Breaking Faith: Disrupted Expectations and Ownership in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga‪.‬

Every reading experience draws from three essential elements--text, author, and reader--that combine to create varied interpretations of individual works. The dynamics of power among these elements, however, has been affected by the wide availability of online media, particularly in the case of literature with large fandoms. Stephenie Meyer's recent Twilight saga, comprised of her books Twilight, Eclipse, New Moon, and Breaking Dawn, provides a useful case study for this phenomenon, proving how accessible and instantaneous communication on the Internet transforms interpretation and empowers readers. The Twilight saga's enormous popularity is closely tied to its author's tense relationship with her fans. Meyer's frequent interaction with fans via online media disrupts their expectations and leads to competing interpretations. In Fan Cultures, Matt Hills talks about the "loosening of identification in fantasy" (69) whereby the fantastic elements in fiction allow the reader to see past self-identification, providing more entry points into interpretation and interaction with the rest of the fandom. I would suggest that, in a similar process, the more fans interact with and read the books, the more the constructed world of the texts becomes collectively defined and anticipated. When the fandom's collective vision of the textual world is undermined, fans personally feel deceived and misled and resist the altered structure. The fandom then turns to the most accessible outlet for its frustrations--the Internet--which gives a united voice to its displeasure and a venue for its action against author and text.