WARNING: THERE BE SPOILERS AND CURSING AHEAD.
Before I start this read-along series, I might as well come clean: I used to like Twilight. GASP! In middle school, I read many a bad book, but Twilight was perhaps the most famous. I’ve read all the books (more than once) and seen all the movies (more than once: curse you ABC Family!), making me more than qualified to evaluate this Twilight gender-bender (the gender of the characters are swapped: Bella is a dude now, Edward a girl, and so on). While I’m no longer under Twilight’s spell, I will admit that Twilight was great at allowing people to project themselves and their ideals onto the characters. When I was reading it, Bella was much more snarky and Edward was much hotter and laid back. Thus, when I first saw Bella and Edward on the big screen looking constipated and humorless, my undying love for sparkling vampires was suddenly cured.
Also, I would just like to state that while I’m hoping we will all get a few laughs out of this read-along I’m by no means bashing the author Stephenie Meyer. Hey, making millions off of a debut novel is stellar no matter the quality of the book.
With all that being said, let us begin!
THE COVER
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| Twilight |
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| Twilight Reimagine |
Now that Bella is a dude there’s no need to hold an apple with two hands anymore. Apparently, guys one hand that shit. And apparently apples have genders now.
FOREWORD (in a nutshell)
-Nope. This is not Midnight Sun. Sorry.
-Apparently, Meyer was annoyed that people viewed Bella as a damsel in distress when really she’s a human in distress. To prove this, she decided to write this gender-bender which is where the genders of the characters are swapped (Bella is now a dude, Edward a girl, and so on). Which really goes to show that Meyer really doesn’t understand the complaints against Twilight if that’s all she took from it.
-Then Meyer lists what she actually changed in the book:
-she didn’t swap the genders of Bella’s mom and dad or super duper minor characters
-Beau (Bella as a dude) has a slightly different personality and I quote “The biggest variations are that he’s more OCD, he’s not nearly as flowery with his words and thoughts, and he’s not as angry — he’s totally missing the chip Bella carries around on her shoulder all the time”. Take that for what you will because I can’t even.
-Tweaks in wording and events
-Mythology tweaks such as with Alice’s visions
-Miscellaneous
PREFACE
The preface is less than half a page so mostly the pronouns have changed. However, I’m so glad to see that Bella as a dude has finally learned how to breathe. But seriously:
Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined (Beau)
“I stared across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and she looked pleasantly back at me.”
Twilight (Bella)
“I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.”
CHAPTER 1
Most of the exposition starts out the same. Beau’s mom is driving him to the airport so he can go live with his dad in Forks. Instead of Bella’s white eyelet lace shirt, Beau is wearing a Monty Python t-shirt that doesn’t quite fit. Don’t worry though! Apparently, that won’t be an issue anymore because he “wouldn’t be needing t-shirts again soon.” Uh? Dude, you are going to Washington state not Antarctica; I’m sure you still be able to wear t-shirts.
Next Beau describes Washington and how he used to spend a month of the summer there until he and his father started vacationing in California instead. Beau clearly means serious business because he “started making ultimatums” to start going to California rather than Forks while Bella only “put her foot down”.
Beau describes going to live in Forks like hard prison time while Bella describes it as exile. Now, back in middle school, I understood the teenage angst of being under the thumb of your parents and somehow managed to sympathize with Bella. But, let’s be clear here: Bella/Beau are willingly deciding to go! In fact, it was their idea! A couple paragraphs ago they even explained how they had so much power in their family that they “started making ultimatums” and “put their foot down” in order to go to California in the summer instead of Forks! I’m sorry, but what kind of teenager has that kind of power and then still asks for sympathy with all this melodrama?
Later, Beau admits, “Okay, just a tad melodramatic there. I have an overactive imagination, as my mother was fond of telling me.” This is just so odd to me. It just doesn’t ring true for a teenager. Who brings up their mom like that? I just imagine him with his pinkie in the air, saying, “Oh, well, like my mother was saying the other day…”
However, all of this is just small pickings compared to this baffling, little gem.
“My mom says we look so much alike that I could use her for a shaving mirror.”
What?! Just what? Does your mom have facial hair? Mind you, he hasn’t described himself yet so this comparison means next to nothing right now. But, oh, it gets so much better with these following lines.
“It’s not entirely true, though I don’t look much like my dad at all. Her chin is pointy and her lips full, which is not like me, but we do have exactly the same eyes. On her they’re childlike — so wide and pale blue — which makes her look like my sister rather than my mom. We get that all the time and though she pretends not to, she loves it. On me the pale blue is less youthful and more…unresolved.”
First, did you seriously just say how similar you and your mom look just to backtrack and say all the ways you do not look alike?! And again what teenager narrates like this? Her lips are full? Bro, that’s your mom. Plus, the “looks like my sister” line is something awkward guys at the checkout counter say. **shiver** Also, wouldn’t it be pretty dangerous to try to use another person’s face as a shaving mirror if literally the only thing you have in common with them are your EYES?!!! By the way, how does the pale blue of your eyes make you less youthful? And I really don’t even know where to start with the unresolved part. What does that mean?
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| Me Pulling Out My Hair |
Anywho, Beau gets on the plane and meets up with his dad. One of the first things Charlie (dad) asks Beau is:
“You really feel okay about leaving her [Beau's mom]?”
You might be wondering, “Well, what’s so wrong with that?” You’re right, of course. There’s nothing per se wrong with that line. Until you pair it with the following paragraph.
“We both understood that this question wasn’t about my own personal happiness. It was about whether I was shirking my responsibility to look after her. This was the reason Charlie’d never fought Mom about custody; he knew she needed me.”
Is your mother really that incompetent that she needed a minor to look after her? How did the court give her custody in the first place? Mind you, his parents divorced when he was an infant! Also, God forbid you ever did actually ask about your own son’s personal happiness. Also, no, this part of the conversation is NOT in the original Twilight. Oh boy, this does not bode well for the rest of this novel.
Glad to see Beau is clumsy too (granted his clumsiness is blamed on a growth spurt while Bella just IS clumsy) as he totally hits a guy with a duffel bag. Plus, the guy is tatted and he and the girl he’s with are totally not having it and they get into Beau’s face about it.
Now Beau’s looking out the window as his dad drives and has this epiphany of the scenery: “It was probably beautiful or something.” Wasn’t that just awe-inspiring? What a sophisticated way of putting it! Guys, down in the comments, tell me are your thoughts always this sublime?
Also, apparently Beau was “The kid who got shoved into lockers until I’d suddenly shot up eight inches sophomore year.” I don’t know why this cliche amuses me; it just does.
Now, for those of you who have read Twilight you might remember the “Maybe there is a glitch in my brain” line. Well, Meyer kept it, but right before it she added this beauty:
“Maybe I smelled vinegar when they smelled coconut.”
Just let that sink in for a moment. “Maybe I smelled vinegar when they smelled coconut.” Oh, the writerly possibilities. Why vinegar? Why coconut? How long did Meyer sit there trying to think of just what kind of pairing she wanted to use for this example? Now, the real question is: did she mean this to be funny?
Beau is going through his first day of school at this point. He, like Bella, has also read Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer and Faulkner for some reason. I mean readers relate with readers, but even in the original it seemed a bit much. I will point out that I do like the fact that Beau (short for Beaufort) is named after his Grandpa who died a couple months before he was born and he hates the name. I do think that’s a nice touch. Not much, but something.
Okay, so now Beau is eating lunch and has discovered the Cullens. To get the true effect of this description, let’s take a look at how the original Twilight first described Edward:
“The last was lanky, less bulky, with untidy, bronze-colored hair.”
Now here’s the description for Edith, Edward’s counterpart:
“The last girl was smaller, with hair somewhere between red and brown, but different than either, kind of metallic somehow, a bronze-y color.”
Wow. What a nice tweak of editing there. So much better I can’t even…
Also, when Edith catches Beau staring at her, he doesn’t blush, but instead “could feel the patches of red start to bloom in my face.” I know this is meant to be a manly way to describe blushing, but it just sounds like he is artistically breaking out into a rash…
Now Beau is in Biology with Edith or rather Edythe since he found out he’s been spelling her name wrong in his head the whole time. It’s for this exact reason why this gender-bender will never work. As an author, you have to do a FULL rewrite. You cannot just leave large swaths of wording and content the same because there’s no way it’ll match the new gender’s personality and voice. It stands out so much. While it still wouldn’t have been the best writing, there’s a way Meyer could pulled off a chatty narrator who is less sophisticated and who rambles off descriptions off the top of his head. However, these details and voice don’t match the style of the original Twilight which makes you end up with an edited version that is somehow worse for it.
Afterward, we go through the scene where Beau finds Edythe trying to change her Biology class. Beau, like Bella, experiences a “thrill of genuine fear” from Edythe’s glare, but Meyer cannot let her readers forget that Beau is a MAN and so she adds the fragment “As if she were going to pull a gun out and shoot me.”
The chapter ends with Beau upset, his voice cracking, as he tries to drive home “trying to think of nothing at all” instead of Bella who was “fighting tears the whole way.”
Here’s an equation of what I’ve learned from this chapter:
Being a MAN= prison imagery + guns + red patches + smelling vinegar instead of coconut + unresolved eyes
Tune in next Tuesday for more Kelly Reads Twilight Reimagined!
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