T.01.17 The Game

In Which Wahpires Play Silly Sports

Edward drives Bella home to find Billy and Jacob waiting. There's a long "don't date the vampire" wink and nod and hint routine with Billy and Bella where Billy seems both genuinely concerned about Bella's involvement with Edward and completely incapable of just telling her what's going on. He clearly knows that she knows and she knows that he knows etc etc etc, but Billy won't simply warn her with some sort of real information. Why? I guess he's read the script, too. On one hand it supposedly heightens our concerns about Edward (but doesn't) and gives us something to attach to Billy (friendly, concerned, etc).

Then Edward is introduced to Charlie, which lasts for ten seconds, and Billy & Charlie are off to the ball game. There's another bit of "running" where Edward soothes Bella's nerves using a nice section of "trust me, I'm kissing you" persuasion, she closes her eyes and they're at Wampire Stadium.

If you haven't figured it out, read the book yourself or seen the movie, Wampireball is baseball on a larger scale because they're VAMPIRES, get it?!? The bases are further apart, they run super fast to catch the ball and if it doesn't sound silly, then I'm not doing it right. They play during thunderstorms because hitting the ball.. you get the picture. Edward is, naturally, fantastic at this.

Bella sits in the "stands" with Esme while Emmett, Jasper, and Rosalie play Edward, Carlisle,  and Alice. The game is interrupted when Alice realizes the visiting vampires have heard the game and are on their way. At least they could fill out the infield.

SumUp C-
Wampire baseball is silly. Period. It's adapting a game built to human skill, limitations, talent and speed to creatures who are none of these. Scaling up doesn't make the game Vampire-sized, it just makes it a bigger human game. The fact that they can only compete in very specific conditions makes it even worse. Why wouldn't Vampires compete in purely Vampire games that don't need these weird situations? They've had centuries to work something out that would allow them to compete out of sight (and hearing range) of their prey. You know why?, because the author would have to invent the game and explain the rules and then describe it so we all understood and were entertained. I'd mention Quiddich here, but while that one is well described and interesting to read about, the rules are nonsensical. Instead what we get is a team of superpowered beings goofing off on a baseball diamond.

Aside from W.L.B., the whole conversation with Billy is a wasted opportunity to pass on real information about the Vampires or Werewolves from someone who might have an informed opinion. Who cares what Charlie thinks of the Cullens? He thinks they're just the eccentric family of foster kids. So instead of building up tension or establishing something about Edward that we didn't already know, we get a "be careful" lecture. So either we know everything we need to know about Edward (big sexless boring statue) or Billy has nothing to add and we could have shortened that conversation to a passing comment.