Today is a very blessed Wednesday, because we are bringing you a bonus episode with not one! but two! special guests. Friends of the podcast Ashley and Robert came to Louisiana along with Whiskey Jenny, and we somehow talked them into reading Genderbent Twilight, AKA Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, by Stephenie Meyer, for our September bonus episode.
You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
Note: We kept saying genderswapped about this book, and I’m annoyed with myself because I actually greatly prefer genderbent, which does not carry the connotation of there being only two genders. So, bother. I am sorry about that, and I will be more attentive to language hygiene next time. Discontented-mouth emoji from me.
Thanks so much to our Patreon subscribers for making this possible!
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Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcripts by: Sharon of Library Hungry
Transcript is available below the jump!
THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to, or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hello, and welcome to a special episode of the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. I’m Whiskey Jenny.
GIN JENNY: And I’m Gin Jenny. And we’re in the same room!
WHISKEY JENNY: We are. And we’re also joined by Robert and Ashley.
ALL: Yay!
WHISKEY JENNY: Welcome, Robert and Ashley.
ASHLEY: Thank you.
ROBERT: Thank you.
WHISKEY JENNY: Today we were talking about gender swapped Twilight, AKA Life and Death: Twilight Reimagined, by Stephenie Meyer. All four of us have read it. I’m not sure how we forced other people to do this weird experiment with us.
ASHLEY: I think it was sort of a shared delusion.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: I’m also being held hostage in a house in Louisiana.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Send help! First up, Ashley, what are you reading?
ASHLEY: Well, I just finished gender swapped Twilight all of 30 minutes ago. So I was reading that. And what am I reading now? I think I’m reading a Black Sails fanfic called “Unaccommodated Man?”
GIN JENNY: “Unaccommodated Man,” by kvikindi, and I’ll link to it in the show notes.
ASHLEY: I’m about a page into it. It’s great so far, and I’m super excited to go back to that and be done with gender swapped Twilight. Oh, I have a horror anthology about Ouija board stories that I am super stoked to start reading.
GIN JENNY: That sounds amazing.
ASHLEY: I can’t wait. I’ve heard really good things about it from the gals from Books in the Freezer.
WHISKEY JENNY: Robert, what are you reading right now?
ROBERT: I am reading the first book of the Broken Earth series by N.K. Jemisin. Now, I would love to brag about that, because it’s getting so much attention these days. But this is the third time it’s been interrupted by either a book club book or, again, being held hostage in Louisiana.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: Sorry about that.
ROBERT: One or the other.
GIN JENNY: Sorry not sorry!
ROBERT: Sorry, N.K. Jemisin, but I hopefully will finish it this time without another interruption.
GIN JENNY: Have you ready anything by N.K. Jemisin before? Is this your first experience?
ROBERT: No I read the first book of her other series, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, I think it’s called. Yeah.
GIN JENNY: Cool.
WHISKEY JENNY: Gin Jenny?
GIN JENNY: I just got finished reading a comic called Firebug, by Johnnie Christmas.
WHISKEY JENNY: Definitely a real name.
GIN JENNY: Absolutely a real name. Johnnie Christmas and Tamra Bonvillain? [FRENCH ACCENT] Bonvillain, if she were from Louisiana.
WHISKEY JENNY: I thought you said Bond villain.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I wonder if she did that on purpose!
And it’s about a volcano Goddess, and it was a lot of fun. And I’m hoping that there’s more volumes on the way. It was apparently—I believe it was serialized in something called Island Comics, and they collected it in a trade from Image. So I don’t know if that means more is coming or if this is it. Because the trade paperback ends—I just finished reading it—it ends on a closed note, but still the possibility for more, so we’ll see.
Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m reading Names on a Map, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, who also wrote Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky Club, which is one of my favorite short story collections, which I think I lent to Ashley. She’s nodding.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I liked it a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: I only just started it, but so far so good, and we’ll see how it goes. This is for book club. A book club.
GIN JENNY: One of your thousands of book clubs.
WHISKEY JENNY: And my previous pick for work book club crashed and burned miserably. So we’ll see how this one goes. It was Sorcerer to the Crown. It was. And it went horribly, and I’m very stressed out about this upcoming discussion, because the picker has to also the discussion. And it’s awful.
GIN JENNY: It sounds so stressful.
WHISKEY JENNY: But it’s a thing that I do for fun.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: I don’t know why they have that format. That seems so stressful.
GIN JENNY: Sorcerer to the Crown has a sequel coming out.
WHISKEY JENNY: I did not know that.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, I think it’s coming out next year?
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m really excited.
GIN JENNY: I can’t wait. They just announced it pretty recently.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh.
GIN JENNY: I know. Gosh, it’s so nice to podcast in person.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s lovely.
GIN JENNY: I forgot what this experience is like.
WHISKEY JENNY: I know, I’m like, am I supposed to look at them? Do I not look at them? Is it weird if I look at them?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: I know. As Whiskey Jenny is talking, I feel like I’m looking at you a weird amount.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: It’s probably a normal amount. It’s a more than zero amount.
GIN JENNY: I’m like, now, how much do I look at people when I’m talking with them not with a monkey phone.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: A Mikey phone?
GIN JENNY: I’m calling them monkey phones now because—
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, a monkey phone.
GIN JENNY: —that’s what my nephew calls them.
WHISKEY JENNY: For calling monkeys.
GIN JENNY: Monkey phones. [LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY: Obviously.
WHISKEY JENNY: Of course.
ASHLEY: Obviously.
WHISKEY JENNY: So we read gender swapped Twilight. I can’t be bothered to remember the real name. [LAUGHTER] And for the purposes of this experiment, which is very scientific, Robert and I had never read original sauce Twilight, but we had seen the movie.
ASHLEY: Just the first one for both of you?
ROBERT: Yeah, just the first one for me.
WHISKEY JENNY: Same.
ROBERT: I should mention I saw the RiffTrax version.
GIN JENNY: Was it fun?
ROBERT: We had just started using it for the first time, so there were some technical difficulties with it. We had to stop and start it a few times. But it was a lot of fun, the experience was fun.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then Ashley and Gin Jenny had read original sauce Twilight and seen more of the movies?
ASHLEY: I had read the first book once and seen the first movie also once, also several years ago. So it was not super fresh in my mind.
GIN JENNY: I read all four books—there’s four books, right? I read all four books in about 2009, so it’s been a while. And I saw the first four movies.
WHISKEY JENNY: How many movies are there?
GIN JENNY: There’s five because they split Breaking Dawn into two.
WHISKEY JENNY: Nonsense.
GIN JENNY: It is nonsense. And Breaking Dawn number one was so horrifying that I couldn’t bear to see Breaking Dawn number two. But one time it was on TV when I was at home and I happened to turn it on right in the middle of a—well, this will be a spoiler, I guess, for Breaking Dawn—but right in the middle of the big fight scene where everyone killed everyone and everyone dies super violently. And it turns out to just have been a vision. But you do still get to see all these annoying whiny vampires.
WHISKEY JENNY: Were you excited?
GIN JENNY: I was so excited. It was incredible. It’s a really good fight scene, that everyone got their heads ripped off, and it was so gruesome.
ROBERT: I love how it’s like the end of Godfather, where everyone’s getting whacked.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: It’s a lot like that.
ROBERT: Just like Godfather.
GIN JENNY: I’ve actually never seen Godfather, so that’s speculative.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: But I’ve heard that they’re really similar.
GIN JENNY: Classic storytelling. OK, cool, so I’m the Twilight expert of this table.
WHISKEY JENNY: True.
GIN JENNY: I love it. I love my power. So where to begin?
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t even know. Overall impressions?
GIN JENNY: I venture to say we did not love it.
ASHLEY: No.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes. That’s accurate. [LAUGHTER] Did not love.
GIN JENNY: When I read original Twilight in ‘08 or ‘09 or whatever it was, I remember finding it funner than this experience was.
ASHLEY: I was thinking the same thing. Like, I thought the one that I did read was very silly. I also read it in 2009. Yeah, I remember it being at least fun on a plotty level, like I know this is not good writing, but I’m flipping the pages really quickly. Which is sort of what seems to be the consensus among people who like those books. It’s like, yeah, they’re just fluff and they’re fun. And that was the impression I had. But this was a lot more of a chore than I was expecting.
GIN JENNY: Oh my God, it was such a chore.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was so boring. What even happened?
ASHLEY: It’s extremely tedious. And I didn’t I pick up on that before.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was so boring. And I enjoyed the movie when I saw it. It’s very silly, but it was just a bad high school movie with vampires. Which was fun. I had a good time. And this one, I don’t even—they stared at the wall. They literally told us at one point that they stared at the wall. It was very boring. I don’t know how you made a story about people killing people all the time that boring. How did you do that?
ROBERT: For me it was a combination of the different sections of the book being blown up to the point where we’re getting into this minutia about the classes that they took, things like that. And then the prose is clogged with these filler words. There’s a lot of use of the word of the verb “be.” This is a thing that just drives me nuts, where you’re constantly saying “I was standing” instead of “I stood.” That ends up bloating the prose to a point where it drives me nuts.
I actually, there was one particular line that I thought was one of the worst examples of this, I had to—
ASHLEY: I had one of these highlighted, too.
ROBERT: “It wasn’t like I wasn’t already hyperaware that Edythe was right there, just an inch away from me.”
WHISKEY JENNY: That is right there.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: So three uses of the word “was,” OK? And she likes using either “super” or “hyper” to describe things. All the characters use that, so there’s no difference in the way the characters talk.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, no, not at all.
ROBERT: And then, “just an inch away from me.” Like, is that an exaggeration, or are you just repeating what they’ve already said?
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s so close!
ROBERT: Yeah that’s really—I would elbow that person immediately. I’m not touching you!
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: The one that I had is really similar. It’s a lot of very unnecessary to be verbs. “Maybe, when we were all together in one room, I would be able to feel sure that I was wrong, that there was nothing sinister about them.” And then—
WHISKEY JENNY: I would be able to what?
GIN JENNY: I was also having a hard time.
ASHLEY: “I would be able to feel sure that I was wrong.”
WHISKEY JENNY: I would be able to feel sure that I was wrong.
ASHLEY: One sentence later, “would they be able to know what I was thinking?”
WHISKEY JENNY: Do I know that they know that she knows?
GIN JENNY: Uh-oh. This is Whiskey Jenny’s bête noire.
ASHLEY: Like why do we need “would they be able to know?” Why isn’t it just “would they know?” So sloppy.
ROBERT: Did you notice as well, I don’t know if there’s a word for this. I called it negative description. There’s got to be a better word for this, where you describe things according to what they’re not. It was driving me crazy.
This is within three sentences, what I’m about to read you. “Finding the school wasn’t difficult. It wasn’t obvious at first.” There’s a lot of those. Like, “the restaurant wasn’t too crowded.” One of my favorites was, “I wasn’t super excited.” Like, what level of excitement is that?
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: It’s somewhere between not at all and medium excited.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: And that has a cumulative effect for the whole book, because you’re really like, I just want to get done with this scene. I get that they’re happy to see each other. Can we move on, please?
GIN JENNY: I thought you were going to say, the thing that bothers me more in the writing is that she won’t commit to an adjective. So she’ll be like, “it was almost as if Edythe was furious.” Or “she looked almost agonized.” There’s a la-ha-hotttttttttt of that.
ASHLEY: I highlighted one of those. “But all of this was only if things went badly, and I was nearly 90% sure that they wouldn’t.”
WHISKEY JENNY: So like 85?
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: 89%, I believe. [LAUGHTER] Wow, that’s terrible.
ASHLEY: But also, how can you quantify your certainty with a number like that? And if you can do that, why wouldn’t you just pick a number instead of saying nearly 90?
ROBERT: So you’re doing all this heavy lifting, but you’re not getting information.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, that’s the same thing for me. There was a lot of stuff that just didn’t make sense, and I was trying to figure out what I had done wrong as a reader to not understand the sentence. There’s a part—Beau blushes a lot. Beau is the Bella character. I guess we should have said that up front.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, yeah. Let’s talk about those names.
GIN JENNY: Oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER] We’ll come right back to that.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, good.
GIN JENNY: Beau, the main character, blushes a lot. And at one point he’s blushing in front of the beautiful vampire Edythe. And he thinks, “Why couldn’t my blood just stay in its veins where it belonged?”
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: I remember that.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: Where’d it go? Did it come shooting out of his nose?
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: He passed out a second later from the loss of blood.
GIN JENNY: And the line I was reading to the group earlier. When he’s touching Edythe, he thinks, “Her skin was so soft. Not that it had any give at all, no, but soft like satin.”
ASHLEY: Eugh.
WHISKEY JENNY: Give?
ASHLEY: Give.
GIN JENNY: Not like it had any give at all.
WHISKEY JENNY: Like a statue?
GIN JENNY: Yes. She’s an icy perfection statue.
ASHLEY: But then why wouldn’t you just say it was smooth like marble? Like a thing that actually doesn’t have any give. Not like satin, which has a shitload of give. It’s a fabric.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: It better give.
ASHLEY: It gives.
WHISKEY JENNY: Just walking around.
GIN JENNY: We should—I guess we should actually talk about the device of this book.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure.
GIN JENNY: Stephenie Meyer says in the introduction that one of the big criticisms she got about this book was that Bella is a damsel in distress, and therefore it’s reinscribing stereotypical gender roles. A of all, that is not the main criticism that I have with the gender roles in original Twilight. B of all—well, there’s no B. That all. [LAUGHTER] That’s not the problem.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s not the problem, but in order to disprove this, she decided to rewrite the book, swapping all the genders of all characters except for the parents.
GIN JENNY: She thinks it’s going to prove that Bella’s not a damesel in distress so much as a human among superheroes. Well, we’ll come back to how well we think she succeeded at that goal.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure.
GIN JENNY: But so they’ve changed all the genders of all the characters, so Bella is now Beau. [SIGH] Beaufort. Beaufort. I’ll never be over it.
WHISKEY JENNY: But he throws such a hissy fit if you call him Beaufort, as if Beau and Beaufort are just years apart. It’s basically the same name.
ASHLEY: It’s like the worst thing that ever happened to him, that he’s now at a new school where people don’t know that he goes by Beau and they call him Beaufort.
WHISKEY JENNY: He cannot deal with it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, so that was that. And all the Cullen siblings, all the vampire siblings and parents have been gender swapped. The only exception is, Stephenie Meyer didn’t gender swap Bella/Beau’s parents, on the basis that she didn’t think it would be realistic for the dad—in that case, the mom and the original books—to have gotten custody.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m glad she kept it realistic.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: It was just such a weird thing to suddenly care about.
ASHLEY: It’s a very strange point to—yeah, to care about that much.
GIN JENNY: Well, how did y’all feel the book did at proving that Bella is not a damsel in distress and it’s exactly the same?
ASHLEY: So bad.
GIN JENNY: You do not think it was successful.
ASHLEY: I do not think it was successful at all.
GIN JENNY: Say on.
ASHLEY: I did write this down under the category “dumb shit.” [LAUGHTER] Edythe comes across like a total psycho. It doesn’t fix any of the problems. She’s a psycho because Edward’s a psycho in the first one. It doesn’t prove anything. They both come across like psychos.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s still a horrifying relationship.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Yeah. It really is.
ASHLEY: Every time they go to make out and he’s into it, she shoves him away and then is like, what am I supposed to do with you, Beau?
WHISKEY JENNY: And then he’s like, you’re right. I’m so sorry. That’s totally my fault. I should have been more careful. Which sounds so much like an abusive relationship.
GIN JENNY: It absolutely does. It doesn’t fix any of the problems that I had with how uncomfortable the relationship made me. And that was true even when I was enjoying the plot of the book. I was still like, this is a very unromantic and extremely troubling relationship.
ASHLEY: It’s very unromantic.
GIN JENNY: It is.
ROBERT: Yeah, and the sword of Damocles that’s hanging over this the whole time, where it’s like, look, I really love you, but any minute I could go crazy and eat you. I don’t know how you could walk that line. There’s no way—there’s no way, I don’t think. And also, the whole idea that the basis of her attraction to him is the fact that she is attracted to him as food, that’s a lot worse than objectifying someone, I would say.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: Well also, and this is pretty much a theme throughout the book, that there are lots of potential sources of conflict that are really not explored, just dropped. Like I really feel like Stephenie Meyer has no interest in exploring what would be the really interesting, obvious—or even less interesting, less obvious—avenues of conflict. But one of the big ones is, like you were saying, the big thing that’s hanging over their head is that she’s into him as a food, and he doesn’t care at all. He could not care less.
GIN JENNY: To the point that he’ll say, oh, I’m worried about what’ll happen to you—
WHISKEY JENNY: If you eat me.
GIN JENNY: If you eat me. Which is a really upsetting thing for someone to say.
ASHLEY: Yeah. Like, he can care about that stuff and be concerned for his own safety, but also care about hers and find a way to work it out.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s in fact more interesting if you have that—
ASHLEY: Conflict.
WHISKEY JENNY: Is it a conflict?
ASHLEY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: If you’re torn in that way, it would be more interesting than, I’m 100% on your side, even if you eat me.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: It’s almost like love stories are better if there’s some sort of conflict along the way that has to be resolved before the happy ending. [LAUGHTER] I know that’s crazy.
GIN JENNY: Happy.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: Just spitballing here. Can I also say, the way the book is structured exacerbates this problem, just because—I think the book would have been better served by setting it up more like a mystery that Beau is trying to solve. I mean, this is how you get out of this damsel in distress business, where you have your protagonist, give that person a motivation to solve a mystery, and then have them try to solve the mystery. This book, Beau just hangs around Edythe long enough for her to give him an info dump. And then she introduces him to the family, and they all give their own info dumps. And then after the climax of the story, we get more info dumps. So he does nothing to earn any of this, other than smelling good.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: That cannot be overrated, though.
ROBERT: Right. OK, I’ll give you that.
WHISKEY JENNY: Also, they’re supposed to be keeping the existence of vampires a secret, and he figures it out in two days. All he does is—
ROBERT: Goes to the beach with them, right?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. He notices their eyes, which I think I would notice also if randomly people’s eyes around me started turning pure black. I just feel like maybe a color change I wouldn’t notice, but pure black is kind of noticeable.
GIN JENNY: Especially when the previous color—
WHISKEY JENNY: From yellow.
GIN JENNY: —was gold. Yeah.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: So he figures that out and no one else does. And then he goes to the beach with Jules and she gives him a handy little info dump. And then he’s like, you know, I wonder if these people are vampires? And everyone’s oblivious, even though it took me all of two days to figure it out.
GIN JENNY: I agree. And also, going back to what you were saying, Robert, about Beau not being an active character. If he were solving the mystery of the vampires, that would have been one thing that would have made him more of a dynamic character and also made the book move along in a more interesting way. But also, returning to the romantic relationship, he takes no ownership at all over deciding what’s going to happen in the relationship. He’s just kind of like—the one thing I think he asks about is the logistics of sex between a human and a vampire. And I think that’s it. Most of the time it’s just Edythe saying, I might kill you! And Beau being like, well probably not, but it’s fine.
WHISKEY JENNY: It’ll be worth it if not. He also—this part really grossed me out. He only started thinking about the impact of him becoming a vampire once he thought maybe Edythe might want him to become a vampire. And he says that. Like, oh, what if Edythe wants me to become a vampire? And that’s the only way that that would ever happen is if Edythe wants it, not if I, perhaps, want it. And then he was like, oh gosh, that would be really weird and maybe kind of hard on my parents. But that’s probably fine. Who is this monster?
[LAUGHTER]Also on the relationship, there was just that grossest gross scene in the parking lot where Edythe physically stops him from walking in the direction that he wants. And he stops and is like, OK, which way do you want me to go? And she’s like, great, I’m glad you’re learning. I get to make all of the choices for us, including which way you walk. It’s so gross!
GIN JENNY: I hated it. I hated it. I will say that it reads differently to have a girl bossing a guy around in this way, but doesn’t prevent it from being gross. It just prevents it from being the same stereotype that you always see.
WHISKEY JENNY: Still gross.
GIN JENNY: But still very gross. It doesn’t fix the problem. It just doesn’t fall to the same stereotypes. It’s gross in a new, original.
ROBERT: As far as the writing style and how it plays into the gender politics. The questions.
GIN JENNY: Thank you! Thank you.
ROBERT: Constant—there were constant questions. All the dialogue is cluttered with question marks. There are questions about the questions they’re asking, questions about the tone of the questions, questions about how many more questions there will be. I mean, that just makes for the most boring dialogue. There’s no tension. Even when there’s this creepy subtext, there’s zero tension. I don’t know she pulled that off. It’s incredible.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sometimes there were too many questions and she just summarized the questions for her in a nice little paragraph. And then there were some questions about these general topics.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Well, and also, Edythe and Beau never really seem to have a conversation conversation. Every time they have a conversation, it is in interrogation format. And Beau is really excited about it. Edythe is like, I have thousands of questions for you, and then asks him questions all day.
WHISKEY JENNY: In fact had a thousand questions.
GIN JENNY: And then asks follow up questions. Like, where did you go with your mom when you were seven that was fun for you? And if Beau was like, the zoo, Edythe would be like, what animals did you like at the zoo? That is not how conversation works. That is a terrible conversation.
ASHLEY: People in relationships, even in the beginning when you don’t know anything about each other, you still talk about other things besides your relationship. All they talk about is their relationship.
GIN JENNY: But even when they’re not talking about their relationship and Edythe’s trying to find out more about Beau, it’s like they both can’t be contributing to the conversation at the same time. One of them has to be giving all the input. It’s so strange. It’s so, so strange.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. The other thing I thought this might be before reading is a fun falling in love story for teenagers, which it was not.
GIN JENNY: No.
WHISKEY JENNY: Aside from the creepiness, it’s just, they don’t fall in love. They have two conversations—I’m putting conversations in air quotes—they have two conversations. They never have fun banter or anything, and then suddenly they’re in instant love. They’re in love forever and ever, and you don’t even get to watch them fall in love. They just are.
GIN JENNY: Edythe is not nice to Beau. In the early stages before they hit the love point, she’s always making fun of him and calling him names. She’ll be like, you’re an idiot, you’re absurd, this and that. It’s real ugly. It’s not nice to read.
ASHLEY: That’s not even a nice way to talk to someone you know very, very well. But it’s especially rude when the other person has no context for what you’re saying. Like, this is one of the first conversations they ever have. He’s confused about why she’s being a butthead to him. And she’s like, you’re being an idiot.
GIN JENNY: And Beau is like, you’re right, I’m probably being an idiot. Yeah, very likely. I can believe a teenager would have that response, because teenagers are insecure. But it’s just—
ASHLEY: It’s hard to read.
GIN JENNY: It’s miserable to read about it, because the book reinforces that that’s correct.
ROBERT: One of the scenes I was genuinely looking forward to—I know this might sound bizarre. But having seen the movie, and entering into this book thinking, well, this’ll be fluffy entertainment, but it will be fun. I really think I’m pretty open minded about people’s guilty pleasures, so I thought I entered this with the right attitude. I wasn’t just like I was going to shit on this book.
But the biggest wasted opportunity is when we first see the Cullens at the cafeteria. We get a description that is completely devoid of anything to ground us in the real world. All I hear over and over again how beautiful and absolutely perfect they are. Now, later in the book we get this line. And this is like 50% of the book. “I realize I’d never once really noticed what she was wearing. Not just tonight, but ever.” So we didn’t even get the clothes? [LAUGHTER] That was an opportunity for this book to really stand out. Even just a physical description, but it could make these characters stand out. It could give some better motivation than just, oh, she’s beautiful. Yeah, there wasn’t anything there.
And by the book’s own admission later on, we’re like, by the way, I should probably tell you what clothes she wears. Oy.
GIN JENNY: There was never anything there. The big conflict in the book, the big external conflict in the book is that they encounter another group of vampires who—so the Cullens do not eat humans, but they encounter these other vampires who do eat humans. That actually goes pretty OK. But then as soon as the vampires walk away, we find out that there’s a certain kind of vampire that really likes to track humans, and these vampires happened to contain one such tracker.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh. That’s a special kind of vampire?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know.
WHISKEY JENNY: Huh.
ASHLEY: They do use that word like it means something.
GIN JENNY: Yes. They say, oh, she’s a tracker, as if that is a word with meaning.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh. I thought she was just good at tracking. I didn’t realize it was a species of vampire. Anyway, doesn’t matter. Who cares.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: I was grateful that they didn’t explain it. I got it. She tracks things. Got it.
WHISKEY JENNY: It means she’s good at tracking.
ROBERT: Yes. That’s it. One who tracks.
ASHLEY: Try to keep up.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: But again, it had nothing to do with anything. It just was bad luck that they happened to come across a vampire who liked tracking humans. And so due to this unfortunate confluence of circumstances, they had to protect Beau. And then a whole bunch of plot ensued from there. But it would have just been so much more interesting if the vampire had had some motivation other than, that thing smells good and I’m a dick.
ASHLEY: I have some notes about the tracker.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: Oh boy.
ASHLEY: That was one of the most—I mean, this is a very nonsensical book, which is not a bad thing. The tracker thing was nonsensical to me in a bad way, because they keep highlighting the fact that it’s just all about the chase for her. She loves tracking things so much. All she wants to do is hunt this guy down. She’s never going to stop. She’s going to track him until she finds him and kills him, the end. And it’s only because she super, super, super loves tracking.
So what she does is not track him, but lay a trap for him so that he comes to her. That doesn’t seem like tracking to me. That seems like what you do when you want to kill someone for reasons, but you’re lazy and you just want them to come to you and make it super easy and get it over with. I don’t think that counts as tracking. I’m sorry.
GIN JENNY: That is what I do when I want—I am very lazy. And when I want to lure someone to me—
ASHLEY: Are you a tracker, though?
GIN JENNY: No, I’m not a tracker.
ASHLEY: So there you go.
GIN JENNY: So now we know. I’m a lurer.
ASHLEY: Yeah. And I think those, correctly, are two different views of supernatural creature. So I thought that was super dumb. And also, she helpfully explains that she had lost a human before and then that human had got turned into a vampire, and now there’s no reason for her to kill that vampire now, because she’s only into killing humans. Which seems super dumb. Because wouldn’t vampires, or any other supernatural creature, be much harder to track and kill than a human?
WHISKEY JENNY: You would think. Also, isn’t that one human who got away Archie?
ASHLEY: Correct.
ROBERT: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, what a coincidence! [LAUGHTER] How the hell did that happen?
ASHLEY: Small world.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, this is the other thing. It just feels like this book wants to wrap everything up in one book. In Twilight—if I may spoil Twilight.
ASHLEY: Please.
GIN JENNY: What happens is that the bad tracker vampire kidnaps Bella, slaps her around, breaks her leg. They show up and rescue her, he bites her, but Edward is able to suck out the poison and control himself from eating her through a superhuman effort of will.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, good for him. I’m so glad he didn’t eat her. Give him a medal.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And then she goes back home. And the Cullens are like, wow, super glad we didn’t turn you into a vampire. But in this book, it changes the whole ending and makes it really, really messed up and horrifying.
So same thing, the evil tracker vampire gets Beau and tortures him quite graphically.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was very violent.
GIN JENNY: It was extremely violent. At one point he was “splayed awkwardly in a pool of his own vomit.” Troubling. [GROANS] And they show up. Edythe is trying to suck out the poison, et cetera. And one of the vampires who is able to see the future is like, bad news. [LAUGHTER] What I’ve seen from here is—I think he was just angling to get a perma–best friend, honestly. But he’s like, bad news. The outcomes from here are either Beau turns into a vampire and joins our family or Edythe kills him.
WHISKEY JENNY: One or the other.
GIN JENNY: One or the other. So Beau chooses to become a vampire.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, now. Finally now Edythe is like, well, I guess we should let him make this choice between death or becoming a vampire. This is the one I’ll leave up to him.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. And he chooses to become a vampire. And then many hours of pain are necessary to become a vampire. So as he’s writhing in agony—
WHISKEY JENNY: Which—I would just like to interrupt, I’m sorry, to say that Stephenie Meyer, it also has many hours of pain in the book, it feels like, where she just had to keep writing about how painful it was over and over and over again to the reader.
ROBERT: No detail. Just, it’s painful, it’s painful, it hurts. There’s a bowl of fire in there at one point, but that’s it. Sorry.
ASHLEY: It moved around. But it was like—
WHISKEY JENNY: His toes.
ASHLEY: It was cold and then it was hot pain.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: And while he’s writhing in agony and the back of the Volvo, the other vampires are like, well now is actually a really good time—
WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] Sorry! [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Now is actually a really good time to explain to you all the other worlds building details that are going to be revealed in the subsequent Twilight books in the original Twilight universe. So they tell this unbelievably long, involved, pointless set of stories about the vampire cops that live in Rome—
WHISKEY JENNY: The nighttime patrons of the arts, you mean. [LAUGHTER] Like that’s a thing!
GIN JENNY: Nighttime patrons of the arts, yeah. And, God, what else? They tell him all the—all of the vampire families’ back stories get rehearsed again. Why, I don’t know.
WHISKEY JENNY: Can you imagine if you’re basically being tortured and someone was like, OK, quick pause. I’m gonna tell you this really long, boring story about myself. Right? You can’t go anywhere, so too bad for you!
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: But anyway, he eventually becomes a vampire. And then in a perhaps even more horrifying scene, he eavesdrops on his own funeral, because they faked his death so that his parents never know he has lived. They just think they’ve lost a child. And he goofs on their funeral choices. He’s like, well they didn’t need a hearse. That’s overkill. I’m like, come on, man.
WHISKEY JENNY: And then makes out in the tree with Edythe.
GIN JENNY: And then makes out in the tree with Edythe.
WHISKEY JENNY: Maybe a minute after witnessing his very grief-stricken parents.
GIN JENNY: Yes. And then, of course, there’s a brief non-conflict with the werewolves. Because the story is that the werewolves have made a deal with the Cullens that they can stay in the town as long as they don’t eat any humans. And the werewolves believe that the vampires killed Beau, so they show up to rumble. And Beau has to be like, no, no, it was some other vampires. Don’t worry about it. And they’re like, OK, cool. And then they peace. And then that’s the end.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: That part cracked me up so much, where Bonnie, the werewolf grandma, is like, do you guys really expect me to believe this guy that looks sort of a little bit like Beau is really him? And he’s like, [DEEP VOICE] it’s me! And she’s like, oh my God! That scene cracked me up for some reason.
GIN JENNY: Oh my God, it was ridiculous.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: So stupid.
GIN JENNY: It was ridiculous. And again, it just felt like an effort to shoehorn in events from later books so that we wouldn’t feel like we missed out on anything in this retelling.
ROBERT: It would’ve been great if the werewolves were like, you know, you two don’t seem to have a very healthy relationship. [LAUGHTER] I mean, I know I’m werewolf and all, but. [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: The other problem with the end is, everything we just listed—with the bad tracker vampire showing up—it feels like it happens maybe 90% into the book. And then you’re at most of the time breakneck pace until the very end. So all the interesting things that happen are in the last 10%, and the rest of it is them having interrogations, as Robert said. So I don’t know why I they had to start there.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I wrote that down. I was like, the action totally grinds to a halt at the end, and the falling action goes on for a thousand years. It’s like, the climax of the book is at about 80%, and then there’s this, like, falling—
GIN JENNY: Off a cliff, man.
ASHLEY: Basically, yeah. It just grinds to a complete halt when it’s supposed to be at the most exciting. And when the first—when the original Twilight, I think, is at its most exciting. Which, I mean, now I’m starting to question whether it really was that exciting. But I thought it was at the time.
ROBERT: Could I ask the group—maybe I missed something. But if I remember correctly, Beau is practically unconscious. The good vampires come in, and all he remembers is that the bad vampire gets tossed off of him. And that’s the last we hear of that vampire. We don’t get to see the climactic battle between them. As far as we know, the tracker vampire may have just run away. We get no details of that. Your climactic fight, and he just sort of dozes through it, I guess.
GIN JENNY: I’m trying to remember in the original Twilight what happened. Because I think—I was about to make the defense that Stephenie Meyer is writing this book for people who have already read Twilight, and are therefore already aware of some stuff that you, as a new reader, wouldn’t necessarily know. But as I’m thinking back to original recipe, I don’t think we see the bad vampire get killed there, either.
Because I seem to remember when I saw the movie, you see Alice jump on him to rip off his head. And I remember being like, that’s very satisfying.
WHISKEY JENNY: Nice.
GIN JENNY: So I don’t think it does happen in the original Twilight. So that is a true flaw.
WHISKEY JENNY: Another question I have about the end. If someone on your team could see the future, how did he not see this coming? So Beau sneaks away because he thinks his mom has been kidnapped. How did Archie not see that coming?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know. All the vampires— [HEAVY SIGH] All of the vampires have special gifts relating to their, I guess, talents when they were humans. And one of them, Archie—who’s Alice in the original books—can see the future, kind of.
WHISKEY JENNY: When it’s convenient for the plot she can. Or can’t.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, but not in any useful way. And Beau decides to sneak off, writes a long note to Edythe, being like, I’m sorry that I’m dead. I really love you. Don’t blame yourself. It’s definitely her fault, by the way. Et cetera. And through all of this, Archie apparently notices nothing. Even though his one job is to babysit Beau.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, and to keep an eye on his siblings who are also tracking the tracker. And doing a bad job of it, because they lose him.
ASHLEY: I think what he says is that Archie sees that something is different, but that Beau thinks that Archie thinks that the reason it’s different is because the tracker is doing something different now. But also—this was my favorite part—Beau intentionally clears his mind so that no one can see what’s going on in there. I’m like, your superpower is not thinking of anything. Great job, Beau.
GIN JENNY: Buddy.
ROBERT: It’s like Ray in Ghostbusters. Clear your mind! [LAUGHTER] Oh my God.
WHISKEY JENNY: I also was really annoyed—I’m just talking about all my things about the end right now. I was really annoyed that they we so smug about their plan that she’ll never see it coming if we say we’re going to Phoenix and then go to Phoenix. That’ll really trick her!
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: That was so stupid.
GIN JENNY: The world is a vast place. There’s a lot of places they could go.
WHISKEY JENNY: [LAUGHTER] That’s a horrible plan! [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: It’s such a bad plan.
ASHLEY: I was trying to make sense of it. But then I was just like, no, I don’t think there’s any sense there to be made.
GIN JENNY: And even in the world of the book, it doesn’t work. The tracker’s like, well, I knew you said you were going to Phoenix, but then I was like, oh, maybe it’s a trick. But THEN I was like, galaxy brain, what if it’s NOT a trick! [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: Better check just to be sure! [LAUGHTER] Oh, great, you’re here.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: It’s like in The Princess Bride, it was like, well I knew I couldn’t take the cup in front of you. It’s like, you’re stalling now.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. It’s so silly.
WHISKEY JENNY: I was also really grossed out thinking about the conversations between the tracker and Beau in original sauce Twilight. I was like, oh, this is even grosser in the original one. It’s still not great, but bluck!
GIN JENNY: The scene where the bad vampire has Bella I don’t remember being quite so graphically torturey.
WHISKEY JENNY: Just when he’s on the phone with him and making him say things, and being like, oh, I can’t wait to see you. It was pretty gross.
GIN JENNY: It was pretty gross. Hang on, let me—I’m so curious now if original Twilight has the same stuff. Hang on one second. Yeah, he’s much more chill.
ASHLEY: I don’t remember specifically being troubled by the evil tracker’s—I don’t remember him being creepy. He just super wanted to kill Bella. That’s all.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s good.
ASHLEY: So it’s nice that he wasn’t creepy about it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I’m looking now at the original Twilight and it’s just much less horrifying overall. There’s much less sadism from that bad tracker vampire, and not as many injuries happened to Bella. Beau sustains a lot of damage.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, two more problems at the end, one of which is that it was announced in the prologue what was going to happen in the book, which takes away all the tension that there might have been, even. And I know that’s a technique you can do sometimes to make everything seem inevitable, but in this case it just made it boring to me.
GIN JENNY: And also, the prologue says the following.
WHISKEY JENNY: Great.
ROBERT: Ermigerd.
GIN JENNY: “When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.” Disagree!
WHISKEY JENNY: I think it’s pretty reasonable.
GIN JENNY: Super reasonable.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I think you can be sad if your life ends.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
ASHLEY: It’s allowed.
GIN JENNY: I’m sorry, continue. I read that and I just could not cope with it at all.
WHISKEY JENNY: My last thing, and I know Ashley wrote down in her notes, look out for Whiskey Jenny bringing this up, because I’m going to, and it drives me crazy every time. But they decided they had to keep it a secret from Charlie, the dad, that he’s super in danger, because he’ll be safer if they keep it a secret. And he definitely won’t be! You should tell him! You should tell him. You should always tell them. If you’re trying to protect people, you should tell them that you are rather than doing it in secret! Because he might make a dumb decision, because he doesn’t know that he’s in danger! That’s the end of my rant.
ASHLEY: I also really hated that. I hated it on my own and also on behalf of Whiskey Jenny, because I know that bothers her a lot. Rightly so. It bothers me a lot, too.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, because then you have to read really dumb, hard scenes about people being mean for no reason to their people and loved ones.
GIN JENNY: That’s the other thing. When Beau runs away to protect Charlie, he says to Charlie the same parting line that his mom said when leaving Charlie many years ago.
WHISKEY JENNY: You jerk!
GIN JENNY: Which sucks. And then he dies—quote unquote—becomes a vampire. So as far as Charlie knows, that’s their last ever interaction. And Beau’s like, yeah, I do feel bad about that.
ASHLEY: A little bit.
GIN JENNY: He doesn’t feel that bad.
WHISKEY JENNY: Because then he makes out.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, because then he makes out with Edythe, exactly.
ASHLEY: He’s even like, oh, I was sitting there trying to feel what I was supposed to feel about the grief. And it’s very confusing and wishy-washy about the grief feelings. Which I know it’s because we’re supposed to be tying everything up with a bow and being happy that he is-—the Beau is with Edythe eternally. Which I also have some notes about. But that’s still really—it was way too easy, like everything else in this book.
ROBERT: It’s almost like a “I’m sorry you feel that way” kind of apology.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Not even that, just in his head, I’m sorry you’re sad Charlie. You’ll never know I feel that way. [LAUGHTER] Can we transition to how Beau is a butthead?
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes.
ASHLEY: Please.
GIN JENNY: Across the board.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes, we can. I have a question, though, before we get into that. So she says in the prologue, she talks about some of the changes that she made. And one of them, she says that she makes Beau have less of a chip on his shoulder. So is Bella even more of a butthead?
GIN JENNY: I don’t remember her being this much of a butthead, but it’s been a while.
WHISKEY JENNY: Because he’s a real big butthead.
GIN JENNY: He’s such a jerk. On his first day of school everyone’s really nice to him some kids at school kind of take him into their friend group and want to hang out with him. He talks to one girl, and she says you don’t look very tan. And Beau says, my mother is part albino. And Erica, who doesn’t know him and probably doesn’t know a lot about albinism—I don’t—doesn’t laugh at this joke, and Beau is like, nobody here has any sense of humor! I hate it! I’m moving back to Phoenix!
WHISKEY JENNY: No one gets my cool, edgy jokes.
ASHLEY: He does have a huge chip on his shoulder about his pale skin, which is one of his only personality traits. He’s very obsessed with the fact that he’s pale and comes from a place where people are not pale. Now he’s moved to a place where people are pale. I don’t understand why we spent so much time talking about his skin color. And I get that it’s supposed to be because vampires are people, too, whatever.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well I do have a question about that. Because at one point Edythe says, well, humans definitely—people can’t smell blood. And Beau says I can, and Edythe is really surprised. And A of all, you can definitely smell blood.
GIN JENNY: We’ve all done it.
WHISKEY JENNY: And B of all, why is Edythe—are we supposed to think that Beau is slightly vampire-like already?
ASHLEY: I thought that was supposed to be his superpower or something, but then that never comes back at all.
WHISKEY JENNY: He’s pale and he can smell blood, which apparently is a weird thing in this book, so. I’m looking at Gin Jenny as the resident Twilight expert, but that’s unfair.
GIN JENNY: I don’t think so. That never comes up. When Bella becomes a vampire, her special gift is protection. She’s able to protect people.
ASHLEY: Barf.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Also baffling, because we see no evidence whatsoever that Beau ever wants to protect anyone.
ASHLEY: Or Bella in OG Twilight.
GIN JENNY: Or Bella in OG Twilight. Protective is just not a trait with them. They’re just real jerks to everyone.
WHISKEY JENNY: They’re jerks. He’s clumsy.
GIN JENNY: He’s clumsy. That is his quality.
WHISKEY JENNY: That’s a personality trait, is he’s clumsy.
ASHLEY: He’s tall.
WHISKEY JENNY: He’s tall. He likes both—I think you brought this up earlier—he likes both Debussy and rock music.
ASHLEY: Of some unspecified band that his stepdad likes.
WHISKEY JENNY: So he definitely contains depth.
GIN JENNY: Muse. Again, it’s Muse.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: I love that.
WHISKEY JENNY: And yet every single girl at the school is in love with him. Every werewolf he meets is in love with him. Every vampire wants to hang out with him. Edythe is like, oh, you’re the least ordinary person I’ve ever met. But why? What—he has no personality!
GIN JENNY: It seems to be just because—so Edythe’s special vampire gift is she can read minds. And she can’t read Beau’s mind for reasons that are never specified.
ASHLEY: There’s nothing going on up there.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: There’s a gerbil in a wheel.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: And she finds this fascinating. You several times see her being mad at him for having thoughts that she doesn’t know about, which is again very controlling and troubling.
ASHLEY: He even explains to her, you do understand that not only is this what it’s like for everyone else, this is what it was like for you before you became a vampire. Don’t you remember?
GIN JENNY: But she doesn’t.
ASHLEY: She doesn’t care.
ROBERT: Yeah, that to me fits in with the bit about this constant threat of her potentially eating him and the fact that her attraction to him also involves, well, it’s something I can’t have, so I need to try to control it. I’m just like—I can’t even imagine how bad that translated in the original.
ASHLEY: Real bad.
ROBERT: Yeah, I’m sure it was not good.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was not good, my friend.
ASHLEY: Not great, Bob.
ROBERT: I’ll describe it as Stephenie Meyer would—it wasn’t good. As opposed to—yeah.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I wasn’t sure if the intention behind making Beau this big of a jerk is I’m supposed to think that he’s a cranky teenager, or I’m supposed to think that he is edgy and sarcastic and just no one gets him. Neither of those things were successfully pulled off. I think you have to be a better—this is going to be really mean, but I think you have to be a better writer to pull that off.
It’s like when you’re writing dialogue that sounds realistic, you can’t just write down the way people actually talk, because reading it would be garbage. You can’t also write down every annoying thought that a teenager might have and then expect, like, that’s what a teenager is like. But you can’t read that and have it be reasonable. So in either case it failed but I still wasn’t sure what I was supposed to pick up from it.
ASHLEY: I think I mentioned this to Robert. Yeah, I think there’s a skill, related to what you were just saying, to writing teenager personalities and teenager thoughts where you actually have to pump the brakes a little bit on the—at least what I remember of myself as a teenager—the obsessive checking in on your own mood, obsessive chronicling of every bit of minutia that happened that day. That is what teenagers do, but it is super boring to read. So to accurately capture what it’s like to be a teenager without going so literal. And I think this in a lot of ways, like with Beau telling us how his trig test was super easy, and how the weather was kind of cloudy but not really. It’s too much of the way teenagers just get so caught up in minutiae.
WHISKEY JENNY: And the fact that it was cloudy sometimes and not always sunny is the worst thing that Beau has ever experienced, aside from people calling him Beaufort.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, that’s the thing. He doesn’t like anyone and he’s not nice to anyone.
WHISKEY JENNY: He’s so snotty when they’re like, hey, let’s have a snowball fight. And he’s like, ugh, these people in small towns with their snowball fights.
ASHLEY: Even though snow is just as exotic to him as it is to them, if not more.
GIN JENNY: Much more so, I would think.
WHISKEY JENNY: Snowball fights are fun, also.
ASHLEY: Fun is great. Friends are great. Having people like you is great. The one person that likes him, nerdy Alan, he’s so dismissive of him. He’s just like, I was halfway listening to Alan droning on about some girl that he liked. What a loser. Anyway, Edythe.
GIN JENNY: Yes! He’s so unfriendly to everyone. Everyone is so nice to him at the high school. He never listens to what they’re saying. We very frequently have him being like, “so and so was talking, but I wasn’t listening.” I mean, that is not just one time. That is throughout the book.
ASHLEY: So many times.
GIN JENNY: They’re always inviting him to hang out with them and he’s always like—the only time he ever says yes is if he thinks he has a shot at seeing Edythe.
ASHLEY: He’s very single-minded and not—yeah, he’s very single-minded.
ROBERT: And just a writing thing, very little of the dialogue throughout the book is actually summarized to where you could actually maybe get to the end of the chapter a little faster. One of the few times that the dialogue is summarized is when he’s, as you say, describing someone droning. And then we can just skip past that part.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, back to me.
ROBERT: Yeah. I was like, couldn’t we have summarized a little more of the question and answer sessions between Edythe and Beau. That would have been a mercy to someone like me.
GIN JENNY: No, what’s his favorite music, and what’s his favorite color, and what’s his favorite zoo animal?
ASHLEY: Those are all super important. We need to know all of those things.
WHISKEY JENNY: Do we even hear the answers?
ROBERT: No, I don’t think we do.
WHISKEY JENNY: We just hear the questions.
ASHLEY: I actually would have been fine with hearing the answers to those questions, because it would have given Beau something resembling a personality.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure.
GIN JENNY: It’s like on The Bachelor—it’s actually exactly like on The Bachelor. Whenever they have their dates, they never talk about anything except—they ask each other questions, but never anything personal, so you never find out anything about their likes and dislikes. You only ever hear them talk about their relationship and the date they’ve just been on. So what just immediately prior happened.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: It’s like a recap. We were just at—
GIN JENNY: Yes! Honestly. They’ll go to dinner, and they’ll have their glasses of wine and their food that they’re not eating, and they’ll be like, well, we sure went on a helicopter. Boy, that helicopter. I feel like our relationship is moving forward at a rapid clip.
ASHLEY: And then they’ll narrate: “You know, man, I just really feel like I’m falling for this person. I’m really starting to have some feelings about them.”
GIN JENNY: That’s actually—God, I’m a genius. That is a brilliant analogy.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Didn’t they—at one point someone said, do you want to play Twenty Questions? And the dude was like, OK, and then the girl just asked him twenty questions. Yeah, which is what this feels like.
GIN JENNY: It’s what this feels like.
WHISKEY JENNY: Except Edythe got a million. [LAUGHTER] Want to play a Million Questions?
ASHLEY: And when Beau was like, isn’t it my turn? She’s like, no, obviously not.
WHISKEY JENNY: Beau, it’ll never be your turn. [LAUGHTER] OK. [SIGH]
Did you want to say more about Beau and Edythe’s creepy, creepy relationship?
ASHLEY: So we talked briefly about how they fall in instalove and how that’s super dumb and unsatisfying, since that’s what this book is supposed to be about. They’re in instalove, then Beau becomes a vampire. And then they have another dumb, anticlimactic conversation about whether they’re going to stay together, whether he’s mad at her for turning him into a vampire. And of course he’s not. He doesn’t care.
But they’re both committed for all eternity. And I get that he’s 17 and she looks 17 but isn’t anymore, so it’s creepy on that level. But also, they just met and they’re going to be alive for all of eternity until someone rips them apart and burns the pieces, which is how Edythe says you kill a vampire. So I just was like, you guys barely know each other, and you’re both immortal now. And you’re both like super ready to not just get married, but to commit to each other forever?
GIN JENNY: And Edythe tells Beau that if he had died, she would have killed herself.
ASHLEY: Yes!
GIN JENNY: Number one, that is not a romantic thing to say. That’s a very disturbing thing to say. And number two, what you said, Ashley. They have known each other for five minutes.
ASHLEY: They can commit to each other without having to be forever! Forever is already long for humans. It’s so much longer for them! It’s OK, you can still say you love each other without being like, this is FOREVER! Thousands of years.
GIN JENNY: God, it is exactly like The Bachelor. It’s exactly like The Bachelor in every way.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: I’m glad you brought up the age thing, because I have a question about a strange thing that was said. So Jules is the Jacob person, right?
GIN JENNY: Yeah. She’s a Quileute werewolf, or soon-to-be werewolf.
WHISKEY JENNY: But no one told her not to tell everyone about the stories. But anyway, different problem. So Beau and Edythe are talking about Jules, and Edythe refers to Jules as a child. And Beau says, “‘Child? You know Jules is not that much younger than I am.’ She looked at me, her anger gone. She grinned. ‘Oh, I know.’“ That’s creepy, right? She’s excited that Beau is kind of a child?
GIN JENNY: I can’t think of a non-creepy interpretation of that remark.
ASHLEY: Exactly.
WHISKEY JENNY: I was really creeped out. I know this is a common problem with vampire stories, because if you’re a vampire, you’re at least 150 years old always. You’re never a new vampire.
ASHLEY: No one became a vampire in the ‘60s.
WHISKEY JENNY: But you made it more creepy somehow.
ASHLEY: She has some pretty extreme mood swings.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, they’re all Beau’s fault, so.
GIN JENNY: Not to harp on this too much, but again, another hallmark of an abusive relationship is that she’s unpredictable with him, so he never knows what her attitude towards him is going to be on a given day. So yeah, it’s not pleasant to read.
ASHLEY: Again, I think that was another one of the main things people complained about with the first one. It really puzzles me that she thought that changing the genders but keeping the abusive behavior would fix that. Like you were saying, it makes it less conforming to a type that we know already, but it’s still abusive.
GIN JENNY: It’s still clearly abusive. It really is not romance.
ASHLEY: It’s not OK.
ROBERT: You know, this business about her age actually touches on this issue of world building, which I think this book is—ah, it had so much potential in that area but doesn’t explore the real consequences of people living hundreds of years. Starting with the fact, obviously, that why would a person who is over 100 years old be attracted to a 17-year-old other than creepiness? And it’s her first love? She never dabbled in it at all, even with another vampire?
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
ROBERT: That’s very shocking. I mean, does it just kill your sex drive or something? Is that what I’m supposed to believe?
GIN JENNY: No, because the other vampires are banging it out nonstop. And Edythe’s just home being like, doodle doodle doodle doodle do—perfecting her piano playing.
WHISKEY JENNY: And doing homework from high school, because they’re still going to high school! If I’m an immortal, all-powerful being, even if I’m trying to blend in, I’m not going to high school. I’m telling you all right now, I’m not doing that to keep our secret safe!
ROBERT: I’m not going back.
WHISKEY JENNY: I’ll go to college, maybe, but I am NOT going to high school.
GIN JENNY: They keep saying—they say this several times, that when they move to a new place, the younger Cullens start in high school so they can stay there for longer. But I don’t find that to be a compelling excuse, because nobody graduates from college in four years. So you can go to college as long as you want and no one’s going to think anything of it. You can even go to college for two years, drop out for two years, come back to college. No one’s going to say anything!
WHISKEY JENNY: Do a bunch of graduate work.
GIN JENNY: It’s such a strange—going back to the question of world building, even the small practicalities of this just aren’t thought through in any consistent way.
ASHLEY: You’re making me realize they really grossly overestimate how much non-vampires’ perceptions of how old the vampires look and appear to be matters. Like, you have to look like you were 12 and be pursuing an advanced degree, or being a CPA or something. People would be like, you look a little young for a CPA.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, how many years has it taken to realize Paul Rudd is a vampire? A lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was a while.
GIN JENNY: More than five.
WHISKEY JENNY: He just has a young face. That’s what we all believed.
GIN JENNY: More than ten. So I just don’t find it convincing.
ROBERT: And it also touches on the issue of what the vampires want. There’s not really much of a drawback to having these powers. It’s not like they have to hide during the day.
GIN JENNY: Well.
ROBERT: Other than that they might sparkle a little bit. But vampires from other stories, they have to have someone guard their body while they’re asleep during the day. Otherwise somebody might show up and get them.
GIN JENNY: To be fair, they don’t sparkle a little. Edythe says, “Aren’t you repulsed by my flagrant lack of humanity?” Suggesting that they sparkle quite a lot.
WHISKEY JENNY: What’s the referee signal for flagrant lack of humanity?
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Sorry, but continue. You’re right. They don’t have the same drawbacks that regular vampires do, that’s true.
ROBERT: The other thing is that they establish very clearly that they can satisfy their thirst just by drinking the blood of animals. So I feel like that is a huge obstacle to living a normal life that they can solve very easily. So why not devote their lives to doing something more interesting than just survival? If it’s been 100 years, aren’t you bored at this point? Haven’t you looked around the world and been like, wow, there’s been a lot of world wars and stuff. There’s been a lot of horrible things happening to people that I should have empathy for, because I’m a marginalized person in some way.
I was even thinking, like, if I had these powers, I don’t know, maybe I would reach out to the government and be like, hey, I could do some secret missions for you or something. Just to past the time if nothing else.
ASHLEY: By the way, you can’t kill me, so if you have something super dangerous that needs doing—
WHISKEY JENNY: Be happy to.
ASHLEY: —I can do it.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, get your pilot license, Edward. Edythe.
ROBERT: I could jump into a nuclear reactor and shut it down if it’s in meltdown. I could do that, if you ever want to call me up.
GIN JENNY: I really feel this is a problem that recurs for me with any kind of superheroes. Because whenever I’m watching Avengers movies, I’m like, this is cool that you’re fighting aliens in this moment, Captain America. But you know, there’s serious famine and civil war in Yemen. Whatcha doing about that, pal? I feel like that’s not a useful avenue for my mind to go to, [LAUGHTER] but I do think it’s kind of an overall problem.
ROBERT: The fact that they’re not even trying to do anything. Because that’s another storyline with some superhero stories, where a character like Superman in some iterations can just hear people calling his name constantly, and there’s an exhaustion that comes with that. And he has to look for some motivation, some meaning despite that. So I mean, there are ways to explore it.
But this is just, we shrug, we move to another city, and we start over. And we’re just trying to survive. There’s nothing—again, not even just to pass the time. Forget the noble reasons. Just to make life a little more interesting and use your amazing powers.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, they do have baseball.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: Let’s talk about that.
WHISKEY JENNY: Can we? Is it time? Can we talk about the baseball?
ASHLEY: Let’s talk about the baseball.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. The second time Beau meets the Cullens, they are going to play a game of baseball. Vampire baseball. Which they can only do during thunderstorms, because the noise of the bat hitting the ball is so extreme that it would sound like thunder.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK, I legit have a question about that. No physicist, so I’m sorry if this is dumb. But if you hit the same kind of baseball bat that humans use with the same kind of baseball ball that humans use, even with a lot more force, does it sound different?
ASHLEY: I can’t imagine that it would sound anything like thunder.
WHISKEY JENNY: But with not enough force to crush either thing.
GIN JENNY: Right, that’s my question. Because they play with metal bats. So it would be the baseball. And I don’t understand how they play any baseball at all. Because if it’s loud enough to sound like thunder—which I question, again—I just don’t see how the baseball would survive.
ASHLEY: My question is why they play with metal bats at all. Because in the majors they play with wooden bats because they’re such fantastic athletes. And I don’t understand why, if these vampires are so much more superhuman than even our greatest human baseball players, why are they playing with metal bats like a bunch of beer league softball?
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: None of this made sense to me. It honestly reminded me of the scenes in the movie The Room where they just randomly throw a football at each other. It was like, what the hell is going on? That’s what I was thinking, reading this, and watching the movie. I was like, again, you have these extraordinary powers, and you’re using them to play baseball. I don’t know. If I was just looking for some meaning in my life over the course of 100 years, maybe there would be a 10 year period where I was like, I’m going to go play in the NFL. Kick everybody’s ass for 10 years.
WHISKEY JENNY: Honestly, I feel like vampire football makes more sense. Because you could throw it much harder, and you could tackle each other much harder. And it’d make more sense for you to play with each other. Vampire baseball just doesn’t make sense.
GIN JENNY: Agreed. A contact sport makes more sense.
ASHLEY: I totally agree.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, a contact sport, you’re not trying to hit—there wouldn’t be any loud noises. You would just be catching it.
ASHLEY: Well, if you remember, I think somebody collides with someone else, and that also makes a very loud noise.
GIN JENNY: Yes, and I thought that was preposterous.
ASHLEY: It’s so stupid. That is so stupid.
WHISKEY JENNY: Would it? No.
ASHLEY: It definitely wouldn’t.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was also described—this is one of the not helpful descriptions she gave us. She described it, “it was like watching superheroes play baseball.” Like, no shit. Yeah. They have superpowers!
ASHLEY: Because that’s a point of reference we all have.
WHISKEY JENNY: They have superpowers! And also, I’ve never seen superheroes play baseball, so it’s not really helpful.
GIN JENNY: And to the question of whether it would make a sound as loud as thunder—
WHISKEY JENNY: I’m glad we’re sticking with this, because I want to know.
GIN JENNY: No, I don’t have an answer. But the reason I brought up the custody thing when we first started talking about this is because it’s so strange to me that, having all these years to think about what she’s written, Stephenie Meyer only decided to change the genders and didn’t really address anything else in the book that logistically made no sense.
Like for example, the werewolves belong to the Quileute tribe, which is a real Native American group. And I just feel like if I had ten years to think about it, I would have probably done some more research on what their actual legends are, what their lives are like, and include some of that in the book. And you see none of that. She sticks with the just nonsense she made up out of nowhere. Again, it just seems like, not just the world building of the supernatural stuff, but the world building of stuff that really exists in real life is just very poorly thought out, and she really doesn’t deal with it at all.
ASHLEY: There’s just not very many interesting things to see in the book, and there’s not—yeah, the world that we live in is so bland.
GIN JENNY: Yes. It doesn’t feel like she gave a lot of thought to much of anything. And another thing—this really, really bugged me. Bonnie, who’s the werewolf grandma, uses a wheelchair. And they repeatedly say, she uses a wheelchair so of course she can’t drive. Someone has to drive her everywhere. And they say it over and over again, as if that’s a thing. Like, number one, many wheelchair users can use cars without any adaptations at all. Number two, there are many adaptations you can make to a car to make it wheelchair accessible, and they never talk about that.
Also at one point, Beau’s house has a porch. It’s talked about at one point, that there’s a porch. But then at some other point, Bonnie is taken into the house. How? Is there a wheelchair ramp? I bet there’s not. But if there is, we don’t hear about it!
ASHLEY: Yeah, the Bonnie storyline was very strange to me. Like, the friendship that she supposedly has with Charlie. Like, this is one of my personal pet peeves, but I really dislike when anyone over the age of 30 is described as having a best friend. Which I get is Podcast I guess a thing. [LAUGHTER] No, I get that some people still refer to people as their best friends. I find it very silly to talk—especially in the context of this book. I find it extremely silly that Charlie and Bonnie are supposed to be best friends. I don’t buy that, I’m sorry. They haven’t talked in years.
GIN JENNY: And they never talk. They talk maybe twice in the course of this book.
WHISKEY JENNY: I thought they had a falling out.
ASHLEY: Right. That’s what I mean. They haven’t talked in years because they had a falling out. Now they’ve sort of patched it up, but I don’t think we’ve made it back to best friends yet.
GIN JENNY: Again, just nothing is thought through. It all seems really random.
ASHLEY: Yeah, I agree. I have some minor in the scale of things—things that bothered me about the world building towards the end. And I may just miss something because I was in such a hurry to finish.
GIN JENNY: This was the thing. I kept trying to blame myself for the book’s flaws, because I can be an inattentive reader. But I do, in fact, think the book is just flawed.
ASHLEY: I will accept it if it turns out that this is me not paying attention, though. So they keep saying, at the end when he’s become a vampire, that he’s supposed to not have any self control over his own blood lust or whatever. Fine, who cares. He has to learn that, so he is weak in that. But also, it’s confusing to me whether he’s supposed to be physically weaker or stronger than older vampires.
They seem to make it sound at first like younger vampires are stronger, like younger humans. But then other times it’s like, oh, well he’s just a baby vampire. He hasn’t learned to do this. And such and so is older and faster and better at this than he was. He has to struggle to keep up with Edythe, which I get is because Edythe is the fastest. But it was just very confusing to me whether your physical strengths and attributes are supposed to be increased the more you’re a vampire, or decreased because you’re old.
GIN JENNY: I don’t think it is ever stated.
ASHLEY: It seemed to go both ways, and that’s why I was troubled by it.
GIN JENNY: I don’t think it’s made clear.
WHISKEY JENNY: But he is a magical unicorn of a vampire, because he has no problem controlling his thirst at first, and everyone’s so surprised.
ASHLEY: It’s so convenient that he just doesn’t eat any humans and it’s totally fine.
GIN JENNY: Y’all can’t imagine at what great length the fourth book goes on about this when Bella finally becomes a vampire.
WHISKEY JENNY: Really?
GIN JENNY: There’s so much of it. Everyone—ev-er-y-one—stops by and is like, wow, you’re the best vampire of all the vampires!
WHISKEY JENNY: What am I supposed to learn from that?
GIN JENNY: No idea.
ASHLEY: And isn’t Bella, as the protagonist of the book, supposed to maybe go through some stuff and have a character arc?
WHISKEY JENNY: No.
[LAUGHTER]ASHLEY: The other even more minor one is that—we’ve established that vampires don’t have to breathe. They kind of do anyway, but it’s not clear what’s actually happening with they’re breathing. It’s fine; I don’t care. But when he encounters Bonnie at the end of the book, and this was his first encounter with a human, and he doesn’t breathe because he doesn’t want to smell her and want to attack her, he gets out of breath. I actually highlighted it.
[LAUGHTER]I was like, he doesn’t have to breathe! I get that he can if he wants to, to look human. “I was out of air. I gripped Edythe’s hand and took a shallow breath. Still upwind it was OK.” But it makes it sound like his being out of breath is affecting him physically. I’m like, you already told us they don’t have to breathe. This shouldn’t—
GIN JENNY: I have to say, this is a recurring problem that I have with vampire lore. Because I don’t need them to get into the really specifics of how their blood flows and air in their lungs, their digestive systems. I truly don’t care and I don’t need them to get into it. But when they do get into it, they never do it consistently.
There’s an episode of Angel where a vampire is miraculously giving birth. Because apparently miraculous pregnancies, we’ll never be done with them. Thanks a lot, Jesus.
ASHLEY: [LAUGHTER] Sorry.
GIN JENNY: And one moment they’re telling the vampire, breathe and they’re doing birth breaths or whatever with her. [PUFF, PUFF, PUFF] And then the next second some people come up and some stuff goes on, and they’re like, don’t worry, just breathe through it. And after doing all these breaths with them, she’s like, I don’t breathe!
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is it?
GIN JENNY: Yes, which is it? So I agree with you that’s inconsistent, but I do think that happens so often with vampire stories. And I think people should just leave the whole question alone.
ASHLEY: I totally agree. It just seemed like a weird time for him to suddenly be weak in the knees because he didn’t breathe. I’m like, you already told us they don’t have to breathe.
ROBERT: I totally figured out what these vampires could do.
WHISKEY JENNY: What is it?
ROBERT: Put them in a rocket ship, fire them to Mars.
GIN JENNY: Noice.
ROBERT: Or the moon. And then constantly fire up other supplies. Let them build the station there over the course of however many years it takes. And then by the time it’s ready, then humans can come there and live there.
GIN JENNY: Beat that, Elon Musk!
ROBERT: See? And you wouldn’t have to have space suits, or you wouldn’t have to worry about the habitat working. It would be perfect.
WHISKEY JENNY: I was going to ask a question about, do they have to breathe at all, or is it just they can go a long time? But then I don’t care about the answer, so. Yeah, let’s do that. [LAUGHTER] Let’s shoot them to the moon, and either they’ll die and that’ll great, or we’ll get a moon station.
ROBERT: Who would be mad at vampires ever again? People would be like, yeah, sure, have some deer blood. We’ll send it up there. We’ll freeze it, send it up there.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. This is what they do in The Vampire Diaries, too, is they go to the blood bank. Why don’t they just do that? If they have to have human blood—which they don’t in this book, so that’s fine—but why wasn’t that ever brought up as an option, just go to the blood bank and get yourself some human blood?
GIN JENNY: Especially because the doctor mother of the vampire family—
WHISKEY JENNY: She’s a doctor!
GIN JENNY: Is a doctor. [LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY: That’s easy access to blood bags. Why don’t you just bring some home?
GIN JENNY: I posit that the answer is: There’s a blood shortage, you guys. Don’t be monsters. Oh, I have to say—I’m sorry—at one point they’re talking about how they don’t eat human blood. And they’re talking about Archie and Jessamine—who are Alice and Jasper in the books—and Edythe says, “They both developed a conscience, as we call it, with no outside guidance.”
WHISKEY JENNY: “As we call it.”
GIN JENNY: As we call it. Meaning that they decided not to eat humans on their own. It’s like, Edythe, you have lived for so many years. You must know that’s what everybody calls it.
WHISKEY JENNY: You didn’t make up the word conscience. Here’s my question. Why does he drive like an insane person? How do you get to drive like that if you’re a vampire?
GIN JENNY: I have already answered this question off air, and I think that I’m correct.
WHISKEY JENNY: Why?
GIN JENNY: So Edythe drives like a maniac.
WHISKEY JENNY: With Beau in the car, who every single time she’s like, don’t even go to the ocean, you might fall in.
GIN JENNY: She drives like a maniac, and when he says, hey, you’re driving like a maniac, she says, well I’m a vampire, so it’s OK. And she not only drives very fast, she also looks at Beau.
WHISKEY JENNY: Never looks at the road—
GIN JENNY: —as she’s driving. My theory is, like all people who drive like this, she thinks she’s a better driver than she is. That’s all. I don’t think there’s anything more to it. She thinks she’s a better driver than she is.
WHISKEY JENNY: If she never looks at the road, how does she not wreck in this book?
GIN JENNY: Because a lot of times people don’t get in wrecks for a long time.
WHISKEY JENNY: If you look at the road!
GIN JENNY: Well she doesn’t never look at the road. She just often doesn’t look at the road.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: That’s a big percentage.
ASHLEY: She does say the thing that all people who think that they’re better drivers than they are say, which is, I’ve never been in a wreck, so there.
WHISKEY JENNY: But she does say that they all like to go fast. So do they all drive like that?
ROBERT: They all seem like terrible people.
GIN JENNY: No, I love Archie.
ASHLEY: But it was funny when he’s explaining to Beau how they’re going to become best friends. [LAUGHTER] That really just cracked me up.
GIN JENNY: That’s why I liked Alice in the first book, because that is such a delightful—and also, that’s apparently how she manages all her relationships. She just sees people in her future and she’s like, we’re going to be married. We’re going to be family members. That’s adorable. [LAUGHTER]
ASHLEY: And I kind of liked that Beau was like, I really liked him, but I didn’t know if it was just because he said that we were going to become friends later, or if we were just becoming friends now. [LAUGHTER] That was really funny.
GIN JENNY: Oh, Beaufort.
ASHLEY: Can I tell, there was one or two funny cute parts at the beginning that I actually liked.
GIN JENNY: I don’t believe you.
ASHLEY: I did. I did. When she gives him the scarf, and she’s like, don’t worry, it’s not a lady’s scarf.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Because they’re so different!
GIN JENNY: Actually, this really bugged me, speaking of gender roles. There are several points in the book where things play a little differently because Beau is a guy and Edythe is a girl than in the original Twilight. And I feel like Stephenie Meyer goes out of her way to signal to the reader, don’t worry! Beau’s masculinity is not compromised!
ASHLEY: You’re absolutely right.
GIN JENNY: Because there’s this, and then there’s another part where Edythe is saying, I have to protect you. It shouldn’t compromise your masculinity, or something like that. It’s so explicit, and it’s so dumb, and Bella never gets any version of this from Edward.
ASHLEY: I love the part where she gives him the scarf, it was cute, where he’s like, I’d never worn a scarf that I could remember, so I just wound it in a circle until I ran out of fabric. That was really funny and cute.
GIN JENNY: That is kind of cute.
WHISKEY JENNY: That sounds right, though. That’s how you deal with a scarf.
ASHLEY: That’s what you do. And it actually made sense. He’s from a place where it doesn’t get cold so he’s never worn a scarf. He doesn’t know what to do with it, but he doesn’t want to look gauche in front of Edythe. So he’s just like, all right, I’m going to try this and see how it goes. I thought that was cute.
GIN JENNY: All right. Fair enough
WHISKEY JENNY: I will say, after reading this now, I understand why Fifty Shades of Gray exists. I feel like I have a better baseline for that. I definitely understand why you would rewrite this story but just have them bang. Please. If you’re just going to talk about how much you like each other but not actually have personalities, then I guess just bang.
And B of all, I understand why it would be a horrifying, controlling banging relationship and not a healthy one. So it all makes sense now.
ASHLEY: I do want to say, too, the one thing that I sort of admire about the Twilight franchise, even though I think that it’s not very well written and very silly in a lot of ways—the one thing I think is interesting about it that it seems to me that what Stephenie Meyer is trying to do, and I think she succeeded at, was she wanted to write a romantic story in which the characters don’t do anything morally that she wouldn’t do, AKA have premarital sex, but she didn’t want it to be about them being Mormon, which is what she is. So instead she created a mythos that makes it impossible for them to do that thing, and built that into the world building. And I think that’s pretty clever.
Like, I don’t know sit there reading this book thinking, this is the author trying to shoehorn her Mormonism in and disguise it as mythos. Which I do think happens in some other romantic books, where I feel like the author has morals that they want the characters to live by, but not for the same reasons.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
ASHLEY: For whatever reason, it seems like a lot of romance writers have these ethical boundaries—which is fine.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! Ethical boundaries!
ASHLEY: That actually wasn’t what I was going to say. I didn’t mean for whatever reason they have the boundaries. That’s fine. I meant for whatever reason, they have the boundaries but they don’t want the characters to have them. And I don’t really understand why you would have a problem with that. But also, maybe they just want to write about something that isn’t just like their life, which is great. So I think that Stephenie Meyer actually is better at that than some other writers I’ve read, where you can see the scaffolding behind it. And I feel like Stephenie Meyer does a good job of disguising it.
GIN JENNY: Interesting.
ASHLEY: I’ve thought about that a lot. And for all the other flaws that this franchise has—which, again, I only know the first book and now this one—but I do think she did a pretty good job of that.
ROBERT: I’m also curious—and maybe other reviewers have gone into more detail who obviously know much more than I do about this—but I’m curious about how the experience of Beau or Bella being recruited into this group, how that maps onto the author’s ideas about people converting to a religion.
WHISKEY JENNY: Ooh.
ROBERT: You know, I wonder if that’s supposed to be a metaphor for it or not, in some way. I don’t know.
GIN JENNY: Well, I don’t think it necessarily has to be a metaphor. I hadn’t thought of that, but I can imagine her being influenced by something like that, especially coming from a religion for which evangelizing is such a major component.
WHISKEY JENNY: Interesting.
ROBERT: Especially because it involves leaving your family behind. I mean, there are passages in the Bible that specifically say, you’ll leave your family behind to join me. I’m like eh. You’ll be at your own funeral making fun of your family as they try to do something nice for your dumb ass.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Such a jerk.
ASHLEY: He’s a real butthead.
GIN JENNY: I want to end by each of the other three of us saying something that we liked about Twilight. And Whiskey Jenny has one, so.
WHISKEY JENNY: I have one about gender swapped Twilight.
GIN JENNY: That’s what I meant. Yes, about gender swapped Twilight. Yes, go ahead.
WHISKEY JENNY: So I liked that all of the side character professions end up being not the gender you would expect, because she swapped all of them. So the school receptionist is a dude, and the taxi driver that Beau takes is a lady. Which is a nice thing about this, but I will say it’s also sort of a two-headed dragon, because that means that in Twilight they weren’t, and everyone was just—all the receptionists were ladies, the end.
GIN JENNY: Bummer.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah. [LAUGHTER] I managed to make a negative.
[LAUGHTER]ROBERT: You know, I don’t recall having a problem with Charlie, the character. Whiskey Jenny just gave me a dirty look. I don’t recall having a problem with him, but wait, maybe I need to take that back. Let’s edit this part out. Wait, correct me, please, because I honestly—maybe I missed something.
WHISKEY JENNY: I just—he never ever makes dinner or does the dishes. Which, he could do a dish once in a while, I feel like. That’s the only thing. It wasn’t a big thing.
GIN JENNY: No, but Charlie is better than most of the other characters.
WHISKEY JENNY: Absolutely. For sure, yeah.
ROBERT: First of all, I forgot about that. I thought that they had at least taken turns on a couple of occasions, but maybe I misread that. But yeah, I agree, that sucks. I just got the impression that he was kind of overwhelmed and that the book was at least trying to illustrate that a little bit. Because that’s the thing about the book is that it gets exhausting with how perfect everybody supposedly is. And so having a character who’s a little more vulnerable and not dealing with it very well felt a little more human and a little more tethered to reality than some of the other characters in this.
WHISKEY JENNY: Sure. And he is trying to raise his newly acquired full time teenage son, and still trying to ask him questions about the town. And Beau’s always like, ugh, will you give it a rest?
ROBERT: And he has real responsibilities in this town. And if I remember correctly, the movie has him investigating the bad vampires that were showing up. I remember that being a part of the movie, right?
WHISKEY JENNY: That would be interesting.
ROBERT: That’s actually one of the bummers of this, is like, did this have to be first person and one POV? Because it really gets exhausting staying there. And there’s so much potentially interesting stuff going on, especially with Charlie. Like I said, I wish there had been more of a mystery element to this.
GIN JENNY: I love how throughout this podcast, Robert keeps inventing fanfic. [LAUGHTER] OK, I thought of something I liked about this book. There’s a scene where Beau goes down to the beach with some friends, who he of course hates and doesn’t want to hang out with. And then Julie shows up, and they go for a little walk. And I actually thought they had a really nice, relaxed chemistry compared to Beau and anyone else in the book, very much including Edythe.
They had a nice give-and-take. They actually had a conversation, even though it was an exposition dump. Still, they felt a little more natural with each other than most of the characters in the book. And I actually really enjoyed that part, and I was like, man, this Julie character should come back around. But she never, ever will.
WHISKEY JENNY: I have a question about that, though. So this is Jacob.
GIN JENNY: This is Jacob.
WHISKEY JENNY: Is he four years younger than them in regular Twilight?
GIN JENNY: No. In this, I think they say she looks 14 or 15. And I believe she is 15.
WHISKEY JENNY: OK. So three to two. So two years younger.
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
WHISKEY JENNY: And Jacob is, in original Twilight, this much as well.
GIN JENNY: Yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is not very much.
GIN JENNY: Yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: And he’s a bigger character later on?
GIN JENNY: Yes. Because in the second book—I guess spoilers again—in the second book, Edward leaves Bella for her own good.
WHISKEY JENNY: [ENRAGED GASP] [LAUGHTER] Oh! Oh my—all right. Yeah, sorry, go on.
GIN JENNY: And then there’s this really, really disturbing thing where there’s chapters of the book that are just blank pages. So it’s like, chapter 2, December, nothing. Chapter 3, January, nothing. [LAUGHTER] It’s just a blank. And this happens for several months. But then Jacob starts coming around and getting Bella more interested in life again. They fix cars together. They develop a genuinely really nice friendship.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well that’s nice. But so, sorry—she has—
GIN JENNY: Nothing for months.
WHISKEY JENNY: Nothing gets written about because Edward is gone.
GIN JENNY: Yes.
ASHLEY: And there are actually blank pages in the book?
GIN JENNY: Yes.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, that’s so gross.
GIN JENNY: Yes.
ASHLEY: Also, so lazy like as a writer, to put blank pages in your book.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. I mean, I know that I was just saying a nice thing. And I feel like we’ve all done this, where we say a nice thing and then like, also all these negative things. But like Robert was saying about missed opportunities, and I think doing this gender swap was a really interesting opportunity to actually really look at the gender roles and what it means that this story hits me very differently in a lot of ways when it’s Beau and Edythe, versus when it’s Bella and Edward. And that does not get explored at all.
ASHLEY: It really seemed like the reason she wanted to do it wasn’t not quite an up yours, but it seemed like her reasons for wanting to do it were sort of retaliatory and defensive. Which would be fine if she had actually explored how gender affects the book. And she didn’t really do that, and even explicitly says in the introduction that most of the changes she made were not about the genders.
GIN JENNY: I mean, we were saying this earlier—she wrote this instead of releasing her story that’s Twilight from Edward’s perspective. She did this instead. So I think she had in mind something that she could do that would be retreading familiar ground, but a little different. So I think that was already in her mind anyway. I think it was maybe a little—I would ascribe more generous motives, I think. I think there was probably a little bit of—if not retaliation, then proving a point.
ASHLEY: Right. Maybe that’s more accurate.
WHISKEY JENNY: I don’t understand what point she was trying to prove, though. How would swapping them prove that point?
GIN JENNY: I don’t know.
WHISKEY JENNY: That it’s still a story? It is. I’ll grant her that. It’s still a book. [LAUGHTER] That’s my other nice thing.
GIN JENNY: It is a baffling choice to make. She’s trying to prove that Bella’s not passive because she’s a girl. She’s passive because of the situation she’s in. But the problem I think she doesn’t realize is that by putting a girl character in a situation where she’s completely passive—
WHISKEY JENNY: Which is how you chose to do it to begin with. That was what you originally wanted to write about.
GIN JENNY: —is itself troubling. And, as we said, this relationship is still very disturbing with the genders this way around. So really no point has been proved at all.
This has been the Reading the End Bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys. We were so delighted to have you, Robert and Ashley.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yay! Thank you!
ROBERT: Thank you.
GIN JENNY: Thank you so much for coming on. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow us on Twitter @readingtheend. We are both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us—we hope you will—at readingtheend@gmail.com. Robert and Ashley, where can people find you online?
ASHLEY: Probably Twitter is the best place to find me. I’m @AshleyBWells.
ROBERT: I’m also on Twitter, Repino1.
GIN JENNY: If you like what we do, you can become a podcast patron at Patreon.com/readingtheend. And if you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review. And until next time, thank you so much to our patrons for making this special episode possible.
[GLASSES CLINK]THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to, or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.
[BEEP]ROBERT: Could I ask real quick, just so we have another person who can search things, what is your Wi-Fi? Password is poop?
GIN JENNY: Poop poop.
ROBERT: Poop poop. Um—
GIN JENNY: No space. All lowercase, all one word.
ROBERT: Oh, boy. [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: Yeah. A resounding oh boy from me, too.
[BEEP]WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, do more research on The Rock next time and then come back to me, Stephenie Meyer.
[BEEP]ASHLEY: Whiskey Jenny’s back’s getting tired from carrying this whole podcast.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: That is the exact opposite of what usually happens. [LAUGHTER] I always make her do the segues because I can’t think of one.
[LAUGHTER] [BEEP]GIN JENNY: Clink.
WHISKEY JENNY: Clink.
ASHLEY: Clink.
ROBERT: Clink.
[GLASSES CLINK]