Last time on Kelly Reads Twilight Reimagined…
We discovered that:
-The smiling pig has a reason to smile
-Beau is a baby seal
-Beau somehow has ten admirers
This time…
CHAPTER 15
Beau wakes up the next day and takes a shower. Edythe is still there because Charlie has already left for the day. Beau realizes that he forgot to bring his clothes to the bathroom so he “tucked the towel securely around my waist and then marched into the hall with my face blazing red. Even better — the patch of red on my chest was exposed, too.” How is his chest blushing? Seriously, his red patches can only be explained now with a skin condition. Maybe in the sequel he’ll go to a dermatologist.
Edythe wants Beau to meet her family today. Beau is worried not because it’s a family of vampires but because he’s not sure if they will like him. Edythe and Beau make out and Beau faints for a second. Why? He “kind of forgot to breathe”. As you do?
Edythe drives them to her house. Beau sees Earnest for the first time and thinks “There was something really…kind about his face, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was that made me think that.” Some of you might find this nitpicking, but descriptions like this just make a book seem unfinished. It seems like a placeholder I would put in a story for when I couldn’t think of how to describe something.
Archie comes down the stairs and gives Beau “one of those one-armed bro-hugs”. Is that what they are called? Because I think I might just call them that now. Come on, bro-man-bro, give me a bro-hug for the road.
Edythe plays a piece on the piano that she made just for Beau. Her family disappears to give them privacy. Edythe tells Beau that Archie saw other vampires coming into town. Edythe tells Beau Carine’s (Carlisle’s) backstory which is different from Twilight. In Twilight, Carlisle reluctantly takes up his pastor father’s position to find vampires and through his own cleverness finds a coven of them. Unfortunately, in the process, one weak, hungry vampire feeds on him instead of escaping and Carlisle is turned into a vampire while in hiding.
In Twilight Reimagined, Carlisle is now a woman named Carine who only argues against her father’s position on vampires in vain. Her father destroys the sewer area where the vampires had been living and as revenge one vampire follows him home, turns his daughter Carine into a vampire (because she was the thing he loved the most), and kills him.
On one hand, I understand why the story must be different. As a woman in that time, Carine most likely would not be allowed to take up her father’s position and so on. However, Carlisle’s cleverness and agency (for finding the vampires his father could not) is not replaced with anything in Carine. She becomes a passive character in her own story. The revenge plays out as if she were an object too. Furthermore, this changed backstory does not add up with what Carine does later: make other vampires. Carlisle’s story left room for forgiveness. The vampire that attacked him was weak and hungry and attacked by humans. If anythings, his actions could fall under self defense.
But in Carine’s story the vampire comes to their house for revenge. He forces her father to watch him turn Carine and then Carine is forced to watch her father die. How could she forgive such malicious actions? How could she later on ever thing it was right to change someone into a monster like that? I think this change adds new issues to the story, to be honest.
The chapter ends with Edythe taking Beau to Carine to finish the story.
CHAPTER 16
Apparently, not then. Carine says she would stay and tell the story but she has to go to work. Edythe shows Beau some paintings and continues the story with Beau interrupting with questions. Like Carlisle, Carine discovers she can live off of animals and begins to study and travel. However, during that time it would be unusual for a woman to be traveling alone, but this isn’t mentioned.
Edythe then talks about how Carine spent some time with the Volturi but left after a few decades. She said Carine was lonely and so when she saw Edythe dying alone during the Spanish influenza she turned her. Edythe shows off her room. Archie says there will be a storm and that they should play baseball. You know because that's how vampires spend their immortal lives.
Which now that I think about it doesn’t really make sense. Yes, I get that they hit so loud that they need thunder to cover it up, but wouldn’t they be constantly replacing bats? Wouldn’t the balls fall to bits and leave nothing to catch? Just saying.
The chapter ends with them agreeing to play baseball.
CHAPTER 17
Edythe drives Beau home and they see that Bonnie and Jules Black are in the driveway. Edythe leaves and Beau convinces Bonnie not to tell Charlie the truth about the Cullens. I wonder how different the book would have been if Bonnie had told. It’s moments like this where I feel the author goes too easy on the main character. The point of a story is to keep pushing the main character, but I feel like Bella/Beau slips away from almost everything.
Beau tells Charlie that Edythe is his girlfriend and feels “a strange sense of pride, being able to claim her this way. Kind of Neanderthal of me, but there it was.” The idea of claiming people in relationships has always been off to me. I guess Meyer kind of scoots past this with the Neanderthal comment but just barely.
Edythe comes over and Charlie gets to meet her. Beau and Edythe drive off. Beau has to hop on her back again so she can run them into the clearing. Everyone but Earnest and Beau start playing baseball. In Earnest’s story, he jumps off a cliff because his two year old daughter died (instead of a days old boy). It seems odd that his wife isn’t mentioned at all though…
They continue to play ball. I still find it weird that when the Cullens collide it apparently sounds like “the crash of two massive falling boulders”. I mean, jeez…Then Archie realizes that the vampire vistors are heading their way. They are worried for Beau’s safety, but continue playing hoping to show that everything is normal and that is how the chapter ends.
Here's hoping that the vampire vistors kill Beau.
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