Note: I am writing for the express purpose of venting spleen. I liked Twilight. I thought the rest of the series was abysmal. So be warned-- tasteless humor ahead.


Once, in the tiny town of Forks on the drizzly Olympic peninsula, there lived a fairly pretty girl from a fairly good family of fairly well-off Forksians. She was neither the brightest child, nor the strongest, nor the most well-mannered, and all that distinguished her from her classmates was her legendary clumsiness. Her name was Sweet Little Girl and she was engaged to marry The Most Beautiful Boy Imaginable.

Beautiful was not human, which was only natural since humanity is not a particularly attractive species. Beautiful belonged to a more perfect people: the vampires. As it happened, he had a particular preference for the flavor of Sweet's blood, and, since he was so very in love with her blood, the only thing to do was love the rest of her as well.

Sweet was not deterred in the least by the fact that each of her movements made Beautiful's mouth water, although she was relieved to learn that, except for a brief stint wherein he ate bad people, he and his whole family dined on animal blood. But even before she knew that, she had already determined that she belonged to him, body and soul, and whether she be lover or snack for him was entirely his choice. How could she not adore him? Beautiful was beautiful.

He breathed only when it was graceful to breathe, ate only when out of sight, never excreted anything, lifted heavy objects with effortless ease, and his skin was white as Mary's little lamb.

She knew Beautiful was smart, and that he would excel in school if he ever decided to stop skipping class. But she admired him for his spotty attendance, for it showed that he was a free-thinker, only occasionally deigning to be bound by conventions like high school.

She also admired the way he showed his profound interest in her by answering her questions with questions of his own, often evading her inquiries or cutting her off mid-sentence. This showed that he was a masterful conversationalist, a man to be feared, and therefore loved. For, Sweet reasoned, one can never truly love what we are too comfortable around. Love makes us try to primp and appear at our best, and Beautiful always demonstrated that he must be held at a distance and respected.

Best of all, he was protective.

When she went to visit Underdog, her dear werewolf friend, whom she kissed only occasionally, Beautiful demonstrated his affectionate concern by tailgating her for miles, lips curled in a tender sneer. When she returned home, he was there waiting for her with a chiding glower, the soothing refrains of Eminem's "Kim" playing on the stereo.

He also liked much of the same music that she did. He played the piano expertly and composed songs just for her.

With so solid a basis for a relationship, Sweet could never doubt the inevitability of their future together.

As if all this were not enough, Beautiful, though not particularly religious by nature, refused to have sex with her before marriage. He explained that the God he did not believe in might condemn the soul he did not believe in to eternal damnation.

For this, Sweet loved him more than ever, and agreed wholeheartedly to be his wife, even after repeatedly telling him that she was not ready for marriage.

When she confessed her engagement to her father, she feared his reaction, as she always feared men's reactions, but he deferred judgment to her mother, since love and weddings are women's issues. For a split second, Sweet had time to fear her mother's reaction, but no sooner did the worry materialize than her mother put her mind to rest. A love as true and perfect as the love of Sweet Little Girl for The Most Beautiful Boy Imaginable was nothing that any devoted mother could stand in the way of.

After that, there was little to do but wait. Sweet's future sister-in-law, Looking Glass, was taking care of all the wedding arrangements, so the wedding would be perfect and ridiculously extravagant.

The day of the wedding dawned gray and drizzly, which meant absolutely nothing since the weather patterns in Forks vary by the hour. Hammett, the hulking, jovial vampire, had chosen Forks after reading online that it was the point in the United States that had the most rainfall. Unfortunately, the misting rain, while it came nearly every day, often did not last for more than a few hours, and so the family of vampires was forced to keep to themselves, because their skin glittered like white diamonds in the sunlight, and they were sure to be discovered if they kept coming to class and work only during the cloudy parts of the day.

Looking Glass arrived shortly after dawn, full of reassurances that the rain would not last and the actual ceremony would take place in partly-cloudy, drizzle-free weather. Sweet smiled because Looking Glass' predictions were never wrong, but truthfully, it would not have mattered to her if freak hurricane came and wiped out half the guests. Nothing mattered except the fact that The Most Beautiful Boy Imaginable wanted to be her husband forever, and so she had meaning and purpose and her life, and hope for her existence.

After much primping and fussing, Sweet found herself beribboned and bejeweled and bedecked in a designer dress made especially for her, her face accentuated by a careful layer of paint.

"I'm so very glad you saw through my polite, protesting facade," Sweet Little Girl said to Looking Glass. "Even though I claimed to cringe at the very thought of weddings, and Beautiful had to all but force me up the aisle, I am ecstatic that you truly made this your day, erasing all vestiges of me. I am more than thrilled to be here, getting married when I have said I am not ready for marriage, in a dress I never would have chosen, in an extravagant ceremony in front of half the town when I said I wanted something simple and private. All of my opinions are warped by my low self-image and angst-ridden indecision, so I don't really know what I'm saying. What you've done is best, of course. It is part of a woman's nature to want a lavish wedding wherein one does not have to think at all about the price, and, since I am a woman, that must really be what I want, too."

"Naturally," Looking Glass said, beaming. "You and I are such good friends because we understand one another so perfectly. It is unthinkable that you would not want the kind of wedding celebrated in bridal magazines and celebrity tabloids. Indeed, you have been shopping for this day, whether you wanted to or not, since you were old enough to admire beauty, and your life would be incomplete without monogrammed napkins and an ice sculpture and a view of yourself looking like an airbrushed model. But, as unthinkably unfeminine as it would be for you to actually not want a wedding where price tags mean nothing, it would be equally unbecoming for you to ask for it. That is why it must be forced on you as a gift. Together, you and I make the perfect woman's perfect dream."

Sweet laughed, and kissed her soon-to-be sister-in-law, and when the music played, she made her way down the stairwell-aisle (the house having been remodeled expressly for this purpose) and was married in a fit of bubbling, tearful happiness, unadulterated by any qualm or hesitation. The Most Beautiful Boy Imaginable beamed at her possessively, and Sweet thanked him with all her soul. In fact, he bruised her only once during the reception, when she accidentally got up to dance without asking to be excused first, and Beautiful had to grab her by the arm and wrench her around to correct her. Sweet apologized profusely and smiled up at him, berating herself for making that mistake again.

When she danced with her father, he already seemed like a stranger to her. Even now, she could not imagine truly needing his approval in the way she needed Beautiful's approval. She supposed this only made sense, since she had been hiding the truth of Beautiful's vampire nature, as well as his nocturnal visits, for months now.

Lyle, her new father, was the founder of Vegan Vampires Anonymous, and had assembled a small group around him as his family. He indulged his masochism by working as the town doctor, constantly surrounding himself with the blood he never drank.

Faith, Origin's lovely wife, stood beside him, glowing with wedding-happiness. She, too, was mysterious-- in a blond sort of way-- and Sweet was a little in awe of her.

With an effort, Sweet kept her eyes from skipping over her new sister. Posalie was only slightly less beautiful than Beautiful, but that beauty was often marred by a baleful glower in Sweet's direction. When Sweet thought about the reason, her heart broke. Posalie was utterly opposed to having Sweet join them, although the blonde girl's wishes had been overruled by the rest of her family.

Including her spouse, Hammett.

Off in a corner stood Casper, her other new brother. And with him, of course, was Looking Glass. Dear Looking Glass, who shared everything with Sweet except her faith.

A few of her slim, pale, impossibly gorgeous new relatives were vampires she had never seen before. They were distant cousins who also kept to a diet of animal blood. Their leader, She Will Be Significant Later On, was a bit on edge because one of her sisters, Expendable, had gone missing after refusing to come to the wedding. Sweet felt horribly guilty about the whole business. When Expendable's boyfriend tried to kill Sweet, Underdog and the other werewolves had killed him, instead, so it had really all been her fault.

She wished Underdog were here now. He always knew how to make her feel better.

He was the one missing piece of her heart, the only thing that would make this day even better than it was. She knew she would probably never see him again, since he had been gone for months, proving his devotion to her by dropping out of school and ruining his own life. Scorned, heartbroken suitor that he was, he was probably out chasing wolf tail in his wolf body. But when Beautiful's eyes narrowed, she knew that her unspoken, half-formed wish had come true.

After waiting for his permissive nod, Sweet skipped out into the cool, darkened yard to meet her not-quite boyfriend.

They embraced, and he kissed her, chastely, for rather a long time.

"So," he said at length.

"So," she replied, relishing the ease of conversation she always felt around him.

He wore only shorts, despite the damp coolness of the evening (werewolves having a higher body temperature than humans.) He looked uncomfortable in the shorts and uncomfortable in his human form, so Sweet was deeply honored that he would don them both to make her happy.

"I am so very glad that we are still friends, Under. I have always felt solid and comfortable with you, so I am glad that there has never been any awkwardness between us, even though I fantasized about having your children and French kissed you, even after getting engaged to Beautiful. You saved my soul when Beautiful left me without a backward glance. I would have died without your attention (if death had not been too good for me) because I am a woman: a hollow, sucking vacuum in desperate need of male approval. So I am overjoyed that we are still friendly friends, who can feel friendly toward one another in true friendship, despite the fact that, for months, we have talked about nothing except you wanting more from me, and me being glad to give you more if only Beautiful were not so beautiful that I had no choice but to need him more than I need you. But I do still need you, Underdog, just not for any discernable reason, since our whole relationship hinged on my insatiable craving for a man's attention, which Beautiful is giving me now."

"And they say you have to be bitten to turn into a vampire."

Sweet blinked, not understanding.

"When are you changing, anyway?"

"I have begged and pleaded and cajoled Beautiful to change me from the time I first knew he was a vampire, and even more so from the time my being human began to put my life in real danger. But now that the hour is on me, I am indifferent to the actual date. Rather than having it be on our wedding night, as we agreed, I may let it slide for months. Or a year. Whatever Beautiful and I can agree on."

"Really? Huh." Underdog reached for her, and they began dancing together in the dark. They shared one another's heat and scent, and she pressed her face against his bare chest as his heat washed through her. "Maybe you'll feel the same way about sex," he added.

"Oh no. I am incredibly eager to lose my virginity to a marble popsicle as soon as ever I can."

Underdog slapped her, sending her reeling into the grass. As she fell, she cried, "Oh!" as understanding dawned. "I can see that you feel the need to warn me of the danger of vampire-on-human sex (where any loss of control could be deadly) by losing control yourself. Beautiful, also, explained to me early on that sex between us is physically impossible. However, I don't feel it to be impossible, therefore he must have been mistaken."

While she was speaking, Beautiful vaulted over cake and presents and locked his hands around Underdog's throat. They went rolling and tumbling together through the grass and across the dance floor, smashing vases and knocking over tables, Beautiful hissing, and Underdog snarling and baring his teeth as they went.

Sweet pressed her fingers to her lips in dainty distress, eyes wide at the sight of two gorgeous men fighting over her, consumed by their desire for her.

Then the werewolves pulled Underdog off Beautiful, and the vampires pulled Beautiful off Underdog, and Looking Glass pulled Sweet off the grass and rushed her into the getaway car. When Beautiful joined her a moment later, Sweet put on her bravest smile, and forgot all about the unpleasantness. Or pretended to forget. When she was with Beautiful, it hardly mattered what was sincere and what was pretense.

Underdog, a wolf again, howled after them as they drove away.

"Do you think he's alright?" Sweet couldn't resist asking.

Beautiful thought he was fine.

"Are you sure?" Sweet asked, "He sounds like he's gotten his leg caught in a trap again."

Beautiful was sure.

"You're not upset, are you?" Sweet asked, for good measure, unable to bear the thought of his displeasure.

The Most Beautiful Boy Imaginable smiled his beautiful smile and said, "Of course not, Sweet, my only sweet and precious love. Why would I be upset about you spending half of our reception dancing cheek-to-cheek in a dark corner with my scantily-clad rival? All I feel is a touch of pity for him."

And Sweet grinned, and kissed him, and settled back into her seat and the beginning of her new life.