We Gender Swapped YA Book Characters Following Twilight’s Anniversary Reimagining, & The Results Were Interesting

Twilight author Stephenie Meyer has revealed that she’s celebrating the book’s 10 year anniversary with a special reimagining of the first novel.

Life And Death: Twilight Reimagined gender swaps Bella and Edward into the roles of Beau and Edythe – and Stephenie is said to have made this decision following the constant critics labeling Bella a damsel in distress.

While the book won’t be available until Tuesday (October 7), we’ve decided to take this pretty awesome exercise and apply it to other huge YA books and their lead characters.

Would there be much of a difference is Katniss became Kevin or Hermione became Harrison? Let’s find out…

Harry Potter

In the HP books, Hermione was never the shy, retiring wallflower or lovesick puppy cliché we hate, making us think that if she was then portrayed as a man, he would come across just as smart, but he probably wouldn’t be labelled a know-it-all like Hermione was.

Probably because being a know-it-all isn’t really a thing when you’re a guy. Whatever.

On the other hand, Harry’s traits portrayed as a woman would probably come across as even more tortured than in the books.

Let’s be honest, he’s pretty whiny at the best of times, so turn him into a girl and that becomes a bit of a stereotype.

The Hunger Games

For some reason, when we think of Gale as a woman, we picture one of the Game of Thrones girls. Maybe Sansa, or even Daenerys. Just a strong, silent, beautiful human.

Considering Katniss didn’t have a ton of super feminine traits in the books – there’s a specific part about her explaining how much she hates seeing other people get emotional around her that really stuck with us – if she was then portrayed as a man, we don’t think there would be a lot of difference.

Maybe he’d rock a man bun instead of that totally on-trend braid.

But Peeta bloomin’ Mellark (who we personally think is a great male character, mainly because he has no qualms about being quite soft and in touch with his feelings) would become the stereotypical damsel in distress.

‘Oooh she’s just a baker who likes decorating cakes and her only weapon during the Games is that she can paint herself into shrubbery’. No, we’ll stick with the female badass, thank you.

The Maze Runner

Even though Thomas is meant to fit in with his fellow Gladers in the Glade, it’s clear from the start that he’s different.

But if Thomas was gender swapped from the word go, the whole story would have been different. Based on the way Teresa is treated when she turns up, Thomas would have been an untrustworthy outcast and probably would never have had the chance to run in the Maze in the first place.

Even though Teresa arrives unconscious and spreads weird prophesies to the Gladers, if she was originally portrayed as a male, everyone probably would have realised how much danger they were in much sooner.

Divergent

In our heads, if you made Four a woman and Tris a man in the first Divergent book, it basically would have played out really differently.

While we imagine Tris would have been bullied more for being weak at the beginning, we doubt a female Four would feel as compelled to help him (because hey, she definitely gets a tough time being a female leader against such chauvinistic Dauntless boys).

Also (spoiler if you haven’t read the first Divergent book), would Al NOT have tried to kill Tris and then commit suicide if Tris had actually been a boy? Maybe his masculinity wouldn’t have been quite as fragile then. DEEP, we know.