BLOGGING TWILIGHT, pt. 12: Lux Aeterna

About three things I am absolutely positive. First, I am reading Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer. Second, there is a part of me – and I don’t know how potent that part is – that is kind of enjoying this. And third, previous entries can unconditionally and irrevocably be found in the archives.

Chapter 12: Balancing

I'll say this about Jacob: he's appealing in a meat-headed, grinning idiot sort of way. He basically chuckles and shoves his hands in his pockets and says "aw shucks" throughout this next scene, in which Bella goes into a blind panic over Billy Black potentially telling her father about how she's been Associating with a Known Vampire. Compared to Edward and all his messy emotions, Jacob is appealingly uncomplicated. His lines aren't followed by phrases like "he groaned bleakly," or "he despaired longingly," or "his voice was wrought with longing despair." Jacob just smiles.

So Billy & Charlie are watching some kind of sporting event, and Bella & Jacob are gossiping in the kitchen (Isn't it weird that the adults have kid names and the kids have adult names in this book? I feel like that sentence should read "Billy & Charlie are in the sandbox, and Bella & Jacob are discussing cap gains taxes." But it doesn't). Billy hasn't really said anything at all to Bella, but his looks are very knowing and noble-savage like and suspicious! The first few pages of this chapter have an unnecessarily tense tone! Take a chill pill, Bella!

Jacob has apparently never actually met the Cullens, and he mentions not recognizing the dude in the driveway. Bella ducks the question, but it comes up again. Jacob seems to be pressing the issue. Just when we're expecting a Mike-like explosion of jealousy, Bella tells him it was Edward and he laughs. He's such a nice guy!

Jacob immediately realizes that this is why his father was giving Bella weird looks and shit, and reassures Bella that Billy won't mention anything to Charlie. He alludes to a previous incident when the subject came up and Charlie allegedly "chewed [Billy] out pretty good," presumably for his anti-Cullen views, which Jacob again characterizes as "superstitious" (pg. 239). Bella tries to play off her worry as if it ain't no thang.

I don't understand why Bella feels like she has to adopt layers of pretense around Jacob. Would you adopt of pretense around a wall, or a bag of potatoes?

Then they leave, because the game ends. Hang on! A lot of time just passed on page 239! Does S. Meyer understand how long your average sporting event lasts? Conversations between Bella and Edward, driving home from school, last fifteen pages. A whole football/basketball/baseball game (I don't think a sport was specified) lasts two? I understand that novels can compress time - that's one of the advantages of the form - but did Gabriel Garcia Marquez write this shit or something?

Anyway, the only thing that happens is Billy says "You take care, Bella." BUT HE SAYS IT OMINOUSLY! That was a lot of tension with no real climax. We've all got literary blue balls over here.

Next day, Edward's in the driveway again. She asks how his night was.

"Pleasant." His smile was amused. I felt like I was missing an inside joke. (pg. 241)

First of all, his smile was amused? Second of all, I feel like this is supposed to be some foreshadowing here. Edward doesn't sleep at night, so what's he doing? Cullen family orgies? It's definitely possible (they're not REALLY related, are they?).

They go to school, they talk. Edward mentions that he and Alice are leaving after lunch to go hunting. "If I'm going to be alone with you tomorrow I want to take whatever precautions I can," he says (pg. 243). Hot. The whole "Edward might lose control" thing gets drilled home HARD over the next few chapters. We get it.

So Edward is going off alone with Alice, who is his sister. But again, not really. I'm not sure how legal this adoption could really be; Edward is probably old enough that I doubt his paperwork is all in order. I'm betting he's not adopted so much as "adopted," you know? Should Bella feel weird about this? Remember all that talk about how when they go hunting they give themselves over to their instincts?

The rest of the Cullen kids, by the way, are very wary of Bella. Rosalie gives her a weird, dead-eyed stare at lunch. Edward says it's because their cover will be blown too if Edward accidentally murders and eats her this weekend. Bella yearns to comfort him. Yes, that is what her first thought is.

I realized slowly that his words should frighten me. I waited for that fear to come, but all I could seem to feel was an ache for his pain. (pg. 245).

We're all aching Bella. But the rest of us have headaches from trying to understand what your deal is. Also, I fail to see why this is a big enough deal to cause Edward pain. His siblings are reasonably uncomfortable with this whole scenario, and their discomfort has so far only manifested itself in a stare. What pain?

One could see how the other Cullens being hostile toward Bella could be read as some kind of racial metaphor - opposition to coupling outside the ethic group - and this would position the reader justifiably in Bella's camp. But think about it this way: If your brother came to you and told you about how he really liked this girl and felt a real connection to her and all that but she got him so worked up on a regular basis that he was afraid of killing her, wouldn't YOU discourage that relationship?

We finally meet Alice when she comes over to see if Edward is ready to go after lunch. S. Meyer's penchant for cartoonish descriptions leaves me with a weird mental picture of Alice. She has "a high soprano voice" and "short inky hair in a halo of spiky disarray around her exquisite, elfin face" (246). So basically a punk rock Minnie Mouse?

Part of this is I guess the fact that the Twilight-Industrial-Complex has burned Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, and Taylor Lautner into my brain, but I'm drawing a blank for the rest of them. So Alice is played by an actress named Ashley Greene, who also starred in... uh, an episode of MADtv. Gotta start somewhere I guess. So I google-image searched her to get an idea of what she looked like, and I found this:

So yeah. Just picture her as that.

Bella is struck by all of Edward's talk about covers getting blown, and she doesn't want to blow his (you're welcome). So she starts lying to everyone saying she's not hanging out with Edward after all, she's just going to stay home and do homework, and Edward has a thing he's gotta do out of town anyway, so he won't even be around. So basically if she does get murdered, she's set it up so that her murderer will never be caught.

She even tells her father this (even though he still thought she was going to Seattle, alone, so that actually probably would have been better for the Forks Chief of Police to think if she wanted to ensure a quick getaway for the Cullens [if that is even what she is doing], but whatever, Bella is operating at half-awareness like Nancy Botwin or something) but Mike gets the news first:

"You know, you could come to the dance with our group anyway - that would be cool. We'd all dance with you," he promised.

Have I mentioned before how much I hated high school?

Bella goes home and has another freak-out over the now impending date. She convinces herself that he wants her to be safe, because he left a note on her car that read "Be Safe." Note that it did not read "I promise not to kill and eat you tomorrow."

A tiny voice in the back of my mind worried, wondering if it would hurt very much...if it ended badly. (pg. 251)

As in, if she died? Yes Bella, it would probably hurt very much. And also, you would be dead.

Bella's anxiety gets so intense that she deliberately takes a bunch of cold medicine to knock herself unconscious. WHOA. Bella, when I said take a chill pill, I didn't mean LITERALLY! But this is an interesting development. I'd like to see where this drug addict storyline could go.

Screen shots from "The Twilight Saga: Fast Times At Forks High"

Bella wakes up the next morning well-rested and singing the praises of substance abuse. Edward shows up on foot - Bella insisted on driving today.

I'd rather be driving this plot forward a little faster- Edward's Bumper Sticker

She asks him where to go. "Take the one-oh-one north," he says (pg. 253). Um. There's no denying that looks weird and ugly on the page. One-oh-one? I can't understand why it would even be important to include this detail. It seems like you can get your characters into a car and driving without having to relate all the stupid boring bullshit about directions. People who feel like they have to write about every time a character exhales or eats a meal strike me as having a specific and weird imaginative deficit.

They eventually get to their destination: the forest! An outdoorsy girl like Bella is really going to love that! "Don't worry," Edward says, "it's only five miles or so" (pg. 254).

Are you fucking retarded Edward? Do you ever want to get laid in your life? A nice dinner! A picnic if you insist on the outdoors! Somewhere close, though! Jesus!

And he's not joking! They get out and walk five miles. They take off their sweaters and Bella is momentarily stunned because Edward's shirt is unbuttoned underneath. So he was wearing a sweater over an unbuttoned shirt? That would be really uncomfortable.

Eventually they get to a beautiful clearing. Bella waxes poetic again, talking about "buttery sunshine" and "gilded air" and all that bullshit. But Edward is still lingering by the treeline. He's preparing to show Bella what happens when the "buttery sunshine" shines over "the marble contours of his chest."

I don't know what's going to happen, but I bet the description of it is going to be RIDICULOUS.