1/2/12 5:15 PM UPDATE: io9 has reposted ye olde Twilight snark. Check the comments for more hilarious suggestions, from Dr. Seuss to George R.R. Martin.
As I mentioned in an early post, the main problem with Twilight isn’t its sparkly vampires who lack all traditional weaknesses or its anti-feminist sensibility. When you get right down to it, the trouble is that the writing is terrible, filled with cliche phrases (“smoldering eyes”), repeated words (294 “eyes” in 498 pages) and the reductive characterization of its main characters (Bella is clumsy, and I guess she likes books. Or something).
On a recent car-trip with my husband and the writer Chip Cheek, we mulled over the question: What if great literary writers of the last 200 years had penned Twilight?
Herman Melville
“Call me Bella.” A tome about the length of the original series investigates Bella’s monomanical search for the vampire who stole her virginity. There’s an entire chapter devoted to describing the devastating whiteness of Edward’s skin, and several on the physiognomy of vampires, starting with their skeletal structure outward.
Virginia Woolf
The novel takes place over the course of twenty four hours, during which Bella is painting a portrait of Edward and reflecting on how her femininity circumscribes her role within 20th century society.
Cormac McCarthy
In the opening scene, Edward dashes Bella’s head against a rock and rapes her corpse. Then he and Jacob take off on an unexplained rampage through the West.
Jane Austen
Basically the same as the original, except that Bella is socially apt and incredibly witty. Her distrust of Edward is initially bourne out of a tragic misunderstanding of his character, but after a fling with Jacob during which he sexually assaults her (amusing to no one in this version) she and Edward live happily ever after.
George Saunders
Same as the original, but set in a theme park. Somehow involves gangs of robots, which distract the reader from the essential sappiness of Edward and Bella’s story.
Raymond Carver
Bella stars as the alcoholic barmaid with daddy issues that Edward, a classic abuser, exploits. When Bella’s old friend Jacob comes to visit and is shocked by her bruises, she thinks about leaving him, but instead hits the gin bottle. Hard.
Annie Proulx
Edward and Jacob defy society’s expectations up in the mountains.
Lewis Carroll
Bella takes acid and charts syllogisms.
James Joyce
Edward’s rapacious love for Bella reflects the way globalism has pillaged Ireland. It’s entirely written in Esperanto, with sections in untranslated Greek, except for Chapter 40, which is inexplicably rendered as a script page from the musical The Book of Mormon.
Dorothy Parker
Bella writes a brilliant takedown of the latest school play, dates a string of men, and repeatedly attempts suicide.
Kate Chopin
Stifled by her marriage to Edward, Bella has an affair with Jacob and then drowns herself.
Ernest Hemingway
Edward and Bella exchange terse dialogue alluding to Edward’s anatomical problem. Eventually, Bella leaves him for Jacob, a local bullfighter with a giant…sense of entitlement.
Flannery O’Connor
When Native American werewolf Jacob threatens her with death, Bella reconsiders her hardcore racism, and just for one milisecond, the audience finds her sympathetic.
Ayn Rand
Edward tells Bella that he intends to stop saving her life, unless she starts paying him in gold bullion. Hatefucking ensues, then Jacob spouts objectivist philosophy for the next 100 pages.
12/22/11 Update:
Novelist Urban Waite adds this one:
Tim O’Brien
It’s all about the memories these vampires have carried with them for the past couple hundred years. Just think how much that would have deepened their characters. “Bella looked into Edward’s smoldering eyes and knew all the pain he carried with him, the cross burned into the cleft of his muscular chest, 1 oz., the dash of his hair across his forehead, dangling ever-so, 5.oz, etc… etc… ”
Got more writers and renditions? Put ’em in the comments.
While I’m flattered that people are reblogging this post, I ask that you don’t reproduce it in its entirety on your own blog.
Goethe: The whole book is written in letters.
Jacob, a poetic young men who loves nature (and is by the way completely perfect because of the huge ego of the author who just described himself and his life), fells deeply in love with Bella who is also the most perfect women in the world. Sadly, she is already engaged with Edward, a responsible guy with much money. After a big drama and a lot of tears Jacob commits suicide.
(I’m german, so I’m sorry for possible mistakes.)
Howard Zinn: Tired of the revisionist history of vampires and werewolves Zinn sets out to tell the story of Edward and Bella from the point of view of the oppressed. It starts with a lengthy discussion of how Jacobs people were screwed by the US policy toward Native Americans and how they have already move as far Northwest as they could without ending up in Canada. Several hundred thousand were killed along the way. We also find that Thomas Jefferson was actually Thomas Cullen (Jefferson) and his support of the Indian Relocation project was only to make it easier for vampires to rape and pillage the country.
Chinua Achebe:
They eat yams. Edward feels that his role as a man is defined by things outside his control. They eat yams. Everyone gets to say “ikemafuna” a lot. They eat yams. The kill jacob and his twin in the woods as infants. Then, for a change of pace, they eat more yams.
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Camus:
In Edward’s dream, Jacob is endlessly pursuing Bella along a beach of dazzling, glittering sand. Edward awakes to the sound of screaming. He has torn Bella’s throat apart in his sleep. Jacob stands over them, his eyes smoldering (sic) with rage. Edward declines to justify his action or apologise. He is tried by the Volturi and found guilty of murder. Their leader offers him redemption if he will apologise and suggests he may yet save his soul. Edward denies having one. He spends his time lying on his prison bumk watching a small spider trying to catch a large fly and waiting for his execution.
Sartre:
Edward, Bella and Jacob are shut in a room for eternity. Their eyelids are atrophied open.
All three are chained to different corners of a triangular room in such a way that they can never quite reach each other.
Edward’s eyes have been put out. Jacob changes from adolescent to wolf perpetually and Bella is deprived of makeup, tissues and sharp objects.
Beckett:
Edward et Jacob se rencontrent au carrefour poussiéreux d’un sentier de campagne. Ils attendent l’arrivée de leur copine. Ils discutent de l’amour, de la faim et de la mort. Ils boivent d’une bouteille. Enfin l’on comprend que la bouteille contient le sang de leur copine.
Ian McDonald:
Bella is the heiress to a tech empire based in a rapidly modernising Third World country. She meets data mogul Edward, who promises her software upgrades she doesn’t understand, but which he persuades her are for the best. Jacob heads a rival company that’s been stirring up trouble in the country in an attempt to destabilise Bella’s company’s leading position in the market. It all culminates in a virtual battle between the advanced AIs of the three corporations, who end up collectively ascending to become a creature of pure data that exists beyond human understanding.
Thank you for this absolutely delightful thread. I only wish that I had my own contribution to this. It has lightened my heart today.
J.D. Salinger:
Bella, an apathetic failure of a student runs across the lousy but not completely ugly Edward, but is bored to death after hearing all about his lousy vampire family, who probably aren’t really vampires anyway, but just a bunch of phonies. She finds the incredibly hairy gigolo, Jacob, but just sits and stares at him. Ultimately, she decides to dump all those lousy phonies and become a shut-in.
William S. Burroughs:
Edward suffers from a blood disorder that interferes with his job as a Hyper-Dimensional Fuck Doll on a colonial planet that may be earth of the future or possibly a 1950s alternate dimension. He spends interminable chapters repeatedly musing on his own inability to shit. He finally quits his job and tours the globe posing as a journalist researching rare diseases sampling any drug he can often as elaborate cocktails as he tries to cure himself. The drug cocktails affect his skin which now appears to sparkle… he takes this as a sign and moves to Marrakesh where he starts drinking the blood of virgin boys. Meanwhile left alone for several years, Bella, his long suffering wife, has had an affair with Jacob who she thinks is Edwards psychiatrist but is in fact a junkie friend of Edwards who believes he was given shape shifting powers by alien infiltrators. Edward returns seemingly cured and gives Bella and Jacob his blessing and they all move in together. During the Road trip epilogue Edward accidentally shoots Bella in the forehead and she dies. Edward returns to Marrakesh where the story breaks down entirely and we repeat 8 chapters of scatological musing.
Bill Peet:
It would be basically the same, but all of the smiling, smouldering eyes, and 90% of the rest of the book would just be replaced by cute, slightly comical pencil drawings. The plot would be basically the same, but anything too graphic would only be implied. The moral of the story would have to do about choosing your relationships wisely, unlike the main character.
Clive Barker: Bella is an aerialist in a travelling carnival, the daughter of the bearded woman and the lizard man who, like the rest of the freaks, reject her for being beautiful. Edward is the ringmaster, who glows not only when the spotlight is on him, but whenever he is elated, a sign of the Nightbreed blood in his veins. His lover/assistant is the bulging-muscled Edward, a mendicant with a lot of canine characteristics. The plot is very complicated, having something to do with a pair of glowing balls and a large rod that can pierce through dimensions and a wizard who can control anything made of dairy, paper or muslin.
Dan Brown version:
Bella is a famous scientist who specializes in folklore. She is contacted by Edward, an old and well respected friend who is an expert in history, indicating that someone has been murdered in Forks. When there he is greeted by Jacob who acts as her guide to the new town. They have an intimate relation as they track the mysterious “cold ones”. With Edwards help they are led on a wild goose chase only to realize that he was responsible for the murder in the first place.
Agatha Christie:
Edward and Bella are a happy young couple engaged to be married, though his family finds Bella to be too “common”. While staying at the Cullen family estate, Edward is nearly poisoned by a cup of tea that was intended for Bella, and several minor characters are murdered. Edward plots to catch the murderer with his old school-mate, Jacob, while Bella, terrified, enlists the help of Poirot, a funny little man with an egg-shaped head who happens to be in the neighborhood. Poirot finds Bella distastefully modern, but his friend Hastings thinks she is rather charming, really.
In the second-to-last chapter, Poirot calls together the entire household and reveals that Bella and Jacob are actually husband and wife crooks who were after the Cullen fortune. Edward is heartbroken for a few paragraphs, until he suddenly realizes that his father’s secretary, the sweet Miss Agnes, is really the love of his life.
(pardon my English) Dante Aligieri:
The word “eyes” appears only 40 times, once every 200 pages.
Bella is looking for the answer about the human existence and the philosophical purpose of the Universe. One night of deep meditation she meets Edward, a mysterious man who offers to show her the other world hidden for ordinary mortals. She accepts and together with Edward she travels the (under)world seeing with her own eyes the deepest secrets of human souls. She is deeply moved with what she sees and describes everything with rhetorical skills that ancient Greeks (whom she also have met) envy her. During the journey she fells in love with Edward, but he leaves her unexpectedly. While she mourns the departure of her guide, Jacob appears, her old friend and lover, who, even though he might be dead, shows her the other aspects of human existence and further purpose of the Universe. She accepts his proposal and contues journey for another 300 pages sharing with the reader the whole spectrum of her moods.
Sadly in the end of the journey Jacob, who apparently has been a ghost all the time, leaves her. Though devastated she knows her destiny is to overcome vanity of heart desire.
She wants to continue the journey for the higher purpose. When she makes that decition she meets Aro, in whom she recognizes both Edward and Jacob. Aro tells her she has always been his desire and spent about 28549 years preparing for meeting her. Together they turn form this life and rule the (under)world determinating the purpose of the Universe.
Louisa May Alcott: Bella is a tomboyish, short tempered girl who loves making up stories and plays which she acts out with her three sisters.Then a new boy moves in next door named Jacob he falls in love with her eventually and asks her to marry him but she refuses. He leaves to go to Europe and she goes to the New York to start her life as a writer. There she meets an enigmatic German immigrant named Edward who she falls in love with. But one of her younger sisters is dying of cancer so she has to return home. Everyone gathers for the funeral and Jacob comes back from Europe married to her youngest sister Renesmee. Bella is shocked and realizes she is alone. Three weeks later a package from Edward arrives and in it is her manuscript Twilight which is going to be published. She asked who delivered it and her maid tells he a beautiful man who shines in the sunlight. Bella runs down the road after him and they reconcile and get married and live happily ever after!
lol that would actually make a pretty awesome book! Also im just realizing that twilight has a few things in common with little women
Jim Butcher:
Bella is a (sexy) wizard on the outs from the magic council who decides to “go public” and advertise her services as a wizard who investigates paranormal cases.
She takes a throw-away case just to get away from the Big Bad Things ™ in the city. She investigates the mysterious disappearance of massive amounts of wildlife from the rain forests of the pacific northwest.
Bella tracks down a family of vampires who are like no other she’s ever encountered. They sparkle in the sun instead of bursting into flames. She also encounters a Native American tribe of werewolves.
One thing leads to another, and she discovers that, between the two groups, they’re devastating the ecology of the entire region.
One of the (sexy) vampires (Edward) and one of the (sexy) werewolves (Jacob) take a liking to her and try to woo her over to their way of thinking.
She incinerates them both with a blast of magical fire, then hunts down and destroys the rest of the vampire family and the werewolf tribe.
Which is as it SHOULD be.
George Orwell (novels): A lengthy metaphor of totalitarianism, where Bella is a proletariat who is in love with both party inner circle member Edward and soldier Jacob. In the end Bella and Jacob are tortured until they cannnot love any more.
George Orwell (essays): Analysis of the use of gothic horror figures like vampires and werewolves and how they reflect on the class struggle, and what they revela of the writer and his political views.
Shakespearean comedy:
Bella loves Edward, who is in love with Jacob (who is dressed in drag to hide from his evil uncle who wishes to kill him for his inheritance), who is in love with Bella. Eventually Bella and Edward get married, and Jacob’s uncle is punished for his schemes. There are lots of sex jokes in the meanwhile.
Lord Byron
‘She Walks In Twilight’
She trips in beauty, like the twilight
Of rainy days and cloudy skies
A bit of blood and a bit of fright
Meet in her in biology, bad surprise
Thus I feel sick, I so want to bite
A teenage boy, is my disguise
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Anne Rice:
Edward is a vampire of high class and with picky tendencies. He seeks to find a companion who will remain with him for all eternity.
Enter Bella, who is not his type. He attacks her eventually, because she is annoying and feeds off her.
Jacob and Edward become lovers.
Peter Watts:
Bella is a researcher who conducts experiments in an esoteric, semi-fictional sub-discipline of cognitive science for an obscure government agency. Due to childhood sexual abuse, she is unable to form normal emotional attachments, and devotes herself obsessively to her work. The closest thing she has to a friend is Edward, her supervisor, whose intense, semi-autistic demeanour somehow fails to trigger her customary revulsion for human contact. The bulk of the book’s early chapters are taken up by a bleak exploration of Bella’s strange everyday life, interspersed with frequent scholarly asides and various slow-burning and seemingly disconnected sub-plots presented by an anonymous narrator.
Halfway through the novel, Bella stumbles upon a terrible secret that causes her to be marked for death, and goes on the lam accompanied by Jacob, an escaped research subject who has developed a bestial split personality as a result of a botched surgical procedure. They are alternately aided and hindered in their flight by Edward, who appears and vanishes without warning and knows far more than he should. A deeply dysfunctional relationship develops develops between the three, culminating in a graphic three-way sex scene between Bella, Edward, and Jacob’s animalistic alter-ago that drew heavy censure from critics for its “extreme sexual sadism”.
Eventually, Bella discovers that she herself has been experimented on: the childhood trauma that has rendered her emotionally crippled throughout the story is really a series of false memories, implanted only a few weeks before the story began; classified documents reveal this to be part of an experiment aimed at creating a perfectly loyal employee. Meanwhile, Jacob is separated from the group and regresses permanently into a bestial mindset (represented by his portions of the text being narrated from a clinically detached viewpoint that describes his actions in terms of stimulus and response); he recovers some shred of his humanity just in time to discover a terrible secret, but is killed in a spectacularly pyrotechnic accident before he can warn Bella, leaving everyone but the reader ignorant of what he found.
In the end, it is revealed that Bella’s agency has been subverted by some unknown force, implied – but not confirmed – to be extraterrestrial in origin. Edward turns out to be an artificial being with a completely alien mindset, who had simply pretended to have human emotions in order to manipulate those around him. He destroys all evidence of the conspiracy, but inexplicably spares Bella’s life and departs. Bella finds a sort of nihilistic empowerment in her ordeal, and becomes an anarchistic vigilante. The novel ends with a short monologue on the inevitability of human extinction by the same anonymous narrator from the beginning, his (or her) identity hinted at, but never fully revealed.
(Five years later, a second book is published; though nominally a sequel, Bella makes only a token appearance, the bulk of the text being concerned with the adventures of a group of hyper-intelligent squid.)
Marquise DeSade
Edward and the rest of the vampires lock Bella and anyone who has come into contact with said vampires in the basement of the vampire house, raping, torturing and administering molten lead enemas to the victims for the time of an entire school year. And then they’re not being violated six ways from Sunday, they are invited to dinner parties with their captors, instilling a horrible case of Stockholm Syndrome.
John Grisham: Bella, fresh out of Forks Law School, takes a position at the prestigious law firm of Cullen & Cullen. While there, she gets swept off her feet by the porcelain skinned Edward. Their brief love affair is cut short when Bella is assigned to the biggest case in Forks history. The opposition, determined to defend the rights of shirtless men everywhere, is led by Jacob Black whose short temper is the stuff of courtroom legend. Together with his pack of well-muscled attorneys, Jacob pushes Bella and the Cullens to the brink of a billion dollar settlement. The case is all but over until, the night before the final hearing, Bella is approached by none other than Jacob Black himself. Jacob reveals that the Cullens have been secretly blackmailing the (Vol)jury in order to secure a verdict. The next morning, Jacob is “accidentally” killed by a drunk driver on his way to the hearing. Without the dynamic figure of Jacob in the courtroom, the (Vol)jury rule in favor of the Cullens. Bella confronts Edward after and demands to know if what she was told about the Cullens is true. Edward gives Bella the cold shoulder, confirming her suspicious. Wearied by the corruption of the big city, Bella moves to Idaho to be a corn farmer.
Irvine Welsh:
Edward, an american 45 year old wealthy man who spends his time indulging in all excess known to mankind meets Bella, a 16 year old girl just casted in the new generation of the Mickey Mouse club. Bella’s manager Jacob is a 43 year old scottish man who is also a retired boxer secretely in loved with her. Edward and Bella fall for each other and 3 chapters of the book are spent between their sexual escapades and drug abuse, and Jacob’s monologues on how he is going to kill Edward with his own hands. Edward and Jacob have a fight in a mall, which results in both going to prison. There they get entangled in a love/hate relation, filled more drug abuse and sexual excapades. In the final chapter Edward and Jacob are released and Bella´s mother reveals that Edward is her father, who abandoned her mother when he found out she was pregnant. Bella doesn’t care and marries Edward. Jacob Kills them both and ends up in a mental institution where he spends the rest of his days writing kid’s, rivaled in sales only by those written by Madonna.
ehem… Jacob spends the rest of his days writing kid’s books. sorry for that mistake.
George Lucas
Bella is a strong independent princess who is captured trying to save her planet from the evil mouth-breathing Volturi. Edward is a young Jedi who falls for her as he is trying to learn to control his emotions without looking constipated. He hires the dashing Jacob, who enjoys hanging with furry creatures, to fly him and his family to the planet Volterra where they discover Aro is actually Edward and Bella’s father.
John Gardner:
Bella is a misunderstood, erudite genius who is hopelessly in love with Edward, who never had much interest in her and constantly spurns his advances. The townsfolk look down on Bella as a freak because of his intellectualism and romantic view of life, which is incomprehensible to them (but regard the real plagues on the town of vampire and werewolf attacks and corrupt politicians as totally normal). Bella resents Edward for the constant pain of rejection he has brought to her life, and her conflicting emotions lead her to self-destructive manic depressive tendencies.
Jacob will happily sleep with Bella, but Bella doesn’t like Jacob because after sex she always realizes how incredibly boring he is, and so sex with him is meaningless. The townsfolk is full of pompous windbags who represent that which they condemn. In the ultimate perversion of justice, Bella is executed at the end.
Moderators: sorry, in the other post I got my pronouns mixed up. Please approve this one instead.
John Gardner:
Bella is a misunderstood, erudite genius who is hopelessly in love with Edward, who never had much interest in her and constantly spurns her advances. The townsfolk look down on Bella as a freak because of her intellectualism and romantic view of life, which is incomprehensible to them (but regard the real plagues on the town of vampire and werewolf attacks and corrupt politicians as totally normal). Bella resents Edward for the constant pain of rejection he has brought to her life, and her conflicting emotions lead her to self-destructive manic depressive tendencies.
Jacob will happily sleep with Bella, but Bella doesn’t like Jacob because after sex she always is forced to confront how boring he is, and so sex with him must be meaningless. The townsfolk is full of pompous windbags who represent that which they condemn. In the ultimate perversion of justice, Bella is executed at the end.
Don DeLillo: The plight of Edward and Bella is an allegory for the end of the American Empire, the Kennedy Assassination and 9-11. In this version, Jacob is the ghost of Lee Harvey Oswald.
Palahniuk:
Bella is an anorexic coke-fiend who, to escape the constant raping of her father, allows herself to be sexually accosted (read: raped) by Edward Jacob, a highly-delusional vampiric murderous psychopath with a split personality who is a bisexual LARPing furry.
Instead of giving birth to his son, she’s given a huge dose of LSD and Edward Jacob disembowels her while she’s tripping.
Voltaire
Edward and Bella, two starry-eyed young lovers, set forth into the world with the hopes of converting all vampires into the Best Of All Possible Vegans. Their tutelage from crazy old Dr. Cullen led them to believe the best in others. Edward seeks to convert the Volturi, only to be hunted down and enslaved by them. Bella is led astray by Jacob, and ends up being continually raped by werewolves. Both escape their terrors and finally find each other again, and spend the rest of their lives humbly hiding on a farm and eating their own livestock.
Steven Brust: Bella makes her living working for the vampires and werewolves as a killer, meets Edward and Jacob in the middle of planning a hit, they fight, become friends, she finds out she is the reincarnation of their sister, briefly meets a little girl in one scene that is never explained, and has many a good meal
Not sure if he’s THAT famous, but…
John Green: Edward leads relatively a normal, single life, right up until meeting a manic pixie dream girl named Bella. His best friend, Jacob, is mostly in the background until he mentions his parents’ collection of black Santas (queue an entire group of people in the real world collecting them too). Bella asks him for a random favor of helping her screw with the Volturi. She then runs away before Edward can graduate, which leads him to chase after her to a made-up place.
Quentin Tarantino
Bella, while engaged in a kick-boxing death-match with a former rival, accidentally blows off Edward’s head when she slips on a knick knack that has fallen to the floor. Her clean-up guy, Jacob, is called away from his bookie’s sado-masochistic preferred customer lounge to orchestrate her escape from a town in which she is no longer welcome.
Fred Gipson:
Young Bella lives on a farm with her family and faithful dog, Jacob. They have many adventures together. One day, a lone vampire attacks Bella. Jacob comes to her rescue, fiercely driving the creature away. Unfortunately in the process the loyal dog is bitten by the vampire. The novel ends with a poignant scene where Bella takes Jacob into the woods to stake him.
James Fenimore Cooper — Jacob, one of the last two of a dying native american werewolf clan, his daughter Bella and his “white son” vampire Edward are caught up in the middle of the French and Indian war. During a journey to rescue a group of British from another tribe, Bella is killed, leaving Jacob as the last of his tribe.
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Kurt Vonnegut- Bella meets Jacob in a field outside her house when the two of them witness doubles of themselves apear in ancient Roman attire along with Edward. The next moment the two are abducted by aliens called Trenlins. The two go back in time to the fall of Rome and fight barbarians for 14.6 hours and then are abruptly transported back to the forest outside a clearing a few moments before Bella and Jacob witness themselves appear by a discenting Trenlin. The two witness the abduction take place with a pop, and Edward approaches them asking what happened. The three are then transported back to ancient Rome the instant they previously left. After a few more hours of hiding and fighting everything freezes and a Trenlin approaches them and tells them they need to prevent the fall of Rome so that the civilization can live on and one day give rise to an intergalactic federation that in turn saves the Trenlin’s home-world from famine. The three agree to try but eventually fail where they are transported back to the present where they find themselves standing moments before the initial abduction. After hearing the pop from the woods a Trenlin approaches them and with a wave of his hand they forget everything. They all wake up in their respective homes the first day of school for Bella in Forks, Washington.
Chinua Achebe: A long and in depth portrait of Jacobs life in which his hyper-masculine mentality is highlighted by his incessant need to take his shirt off and transform into a wolf is shown. Bella comes to town and begins to throw everything he knows into chaos. Jacob falls in love with Bella but Edward, a white man, has gained her love. The tension between Jacob and Edward builds quickly and climaxes in a brief interaction that ends with Jacob severing Edwards head in two strokes with a machete. Unable to cope with this new world Jacob hangs himself.
This turned out much longer than I expected, but here goes…
Terry Pratchett
Recent violent skirmishes between the vampires and werewolves in Überwald have led to an influx of refugees of both species into Ankh-Morpork, which is happy to house them if they stay out of each other’s way and don’t cause any (much) trouble.
Edward is a vampire who finds work as an assistant to Otto Chriek and sees an Igor on a regular basis due to a strange malady he suffers from; his skin turns into diamonds in the presence of human girls, and a small gnome called Manfred who lives on Kicklebury Street.
One day Edward meets a young girl who mysteriously does not cause his diamond skin to appear. At first he tries to get her help to discover a cure but even when this proves futile he still spends time with her and they fall in love.
Bella goes with Edward on a night with a full moon to cover a werewolf story for the Ankh-Morpork Times where she saves a sort of oversized poodle from being run over by a cart which Bella herself accidentally sent hurtling down the street. Through hijinks she discovers that the poodle is in fact a werewolf names Jacob whose “kissing-cousin” parents caused his unfortunate werewolf form. Jacob has lived in the city for many years and generally tries to keep a low profile and away from others of his kind. Bella agrees to keep his secret and lets him stay with her on full moon nights. Jacob comes to have strong feelings for Bella, but is unsure if they’re not solely due to the fact that she gives the most divine stomach scratches and likes to play ball with him.
When Edward finds out about Jacob he is enraged and their feud ignites the already tense vampire vs. werewolf sensibilities. Soon the whole city is swept up in the conflict and the Watch is arresting vampires and werewolves left, right and centre.
A series of clues and oddities eventually lead the two men to discover that Bella is not in fact a human but the last member of the fierce, shape-shifting Selkie race who has sworn revenge on all vampires and werewolves for the persecution and ultimate extinction of her species 200 years ago in Überwald. She is also revealed to be the main instigator responsible for the outbreak of violence there. The men find the Selkie skin and use it to turn Bella back into her mindless animal form. She is sold to a small zoo run by Mr C.M.O.T. Dibbler.
Edward and Jacob settle their differences and go back home to Überwald as emissaries of peace to help their respective peoples do the same. Months later Ankh-Morpork’s first zoo is tragically destroyed in an unrelated incident involving a Klatchian migratory bog truffle, a small pot of cream and an inexplicable letter most definitely not signed by the Patrician.
Pedro Almodovar:
Similar to the original, Edward and Bella get married and Jacob is a heartbroken werewolf. During an argument Edward lets his lust lead him to Bella’s neck and so kills her, Jacob finds out, kidnaps Edward and through a series of operations turns Edward into a Bella look alike transsexual who he falls in love with.
Charles de Lint: Bella is a homeless pixie girl with hidden wings and an incredible painting ability. Eddy is the sparkly king of a legendary mole people whose realm is only accessible by looking sideways at the base of a random light pole. Jacob is a Native American dream spirit that in habits the random tree that Bella is living in. Bella is just chilling with her hippie, nature friends who all play reed flutes or violins when she becomes embroiled in an ancient war between the mole people and the dream spirits. She must choose between becoming the queen of the mole realm or of the dream spirit realm by choosing between Eddy or Jacob. If she doesn’t, the ancient Volturi Being of Myth, who is behind the war, will consume both realms. She instead spends all her time saving abused orphaned street children and the other homeless denizens of the poor parts of the city. There is also random, obscure references to Irish, Welsh, and Native American mythology.
Bret Easton Ellis:
Bella and Edward are bored with their lives and wind up doing a lot of coke and having sex with each other and all the other characters they can find. They attend fabulous parties with other beautiful people and have fabulous drinks and are generally fabulous, cold, callous dicks. Jacob tries to find meaning in torturing and mutilating girls. Bella eventually moves to LA, realizes she’s still bored there, does a lot more coke, and moves back to Forks. In the end, nothing really happens, the characters’ lives are just as shallow, and the reader is left to wonder if any of this actually occured.
Margaret Atwood: 40 years down the road, Edward and Bella are married but openly carrying on affairs with other people while growing increasingly bitter towards each other. Meanwhile, the still-mortal Bella is beginning to feel the pinch of middle age, which she obsesses over in lovely, candid prose while reflecting back on her entire life, particularly the hormone-fueled events that have led her to this somewhat regrettable impasse. Jacob attempts to protest his “temporary” status in Bella’s life by committing suicide, and is unpleasantly surprised when he succeeds.
Lois McMaster Bujold: Jacob is a traumatized ex-soldier looking for peace, but ends up uncovering scandal and corruption within the Volturi (surprise!) while attempting to live out a quiet life as Bella’s tutor. He eventually overthrows them with great difficulty and the help of a spiritual epiphany, while Bella, an impetuous, strong-willed woman, goes on to become Volturi head after her creepy suitor Edward is magically assassinated.
Morag Joss: Twilight is set in Scotland. Everyone is misunderstood, but no one really cares. Edward, Jacob, and Bella all become massively more irritating, which is probably a product of the prose switching repeatedly from first person to third person and back again. Bella attempts to look more grown-up to Edward by acting like she doesn’t care about anybody, and impresses no one.
George Lucas
Bella is an intergalatic princess kidnapped and facing death at the hands of a ruthless and evil enemy with bizarre powers. Following an SOS message she is rescued by an angst ridden Edward coming to terms with the death of his known relatives and the new knowldege that has a special destiny. Edward is accompanied by the alluring Jacob, the rogish captain of a smuggling ship, in which they escape. Following a big fight, the great weapon of the enemy is destroyed by Edward. Subsequently Bella finds it difficult to decide between Edward and Jacob, who are becoming increasingly jealous of each other’s relationship with her. This is ultimately solved by the discovery that Bella is Edward’s sister, and everyone lives happily ever after.
20 years later some prequals are written which just annoy everyone.
Schiller:
Bella is a simple young girl in love with the wealthy Edward, son of the overambitious official Carlisle. She doesn’t hope for a future with Eddie because of their different origins, but he does not care about society and obligations and is determined to marry her. His father does not approve. He compels Jakob (the comedic character), who is responsible for spreading the aristocratic gossip, to play Bellas secret lover. Edward is easily convinced that Bella is cheating on him. He poisons her. Then he learns of her innocence. He is in total despair and tries to kill himself, but then remembers that he is actually a vampire and therefor doomed to live forever in agony and guilt.
Edgar Allan Poe:
In a poem entitled “Bella Marie,” Poe narrates from the point of view of a man, Edward, who has lost the woman he loves. The narrator repeats the refrain “I and my Bella Marie” and “city by the sea” to create a repetition of rhyme throughout the poem. The narrator recounts (several times) how he and Isabella Marie were deeply in love but that Jacob (a “demon”) killed Isabella Marie about of jealousy of their happiness. He feels his soul cannot be separated from hers, and spends his days sleeping beside her corpse.
CJ Cherryh (sci-fi author of the Foreigner series):
In the future, Earth is shared between two races: the humans and vampires. They have a truce that they adhere to, in order to avoid open warfare which has historically decimated both sides (but mostly the human side). Bella is a human who has been studying vampire culture and language. When the one human interpreter who is allowed by the truce to live among vampires retires, she’s promoted to his position. Her competency at vampire language and manners quickly place her in volatile diplomatic situations, during which she increasingly learns to mediate. Edward is assigned to her as one of her security detail against the vampire assassin’s guild, the Volturi, and conservative vampire factions who do not like humans. He finds her strangely attractive and they fall into a sexual and awkwardly romantic relationship. Jacob, Bella’s old boyfriend, makes several attempts to pull Bella back into a “normal” relationship with him, but ultimately fails as she becomes embroiled in global politics and becomes increasingly estranged from human relationships. The books of the series contain a growing glossary of the vampire language.
Ian McEwan: Jacob falsely accuses Edward of sexual assault, therefore Edward and Bella are forced to be apart. Bella is furious and breaks all contact with Jacob. She and Edward manage to meet only once but never consummate their love. They both die young in different circumstances. Jacob lives all his life with the guilt that he separated Bella and Edward. Before he dies, he writes a book about it.
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My friends have all come up with their own versions inspired by this great post. I still have yet to come up with one. (I’m slow.)
Here’s my husband Alex Bosworth’s Edgar Allan Poe version.
Recounted by Bella, from within the walls of a mental institution, the story involves the young woman’s uneasy cohabitation with the century and a half old Edward, who’s constant glittering drives her to insanity. In a fit of blind rage. she bludgeons her shimmering roommate to death and stuffs his body beneath the floor. When Jacob arrives to investigate, Bella tries to remain nonchalant, but slowly becomes unhinged under the delusion that she can still sense Edward glittering. The story ends as Bella tears open the floor boards hysterically screaming out a confession.
Alan Moore: Set in an apocalyptic world where everyone fears the attack of the Russians on the United States. Everyone hates the President, the whole country has gone down the drain and everyone lives in fear. Bella, aka Swan Spectre, is the daughter of an aging, dying whore in California. She later finds out that Charlie, aka The Policeman, is her father because he raped her mother when they were both crime fighters together back-in-the-day. Edward wears a mask because he’s so ashamed of his life, he calls himself Rorschach and is a pyschopath. Jacob, aka Dr Brooklyn, is a super-human, no-clothes-wearing physics geek who fights with Bella, breaks up with her and then he goes to live on Mars. He knows all about the past and future. Together the three of them, with others, make up the Watchmen. Lots of fighting ensues, lots of scheming happens and eventually it’s found out that the person everyone least expected, Alice, is the coordinator of all the violence and everything she held dear is destroyed in the end. The Russians don’t attack, Edward dies (but his apathetic diary remains and somehow arrives on the desk of the editor of the local newspaper) and Bella lives with her new boyfriend Mike happily ever after.