History Fridge / TWILIGHT

* I owe this one to Creator/DougWalker. Because TVTropesHasRuinedMyLife, the Oxford introduction to ''Theatre/TheSpanishTragedy'' recently made me think that a Revenge Tragedy basically boils down to "YouKilledMyFather. PrepareToDie." That made me think of Chester A. Bum imitating Victoria in ''Eclipse.'' And ''that'' made me jokingly think, So, from a PerspectiveFlip, Victoria would be the heroine of a Revenge Tragedy. And who else wrote Revenge Tragedies? Our good friend Creator/WilliamShakespeare! So WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic was absolutely right - Bella ''would'' make "a great Shakespeare villain."

* I owe this one to [[Website/ThatGuyWithTheGlasses Doug Walker]]. Because TVTropesHasRuinedMyLife, the Oxford introduction to ''Theatre/TheSpanishTragedy'' recently made me think that a Revenge Tragedy basically boils down to "YouKilledMyFather. PrepareToDie." That made me think of Chester A. Bum imitating Victoria in ''Eclipse.'' And ''that'' made me jokingly think, So, from a PerspectiveFlip, Victoria would be the heroine of a Revenge Tragedy. And who else wrote Revenge Tragedies? Our good friend Creator/WilliamShakespeare! So WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic was absolutely right - Bella ''would'' make "a great Shakespeare villain."

** In Shakespeare's ''Theatre/TheMerchantOfVenice'', Jessica pulls a Bella (in a perhaps-deliberately-''RomeoAndJuliet''-echoing balcony scene) and elopes with her lover and the rest of the local beautiful people. Jessica, like Bella, lives alone with a protective dad. The "beautiful people" are the Christians, utterly alien to Jessica, since she and her father are Jews. Although many of the Christians abuse Jews (as many of the vampires kill humans), Jessica isn't afraid--she wants Lorenzo to make her a Christian and marry her. There's even a Jacob hanging around--Jessica's roguish, comedic best friend Launcelot, and Lorenzo and Launcelot are jealous of one another for hanging around her and spar in a way that's very Edward-and-Jacob-like. Although, as in ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'', the couple get a sugary-sweet happy ending, AlternateCharacterInterpretation pegs Jessica as the villain for shunning her father. This means one of two things: 1) Stephenie Meyer is secretly a subversive, Shakespeare-referencing genius, or 2) Shakespeare saw ''Twilight'' coming. I'd love to believe the former, but I find the latter far more likely.

* I owe this one to [[Website/ThatGuyWithTheGlasses Doug Walker]]. Because TVTropesHasRuinedMyLife, the Oxford introduction to ''The Spanish Tragedy'' recently made me think that a Revenge Tragedy basically boils down to "YouKilledMyFather. PrepareToDie." That made me think of Chester A. Bum imitating Victoria in ''Eclipse.'' And ''that'' made me jokingly think, So, from a PerspectiveFlip, Victoria would be the heroine of a Revenge Tragedy. And who else wrote Revenge Tragedies? Our good friend Creator/WilliamShakespeare! So WebVideo/TheNostalgiaCritic was absolutely right - Bella ''would'' make "a great Shakespeare villain."

*** According to Smeyer its [[YouFailBiologyForever "dead blood"]]. According to some of my family members who are nurses and people who paid attention in sex-ed, menstrual blood is actually packed with nutrients considering that its purpose is to support a potential new life. So if anything Jasper (and by extension all the meyerpires) would be driven even more bloodthirsty than usual, which is saying something. However even if you ignore that its a school with about 400 kids at least one person is going to get a paper cut a day, and at least once it'll happen within Jasper's presence. What the hell is Alice going to do when its right up his nose? But to answer the question, he's trying to "get used to" being near humans and seeing them as people and not prey. Not that any of the Cullens feel that way to begin with.

** Except that {{Literature/Dracula}} could walk around in the daylight (although he can't use his powers). I think the criticisms are more about the fact that Meyer decided to take a weakness and turn it into something that makes vampires even more "perfect," which cheapens the whole thing.
** That's not what it is at all actually. Like the above troper said, it's because Meyer made her vampires too good and practically perfect. It would have been fine if she just left the sunlight ineffective, but instead she made it a strength.

* So imprinting is intended to get the best mate for the new generation of wolves. Age isn't an issue, and species isn't an issue (since Jacob imprinted on Renesmee, a half-vampire). Does that mean that werewolves can imprint on wolves and/or dogs, since they would be able to have sex with them in wolf form?
* The idea that Jacob imprinting on Renesmee and will eventually marry her when she's only ''seven years old'' is toooootally fine because, after all, Renesmee has the intelligence of an adult and grows up faster, right? Yeah, Meyer probably didn't think of this, but "she's mature for her age" and "she doesn't ''look'' like a child" are justifications given by real life pedophiles and ephebophiles. The idea that an adult shacking up with a minor is okay if said minor is "mature for their age" is utter nonsense, half-vampire aging weirdness aside.

* So imprinting is intended to get the best mate for the new generation of wolves. Age isn't an issue, and species isn't an issue (since Jacob imprinted on Renesmee, a half-vampire). Does that mean that werewolves can imprint on wolves and/or dogs, since they would be able to have sex with them in wolf form?

* So imprinting is intended to get the best mate for the new generation of wolves. Age isn't an issue, and species isn't an issue (since Jacob imprinted on Renesmee, a half-vampire). Does that mean that werewolves can imprint on wolves and/or dogs, since they would be able to have sex with them in wolf form?
* '''Alice's visions.''' As discussed in the Nightmare Fuel page, when you take a closer look at it, her brand of future vision is ''far'' from being just a handy cheat-sheet to help the main cast stay a step ahead of the game. Let's break it down:
** First, there's the nature of the visions themselves. It is made extremely clear throughout the series that Alice can only see the future as it is ''most likely to unfold'' at the time that a vision occurs to her, regardless of whether she actively seeks out a certain part of the future or not. Between her chess games with Edward and her commentary regarding the state of the future whenever somebody commits themselves to a major decision, we have plenty of evidence that it's not a matter of seeing what will happen if she flips a coin and it lands on heads; rather, she's seeing that the coin is currently 'most likely' to land on heads unless she or someone else alters their current plans or behaviors. Which is fine, until you realize this means that '''any time she receives a vision of someone being hunted, or injured, or killed, she is seeing the ''most likely'' course of that person's fate.'''
** While Alice is capable of actively monitoring the future, there are instances where a vision occurs to her entirely at random - most notably, her vision regarding the Volturi deciding to move against the Cullens. This means that it is possible for Alice to receive a vision of someone she loves coming to harm ''completely at random;'' additionally, since her visions only occur after a decision has been made which causes a specific outcome to become the most likely course of fate, under the right circumstances it is also entirely possible that she can receive a vision of someone's grisly death ''without there being any obvious hint of danger at the present moment.''
** Because her visions only occur after someone has already committed to a course of action that will impact the future, Alice must also be ready for the future to change in an instant - if she doesn't have at least a couple of contingency plans, one person's snap decision could cause everything to fall apart around her.
*** To make matters worse, any choice ''she'' makes that directly involves a future she has foreseen will cause her to become part of that particular chain of events, which means her decisions may also alter the future - perhaps even negatively so. In other words, if Alice foresees someone's death and chooses to prevent it, she might receive further visions where her interference will make things ''worse.'' This bit alone makes her visions high-octane nightmare fuel for anyone who struggles with paranoia, anxiety, or poor self-image: On top of monitoring and managing the decisions of her friends and enemies alike, Alice also has to hyperanalyze ''herself'' every time she chooses to impact the future.
** Vampires are explicitly stated and shown to have perfect recall, down to the tiniest detail. Because Edward can see her visions through the use of his own gift, we know with absolute certainty that Alice's visions occur within her mind. This means that Alice is able to perfectly remember every detail of every vision she has ever received, and unlike in her mortal life, there's no shock therapy that can wipe those memories away now. Any time she sees a vision of someone's death, regardless of whether or not the vision becomes reality, Alice will be left with a perfect, crystal-clear memory of that vision. '''Forever.'''
** Alice cannot sleep. Sleep, as mentioned above, is imperative to one's emotional and psychological wellbeing, and the lack of it may well contribute to the declining sanity of older vampires like Aro. The REM stage of sleep in particular is essential for allowing the unconscious mind to process information gathered throughout the day in the form of dreams. Alice might have nightmares if she could sleep, but instead she has the visions themselves haunting her every waking moment, with not even the chance of exhausted, dreamless collapse to help her escape from them.
** And as insult to injury: Nobody else in the entire series seems to have realized any of this. Not Edward, not Jasper, not Carlisle or Bella or any of the Cullens at all - nobody who benefits from Alice's future vision ever once acknowledges the full extent of the burden her "gift" places on her. The most anyone ever does is apologize for the strain they put on her while they all gleefully use her like a walking 8-ball, and it's always in the context of apologizing for the effort she puts into watching the future, rather than the horrors she might be watching when she does or the hellish memories she'll be left with. No one ever expresses a desire to help her cope with anything that she sees. No one ever so much as stops to wonder whether they're being fair by throwing Alice at a problem without much more than a quick "thanks" after everything is said and done. Alice is stuck with an absolutely nightmarish "gift" and even the people she loves best don't seem to realize or care how awful it can truly be.
*** Jasper and Alice do seem more private in their relationship than any of the other vampire couples among the good guys. Maybe - hopefully - Jasper ''is'' aware, and can use his gift to at least take the edge off the horror for her... when he isn't having to focus more on not slaughtering nearby humans, in any event.
*** Aro, who wants so desperately to draw Alice into the fold that he's entirely willing to bait her into attacking him by ''killing her mate in front of her'' just so that she can be taken prisoner and ultimately brainwashed into joining, likely wouldn't care even if any of this ''did'' occur to him. If she has a rough time among her own coven, who despite their faults do genuinely seem to have grown to love each other, think how much worse it would be if the ''Volturi'' got their hands on her.

* '''Alice's visions.''' As discussed in the Nightmare Fuel page, when you take a closer look at it, her brand of future vision is ''far'' from being just a handy cheat-sheet to help the main cast stay a step ahead of the game. Let's beak it down:

*** Jasper and Alice do seem more private in their relationship than any of the other vampire couples among the ggood guys. Maybe - hopefully - Jasper ''is'' aware, and can use his gift to at least take the edge off the horror for her... when he isn't having to focus more on not slaughtering nearby humans, in any event.
*** Aro, who wants so desperately to draw Alice into the fold that he's willing to bait her into attacking him just so that she can be taken prisoner and ultimately brainwashed into joining, likely wouldn't care even if any of this ''did'' occur to him. If she has a rough time among her own coven, who despite their faults do genuinely seem to have grown to love each other, think how much worse it would be if the Volturi got their hands on her.

** First, there's the nature of the visions themselves. It is made annually clear throughout the series that Alice can only see the future as it is ''most likely to unfold'' at the time that a vision occurs to her, regardless of whether she actively seeks out a certain part of the future or not. Between her chess games with Edward and her commentary regarding the state of the future whenever somebody commits themselves to a major decision, we have plenty of evidence that it's not a matter of seeing what will happen if she flips a coin and it lands on heads; rather, she's seeing that the coin is currently 'most likely' to land on heads unless she or someone else alters their current plans or behaviors. Which is fine, until you realize this means that '''any time she receives a vision of someone being hunted, or injured, or killed, she is seeing the ''most likely'' course of that person's fate.'''

** Alice cannot sleep. Sleep, as mentioned above, is imperative to one's emotional and psychological wellbeing, and the lack of it may well contribute to the declining sanity of older vampires like Aro. The REM stage of sleep in particular is essential for allowing the unconscious mind to process information gathered throughout the day in the form of dreams. Alice might have nightmares if she could sleep, but instead she has the visions themselves haunting her every waking moment, with not even the chance of exhausted, dreamless collapse to help her escape from them.

* So imprinting is intended to get the best mate for the new generation of wolves. Age isn't an issue, and species isn't an issue (since Jacob imprinted on Renesmee, a half-vampire). Does that mean that werewolves can imprint on wolves and/or dogs, since they would be able to have sex with them in wolf form?

* One of the bigger criticisms of the series is the nonessential re-writing of vampire rules, i.e., sparkling in sunlight. Why is it okay in books like HarryPotter and ''Literature/PercyJacksonAndTheOlympians'', and not Twilight? Because when those series' made stuff up, (the concept of parsulmouths, Athena's demigod children fearing spiders, ect.) they made sure that it didn't contradict existing lore. There's almost nothing partaking to snakes in particular in the lore of wizards and witches, and Athena having demigod children (through different means rather than physically, thereby working around her status as an eternal virgin) is never mentioned in myths. However, lore of vampires very clearly states the sunlight kills, or at least hurts, them. The problem is that the books are disregarding classic lore in favor of its own rules.

* I had a moment where I looked into the hypothetical fridge and thought: "James really did everything Edward said he wanted to do. Wait a minute..." Maybe, just maybe, James and Victoria are meant to represent [[JekyllAndHyde Edward and Bella]] - only their dark side. They are and do everything Bella and Edward wish they could do and be: James drinks human blood, and he gets to hurt and try to kill Bella. (If you don't think Edward wanted to do this, reread the chapter Confessions in {{Twilight}}.) Victoria is a mated vampire, who by all accounts has wild, passionate, unmarital sex with her mate. (If you think Bella's wishes were deeper than this, you never read the Twilight Saga.) Even their talents are mirrored: No one can hide their thoughts from mindreader Edward, as much as no one can hide physically from tracker James; Bella's gifts allow her to hide her thoughts, even from Edward, whereas Victoria's gift is hiding, physically, and as such being uncatchable. (For all we know it even works on James.)

** Actually the books specifically say that the werewolves run several degrees warmer than humans. They don't wear shirts because they're always warm. It's made relevant to the plot when Jacob has to share a sleeping bag with Bella to keep her from freezing to death.
*** Which turns this into ''FridgeLogic'' - if the shapeshifters/wolf boys really run several degrees warmer, they would naturally be inclined toward wearing more clothing, not less, because it would mean there's a much larger difference between their body temperature and the temperature around them. Think about how cold you get when you're running a fever. And the wolf boys live in Washington. They should be chattering away at all times - it's not like they have any body fat to help keep them feeling warm.
*** Yes... applying laws of science in a fantasy book about sparkling vampires with pyschic powers and shapeshifting wolves...
*** This is a fridge brilliance section, dude, it's where we explain things logically.
*** It passes the time, that and Meyer started doing it first.
*** That would work as a justification if the books hadn't tried to explain it scientifically to begin with.

** ''InterviewWithTheVampire'' actually mentions this in-book, saying that no-one knows if vampires die upon being burned.

** Actually the books specifically say that the werewolves run several degrees warmer than humans. They don't wear shirts because they're always warm. It's made relevant to the plot when Jacob has to share a sleeping bag with Bella to prevent her freezing to death.

*** Yes..applying laws of science in a fantasy book about sparkling vampires with pyschic powers and shapeshifting wolves...

* I hated the first half of the novel ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' because there was too much of Bella obsessing over Edward. I thought it was hokey and dull adolescent literature crap. Then the second half of the novel was more interesting than the first. After I finished the fridge brilliance hit me: Edward is a vampire. He drives women crazy with how beautiful he is - it's a part of him being a predator. Bella spent the first half of the book trying to understand WHY she was so obsessed with Edward.
** On the subject of ''Literature/{{Twilight}}'' and vampires-as-predators; the whole "sparkling" thing. At first, it just seemed, well, kind of silly. I mean, why? But then I remembered the whole little speech about being the "perfect predator," and it made sense. The sparkling is a lure for future victims; after all, ridiculous or not, wouldn't ''you'' do a double take if you saw someone sparkling? And people who are less wise (someone like Bella, for example) would probably go check out what's going on, leading to an easy way to get prey without causing a whole mess of attention. It's still a little odd to me, but it's no longer gratuitous.

*** The only problem is, Edward addresses his perfection as a luring predator, and then mentions that everyone but Bella finds him and the rest of the Cullens crazy amounts of creepy. He returns to that point frequently, that she's so unusual for wanting to be anywhere near him or any other vampire. I guess this means that vampires prefer the blood of people experiencing Lust Induced Brain Freeze?

*** Also, that completely and totally ignores the whole friggin point of vampires having to stay out of the sunlight. The sunlight is supposed to be detrimental to vampires not make them even better killing machines! It's their weakness and having that weakness is an essential part of [[strike: all vampire lore]] vampire lore post-1922. I think this one is more a case of Meyer's habit of thinking that writing a perfect character is better than writing a character with flaws or weaknesses.

*** I always thought that their sparkliness was a weakness. Instead of bursting into flames, they sparkled. While it does not cause death, the sparkling would require more investigation and more investigation means the world finds out about vampires.
*** Except that people ''not'' believing in vampires is a fairly recent phenomenon, from an historical perspective.
*** The main problem this troper has with the sparkling is that it breaks one of the two traits that the vast majority (if not all. Hey, I am only on the L's in the vampire dictionary right now. Give me a break, this book is thick) of vampires have: A strong attachment to the night. Sparkling like diamonds in the sun isn't exactly creature of the night material... And although it could be dismissed as OurVampiresAreDifferent, considering all the other deviations you gotta wonder where the line is when something should stop being called a vampire and instead be like... a angel/faerie/SOMETHING instead. This led to this troper's fridge brilliance moment when she realized that the novels would have been a whole lot more kick butt if instead of vampires, the Cullen's and their ilk were gods like the Greek or other polytheistic ones. Shining/sparkling when revealing themselves to a mortal? Check the myth of Dionysis's mother! Requiring blood sacrifice? Well, the Inca gods needed it. And let us not forget immortality and [[DoubleStandardRapeDivineOnMortal creepy courting maneuvers...]] Sparkling would almost be awesome in this case.
** One thing this troper hated about the ''Twilight'' series is how every character, from the leads like Bella, Edward and Jacob, to the BigBad of Eclipse, Victoria, and her right-hand-man, Riley, to the eponymous character of ''The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner'', are cripplingly motivated by "love". Bella is catatonic for four months when Edward leaves her; Edward tries to kill himself when he thinks Bella is dead; Jacob tries to kill himself when he finds out Bella and Edward are married; Victoria assembles a newborn army to avenge her mate, James; Riley follows Victoria to his own demise, loving her and believing that she loves him; and Bree Tanner, a newborn, overrides her most powerful instinct - self-preservation - when she realizes that Diego , who she has known all of two days, is dead. It made me sick to see how pathetic they all became...but then I realized, Stephnie Meyer is writing about a world where true love, real love, love worth fighting and dying for, actually exists. And suddenly, I was glad for it. [[SomeAnvilsNeedTobeDropped Because, what's wrong with that?]] --MollyWalker
*** Yeh, what's wrong with thinking that a man who stalks you, breaks into your house, watches you while you sleep without your knowledge, breaks your car to stop you from going to see your friends, threatens to commit suicide if you ever leave him, badly hurts you during sex, tries to force you to have an abortion (and mind, this troper's pro-choice, but that's the point, pro-''choice''), wants to murder you all the time and drink your blood, abandons you to four months of hell knowing full well you're creepy obsessed and will go crazy, [[{{Anvilicious}} forces you to marry him against your wishes in order to have sex with him]] and become a vampire even though you're barely legal, carries on a dangerous relationship with you in full knowledge that if you so much as trip, you're almost-literal toast, and has murdered quite a lot of people in the past is totally romantic? People these days, so cynical.
*** [[SomeAnvilsNeedToBeDropped What's wrong with that is that that's not the way the real world works at all, and teaching impressionable adolescent girls to be morons at young ages over what they think must be true love because they read it in the perfect perfection of perfectness that is Twilight is a really bad idea?]]

* So vampires in this verse are extremely cold. So cold that when Bella is cuddling with Edward she's shivering even with a blanket wrapped around her! When they had sex while she was human wouldn't he probably freeze her? Or cause frostbite? Wouldn't it be more painful than pleasurable? Also wouldn't his junk essentially act like a ice box for his sperm, constantly keeping it frozen thus making it impossible for her to get pregnant? My brain hurts.

** Those things are nice, but 'technology' is often misleading in war. The most complicated, expensive, and recently-produced device is not always the best - and this would not be a Conventional or Limited War. Such expensive, resource-intensive, hard-to-maintain devices could never be the chief weapons of the world's war effort. It would be a Guerilla War like The Philippines, North China, Cuba, Belarus, Afghanistan - and a Total War like WorldWarOne or WorldWarTwo. Centres of government and administration, utilities and transport, and the munitions factories and petroleum industries needed to continue the war would all be horribly vulnerable and frankly impossible to defend alongside the entire civilian population. Either large areas and populations would have to go undefended, or lightly-armed militia (coupled with a willingness to devastate huge areas with the use of fire-support regardless of civilian deaths and maimings) would have to be a stop-gap before they received sufficient heavy weapons 2-10 years after the mobilisation to a Total War World Economy - and this is assuming that the vehicle-portable heavy weapons are even able to hit and kill the damned creatures in the first place. If they are not, then the fighting would have to depend on fire-support up to and perhaps including tactical nuclear weapons. Victory over the Vampires could be possible, but the world would have much if not most of its people killed in the toughest and biggest unconventional war humanity had ever executed.