Afterword

First and foremost, I would like to thank everyone who gave my little tale of woe the time of day. I write a lot, but I only just started publishing on the internet, so I'm not really used to having an audience outside of people I already know or the odd creative writing class colleagues. You invested your hours, you stuck with the story, and I am grateful for that. Thank you, also, for leaving comments, for telling me what you think and for leaving suggestions. I appreciate your thoughtful critiques a lot and I take them to heart.

This is why I wanted to explain what exactly motivated me to write this story, and what I intended it to be. I'm not sure I accomplished every goal I set for myself, but still, I'd like to explain where all of this came from. Basically, it came from me being an anti, but also from the outrage at least half the fan-base of these books felt when Breaking Dawn was released. They had a lot of complaints, and all of those complaints were not only justified, but got completely blown off by the author and her brother – you know, the one who screens her mail for her. Yeah. Anyway, I don't intend to soapbox. What I do intend is to (again, wordily) elaborate on my reasons for writing this story.

Here's the tl; dr version, first: people didn't like Breaking Dawn. I myself thought it was abysmally bad. I had fun trying to address all the issues the fans had with it. Thank you for giving me the time of day!

Here's the wordy version:

So…let's get to it, then. As I wordily explained in the note at the start of chapter one, I set out to do the opposite of what Stephenie Meyer had done: I wanted to write an actual story with a plot and with character development – you know, something the actual Twilight fans were expecting and what they, frankly, deserved. I'm not a fan, as you can obviously tell, and when I read the novels, I was well aware of the fact that they were a blatant Mary Sue wish-fulfilment fantasy. I knew that going in. I started reading them after the Sparkledämmerung, after Seth Morgan's infamous response to that very polite fan petition, after the Breaking Dawn fallout. I'd never even heard of Twilight before the first movie trailer came out, and it only caught my eye due to internet mockery, in the first place.

Mockery, however, has never been my intention with this fic.

I got to say, when I first read those books, I wilfully ignored the damaging messages, the abuse, the racism, the misogyny, the bad writing etc. I simply didn't care. It was a Mary Sue fantasy and it was fun – for me, at least. That being said, I understand the actual fans' rage at not only the dud that was Breaking Dawn, but also at Meyer's rather infantile reaction to criticism. That wasn't so great, to put it mildly. Insulting and dismissing your detractors is bad enough; doing it to your fans is infinitely worse. As for you people who didn't like Breaking Dawn? You just didn't get it, apparently. Says so in the Illustrated Guide.

Most people who loved the books honestly believed that Meyer was writing a coherent tale wherein all elements had a narrative purpose. Turns out they were mistaken, and that made them angry – rightfully so. The fans deserved better. The fans deserved resolutions to the many plotlets that Meyer had introduced; they deserved to have at least some of their questions answered, instead of just having to swallow a half-arsed hand-wave for nearly every conflict established throughout the novels. Because that's what happened.

In short, the fans wanted Bella to have her happy ending, but they wanted her to fight for it, to face adversity, to grow as a person. They did not want to watch her prance about arrogantly à la Rose Potter, lord her superiority over everyone else, and then stand around doing jack shit and feeling awesome. They did not want everyone to just talk for five minutes and then go home. Of course they didn't want that. Nobody wants to slog through such a massive waste of time.

So that's another reason for me to write my story: I wanted to tell an actual story with a narrative and plot.

I've known for years that Breaking Dawn has no plot to speak of, that the characters don't grow, and that Bella Swan is a stagnant shell of a protagonist who alternates between being horrifyingly OOC in Book II to being an obnoxious brat in Book III. Why did I write my own story now? Because I read the in-depth analysis of the entire Twilight series (I refuse to call it a 'saga') on the LiveJournal community Das Sporking, and the amount of fail that the sporkers responsible uncovered was so immense, it inspired me to, you know, think about what I would want as a resolution to the series.

It was meant to be an exercise in plotting and character development and not this huge monstrosity it ended up turning into, but I have to say that I enjoyed spending time in that universe, with those characters. I enjoyed picking up the heaps of lost potential and trying to sort them out and give myself and you lovely people something enjoyable. I was never actually a fan, but I do understand the fans' outrage at the terrible end to their beloved series. Writing a story without inserting oneself into it as an author avatar can do wonders in terms of preventing Mary Sue shenanigans, it turns out.

At first, I wanted to write the characters like Meyer intended them to be, but I quickly found out that I could not go through this with the Meyer-goggles on. Her heroes are murdering, sociopathic, pompous monsters who look down on everyone who isn't a vampire and who don't care a single bit about saving human lives. That's not what Meyer wanted to write, as she told us in numerous interviews, but she wrote it nonetheless. Think about it. Look at saintly Carlisle, who changed dying people (one of them a gang-rape victim and the other a woman who had tried to commit suicide), and then did nothing to stop them from murdering innocent human beings. He took no responsibility for the vampires that he created – none. All he did was frown disapprovingly whenever someone 'slipped up' (i.e. ate people), admonish them mildly, and then move the 'family' to a different place. That's it. They don't care. He doesn't care. Nobody cares.

Wardo himself became a serial killer for years on end, eating hundreds if not thousands of humans, and no-one did anything to stop him. He had no right to execute people, he could not have had all the information, and he ate them. He ate them. Meyer's attempts at sanitising this are futile, because that's what he did. He decided that he had the right to be judge, jury, and high executioner, and he ate hundreds of human beings. There is no excuse for this that makes it any more – ha, ha – palatable. Alice 'slipped up'. Esme 'slipped up'. Emmett 'slipped up' and laughed about it. Rosalie brutally murdered the two guards protecting her ex-fiancé for no reason. They hadn't done anything to her. They were probably just glad to be working, and she broke their bodies without a second thought. Her comment? "Oops". Seriously, oops? Those people are dead and rotting in the ground because of her, and that's plain awful.

If it were intentional, this characterisation, I'd applaud Meyer, but we all know that it's not.

This is something I, as an anti, simply do not get: the nonchalant attitude toward murder the 'heroes' have, and how their author blatantly defends the slaughtering of human beings as being perfectly okay (again, see Personal Correspondence #12 for reference). Killing people is not a 'slip-up' or an 'oopsie'. It's murder. These vampires eat people and it's treated like it's a tacky faux-pas instead of an unforgivable crime with unforeseeable consequences. I think that in this day and age, draining people of blood with impunity is a lot harder, and apart from the fact that everyone who takes a life deserves a comeuppance, they would undoubtedly get caught – hence the media / internet / FBI subplot.

Murder in fiction should be treated with the gravitas that it deserves. There should be consequences for that. There would be consequences for that.

That's also why I decided to have at least the vampire government use their brains and adapt to modern times, i.e. be mindful of human technology that could end up exposing them and getting them wiped out. Cooperation makes sense, but it's more than that. I don't think sparklepires are better than we are, or that they have the right to kill sapient beings. That's one of the main themes of my story. The way murder is excused and sanitised in Breaking Dawn made me really want to address the issue, to present different ways of looking at it (take Jasper's defence of murder and Demetri's opinion, which is the exact opposite. You're welcome to draw your own conclusions). No, the fact that vampires survive on blood is not an excuse. We manage to rise above ourselves regularly. They should strive to do the same.

So, yes, this was another thing that was missing in Breaking Dawn, which the fans and antis alike hated: no consequences for anything. That's the reason I made sure every action had a reaction in my story.

Anyway, on with the Cullens: Carlisle himself didn't kill anyone, but he sure as hell didn't try to stop anyone else from doing it, either. In Breaking Dawn, the Cullens 'graciously' lend their cars to their charming cannibalistic guests, so that the guests can go and eat people outside the Quileute-protected radius. If the Cullens cared so much for human life, they would not have become an accessory to bloody murder. They'd at least feel bad about it. Instead, Bella just called mealtimes 'dicey'. What the hell.

Of course I was going to include this particular WTFery in the story.

Let's look at Jasper. He is easily the most frightening character Meyer ever wrote, and again, this was purely by accident. Keep in mind that he's supposed to be a good guy, reformed by the power of love or whatever. He spent about eight decades mass-murdering droves of people in Mexico and Texas, and he only stopped doing it once his side started to lose. That's it. He is a complete psycho. His death-toll alone numbers in the thousands, maybe even tens of thousands. I know I wrote him as being a sadistic fuck, and it got a bit self-indulgent at times, but that's really what he is. He's a mass-murdering psychopath who doesn't even know how to spell repentance.

Have you guys read Midnight Sun and Bree Tanner? I have. Good Lord, the guy is scary. In Midnight Sun, he has a vaguely paedophilic rape fantasy (and that's what it is, let's not kid ourselves on that front) that is exceedingly creepy and exceedingly uncomfortable to read. He also nonchalantly advocates killing Bella, by the way, in case you didn't know. This guy never, ever regrets murdering tons of people. Nothing in the text ever gives anyone the impression that he does, no matter what Meyer might claim in interviews. He's even good friends with vampires who still eat human beings, one of whom he wanted to murder – Charlotte. Charming.

There's that absolutely horrifying scene in Bree Tanner, wherein he leads the titular character to a bonfire where all her friends are burning. He tells her to follow him with her eyes closed, and that he'll kill her if she opens them. She gets to smell the smouldering remains of her comrades-in-arms, whilst she is forced to sit there, unrestrained, and fight the urge to flee or attack, which Jasper is making worse with his power, completely on purpose. He very obviously wants her to give him the excuse to dismember her and set fire to her, and he very obviously enjoys psychologically torturing this girl. That's the kind of guy this character is. It's all in the text. I didn't make it up at all, even though I admit that I may have had a bit too much fun writing him.

The thing is, it would all be fine under different circumstances. A creepy, psychopathic, sadistic vampire is an interesting character in a vampire story. He could be used to highlight the alien nature of vampires when compared to humans. He could be a worthy antagonist, too. He could just be an unrepentant psycho who entertains the readers. However, that's not what Meyer intended. He's supposed to be a good guy, one of the angelic Cullens who can do no wrong. We're not supposed to be creeped out by him. We're supposed to approve of him.

We're supposed to approve of all the abysmally stupid decisions the Cullens make, too, such as their not bothering to investigate the obviously vampire-induced deaths in Seattle, because they thought it wasn't their problem. Nice to see how much you care about protecting humanity, guys! Yeah. We're not supposed to think that they are wasteful, snobby, racist, abusive wankers who do everything in their power to draw attention to themselves, and who do nothing to protect innocent people from harm. They're supposed to be the epitome of all that is good and wholesome, and boy, did Meyer not write what she intended to write. Her heroes are callous, inert, self-enamoured morons whose death-toll is staggeringly high, and who believe that remorse is for weaklings. That's what the text says, that's what Personal Correspondence #12 says, it's what the Illustrated Guide says, and that's how I wrote them – without going into parody territory, because that was not my intention. At least I hope I didn't do that.

The same thing goes for the Volturi. Meyer wanted them to be tah ebulz, dictators and corrupt and moustache-twirling. Instead, what we got is a bunch of laid-back boys and girls who only care about two rules being kept: a) keep vampires a secret, and b) don't eat babies. That's it. In Breaking Dawn, the intense power struggle wherein liberty wins over corruption and oppression didn't happen. What happened, instead, was that the Volturi came to investigate claims that a baby had been eaten. They spoke to the defendants, tolerated their antagonistic and bratty behaviour, came to the conclusion that no law had been broken (which is bullshit, but whatever), and then they went back home. What's so evil about that? They didn't do anything. On the contrary: they were very, very lenient with Wardo's little tantrums, with Bella not being turned quickly, with Carlisle not keeping his creations in check. That's not villainous behaviour. And please don't trot out the busloads of tourists getting murdered in Volterra (which is stupid), because as of Breaking Dawn, the Cullens are no better than that. They happily aided and abetted a whole bunch of murdering psychos, among which were charming people such as Amun, who'd once set himself up as a god and kept a harem of sex slaves. Any moral high ground the Cullens might've had? Gone in a puff of sugary smoke.

To say nothing of Bella. I think her arrogant and self-enamoured attitude in Book III of Breaking Dawn speaks volumes.

There were other points of contention that fans and antis alike hated with the same intensity, such as the whole imprinting debacle. Meyer again claimed one thing and wrote another. She wanted to make us believe that as long as the imprintees weren't physically mature, the imprint wouldn't be sexual, but guess what? It is. It so is. Meyer herself told us that imprinting is about guaranteeing strong offspring that carries the werewolf gene, and that, my friends, is sexual in nature because making babies is the ultimate endgame, here. You all know the term for watching over a child with the intend to have sex with him or her once they grow up. That attitude is generally frowned upon, to put it euphemistically, and for good reason.

What bugs me even more are the unfortunate implications of imprinting. The text itself tells us that the imprinter loses their personality, that this personality gets re-written to suit the imprintee's needs. They will do everything and anything the imprintee wants, except leave them alone. They lose everything that once made them unique, including love for other people, and all they care about is making babies with their imprintee. Imprinting erases all personal ambitions, all familial ties, all previous romantic ties. It doesn't matter if the imprinter already had a relationship and loved their partner dearly, because the imprint takes that away from them. It makes the imprinter be single-mindedly obsessed with a woman's genetic make-up; that woman's personality (or sexuality) doesn't even factor into it. Think about it, guys: the imprint would make gay people straight. It strips the imprinters of all their identity – social, inter-personal, sexual. They become pod-people. That's horrifying.

Also horrifying is the situation of the imprintee. Even if they did love the imprinter before the fact, their situation is still awful, and they are to be pitied. They can't change their minds about the relationship. They can't ever leave. Also, imagine you fall in love with a boy, and when this boy finally reciprocates, he's turned into a different person entirely. It's like he doesn't have a personality anymore. He doesn't argue with you, he always does what you say, watches the movies you watch, changes his opinions to match yours. His identity is gone. He has no life whatsoever outside of stalking you. You fell in love with a person who has wants and needs and, you know, a personality, not with an empty shell who will stalk you and physically threaten you if you ever plan to leave. All of the things you grew to love about that person are gone now, and you are forever stuck with them, from now until the day you die. Their choice was taken away from them, and so was yours.

That's not love. That's the plot of a Criminal Minds / Supernatural crossover. None of this is portrayed in a bad light, though, in-universe. It's supposed to be the epitome of love, the purest and deepest and bestest evah! Meyer's fans are not stupid, and they did not buy it. Again, they deserved better – they really did. It's horrifying, it's bad, it's insulting, and it's infuriating, too.

It's insulting on so many levels, also because the romance was the entire point of the series. It was the main plot. With the Jacob / Renesfail imprint, the entire love triangle was rendered moot and pointless. It was swept under the rug. It was hand-waved away, meaning the fans wasted their time caring about the characters, about the love triangle, about everything. There were no consequences. There was no actual resolution that involved any effort, sacrifice, growth of character, or anything like that. There was just this stupid imprint crap, and that was a slap in the face of everyone who actually cared about the story and the people involved. Nice.

With all that in mind, and with Meyer's general 'humanity sucks' attitude (again, not an exaggeration; you can look that all up), I wanted to create a spitefic that didn't exactly mock Breaking Dawn. It was supposed to be an actual story with a plot, with three-dimensional characters, and with satisfactory resolutions instead of wanky hand-waves. As an anti, of course I latched onto Leah Clearwater, who is basically the only three-dimensional character in those books (with the possible exception of Charlie Swan), and who just rocks our collective socks. We all love her, because she is the only one who refuses to kiss Bella's sparkly behind, who keeps soldiering on despite the awful abuse heaped upon her, and who actually takes active steps to improve herself.

I wanted to do her some justice, instead of declaring her defective for being sterile (and Meyer didn't even answer the question whether this condition is permanent or not. That's not cool), which is so offensive that I can't even. Jasper and Bella have personalities, too, just not the ones Meyer wanted them to have, so writing them was fairly easy. In the case of Irina and Demetri, it was almost like writing original characters, because they were both cardboard cut-outs in canon. Needless to say, I had fun giving them backstories and personalities that included motivations and fears and such.

There's a lot of lost potential in the actual novels, and the fact that fanfiction / spitefics give us the opportunity to address that, to let our imaginations flow, to share ideas, and to actually think about what we're writing is just the best. I got to spend a year getting to know the characters, getting immersed in the world, and reading your thoughts on my story, and that was fantastic. I'd gladly return to this universe, and maybe I will – one day.

All in all, those were the inspirations, thoughts, ideas, and intentions behind the concept of my story. Personally, I'm rather happy with the result, and I sincerely hope that you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. In any case, thank you very much for bearing with me and for sharing your opinions with me. They are appreciated.

See you guys around!

The Necroposter, 23.10.2016.