Appendix: Textual parallels between The Vampire Diaries and Twilight
I. Avoidance vs. Hatred
The Vampire Diaries:
[S]he smiled.
He looked down from the smile quickly…And at last, slowly, she turned around again. She was hurt. Even through the blocks, he could feel that. He didn’t care. In fact, he was glad of it, and he hoped it would keep her away from him. Other than that, he had no feelings about her at all.
He kept telling himself this as he sat, the droning voice of the teacher pouring over him unheard. But he could smell a subtle hint of some perfume—violets, he thought. And her slender white neck was bowed over her book, the fair hair falling on either side of it. In anger and frustration he recognized the seductive feeling in his teeth—more a tickling or a tingling than an ache. It was hunger, a specific hunger. And not one he was about to indulge (Smith 30).
“Why do you hate me?”
He stared at her. For a moment he couldn’t seem to find words. Then he said, “I don’t hate you.”
“You do,” said Elena. “I know it’s not… not good manners to say it, but I don’t care. I know I should be grateful to you for saving me tonight, but I don’t care about that, either. I didn’t ask you to save me. I don’t know why you were even in the graveyard in the first place. And I certainly don’t understand why you did it, considering the way you feel about me.”
He was shaking his head, but his voice was soft. “I don’t hate you.” (Smith 139)
Twilight:
“If I hadn’t been denying my thirst for the last, well, too many years, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself.” He paused, scowling at the trees. He glanced at me grimly, both of us remembering. “You must have thought I was possessed.”
“I couldn’t understand why. How you could hate me so quickly…”
“To me, it was like you were some kind of demon, summoned straight from my own personal hell to ruin me. The fragrance coming off your skin…I thought it would make me deranged that first day.” (Meyer 268-269).
II. Why We Shouldn’t Do That/Be Together:
A: The Vampire Diaries
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” He was standing rigid, his face furious, his eyes anguished. “If I once let go, what’s to keep me from changing you, or killing you? The passion is stronger than you can imagine. Don’t you understand yet what I am, what I can do?”
She stood there and looked at him quietly, her chin raised slightly. It seemed to enrage him.
“Haven’t you seen enough yet? Or do I have to show you more? Can’t you picture what I might do to you?” He strode over to the cold fireplace and snatched out a long piece of wood, thicker than both Elena’s wrists together. With one motion, he snapped it in two like a match stick. “Your fragile bones,” he said.
Across the room was a pillow from the bed; he caught it up and with a slash of his nails left the silk cover in ribbons. “Your soft skin.” Then he moved toward Elena with preternatural quickness; he was there and had hold of her shoulders before she knew what was happening. He stared into her face a moment, then, with a savage hiss that raised the hairs at the nape of her neck, drew his lips back.
It was the same snarl she’d seen on the roof, those white teeth bared, the canines grown to unbelievable length and sharpness. They were the fangs of a predator, a hunter. “Your white neck,” he said in a distorted voice.
Elena stood paralyzed another instant, gazing as if compelled into that chilling visage, and then something deep in her unconscious took over. She reached up within the restraining circle of his arms and caught his face between her two hands. His cheeks were cool against her palms. She held him that way, softly, so softly, as if to reprove his hard grip on her bare shoulders. And she saw the confusion slowly come to his face, as he realized she was not doing it to fight him or to shove him away.
Elena waited until that confusion reached his eyes, shattering his gaze, becoming almost a look of pleading. She knew that her own face was fearless, soft yet intense, her lips slightly parted. They were both breathing quickly now, together, in rhythm. Elena could feel it when he started to shake, trembling as he had when the memories of Katherine had become too much to bear. Then, very gently and deliberately, she drew that snarling mouth down to her own (Smith 281-282).
B: Twilight
Copying the exact text for this proved difficult, as it is somewhat more scattered across several pages which brought copyright considerations to mind, but consider the scene with Edward and Bella in the forest, as he is ripping up trees and showing her just what he could do to her and how perfect a predator he is. (Meyer 260-265).