Twilight: My Dinner with Vlad

Twilight, pp. 196-206.

Bella awakens the next morning, fighting the belief that it was all a dream. I don't know what was so dreamlike about it--the almost-rape seems like something that would be etched in memory--but there you go. Edward is there, ready to take her to *snicker* school.

When I first read this novel, it was Edward I hated. His emotional power games, his use of his powers to manipulate and deceive, his commanding and domineering manner, his casual disdain for everyone outside of his own family, his whiny "but I don't wanna be a monster!" bullshit, his domination of Bella's sexuality--he really is a fucking tool. But this second reading is making me hate Bella a lot more. In fact, this chapter does something I didn't think possible, which is to make me, for a very brief moment, almost kind of like Edward. Why? Because he continues to be the voice of reason when it comes to Bella's inhuman nonreaction to his vampirism.

He turned to smirk at me. "What, no twenty questions today?"

"Do my questions bother you?"

"Not as much as your reactions do." He looked like he was joking, but I couldn't be sure.

I frowned. "Do I react badly?"

"No, that's the problem. You take everything so coolly--it's unnatural."

Do you think he'll ever figure out the reason for this, that she's an empathy-less pathological narcissist who views other people entirely as tools to be manipulated for her own ends? Yeah, I don't think so, either.

In another indication of the Cullens' wealth--substantial in the first book, though it reaches positively O'Leary-an heights as the series wears on--the other Cullen kids are forced to take Rosalie's car, a red convertible that Edward tells us is very, very expensive. The vampires have this expensive car because they like to drive fast, even though later in the series it will become clear they can run faster than a car (that, or Stevenie Meyer can't be bothered to indicate the passage of time when they travel somewhere), so I don't know why they like driving a fast car. Usually the Cullens take the sweet ride (by which I mean the Volvo) to school instead of the convertible since it's less conspicuous (even though Bella noticed it immediately on her first day at Forks High), but they had to take the convertible this time since Edward took the Volvo just to pick up Bella. That's right, he tells her, "I'm breaking all the rules now". Oh, snap! I think Edward's a little too good at wooing insecure fourteen seventeen-year-old girls, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Bella has been ruminating over what she will tell Jessica when they meet, since the latter will undoubtedly want to question her further about last night's interview with the vampire. My first thought was "The truth?", but then I remembered who we're talking about here.  Jessica appears and so Edward naturally reads her mind because he's a dick. After Jessica hands Bella back her jacket--thank God Meyer didn't leave us hanging about whether or not Bella got her jacket back--Edward tells Bella that Jessica won't ask her about their situation in front of him but will do so at the first opportunity, in the trigonometry class she and Bella share.

And now it's time to play our favorite game, What Will Bella Do? Get this one right, and you move on to the next round! Here we go: When faced with this gross invasion of her best friend's privacy, What Will Bella Do? Will she

a) ...angrily demand that Edward no longer read her friend's intimate thoughts and respect her privacy?
b) ...tell Edward that, while she may be powerless to stop him from reading her best friend's mind, she doesn't want any part of using that ability against her?
c) ...not react at all?
d) ...angrily demand that he tell her more specifically what her best friend was thinking so that she can more effectively prepare responses to avoid honestly answering Jessica's questions?

D is your final answer? You're correct! What's our contestant won, Johnny? That's right, you get to continue to read snippets of Twilight!

"So what are you going to tell her?"

"A little help?" I pleaded. "What does she want to know?"

He shook his head, grinning wickedly. "That's not fair."

"No, you not sharing what you know--now that's not fair."

That's right, in Bella Swan's world, it's wrong to use your magic powers to enter without permission and steal from the most intimate space a person has--her own mind--if you don't use those powers for her benefit. That's our Bella!

It turns out Jessica wants to know if Edward and Bella are dating and how Bella feels about him. Wow, he needed vampire mind-reading powers to know that? I'd better check to see if I'm a vampire. Edward gets the last laugh, though, because he tells her he'll be reading Jessica's mind when she tells her how she feels about him, so she'll effectively be telling him, too. Of course, knowing this, Bella could tell him not to do that, or tell him her feelings right there, or refuse to tell Jessica her feelings, but then Jessica would lose her narrative function of "serve as a vehicle for Bella and Edward to play out their dominance/passive-aggressive power games", and Stevenie Meyer isn't about to let that happen.

The conversation with Jessica goes about as you expect, with Bella being evasive and telling half-truths, only this time, in what may be the most off-putting use and abuse of the Jessica character yet, she's actually talking to Edward through Jessica's mind. So she tells her things like Edward's driving is scary and drops really, really obvious hints that she wants him to kiss her when they go out on Saturday (even though she said immediately before this that "it's not like that") because she wants Edward to know these things. I thought Bella was a terrible person when she constantly ignored her alleged best friend, but now she's talking to her on the surface while in reality actually talking to Edward. A conversation between Jessica and Bella is in reality a conversation between Edward and Bella. I told you he takes over the novel. Not only does Meyer not show us any conversations that aren't about him, but now she doesn't even give us any conversations that don't involve him.

Bella makes sure to point out to us that she thinks Jessica would forgive any of Edward's flaws simply because he's, as Jessica says, "unbelievably gorgeous". And while that may be true, I'd just like to point out that that's exactly what Bella's doing. Oh, she pretends it's because he's a monster trying not to be a monster by saving people's lives (by which she means, of course, her life, because that's the only one he's ever saved or will ever save, and that's the only one that matters, so it's the same in her mind as saving "people's lives"), but really, I've been leaving out all the times she's talked about his gorgeous face, his muscled chest, his ripped torso, etc. etc.. Go ahead, go back through the novel and add up the number of times Bella talks about Edward's physical appearance, and tally that against the number of times she talks about how attracted she is to his good vampire-ness. I fucking dare you.

Bella tells Jessica that Mike asked her if Jessica said anything about her and Mike's date, and so the conversation moves to trying to figure out how much Mike likes Jessica. Of course, since this directly involves neither Edward nor Bella, we don't get any details of this, just a paragraph saying it is discussed. Remember, Jessica only speaks when it concerns Edward, and she's talking about Mike now, so her dialogue disappears. The bell rings for lunch, meaning Bella is finally free of having to talk to her best friend so she can bounce off to see her creepy stalker, and I'm finally free of this tripe for another week.

Twilight: End of Line

Twilight, pp. 189-195.

So we're in the car, flying through the night at 80 miles per hour while Edward doesn't pay attention to the road.

"And after what happened tonight, I'm surprised that you did make it through a whole weekend unscathed." He shook his head, and then seemed to remember something. "Well, not totally unscathed."

Right! The almost-got-gangraped-in-a-dark-alley thing. Bella doesn't seem to remember it, but Edward at least occasionally seems to.

"What?"

"Your hands," he reminded me. I looked down at my palms, at the almost-healed scrapes across the heels of my hands.

Oh, he meant--yeah, minor scratches. Priorities!

Edward says that he annoyed Emmett (Emmett?) on their three-day hunt because he was so worried about Bella getting herself killed while he was gone. ("Will you shut up? I'm trying to drink blood from the pulsing artery of this dying cougar!") This doesn't satisfy Bella, though, because of course she only wants to talk about her own suffering. Yes, suffering is the word Meyer uses. Bella suffered through Edward's three-day absence, and Edward didn't even call. Sure, he just told her he went hunting to slake his bloodthirst to make it easier to not eat her, but he didn't call. Yes, I know he had no reason to call because a three-day absence (two days of which are the weekend, a time they've yet to see each other anyhow) is hardly cause for alarm, and also they're barely even acquainted with one another, but Bella doesn't think about any of that because...well, you know.

They rehash "I'm dangerous [because I'm a vampire even though I don't eat people]" "I don't care that you're a bloodsucking monster" again. If you think my constant mentions of this are excruciating, try reading the same goddamn scene over and over. She tells him it's too late, she's in too deep, just when she thought she was out, he pulls her back in, etc. etc., and he says it's never too late, which makes her cry. I don't know why it does, but there you go. He apologizes and talks about how likely she is to get herself killed some more before he remembers he has a paper due tomorrow. Wait, he's a vampire, so, I guess it's a paper...of the damned! He makes her promise not to go into the woods alone because there are more dangerous things in the forest than him, like raccoons. (Okay, I might have added that last part.) Then he takes his leave.

Bella goes into the house to be evasive to Mustache Dad. She doesn't mention Edward or the attempted rape, and when she talks to Jessica on the phone, she makes sure to clue her in that Mustache Dad is to be kept in the dark. They discuss the logistics of Bella getting her jacket back after having left it by mistake in Jessica's car. Bella then takes a shower and finally has the emotional breakdown that I've been complaining about her not having for the last 30 updates. I see, so I guess she was in a kind of shock before, such that only now does the enormity of what happened to her that night come crashing down upon her. Looks like I have to take back everything I said about Meyer's completely ignoring the emotional issues you'd think would have to arise from an experience like that:

I walked up the stairs slowly, a heavy stupor clouding my mind. I went through the motions of getting ready for bed without paying any attention to what I was doing. It wasn't until I was in the shower--the water too hot, burning my skin--that I realized I was freezing. I shuddered violently for several minutes before the steaming spray could finally relax my rigid muscles. Then I stood in the shower, too tired to move, until the hot water began to run out.

I stumbled out, wrapping myself securely in a towel, trying to hold the heat from the water in so the aching shivers wouldn't return. I dressed for bed swiftly and climbed under my quilt, curling into a ball, hugging myself to keep warm. A few small shudders trembled through me.

My mind still swirled dizzily, full of images I couldn't understand, and some I fought to repress. Nothing seemed clear at first, but as I fell gradually closer to unconsciousness, a few certainties became evident.

About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was part of him--and I didn't know how potent that part might be--that thirsted for my blood. And third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.

Wait...that's what you're having this reaction about? This reaction?

People, I give up. I just...I don't know how to deal with this. My brain can't process it. This is the end of the chapter, but I...I just can't. I'll have to go into all the reasons this passage is stupid and poorly written next week. For now...I need to lie down for a while.

Twilight: Deja Vu

Twilight, pp. 179-188.

Goddamn, this book is bad.

The title of this chapter is "Theory". Seriously. Theory? What theory? Bella already decided Edward is a vampire and that she's okay with it. Stevenie Meyer is no longer even pretending there's any difference between herself and Bella. Theory don't bleedin' enter into it. Well, at least the chapter starts off with a bang:

"Can I ask just one more?" I pleaded as Edward accelerated much too quickly down the quiet street. He didn't seem to be paying any attention to the road.

He sighed.

"One," he agreed. His lips pressed together in a cautious line.

Whew, I need a minute to catch my breath. The action never stops (because it's yet to start)! I can probably think of a few worse opening lines than "Can I ask just one more?" if you give me a couple of hours, but it's still impressively bad. One more what?

Bella asks how Edward knew she went south from the bookstore since she was alone and so there was no one's mind to read. So we get more X-Men powers, in this case Wolverine's super-smell. So let's review all the powers vampires have so far. They're super-strong, super-fast, super-good-looking, super-not-dead, have super-senses, and heat vision. (Okay, I may have added that last one.) He then explains how his mind-reading power works: It's effective over some distance, the distance being greater the better he knows the person, up to a few miles, and he has to focus on a person to hear her thoughts as distinct from the background babble. Then she asks if he knows why he can't read her mind, and he says he doesn't know. If you've read the later books or seen the later movies, you know he's lying, undoubtedly to set up his next line to set insecure adolescent white girls' hearts aflutter:

"The only guess I have is that maybe your mind doesn't work the same way the rest of theirs do."

To keep myself sane, I can only respond appropriately, by paraphrasing a real vampire/werewolf movie: You and 20 million other girls.

"My mind doesn't work right? I'm a freak?" The words bothered me more than they should--probably because his speculation hit home. I'd always suspected as much, and it embarrassed me to have it confirmed.

"I hear voices in my head, and you're worried that you're a freak," he laughed.

I guess Edward hasn't been paying attention, since Bella is a clinical narcissist and so of course she's only worried about herself. If I were Edward, I wouldn't be a complete dick to everybody I encounter and involve young girls in my creepy abstinence power games. Plus, I would point out that I didn't say the word "freak" or even imply it and tell Bella to get over herself before dumping her childish ass at her father's house and getting out of there as fast as my vampire driving powers could carry me:

I happened to notice the speedometer.

"Holy crow!" I shouted. "Slow down!"

"What's wrong?" He was startled. But the car didn't decelerate.

"You're going a hundred miles an hour!"
...
"Relax, Bella." He rolled his eyes, still not slowing.

"Are you trying to kill us?"

"We're not going to crash."

I tried to modulate my voice. [What?] "Why are you in such a hurry?"

"I always drive like this." He turned to smile crookedly at me.

"Keep your eyes on the road!"

"I've never been in an accident, Bella--I've never even gotten a ticket." He grinned and tapped his forehead. "Built-in radar detector."

So you're immune to law enforcement because you can read the cops' minds, hmm? Well, I hate to drop this knowledge on you, Ed, but I don't think that's what she's worried about there, genius. She's probably more concerned with being turned into road pizza when you hit a full-grown deer at 100 miles per hour. Or does he read deer's minds now, too?

"Very funny," I fumed. "Charlie's a cop, remember? I was raised to abide traffic laws."

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH! I hate this book! I hate it! It makes no goddamn sense! People don't talk like this! People don't act like this! It's not real, it's not real, it's NOT REEEEEEAAAAALLLLL!

Sorry, I just had to avoid a breakdown, there. Also, "holy crow"? After voicing her disapproval of Edward's violation of a minor traffic law, Bella finally has a glimmer of self-preservation and asks him to slow down so that he will not "turn us into a Volvo pretzel", a crash to which he may be immune, but she isn't. He agrees to slow to 80 mph, which is just as deadly a speed as 100 mph and just as much a violation of the law, so great job, Bella! You sure showed him!

Now it's time for Bella to tell Edward her "theory" that he is a vampire. Edward assumes, as you would, that this is in fact her theory, so she continually has to clarify that, well, Jacob told her each and every part of it so that it is in no meaningful way "her" theory, even admitting that her Google search told her nothing. When she declares that it doesn't matter (which is another lie, because she's been more concerned with talking about it than with the fact that she was almost gang-raped in a dark alley), once again someone else has the reaction Bella should have, as Edward comically freaks out when he hears of her utter unconcern that he's a blood-drinking dead man. Well, okay, it's not really the reaction she should've had, since he is of course "bleak", "cold", "hard", and "mocking". (Isn't he dreamy?) But it is, at least, a reaction, which is more than we can say for Bella, whose emotional EEG has yet to spike. Edward may be a walking corpse, but Bella is the soulless monster.

Bella then asks about what other powers he has and how they match up with established vampire lore. I hope you're sitting down, but it turns out they don't match up very well. He also reveals that he can't sleep. Combine that with immortality, and vampirism does sound like one of the most horrible fates that could possibly be inflicted upon a sentient being. That Bella doesn't recognize this and continues to insist Edward make her a vampire (whoops, sorry to blow that plot twist for you) could have been the basis for actual drama, but we'll have none of that.

Edward also has to be the one to bring up the question of whether he eats people or not, since for a sociopathic narcissist like Bella, "it doesn't matter". Edward never explicitly confirms that the Cullens don't eat people, but Bella is convinced and she wrote this crap, so that's enough for me. Still, Bella reminds us, the Quileutes don't want the Cullens on their land. Sounds pretty damn sensible to me.

Then it's time to rehash the "I'm dangerous, really, I so am!" thing for, what is this, the 842nd time now? Edward compares surviving on animal blood to a human surviving on nothing but soy milk and tofu, and he tells us that at times it can be difficult not to eat people. Let's all say it together now:

"Is it very difficult for you now?" I asked.

He sighed. "Yes."

Look, Meyer, if you're going to telegraph even lines of dialogue, can we just agree that I've effectively already read this entire novel and let me go do something more fun and productive, like rearranging my refrigerator magnets or reading a White House press statement? No? Drat!

"But you're not hungry now," I said confidently--stating, not asking.

"Why do you think that?"

"Your eyes. I told you I had a theory. I've noticed that people--men in particular--are crabbier when they're hungry."

He chuckled. "You're observant, aren't you?"

Brilliant observation, Holmes! Look, Stevenie, if you're going to recycle scenes, then I'm going to recycle the jokes.

At least this passage explains my earlier issues with how the Cullens can get away with living in Forks under their original names for generations (not continuously, perhaps, but often enough that plenty of people who knew them would still be living when they came back) without being noticed. The people of Forks are apparently so unobservant they don't notice the radical changes in Edward's eye color (from amber to black) and the accompanying radical changes in behavior. Even more hilarious is Edward's being impressed at someone's figuring this out. It ain't exactly brain surgery, there, Eddie. We're not talking about eyes that sometimes look green and sometimes look blue and sometimes look grey. Forks may be a town of dullards, but anyone with even half a brain could piece that together.

Of course, a meta-explanation is that Edward doesn't behave any differently no matter what color his eyes are. So far he's been the same smug, condescending asshole in every scene. You know, like Clooney.

Twilight: Psychic Surveillance

Twilight, pp. 171-178.

Bella, her hunger sated by the end of a breadstick she nibbled, is ready to get down to what's really important: What color Edward's eyes are.

"Usually you're in a better mood when your eyes are so light," I commented, trying to distract him from whatever thought had left him frowning and somber.

He stared at me, stunned. "What?"

"You're always crabbier when your eyes are black--I expect it then," I went on. "I have a theory about that."

"More theories?"

"Mm-hm." I chewed on a small bite of the bread, trying to look indifferent. 

"I hope you were more creative this time...or are you still stealing from comic books?" His faint smile was mocking; his eyes were still tight.

His eyes were still tight? Okay, help me out here, people. What the hell is Meyer talking about? I've been on this Earth a few decades, and English is my tool, and I've never once see or heard eyes described as "tight", probably because it makes no fucking sense. But at least this passage explains my earlier issues with how the Cullens can get away with living in Forks under their original names for generations (not continuously, perhaps, but often enough that plenty of people who knew them would still be living when they came back) without being noticed. The people of Forks are apparently so unobservant they don't notice the radical changes in Edward's eye color (from amber to black) and the accompanying radical changes in behavior. Even more hilarious is Edward's shock at someone's figuring this out. It ain't exactly brain surgery, there, Eddie. We're not talking about eyes that sometimes look green and sometimes look blue and sometimes look grey. Forks may be a town of dullards, but anyone with even half a brain could piece that together.

Of course, a meta-explanation is that Edward doesn't behave any differently no matter what color his eyes are. So far he's been the same smug, condescending asshole in every scene. You know, like Clooney.

The "stealing from comic books" line is of course a reference to Bella's earlier speculation that Edward might be Spider-Man or Superman (which he basically is, though since dumb ol' girls don't buy books about superheroes, Meyer made the book about vampires). Bella does have a theory, and baby, it's the stupidest moment in the book yet. And that's saying something.

I glared at him and continued slowly. "Let's say, hypothetically, that...someone...could know what people are thinking, read minds, you know--with a few exceptions."

That's...just...imPOSSIBLE. Where the hell did she get that? She hasn't had any reason to believe Edward can read minds. Come on! He has never once told her anything that anyone was thinking. As I noted last week, the film has Edward say in the car that he read the minds of the four gangers, and during the restaurant scene, he allegedly demonstrates this power by telling her what some of the other patrons are thinking. (I say "allegedly" because Bella makes no attempt to confirm that what he says is in fact what they're thinking, because of course she knows, because Meyer knows.) But at least the film threw us that bone. The novel doesn't even do that. Out of nowhere, Bella suddenly starts talking about mind-reading. That didn't even come up in her vampire Googling!

And what's with the exceptions? Why would there be any exceptions? Is that the way most people conceive of mind-reading powers? They work on everybody except Catholics, or people under 5'3", or redheads? How hard would it have been for Meyer to have Edward occasionally let slip that he "heard" something that someone didn't actually say? The answer is not at all since the film seemed to do it with no trouble. Stephenie [sic] Meyer is just that lazy.

Our leads play this game of "hypothetically" while they both know it isn't hypothetical and admire each other for figuring out their little game in the way that only annoying pretentious teenagers can. Bella outlines that she came up with the mind-reading thing to explain how Edward was there to rescue her from the criminal scum. (No attempt is made to explain where the exceptions idea came from.) Okay, that's the most plausible explanation? Not that he has some sort of danger sense (I mean, she already guessed he was Spider-Man), or clairvoyance, or psychic powers? How about this one, honey? He's stalking you. See? It explains everything and doesn't require an appeal to anything supernatural.

They go over the "I'm dangerous" thing yet again (still not buying it), and then Edward says that he was stalking her. (Bingo!) Okay, I'm paraphrasing. He says that he followed her to Port Angeles, for her own protection, of course, not because he's a creep who enjoys breaking into a young girl's house to watch her sleep. Then he reveals that he constantly reads Jessica's mind in order to keep tabs on Bella.

If you're reading this sentence, you didn't fully appreciate the last one. Go back and read it again until you get it. I'll wait.

Five. Star. Creepy. Edward constantly monitors a young girl's thoughts. It's the ultimate invasion of privacy, a gross violation of a person's most sacred space, and Jessica is subjected to it precisely because she's been nothing but friendly and welcoming to Bella, so how does Bella react to Edward's morally reprehensible act of psychic breaking and entering in the service of his constant surveillance of her whereabouts? Shock? Horror? Rage? Fear of who else he might be monitoring?

I hope you're sitting down for this, because I don't want to be responsible for giving anyone the vapors: Bella...doesn't react. At all. Edward continues speaking about how he found her after she left Jessica's awareness--by "randomly searching the thoughts of people on the street", natch--until he heard the thoughts of the go-gangers, and Bella lets it all pass without comment. Edward explains that he kept her with him instead of letting her go with her friends because otherwise he would've stalked and slain the miscreants. Finishing his story, Edward is ready to take Bella home. Her thoughts "incoherent", Bella is clear that she doesn't want to leave the presence of the ambulating cadaver who's been reading her best friend's most intimate thoughts for the past week without anyone's knowledge or consent.

Remember, girls: If he doesn't use invasive surveillance techniques to keep himself constantly informed of your whereabouts, it isn't True Love.

Aaaaaand...chapter! Yep, Edward gets the check, they get in the car about to start a conversation...and the chapter ends, right after the conversation's opening line. Were chapter breaks mandated every 20 pages or something?

So...yeah. We're done for the week, I guess. Don't look at me, I didn't insert a random chapter break. Anyhow, tune in next week for more hot talking-to-each-other-in-the-car action!

Twilight: Emotional Flatline

Twilight, pp. 165-170.

Edward knows that being almost assaulted and/or raped really works up an appetite, so he takes Bella to dinner. He doesn't ask her to dinner. He simply takes her.

I heard the door open and turned to see him getting out.

"What are you doing?" I asked.

"I'm taking you to dinner." He smiled slightly, but his eyes were hard. He stepped out of the car and slammed the door. I fumbled with my seat belt, and then hurried to get out of the car as well. He was waiting for me on the sidewalk.

He spoke before I could. "Go stop Jessica and Angela before I have to track them down, too. I don't think I could restrain myself if I ran into your other friends again."

Okay, this passage is so badly written I had to read it a couple of times to get what Meyer was going for. She means that Edward wants Bella to stop Jessica and Angela from (I think) searching for her so that Edward doesn't have to rescue them from those same four not-so-smooth criminals Bella just talked him down from brutally slaying.

The first time I read this, I thought Edward was telling Bella to stop the other girls from coming up to him because otherwise he would track them at some later date and eat them. And really, isn't that the more plausible reading? I mean, surely no one, having read the gangbangers' minds and found they were going to do to Bella something so terrible that it took everything he had not to kill them all where they stood, would in the immediate aftermath refer to them as Bella's "friends". I mean, there's gallows humor, and there's being an insensitive twat. I assume Bella makes the same mistake I did, since she doesn't kick Edward in the daddy marbles for calling her attempted rapists "friends".

Maybe I'm just so desperate for Edward to actually behave like a vampire that I'm seeing things, but I don't think so. Any normal person would just say, "Let Angela and Jessica know you're okay." But of course Edward is a gigantic asshole who's going to use this opportunity to manipulate Bella emotionally, so he will get rid of the girls and begin the process of isolating her from other friends and family, which culminates, as I noted in my review of Twilight, Part 4: Part 2, in her severance of virtually all non-Cullen relationships.

"Um, actually, Bella, we already ate while we were waiting--sorry," Angela confessed.

"That's fine--I'm not hungry." I shrugged.

"I think you should eat something." Edward's voice was low, but full of authority. He looked up at Jessica and spoke slightly louder. "Do you mind if I drive Bella home tonight? That way you won't have to wait while she eats."

Jessica demures about just abandoning her friend--because, unlike Bella, Meta-Jessica cares about other people, though neither Bella nor Meyer gives her credit for this. Ha! I refer to Bella and Meyer as if they were separate people because I am making a joke! Bella isn't having any of it, though.

I winked at her. I wanted nothing more than to be alone with my perpetual savior. There were so many questions that I couldn't bombard him with till we were by ourselves.

I know we're supposed to view Bella's non-reaction to being moments from being physically and possibly sexually assaulted as due to her maturity and total got-it-togetherness, but it isn't. I don't care how mature and got-it-together you are. Human beings react to situations like that. Maybe Meyer's alien leaders didn't teach her that before they sent her to Earth. Oh, and Bella, you just rode in the car alone with him to two different destinations. Why didn't you ask him then? Answer: Got to pad out the book somehow. Do I even need to mention that the film actually does something with the restaurant location? Can we just assume that from this point, the film is an immense improvement on the source material and still isn't very good? Oh forget it, I'm bitter. Let's just watch Edward order Bella around some more.

"Honestly, I'm not hungry," I insisted, looking up to scrutinize his face. His expression was unreadable.

"Humor me."

He walked to the door of the restaurant and held it open with an obstinate expression. Obviously, there would be no further discussion. I walked past him into the restaurant with a resigned sigh.

I guess "unreadable" doesn't mean what I thought it means. You can't say Twilight isn't educational. I'm learning that so many words mean the opposite of what I learned they mean. It's good to see Bella not even putting up a token struggle anymore. Her man speaks, and she, resigned, obeys.

So they go into the restaurant, and the animated corpse charms the hostess and gets them *yawn* a good table. He refuses the first table for "something more private", which Bella tells us she has never seen anyone do "except in old movies"(!), and then they order beveragezzzzz....Oh, I'm sorry, I dozed off for a second. Edward says he's waiting for her to go into shock (I'll say!), and she says she won't, and they order food while Bella drinks her Coke "obediently" (of course), and Jesus Christ get ON with it!

I got a laugh when Edward gives Bella his jacket, revealing that he's wearing a turtleneck sweater. I picture a century-old vampire looking through his closet, ready to dress for the day. "Hmm...the long flowing black cape? No, too showy. Ah, my turtleneck! Magnifique!" I guess it's not that silly, because Jerry Dandridge was a snappy dresser and he was just fine as a vampire. But then, Jerry Dandridge was hot and ate people, so he can get away with it.

Edward keeps trying to feed her, since that's how you deal with people going into shock, but Bella puts her foot down at being forced to eat delicious breadsticks.

"Really, I'm not going into shock," I protested.

"You should be--a normal person would be. You don't even look shaken."

Ah, but Edward doesn't realize that our Bella is emotionally stunted. I guess that's why it's okay for her to become a vampire, becoming forever fourteen seventeen.

She wasn't going to develop anyway.

Twilight: Near Miss

Twilight, pp. 157-164.

When we left Bella, she was too busy moping to pay attention to where she was going. As it happens, she stumbles over to the seedy side of Port Angeles. And baby, you will never find the more wretched hive of scum and villainy. I mean, just check out one of the four dastardly villains that accost Bella in an alley:

Two of them had paused, and the other two were slowing. The closest, a heavy-set, dark-haired man in his early twenties, seemed to be the one who had spoken. He was wearing a flannel shirt over a dirty t-shirt, cut-off jeans, and sandals.

A fat guy in sandals--my God, the horror! Run, Bella! A guy like that, who knows what he'll do? He might offer to sell you marijuana!

Flannel over a t-shirt, cut-off jeans, and sandals were what all the guys in their early twenties were wearing in 1992 2005. Meyer sure has her finger on the pulse of popular culture!

I'd also like to point out that this reprobate, who will be around for all of eight pages, has been given more of a physical description than Jessica, who didn't even get clothes. Hell, we get about as much as for him as we got for Edward. This must be part of Meyer's "don't show, don't tell" writing strategy. The vaguer your characters are, the more they can be whoever the reader wants them to be, and the better to be your wish fulfillment, my dear.

The rapscallions chase Bella around the back alleys of this Port Angeles Skid Row--well, they don't chase her so much as "casually stroll after her as she kind of meanders around". These passages are some of the worst writing yet, such as when Meyer makes it a point that Bella, who is being stalked in the night by four strange men in the bad part of town, feels a chill that "had nothing to do with the weather". (Thanks!) When the hoods finally get her cornered, Bella is choked with fear and just barely musters the energy to demand they stay away from her. One of the four, apparently thinking he's Huggy Bear, responds, "Don't be like that, sugar." This devastating riposte sends the other three into hysterics, and Bella prepares herself for combat, resolving that she isn't going to go down without a fight. Get ready, my little droogies. Bella Swan is about to do something!

Suddenly, just when we most expect it, Edward appears to the rescue!

Headlights suddenly flew around the corner, the car almost hitting the stocky one, forcing him to jump back toward the sidewalk. I dove into the road--this car was going to stop, or have to hit me. But the silver car unexpectedly fishtailed around, skidding to a stop with the passenger door open just a few feet in front of me.

"Get in," a furious voice commanded.

It was amazing how instantaneously the choking fear vanished, amazing how suddenly the feeling of security washed over me--even before I was off the street--as soon as I heard his voice. I jumped into the seat, slamming the door shut behind me.

All right, Bella's going to--oh, wait...but she was just about to...So you're gonna--oh, right. Okay. Right.

Now that a man is here, of course, everything's perfectly all right. One would think Bella would be a little in shock, a little bewildered, a little upset and emotional given she's just narrowly avoided being assaulted or worse. But nope, she's fine. So fine, in fact, that she asks Edward if he's okay! He'll eventually ask her if she's okay, but only after telling her to put on her seat belt, telling her that he's not okay, driving around for a while, and finally stopping the car in the middle of nowhere. Why? Because he's mad, and so of course his anger at these four men for threatening his privileged access to Bella's body (not that he's interesting in actually make use of this access, only in maintaining its integrity against the challenge of other men) trumps any question of her psychological well-being.

But I felt utterly safe, and, for the moment, unconcerned about where we were going. I stared at his face in profound relief, relief that went beyond my sudden deliverance. I studied his flawless features in the limited light, waiting for my breath to return to normal, until it occurred to me that his expression was murderously angry.

"Are you okay?" I asked, surprised at how hoarse my voice sounded.

"No," he said curtly, and his tone was livid.

It's time for your old pal Carl Eusebius to check in with you neurotypicals again: Is this normal behavior? Imagine: You were this close to being physically beaten by four toughs--possibly raped, as Bella earlier feared "they might be something worse than thieves". Would you even give a thought to the fact that you get to see the guy you haven't seen in four days? Would that form even a small part of the flood of relief you felt in the immediate aftermath of escaping that situation? Who's crazy here, Meyer or me? Because one of us definitely is.

And I do de-clare, I believe it's here on page 163 that the word "said" for dialogue first appears. Hallelujah, hallelujah!

"Distract me, please," he ordered.

"I'm sorry, what?"

He exhaled sharply.

"Just prattle about something unimportant until I calm down."

Has anyone been keeping track of how often Edward gives Bella "commands" and "orders"? Because it's fucking often. And it's nice that Bella, upon hearing the word "prattle", doesn't immediately think of Jessica as I half-expected her to do. Bella does talk about something unimportant--so unimportant that I've skipped it up until now and I'm going to skip it again--until we get this.

"What's wrong?" My voice came out in a whisper.

"Sometimes I have a problem with my temper, Bella."

Hold on, just give me a sec, here...I know I've...ah, here it is, The Abuser's Handbook page 34. Allow me to give the full quotation: "Sometimes I have a problem with my temper, and at those times, you might find yourself accidentally falling down the stairs."

But no, Edward's not an abuser! (Well, he is, but his is emotional abuse.) He just means that he desperately wants to kill the hoods. Wait, why does he want to do that? All he saw was four people standing around Bella. This is a crime that warrants death? As I've noted, Edward can read thoughts, so presumably he saw in their minds that the scum were going to do something terrible. But Bella doesn't yet know he can do this. Since she isn't particularly affected by what should be at the very least an experience to shake you up a little, isn't she curious how he knew to come screaming around the corner at that exact moment? Because that's what happened. It isn't like he was just passing by, happened to see what was going on, deduced it was something terrible almost instantly, and put pedal to metal. He comes around the corner already driving like a maniac and heading right for them, so actually he didn't even see what was happening. Bella, of course, doesn't ask about this, just like she didn't ask how he can stop a speeding van with his bare hands. (No, I'm not going to let that one go.)

Once again, the Twilight film improves on this scene by having Edward almost immediately say that he saw the lowlifes' thoughts and so in a sense saw what they were planning to do. This also drops movie-Bella another clue that Edward isn't what he seems (because movie-Bella, as I've noted, has to piece together Edward's vampire nature on her own). Here, though, he doesn't say that, so we're left with Edward in a murderous rage over events he didn't witness, and Bella doesn't think to ask. She clearly isn't traumatized by her experience, and so why doesn't she ask why he's there, how he knew she was in danger, how he knew what was happening, and how he knew so certainly that he's in a murderous rage about it?

She doesn't ask because, of course, she knows. Because Stephenie [sic] Meyer knows. No one in this novel behaves like a real person, or even a believable character in a trashy vampire romance novel.* They never behave in any way other than to move the plot (such as it is) forward. In fact, Bella won't ask why he was there for another eight pages. During that time, they meet up with Jessica and Angela, blow them off (what, you expected them to spend a single moment with other people?), go to a restaurant, and talk about nothing for several minutes, and then Bella wonders how Edward was suddenly right there right when she needed him, because that's when Meyer is ready to tell us. And Bella never asks why he's as angry as he is, why he's having the emotional reaction she should be having.

I'm beginning to wonder if Bella could pass a Voight-Kampff test.

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* I'm rather surprised that necrophilia is not only as popular as it is today, but as socially acceptable as it is, if only in the realm of fantasy.

Twilight: When Subtext Becomes Text

Twilight, pp. 99-104.

This week, we readers of Twilight are treated to a boring conversation about nothing between Edward and Bella. So yes, the same as last week. Unlike Stephenie [sic] Meyer, though, Carl Eusebius will take a different tack with the analysis. This time, instead of banging on about how Meyer hasn't thought through her characters, I'm going to rip into how the conversation is contrived, badly written, and doesn't make any sense even in the context of a crappy tweener novel.

"You scared me for a minute there," he admitted after a pause. His tone made it sound like he was confessing a humiliating weakness. "I thought Newton was dragging your dead body off to bury it in the woods."

Huh? He thought Bella was dead? But why would he think that, when he could just read Mike's mind and know exactly what happened? Or are we to believe that Mike thought Bella was dead? This just doesn't make sense on any level. Edward says a few lines later that he saw them pass by his car, so he must have seen Bella walking. She needed Mike's help, but she was clearly providing much of her own locomotion. Do people normally carry dead bodies beside them, with the corpse's arm around their neck? Does he think she's a walking corpse or something?

Wait...he's a walking corpse,* so I guess they've got me there.

"Honestly--I've seen corpses with better colour. [Yeah, every time he looks in the mirror! Zing!] I was concerned that I might have to avenge your murder."

"Poor Mike. I'll bet he's mad."

"He absolutely loathes me," Edward said cheerfully.

Okay, who talks like that? Take any conversation in this novel--choose one at random--and say the lines aloud. See how unnatural you sound. Feel how difficult it is to talk that way. It's got to take mental effort to write dialogue this mannered and artificial. Surely Meyer has had conversations with other human beings in real life. How hard is it to translate that experience into writing? (Very hard, I guess.)

"I was concerned that I might have to avenge your murder." Why? Even if Edward could somehow believably think Bella's dead, why would he think she's been murdered? Being a century old, he must have seen people die from all sorts of causes all the time. And why doesn't Bella react at all to this odd and deeply creepy statement? "Poor Mike"? How does that statement follow from "I might have to avenge your murder"? Also, note that this may be the only time Edward ever says anything "cheerfully". And, of course, it's because he's inspired intense dislike in someone else. Isn't he dreamy?

Mike becomes the hero of the story when he interrupts their conversation by dragging another fainting student into the nurse's office. Edward immediately makes to get Bella out of there, because God forbid she see another drop of blood. That would make this scene go on longer! Then--and I swear to Edward James Olmos this happens--the following exchange takes place:

I spun and caught the door before it closed, darting out of the infirmary. I could feel Edward right behind me.

"You actually listened to me." He was stunned.

"I smelled the blood," I said, wrinkling my nose. Lee wasn't sick from watching other people, like me.

"People can't smell blood," he contradicted.

People can't smell blood. People can't smell blood? Wha...what? This line brings you to a screeching halt. Like Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse saying "Pain don't hurt." It's just...the mind boggles. You have to stop, wonder if you misread it, go back and read it again. People can't smell blood? You might as well say that birds can't fly at night or left-handed people can't drive cars on Sunday or Congressmen can't use their expense accounts for hookers and blow.

You know, I tried to read this statement in the light most favourable to Meyer, so I thought maybe it's supposed to be some vampire thing. Like, say, compared to their vampire senses, we humans with our puny sense of smell can't really smell blood, something like that. Only that doesn't work, because he never says that about anything else. He doesn't say people can't hear music, or see trees, or feel velvet. Edward does, in fact, listen to music for pleasure, so it's not even the case that he only mentions blood because that's all he cares about. I don't know how this is possible, but I really think Meyer thinks Bella's (and therefore her own) ability to smell blood is unusual. I can't escape the conclusion that she is somehow unaware that people can smell blood. Just about all people can, and do, and have. That, in fact, it has a very distinctive odour. One would think that merely existing in the human world would have imparted this information to Meyer. I'm simply thunderstruck that someone has lived three decades yet missed this simple fact.

Oh and one more thing: "he contradicted"? I mean, that's just...that's just wrong.

Mike comes back to make sure Bella's okay and to confirm that she's still going to the beach with him and his their friends. (She is.) Bella humiliates him some more--though mostly in her narration--and he leaves, despondent that she's in the presence of Edward. This is, naturally, portrayed as jealousy on Mike's part, though I prefer to think he's saddened to know that she's caught up in Edward's mind games. After Mike departs, Edward uses his hypnotism power--I think--to get Bella out of gym class, declaring to the school nurse that he will take her home. Bella then invites Edward to the beach, even though Meyer made sure we knew that Mike made it a point not to invite him. This adds a whole John-and-Yoko vibe to Bella, as if we needed any further reason to despise the character. Edward joins in on the Mike humiliation when he declines the invitation because Mike might "snap", though we'll find out later that the real reason he doesn't want to go has more to do with the location than the people involved.

Edward then assaults Bella when she heads toward her truck to leave. He grabs her by the jacket and "yanks" her back to him, and then he hauls her over to his car.

He was towing me toward his car now, pulling me by my jacket. It was all I could do to keep from falling backward. He'd probably just drag me along anyway if I did.

"Let go!" I insisted. He ignored me. I staggered along sideways across the wet sidewalk until we reached the Volvo. Then he finally freed me--I stumbled against the passenger door.

"You are so pushy!" I grumbled.

Yes, pushy. That's it. That's what you call someone who jerks you around and drags you bodily over to his car while you demand to be released. Pushy.

"Get in, Bella." 

I didn't answer. I was mentally calculating the chances of reaching the truck before he could catch me. I had to admit, they weren't good.

"I'll just drag you back," he threatened, guessing my plan.

You know, sometimes I wonder why I write this blog. In my earlier posts, I interrogated Edward's words and behaviour to expose them as the emotional manipulation that they were. I examined Bella's thoughts and actions and how they reveal a kind of dependent passivity and powerlessness. But now the novel just has Edward directly controlling her person through physical force. I mean, do I even need to talk about this? There's no deeper level to probe, here. The misogyny is right there on the surface. Why continue with this madness?

It became an instant bestseller when published originally in hardback in 2005, debuting at No. 5 on the New York Times Best Seller list within a month of its release and later peaking at No. 1. That same year, Twilight was named one of Publisher's Weekly's Best Children's Books of 2005. The novel was also the biggest selling book of 2008 and the second biggest selling of 2009, only behind its sequel New Moon. It has been translated into 37 different languages. When first published, Twilight gained much critical acclaim.[Source: Wikipedia]

Oh, yeah. That's why.
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* I know I'm striking a deceased equine here, but it continues to astound me that anybody thinks falling in love with a vampire is a believable idea. They're dead, people. They're shambling corpses that reek of the grave. They subsist on the blood of living human beings. There's no heat in their bodies, no life in their eyes, no light in their souls. They are inhuman. Stop saying you love them. It's disturbing.

Twilight: Couch Potato

Twilight, pp. 91-98.

Bella has obeyed Edward's summons. They sit together in the school cafeteria, not saying much. Oh, they talk constantly, but they don't say much of anything. Edward first asks if Bella is hungry. I thought it was rather cute that he even remembered what it's like to desire food. (Watch Shadow of the Vampire to see a real vampire's understanding of human food. Or a plausible interaction of a real vampire with the modern world. Or a decent film. Or a reminder of why people consider Willem Dafoe a good actor.) Edward then demands to know how Bella thinks he got his superpowers. She suggests a radioactive spider (har, har), and he says that's wrong and that he doesn't fear Kryptonite, either (ho, ho).

So Edward knows the origin of Spider-Man and Superman's great weakness. Being that he is a century old, how, precisely, did he come by this information? Since Edward never speaks a word to anyone, I picture him spending 17 hours a day watching television to stay up on pop culture. Though given that he never talks to anyone, I'm not sure why he needs to know these things, especially since he can just read people's minds to understand references.* Meyer here gives us more evidence--as if we needed any more--that she hasn't given even the briefest thought to what it might be like to be one hundred years old.

Once again, Meyer has put her characters into a potentially interesting situation, which she then immediately cocks up because she doesn't see her characters as characters but as stand-ins for herself and her adolescent sexual fantasy figure. I noted last time that there's nothing about Bella that should be attractive to Edward. But there could be, if only Meyer would write for her characters rather than herself. Edward shouldn't know anything about contemporary culture. That would mean Bella knows a lot that he doesn't know, stuff that allows her to function in the world far easier than he, and since his powers don't work on her, he can't use his mind-reading trick to fake it for her. That would make him vulnerable in front of her. She's got something he doesn't have, doesn't understand, and wants to know more about. But no, Meyer's crippling need to have it both ways manifests itself. Edward somehow just knows what any other high school senior would know, and any chance for dramatic tension is gone, as is any shred of hope that Meyer might give Edward a reason to desire Bella other than "she's me and I want vampire hunk!".

Any writer worthy of the label should be able to do something interesting and romantic with the "I can read everybody's mind but yours" trope. Think about it: Edward can't read Bella's mind, and so he's forced to figure out what she's thinking in the same way that we lowly humans do. Here's your believable reason for Edward to be attracted to Bella: She, as a socially adept high school girl (which she is, remember, even though she's also an introverted wallflower who shuts down everyone who tries to befriend her), can effortlessly read people without Edward's mind-reading powers. He, on the other hand, is helpless without them, having long ago lost the human ability to read people through body language, posture, tone of voice, and non-verbal cues. Edward would be impressed by this mundane skill that everyone else takes for granted because he's a vampire and has been such for 100 years and isn't human and isn't just like everyone else. But no, the fatal flaw of this novel is that Edward is just like everyone else. Despite his being 100 years old and a vampire, everything about his interaction with Bella plays exactly as it would if he were a typical high school student. So Edward can read Bella just as if his mind-reading power worked on her, he's not impressed by her ability to read people without powers, and I continue to wonder what people see in this series.

And now, my little droogies, it's time for more of Edward warning Bella away because he's bad. Man, I just can't get enough of that. Bella finally accepts that he's dangerous but not that he's bad. Suddenly, he proves her wrong by telling her...wait for it...he's not going to class! Whoa, I take back everything I said about Edward not being dangerous. This badness is too much for Bella, who hurries off to biology, where the teacher is telling students to stab themselves with scalpels and drip the blood onto cards so they can learn their blood types. Who went to a high school that allowed this? I can't imagine my old high school ever handing us knives and telling us to cut ourselves open with them. A few thousand pounds of lawyer would've been hurling lawsuit at the district before the blood hit the card. The teacher even grabs Mike by the hand and without warning pricks his finger! With a scalpel! I'm pretty sure that constitutes assault with a deadly weapon. What kind of high school is this?

Bella immediately feels faint at the sight of this teeny drop of blood (you, because she's a girl). Mike half-carries her toward the school nurse's office--despite his bleeding being the cause of the problem--and suddenly Edward is there. How? Why? Who knows. Well, I know, because I've read the book already. Later we find out that Edward's mind-reading powers are apparently not affected by distance. He can read the mind of any person at any time anywhere, and because he can't read Bella's mind, he constantly monitors the thoughts of people around her. If you're getting a creepy stalker vibe from Edward here, that's because he's a creepy stalker. That, I presume, is how he knew she was faint, and he personally showed up to repel Mike's challenge to his access to Bella make sure she's okay. He picks her up like he's going to carry her over the threshold, over her repeated protests (men know best), and carries her to the office. Well, at least this vampire is finally doing something a little bit monstrous, carrying a protesting girl who can't escape his super-strong grasp. Yeah, it's weak, but I'm reaching for anything, here.

Edward takes Bella into the office, continually laughing about her fainting spell, and lies to the nurse so he can stay with her while the nurse leaves. Then they have a long, boring conversation that we'll get to next week.

Yes, I know they just had a long, boring conversation two pages ago. But see, then they were in the cafeteria, but now they're in the nurse's office. Totally different.

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*Maybe that's what Edward does all day: reading people's minds for trivia he might be called upon to know at some point. One hundred years is a lot of cultural change to keep up with.

Twilight: Blood Appeal

Twilight, pp. 85-90.

The rest of the morning passed in a blur. It was difficult to believe that I hadn't just imagined what Edward had said, and the way his eyes had looked. Maybe it was just a very convincing dream that I'd confused with reality. That seemed more probable than that I really appealed to him on any level.

We open this week with another piece of unintentional irony. Once again, Stephenie [sic] Meyer manages to get both aspects of a particular situation wrong at the same time. She has even odds to get at least one right, but Twilight is such a masterpiece of suck that it's consistently wrong at a number of levels simultaneously.

It is true, of course, that Bella shouldn't appeal to Edward "on any level". First among these, of course, is that vampires eat people. Edward's attraction to Bella is like a person falling in love with a deer. Would you feel anything approaching romantic love for something that you hunt, kill, and eat? Now, to make the vampire mythos as sexually neutered as possible in this story, we'll eventually find out that the Cullen clan don't eat people anymore. (Come on, not even a Dexter or Morpheus the Living Vampire we-only-prey-on-bad-people thing? No. The vampires must be as nonthreatening as possible for maximum faux-bad boyness.) But as we'll discover, this doesn't in any way decrease their desire to eat humans. It's just that these are Zen vampires that hold their desires in check. So the point still stands. Edward has eaten lots of people, and he'd still eat people now if he didn't practice safe feeding. The notion that he'd have true romantic feelings toward a person is unthinkable. (Again, the Edward-as-villain plotline is just straining to come out here.)

That the prey animal Edward has a totally unbelievable fixation on is Bella makes it even more ludicrous. In all his decades of unlife, he's never come across anyone as enchanting as a 17-year-old girl he's shared probably four minutes of conversation with? I guess her high school-level command of the process of cell mitosis is pretty impressive stuff where Edward comes from! We'll be told later that Edward is drawn to Bella primarily because he can't read her mind. (Because Edward does that, you know.) Now I know I'm hardly the first to make this observation, but really, it's too easy:

Maybe he can't read her mind because there isn't anything to read.

But Meyer can't just get this wrong. No, a rich, powerful, dark, and mysterious man falling in love with the heroine for no discernable reason is part and parcel of hack romance novels. (Novels of this type written by good authors provide female protagonists who are believably irresistable to such men.) Any old crap writer can be not bothered to craft a plausible scenario in which two characters in a romantic story could actually fall in love with each other. It takes someone as monumentally untalented as Meyer to both do that and have an unbelievable scene in which the heroine recognises this fact, but for no reason at all! As noted, if you know Edward is a 100-year-old vampire, you can't believe his attraction to Bella. But Bella doesn't know this. All she knows is that Edward is a year ahead of her in school, is hot, and is kind of a creepy jerk. Why wouldn't she appeal to him? So far, every boy at the entire school has been asking her out! The most popular girl in school has made her her best galpal. And if that isn't enough, she's new to this tiny, isolated town that probably hasn't had any new blood since the Carter administration.

To cut Meyer as much slack as possible, this could possibly work if Bella were sheltered, naive, and socially inept, the way good Mormon parents like to think their good Mormon girls are. (They aren't.) In short, maybe if Bella had actually lived in Forks her whole life and been raised by Charlie, maybe I could buy that she reached age seventeen without seeing herself as attractive. But Bella grew up in Phoenix, raised by her pseudo-hippie New Age mother whose first question when she hears Bella likes a boy is, "Are you being safe?" I can't believe I'm saying this, but "he really likes me?"  is immature for high school. Think about what that means.

Even if Bella consciously rejects relationships, dating, and the high school social scene, it's not credible that she has no understanding of how it works, and since her arrival in Forks, she has shown she does know how the game is played. Once again Meyer wants to have her cake and eat it, too. She wants Bella to be popular and liked and desired even as she's standoff-ish, tragically hip, and withdrawn. She's written Bella as both naive and jaded, narcissitic and empathetic, passive-aggressive and...well, she got that one consistent. Bella has belief and understanding that she could never have formed without going through experiences that can't possibly have left her as innocent as she has to be to keep this "I don't know know why boys like me" foolishness going.

At this point Meyer informs us that Bella's mooning over whether or not Edward really said he wasn't going to talk to her because they shouldn't be friends hasn't been taking place in solitude. No, she's been doing this while--and I hope you're sitting down as you read this--ignoring the person she's with. That isn't my judgement; Bella tells us so. It's poor Jessica she's ignoring, again. Jessica, who apparently has no friends other than Bella, despite Bella's never once so far listening to anything Jessica had to say that wasn't about Edward. This time "Jessica babbled on and on about her dance plans...completely unaware of my inattention." That's our Bella!

Jessica finally stops "babbling" when she mentions Edward (because all talk that isn't about Edward is babble by definition), who's sitting alone instead of with the rest of the Cullen clan. He motions for Bella to come over, and Jessica reacts to this with "insulting astonishment", even though Bella is "star[ing] in disbelief". Right, so Jessica's disbelief that Edward would want to see Bella is insulting, while Bella's disbelief of the exact same thing at the exact same time is not. That's our Bella: She's right and everyone else is wrong, even when they have identical thoughts. I mean, I can't think of a more naked sign of authorial favour. When you're wrong, I'm right, and when you're right, I'm right. Isn't this the same person who earlier on this very page declared it more likely that she hallucinated an entire conversation than that Edward would find her appealing "in any way"? Yet Jessica's "astonishment" at this very thing is "insulting"?

Edward wants to see her because he "decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly". When Bella rightly points out that he's not making sense, he says, "I know[!]" and leaves it at that. Then why did he say it in the first place? Because he's the kind of person we here in normal-people land call something that rhymes with "brass pole". He eventually says he's "giving up" on trying to stay away from her. The two then descend into a bottomlessly silly exchange in which he says it's a problem that he says too much around her, so he says it so that she doesn't understand what it means. So why is it a problem? And how can he accidentally say "too much" if it's nonsensical? Then we go over the "I'm warning you, I'm dangerous" rigamorole all over again, because we readers are too dumb to get it the first 37 times.

Or maybe Meyer thinks that if she keeps saying it, we'll believe Edward really is dangerous.

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*Okay, I know I've said that attending high school for eternity would be a horrible fate. I mean, listening to teen-agers prattle on about nothing day after day as year after year slips past....So, Edward doesn't do that. I get it. But what exactly does he do? He doesn't talk to anyone, doesn't appear to study (he just reads the teachers' minds to find out what the answers they want)...what does he do in school for seven hours a day?

Twilight: The Abuser's Handbook

Twilight, pp. 74-84.

I know what you've been missing: Edward's controlling mind games and Bella's humiliation of romantic rivals. Well, your prayers are answered by the little spread of pages we have for this week. We've got plenty of both coming at us!

Back in biology class, E and B play peekaboo with each other, some more Bella's heart in palpitations that the creepy stalker is looking at her "for the first time in a half-dozen weeks" (half-dozen?).


I couldn't allow him to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. More than pathetic, it was unhealthy.


Occasional flashes of seeming self-awareness creep through in this section of the book. This is the sort of thing that I used to think indicated the author was intentionally portraying an emotionally disturbed young girl being tormented by an expert manipulator. Out of the context of the novel as a whole, you too, my little droogies, might think the same thing upon reading such lines. By the time we get much farther, though, it will become clear this is not the case. We are meant to be (mildly) frustrated that Bella doesn't see that only a man who truly loves you controls you. Rather than "unhealthy" or "pathetic", it's supposed to be romantic.

It's not.

Now as noted, Edward hasn't so much as looked at Bella for "a half-dozen weeks" (half-dozen?). Of course, after giving her the silent treatment for a while (Abuser's Handbook p. 121), he realises she's too passive to initiate contact herself (Handbook p. 124) and so he has to do even that for her (p. 127, sub-paragraph c). He does this by addressing her by name, which author Stephenie [sic] Meyer follows with two paragraphs of Bella mooning over how handsome he is. She then manages to say:

"What? Are you speaking to me again?" I finally asked, an unintentional note of petulance in my voice.

His lips twitched, fighting a smile. "No, not really [!]," he admitted.

I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly through my nose, aware that I was gritting my teeth. He waited.

"Then what do you want, Edward?" I asked, keeping my eyes closed; it was easier to talk to him coherently that way.

"I'm sorry." He sounded sincere. "I'm being very rude, I know. But it's better this way, really."

I opened my eyes. His face was very serious. "I don't know what you mean," I said, my voice guarded.

"It's better if we're not friends," he explained. "Trust me."


My eyes narrowed. I'd heard that before.


"It's better if we're not friends", even though I'm talking to you again for no reason other than to tell you we won't be talking. Which we haven't been talking for a half-dozen weeks (half-dozen?). But now that we're talking, I want you to know that we won't be talking. Again. You know, after this.

Mixed message much?

I also can't figure out any way to picture Bella carrying on half of this exchange with her eyes closed the entire time that isn't hilarious. Especially when she could simply look toward the front of the room where the teacher is.

She then ludicrously accuses him of regretting his decision to Superman the van away from her, at which point it's his turn to be petulant with a "You don't know anything" that, well, I guess a real seventeen-year-old might come up with. Bella drops her books (endearing clumsiness, her humanising flaw!*), and Edward uses his vampiric speed to stack them and hand them to her before she even decides to bend down to pick them up. This use of vampire powers to complete mundane tasks will be a recurring motif of this book, and it just gets more infuriating every time. I'm continuously amazed by how wrong Meyer gets everything in this book. She's somehow able both to make vampirism more appealing (by removing all the drawbacks associated with it, like drinking human blood, dying in sunlight, and oh yeah, eternal damnation of your immortal soul) and simultaneously less appealing (by making it prosaic and banal). Instead of living in castles, hiding in shadows, swooping down on unsuspecting humans to feed on, and seducing people with their mysterious powers, Twilight vampires go to high school, show up to work, commute by car, and use their powers to stack books, play baseball, and watch young girls sleep in their rooms.

After mutual icy retorts, we're thankfully spared further interaction between our main characters for a little while. Sadly, this is only for poor Eric to ask Bella to the Not Sadie Hawkins Day dance. She of course rejects him, causing him to "slouch" off, no doubt to contemplate suicide. Either that or just to accept one of the invitations from the nicer and likely cuter girls who've already asked him. For added hatred, Edward, somehow there, laughs at the poor kid, knowing that his vampiric powers (I guess?) have already made Bella his. The book is maddeningly vague on whether or not the vampires have the power of hypnotism. Considering they're described as perfectly beautiful and lacking any putrid stench of the grave or icy touch of a body with no hot blood running through it, it seems they would hardly need such a power. Bella has described herself as "unable" not to look at him, but this comes across more as inept "romance" than vampiric power. [Future Carl Eusebius: Plus, Bella will turn out to be immune to all vampiric powers.] Still, I don't know why else Edward would be amused that she turned down the invitation of one guy that she never showed any interest in to a dance she's never expressed any desire to go to. Whatever his reason, though, it doesn't seem anything other than mean-spirited and petty. Which describes, I suppose, the only reasons Edward ever does anything in this story.

Edward uses his Volvo (really?) to block Bella into the car park. She briefly considers ramming his car with her 100% red-blooded American truck--raising the tantalising possibility of making the Volvo "the foreign car it had destroyed" back on page 8--but decides not to. Then Tyler Crowley (the fellow whose van Edward Superman-pushed away from Bella, you'll remember) chooses this moment to leave his vehicle (running) behind hers to approach her truck in the middle of the car park lane and...do I even need to say it?

"Will you ask me to the spring dance?"


Quickly shut down, Tyler promises that "We still have prom" and returns to his vehicle. (Bella has now been asked to this dance by every male in the book so far except Edward, her father, and the biology teacher!) Edward is looking at Bella in his rearview mirror (but vampires don't--oh, forget it!) and "shaking with laughter". Okay, I give up, my droogies. What's so funny about a girl rejecting guys? Why is this so hilarious? A century-old vampire is amused by a couple of guys failing to take a particular girl to a particular high school dance? I know I keep banging on about this high school thing, but really, it boggles the mind. How can you live for a century and then go back to high school even for a month, much less however long Edward Cullen has been doing it? How can you take any interest in anything that happens or anyone you encounter? Maybe I was wrong about Meyer's softening of vampirism. Attend high school for the rest of eternity? These vampires truly are damned.

I can't think of any way "century-old vampire going to high school" can work that doesn't make Edward the villain. Imagine: All his vampiric powers plus one hundred years of experience manipulating people, running amok amongst a bunch of teen-agers with raging hormones, a measure of freedom, and no brains. But Twilight isn't interested in any kind of real danger, because it's born of adolescent fear of maturity: responsibility, committed love, and (ewwwww!) sex.

So its vampire is neutered, its heroine is passive, and its narrative is toothless.

The chapter ends with E and B meeting in the school car park again that next morning. E declares he wants to be B's friend, even though it's "more prudent" for Bella not to agree to this. (Spoiler: She does agree to it.)


"You really should stay away from me," he warned.


I bet Ted Bundy used that line. Of course, in his case, unlike Edward's, it's actually true.



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* Flaws not guaranteed to be genuine. Void where prohibited.

Twilight: Look! Up in the sky!

Twilight, pp. 58-67

So, after finding out that Edward's rescue left an Edward-shaped dent in the tan car Bella was nearly smashed against--another dent that no-one but Bella ever notices--we deal with the aftermath.

First, Bella argues with Edward about how he reached her so quickly (and not about how he stopped a speeding van with--okay, okay, sorry) until the ambulance shows up to take her away. Next, her father shows up at the hospital, filled with concern for his daughter, so she does the only appropriate thing: She 'tune[s] him out' so she can think about Edward. Then, the driver of the van is wheeled into place next to her, and he demands to know how Bella was able to get out of the way so fast. I guess I'm confused here, but after having both seen the movie and read the book, it's clear Bella didn't get out of the way at all. Edward got between her and the van and physically pushed it to a stop. Again, though, no-one appeared to take note of this, including Bella herself, despite the fact that the entire parking lot watched this occur. (Note that the van's driver saw Bella quickly move out of the way--ignoring for the moment the fact that she didn't--but failed to notice Edward stop the van with his bare hands.) The driver is apologetic, even though it was an accident and Bella was not seriously injured, so Bella responds by ignoring him as well.

Dr. Cullen puts in an appearance, and...well, I don't have much to say about him. As I noted in a previous entry, the other Cullens are pretty bland and indistinguishable, at least in this first novel. The only giggle-inducing moment is that '[h]e was young', and indeed, in the film he looks practically the same age as Edward. So a man who looks to be in his late twenties at most has adopted a bunch of high-school kids. This doesn't turn any heads, in this small town that supposedly annoys Charlie with its gossip?

They're pretty forgiving up there in Washington.

Dr. Cullen tells Bella she is free to go, so she demands to speak to Edward alone ('Your father is waiting for you,' Edward says, but I think we all know how much weight that statement carries with our Bella) to go over the 'how did you move so fast?' thing again, though at least this time she does toss in that he bench-pressed a van. To add to the hilarity, Edward, who has consistently lied to Bella about where he was standing, balks at lying to her about stiff-arming the van, instead responding with the non-denial 'Nobody will believe that, you know.' That's okay, though, because

'I'm not going to tell anybody.' I said each word slowly, carefully controlling my anger.

Surprise flitted across his face. 'Then why does it matter?'

'It matters to me,' I insisted. 'I don't like to lie--so there'd better be a good reason why I'm doing it.'

Raise your hand if you think he gives her a good reason, or any reason at all. No-one? Good, you've been paying attention. It's even funnier because we know that Bella's definition of a good reason to lie is pretty generous. Plus, and I hate to point this out--oh, who I am kidding?--but in this case, she isn't actually lying. She's choosing not to tell people what she saw, which is understandable since what she saw was impossible and she did suffer head trauma. So far, no-one has asked her, 'Bella, did you see Edward display superhuman strength and speed?' Imagine you saw your boss momentarily float in midair in the middle of the office and then decided not to tell anybody what you thought you'd seen, as none of your co-workers apparently saw it. Is that lying?

This has been such a heart-warming conversation for Edward and Bella that they 'scowl at each other in silence', a silence Bella breaks with a meta-Freudian slip.

'Why did you even bother?' I asked frigidly.

Okay, Novel. If you're going to make the jokes, can I stop reading?

Bella, 'not in the mood for chitchat' such as her father's question, 'What did the doctor say?', 'barely knew Charlie was there' as he takes the ungrateful brat home. She eventually reveals that she is 'consumed by the mystery Edward presented', and I have to admit to be a little intrigued by this mystery as well. Why is he such a colossal jerk? Why does he attend high school? What does he see in an average high school girl that he hasn't encountered in the previous century?

I was consumed by the mystery Edward presented. And more than a little obsessed by Edward himself.

Oh, really? I hadn't noticed.

Twilight: When an Irresistible Plot Device Meets an Emotionless Object

Twilight, pp. 53-57

I threw down a quick bowl of cereal and some orange juice from the carton. I felt excited to go to school, and that scared me. I knew it wasn't the stimulating learning environment I was anticipating, or seeing my new set of friends. If I was being honest with myself, I knew I was eager to get to school because I would see Edward Cullen. And that was very, very stupid.

You know, as I go through this book a second time, I hate it a lot more. With the tide of badness washing over you, it's easy to miss the little things. Take this paragraph here.

First, I had no idea the phrase 'throw down' referred to eating. I know its literal meaning, and I know it's a seldom-used euphemism for fighting, but I didn't know people referred to eating food quickly as 'throwing down'. I got a good laugh, though, by my literal reading of the phrase. I pictured Bella, in a chipper mood for the first time in the story, cheerfully making a bowl of cereal and then throwing it on the floor. Then, rather than throwing the carton of orange juice down after it, she pours some juice into her hand and throws that on the floor. Go ahead, picture it. Might as well get some amusement out of this thing. (No, I didn't picture her fighting with her cereal, but that would've been awesome.)

Notice how, yet again, Bella utterly dismisses people she calls friends, who have been nothing but considerate and friendly despite her generally gloomy demeanour and cutting remarks. Maybe this is an accurate portrayal of an average teenager (though I remember liking my friends, and even wanting to see them on occasion), but it comes off as a kind of psychosis. Edward is the only thing that matters, and every other contact is all but shut out. Whenever she's not talking to Edward, she's thinking about Edward, even when other people are talking to her. I don't know how she continues to pass her classes, since she treats schoolwork the same way she treats her friends (as distractions from Edward). In fact, this is yet another point at which I can see an interesting direction the novel might have taken. (Go ahead, try it yourself.) What if Bella, the socially inexperienced girl with excellent marks, falls so hard for Edward that her grades start to slip, jeopardising her future?

But no, that would introduce some conflict into the story, since Edward would then not be perfect for Bella. It really is a mark of how much vampires have been neutered in contemporary culture. Edward can lust for human blood, but he can't cause Bella to get a B in chemistry!

I'm beginning to suspect Charlie is a very private man and is also constantly busy so that Meyer doesn't have to portray Bella shutting him out as she does her friends. Throughout the book (and, I'm given to understand, in future stories as well), Charlie comes off as the most sympathetic character. We see another example of this here:

Charlie had gotten up who knows how early to put snow chains on my truck.

Chief Swan comes off as a decent, loving father, and Bella remains self-centred, deceitful, and ungrateful.

We also see also another instance of Bella's maddening contradictory traits. She breezes through all her classes, an advanced prep, straight-A student, but she is 'scared' because she is 'excited about going to school'.

And I was suspicious of [Edward]; why should he lie about his eyes?

Bella here is referring to Edward's evasiveness about his eyes changing colour--to what end, I've no idea--but I still find it amusing that his lie about not having a chance to introduce himself gets a pass. Then there's this gem:

...Mike's puppy dog behaviour and Eric's apparent rivalry with him were disconcerting. I wasn't sure if I didn't prefer being ignored.

So when Mike sat next to Bella and escorted her to her next class while Eric looked on with jealousy, 'that was flattering', but now the exact same behaviour is 'disconcerting'. What's happened here?

Well you see, Oh My Brothers, now Bella has Edward, who is higher up in the food chain. So now the other two boys' desire for Bella and their rivalry with each other is meaningless, and hence their antics now annoy Bella.

Now we get another moment that made me laugh out loud the first time I saw the Twilight film. But first, the set-up.

Edward Cullen was standing four cars down from me, staring at me in horror. His face stood out from a sea of faces, all frozen in the same mask of shock. But of more immediate importance was the dark blue van that was skidding, tires locked and squealing against the brakes, spinning wildly across the ice of the parking lot. It was going to hit the back corner of my truck, and I was standing between them. I didn't even have time to close my eyes.
But a lot of other people had time to hear the sound of the brakes, turn to look, recognise what is happening, and assume shocked expressions. Unless 'a sea of' people were already all looking at Bella. And surely that wouldn't be the case.

Just before I heard the shattering crunch of the van folding around the truck bed, something hit me, hard, but not from the direction I was expecting. My head cracked against the icy blacktop, and I felt something solid and cold pinning me to the ground.

I hope you see the romance in 'Edward violently shoves Bella into hard surfaces', because this won't be the last time we'll see it.

I was lying on the pavement behind the tan car I'd parked next to. But I didn't have a chance to notice anything else, because the van was still coming. It had curled gratingly around the end of the truck and, still spinning and sliding, was about to collide with me again.

A low oath made me aware that someone was with me, and the voice was impossible not to recognise. Two long, white hands shot out protectively in front of me, and the van shuddered to a stop a foot from my face, the large hands fitting providentially into a deep dent in the side of the van's body.

Wow, two unnecessary adverbs in the same sentence! Meyer has outdone herself. (Plus, 'providentially' is used incorrectly, given what Bella says about the dents [sic] later.) Bella is fine, of course, and there are some words exchanged to this effect, during which Edward speaks in a 'low, frantic voice' and assumes a 'concerned, innocent expression'. Some vampire. When Father Callahan lamented the world no longer had Evil for him to confront, just evil, the vampire Barlow showed him the error of his thinking in 'Salem's Lot's most powerful scene. ('Come, false priest. Learn of a true religion. Take my communion!')* One gets the feeling Callahan's faith would be more than adequate to send Edward fleeing back to his coffin--err, crypt--err, stately Cullen manor just outside of town.

Then we get the novel's version of one of my favourite moments in the Twilight film:

'How in the...' I trailed off, trying to clear my head, get my bearings. 'How did you get over here so fast?'

'I was standing right next to you, Bella,' he said, his tone serious again.

I'm not sure exactly why I find this exchange so hilarious, but I do. After Edward stops a speeding van with his bare hands, Bella demands to know...how he reached her so quickly. I can't tell you how hard I laughed once I realised she was never going to bring up his superhuman strength and durability, not to Edward or to anyone else. She will pursue him relentlessly about how he got from where she saw him standing to where she was, but she never thinks to herself that it's a wee bit strange that he was able to stop an out-of-control vehicle barrelling towards him just by pushing on it. No, the reason her puzzler hurts is that he seemed to be standing far away. He mentions that she has a concussion and that's why she doesn't realise where he was (frankly, not a bad explanation), but she's convinced.

To be fair, the novel does have Bella bring up his leaving hand-prints in the side of the van from pushing it to a stop, but only later, in the hospital, and after she's harped on the 'how were you there so fast?' bit.

I'm sorry, but I'd sooner demand an explanation of 'you stopped a speeding van with your bare hands' than 'I thought you were standing over there'.**

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*We'll just ignore Callahan's appearance in the later Dark Tower books. Should be easy to do, since after reading the later Dark Tower books, I slammed my head into the desk until I dislodged all memory of them.
**Good thing nobody notices the van has two hand-shaped dents in it, eh?