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Hello my Beautiful Watchers, those of you who follow me on Twitter were probably expecting
this to be my promised episode of Lost in Adaptation regarding Twilight: New Moon. Now,
I had started that, but then my sister had a baby so it’s been delayed while I fly back to the UK.
Yes this is something I could have planned around but I didn’t.
As a holdover until I get back, and because I’m re-exposing myself to the Twilightverse anyway,
let's have a quick look at the spin-off short story that Meyer added to the collection in 2010.
The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner recounts the last few days before Victoria’s attack
on the Cullen clan that took place in the climax of Twilight:Eclipse,
from the POV of one of the new vampires that she created as she raised her army.
Meyer claims she wrote it while editing Eclipse, but having read Eclipse I think
it’s far more likely that this is what she was doing INSTEAD of editing, heyoooo!
For more banging zingers like that or if you’re not familiar with the
events of the Twilight series, I have synopsised it and reviewed
it extensively in the hopes I can spare others from having to read it.
This novella was originally intended to be a small part of the official Twilight
guide book but grew too long for that so gained its own separate publication.
A pre-release copy of the book was provided to the Eclipse film writers
so elements of the story could be included and the character given sufficient attention.
I guess we’ll come to that when I eventually cover that Lost in Adaptation.
Ok, I’m going to do a quick synopsis for the members of the audience who
have been more successful than I at staying clear of this series,
but first, a quick word about this video’s sponsor.
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Right then: Umm, formerly 15-year-old Bree Tanner is into her third month of being an unwillingly
created vampire and having a miserable time living in a house full of way more aggressive and violent
converts and enduring the harsh leadership of Riley who you may remember was the teenager
Victoria took on as a lover and henchman who met his end in the jaws of a werewolf.
Bree has taken to avoiding the notice of the newly formed vampire gangs by sitting next to
a vampire called Fred, who is the only one of the group who developed an extra power:
the ability to make people so repulsed by him they can’t even look directly at him.
She goes out hunting for delicious blood with another vampire called Diego
who she forms a close friendship, then intense romance with overnight.
Diego by the way is 18, so Meyer is at it again with the adult/child romance.
Oh joy.
They return from their killing spree to discover that the other vampires
had accidentally burned down their base of operations while fighting with each other again
and relocated in their absence. Believing what they had been informed about vampires burning
up in sunlight they take cover in a secret cave that Diego had previously discovered.
They agree to form a two-person secret club to watch out for each other, then
Diego scares the shit out of Bree by deciding to see what daylight actually does to them,
revealing the sparkly USP of the series.
Realizing that Victoria had clearly lied to them,
they consider their next move. As Diego believes that Riley is his friend,
he insists they confront him about it on the assumption that he didn’t know the truth either.
While following him away from their new house, they overhear him discussing their attack plans
on the Cullens with Victoria and witness some Volturi ambassadors arrive to order
them to just get on with their attack already so they can pretend they were too late to stop it.
Diego still insists on talking to Riley and sends Bree back home.
Later Riley comes back without him but reassures her by mentioning some secrets that only she
and Diego were privy to and explaining that he’d sent him on ahead to scout the battle.
Riley then passes around Bella’s jacket to give them all a good whiff of just how
good she smells, then gives them a very stupid story explaining that vampires can actually
go out in sunlight but only 4 times a year when conditions are just right so
they’re good to start their attack on the Cullens.
Before heading out they massacre a ferry full of Canadians on the river to get all blood fueled up.
Bree does the standard tortured vampire soul thing where
she doesn’t enjoy killing but does it anyway because the thirst is just too all-consuming.
Fred decides he’s had enough of this obvious manipulation and bounces,
offering to take Bree with him but she’s obviously ride or die for the love of her
unlife that she met properly the day before so goes with the army to Forks.
When she gets there she realizes that Diego is very obviously dead and the
secret handshake that Riley gave her was forced out of him with horrible torture,
but by then its too late as her side is getting massacred by the Cullen/Quillute alliance.
She surrenders to Carlisle and we get a blow by blow recount of the end of Eclipse from
her perspective, including her psychic torture at then execution at the hands of the Volturi.
Before dying, she takes some satisfaction in knowing that she passed on all the info
she had on their duplicitous nature to Edward through his mind-reading powers.
I was surprised that Bree was already a vampire at the start of the story. I mean,
I would have thought that establishing her as a person with hopes and dreams before she
was dragged into Victoria’s war would have done wonders for the emotional impact of the
story. Instead, it’s only briefly mentioned in conversation and a very short flashback memory.
I guess that was my fault for forgetting one of the things I learned from reading the main series:
Meyer does not care about humans. If you’re not a vampire, a werewolf or Bella, you do not matter,
so of course, she super prioritized building up who Bree is exclusively post vampirefication.
I remained unsatisfied throughout this book regarding the reasoning for why Bree never
cheesed it out of dodge on the multiple occasions she had the opportunity to.
Once she was fixated on Diego she had a halfway solid reason to stick around
but Meyer went out of her way to play up her total misery and hatred for life in
Victoria’s army before that and Bree was very aware of her own capabilities as a vampire so
I just don’t get why she didn’t bail in the three months before the start of the book.
The implication seems to be that the lie about the danger of the sun was used to keep her and
the other vampire babies in check but I fail to see why she would believe she would be utterly
unable to arrange her own shelter during the day. Her whole backstory is about being a
runaway child so clearly, she wasn’t afraid of striking out on her own despite her age.
Her very very young age, Diego.
It’s mentioned several times that with the exception of Riley,
Victoria is exclusively making new vampires out of “the dregs of humanity”, i.e. sex workers, the
homeless and drug addicts. Partly to migrate the human’s response to all the deaths and
partly because apparently such people make for weak-minded, easily manipulated minions.
When you factor in the comparison to the hyper-intelligent, capable and very very rich
Cullens, this left me perceiving some extremely classist overtones that I did not care for at all.
The formatting of this book felt very weird to me. Like all the other books in the Twilight series,
it’s written in the first person past tense,
so Bree herself is narrating the events by saying “I did this”, “I thought that”.
Now while this formatting doesn’t necessarily
literally mean the character is telling their story either in-universe or
in a meta way to the reader, that is almost subconsciously the implication you’re given.
So in this case something just felt a little off because the story ended
at the moment of Bree’s death and it was still being narrated in the past tense so…
How, when and to whom was she recounting these events? To God?
Like I said, it’s not supposed to be taken literally so it’s not a plot hole or anything,
and I’m sure Meyer isn’t the only author to have done this. It just bothered me,
is all. I don’t get why Meyer didn’t switch to the 3rd person just for this
book as she knew the narrator was doomed from the start.
So with spinoffs, I like to ask: what was the point of adding this little
addendum to the series and what does it change about the story as we knew it?
Well, as far as I can see the additional pov doesn’t provide any new information
or recontextualize anything as such. I mean,
we already knew all about Victoria’s army by the end of Eclipse. I guess we find out there’s
a vampire called Fred wandering around out there somewhere so… That’s exciting?
To be fair this was a good setting for Meyer to try her hand at writing tragedy and to continue
to be fair, I think she succeeded on many levels. This was legitimately a pretty decent sad story.
It also significantly humanizes the largely irrelevant bad guy pawns from Eclipse…
which is pretty bad for the heroes who didn’t lift a finger to save them from
being horribly murdered by the Volturi at the end.
Oh infinitely compassionate, selfless Carlisle. How great does this guy look
after we witness him promising to show a frightened 15-year-old girl mercy and protection,
then immediately handing her over to psychopaths without any argument whatsoever
from the perspective of the child he utterly abandoned?
This book could not have been better designed to drive home
what absolutely selfish pricks every character in Twilight is.
As long as they are fine they do not give an ounce of a shit who else dies horribly.
The story also serves to emphasize how terrible the Volturi are.
Not only do they slaughter untold thousands of humans every year,
they also maintain a massive double standard about the rules that they put in place.
This sure would be an unfortunate thing to remind everyone of if your series
ended without a resolution regarding their reign of terror, wouldn’t it?
So that is my short review of The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. Meyer kept up her tradition
of having some occasional moments of legitimate writing talent that get overshadowed by the sheer
awfulness of the characters she created and the bizarre choices she makes in her series.
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Much love and appreciation to my Patrons of Honor: Shelby Hotz, Etel Sverdlov,
and Trace Carter. Shoutout to Il Neige for the credits music,
check out his channel for more parody and original songs. And a huge thank
you to this video’s editor, Sophia Ricciardi, links to her work in the video description.
I feel like I said Twoi-light there. TWOI-LIGHT. Yo,
yo what's up, it's Two-light. I'm from New York, over here! …I’ll stop that.
I’m going to drink some tea, even though I hate it.
Just four times a year…that’s three, I’m holding up three. I’m always doing that!
Hello Sir Terry! Come to make your mandatory cameo? Mmmmm, floof floof floof.