From Fan History Wiki

[edit] Introduction

The Twilight Fandom is a rather large and extensive network of people who devote any amount of time to the works of Stephenie Meyer which involve Bella Swan, Edward Cullen, or otherwise associated characters. The Twilight series is a set of four novels (as of the release of "Breaking Dawn" on August 2, 2008) about an exceptionally clumsy and plain girl named Bella Swan and the exceptionally beautiful and perfect vampire with whom she's obsessively in love. Bella transfers to a new high school where she meets Edward Cullen, who's around a hundred years old, and their relationship blossoms. Other characters include Bella's father Charlie, Edward's family, and the local pack of Native Americans/werewolves (a young werewolf and family friend of Bella, Jacob Black).

There is a sometimes intense feud going on between Edward Cullen fans and Jacob Black fans, though the overwhelming majority support Edward, who is Bella's choice as well. The feud dissipated somewhat when Jacob imprinted on Edward and Bella's daughter Renesmee in the final novel, "Breaking Dawn". Most fans choose sides in the feud, "Team Edward" or "Team Jacob", but a small percentage support both (sometimes referred to as being like Switzerland), and an even smaller percentage think Bella should choose neither.

Members of Twilight fandom have produced a tremendous volume of fanworks devoted to the series since the release of the first book. On FanFiction.Net alone, Twilight surpasses all other books except for the Harry Potter series in stories published as of 2009.[1] Twilight fans have extensive message board forums, livejournal communities, and both passionate followers and intense haters of the series. Kerfluffles and wanks have plagued the fandom as well, no doubt due to its tremendous, quickly-growing size.

[edit] The Author

Stephanie Meyer

Stephenie Meyer is a unique case of writer's inspiration. She was a stay-at-home mother with no real training in professional writing. Then, one night, she had a very vivid dream about a girl and a boy sitting in a meadow. The girl seemed to be an ordinary girl, but the boy admitted to being a vampire. They were discussing the fact that they were slowly falling in love. When Stephenie woke up, she did not want to forget about the dream, so she wrote it down. The dream appears in one chapter of Twilight, "Confessions." After she finished writing her dream down on paper she began writing more chapters, until she finished her first story. She had to go back and write the beginning because she had started the story in the meadow. When she finished Twilight she realized she wasn't ready to let the characters go, and she decided to continue the story of Edward and Bella in four books.

[edit] The Canon

[edit] What is canon?

The canon consists of four books and the movies based on the books. The unofficial sequel Russet Noon is not considered canon.

[edit] Release timeline

"On May 6, 2008, Little, Brown and Company will release The Host, Meyer's highly-anticipated début novel for adults." [2]
On November 21, 2008 Twilight was officially released in theaters in the U.S.
On March 17, 2009, "Twilight: Director's Notebook" by director Catherine Hardwicke was released.

On March 21, 2009, the Twilight DVD was released in the United States.

On April 3, 2009, the Twilight DVD was released in Ireland.

On April 6, 2009, the Twilight DVD was released in the United Kingdom.

On April 8, 2009, the Twilight DVD was released in Portugal.

On April 21, 2009, the Twilight DVD was released in Spain.

On April 22, 2009, the Twilight DVD was released in Australia.

[edit] Terminology

Below is a list of terms and their definitions that may be used in this fan community.

Edwardist- Someone completely in love with Edward. Also someone who wants to kill Jacob. An Edwardist puts herself (or himself, whatever floats your boat) in Bella's shoes in order to experience Edward's love in a more detailed manner.
Irritable Grizzly- Someone who for some reason is getting on your nerves. Usually someone who you have fun getting rid of.
Vamp- A vampire, gone bad. Usually a term used by other vampires as a sign of disrespect.
Leech Lover- An offensive term for some one who is for team Edward, generally used by the population of Edward bashers.
Dog/Pup- Does not mean an actual dog. An offensive term for a werewolf, usually used by Edward lovers
Bloodsucker- an offensive term for a vampire. Usually used by Edward bashers
EXB- A story where Bella is paired with Edward.
JXB- A story where Bella is paired with Jasper.
BB - Stands for baby. [3]
OME- Oh my Edward. An exclamation used by internet fans.
Team Switzerland- Fans who equally support Edward and Jacob. Someone who will be satisfied with Bella's choice, whatever it may be.
Team Edward- Fans who support Edward and want Bella to choose Edward.
Team Jacob- Fans who support Jacob and want Bella to choose Jacob.
Team Cucumber- Fans who don't root for Edward or Jacob.
Twihards - derogatory name for hardcore Twilight fans.[4]
Twiworld- Anything and Everything to do with Twilight, the 'world' of twilight.

[edit] Timeline

Below is a partial timeline of events that took place in this fan community.

[edit] 2003

On June 2, 2003, Stephenie Meyer Had her dream and started writing Twilight! On her first day she wrote Chapter 13 (In the meadow.)

[edit] 2005

On June 20, 2005, Stephenie Meyer created her official site. [5]

[edit] 2006

On June 17, 2006, the GreatestJournal community stepheniemeyer was created. [6]
On October 7, 2006, the domain BellaAndEdward.com was registered. [7]
On October 22, 2006, the fansite BellaAndEdward.com was officially launched. [8]
On November 29, 2006, the FanFiction.Net forum The Twilight Zone was created. [9]

[edit] 2007

On March 3, 2007, the FanFiction.Net forum Insanity Inc was created. [10]
On July 6, 2007, the GreatestJournal community twilightfans was created. [11]
On March 23, 2007, My Dreams Belong to You by moonlitstranger became the first Twilight story posted to FanLib. [12]
On June 14, 2007, the FanFiction.Net forum T w i l i g h t d o m was created. [13]
On August 16, 2007, the FanFiction.Net forum Party at the Institute was created. [14]
On August 31, 2007, an article about Twilight was created on Wikipedia. [15]
On September 5, 2007, the FanFiction.Net forum Twilight FanMALE was created. [16]
On October 11, 2007, the Twilight last.fm group was created.[17]
On November 11, 2007, the FanFiction.Net forum Twilight Party Palace was created. [18]
On December 17, 2007, the fansite Twilighters.org was created. [19]

[edit] 2008

Twilight mentions in the period between April 23 and May 22, 2008 according to Technorati.

On February 7, 2008, the release date for the final Twilight book was announced. [20]
On February 14, 2008, the Twilight fanfiction/fanart archive MyOwnTwilight opened. [21]
On February 15, 2008, the Twilight fansite/blog Twilight Lexicon was created. [22]
On February 29, 2008, the Twilight fan fiction archive The Host Library was created. [23]
On June 22, 2008, Twilight Sedin was created. [24]
In July 2008, fans of Twilight were upset over the cover of Entertainment Weekly because they felt it made the actors look ugly. [25]
On July 15, 2008, an interview with Twilight Guy was published in Entertainment Weekly. [26]
On August 2, 2008, the final Twilight book released. [27]
On August 15, 2008, it was announced that the release date for the Twilight movie had been moved to November 21, 2008, a date which had previously been Harry Potter's scheduled release date. [28]
On August 30, 2008, a campaign to support Stephanie Meyer was started by a number of influential Twilight fansites including His Golden Eyes, SLTA, Twilight Lexicon, The Twilight Moms, Twilight Series Theories, and Twilight Teez. [29]
On October 7, 2008, a report made its way to a LiveJournal community that at least one Twilight fan had named a child Renesmee.
As of November 1, 2008, 672 LiveJournal users listed themselves as attending Forks High School. [30] This resulted to these people being called "Twilight fan(tard)s" on sf_drama. [31]
On November 22, 2008 Summit Entertainment officially announces that they will be making New Moon. [32]

[edit] 2009

In March 2009, Entertainment Weekly wrote an article about how some fans of Twilight felt like Kristen Stewart was putting them down. The article talked about how Kristen Stewart saying that she loves the fans, really. [33]
In March 2009, Twilight haters got upset with the author of the books because she plugged Cassandra Claire's work. Meyer was viewed by some as sullying the awesomeness of Cassandra Claire. [34][35]
Twilight Forums was created on April 23, 2009. [36]
On May 10, 2009, an updated post about Russet Noon was made on fandom wank by caito. [37] It looked at LadySybilla's comments to User:Tikatu, an update on Potato Moon and Peter David, LadySybilla's apology to Stephenie Meyer, and the ongoing Wikipedia drama. [38]
In the first week June 2009, "new moon trailer" was one of the fastest moving search terms online. [39]

[edit] Kerfluffles

[edit] 333, the number of Satan's torso?

In July 2008, the Twilight fandom made fandom wank for a wank called "333, the number of Satan's torso?". [40]

[edit] Russet Noon

A very large fandom kerfluffle carrying over into the professional publishing world erupted in March of 2009, surrounding the plans by LadySybilla to publish an "unofficial sequel" to the Twilight series entitled Russet Noon. See main article for more information.

[edit] Fan Vidding

The (in)famous NuttyMadam.
The sisters who put out a list entitled "41 Reasons why Twilight is Better than Harry Potter"Said list was almost immediately discovered by a community of Twilight haters and subjected to merciless deconstruction, multiple times.

[edit] Role Playing

This section needs more information.

[edit] The Internet

[edit] Bebo

There is a community of fans on bebo. Compared to LiveJournal, they are not as active.

In August 2006, the bebo group ForeverBeginsNowx was created. [41]
In January 2007, the bebo group Edward-Cullen was created. [42]
In February 2007, the bebo group Tvviliqht was created. [43]
In August 2007, the bebo group twilight-lovers was created. [44]
In December 2007, the bebo group --twilight was created. [45]
In March 2008, the bebo group -FOREVER-TWILIGHT-- was created. [46]
In May 2008, the bebo group -TwilightSkins- was created. [47]
In May 2008, the bebo group TwilightSkins was created. [48]
In September 2008, the bebo group x-twilight-love-x was created. [49]
In December 2008, the bebo group LoveXLori was created. [50]

[edit] JournalFen

There is a small community of Twilight fans on JournalFen. Most of the community that does exists exists to mock the books, movies and their fans on fandom wank.

[edit] LiveJournal

There is a large, active fan base for the books and movies on LiveJournal.

[edit] Message boards

Screenshot of Twilight Sucks Forum

Message boards are important to the Twilight fandom. One inmportant one is Twilight Sucks Forum. As of June 12, [2009]], it has over 457,168 posts. [51]

[edit] Influential Fanworks

See Twilight fandom influential fanworks for a list of influential works in the fandom.

[edit] Fanfiction

See Twilight fandom influential fanworks#Fan Fiction.

[edit] Fandom Members

See Twilight fans for a directory of members of the fandom.

[edit] Fandom Size

[edit] December 2007

As of December 13, 2007, there were 30 stories on FanLib. [52]

As of December 27, 2007, there were 33 stories on FanLib and [53] 265 fans on FanPop. [54]

As of December 27, 2007, there were 11,628 stories on fanfiction.net, 124 forums on fanfiction.net, and 147 fan communities on fanfiction.net

[edit] June 2008

As of June 25, 2008, there were 26,134 stories, 340 communities and 190 forums on FanFiction.Net. [55]

As of June 25, 2008, there were 637 stories, 56 videos, 43 images, 32 poems, 4 screenplays and 3 lyrics on FanLib. [56]

[edit] April 2009

As of April 17, 2009, there were 76,052 stories, 990 communities and 415 discussion forums on FanFiction.Net.[57]

[edit] Misc

[edit] External Links

[edit] See also

Twilight fanzines

[edit] Sources

Below is a partial list of articles and academic sources to help you continue to learn about this community.