The Position Behind My Continuation of Life and Death

So, as I opened up Death and Rebirth: New Moon Reimagined, I tried to imagine what would have happened after Life and Death now that Beau was a vampire. Especially if I followed the general plotline of the rest of the Twilight Saga. This brought forth a number of challenges. 

In the original Twilight Saga, it is this really sappy teenage love story with small hints at deeper meanings and thought processes. The first time I read the complete saga, I read it in much that way - as a sappy teenage love story.

But I needed to find more meaning, more depth, than just that. So I read it again, and again, and again (you get the picture). A little background on me is that I'm a lawyer with a major in psychology. So to put that into perspective, I need to suss things out, need to analyze, over analyze, and ultimately understand every little detail of something I become obsessed with. This would be why I've read the Twilight Saga well over twenty times. I could go in depth into my thoughts on Bella, Edward, Jacob and the other characters in the Twilight Saga (in fact I probably will, in some other post(s)), but that's not the purpose of this post.

The Twilight Saga has a lot of different changes that happen to the characters, but it never goes into detail on the changes. The focus wasn't on the character growth, the emotional development, or the maturing of the characters in general. It was all there, in the background, but it wasn't a focus. Instead, the focus was on a sappy teenage romance that had no morality or anything else behind it.

So going into my stories, I wanted the characters to still have that ultimate sappy romance, but I wanted there to be reason behind it, I wanted people to actually see the growth of the characters. The problem is that the main characters, Beau and Edythe, are both vampires, both turned at seventeen. So barring major influence they can't change. A "real life" romance would never survive if all it was was an early stage first love with no depth behind it.

Because of the way vampires are in the Twilight universe, Beau isn't just going to wake up one day and be a mature adult (he can't sleep), Edythe would never instantly move away from that overprotective vampire faze. There are a lot of psyche flaws - for a lack of a better word - in both of the main characters. And since vampires are stuck in their ways and almost never change without major things happening, it makes it difficult to have these characters grow.

For Edythe, walking away from Beau because she believed it would save him and then believing he was killed has helped her to grow into a more mature woman, watching him walk away and actually be with Jules - at least for a short while - made her come even farther into her own. Obviously, Beau didn't get to see most of that growth as he wasn't there for it, but it's hinted at through the first half of Rebirth and Affliction. The thing with Edythe though is that she was no longer a child when she was turned. In the early 1900s a seventeen year old would most likely already be at that point where they're starting to be courted, where they're learning to be a homemaker, learning how to raise children, and more. Edythe wouldn't have quite been an adult when she was turned, but she definitely wasn't what we consider to be as a typical teen in today's terms

Beau, on the other hand is more of a typical teenager. He's just a seventeen year old boy who was turned at that cusp of adulthood.  He didn't grow up in a time of war, disease and/or depression, he never had that kind of experience. He never truly had a chance to grow up at all. (Born middle age and all that be damned, he's still a kid). To top all of that off, he was stubborn as hell when he was human so that comes through in spades now that he's a vampire. As a result, Beau's journey is more difficult. It takes multiple metaphorical 4x4's whacking him over the head to get him to grow.  Having him deal in depression, anger, bloodlust, and more have helped to develop the backbone behind that growth. As we go into the second half of Rebirth and Affliction, the final major metaphorical 4x4 will hit him. It's that one, the major one actually, that will finally break through that stubborn wall in his mind.

There's more to these stories than just that emotional growth, but that particular part of the stories is about to hit it's climax, at least where Beau and Edythe are concerned (Jules growth is still to come).  

Hopefully I have done justice to the struggles, setbacks, and general state of continuity that will allow these characters to truly find love, respect and happiness in the long run.