#twilight racism

[gisellelx]

By any other name (literally, ANY other)

I was reading Braiding Sweetgrass for pleasure and for work and there's a chapter which reminded me of something I knew but had not truly ever reconsidered--"Carlisle" is a place name. It's a city in England, and gave rise to the same name across several towns in the U.S. Most famously in the U.S., Carlisle, PA is home to the US Army War College, which sits on the former grounds of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the main boarding school (though there were many) where Indigenous American children were sent to be stripped of their languages, tribal identities, spiritual beliefs, and not too infrequently, their lives. It is the place of origin of the phrase "Kill the Indian in him and save the man" and served as the model for the many other schools across the United States where this took place in the early 1900s. And like...I'm sure it was technically unintentional and yet at the same time, SM and I aren't that far apart in age. This same fact was rattling around in the far reaches of her brain and when she went searching for the name of the patriarch (who by all accounts, in 1640s England, should be "John" or "William" or "Thomas" which is why I hold my hc that he's just basically forgotten his own first name) she came up with Carlisle. Because that name was ringing some bells as she thought about writing a book about vampires and Native humans.

What in the fresh hell, Stephenie.

[rjalker]

"13 year old are too young to think about the thing they're reading at all!!! Everyone who read Twilight as a kid was completely oblivious to the problems in it!!!!"

speak for yourself. Just because you mindlessly consumed books without thinking about them at all does not mean everyone did. I literally got into multiple heated arguments over the lunch room table with my friends, some of whom were even a grade above me, because they were defending all the creepy abusive shit Edward did. Lots of us talked about the problems in the books and criticized them.

Pretending that kids just mindlessly read books several times and constantly talk about them without ever actually thinking about them in any way besides gushing praise just makes you a jackass, especially when you're trying to use this ""argument"" to claim that no one ever criticized the racism in the books before 2023.

[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.

[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.

[spursthatjinglejanglejingle]

Girl okay not only was it extremely racist to have Jacob's actor cut his hair but in what fucking world. In what galaxy. In what possible combination of the atoms that make up our universe does this not look better than his short hair. I'm a misogynist now because of Stephany Mayer what is wrong with you.

[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.