Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Breaking dawn + reflection

This will be a multi-part post because im writing it on an ipad, which is a stupid machine that limits how long your posts can be.
The asinine final chapter of twilight concerns the birth of Edward and Bella's child, an ultimate showdown of vampires that amounts to nothing, and way too much stupid description about Bella becoming a vampire. I'm gonna blow through the plot here so's I can commence to bitching about the book sooner.
There's a wedding, blah blah blah, they go to brazil for their honeymoon and Bella gets knocked up right away. The way this book deals with sex is one of the most laughable things about it. The morning after their wedding night, Bella wakes up and finds herself covered in feathers because Edward had to bite the pillow to keep from totally destroying Bella's vagina. First of all, wow, real subtle there. Second, it is obvious to me that stephenie meyer is not at all familiar with the term "pillow biter" or it's attendant connotations. If you are unfamiliar, go watch waiting for Guffman, or just think about it logically for two seconds. It's hilarious, that you would spend three books building this man up as the most amazing specimen of masculinity, then as soon as he hits the sheets you unintentionally tag him with the derisive term for a gay bottom. And yes, i have now taken to referring to stephenie meyer in the second person. That is how damaging these books have been to my world.
As far as I can tell, Edward and Bella manage to have sex exactly twice before her pregnancy starts causing such horrific complications she needs to be bedridden. See, after the first time, Edward has all the pangs of guilt over it because... She had bruises on her thighs afterward. Yeah. Apparently during his 150 years on earth, nobody ever told him there are other positions than just pounding away at some chicks open legs. Also, bruises means you got off easy, sweetheart. So anyway, the pregnancy absolutely rips Bella a new one. She can't keep anything down, the baby kicks her so hard it breaks her ribs, etc. this part of the book is actually kinda fun, seeing Bella finally, finally suffer as bad as she has deserved to all this time. Unfortunately, we are cheated out of experiencing it through her pov because the narration abruptly shifts to Jacob at this point, for no reason. Hey, I'll take any respite from the tortured prose of Bellas pov, but you'd think the one time it'd be important to be in the characters head is during the most horrendously painful experience of her life. But that's stephenie Meyer for you, the woman who has deomnstrated over and over that she doesn't understand how literature works.
So after something like 2 months of pregnancy, the baby comes, snaps her spine in half, and Edward has no choice but to turn her into a vampire. Obviously he'd wanted to all this time because everyone was afraid the baby would kill her, but she refused. Ok, we all know it's good to respect your wife's wishes, but this is a person who openly acknowledges she doesn't know what's good for her. Sometimes you have to grow a pair and do what somebody doesn't want you to do. This gets at the heart of what is most fundamentally wrong with this whole series, which I'll return to later. She miraculously survives through some combination of vampire venom and morphine, but not before experiencing the most incredible pain imaginable. Then boom, she's a vampire.
A whole lot of nothing happens between the baby's birth and the ostensible climax of the series. But before I get to that, let me just point out that she names the baby reneesme. Bellas mom is Renee, Edwards adoptive vampire mom is esme. If you had a friend who did that, you would never stop making fun of them. But since this is Bella, everyone acts like its no big deal. So during the early stages of her vampirism, everybody is totally interested in what her vampire power would. And Bella is so pathetic that when no extraordinary power is apparent, people start assuming her power is that she's ale to control herself from not biting humans... Better? Than other newborn vampires. I'll just skip to the end and tell you her power turns out to be creating a psychic "shield" that can protect herself and others from other vampire powers, kind of like Invisible Woman from the Fantastic Four, or the daughter from the Incredibles if youre too young to know what that is.

(continued in part 2)

1 comment:

Austin said...

I once had a theory that Stephenie Meyer was part of some elaborate troll and she was going to show how stupid everyone is for liking these 'books.' then this one came out and i came to the realization "omg, she thinks she's awesome and is completely serious." which actually made it even funnier.