Sorry for this review taking so long. I was playing way too much Dragon Ball Fusions over the past few days and I lost track of time… Anyway, off to Edward’s backstory.
After I read it, I managed to sum up my thoughts on the matter in one word.
Unfortunate.
This thing is riddled with unfortunate implications, and most of them stem from some key word choices on Meyer’s part that leave the whole story with a bunch of problems. I get what Meyer was trying to demonstrate with Edward’s backstory, I really do. It was supposed to show us Edward being remorseful about his human-eater days and why he’s so worried about losing control and drinking Bella’s blood. It was supposed to show that Carlisle and Esme were really compassionate because they forgave Edward and welcomed him back with open arms. It was supposed to show the strength of Bella’s feelings for Edward, since no matter how many horrifying things he’s done nothing dissuades Bella from seeing him. The mind-reading didn’t do it, the vampirism didn’t do it, the stalking didn’t do it, and now the confession of being an ex-serial killer didn’t do it either. Edward even claims repeatedly that he assumes the next reveal is going to turn Bella away from him and keeps getting surprised when Bella defies his expectations, and with this reveal Edward is all out of surprises.
But all of these intentions fall flat because of a few poor choices of words. Let’s break them down in order.
Edward is supposed to be showing remorse about going out on his own and eating people; he came back to the Cullen coven in the first place because he started having second thoughts. But unfortunately, he describes his human-eating actions as justified. In his words, Edward couldn’t stomach the burden of so many lives “no matter how justified”.
That is not how you portray an atoner remembering their past atrocities. It leaves the impression that Edward thinks he was right in each individual act of vigilante murder, and he just stopped because the body count was getting too high. Not because of any actual change of character or coming to realize that what he was doing was wrong. As things are written, Edward evidently has no problem with using his mind-reading to decide who gets to live and who gets to die per se; he just has a problem with having that behaviour leading to hundreds of deaths. His problem is with the consequences of his actions and not the actions themselves.
And that’s got a bunch of problems of its own. Edward apparently thinks that it’s okay to constantly invade others’ privacy for malicious thoughts, and then sentencing those with evil thoughts to death before they could act on them. Sure Edward might have caught a few potential murderers, arsonists, and rapists right as they were about to act, but nonetheless all crimes must have by necessity been treated equally, with the sole punishment being that you become Edward’s food. And on top of that, regardless of his reasons for doing so what Edward was doing is ultimately just more murder, and he wasn’t sentencing himself to death for trying to kill people, which was one of the evil thoughts he was looking out for.
I’ve heard some people calling Edward’s past the vampire equivalent of Batman. They’re wrong. Batman doesn’t kill people (most of the time, and if he does it’s probably because the writer of the week was terrible. It isn’t a coincidence that ASBAR and BvS are widely considered the worst Batman-related media in recent history and both forget that particular aspect of his characterization). Batman also understands that it isn’t one man’s call to decide how crime is punished and leaves that duty to the Gotham justice department. Yeah, he’ll scare Gotham’s criminals into submission, but he isn’t out to play Judge, Jury, and Executioner. And he isn’t out to play God either.
Edward was playing God. Bella even describes it as such. Edward was using a supernatural advantage to kill everyone he thought deserved to die, and hypocritically didn’t apply the same lethal standards to himself.
That doesn’t make him vampire Batman. That makes him vampire Light Yagami.
Damn it. Now that I’ve referenced Death Note I can’t help but imagine Charlie Swan meeting Soichiro Yagami and Persona 4’s Ryotaro Dojima at a bar and the three of them complaining to each other about how their kids always keep secrets from them.
Huh. All three stories involve a high school student getting involved with the supernatural and keeping it a secret from their father-figure, who just so happens to be a high-ranking police officer in the area. There’s also a serial killer in the midst to varying degrees; in Persona 4, the identity of the killer is unknown and figuring it out is a major mystery of the game, while in Death Note the kid is the serial killer and in Twilight the kid falls in love with them.
Just wanted to throw that out there. Actually, the comparisons between Death Note and Persona 4 go even deeper than that, but that’s not the topic of this post.
Edward’s backstory is the topic of this post. Let’s get back to that. Carlisle and Esme welcoming Edward back with open arms is supposed to show their compassion and willingness to forgive. But unfortunately, Edward describes them welcoming him back “like the prodigal”. Edward is still being treated like the Cullens’ favourite son when he’s their only child that, since joining the Cullens at least, went out and ate people intentionally. Yeah, the others may have lost control on occasion, but everyone makes mistakes. Edward though? His people-eating wasn’t a mistake; it was a conscious decision that he only went back on after years of human-eating. It was a deliberate betrayal of everything Carlisle stood for.
No, I’m not saying that Carlisle shouldn’t have accepted Edward back into the family. That was both the most compassionate and the most pragmatic thing to do; better that Edward stays close-by so you can deprogram him back onto the animal diet than let him loose and leave him eating humans again up to chance. But Carlisle and Esme should have at least forced Edward to apologize and promise to never hunt humans again before accepting him back. The willingness to forgive is great, but there’s a difference between forgiving someone and not holding someone accountable. The fact is that Edward betrayed the family and if he wanted to come back then it should have been under the condition that he admit he was wrong to leave; otherwise Edward isn’t held accountable for his actions and the other Cullens would be incentivized to leave and eat as many humans as they want, since they’d know they can come back without repercussion.
What Carlisle and Esme did wasn’t giving Edward a chance to redeem himself; it was making him a Karma Houdini.
That leaves Bella. She was supposed to be showing the strength of her feelings for Edward. But unfortunately, like Carlisle and Esme it comes off more like Bella is excusing Edward’s past behaviour than it is giving Edward a chance despite what happened. Even before Edward goes into detail about how he hunted people and that he was remorseful for it, Bella says that Edward ditching the Cullens to hunt humans is “reasonable”.
Got that?
Betraying his family is “reasonable”.
Spending years murdering people with impunity is “reasonable”.
Being an ungrateful bastard by repaying Carlisle’s kindness with becoming everything Carlisle hates about vampirism is “reasonable”.
Speeding on the highway is met with a freak-out while she has no problem rationalizing betrayal of parents and premeditated murder. Without the “I used my mind-reading to kill only the bad people” part.
I take what I said back. It doesn’t just excuse Edward’s behaviour… It shows us that Bella is fine with betraying her parents and murdering people herself. And that’s consistent with everything we’ve seen of her so far. One more point for Villain Protagonist Yandere Bella.
If I were writing this, I’d have had Bella say something like “but you’re not that person anymore. So it’s fine, right?” instead of… “reasonable”.
1. Death Note TV Drama - this show holds 90% of my serotonin and the other 10% lives in the Drama Based fanfic in my head that I will probably never write but love nonetheless
2. Drawing, I don't really post my art on here because I'm ✨insecure✨ and if someone criticized my art in a way that wasn't constructive I would probably CRY and delete tumblr for a month. But I love to draw!! I painted my sketchbook!! I have like 5 sketchbooks!!! I have many colored pencils and gel gens!!!!!!
3. Poetry, I write poetry a lot! I really hope to get the confidence to post it on here someday, but I actually got published in a poetry competition book thing once when I was younger and I actually wrote a poem based on an anime character I like and READ IT AT A COMPETITION (don't worry that one wasn't the one that got published lmao)
4. CHARACTER DESIGN. CHARACTER BUILDING. My beloved <333 I'm currently trying to write a book (2 technically) and making my main characters design was SO FUN. And I love to write her because I enjoy building her as a person and not just a character!!
5. Cosplay!! I deleted tiktok because straight people and my classmates found my account and I got a shitton of hate but cosplay is one of my favorite things to do! From the art on your face, to the pain and suffering that is wearing a wig for multiple hours... it's just *chefs kiss* I love it! Also, I have a Near cosplay that I got like 5 days ago and I already have worn it twice so
