It’s almost a dare to have a website titled “Bad Books Good Times” and then have nothing to say about the release of the long unfinished, unreleased Midnight Sun.
Yes, yes, it’s quite a time to be alive. Twelve years after the first twelve chapters of Twilight rewritten from Edward’s perspective leaked and Stephanie Meyer abandoned the draft, Midnight Sun now actually sees the light of day. And what is there to even say about it? I’ve read notable Twilight fanfiction Fifty Shades of Grey. I’ve read Grey, the rewrite of said notable Twilight fanfiction Fifty Shades of Grey from the male character’s perspective (arguably technically a fanfiction of Midnight Sun, in which case arguably the first fanfiction to precede the publication of the original fiction it is based on). And I’ve read Life and Death, Stephenie Meyer’s other rewrite of Twilight, this one swapping the genders of the characters.
My point being, I’ve read Twilight an exhausting number of times for someone who has never actually read Twilight.
So the challenge upon hearing that Midnight Sun was actually finally going to be released is that neither Ariel nor I felt like there was anything entertaining, interesting, or new to say about another version of Twilight. Is there something funny about how the writing is still bad, again? (There are plenty of words we wrote years ago about other versions of this same story.) Is there something funny about how, honestly, was Twilight ever that bad or is it kind of embarrassing now, in 2020, how much of a frenzy we, as a culture, got whipped into? (There are podcasts that, honestly, are having more fun subjecting themselves to this question.) Is there something funny about how Stephenie Meyer only finished writing and published Midnight Sun entirely out of frustration that E.L. James blatantly ripped her off and then beat her to the punch of rewriting her ripoff from the male love interest’s perspective. (Yes, without question, but I am extremely here for this pettiness.)
Which is to say that, no, we’re not interested in doing a chapter by chapter recap of Midnight Sun. What could we say reading this same story for a fourth time? It’s over.
okay well the first twelve chapters leaked years ago but there’s new stuff but that’s still boring unless there’s anything that happens AFTER chapter 12 that would be particularly interesting to revisit from Edward’s perspective…
Maybe… there is something that happens later in the book that would be particularly interesting to read from a male narrator’s perspective…
Maybe something like that would be enough to do a one-off recap for after all? Perhaps… I should just recap… the chapter where…
Midnight Sun: Chapter 21 – The Game
…where they play vampire baseball, motherfuckers.
We only had ten yards to go before we passed the edge of the wood and entered the huge, open field my family simply called the clearing.
Ah, now we know that the Cullens refer to a large field on their property as “the clearing“. Another mystery resolved after a 12-year wait. Good thing I’m recapping this.
Carlisle was setting up the diamond while Alice and Jasper practiced some new tricks she wanted to perfect: If Jasper decided in advance to run a certain direction, Alice could see this decision and throw to his new position before he’d telegraphed the move. It didn’t give them much of an advantage, but as closely matched as we all were, anything had the potential to make them more competitive.
My god, the tension really takes on new dimensions the third time this scene got published, doesn’t it? Sports!
“Are you ready for some ball?” I grinned, easily inferring from Charlie’s comments that this evening was an anomaly for her. Well, hopefully we could keep her entertained.
“Go team?”
I laughed at her put-on enthusiasm
God damn, all this time Edward picked up from her conversation with her father that Bella did not care for baseball? God. Damn.
Emmett misses the first pitch. (Edward disappointingly has very little to add to how this influences his opinion of Emmett. Why publish this book even, Stephenie Meyer?) Emmett hits the second pitch though, and Edward runs after it. As a reminder, Edward has the power to read people’s minds, and Alice has the power to see the future. Edward notes that this combination means putting them on the same time is a rather unfair advantage.
Alice had already seen where the ball was headed, and that I was fast enough. It took a bit of the fun out of the game—honestly
Finally, after all these years, we have learned that even the vampires were a little bewildered by how vampire baseball was supposed to be fun.
Jasper’s next up to bat and hits a single, strategically hitting the ball to Carlisle rather than Edward. Rosalie – who has some issue with Bella that admittedly I don’t remember, sorry if this is actually the most interesting part of Midnight Sun and I fucked it all up with my baseball joke shitpost – hits a double as Rose tags Jasper out at home.
And, amazingly, once again, even the vampires wonder what the point of this scene is:
I could guess their next play before Emmett traded spots with Jasper again. Emmett would hit a long sacrifice fly to get Rosalie home. Alice had seen the same, but it looked like they would succeed. I moved back to the tree line, but if I ran to the spot Alice saw the ball heading to before Emmett actually hit it, Esme would penalize us for cheating.
In the middle of the inning, we get to check in on how Bella’s feeling… from Edward’s point of view!
“What do you think?” I asked.
She laughed. “One thing’s for sure, I’ll never be able to sit through dull old Major League Baseball again.”
“And it sounds like you did so much of that before.”
Then she pursed her lips. “I am a little disappointed.”
She hadn’t looked disappointed. “Why?”
“Well, it would be nice if I could find just one thing you didn’t do better than everyone else on the planet.”
Ugh.
Fun fact: this is page 502 of this book. Imagine how many other delightful ughs there have probably been before now, now that we are at last privy to Edward’s innermost ughs.
The game continues. We learn more about the house rules of vampire baseball, eg, since the teams are only three people, bases loaded is an automatic end to the inning since no one is left to bat. Now you know.
Aside from Baseball Strats, most of what Edward’s perspective seems to bring to this scene is how frequently he checks in on whether Bella seems to be having fun, how his family is feeling about her, etc. It’s not not cute, but it is perhaps limiting that the one scene I chose to read is the one where Edward invites Bella to watch him do something that she isn’t interested in and frequently worries if she’s bored yet… which makes me wonder what the Twilight world equivalent of making your boyfriend watch Twilight with you would be.
After eleven innings of play (a uniquely Edwardian highlight of which is that the Edward-Alice vampire power combo means he knows “exactly which tree to scale in order to catch [a] fly ball”), the sound of vampire baseball attracts other vampires unfriendly to humans…
Which means my work here is done. Hope you enjoyed Midnight Sun.
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Nice too see you back! I wonder how much money will be made on this pile of rehashed nonsense
May I ask where the “oh” gif is from?
Schitt’s Creek! An almost perfect tv show
Thanks.