Why Breaking Dawn Sucked Balls
Generally, I think there is way more Twilight bashing than the books deserve, but I think we all had a bone to pick with Breaking Dawn, so here's some rant for you all.
(Spoilers, PG)
Having read the much anticipated fourth and final book in the Twilight series, I am… honestly stunned. I would like to start off with a few good things about the book, but I really can’t think of any. It was that bad. I mean, damn, was Stephenie Meyer drunk when she wrote this? Or taking a spin on the Pineapple Express? My ass could have written a more articulate story. The entire book had that ‘there are no more coming in this series, so I’m not going to bother making this one good’ feel to it. Yes, the first book was empty headed and vapid, yes, the second was pointless and dull, and yes, the third book was painfully predictable and not at all clever, but that's not the point. They were enjoyable. I was glad to have read them. Breaking Dawn, on the other hand, just drove me crazy. It absolutely took the literature’pocalypse cake for shear balls-suckedness. The following is a somewhat orderly account of what was wrong with this book.
1) Book three ends with Jacob sort of redeeming himself and saying he’s going to try a little harder to be everyone’s friend. What happened to his evolving character? What happened to him growing up? Jacob went from being one of my favorite characters to one of my least favorite in a few (badly written) paragraphs. The whole Jacob vs. Cullens conflict dragged on about two books too many.
2) Then he comes racing back for her wedding, because, apparently, all is forgiven on the day that his worst nightmares come to fruition. Then, when he learns Bella and Edward are going to have sex, he freaks out all over again. Seriously, though, Jacob made less of a fool of himself when he thought Bella was just becoming a vampire back when he still thought vampires were animated rocks or whatever.
3) Bella blackmails Edward into having sex with her. And then he goes on emo tour and feels all violated because he thinks she didn’t like it. What? Did he get stupid or something? Obviously she liked it. I don’t think she’s a good enough liar to fake it.
4) Isn’t love based on trust? Because these two trust each other less than… than… than I trust either of the upcoming presidential candidates. Which is to say, not a terrible lot. Like, none, actually.
5) Whoa. Edward is potent. They have sex three times and, bam, there’s a bun in the oven! He should sell is macho super-sperm on the internet for much moneys.
6) Bella’s greatest fear is becoming like Renee. Played against her want to make Edward happy, her fear was stronger, which is why she held off marrying him. She gets embarrassed when people even think she could be pregnant. Edward is the exact opposite. Probably because of his upbringing in the early 1900’s, he wants to live the life of a good, Christian human. He believes in God, heaven and hell. He believes in saving his virtue to save his soul. He believes that a fetus is more important than a woman. He actually told Bella he wished she was pregnant, which is unusual, as Edward hardly ever admits to wanting anything other than Bella’s love. Enter pregnancy. Exit character development. Bella goes totally gaga for her lovely little nuptial bundle, leaping happily into a life she previously spat on, while Edward instantly turns against everything he’s ever confessed to wanting and decides to knife the poor thing before it can cause any trouble. What the hell happened here?
7) Humans age slowly. Vampires don’t age at all. So naturally human plus vampire equals miracle grow. Er… right? This whole thing stank of ‘I’m too lazy to write all nine months so let’s get the damn thing over with.’
8) Edward asks Jacob to have sex with Bella. Ummmm... wut?
9) And then Bella goes and bashes adoption and surget children and stuff. What’s with that, Bella? And because Stephenie chose to write outside of Bella’s perspective for the pregnancy, we have no idea why this fetus in particular has completely changed all of her values. I mean, she loves the thing more than Charlie, Edward, Jacob, her vampire family: basically everyone she’s hurting by keeping it. She loves it more than she loves herself. And that isn’t something that automatically comes with pregnancy. Lots of women abort, or put their children up for adoption once they’re born. A little explanation might help.
10) The whole thing was preachy. Marriage before sex. Abortion is a sin. Blah, blah, blah. Bottom line: don’t need to hear it. Miss Meyer’s a Mormon, and I’m getting pretty fed up with her religious propaganda. I have no problems with God. I love God. I love life. I just don’t like it messing with my girl-porn (aka: sappy vampire romance novels).
11) Stephenie Meyer says that she supports gay rights, and says that there are gay vampires. So why are none of them in the book? Isn’t it like, one out of every twenty college students are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transsexual? And not a single member of the cast was looking at someone with matching chromosomes and licking their lips. Way to stand by your morals on that one, Steph.
12) Jacob being a sexist brat. Seriously. It was sort of over the top. Why is Bella attracted to guys who want to push her around? Jacob thinks he could just hold her down and tear the fetus right out of her womb. Edward ignored all of Bella’s ideas throughout… like, pretty much all of the books, starting when he won’t listen to her ideas about James in book one.
13) Bella doesn’t stand up for Rosalie. Neither does Edward, or Emmett, or anyone else Carlisle should have, at least, as he was on her side about letting Bella choose.
14) Shouldn’t Bella worry about Charlie thinking she has a mysterious tropical disease? Gone over night: oh noes, Charlie’s going to kill himself! Dying of bird flu: woot, glad we got him off my back. His character isn’t needed for another 500 pages, and lord knows his cop uniform smells like feat.
15) What on earth is she going to tell Renee?
16) …And why is Jacob revealing himself any better? If Charlie was ever investigated by the Aro, he’d still be a human who knew too much, if we take into account the mentioned ‘rest of the supernatural world,’ all those moon-children and stuff, then we can assume knowing about any supernatural creatures is a capital crime.
17) Jacob’s plan wasn’t clever. Why do Bella and Edward forgive him so easily? Isn’t Bella supposed to be stubborn? Isn't Edward easily opinionated?
18) Jacob pulled Renesmee out of Bella’s arms, the first time Bella got to see her own daughter. In real life, Bella would have torn his head off, best friend or not.
19) Renesmee.
20) Carlie.
21) Cullen.
22) Was this book written by a ten-year-old?
23) How I hate her! “I’m so powerful… I’m so clever… I have nothing to do with a consistent plot…”
24) Geesh, Alice sucks all of a sudden. Let’s face the obvious: she only stayed hidden for about five minutes once the meeting began before prancing out into the open. Why bother with the disappearing act at all? Which leads me to the bigger factor: this entire plotline was choppy and tacked on. Stephenie obviously made up the ‘Aro wants Alice more than Edward’ strand as an excuse to put it into action, even though Edward already said he wanted them both.
25) The book is 750 pages long. Remind me again why we needed the whole filler arc about Bella printing out fake papers for Renesmee.
26) Why did the wolves decide to kill the baby, again? There really wasn’t even an attempt to rationalize that. Do the math, people. Strong plus weak equals average. Technically, any child of a vampire and a human should be weaker than the vampire alone. Plus, it’s being raised by the Cullens, who they suddenly have faith in. Shouldn’t the Cullens be just as capable of controlling the thing if it got out of hand as the wolves? The idea of storming Cullen Manor to protect the wolf pack is absurd.
27) Way too many new characters, way too many powers. Stephenie Meyer just threw her editing to into the blender for this one, didn’t she? None of the vampires that came to stand as witnesses were important or progressive at all, seeing as there was no battle.
28) There was no battle.
29) Benjamin’s power. Is this a novel, or a volume of manga? I was half expecting Speedracer to leap out from behind a wall, a delicate, scantily clad cat girl perched across each of his shoulders, and cleave Aro in two with a sword the size of a small whale. (“Naruto clones, seize him! Ulquiorra, you bring up the back!”)
30) There was no battle! None! Nada, zip, zero-
31) Why did the Volturi bring witnesses? They never did that before. And why did they bring the wives? We never even learned the wives’ names, or where the witnesses were from. For a book written by a woman, Breaking Dawn is surprisingly non-uplifting.
32) Most anti-climactic ending ever, in the history of the universe, ever!!
33) The plot didn’t unravel. It didn’t unfurl. It bust, like the sticky insides of a rotting egg (a gory memento to a chance at life) over an already somewhat jeopardized and moldy cob salad, spewing runny, yellow-green shards of the body’s largest cell all over an assortment of wilted, seemingly unrelated characters and lettuce.
34) I don’t know about any of you, but nobody I have ever talked to has dreams that relevant. I’d go to sleep after learning about the immortal children and dream about self aware home fries running a divorce agency in my aunt’s bathtub, and I don’t think I’m that un-average for saying so. Which leads me to believe Stephenie was just looking for a cheap plot device to express the emotions that she was otherwise incapable of illustrating.
35) Suddenly introduction of cousins- a swarm of more human-vampires crawl out of the woodwork at random with no foreshadowing or anything. Wow. That wasn’t sudden and chalky and poorly thought out at all. [/sarcasm]
36) I wasn’t comforted by the knowledge that Renesmee would live forever. Wouldn’t the real victory have come from her living out a mostly human life with Jacob and be able to… you know, prove that being human isn’t all bad? Help heal the ties between vampires and humans and fake werewolves?
37) Jacob imprinting on Renesmee. Oh. Gross. That’s like… if I dated one of my mom’s boyfriends. And it’s like that because that’s exactly what is going on.
38) Fake werewolves. Where did that come from? And why is it important in the slightest?
39) Finally, it was boring. Actually, really boring. I think Bella changed way too early in the book. It ruined the element of danger and the sort of cheery comedy whenever human-Bella tripped over things. This book wasn’t cute. It wasn’t sweet or heartwarming. It wasn’t exciting. It was an epic fail. Summary in ten seconds: boring boring SEX boring boring Jacob’s an ass, boring boring… How many chapters are in this thing?... boring boring boring… Oh. Look. It’s over. Can I have my sixteen dollars back, please?
End.
I apologize to everyone I’ve offended. Had to get that off my chest. Please feel free to post a rebuttal to any of the statements listed above. That’s why they’re numbered. Please feel double free to add your own complaints.
(Spoilers, PG)
Having read the much anticipated fourth and final book in the Twilight series, I am… honestly stunned. I would like to start off with a few good things about the book, but I really can’t think of any. It was that bad. I mean, damn, was Stephenie Meyer drunk when she wrote this? Or taking a spin on the Pineapple Express? My ass could have written a more articulate story. The entire book had that ‘there are no more coming in this series, so I’m not going to bother making this one good’ feel to it. Yes, the first book was empty headed and vapid, yes, the second was pointless and dull, and yes, the third book was painfully predictable and not at all clever, but that's not the point. They were enjoyable. I was glad to have read them. Breaking Dawn, on the other hand, just drove me crazy. It absolutely took the literature’pocalypse cake for shear balls-suckedness. The following is a somewhat orderly account of what was wrong with this book.
1) Book three ends with Jacob sort of redeeming himself and saying he’s going to try a little harder to be everyone’s friend. What happened to his evolving character? What happened to him growing up? Jacob went from being one of my favorite characters to one of my least favorite in a few (badly written) paragraphs. The whole Jacob vs. Cullens conflict dragged on about two books too many.
2) Then he comes racing back for her wedding, because, apparently, all is forgiven on the day that his worst nightmares come to fruition. Then, when he learns Bella and Edward are going to have sex, he freaks out all over again. Seriously, though, Jacob made less of a fool of himself when he thought Bella was just becoming a vampire back when he still thought vampires were animated rocks or whatever.
3) Bella blackmails Edward into having sex with her. And then he goes on emo tour and feels all violated because he thinks she didn’t like it. What? Did he get stupid or something? Obviously she liked it. I don’t think she’s a good enough liar to fake it.
4) Isn’t love based on trust? Because these two trust each other less than… than… than I trust either of the upcoming presidential candidates. Which is to say, not a terrible lot. Like, none, actually.
5) Whoa. Edward is potent. They have sex three times and, bam, there’s a bun in the oven! He should sell is macho super-sperm on the internet for much moneys.
6) Bella’s greatest fear is becoming like Renee. Played against her want to make Edward happy, her fear was stronger, which is why she held off marrying him. She gets embarrassed when people even think she could be pregnant. Edward is the exact opposite. Probably because of his upbringing in the early 1900’s, he wants to live the life of a good, Christian human. He believes in God, heaven and hell. He believes in saving his virtue to save his soul. He believes that a fetus is more important than a woman. He actually told Bella he wished she was pregnant, which is unusual, as Edward hardly ever admits to wanting anything other than Bella’s love. Enter pregnancy. Exit character development. Bella goes totally gaga for her lovely little nuptial bundle, leaping happily into a life she previously spat on, while Edward instantly turns against everything he’s ever confessed to wanting and decides to knife the poor thing before it can cause any trouble. What the hell happened here?
7) Humans age slowly. Vampires don’t age at all. So naturally human plus vampire equals miracle grow. Er… right? This whole thing stank of ‘I’m too lazy to write all nine months so let’s get the damn thing over with.’
8) Edward asks Jacob to have sex with Bella. Ummmm... wut?
9) And then Bella goes and bashes adoption and surget children and stuff. What’s with that, Bella? And because Stephenie chose to write outside of Bella’s perspective for the pregnancy, we have no idea why this fetus in particular has completely changed all of her values. I mean, she loves the thing more than Charlie, Edward, Jacob, her vampire family: basically everyone she’s hurting by keeping it. She loves it more than she loves herself. And that isn’t something that automatically comes with pregnancy. Lots of women abort, or put their children up for adoption once they’re born. A little explanation might help.
10) The whole thing was preachy. Marriage before sex. Abortion is a sin. Blah, blah, blah. Bottom line: don’t need to hear it. Miss Meyer’s a Mormon, and I’m getting pretty fed up with her religious propaganda. I have no problems with God. I love God. I love life. I just don’t like it messing with my girl-porn (aka: sappy vampire romance novels).
11) Stephenie Meyer says that she supports gay rights, and says that there are gay vampires. So why are none of them in the book? Isn’t it like, one out of every twenty college students are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transsexual? And not a single member of the cast was looking at someone with matching chromosomes and licking their lips. Way to stand by your morals on that one, Steph.
12) Jacob being a sexist brat. Seriously. It was sort of over the top. Why is Bella attracted to guys who want to push her around? Jacob thinks he could just hold her down and tear the fetus right out of her womb. Edward ignored all of Bella’s ideas throughout… like, pretty much all of the books, starting when he won’t listen to her ideas about James in book one.
13) Bella doesn’t stand up for Rosalie. Neither does Edward, or Emmett, or anyone else Carlisle should have, at least, as he was on her side about letting Bella choose.
14) Shouldn’t Bella worry about Charlie thinking she has a mysterious tropical disease? Gone over night: oh noes, Charlie’s going to kill himself! Dying of bird flu: woot, glad we got him off my back. His character isn’t needed for another 500 pages, and lord knows his cop uniform smells like feat.
15) What on earth is she going to tell Renee?
16) …And why is Jacob revealing himself any better? If Charlie was ever investigated by the Aro, he’d still be a human who knew too much, if we take into account the mentioned ‘rest of the supernatural world,’ all those moon-children and stuff, then we can assume knowing about any supernatural creatures is a capital crime.
17) Jacob’s plan wasn’t clever. Why do Bella and Edward forgive him so easily? Isn’t Bella supposed to be stubborn? Isn't Edward easily opinionated?
18) Jacob pulled Renesmee out of Bella’s arms, the first time Bella got to see her own daughter. In real life, Bella would have torn his head off, best friend or not.
19) Renesmee.
20) Carlie.
21) Cullen.
22) Was this book written by a ten-year-old?
23) How I hate her! “I’m so powerful… I’m so clever… I have nothing to do with a consistent plot…”
24) Geesh, Alice sucks all of a sudden. Let’s face the obvious: she only stayed hidden for about five minutes once the meeting began before prancing out into the open. Why bother with the disappearing act at all? Which leads me to the bigger factor: this entire plotline was choppy and tacked on. Stephenie obviously made up the ‘Aro wants Alice more than Edward’ strand as an excuse to put it into action, even though Edward already said he wanted them both.
25) The book is 750 pages long. Remind me again why we needed the whole filler arc about Bella printing out fake papers for Renesmee.
26) Why did the wolves decide to kill the baby, again? There really wasn’t even an attempt to rationalize that. Do the math, people. Strong plus weak equals average. Technically, any child of a vampire and a human should be weaker than the vampire alone. Plus, it’s being raised by the Cullens, who they suddenly have faith in. Shouldn’t the Cullens be just as capable of controlling the thing if it got out of hand as the wolves? The idea of storming Cullen Manor to protect the wolf pack is absurd.
27) Way too many new characters, way too many powers. Stephenie Meyer just threw her editing to into the blender for this one, didn’t she? None of the vampires that came to stand as witnesses were important or progressive at all, seeing as there was no battle.
28) There was no battle.
29) Benjamin’s power. Is this a novel, or a volume of manga? I was half expecting Speedracer to leap out from behind a wall, a delicate, scantily clad cat girl perched across each of his shoulders, and cleave Aro in two with a sword the size of a small whale. (“Naruto clones, seize him! Ulquiorra, you bring up the back!”)
30) There was no battle! None! Nada, zip, zero-
31) Why did the Volturi bring witnesses? They never did that before. And why did they bring the wives? We never even learned the wives’ names, or where the witnesses were from. For a book written by a woman, Breaking Dawn is surprisingly non-uplifting.
32) Most anti-climactic ending ever, in the history of the universe, ever!!
33) The plot didn’t unravel. It didn’t unfurl. It bust, like the sticky insides of a rotting egg (a gory memento to a chance at life) over an already somewhat jeopardized and moldy cob salad, spewing runny, yellow-green shards of the body’s largest cell all over an assortment of wilted, seemingly unrelated characters and lettuce.
34) I don’t know about any of you, but nobody I have ever talked to has dreams that relevant. I’d go to sleep after learning about the immortal children and dream about self aware home fries running a divorce agency in my aunt’s bathtub, and I don’t think I’m that un-average for saying so. Which leads me to believe Stephenie was just looking for a cheap plot device to express the emotions that she was otherwise incapable of illustrating.
35) Suddenly introduction of cousins- a swarm of more human-vampires crawl out of the woodwork at random with no foreshadowing or anything. Wow. That wasn’t sudden and chalky and poorly thought out at all. [/sarcasm]
36) I wasn’t comforted by the knowledge that Renesmee would live forever. Wouldn’t the real victory have come from her living out a mostly human life with Jacob and be able to… you know, prove that being human isn’t all bad? Help heal the ties between vampires and humans and fake werewolves?
37) Jacob imprinting on Renesmee. Oh. Gross. That’s like… if I dated one of my mom’s boyfriends. And it’s like that because that’s exactly what is going on.
38) Fake werewolves. Where did that come from? And why is it important in the slightest?
39) Finally, it was boring. Actually, really boring. I think Bella changed way too early in the book. It ruined the element of danger and the sort of cheery comedy whenever human-Bella tripped over things. This book wasn’t cute. It wasn’t sweet or heartwarming. It wasn’t exciting. It was an epic fail. Summary in ten seconds: boring boring SEX boring boring Jacob’s an ass, boring boring… How many chapters are in this thing?... boring boring boring… Oh. Look. It’s over. Can I have my sixteen dollars back, please?
End.
I apologize to everyone I’ve offended. Had to get that off my chest. Please feel free to post a rebuttal to any of the statements listed above. That’s why they’re numbered. Please feel double free to add your own complaints.