Of course, I couldn’t fool myself completely.
Why not? You've fooled countless Twilight fans into thinking you're a good, unselfish and intelligent person.
When I stopped to take stock of my life, which I tried not to do too often, I couldn’t ignore the implications of my behavior.
"Murdering and skinning animals was NOT a mentally healthy thing to do!"
Seriously, Smeyer is even admitting that her Sue - who does EVERYTHING SHE WISHES SHE COULD DO - is doing some truly stupid, off-the-wall self-destructive shit. Even the stupidest woman in the publishing industry (who is not a Kardashian) admits this. And yet in her mind, it's OKAY because Bella is a speshul unique snowflake of awesomeness! She can do this revolting self-destructive crap over a guy who left her sniveling in the dust - LITERALLY - but it's okay! Because she's speshul! She shouldn't be held to the same standards as the rest of the human race! Because she's speshul!
To be honest, I wonder if her publisher FORCED her to acknowledge how sick this is. Because there was definitely some editorial tampering in this book to make it look like Bella isn't the worst person to not start World War II.
And lest you think that Smeyer/Bella is showing some signs of self-awareness, and that the knowledge of how fucked-up she is might make her change her behavior... we have this: I was like a lost moon—my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation—that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity.
- Have I mentioned lately how VERY VERY DEPRESSED AND MISERABLE I AM?! I am SOOOOO emo and sad! I pee tears and crap heartbreak! PAY ATTENTION TO MEEEEEEEEEEE...
- And honestly this sounds like Smeyer is trying to remind us that Bella is obsessed with Edturd, not Jacob's abs. Because whenever Jacob is around, she seems to get selective amnesia about her ex.
- A moon that has no planet is not a moon. It's just a large rock in space.
- Also, aren't "lost moons" usually moons that just spun off into space?
- Or documentaries about Apollo 13?
- Also, a lost moon going out of its previous orbit after a planet blows up isn't the law of gravity. It's the law of MOTION.
- I know Smeyer fails completely at science... and writing... and life... but that is a HORRIBLE simile. Especially since Edward isn't dead or anything - he just dumped her pasty ass.
- "Cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation"? EDITOR! Put down your vodka and do your fucking job!
- In fact, the more times I read this disaster of a sentence, the worse it gets. And it's SOOOOOOO melodramatic!
So since we were all just DYING to hear how Bella's Death Machine of Death has been faring, she's apparently getting better at riding it. Which isn't saying much, since she's been zooming at top speed right onto her face. But oh noes!, for the voice in my head began to fade, until I heard it no more. Teh horrorz! She isn't able to hallucinate about her asshole ex yelling at her! Oh the woe!
Quietly, I panicked. I threw myself into the search for the meadow with slightly frenzied intensity.
... even though it's already been established that it won't work. Wow, can this be the power of PLOT CONVENIENCE?!
I racked my brain for other adrenaline-producing activities.
It wasn't hard, since I'm such a boring and passive person. For instance, the other day I used a credit card WITHOUT a valid form of ID! And I drank Sierra Mist instead of Mountain Dew! I'm living on the wild side! Edward screamed at me for half an hour!
I tried to live as much in the present as possible, no past fading, no future impending.
You know, it's kind of obnoxious to any person who has suffered a REAL tragedy how incredibly self-indulgent and whiny this bitch is. Your boyfriend dumped you. Boo hoo. Welcome to real life! Why is HER breakup any more tragic or devastating than Jessica breaking up with Mike?
So then Jacob shocks Bella by giving her a little box of those chalky little hearts with words printed on them for Valentine Day.
Yeah, those ones. I bet Bella is the sort of person who reads deep meaning into those ultra-cheapo candies that don't even taste good but for some reason you just can't stop eating them.
"This says 'B mine'... oh, if only Edward would b mine! And this one says 'luv u'... perfect for Edward, if only I had his mailing address! This one says 'Let's kiss' - how I miss making out with Edward's cold stony hotness!""
“Well, I feel like a schmuck,” I mumbled. “Is today Valentine’s Day?”
"So is THAT why the boys at school were throwing even more candy, roses and sprawling poems to my perfection? D'OY!"
Yes, even though Bella is supposed to be super-attractive to all the boys, she failed to notice Valentine's Day until Jacob jammed candies in her face. I guess they got over her snowflakitude. Hell, since apparently Mike hasn't bothered to ask her out, give her anything or hump her leg, I guess NOBODY is chasing after the most irresistible girl ever.
Jacob half-jokes about her being his Valentine... and Bella makes a big deal out of it. Shock.
I started to feel uncomfortable. The words were teasing, but only on the surface.
Uh... does anyone older than nine actually seriously talk about being Valentines? It's not a friggin' commitment, you dumb bitch.
“What exactly does that entail?” I hedged.
“The usual—slave for life, that kind of thing.”
"Excellent! I was totally missing that! Now tell me I'm stupid and worthless!"
But I was trying to think of some way to make the boundaries clear. Again. They seemed to get blurred a lot with Jacob.
Because just SAYING that you want to just be friends is too obvious.
“So, what are we doing tomorrow? Hiking, or the ER?”
“Hiking,” I decided. “You’re not the only one who can be obsessive."
OBSESSIVE? What has he done or said that indicates he's "obsessed"? He gave you a little box of the cheapest kind of Valentine's Day candy there is! How does that read as "obsessive"?
Or maybe Bella just assumes that all men are obsessed with her.
"I'm sorry, Billy, but I can't possibly be with you!"
"What? I'm not interested in you. You're my best friend's daughter!"
"I know I'm just so dazzling that all men instantly fall in love with me..."
"Hello? Earth to Bella?"
"...but my heart belongs to another! I can love no other!"
"Charlie, is she off her meds again?"
So because Jacob is SO obsessed with her that he gave her a tiny box of strangely addictive but very cheap candy, Bella decides that they mustn't ride their bikes together!
“I’m going to a movie Friday. I’ve been promising my cafeteria crowd that I would go out forever.”
... why? She's found something new to obsess on (chasing Edturd's voice) so why would she bother socializing with the commonfolk she has nothing but contempt for?
Jacob is bummed out by this revelation, since spending a whole day away from Bella's sullen whiny self is just depressing. And because Bella is a compassionate angel of mercy who neglects her relatives and ditches her friends for supernatural penis, she immediately feels so very bad for making Jacob feel bad. I mean, it's not long she's stringing him along by spending EVERY SINGLE DAY with him while having no intention of.... oh, wait.
“You’ll come too, right?” I added quickly. “Or will it be too much of a drag with a bunch of boring seniors?”
"After all, I'm a boring senior, and all my friends have to pretend to be if they want to be in my shining presence."
For fuck's sake, has Smeyer never actually MET a teenager? They don't regard themselves as "old" compared to slightly younger teenagers - they regard the younger teenagers as "kids."
... or is this supposed to be funny? Because if so...
So much for my chance to put some distance between us.
"I'm too much of a pussy to actually say that I don't wanna date you, so I'm gonna halfheartedly try to shrug you off for a WHOLE DAY."
Remember kids: if you don't like a boy, spend every single day with him and avoid a normal social life. That will send the right message!
I couldn’t stand hurting Jacob; we seemed to be connected in an odd way,
It's called "He's hot and has a penis," sweetie. All your emotional connections revolve around that.
and his pain set off little stabs of my own.
Bella's "oh teh painz!" is losing its effectiveness.
So Bella whines about how she promised Mike that she'd go to the movies with her "cafeteria crowd," but she doesn't like actually spending time with HUMANS. So she pounces on the chance to bring him along.
“You’d like me to come, with your friends there?”
"Well DUH. I can make Mike think I have a boyfriend AND obsess over a hot piece of supernatural ass at the same time. I'm such a naive little ordinary girl with no idea how anything looks!"
It turns out that Bella was lying the whole time. She DOESN'T have a group date with Mike and her friends. She just made it up because a 50-cent box of candy convinced her that Jacob has a fatal-attraction obsession with her. So why the hell didn't she just say, "I have something I have to do that day"?! WHY DOES SHE LIE EVEN WHEN IT'S NOT NECESSARY?!
Our heroine: a compulsive liar who constantly lies to her dad and her best buddy/love interest without the slightest twinge of conscience. But she's a good role model because she hasn't had sex!
I broached the subject with Mike in English.
As opposed to broaching it in German, Spanish or Esperanto?
“Hey, Mike,” I said when class was over. “Are you free Friday night?”
That's it. THAT. IS. IT.
There is absolutely no way this sociopathic bint is THAT dim. She knows perfectly well how she's stringing along all these guys and getting their hopes up just so she can trash them. Teenage girls know perfectly well how that works, whether or not they've indulged in the attraction dance themselves.
And by the by, if she WEREN'T stringing Mike along, she would have said something like, "I'm thinking about going with a group to see this new movie blah blah blah."
Of course, Bella wants to bring a bunch of people she also detests on this, since she already lied to Jacob about it. She better hope Mike and Jacob don't compare notes, or they'd figure out that A) she was lying to Jacob, her "friend"; B) this group movie date was just to justify the lie she told, and C) she's a bitch.
I’d done my homework this time—even reading the movie spoilers to be sure I wouldn’t be caught off guard. This movie was supposed to be a bloodbath from start to finish. I wasn’t so recovered that I could stand to sit through a romance.
For fuck's sake! Enough with Bella's over-the-top "oh how I suffer! I suffer so! I'm such a suffering saint who has been so wounded that I can't stand anything having to do with romance!" Because it's getting REALLY REALLY FUCKING ANNOYING.
Guess what, Smeyer: other people in this world have broken up with people. Sometimes it's with someone they really, truly loved. I knew someone who had really, desperately fallen in love with a guy, only for him to eventually reveal he was gay. She was devastated. But she didn't spend the next SIX MONTHS freaking out and faking phantom pain whenever she heard a love song on the radio or saw clips of a romance in a movie. Because she isn't an ATTENTION-WHORING DRAMA QUEEN.
Also, I'd remind you that this bland chick goes to HIGH SCHOOL. High school is ALL ABOUT unsubtle sexual and romance attraction. You could not get away from coupley stuff and the stuff if you TRIED. What kind of high school doesn't have couples kissing, making out, snuggling, passing each other mix CDs, etc?! THAT IS NORMAL.
So Mike is still desperately trying to make this "datey" by only inviting other couples, and Bella is just adding as many people as possible, including people she hates.
“And,” I continued, “I’ve got a couple of friends from La Push I’m inviting. So it sounds like we’ll need your Suburban if everyone comes.”
"That's the only reason I invited you, but I'm going to pretend I actually tolerate you, you dweeb."
"Bella, you're talking out loud again."
"Haha, Mike doesn't even realize it!"
"... yes, I do."
Mike’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“These are the friends you spend all your time studying with now?”
“Yep, the very ones,” I answered cheerfully. “Though you could look at it as tutoring—they’re only sophomores.”
“Oh,” Mike said, surprised. After a second of thought, he smiled.
Yes, because it's simply IMPOSSIBLE for a girl to date someone younger than herself. Who cares if he's a muscular hottie with stunning good looks? If he's a year or two younger, he's undateable!
You know, this is something about the Twishite series that REALLY bothers me: the emphasis that a relationship isn't any good unless it's between a young girl and a much older guy, ranging from Bella and Edturd to FUCKING CHILD BRIDES. Age peers? A girl who's even slightly older? Pshah, such inferior romances!
So unsurprisingly, Lauren and Jessica don't want to go with Bella because Lauren is supposed to be an Evil Jellus Hater Bitch and Jessica is still DARING to be pissed at Bella trying to get raped.
Eric and Katie already had plans—it was their three-week anniversary or something.
That is like, so totally lame and stuff! Like, TROO LUV means you're like too busy dry-humping and making out to notice stupid fake anniversaries!
Lauren got to Tyler and Conner before Mike could, so those two were also busy.
Right, because it couldn't be that they don't want to be around your sad-sack ass, huh? It MUST be that the Evil Jellus Hater Bitch got to them first and POISONED THEIR MINDS AGAINST HER! There's no other explanation!
In the end, only Angela and Ben, and, of course Jacob, were able to go.
Along with a dorky janitor and two snarky robots.
"For some reason, these guys yelled 'Dull surprise' every time they saw me!"
“Are you sure you don’t want to see Tomorrow and Forever instead?” he asked at lunch, naming the current romantic comedy that was ruling the box office. “Rotten Tomatoes gave it a better review.”
Just to be bitchy, I shall express my surprise that Smeyer even knows what Rotten Tomatoes is. In the first book, she seemed to think that the Internet was still locked in 1995.
Also, Tomorrow and Forever doesn't sound like a romcom. More like a cheesy romantic DRAMA.
“I want to see Crosshairs,” I insisted. “I’m in the mood for action. Bring on the blood and guts!”
“Okay.” Mike turned away, but not before I saw his maybe-she’s-crazy-after-all expression.
- Pshaw! Dumb loser Mike can't comprehend Bawla's amazingly deep mind!
- Then again, girls never want to see anything but romcoms, because women are frail flowers who are horrified by violence. Only men with their constant violence-boners want to see action movies!
- So clearly this is a sign of insanity.
So Bella gets home and discovers that Jacob has finished his car... which I had totally forgotten about. If I ever noticed it. Seriously, when did this ever come up? I mean... maybe it DID. It's just not particularly memorable... at all.
For some reason, Bella is thrilled by this.
“No way!” I shouted as I jumped out of the truck. “You’re done! I can’t believe it! You finished the Rabbit!”
"Now you can chauffeur me around, poor boy!"
He smacked his hand against mine, but left it there, twisting his fingers through mine.
And Bella doesn't discourage this at all. She just passively sits there, letting a guy she doesn't plan to date paw at her hands because... she's a cocktease.
No, instead she announces out of the blue, “I’m giving up—I can’t top this one. So you win. You’re oldest.” THAT WAS NEVER FUNNY TO START WITH. SO STOP TALKING ABOUT IT.
And Mike turns out. Time to crap all over the mere human!
“I remember this guy,” he said in a low voice as Mike parked across the street. “The one who thought you were his girlfriend. Is he still confused?”
- I'm sorry, but this is just depressing. REALLY depressing.
- The deluded schmuck is totally unaware of the irony - he is snarking on a "confused" guy who thought Bella was his girlfriend...
- ... while being confused and thinking Bella, if not his girlfriend, eventually will be. Even though she's stringing both boys along by refusing to give them the "just friends" speech.
- In a better book, I would think the irony is intentional. In this book... no way.
- And.... when did Mike think Bella was his girlfriend?! The poor guy lives in hope, but the guy who thought Bella was his girlfriend was TYLER.
- CONTINUITY, YOU FUCKING BIMBO.
I raised one eyebrow. “Some people are hard to discourage.”
“Then again,” Jacob said thoughtfully, “sometimes persistence pays off.”
“Most of the time it’s just annoying, though.”
- And Jacob thinks he's got a chance with this bitch.
- Also, it's kind of ironic that Bella is sneering about how hard it is to discourage some people, and how persistence is annoying. Why? Because she fucking STALKED Edturd in the previous movie, and threw a howling bitchfit when he told her to get lost.
- No, it's DOUBLY ironic because she also practically stalks Jacob LATER IN THIS CHAPTER.
So Mike shows up, and poor innocent naive Bella JUST THEN realizes that teehee, Mike might be a little bit jealous of Jacob, who is so big and mature and muscular. Yeah, she's totally stringing them along. Anyone else think Bella is one of those bitchy, selfish girls who like to pit men against each other and make them jealous because they love the attention?
So the two boys wave their dicks around while Bella pusses out and goes off to answer the phone. And guess what!
It was Ben. Angela was sick with the stomach flu, and he didn’t feel like coming without her.
Haha, what wacky hijinks. So because Angela had the NERVE to get sick without the Sullen Queen's permission, pooooooooor Bella is stuck with two boys who are SO jealous over her. Gag me.
I had to admit that I was selfishly upset by this development.
Like, it is SO totally inconvenient. Angela should have dragged herself from her sickbed and watched the movie anyway so poor Bella wouldn't be surrounded JUST by boys that worship her bland ass!
Just the three of us, Mike and Jacob and me, together for the evening—this had worked out brilliantly, I thought with grim sarcasm.
Oh, poor Bella. Her life is SO hard! It's almost like she's the Mary Sue of an author who is contriving to always surround her with hot boys vying for her affections, and that this takes up 99% of the so-called plot of this series! But that would be SILLY!
... FUCK THIS BITCH!
So Mike is all pissed off and jealous because, being human, he can't possibly measure up to Bella's lofty standards. But since Jacob is one of the author's favorites, he's being all smiley and pleasant.
As if to taunt us with how contrived this whole scenario is, Mike even suggests that they do it another time since everybody else is either sick or unwilling to spend time with Bawla Wan. But Jacob butts in and says he's happy to go, so Bella's attempts to agree with Mike never even start. Because hey, she's a woman, so she has to do whatever the nearest man commands.
So Smeyer keeps hammering us with the constant "Mike is all bitter and jellus, and Jacob is cheerful and awesome" crap, and Bella deliberately encourages Mike's jealousy by singing Jacob's praises.
“Doesn’t the radio work in this thing?” Mike asked with a hint of petulance, interrupting Jacob mid-sentence.
“Yes,” Jacob answered. “But Bella doesn’t like music.”
"She says that love songs suck, and breakup songs suck, and anything more rock'n'roll than Taylor Swift is too 'violent' for her."
But OH SHOCKZ, Bella has never told Jacob that! Wanna bet this little revelation will be completely forgotten and unexplained? YAY!
“How can you not like music?” Mike demanded.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. It just irritates me.”
"Along with girls and blondes and redheads and rain and snow and sunlight and primary colors and popular stuff and humans..."
"Does she ever shut up?"
"You learn to tune her out."
“I’m not old enough to get into this one,” he reminded me.
Have you guys forgotten that Jacob is younger than Bella, and therefore totally wrong for her? Because he is!
Seriously, does Smeyer think that a 16-year-old who can pass for 18 is going to bother with legal loopholes? They just buy tickets themselves.
“No. I told him you were planning to corrupt my youthful innocence.”
"For some reason he insisted I bring condoms."
I almost wished that Mike had decided to bow out. He was still sullen—not much of an addition to the party.
Doesn't he know BELLA is the only one who is allowed to be sullen?
But I didn’t want to end up on a date alone with Jacob, either. That wouldn’t help anything.
And it's not like I can just tell him I'm not interested in him! I have to keep dropping vague hints and hoping he catches on!
And once again, Smeyer depicts R-rated movies as cartoonish bloodbaths that the Cinema Snob would be proud of. I guess her squeaky-clean-pretends-to-have-never-seen-an-R-rated-movie attitude means she believes all R-rated movies are non-stop super-graphic gore and violence from beginning to end that make Kill Bill look like Friendship is Magic. They don't have plots or characterization or anything. They're just torture porn all the time.
Hey, bitch? All it takes to get an R-rating is the word "fuck" twice. That is all. You can have a movie entirely about lambs dancing in a sunny meadow, but if someone in it says "fuck" twice, it's a hard R.
Here's a quick listing of well-known, well-respected R-rated movies that are not bloodbath torture porn: Bridesmaids, Gladiator, Alien, Psycho, The King's Speech, Argo, The Godfather, The Blair Witch Project, Silver Linings Playbook, Total Recall, The Birdcage, Blazing Saddles, District 9, Watchmen, Tropic Thunder, Black Swan, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Sleepy Hollow, Flashdance, When Harry Met Sally, the original Amityville Horror, Immortals, Die Hard and The Talented Mr. Ripley.
You know what ALL those R-rated movies have in common? They have more plot than anything Smeyer has ever written.
Bella just sits there drooling through the movie. Stephenie Meyer must be the worst person in the world to go to a movie with, because her Sue never actually watches them. She just sits there staring off into space and not really paying attention to anyone. She even explicitly says that she's watching the colors and the movement on the screen rather than seeing the shapes of people and cars and houses. Why don't you pay attention to the MOVIE?
You know, it's funny that for someone who views herself as a literary titan who is SO much smarter than us plebes because she reads the basics of English lit, Smeyer/Bella has absolutely no standards or preferences for cinema. I guess she thinks it doesn't count as an art form if it involves cameras.
And sadly, this movie introduces us to something that becomes a lot more prevalent in these books after now: the transformation of Jacob into DOUCHEMAN 2.0!
Basically, he becomes one of those people who snickers and talks his way through a movie when other people are trying to pay attention. Yeah, the gore is described as being Monty-Pythonesque
but unless other people are also laughing (like during a screening of Prince of Thieves) it's just RUDE to do that.
So since Bella is a snobby bitch, she enjoys sitting with Jacob and laughing at how fake the movie is. I mean, who would want to do that? Have a person just sitting there laughing and pointing at how awful and stupid something is?
...
...
...
Uh, never mind.
But if she's laughing and making fun of the movie (take that, R-rated movies! Smeyer burned you!), then why the hell was she NOT paying attention two minutes ago? Continuity, you bimbo!
After that, I really watched the show, laughing with him as the mayhem got more and more ridiculous.
Well, at least it's probably more satisfying than the shitfests based on these books.
How was I ever going to fight the blurring lines in our relationship when I enjoyed being with him so much?
... then why fight it?
It's a simple question. I don't know why Bella is resisting her attraction to Jacob. THERE IS NO REASON TO. She's single. He's single. They're attracted to each other. They enjoy spending time together. WHY NOT DATE? People have relationships based on less!
Honestly, I feel like Smeyer left out some vital information that would tell us why she's so determined not to date Jacob. Maybe her idea is that you're supposed to remain faithful to the guy who dumped your ass in the woods, treated you like crap and even took back his GIFTS to you. But... WHY? They're called EX-boyfriends for a reason, dumb twat.
So both Jacob and Mike are trying to hold Bella's clammy limp hands, which is apparently Dick-Waving Stage 3.
I couldn’t believe that Mike was thinking the same thing, but his hand was placed exactly like Jacob’s.
I couldn't BELIEVE that the guy who's been crushing on me for the last year was acting the same way as the guy who's been crushing on me for the last year! This comes out of nowhere!
And then Mike gets sick from seeing all the gore and stuff, although for some reason it takes him half the movie to start being affected. And even though Bella and Jacob have been laughing and talking through the whole fucking movie (I HATE THOSE PEOPLE AND WILL PURIFY THEM WITH FIRE!), people only start staring when Mike groans in pain.
Mike groaned again, and bolted for the door. I got up to follow him, and Jacob copied me immediately.
“No, stay,” I whispered. “I’ll make sure he’s okay.”
Yes, she'll follow him into the MEN'S ROOM to see if he's okay. Clearly Jacob can't do that.
But since Bella is useless in any situation, Jacob does come along with her.
“That’s okay. You sure can pick them, Bella. This movie really sucks.”
Yep, it matches her taste in men.
There was no sign of Mike in the hallway, and I was glad then that Jacob had come with me—he ducked into the men’s bathroom to check for him there.
"Then again, I'm so sexless and bland that it doesn't matter if I waltz into the men's room! And I'm so nondescript that nobody will notice me."
Seriously, what did she expect? When you throw up in any kind of building, YOU HEAD FOR THE BATHROOM. Or at least, normal people do. Someone like Bella would probably just puke on the floor and then lie there waiting for a rescue.
So Jacob checks on Mike, and then pops back out to be an asshole about someone else vomiting: “What a marshmallow. You should hold out for someone with a stronger stomach. Someone who laughs at the gore that makes weaker men vomit.” Someone who values strength over personality. Someone who lacks compassion and empathy. Someone who is an asshole to romantic rivals who haven't been rude to him.
Yeah, you can tell when Jacob REALLY becomes a contender for Bella's affections: it's when he starts acting like an asshole.
So since Smeyer has no understanding of the joy of snarking, Bella and Jacob just sit out in the hall and do Bella's favorite activity: sitting there and blabbering. When Jacob tries to cuddle with Bella, Bella gives him the "I just want to be friends" speech... oops, wait, forgot what book this is. She just whines "Jake" and wriggles away.
He reached out and took my hand firmly, wrapping his other hand around my wrist when I tried to pull away again. Where did he get the confidence from?
His future career as a rapist? Seriously, what kind of fucked-up girl sees "grabbing my body parts and refusing to let me pull away" as "confidence"?
So now it's time for...
I'll sum it up for you: They have an incredibly long, boring conversation about how Bella likes Jacob better than anyone else in her life, and he's okay with it as long as he's No. 1, but she's still hung up on Edturd. Oh, and Jacob continues being a douche about poor Mike, who it later turns out is actually ill. With a disease.
I didn’t want to do this. Not just not now, but not ever.
I wanted to string hunky teenage boys along indefinitely without having to either turn them down OR go out with them! Is that so much to ask?!
There was nothing left in my life at this point that was more important than Jacob Black.
I'm sure her parents feel SO loved. Let's check the ranking of importance in Bella's life...
- Bella
- Bella
- Bella's angst
- Edward's penis
- Edward's money
- Edward
- Jacob's penis
- Jacob
- Bella's book collection that she never seems to be reading but needs in order to look smart and superior
- Bella's cliffs notes, so she knows the basics of what those books are about
- Bella's skinny jeans
- Bella's emo eyeliner
- Her true love Alice
- The rest of the Cullens (except Rosalie)
- That ditzy blonde woman who lives in Florida and pesters Bella for attention....
- .... 147. That annoying guy who lives in Bella's house and smells like fish, but who gives her money and doesn't bother her with rules and stuff.
So basically Jacob strong-arms Bella into admitting that she's not interested in him romantically, which she was too much of a selfish cowardly bitch to actually say herself. Our heroine, people. And we're supposed to think of her as a selfless angel.
“That’s okay, you know. As long as you like me the best. And you think I’m good-looking—sort of. I’m prepared to be annoyingly persistent.”
"I'm prepared to stalk you openly, steal your panties, tap your phone and whatever else it takes to get your affection."
"Will you break into my house and watch me sleep?"
"Oh, totally. That's a part of normal romantic pursuits!"
“I’m not going to change,” I said, and though I tried to keep my voice normal, I could hear the sadness in it.
"I'll still have an obsessive fetish for marble statues!"
Ugh, this whole scene just sums up what this whole book is about - Smeyer feeding the fantasies of young stupid girls who think that it's the end of the world if your boyfriend dumps you, and the world is dark and bleak and love is dead and blah blah blah end Livejournal poetry entry. Yeah, that's how teenage girls often think and feel. It's a part of immaturity, and learning how to have a relationship and handle the emotions that come with it.
But you know what? A thirtysomething WOMAN should not believe this shit, nor should she ENCOURAGE it in others. If she does, it means that she has the same maturity as a 13-year-old who just got dumped.
Yes, Bella is an actual teenage girl in this story, and this is her first relationship. But here's the thing: her mopey emo-ness about Edturd is depicted as being the normal reaction of someone deprived of "true love," no matter what their age. She's not being depicted as someone immature and stupid, but someone smart and mature who has "twoo wuv."
He picked up on so much about me that I never said.
"Like my contempt for everyone and my total lack of personality!"
“You shouldn’t waste it on me,” I said, though I wanted him to. Especially if he was willing to accept me the way I was—damaged goods, as is.
JUST FUCKING DATE HIM ALREADY. She wants to, but for some reason that HASN'T been explained, she won't. I HATE THIS BOOK.
I am against book-burning on principle, but I would make an exception for this piece of shit. Also, what does she mean, "damaged goods"?! So if you break up with someone, you're too "damaged" to have another relationship?!
So blah blah blah Bella rejects Jacob while also hinting that she totally wants his "little wolf" and wants him to hang around her, ie she is a huge cocktease.
“So what’s the problem?”
“The problem,” I said, “is that it means something different to me than it does to you.”
“Well.” He tightened his hand around mine. “That’s my problem, isn’t it?”
No. No, it's not. A friendship is a MUTUAL relationship, and so if it means different things to the two people involved... it's a problem for BOTH of them!
Oh wait, Bella can't possibly have any real PROBLEMS in her life, so people will just reshuffle reality so she won't have to deal with any nasty emotional complications. Hmm, who does that remind me of?
Yeah, Bella is basically a Mormon version of Anita Blake.
So they natter about her scar that has NOTHING TO DO WITH ANYTHING, and eventually poor Mike comes tottering out and asks to leave early. To really hammer home that Jacob is being an insensitive dick, it turns out Mike has been feeling ill for awhile, but was hoping it would pass. Even the popcorn girl is an insensitive asshole to poor Mike, just in case Our Heroes shitting on him wasn't enough.
Oh, and Bella conveniently doesn't realize what this means about Mike - he came along on this trip to try to spend some time with her, even though he was feeling unwell. Does she care? Nope!
So they start driving home, and... DUN DUN DUN! Jacob's skin is unnaturally hot, but he doesn't feel bad.
Mike groaned in the backseat, and threw up in the bucket. I grimaced, hoping my own stomach could stand the sound and smell. Jacob checked anxiously over his shoulder to make sure his car wasn’t defiled.
Bella only cares whether Mike's uncontrollable vomiting is too icky for her delicate sensibilities, and Jacob only cares about the upholstery. It's nice to see such compassionate protagonists.
So since Bella has gone a whole ten minutes without navel-gazing, she decides to spend the trip home wangsting about her poor wittle broken heart and her twagic life.
I stared out the windshield, consumed with guilt.
Not so much guilt that I would actually do anything different, but just enough that I can claim I'm not a sociopath.
It was so wrong to encourage Jacob. Pure selfishness.
Know who that reminds me of?
Why? Because like Bella, Anita Blake will do horrible things like rape, murder and enslavement, pretend to feel bad about how horrible she's being... and do that stuff anyway, since she considers the admission of guilt to be absolution.
It didn’t matter that I’d tried to make my position clear.
No, you didn't. You squirmed a little, gave him mixed messages, and you actively AVOIDED talking about it.
If he felt any hope at all that this could turn into something other than friendship, then I hadn’t been clear enough.
No. You haven't. Like I said, MIXED MESSAGES. You said it totally wouldn't turn into a romance, but hoped it would. You said you just wanted friendship, then nattered about how much you like him. YOU ARE STRINGING HIM ALONG, YOU INSUFFERABLE MANIPULATIVE BITCH. YOU MAKE BROTHERFUCKING MURDERER CERSEI LANNISTER LOOK LIKE A LIKABLE PERSON.
How could I explain so that he would understand?
I just wasn't interested in a guy who isn't ice cold and rock hard.
I was an empty shell.
So what? You were one to begin with.
No, seriously. She has barely any memories of her pre-Forks life, no friends from her pre-Forks life, no hobbies, no favorite anythings, no phobias, no tics, no pets, no opinions except that everything sucks, no family connections outside her parents, and no identity outside Edturd. She's like a blank canvas that is NEVER going to be filled in except for constant repetitions of the word "Edward Edward Edward."
Like a vacant house—condemned—for months I’d been utterly uninhabitable.
Like a bad sentence - horrible - that was bad writing.
And so she's saying that she's uninhabitable. What? Does she expect tiny people to use her body as a house?
Now I was a little improved. The front room was in better repair. But that was all—just the one small piece. He deserved better than that—better than a one-room, falling-down fixer-upper. No amount of investment on his part could put me back in working order.
The words "the bitch doth protest too much, methinks" come to mind. Sorry, but we've seen no evidence that she isn't in "working order" or that she's incapable of a relationship with Jacob.
Let's see:
| Edward | Jacob |
| Bella obsesses on him | Bella obsesses on him |
| They do the "I can't go out with you/but I want to anyway" dance |
They do the "I can't go out with you/but I want to anyway" dance |
| Bella thinks he's hot | Bella thinks he's hot |
| Bella spends all her time with him |
Bella spends all her time with him |
| He's the only guy she pays attention to except Jacob |
He's the only guy she pays attention to except Edward |
| Bella stalks him | Bella stalks him (later in the chapter) |
| Bella is completely codependent with him |
Bella is completely codependent with him |
| The more he acts like an asshole, the more Bella likes him |
The more he acts like an asshole, the more Bella likes him |
So basically Bella is acting EXACTLY the same way, except in this case she actually got to KNOW the guy instead of just being interrogated for a few days.
Come to think of it, the only real reason Bella has to turn down Jacob is because he's not white and rich.
Yet I knew that I wouldn’t send him away, regardless. I needed him too much, and I was selfish.
Of course you won't. Bella craves supernatural penis!
Maybe I could make my side more clear, so that he would know to leave me. The thought made me shudder, and Jacob tightened his arm around me.
So she won't date him, but she wants him to hang around around her all the time, have his whole social life be about her, do stuff for her, and generally have her whole life revolve around her. In return he gets a constant droning of, "I totally like you but I totally am not gonna date you m'kay?"
Actually, she's sounding more and more like...
Yeah, the one who ALSO insists on all men spend their time dancing attendance on her, but refuses any kind of emotional attachment, claiming that she's selfish but tough tits, that's how she is, and you better NOT LEAVE HER. The only difference is that Anita puts out, whereas Bella won't unless you're toothpaste-colored.
Jacob was quiet all the way back to my house, and I wondered if he were thinking the same things that I was. Maybe he was changing his mind.
"Wow, that guy puked up a whole chicken drumstick! A whole one! Bone and all! How do you even DO that?"
No, actually it turns out that Jacob is starting to feel kinda off as well, and Bella of course thought it was all about her.
“I would invite myself in, since we’re early,” he said as we pulled up next to my truck. “But I think you might be right about the fever. I’m starting to feel a little...strange.”
Kid, it's called an erection. Get used to them.
So even though she spent the ENTIRE DRIVE thinking just about herself, Bella supposedly is all concern about his health, and even insists that he call her as soon as he gets home. Jacob doesn't seem to give a crap... which makes Bella suddenly obsessive about him.
“Sure, sure.” He frowned, staring ahead into the darkness and biting his lip.
He was ignoring me completely! Suddenly I was so turned on!
“There’s something I want to tell you, Bella...but I think it’s going to sound kind of corny.”
"I think I'm gay for your ex-boyfriend."
No, he just blabbers about how he'll always be there for her and she can always count on him, and he'd never hurt her blahblahblah wake me when the cliches end. Basically it's all about he's the total opposite of her ex-boyfriend, who not only dumped her without warning after pledging eternal love to her, but also left her in the middle of an enormous forest with no way of getting home. And he stole the presents he gave her.
.... MR PERFECT.
Bella responds by saying, “Yeah, Jake. I know that. And I already do count on you, probably more than you know” and Jacob immediately
I hadn’t said one word that was a lie, but I should have lied. The truth was wrong, it would hurt him. I would let him down.
- Yes, you will let him down.
- Because you're a worthless human being.
- Just because it's the truth doesn't mean it has to be PHRASED LIKE THAT. Emotional/relationship truths do not have to be phrased in ONE WAY.
- You could have just said, "Thank you, Jake, hearing that is a huge comfort." And it wouldn't have strung him along!
- But Bella won't do that, because she clearly is one of those women who LIKES stringing guys along and then wangsting about how she cannot love them no matter how big their penis is.
Jacob starts feeling weird again, and leaves. Since Bella is now being ignored, she screams after him, “Call me!” Jacob, take a hint: she's only hot for you when you ignore her and treat her like crap. It's just the kind of girl she is.
How much I wished that Jacob Black had been born my brother, my flesh-and-blood brother,
... wow. I was prepared for abusive codependent relationships, self-destructive behavior, sexual assault and pedophilia. But I didn't count on the main character wishing for incest.
Good going, Smeyer! You always manage to surprise me!
I'm not kidding here. She says one paragraph later that she DOES love him romantically... but she also wishes he were her brother. Ew.
And you know what's even grosser? One of Smeyer's brothers... is named Jacob. The incest vibes are getting stronger.
Heaven knows I had never wanted to use Jacob, but I couldn’t help but interpret the guilt I felt now to mean that I had.
Notice that she doesn't assume she's using him because of her ACTIONS and WORDS, but because of her vague "guilt."
Even more, I had never meant to love him.
"I only spent every day hanging around and having fun with a devastatingly studly attractive member of the opposite sex who makes me feel wonderful while erasing my emo pain. I didn't expect LOVE!"
Honestly, I think Smeyer doesn't think that actual love arising from compatibility, time spent together and friendship counts as actual love. If it doesn't hit your eye like a big pizza pie, it's not amore - or at least, that's what she keeps insisting. Instant lust with NO KNOWLEDGE OF EACH OTHER WHATSOEVER is the only REAL love. More on that later.
One thing I truly knew—knew it in the pit of my stomach, in the center of my bones, knew it from the crown of my head to the soles of my feet, knew it deep in my empty chest
Knew it in my throbbing gallbladder, knew it in my patellas, knew it in the spot 2/3rds of the way down my left arm, knew it in my uvula...
was how love gave someone the power to break you.
Oh shit... not again.
It's official. Bella is a Mormon version of Anita Blake. Seriously.
Let's see the checklist:
- Both are allegedly smart, charming and brave, but are actually dumb and dull.
- Both are supposedly attractive to all men.
- Both have a vampire and a werewolf that feud over them.
- Both prefer the asshole who manipulates them to the "Boy Scout."
- Both have no actual skills.
- Both are annoyed by guys who want emotional commitment.
- Both of them act like insane bitches when rejected.
- Both have nothing but contempt for their loving families.
- Both are super-pale brunettes.
- Both hate blondes.
- Both have no tolerance for other women, unless those women are ass-kissers and/or somehow "defective."
- Both are only interested in "monsters," and have only contempt for humans.
- Both are speshul snowflakes who do stuff nobody else can do, including mentally repelling the villains.
- Both are obsessed with sex.
- Both are racists
- Both choose the rich guy over the "normal" guy.
- Both are the center of their books' universes, and everybody knows about and is interested in her.
And so on, and so on. The main difference is that since LKH isn't Mormon, her Sue fucks a whole bunch of different guys, waves guns around, swears a lot and dresses like a whore. Smeyer just WISHES Bella could fuck a bunch of different supernatural guys and dress like a whore.
But I digress. What does that "love can break you" thing have in common with Anita Blake?
Why, because Anita spouts the same shit. Namely, her mother died in a car crash when she was like five years old, and her college boyfriend dumped her ass. So now she's "afraid" (read: unwilling) to emotionally commit to any of the penises she's screwing because love lets people hurt you. She demands love and devotion, while giving no support to others whatsoever.
Bella? Her boyfriend dumped her, so she's decided to never love again because her asshole ex "broke" her. Think about that. That's even stupider than Anita Blake's self-indulgent crap. I mean, the people reading this are probably in their mid-teens or above. You've probably had more than one relationship in your life. You've probably been dumped. You've probably dumped someone else. IT'S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD. Even the most intense and passionate of relationships are things you can move past.
And this wasn't a marriage of forty years or something like this. This was a couple who dated for like six months, went to prom, never had sex, and never progressed past the "let's feed each other ice cream" phase. I have had more lasting relationships with my socks.
Also, you notice that she's implicitly admitting that she doesn't love her parents or anybody else. That dear ol' granny at the start of the book? Bella didn't love her, because obviously her DEATH didn't break Bella.
I’d been broken beyond repair.
... or at least, that is what I kept telling myself. After all, being happy, well-adjusted and moving past my breakup wouldn't be self-indulgently emo!
But I needed Jacob now, needed him like a drug. I’d used him as a crutch for too long,
Thank you for taking the only semi-normal, semi-healthy relationship in the whole series... and trying to make it sound as unhealthy as Bella/Edward.
Now I couldn’t bear for him to be hurt, and I couldn’t keep from hurting him, either.
Yes, you could. You're just too selfish to do so.
He thought time and patience would change me, and, though I knew he was dead wrong, I also knew that I would let him try.
"Because I'm a selfish horrible bitch who uses other people for her own ends."
He was my best friend. I would always love him, and it would never, ever be enough.
He might be red-hot, sweet and affectionate, but he also has to be rich and cocaine-colored! It will NEVER be enough until he is!
So having established that she totally isn't hot for Jacob and never will be, Bella sits next to the phone biting her nails and waiting for him to call her.
No, seriously. I don't think Smeyer is trying to be ironic, because she's too much of a hack to understand irony. Charlie also comes in, so we can have this scintillating exchange:
“Mike got sick,” I explained. “Some kind of stomach flu.”
“You okay?”
“I feel fine now,” I said doubtfully. Clearly, I’d been exposed.
Yes, because stomach bugs work within an hour of being exposed. That's how they work, Ms. Science Expert.
So because Jacob doesn't call THE MOMENT he gets home, Bella starts calling his house. Over and over. She doesn't care that nobody answers. Maybe Billy was asleep. What a kind selfless person she is. And finally Billy answers the phone, and states that Jacob is there, but he's sick. It's pretty obvious that Billy is totally uninterested in talking to Bella, and Bella is too dense to figure out that he wants her to keep her ass away from Jacob while he's sick... probably because he's afraid that the sociopathic bint will rape him.
“No, no,” Billy said quickly. “We’re fine. Stay at your place.”
"Seriously, the last thing he needs is a whiny girl sitting there telling him why HER life sucks."
The way he said it was almost rude.
Almost as rude as constantly calling a handicapped man who is trying to care for his sick son, and refusing to stop nagging until he answers.
So Billy hangs up right away, which doesn't stop Bella from obsessing on Jacob and plotting to take him some cheap soup the next day: I could take soup—we had to have a can of Campbell’s around here somewhere. Um, the whole point of taking someone soup is the idea that you actually did some work to make them food that might make them feel better. Why bother bringing over a CAN OF INSTANT SOUP that the other person could make themselves with no effort?
What, does Bella's culinary prowess not extend to homemade chicken soup, or is Jacob not worth the effort?
Instant soup = caring!
Also, note the pattern: Bella rejects Jacob and insists that they can never be anything but friends... and then she does something to encourage him. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But fortunately for Bella, she doesn't have to go on her mission of mediocre mercy, because she catches the same stomach bug Mike had. Yeah, isn't this what you read vampire fiction for? Gripping, riveting stomach bugs! Dramatic puking! Taking a day off from your part-time job! The stuff of great drama! Thrills! Chills! More puking!
I spent the rest of the day on the bathroom floor, sleeping for a few hours with my head on a crumpled up towel.
What a pathetic wimp she is. Mike managed to make it halfway through a movie before he had to leave. Why doesn't Bella just go to bed with a bucket?
Charlie claimed that he had to work, but I suspected that he just wanted access to a bathroom.
Also, he was tired of hearing Bella whining about how she wouldn't be sick if Edward had just made her a vampire.
Have you noticed that Bella assumes everyone in the world is just as much of a selfish liar as herself? Maybe your dad is... I dunno, investigating those mysterious mutant animals roaming in the woods?! Especially since we later discover that there are a bunch of MYSTERIOUS DEATHS in the area? Why do you think YOU are what matters?
He left a glass of water on the floor beside me to keep me hydrated.
Get the feeling Charlie just doesn't give a shit anymore?
He clumped up the stairs to check on me.
“Still alive?”
Yup, he gives not one shit.
He hesitated, clearly out of his element. “Okay, then,” he said, and then he went back down to the kitchen.
- Then again, he apparently is incapable of simply helping out a sick loved one.
- Thank God he's the only cop in the town. If you crashed into a tree, he might be so overwhelmed by the awkwardness of it all that you would NEVER get help.
- Also, Bella has been living in Forks for over a year now, and attending a public school. Are we supposed to think she's never gotten a stomach bug?!
Bella spends the whole night on the bathroom floor, and finally Charlie gets sick of having to pee in the woods, and stuffs her limp carcass in her bedroom. Wasn't this whole part of the chapter just SO necessary?! Nothing else would work unless Bella spent the day puking!
And the next morning, she calls Jacob again. Amazingly, Billy has not blocked her number.
“Oh, Jake,” I groaned sympathetically. “You sound horrible.”
"Almost as horrible as I feel. See, I spent all night puking, so let me tell you about it-"
"Goodbye, Bella."
click
So even though he feels like shit, Jacob is glad he went on his dick-waving movie-snarking trip with Bella.... because obviously going to see a movie is so much more intimate than spending every single day together... with no one else around.
“I don’t think I have the same thing you did.”
"I mean, do your symptoms involve growing lots of hair, growling and inexplicable attraction to Mary Sues? Because my dad says it's just puberty, but I have my doubts."
“Don’t you have the stomach flu?” I asked, confused.
“No. This is something else.”
"Is bleeding from every orifice a bad sign?"
So for some reason, Jacob says every part of him hurts.
He also orders Bella to not come see him, and Bella.... really doesn't seem to care much. Considering she was glued to the phone the other day, this is a big switcheroo.
Tune in next time, same snarky time, same snarky channel! And in the next chapter, something will happen! Almost! Something will ALMOST happen! Not!
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