Breaking Dawn: Chapter 26 - Shiny
Projection Room Voices: Before we begin this session, we'd just like to inform you that the trailer for Eclipse is out.
ZeldaQueen: Huh *watches* I find it laughable that they have the nerve to use the phrase "It started with a choice". And Jacob's "I might be better for you" bit might be more believable if we all didn't know what is going to be happening.
Projection Room Voices: Yes, good times. Ready to continue?
ZeldaQueen: Go for it.
Projection Room Voices: "Chapter twenty-six, in which we entoll the Sues' virtues some more and another swipe at humanity is taken".
ZeldaQueen: *looks ill*
Projection Room Voices: Starting Media in 3...2...1...
Chapter 26: Shiny
ZeldaQueen: Wheee! I like shiny, I like shiny! After all of the endless prose about how sparkly and pretty the Cullens and everything related to them is, Meyer seems to have cut to the chase and just named her chapter that.
We open up with Charlie asking if Renee knows about Bella's...condition or not. She tells him "no", and they basically agree to not tell her anything since this all "isn't for the fainthearted". *scowls* Excuse me Bella, but wasn't your mother supposed to be your bestest friend ever? So nice to see how much you want to keep her in the loop!
Charlie gets hungry and is convinced that it's safe to leave without worry of Bella running off. We find out that he and Billy have been having their dinners fixed by Sue Clearwater and Bella is pleased that her father is not starving over his inability to cook. Excuse me Meyer? Haven't Billy and Charlie been single fathers for some time now? Wouldn't they therefore know how to fix their own meals??? I guess you could argue that Jacob cooked for his dad (although it seems kind of unlikely, what with him hunting vampires and all), but Charlie lived on his own for years! Did he honestly spend all of his time between the divorce and Bella's arrival mooching off of other people? And of course it's Sue who makes them food. The unpaired woman just needs to serve a man just like the single men just need to have a woman to do work for them.
I swear, this sounds like those stupid 1950s educational videos on the "proper" behavior of a husband and wife which get MST3K'ed. Except that this is apparently serious.
Oh, and before leaving, Charlie takes time to hold Renesmee and coos over how pretty she is. And while this could be seen as the usual doting grandfather type of thing (hey, I could see Charlie as the guy who is a sucker for kids), given how everyone else has been acting, it comes across as him being put under the Sue Spell. Bella even says as much, that "Charlie was just as helpless against her magic as the rest of us. Two seconds in his arms, and already she owned him". Meyer, how do you not catch this stuff? If it weren't here, I'd never guess that anyone could be so enamored of their own work. Bella gets annoyed when he nearly calls the baby "Nessie" and takes the opportunity to give us the kid's full name - Renesmee Carlie Cullen. Yeah...
Charlie leaves and Bella and Edward get all happy about how she didn't eat him and one more problem down, etc. Emmett starts up on his jokes again, commenting that Bella is so tame that she doesn't even seem to be a vampire. Bella starts to throw a Rose Potter-esque tantrum complete with hissing, but Emmett only laughs it off and seems ready to continue with his sexual comments the next time her father returns. Edward butts in at this point, reminding Emmett that Bella is currently the strongest vampire in the house and thus it's unwise to antagonize her. He then reminds Bella of a favor he asked her for several months ago. Bella recalls this favor and challenges Emmett to an arm wrestling match. Alice quickly talks them out of using the dining room table which Esme is rather attached to and thus they all head out back where there's a huge fracking granite boulder which they will hold the match on. They lay out the terms of the contest - if Bella wins, Emmett shuts up about her sex life. If she loses, the comments get a lot worse.
Bella is all nervous and freaked out, because she cannot imagine herself being able to defeat Emmett. And while there's that whole "women can't beat men" thing, I kind of have to give her half a point since apparently Emmett appears to have larger muscles than her so it's a bit more understandable that she's worried. Well, she needn't be since she's a Sue. No matter how hard Emmett pushes, he can't budge her an inch - that's what she said - and Bella is able to move his arm an inch just by flexing. Bella reminds Emmett of his promise and shoves his hand down so hard that the boulder cracks into pieces. Emmett is rather fussed by this, demands a rematch, and punches the granite into even smaller pieces, which Bella describes as "kind of neat, in a childish way"
*dangerously* Meyer, after all of Bella's behavior thus far, I refuse to hear her apply that word to anyone else, including actual children.
Bella gets off on some weird high after this victory and goes around smashing boulders herself, karate chopping and kicking away, and ignoring the laughing from the Cullens behind her. And I actually like this bit as well, since it's the only time we really see Bella loosening up and enjoying her super-strength. Seriously, she's acting like a normal teenager who just got fantastic strength and is being kind of goofy and having a good time breaking stuff. She's laughing and being kind of silly and ignoring what everyone else is thinking. And then the little rugrat Renesmee horns in on the action and laughs, and of course everyone stops what they're doing and turns to adore the Christ child baby who of course has such a perfect and pretty laugh.
Jacob makes a rib at Bella's behavior and Rosalie reminds him that he probably was just as goofy when he first was getting used to his wolf powers. Again, yes. This is what I'd like to see! People not being freaking dour and depressed and brooding all of the time and having fun. Jacob speaks up (I wish he wouldn't) and jokingly says that Bella's married and a mom and thus ought to be a bit more dignified. I'm not laughing because I'm still angry with him for last chapter.
Renesmee actually says something that makes me like her a very slight amount, by requesting less dignity from Bella since she too was enjoying watching her mom let loose. Bella playfully asks if she's funny and offers a piece of rock for Renesmee to break. Bella joins in and while breaking rocks is an...odd form of family entertainment, it's a good sight more healthy than most of the activities these people have been engaging in. Also, it's bonding between the two! Bella is holding her baby and they are laughing together and Jacob is not saying a word or hovering at the elbow and if there were more scenes like this, I might actually enjoy it a little more (keep in mind that when one is at the bottom of a hole, all there is to go is up). And then, God damn it!
"The sun suddenly burst through the clouds, shooting long beams of ruby and gold across the ten of us, and I was immediately lost in the beauty of my skin in the light of the sunset. Dazed by it"
ZeldaQueen: What is this?!? This is a conspiracy! Even the heavens of Meyer's universe are determined to see to it that I get no enjoyment from the little that there is!
*sigh* Well, I guess Meyer figured hey, who wants parent/child bonding when you could have descriptions of how pretty everyone is, because that's what we move on to. After Bella admires her own glistening arm, Renesmee puts her arm into the sun and we see that it only faintly glows and thus will not "keep her inside on a sunny day like my glowing sparkle". Meyer? Please stop trying to write off sparkling as some taboo thing that is hated by society and causes unjust persecution. It's like Neil trying to pull it off with nudism in Hogwarts Exposed - I just won't believe it.
And of course we can't leave out Edward, who gets into the sunlight and dazes Bella. Jacob pretends to shield his eyes with his hand and refers to Bella as freaky. And while I'm still angry with him, I agree if only because that scene must have looked freaking ridiculous. Edward agrees and adds that he thinks that she's amazing (SHE'S A SUE!!!) Bella notes that he's "He was both dazzling and dazzled" and I want to curl up and die.
Finally, we go on to hear Bella rhapsodize about how happy she is as a vampire. And this is just too...I need to show you this whole thing and then talk about it.
" As a human, I'd never been best at anything. I was okay at dealing with Renée, but probably lots of people could have done better; Phil seemed to be holding his own. I was a good student, but never the top of the class. Obviously, I could be counted out of anything athletic. Not artistic or musical, no particular talents to brag of. Nobody ever gave away a trophy for reading books. After eighteen years of mediocrity, I was pretty used to being average. I realized now that I'd long ago given up any aspirations of shining at anything. I just did the best with what I had, never quite fitting into my world. So this was really different. I was amazing now-to them and to myself. It was like I had been born to be a vampire. The idea made me want to laugh, but it also made me want to sing. I had found my true place in the world, the place I fit, the place I shined."
ZeldaQueen: Right. First of all, I think I finally get what Meyer was going for in this series - Bella was so plain and average at everything because she wasn't cut out to be human. All along, she was mean to be a vampire. There are a couple of problems with this though, the first and foremost being that it completely piddles all over the many assertions that the series is all about choice. If Bella is somehow destined to be a vampire and that's the only way she can be special at anything, where is the choice? I mean, I guess she could have chosen Jacob (or Mike, but of course he's never considered, the poor guy), but what then? She'd be a clumsy, average person for the rest of her life. Compare that to the life she has as a vampire and it hardly seems like a choice at all. The other issue is that Bella was not a plain, average person the way she insists she was. Oh, she says that she was unpopular and ignored in Phoenix, but we only see her in Forks. And there, we see that she has people clamoring to be her friends and date her despite the fact that she clearly is uninterested. We see that she gets fantastic grades and is well ahead of the classes. We see that she is apparently the only one who can cook and clean for her father. So how do we see her as a bored and average teenage girl not cut out for humanity?
I might also add, Meyer, that by trying to make her so average, you just succeeded in making her extremely boring! She says she's not artistic or musical and indeed makes no effort at all towards those things (besides the Claire de Lunes and the implication of listening to Linkin Park and the like). I mean, I'm not the most musically gifted person in the world, but I still played the violin for a hobby. She doesn't do anything like that! She's not in any clubs, she doesn't do any volunteer work, she doesn't collect anything, she doesn't have little habits that she carried over and done consistently. All of those things could have given us more insight into her character, helped us connect to her, and let us be more interested in her. But we get none of that. And we really don't get any more of that with her as a vampire. All of the things she has, she is literally given on a silver plate. Her strength, her money, her car, her house, her clothes, her powers, they all just took one bite. She worked for nothing and still does nothing (besides sleep with Edward).
I love how she "deals" with Renee (why does she call both of her parents by their first names anyway? Doesn't anyone in this series use "Mom" and "Dad"? And don't say it's an age thing, Meyer, I'm nineteen and I still call my parents those names), like her mother is some sort of an appliance that just needs to be fixed. No mother/daughter bond there, Bella's just instantly replaced with her stepdad. Lovely.
And no one gives out awards for reading? Clearly you've never joined any library book clubs as a child. Or else Phoenix doesn't have Reading Week or books of the month.
And finally, we get her saying that she gave up on trying to move ahead in life. She just apparently decided that eighteen years are all it takes to define the full scope of her talents and thus there's no point in working hard anymore. I guess Meyer's lesson here is that if you're not the best at something by the time you're eighteen, you're a mediocre loser who had better just give up and resign yourself to a life of average or else shack up with a supernatural creature.
I honestly don't get the pro-vampire message Meyer seems to keep giving off. So she's saying that if you're so off and average it could be because you're just not a good human? But what about people in real life who feel "off"? They can't go and get turned into vampires! What should they do? Just be mediocre, I guess...
ZeldaQueen: Nearly done...nearly done...
Projection Room Voices: Have faith, the end is near...ing!
Onward to: Chapter 27: Travel Plans
Back to: Chapter 25: Favor
Return to: Table of Contents
ZeldaQueen: Huh *watches* I find it laughable that they have the nerve to use the phrase "It started with a choice". And Jacob's "I might be better for you" bit might be more believable if we all didn't know what is going to be happening.
Projection Room Voices: Yes, good times. Ready to continue?
ZeldaQueen: Go for it.
Projection Room Voices: "Chapter twenty-six, in which we entoll the Sues' virtues some more and another swipe at humanity is taken".
ZeldaQueen: *looks ill*
Projection Room Voices: Starting Media in 3...2...1...
Chapter 26: Shiny
ZeldaQueen: Wheee! I like shiny, I like shiny! After all of the endless prose about how sparkly and pretty the Cullens and everything related to them is, Meyer seems to have cut to the chase and just named her chapter that.
We open up with Charlie asking if Renee knows about Bella's...condition or not. She tells him "no", and they basically agree to not tell her anything since this all "isn't for the fainthearted". *scowls* Excuse me Bella, but wasn't your mother supposed to be your bestest friend ever? So nice to see how much you want to keep her in the loop!
Charlie gets hungry and is convinced that it's safe to leave without worry of Bella running off. We find out that he and Billy have been having their dinners fixed by Sue Clearwater and Bella is pleased that her father is not starving over his inability to cook. Excuse me Meyer? Haven't Billy and Charlie been single fathers for some time now? Wouldn't they therefore know how to fix their own meals??? I guess you could argue that Jacob cooked for his dad (although it seems kind of unlikely, what with him hunting vampires and all), but Charlie lived on his own for years! Did he honestly spend all of his time between the divorce and Bella's arrival mooching off of other people? And of course it's Sue who makes them food. The unpaired woman just needs to serve a man just like the single men just need to have a woman to do work for them.
I swear, this sounds like those stupid 1950s educational videos on the "proper" behavior of a husband and wife which get MST3K'ed. Except that this is apparently serious.
Oh, and before leaving, Charlie takes time to hold Renesmee and coos over how pretty she is. And while this could be seen as the usual doting grandfather type of thing (hey, I could see Charlie as the guy who is a sucker for kids), given how everyone else has been acting, it comes across as him being put under the Sue Spell. Bella even says as much, that "Charlie was just as helpless against her magic as the rest of us. Two seconds in his arms, and already she owned him". Meyer, how do you not catch this stuff? If it weren't here, I'd never guess that anyone could be so enamored of their own work. Bella gets annoyed when he nearly calls the baby "Nessie" and takes the opportunity to give us the kid's full name - Renesmee Carlie Cullen. Yeah...
Charlie leaves and Bella and Edward get all happy about how she didn't eat him and one more problem down, etc. Emmett starts up on his jokes again, commenting that Bella is so tame that she doesn't even seem to be a vampire. Bella starts to throw a Rose Potter-esque tantrum complete with hissing, but Emmett only laughs it off and seems ready to continue with his sexual comments the next time her father returns. Edward butts in at this point, reminding Emmett that Bella is currently the strongest vampire in the house and thus it's unwise to antagonize her. He then reminds Bella of a favor he asked her for several months ago. Bella recalls this favor and challenges Emmett to an arm wrestling match. Alice quickly talks them out of using the dining room table which Esme is rather attached to and thus they all head out back where there's a huge fracking granite boulder which they will hold the match on. They lay out the terms of the contest - if Bella wins, Emmett shuts up about her sex life. If she loses, the comments get a lot worse.
Bella is all nervous and freaked out, because she cannot imagine herself being able to defeat Emmett. And while there's that whole "women can't beat men" thing, I kind of have to give her half a point since apparently Emmett appears to have larger muscles than her so it's a bit more understandable that she's worried. Well, she needn't be since she's a Sue. No matter how hard Emmett pushes, he can't budge her an inch - that's what she said - and Bella is able to move his arm an inch just by flexing. Bella reminds Emmett of his promise and shoves his hand down so hard that the boulder cracks into pieces. Emmett is rather fussed by this, demands a rematch, and punches the granite into even smaller pieces, which Bella describes as "kind of neat, in a childish way"
*dangerously* Meyer, after all of Bella's behavior thus far, I refuse to hear her apply that word to anyone else, including actual children.
Bella gets off on some weird high after this victory and goes around smashing boulders herself, karate chopping and kicking away, and ignoring the laughing from the Cullens behind her. And I actually like this bit as well, since it's the only time we really see Bella loosening up and enjoying her super-strength. Seriously, she's acting like a normal teenager who just got fantastic strength and is being kind of goofy and having a good time breaking stuff. She's laughing and being kind of silly and ignoring what everyone else is thinking. And then the little rugrat Renesmee horns in on the action and laughs, and of course everyone stops what they're doing and turns to adore the Christ child baby who of course has such a perfect and pretty laugh.
Jacob makes a rib at Bella's behavior and Rosalie reminds him that he probably was just as goofy when he first was getting used to his wolf powers. Again, yes. This is what I'd like to see! People not being freaking dour and depressed and brooding all of the time and having fun. Jacob speaks up (I wish he wouldn't) and jokingly says that Bella's married and a mom and thus ought to be a bit more dignified. I'm not laughing because I'm still angry with him for last chapter.
Renesmee actually says something that makes me like her a very slight amount, by requesting less dignity from Bella since she too was enjoying watching her mom let loose. Bella playfully asks if she's funny and offers a piece of rock for Renesmee to break. Bella joins in and while breaking rocks is an...odd form of family entertainment, it's a good sight more healthy than most of the activities these people have been engaging in. Also, it's bonding between the two! Bella is holding her baby and they are laughing together and Jacob is not saying a word or hovering at the elbow and if there were more scenes like this, I might actually enjoy it a little more (keep in mind that when one is at the bottom of a hole, all there is to go is up). And then, God damn it!
"The sun suddenly burst through the clouds, shooting long beams of ruby and gold across the ten of us, and I was immediately lost in the beauty of my skin in the light of the sunset. Dazed by it"
ZeldaQueen: What is this?!? This is a conspiracy! Even the heavens of Meyer's universe are determined to see to it that I get no enjoyment from the little that there is!
*sigh* Well, I guess Meyer figured hey, who wants parent/child bonding when you could have descriptions of how pretty everyone is, because that's what we move on to. After Bella admires her own glistening arm, Renesmee puts her arm into the sun and we see that it only faintly glows and thus will not "keep her inside on a sunny day like my glowing sparkle". Meyer? Please stop trying to write off sparkling as some taboo thing that is hated by society and causes unjust persecution. It's like Neil trying to pull it off with nudism in Hogwarts Exposed - I just won't believe it.
And of course we can't leave out Edward, who gets into the sunlight and dazes Bella. Jacob pretends to shield his eyes with his hand and refers to Bella as freaky. And while I'm still angry with him, I agree if only because that scene must have looked freaking ridiculous. Edward agrees and adds that he thinks that she's amazing (SHE'S A SUE!!!) Bella notes that he's "He was both dazzling and dazzled" and I want to curl up and die.
Finally, we go on to hear Bella rhapsodize about how happy she is as a vampire. And this is just too...I need to show you this whole thing and then talk about it.
" As a human, I'd never been best at anything. I was okay at dealing with Renée, but probably lots of people could have done better; Phil seemed to be holding his own. I was a good student, but never the top of the class. Obviously, I could be counted out of anything athletic. Not artistic or musical, no particular talents to brag of. Nobody ever gave away a trophy for reading books. After eighteen years of mediocrity, I was pretty used to being average. I realized now that I'd long ago given up any aspirations of shining at anything. I just did the best with what I had, never quite fitting into my world. So this was really different. I was amazing now-to them and to myself. It was like I had been born to be a vampire. The idea made me want to laugh, but it also made me want to sing. I had found my true place in the world, the place I fit, the place I shined."
ZeldaQueen: Right. First of all, I think I finally get what Meyer was going for in this series - Bella was so plain and average at everything because she wasn't cut out to be human. All along, she was mean to be a vampire. There are a couple of problems with this though, the first and foremost being that it completely piddles all over the many assertions that the series is all about choice. If Bella is somehow destined to be a vampire and that's the only way she can be special at anything, where is the choice? I mean, I guess she could have chosen Jacob (or Mike, but of course he's never considered, the poor guy), but what then? She'd be a clumsy, average person for the rest of her life. Compare that to the life she has as a vampire and it hardly seems like a choice at all. The other issue is that Bella was not a plain, average person the way she insists she was. Oh, she says that she was unpopular and ignored in Phoenix, but we only see her in Forks. And there, we see that she has people clamoring to be her friends and date her despite the fact that she clearly is uninterested. We see that she gets fantastic grades and is well ahead of the classes. We see that she is apparently the only one who can cook and clean for her father. So how do we see her as a bored and average teenage girl not cut out for humanity?
I might also add, Meyer, that by trying to make her so average, you just succeeded in making her extremely boring! She says she's not artistic or musical and indeed makes no effort at all towards those things (besides the Claire de Lunes and the implication of listening to Linkin Park and the like). I mean, I'm not the most musically gifted person in the world, but I still played the violin for a hobby. She doesn't do anything like that! She's not in any clubs, she doesn't do any volunteer work, she doesn't collect anything, she doesn't have little habits that she carried over and done consistently. All of those things could have given us more insight into her character, helped us connect to her, and let us be more interested in her. But we get none of that. And we really don't get any more of that with her as a vampire. All of the things she has, she is literally given on a silver plate. Her strength, her money, her car, her house, her clothes, her powers, they all just took one bite. She worked for nothing and still does nothing (besides sleep with Edward).
I love how she "deals" with Renee (why does she call both of her parents by their first names anyway? Doesn't anyone in this series use "Mom" and "Dad"? And don't say it's an age thing, Meyer, I'm nineteen and I still call my parents those names), like her mother is some sort of an appliance that just needs to be fixed. No mother/daughter bond there, Bella's just instantly replaced with her stepdad. Lovely.
And no one gives out awards for reading? Clearly you've never joined any library book clubs as a child. Or else Phoenix doesn't have Reading Week or books of the month.
And finally, we get her saying that she gave up on trying to move ahead in life. She just apparently decided that eighteen years are all it takes to define the full scope of her talents and thus there's no point in working hard anymore. I guess Meyer's lesson here is that if you're not the best at something by the time you're eighteen, you're a mediocre loser who had better just give up and resign yourself to a life of average or else shack up with a supernatural creature.
I honestly don't get the pro-vampire message Meyer seems to keep giving off. So she's saying that if you're so off and average it could be because you're just not a good human? But what about people in real life who feel "off"? They can't go and get turned into vampires! What should they do? Just be mediocre, I guess...
ZeldaQueen: Nearly done...nearly done...
Projection Room Voices: Have faith, the end is near...ing!
Onward to: Chapter 27: Travel Plans
Back to: Chapter 25: Favor
Return to: Table of Contents