The Darkest Hour
is a fanfic written by Das Mervin and Mrs. Hyde (of Das Sporking fame). It is set in the infamous The Twilight Saga series, and attempts to deal with the backstory of the character Edward Cullen. In this story, Edward struggles with becoming a vampire, and with the morality of feeding on humans as opposed to the less sustaining animals. It have some other companion stories: The Thorns Remain, which deals with Rosalie Cullen, His Brother's Keeper for Emmett Cullen, and Curiouser and Curiouser for Jasper and Alice Cullen. The goal of the stories is to accomplish what the canon material did not - to make sympathetic and flawed characters.
In 2022, Mrs Hyde released The Blue Hour, her rewrite of Twilight.
The Darkest Hour contains examples of...
- All Women Are Lustful: Most human women find male vampires supernaturally alluring. Bella, however, is more resistant than most.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Alice Cullen
- Cursed with Awesome: Edward can read the thoughts of anyone within a radius of about a mile or two. However, he can't turn it off, he's immortal, and he never sleeps. The story opens with him vicariously experiencing sex between his (adoptive) mother and father.
- Emergency Transformation: Edward was turned to save him from influenza, Rosalie was violently assaulted and left to die, Emmett was mauled by a bear.
- Fantastic Racism: Vampires view humans as food, for the most part. Edward is soundly laughed at for swearing off human blood.
- Fix Fic: where the thing to be fixed is the original series tendency to
waste plot oportunities and ignore any Character Development opportunities. - I Am a Monster: After Edward eats a rapist.
- Kiss of the Vampire: Feeding is described as a sensual, erotic experience for most vampires. Which is why animal-eaters are seen as freaks.
- Our Vampires Are Different: They can survive in the sunlight, and seem to absorb blood directly into their veins instead of digesting it.
- Rape as Drama: Rosalie is turned into a vampire after being raped and murdered.
- Shown Their Work: Mervin and Hyde put in a lot of detail about the setting, including mentions of social/political movements, period slang, economic conditions, fashion...
