thoughts go back to how awkward it is to have mind-reading as a power. The first time this experience happened to him, he was just passing by a house, where a recently married couple lived. Wow. This sucks even more than I had anticipated. The idea that he was distracted before, and thus was completely unprepared…he had no idea what was happening, and suddenly, he has an erection, his bloodlust is amplified, and he simultaneously feels himself thrusting inside a woman and being screwed by another guy in an orifice that he doesn’t have…and he has no clue what to do. To make matters worse, Carlisle was THERE and figured out exactly what happened. Seriously, Carlisle saw Edward soil himself randomly in the middle of a street.
Even more horrifyingly, vampires can’t really commit suicide.
…Seriously, this SUCKS. I cannot think of any fate that sucks more than what Hyde!Edward had to go through.
Well, since then, he’s been a lot more cautious about what’s happening around him…but that doesn’t really help when the same activity happens in his house frequently. Edward gets a bit bitter here and kicks a rock whilst scowling at the ground. Again, this really doesn’t have a deeper meaning…it’s just a little quirk of his character that made me smile. On the one hand, reading his internal monologue, he really does sound like a world-weary adult. On the other hand, sometimes, his reactions are still quite stereotypically teenager-ish.
He also reveals that it’s even harder for him to ignore Carlisle and Esme because he is ‘familiar’ with their minds. I wonder how that works. Is he just especially good at picking out their voices in a crowd? Or do people who are close to him sound especially loud to him? Or does he instinctively listen in to the thoughts of people who are close to him?
Carlisle and Esme had apparently went on a short honeymoon, and Edward wasn’t with them. I wonder what he did whilst Carlisle and Esme were away. It can’t be easy living on your own when you look like a teenager…authorities are bound to start asking questions. And I can’t help but feel Carlisle is being a bit selfish here. I mean, Edward has to handle double the amount of pressure because of his mind-reading, and when Esme was turned, he had only been a vampire for 5-6 years. It’s very possible that he would have snapped without Carlisle’s calming presence. I mean, I know he’s just married and everything, but I still feel like he’s got an obligation to keep an eye on Edward…
The first incident happened the first night Carlisle and Esme got back to Edward (really, what was he doing during their honeymoon?), when Carlisle proposed to ‘[christen] the new house’. I never really saw Carlisle as the type to make quips like that. And, again, I’m not experienced in any way, but after a whole month of nothing but screwing each other, you’d think they would have gotten tired of it…
Anyways, Edward had been reading at the time and was completely taken by surprise, and ended up ejaculating in his pants on his bedroom floor. He ran out there (not even bothering to change, thanks Edward, we really needed that detail) immediately.
But, of course, he had to come back and, you know, try to act like nothing had happened in front of Carlisle and Esme. ‘Edward had been stuttering and completely unable to look either of them in the face - because not only did he know precisely the sounds Esme made when she found her release and what it felt like to be inside of her when she did, but he also knew exactly what it felt like to be kissed, caressed, and soundly rogered by the man that he’d come to know as a second father.’ Mind-reading is a HORRIBLE power to have and I sympathise with anyone who has ever had anything close to it. Especially if they have parents.
This is rather minor, but I’d like to point out that Edward thinks of Carlisle as his SECOND father. He never forgets about his human past and biological parents, and he never stops loving them. He admires Carlisle, but he is not going to let anyone replace his father and mother in his memory either. That is…incredibly touching. It makes me want to hug him.
When was the last time canon!Edward thought about his father?
I thought so.
After two days of the ultimate AWKWARDNESS, Carlisle demanded to know what happened. Edward tried to skirt around the issue, but Carlisle has been alive for three hundred years, he has some degree of Genre Savvy. And then the AWKWARD gets even MORE awkward, and I really, really want to reach into the computer screen and hand Edward a chocolate bar. He really needs it. Seriously, his life sucks. (Another interesting little quirk of Edward’s comes up here - his tendency to run his hand through his hair. It’s cute and it explains why his hair is so messy all the time, but mostly, it’s just cute.)
Edward recounts Carlisle’s apology whilst making it clear that he does not consider the whole thing Carlisle’s fault at all, and apologises himself for eavesdropping. Really, the kid thinks everything is his fault, isn’t it? It wasn’t Carlisle’s fault that he forgot there was a teenage mind-reader in the house, Edward just wasn’t strong enough.
Really, what kind of people brought him up? Where did all this self-loathing come from?
Anyways, Edward reassured Carlisle that he could handle it (no pun intended), and that was the end of the discussion. Apparently, he decided to conquer this problem the same say he tried to conquer his bloodlust - by distracting himself. He tried to read, or play music, or pain, but, of course, none of them worked, and he’s getting incredibly frustrated at himself. He makes a joke at his expenses for his perceived ‘weakness’ as he turns onto his street, carefully listening for signs of on-going activity before venturing forth. This little detail really made me feel for him, because no one should have to be cautious when approaching their own home.
This is especially sad since, as I’ve said before, the only place Edward can truly belong is at home, and now he feels like a stranger in his own house. His time spent near the only two people who can possibly understand him is now forever tarnished by his mind-reading, and I doubt he’ll ever be comfortable around Carlisle and Esme again.
Really, I suppose I can’t blame Carlisle and Esme, but I’m still rather upset with them. Carlisle of all people should know how much strain his activities are putting on Edward, who already has to deal with mind-reading, bloodlust, and school. They’re freaking vampires, it’s not going to be that hard to run 6 or 7 miles away every time they felt the need to do it! It’s just that the problem can be so easily solved, and yet no one is going along with the solution because of poor communication.
However, this alienation sets up the circumstances under which Edward will leave Carlisle. It is precisely because he can no longer find closure in Carlisle’s company that he eventually decides to make it off on his own.
Well, anyways, it turns out that everyone on the street is asleep, so Edward ‘cheated a little and ran down the street at his true speed, rather than maintaining the frustratingly slow façade of humanity, arriving on their front step in mere second.’ HOORAY, REALISM. Seriously, that is what a person with super speed will do! They’ll maintain the masquerade, but they will try and have fun every now and again with their super powers, because it’s cool. It’s simply preposterous to expect people to believe that a person can be granted super strength, invulnerability, super speed…and yet almost never truly enjoying the use of those abilities.
Carlisle and Esme are talking upstairs (apparently, they do this after sex every time, which made me confused, because I thought people fell asleep afterwards. Again, I’ve never had experience, so maybe I just fail Sex Ed). So Edward goes in, assured that they wouldn’t notice him because they’re too wrapped up in each other, and god, it makes me want to smack Carlisle up the head with a book. Edward is his surrogate son! Can’t he see that he’s going through a rough period in life? This scene read almost too much like neglect, which is a very valid form of child abuse. I suppose I can’t think of Edward as a child, but he is so lost in life and confused by everything around him that…well, he definitely needs Carlisle to be there for him in this period of his life, and Carlisle is ignoring his needs in favour of screwing his wife.
Really, this Carlisle is a million times better than the one in canon, but he still frustrates me.
It’s close to six o’clock now. It took him nearly an hour to get home? How slowly did he walk? How far away was the school? I’m so confused by the time flow…
Carlisle would be leaving for work soon, so he can get there before the sun. Apparently, Mrs. Hyde’s vampires will still sparkle, though she promised to give it a very nice explanation (which I can’t wait for). Anyways, that means it’s almost time for Edward to leave for the ‘adjacent library’ as well. Adjacent to what? His house? His school? Anyways, he’ll stay late there and then go back home when the sun goes down.
‘He trudges up the stairs and into his room. Time to get ready for another day - at school.’
Huh? I thought he was going to the library! Was it the school library? I’m so confused!
Anyways, that concludes part 1 of Chapter 1.
In this chapter, we get a basic overview of Edward’s past. Most of the chapter is spent on the various disadvantages that his immortality, vampirism, and mind-reading brings to him, most importantly, isolation from society. We get to know him as a person, his hobbies, dreams, idols, frustration…the anti-sporking is quite long, but this part is actually relatively short, and I’m truly impressed by the amount of information presented to us without the whole thing turning into a gigantic info-dump.
Of course, the writing wasn’t perfect, but then again, what is? As fanfiction goes, it’s definitely THE best I’ve ever read, and it has already accomplished its mission: make me like Edward.
The next part is a chapter-long humiliation conga, where one horrible thing after another happens to Edward, to the point that I can barely look at it without squirming in discomfort. So, tune in next time for more angst, delicious character development, and the beginning of the plot!
Go forward to: Additional Notes
Go back to: Chapter 1 Part 1, Section B
Damn.
Ooh…this is fun. Apparently, Carlisle has a subtle ability to heal! This explains his interest in medicine, and also fixes a number of plot holes in the Twilight series. No, Carlisle wouldn’t be stupid enough to perform surgery in his own kitchen with unsanitary tools, he’ll just use his ~healing~ magic! And it completes the mythological lore of Twilight a lot more. ‘Compassion’ is not a superpower. You cannot have one character with the ability to mind rape people into feeling exactly what he wants them to feel and have another character whose ability is being really, really nice. This keeps with the theme of Carlisle having a weak power, but makes it much more legitimate and negates a lot of questions about how superpowers work in Twilight.
Esme has an ability, too! How convenient. So…practically all the Cullens have powers?
I wonder if all vampires in Hyde!canon have powers…this seems a bit too...well, I always figured powers would be more rare.
But Esme’s power is AWESOME. ‘…Esme was quite the formidable mover and shaker. She could take charge of any situation and command obedience, a skill that was made only more powerful upon her change to a vampire…’
SHE COULD TAKE CHARGE OF ANY SITUATION AND COMMAND OBEDIENCE.
Is it just me or is that the dream superpower of every evil overlord ever? Seriously, this was the meek, maternal, gentle, weak Esme of Twilight, and she has the power to instantly command OBEDIENCE! This is just…words cannot describe the Awesome.
It’s a pity that we don’t have a fic focusing on her. Even though she wouldn’t be the type to regularly take advantage of her power, I still want to read about her because DAMN, SHE IS AWESOME. Seriously, Meyer, this is how you write awesome females.
Ahem. Sorry, my inner fangirl went on a little rampage there. Moving on…
Esme is continuing her job as a nurse, helping Carlisle, which is awesome, because it actually shows them working together and complimenting each other, as well as demonstrating that not all married women immediately start living in the kitchen.
Edward is posing as Carlisle’s younger brother, which makes sense because Carlisle is canonically said to look young, so this is a lot more believable than saying that he is his son.
Edward proposed to re-enter the local high school and actually finish his education, because he’s a little nerd like that. Also, this helps him catch up with the new scientific discoveries, which he would need to know if he wants to become a doctor. See? That is a much better reason to go to high school.
Meyer tries to say that the Cullen children HAVE to go to school because they look too young, but home schooling has existed for hundreds of years, and plenty of people in their twenties look like teenagers. The Cullen would only have to go to school if they actually wanted to. And, frankly, this is a very in-character reason. Edward is characterised as a bookworm, so of course he would want to have an actual high school diploma, whether he would be able to use it or not. People like that take actual joy in learning. But of course, he is not JUST going to high school. He sometimes helps Carlisle in his work, and, later, he finds jobs on his own (in another fic).
If I were a vampire, that is actually exactly what I would do. First of all, finish my high school education, then enrol in college for a few years, skipping around from subject to subject, learning whatever took my fancy. When I get bored of that (thought I doubt I will any time soon), I’ll go travelling and use my awesome powers to walk on the bottom of the ocean or run across the arctic. And I’ll constantly be going back to college because SO many topics interest me that I will never be able to learn about them all.
Whatever happens, no one, absolutely NO ONE on earth, is going to spend ETERNITY in high school, repeating the same curriculum over and over and over. NONE. Even if they have to get plastic surgery to make themselves look older.
Interestingly, he also wants to complete his education because he has apparently been interested in medicine as a small boy, influenced by his father and his grandfather. This is another element of Edward’s backstory that is changed. He wasn’t into being a soldier. This makes a lot more sense than the soldier idea because America wasn’t that involved in World War I! They were pretty isolationist back then and did not join the war until the very, very end, and even then, there weren’t as much propaganda, because the war was not romanticised! I could see someone wanting to be a soldier in WWII, but WWI? No. And this fits his bookworm, gentlemanly personality (which Meyer also tried and failed to cultivate) more. A bookworm-y gentleman does not lust after violence and blood. In fact, it’s a very bad idea to make your character have any interest in slaughtering people when he actually has the ability to do so and brags about it regularly. By having him aspire to be a doctor, someone devoted to lessening people’s suffering, Mrs. Hyde makes the character far less psychotic and relatable. We can’t sympathise with your character if we are preoccupied with wanting to bash his face in with a shovel…or run the hell away, Meyer.
It’s also interesting in that we can see his desire for scholastic achievement as him desperately trying to maintain his last link to humanity. Becoming a doctor has been what his parents wanted for him and his childhood dream. It’s one of the last remnants of his human life, so of course he is going to latch onto it.
Of course, things aren’t going to be that easy (because Mrs. Hyde knows what conflict is). Sure, it’s rather jarring to be pressed into a tiny room with two dozen teenagers, filled with blood and decidedly awkward thoughts, but the hardest part is definitely how he cannot fit in anymore.
Okay, it doesn’t sound quite that bad when you put it that way, but it’s actually quite heart-wrenching. Going to school is his way of clutching at his humanity, and the realisation that he is so different from everyone around him, and that no matter how hard he tries, he will never be fully accepted in human society, is just heartbreaking.
Actually, throughout this chapter and the next, we will see a gradual a deliberate cutting off of his human connections. Every human identity, every human connection he may still have will be ripped away from him, and this disconnection is what will drive him down the road to darkness. The loss of his humanity is what made him a monster, and we are seeing the very first step here: the loss of the ability to participate in human society.
The girls in his class are as obsessed over him as before he went to Maine with Esme and Carlisle…only now, he doesn’t enjoy it anymore, because the high has worn off, and he’s starting to see reality as it is. He found that he is all but incapable of making friends with girls because he doesn’t even have to get close to them before his head is filled with various lewd fantasies featuring him. It’s awkward. Not only is it awkward, it is another stark reminder that he is not human. He can never interact normally with these girls because he already knows everything there is to know about them before they open their mouths. What hurts the most has to be the fact that he knows that they don’t like him because he’s funny or witty or intelligent or charming…in fact, they know nothing about him at all. They don’t like him, they like the twisted version of a human that the vampiric transformation has made him. When they look at him, they only see the glamour, the dazzling effect. They’re loving an illusion. Most of them don’t even bother to get to know him! That is…horrible. Just…horrible. I’m sure, at this stage, he’s realised that he will never be able to enter a romance.
This is actually a lot better than the Twilight explanation for why Edward remained a virgin for over a century, despite being in the body of a teenager. He didn’t think that the human girls weren’t good enough for him. He may be gay, but that’s not the real reason. He had no idea he was supposed to be waiting for a true love…he didn’t love because he couldn’t love. Hell, he can’t even ever become friends with a human anymore, thanks to his curse (and yes, in this case, it’s an actual curse, not a gift).
And this is precisely why I’m looking forward to The Blue Hour so much. Mrs. Hyde has revealed that not only will Bella be immune to Edward’s mind-reading, she will also be immune to the dazzling effect vampires have, seeing as that is a psychological manipulation as well. Thus, he can be almost assured that she is not loving him because the vampire in him is mind-raping her into doing so. And he will actually have to talk to her, get to know her, instead of just knowing things right off the bat. It would also prevent awkward situations where she thinks something she probably shouldn’t be thinking, as teenagers are wont to do. The Bluest Hour isn’t even published yet, and it’s already shaping up to be [insert insanely large value here] times better than Twilight.
The vampire in him attracts prey to him…but it also repulses the prey as well. Humans around him are freaked out by him instinctively, because they still recognise him as a predator on a very subconscious level. So, this makes it even harder to make friends with girls, because he can almost sense the discomfort and anxiety lurking beneath the artificial attraction that marks him as a monster, a being born to murder.
Seriously, being a vampire SUCKS. Edward, in this verse, actually has a legitimate reason to hate his existence as a vampire.
‘He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that his efforts to open up with the boys among his classmates had been an equal failure.’ Oh, poor Edward. He gets rejected every time, doesn’t he? First Carlisle, and now his class mates…Seriously though, what was he thinking coming out of the closet to his classmates in the twenties?
He didn’t have many friends as a human because his parents had children late, so their friends’ children were far older than Edward, and he had been content with his books. See? A lovely non-angsty reason why someone is a loner that still deepens and expands their character. If every writer on earth knew how to do this, the world would be an infinitely better place. Anyways, he wasn’t really hoping to make friends, but was still hurt by the degree to which the boys hated him. Apparently, the boys in the class saw him as a rival because of how much the girls were obsessing over him, and because his dazzling didn’t have as much of an effect on the boys, the instinctive distrust and aggression is even more obvious in boys. They really treat him like he’s the dangerous predator he is.
I wonder why the dazzling doesn’t work on boys. Surely, if the dazzling was designed to attract prey, then it wouldn’t care the gender of the prey it lures in? After all, it’s not like there’s a difference between female and male blood. Why would a biological weapon designed for hunting be tuned so that it only worked with heterosexual people?
And would he have the same dazzling effect on lesbians? What about gays? Does the dazzling only work if his prey has a possibility of being attracted to him? This is a very interesting topic…I hope it gets expanded on in The Blue Hour.
Anyways, Edward ends up finding himself a complete social outcast, caught between irrational lust and overwhelming hatred, the whole school having tangled itself about him in a web of social drama. Looking upon the mess he’s caught in and reflecting on how childish it all was, Edward suddenly realises something: he had aged.
He hadn’t noticed because he was away from human society from so long, and for a long time, his only companion was literally centuries old. But he had aged.
Carlisle had promised to him that he wouldn’t age when he offered Edward the choice, but now Edward realises that aging wasn’t just a physical process.
He was an adult forever trapped in a child’s body.
He changed.
I cannot emphasise enough how much this change thrills me (not in that way). Meyer has specifically said in her illustrated guides that vampires don’t change. They remain exactly the way they are when they are first transformed. As well as their bodies, their minds freeze in time as well, and that is STUPID. STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, STUPID. A person’s mind has to change. The longer they live, the more things they learn, the more complete a world view they have. As they come upon new information, they have to rethink their prior values and assumptions. As long as they are alive, they are bound to change infinitesimally in their thinking each day. People live because they grow. And in a purely literary sense, this is stupid as well. Static characters are not good. Static characters are exactly the type of thing writers everywhere try to avoid at any cost. Writing your story so that your characters are almost GUARANTEED to be static characters is STUPID. You have all but said that character development is IMPOSSIBLE for your main characters, and words cannot describe how much FAIL that is. People read stories to experience the characters’ journeys with them. People read stories to watch these characters learn, grow, and mature. Outright saying that your characters never change is so STUPID that my brain almost exploded when I saw it. Most of all, having characters be never-changing would violate your own canon.
Let’s have a look at Rosalie for an example. She was transformed just after she had been BRUTALLY ASSAULTED BY HER TRUSTED FIANCE AND HIS FRIENDS AND FREAKING GANG-RAPED TO DEATH. She woke up vulnerable, scared, violated, and confused. Does she behaved like this at all in the story? No! We’re even outright told that she and Emmett have a very healthy sex life! That is not what women who have just been gang-raped by their fiancés do! She had to have grown in the intervening years and gotten over her trauma at least somewhat! It is blatant canon rape to say that vampires have static minds, because Rosalie would still be behaving as if, just minutes ago, her love had gang-raped her with a group of his friends, beat her up, and left her to die by the side of the road!
I am so happy that this aspect is changed. And I am so guilty that I feel so happy that Edward will have to suffer more. I like Hyde!Edward. He needs good things to happen to him once in a while…
Anyways, at first, he loved the idea of being un-aging, remaining young forever. Despite being a prolific reader, it seems that Edward is still very Genre Blind. Seriously, how many immortals in fiction actually enjoy their immortality? Especially the ones who had been mortal once? Well, the point is, despite his initial enthusiasm, he has grown to hate the idea of immortality, especially the concept that he would be stuck looking like a child forever, when he is adult in mind. He can’t fit in with his peers, because he thinks differently from them.
But the point is, he can’t fit in with people ‘his own age’ (his own mental age, that is) either, because he looks like a kid to them. Elder women, though attracted to him as they are, treat him as a child and never consider him seriously as a contemporary. Older men are much the same, quizzing him as a father would his son, whilst still being very cautious of him. Looks are deceptive, and even Esme sometimes slips and treats him like a child.
This provides a very non-creepy explanation for why Esme acts the way she does in canon. I like this, yes. I mean, at least she isn’t doing this because this is what is appropriate for her, as a woman, to do.
Anyways, because he looks younger than he actually is, he will never be able to find a place where he can just belong, except Esme and Carlisle’s house. As time passes, this problem will only becomes worse, as he becomes a middle-aged, old, ancient…and yet, all the while, people around him will still treat him like a child.
And there’s just no possible way to get out of this situation. A human may become a vampire, but a vampire will never be able to become a human again, and right now, that’s exactly what he wants.
He’s startled out of his thoughts when the clock strikes five (I’ve never actually heard a church clock strike the hour before). I was a bit surprised when I read this, because I always assumed far more time had passed. He heard the thoughts of a milkman when he first got on the high school roof, and around my parts, newspaper deliveries are made at 4:30, I assume the milkmen worked the same hours. I was convinced that more than half an hour had passed…
Meh, at least it’s far better than the non-existent time transitions in Twilight.
He decides to head home, figuring that Carlisle and Esme must be done by now, which makes me confused again. Just what time did he leave the house? Obviously, he’s been out for more than half an hour, so just what time do the milkmen make their rounds in America? Anyway, he starts walking back home slowly.
His thoughts go back to how awkward it is to have mind-reading as a power. The first time this experience happened to him, he was just passing by a house, where a recently married couple lived. Wow. This sucks even more than I had anticipated. The idea that he was distracted before, and thus was completely unprepared…he had no idea what was happening, and suddenly, he has an erection, his bloodlust is amplified, and he simultaneously feels himself thrusting inside a woman and being screwed by another guy in an orifice that he doesn’t have…and he has no clue what to do. To make matters worse, Carlisle was THERE and figured out exactly what happened. Seriously, Carlisle saw Edward soil himself randomly in the middle of a street.
Even more horrifyingly, vampires can’t really commit suicide.
…Seriously, this SUCKS. I cannot think of any fate that sucks more than what Hyde!Edward had to go through.
Well, since then, he’s been a lot more cautious about what’s happening around him…but that doesn’t really help when the same activity happens in his house frequently. Edward gets a bit bitter here and kicks a rock whilst scowling at the ground. Again, this really doesn’t have a deeper meaning…it’s just a little quirk of his character that made me smile. On the one hand, reading his internal monologue, he really does sound like a world-weary adult. On the other hand, sometimes, his reactions are still quite stereotypically teenager-ish.
He also reveals that it’s even harder for him to ignore Carlisle and Esme because he is ‘familiar’ with their minds. I wonder how that works. Is he just especially good at picking out their voices in a crowd? Or do people who are close to him sound especially loud to him? Or does he instinctively listen in to the thoughts of people who are close to him?
Carlisle and Esme had apparently went on a short honeymoon, and Edward wasn’t with them. I wonder what he did whilst Carlisle and Esme were away. It can’t be easy living on your own when you look like a teenager…authorities are bound to start asking questions. And I can’t help but feel Carlisle is being a bit selfish here. I mean, Edward has to handle double the amount of pressure because of his mind-reading, and when Esme was turned, he had only been a vampire for 5-6 years. It’s very possible that he would have snapped without Carlisle’s calming presence. I mean, I know he’s just married and everything, but I still feel like he’s got an obligation to keep an eye on Edward…
The first incident happened the first night Carlisle and Esme got back to Edward (really, what was he doing during their honeymoon?), when Carlisle proposed to ‘[christen] the new house’. I never really saw Carlisle as the type to make quips like that. And, again, I’m not experienced in any way, but after a whole month of nothing but screwing each other, you’d think they would have gotten tired of it…
Anyways, Edward had been reading at the time and was completely taken by surprise, and ended up ejaculating in his pants on his bedroom floor. He ran out there (not even bothering to change, thanks Edward, we really needed that detail) immediately.
But, of course, he had to come back and, you know, try to act like nothing had happened in front of Carlisle and Esme. ‘Edward had been stuttering and completely unable to look either of them in the face - because not only did he know precisely the sounds Esme made when she found her release and what it felt like to be inside of her when she did, but he also knew exactly what it felt like to be kissed, caressed, and soundly rogered by the man that he’d come to know as a second father.’ Mind-reading is a HORRIBLE power to have and I sympathise with anyone who has ever had anything close to it. Especially if they have parents.
This is rather minor, but I’d like to point out that Edward thinks of Carlisle as his SECOND father. He never forgets about his human past and biological parents, and he never stops loving them. He admires Carlisle, but he is not going to let anyone replace his father and mother in his memory either. That is…incredibly touching. It makes me want to hug him.
When was the last time canon!Edward thought about his father?
I thought so.
After two days of the ultimate AWKWARDNESS, Carlisle demanded to know what happened. Edward tried to skirt around the issue, but Carlisle has been alive for three hundred years, he has some degree of Genre Savvy. And then the AWKWARD gets even MORE awkward, and I really, really want to reach into the computer screen and hand Edward a chocolate bar. He really needs it. Seriously, his life sucks. (Another interesting little quirk of Edward’s comes up here - his tendency to run his hand through his hair. It’s cute and it explains why his hair is so messy all the time, but mostly, it’s just cute.)
Edward recounts Carlisle’s apology whilst making it clear that he does not consider the whole thing Carlisle’s fault at all, and apologises himself for eavesdropping. Really, the kid thinks everything is his fault, isn’t it? It wasn’t Carlisle’s fault that he forgot there was a teenage mind-reader in the house, Edward just wasn’t strong enough.
Really, what kind of people brought him up? Where did all this self-loathing come from?
Anyways, Edward reassured Carlisle that he could handle it (no pun intended), and that was the end of the discussion. Apparently, he decided to conquer this problem the same say he tried to conquer his bloodlust - by distracting himself. He tried to read, or play music, or pain, but, of course, none of them worked, and he’s getting incredibly frustrated at himself. He makes a joke at his expenses for his perceived ‘weakness’ as he turns onto his street, carefully listening for signs of on-going activity before venturing forth. This little detail really made me feel for him, because no one should have to be cautious when approaching their own home.
This is especially sad since, as I’ve said before, the only place Edward can truly belong is at home, and now he feels like a stranger in his own house. His time spent near the only two people who can possibly understand him is now forever tarnished by his mind-reading, and I doubt he’ll ever be comfortable around Carlisle and Esme again.
Really, I suppose I can’t blame Carlisle and Esme, but I’m still rather upset with them. Carlisle of all people should know how much strain his activities are putting on Edward, who already has to deal with mind-reading, bloodlust, and school. They’re freaking vampires, it’s not going to be that hard to run 6 or 7 miles away every time they felt the need to do it! It’s just that the problem can be so easily solved, and yet no one is going along with the solution because of poor communication.
However, this alienation sets up the circumstances under which Edward will leave Carlisle. It is precisely because he can no longer find closure in Carlisle’s company that he eventually decides to make it off on his own.
Well, anyways, it turns out that everyone on the street is asleep, so Edward ‘cheated a little and ran down the street at his true speed, rather than maintaining the frustratingly slow façade of humanity, arriving on their front step in mere second.’ HOORAY, REALISM. Seriously, that is what a person with super speed will do! They’ll maintain the masquerade, but they will try and have fun every now and again with their super powers, because it’s cool. It’s simply preposterous to expect people to believe that a person can be granted super strength, invulnerability, super speed…and yet almost never truly enjoying the use of those abilities.
Carlisle and Esme are talking upstairs (apparently, they do this after sex every time, which made me confused, because I thought people fell asleep afterwards. Again, I’ve never had experience, so maybe I just fail Sex Ed). So Edward goes in, assured that they wouldn’t notice him because they’re too wrapped up in each other, and god, it makes me want to smack Carlisle up the head with a book. Edward is his surrogate son! Can’t he see that he’s going through a rough period in life? This scene read almost too much like neglect, which is a very valid form of child abuse. I suppose I can’t think of Edward as a child, but he is so lost in life and confused by everything around him that…well, he definitely needs Carlisle to be there for him in this period of his life, and Carlisle is ignoring his needs in favour of screwing his wife.
Really, this Carlisle is a million times better than the one in canon, but he still frustrates me.
It’s close to six o’clock now. It took him nearly an hour to get home? How slowly did he walk? How far away was the school? I’m so confused by the time flow…
Carlisle would be leaving for work soon, so he can get there before the sun. Apparently, Mrs. Hyde’s vampires will still sparkle, though she promised to give it a very nice explanation (which I can’t wait for). Anyways, that means it’s almost time for Edward to leave for the ‘adjacent library’ as well. Adjacent to what? His house? His school? Anyways, he’ll stay late there and then go back home when the sun goes down.
‘He trudges up the stairs and into his room. Time to get ready for another day - at school.’
Huh? I thought he was going to the library! Was it the school library? I’m so confused!
Anyways, that concludes part 1 of Chapter 1.
In this chapter, we get a basic overview of Edward’s past. Most of the chapter is spent on the various disadvantages that his immortality, vampirism, and mind-reading brings to him, most importantly, isolation from society. We get to know him as a person, his hobbies, dreams, idols, frustration…the anti-sporking is quite long, but this part is actually relatively short, and I’m truly impressed by the amount of information presented to us without the whole thing turning into a gigantic info-dump.
Of course, the writing wasn’t perfect, but then again, what is? As fanfiction goes, it’s definitely THE best I’ve ever read, and it has already accomplished its mission: make me like Edward.
The next part is a chapter-long humiliation conga, where one horrible thing after another happens to Edward, to the point that I can barely look at it without squirming in discomfort. So, tune in next time for more angst, delicious character development, and the beginning of the plot!
Go forward to: Additional Notes
Go back to: Chapter 1 Part 1, Section B