Anti-Spork: The Darkest Hour and Twilight - Chapter 1 Part 1 (Section B):
I underestimated my own ability to rant. I'm afraid I'll have to do this in three sections...
Edward runs to the roof of his high school and takes a moment to calm himself down. He mentions that the mental voices of people are much more muffled up there. Actually, the volume of mental voices and, occasionally, what people around him are thinking are constantly catalogued in this fic. The fact that he can read minds is repeated as constant to the readers as it is to Edward. This helps us relate to him even more, as we start to accept mind-reading as an inherent part of his character, instead of a super power tacked onto him.
Something else that is a constant is his bloodlust.
‘He filled his lungs with the cool night air, breathing in the sharp, sticky scent of the surrounding pines, the bitterness of road dust, the acrid tang of wood smoke, the cool blue of the Penobscot…and beneath it all, the maddening sweetness of the thousands of hearts pumping their thick red blood in the city below him.’
Whenever we see a new location, the level of mental noise and how Edward is dealing with his bloodlust are two pieces of information that are guaranteed to come up. Trying to cope with these two things have been the focus of his new life thus far, and the constant reminder gives us a small taste of what it would feel like to live if you were constantly plagued by the desire to eat everyone you meet, but is also unfortunately privy to their most private thoughts.
Having to resist the temptation of blood is horrible, but Edward admits that it’s far better than what is happening at home…except that bloodlust and actual lust is directly connected. The abundance of blood is only making his physical arousal worse. That could translate to a very weird fetish.
That said, I’m becoming very, very interested in The Blue Hour because of these tantalising hints dropped in The Darkest Hour. So, the want of blood literally translates to boner…I wonder how this Edward’s meeting with Bella will go down, especially since she would be the equivalent of the sexiest woman on earth to him.
Anyways, overpowered by lust multiplied two fold, Edward gives up and wanks off in the corner of the school building. Again, we are treated to his view of sex: it’s something as irresistible as blood to him, and he fights to conquer it as much as he does his bloodlust (‘that horrible, insistent arousal that sank its teeth into his groin every time he had the misfortune to be too near to an amorous couple…’). To him, it almost seems that masturbation (and anything related to sex) is deeply shameful and sinful…which would make sense, considering the period he was born and raised in. All of his angst regarding his bodily functions just makes me look forward to his meeting Bella in the middle of a crowded classroom so much more. It’s going to be awesome.
Edward, here, sees his body as almost a separate entity to him (‘It didn’t care who or what brought on this frenzy - it only demanded release.’). Again, we see a rift between his mind and his body which is only going to get worse in the upcoming years. He hates his vampiric existence, just as canon!Edward does. He hates the body he is in. However, he does so for a good reason.
Canon!Edward thinks of himself as a ‘monster’…but we never see why. Sure, he killed hundreds of people before…but he doesn’t seem too concerned about that. In fact, the way he talks about his past has an almost prideful tone to it (‘In another compartment of my head, I was already sorting through the range of tortures I’d bore witness to in my vigilante days, searching for the most painful of them. He would suffer for this. He would writhe in agony.'). Sure, he has the stupid ability of sparkling in the sun…but that part of his existence has brought him nothing but good things, including getting Bella’s ‘love’. Sure, he can’t sleep, but even that’s an advantage, since he can spend more time honing his skills as a Stu.
Hyde!Edward, however, has plenty of reason, as we will see, and the fact that his body is frozen in time is the least of them. He is an adult in mind, and a quite mature one at that, and to be ruled by a hormonal teenager’s body must be the ultimate humiliation.
Again, Edward treats the whole task of masturbation like, well, a task, and a very unpleasant one at that. He hates himself for enjoying it and indulging in it, but can’t help but take pleasure in the sensations. I find myself truly sympathising with him, again, if not empathising.
The session is quickly over, because his body is perpetually teenage, which means no stamina…well. Mrs. Hyde, please re-write the Twilight series soon! I can’t wait to find out what this means for he and Bella’s married life.
His mood immediately sours (even more) after finishing his business, and he internally mocks himself as he cleans himself up. Quickly, he tries to distract himself again, because he knows that (as a teenager) he would soon need to go for a second round if he didn’t. So…he’s short but frequent? Really, please, I need to hear Hyde!Bella’s point of view NOW.
Choosing possibly the worst line of thought to distract himself from the bloodlust, he decides to point out to us what has been obvious for the past two page: whilst he is growing and maturing as a person, his body is never going to change. He will always be stuck at the awkward age of seventeen.
Apparently, orgasm temporarily stops his mind-reading abilities, because his own sensations are overpowering those of others, and now the voices of the night return again. (This must make abstaining from pleasuring himself even harder, as he knows that the only way he can gain a short while of piece is through self-stimulation, and yet he feels dirty doing it. Conflict, isn’t it delicious?)
What follows is a long paragraph about random people on the street and their thoughts and worries. Interestingly, each person described has their name included. Edward literally knows these people. He know their names, their occupation, their current worries, their goals…This sheds a new light on why he is determined to stick to an animal-diet.
The Cullen in canon…well, we literally have no idea why they bother to only eat animals. They clearly don’t care about the sanctity of human life. Look at Carlisle, the ‘most compassionate’ of the Cullens (whose superpower is actually compassion)! In the illustrated guide, we learn that he lived with the Catholics for a while, during which time they would bring him bleeding humans to test his resolve.
You know what he did?
Nothing.
He didn’t try to stop them. He didn’t try to persuade them. He couldn’t even find the common decency to save the bleeding human…or even mercy kill them.
He stood right by and watched someone bleed to death in front of him, and was proud of himself because he didn’t eat that person.
So, if they care so little about humans…why only eat animals? The only reason seems to be so that they can look down upon the ‘barbaric’ vampires. They do it to make themselves feel good.
Hyde!Edward, however, does it because he knows every person he ever pass on the street. It’s damned hard to murder someone when you know their name, their hobby, their family composition, their fears, and their treasures.
You know how, in fiction, if you have a name, the odds of you being killed off are immediately vastly reduced? Well, everyone on earth is like this for Edward.
Secondly, all the thoughts he sees seem to be negative. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or not, but none of the people listed are really thinking ‘happy thoughts’, so to speak. I wonder if that’s a limitation of his power. If it is, it would really suck, to only be able to know the bad sides of society, to look at a person, and be only capable of seeing their vengeful parts…
But this also sets up his romance with Bella brilliantly. She would be the only person on Earth whose dark side he wouldn’t know immediately. She is the only person who he can enter a relationship with completely unbiased. He would actually have to get to know her and work hard at trying to figure her out. They would actually need to talk, something that is essential to relationship, and yet doesn’t happen all that much in canon.
Edward informs us that his ability to control his mind-reading is improving, and he tries hard to tune people out, hoping that, one day, he’ll get so good that he will actually be able to ignore the voices constantly in his head.
It is a bit presumptuous, but I’m going to propose that he is not only doing this so that he is not driven mad by the chorus of voice from people around him…but also because he respects the privacy of those very people.
I have noticed that in badly-written fanfiction, if a character has mind-reading as an ability, they are almost guaranteed to go around rifling through everyone’s thoughts like they owned it - the exact thing canon!Edward does, coincidentally. To meet a person who can effortlessly read minds and yet has the decency not to use that ability really speaks well of their moral character…as well as the moral character of whoever is writing them.
Edward has a very interesting way of describing his transformation: ‘He’d awaken to find himself dead and his head ringing with a clamour of voices that he didn’t recognize.’
Again, Mrs. Hyde is not pulling punches.
Vampires are dead.
This is an issue that Meyer constantly skirts around. Her vampires are hard, beautiful, graceful, and even pleasant smelling. She has literally done EVERYTHING she could in order to disassociate them from the fact that they are, at the end of the day, walking corpses. Vampirism is associated with new and better life, heaven, so to speak, rather than eternal un-death.
The vampires in Hyde’s world, particularly the Cullens, have no illusions, however. They are dead and are living a warped version of life that must be an affront to God. And this makes sense, because it sets up why Edward would be reluctant to turn Bella. It’s not just that he would be damning her soul…he would be killing her and replacing her with someone who talks, walks, and acts like her…but is fundamentally different from her. He would have lost the woman he loved forever.
I expect this is also a part of the deconstruction of Twilight: walking corpses are not romantic. Vampires are freaking dead. They are like zombies, but with a blood fetish instead of a brains one.
We are also presented here with the second disadvantage of being able to read minds: your mind will never be your own again. You will never have peace, or even a moment of quiet, to yourself. In the case of immortals, like Edward, you are literally going to be stuck for the rest of eternity with your head constantly occupied by dozens of people who you have never spoken to. Like it or not, you are going to get dragged into other people’s drama and problems, because they are worrying about it, and thus you are worrying about it by proxy.
He momentarily mentally grumbles at Carlisle for not warning him about that part of becoming a vampire, before chastising himself for being unfair to Carlisle. Carlisle couldn’t have know that he would get this power…but he did know that Edward would have a power of some kind. The vampires in Hyde’s universe can apparently sense humans who would make great vampires, who have the potential of special abilities. They are attracted to them.
This makes sense as an ability, as stronger vampires mean the better survival of the entire race. I can clearly see how vampire can evolve that ability…unlike sparkling. This also sets up the conflict in Mrs. Hyde’s re-write of the Twilight series. It would explain why so many vampires seem to go after Bella, even though she is only Edward’s ‘singer’. In canon, it almost appeared that Bella was the singer of every goddamned vampire on earth, which would be the most ‘almost-meta’ superpower ever. She literally has the ability to make every vampire (a superior race that she idolises) on earth love her. In Hyde’s universe, people wouldn’t be coming after Bella because she's just that desirable, they would be doing it because they know she has a powerful ability and, thus, can be useful to them.
Edward then muses about the concept of ‘powerful vampires’, and bitterly monologues that no being can call themselves powerful when they are too weak to deny the demands of their body. He couldn’t curb his arousal when he needed to. He couldn’t stop the urge to drinking people dry. He couldn’t refrain from listening in on Carlisle and Esme’s ‘conjugal activities’.
Again, we see how he holds himself responsible for absolutely everything, and how self-loathing he is. He finishes the diatribe with a sarcastic, ‘Some vampire.’
This is very interesting as it appears that, to Edward, an essential part of being a vampire is being able to suppress one’s urges. It doesn’t even occur to him that vampires would drink people's blood without remorse. It doesn’t even cross his mind that vampires are ‘meant to’ kill humans (as Meyer often declares). To him, to become a powerful vampire, you must be able to completely resist the urge of human blood. No doubt, he learned that ideal from Carlisle, but just the fact that he takes the sanctity of life as a given is deeply refreshing after reading the anti-human propaganda of Twilight.
We have seen canon!Edward’s opinion of murder and torture before, in the quote from Midnight Sun, now, we see Hyde!Edward’s. And really, which of these two would you like to have a chat to: the prideful torture technician or someone who actually believes murder and cannibalism (and symbolic rape) to be wrong?
He thoughts are interrupted when a teenage girl somewhere begins fantasizing about what sex would be like and imagined him as the potential partner. He runs over to the other side of the building, and, apparently, that’s enough distance so that he can’t hear her thoughts clearly. The high school must be located in a very densely populated area, since Edward has a range of a couple of miles and appears to be particularly sensitive to these kinds of things. Interestingly, it is revealed that the minds of people who are asleep are like static to him. This…uh…I don’t think this has a significance. It’s just a nice little detail that makes his powers that much more rounded.
He admits that he was ecstatic to find himself popular with the girls upon his transformation, especially since he was a nerdy bookworm before. This, Meyer, is realism. There is no teenage boy on earth who would not be pleased that he is getting female attention, even the gay ones. Humans are social animals. When you take one who has been an outcast before and suddenly turn him into the object of everyone’s desires, anyone will love it. We crave affection. We crave attention. Changing your diet does not automatically make you the most condescending bastard ever born. Anyone would be happy that people around them actually like them.
What is also interesting here is the description of Edward - skinny with perpetually messy hair. Given Mervin’s *ahem* mild obsession with Pattison’s hair, I think we can be sure who this Edward’s appearance is based on. Apart from the fact that Mervin thinks Pattison’s hair is awesome, there is another reason why she chose to portray Edward this way: she has no idea what Edward looks like. Sure, about 90% of the books is taken up by Bella topping herself in describing Edward with the most ridiculous purple prose possible…but those descriptions have no substance. It is repeated over and over again how he is ‘beautiful’ and ‘perfect’ and ‘handsome’, but at the end of the day, we still have no idea what he looks like. Does he have a square jaw, or is his face more round? Are his eyes almond shaped, or more narrow and tapered? Are his lips full or thin? Is his nose low and narrow or high? We have no idea. We are never given any information on what he looks like. We are just asked to believe that he is the hottest man alive because the Bella is the ultimate judge of what is attractive and all we have to do is bow down before her verdicts. Ask any Twitard, and they will give you a completely different description of Edward simply because he was never actually described in the books.
Edward compares his popularity with Douglas Fairbanks, an actor/director/producer/screenwriter active from 1915 to 1934 who was regarded as the ‘King of Hollywood’ in his day. This, Meyer, is RESEARCH. It exists, and you better start doing it right now, because it makes a story so much better. Not only does it give the sense of realism, the idea that maybe this actually happened, it also helps the readers immerse in the story. These little details complete a world.
It also helps to prevent stupid, stupid mistakes (like claiming there’s a tropical island off the WEST coast of Brazil) that snaps your readers out of the story (like it happens every chapter in Twilight).
Well, he indulged in his popularity for a while…until Esme happened.
Carlisle and he were going home from work on a train when a trainwreck occurred. Esme was about to become the only casualty. Carlisle, being the compassionate individual he is, rescues her and offers her the choice of succumbing to her injuries or become a walking undead. As we know, she chose the vampire option, and Edward and Carlisle are forced to retreat from society and take her to a remote location where she can learn how to control her body.
Despite wanting to stick close to canon, I see that Mrs. Hyde has changed Esme’s backstory all but completely. And I am very, VERY happy for it. All of these changes happened for a reason, a good reason.
This is a very small detail in a mountain of awesome, but I like the image of Carlisle and Edward working together like father and son. It emphasises the love (familial love) they have for each other, and show us how much Edward admires Carlisle and wishes to become like him. This also gives the feeling that they are family much better. In Twilight, I’ve never gotten the feeling that the Cullens were anything close to what a family should be like. The children roam free and cause trouble (by committing mass-murder), and their father figure never does anything about it. We never see them having family time (except for that one base-ball game), we never see them actually talking with each other. They give off the feeling of a bunch of strangers forced together by the author to wait on the protagonist hand and foot, which is exactly what they are, actually.
In canon, Esme was trying to commit suicide.
Wait, let me elaborate.
Esme had lost her child and was so depressed that her depression created a cliff out of thin air in Wisconsin and she jumped off it, because without a child, she has no value.
Let’s ignore the research fail and sexist beliefs and instead focus on the fact that she WANTED to die. What she wanted was oblivion.
What did Carlisle, the most compassionate person ever, do?
He changed her. He made sure that she would live FOREVER in a body that is incapable of bearing children.
He deliberately made sure that she will never have a child again, and then gave her IMMORTALITY, so she can spend an eternity being tormented by her loss.
Here, it was a very sudden accident. We can believe that Esme wanted to live, that she had dreams and goals she still wanted to accomplish, and that she never desired death. Here, Carlisle is actually saving her instead of subjecting her to psychological torture.
This also gets rid of the unfortunate implications of ‘if you’re a woman and you have no child, you might as well go ahead and throw yourself off a cliff’, as well as the research fail of cliffs in Wisconsin.
He took her opinion into account, because he knew being a vampire was not a pleasant experience.
In Twilight, he never asked. He never even considered whether she would want to become a monstrous walking corpse. He never bothered to think that if she committed suicide, then maybe she didn’t want to live. In fact, out of the people he has turned, only Edward was by consent. None of the others ever expressed a wish to become a vampire. He just swooped in and changed them, dooming them to eternity whether they like it or not, and had the balls to think of himself as a saviour afterwards.
Of course, vampires were all but portrayed as gods in Twilight. There really is no reason why people wouldn’t give anything to live that kind of life, is there? I mean, why wouldn’t they all want to become raging Sues and Stus?
In the illustrated guide, we find that every one of the Cullens had a body count reaching into the hundreds under their name.
Why?
Because after they were changed, Carlisle never bothered to ease them into humanity. He just threw them into a high school, where they are in close quarters with humans all day, and hoped they would be strong enough to resist the blood. When they inevitably gave in, he just moved away for a while.
He never had the patience to teach them how to deal with this change. He never did anything to protect the humans he lived around. He never bothered to prevent blood from staining the hands of his own children.
He just went straight ahead and ‘saved’ them, and then did everything in his power to ensure that they would become murderers.
Look at when Bella was changed. It was done right in Forks, and they stayed there afterwards. There was never any plan to move away for a while. No one ever taught her how to use her body, and just expected her to be able to hunt a few hours after her transformation. Hell, no one even explained to her the sensory overload that she will experience, despite there being plenty of time to do so.
These people didn’t give a damn.
Hyde!Carlisle did.
He mentored every one of his vampiric children to make sure they could deal with their new circumstance, knew how to use their body, was capable of performing everyday acts without breaking everything they touched, and, most importantly, could resist the temptation of human blood. Doubtlessly, he also helped Edward deal with the voices in his head as well.
Every change here made Carlisle that much better an individual. Instead of a sociopathic, paedophilic monster with a God-complex, we can actually believe that he is a good man now.
Meyer, stop your bullshit of free will and choice. THIS is how you depict choice, because, you know, there is actually a choice being made here. Changing someone when they are unconscious does not choice make!
Anyways, Edward had to go through the same thing, proving that Carlisle did indeed make sure to tutor all of his protégée, to make things as safe as possible for everyone involved. See? THAT is dedication. THAT is compassion. THAT is a man that can actually be described as noble and decent.
Carlisle had smuggled Edward out of the hospital, leaving an unclaimed corpse with a fake death certificate in his place, changed him, and moved to the rainforests in Michigan. Edward was gently eased back into human society, starting with small villages and towns, moving southward while he dealt with all the changes his body went through (damn, that sounds like puberty). When he was in control enough to deal with moderate sized cities, they started living in more populated areas, so that Carlisle can continue his work as a doctor.
Edward mentions here, for the first time, that he wants to eventually join Carlisle in his work. It’s cute. It also makes his character more rounded and his relationship with Carlisle more solid, but mostly, it’s just very, very cute. I doubt that’s going to work out well for him though, especially since he looks like a teenager. No hospital is going to take him seriously…
Anyways, Edward goes back to his flashback to reveal that Esme was an actual nurse! This is fantastic because not only does it give Esme an identity outside of ‘woman who was obsessed with baby’, it also gave her a similarity to Carlisle. Esme in Twilight was flatter than cardboard. She had no purpose outside of being the stereotypical mother. She had no life outside of playing house with the Cullens. Here, we see that she actually had a profession, something she was good at, something that she excelled in. She was saving people’s lives. This is awesome. It also gets rid of the stupid ‘love-at-first-sight’ thing, because those don’t work. You can have admiration or lust at first sight, but you cannot have love. Love is built on a relationship of mutual understanding and respect. You cannot understand and respect someone who you have not even talked to. Her knowledge of medicine gives her something to relate to Carlisle about. It also means that, since they will be working with each other frequently, they develop trust and equality. Doctors cannot function without nurses and vice versa. Symbolically, she is an integral part of Carlisle’s dream. This is a much healthier depiction of a romance than ‘he kissed my hurts away when I was a tiny little girl, so I’m going to bear his babies for him as thanks’.
It’s also less paedophilic.
They went to the forests in central Maine with Esme. Edward enjoyed the journey as, away from people, there were a lot less voices in his head, and peace is hard to come by for him (see? This keeps coming up). He also enjoyed it quite a bit because, this time, he was the authority figure. He was experienced and wise, and could give advice to Esme. Every teenager knows what I mean. The opportunity to play adult is always exhilarating when you are at this stage in your life. This opportunity also cements for him how much he has grown, to compare his current position with that of Esme. This offers proof to him that he is becoming better, and, knowing how self-loathing Edward is, this must be very important to him.
(By the way, Edward and Esme’s surnames are Mason and Evanson, not Masen and Evansen, because THOSE NAME ARE SPELLED WITH AN ‘O’. Changing a letter of the name to make it more SPESHUL for your Sues and Stus is literally the most clichéd Mary Sue tactic in the book. And it looks STUPID.)
It wasn’t surprising for Edward that Esme fell in love with Carlisle because, after all, who wouldn’t fall in love with someone so fantastic? And because I have my slash-goggles on, this little passage made me giggle. ‘Carlisle was simply one of the strongest, most compassionate, and, well, for lack of a better word, most noble men that Edward had ever met.’ Indeed.
Note that he considers Carlisle to be ‘strong’. And especially note how ‘strength’ is put in the same category as ‘compassion’ and ‘nobility’. It shows you exactly how much Carlisle’s beliefs influenced Edward, and exactly what he considers to be strength. This isn’t the Edward that exulted in his ability to crush puny human’s skulls. This is the Edward for whom compassion and strength are synonymous concepts.
Damn, I already love this character.
Anyways, he proceeds to express surprise that Carlisle actually loved Esme back. I mean, a man and a woman stuck in a rainforest together for years, sharing the same love for medicine…why would they ever fall in love with each other? Really, Edward, why are you so surprised that Carlisle would fall for a woman?
I’m sorry, I really have to compose myself. The real slash doesn’t come in until Chapter 4…
Edward explains his shock as having always thought of Carlisle as ‘married to his work’. That, and he had been single for three-hundred-years. Right. Sure. I totally believe that.
I wonder how he took care of his needs during the three centuries. I mean, your hand doesn’t always work, right? There’s no way it would satisfy him for three centuries…I wonder if he stayed with the Catholics in this canon as well…
Edward proclaims that he is genuinely happy for Carlisle and Esme but ’…surely such an understandably old-fashioned fellow as Carlisle wouldn’t have taken with such a thoroughly modern woman as the divorced suffragette Nurse Esme Evanson.’ Yeah. Totally happy for them. Totally.
Edward is gay in every depiction of him I have ever seen. It’s an integral part of his character. You can change anything about him, but you can’t get rid of that.
Also, I squee-d at the fact that Esme is a divorced suffragette. First of all, there is no ‘true love’. People do not go through life deliberately celibate, just waiting for their ‘true love’ (at least not most people). And people do not immediately know who their ‘true love’ is. Every single person has had to go through bumpy, if not numerous, relationship before they can work out what love even is. And the concept of ‘true love’ implies that love comes in levels, and some are less worth than others, which is deeply insulting to anyone who has so much as felt affection for another person before. Esme wasn’t waiting for Carlisle! She didn’t even know Carlisle existed!
This also shows that not every first love is your true one. In fact, most people would just about die of embarrassment if they had to live with their first love for the rest of their lives. Love is trial and error. If you don’t make mistakes, you will never get the answer you want.
And this shows that it’s not only possible, but encouraged for people to MOVE ON from their past relationship. When Esme divorced her husband, she didn’t spend the rest of her days as a zombie, nursing a Goddamn Hole ™ in her heart! She moved on!
And I absolutely love the irony of Mrs. Hyde turning the most stereotypically weepy, weak, emotional, submissive, meek female in canon into a suffragette. It’s AWESOME. I really don’t think I need to explain why.
‘Any discomfort Edward had felt at being inadvertently privy to their private thoughts and conversations during their courtship was largely overwhelmed by his honest happiness for Carlisle - and for Esme as well. She was a lovely woman, and she and Carlisle made each other so happy.’ Eddie? I really don’t think that’s discomfort. And I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t a result of you invading their privacy.
Seriously, read that and see how bitter it sounds. How Esme’s happiness is second to Carlisle’s, the implication being that Edward ‘Just Wanted His Beloved to Be Happy’. The whole ‘She was a lovely woman’ thing? How obvious can it get?
Carlisle and Esme married when she was fit for society again. ‘It had seemed a perfect arrangement.’ Aw…I wish I could hug him. If I ever get to meet Hyde!Edward, I would totally buy him an ice cream.
Go Forward to: Chapter 1 Part 1, Section C
Go back to: Chapter 1, Part 1, Section A
Edward runs to the roof of his high school and takes a moment to calm himself down. He mentions that the mental voices of people are much more muffled up there. Actually, the volume of mental voices and, occasionally, what people around him are thinking are constantly catalogued in this fic. The fact that he can read minds is repeated as constant to the readers as it is to Edward. This helps us relate to him even more, as we start to accept mind-reading as an inherent part of his character, instead of a super power tacked onto him.
Something else that is a constant is his bloodlust.
‘He filled his lungs with the cool night air, breathing in the sharp, sticky scent of the surrounding pines, the bitterness of road dust, the acrid tang of wood smoke, the cool blue of the Penobscot…and beneath it all, the maddening sweetness of the thousands of hearts pumping their thick red blood in the city below him.’
Whenever we see a new location, the level of mental noise and how Edward is dealing with his bloodlust are two pieces of information that are guaranteed to come up. Trying to cope with these two things have been the focus of his new life thus far, and the constant reminder gives us a small taste of what it would feel like to live if you were constantly plagued by the desire to eat everyone you meet, but is also unfortunately privy to their most private thoughts.
Having to resist the temptation of blood is horrible, but Edward admits that it’s far better than what is happening at home…except that bloodlust and actual lust is directly connected. The abundance of blood is only making his physical arousal worse. That could translate to a very weird fetish.
That said, I’m becoming very, very interested in The Blue Hour because of these tantalising hints dropped in The Darkest Hour. So, the want of blood literally translates to boner…I wonder how this Edward’s meeting with Bella will go down, especially since she would be the equivalent of the sexiest woman on earth to him.
Anyways, overpowered by lust multiplied two fold, Edward gives up and wanks off in the corner of the school building. Again, we are treated to his view of sex: it’s something as irresistible as blood to him, and he fights to conquer it as much as he does his bloodlust (‘that horrible, insistent arousal that sank its teeth into his groin every time he had the misfortune to be too near to an amorous couple…’). To him, it almost seems that masturbation (and anything related to sex) is deeply shameful and sinful…which would make sense, considering the period he was born and raised in. All of his angst regarding his bodily functions just makes me look forward to his meeting Bella in the middle of a crowded classroom so much more. It’s going to be awesome.
Edward, here, sees his body as almost a separate entity to him (‘It didn’t care who or what brought on this frenzy - it only demanded release.’). Again, we see a rift between his mind and his body which is only going to get worse in the upcoming years. He hates his vampiric existence, just as canon!Edward does. He hates the body he is in. However, he does so for a good reason.
Canon!Edward thinks of himself as a ‘monster’…but we never see why. Sure, he killed hundreds of people before…but he doesn’t seem too concerned about that. In fact, the way he talks about his past has an almost prideful tone to it (‘In another compartment of my head, I was already sorting through the range of tortures I’d bore witness to in my vigilante days, searching for the most painful of them. He would suffer for this. He would writhe in agony.'). Sure, he has the stupid ability of sparkling in the sun…but that part of his existence has brought him nothing but good things, including getting Bella’s ‘love’. Sure, he can’t sleep, but even that’s an advantage, since he can spend more time honing his skills as a Stu.
Hyde!Edward, however, has plenty of reason, as we will see, and the fact that his body is frozen in time is the least of them. He is an adult in mind, and a quite mature one at that, and to be ruled by a hormonal teenager’s body must be the ultimate humiliation.
Again, Edward treats the whole task of masturbation like, well, a task, and a very unpleasant one at that. He hates himself for enjoying it and indulging in it, but can’t help but take pleasure in the sensations. I find myself truly sympathising with him, again, if not empathising.
The session is quickly over, because his body is perpetually teenage, which means no stamina…well. Mrs. Hyde, please re-write the Twilight series soon! I can’t wait to find out what this means for he and Bella’s married life.
His mood immediately sours (even more) after finishing his business, and he internally mocks himself as he cleans himself up. Quickly, he tries to distract himself again, because he knows that (as a teenager) he would soon need to go for a second round if he didn’t. So…he’s short but frequent? Really, please, I need to hear Hyde!Bella’s point of view NOW.
Choosing possibly the worst line of thought to distract himself from the bloodlust, he decides to point out to us what has been obvious for the past two page: whilst he is growing and maturing as a person, his body is never going to change. He will always be stuck at the awkward age of seventeen.
Apparently, orgasm temporarily stops his mind-reading abilities, because his own sensations are overpowering those of others, and now the voices of the night return again. (This must make abstaining from pleasuring himself even harder, as he knows that the only way he can gain a short while of piece is through self-stimulation, and yet he feels dirty doing it. Conflict, isn’t it delicious?)
What follows is a long paragraph about random people on the street and their thoughts and worries. Interestingly, each person described has their name included. Edward literally knows these people. He know their names, their occupation, their current worries, their goals…This sheds a new light on why he is determined to stick to an animal-diet.
The Cullen in canon…well, we literally have no idea why they bother to only eat animals. They clearly don’t care about the sanctity of human life. Look at Carlisle, the ‘most compassionate’ of the Cullens (whose superpower is actually compassion)! In the illustrated guide, we learn that he lived with the Catholics for a while, during which time they would bring him bleeding humans to test his resolve.
You know what he did?
Nothing.
He didn’t try to stop them. He didn’t try to persuade them. He couldn’t even find the common decency to save the bleeding human…or even mercy kill them.
He stood right by and watched someone bleed to death in front of him, and was proud of himself because he didn’t eat that person.
So, if they care so little about humans…why only eat animals? The only reason seems to be so that they can look down upon the ‘barbaric’ vampires. They do it to make themselves feel good.
Hyde!Edward, however, does it because he knows every person he ever pass on the street. It’s damned hard to murder someone when you know their name, their hobby, their family composition, their fears, and their treasures.
You know how, in fiction, if you have a name, the odds of you being killed off are immediately vastly reduced? Well, everyone on earth is like this for Edward.
Secondly, all the thoughts he sees seem to be negative. I’m not sure if it’s intentional or not, but none of the people listed are really thinking ‘happy thoughts’, so to speak. I wonder if that’s a limitation of his power. If it is, it would really suck, to only be able to know the bad sides of society, to look at a person, and be only capable of seeing their vengeful parts…
But this also sets up his romance with Bella brilliantly. She would be the only person on Earth whose dark side he wouldn’t know immediately. She is the only person who he can enter a relationship with completely unbiased. He would actually have to get to know her and work hard at trying to figure her out. They would actually need to talk, something that is essential to relationship, and yet doesn’t happen all that much in canon.
Edward informs us that his ability to control his mind-reading is improving, and he tries hard to tune people out, hoping that, one day, he’ll get so good that he will actually be able to ignore the voices constantly in his head.
It is a bit presumptuous, but I’m going to propose that he is not only doing this so that he is not driven mad by the chorus of voice from people around him…but also because he respects the privacy of those very people.
I have noticed that in badly-written fanfiction, if a character has mind-reading as an ability, they are almost guaranteed to go around rifling through everyone’s thoughts like they owned it - the exact thing canon!Edward does, coincidentally. To meet a person who can effortlessly read minds and yet has the decency not to use that ability really speaks well of their moral character…as well as the moral character of whoever is writing them.
Edward has a very interesting way of describing his transformation: ‘He’d awaken to find himself dead and his head ringing with a clamour of voices that he didn’t recognize.’
Again, Mrs. Hyde is not pulling punches.
Vampires are dead.
This is an issue that Meyer constantly skirts around. Her vampires are hard, beautiful, graceful, and even pleasant smelling. She has literally done EVERYTHING she could in order to disassociate them from the fact that they are, at the end of the day, walking corpses. Vampirism is associated with new and better life, heaven, so to speak, rather than eternal un-death.
The vampires in Hyde’s world, particularly the Cullens, have no illusions, however. They are dead and are living a warped version of life that must be an affront to God. And this makes sense, because it sets up why Edward would be reluctant to turn Bella. It’s not just that he would be damning her soul…he would be killing her and replacing her with someone who talks, walks, and acts like her…but is fundamentally different from her. He would have lost the woman he loved forever.
I expect this is also a part of the deconstruction of Twilight: walking corpses are not romantic. Vampires are freaking dead. They are like zombies, but with a blood fetish instead of a brains one.
We are also presented here with the second disadvantage of being able to read minds: your mind will never be your own again. You will never have peace, or even a moment of quiet, to yourself. In the case of immortals, like Edward, you are literally going to be stuck for the rest of eternity with your head constantly occupied by dozens of people who you have never spoken to. Like it or not, you are going to get dragged into other people’s drama and problems, because they are worrying about it, and thus you are worrying about it by proxy.
He momentarily mentally grumbles at Carlisle for not warning him about that part of becoming a vampire, before chastising himself for being unfair to Carlisle. Carlisle couldn’t have know that he would get this power…but he did know that Edward would have a power of some kind. The vampires in Hyde’s universe can apparently sense humans who would make great vampires, who have the potential of special abilities. They are attracted to them.
This makes sense as an ability, as stronger vampires mean the better survival of the entire race. I can clearly see how vampire can evolve that ability…unlike sparkling. This also sets up the conflict in Mrs. Hyde’s re-write of the Twilight series. It would explain why so many vampires seem to go after Bella, even though she is only Edward’s ‘singer’. In canon, it almost appeared that Bella was the singer of every goddamned vampire on earth, which would be the most ‘almost-meta’ superpower ever. She literally has the ability to make every vampire (a superior race that she idolises) on earth love her. In Hyde’s universe, people wouldn’t be coming after Bella because she's just that desirable, they would be doing it because they know she has a powerful ability and, thus, can be useful to them.
Edward then muses about the concept of ‘powerful vampires’, and bitterly monologues that no being can call themselves powerful when they are too weak to deny the demands of their body. He couldn’t curb his arousal when he needed to. He couldn’t stop the urge to drinking people dry. He couldn’t refrain from listening in on Carlisle and Esme’s ‘conjugal activities’.
Again, we see how he holds himself responsible for absolutely everything, and how self-loathing he is. He finishes the diatribe with a sarcastic, ‘Some vampire.’
This is very interesting as it appears that, to Edward, an essential part of being a vampire is being able to suppress one’s urges. It doesn’t even occur to him that vampires would drink people's blood without remorse. It doesn’t even cross his mind that vampires are ‘meant to’ kill humans (as Meyer often declares). To him, to become a powerful vampire, you must be able to completely resist the urge of human blood. No doubt, he learned that ideal from Carlisle, but just the fact that he takes the sanctity of life as a given is deeply refreshing after reading the anti-human propaganda of Twilight.
We have seen canon!Edward’s opinion of murder and torture before, in the quote from Midnight Sun, now, we see Hyde!Edward’s. And really, which of these two would you like to have a chat to: the prideful torture technician or someone who actually believes murder and cannibalism (and symbolic rape) to be wrong?
He thoughts are interrupted when a teenage girl somewhere begins fantasizing about what sex would be like and imagined him as the potential partner. He runs over to the other side of the building, and, apparently, that’s enough distance so that he can’t hear her thoughts clearly. The high school must be located in a very densely populated area, since Edward has a range of a couple of miles and appears to be particularly sensitive to these kinds of things. Interestingly, it is revealed that the minds of people who are asleep are like static to him. This…uh…I don’t think this has a significance. It’s just a nice little detail that makes his powers that much more rounded.
He admits that he was ecstatic to find himself popular with the girls upon his transformation, especially since he was a nerdy bookworm before. This, Meyer, is realism. There is no teenage boy on earth who would not be pleased that he is getting female attention, even the gay ones. Humans are social animals. When you take one who has been an outcast before and suddenly turn him into the object of everyone’s desires, anyone will love it. We crave affection. We crave attention. Changing your diet does not automatically make you the most condescending bastard ever born. Anyone would be happy that people around them actually like them.
What is also interesting here is the description of Edward - skinny with perpetually messy hair. Given Mervin’s *ahem* mild obsession with Pattison’s hair, I think we can be sure who this Edward’s appearance is based on. Apart from the fact that Mervin thinks Pattison’s hair is awesome, there is another reason why she chose to portray Edward this way: she has no idea what Edward looks like. Sure, about 90% of the books is taken up by Bella topping herself in describing Edward with the most ridiculous purple prose possible…but those descriptions have no substance. It is repeated over and over again how he is ‘beautiful’ and ‘perfect’ and ‘handsome’, but at the end of the day, we still have no idea what he looks like. Does he have a square jaw, or is his face more round? Are his eyes almond shaped, or more narrow and tapered? Are his lips full or thin? Is his nose low and narrow or high? We have no idea. We are never given any information on what he looks like. We are just asked to believe that he is the hottest man alive because the Bella is the ultimate judge of what is attractive and all we have to do is bow down before her verdicts. Ask any Twitard, and they will give you a completely different description of Edward simply because he was never actually described in the books.
Edward compares his popularity with Douglas Fairbanks, an actor/director/producer/screenwriter active from 1915 to 1934 who was regarded as the ‘King of Hollywood’ in his day. This, Meyer, is RESEARCH. It exists, and you better start doing it right now, because it makes a story so much better. Not only does it give the sense of realism, the idea that maybe this actually happened, it also helps the readers immerse in the story. These little details complete a world.
It also helps to prevent stupid, stupid mistakes (like claiming there’s a tropical island off the WEST coast of Brazil) that snaps your readers out of the story (like it happens every chapter in Twilight).
Well, he indulged in his popularity for a while…until Esme happened.
Carlisle and he were going home from work on a train when a trainwreck occurred. Esme was about to become the only casualty. Carlisle, being the compassionate individual he is, rescues her and offers her the choice of succumbing to her injuries or become a walking undead. As we know, she chose the vampire option, and Edward and Carlisle are forced to retreat from society and take her to a remote location where she can learn how to control her body.
Despite wanting to stick close to canon, I see that Mrs. Hyde has changed Esme’s backstory all but completely. And I am very, VERY happy for it. All of these changes happened for a reason, a good reason.
- Carlisle and Edward were going home together
This is a very small detail in a mountain of awesome, but I like the image of Carlisle and Edward working together like father and son. It emphasises the love (familial love) they have for each other, and show us how much Edward admires Carlisle and wishes to become like him. This also gives the feeling that they are family much better. In Twilight, I’ve never gotten the feeling that the Cullens were anything close to what a family should be like. The children roam free and cause trouble (by committing mass-murder), and their father figure never does anything about it. We never see them having family time (except for that one base-ball game), we never see them actually talking with each other. They give off the feeling of a bunch of strangers forced together by the author to wait on the protagonist hand and foot, which is exactly what they are, actually.
- Esme was killed by a trainwreck.
In canon, Esme was trying to commit suicide.
Wait, let me elaborate.
Esme had lost her child and was so depressed that her depression created a cliff out of thin air in Wisconsin and she jumped off it, because without a child, she has no value.
Let’s ignore the research fail and sexist beliefs and instead focus on the fact that she WANTED to die. What she wanted was oblivion.
What did Carlisle, the most compassionate person ever, do?
He changed her. He made sure that she would live FOREVER in a body that is incapable of bearing children.
He deliberately made sure that she will never have a child again, and then gave her IMMORTALITY, so she can spend an eternity being tormented by her loss.
Here, it was a very sudden accident. We can believe that Esme wanted to live, that she had dreams and goals she still wanted to accomplish, and that she never desired death. Here, Carlisle is actually saving her instead of subjecting her to psychological torture.
This also gets rid of the unfortunate implications of ‘if you’re a woman and you have no child, you might as well go ahead and throw yourself off a cliff’, as well as the research fail of cliffs in Wisconsin.
- HE ACTUALLY OFFERED HER A CHOICE.
He took her opinion into account, because he knew being a vampire was not a pleasant experience.
In Twilight, he never asked. He never even considered whether she would want to become a monstrous walking corpse. He never bothered to think that if she committed suicide, then maybe she didn’t want to live. In fact, out of the people he has turned, only Edward was by consent. None of the others ever expressed a wish to become a vampire. He just swooped in and changed them, dooming them to eternity whether they like it or not, and had the balls to think of himself as a saviour afterwards.
Of course, vampires were all but portrayed as gods in Twilight. There really is no reason why people wouldn’t give anything to live that kind of life, is there? I mean, why wouldn’t they all want to become raging Sues and Stus?
- THEY MOVED AWAY FROM POPULATED AREAS!
In the illustrated guide, we find that every one of the Cullens had a body count reaching into the hundreds under their name.
Why?
Because after they were changed, Carlisle never bothered to ease them into humanity. He just threw them into a high school, where they are in close quarters with humans all day, and hoped they would be strong enough to resist the blood. When they inevitably gave in, he just moved away for a while.
He never had the patience to teach them how to deal with this change. He never did anything to protect the humans he lived around. He never bothered to prevent blood from staining the hands of his own children.
He just went straight ahead and ‘saved’ them, and then did everything in his power to ensure that they would become murderers.
Look at when Bella was changed. It was done right in Forks, and they stayed there afterwards. There was never any plan to move away for a while. No one ever taught her how to use her body, and just expected her to be able to hunt a few hours after her transformation. Hell, no one even explained to her the sensory overload that she will experience, despite there being plenty of time to do so.
These people didn’t give a damn.
Hyde!Carlisle did.
He mentored every one of his vampiric children to make sure they could deal with their new circumstance, knew how to use their body, was capable of performing everyday acts without breaking everything they touched, and, most importantly, could resist the temptation of human blood. Doubtlessly, he also helped Edward deal with the voices in his head as well.
Every change here made Carlisle that much better an individual. Instead of a sociopathic, paedophilic monster with a God-complex, we can actually believe that he is a good man now.
Meyer, stop your bullshit of free will and choice. THIS is how you depict choice, because, you know, there is actually a choice being made here. Changing someone when they are unconscious does not choice make!
Anyways, Edward had to go through the same thing, proving that Carlisle did indeed make sure to tutor all of his protégée, to make things as safe as possible for everyone involved. See? THAT is dedication. THAT is compassion. THAT is a man that can actually be described as noble and decent.
Carlisle had smuggled Edward out of the hospital, leaving an unclaimed corpse with a fake death certificate in his place, changed him, and moved to the rainforests in Michigan. Edward was gently eased back into human society, starting with small villages and towns, moving southward while he dealt with all the changes his body went through (damn, that sounds like puberty). When he was in control enough to deal with moderate sized cities, they started living in more populated areas, so that Carlisle can continue his work as a doctor.
Edward mentions here, for the first time, that he wants to eventually join Carlisle in his work. It’s cute. It also makes his character more rounded and his relationship with Carlisle more solid, but mostly, it’s just very, very cute. I doubt that’s going to work out well for him though, especially since he looks like a teenager. No hospital is going to take him seriously…
Anyways, Edward goes back to his flashback to reveal that Esme was an actual nurse! This is fantastic because not only does it give Esme an identity outside of ‘woman who was obsessed with baby’, it also gave her a similarity to Carlisle. Esme in Twilight was flatter than cardboard. She had no purpose outside of being the stereotypical mother. She had no life outside of playing house with the Cullens. Here, we see that she actually had a profession, something she was good at, something that she excelled in. She was saving people’s lives. This is awesome. It also gets rid of the stupid ‘love-at-first-sight’ thing, because those don’t work. You can have admiration or lust at first sight, but you cannot have love. Love is built on a relationship of mutual understanding and respect. You cannot understand and respect someone who you have not even talked to. Her knowledge of medicine gives her something to relate to Carlisle about. It also means that, since they will be working with each other frequently, they develop trust and equality. Doctors cannot function without nurses and vice versa. Symbolically, she is an integral part of Carlisle’s dream. This is a much healthier depiction of a romance than ‘he kissed my hurts away when I was a tiny little girl, so I’m going to bear his babies for him as thanks’.
It’s also less paedophilic.
They went to the forests in central Maine with Esme. Edward enjoyed the journey as, away from people, there were a lot less voices in his head, and peace is hard to come by for him (see? This keeps coming up). He also enjoyed it quite a bit because, this time, he was the authority figure. He was experienced and wise, and could give advice to Esme. Every teenager knows what I mean. The opportunity to play adult is always exhilarating when you are at this stage in your life. This opportunity also cements for him how much he has grown, to compare his current position with that of Esme. This offers proof to him that he is becoming better, and, knowing how self-loathing Edward is, this must be very important to him.
(By the way, Edward and Esme’s surnames are Mason and Evanson, not Masen and Evansen, because THOSE NAME ARE SPELLED WITH AN ‘O’. Changing a letter of the name to make it more SPESHUL for your Sues and Stus is literally the most clichéd Mary Sue tactic in the book. And it looks STUPID.)
It wasn’t surprising for Edward that Esme fell in love with Carlisle because, after all, who wouldn’t fall in love with someone so fantastic? And because I have my slash-goggles on, this little passage made me giggle. ‘Carlisle was simply one of the strongest, most compassionate, and, well, for lack of a better word, most noble men that Edward had ever met.’ Indeed.
Note that he considers Carlisle to be ‘strong’. And especially note how ‘strength’ is put in the same category as ‘compassion’ and ‘nobility’. It shows you exactly how much Carlisle’s beliefs influenced Edward, and exactly what he considers to be strength. This isn’t the Edward that exulted in his ability to crush puny human’s skulls. This is the Edward for whom compassion and strength are synonymous concepts.
Damn, I already love this character.
Anyways, he proceeds to express surprise that Carlisle actually loved Esme back. I mean, a man and a woman stuck in a rainforest together for years, sharing the same love for medicine…why would they ever fall in love with each other? Really, Edward, why are you so surprised that Carlisle would fall for a woman?
I’m sorry, I really have to compose myself. The real slash doesn’t come in until Chapter 4…
Edward explains his shock as having always thought of Carlisle as ‘married to his work’. That, and he had been single for three-hundred-years. Right. Sure. I totally believe that.
I wonder how he took care of his needs during the three centuries. I mean, your hand doesn’t always work, right? There’s no way it would satisfy him for three centuries…I wonder if he stayed with the Catholics in this canon as well…
Edward proclaims that he is genuinely happy for Carlisle and Esme but ’…surely such an understandably old-fashioned fellow as Carlisle wouldn’t have taken with such a thoroughly modern woman as the divorced suffragette Nurse Esme Evanson.’ Yeah. Totally happy for them. Totally.
Edward is gay in every depiction of him I have ever seen. It’s an integral part of his character. You can change anything about him, but you can’t get rid of that.
Also, I squee-d at the fact that Esme is a divorced suffragette. First of all, there is no ‘true love’. People do not go through life deliberately celibate, just waiting for their ‘true love’ (at least not most people). And people do not immediately know who their ‘true love’ is. Every single person has had to go through bumpy, if not numerous, relationship before they can work out what love even is. And the concept of ‘true love’ implies that love comes in levels, and some are less worth than others, which is deeply insulting to anyone who has so much as felt affection for another person before. Esme wasn’t waiting for Carlisle! She didn’t even know Carlisle existed!
This also shows that not every first love is your true one. In fact, most people would just about die of embarrassment if they had to live with their first love for the rest of their lives. Love is trial and error. If you don’t make mistakes, you will never get the answer you want.
And this shows that it’s not only possible, but encouraged for people to MOVE ON from their past relationship. When Esme divorced her husband, she didn’t spend the rest of her days as a zombie, nursing a Goddamn Hole ™ in her heart! She moved on!
And I absolutely love the irony of Mrs. Hyde turning the most stereotypically weepy, weak, emotional, submissive, meek female in canon into a suffragette. It’s AWESOME. I really don’t think I need to explain why.
‘Any discomfort Edward had felt at being inadvertently privy to their private thoughts and conversations during their courtship was largely overwhelmed by his honest happiness for Carlisle - and for Esme as well. She was a lovely woman, and she and Carlisle made each other so happy.’ Eddie? I really don’t think that’s discomfort. And I’m fairly certain that it wasn’t a result of you invading their privacy.
Seriously, read that and see how bitter it sounds. How Esme’s happiness is second to Carlisle’s, the implication being that Edward ‘Just Wanted His Beloved to Be Happy’. The whole ‘She was a lovely woman’ thing? How obvious can it get?
Carlisle and Esme married when she was fit for society again. ‘It had seemed a perfect arrangement.’ Aw…I wish I could hug him. If I ever get to meet Hyde!Edward, I would totally buy him an ice cream.
Go Forward to: Chapter 1 Part 1, Section C
Go back to: Chapter 1, Part 1, Section A