Breaking Dawn, Ch. 25-26

Chapter 25. Favor

The chapter begins with more pillow talk, but Bella remembers that they have a plot to get back to. Unfortunately, Bella is stymied when she can’t find something she wants to wear among all the clothes Alice sent with her. Edward has to help her (1) find clothes she like by the scent of the materials. I wish I were kidding. Isn’t it great that the the story is about this kind of crap instead of Bella learning to live with the consequences of her choices?

Once they go back to the Cullens’ house, Rosalie and Emmett tease them for a few pages. Emmett earns the Jackass of the Week award with this:

“So [the cottage] still standing?” he managed to get out between his snickers. “I would’ve
thought you two had knocked it to rubble by now. What were you doing last night?
Discussing the national debt?” He howled with laughter.

Haha, family members, your sex-having is so wacky!

Suddenly, Alice interrupts to announce that Jacob is doing something that blocks her clairvoyance:

“What is he doing? What is that dog doing that has erased my schedule for the entire
day? I can’t see anything! No!” She shot me a tortured glance. “Look at you! You need
me to show you how to use your closet.”

Speaking of Alice, let’s play a quick drinking game. Take a shot for every time in the last two books  she’s said something that isn’t about clothes. Do it now. All finished? If you did it right, you should still be stone cold sober. In Twilight and New Moon, Alice was the closest thing the books had to a competent character, but now all she does is buy clothes for Bella while Bella sighs overdramatically.

Anyway, Edward explains that Jacob has told Charlie about Bella’s transformation and the two of them are on their way to the Cullens’. Naturally everyone flips out at this, and when Jacob arrives they demand an explanation. Here it is:

Jacob’s smile wavered, but he was still too wound up to answer seriously. “Blondie [Rosalie] and
Emmett woke me up this morning going on and on about you all moving cross-country.
Like I could let you leave. Charlie was the biggest issue there, right? Well, problem
solved.”

Let’s play Disturbing Sentence Bingo! Between “Like I could let you leave” and “Charlie was the biggest issue there, right? Problem solved,” somebody should be a winner by now.

Bella is reasonably upset at this, and boy, there’s a sentence I’d given up hope of ever writing. Jacob explains that he transformed into a werewolf in front of Charlie in order to prove what he was saying. At first I thought this was a plot hole, since he couldn’t do this back in New Moon when he had to hint at the truth to Bella. This time, though, he is his own pack leader, so there’s no one to order him not to. This isn’t actually explained in the text, so either Meyer had a rare moment of trust that the reader would figure it out or she didn’t think the consequences out that far herself.

Bella worries about how she’ll explain her vampirization to Charlie, but Jacob tells her it’s not a problem:

"His main request is that he be told as little as possible about all of this. If it’s not
absolutely essential for him to know something, then keep it to yourself.
Need to know, only...he’d just like to pretend things are normal”

No.

For the first three books, Charlie was as concerned about his only child as you’d expect a parent to be. For the first half of this book, Charlie has been worried sick about Bella and doing everything he can to find out what’s wrong with her. Now he decides he doesn’t want to know? Sure. Is Meyer even trying anymore? She’s done nothing but set up one problem after another only to resolve them in the most banal way possible. Why even go through the trouble? It’s not like she gets paid by the word.

Charlie arrives, and nothing much happens. For some reason they tell him that Renesmee is Edward’s niece. Charlie doesn’t buy it, but Jacob invokes “need-to-know” and Charlie drops it. Emmett interrupts by cheering for the football game he’s watching(2), and Charlie goes over to join him.

Chapter 26. Shiny

We’re told Charlie sat motionless as he watched two whole football games with Emmett. Stephenie Meyer does know how long a football game is, right? That’s a good six hours at the minimum.

Say, you know what we haven’t had in six whole pages? Bella ego-stroking! Stephenie Meyer demands that we fix that now:

Bella:

I realized I’d done it. I’d actually made it through the whole day without hurting Charlie.
All by myself. I must have a superpower!

Edward:

"You were unbelievable. All that worrying over being a newborn, and then you skip it altogether.”

Emmett:

“I’m not even sure she’s really a vampire, let alone a newborn,” Emmett called from
under the stairs. “She’s too tame.”

The Pope:

Bella Swann's magnificence, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life
and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force  behind
the authentic development of every person and of all humanity.

Emmett challenges Bella to an arm-wrestling contest outside. Bella accepts. You can guess how it plays out:

Emmett grunted; his forehead creased and his whole body strained in one rigid line
toward the obstacle of my unmoving hand. I let him sweat—figuratively—for a moment
while I enjoyed the sensation of the crazy force running through my arm.
A few seconds, though, and I was a little bored with it...I smashed his hand into the
boulder...Fascinated by the undeniable proof that I was stronger than the strongest vampire I’d
ever known, I placed my hand, fingers spread wide, against the rock. Then I dug my
fingers slowly into the stone, crushing rather than digging; the consistency reminded me
of hard cheese. I ended up with a handful of gravel.

Not pictured: three wise men bringing gifts to celebrate Bella’s vampirization. But then, Bella has never liked gifts.

As the chapter ends, Bella drives the point home one last time:

I was amazing now—to them and to myself. It was like I had been born to be a vampire.
The idea made me want to laugh, but it also made me want to sing. I had found my true
place in the world, the place I fit, the place I shined.

You know what I think? I think Bella actually did get hit by the van in the first book. She’s been in a coma this whole time, silently dreaming of a life that revolved around her. Or how about this: Edward bit Bella way back in Twilight but decided to eat her later, and the venom has kept Bella alive while distracting her with a lotus-style fantasy.

——————————–

(1) And hey, way to go with all that “girl power” Stephenie Meyer likes to talk about: Bella can’t even dress herself without help from Edward’s magical vampire superpowers.

(2) Incidentally, every time Emmett is mentioned he is watching a football game. One wonders if he’s just been sitting around for the last few weeks watching ESPN or something.

A list of my favorite book and short story titles

In no particular order. I have only read the Dick and LeGuin works so far.

• The Stars My Destination — Alfred Bester
• Very Far Away from Anywhere Else — Ursula K. LeGuin
• “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman — Harlan Ellison
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip K. Dick
• Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones — Samuel R. Delaney
• Life Regarded as a Jigsaw Puzzle of Highly Lustrous Cats — Michael Bishop, probably a riff on the previous title

Science fiction authors seem to be drawn to exotic titles. Except for Very Far Away…, all of these are science fiction works, and even that one is written by an author mostly known for her speculative fiction(1). The lists of Hugo and Nebula short story award winners are entertaining reading for the titles alone.

Harlan Ellison must get a special mention here for his weird and wonderful titles. He also wrote short stories called “The Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World” and “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”–oddities even among science fiction titles.

Post your favorite titles in the comments; I love collecting these.

————————————-

(1) Pedant’s note: reams have been written on what the terms “science fiction,” “fantasy,” and “speculative fiction” mean, and which works fit into which category. I consider the term “speculative fiction” to be the most compact term as well as the most descriptive, but I realize “science fiction” is more familiar and easier to use. Paradoxically, accurate terms can themselves be misleading: witness all the work John Piper has done over the years defending the term “Christian Hedonism”.

In any case, I use it here to describe LeGuin’s work because she has written both fantasy and science fiction series. More importantly, perhaps, she uses the counterfactual nature of both genres to explore ideas, something I consider integral to good speculative fiction.

Breaking Dawn, Ch. 23-24

Chapter 23. Memories

Bella is a Streisand fan, I guess.

Anyway, the chapter opens with everyone apologizing on Bella’s behalf. Apparently she chose to cope with the news of Jacob’s imprinting by beating the crap out of Seth, Jacob’s werewolf buddy. Again, if Bella were a mere mortal, this would be all kinds of messed up, but since she has super strength and less self-control now it’s apparently okay. Honestly, why doesn’t Stephenie Meyer just come right out and say vampires are the master race?

Bella melodramatically claims to be a bad person. Naturally everyone reassures her she isn’t. While this is happening, Stephenie Meyer Bella same thing Bella realizes it’s time wrap up another plot point, so she exposits that it’s forbidden for werewolves to kill the object of another werewolf’s imprinting. This would be an elegant solution to the problem if it had ever been mentioned before, but since it comes out of nowhere it’s a deus ex machina. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes, there’s a creepy element to this as well: it’s forbidden because it causes a great deal of pain to the pack, not because the werewolves have a responsibility to defend their tribe or because murder is wrong or anything. No, it’s bad because it hurts werewolves.

But wait, there’s more! Bella decides to go for a second deus ex machina–a deuce ex machina?–by deciding that since Jacob is the real Alpha of the werewolf pack and he said Bella’s transformation didn’t violate their treaty, Sam’s wolves are now obligated to be okay with Bella. Great. Maybe Bella can go on to cure cancer with her tears and make it a deus ex machina hat trick.

To reassure everyone that Bella is the pure and chosen savior of the Twilight universe, Jasper interrupts Bella’s thoughts to praise her self-control. Dear Jasper: shut up.

Anyway, Bella resumes thinking, presumably with some effort. She decides to visit Charlie to show that she’s alive, but she won’t mention the nature of her changes. She thinks this will satisfy vampire secrecy laws. Um, sure, at least until Charlie asks why she is cold as ice and strong enough to flip a car. And I’m sure the Volturi will just take her word for it that her closest relative knows she’s alive but doesn’t understand why. Nice planning as always, Bella.

Renesmee walks up to telepathically transfer memories of drinking blood to Bella. This is how she communicates, by the way–memories and impressions communicated via touch. Magical sparkly perfect self-control Bella finds the communicated smell of blood only mildly tempting. This is enough to send Jasper into a fit of depression, since he still struggles with his desire for blood, and seeing Bella totally ace the challenge makes him feel like an utter failure. It’s okay, Jasper; we can’t all be Mary Sues.

Chapter 24. Surprise

Rocks fall! Everyone dies!

Oh, I wish. Sadly, it’s not that kind of surprise. It’s actually just Alice announcing that it’s Bella’s nineteenth birthday. Bella does her usual whine about aging again, but Alice goes ahead with the party anyway. Alice and Edward argue about who gets to give Bella a gift first, and they agree to decide by rock, paper, scissors. They don’t actually play, though, since Alice announces that she’ll win. Okay, that was actually amusing.

Bella silently exposits that Rosalie no longer resents her now that they’ve both fought to save Renesmee. Huh. You know, Breaking Dawn, I was just kidding about that deus ex machina hat trick. You didn’t actually have to do it. Really, you shouldn’t have.

Alice’s gift turns out to be a house. Apparently the Cullens built a house for Edward and Bella in their spare time. Without anyone noticing. And without any architectural training that we know of. Huh. I give it a week before it collapses on them.

Anyway, Edward and Bella go off to have a second honeymoon in their new and almost-certainly-not-up-to-code house. Thankfully things fade to black again.

Wait. Oh, great.

Though we’re spared the actual sight of Bella and Edward screwing like rabbits, Stephenie Meyer lovingly transcribes their pillow talk. Since the vampire sex was–you guessed it–wonderful, Bella wonders why vampires don’t spend all their time making love. Edward doesn’t really answer, but he says he spent his time taking up a lot of hobbies while he was unmarried. Uh, okay, Edward, but what does that have to do with anything? That’s not a euphemism, is it? Oh good heavens I hope that isn’t a euphemism.

Breaking Dawn, Ch. 22

Chapter 22. Promised

Thinking of Renesmee brought her to that center-stage place in my strange, new, and
roomy but distractible mind.

Oh boy. Time to break out the bulleted list:

• Thinking of someone brought her to your mind?
• It didn’t bring her to the center, but rather the “center-stage place”?
• What exactly is strange and new about Bella’s mind? We’ve never heard of vampirization causing any cognitive changes.
• What is “roomy but distractible” supposed to mean? It sounds like Bella is calling herself stupid, but that can’t be what Meyer was going for.
• This sentence makes the English language cry. Stephenie Meyer usually comes across as more inexperienced than bad, but it’s hard to chalk this up to mere inexperience.

Edward fills Bella in on Renesmee’s development. Her growth hasn’t slowed, and she is already capable of communicating with others. You know how one of the challenges of parenting is learning to understand the needs of someone you love that isn’t yet capable of telling you? I hoped that Meyer would use this to develop Bella as a character, but that was clearly foolish of me. Isn’t that the Twilight series in a nutshell? Rather than make her characters change or grow, Meyer would rather change a fundamental human relationship into something nigh unrecognizable.

Bella is surprised to learn that Jacob is still hanging around. She melodramatically asks Edward about this:

“Why is Jacob still here?” I asked. “How can he stand it? Why should he?” My ringing
voice trembled a little. “Why should he have to suffer more?”

Why is she concerned about him now? It never stopped her from using him before.

“Jacob isn’t suffering,” he said in a strange new tone. “Though I might be willing to
change his condition,” Edward added through his teeth. 

“Edward!” I hissed, yanking him to a stop (and feeling a little thrill of smugness that I
was able to do it).

If I felt Bella were intentionally written to be monstrously self-absorbed, I’d say Stephenie Meyer is doing a great job. I’ll have to settle for protesting yet again about having to see the world through a sociopath’s eyes.

“How can you say that? Jacob has given up everything to protect us!
What I’ve put him through—!”

Bella now seems to regret toying with Jacob’s affection for the last three books. This comes out of nowhere, and as I noted earlier this is a complete reversal of her earlier attitude. I guess characters in Breaking Dawn can get everything they want, but they have to feel bad about it for a few seconds.

I cringed at the dim memory of shame and guilt. It seemed odd now that I had needed him
so much then. That sense of absence without him near had vanished; it must have been a
human weakness.

“Human weakness.” There’s a lot packed into those two words, more than the circumstances of this passage would indicate. From Stephenie Meyer’s website, in a response to claims that she is misogynistic:

I am not anti-female, I am anti-human...when a human being is totally surrounded by creatures
with supernatural strength, speed, senses, and various other uncanny powers, he or she is not
going to be able to hold his or her own. Sorry. That's just the way it is.
(source) [emphasis in the original]

In short, Meyer’s view is that the battle is to the strong and the race to the swift. This is certainly borne out in the novels, where the inferiority–in value as well as ability–of ordinary humans compared to the vampires and werewolves of Twilight has always been present, but now that Bella has crossed over into vampirehood it has become more overt. In the Twilight universe, human things don’t count for much: human men are boring or, in Charlie’s case, clueless; human relationships pale in comparison to the passion of vampire romances or the thunderbolt-like imprinting of werewolves. Vampires are wealthy and drive nice cars; humans are low or middle class and drive ancient trucks or vans (remember Tyler? Van run-over guy?). Humans are clumsy and fragile; werewolves are big, strong, and recover from massive injuries almost instantaneously. In the Twilight universe, humans simply don’t count for much.

Bella races Edward back home. Do I even need to tell you she wins?

Once they arrive, Bella is furious to learn that Jacob has imprinted on Renesmee. She gets over it in about five minutes as the chapter ends.

“The Morning Song of Senlin” — Conrad Aiken

I almost wrote my senior paper in undergrad on this poem and on Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno, a poem that will definitely get its own post in the future. In the end I didn’t, because I couldn’t find enough published on it to build a coherent thesis. I awoke early this morning, so it seemed especially appropriate to post it today.

Fans of Madeleine L’Engle will recognize that her novel A Swiftly Tilting Planet takes its title from this poem.

——————————————————————-

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
When the light drips through the shutters like the dew,
I arise, I face the sunrise,
And do the things my fathers learned to do.
Stars in the purple dusk above the rooftops
Pale in a saffron mist and seem to die,
And I myself on a swiftly tilting planet
Stand before a glass and tie my tie.

Vine leaves tap my window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And tie my tie once more.
While waves far off in a pale rose twilight
Crash on a white sand shore.
I stand by a mirror and comb my hair:
How small and white my face! —
The green earth tilts through a sphere of air
And bathes in a flame of space.
There are houses hanging above the stars
And stars hung under a sea …
And a sun far off in a shell of silence
Dapples my walls for me …

It is morning, Senlin says, and in the morning
Should I not pause in the light to remember God?
Upright and firm I stand on a star unstable,
He is immense and lonely as a cloud.
I will dedicate this moment before my mirror
To him alone, for him I will comb my hair.
Accept these humble offerings, cloud of silence!
I will think of you as I descend the stair.

Vine leaves tap my window,
The snail-track shines on the stones,
Dew-drops flash from the chinaberry tree
Repeating two clear tones.

It is morning, I awake from a bed of silence,
Shining I rise from the starless waters of sleep.
The walls are about me still as in the evening,
I am the same, and the same name still I keep.
The earth revolves with me, yet makes no motion,
The stars pale silently in a coral sky.
In a whistling void I stand before my mirror,
Unconcerned, and tie my tie.

There are horses neighing on far-off hills
Tossing their long white manes,
And mountains flash in the rose-white dusk,
Their shoulders black with rains …
It is morning. I stand by the mirror
And surprise my soul once more;
The blue air rushes above my ceiling,
There are suns beneath my floor …

… It is morning, Senlin says, I ascend from darkness
And depart on the winds of space for I know not where,
My watch is wound, a key is in my pocket,
And the sky is darkened as I descend the stair.
There are shadows across the windows, clouds in heaven,
And a god among the stars; and I will go
Thinking of him as I might think of daybreak
And humming a tune I know …

Vine-leaves tap at the window,
Dew-drops sing to the garden stones,
The robin chirps in the chinaberry tree
Repeating three clear tones.

—Conrad Aiken, 1919

September is here, quiet and bittersweet. It opens with a little leftover warmth from August, and it ends with a wet chill that annouces the arrival of October.

Breaking Dawn, Ch. 19-21

Book 3: bella

Now that we’re finished seeing Jacob do nothing of consequence for several chapters, it’s time to get back to Bella. I’m actually glad, for this means no more stupid chapter titles.

Personal affection is a luxury you can have only after all your enemies are eliminated.
Until then, everyone you love is a hostage, sapping your courage and corrupting your
judgment. 

Orson Scott Card
Empire

An author I dislike quoting another author I dislike? Awesome.

Preface

No longer just a nightmare, the line of black advanced on us through the icy mist stirred
up by their feet. 

We’re going to die, I thought in panic. I was desperate for the precious one I guarded,
but even to think of that was a lapse in attention I could not afford.
They ghosted closer, their dark robes billowing slightly with the movement. I saw their
hands curl into bone-colored claws. They drifted apart, angling to come at us from all
sides. We were outnumbered. It was over. 

And then, like a burst of light from a flash, the whole scene was different. Yet nothing
changed—the Volturi still stalked toward us, poised to kill. All that really changed was
how the picture looked to me. Suddenly, I was hungry for it. I wanted them to charge.
The panic changed to bloodlust as I crouched forward, a smile on my face, and a growl
ripped through my bared teeth.

I know I already complained about this, but how does one have a preface in the middle of a book? At any rate, this is probably the best preface of them all, for it gives us a concrete threat to worry about. And Bella is less passive. It’s a change of pace, at least.

That said, “icy mist”? The water is frozen and gaseous at the same time? It must have extra chromosomes!

Chapter 19. Burning

As near as I can tell, this chapter consists of Bella narrating her own coma. Great.

The pain was bewildering.

Bella regrets reading Twilight.

My body tried to reject the pain, and I was sucked again and again into a blackness that
cut out whole seconds or maybe even minutes of the agony, making it that much harder
to keep up with reality. 

I tried to separate them. 

Non-reality was black, and it didn’t hurt so much. 

Reality was red, and it felt like I was being sawed in half, hit by a bus, punched by a
prize fighter, trampled by bulls, and submerged in acid, all at the same time.

Believe it or not, I don’t blame Stephenie Meyer for this passage. She wrote it, true, but its flaws are common to many new writers. I have no sympathy for whomever worked with her to get this published, and whoever signed off on it once it was accepted. I have two specific complaints:

1) If a character can’t describe a situation meaningfully, pick another character to describe it. Bella is in pain; we get it. All this blathering about red and black just sounds pretentious.

2) That last sentence is unadulterated cliche, not to mention ridiculous. To paraphrase William Zinsser, reading constant overstatement is like listening to a man who only speaks in limericks.

Anyway, this chapter is basically the birth scene from Bella’s perspective. It’s kind of like Rashomon, except Rashomon doesn’t suck.

Bella goes on about red and black some more, and it gradually transitions into a description of vampirization. (Summary: it hurts.)  At one point she hears Edward and Bella talking about her; Edward, ninny that he is, laments about the pain he caused her. You’re one hundred and eighteen, Edward, don’t you think it’s time to grow up? Anyway, Carlisle assures him that Bella is recovering nicely, so Edward go back to listening to “Girlfriend in a Coma” on repeat.

Bella narrates a few more hours of laying about in pain. Really, Stephenie Meyer? The one time where it makes sense to have the book from another perspective, and you do this? You’re killing me.

Chapter 20. New

Bella awakens to find out she’s a vampire. The world looks a little different:

The brilliant light overhead was still blinding-bright, and yet I could plainly see the
glowing strands of the filaments inside the bulb. I could see each color of the rainbow in
the white light, and, at the very edge of the spectrum, an eighth color I had no name for. 

Behind the light, I could distinguish the individual grains in the dark wood ceiling
above. In front of it, I could see the dust motes in the air, the sides the light touched, and
the dark sides, distinct and separate. They spun like little planets, moving around each
other in a celestial dance.

This is what Meyer has really wanted to write for three books now. Doesn’t that passage seem more natural than all the exposition and tired plot twists we’ve suffered through? Don’t you have a clearer sense of what Bella sees–not just how she sees, but how the world around her appears to her eyes? This is one of the few descriptive passages in the Twilight series, and it’s no coincidence that it gives a sense of balance to the text, a sense that the characters are people who interact with physical objects and not just angst generators.

Bella goes on like this for a while. She only stops when she notices Edward. Sadly, she goes on about how he’s now more beautiful than she had realized while mortal. Ugh. They kiss, and Bella says it’s like their first kiss all over again. Hopefully you aren’t tired of this, because Stephenie Meyer sure isn’t.

Anyway, this sexual fantasy is in the process of becoming a power fantasy, for Stephenie Meyer Bella is now strong enough to hurt Edward when she hugs him, and Carlisle is amazed at her self-control. Yes, Bella is abnormally self-controlled for a newborn vampire, and everyone coos over her in awe. Bella, thy name is Mary-Sue. To hammer the point home, they provide Bella with a mirror; naturally, she’s ten kinds of amazing and beautiful. Jeez, it’s like Stephenie Meyer is writing fanfiction about her own life.

Bella wants to know about Renesmee, but Edward is reluctant to let Bella see her. I can’t blame him; I wouldn’t trust Bella to take care of a goldfish, much less a baby, but he’s just worried about Bella’s new thirst for blood.

Chapter 21. First Hunt

Bella goes hunting with Edward, and she almost kills some hikers by accident. Awww, it’s her first almost-murder! I hope somebody brought a camera.

It’s been a couple of pages since anyone stroked Bella’s ego, so Edward picks up the slack:

“You shouldn’t be able to do any of this. You shouldn’t be so… so rational. You
shouldn’t be able to stand here discussing this with me calmly and coolly. And, much
more than any of that, you should not have been able to break off mid-hunt with the
scent of human blood in the air. Even mature vampires have difficulty with that—we’re
always very careful of where we hunt so as not to put ourselves in the path of
temptation. Bella, you’re behaving like you’re decades rather than days old.”

It’s magical sparkly author-insertion vampire Bella! The author commands you to worship, puny readers!

M-M-M-MEGA POST! Breaking Dawn, Ch. 16-18

Chapter 16. Too-Much-Information Alert

In order to break up the vampire drama, this chapter provides relief in the form of…werewolf drama. Remember, aspiring writers: story ≠ drama.

In this case, Leah is actually being friendly to Jacob, or at least less unfriendly. To his dismay, she even suggests they remain as a pack once the the Cullen incident blows over. To my amazement, the text actually treats Leah with some sympathy instead of contempt. It’s nice to see Meyer making baby steps toward acknowledging that her characters are, frankly, kind of jerks. The text has acknowledged the casual sexism of the wolf pack, but it has made zero effort so far to challenge it. We’re supposed to find Leah to be an unlikeable character, but jeez, look at her circumstances: being the only woman in the pack, being constantly treated as a nuisance, and losing most of her free will to a guy she has a lot of bad history with. I say she’s a saint for not going on a silver bullet rampage by now.

Anyway, Leah has now learned that werewolfization has left her sterile for the foreseeable future. What’s the deal, Stephenie Meyer? All the male werewolves imprint on toddlers they can raise to their liking (ugh) or beautiful adults they can slap around (more ugh), but the one female werewolf gets nothing except a ruined engagement. Nice.

Anyway, Jacob realizes this, but it hasn’t created in him a sense of obligation to be nice or anything:

"I’m talking about being a genetic dead end, Jacob," [she said.]

The vicious edge to her words left me floundering. I hadn’t expected to have my anger
trumped.

"I don’t understand."

"You would, if you weren’t just like the rest of them. If my 'female stuff'—she thought
the words with a hard, sarcastic tone—"didn’t send you running for cover just like any
stupid male, so you could actually pay attention to what it all means."

Oh.

Yeah, so none of us like to think about that stuff with her. Who would?...None of us had
wanted to deal with that breakdown. Obviously, it wasn’t like we could empathize.

Jeez. Jeez, Jacob. I guess this is a step above “bitch had it coming,” but several steps below ordinary human decency. I’m genuinely confused: how are we supposed to read this? Jacob is the narrator and a protagonist, and in Stephenie Meyer’s world that means you’re a-okay and favored by fate. I really don’t get the misogyny towards Leah here, not by Jacob, not by Meyer.

Leah continues to lament that becoming a werewolf basically precludes any sort of family life. Jacob, sadly, is Jacob:

"I’m… I’m menopausal. I’m twenty years old and I’m menopausal," [she said.]

Ugh. I so didn’t want to have this conversation.

Your hero, ladies and gentlemen.

Just as Jacob starts to come across as a complete monster, he shows that he has the sanest perspective in the entire book on this whole imprinting business:

"You really want to imprint, or be imprinted on, or whichever?" I demanded. "What’s
wrong with going out and falling in love like a normal person, Leah? Imprinting is just
another way of getting your choices taken away from you."

Good sense? In the Twilight universe? It’s more likely than you think. Of course, it would have been nice if he’d mentioned that it basically takes someone else’s choices away from them, too, but you can’t have everything.

This goes on for a bit longer as they make their way back to the Cullens. Once they arrive, Alice conversationally informs him that the baby just broke Bella’s pelvis. If the chapter hadn’t already been one unremitting horror show I’d probably be creeped out, but now I’m honestly kind of dead to it.

There’s a bit more domestic stuff–threats of death, drinking blood, that kind of thing–and then Edward realizes he can hear the baby thinking. Uh…okay. Bella finds this weird, too, and her surprise causes the baby to bruise her from the inside. Yikes. Apropos of nothing, they discuss names for the baby: Edward if it’s a boy–of course–or Renesmee. Jacob abruptly decides he’s had enough of this, so Edward tosses Jacob his car keys. Exeunt narrator.

Chapter 17. [I swear I am not making this title up. --mkp] What Do I Look like? The Wizard Of Oz? You Need A Brain? You Need A Heart? Go Ahead. Take Mine. Take Everything I Have.

[Note from future Mateo: these two chapters probably aren't for the faint of heart. Fair warning.]

Long title, long chapter. Let’s a-go!

Anyway, Jacob goes anger driving for a while. As he does, a plan forms…wow. Oh, wow. This is dumb even by Twilight standards. Hey, even Jacob says so:

This was a stupid plan. It wasn’t going to work. But, as I’d searched my head for any
way at all to get away from the pain, what Leah’d said today had popped in there.

"That would go away, you know, if you imprinted. You wouldn’t have to hurt over her
anymore."

Seemed like maybe getting your choices taken away from you wasn’t the very worst
thing in the world. Maybe feeling like this was the very worst thing in the world.
But I’d seen all the girls in La Push and up on the Makah rez and in Forks. I needed a
wider hunting range.

So how do you look for a random soul mate in a crowd? Well, first, I needed a crowd.
So I tooled around, looking for a likely spot. I passed a couple of malls, which probably
would’ve been pretty good places to find girls my age, but I couldn’t make myself stop.
Did I want to imprint on some girl who hung out in a mall all day?

Yes, you read that right: Jacob is randomly driving around with the goal of imprinting on a passerby. A rebound imprinting, no less. Leaving aside the fact that Jacob managed to make imprinting even more skeevy(!), Jacob is SOL if his magical mystery mate lives in China or something. But what happens if he does imprint on someone in his “wider hunting range” (still more ugh)? What if he imprints on a random toddler in the crowd? What’s he gonna do, walk up and offer to be her best friend until she turns legal? I imagine parents not from a werewolfing tradition wouldn’t be pleased.

As it turns out, Jacob’s actual approach…well, let’s say it could use some work:

I stared into the face of every girl who passed anywhere near me, making myself
really look, noticing who was pretty and who had blue eyes and who looked good in
braces and who had way too much makeup on.

Jacob evidently favors the serial killer approach meeting girls. Remember, he’s six-foot-something and looks like he’s in his early twenties.

I tried to find something interesting about each face, so that I would know for sure that I’d
really tried. Things like: This one had a really straight nose...

…that would look great mounted on his wall…

Sometimes they stared back...

Trying to recall if they’d seen that face on the wall of a post office, no doubt.

Sometimes they looked scared—like they were thinking,
Who is this big freak glaring at me?

Little tip from one guy to another: they were thinking that. I’m no romantic expert, but I can’t imagine the “stare like a pervert” approach is the most effective conversation starter. Unless you’re interested in a policewoman, maybe.

Unable to find the perfect addition to his human skin collection match for his lonely werewolf soul, Jacob returns to his car. To his surprise, there’s a huge contrivance waiting for him: a pretty girl is just standing there, admiring his car and eager to make conversation with the owner. First of all, yeah, right. Second of all, was this high school-ish aged girl expecting someone roughly her age to walk up? Remember, Jacob borrowed this car from the Cullens, and they only seem to dive exotic sports cars. Those generally aren’t owned by high-schoolers. Either this girl was incredibly naive, or she was hoping to make conversation with someone much older. Breaking Dawn being as messed up as it is, I don’t know which is more likely.

Anyway, Jacob is sufficiently impressed by the plot device girl, so he tries to will himself to imprint:

I stared at her face harder, wishing I knew how to make it work. C’mon, Jake—imprint already.

Needless to say, it doesn’t work. This in keeping with Twilight’s theme of “ordinary human relationships are for suckers,” but it’s still pretty pathetic. And hey, why the suddenly high standards, Jacob? Wasn’t too long ago you settled for being Bella’s pet dog and space heater.

Anyway, the poor girl stands around and hopelessly tries to make conversation for a bit, but Jacob just gets in the car and drives back to the Cullens. Edward meets him, and he’s not happy; apparently Leah showed up angry at Bella for jerking Jacob around for three whole books. Bella can’t be unhappy, of course, so Edward wants Jacob to “control” Leah and keep her from…I don’t know, getting angry at Bella or something. I don’t know why he doesn’t just talk to her himself. In the Twilight universe, rational, honest conversations are for men only, I guess.

That out of the way, Edward and Jacob get back to talking about the center of the universe, i.e., Bella. Apparently she’s going through blood by the gallon, so Carlisle left to get more. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Edward and Bella Cullen! One of them has an insatiable craving for human blood, and the other one is a vampire!

Bella walks down the stairs to meet them, and in the process she spills her sippy cup of blood on the couch. Again, none of the vampires even blink. This kind of makes Edward look like a wuss for skipping class when they were doing blood typing.

There was the strangest, muffled ripping sound from the center of her body.
“Oh!” she gasped.

And then she went totally limp, slumping toward the floor. Rosalie caught her in the
same instant, before she could fall. Edward was there, too, hands out, the mess on the
sofa forgotten.

“Bella?” [Edward] asked, and then his eyes unfocused, and panic shot across his features.

A half second later, Bella screamed.

It was not just a scream, it was a blood-curdling shriek of agony. The horrifying sound
cut off with a gurgle, and her eyes rolled back into her head. Her body twitched, arched
in Rosalie’s arms, and then Bella vomited a fountain of blood.

HOLY CRAP! THE BABY IS EATING IT’S WAY OUT OF HER JUST LIKE IN ALIENS! WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH STEPHENIE MEYER??!!

Chapter 18. There Are No Words For This.

Bella’s body, streaming with red, started to twitch, jerking around in Rosalie’s arms like
she was being electrocuted. All the while, her face was blank—unconscious. It was the
wild thrashing from inside the center of her body that moved her. As she convulsed,
sharp snaps and cracks kept time with the spasms. 

Rosalie and Edward were frozen for the shortest half second, and then they broke.
Rosalie whipped Bella’s body into her arms, and, shouting so fast it was hard to separate
the individual words, she and Edward shot up the staircase to the second floor.

I guess it’s obvious, but this is basically a frame-by-frame recreation of the table scene from Alien. What’s not obvious is WHY IS THIS HERE?!?!

“Get him OUT!” she screamed. “He can’t BREATHE! Do it NOW!”
I saw the red spots pop out when her scream broke the blood vessels in her eyes.

This is a bug hunt, man! A bug hunt!

[Rosalie's] hand came down on Bella’s stomach, and vivid red spouted out from where she
pierced the skin. It was like a bucket being turned over, a faucet twisted to full. Bella
jerked, but didn’t scream. She was still choking.

For some reason, Rosalie decides she likes blood again, so Jacob has to pull her off. Edward starts performing CPR on Bella for some reason. It seems like KILLING IT WITH FIRE would be more helpful, but hey, I don’t know what I’d do in this situation. Alien always gave me nightmares as a kid.

Another shattering crack inside her body, the loudest yet, so loud that we both froze in
shock waiting for her answering shriek. Nothing. Her legs, which had been curled up in
agony, now went limp, sprawling out in an unnatural way. 

“Her spine,” he choked in horror.

Game over, man, game over!

Edward tries making an incision with the scalpel, but the amniotic sac just bends the blade. Edward…

Oh.

Oh. This…just…

Edward starts to bite his way through to get the baby out:

The next sound jolted through me, unexpected, terrifying. Like metal being shredded
apart. The sound brought back the fight in the clearing so many months ago, the tearing
sound of the newborns being ripped apart. I glanced over to see Edward’s face pressed
against the bulge. Vampire teeth—a surefire way to cut through vampire skin.

What the hell, I don’t even know any more.

They get the baby out, and what’s left of Bella is dying on the table. Edward leaps into action and jabs a syringe of his venom into Bella’s heart. Wow. From Alien to Pulp Fiction, eh, Twilight? Maybe in Chapter 19 Bella will awkwardly walk up to Edward and suggest they not tell Marcellus Wallace about this.

Since there’s nothing else for Jacob to do, he leaves Edward with Bella. On the way out he walks past Rosalie, who is feeding the baby with human blood. I guess they weren’t out after all? I thought that’s why Carlisle left, but who knows. Oh, and I guess Rosalie magically got her self-control back. Continuity is for suckers, I guess.

Jacob decides Sam was right all along, and he decides to kill the newborn. I no longer have any idea if this is horrifying or not. He moves in for the kill…

What.

No, he doesn’t. I don’t believe this.

It’s a girl. Jacob imprints on her. Damn, dude. Way to literally rob the cradle.

…

This…

I just…

I give up trying to make sense of this. Sure. Whatever, novel. Go for it. That’s one way to get a happy ending, I guess. Bella has Edward, Edward has Bella, or what’s left of her, Jacob gets to imprint on a newborn, Rosalie gets to play mommy like she’s wanted to all century. Esme can coo over the new member of the family, Alice can wonder why the hell she didn’t see any of this coming, and Carlisle can congratulate himself on a job well done. Hey, when Bella gets better, maybe you can all go out for drinks! Bloody Marys all around!

Breaking Dawn, Ch. 13-15

Chapter 13. Good Thing I’ve Got A Strong Stomach

The chapter opens with Jacob noting how weird it is to keep a fridge stocked with blood. Heh.

Everyone rushes to get Bella a cup of human blood. It’s a hit:

Bella sucked in a deep breath. “It smells good,” she admitted in a tiny voice.

You know, I’ll bet Bella the sociopath is just pretending to be pregnant in order to have an excuse to drink human blood.

Bella chugged a few more ounces...

Chug! Chug! Chug! Vampires party hard: in a few pages it’ll be time to break out the blood bong.

Incidentally, none of the Cullens seem to be interested in the cup of blood. They almost went nuts when Bella nicked her arm on a broken table back in Eclipse, but I guess that collective increase in self-control wasn’t important enough to record.

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but Edward has been keeping a running commentary on Jacob’s running commentary. Edward feels no obligation to mind his own business; more often that not he responds to what people have thought, not said. Given the way he stalked Bella, I guess this shouldn’t be surprising, but it still seems weird. Being friendly with the Cullens apparently means giving up any and all privacy.

A delegation from Sam’s werewolf pack arrives to convince Jacob to return to the old pack. They get nowhere.

Chapter 14. You Know Things Are Bad When You Feel Guilty For Being Rude To Vampires

Show, don’t tell.

Jacob returns to the Cullens’ house. Bella is doing better–good enough, in fact, to jerk Jacob around some more:

Bella didn’t hear me. She only glanced up when he did, and then she smiled, too. With
real energy, her whole face lighting up. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d looked
so excited to see me...Why did she have to be so damn thrilled to see me? Like I’d made
her whole freakin’ day by walking through the door.

I don’t like Jacob(1), but even I feel a little sorry for him. What’s Bella playing at?

Anyway, the baby soon breaks one of Bella’s ribs–from the inside–and that puts a damper on her too-cheerful mood. I thought this was romance, not horror. Carlisle x-rays her(2) on his handy x-ray machine(!) while Jacob catches up on some sleep. He awakens to find Alice resting nearby; it seems she finds his ability to interfere with her precognition helpful for relieving her headaches. (Remember those? They haven’t been mentioned since the first book, I think.) Makes sense.

Jacob falls asleep again. Man, even the characters can’t stay awake for this chapter. He wakes up to find Rosalie nearby this time. I don’t know why. We’re treaty to the following “witty” banter when she complains about his snoring.

“The chainsaw impersonation was getting a little tired.”

Does she mean “tiresome” ? Because I don’t see how an impression can get tired of anything. Head in the game, editors.

Chapter 15. Tick Tock Tick Tock Tick Tock

Oh, good. Sound effects. By Chapter 20 it’ll probably be grunts.

This chapter is mostly werewolf housekeeping. Seth informs Jacob that Bella has been talking with Charlie, her father. Jacob doesn’t understand why, since Bella won’t be able to maintain contact post-vampirization. Apparently she’s hoping to play coy about her real nature at that point. This is perfectly in-character: it’s selfish and stupid all at once. Bella is written as self-sacrificing–witness the number of times she’s tried to offer herself up to the threat of the week–but she has no problem being selfish in situations like this. To be honest, Bella seems starved for attention more than self-sacrificing; her giving instincts only come out when the opportunity for showy self-sacrifice is there. Leading her father on about her not-death? Sure. Leading Jacob on when she knows he’s still in love with her? No problem. Doing so in front of her husband while he’s worried sick about her? A-okay.

Oh, hey, speaking of leading Jacob on:

“It feels… complete when you’re here, Jacob. Like all my family is together. I mean, I
guess that’s what it’s like—I’ve never had a big family before now. It’s nice.” She
smiled for half a second. “But it’s just not whole unless you’re here.”
“I’ll never be part of your family, Bella.” [Jacob said.] 

I [Jacob] could have been. I would have been good there. But that was just a distant future
that died long before it had a chance to live.

“You’ve always been a part of my family,” she disagreed... “We got off track, Jake.
Out of balance. You’re supposed to be part of my life—I can feel that, and so can you.”

All this time Edward is there, staring out the window, no doubt wishing vampires could drink.

Bella falls asleep, and Edward takes the opportunity to fill the reader Jacob in about Bella’s pregnancy. Emmett and Jasper have been doing research, and they found…

They…

What…

This…

I don’t even…

This…

What is this I don’t even…

This is what Emmett and Jasper found out:

“From what little research we’ve been able to do, it would appear the creatures use their
own teeth to escape the womb,” he whispered.

…

…

…

…

……………

This.

Book.

Is.

Bananas!

What are we reading? Is this still the same series? When did this romance become about babies eating their way out of their mothers? What is this story even about? There are pedophile werewolves and cannibalistic babies and bizarre genetic science and what is this why is any of this happening I don’t understand

———————–

(1) Well, technically I don’t like any of these people.

(2) I was going to mock Carlisle for x-raying a pregnant woman, but some quick research showed that this isn’t uncommon. He gets a pass on this one.

Breaking Dawn, Ch. 11-12

Chapter 11. The Two Things At The Very Top Of My Things-I-Never-Want-To-Do List

The last chapter ended with the werewolf pack en route to attack the Cullens. Although forced to obey, Jacob argues that Bella’s child isn’t a threat and that an attack is unnecessary. The others aren’t persuaded, so Jacob reasserts his status as the pack’s real alpha(1) and splits off to form his own wolf pack. With blackjack! And hookers! In fact, forget the wolf pack!

Seth joins him, because he doesn’t mind vampires so much.

Chapter 12. Some People Just Don’t Get the Concept of “Unwelcome”

Jacob and Seth warn the Cullens about the rest of the pack. Jacob tries to argue Sam out of leaving the others, but there’s never any doubt Seth will stick with them. They are soon joined by Leah, Seth’s sister, and the only known female werewolf. More arguing. Jacob is too dense to realize it for several pages, but Leah has zero interest in rejoining Sam’s pack–not surprising, since you’ll recall that Sam first imprinted on and then mauled her cousin Emily.

After they argue pointlessly for a few pages, Jacob’s pack returns to the Cullens’ place to get an update on the plot/Bella. Carlisle is watching over her, and Carlisle practicing medicine is almost always comedy gold. This time is no exception:

“The fetus isn’t compatible with her body. Too strong, for one thing, but she could
probably endure that for a while. The bigger problem is that it won’t allow her to get the
sustenance she needs. Her body is rejecting every form of nutrition. I’m trying to feed
her intravenously, but she’s just not absorbing it. Everything about her condition is
accelerated. I’m watching her—and not just her, but the fetus as well—starve to death
by the hour. I can’t stop it and I can’t slow it down. I can’t figure out what it wants.” His
weary voice broke at the end.

Gee, what could a vampire child possibly need for nourishment? I’ll give you a hint: it begins with a b and ends with a lood. Jacob immediately figures it out, but Carlisle goes on for a while like this. He also complains that Rosalie won’t let anyone get close enough to perform proper tests on Bella. What exactly is Rosalie’s deal? She’s had eighty years to come to terms with her childless status, so this little fit of madness makes no sense. And really, haven’t the Cullens worked out any better approach to conflict resolution than attacking mindlessly?

Anyway, Carlisle is still talking science, or, more accurately, “science.” Just listen to this:

He [Carlisle] chuckled once—even his laugh sounded exhausted. “Okay. How much biology have
you taken? Did you study chromosomal pairs?”

“Think so. We have twenty-three, right?”
“Humans do.”
I blinked. “How many do you have?”
“Twenty-five.”

I don’t know why Stephenie Meyer wasn’t content to let supernatural creatures be supernatural, but trying to explain magic by differing chromosomal counts is just plain dumb. I could provide links that explain  why polysomy doesn’t end well in humans, but why bother? This doesn’t even make sense as technobabble.

I can only assume that Carlisle is still mostly comfortable with 19th century science and has only a vague familiarity with modern medical science. This would explain a lot, and it would also mean that we could look forward to seeing him try his hand at phrenology in a later chapter. Stick with me, readers, and we’ll make these characters make sense somehow!

Edward enters the room to inform Carlisle of Jacob’s brilliant discovery. Hilariously, Carlisle doesn’t get it even after Edward explains it to him:

“I’m not following you, Edward,” Carlisle said.
“Think about it, Carlisle. If that creature is more vampire than human, can’t you guess
what it craves—what it’s not getting? Jacob did...”
“Oh,” he [Carlisle] said in a surprised tone. “You think it is…thirsty?”

I don’t think you could fail harder if you tried.

Rosalie speaks up–apparently she was in the room all along–to mention that they were stockpiling blood for Bella, presumably because of her tendency to plot-advancing accidents. This actually makes a fair amount of sense, but I have to wonder how vampires can keep a bunch of units of blood around without getting tempted. Also, where are they getting all this blood? Rosalie informs us that Bella’s blood type is O Negative, one of the rarer types. It’s also the one in perpetually high demand, since it is compatible with almost everyone. Is Carlisle stealing from the hospital blood bank? Let’s hope nobody else in Forks needs a transfusion.

“Of course,” she [Rosalie] muttered. “Carlisle, we have all that type O negative laid aside
for Bella. It’s a good idea,” she added, not looking at me. 

“Hmm.” Carlisle put his hand to his chin, lost in thought. “I wonder… And then, what
would be the best way to administer...” 

Rosalie shook her head. “We don’t have time to be creative. I’d say we should start with
the traditional way.”

Rosalie says she’s worried about time, but in reality she knows that if she doesn’t speak up, Carlisle will probably try a blood suppository or something equally medically unsound.

They inform Bella of the plan. She’s surprisingly okay with it:

“Well,” she rasped, barely audible. “I’m starving, so I’ll bet he is, too.” Trying to make
another joke.

Haha, nothing like drinking human blood. Good times, good times.

——————————————-

(1) Mentioned briefly in Chapter 19 of Eclipse, Twilight fans! –ed