I have a thing for non-existent beings

1. It’s overused and supports the current status quote of typical vampire supremacy:worshiping rich folk.

2. Vampires prey upon humans and therefore symbolize capitalists preying on the working class.

The first example that comes to mind is something she mentioned herself. When people asked her "why are ALL the boys in school super into Bella?" she explained that it was based on her own experience from moving from Arizona to Utah:

In this particular case, I modeled Bella’s move to Forks after my real life move from high school to college. (Personal story alert!) I mentioned in my bio that I went to a high school in Scottsdale, AZ, which is Arizona’s version of Beverly Hills (picture the high school in the movie Clueless). In high school, I was a mousy, A-track wall-flower. I had a lot of incredible girlfriends, but I wasn’t much sought after by the Y chromosomes, if you know what I mean. Then I went to college in Provo, Utah. Let me tell you, my stock went through the roof. See, beauty is a lot more subjective than you might think. In Scottsdale, surrounded by barbies, I was about a five. In Provo, surrounded by normal people, I was more like an eight. I had dates every weekend with lots of really pretty and intelligent boys (some of whose names end up in my books). It was quite confusing at first, because I knew there was nothing different about me.

Gonna go out on a limb and assume this is also where her resentment of pretty blonde women comes from, too (See: Rosalie, Lauren, Tanya, etc) given her use of the term 'barbies' here.

I think the importance of children/family/marriage is another big one. It seems like she simply could not imagine an existence, or a happily ever after, without a family, and without a child. It's the source of Rosalie's resentment and pain; it's the pathology that motivates Esme to play mother to a bunch of teenage immortals barely 'younger' than her; it's Leah being upset when she believes herself to be a 'genetic dead end.' Even though she wrote Bella specifically as not being into the idea of kids ("loud creatures often dripping some form of goo"). Even when writing about vampires it's through the lens of this happy nuclear family. And I was here for the found family stuff, with both the Cullens and the Pack, people who aren't blood-family (okay, some of the pack are distant cousins but you know what I mean) forming those kind of supportive bonds, etc. But then that's not good enough for her protagonists and she has to give them a biological child. It really just feels like she couldn't imagine a happy ending that didn't include children and that may come from her own personal experience as a mother, (and?) or the cultural emphasis placed on family, children, motherhood in her religion.

(Anon refers to this post)

Well, you just said it yourself, Bella’s in love with an ideal. But I’ll happily give you more words, because it’s a very particular ideal.

My thoughts on the relationship are really a post of their own, so I’ll just say that I think it’s a disaster and Bella is his prey, not his lover.

Also, once again I must link this meta because it is so good at explaining why Bella goes for Edward the way she does. And I’ll just link this post as well because Bella’s view of everything is fundamentally skewed. Vampires, the Cullens, and Edward, she sees it all through rose tinted glasses.

So, what gets Bella interested in Edward in the first place? At first, he was just the creepy ass from Biology who really hated her. A beautiful one, but still an ass.

Still, she was very attracted to him, and intrigued by the mysterious Edward Cullen who doesn’t talk to anybody. And so, when he initiates conversation she’s down for that.

What happens next is that this girl who has the lowest self esteem, who believes herself to be the least interesting little mouse on the planet, is suddenly lavished with attention by the guy she’s lowkey crushing on. There’s nothing, ranging from her favorite books and why she likes them, to her relationship with her mother, that doesn’t interest Edward.

Now, anyone would love to be center of attention from a hottie like Edward. But it means more to Bella than it would to most.

Bella doesn’t value herself, and so, when Edward starts doing it for her, she lets him. She lets him make her his invaluable human, the Juliet to his Romeo. She becomes entirely wrapped up in their romance because by Edward’s side she’s worth something.

(It’s telling that she later tries to repeat this with Jacob - Bella can’t build herself up on her own, she needs someone else to do it for her. Our girl may be a Feminist™ who writes essays about misogyny in Shakespeare, but she doesn’t actually understand female liberation and she’s light years away from realizing it. If she did, she wouldn’t need a man to give her value.)

As for why she latches on to Edward the way she does, and what about him she loves - it’s the vampirism.

The attributes Bella notices about him, and grows to love and know about him, are his inhuman attributes. His impossibly beautiful face, that perfect skin, those golden eyes, his hypnotic voice, his scent, his grace, his sparkle, his strength and speed. Loving Edward for these things is so obvious that Bella never really looks for other reasons.

(It’s almost poetic, that they love each other for the things the other hates most about themselves. Except the similarity is slim, at best. Edward is a predator, and Bella a neglected teen who got into a relationship for the wrong reasons, and now is stuck with the consequences.)

This is such a good point. I think it also adds to your other metas about Bella's debilitating low self esteem that she couldn't even tell that Jacob and Edward loved her in completely different ways.

In your meta about how Edward doesn't really love Bella (can you tell I'm just reading all of them in a row? They're incredibly insightful and I enjoy all of them!), you pointed out that Edward just asks Bella questions that don't really add up to a personality. He looks for clues about her in the songs and movies and books she says she likes but none of that can really tell him who she is.

In comparison, Jacob seems to know a lot about Bella without needing to ask her. He picks up on it when she stops listening to music, he helps her with with bikes because he can tell she needs some distraction in her life (although her thrill-seeking behavior in NM is definitely more worrisome than simple distraction but since Bella herself wouldnt even admit that I think it's fair for Jake to see it as mostly harmless at first). Basically, Jake doesn't need to piece together an image of Bella from random questions because he bothers to pay attention to her when they're together.

Bella wouldnt be able to see this difference because with Edward and his never ending Q&A, Bella can tell she's the center of attention. The way he looks at her "like [she's] something to eat" comes across as charming, attentive, loving. Edward makes it painfully obvious that he's obsessed with her and only her while Jake- being that he is a normal person- also loves Billy, and his sister's, and his friends, and the pack, and probably even Charlie.

Sorry that I took so ridiculously long to answer!

The answer to this one is bleak.

Because why, exactly, does Edward fall in Bella? What makes her stand out from the crowd?

Famously, it’s her blood. 

He smells it and just like that it became his highest priority in this world. 

“I hadn’t imagined that such a scent could exist. If I’d known it did, I would have gone searching for it long ago. I would have scoured the planet for. I could imagine the taste.” (Midnight Sun, page 12)

People tend to downplay a bit just how insignificant Bella’s scent is to Edward. This is past “she smells like freesias<3”. This is a predator who just found the greatest prey he’ll ever find. This is the core of Edward/Bella, and there’s nothing personal or romantic about it.

Further, Edward is a person who puts all his stock in reading people’s minds. It’s how he interacts with people, and he has based much of his personality and self-esteem on it. He fancies himself someone who knows and understands the people around him intimately. How could he not? He knows their every thought.

Enter now the girl he can’t keep his mind off because her blood is driving him mad. Chapter 2 of Midnight Sun opens with him trying to stargaze in peace, but he’s just thinking about Bella. 

(...) a face, just an unremarkable human face, but I couldn’t quite seem to banish it from my mind. (Midnight Sun, page 26)

Of course, this is intended to be because they’re mates and Edward is supposed to already be already in love with her. He just doesn’t know it yet!<3

Well, I don’t believe in mates, and this guy is not in love. He finds Bella plain (chapter 1), unremarkable (chapter 2), even her eye color is boring. Not to mention that he doesn’t know her at all and desperately wants to eat her.

Anyway, Edward ends up returning to Forks, and finds that he can’t read her mind. The girl with the irresistible blood that he is already obsessed with is now officially an enigma. It’s no longer just about the blood, it’s about the entirety of Bella Swan. Who is this girl his mind won’t stop circling around?

He decides to find out.

This is where the mess that is Edward Cullen comes in, because in spite of or perhaps because of his gift, Edward has a very poor understanding of people. He judges people based on what he gleans from their minds, assuming that his gift lets him see their true self. Taking Rosalie for an example, she thinks about her looks compulsively. Edward takes this to mean that she’s vain. He never asks himself why Rosalie would be like this, if perhaps she’s like this because when it’s what her family and everyone else in her life has valued about her, if it’s because she doesn’t feel she has any other value, or if she in any way has a reason for obsessing over her looks that runs deeper than vanity.

My point being, Edward doesn’t get people, and he doesn’t know that he doesn’t get people. He bases his understanding of them on what he reads in their minds.

And so, when he sets about getting to know Bella Swan, he does so by asking her a million questions, and analyzing every answer she gives him. One example, he asks her which CD she’s listening to, she tells him, he asks which tune she likes best, she tells him, he runs through the lyrics in his head looking for some kind of clue.

He asks her questions that ultimately mean nothing, but they allow him to feel he’s getting closer. The result here is that he doesn’t know her at all, but he thinks he does. More on that later.

We also get him observing her. She’s nice to others, she doesn’t do the shallow teen things he disapproves of like fawning over him or gossiping with Jessica Stanley, and it totals to him quite liking what he sees. More on this later as well.

So, we have three components here that draws Edward to Bella. There’s her blood, her mystery, and the fact that he likes what he sees.

And that last bit is what the whole ship hinges on, for obvious reasons.

But what exactly does he see?

When Edward is drafting out her personality, he draws conclusions based on what he wants to see. He likes Bella, and more, he wants her to be special. He ends up imagining someone who is of course much too good for him, who probably won’t even give him the time of day, a person who couldn’t care less about his inhuman beauty. He projects a persona onto Bella that is saintly, and honestly quite similar to Carlisle. This persona has little to nothing to do with who Bella is. A good example of how far removed Edward’s Bella is from the real Bella is that he’s surprised to learn she finds him attractive.

Cut to Twilight, and Bella spends 90% of the book fawning over his inhuman beauty, and being very much a mortal teenager who has a crush on a boy. It’s just that she doesn’t gossip with Jessica, and Edward can’t read her fangirling mind, so he never has to find out that his version of Bella is made up.

There’s also the fact that Bella is very much the ideal woman to Edward. Frail, ladylike, naturally beautiful without makeup, kind, nurturing, aloof and above the other, menial teens. Edward very much has a Madonna/Whore complex (look at how he treats Rosalie), and Bella is the ultimate Madonna.

Then there’s the fact that Bella is human, which is a whole other can of worms best reserved for another post. I’ll just say this, Edward is deeply disgusted by vampires, and would not have fallen in love with one.

So, I think Bella was a perfect storm. Delicious enough that he became obsessed with her based on that alone, being around her is torturous which in turn makes it a challenge he can’t resist, a hidden mind he can project whatever personality he like onto, and she’s the kind of woman he approves of. Even her taste in literature is something that a snob like Edward can agree with.

It was Bella or bust.

Edward was ready to pounce on Bella the second he could and abort their kid against his wife's wishes, and Jacob, her bestest friend in the world, was totally okay with this and actually prepared to help. Canon also implied Carlisle would be an accomplice by being the one to perform the abortion. While the other Cullen's weren't mentioned Rose apparently felt so strongly that they would sit by and let this forced abortion happen that she outright refused to leave Bella's side for the majority of the pregnancy.