#racism in twilight

[vavuska]

Stephanie Meyer in her“The Twilight Saga: Official Illustrated Guide” wrote that vampire pallor is part of the transformation new vampires undergo that beautifies them as their melanin drains away, resulting in their white skin.

In fact, in the first chapter, in which she describes the physical characteristics common to all vampires, Meyer wrote:

In the Twilight universe all vampires were originally human. As vampires, they retain a close physical resemblance to their human form, the only reliably noticeable differences being a universal pallor of skin, a change in eye color, and heightened beauty.

More orver the typical vampire pallor is not attribuite, as traditional thrope impose, to the fact that vampires are dead, recalling the repulsive look of a corpse, but to an element of crystalline, supernatural form of beauty, which is described as following:

The common factor of beauty among vampires is mostly due to this crystalline skin. The perfect smoothness, gloss, and even color of the skin give the illusion of a flawless face.

So, dark skinned or deeper skin toned people will have very light olive skin as vampires. In fact the only creature who keeps a natural dark-skin is Nahuel, the vampire-human hybrid (born to a white European vampire and a indigenous woman), who is described having “dark brown skin”, while his Aunt Huilen, a full-indigenous woman has “an olive tone to her pale skin” due to being a vampire. Let's see more examples in the book where this “white washing” effect of vampirism is more explicit:

Vampires in Stephanie Meyer's books are white and pure because Mormons believe people who are not white will be white in heaven. I can't 100% remember the reason or events but during some event they think God turned some people black because they either betrayed him or Jesus. So when you are a good person and go to heaven he will remove that. If you look into what Mormons believe it's almost as crazy as scientology.

Ok, apparently, Mormons think black and dark-skinned people are in some way descendants of Cain, who was banished from human community and condamned by God to a nomadic life. However, God was pleased by blood sacrifice (God favored Abel who killed animals for God, while Cain offered the products of earth he cultivated) and gives Cain a mark, known as “Mark of Cain” (Genesis 4:15). This mark of Cain is God's promise to offer Cain divine protection from premature death with the stated purpose of preventing anyone from killing him. Bible does not identify the exact nature of the mark God put on Cain. Whatever it was, it was a sign/indicator that Cain was not to be killed (but also a warn that helped others to spot him as a murder to not trust). Some propose that the mark was a scar, or some kind of tattoo (Maybe this is the source of Tattoo Prohibition in Leviticus 19:28). Whatever the case, the precise nature of the mark is not the focus of the passage. The focus is that God would not allow people to exact vengeance against Cain. Whatever the mark on Cain was, it served this purpose.

However, Brigham Young, one of the founders of Mormons and one of the earliest leader, described black people as cursed with dark skin as punishment for Cain’s murder of his brother. “Any man having one drop of the seed of Cane in him cannot hold the priesthood,” he declared in 1852. Young deemed black-white intermarriage so sinful that he suggested that a man could atone for it only by having “his head cut off” and spilling “his blood upon the ground.”

For more information about the racial question among Mormons, I suggest this article of New York Times:

[darkshrimpemotions]

don't forget about pre-vampirism!jasper being a major in the fucking confederate army 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬

And being EXTREMELY proud of that fact and not one single person ever having a problem with it! Yeah I haven't forgotten. I'll definitely get there in my other post.

The thing about Twilight is that the racism is baked into every layer of it, so much so that you cannot "fix" it by changing one or two lines or story points or using colorblind casting. It's in the worldbuilding, the characters, the plot, the dialogue, the relationship dynamics. When I say Twilight is a white supremacist wish fulfillment fantasy, I really mean that. The entire setup and plot of Twilight is exactly that.

That's what I'm getting at, albeit slowly, with my series of mini-metas on racism in Twilight. This story was already published, and got popular, and became a film franchise, and we can't do anything about that. We can engage critically with it instead of handwaving its issues, and support the real Quileute tribe through donations and educating ourselves and combatting Smeyer's misinformation.

But its issues are too numerous and layered to be fixed while leaving the story recognizable, and frankly no one involved in the creation of it has ever been held accountable for that. So the likelihood that this new series will be a racist shitshow is basically 100%.

So maybe Twilight should stay in the early 2000s where it came from, and maybe its fandom should be the ones to help that happen, by choosing not to engage with this reboot.

[anotherpapercut]

genuinely it will never stop baffling me how people will wear twilight shirts and talk about team Edward vs team Jacob and then the same people will be like "I'm not basing my personality off of a piece of media (harry potter) made by a transphobe 😌" like good that's great! so you can excuse racism but you draw the line at transphobia? good to know

[alinahdee]

ONE SCENE FOR FORGIVENESS (aka The Twilight Saga Is Racist)

BUY ME A KO-FI: https://ko-fi.com/alinahdee

HELP MOVE THE QUILUETE TRIBE TO HIGHER GROUND: https://mthg.org/

[antinativefaves]

From the Twilight Illustrated Guide:

[bixels]

So i have a small nicpic i wanted to share with you about your interpretation of spike in the au and i want to make two things clear before i talk

1) i havent watch the series for a little while as of now so i might be misnterpreting a aspect of this chatacter that might have never been there and only apeared in fan content and personal interpretation (since that whats been keeping me on the fandom)

2) this is not a big problem about the au i matured enough to not get angry at a interpretation of a fictional charater

Now here i go

I feel spike being the same race as the rest of his familie makes him lose a part of his character that might have not been central but was still something interesting about him and is the idea of not mayhering how diferent he looked from his adoptive family (and his cominty as a whole) he was he was still seen as part of it

Again this isnt a big problem with the au as a whole its just a small nicpic that i have about the au and its not going to make me hate the au

This was just my opinion that i wanted to share and im interested to know your opinion about what i said

I understand this criticism and agree that having Simon/Spike be a different race than Thea could speak to their relationship in the original show.

My reasoning for designing them both to be African American is this. I believe Simon's adoption is enough to explore the feelings of separation and exclusion he may have with Thea and her family. The original show doesn't bring up Twilight and Spike's racial differences much because they originally didn't consider Spike to be a part of Twilight's family. As far as I know, there's no moment where someone says, "Wow! You're telling me you're related to Twilight Sparkle? But you look nothing alike!" because Spike was more so Twilights... familiar than anything.

Later episodes that explore their familial dynamic poses the conflict through Spike's adoption. There's one episode where Spike's "biological father" returns, and Spike accuses Twilight of not being his real family, which breaks her heart. There's another that delves deep into Spike's feelings of exclusion from Twilight and Shining Armor's siblinghood. Basically, in discussions of family dynamics, the show places more emphasis on Spike's identity as an adopted sibling rather than a dragon.

I really do believe a multiracial family would be good representation, but the racial dynamics would not be something I'd be interested in getting into. That's not to say I find real multiracial families problematic or uninteresting or unappealing or unimportant. I just wouldn't be interested in having to explain in-text that Simon (non-black) and Thea (black) are related over and over; it would grow tedious. It adds an extra level of writing complication and opens up racial discourse (discourse that I feel is unrelated to their relationship in the original show) that I don't want to concern myself with, especially because I have no experience in navigating such discourse.

[jcalexandrewrites]

Me: Man, you think the Twilight series can't get any worse, but then you learn about Emily Young. You: Who's Emily Young? Me: She's a native woman who was attacked by a werewolf, and she has a permanent scar on her face from that attack. You: Oh, wow! That's terrible. Why did the werewolf attack her? Me: Because he wanted her to be his soul mate, but she refused him. You: Oh! Oh, wow! That's real terrible. I bet she doesn't want anything to do with him. Me: Oh, no. She's actually married to him now. You: ... Me: And she serves as his submissive loving wife. You:

[icedsodapop]

Something something... the difference between how Stephanie Meyer depicts women in relation to the fantastical creature they are associated with.... something something... for White women, being associated with vampires is empowering for them, protects them... something something... but for Native American women, being associated with werewolves brings them nothing but pain and suffering judging by how the most prominent Ndn female characters, Leah and Emily, are treated within the narrative.... hmm, interesting...

[spacebeyonce]

I love soooooo much finding video essays talking about twilight's racism, and this one is VERY good, hot off the presses and majorly focused on the anti-indigenous racism that's baked into every part of the story.

[queerstudiesnatural]

i'm gonna say it i genuinely believe that harry potter taught way more harmful messages to girls and young people than twilight ever did, and i'm being 100% serious like this is something i've thought about at length and have also experienced firsthand

[the-aila-test]

I'm going to be working on a video essay about BIPOC who have a long list of grievances against Twilight and Stephenie Meyer's racism. I want the focus to be primarily Indigenous people (ESPECIALLY Quileute folks) but any non-Indigenous Black and People of Color are welcome to contribute. Please message me if you're interested.

If you are from the Quileute community, ESPECIALLY if you have first hand experience with the tourism and/or racism that Twilight brought to your communities, please reach out. You will be kept anonymous if you don't wish to go on the record.

[darkshrimpemotions]

Okay so into this world of highly racialized supernatural creatures steps Bella Swan, Smeyer's self insert and the character we're all meant to relate to and root for. It's through Bella's eyes that we learn about this world. And in Bella's eyes, the Cullens can do no wrong.

From the very beginning, Bella is entranced by the Cullens. By their beauty, their obvious wealth, their self-imposed isolation from the rest of the student body. She focuses in on Edward almost immediately, and from then on the rest of the series is filled with her going into raptures over his perfect face, perfect smell, etc.

Meanwhile, Bella routinely handwaves or flat out ignores concerning or downright immoral behavior from Edward and the other Cullens due to her infatuation with their power and beauty. Edward sneaking into her room to watch her sleep without her knowledge or consent is a perfect example of this from the first book, but there are many others.

And by the end of the first book, she wants that power and beauty for herself, in order to be "worthy" of them.

See, as Bella is more and more enthralled by the Cullens, her indifference and even contempt for other humans and humanity steadily increases. And though this is often framed as simple insecurity on Bella's part, it quickly becomes clear that it goes beyond that.

For one thing, the insecurity is not intrinsic to Bella's mental state, as it never manifests with other kids at school or with Jacob and the wolves. It is rather a direct reaction to comparing herself with the Cullens. She hates her own humanity because she sees it as inferior in comparison to them. She hates even symbols of her humanity, anything alluding to it. She gets upset about the presence of a bed in Edward's room at one point, because it's ridiculous as "vampires don't sleep."

For another thing, the disdain extends beyond herself. Throughout the story, Bella treats other humans--Jessica and Angela, but also her own father and the wider community of Forks--with a shocking level of indifference. As the story goes on, they are barely people to her. If anything, they're tools and obstacles. Obstacles to spending more time with Edward, obstacles to convincing him she should be turned. Tools for Bella to convince the authority figures in her life she's fine.

Of the total five times Bella hangs out with someone other than the wolves or the Cullens outside of school, four include a premeditated ulterior motive related to the Cullens in some way. She never hangs out with Jessica or Angela at all, despite calling them friends, without some other goal in mind. Even her friendship and brief romance with Jacob, before he shifts, is primarily driven by trying to learn about--or forget about--Edward.

This disdain for humans starts small, with an unkind thought toward Jessica Stanley in favor of Edward--someone she doesn't even know versus someone who has gone out of her way to include Bella and be nice to her--and concludes with Bella's realization in the fourth book that she is willing to sacrifice the lives of random strangers in order to give her chosen family a dubious edge in an upcoming fight.

This is all in spite of the fact that her stated reason for loving Edward and his family is that they choose not to be monsters by not doing just that: sacrificing humans in the name of personal gain. In fact, Bella hurls that very thing in Jacob's face in New Moon, accusing him and the other wolves of being murderers and monsters, in contrast to her vampires who have never hurt anyone (except...they very much have and she fully knows this at the time).

But throughout the series, Bella handwaves or ignores the past murders committed by the Cullens and other vampires in order to continue her quest to become one of them with a clear conscience, while simultaneously condemning the wolves for everything they do despite most of that being entirely outside of their control.

Her reaction to learning Emmett drained his singer, Jasper was a general in a vampire war, Edward killed people whose thoughts he deemed wicked enough? A little bit of fear followed quickly by acceptance and, if anything, increased admiration that they try so hard not to kill.

Her reaction to Emily's scars, imprinting, assuming without any proof that the wolves had killed hikers? Instant judgment and consternation that she has to be talked down from.

Thus, through Bella's eyes the idea of the Cullens as aspirational, the wolves as dangerous, and regular humans as inconsequential is reinforced over and over again. And through Bella's journey this is pushed even further. Tune in next time to Racism in Twilight for more on that!

In light of this ridiculous Twilight TV series news, are we finally going to talk about the ways in which Twilight is a white supremacist wish fulfillment fantasy?

[sophiathefallen]

I love how different the tones are of the My Little Pony series' and the My Little Pony movies

Like the show will be like: The nerdy pony needs to learn friendship!! 🤗Pinkie Pie and Izzy are so crazy!! 🤪

and then the movies will go: ABANDONMENT ISSUES! PONY RACISM!

[neechees]

Looking back on Twilight criticism is so funny because mainstream crit (that I saw anyway) was all focused on "Ew girls like it" when literally the ENTIRE BOOK NEEDS CRITICISM IT STARTS WITH A CREEPY DUDE WATCHING A GIRL WHILE SHE SLEEPS AND WHEN SOMEONE ASKS "How much racism will Smeyer add?" SHE ANSWERED "Yes."

Exactlyyy. White ppl will like hide behind any type of marginalization they face (like misogyny, homophobia, etc) when they wanna dodge either being accused of racism, or things they like that are racist & being critisizes for that racism, even when said marginalization has nothing to do with it.

Twilight itself is an extremely misogynistic book, where it places White women as the ultimate standard of femininity, particular thin rich White women who are stay at home moms, home makers, etc, and places all other women as not as good or "pure" as them. Bella at 17 literally looks after her dad and cooks and cleans for him. Leah is demonized as a Native woman for literally no reason & gets used as a punching bag throughout the film & books. Abortion is seen as "murder", even when the fetus is slowly killing the mother & clawing its way out of her. There's more obvi but those are just a few examples.

But even if you ignore the racism or misogyny (which you shouldn't) it also romantisizes abuse, what with Edward fitting ALL "signs that your partner is abusive" ticks.

If you ignore the romantisization of abuse, it's also classist: the Cullens are upheld as this angelic set if vampires who are literally billionaires, and could go any fucking place in the world, but they decide to go to the one place they agreed not to go near (due to a treaty with the Quileute Forks) & where they were literally already colonizers who disrupted & harmed the Native population & where they're a threat to the Quileute & they go there for no reason. Edward replaces Bella's old car that her dad & Jacob had fixed up for her (which she had already stated to adore, one reason being that she has an interest in old things) with a sports car, purely to one up Jacob. They all drive various sports cars & Alice routinely wears & throws out clothes. They're held up to this romantisized standard against Bella & the Quileute tribe's middle to lower class status, & this is meant to be another point of why Edward is supposedly better than Jacob (because he is rich).

If you ignore the classism, racism, & misogyny then there's also the weird Mormon ideology literally baked into the entire series, & it can be considered essentially Mormon propaganda. The Native characters are demonized, obviously (considering Mormons literally think Native people are evil). None of the vampires have tattoos but all the werewolves do, & according to the lore, any and all tattoos get removed after becoming a vampire (which is what Mormons believe happens to tattoos in their afterlife). In the books, any poc who become vampires become pale regardless of their skin color in life, & again, this is what Mormons believe happens to poc who become Mormons & enter the afterlife. The whole "no sex before marriage" thing & the abortion thing. Bella & a lot of the other non-demonized female characters dress pretty conservatively, & Edward finds a full length skirt sexy & "indecent". The (white) vampires are repeatedly compared to "angels" & called beautiful & perfect. Other non Christian, non-Mormon religions (& the people that belong to/practice them) in the series are routinely demonized & mocked. Vampirism, but namely for the White characters, is literally an allegory for White Mormons in heaven.

If you ignore all the above and a bunch of other bigoted & weird shit in the series that I haven't yet mentioned, then it's genuinely just very dumb & badly written with stupid logic. Bella thinks it's weird how the Cullens all have really old names when HER name is literally "Isabella Swan". The Cullens literally hate the Quileute & "werewolves" for no fucking reason since they literally trespassed on Quileute land as colonizers in the 1800s, & it's already been established that the shapeshifters aren't even actually real werewolves in the lore so therefore they have no inherent quarrel with them based on the vampire vs werewolves thing, so they just hate them for no reason. The vampires keep going to high school & learning the same shit over and over again when they could be going to COLLEGE or idk doing something productive. Jasper apparently has to teach the Natives how to fight so obviously Smeyer has never seen a rez fight. Jasper is considered a "newborn" even though he was literally turned in the 1860s. Bella gave her kid the dumbest name ever. Ppl have been memeing & making fun of this series since it came out, & I feel like it's hypocritical for twilight fans to both say "ppl only hated it because girls liked it but its actually really good!" While also saying they find it hilarious even the actors made fun of it & hated making it because of its many faults (like so you agree? People made fun of it even back then?) And while also saying they "enjoy it critically" meaning. They admit there's something wrong with it, but still get mad when ppl critisize it.

[alinahdee]

So this comment was deleted (the entire post was actually) but here's what irks me quite a bit about this specific line of thinking:

This was in response to watching my video ONE SCENE FOR FORGIVENESS / THE TWILIGHT SAGA IS RACIST.

Literally within the first 20 seconds of the video, you get these:

Even if you have a very simplistic understanding of these topics, they certainly sound serious. Enough to be included in a content warning at the very least. It's giving people a huge head's up about what this video is going to dive into and discuss and that this discussion can be triggering and distressing.

And then the next minute and a half is spent with me detailing how FORGIVENESS is weaponized against Indigenous women by non-native writers. All the time. Constantly. Obviously I'm setting things up for what is going to be addressed and interpreted later.

So you're telling me you sat through ALL OF THAT right at the very start of the video and instead of --THAT-- making you angry, you're mad because I said "mindlessly consuming material" and "this franchise is garbage."

Peak white fragility.

[antinativefaves]

Your Fave Is Anti-Native: Game of Vampires Twilight Sun

Marketing your game using an infamously racist and misogynistic relationship from Twilight that literally endorses grooming and pedophilia at the hands of an Indigenous man definitely was something we never needed.