BLOGGING NEW MOON pt. 26: Declare Independence!

We're almost done here, so start talking your friends into joining us for Eclipse. It's a tough sell, I know. On the Venn Diagram of “People who are willing to read Twilight” and “People who enjoy deconstructing YA Fiction with microscopic precision over the course of several months” the circles are barely touching. We might have found everyone all ready. Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 24: Vote

A pissed-off Edward begrudgingly helps Bella out the window and sullenly puts her on his back; his voice is “seething with disappointment.” This is Edward's angst-y chapter. Dude is VERY MOODY. As he takes off running, Bella expresses surprise at how familiar it feels to ride him (you're welcome). It's also a lot of fun to ride Edward, apparently (you're even more welcome). Bella experiences a rush “A hundred times better than the motorcycle” while riding him (you're the most welcome).

We lapse briefly back into Bella talking about how she may still be dreaming, and Edward seems as frustrated with this device as we are. She tells him she doesn't know how she could be “enough,” how she could “deserve” his love. He stops running to hug and reassure her, “Your hold is permanent and unbreakable.” In the last chapter Bella was rank-ordering her fears for some reason, Victoria being third-worst, the Volturi being second. Edward now asks who holds the top spot.

“The worst the Volturi can do is kill me.”
He waited with tense eyes.
“You can leave me,” I explained. “The Volturi, Victoria...they've got nothing compared to that.”

Edward's face contorts into an anguished expression. This guy with these anguished expressions of his! I didn't miss him very much, actually. “Don't be sad,” Bella says. That'll work, I'm sure. Edward tries to smile, but it “didn't touch his eyes.” It had been SO LONG since someone's expression hadn't touched his or her eyes, I was getting worried! (I wasn't really getting worried.)

“If only there was some way to make you see that I can't leave you” Edward says angstily. I can think of one way: fuck her! But that isn't going to happen, duh. Bella changes the subject and asks for her stuff back – Edward tells her that everything he took is actually just hidden beneath her floorboards. Oh, how sweet! That's not extra-cruel at all (sarcasm)!

“Hey, remember all that stuff I took from you? I actually just TRICKED you into thinking I took it from you! So everything is fine, right?”-Edward

Then Bella's subconscious mind triumphantly returns. She says something about knowing the stuff was there all along, on some level. Thanks for cluing us in back there, Bella. She starts explaining to Edward how she'd intentionally sought out danger in order to hear his voice. As he prods her for information, he asks questions “flatly,” and then his voice is “unnaturally even,” and then he speaks “words without inflection or emphasis.” I feel like I can hear the time bomb ticking. But Bella is recapping the plot partially for her own benefit, and when Edward starts talking she tells him to shut the fuck up (paraphrasing).

“Hold on a second. I think I'm having an epiphany here.”

Remember Bella's long, convoluted inner monologue way back in Port Rapegeles after she first hears Edward's voice? She does a callback here, deciding that if Option One to explain the voices was that she'd lost her mind ("I was crazy. That was the layman's term for people who heard voices in their heads.") and Option Two was some other way of saying she was crazy ("My subconscious mind was giving me what it thought I wanted. This was wish fulfillment- a momentary relief from pain by embracing the incorrect idea that he cared whether I lived or died." ), Option Three is that Edward loves her so much, it has “forged” some kind of mystical “bond.” Or something. Truth be told, this is kind of an incomprehensible epiphany:

What if you sincerely believed something was true, but you were dead wrong? What if you were so stubbornly sure that you were right, that you wouldn't even consider the truth? Would the truth be silenced, or would it try to break through?

What is that? I don't even – anyway, I guess Bella is essentially realizing for the first time that Edward loves her, he really loves her!

And no how much more special or beautiful or brilliant or perfect than me he might be, he was as irreversibly altered as I was.

Wouldn't it be nice if Bella could finally believe in own attractiveness, too? Wouldn't that be an epiphany worth having? But no. We're going to stick with I'm Ugly But He Loves Me Anyway. Okay. Bella feels like her heart is inflating, like she's the Grinch at Christmas Dinner or something. Edward tells her that he suffered through their breakup even worse than she did. Of course he did.

“You, at least, made an effort. You got up in the morning, tried to be normal for Charlie, followed the pattern of your life...I'm embarrassed to admit that I more or less curled up into a ball and let the misery have me.”

This isn't a contest, Edward! But it makes Bella happy to know how tortured he was, so I shouldn't judge, even if this is a really weird relationship dynamic. Speaking of weird dynamics, Edward chooses this moment to get all totalitarian, saying he's only humoring Bella with this vote. “It doesn't matter in the slightest what they say.”

Very mature and not troubling at all, Edward. Anyway, they get to the Cullen house, and we get some interesting vampire details, the first in a long time. As they walk in the front door Edward has to turn all of the lights on, but it turns out his entire family is home. So the Cullens just hang out in the dark when the humans aren't around? Awesome. He calls their names, but doesn't raise the volume of his voice at all. “They would hear,” Bella says.

The Cullens assemble around the dining room table, which they keep for appearances and for fucking on. The table has eight chairs, which is convenient. Alice is already grinning, having seen this meeting taking place. Alice continues to be great. Edward glares at his family while Bella explains that she doesn't want to bring the Volturi down on them but she also doesn't want to join them without permission. Sort of surprisingly, she says if they reject her, she'll go to the Volturi alone, presumably to be killed. I don't think she has any real intention of doing that, and furthermore the Volturi would probably rather vamp her than kill her anyway, but politically speaking it's a shrewd move. A vote against Bella is now a vote for her death. This is why politicians always give bills names like the “The Making America Stronger Act of 2010.” Vote against it, and you voted against making America strong! If this vampire thing doesn't work out, Bella should run for Congress.

Bella tries to call a vote, but Edward is like, “point of order, Mr. Speaker.” Turns out he has a plan to deal with the Volturi should they come. Alice starts anxiously questioning him about it; she's pulling for Bella. That's our Alice! I hope Bella is noticing who is looking out for her interests at this table. Edward explains that Demetri is a tracker, a super-powerful tracker - he is how the Volturi find people. But he's pretty sure Demetri's power won't work on Bella. Wait!

The whole first book was based on the premise that another tracker could find Bella; in fact Edward specifically compares Demetri to James. Demetri is “a thousand times more gifted than James,” but his power doesn't work on Bella. Uh, what? That doesn't sound like “a thousand times more gifted,” Edward. That sounds like “one hundred percent less gifted.” But apparently Demetri's power works differently? It's different in that it doesn't work on Bella. Okay. Fine.

Let's be honest. There are two kinds of vampire powers: the ones that work on Bella and the ones that don't. That is the only meaningful classification. There's a kind of half-assed explanation – some powers work on the mind, some work on the nervous system or something. So cerebral-power vampires don't work on Bella, and Demetri can sense “the tenor... of someone's mind,” making him one of the cerebral vampires. James tracked according to scent. Those ellipses back there are S. Meyer's, which makes it read how it feels: like she's making it up as she goes along.

Alice's power works on Bella, after all, and Alice's lack of total omnipotence has been explained away by the fact that she seems to rely on people making decisions in order to have visions. And decisions are made, you know, in your mind. If this book ends with Victoria attacking Bella and being unable to claw her face off because Victoria's mind controls her clawing hands or something, I'm going to be pissed.

Anyway, none of it makes any sense, but Edward says he can hide Bella from the Volturi, and without Demetri's power they'll be “helpless.” Edward compares it to “ looking for a piece of straw in a haystack.” I see what you did there, Edward.

“She'll stick out like a thumb that isn't sore!”-Edward Cullen
“The bird that doesn't wake up early won't get anything special!”-Edward Cullen

Emmett and Jasper are enthused by Edward's plan. Rosalie and Alice are pissed. We're divided along gender lines, but not for long. Bella breaks Edward's filibuster and calls the vote. Edward Cullen votes no, predictably. His esteemed colleague Alice Cullen votes yes. Somewhat surprisingly, Jasper votes yes, too. We don't know much about this guy – I honestly think we got the best sense of him as a person in the deleted chapters from Twilight – but I'm willing to believe that he is worthy of Alice from this alone. Rosalie votes no. Bitch. Bella keeps a stone face, but Rosalie tries to explain something about how it wasn't her choice to become a vampire and she wouldn't wish it on anyone. Ungrateful much? Emmett votes “Hell, yes!” despite his eagerness to pick a fight with the Volturi. Where are your bros now, Edward? The Coalition Of The Willing To Fuck With The Volturi fell apart pretty fast! Maybe because no one else is willing to bet the store on an imagined vampire-conversion theory of soul-loss!

Esme votes yes. So Edward has definitely lost this vote, but Bella turns to Carlisle nervously anyway. She (understandably) wants his approval. And since Edward can read thoughts, he sees what Carlisle is about to say and freaks out. Sucks to lose, huh Edward? That's politics, bitch! He storms out and smashes something in the living room. Very reasonable. Preston Brooks over here.

Next time we will wrap up chapter 24 and the epilogue, at which point we will be fucking done with this book. Get excited. Or should I say get Eclipsited? No, never mind.