YMMV / The Twilight Saga

The following contains YMMV items to the Twilight series.

• Alternative Character Interpretation
• Memetic Mutation

A - D

• Accidental Aesop: Many opponents of the series cite examples of Jacob and Edward's dominance of Bella as anything from undermining feminism to propagating Mormon beliefs (just look at the Alternate Character Interpretation page). Then there's the implications that your boyfriend should come before everyone and everything else, being a relatively normal person is lame and makes you lesser than "special" people and if your boyfriend acts like a creepy, controlling stalker, it's just because he loves you.
• Accidental Innuendo:
  • Eclipse, in the dedication. Among his other positive qualities, the author thanks her husband for his "willingness to eat out." One may be shocked by the level of TMI about their private relationship, before realizing Meyer means going to restaurants.
  • In the film version of New Moon, Edward is a real bastard:
    Bella: (exasperated) I'm coming!
    Edward: I don't want you to come!
  • In Breaking Dawn, shortly after Bella awakens as a vampire she uses some...interesting words to describe Edward, including getting lost "in the velvet folds" (referring to his voice) and his hand being "satin-covered steel". These descriptors are frequently found in erotica (or fanfiction) but are generally used to describe...well, different body parts...
• Actor Shipping:
  • Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart repeatedly denied they were in a relationship before it was eventually confirmed they were dating. Even before the confirmation, it didn't stop fans from shipping them; contributing to this is the fact that Pattinson admitted/joked that he auditioned for the part of Edward entirely for the opportunity to hit on Stewart. A cynical man could be forgiven for thinking that they stayed together after Stewart's cheating scandal the year before just long enough to promote the film release of Breaking Dawn Part 2.
  • Some viewers began shipping Kristen Stewart and Nikki Reed due to their being pictures of them kissing. The fact that Stewart came out as bisexual a few years after the release of the last movie only added fuel to the fire.
• Americans Hate Tingle: To say that this book series is unpopular with Native American readers would be a serious understatement, given that Stephenie Meyer's depiction of the Quileute people (a very much real tribe) either ignored or completely rewrote their actual tribal mythology.
• Angst Dissonance: Even some fans of the series got fed up with Bella’s near-constant crying and moping over Edward leaving her in New Moon, especially as it lasts virtually the entire book. Some considered it to be a disproportionate response (she seems to be seriously depressed and even suicidal, all over being dumped by a guy she’d dated for a few months) and/or found her unsympathetic for how she seems to completely disregard her family and friends during this period, even if they try to help her (and in the case of Jessica and particularly Jacob, outright uses them just to make herself feel better).
• Anvilicious:
  • The first book in particular is made of anvil. Giving into those base desires will kill you! Sex before marriage will kill you!! Blood equals sex equals death equals don't do it!!!
  • Every woman has the desire to get married and be a mother ingrained in her DNA, even if she doesn't realize it; if she says she doesn't want these things, it's just a silly little rebellious phase that she will get over. In the books Bella originally doesn't want to get married and admits to never wanting a child, but after Edward gives her an ultimatum (he won't even discuss having sex with her unless they get married) and she unintentionally becomes pregnant, everything clicks into place and she realizes that marriage and motherhood were the keys to happiness all along. Similarly, all of the women in the books are either married and have children, want to get married and have children, or regret that they can't get married and have children unless they belong to the villains or are meant to serve as an example of someone selfish and irresponsible (i.e. the sort of person YOU shouldn't want to be).
  • Don't even think naughty thoughts. Vampires will hear you. And... and... judge you!
  • Your boyfriend should be the most important thing in your life, he should come before your family, your friends, your future, and even your own personal safety. If you can't get a boyfriend you're doomed to a life of solitary misery... and there's probably something wrong with you (especially if you don't even want a boyfriend).
• Ass Pull:
  • The Big Bad vamps Victoria, James, and Laurent were not mentioned at all until the very end of the first book. The movie rectifies this mistake and has them shown earlier. The role of the Volturi in enforcing the rules of vampire society was similarly introduced out of the blue in New Moon.
  • Before Breaking Dawn Part II was released, the promotional materials and marketing hyped up an epic final battle that was shown in nearly every trailer and TV spot. When the film was released, the final battle turned out to be one of Alice's visions. While this was the movie trying to have its cake and eat it too, some have argued its actually lore-breaking as previous installments established that Alice's visions are not capable of featuring werewolves and half-vampires, both of which feature heavily in this vision.
  • Also from Breaking Dawn, just when it seems the Cullens will have to face the consequences of allying with werewolves, mortal enemies of vampires, Jake and his tribe are suddenly revealed to be a group of mystical shapeshifters whose totem just happens to be a wolf, and whose powers are completely unrelated to those of real werewolves (or "Children of the Moon" as the book calls them). This comes despite them being regarded as werewolves by the narrative for the whole of the series. And the Cullens knowing they weren't real werewolves all that time. They didn't say anything about it because You Didn't Ask.
  • For some readers, the Plot Twist in Breaking Dawn where Bella gets pregnant by Edward. In the book itself it's actually foreshadowed to an extent, but some people still found it extremely unexpected on account of the fact it had clearly been established in earlier books that vampires couldn't have kids.
  • Nahuel, a Dhampyr brought in by Alice to testify against the Volturi and convince them that Renesmee Cullen was not a threat to the vampires' existence, who was also a Dhampyr herself, is introduced, out of the blue, in Breaking Dawn without being mentioned prior. Before, it seemed as though Renesmee was treated as the only one of her kind. His appearance really comes across as a Get out of Jail free card for the Cullen's and their allies so they won't have to go to war with the Volturi.
• Awesome Music: In an inversion to the quality of the films, many of the songs on the soundtracks are fantastic featuring work by the likes of Muse, Paramore, Thom Yorke, Bat For Lashes, Beck, Metric, Bombay Bicycle Club, The Black Ghosts, Lykke Li, Death Cab For Cutie, The Joy Formidable, and many others. The OST is great as well, and the trilogy is scored by none other than Carter Burwell, Howard Shore, and Alexandre Desplat. See here.
  • Special note goes to Iron & Wine, whose "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" was rereleased as a digital single and became his most famous song overnight due to a heavy case of Song Association.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • One could make a case for Alice Cullen. On one hand, she is loved by many fans and even some antis for being a funny, chirpy fashionista with useful powers that move the story forwards and an interesting backstory that's kind of relevant to the main plot of the first book. On the other, some people regard her as more of a Scrappy who seems to care about little but fashion and material items, even in extremely dire or inappropriate circumstances, comes across as shallow, pushy and irritating rather than cute, is horribly racist to the werewolves despite them never actually doing anything to her personally and has wildly inconsistent powers whose accuracy is dictated by the plot.
  • Bella Swan. Many fans, whether they really enjoy the book's content or just see it as So Bad, It's Good, really do not like Bella. Many a reader views her as a flat, boring and rather passive character at best, an emotionally manipulative and selfish jerkass at worst, who gets everything she ever wanted without having to really work for it and doing little but whining and needing to be rescued the entire series. Some readers didn't start really disliking her until Breaking Dawn, believing that after she became a vampire, she became ridiculously overpowered, beautiful and special and stopped being relatable. However, there are readers who do genuinely like Bella and find her very relatable (which is probably because she was intentionally designed to be an easy character for readers to use to insert themselves into the story).
  • Edward and Jacob both have sizable fanbases who adore and root for them, but they also have their fair share of haters too (some of which depends upon who you're rooting for in the love triangle). Some people don't care for either of them and are sick of the merchandise fuel that plays up the love triangle, despite the ending of the series being determined before the first movie came out.
    • Edward in particular is despised by some readers for being a spectacularly whiny vampire who barely 'acts like a real vampire', as well as some of his behavior towards Bella coming across as a bit creepy or borderline abusive. That, and apparently hating music from The '60s and especially The '70s, and calling 80's music just "bearable". For other people, though, he's a swoon-worthy Romantic Vampire Boy.
    • A lot of readers view Jacob as being one of the better characters in the series, thought of as having more depth than Bella and Edward, and viewed with sympathy for his mostly unrequited love for Bella, as well as being viewed as much better boyfriend material than Edward. However, others view him as being just as bad as Edward, if not worse, in his treatment of Bella. Jacob haters really started cropping up in Eclipse, as in this book he took several levels in Jerkass and acts like an aggressive and jealous ass to Bella much of the time, at one point even kissing her against her will. The second part of Breaking Dawn, which is told from Jacob's POV, didn't help endear him to some readers, as he spends much of it whining about his unrequited love for Bella and even considers murdering her newborn baby when she seemingly dies in childbirth... until he imprints on the baby instead, which many people found insanely creepy (albeit unintentionally). Jacob finally tones down his Jerkass behavior in the third part, but by this point he doesn't really do anything significant anymore, mostly just acting as Renesmee’s babysitter and the Cullens' liaison with Charlie and the wolves, which was disappointing for some readers who genuinely liked the character.
  • Heck, given the fact they had to make an entirely separate page to house the Alternative Character Interpretations for this series, it’s safe to say many of the characters are subject to a great deal of debate amongst readers.
• Best Known for the Fanservice:
  • The film adaptations in particular are well known for Jacob and the other werewolves constantly walking around in nothing but denim shorts, showing off their rippling abs. Or Edward stripping off in public if you're Team Edward. Or both.
  • Many fans were eager to watch Breaking Dawn Part 1 on account of the fact it's the one where Edward and Bella finally get it on. Especially as unlike the book (which mostly skimmed over the sexy stuff), the film actually shows the sex (PG-13 sex, admittedly, but still something), which also got talked about quite a bit in the media surrounding the film's release.
• Bile Fascination: Like a bizarrely-enjoyable train-wreck, some readers can't pull away.
• Bilingual Bonus: Readers who understand Portuguese will get a laugh at Kaure assuming Edward is a Lobishomen in Breaking Dawn, since the word (and the legend) derives from lobisomem, which means... werewolf. Even funnier in the Brazilian translation of the book, where they literally translate it as lobisomem, so to the readers it's easy to assume Kaure is mistaking Edward for a werewolf of all things.
• Broken Base:
  • Leading up to the release of the film version of New Moon, the war between the "Team Edward" and "Team Jacob" factions became so intense that Burger King was able to base an ad campaign around it.
  • And the base promptly exploded when Breaking Dawn came out.
  • The concept of a "Twilight Renaissance" as noted under Vindicated by History. Even before the totally unexpected release of Midnight Sun in its complete form, many people had begun to reexamine their initial dismissal of and disdain towards the franchise, finding that a definitely-present level of misogyny colored a great many of the grievances against the series. This in turn has led to counter-criticisms noting that the Twilight hate was as much a cultural phenomenon as it was specifically because it was rife with Unfortunate Implications and some critics who don't take well to the idea that Twilight was decent literature that got an unfair deal, especially as the idea that Twilight's only criticisms came from misogynists was already a popular defense in its heyday. Legitimate detractors also decry and find irony in the fans calling detractors misogynists given how the books themselves have been accused of being misogynistic in their own right.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Arguably features a few throughout the series.
  • In Twilight, the 'twist' that Edward and the Cullens are vampires (to the point where the blurb states it in some editions and it’s the only thing some people even know about the plot).
  • In Eclipse, it came as a surprise to pretty much no one but the Cullens that Victoria is behind the newborn army, seeing as she spent most of the previous book actively trying to kill Bella and is virtually the only person known to the Cullens with the motivation to create one. Bella herself repeatedly states she thinks Victoria is responsible, but no one else listens. The film adaptation doesn't even bother hiding this fact.
  • In Breaking Dawn Nessie wanting blood is treated as some amazing revelation. She's half-vampire and explicitly sucking Bella dry; what else could she want?
• Character Perception Evolution:
  • Bella used to be treated as a blatant Escapist Character who had "no personality" and existed to be as bland as possible so the reader could imagine that she is Bella. With the overwhelming backlash to the series levelling off, many fans have come forward to Bella's defence; arguing that she actually does have a character and it's specifically pointed out that she's a Shrinking Violet who's baffled by all the extra attention she gets when she moves to Forks (as she doesn't think she's interesting at all). She's specifically had to take care of herself because of her mother's immaturity, and thus this has given her a weird mix of age-appropriate traits and Wise Beyond Her Years ones. She specifically likes classic literature like Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters, and is used to parenting herself, even when living with Charlie. The main reason she fawns over Edward is that she's never had someone to care for her before and be that invested in her - and that is the reason she takes their break-up in New Moon so bad. She's a Vanilla Protagonist sure (see below), but that hardly makes her stand out from other YA female protagonists.
  • When the series first came out, a lot of audience members viewed Jacob as being a better romantic option for Bella due to him being her plucky childhood friend with a crush who refused to give up on her, while criticizing Edward as being domineering and paternalistic. Some people disapproved of Jacob's behavior in Eclipse but it tended to be chalked up as him just suffering from Love Hurts; after all, Jacob was popular enough as a love interest to cause the great Team Edward vs Team Jacob debate. However, due to increasing awareness and criticism of sexual harassment/abuse and the rise of "incel culture" in the decade since Twilight's release, many readers have become a lot more critical of Jacob, pointing out that he can come across as feeling entitled to Bella's affection and overly-aggressive in his pursuit of her (including kissing her against her will; the narrative plays it off as Jacob just being passionate but most people nowadays call it out as sexual assault). His refusal to respect Bella's rejections and anger at her for not choosing him arguably makes just as bad or even worse than Edward;^note While Edward's behavior towards Bella can also be problematic, he at least is depicted as showing concern for Bella's physical/emotional well-being and having some respect for her autonomy, including saying he would willingly stand aside if Bella chose Jacob over him it's not uncommon to hear detractors refer to Jacob as being a "nice guy" in the pejorative sense. Not helping matters is the whole imprinting on Renesmee (Edward and Bella's infant daughter) thing.
• Cliché Storm: Awkward, clumsy girl moves to new school and is instantly adored by all? Check. New girl falling in love with the hottest (cough) guy in school? Check. Hot boy falls in love with new girl? Check. Girl is so in love she will do anything for her true love? Check. And that's just the beginning...
• Complete Monster: The film version of Aro is the tyrannical head of the Volturi, the biggest vampire coven in the world. Driven by a desire for power and growing his own coven, Aro often falsely accuses other covens of breaking his laws so he can slaughter them just to recruit their most gifted members into his own. Every execution Aro conducts, whether he has his victims ripped apart by his followers or personally tears their heads off, brings him clear, sadistic pleasure. When Aro hears the false allegation that Renesmee, daughter of Edward Cullen and Bella Swan, is an immortal child and a danger to vampirekind, he uses this as an excuse to attack the Cullens, plotting to destroy all but Bella, Edward, and Alice, whom he deems useful to his clan.
• Contested Sequel: Even the fans became a Broken Base with Breaking Dawn. The Amazon page gives it an average 3-star rating — because most of the reviews are either 5 stars or 1 star. In one camp, people thought it was a satisfying conclusion to the series; all the main characters survive and live Happily Ever After, the Love Triangle is resolved with no hurt feelings, all Bella's dreams come true and readers finally get to see what it's like to become a vampire in the Twilight universe, which had been hyped since the first book. Some readers also enjoyed the unexpected plot twists, such as Bella getting pregnant with a Dhampir, especially as it helps expand the lore. In the other camp, readers criticised Breaking Dawn for having very slow pacing in a book that's already a Doorstopper, the lack of a climactic battle, certain plot threads being left dangling while others are tied up just a little too neatly, Renesmee hijacking the plot, Bella becoming (in their view) an Invincible Hero and the twists relying on gaping plot holes and/or retcons.
• Creator's Pet: Renesmee from Breaking Dawn. EVERYONE who meets her loves her, despite the fact that she hasn't done anything other than be Edward and Bella's half human/half vampire daughter with psychic powers. Many fans loathe her for hijacking the story away from the Official Couple. Others hate her because her very existence is Artistic License – Biology AND a direct contradiction to previous Word of God. Team Jacob fans hate her for other reasons. Meyer admitted that Bella and Nessie both are avatars of her ideal fantasy daughter (though Bella is also an admitted self-insert).
• Critical Backlash:
  • The first movie is actually regarded by some as a decent young adult adaptation, while the other movies are subject to Sequelitis. If nothing else, the movie is seen as being much better than the source material it was based on.
  • In general, while it's still nowhere near as popular as it used to be, some have applied this trope to the series as a whole, noting that, at its height, the backlash in the early '10s was often laced with misogyny from both young men who felt that the books' fans were invading "their" geek spaces and young women who didn't want to be associated with "girly" things. The general consensus among women who were fans of the books and films when they were younger seems to be "they're trash, but they're our trash." Feminist commentators Lindsay Ellis, Contrapoints, and Sarah Z have made analytical videos on how the anti-Twilight backlash eventually came in for counter-backlash itself. Even today, you'll find plenty of people who still remember it fondly, find things to praise even with its faults, and it still gets brought up in popular media now and then, proving that, for better or worse, the franchise has left its mark on pop culture.
  • To a lesser extent, some antis have a tendency to go on and on about how Twilight allegedly "ruined vampires". While Twilight did end up with a glut of imitators of varying quality, there were and still are vampire-themed works being made that have been quite well-received and feature a wide variety of stories and portrayals of vampires (as opposed to just romances aimed at teens). Regardless of your opinion of Twilight, its popularity also actually helped revitalize interest in older works in the vampire genre, such as The Vampire Diaries and several others. Therefore, it’s probably safe to say that Twilight hasn’t "ruined vampires forever".
• Critic-Proof: The books and especially the films were greatly savaged by critics, but the franchise was still a bestseller and box office success.
• Damsel Scrappy: Bella Swan epitomizes this trope, even commenting in her own narrative that "I guess my brain will never work right. At least I'm pretty." Add in the fact that she can't seem to get out of any scrape without the intervention of a male and you've got one of the most textbook examples of this trope ever. Alice Cullen just sums it up: "I have never seen anyone more prone to life-threatening idiocy."
• Death of the Author: Meyer ostensibly wrote the series to be about the triumph of love over all obstacles. As is well-known by now, it's instead interpreted by many to be a paean to Stalking is Love, that vampirism "fixes" people of other ethnicities by making them white, and Bella's baby being so spoiled rotten and easily able to bend others to her will she'll probably grow up to take over the world, among others.
• Designated Hero:
  • Edward and the Cullens are the good guys because... well, they don't eat humans. They let their vampire buddies eat humans, routinely show up the Muggles, use their awesome powers for pure personal gain, and screw up the lives of many a werewolf to get their way, but at least they don't eat humans.
  • Bella gives minimal thought to the innocent people being killed by vampires, unless it's someone she knows. In New Moon, she seriously considers withholding what she knows about vampires from the werewolves because telling them anything would feel like betrayal to the Cullens (even though she knows full well that the Cullens are in no danger from the wolves at all and that helping the wolves learn about the vampires will help them stop Victoria more quickly and thus keep more people from dying).
  • It's a lot harder to sympathize with Bree Tanner when she shows no remorse at all for committing multiple murders and seems under the impression that she is above laws as long as there is no one to hold her to them. There's also the matter of her and Diego suffering from a severe case of Too Dumb to Live.
  • And in the unfinished manuscript for Midnight Sun (2020) (which finally got released in full in 2020 after having been shelved for several years), Edward is definitely genocidal, casually mentioning wanting to slaughter the Quileute tribe due to Jacob daring to speak to Bella because as far as he knew they were defenseless. He also comes across as a school killer, plotting the murders of his entire class so he could get to Bella without witnesses, and later plots getting her at her home in a way that comes across as very much like he's planning a rape.
  • Even outside the abundance of unintended character traits that come off as scary, many readers have noted that the protagonists are just...well, generally really rude jerks.
• Diagnosed by the Audience:
  • Bella:
    • In New Moon, Bella becomes very depressed after Edward leaves her: she suffers from horrific nightmares, becomes apathetic about everything, withdraws from others and even seems to harbour suicidal thoughts, believing her life isn't worth continuing without Edward. This continues for months on end; even a year later, she's only slightly improved.
    • She also begins hearing Edward's voice, and in the film adaptation she outright hallucinates him. This is usually only when she's engaged in risky behaviour, causing her to start pulling stunts like approaching random bikers (one of whom she actually mistakes for her would-be rapist), jumping off cliffs into the ocean, hiking in the woods by herself whilst a killer is on the loose, and riding a motorcycle without a helmet just so she can hear Edward. There is no suggestion that there is a supernatural cause for this.
    • Thanks to Protagonist-Centered Morality and Bella's stated traits not matching what is actually written, Bella meets all seven diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
• Don't Shoot the Message: Many, many anti-abortion activists do not like Breaking Dawn and see it as Unwanted Assistance since the pregnancy in question was literally killing Bella, which is a circumstance most anti-abortion advocates are willing to make an exception for.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • "Team James" has quite a following. Same for Victoria, particularly for Bella haters.
  • Aro has become something of this after the New Moon movie came out and Michael Sheen turned in his Large Ham performance.
  • Tyler's van. At least it tried.
  • Jane is also extremely sadistic and otherwise emotionless, but being played by Dakota Fanning increased her fandom.
• Dry Docked Ship: Some readers believe Aro and Carlisle were once in a relationship, due to perceived Ho Yay, or at the very least that Aro was and still is very much into Carlisle.

E - L

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Many of the side characters, but a fair share are especially noteworthy.
  • Vampire doctor Carlisle. Most of his fans are among those who otherwise loathe the books.
  • Ditto Alice, who counts Moviebob and Cleolinda Jones among her fans. Being played by Ashley Greene helps just a tad.
  • Jasper, redeemed Blood Knight.
  • On the villains' side, you have Aro, though the Volturi in general probably count. Marcus too, for his sad backstory.
  • And Rosalie for some, particularly people who dislike Bella.
  • For the werewolves there's sweet kid Seth and fierce Leah, who has a particularly memorable moment involving a Narrative Profanity Filter. Jacob too, ignoring his jerkass moments in Eclipse and anything after the imprinting.
  • Sam, thanks to his giant black wolf form being totally badass...though considering he imprinted on Emily and left Leah for her and then ripped half of Emily's face off when she tried to reject him, it becomes a lot more complicated.
  • A lot of the moviegoers loved how Charlie was done thanks to Billy Burke's portrayal. Like Leah and Carlisle, even critics tends to like him. The Spoony One (referring to him as "mustache dad") even says he's the most sympathetic character throughout all the movies. Even the Rifftrax team like him! they also call him Mustache Dad, mostly because mustaches are a Running Gag for them. The Distressed Watcher says he wishes the movies were centered on Charlie, a silent but resourceful lawman investigating a string of mysterious murders and struggling with single fatherhood while his daughter keeps secrets from him.
  • Tyler Crowley, aka "the guy who almost hit Bella with his van." Even after the passing of his actor. Hell, the van itself too, really.
  • Bree made people pity her to the point that they wrote an alternate take on her encounter with the Volturi and even went as far as have her be adopted by the Cullens.
  • Bella's human friends, who seem like the sort of people you genuinely want to hang out with.
  • The Denalis, Benjamin and his family all became incredibly popular after Breaking Dawn Part 2 came out, as their actors managed to make them fairly interesting and/or likeable (Benjamin being played by Rami Malek and having cool elemental powers also helps). Garrett as well (being played by Lee Pace doesn't hurt.) All of the witnesses the Cullens gather (and surprise witness Nahuel's briefly mentioned half-sisters) are pretty interesting characters, but those ten stand far above them in recognition with the fanbase and/or fanfic tributes.
  • J. Jenks gained this thanks to Wendell Pierce's performance in the film version; a high-powered lawyer who forges papers for the Cullens and suspects they're vampires but purposefully keeps himself in the dark because that's none of his concern. He's basically a mortal Consigliere and we only get one scene with him.
  • Bianca is a Canon Foreigner with one short scene in the fourth film, but she has a strong fanbase due to her Leg Focus moments and terrified misery over working for Bad Boss Aro.
• Escapist Character: Bella Swan all the way, which is a big part of her appeal to readers. She's actually an admitted Audience Surrogate, being a very ordinary teenage girl who never felt like she fitted in, who suddenly has all these gorgeous supernatural guys (and human guys for that matter) fawning over her. Edward and Jacob are both utterly devoted to Bella, to the point where one of the main conflicts of the series is which guy Bella should pick. She also stands out in the supernatural world due to her unique, nigh-irresistible-to-vampires scent and the fact she's mysteriously immune to vampire mind powers. This trope is kicked into high gear by Breaking Dawn, which details Bella's fairytale wedding and tropical island honeymoon with Edward. She gets to join an immensely rich family who adore her and becomes a vampire, gaining super powers, inhuman beauty and immortality. What's more, Bella is established to have excellent self-control for a newborn vampire, so she doesn't have to worry about accidentally massacring the townsfolk and easily adjusts to a Vegetarian Vampire diet. Bella also has a hybrid daughter while she's still human (and so isn't affected by the Law of Inverse Fertility like other female vampires) who is also very beautiful, gifted, immortal and well-loved, as well as highly intelligent and fast aging, meaning she doesn't have to worry about potty training and such. Jacob also imprints on said daughter, which neatly solves the love triangle while ensuring Bella gets to keep Jacob around as her best friend. Finally, Bella's mental shield power – which is amplified by her becoming a vampire – proves key to saving the Cullens and their allies from the Volturi in the novel's climax, ensuring Everybody Lives.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Jacob's imprinting on Renesmee, considering he stated it's actually a terrible brainwashing not long before. He indeed loses his personality and becomes Demoted to Extra, his imprintee is practically abusive to him, and he had to leave his family and pack for good to live with the Cullens instead. Not to mention that the Volturi are still very much alive and kicking, and are now royally pissed off at the Cullens for making them look like idiots. It's outright stated that the Volturi will never forgive or forget the Cullens' defiance.
• Everyone Is Satan in Hell: Okay, some conservative objections against the book make sense, but there are a lot of people who take the most bizarre potshots against it. According to this video, Stephenie Meyer must have intentionally hidden Satanic messages into her series because, among other things, a kid with the last name "Cullen" once escaped a Satanic cult, and the chessboard on the Breaking Dawn cover has a check pattern just like the floor in a Masonic lodge.
• Evil Is Cool: The Volturi. A badass group of vampire overlords who's mere name strikes fear into the hearts of vampires everywhere, who go round in black cloaks and steal every scene they're in. Some fans only read/watch the books/films for them and they have some fans who are actively rooting for them. It helps that they make a lot of good points.
• Fan-Disliked Explanation: A few of Meyer's attempts to explain things in the series weren't appreciated by some readers, mostly because they tended to open up a whole new can of worms in regards to the logistics of the world. Team Jacob especially did not like the explanation that he apparently only loved Bella because he was subconsciously waiting for Renesmee, as they felt it cheapened the bond between their OTP, essentially made the love triangle that had dominated much of the series pointless, and/or because it had weird implications that Jacob had somehow imprinted on Bella's ovum.
• Fandom Rivalry: As mentioned on the main page, Twilight fans have a huge rivalry with Harry Potter fans, who were soon joined by the fans of The Hunger Games. To a lesser extent, fans of The Vampire Diaries, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Silver Kiss have also waged war upon Twilight for allegedly ripping-off or stealing the thunder of older (and in their opinion, superior) works.
• Fanon Discontinuity: If the Amazon.com reviews are any indication, a good portion of the fanbase has excommunicated Breaking Dawn.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Jasper Hale is BAD EVIL HARPO!
  • Lauren Mallory goes by "Fucking Lauren", thanks to Alex Day.
  • SMeyer, RPattz, KStew.
  • Antis, also.
  • Jacob McMillion Abs!
  • Famous ladies' man; Charlie the Vampire Slayer. He's also known as Mustache Dad, thanks in part to The Spoony One.
  • Stephyloccocus for haters.
  • Renameme or Renesfail for Renesmee, by the hatedom.
  • Sparklepires to refer to Meyer's vampires, again mostly by haters but occasionally by some people who don't mind the series.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Jacob/Bella, though the official couple has its own vast devoted fanbase. Team Jacob supporters cite that Jacob usually comes off as far more warm and compassionate towards Bella (at least until Eclipse) compared to Edward (who's a stalker and a bit of a jerk to her at times), and that their bond is built upon a genuine friendship rather than infatuation. Bella and Jacob actually have hobbies and interests in common and she is generally more relaxed and carefree around him (probably because she doesn't have to worry about him wanting to eat her all the time). Team Jacob also points out that when Edward broke Bella's heart in New Moon, it was Jacob who emotionally supported her and helped her out of her depression, and that while Edward has a habit of lying to/keeping secrets from Bella, Jacob is usually very honest with her (sometimes brutally so). In the films, some fans and reviewers feel that Bella and Jacob appear to have more onscreen chemistry and believable development than Bella and Edward (the wedding dance scene in Breaking Dawn Part 1 being an oft-cited example). It doesn't help that Bella herself eventually admits her feelings for Jacob are stronger than she initially thought and that before Edward came back, she'd at least entertained the thought of having a relationship with him. Stephenie Meyer has stated that Edward/Bella were always going to be the Official Couple even after she added the Love Triangle, but Team Jacob still generally feel they was robbed, or that it's a case of Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading.
  • Not to mention Alice/Bella. She's the Cullen Bella is closest to after Edward; interestingly, when Edward ditches her she spends months pretending to email Alice and she's reduced to tears of happiness when Alice comes to see her. When Alice had a vision of Bella seemingly dying, she defied Edward's orders to actually travel all the way to Forks to see if Bella was alright (Edward, in comparison, just tried calling Charlie, assumes she's dead based on a vague comment Jacob makes and then cuts off all communication to try and kill himself).
  • Jacob/Leah, mostly because they have some Ship Tease in Breaking Dawn and a fair bit in common (such as both experiencing unrequited love and losing a parent). Leah also doesn't jerk him around and play with his emotions, telling him exactly what she thinks and feels, while still being loyal and compassionate towards him. That, and some people just think Leah deserves some happiness after all the crap that's happened to her.
  • Among Jacob/Leah shippers, Nessie/Seth sounds like a better imprinted couple, given that Seth has a pure mind and already likes vampires and is at least younger, so him waiting for Nessie to grow up is easier to buy as a relationship. Or, alternatively, Nessie/Nahuel, which is even hinted at in the freaking book at the end, despite the whole business with Jacob being Nessie's "soulmate".
  • Bella/Tyler's Van. To be fair, that van was totally going to smash her until Edward got in the way.
  • In the movies, some viewers believe Jacob and Alice have more chemistry in a single scene than Alice and Jasper do in any of the films (mostly in the form of apparent Belligerent Sexual Tension; comparatively, Alice and Jasper barely interact beyond Alice toting Jasper around by the hand to stop him from murdering random people).
  • There's a reasonably sized fanbase who ship Aro and Carlisle together, or at the very least are convinced they were once lovers. The fact that they once lived together, Aro found Carlisle fascinating and is still more than a little obsessed with the Cullens, Aro is from Ancient Greece (where homosexuality was more or less socially accepted), and that there's an extended scene in Breaking Dawn Part 1 where Aro is positively thrilled to get a letter from Carlisle and gets ticked off at his secretary for spelling Carlisle's name wrong just adds more fuel to the fire.
• Faux Symbolism: The author tries to invoke this with references to the forbidden fruit and the lion and the lamb, but seems to have a poor understanding of what those things mean so it doesn't really work. Especially bad since Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon and presumably went to Sunday school in her youth.
  • To address the former, it's supposed to be about exciting but dangerous knowledge, and being pulled from the confines of your safe reality forever (finding out vampires are real and the hot, moody boy you've been swooning over is one). But Bella despises living in Forks, looks down on most of the normal people in her life in one way or another, and obviously places little to no value on living the way she is when the story begins (she says she'd gladly die for any of the Cullens' sake so many times it practically becomes a catchphrase). What she stands to gain from hanging around the Cullens (love, power, wealth, simple excitement) far outweighs anything she has to lose, and she never thinks twice about accepting. Having accepted, whenever something bad happens that might reasonably cause her to step back and rethink her situation, she always uses it as a reason to try to go even deeper (i.e., They find out an evil vampire's probably out to get Bella. She presents that as evidence that she needs to be turned into a vampire right away). Eating the apple's her ticket into paradise, not out.
• First Installment Wins: Particularly when it comes to the film adaptations, Twilight is generally viewed as being the best in the series and is also the most well-known among the general public. Even the first book is seen by a lot of people as an enjoyable, if overly long paranormal teen romance novel. It's also the most straightforward book without some of the bizarre elements and Padding of the others.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Like you wouldn't believe. Victoria/Bella, Rosalie/Bella, Rosalie/Jacob, Alice/Jacob and Edward/Jacob are among the most popular.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • A reason why Breaking Dawn is a Contested Sequel might be due to this trope and Wish-Fulfillment. Breaking Dawn, among other things, significantly empowers Bella, inserts her into a Teen Pregnancy storyline that ultimately ends well, has clumsy Cleaning Up Romantic Loose Ends involving Bella's child, and has an anti-climatic Happily Ever After ending. Thing was, Bella's tendency to have everything largely work out for her a little too conveniently in the end has its roots in the earlier books. To name examples, James is anticlimactically Killed Offscreen by Emmett and Jasper not too long after his battle with Edward while the latter is in the midst of draining James' venom from Bella, Victoria and her entire army of 'newborns' are completely vanquished by the end of Eclipse, and just about every form of relationship drama Bella underwent involving Edward, Jacob, or both is largely resolved smoothly by the end of every book in which said moments appeared. That being said, readers were a lot more willing to overlook these matters, to an extent, since Bella worked somewhat decently at the time as an Escapist Character who could easily appeal to teens since she was presented as (at least ostensibly) a Cute Bookworm Naïve Everygirl who finds herself cavorting with filthy rich vampires and greaser werewolves, and even has romantic entanglements with them. The fact that there were also moments in the earlier books where Bella was either genuinely in danger or at the very least undergoing some form of relatable drama that readers could sympathize with her on also helped. However, once she became an Invincible Hero who has Idealized Sex with her new husband Edward, blatantly enjoys her newfound wealth and power, and has an equally glamorized daughter, any relatability she had was essentially gone, and the writing issues of the previous books became more apparent on subsequent readings.
  • Bella's constant angsting in New Moon has been criticized as wangsty even by readers who genuinely like the books. While Bella was always pessimistic and angsty in Twilight, she tended to combine it with sarcasm and wit, so it was more entertaining to read, and she was still being proactive about things like uncovering the truth about Edward. In New Moon, though, she does little but angst ceaselessly for the whole book and her entire character arc centers around how miserable she is about Edward leaving her (to the point of suicidal ideation), which is a lot more emotionally draining and frustrating for readers.
  • Kristen Stewart's performance as Bella has been criticized as over-using Dull Surprise and making Bella seem bland and two-dimensional. Some have defended Stewart though, by pointing out she didn't exactly have the best of material to work with because Bella is much the same in the books. A possible explanation for why this worked better or was overlooked in the books is the difference in medium: because the books are written in first-person from Bella's perspective, it's easier for the reader to immerse themselves into the story and get distracted by the Vampire-Werewolf Love Triangle and what have you. With the film adaptations though, the audience is forced to view Bella from more of an outside perspective, so her lack of depth becomes more obvious.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Some older Twilight fans – mostly so-called "Twi-moms" – are friendly with fans of Fifty Shades of Grey. It's understandable, considering that Fifty Shades started out as an Alternate Universe Twilight fanfiction written by an older fan, E.L James. Stephenie Meyer herself said she was glad James had found success but that personally erotica was "not [her] thing".
  • Some fans of The Vampire Diaries (more so the TV show than the books) actually do like Twilight as well, while others are more disdainful.
  • There's a bit of this between fans of Twilight and fans of Red Riding Hood and Snow White & the Huntsman – they're both dark fantasy films with romance and love triangles; Red Riding Hood has werewolves, Billy Burke and was directed by Catherine Hardwick (who also directed the first Twilight film), while Snow White and the Huntsman also stars Kristen Stewart. Although, the friendliness with Snow White had a bit of a damper put on it when it was revealed Stewart had had an affair with the director while still in a relationship with Robert Pattinson...
• Gateway Series: For some fans, Twilight served as a gateway that got them into paranormal fiction, in particular Vampire Fiction.
• Girl-Show Ghetto:
  • While Twilight has a lot of reasons to be hated, many have started to note that a lot of the hate tends to have a certain Double Standard compared to similarly flawed works that are instead targeted towards men. Given how a good number of those who complain about Twilight tend to focus on elements such as Edward's lack of masculinity, Bella being a Damsel in Distress, the sparkly vampires, and the fact it's popular with young women, rather than the Unfortunate Implications noted below or its more legitimate flaws, other famous works with similar problems in their writing, such as a number of action, sci-fi, and superhero films (IE, the kind aimed at men), tend to get far less mockery and criticism.
  • Then again, in spite of the polarizing critical reaction to the series, both the books and the films have been massively successful commercially. When combined, the films made over $3.3 billion at the box office and all four main novels and some of the companion books appeared at the top of bestseller lists. It's actually been suggested that the success of the Twilight movies – all of which were written by a woman and starred a female lead (and in the case of the first movie, directed by a woman too) – was uncommon back when the franchise was first released and proved that so-called 'girly' films could actually be profitable and popular, paving the way for franchises like The Hunger Games, Frozen and even Wonder Woman (2017) (all of which were financially successful and generally well-received critically).
• Ham and Cheese:
  • Everything about Robert Pattinson's performance as Edward.You can really see Pattinson giving up at trying at all in Eclipse and deciding to just have fun, making his scenes far more enjoyable than the book counterpart. (Probably helped since in an interview he mentioned being super tired and busy from other projects while filming and barely remembers filming the movie.)
  • In the film of New Moon, Dakota Fanning managed to rival him despite having a grand total of five lines.
  • Michael Sheen as Aro, promptly stealing the show. He seems to be having an absolute blast playing Aro, exaggerating his megalomania and Affably Evil traits for all its worth.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • When Edward leaves Bella in New Moon, she breaks down and remains almost catatonic for months. This foreshadowed Kristen Stewart's reaction to her highly publicized breakup with Robert Pattinson in 2012.
  • Some of the more unintentionally troubling aspects to some of the werewolves’ relationships (Sam ripped half his girlfriend's face off when she rejected him, Jacob acts like a petulant and aggressive Jerkass around Bella and forcibly kisses her and then there's the whole imprinting on toddlers business) get even more uncomfortable if you’re aware of the depressingly high rates of domestic and sexual violence perpetrated against Native American people.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Jacob Black has a sister named Rebecca.
  • Dakota Fanning plays Jane, a vampire, in the film adaptations. Her little sister Elle would eventually also play a vampire in Francis Ford Coppola's 2011 film Twixt.
  • Two words: Twilight Sparkle.
  • Melissa Rosenberg, writer of all five film adaptations, later became the show runner for Jessica Jones (2015), which takes many of the Unfortunate Implications Twilight is often accused of and plays them all for the drama they'd have in the real world, with a hero who's Bella Swan's polar opposite.
  • The amount of conservative Christian agenda-pushing by Meyer in the books, as well as the amount of Les Yay Bella gets from other women, is definitely this in light of Kristen Stewart admitting that she liked girls several years after the release of the final film.
  • Edward can be compared to Raphael Solano in Jane the Virgin. Like Edward, he is the Veronica to Michael's Betty, as Edward is the Veronica to Jacob's Betty. They both have the same callous, self-pitying attitude, and families a touch on the bloodthirsty side (in that, Raphael's mother and stepmother are both crime lords). What makes this Hilarious In Hindsight? They share a German voice actor!
  • In the Japanese dub of the movie, Takahiro Sakurai voices Edward Cullen. This is even funnier if you already know that Sakurai voiced in the Japanese version of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin the main hero Jonathan Morris, a Vampire Hunter. He also voiced Rui Mukami, another vampire, in Diabolik Lovers, who is the complete opposite of Edward in every aspect.
  • The final book in the series is known for being the most polarizing even amongst hardcore fans and is called Breaking Dawn.
  • Robert Pattinson playing an undead creature often affiliated with bats. Now he's playing Batman. This lead to a lot of jokes where Bella admits to knowing Edward's real secret as Batman. What's more, Rob's take on Bruce Wayne looks even more like a vampire than when he was playing an actual vampire.
    • In Breaking Dawn, it's revealed that in his early years as a vampire Edward would hunt down and feed off murderers, rapists etc., avenging their victims and/or preventing them from harming anyone else. Some people wished we'd gotten a story about Edward being a vigilante vampire taking out violent criminals and defending the innocent with his powers...and now they're getting their wish, in a manner of speaking.
    • The plot of The Batman itself just adds to the hilarity. Bruce Wayne is so dedicated to fighting crime he's practically nocturnal with bad people skills, the bad guy's real name is Edward and the climax involves Batman trying to save a woman named Bella.
    • It's also pretty funny that Edward's sister and father-in-law went on to become Batman's sidekick and confidant.
  • Stephenie Meyer's original personal choice for Edward's actor was Henry Cavill, though the filmmakers never offered him the role because they thought he was too old to believably play a teenager (or teenage looking vampire). Cavill went on the play Superman, while Robert Pattinson was later cast as Batman. And Cavill then got cast in a different fantasy story where he wears orange/yellow contacts lenses, has super-abilities and is depicted as Mr. Fanservice.
• Hollywood Homely: Bella. She's supposed to be a "plain Jane", yet describes what she's apparently supposed to see as negative attributes in terms of glowing beauty, like "ivory-skinned", "chocolate brown eyes", "slender but soft". This could be purple prose, or her "plainness" could be like a size 2 complaining how fat she is so everyone will tell her how she's really thin and beautiful. Moreover, her actress Kristen Stewart is a quite good-looking woman and Stephenie Meyer originally wanted Emily Browning to play Bella. Although, it could simply be that Bella suffers from low self-esteem. She also averts plain in the graphic novel.
  • There could be some form of in-universe Fridge Brilliance for this - Bella spent most of her life in Arizona where apparently the girls were all tall, tan, athletic, and blonde, the total opposite of what Bella is, so she likely always felt like an awkward ugly duckling. Then she moves to Forks where pale skin is the norm and is seen as beautiful. She came to school expecting to be treated as an outcast like she was in Arizona but instead finds herself welcomed. In her head though, she's still got this narrow picture of what beautiful is and she's spent so long resigning herself to the fact that she isn't like those tall blonde athletes she can't see that she is pretty on her own merits. When she wakes up in the book as a vampire, she expects to be beautiful but is shocked to find she doesn't look that much different, meaning she's always been pretty, she was just incapable of seeing it. So, yes, self-image issues could be the root of the dissonance.
• Humor Dissonance: The Cullens, in particular Emmett, joking about Bella having trouble controlling herself when she becomes a vampire. They all find it quite amusing...except they're joking about the very real possibility of Bella inadvertantly killing innocent people. It gets even worse when one recalls that Emmett actually has done exactly this.
• Hype Backlash: Twilight was subject to a lot of this at the height of its popularity in late 2000s and early 2010s. Part of the reason some antis got so riled was because it was hyped as being an epic supernatural love story with a fresh twist on vampires (there were even a few who compared it to classics like Pride and Prejudice), only for some readers to find it was a pretty average story that didn't add much new to the vampire genre (save for watering down the horror elements) and at worst contained problematic depictions of women, romantic relationships, Native Americans etc. A Vocal Minority of fans became extremely defensive over any criticism of the series, resulting in lots of arguing. The fact that Twilight's success lead to YA literature being inundated with copycats, some of which were far worse than Twilight, didn't help. By the 2020s, some antis have even admitted that Twilight isn't as bad as they initially thought and that they would probably have been more tolerant in its heyday if the hype wasn't being constantly pushed in their face.
• Inferred Holocaust: Breaking Dawn ends with the Volturi admitting defeat and leaving the Cullens alone and Bella and Edward being left to have a happy marriage for eternity, with no one else wanting to shanghai members of the family or kill their daughter. They all apparently have forgotten that Aro touched Edward's hand during the climax, giving him access to all of Edward's thoughts so he now has knowledge of all of the powers of the gathered vampires, including Bella, who was supposed to be the secret ace-in-the-hole. That, coupled with the book's insistence that the Volturi would never give up trying to have their way, has led a number of people to comment that Bella and Edward's happily ever after will probably be interrupted when the Volturi come back to kill them which the Cullens won't be able to see coming because the Volturi now know how to block out Alice's visions completely and are going to visit the people they need to be around to do so.
• It Was His Sled:
  • Believe it or not, Edward being a vampire is supposed to be the major twist of book one. In fact, Eclipse is the only book not to spend its whole first half building to a twist everyone already knows; the others are that Jacob is a werewolf, and Bella has a baby that Jacob imprints on. In some copies of the first novel, it straight up tells you Edward is a vampire on the blurb.
  • Eclipse had one - it was that the vampire population surge in Seattle was an army being created by Victoria to offset the twenty-some supernatural creatures protecting Bella. That one was arguably the worst of the lot, since Bella had known for two-thirds of the previous book that Victoria was out for revenge on her. But the Cullens apparently thought Victoria wasn't capable of figuring out she was outnumbered and getting reinforcements. Even though Jasper once did the exact same thing she was doing.
  • Bella picks Edward. Doubles as a Captain Obvious Reveal for some people, and a Late-Arrival Spoiler.
  • From the film Breaking Dawn Part 2, the climatic battle with the Volturi ends with The Reveal it was only one of Alice's visions of a possible future and Everybody Lives.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Bella. She's been shipped with half the cast by now, including all the Cullens (that includes the ladies), members of the Volturi, Tyler's van, and characters outside the Twilight universe, including Stefan Salvatore, Roman Godfrey, and Lestat.
• LGBT Fanbase: The whole series, especially the movies, is incredibly campy and filled with handsome, shirtless men, so it's no surprise that it's developed one of these. Rather ironic in light of Stephenie Meyer's avowed Mormon religious views, you have to wonder how she feels about it. She must be very chagrined. Carlisle and Aro are especially popular with gay and and gay-friendly fans, partly due to the intensely homoerotic nature of their relationship and partly because Michael Sheen's performance is only one or two steps removed from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

M - R

• Narm: Has its own page.
• Narm Charm: Some fans like the Twilight Saga simply for its cheesiness.
• Never Live It Down: The sparkling vampires. Also, the movie was enough of a hit that the actors are now tied to their characters.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Before, you'd be much more likely to find it placed in the Teen section - usually huddled in the back of the bookstores, behind all the Fantasy and Science Fiction sections, even. Now? Bookstores have an entire section dedicated to Teen Paranormal Romance; the film franchise, along with the books, find themselves regularly on the bestseller lists.
• Offending the Creator's Own: Stephenie Meyer has stated she considers herself a feminist and strongly believes women should have a right to choose what they want to do with their lives. She has said she tries to reflect this in her writing; in Twilight there is much that hinges around Bella's choice between Edward and Jacob, and her staying human or becoming a vampire. However, Twilight has been criticized on numerous occasions for being 'anti-feminist' or sexist for its content (to name a few, Bella coming across as a passive Damsel in Distress who has to rely on her male love interests, both Edward and Jacob coming across as possessive and controlling towards Bella etc). Meyer herself has stated that Bella's 'damsel in distress' status is because she's a human surrounded by powerful supernatural beings rather than her being a woman.
• Older Than They Think: Let's just say that the series is not as original as some of the more zealous fans and haters say it is. Interestingly, fans will defend the series for adding "new, unique" ideas to the vampire mythos, while detractors will bash it for "ruining vampires" by adding traits they "shouldn't" have.
  • Most fans of the series seem to be under the impression that Vegetarian Vampire is a new innovation that Meyer introduced to the vampire genre when, in reality, the concept was used by Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Vampire: The Masquerade and many others long before the Twilight series came out. This also goes for vampires walking in daylight (it was present in Dracula), having luminous skin and developing emotional attachments to humans. Sunlight killing vampires was invented for Nosferatu.
  • On the flip side, a lot of haters blame Twilight for making vampires sexy and glamorous in the public's eye instead of monstrous, when the 1931 "Dracula" film depicted the bloodsucker as a titillating figure (just look at the movie poster) and other vampire-centered media like Buffy, Castlevania, The Vampire Chronicles, and many, many others play up vampires as sexually desirable (plus, the two don't necessarily have to be mutually exclusive, Anita Blake being a perfect example). There's even a trope for it. The original Dracula, subtextually, is all about the intersection of danger and sex.
  • Even vampires being mineral-based isn't a new idea, as Tim Powers used it in The Stress of Her Regard.
  • Before Renesmee Cullen, there has been in literature a half-human supernatural baby that grows up and matures to an adult in a fraction of the usual time, has incredible powers, and creeps out some people. Who is it? Wilbur Whately. The very concept of the Dhampir is far older, dating back to folklore.
  • There is an animated series from The '90s called "The Ketchup Vampires". The heroes are a family of Vegetarian Vampires whose son falls in love with a human schoolgirl. The girl's name is, hilariously enough, Bella. Both are a bit younger than the main characters from Twilight though.
  • Look up the 1990 novel The Silver Kiss for young adult vampire fiction, the main differences being that the human girl learns to accept mortality, the vampire boy actually does get released from his immortality (through his own choosing no less), and the ending is more bittersweet.
  • A minority of fans and even some antis seem to think Stephenie Meyer invented vampire-human romances (the former view it as some very unique and interesting concept no one's ever thought of, while the latter view it much the same but through the lens of ruining vampires by making them into wussy love interests). Vampire-human romances have in fact been around for decades, if not centuries; rather like the aforementioned Vampires Are Sex Gods, there are also tropes for this. Whether such romances are healthy or not varies wildly, and when you look at some of the critcisms of the franchise, well, that aspect was captured, too.
  • Vampires having different powers based on the individual which are not present on the "stereotypical" vampire has been done before, too. The Lost Boys gave at least one of its vampires minor illusion powers, Vampire: The Masquerade allowed vampires to learn Disciplines that covered a wide array of powers, many with little or no support in standard vampire lore.
  • Even the lack of "traditional" means of defeating a vampire predates the series. In folklore, the full treatment for killing a vampire was to drive a stake through the heart, cut off the head, then either stuff the mouth with garlic and/or holy wafers and place it between the corpse's knees, or burn or bury the head and body seperately. Over time, this got simplified to just the wooden stake through the heart. But when you consider what a wooden stake is, you begin to wonder if this is truly a means of killing a vampire or just a way of stapling it into its grave so it can't get up and attack people anymore (this was all obviously best done during the day, while the alleged vampire was sleeping). Vampire: The Masquerade decided a wooden stake in the heart can't kill a vampire, just paralyze them — still helpful, but not a means of destruction. Assorted other media have embraced or denounced assorted other classic vampire weaknesses, such as garlic, crosses, running water, silver, sunlight, even fire and beheading.
• Padding:
  • The books have lots of padding such as Stephenie Meyer describing how beautiful Edward was and how much Bella loved him and the step-by-step descriptions of Bella getting up, brushing her teeth, picking out her clothes, making breakfast for her and Charlie, closing all the pop-up boxes after running her web browser, etc. The most extreme example of padding was in the second book (New Moon), where there are (literally) eight blank pages in the middle of the book. It essentially goes blank when Edward decides he must remove all traces of his life from Bella's.
  • A frequent criticism leveled at the (first half of the) film adaptation of Breaking Dawn—since the filmmakers decided to split the book into two movies, despite how the novel could have been easily squeezed into a single film, Part 1 is packed to the brim with montages to pad out the running time to just under two hours.
  • A criticism of the books is that it’s a three book story dragged out to four. There’s just not enough of a story to justify the page count. New Moon, in particular, stands out as being unnecessary. A lot of it could be done away with completely or be condensed down into one of the others.
• Periphery Demographic: The TwiMoms, as well as the aforementioned gay following.
  • Also, racial purists.
  • Hardened convicts base their views on romance on this book.
  • A number of males struggled to watch through the movie, just to see the admittedly impressive action scenes, which unlike the books, actually are shown onscreen.
  • Former United States Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife are both professed fans of the books. His family and Stephenie Meyer are both avowed members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints, and although the series isn't necessarily aimed at Mormons, Meyer's beliefs on sex, abstinence, motherhood, etc., are on full display and championed by the characters without (just refer to the Anvilicious subheading above for specifics), so it's unsurprising that the series has been well-received by conservative Christian audiences who aren't normally big fans of the paranormal romance subgenre.
  • LGBT people have begun to embrace the series online by rewriting whole chunks of the story to be queer.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading:
  • A lot of people felt this was present between Bella and Jacob, except in visual form... The scene where Jacob and Bella are dancing in Part 1 of Breaking Dawn has more intimacy, romance and pure connection than the original dance with Edward at the actual wedding, even though canonically, Bella is supposed to love Edward more and views Jacob in more platonic terms. Others have argued this is consistent with the books. One of the biggest complaints Team Jacob have with the eventual outcome is that Bella and Jacob actually have some level of chemistry together and spend more time getting to know each other, having fun and sharing hobbies and interests.
  • A bigger example is Jacob and Leah in Breaking Dawn. Many, many readers/viewers consider them just right for each other due to their interactions. Leah is understanding of Jacob's situation while not putting up with his whining, while Jacob comes to empathise with Leah more and actually gives her the time of day. They both open up to each other and support one another. Leah actually becomes much calmer and happier around Jacob; the angriest she gets is when she chews out Bella specifically because she sees how hurt Jacob is over Bella continuing to string him along. But nope, according to Stephenie Meyer, they're "just friends", thus Leah ends up with no-one and Jacob ends up with Bella's daughter.
• Poe's Law: To this day, people debate whether or not Stephenie Meyer is either a very lucky but very poor author, or a very, very good Troll.
• Portmanteau Couple Name:
  • Jakeward. It's not too hard to guess who they are. Alice/Bella goes by the name of Bellice, while Rosalie/Bella is called Rosella. And some people actually refer to Bella/Edward as Bedward.
  • There's always what the slash shippers come up with. Some examples being: Jaspard, Jaspeth, and Mareth. The former two of which have rather impressive followings, with Jaspard being one of the more popular slash pairings.
• Protection from Editors:
  • Quality of the writing aside, the sheer amount of basic research fail in the books suggests this. Not just the biology fail, or the Misplaced Wildlife, but the west coast of Brazil? Whatever else any editors might or might not have done, fact-checking and Real Life research they did not. Given how Meyer goes on and on about how much she hated to cut the few scenes she did (and how she put said scenes on her website, spelling errors and all), that seems rather likely.
  • This also happens with the graphic novel, even though Meyer didn't even write that one. Young Kim, the artist, wrote about how her editor would have her cut out a scene for pacing reasons, only for Meyer to convince her to put the scene back in.
• Recurring Fanon Character:
  • Atlantiana Rebekah Loren is the main character of the famously bad fanfic Forbiden Fruit: The Tempation of Edward Cullen. She is a badly written, Mary Sue self-insert character shipped with Edward. Similar to Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way, she became very popular for the hilarious terrible writing of her fic.
  • Less popular than Atlantiana but still relatively notable is Twila Beatiful Psyco Topaz Cullen, a similar Mary Sue protagonist from Twila The Girl Who Waz In Luv With A Vampyre.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Mike Newton later became a zombie hunter, still obsessing over a girl.
  • Benjamin went on to become a socially anxious hacker working to bring down the biggest conglomerate in the world.
  • Tia became a woobie sex bot in a park full of abused androids.
  • Marcus moved to New Orleans to take part in the vampire government there and then became a vampire hunter.
  • Seth was banished to an island because his father tried to conquer Agrabah and became an all-powerful genie.
  • Angela went on to survive the zombie apocalypse.
  • In the Japanese dub, Jacob Black will end voicing another wolfman, or a shape-shifter.
    • This trope goes as well for Sayaka Kinoshita (Bella Swan, along with Yumi Ishiyama), before her Star-Making Role as Rumi Usagiyama/Mirko.
• Romantic Plot Tumor:
  • Ironically, many critics of the series complain that the story would have been far more interesting had the author only devoted more time to the secondary characters and less to the Edward/Jacob/Bella love triangle and Edward and Bella's relationship drama, which seemed stale and boring compared to the far more original, provocative personalities and backstories of the secondary characters.
  • There have even been people on Deviantart and LiveJournal who post "edited" plots that actually aren't hate-oriented. A memorable one suggested that there should have been hints of James' coven's existence earlier and that Bella should have thought Edward was the reason for those hints, making her wonder about the relationship instead of just diving right in without complications. Another pointed out that the books are a good example of when the romance should really be a subplot.
• Ron the Death Eater:
  • A bizarre and probably unintentional example. Christian Grey was Edward Cullen in the original fanfiction Master of the Universe before they had the Serial Numbers Filed Off and is still rather similar to him in a number of ways. However, despite the fact Christian is supposed to be the hero and Love Interest, it would seem that many of his more negative traits, such as his stalker tendencies and condescending attitude, have been greatly exacerbated in the Fifty Shades series; a lot of people point out that compared to Christian, Edward almost comes across as sane and normal (say what you will about Edward, he never broke into Bella's house specifically to beat her and have rough sex with her, groped her in public or bought the place where she worked to keep tabs on her).
  • Edward also gets this for one specific moment in New Moon. People love to talk about his intended suicide as though he was specifically threatening it to get Bella back. Except he wasn't threatening it at all; Alice merely saw a vision of what he was planning to do, and it was also brought on by guilt that his break-up with Bella left her suicidal and she had killed herself because of him. Edward believed Bella to be dead, and Jacob had told him she was, so he wasn't threatening anyone.
• Rooting for the Empire: The books put a lot of emphasis on the Volturi being a power-hungry dictatorship that ruthlessly oppresses the vampire world. The trouble is, the only restriction they apparently put on the vampires is to not be noticed by humans, which is given a reasonable justification (human technology could potentially kill vampires) and very lightly limits the ability for a vampire to kidnap or kill a human. Word of God and the series also show that vampires are more or less like animals if left to their own devices, so it makes it difficult to see the Volturi as dictators instead of a group of people who are trying to establish some sort of order and structure to their world. Meyer tries to make the Volturi's corruptness really apparent in Breaking Dawn when it's hammered in that they'll arrive to kill Renesmee and in no way listen to reason... only for them to bring witnesses, reasonably listen to evidence, and leave without killing anyone.
  • It is made clear that the witnesses and plans for listening to evidence were really for show, as they were planning to put them all under a mist and kidnap Alice and whoever else they wanted for their powers. Only Bella's shield actually protects them from this. That said, there are plenty of people, even those who are otherwise genuine fans, who would be quite happy for the Volturi to kill Renesmee even if they weren't doing it for legitimate reasons.
    • It's also the prosecuted vampires who come to that conclusion. Consider this. Basically, the Volturi's methods may not be totally angelic, but they've also prevented a vampire population explosion that'd put a strain on their feeding stock, but also kept the feeding stock which is now equipped to hunt them to extinction from finding out they exist. And as mentioned above, by their nature most vampires are basically animals ruled by their hungers and passions. Even though the book makes a point that the Cullens are so unique for remembering how to still love, they're still supremely arrogant toward non-vampires (toward the end of Breaking Dawn Bella thinks it would be "a shame" to have to kill someone) and think nothing of flaunting their superiority. Mainly in displays of wealth which should stick out like a sore thumb in a tiny town, where a family of seven has only one breadwinner. At the end of the story it mentions all the Cullens' allies maybe reuniting one day to overthrow the Volturi once and for all and presents that as a heroic happy ending, but the books also portray them as the only thing keeping vampires from giving into their urges completely and exposing themselves to a world that would hunt them to the last one. TL;DR, the Volturi are written as being mean for telling vampires not to kill as many people as they want, but they're also written as the only thing keeping humans from learning vampires exist and wiping vampires out.

S - W

• The Scrappy: Renesmee is hated by both fans and haters. She's an obvious Creator's Pet and ruined things for Jacob/Bella and Jacob/Leah shippers. A lot of people disliked the fact she was a Spotlight-Stealing Squad for the main trio. She's also supposed to be sweet, lovable and precocious, but a lot of readers felt she instead came across as spoilt, obnoxious or downright creepy (her appearance in the films doesn't exactly help, as it takes her straight into Unintentional Uncanny Valley territory, although Mackenzie Foy's portrayal does help tone down her obnoxiousness from the book). Her relationship with Jacob in particular is full of unintentionally disturbing elements from both sides.
• Sequelitis: Both the books and the films get hit with this, especially the latter. The first book is more or less viewed as a flawed and overly-long, yet entertaining paranormal romance story for teens. The sequels, though, starting with New Moon, are generally viewed less favourably. The books get progressively longer but don’t quite come up with the plot points to compensate, leading to lots of Padding and contrived, drawn-out relationship drama to create ‘conflict’. The film adaptations after the first one tend to reflect this, with the exception of, perhaps, Breaking Dawn Part 2, which is seen as one of the most entertaining films in the franchise, probably because of the added fight sequences and twelve minute long battle in the finale (which was absent from the novel). Breaking Dawn Part 1 is widely viewed as the worst of the lot; the novel it's based on is a Contested Sequel where nothing much happens in the first half and the decision to split the films in two was seen as a blatant cash grab.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • There's a surprising amount of people who ship Leah with Demetri (the Volturi's tracker). The only scene where they're even in the same vicinity is at the end of Breaking Dawn for the battle-where-nothing-happens.
  • There's also Renesmee and Nahuel, who meet all of once right at the end of the last book. Nahuel at least seems intrigued by her, probably because she's the first female dhampir he's met who's not his sister.
• Ship Mates:
  • Team Edward and Jacob/Leah shippers usually get along, as do Jacob/Leah shippers and Nahuel/Nessie or Seth/Nessie shippers.
  • Unsurprisingly, Edward/Jasper shippers and Alice/Bella shippers go together just like peanut butter and jam. In fact, fanfiction of one couple tends to feature the other to Pair the Spares, with some even following both couples with equal importance through the narration.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Twilight's fandom was home to one of the most notorious shipping wars in recent memory. The conflict between Team Edward (Bella/Edward shippers) and Team Jacob (Bella/Jacob shippers) got nasty very quickly, with numerous hate fics, flame wars, essay-length rants on why their side was better etc. This was, of course, milked for all it was worth by the filmmakers, especially in merchandising. To this day, some fans are divided over which pairing they prefer.
• Silent Majority: Statistically Speaking, this is actually a very successful franchise. The way the internet talks about it? There are no fans about them. Yet nowadays, people are much more likely to run into haters than fans... clearly there are a lot of people who like this franchise, yet feel no need to scream about it on the internet.
• Slow-Paced Beginning:
  • The first film takes forty five minutes to reveal that Edward is a vampire.
  • Breaking Dawn Part 2 is, for the most part, a fairly banal and boring affair...until you reach the action climax where the movie suddenly decides to kick all kinds of ass. It's a sight to behold, really.
• Smurfette Breakout: Leah, the only female werewolf, has proven to be very popular amongst both fans and antis (especially the latter). Stephenie Meyer even said that if she wrote any more Twilight books, she'd consider writing one from Leah's POV.
• So Bad, It's Good: A significant portion of the series' internet fanbase enjoys the books because of the melodramatic plot and sparkling. Likewise, the films can be enjoyed for their crazy dialogue and stilted acting.
  • The commercials involved with Burger King (especially the commercials for Eclipse) can qualify.
• So Okay, It's Average: The first book and in particular the first movie adaptation are seen as this by many people who aren't either hardcore fans or antis. The sequels tend to be a lot more contentious.
• Spiritual Successor: The writing style is almost identical to the one used in Kathy Reichs's novel series about forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brenna. The difference is that in those books, the narrator and protagonist is a middle-aged scientist with likely neurodivergence, so it makes sense for her to think and speak in an analytical manner with focus on details and using references to culture, but no pop-cultural references.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Many in The Film of the Book, including a sparkling vampire who looks a lot more like he's covered in sweat, and way too much pale makeup on the Cullens. Said pale makeup also would stop at the neck or fail to cover the ears, particularly with Bella in the hospital scene.
  • Most distracting was the indescribably abysmal wire-works for the jumping bits that can be easily spotted.
  • Jacob's absurdly obvious hair weave (until he gets his Important Haircut).
  • The special effects in the second film were significantly better in most aspects. Just so long as you ignore the werewolf transformations...
  • The notorious CGI baby in Breaking Dawn Part 2 for landing square in the Unintentional Uncanny Valley. As the guys from RiffTrax put it:
    "Jack-Jack from The Incredibles looked less digital than this thing!"
    • It still managed to be an improvement over the nightmare-inducing animatronic baby they were originally going to use. Behind the scenes, the production crew briefly experimented with using an animatronic baby puppet instead. After a few scenes with said puppet was shot, it was concluded that it was somehow even more unintentionally horrifying — to the point where the cast and crew nicknamed it "Chuckesmee" — the idea was scrapped and the CGI seen in the finished product was applied instead.
  • By Breaking Dawn Part 2, they just seemed to give up entirely, as there are several scenes with vampires standing around in broad daylight without so much as a shimmer, a particularly egregious example being the final scene with Bella and Edward in the meadow.
• Strangled by the Red String:
  • The series has this In-Universe with the concept of "imprinting", which means that werewolves can instantly fall in love with someone as soon as the plot demands (arguably, all the examples in Eclipse were only to prepare the reader for the one in Breaking Dawn).
  • While less discussed than imprinting (due to thankfully lacking its grooming aspects), In-Universe vampires don't have it much better than werewolves with the concept of "mates". What basically happens is either vampire A meets vampire B, they lock eyes and are instantly madly in love with each other for eternity, or vampire C meets human D and falls instantly in love with them; if human D gets turned (with a slim chance of survival, at that), they'll instantly fall in love with Vampire C (if they're not already in love, like Bella with Edward). Either way, the mate becomes the primary focus of the vampire's life; should one of them die, the surviving mate's life would lose any meaning, and they would barely function or think of anything but avenging their lover's death against any logic, common sense or self -preservation – in fact, self-destructon is often the endgame once they've avenged their mate. Looking at how messed up Irina, Victoria and especially Marcus are after losing their mates, Edward's Wangst over Bella's supposed death in New Moon almost feels like a supernaturally Justified Trope.
  • It's been argued that Bella and Edward's relationship comes off as this. Edward acts surly and moody toward Bella for the first half of Twilight, and yet Bella decides that she's "unconditionally and irrevocably in love with [Edward]" right after she realizes that he's a vampire who thirsts after her blood, and is completely devoted to him from that point on, even in the face of Edward's own warnings about how he could kill her. Just how devoted is she? She's willing to give up her human life without any second thoughts to be with him forever after what can't be any more than a month of knowing him, and instantly leaps back into his arms after he renders her practically comatose by leaving her without explanation. And her interactions with Edward after the vampire "reveal" consist almost entirely of them repeatedly professing their love to one another and her even more repeatedly being "dazzled" by Edward's glorious beauty. This is arguably furthered in the films, when in their "romantic" scenes, they both just look bored and uncomfortable.
  • Likewise, in The Short Second Life Of Bree Tanner, with Bree and Diego and, later, Freddie. Bree and Diego interact for one night, she spends most of it afraid that he's going to kill her, and by morning they seemingly are madly in love with each other. The same goes for Freddie. Since it's from Bree's point of view and the "relationships" between her and the guys are so muted, it's possible that we're supposed to see it as her mistaking simple friendship for love (which would fit with her background of being abused and neglected), except that nothing ever indicates this and she acts almost exactly the same way Bella does, including being perfectly alright to die when she finds out he's gone, because life without him isn't worth living.
  • Even the imprinted couple of Sam and Emily aren't immune from being an out-of-universe example, especially keeping in mind that the imprintee doesn't necessarily reciprocate the imprinter's feelings. For years, Sam was in a committed relationship with Leah, Emily's cousin and best friend. After becoming a werewolf and imprinting on Emily, Sam dumped Leah without explanation after disappearing for weeks, then tried to pursue Emily (to the point of visiting her nearly daily to bug her about it). She understandably rejected him and was eventually blunt about it due to his refusal to leave her alone...and Sam lost it, phased and shredded her face, leaving her permanently disfigured. A remorseful Sam threatened suicide at her hospital bed...and it was this that apparently led to Emily reciprocating his feelings and becoming his girlfriend. At worst, some readers think it inadvertently comes off more like Emily only got with Sam out of concern he'd hurt himself or her (again).
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • In the novel New Moon, Bella is annoyed that Jessica won't talk to her, and thinks that Jessica is being petty and evil. This is after Bella has ignored everyone for four months, used Jessica to get Charlie off her back, ditched her shortly into the movie to pine over Edward, and then nearly frightened Jessica to death by walking up to a very dangerous-looking biker in a bad part of town that Jessica clearly wanted to avoid, all because Bella thought it may be the same one that Edward rescued her from before.
    • To a lesser extent, Jessica in the movie goes on a rant about how zombie movies seem to be pointless and either point towards leprosy or critiques of consumerism. If it's the case of the former, it's not nice to real people who have leprosy, like her cousin, and if it's about consumerism then sometimes the movies have "self-referential cleverness" because it's not a crime that some girls love shopping and others don't. A few Tumblr users pointed out that the speech is meant to make Jessica look like a ditz but it's actually quite insightful.
  • In Breaking Dawn, Leah calls Bella out on some of her more selfish actions in trying to manipulate and keep Jacob with her despite knowing full well how much it hurts Jacob to be around her, knowing that she's chosen to die and become an undead monstrosity with Edward over a life with him. Even Bella admits that she's being selfish, but chooses to keep doing it anyway. Everyone else gets angry at Leah for upsetting Bella, including the guy Leah was trying to stand up for. And any point Leah made is completely forgotten.
  • Also, the part where Aro says that humans now have technology that could be used to hurt or kill vampires, so since there's no way of knowing that Renesmee will always be able to keep vampires a secret she's a vulnerability. The response to this is something along the lines of "Aro is a big mean jerk who just wants to destroy the Cullen family for loving each other" and nobody bothers to refute his point until Alice conveniently shows up with another half-vampire. Aro is actually kind of right, though, especially since Renesmee's superpower involves sharing her thoughts with people—that could easily develop into something that'd make it hard for her to keep secrets if she gets more powerful as she grows older (if she ever experiences any Power Incontinence she could end up accidentally sharing random things with random humans).
    • Let's also not forget that Bella finds out she has the ability to project her power over an area. Since Renesmee's power is suspected to be basically an inversion of her mother's, who's to say she couldn't be capable of projecting her thoughts not just into a person she touches, but everyone within a given area? And on top of that, the full scope of Bella's abilities were held back by her self-doubt until she was angry enough to overcome it. Renesmee, on the other hand, seems unencumbered by any such baggage. With all that little encounter was revealing about how much vampires might not know about themselves, it's hard to blame the Volturi for being cautious, especially with a family of known rule-breakers.
  • Charlie gets both this and Informed Wrongness. His daughter is creepily obsessed with a guy who has never displayed any attributes aside from being equally creepily obsessed with her and being an asshole and also gives him no reason to assume he isn't an abuser (which, by real world standards, he is). The narrative pretty clearly wants the reader to side against Charlie, even when Bella and Edward team up to casually manipulate and bully him into letting her do whatever she wants, and despite the fact that Charlie really hadn't been wrong about anything in the entire story.
    • Goes into Tear Jerker territory in New Moon when he's trying to get Bella help when she's clearly depressed. He points out (correctly) that she's just going through the motions and that it would be better if she lived with her mother rather than staying in the town that has too many painful memories. And the readers are supposed to side with Bella, who refuses to move on with her life and even exploits Jacob's infatuation with her, because the only way she can find any measure of happiness is playing games with her life which causes her to hallucinate Edward telling her to stop risking her life.
    • But wait, it gets sadder. Because not only is Charlie desperately trying to get Bella out of her depression (in a dialogue that everyone who tried to get a friend/family member out of their depression will recognize as something they said), but he's also directly talking about the day when his wife left him with Bella, a memory that hurt him even years after and he's on the verge of tears during all of it. And Bella completely ignore his concern, almost doesn't pay attention to him and then proceed to manipulate one of her classmates to "get him off [her] back". It's hard to not feel for Charlie.
  • This is of course treated as a triumph of the 'wisdom' of love over the bland practicality of reason.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: The Eclipse film was viewed as significantly better than the New Moon one, thanks to its more interesting plot that balances vampire activity better with the love triangle, some good action scenes and including a few Lampshade Hangings (Edward's memetic "does he even own a shirt" about Jacob for one).
• Take That, Scrappy!: In Breaking Dawn, there's one brief, shining moment when Leah chews Bella out for leading Jacob on like she has been. It happens offscreen and the reader is supposed to hate Leah for it, but it's still something.
• Tear Jerker: In the first film when Bella runs away from home, which is actually a cover to keep James from attacking her father. Bella decides that the best way to avoid suspicion is to basically tell Charlie she hates living with him. Going by Charlie's reaction, it would have been kinder to just literally rip his heart out.
  Charlie: Bella, come on. I just...I just got you back.
  Bella: (steels herself) Yeah and you know, if I don't get out now...then I'm just gonna be stuck here like Mom. (slams the door in his face)
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Many of the secondary or minor characters in this series are considered infinitely more likable and interesting than the main characters, but are unfortunately severely underused or underdeveloped. Some standout examples include:
  • Leah Clearwater. As well as being an Unintentionally Sympathetic Ensemble Dark Horse, she's a snarky badass and notably the only female werewolf in her tribe's history, which she is generally ridiculed for, but still manages to use her abilities to save the day and prove herself a capable warrior. Some even opine she would arguably have made a much better protagonist than Bella, who is often criticized for being a doormat and Damsel in Distress who never really does anything to resolve conflicts or move the plot forwards on her own. Instead, Leah is mostly there to make bitchy comments and get Jacob injured to create drama in the last few pages of Eclipse. Even Breaking Dawn, which goes into her private angst and fleshes her out as a person, doesn't really give her an ending to her character arc beyond throwing off a last-ditch attempt on Sam's part to manipulate her.
  • Charlie Swan. As outlined under They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, many people believe the series would’ve much better if it had focused on him instead. In the books themselves, he's mostly relegated to the role of unwitting Fantasy-Forbidding Father who comes between Bella and Edward's love due to "misunderstanding" Edward and only becomes an important character plot-wise in the first book, due to James potentially targeting him.
  • Just about any of the vampire covens the Cullens recruit to help them out in Breaking Dawn.
  • J. Jenks, the forger the Cullens work with, who is apparently at least half aware of what they truly are but keeps his silence for his own reasons. He's a very interesting and very important character, given he helps the Cullens uphold The Masquerade... and yet he's not actually even mentioned until the last third of the final book and only featured in one small scene.
  • Marcus. He's shown as by far the most reasonable of the Volturi and only seems to be allied with Aro because Aro is his brother-in-law. On top of that, he's the Death Seeker Woobie who lost his wife (killed by Aro, her own brother, unbeknownst to Marcus) and is mind-controlled by Chelsea into obeying the Volturi's will. In other words, his character arc is perfect for a Heel–Face Turn against Aro. Do you think that Stephenie Meyer ever does anything with this plot possibility? No, of course not.
  • Bella's human friends, in particular Angela (who seems to be the one person she genuinely enjoys hanging out with and confiding in besides the Cullens, and is an all-around nice person who, according to Word of God, is the only friend of Bella's that isn't a False Friend or trying to get in her pants). At one point, Bella jokingly mentions that if Angela turned out to be a witch, she could come hang out with her, the Cullens and the wolves too... which isn't actually a half-bad idea. At the least, it would've been interesting to have Angela find out the truth about the Cullens and become a Secret-Keeper along with Bella, as well as letting her actually contribute to the plot in a meaningful way. Tragically, she's never even mentioned again after Bella marries Edward at the beginning of Breaking Dawn.
  • Laurent. His betrayal of James to help out the Cullens and relationship with Irina set him up to be a somewhat complex or unpredictable character who would have a big impact on the Cullens. Pity most of it happens off-screen or is merely alluded to, and his only other appearance in the series is getting ripped apart by werewolves (again, unseen), after randomly trying to kill Bella.
  • Meyer introduced an entirely new species in the final pages of Breaking Dawn: the Children of the Moon, who are said to be "true" werewolves and the ancient enemies of the vampires, who have been hunted to near-extinction by the Volturi after one nearly killed Caius. Some of those might've been handy to have in the not-battle against the Volturi and they'd have a pretty good reason to want to go to war against them. They're only mentioned once in an offhand comment by Edward to Hand Wave that the Quileute wolves are actually just shapeshifters that turn into wolves, not real werewolves and so the Volturi have no grounds to go to war with them, and then the subject is promptly dropped.
  • Esme, who supplementary guides revealed escaped an abusive marriage to become a teacher, briefly met Carlisle when she was still human, and has a love and talent for architecture. She could have provided Bella her own insight on knowing their vampire loves while human, but she was just shoved in the background.
  • Alice, a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire with the power to see the future. She's basically a would-be superhero inexplicably relegated to a supporting role in a paranormal romance.
  • Rosalie. As noted below in They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, her backstory would have made for an interesting narration by itself. But as a character, before Bella's trasformation, Rosalie is the only vampire other than Carlisle not to have tasted human blood ever. Not only that, but while everybody gushes over Bella's miraculous self-control as a newborn, it's never acknowledged that newborn Rosalie managed to resist the pull of human blood while going on a murder spree. In a phase where vampires are supposed to be mindless killing machines only intent on feeding, and go feral if they as much as smell a human nearby, Rosalie managed to plot and accomplish five murders all by herself without spilling a single drop of blood or being tempted to drink it. Now, that's some unprecedente self-control, but it's never even mentioned in-universe.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Many feel that the sprawling, epic vampires vs. werewolves story would be far more interesting than what they see as the walking Romantic Plot Tumor that forms the books. Many others feel that the books would be better if they were about likable, clever small-town cop Charlie and vampire doctor Carlisle solving supernatural murders, rather than being about his obnoxious daughter getting laid.
  • The larger vampire culture and the power games that shape it — like the brutal and bloody Southern Wars that Jasper is a veteran of, the overthrow of the ruling Romanian coven and their attempts to seize power again, vampirekind's rivalry with the Children of the Moon the Machiavellian Decadent Court the Volturi is implied to be, and (per All There in the Manual sources) Victoria going on the run from the Volturi with her escape instinct powers after they unjustly destroyed her coven — all sound like infinitely more interesting and awesome plotlines than listening to a bunch of spoiled, selfish teenagers whine about their relationship woes all day and night in a cold, wet, grey corner of the United States.
  • Rosalie's backstory could easily be a great story on its own, essentially being Kill Bill with vampires. Yet it's briefly summed up in a single chapter and never mentioned again.
  • With some tweaking, Twilight could make a pretty decent Gothic Horror. A few people claim the series to be this anyway (mostly because it's got vampires and vaguely Gothic-looking cover art) and it references a few Gothic novels (namely Wuthering Heights and Dracula), but it isn't really an example (as many in the hatedom will be quick to point out). That being said, it does actually have a few traits of Gothic fiction, though most of them seem to be unintentional - namely Body Horror, creepy, obsessive romantic relationships, a heroine who may be a little (or a lot) unhinged, melodrama, several cases of a Woman Scorned, a dreary, isolated setting, dangerous woods and Gaslighting the love interest. If the series were rewritten to ramp up these aspects (or heck, just interpreted this way instead of as a sappy teen romance, which judging by the Alternate Character Interpretation page, is easy enough) then you'd have the ingredients for a modern Gothic horror story.
  • Many have said that had the Breaking Dawn confrontation had been presented as a trial instead of a battle, it would have provided a very interesting endgame.
  • Many people think that Edward as a vigilante solving crimes and taking down murderers and rapists with his powers would make a really cool plot (in the books themselves, the Cullens do actually do a bit of detective work from time to time). However, Edward's vigilantism is only brought up once by Edward when he's explaining his past to Bella and then never comes up again.
  • Bella's emotional breakdown, recurring nightmares and social withdrawal in New Moon might've been more interesting and sympathetic if instead of being presented solely as a consequence of Edward breaking up with her, it was instead also framed as trauma over her Near-Death Experience at James' hands in the previous book (which happened only months ago), especially as Victoria is still out there. In the book itself, until she encounters Laurent in the woods midway through, Bella never thinks much at all about the vampires that tried to murder her and threatened the lives of her parents.
• Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: When all three of the main characters are extremely possessive, selfish and emotionally manipulative Jerkasses at best, neither the Cullens nor the Volturi have very many redeeming traits and the story itself pushing jerks to the front, often giving them incredibly fucked up backstories but portraying them rather positively, while pushing the ones that aren't jerks to the background as fast as possible, portraying them negatively despite them not really showing any negative traits, or making them worse in an apparent attempt to make them less sympathetic, it can become really rather hard to even fake that one cares who ends up with who and/or how the story ends because all end results are equally repugnant.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: In contrast to co-stars who opted for Ham and Cheese, Billy Burke turns in a fairly grounded, serious performance as Bella's father Charlie. This causes Charlie to come off as the Only Sane Man in the story and makes him quite popular even with those who dislike the series.
• Tough Act to Follow: Stephenie Meyer had a huge hit with the Twilight series. Her next novel, The Host (2008) sold very well and was also made into a movie, but has nowhere near the same level of hype; the movie was also a critical and commercial failure. Her crime thriller The Chemist was reasonably well-received, but is pretty obscure compared to The Host and especially Twilight. Meyer has stated she has many other ideas for novels, so it remains to be seen if anything she does will come close to her first.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley:
  • Robert Pattinson's heavily made-up face combined with massive Photoshopping on covers, posters, and promotional art.
  • Renesmee. Full stop. Her CGI self is not very convincing. However, it could have been so much worse. For a while the crew tried using an animatronic doll, but the result was deemed so horrifying the cast even began calling it "Chuckesmee."
  • Bella's character profile in the official guide; she looks like someone took the face of a grown woman and slapped it onto a teenage girl's body.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Rosalie. Her initial dislike of Bella is supposed to be seen as a bad thing, but considering how many times the Cullen's have been put in danger because of her (which is the very reason Rosalie disliked her), you can't really blame her for being distrustful. Then there's the fact that it's very heavily implied that Alice seemingly dropped Rosalie in favor of Bella, not to mention Rosalie gets the blame for the Volturi fiasco, despite Alice's mistake causing the whole thing.
  • Leah, oh dear God, Leah. Through most of the series, Leah is meant to be seen as a heartless bitch who didn't bow graciously out for Sam hooking up with Emily, uses the pack mind to think of various scandals, and tell Jacob he's being overly angsty about Bella. The problem with that is, with all the stuff she's been through (she has been dumped by her boyfriend because he imprinted on her cousin, she's hated by her wolf pack for being upset about it (while Jacob is coddled for doing the same thing), might have caused her dad's heart attack when she transformed in front of him, is not able to have children, she's the only female to not be paired up romantically with someone at the end of Breaking Dawn, also in the same book she mentally admits that her ex-fiance wants her to disappear, and, to top it all off, her own brother, who she spends all of her time protecting, tells her "you ruin everything!") she comes across as an Iron Woobie. She comes across as this even more so when one considers that the same people who call her selfish and whiny all coddle Jacob for being even more self-centered and whiny over Bella, who he was involved with far less than Leah was with Sam. Because of this, Leah is arguably the most popular character with antis, or even the only character they like at all.
  • Out of Bella's human friends, there is Lauren, who is supposedly an Alpha Bitch because... She doesn't fawn over Bella like the rest of her human friends. The universe itself seems to punish her for this by having her approached by a modeling agency, being told she should cut her hair short and spend hundreds of dollars on head shots, only for them to never contact her again.
  • Also Jessica, who is perceived by Bella as annoying because... she went out for a girls' night with her when Bella asked her to, tries to keep up a conversation, and thinks Bella is interested in anything she has to say when Bella has actively asked her about things and wanted to keep Jessica talking. Things get really weird when Bella consciously brings herself into a dangerous situation and just cannot fathom why Jessica would be upset with this, not even caring that Jessica was endangered by her behavior, too. And yet, Jessica's subsequent behavior is described as "sulking" and unreasonable anger, whereas Bella, who at that time blatantly admits not to understand human emotions anymore, is presented as the character the reader is supposed to sympathize with.
  • Charlie Swan really loves Bella and tries to be a good father, and she returns this love by deceiving, manipulating, and being condescending towards him. It's no wonder most antis like the Mustache Dad.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Bella is intended to be a selfless and mature girl who suffers from low self-esteem and something of a martyr complex. However, many readers find she can at times come off as rather whiny, self-absorbed and pretentious.
    • Right from the first chapter of Twilight, she's moaning about having to move to Forks and everything that it entails, cries herself to sleep and is generally miserable. However, she willingly chose to go to Forks so her constant complaining about everything and everyone there gets tiresome. It doesn't help that Charlie's absolutely delighted to have her stay with him and buys her a truck as a welcoming gift, while she's barely grateful for this and makes little effort to bond with him. She also proves to be very judgemental towards her new classmates, being quick to focus on their perceived character flaws and constantly bringing them up in her narration; although she never voices these thoughts out loud to said classmates and is outwardly nice to them, the reader is given access to all of it, which makes her come across as two-faced and passive-aggressive.
    • Her being devastated at Edward breaking up with her in New Moon is understandable, as he was her First Love and the way he did it was pretty hurtful. ^note  He insinuates she's not good enough for him, abandons her in the middle of the woods and then ghosts her, even stealing her photographs of him and the gifts he'd given her. However, some readers felt it reached ridiculous levels when over four months later, she's still acting like it only just happened and making no effort to move on, insisting her life no longer has any meaning or purpose without Edward. It gets to the point her father expresses concern for her well-being and tries to stage an intervention. Some readers feel it's a major overreaction for a high school relationship that had only lasted a month or two at best. Bella's depression over the break-up is also hard to sympathize with considering she alienates and all but ignores her father and friends despite their concerns, then acts surprised and pitiful that they're not especially welcoming when she finally starts talking to them again. Despite this, Jessica still willingly goes out with Bella to the movies to make her feel better, yet Bella makes no effort to connect with her, even admitting in her narration she's only doing it to get Charlie off her back. Even worse, she puts Jessica in danger to try and approach some random bikers — one of whom she initially thinks is one of the guys who tried to rape her the previous year — for an adrenaline rush, and then she acts offended when Jessica is pissed at her and no longer wants to hang out, with the implication that Jessica is supposed to be in the wrong here.
    • The way Bella treats Jacob throughout the series comes off as very selfish and manipulative to some readers; she only starts hanging out with him so he can fix up her motorbike and leeches off him for emotional support while knowing how he feels about her, then promptly ditches him the moment Edward comes back into her life, then gets angry when Jacob refuses to talk to her as a result, moaning that "It's not fair!" Never mind the fact that her close friendship with the Cullens and intention to become a vampire herself threatens the tenuous truce between the werewolves and Cullens. And even if there was no supernatural stuff involved, Jacob has every right to cut ties (for his own emotional health and wellbeing if nothing else) with someone who treats him so poorly and has made it very clear he'll always come second to the boyfriend who previously dumped her. In Eclipse Bella then refuses to accept the boundaries that Jacob's drawn, essentially trying to force herself back into his life despite him making it clear he wants to keep a distance between them. That he eventually relents is by no means a point in her favour.
    • Also in New Moon, Bella is reluctant to tell the wolves what she knows about vampires because she wants to protect the Cullens, even though the Cullens aren't even around anymore, the wolves already know what they are, and Victoria is on the loose in the area, killing several innocent people and posing a serious threat to Bella herself; this results in Bella's actions looking less like Undying Loyalty and more like Skewed Priorities.
    • In the last chapters of New Moon, Bella gets angry that Charlie has banned Edward from the house and doesn't want him anywhere near her (because God forbid that Charlie wants Edward to keep his distance after he cruelly dumped his daughter and caused her to spiral into a near suicidal depression for several months?!) and emotionally blackmails him by threatening to move out if he doesn't accept that she and Edward are back together. This, after she disappeared to Italy for three days while Charlie was at his best friend's funeral, without so much as a note or a phone call to explain where she was or apologize, and she either completely fails or utterly refuses to comprehend why her father is so upset with her.
  • Edward is supposed to come across as a tortured Anti-Hero who hates being a 'monster' and strives to protect Bella to make up for his past misdeeds, but for some readers he comes across as arrogant, hypocritical, controlling, and borderline abusive towards Bella.
    • Throughout the series he stalks, manipulates, gaslights, deceives and tries to control Bella, as well as being highly condescending to her, all of which he justifies as being for Bella's own good. He often refuses to open up to Bella or consider her opinions because she 'might get hurt', but is perfectly fine deciding how she will live her life to suit him. It gets especially bad in Breaking Dawn, where he tries to force an abortion on his wife and attempts to negotiate pimping her out to Jacob to give her a baby (somehow overlooking that it's Edward's baby she wants rather than a child in general), without consulting her or attempting to see things from her point of view. The few glimpses we get into his mind (worsened by Midnight Sun, which is told entirely from his POV) also paint him as a pretentious bigot, who is racist towards the werewolves and looks down on everyone who isn't Bella, and is even a judgemental Unreliable Narrator when it comes to his own family, and openly contemplates murder more than once to get to Bella.
    • Some readers don't even find Edward too sympathetic in New Moon when he tries to kill himself over Bella's supposed 'death', on account of the fact he stupidly assumes she's dead without thoroughly checking, and then selfishly decides to do away with himself by potentially exposing the vampire world and risking the lives of several innocent humans (he considers massacring the townsfolk, and even his decision to expose himself in broad daylight puts people at risk, because presumably the Volturi would have to do away with anyone who witnessed the sparkling).
  • We're meant to feel sorry for Jacob because the girl he loves only likes him as a friend and is with his worst enemy...only the kid is about sixteen and Bella is pretty much the first and only girl he's ever had a crush on. He's almost as bad as Bella when it comes to melodrama over their supposed 'true loves' whom they've only known for a short while. It should also be noted that as a werewolf, Jacob's 'true love' is his imprint, which is made clear isn't Bella, so one wonders why he kicks up such a fuss. He refuses to respect her rejections and throws tantrums if she does anything he doesn't like, at one point even stating to her face he thinks she'd be better off dead than a vampire - opinions on vampirism aside, this is an awful thing to say to your supposed best friend. He also forcibly kisses Bella, which is technically sexual assault (indeed, she flips shit and tries to punch him over it, which is Played for Laughs, and he never properly apologizes). Jacob is so consumed with jealousy he's even prepared to murder Bella's newborn baby for 'killing' her and the only thing that stops him is that he imprints on the child (which opens up a whole other can of worms).
  • Jacob and the other werewolves come off as hypocrites, as everyone in the pack feels sorry for him and supports him over his constant angsting about Bella even when it results in poor decision-making and violent outbursts, whilst vilifying Leah Clearwater for the exact same thing.^note  Leah arguably has it much worse, due to her long-term boyfriend leaving her for her cousin and best friend with no explanation, and then her father dying suddenly, among other things. Some have even argued their Double Standard regarding Jacob and Leah has misogynistic undertones, as the predominantly male wolf pack all rally around Jacob and his pain over being rejected by a girl whom he was never even dating, while dismissing Leah's pain as something she should just buck up and deal with.
  • Jacob's story arc to become a pack leader in Breaking Dawn falls flat for many readers, seeing as him "accepting his destiny" as the "true alpha" was done solely to end up becoming Bella's doormat so she could have both him and Edward, and so he can be close to their baby, as opposed to serving his people and/or wanting to instigate positive change. He also knows full well that the Cullens are sending their vampire friends off to eat people and despite the fact he's supposed to be stopping that sort of thing, he lets them do it – without even so much as suggesting alternatives that don't involve killing innocent people – just so the people he cares about are safe.
  • The Denalis. Their 'mother' Sasha was executed by the Volturi for making an immortal child, which is portrayed as a huge tragedy and an example of how awful and tyrannical the Volturi are...only given the nature of immortal children (as discussed on this very page), Sasha honestly comes across as a self-centred nutcase who got exactly what she deserved for torturing and getting an innocent child killed, getting dozens of innocent humans killed and, considering that even knowing of an immortal child results in death, risking the lives of her 'daughters'. All because she wanted a 'cute little vampire baby'. Tanya, Irina and Kate don't come off much better; they chose to become 'vegetarian' vampires like the Cullens, but mostly because they like having sex with human men and found it inconvenient when they lost control and killed their lovers, more so than believing killing people in general is wrong.
  • Charlie is usually well-liked and sympathized with by readers (both fans and detractors), save for one moment in Eclipse: his blasé attitude towards Jacob kissing Bella against her will left a bad taste in some readers' mouths. He even congratulates Jacob for it in front of Bella (and her actual boyfriend), overlooking the fact his teenage daughter clearly didn't want Jacob to kiss her (she broke her hand punching his face in response) and just generally being unconcerned her autonomy wasn't respected. Considering that Charlie is usually protective of Bella and respectful of her boundaries, and doesn't tolerate Edward seemingly harming her, it's a rather Out of Character moment.
• Unpopular Popular Character:
  • Leah, the only female werewolf. Everybody in-story seems to hate her, but some people especially will argue that she's the most badass and well- developed character in the series.
  • The Volturi are pretty popular, despite being generally loathed in-universe, either because Evil Is Cool or because they're viewed by some as being Designated Villains. Michael Sheen's ultra hammy performance as Aro in the movies has helped win fans over.
• The Un-Twist: Das Sporking coined the term "Dead Herring" for the many attempts at red herrings that mostly consist of Bella naming the obvious answer to something, then immediately declaring that this can't be the answer and instead coming up with other theories in a way that makes it obvious that Meyer is attempting to poorly distract the audience.
• Vanilla Protagonist: Bella was specifically written bland so that the reader can step into her shoes and experience the cool supernatural world of vampires and werewolves (and the hotties fighting over her). Compare her backstory (moves from Phoenix to a small town in Washington, becomes popular, falls in love with supernatural beings) with that of Carlisle (devout Christian vampire hunter becomes vampire, spends his life helping people even though they're his natural prey), Rosalie (girl becomes a vampire after being raped and left for dead by her fiance, kills him), Jasper (ex-Confederate soldier and some of his friends raise a vampire army), and others.
• Viewer Name Confusion: The Denali clan are so named because they live in Denali, Alaska. Many fans missed this and believe Denali to be their surname, a misconception that actually made its way into the film adaptations. Most vampires in the series, apart from the Cullens, have Only One Name and covens are named for their place of residence, but fans sometimes use the coven names as placeholders for surnames. This sometimes works—for instance the Volturi, so named because they live in Volterra, but they do seem to treat Volturi as a family name of sorts—but other times, such as referring to Stefan of the Romanian coven as Stefan Romanian, not so much.
• Vindicated by History: After the hype died down and the years went by, several pop culture analysts have been taking a closer look into Twilight's impact and place in pop culture. While many agreed that its quality overall was so-so and its messages are questionable at best, the series has earned praise for being a (relatively speaking) nerdy blockbuster franchise that girls (a demographic that was usually passed over) could claim for themselves in a time when that kind of entertainment was still largely male-aimed and male-dominated. Some even credit the series' massive financial success for helping the growing power of women in the entertainment industry and push for greater inclusion and representation for women in entertainment and paving the way for more female-centered blockbuster franchises (notably The Hunger Games series, the Wonder Woman movie, and others) to be made after years of executives being convinced that female-led films (superheroine films especially) wouldn't sell well.
  
  In addition to that, many of those aforementioned analysts (including Lindsay Ellis, Contrapoints, and Sarah Z) have also noted that many of the criticisms aimed at the series during its heyday were laced with shocking amounts of blatant misogyny and homophobia and the series' renaissance being a direct rejection of that mentality. Others still feel Twilight is flawed and problematic, but now widely agree that simply being aimed at teen girls or emphasizing romance over horror aren't valid or thoughtful criticisms (and that mocking fans just for liking the series isn't okay).
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The CGI werewolves actually look pretty good most of the time, with a lot of detail given to their fur and effort put in to make them all look like individuals with different sizes, coloring and facial features (rather than just copy-pasting one model). The transformations are a different matter, but the wolves themselves provide some of the most impressive special effects in the franchise.
  • The special effects and make-up departments both did a great job making Bella look believably emaciated and sickly in Breaking Dawn Part 1; the part where she is healed and transforms into a vampire is also managed quite seamlessly.
• Vocal Minority:
  • Twilight has spawned one of the most infamous examples of loony fans, which doesn't really pan out great for the other 90% who just want to enjoy the books and movies and acknowledge all of Twilight's flaws and parody it shamelessly themselves.
  • Also, the extremely vocal and avid detractors, who seem to use every opportunity to bash the series and its fans in every square inch of the internet, including This Very Wiki, are disdained by the less vocal detractors that wish those people would stop dredging up the series all the time and just move on already.
• Wangst: Both Bella and Edward. Full stop, reaching the absolute peak in New Moon.
  • Bella always seems to be able to find something to complain about even if there's nothing much wrong, such as not being pretty enough for Edward, her classmates showing an interest in her or her dad asking if she's okay/how her day went. It gets to the point that even when she's asleep, Edward overhears her sleep-whinging about how Forks is "too green". When something is genuinely wrong, she still manages to blow it out of proportion;  she literally compares Edward dumping her in New Moon to the end of the world and spends most of the book feeling depressed about it (as in actually displaying symptoms of clinical depression) and going on for page after page about how her life is now meaningless. Breakups are upsetting sure, but Bella is still depressed over it nearly a year after it first happened and makes only minimal attempts to move on. She almost spends more time pining over Edward than she did dating him.
  • Jacob gets in on it too in Eclipse and especially in his chapters in Breaking Dawn.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: Possibly one of the most major criticisms leveled at the film, especially by the British education system and by British parents. Values Dissonance indeed.
• Why Would Anyone Take Him Back?: Or at least, why would anyone take him back so easily? At the end of New Moon, Edward comes back into Bella's life, explains that he only left her to keep her safe, and convinces her he did it all out of love. Bella instantly forgives Edward and quickly makes plans to become a vampire after graduating so they can be together forever. Some readers found it hard to swallow that Bella wasn't a bit perturbed or hesitant about it, even though Edward cruelly dumped her by suggesting she wasn't good enough for him and that he never loved her (because he'd decided this was best for her), which shredded her already fragile self-esteem and resulted in her being extremely depressed for nearly a year, during which time her main comfort was her friendship with Jacob (whom she'd at least considered as a romantic option). Edward also left her at the mercy of Victoria and Laurent, and it's just fortunate that Jacob turned out to be a werewolf so he could protect her in the Cullens' absence. But Bella doesn't care about any of this and they pick up where they left off as if nothing happened.
• The Woobie:
  • Bree Tanner. Her whole character arc is basically a case of Shoot the Shaggy Dog, that gets even worse if you've read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. She was raised by her abusive father and believed her mother had abandoned her when she was four, when in actual fact, her father secretly murdered her and disposed of her body. After getting sick of her father's abuse and running away, Bree lives on the streets, rummaging through trash and sleeping anywhere that might offer shelter to survive. She's tricked and made into a vampire against her will and knows no other life than killing people for their blood and trying to avoid being ripped apart by other newborns, being told that her only purpose is to fight a bunch of other vampires she's never even heard of. She finally finds some happiness with Diego, only for him to be killed. She doesn't even participate in the battle against the Cullens and cooperates with them and the Volturi, but is still executed, for the crime of association, under laws she is completely ignorant of. She never even lives to see her sixteenth birthday. The only worthwhile thing that comes from her death is letting Edward and by extension the rest of the Cullens know that the Volturi were in on Victoria's plot, though given how Breaking Dawn plays out, they never actually do anything with this information. Shoot the Shaggy Dog, indeed.
  • Bella when Edward, her true soulmate and only love, leaves her and takes the loving family she thought she would spend eternity being part of with him in New Moon.
    • For some people, though, this comes across as Wangst or Unintentionally Unsympathetic, given she only knew Edward for a few months and yet close to a year later, is still acting depressed and even suicidal over it, treating her family and friends - most of whom have tried to be supportive - rather crappily in the process. That, and it's something of a Foregone Conclusion that Edward was going to be coming back anyway.
  • Jacob when Bella, the girl he has been helping to heal in hopes of winning her love, leaves him, risking her life, to save the man he was healing her from in New Moon.
  • Edward when you realize that while everyone had someone to love in the Cullen Coven he was all alone, didn't even have a date to prom (any of them), and was so depressed that he couldn't even play music anymore before Bella.
  • Rosalie being to having the family she always wanted, then being gang-raped and left for dead by the man she was going to marry.
  • Carlisle was turned into a vampire against his will and had to leave his father knowing that he would never accept him and probably try to kill him, spent centuries trying to kill himself to avoid feeding on people and was almost mad out of loneliness till he managed to get a companion in Edward and then a whole family.
  • Jasper feeling the agony of the thousands of people he killed till he found Alice and peace with the Cullens and his "vegetarian" lifestyle.
  • James. His parents were killed before he turned eleven and he spent his childhood alone, struggling for survival in the wild, with only his hunting skills to rely on.
  • Victoria. Nearly every member of her first coven (including her older sister) was slaughtered by the Volturi, who wanted to add Heidi to their collection. Victoria only survived thanks to her own power of self-preservation. Later, after her mate was killed, she was ruthlessly (if ineffectively) hunted by Edward merely for being an accomplice in his (James's) hunt for Bella.
  • Leah for being dumped by her fiance for her cousin (who he scarred when she rejected him), might have caused her dad's heart attack when she transformed in front of him, is not able to have children, is hated by the rest of the pack, protects a clan she hates, and is the only female not to be paired up at the end. In Breaking Dawn, she mentally admits that her ex-fiance wants her to disappear and her own brother, who she spends all of her time protecting, tells her "you ruin everything!"
    • It's also implied that she's infertile. She says something about being either "not female enough", and she's stopped having her period as a result of being a werew- I mean, loups- dammit, shape shifter.
  • Charlie, whose only daughter goes on a four month crying spree over a break-up with her boyfriend during which she becomes nearly suicidally depressed. He also has to cope with her running off or doing very dangerous things without telling him anything, and her being involved in a relationship with a boy he doesn't approve of, whom from his perspective, seems to be emotionally manipulative or possibly even abusive. And she ends up marrying this guy straight out of high school. Then Bella gets 'sick' on her honeymoon and no one will contact Charlie, let him see her or give him any information regarding her well-being at all. He's left worrying if his daughter is okay and where she is for weeks. And before that, the woman he loved more than anyone (and still loves to this day) dumped him abruptly and moved halfway across the country, taking their baby daughter with them. Charlie only got to see Bella sporadically when she was growing up and when she moves in with him, he tries time and again to relate to her and build a relationship, only to be repeatedly rebuffed by her. His best friend dies of a heart attack too (and in the film adaptions, not long before Harry's death, another close friend was killed by 'an animal', which he then began to believe was actually a serial killer...whom he was never able to bring to justice. He still thinks the person/people who murdered his friend and several other people are out there somewhere, probably committing more murders). And to top it all off, unbeknownst to him, Bella was planning on either 'disappearing' or faking her death to become a vampire. Although this didn't actually come to pass due to certain circumstances and Charlie was oblivious, it's awful thinking about how devastated Charlie would've been to lose his only child that way.
    • In Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, he actually does lose his son, Beau (the gender-flipped version of Bella, who gets turned into a vampire by James' gender-flipped counterpart Joss and has to fake his death), struggling to hold it together during his funeral.
  • Alistair. He's clearly unhappy about being dragged by the Cullens into a potential battle with the Volturi, and he abandons everyone as soon as he can. Then the official Guide came out, and his backstory was revealed: his own father sold him and his entire family to a vampire in exchange for power. When said vampire transformed him, he fell into a bloodlust that caused the death of dozens, including his father. Upon realizing what he had done, he ran away, only to discover that his family was gone, he couldn't live anymore among humans, and his beloved animals rejected him out of sheer terror on top of that. No wonder he turned into a paranoid loony who refuses any kind of company. The movie makes it worse, because he stated that he was actually growing a little hope that everything would be settled peacefully... before seeing Bella packing a note and resources for Jacob and Renésmee's getaway, at which points he realizes she never had any hope for the Volturi to stop and listen.
  • Marcus. His wife, who was Aro's sister, had been murdered and he never found the culprit. Now, he's The Eeyore of the Volturi. During the climax of the last movie (even though it's only a vision of what could happen), what's his reaction when he's confronted by two vampires about to kill him?
    Marcus: (lightly smiling and without even trying to resist) "Finally..."
• WTH, Costuming Department?:
  • The official wedding dress Bella wears in Breaking Dawn Part 1 can raise eyebrows once you get a good look at it. While the dress itself is quite pretty, the way the bodice is cut makes Bella's breasts look oddly pointy from some angles. To make matters weirder, in the book Bella's dress is said to be inspired by the Edwardian/Great War era when Edward was human; Renee even thinks the dress looks 'Jane Austenian' (who was alive and writing her novels a century before in the Regency era, though to be fair it's acknowledged in-universe that Renee was way off on the date). Bella and Alice state in Eclipse that part of the dress is "1918 vintage". However, if one compares Bella's dress in the movie to images of actual wedding dresses from any of those eras, there is very little resemblance between them; if anything, it bears a closer resemblance to wedding dresses of the 1930s and is clearly based on more modern styles.
  • Bella's engagement ring in the films is a rather odd choice, too. It's supposed to be an heirloom from Edward's mother, likely making it late Victorian era. ^note Edward was born in 1901 and turned into a vampire in 1918, aged 17 However, the ring Edward gives to Bella looks nothing like an Victorian era engagement ring or even an Edwardian era one. Some viewers also thought all the clustered diamonds looked tacky more than anything. Other viewers quite like it and there have been a number of replicas sold, but either way, it doesn't look remotely like it's from the 1800s or early 1900s.
  • A few of the wigs used in the series look very obvious, including some of Rosalie's platinum blonde wigs from the second film onwards (Nikki Reed dyed her hair for Twilight) and Jacob's infamous hair weave, which Taylor Lautner himself despised wearing, before he cuts it short in-universe.

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