Midnight Sun Sporking, Chapter Three, Part Four
Her eyes were closed,
but her breathing was not even, and now and then her fingers would twitch impatiently.
I stared at her face for a long moment. This was the last time I would see her.
C!Syaoran: *lurking in the shadows, already savoring the thought of a bit of butterscotch to top off the chocolate* Yes. It is.
That fact triggered an acute aching in my chest.
Richard: That would be the barrage of sporks that just hit it, actually. *frowns, gazing at Spork-Shooter 3000* We need more Plot Armor-piercing rounds.
Was it because I hated to leave any
puzzle unsolved? That did not seem like enough of an explanation.
Richard: Step away from the Sue’s event horizon. I repeat, step away from the Sue’s event horizon…
Finally, I took a deep breath and moved into view.
When Tyler saw me, he started to speak, but I put one finger to my lips.
``Is she sleeping?'' I murmured.
Bella's eyes snapped open and focused on my face. They widened momentarily,
and then narrowed in anger or suspicion.
Richard: (Bella) I have seen your heart, Edward Cullen, and it is mine.
…That’s actually true, isn’t it? *FACEPALM*
Roy: Ron/Locketcrux? Hmm, I suppose it DOES act like an abusive, jealous boyfriend… trying to drive a wedge between him and his friends and all… insisting that he’ll never be happy with Harry… attempting to convince him that nobody but it will ever love him… *ponders*
Richard: *applies other palm to face*
I remembered that I had a role to play,
Roy: (Edward) I am the troubled young man, desperately in need of guidance from my sensitive, caring stepfather! Oh, Carlisle, help me control my URGES! I will attack some poor girl or mountain lion if you do not seize me and carry me off, restraining me and forcing me to learn your exquisite self-control one terrible, tantalizing inch at a time, this very instant! Release me back into the civilized world only when I have been humbled and chastened, and all my dreadful urges exhausted! Oh, heavens, I cannot hold on much longer! Do it, do it now, Carlisle, I BEG of you!
Richard: *has removed hands from face, but only to cover ears*
Roy: *spreads hands* She brought up roleplay first!
so I
smiled at her as if nothing unusual had happened this morning---besides a blow to her
head and a bit of imagination run wild.
Guardian’s Song: It would explain a great deal if the entire Twilight series consists of Bella’s increasingly bizarre coma-dreams after Tyler’s van spun out of control and ran her over. She found Edward attractive, but couldn’t make sense of his behavior. (Perhaps he suffered from a mental condition, but she didn’t know it.) She might also have had a teensy crush on Alice (hence her later importance).
In order to explain how she had survived intact after being run over, she back-filled an alternate version of the accident with Edward saving her at literally the last second; in order to explain how he could have appeared next to her when her last conscious sight was his horror-filled eyes as he saw the truck come for her, she invented the entire “vampire” mythos, based perhaps on reading one too many Anne Rice novels as a guilty pleasure. (That is, too guilty for her pseudo-literature-major pretensions.) We do hear her puzzling over what FICTIONAL character he could be like (Superman, Spiderman, etc.), hinting at the in-story FICTIONAL nature of Edward’s powers.
Based upon Bella’s depiction of vampires as endlessly hungry undead capable of regenerating from nigh-anything and her epically failing attempts to explain them biologically, we have discovered an astonishing fact about her: she’s a Resident Evil fan. Given Edward’s vivid yellow eyes, she may, in fact, be a Wesker fangirl.
[Dude, we can do spoiler cuts now? :D]
[Last written 9/10/2011, continuing 10/4/2011]
In fact, Bella’s entire dream-world is most influenced by Resident Evil: Code Veronica. That would have come out when she was… twelve going on thirteen. In other words, at the start of puberty. So, when most girls would have been shaping their preferences based upon… heaven knows what, I picked up some of mine on fanficrants… Bella’s main influence, by the looks of it, was a survival horror videogame. And unfortunately, under this theory, she is the poster girl for all the ‘videogames warp your mind’ alarmists.
It wouldn’t have been so bad if she identified with the heroine Claire Redfield, which would be the jump-off point for a badass!Bella AU right there. No, unfortunately for us, she identified with one of the villains, Alfred Ashford.
I realized that it would be a bad idea to bore you with my plot summaries of another story when I’m trying to spork Midnight Sun, so let me summarize:
-Alexia, Alfred’s twin sister, is beautiful, brilliant, and generally superior to Alfred in every way. Alfred, meanwhile, is a bit of a general incompetent, though he actually has above-average intelligence… just nowhere near Alexia’s.
-As a result, Alfred is utterly devoted to Alexia, proclaiming that “she is everything to [him]”, he “would overcome any obstacle and be willing to risk [his] life for her”, and the “proof of [his] love toward Alexia” “is the purpose of [his] existence”. In return, she describes him in her private notes as “that inept but loyal soldier ant who is my brother”.
-Given that she actually loves him, and indeed he’s implied to be the only other human being about whom she ever cared, I think that should give you a good idea of how she treats the rest of humanity. If not - she worked as an Umbrella Corporation Senior Researcher in the zombie-producing department, which meant that she oversaw a program devoted entirely to conducting horrific experiments upon innocent human beings for the purpose of creating and refining terrifying viruses to unleash against even more innocent human beings. Starting at ten years old. No, I don’t mean her VICTIMS were ten years old - I mean SHE was ten years old!
-When she has to leave him for a time as part of an Evil Overlord scheme she’s running, Alfred loses his mind and hallucinates that “Alexia” speaks to him… and even an IMAGINARY Alexia treats Alfred a bit like he’s a screw-up.
Why, yes, that IS Bella’s plot in New Moon right there!
So, under this theory, Bella saw Alfred’s relationship with Alexia and decided it was THE MOST PERFECT RELATIONSHIP EVER and THE EPITOME OF TRUE LOVE. Come on, look at it: that’s Edward/Bella as Bella views it, right there! As for why Bella’s fantasy has her as Alfred rather than Alexia, there are two possibilities: either even Bella isn’t delusional enough to think she’s Alexia’s equal, or Bella has a massive repressed crush on Alexia.
I’m betting on the latter. Edward, a super-intelligent, beautiful, aristocratic, filthy rich, arrogant-beyond-all-belief, dominating psychopath who shows a gleeful disregard for human life and gets off on brutally torturing and killing his enemies, is basically a gender-swapped version of Alexia. The rest comes from another villain who appears in Code: Veronica (and other Resident Evil games), namely Albert Wesker.
Now, Albert Wesker is an Umbrella scientist of the zombie-researcher variety, and yes, he too is a massively egotistical, sadistic psychopath with above-average intelligence. He injected himself with an experimental virus right before receiving a wound that would have killed him under any other circumstances - instead, he gained super-speed, super-strength, and… yellow eyes.
So, the basic theory is that Twilight is Bella’s comatose fantasy about recreating the Alfred/Alexia relationship with herself and a teenaged Albert Wesker. (EDIT: I forgot to add that Bella’s stupidity and callousness stems from it all being a dream, and one can do some really crazy, idiotic things in dreams that leave one just asking, when one wakes up, ‘What was I SMOKING?’ So she really IS a responsible, semi-decent person in *real life*, but…) The Volturi are probably Umbrella Inc. as led by Albus Dumbledore, with the incest-vibe twins Jane and Alec specifically being echoes of Alexia and Alfred. As for the rest, they’re either based off of ‘real-life people’ (such as the Cullen family and Jacob) or are weird echoes of various aspects of The Vampire Chronicles or Code: Veronica. For instance, James almost randomly deciding to hunt Bella, the Cullens killing James, and Victoria going berserk after James’s death, culminating in the Eclipse ‘boss fight’, is an echo of Alfred almost randomly deciding to hunt Claire, Claire’s love interest offing Alfred, and Alexia going berserk after Alfred’s death, culminating in the final boss fight of Code: Veronica.
As such, the series went totally off the rails when Victoria was downed and suddenly Bella had run out of plot. Cue Breaking Dawn, in which the series’ nature as a fever dream became quite obvious. Midnight Sun is Bella’s attempt to backfill Edward’s side of the story, since she had already started dreaming of herself as different ‘characters’ by the middle of Breaking Dawn, and, one might hope, cuts off where it does due to Bella finally awakening from her coma. Cue some VERY confused conversations that sound something like this:
“But you watched me sleep every night!”
“What? Oh… yes… I suppose I did visit you every day, but that was because I felt so guilty about not being able to save you from that truck… I did bring you a disco ball once - did THAT trigger the ‘meadow scene’ to which you keep referring?”
“You were a werewolf, Jake!”
“Whoa, really? What else did I do? Come on, Bells - I want to know!”
“You fell in passionate love with my newborn baby!”
“You know, on second thought, I really DIDN’T want to know.”
“That’s Victoria! That’s Victoria! She’s going to KILL US ALL with her NEWBORN ARMY!”
“What is WRONG with that patient, Dr. Cullen?!”
“Sigh… Miss Swan, Victoria is only an obstetrician employed at a Seattle hospital, though she occasionally drops by here whenever she visits her relatives in Forks, and the worst her “newborn army” is capable of doing is screaming incessantly on long plane flights…”
``Hey, Edward,'' Tyler said. ``I'm really sorry---''
Richard: (Edward) That your van missed? So am I.
I raised one hand to halt his apology. ``No blood, no foul,'' I said wryly. Without
thinking, I smiled too widely at my private joke.
It was amazingly easy to ignore Tyler, lying no more than four feet from me,
covered in fresh blood. I'd never understood how Carlisle was able to do that---ignore
© 2008 Stephenie Meyer
69
the blood of his patients in order to treat them. Wouldn't the constant temptation be so
distracting, so dangerous...?
Roy: Why does this read like an NC-17 fanfic? “As a doctor, Carlisle Cullen must maintain his professional integrity and never start an affair with a client. Until now, he has been able to carry out his duties unflinchingly, but his self-restraint is tested to the limit when he meets the beautiful but troubled Edward Cullen, a recent orphan whose dying mother’s last act was to place him in Carlisle’s care. Carlisle has faith that his own moral fortitude will carry him through, but the lovely seventeen-year-old boy’s constant temptation is so distracting… so dangerous…” It DOES!
But, now... I could see how, if you were focusing on
something else hard enough, the temptation was be nothing at all.
Roy: (Carlisle) *under his breath* No, no, bad Carlisle. Think of the Volturi portrait. No, not the one you have out for guests, the OTHER one. The naked one. That’s right, Carlisle, if you just get through the day without causing anyone’s death or “little death”, you can get home and stare at it all night long…
Even fresh and exposed, Tyler's blood had nothing on Bella's.
Roy: *pause* That sentence really reads like there should be a different word in place of “blood”. I can’t tell what, so let’s find out:
“Even fresh and exposed, Tyler's booty had nothing on Bella's.”
“Even fresh and exposed, Tyler's body had nothing on Bella's.”
“Even fresh and exposed, Tyler's eyeballs had nothing on Bella's.”
Chocolate all chapter, every chapter! *burp*
Roy: …D8 Do you MIND? That was my list!
C!Syaoran: Chocolate eyeball smoothie? *proffers* *is feeling slightly overdosed on chocolate by now*
Roy: …No thank you… *turns green*
I kept my distance from her, seating myself on the foot of Tyler's mattress.
``So, what's the verdict?'' I asked her.
Her lower lip pushed out a little. ``There's nothing wrong with me at all,
Elbe: I really do beg to differ.
but they
won't let me go. How come you aren't strapped to a gurney like the rest of us?''
Her impatience made me smile again.
I could hear Carlisle in the hall now.
Richard: - wheeling in the Spork-Railgun.
“Isn’t that a bit small for a railgun?” Bella asked, furrowing her brow.
“Miss Swan, isn’t it a bit odd that YOU’RE asking about the physical feasibility of anything?” Carlisle asked in reply, and turned the device on.
``It's all about who you know,'' I said lightly.
Elbe: Mostly the author.
``But don't worry, I came to spring
you.''
I watched her reaction carefully as my father entered the room. Her eyes widened
and her mouth actually fell open in surprise. I groaned internally. Yes, she'd certainly
noticed the resemblance.
Roy: (Bella) That riding crop in your hand and Edward’s leather collar have exactly the same insignia on them!
(Carlisle) You noticed! You know, Miss Swan, I do like to coordinate things, so I’m very pleased when someone notes the effort I put into it.
``So, Miss Swan, how are you feeling?'' Carlisle asked. He had a wonderfully
soothing beside manner
Guardian’s Song: “Beside manner”?
(Edward, Nigerian Spammer) Greetings in Jesus name!!
“Greetings In Jesus Name” Count: |||| |||| |
that put most patients at ease within moments.
Elbe: He threatened the rest with having his creepy son stay in the room until they got themselves under control. That also worked within moments.
I couldn't tell
how it affected Bella.
``I'm fine,'' she said quietly.
Carlisle clipped her Xrays to the lightboard by the bed. ``Your Xrays look good.
Does your head hurt?
Richard: (Bella) Head hurt whenever thinky.
Edward said you hit it pretty hard.''
Richard: (Carlisle) So hard that your entire brain fell out, in fact.
(Bella) What brain?
(Carlisle) That’s a possibility, too.
She sighed, and said, ``I'm fine,'' again, but this time impatience leaked into her
voice. Then she glowered once in my direction.
Carlisle stepped closer to her and ran his fingers gently over her scalp until he
found the bump under her hair.
I was caught off guard by the wave of emotion that crashed over me.
Elbe: (Edward) I’m a sociopath! I’m not supposed to FEEL deep emotions! Hmm… maybe it’s to torture and kill something. I do feel somewhat deeply about that.
I had seen Carlisle work with humans a thousand times. Years ago, I had even
assisted him informally---though only in situations where blood was not involved. So it
wasn't a new thing to me, to watch him interact with the girl as if he were as human as
she was.
Elbe: EXTRANEOUS COMMA!
I'd envied his control many times, but that was not the same as this emotion. I
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envied him more than his control. I ached for the difference between Carlisle and me---
Elbe: Oh, stop fishing for compliments. DT!Draco and DT!Ginny both did this, but their actions made it quite clear that they didn’t actually mind the absence of both remorse and empathy within them, and you don’t mind it, either.
that he could touch her so gently, without fear, knowing he would never harm her...
Elbe: Yes, Edward, because he’s not the sort of person who would kill someone for a seven-scoop sundae with chocolate, peppermint, coffee, cookie-dough, mint-chocolate-chip, strawberry cheesecake, and rainbow sherbet flavors, positively dripping with chocolate and caramel syrup, with a side order of rich, well-frosted red velvet cake - BECAUSE HE’S NOT THE SORT OF PERSON WHO KILLS OVER AN ICE CREAM SUNDAE. YOU, however, ARE.
She winced, and I twitched in my seat. I had to concentrate for a moment to keep
my relaxed posture.
``Tender?'' Carlisle asked.
Her chin jerked up a fraction. ``Not really,'' she said.
Another small piece of her character fell into place: she was brave. She didn't
like to show weakness.
Guardian’s Song: No. You know who doesn’t like to show weakness? Albus Dumbledore.
[More rant cuts! :D]
Albus Dumbledore pulled himself together and led an exceptional life after, in very quick succession, his mother was killed by his deranged younger sister, he fell in love, his ~one true love~ cast the Cruciatus Curse on his brother, his sister died, his one true love ran off, and his brother broke his nose. You, on the other hand, Bella, collapsed into a mindless heap on the forest floor, had to be carried home, and turned into a zombie for four months straight, only snapping out of it when you LITERALLY snapped an had a psychotic break from reality - and all of that was JUST from your ~one true love~ running off!
YOU are just a little punk trying to act tough. And for the aforementioned reason, you fail, and fail hard.
But that’s unfair, you say. You’re a different kind of character, and yours is the truest of true loves that ever loved, so you can’t be compared against Albus, since his love was just Tom/Ginny, Gay Version - just ask the author. Well, FINE. We’ll COMPARE you against someone with your kind of love! Let’s take the previously-mentioned Alfred Ashford.
=SPOILERS for Resident Evil: Code Veronica=
Even after being shot, hitting his head, and falling down a deep pit, Alfred, while bleeding to death, DRAGGED himself down a long corridor, leaving a huge smear of blood behind him on the wall every step of the way, to the room where Alexia was being held in cryogenic suspension and, by the time he got to her tube, was CRAWLING across the floor. He didn’t know she was about to wake up; that’s fairly obvious from his reaction. So, with only a few minutes of consciousness remaining, too weak to even force out more than three words at a time, he was forcing his body to move THROUGH SHEER FORCE OF WILL ALONE to where he knew his sister lay sleeping, just so that he could see her one last time. Not talk to her, not touch her, not even be acknowledged by her, but just so that he lay eyes upon her ONE. LAST. TIME.
In the same situation, Bella, you’d curl up in a ball and cry for a big, strong man to save you right up until your consciousness winked out. And you know it. You’d give into weakness like it was tax-deductible, and don’t you deny it.
=END SPOILERS=
*stops speaking to Bella* And if you didn’t read that, let’s just say that even a character just as whiny, dependent, and petty as Bella overcame his weakness for long enough to… really impress me, put it that way. I buy his utter devotion to his loved one much more than I buy Bella’s, and that scene probably helps a LOT with that.
TL;DR: Bella Swan TELLS bravery and SHOWS weakness and ineptitude; Alfred Ashford TELLS weakness and ineptitude and SHOWS it, too, right up to the very last minute… at which point he turns right around and shows bravery For His Love.
Sorry, Meyer! A villain who was a laughingstock for his entire segment in the game is better than your heroine who was glorified all through your stories!
Possibly the most vulnerable creature I'd ever seen, and she didn't want to seem
weak.
Guardian’s Song: Another example - Ariana Dumbledore had a SHITTY life.
[Whee!]
In fact, I think you need an entire sewage treatment plant to express how shitty her life is, considering (I say this since TV Tropes’ Harry Potter Nightmare Fuel section doesn’t mention this and so I suppose it isn’t obvious) that she spent seven years straight being mind-raped by her own magic and having it *explode* out of her on a regular basis… Oh, you didn’t catch the part about the mind-rape? She was “destroyed” and “never right again” after the Muggle boys “got a bit carried away trying to make the little freak stop doing it”, but “her magic turned inward and DROVE her mad”. The attack traumatized her. The MAGIC drove her out of her mind. You know, the magic which SHE COULDN’T GET RID OF?
And if you don’t think the magic EXPLODING out of her when she couldn’t control it didn’t physically harm her… then why was she sickly, eh?
Adding insult to injury, most of the time, she was “sweet and scared and harmless”. Oh, great - oh, wait, she was “scared”? Judging by what scared her the last time she was sane, she was STILL terrified about being attacked if she did magic. Which she did! Involuntarily! On a regular basis! After it raped her mind first! So, whenever Ariana got thrown out of a “calm and happy” state, she was probably in a paranoid panic about how they were coming for her aaaaany moment n- OH GAD A FLOORBOARD SQUEAKED IT’S THEM IT’S THEM IT’S THEM!
I honestly cannot understand why fandom thinks the ATTACK was the worst thing that happened to her. You may be surprised by this rant because I write Ariana as being fairly cheerful… yes, well, she’s as high as a kite whenever she comes in for sporking, because sporkings are supposed to be funny or righteous, a fourteen-year-old girl (possibly with a mental age lower than fourteen in some respects) suffering horribly is neither funny nor righteous. Unless you’re Cassandra Claire, in which case you probably think it’s the FUNNIEST DAMN THING EVER - which is part of the reason I loathe Cassandra Claire. But anyway - yes, Ariana does tend to appear in the sporkings in what the elderly Aberforth would look back upon as a “calm and happy” state, because otherwise it’s just not funny.
And despite all this, despite the misery she went through, despite her being as sane as a Quibbler article, despite her having every reason to cower in a corner and whimper - the record shows that the very last thing Ariana did was try to help. Yes, the bangs and flashes of the duel “set her off”, but whether she started in the same room or had to come in from another room, if Aberforth thought she was “trying to help” and she could have been hit from a spell from any of the three wizards, she had to have been running TOWARDS the duel - at the very least stopping at the edge - not AWAY from it. Someone with Ariana’s sensitivity and easily-spooked mindset should have been fleeing the scene. Instead, she ran in and tried to stop it - and, ironically, did with her death.
(Either that, or Albus’s demented babbling in The Cave is actually HER demented babbling, and she died begging her magic, “Please, oh please, don’t hurt them… hurt me instead…”. That’s my pet theory - and in a way, that’s even worse. Whoever originated that babbling was screaming as if his or her insides were on fire. If that was Ariana? THEY MIGHT HAVE BEEN. And, if so, she STILL was crying that she’d do anything rather than let it hurt them.)
My point? Ariana was the most vulnerable and damaged person in HP canon, and she STILL had enough bravery to run right into what her wrecked mind would have, in either case, processed as the maw of hell to try to keep others from coming to harm.
Bella, you do not hold a candle to Ariana Dumbledore. You do not hold a candle to Alfred Ashford. You do not hold a candle to many a character who had a great deal of “weakness” but, at least once in their lifetime, showed strength of will and courage that makes me ashamed of and disgusted with myself for being such a lazy, cowardly wimp.
Your author’s understanding of bravery and strength is so sickeningly shallow that it astounds me.
(P.S. She doesn’t do “vulnerability” very well either. See, vulnerability rather implies that you can’t fend for yourself any better than this, and Bella just won’t fend for herself any better than she does. She either hands off responsibility for her well-being to someone else or, if she can’t do that, gives up entirely. “Vulnerability”, I think, is when a character is struggling desperately, but just can’t make it work. THAT’S when it’s appealing to have a protective figure swoop in and make it “hurt/comfort” rather than just “hurt hurt hurt oh gad it hurts”. Okay, enough ranting…)
A chuckle slid through my lips.