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As you've pointed out, Alice relies on her visions a lot and it seems like she'd be slightly hostile to anyone who blocks her sight. So how do you think her relationship with Reneesmee and Jacob evolves after the series?

Again, I have to say, we’re basing this on my opinions here. We only get three months with Renesmee and Jacob as permanent fixtures in the Cullens’ lives and Alice isn’t the focus/isn’t even there for a good chunk of that time.

This is one of those that could easily go either way depending on who you ask and none of us are wrong.

But I suppose that’s what we’re here for.

I think she’d quietly tolerate their presence. She’d be annoyed by her lack of visions, perhaps even very concerned about it considering the very real threat from the Volturi always looming on the horizon, but she’d try not to let it show and not mention it beyond a few “AH HA HA, OH RENESMEE GETTING YOU BIRTHDAY PRESENTS WOULD BE EASY IF I COULD SEE HOW YOU’D REACT! I’M JUST KIDDING, YOU’RE SO CUTE” which sound like they’re said in good fun except… they also sound like they’re not.

But this is the happy ending for all of them. The rest of the family loves Renesmee and Alice… thinks she’s cute and all. As for Jacob, well, he seems to be there as Renesmee’s there so they’re stuck with him too. At least it makes Bella happy to have her best friend hanging around.

Alice, I’m sure, quietly hopes for the day where Renesmee will want to leave the nest so she can go off and marry Jacob or something. Alice doesn’t really care. She privately fears that, the way the family is acting, even if those two paired off they’d never actually leave and just stick around forever with all of them.

Alice would reassure everyone that not having visions is great. She can get surprised now! Isn’t that cool! And she’s not receiving onslaughts of visions all the time. Wow, amazing!

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I agree that human society is out....circa now, given how thoroughly everyone's lives are now documented on the internet. The property is less hopeless -- if the property were registered to a trust or an LLC, I think they could keep their names out of it? But if Carlisle wasn't working he'd have to be around his awful family, so that's still a bleak outcome.

Anon is referring to how I think the Cullens are doomed. Specifically, that I think their days of integrating so directly in human society are very numbered in this technological age.

And I love it, anon “They keep the house, but then they have to be around each other. Like Sartre, Hell for the Cullens is each other.”

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All your meta on stuff is pretty cool. Do you have any thoughts on the CW show Supernatural and the characters Sam, Dean and Castiel?

Alas, I have never watched Supernatural, only read a few sporadic fanfics here and there and seen the internet go collectively insane over what looks like a pretty subpar show.

@therealvinelle has watched it but whether she chooses to be torn apart by the internet today is her business.

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Which coverstory would you give post canon Cullens so they don’t come off as massive incestous weirdos

Honestly, let them come across as massive incestuous weirdos. The important thing is that people don't think they're vampires, or anything that might require a closer look. If they look like a cult or a trafficking ring, the sheriff's gonna want a closer look.

Being weird people that are probably committing pseudo-incest (as they're not biological relatives) is not great for making friends around town, but they're not looking to make friends around town. They just want to work and go to college.

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So Carlisle talk in a English accent or no?

Well, that's an interesting question.

In canon, Carlisle is never described as using an English accent, and I do think that's something Bella would have remarked upon. His vocabulary is very American as well, there's no Britishisms that I'm aware of coming out of him, at any point.

As it is, Carlisle's human life was a long time ago, and these days he is passing himself off as an American doctor with a very American family. An unexplicable British accent would only make him stand out all the more. He's gonna have to accent it up.

Which, given @gisellelx's reblog to this post that I rather agree with, should be very easy for him.

So, Carlisle has very good reason to speak American English without a foreign accent, by all accounts appears to do so in canon, and it should be very easy for him to do so.

So far, so good.

But then the Guide has this to say:

He has a slight English accent from his youth, although he can speak with a flawless American accent.

By the sounds of it, Carlisle defaults to an English accent.

(Which... I'm not even going to touch on how Carlisle's "English accent from his youth" would have been a lot less like the modern British English we know and love, and a lot more like this. Which makes "English accent" and "from his youth" an oxymoron. Maybe Carlisle practiced medicine in England later on. Or maybe Twilight exists in an alternate universe where everything is the same except for accents of the English language, in which case, disregard this entire post.)

Except... we have him on record in private as speaking in what appears to be American English. Apart from Bella's first meeting with him in the ER in Twilight I don't think we really see him in action as Dr. Cullen, American Man From America. Bella doesn't see him again until after she knows what he is, and from there on out his human facade adventures are off screen. With the exception of Charlie in Breaking Dawn, he never again has speaking lines around people he has reason to put up a front for.

And yet, Bella doesn't describe a change in his accent, nor does anyone else. There are no British English words used, either, not that I detected.

All I can do in the face of this contradicting information is come up with two theories.

When Edward announced that he was bringing home his human girlfriend, Carlisle's behavior indicates that he did not want to scare her off. He went out of his way to not approach her first but wait until she moved, he moved slowly, and vacated within minutes so that Bella and Edward could be alone. He was there to introduce himself, and no interference beyond that. The theory: he decided to stick with the fake American accent to be less overwhelming. If he'd opened his mouth and a new accent came out, Bella would have wondered who these people even were. The realization that they were not just lying about what they were, but who, could have gotten very uncomfortable for her. Then the baseball match of doom and the trip to Florida happened, and suddenly some time had passed. The Edward Speed Debacle 2.0 happened, as Carlisle found himself having unintentionally lied to this girl about his accent for long enough that he decided to just stick to it. There was no non-awkward way to switch back, as his options would have been to A) do it without warning, overnight he starts talking in his English accent. He'd wait and see if she asked him about it or if they both just never said anything, Bella likely assuming Carlisle is a bit nuts, B) sit her down for a serious talk, and whatever Bella's expecting, she gets Superman revealing his secret identity to Lois instead as Carlisle reveals THE ACCENT WAS FAKE ALL ALONG. Bella concludes that he's a bit nuts. Carlisle decided it was too late, there was no natural way to segue back into his normal accent, and has been speaking American English ever since.

Carlisle found that switching back and forth, American with the humans and English with the vampires, wasn't working out. After forgetting himself one time too many, and having no excuse for why he'd do a fake English accent when breaking the news that a woman had just lost her only son, he decided to committ to American English.

Both of these theories are completely ridiculous.

But, Meyer says he has an accent, one we never see in canon, so... I'm open to suggestions. (And, for once, to saying "Screw you, author! You don't know your characters like I, an internet person, do!")

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Every once in a while, when I'm in a public space or with a new person, I will abruptly scream in my head to see if anyone is a mind reader and flinches.

How would Edward react if someone did this? Would he panic and think they know about the secret? Would he murder them?

... Rock on, anon, that's all I have to say.

As well as, per canon, what would likely happen is that the weird marble people who moved into your neighborhood would suddenly move away. Edward would count this as a mission success and another time he's saved the family from immediate peril of someone who knew too much.

He would very likely not murder you. Unless you smell as delicious as Bella, then you will either end up dead or in a love affair with him. Your mental shrieking will just prove your sane in thinking of him as a gargoyle.

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I put on a silly hat and talk about feminism

My inbox may have 726 728 (received two more while writing this post, sob) 722 (I cut it down a bit) asks right now and I should perhaps be answering a few of those instead, but it occurred to me not one of those asks open the venue for me to write this post. So, here I go.

I touched on it in this post, as I pondered how homophobia among Twilight vampires isn't going to be a problem for gay vampires the way it is gay humans (not saying it'll be problem free, but a lack of governmental or institutional oppression makes a huge difference), but it was a post about other things as well, so I thought misogyny should get its own post.

The thing about living in a patriarchy is that sexism and misogyny is structural. You can't escape it by being a this or that kind of woman, because we live in a society(and if you want to waste fifteen minutes on really bad memes, google that sentence).

I'm not just talking about modern, Western, society, but about past cultures where women have been completely financially dependent on their fathers and husbands, denied basic rights, had their reproductive abilities turned against them (being unable to get abortions, being shunned for having illegitimate chlildren, being impregnated in a time when men wanted heirs and marital rape wasn't recognized as a crime), and in countless other ways treated despicably.

Which isn't to say modern Western society is perfect - men on average make more than women, get promoted more easily, and since they're not at home raising the kids they can earn more money and better pensions: abortion is illegal in some places, and heavily stigmatized where it's legal: women feel unsafe walking home at night and guard their drinks when clubbing:

Luck to be a lady.

Twilight vampires become interesting, then, since they overnight cease to be members of society.

Overnight, they don't need to sleep, pay for their food, or pay for medicine, and anything they need, like clothes, is easily stolen: just like that, the most impoverished human in the world became financially independent. The women are sterile, which not everyone is happy about (hello, Rosalie), but they're also now free of the health problems and setbacks following childbirth, abortions and illegitimate children are no longer concerns. Rape might still be possible, but they have superpowers now. Fighting assailants off is doable in a way it wasn't before.

Think of the implications of sterility and no STDs, alone. Immortal beings who won't have kids either way have no reason to guard women's sexuality. Promiscuity has lost its consequences.

There are no institutions of any kind, meaning no greater, societal, force forcing compliance onto women vampires or punishing them for deviating. Oh, sexist individuals people them will still exist, as does internalized misogyny and the culture they came from: look no further than to Amun and Kebi. Or the Cullens, for that matter. But there's no longer this great, external, structure oppressing women in place. Only the imprints of it, which can't be meaningfully enforced. If Kebi wanted to leave Amun she could, and he'd be out of luck.

Twilight vampires are this interesting thought experiment of people who are set free from the bounds of society, and it gets very interesting if you think about it from a feminist perspective. Or a racial one, or a gay one. You can't oppress a guy with superpowers who doesn't depend financially or materially on anyone, if Jenna the vampire wants to leave her mate or Joey the vampire wants to be in a relationship with his male lover then no one can stop either of them.

Twiligh (and apart from the shapeshifters whose lives are terrible - I'm talking exclusively about the vampires in this post) works as this accidental feminist, pro-gay, and anti-racist (I don't feel qualified to write a post on it, but... these should still apply to oppressed races and ethnicities. You can't be denied a job and housing, brutalized by police, or economically disadvantaged if you're a vampire) utopia for Twilight vampires. At least, the implications are interesting.

Being a Twilight vampire is still miserable, you kill humans, your throat is on fire for all eternity, and then sooner or later it all ends with you being torn apart while fully conscious and burned alive, but it's not hell because you're a woman, gay, or black!

Diversity wins?

(Edit: should perhaps add that this post is on the thought experiment end of things, the TLDR of it is that I find the vampires of Twilight fascinating in that they can't really be oppressed institutionally because there are no institutions.)

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Have you ever thought about creating an OC for twilight? I’ve read OC twilight fanfics and some were good to read.

I don't doubt that, in general I think OCs have an undeservedly bad reputation. An OC is at its core "an outsider enters the story", and that's a perfectly respectable starting point for a story that countless acclaimed authors have used over the ages. The problem with OC fics is that they're executed poorly more often than not.

Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie, a book I recced in this post, arguably uses this concept. The main character, an outsider, walks into a situation he didn't understand at all, makes a huge mess, now has to spend the rest of the story fixing it (while finding love along the way!). Harry Potter, an ordinary boy who finds out he's super special and gets swept up into this magical world, follows the same structure. Luke Skywalker's dull farmer life takes a turn for the fantastical. Bella Swan fits the bill as well. She's an ordinary human girl, she goes to Forks and proceeds to have Edward fall in love with her, the Cullens accept her as one of their own, Jacob falls for her as well and yada yada.

(Also, yes, I'm aware I'm conflating OCs with SIs. Bear with me!)

To me, then, having an OC who goes to Hogwarts or an OC who arrives in Forks where [insert_Cullen] falls in love with her isn't all that interesting. I've seen Harry and Bella do that already.

I'm more interested in how the OC changes the story. Alright, let's say that Bella had a twin brother, or that the universe dropped a random girl in Light Yagami's room for no apparent reason. How does this OC's presence in the story change it?

If the answer is a good story, then I'll be as interested in reading it as I would be any other fic.

If, however, they don't, if the story doesn't actually change at all - yes, Harry has a sister now, but don't worry, it changes nothing - then why not cut the sister?

Generally, with character creation, I'm not a fan of redundancy. If something isn't relevant to the story, cut it. I side-eye JKR's countless unimportant characters taking up space in Harry Potter for this reason, and am on a general basis hugely skeptical of fluff because I see no difference between fluff and filler. OCs are no different. If they serve no purpose, I don't want them.

To say nothing of OCs that appear to have reality-warping powers, since the cosmos recenters itself to make her center of the universe. The people surrounding her are no longer the characters I recognize from canon, but vessels of the author's wish fulfilment.

But, make no mistake - OCs and SIs can be very well done. It's just that creating a good fic is hard, period, OCs or not.

(To answer your question - no, I'm not creating any OCs, mostly because I have plenty of fics featuring established characters that I want to write already. Of course, I say that, but I think we all know there's only a matter of time before one of the OCs from mine or @thecarnivorousmuffinmeta blogs gets a cameo in one of my fics.)

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how would the family dynamic shift after bella joins the cullen family? assuming that renesmee and jacob would tag along, ten family members - eight of them being teenagers under the roofs of a two early 20s couple - isn't exactly subtle.

Oh, it was bad before, now I'm sure Carlisle just cries. No one's going to believe it, but dammit, they have to try (or else they have to rotate who lives with the family/who gets to hang out with the Denali but I suspect that won't fly.)

I'm sure their backstory is now a convoluted, absurd, soap opera that gets worse at every dramatic reveal.

Brief Thoughts on the Cullen Charade in the Post Breaking Dawn Era

But to go into specifics I see happening.

Edward, Bella, and Renesmee will pose as biological siblings. There's simply too much similarity between both Edward and Renesmee and Renesmee and Bella for anything else. This is very unfortunate as that "They're not really incestuous, just, you know, kind of incestuous" argument they had in Forks, yeah, that's gone now. Edward and Bella, flirting at the lunch table, are actually fucking their biological siblings in the eyes of New Town (TM).

Then there's everyone looking near the same except Renesmee. Which, of course, makes the Cullens look that much weirder as it feels a bit like a pattern matching game (which of the people at this table don't belong).

I'm giving Jake an out, per canon he'll stop aging when he looks 25-ish, and he's noticeably huge. He might try the high school thing one time but if Renesmee looks out of place he really looks out of place (actually human looking, much darker skin, looks nothing like the others, looks like an adult). So now he gets to be the creepy adult mechanic who... lives in the Cullen's basement and hits on the less pale clearly underage girl (as Renesmee stops growing when she looks physically eighteenish, supposedly, which means she'll look like a teenager forever).

Thankfully for the Cullens, their days are numbered anyway. The internet's catching up to them, one of these dumbasses will make a social media account, and then they have to go live in the woods. So they probably will only get through one or two iterations of the Cullen High School experience before this happens.

But those experiences will be a ride.

The Family Dynamics

We see hints of how this will settle in Breaking Dawn. And yes, it's weird.

You have something of a nuclear family within a family. There's the whole Cullen entourage, yes, but then Bella, Edward, and Renesmee live in a small cabin as a miniature family.

Otherwise, Bella will think herself a mother without doing any mothering/paying attention to her child whatsoever. Parenting in any capacity is falling to Rosalie and Carlisle (I'd count Esme but she's... Esme), Edward and Bella are completely out to lunch in Breaking Dawn and it doesn't seem like that will change anytime soon.

Renesmee's going to grow up with pressure to marry Jacob from Edward, Bella, and Jacob. So Jacob's going to be around an uncomfortable amount and I imagine will be moving with the family. This will come to an uncomfortable head sooner or later.

Generally though I imagine the sibling dynamics/parent dynamics remain relatively untouched. Despite everything that happened, most the Cullens didn't change opinions about one another through the series, just how they feel about Bella. By the end of the series they all either like her well enough or else tolerate her presence and choices (Rosalie for this last bit).

But I don't expect this period of relative stability to last long.

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what if bella was infertile?

Oh, anon, the answer is not good.

If Bella is infertile then the honeymoon goes as planned.

Edward and Bella have sex, but Bella does not become pregnant with Renesmee. Given the events of canon, Edward probably convinces her to attend university with him while human, and postpone the potential years she'll have to spend in Antarctica with penguins controlling her thirst.

They go to university. Bella undoubtedly enjoys it, but slowly red flags start appearing. Bella starts maturing mentally, she already had, but with each passing year it becomes increasingly obvious that she is now older than Edward more than just physically.

Bella is in her young twenties, Edward is seventeen, Edward will always be seventeen.

Bella is losing him even as she stands right next to him. I imagine the Volturi starts applying pressure to Carlisle: why is Bella not turned yet? Didn't she and Edward get married?

Carlisle sits down with Edward for an intervention: Bella must be turned and they are out of time. Edward of course rages against the dying light as he must, Bella deserves to go to university human, deserves a human life, Edward has just gotten her to really appreciate having a human life to live, and surely the Volturi will forget her or forget how many years it's been.

A few things might then happen.

A more mature Bella then might turn to Carlisle. She becomes aware that the sword of Damocles is dangling above her head, is deathly afraid of now not only outgrowing Edward physically but also mentally, and realizes that Edward will never turn her of his own free will.

This is a bad sign for their relationship, but Bella doesn't want to think about that. It will be fine, so long as she turns, it will be fine. Carlisle turns Bella, Edward never forgives either Bella or Carlisle for this, and enters a state of depression even worse than he was in pre-Twilight. His and Bella's relationship crumbles.

That, or Bella takes too long to decide, the Volturi show up and gleefully murder her or else turn her and induct her into the guard. Edward is likely murdered for having broken the law multiple times if not the entire Cullen coven (depends how much behind the scenes finagling Aro does with Caius).

That, or Edward gives into temptation and eats Bella. My money's on this latter being a significant possibility, as it's never less tempting to Edward and if it's dinner of vampire... Edward might very well pick dinner.

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i don't have a god complex but i do definitely have a vampire complex. i'm an irl vampire and you have no proof that i'm not

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May the 10 of Pentacles bless your account with more money than you can spend. 💵✨

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help i was reading this fanfic about bella being a vampire mob boss for the volturi or something but i can’t find the link anymore and now i’m stressing because it WAS SO GOOD does anyone which one it is help hdjdjdj

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Edward:

Me:

Alright, which of these did he use. ‘Snails? It was ‘snails, wasn’t it.

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Every time I watch the Twilight movies, I can't help but pay extra close attention to the random words where Robert Pattison's accent seeps through.

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obsessed with adults who write books and romanticize working in a bakery or a coffee shop u can literally tell they've never had a job