BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 6: Plane Crash In C

You may have noticed that I am not, at the moment, feeling particularly bound by chapter breaks. That is mostly because these first few chapters are really long. I know this probably makes reading along more difficult, but in each post we will always finish at least one chapter. So there's that. Also: there is a lot going on in these chapters! So if I don't address something, bring it up in the comments. Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 3 (cont'd): Motives

Faced with the realization that Victoria is going to kill her again (I really have no idea why this is a realization, hasn't the Victoria threat been a threat all along?) Bella starts to hyperventilate and freak out. Jacob's notion that Bella should be kept in the loop about everyone trying to kill her is sort of undercut here, isn't it? “Better frightened than lied to,” Jacob says. I'm not so sure about that! Bella is doubly frustrating for those of us who advocate for gender equality: she's not treated fairly, but she doesn't really deserve to be anyway!

Meanwhile, Edward and Jacob's parking lot stand-off is attracting the attention of the student body, who are really hoping either a fight or a threesome will break out. Jacob maintains that Bella could handle more than Edward gives her credit for. I think he means the threats, not two dicks at once. (“Why not both?”-Alice Cullen) “And she's been through worse,” Jacob says.

And that's when Jacob starts basically beating up Edward with his mind. His eyes narrow, “like he was trying to do a difficult math problem in his head,” (So, for Jacob: 2+2. Hey-O!) and it becomes clear that he is deliberately thinking about how much Bella suffered when Edward was gone. His thoughts seem to cause Edward physical pain; it reminds Bella of Volterra and Jane. There is no way to avoid that rhyme – Jane's name rhymes pain! – it's like you know it's coming and you have to just stand there; this is S. Meyer at her most low-rent JK Rowling. But hey, maybe Jacob and Jane will get together some day!

Maddeningly, seeing Edward hurt makes Bella feel guilty. He's the one who left you! “I'd rather Victoria killed me a hundred times over than watch Edward suffer that way again,” she says. So the obvious thing to do, if preventing Edward's suffering is so important, would be to stay away from Jacob. Why do I feel like that's not going to happen? Maybe it's not actually that important? Maybe Bella shouldn't be so hyperbolic?

Edward informs them that the principal is on his way out to the parking lot, so they'd better wrap it up. Jacob decides to speak his character notes aloud.

“A little trouble makes life fun. Let me guess, you're not allowed to have fun, are you?”

Last I recalled, Jacob was really angry at Bella, right? He is openly hostile for most of this exchange, but then he just drops it. He invites Bella to come be his friend again, saying, “I miss you ever day.” I guess we should give S. Meyer credit for at least the head-fake toward the New Moon incarnation of Jacob. Still, that got resolved pretty quickly! Bella has a pang of affection for Jacob - “to wrap around his big, warm [wait for it...] waist in a silent promise of acceptance and comfort.” Poor Bella is torn. She loves Edward, but she wants to fuck Jacob so bad. What's a girl to do? “Edward's shielding arms had become restraints,” she says. Yeah, we got that the first hundred times it happened.

“See what I'm doing here?”-S. Meyer

The principal finally does show up, and Jacob grins while he gets admonished for trespassing. S. Meyer's idea of what a cool bad kid is like seems almost entirely based on Happy Days. Like, literally Jacob is going to hop on his motorcycle now and go get a milkshake. He salutes the principal (showed him! What a SQUARE!) and takes off.

Bella and Edward get to English, where their teacher is “reciting a Frost poem.” Oh hey I wonder which one? Bella and Edward proceed to talk in a series of notes back and forth, irritatingly displayed in different sets of fake handwriting font. (Fake handwriting font is a little too YA-ish for me. It's a little too YA-ish for nine-year olds, really.) Edward's explanation (which we basically already understand: Victoria tried to come to Forks again, they didn't catch her) is all-the-more irritating. “Victoria seems to have some instinct for evasion,” he says.

“Duh.”-Everyone

Bella is pissed, thinking that the Cullens, the wolves, and Charlie were at risk while they were away in Florida. There's a kind of funny bit where he says he wouldn't have sent her alone because with her luck “not even the black box would survive.” She raises the point that even if he'd been on the plane with her and it had crashed – say, the engines exploded – he wouldn't have been able to do anything. Edward begs to differ:

“I'd wait until we were close enough to the ground, get a good grip on you, kick out the wall, and jump. Then I'd run you back to the scene of the accident, and we'd stumble around like the two luckiest survivors in history.”

I have to admit, that's pretty hot. I'm wet. It's weird that I came pretty close to forecasting this also. The teacher is suddenly at Edward's desk, asking Edward if he has something to share. I had teachers who did this kind of thing, but I'm pretty sure even those teachers knew they were being ridiculous and cliched. Edward hands the teacher “a perfect transcription of his lecture” and the poor sucker walks away (showed him! What a SQUARE!). Later on, Bella overhears Tyler, Mike, and some other boys betting on who would win in a fight between Edward and Jacob, or “the big Indian” as they call him. They lament that nothing serious happened today, but conclude that it isn't over yet.

“Duh.”-Everyone

And they decided to discuss it further over a soda pop at Arnold's.

Chapter 4: Nature

Bella at least acknowledges that in retrospect S. Meyer's last reveal was kind of stupid. “I knew that essentially nothing had changed. Okay, so Victoria had not given up, but had I ever dreamed for one moment that she had?” Uh-huh. That's what I thought.

Bella has apparently taken this concern to the Cullens: Isn't it a good idea to vamp me before she gets here? But for some reason no one comes through for her this time. Bella's recollection of it kinda reads like a childrens' picture book: The Girl Who Wanted To Become A Vampire:

“Carlisle had said,” There are seven of us, Bella. And with Alice on our side, I don't think Victoria's going to catch us off guard.”

Alice had rolled her eyes and said, “I'm offended. You're honestly not worried about this, are you?”

I thought S. Meyer had agreed to stay away from past-perfect tense. But anyway, Bella says “Edward's response had been the most frustrating of them all.” See what I mean about the kids' book? This is like the part where you have to give the mouse a whole cookie factory or something. Edward says he'd make her a vampire now if she married him. Of course he would say that. And of course Bella resists for no particular reason. Again, if this is so important to Bella she should just drag his ass down to courthouse and get it over with!

One weekend, Edward goes hunting. Bella wakes up on Saturday to a note from him: “Look after my heart – I've left it with you.” After she finishes vomiting, she contemplates her “big empty Saturday with nothing but my morning shift at Newton's Olympic Outfitters.” It's irritating that Bella thinks she has LITERALLY nothing to do without Edward. How long has she known the guy? What did you do before? Read a book! Learn an instrument! At the very least go get high with Alice! Speaking of Alice, Bella mentions that she'd spend the night “if I was pathetic enough to ask her to.” A million lesbian slashfiction authors just fired up their laptops.

She also mentions a plan to see Angela later to help her with her graduation announcements. I still don't get why this is a big deal. I graduated in May and my announcements are still in a desk drawer. The point is, though, that her day isn't actually empty! So there's really no reason for her to be so filled with apathy and dread that she apparently eats her cereal “one Cheerio at a time.” Then she starts organizing the magnets on the fridge, but can't get the last two to line up. “Their polarities were reversed,” she says. Bella finds this moment deeply symbolic. “I could have flipped one over, but that felt like losing.” Why not flip one over? Why would that feel like losing?

So many different things facing Bella are The Worst Thing facing her. It actually wouldn't be that hard to fix half of this shit! If you can't bear to see Edward in pain, break if off with Jacob. If you want to be a vampire, just fucking marry Edward in Vegas! (Bella's resistance to marry Edward feels like an element wrongly incorporated from some other book. Bella wants very badly to spend her entire life and then some with Edward, she plans on never seeing anyone in her family again anyway, and she has been cast forever as an old soul just like Edward. She is reacting like a typical girl in more typical circumstances would, but S. Meyer has worked pretty hard to convince us that Bella is not a typical girl under typical circumstances! This subplot is eroding the rest of the book!) Bella finally ends up holding the magnets together in her hands, a kind of dark indication of where we're going next. I hope you guys didn't get tired of Bella being manipulative in New Moon!

"There's no need to be so inflexible," I muttered.

THAT'S A GOOD POINT BELLA.