Here it goes. I have never liveblogged anything before so please don’t be too mean about my writing quality.
Before we even get to the story, we have a prelude from SMeyer herself. Smeyer talks about how fun it was to write this with a male lead rather than a female, and basically all the other stuff that has been mentioned in all the online articles about this release. In a nutshell, 5% of the changes were because Beau is a boy, 5% because his personality developed differently to Bella’s, 70% of the change was editing (I’m starting to feel like this is definitely going to be fanfiction I could have written), 10% is things she wished she had included, 5% mythology issues, and 5% ‘miscellaneous’. This whole thing seems miscellaneous, but never mind.
Preface – (the flashforward part).
First change spotted: ‘I stared across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and she looked pleasantly back at me’.
Already this doesn’t seem to work, but maybe that’s just because I reread Twilight about 8 zillion times. Is this going to be like de ja vu, but where things are slightly different? Groundhog Day?
Chapter One – First Sight
Lol guys so the main guy (we haven’t been officially introduced yet so lets call him Mr Protagonist) is wearing a Monty Python tee shirt (‘the one with the swallows and the coconut on’). Why is a teenage boy in 2005 wearing a Monty Python tee shirt? And why do we need to know about the coconut? AND HANG ON…he is calling Renee (oh shit I remembered her name) mom? Didn’t Bella have this odd ‘equals’ relationship where she called Renee by her name? Or was that just Charlie?
‘My mom says we look so much alike that I could use her for a shaving mirror’Pfffffffffffffffffffffffffft. No mom would ever shame herself so bad as to say she looked like a male teenager going through puberty.
‘On me the pale blue is less youthful and more…unresolved’. Ok, I may be picking this up from the liveblog I read on tumblr earlier, but WHAT THE HELL does ‘unresolved’ mean? Like, are they pixelated, like when a computer image hasn’t loaded properly? And also…Mr Protagonist has blue eyes. I guess losing Bella’s gorgeous brown eyes doesn’t matter too much as there definitely can’t be an evil demon baby this time round (every cloud has a silver lining).
When Mr Protagonist talks about leaving his mom to ‘fend for herself’ seems a tad more sexist this time round. I don’t know if it’s worded differently to Twilight, but when Bella left her mom with Phil, it felt like she was just scatty. With her son implying he’s worried for her survival, but might be ok with her bloke, it doesn’t seem the same.
Mr Protagonist has arrived in Forks, and is met by his dad. His name is revealed…dun dun dun…Beau. We all knew this, obviously. But what is not obvious is why Smeyer chose a name that no one has been called since Edward died of Spanish Influenza.
Beau isn’t allowed to call his dad Charlie.
Somethingsomethingsomething…’It was about whether I was shirking my responsibility to look after her.’
WTF WHY IS A 17 YEAR OLD LOOKING AFTER HIS MOTHER WHY IS SHE SO INCAPABLE?
‘This was the reason Charlie’d never fought mom about custody, he knew she needed me.’
WHAT. I’m fairly certain your parents split up WHEN YOU WERE A BABY. WHAT KIND OF FATHER WOULD NOT SEEK CUSTODY WHEN THE MOTHER IS AS APPARENTLY INCAPABLE AS BEAU’S?!
Weird interaction with a man covered in tattoos and an angry lady…not sure on the point…except to show that Charlie is an intimidating cop? I’m going to have to make sure this isn’t foreshadowing something. Or perhaps Smeyer was trying to make Charlie seem more dominant that he was in Twilight?
But Twilight Charlie was the best…
HAHAHAHA BONNIE BLACK. I hope Jacob’s (Jacqueline’s? Jacie’s? Jacobannie’s?) mom is a pirate. Oh hang on wait…Billy Black used to go fishing with Bella and Charlie right? Well, apparently Bonnie AND her husband came along in Beaufort’s world. Guess a lady can’t fish with a cop without a chaperone…
In this version, it seems like Beau was actively bullied at school, until his growth spurt. He apparently also is not ‘like other guys’, in that he appears to have no interests whatsoever. Also, he spent his spare time snaking drains, and I have no idea what this is. Climbing in drains like a snake? Is it a euphemism? What for?!
But he is pale, and had no friends. So far so Bella.
The only person he was friends with was his mom…what a nice guy.
Ok I think maybe I missed something. Has literally every character in this book been gender bent? Except Charlie? I thought it was only going to be the main characters, but even the receptionist is a male now, and he was definitely a lady before.
Hahahaha Beaufort is such a crap name. Sorry if this is your name.
I SPY EDWARDINAS SILVER VOLVO. I very nearly typed Vulva there. Argh please no.
‘I pulled my hood down over my face’ – yes because that will keep you anonymous, and wont at all make you look like a 2005 era emo. I think Bella does this too? Oh well. Still made me giggle. I’m imaging my little brother (who is by the way a scarily tall, gangly and popular 17 year old shoot me - how did I ever think Edward Cullen was cool) doing this and it’s like when he’s sulking or being forced to take the rubbish out.
OMG Eric is now a skinny girl with skin problems. When Smeyer mentioned she’d cut two characters out entirely, I think I thought Eric would be one of them. Oh and she’s called Erica. Smooth.
‘They didn’t look anything alike. There were three girls…’ Oh lets guess them.
Number one: ‘super tall’, ‘legs that went on forever’, ‘dark curly hair’ – SHE EMMETT. SHEMMETT – did I steal this from the other liveblog? Whatever. It works.
Number two: ‘hair the colour of honey’, ‘something intense about her, edgy.’Random Segway about an actress in a film cutting people with a machete (Uma Thurman?). Jasper! Jas…her? Jasher!
Number three: Of course, we all know who this is going to be. She’s smaller (even though Edward was basically as tall as the other two, right?) because no one wants a girl who’s as tall as the guy. Her hair is ‘a bronze-y colour’ (so, bronze…).
Rosa-he has a man bun, which of course, I quote, doesn’t make him look feminine but ‘somehow makes him look more like a man’. MOVE TO LONDON AND TELL ME ALL THESE GUYS WHO HAVE DUMB MAN BUNS LOOK MANLY. Why couldn’t Rosa-he have an amazing beard or something.
‘He was clearly too cool for this school’ – lol jealous BeauBella?
WTF Malice’s only description is that he is wirey and has a buzz cut. Let down. Although the description of him having a ‘quick, graceful lope’ does make me laugh.
DAMN ALL MY NAME PREDICTIONS WERE WRONG
Edward we all know is Edythe. Emmett = Eleanor. Alice = Archie. Jasper = Jessamine. Rosalie = Royal.
The little paragraph here about their names being weird doesn’t really fit this version because YO BEAUFORT. Jessica has become Jeremy why has that happened? I swear Jeremy is pretty old fashioned too? Maybe not as old, but still not exactly the male equivalent of Jessica.
‘The doctor and her husband’ YES CARLISLE IS A SHE! Although for a second I imagined Esme as a doctor and I loved it.
The scene when they first meet in biology is exactly the same, exact for the obvious changes…plus…
‘I had been spelling her name wrongly in my head. It was Edythe, not Edith. It fit her better’. WTF why?
Mike is McKayla. I didn’t think it was spelt that way unless it was a surname, so I’ve learnt something today. Shall I stop updating on name changes?
URGH FINISHED. I need to reread Twilight…I don’t remember it being such a drag. I liked reading Twilight. Have I really grown up that much?
