BLOGGING BREAKING DAWN, pt. 30: Napoleon's Battle Plan

LAST TIME, not only did Edward and Bella fuck right there on the page, Edward revealed that the Cullen house is pretty much a non-stop orgy when the sun goes down. Okay, a heteronormative and monogamous fuck-den, actually, and all of the sex happens under the protective auspices of holy matrimony, but you get it.

Related: Moonlight Sex Nada

Surprisingly, Edward says Rosalie and Emmett had the most difficulty keeping their body parts out of each other. Them? Why don't I get that vibe? Edward does of course allude to their passion in the past tense.

“Better to burn out than to fade away, bro.”-Emmett Cullen
“Hey, do you have any, like, single friends? Discreet ones?”-Emmett Cullen

(And we've also heard Rosalie is the second best musician, which means she's had some spare time.) Maybe Alice and Jasper are just sneakier. There have been multiple previous indications that they were fucking—remember that weird moment in Eclipse when Edward was all like, “Uh, I think Alice stepped out”? What was THAT?

Or maybe they've progressed so much that what they are doing now doesn't even count as a sex act yet. They're sexual forward thinkers, like middle schoolers.

Chapter 25: Favor

The next morning, Bella wants to keep boning, but Edward says “Renesmee” which makes Bella want to go tend to her child instead. (“Renesmee” is Edward's “I have a headache.”) Sort of. She stands up, naked, and her head whips back and forth “a half dozen times in a second” from Edward's body to the direction of her baby. Whoa, headrush. Also—and I love a naked woman as much as the next guy—that can't look terribly attractive, what with the blurry head and all.

Bella still has difficulty wrapping her overactive vampire brain around the fact that she is a mother. If this chapter has a theme it is the awkwardness of being a parent, but we'll get to that next time. There's a goofy moment where Bella finally walks into her oversized closet, an addition to the cottage supposedly bigger than the rest of the cottage, and is greeted by dozens of garment bags.

“Alice,” we said together. He said her name like an explanation; I said it like an expletive.

WORDPLAY! Edward tracks the scent of some denim for her (seriously) and then a t-shirt. So do vampires skip underwear? Or did Alice just not provide any?

“No panties and jeans, that's so necessary”-Alice Carter

And then we get to THE BEST SENTENCE IN THE TWILIGHT SAGA. For real, I found it. It is on page 488, and this is how it goes:

If I hadn't seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis and pale beige pullover.

If I hadn't seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis and pale beige pullover. If I hadn't seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis and pale beige pullover. If I hadn't seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis and pale beige pullover. If I hadn't seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis and pale beige pullover. If I hadn't seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis and pale beige pullover. If I hadn't seen him undressed, I would have sworn there was nothing more beautiful than Edward in his khakis and pale beige pullover.

Holy shit, right? That really cuts to the essence of the thing right there. So they get back to the house, and RNSM is awake. The Cullens are, I think, not properly alarmed by RNSM's behavior. Here, she is introduced sitting on the ground in front of a pile of mangled silverware.

As soon as she spied me through the glass, she chucked the spoon on the floor—where it left a divot in the wood—and pointed in my direction imperiously. Her audience laughed.

Nobody is a little concerned? Bella picks her churlish baby up and reassures herself that her growth has slowed. Is that really possible? I'd believe it if Bella'd been pregnant for a while, and then there'd been a surge of growth at the end of the pregnancy, but bitch had a baby bump ten seconds after Edward pulled out, you know? The casino closed for renovations the MOMENT Elvis left the building! How are we supposed to believe anything other than RNSM is going to age super fast and die at like, age ten? I mean, that is almost certainly NOT going to happen, but it makes the most sense. I suppose Edward and Bella could try to vamp RNSM to stop her growth when she hits peak physical condition, but can you vamp a half-vampire? (Suddenly I'm tricking myself into being interested again!)

RNSM mind-melds with Bella and shows her mother that she's hungry; Bella feels a pang of Nancy Botwin-like guilt. Rose says she's only been up a few minutes, and that Esme “sacrificed” a set of silverware to keep her entertained. But she's only been up for a few minutes!? Tell her to chill out! You'll get nothing and like it, Renesmee! Bella asks why they are developmentally screwing her daughter over, and it turns out they were doing it so Edward could keep screwing Bella over. “We didn't want to...er, bother you,” Rose says as Emmett chuckles silently.

Emmett is a man of few words, huh? He even chuckles silently! (Kellan Lutz got a pretty lousy gig. Then again, he's basically the highest paid extra in showbiz, so.) When Emmett speaks a whole paragraph there, it's jarring. Bella tells Esme the house is perfect, and then:

“So it's still standing?” he managed to get out between his snickers. “I would've thought you two had knocked it to rubble by now. What were you doing last night? Discussing the national debt?” He howled with laughter.

Oh ha ha ha. But that is notable as a rather indirect but still very definite acknowledgment of S-E-X, and I'm still resolved to call those out wherever they are. S. Meyer tap-danced around fucking for three books, and even now that fucking is happening, it's almost like she can't quite bring herself to say so. Or maybe that's just the after-effects of the prudishness of the first three books? Am I just having trouble adjusting to the new world order? What is it like walking around after someone finally takes your chastity belt off? Does it feel good or is it a little weird?

Rose feeds RNSM and Bella hears that Jacob took off in a huff (and a puff and a blow your house down) early this morning. No one is quite sure what was up his ass, but quite suddenly Edward and Alice become telepathically aware of whatever he did. Edward growls, and Alice jumps up—something has happened that “erased [her] schedule for the entire day.” One thing I like about Alice as she is ACTUALLY written (as opposed to my alterations and assumptions) is that she is totally selfish but not self-absorbed. Clearly, something is happening that is causing Edward to freak out, but Alice makes the source of her own anguish more clear.

She shot me a tortured glance. “Look at you! You need me to show you how to use your closet.”

She could give a fuck about whatever crisis is coming, she just wanted to have a girly day with Bella! This is the fourth or fifth time Alice's passion for the clothes of others has gotten in the way of whatever she should actually be concerned about. And not only is it funny, it nicely undercuts S. Meyer's terminal low stakes problem. Because whatever this is, it's not going to be a big deal. But let's pretend whatever is coming is serious anyway.

Here's another great part:

And then Edward's hands balled up into fists and he snarled, “He talked to Charlie. He thinks Charlie is following after him. Coming here. Today.”
Alice said a word that sounded very odd in her trilling, ladylike voice, and then she blurred into motion, streaking out the back door.

What do you think the word was? (Top three guesses: 1. “Cocksucker” 2. “Sonofamotherfuck” 3. “Cuntcuntcunt”)

Bella's mind immediately jumps to Charlie getting killed by the Volturi, so she's pretty pissed off when Jacob swaggers in. Turns out that morning he heard Rose and Emmett talking about a planned cross-country move (to Dartmouth and therefore NH—shoutout to the granite state!) and realized he had to do something to enable them to stay in Forks. So he decided to solve the Charlie problem. Bella raises the Volturi issue, but Jacob explains that he just used her old battle plan: try to get Charlie to come to the wrong conclusion. So he showed up at Charlie's and phased in front of him.

First of all: let's talk about why this plan is dumb. The Volturi want to protect the secrecy of vampire existence, right? But it's not as though the specific fact that they are “vampires” is the most important thing. They are trying to hide the fact that they are immortal fantastical creatures. The specific TYPE of immortal fantastical creature is beside the point—it's an undead rose by any other name. So whether Charlie knows the genus and species is not the key to his survival. Jacob and Bella's thoughts is Napoleon.

(Also: the Cullens all graduated and need to be moving on anyway. Bella can't exactly re-enroll at Forks High under another name, can she? “Uh, my name is Stella Brawn...”)

Bella wants more details, so Jacob gives her the full account. His story of what happened is compelling, and makes me miss him as a narrator. He phased in front of Charlie, changed back, and was basically like, “You think it's one way, but it's the other way.”
I gotta give Jacob credit: he knew exactly how little to say. He tells Charlie that Bella really WAS sick, and had to “change a little” to get better. That she is “more like Esme” now than Renee. He uses details about the wolf pack to get Charlie to say he'd “rather not know the specifics” before he ever has to tell him much about the Cullens. Charlie, who we have seen in the past knows more than he usually lets on, also knows exactly what and what not to ask.

“Then he asked if you'd known what you were getting yourself into when you married Edward, and I said, 'Sure, she's known all about this for years, since she first came to Forks.' He didn't like that very much. I let him rant till he got it out of his system. After he calmed down, he just wanted two things. He wanted to see you, and...his main request is that he be told as little as possible about all of this.”

In S. Meyer fashion it unfolds rather conveniently, but you buy it now because it works for Charlie to react this way. You get the feeling that he's understood something about the Cullens for a long time, but chose not to look into it. Perhaps because he didn't care, but more likely because he knew the Cullens didn't want him to know. Charlie is Bert Cooper, hearing about Don Draper's identity from Pete Campbell. Go back to work, Pete. I mean, Jacob.