Despite working in a bookstore, the release of a genderswapped Twilight rewrite titled Life and Death accompanying the 10th anniversary edition of the original story came as a surprise to me as well. (We weren’t even allowed to open the boxes it came in till last Tuesday morning, in fact.) While Stephenie Meyer claims she wrote it as a challenge to those who critiqued the stereotypical gender roles in Twilight, a quick perusal of the reimagining seems to show that they’ve just been reversed.
When you see the two versions of the same story compared to each other, the changes suggest that Meyer should’ve ignored complaints about Bella being a stereotype and maintained the value of what was undeniably a successful franchise. Instead, she ended up adding slight variations that feed into traditional gender stereotypes: Females receive more unnecessary physical description than their male counterparts did in Twilight and Bella almost cries where Beau doesn’t. (via Entertainment Weekly)
Thankfully, fandom is always there, and a group of dedicated fans have stepped in to create a reimagining that’s actually more progressive than either of these books. Twife or Death, originally titled the Twilight Lesbians Project, has sprung up in the last week on Tumblr, spearheaded by Tumblr user tallulademetriou.
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