BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 17: The Union Forever

Previous entries can be found in the directory.

Chapter 12 (cont'd): Time

Edward shows up and Bella tells him about the article she just read – he makes it sound like the Cullens have been monitoring the situation closely (finally!) but the fact that the police are considering a serial killer is news to him. So, not that closely. He explains that Alice can't seem to see anything; she's afraid she's losing her power. Edward thinks it's more like they are trapped in a feedback loop: “We keep waiting for Alice to see something so we can go...and she doesn't see anything because we won't really go until she does.” That's a kind of clever conceit. I know people complain about the inconsistency with Alice's power, but it's essentially the same situation as Inception – the exceptions to the rules drive the plot action in interesting enough ways that S. Meyer and C. Nolan can get away with it. (Similarly: people complain about the exposition-heavy lines Ariadne has to issue throughout Inception, and out of context some of her them do seem ridiculous, but the end justifies the means. Inception is an incredibly complicated movie that is incredibly easy to understand. That's a tough thing to pull off.)

Edward suggests they skip school today – he wants to talk to Jasper. Bella re-introduces Alice's man in narration, noting that she'd always assumed he was “on the fringe” of the family because the only thing keeping him there was Alice. “He would follow Alice anywhere,” Bella says, but the Cullen's lifestyle does not seem to be his "first choice." When exactly Alice and Jasper came to the Cullen family is unclear – that's a back-story I'd like to read: Alice and Jasper as roving killers in the 50s and 60s! Badass! Bella realizes she knows very little about Jasper, and that Edward has been reluctant to say anything in the past. “I'd always been too intimidated by the tall, blonde vampire who looked like a brooding movie star to ask him outright.” That's a sentence for the S. Meyer Clunky Description Hall of Fame (opening 2016 in Forks, WA) right there.

They get to the Cullen manse where the family is again in various stress poses. When I write it that way it sounds like an interrogation technique out of the Army Field Manual. Carlisle, Esme, and Jasper are watching TV with the volume turned so low Bella can't hear it; Alice is sitting at the bottom of the stairs with her face in her hands. That's why the TV volume is down: Alice is hungover.

“Did you see that they're considering a serial killer now?” [Edward] asked.
Carlisle sighed. “They've had two specialists debating that possibility on CNN all morning.”
“Can you two keep it THE FUCK down please?” Alice groaned.

They're watching CNN instead of reading the paper? Well, there's your problem. Edward doesn't want to let it go on any longer; Emmett agrees. As Carlisle tries to argue with them (so he's the difficult one) Edward turns to Jasper and says “I didn't think of that. I see. You're right, that has to be it. Well, that changes everything.” Get it? Because he reads thoughts? Everyone turns to Jasper, but he indicates that he needs to tell a lengthy story before he can say whatever it was he was thinking. Emmett sighs and walks away, the rest of us think about doing the same thing. Except Alice - walking would take like, way too much fucking effort right now.

“How much do you know about me, Bella?” Jasper asked.
“Can we dim these fucking lights?” Alice moaned.

Jasper pulls up the sleeve of his “ivory sweater” and Bella eventually sees a bite scar much like the one on her hand. As he pushes the sleeve back, Bella sees that his arm is covered in scars. (“Where are all of Edward's vampire scars? Oh, that's right he doesn't have any because you're dating a PUSSY.”-Alice Cullen)

Chapter 13: Newborn

Bella stares in awe at Jasper's “subtly ravaged skin.” (Just how I like my women: subtly ravaged.) “You should see his dick,” Alice says.

“I didn't have quite the same...upbringing as my adopted siblings here. My beginning was something else entirely.” [Jasper's] voice turned hard as he finished.

I'm trying to sort out that “hard” and “finished” into a TWSS, but I just can't make it happen. Jasper says there are much more violent parts of the vampire world, that some vampire sects wage war for territory. Jasper has a bad habit of employing multiple paragraphs to explain very simple concepts.

“You see, there are places in this world that are more desirable to us than others. Places where we can be less restrained, and still avoid detection.
“Picture, for instance, a map of the western hemisphere. Picture on it every human life as a small red dot. The thicker the red, the more easily we – well, those who exist this way – can feed without attracting notice.”

Uh-huh. One would think that New York City would be a sectarian-vampire-violence hotbed, but apparently these vampires prefer Central America. Mostly because it makes S. Meyer's weird civil war parallel work better (not that it works very well). It's “constant war” in the South, Jasper says.

“But what are they fighting for?” I asked.
Jasper smiled “Remember the map with the red dots?”

The one from 50 words ago? Yes, we remember the fucking map with the fucking red dots. “They fight for control of the thickest red,” Jasper says. I can't believe it took two pages to explain that. And we've got 19 more pages to back-story to go!

There was a vampire named Benito who basically took over all of Mexico and Texas in a few weeks. He has a Mexican name so we can remember he is the Mexican vampire. It's nice how S. Meyer is thinking about us with these names (at least it's not "El Draculo"). Benito and his Chinese side-kick Ping Pong were so powerful because they'd created an army of newborn vampires. Newborns are very strong, but so volatile that Benito had to keep making new soldiers because of all the friendly-fire deaths. So it was Vietnam, basically. Other vampire generals followed Benito's lead. “All hell broke loose,” Jasper says. “And I mean that more literally than you can possibly imagine.” But still not literally, right? Because I feel like we can literally imagine hell breaking loose, Jasper. Hole in the earth, demons running amok – what do you think is wrong with our imaginations, dude? Eventually the Volturi showed up, killed Benito and Ping Pong, and then spent the better part of a year killing all the vampires in the South. When armies started to rise again, recruiters were more cautious.

“That's how you were changed.” My realization was a whisper.

Jasper confirms it. “When I was human, I lived in Houston, Texas. I was almost seventeen years old when I joined the Confederate Army in 1861.” HOLD UP. Dude is a Confederate? Alice, I thought you had better standards than that (“I've been with a lot of black men to compensate”-Alice Cullen). Jasper rose quickly through the ranks, in part because of his “charisma.” Still, I'm not sure if you want to brag about helping to lead the team that LOST. “I was one of the best at losing the Civil War.”

One night Jasper was tasked with “evacuating the women and children” (If Gus Haynes were here and a real person he'd point out that you evacuate cities, not people. Women and children evacuating has an entirely different meaning, one that probably would not have been Jasper's responsibility) from his city, and on the way out of Galveston he met “the three most beautiful women” he'd ever seen. (“Ahem”-Alice Cullen) In the movie version I hope this scene is scored with “Corrina, Corrina.”

The women turn out to be recruiters, basically, and they size up Jasper. By now this story has devolved into normal narration with an extra set of quotation marks.

“'Oh, yes,' Nettie quickly agreed, leaning toward me again.”

Quite the raconteur, that Jasper. Two of the vampires leave – they are too tempted to eat Jasper to be sure they can convert him – and he introduces himself to the remaining (lead) vampire, Maria. Jasper's last name is Whitlock, by the way! Why does he go by Hale now? “Whitlock” is infinitely more dusty and grizzled. The only name more dusty and grizzled than “Jasper Whitlock” is “Clint Eastwood,” and that one is already taken. Jasper gets vamped and joins up with Maria's army. Bella senses that he is editing out the pain of transformation as well as other key details for her sake.

“She taught us to fight, and she taught us to be invisible to the humans. When we did well, we were rewarded...”
He paused, editing again.

So Maria was handing out BJs like they were going out of style, eh Jasper? “He was a soldier,” Alice shrugs. Jasper was the best soldier, and it's implied that he iced a lot of motherfuckers. “I was rewarded often,” he says (“Ahem”-Alice Cullen). Jasper's ability to control emotional climates was helpful with the newborns, and he eventually became Maria's partner-in-crime. “In some ways, I worshiped the ground she walked on,” he says. I conceive of “worshiping the ground someone walks on” as a binary condition. You either do or you don't. How do you worship someone “in some ways”? Jasper was a lapsed Catholic for her love.

Eventually (and I mean EVENTUALLY, Jasper says this takes place after decades, that is a lot of MURDERING) Jasper got tired of being a ruthless killer, and struck up a friendship with a newborn named Peter who went AWOL from Maria's army and came back years later (this story takes place across such a long fucking time-line, how long ago does S. Meyer think the Civil War was?) to tell Jasper about the civilized North, where he could be free. Peter put Jasper in touch with the vampire Harriet Tubman and he walked out on Maria “without a backward glance.” Well, that was easy. The vampire Abe Lincoln didn't have to issue any Vampire Emancipation Proclamations or anything!

He tells Bella that his emotion-manipulating power is a two-way street, that he'd been influenced by the hatred and violence that surrounded him for years. He had difficulty adjusting to life in the North (what passes for North is unclear – in a minute we'll hear about Alice, who theoretically would have been kicking around Red States at the time – it might be that the entire United States & Canada is the civilized “North” and the South is everywhere where people speak Spanish, which kind of makes me uncomfortable) where vampires coexisted peacefully. His ability to feel his victims' emotions intensified his guilty conscience. Mired in depression and sick from starving himself, he wandered into a diner only to be approached by Alice.

“It shocked me. I was not sure if she meant to attack... but she was smiling. And the emotions that were emanating from her were like nothing I'd ever felt before.”

Pure animal lust. But seriously, this story is kind of sweet. The punctuation can be hard to follow out of context, but Alice and Jasper quote each other:

“'You've kept me waiting a long time,' she said.” [Jasper said]
I didn't realize Alice had come to stand beside me again.
“And you ducked your head, like a good Southern gentleman, and said 'I'm sorry, ma'am.'” Alice laughed at the memory.

AWWWWWW.

Jasper smiled down at her. “You held out your hand, and I took it without stopping to make sense of what I was doing. For the first time in almost a century, I felt hope.”

Edward and Bella are so fucking lame! They don't have shit on this! I'm flashing forward a hundred years to when vampire Bella and Edward are recounting their “how we met” tale to some other new vampire: “Uh, we went to the same high school, and I really wanted to kill her at first and eat her, but I didn't, and then we had a protracted, years-long fight about her mortality and virginity.” And that new vampire will be like, “shit.” And he or she will look around the room for some other vampire couple to re-inflate his or her confidence about this new life, please, someone tell me it gets better than this! But Alice and Jasper won't be there to help, because they will be too busy fucking.