Tuesday, April 5, 2011

BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 29: Last Tango In Forks

The Cullens are still discussing how remarkable it is that Bella has adapted to vampire life so easily, when Edward proposes that maybe Bella's power is like, super adapting-to-life-as-a-vampire capability. Aw man, for real? Bella is briefly disappointed she won't be “shooting lightning bolts” from her eyes (I feel you gurl), but then she has the realization we all had two to three chapters ago. “What if I didn't have to be a newborn?” she says. Well, uh, this would be happening. The stuff that is happening right now would be happening. WHAT DO YOU MEAN WHAT IF.

And then Carlisle mentions his friend Siobhan, who apparently had a similar power. (“Your friend in that Irish coven?” Rosalie asks, not at all awkwardly. Don't vampires have perfect recall?) Can we have a discussion with S. Meyer about what having a super power means?

“Yes, Siobhan...has this way of deciding her goals and then almost...willing them into reality.”

We're going to do THAT? Seriously? Someone has the super power of willing goals into reality? Holy shit. Has S. Meyer even SEEN a comic book? I hope the next vampire we meet can predict peoples NAMES. Or maybe he or she will have like, extraordinary essay-writing abilities! The Cullens sit down and start chatting, presumably about how retarded Siobhan's power is, while Bella holds Renesmee and the baby continues to use her distinctly less lame but rather impractical ability to project her memories into her mother's head. Eventually the images start to blur around the edges, and RNSM falls asleep. Awwww. That's (sort of) cute. I was hoping RNSM would recall every event of her day up to and including this one and then there'd be like, a glitch in The Matrix. (Do you think once some stoners were watching The Matrix and then there was a glitch on the DVD and their brains just EXPLODED?) Bella holds RNSM's hand to her cheek and realizes she can actually see her daughter's dreams. Heavy. However, she apparently dreams in screen-savers—“just colors and shapes and faces.” What kind of drugs did Carlisle give Bella while she was pregnant, incidentally?
Renesmee's Dream

As Bella observes the Cullens sitting and talking, she notices they deliberately fidget, crossing and uncrossing their legs, touching their hair, and that sort of thing. She realizes that she feels no need to shift her weight or even sit, and that the Cullens are obviously very well practiced at human-like behavior. Does that proclivity toward standing perfectly still really square with the fact that vampires still breathe all the time? (Also, you just KNOW Alice's humanizing gesture is a “jerking off” hand motion.)

Then Edward notes the rest of the family returning. Bella looks out the window and sees Alice swinging from tree branches like a trapeze artist. Esme makes a “traditional leap” over the river, and Emmett just runs right through the water. LADIEZZZ. (Is that supposed to be indicative of sexual technique? Alice is playful and creative, Esme is traditional, and Emmett just dives right in.) Jasper comes back too, so obviously Alice talked him down. And by talked him down I mean... well, you know by now.

Chapter 24: Surprise

Alice comes in and wishes Bella a happy birthday and Bella is all “shut yo mouth cunt!” but seriously, it's Bella's human birthday, she's technically nineteen.

“No, this doesn't count. I stopped aging three days ago. I am eighteen forever.”
“Whatever,” Alice said, dismissing my protest with a quick shrug. “We're celebrating anyway, so suck it up.”


I didn't even make that quote up, it's a real one! Anyway, Alice and Edward both have keys with ribbons on them. Wait, how do key parties work? Is that what this is?
One of the keys is obviously to the “after car.” Well, shit, here I have been criticizing Breaking Dawn for wrapping up all of the loose ends to early, and I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT WHAT CAR BELLA IS GOING TO GET TO DRIVE! And S. Meyer isn't going to give us that one so easily, we don't find out anything more about it in this chapter because of what the other key does SO NOW I HAVE TO KEEP READING I GUESS.

There is a funny moment when Alice returns to the comic relief role she filled throughout Eclipse; she insists that her birthday surprise come first (Edward's being the car), because it apparently concerns clothes. As in birthday suits? “Look how she's dressed,” Alice moans. “It's been killing me all day.” Edward pushes back.

“I know—I'll play you for it,” Alice suggested. “Rock, paper, scissors.”
Jasper chuckled and Edward sighed.
“Why don't you just tell me who wins?” Edward said wryly.
Alice beamed. “I do. Excellent.”


Bella hands off her baby to Rose and asks if she has a crib; Alice informs her that RNSM usually sleeps in Rose's or Esme's or Jacob's arms. Gross. That kid's going to get vertigo or something. Anyway, everyone is really cagey about coming along with Edward, Alice and Bella to wherever they're going off to. Don't get too excited.

On the way, Bella dreads getting whatever gift she's about to get, and then expresses relief that she brought her wet blanket of a soul into her afterlife. She says it's a “revelation to discover how much of my essential core traits had come with me into this new body.” That she hates gifts is one of her “essential core traits”? Okay, you guys are right: Bella is a poorly drawn character.

“Don't attack me,” [Alice] warned, and sprang at me.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, squirming as she scrambled onto my back and wrapped her hands around my face.


Again, don't get too excited! Alice reveals to Bella a stone cottage in the woods. It's old and covered in honeysuckle and lined with roses. Turns out Esme has been renovating it so that Bella and Edward could have a place to spend some time alone. Meaning fuck. Literally, that's what they intend it for; Bella wonders why Esme and the rest of them didn't come, and Edward explains that the alone time is the other part of the gift. So it's a little weird when we get inside and the cottage isn't full of whips and chains and leather swings with dildos mounted on the walls and stuff. I mean, that just seems obvious, right? The stone walls make sense, though.

I continued staring, mouth gaping like a fish.

Sure. Anyway, Alice briefly panics at Bella's silence, but she loves the place. When Edward makes a remark about its size she tells him, “No knocking my house.” That she refers to it as her house is kind of huge, right? I like that. Alice won't come inside (damn! Are you sure? Just to use the shower or something? Fix the cable for them?) and says she'll “stop by... later.” So they go inside, and Bella thinks about her day and her mind is just a little bit blown when she realizes her day will literally never end. That's a concept that is worthy of further exploration, right? But not now: it's FUCKING time. I'm not even kidding.
Because then, we get a sex scene. Really? Yes, really! Sort of. Bella and Edward fuck, in so many words. Seriously, I mean literally in SO MANY words, and none of the normal ones like “penis” or “vagina” and none of the expected abnormal ones either, like “swollen member” and that weird thing where “my sex” refers to vagina sometimes? What is with that? But yeah, this is the most sexually explicit scene we have had.

(It's still not THAT explicit. I was a little surprised by the reactions I saw online to the leaked scenes from the Breaking Dawn film. “How is this PG-13?” someone asked. It's a damn shot of Edward's back while he thrusts. How is that NOT PG-13? Have these people seen Eyes Wide Shut?)
Edward and Bella tear each other's clothes off and then fuck on the floor because they don't have the patience to make it to the bed. Really!

He was all new, a different person as our bodies tangled gracefully into one on the sand-pale floor. We could love together—both active participants now. Finally equal.

Hey, that's nice! EQUALITY. FUCKING. This is all I have been asking for! But I have a serious question: do orgasms exist in this book? Bella realizes as they go at it that she's not going to get tired, “and neither was he.”

We didn't have to catch our breath or rest or eat or even use the bathroom; we had no more mundane human needs...So, in such a situation, how did we ever stop?

There's a pretty clear stopping point, right? I mean, for ten minutes at least, you know? DO vampires cum? And if they DON'T, how did Bella get pregnant? Is that something S. Meyer, you know, understands? And even if venom-semen is a thing, is the female vampire orgasm a myth? Not to be indelicate, but there is nowhere in this scene that Bella appears to get off. Which is kind of troubling.

In the morning, Bella asks Edward if he misses her human body.

It wasn't the first time we'd spoken, but we weren't exactly keeping up a conversation, either.

So just one of them, is a talker. I'm guessing Bella.

Then he pulled his fingers very slowly down my face, lightly tracing from my jaw to my throat and then all the way down to my waist. My eyes rolled back into my head a little.

ALL THE WAY DOWN, baby! But again: the horse is being led to water, but we don't hear if she was quenched or not. A while later, Bella asks Edward how the rest of his family keeps from fucking all the time. He unexpectedly replies that it IS kind of a struggle for them to keep it in their pants all day, but:

“There's a tremendous amount of time left over when you don't have to sleep. It makes balancing your...interests quite easy. There's a reason why I'm the best musician in the family.”

He's a very good solo musician, if you know what I mean. But seriously, is she just saying he had a lot of spare time or is she saying he played the piano to block out the throes of passion coming from everywhere else in the house? What does Chez Cullen sound like around midnight?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm going to guess that it sounds like Sweden.

Kim said...

The sex scene isn't shocking for a PG-13 movie, but it is kind of surprising for Twilight. Though SM does suddenly decide sex is ok now that they're married and have a kid. Or is it just ok now that they're both vampires? This scene and the sex jokes in some of the chapters remind me of a couple of weddings I've been to where the couple were both religious virgins and everyone at the wedding knew because their families kept making awkward jokes and references to it and how they were finally going to do it later that night.

rosanne said...

A lot of the vampires seem to have the power to further the plot without S Meyer actually having to develop anything. This is handy!