Eclipse, Chapter 2: Portrait of an Addict as a Cardboard Ingenue

Eclipse is, by far, a more interesting story as an addiction memoir instead of Teen Paranormal Romance. (I am nauseated to know this sub-genre only exists because of Twilight.) Bella's paranoia, social awkwardness, and aching lust for Edward's cold, vampy kisses easily draw from crack addiction. Her life-planning horizon shrinks from the standard expectations of a high school senior applying for college, to a strung-out waif clamoring for her next Cullen fix. Even her deeply mentally retarded father can see it, and in this chapter he begs for her to try other friends for her socially-induced, sexless high. Charlie practically throws her at Jacob, whose abs have yet to make an appearance in this book. When Edward fucks up her car so she can't drive to see wolfieboy, Charlie offers her his police cruiser.

That sentence should terrify you for a variety of reasons.

Edward is her pusher, of course. He dangles her on the strings of desire, tickles those razor ivories over her smooches, and abandons her to empty, unsated lust EVERY TIME. Then he controls her life for her. In Chapter 2, Edward informs Bella he will forge her signature in order to submit applications to the colleges he feels she should consider. Later, he manipulates her in front of her dim-witted father to go visit her estranged mother in Florida. Finally, when Alice narcs on Bella to him about her plans on visiting her werewolf BFF, Edward removes some vital (but unidentified) portion of her car engine to keep her at home, promising to fix it in time for school.

As far as romantic swains go, Edward blows chunks. But as an actual, bona fide, evil vampire bent on controlling and destroying the life of a young woman, he's a winner! Edward is a chilling when cast as the villain, especially when he challenges Bella to close her window if she doesn't want him to come watch her sleep.

But let's be fair. In the middle of the night, Bella planned on leaving her house without telling anyone, to go visit the angry, hormonal, new werewolf in love with her. If sparklepants hadn't sabotaged her truck, they would have been finding pieces of her up and down the beach for days.

Still, a part of me died inside at then end of the Chapter.

I stamped my way up the stairs, and went straight to my window. I shoved the metal frame roughly - it crashed shut and the glass trembled.

I stared at the shivering black glass for a long moment, until it was still. Then I sighed, and opened the window as wide as it would go.

Given what I know about Breaking Dawn, I assume she does the same with her vagina finally.

Eclipse, Chapter 1: The Dumb leading the Dumber

Motivated purely by ego, the Twilight blog continues into Eclipse after over a year delay. I'm exploring the contents of Meyer's third book digitally this time around, only to have my frustration mount higher with poor ePub formatting. During my downtime, I began tutoring an 11 year-old, and the misshapen format serves comparison between his attempts at essay writing, and this novel. Of course in his stories, a gigantic snow monster terrorizes Las Vegas and can only be defeated by the boy and his faithful companion Yoshi of Super Mario Bros.

I'm having trouble choosing which of the two makes the most sense.

Chapter 1 of Eclipse reintroduces us to elder abuse and misogyny, the latter of course displayed the moment Edward arrives to shit up the scene. But a note to the former, while it has been a very long time since I cracked New Moon, I can't recall Bella's hate-on for her father. Charlie, while not the brightest bulb in the box of local Sheriffs, never struck me as an oppressive presence in her life. I applauded his sole act of parental attention when he grounded Bella for bailing on Forks and jetting off to Italy, and then coming back. But in Chapter 1, we find Charlie epic failing at the preparation of the bachelor staple spaghetti, whinging about Bella's adoration of Edward to the exclusion of all else, pimping Jacob, growlin' at that Cullen boy who comes snooping around, and generally, finally being the bad dad guy.

But Charlie deserves better! Even if he did microwave a jar of spaghetti sauce with the lid still on. Bella shits all over him in her narrative, which may or may not be an example of Unreliable Narrator, but since there is no point to the flawed perception of the storytelling, we'll have to assume Bella's unfailing lack of intelligence is an inherited trait.

Oh yeah, and we lose a page describing Edward. Resplendent. Dangerous. Adonis. Whatever. He douches up the scene trying to placate Charlie, and then proceeds to sit idly by while Bella catches us up on the plot so far. Bella must be vamped, and in the near future, and holy shit is she jonesing for it. The closest thing to sexual aggression I've seen in Bella is her desperation at being made into a lifeless bloodsucker. But not marriage. That gives her pouty face.

Really? You can't make a legal commitment to the wealthiest family in Forks, but you can let Edward rape your circulatory system and curse you with walking death?

As a divorcee, I applaud the resistance to marriage so fast, but I still want to bitch-slap the soup out of Bella's mouth. She doesn't want to go to college, she doesn't want to get married, she doesn't want to grow any older. Instead, Bella dives into Wuthering Heights for escapism, (wtf?!) hides in the domesticated role of caring for her clearly mentally retarded father, worships her boyfriend who won't fuck her, and throws a fit when asked to apply for Dartmouth. Edward proves his princely nature and forges her application for her. Because that's the kind of eternal love you want in your life. Someone who rejects your opinions and feelings and makes bold overtures without your consent.

Shit, this is only Chapter 1! Now I know why I took a 15-month hiatus from Twilight.

New Moon, movie review

The Twilight movie held a greater interest for me compared to the book solely due to the collaborative efforts of talented, inspired and professional artists and actors. It was a pretty movie telling a decent story, despite the insipid source material. I can't say the same for New Moon. Without the delightful newness of lovely if popcorn imagery, I must cast a more critical eye on the film making itself. While still a visually satisfying canvas, the performances by the cast felt ingenuous, stilted and lethargic, as if everyone DMX'd like eight graders before hitting their marks. I've decided the arduous pauses and poor blocking are the result of the teen-movie money shots; Edward's hair and Jacob's abs. Any scene lacking those elements doesn't suck so poorly.

Sex plays just an awkward a role. While the slicked up werewolf boys flex around like wayward Abercrombie & Fitch models, Bella and every other female character, even the dangerous Victoria, angst about swathed head to foot in layers of department store fall fashions, (come see the appropriate side of Sears!) While this is preferable to the early sexualization of American girls, the lack of balance invites a hairy eyeball at the double-standard of female sexuality. Unless she's diving off a cliff or fleeing across the globe to save her ex, Bella's choices are made for her. She's not allowed to claim anything for herself; not her body, her sexuality, her boyfriend, her mortality or her marriage.

God love the Mormons and their Bible fan fiction religion, I can't stand these themes in literature and I despise seeing them on screen.

The pop-movie generator churns on, assembling all the pieces that make a successful box office and throwing them together. The soundtrack rocks, the special effects are getting better, (though I am always going to be picky about my sympathetic monster effects. And by picky, I mean snobbishly unsatisfied,) and the color palette of Forks vs. Volterra is gorgeously contrasted. But the formula is starting to show and no amount of geometry is going to justify its continued use if movie is the only thing sucking in a vampire story.

Faking it: Chapters 20-24 and Epilogue

The first section of Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love chronicles her adventures in Italy where she speaks Italian, eats herself out of shape and generally finds oneness amidst the ancient city of Rome and surrounding countryside. Having merely read those chapters and peeked at the Wikipedia article for Volterra, I already appear to know more than Meyer about Italy. For example, there is no such fucking thing as a vampire-themed festival of Saint Marcus. The use of it feels shoehorned into the dramatic backdrop for the sake of theme, a concession Meyer never bothered with in this or the last book before. Abruptly dragging the setting out of Washington and then not utilizing preexisting concepts in a nation known for political corruption, mafia strong-arming and one notable, failed attempt at Fascism, in favor of a make-believe vampparty is sadder than the allied bombing of abbey at Monte Cassino. Why not Rome, so close to the papal seat in Vatican City, thereby elaborating on Edward's fear of losing his soul and allowing the Volteri to exist like the worm in the apple of the holiest place on earth? Oh, because Meyer is a hack.

A constipated force of tension takes us into Chapter 20 as Bella elbows her way through the festival crowd to stop Edward from making his body-glitter appearance. Please remember that a lot of people are in costume for this shindig, up to and including plastic fangs. I don't know about you, but when I'm at this breed of goth party and someone shows up shirtless and shiny, I either a). Find the guy who slipped me a roofie, or b). Shrug it off as some sort of attention-getting costume and take of my shirt. (I might not glitter, but these nips are epic!) But this is Edward's emo brilliant plan to off himself. Bella clothelines herself on him and convinces him to hide back in shadow before the Volteri show up, which they do anyway.

Alice blows in just as the smack starts talking and the tension mounts before flagging suddenly when the hero of Canton, a man they call Jane arrives and they all blithely follow her into the sewers. A reason is given, eighteen pages later, that Jane's mental powers allow her to incite unfathomable pain upon anyone she looks at. But not for her boring-as-Mormon-missionary-position name. Meyer drops more description on the convoluted path to the Volteri throne room than on the rest of nation of Italy because clearly it isn't interesting enough to note. Further, Bella's whining narrative kicks up to grate nails down my mental chalkboard. Her greatest concern as the mysterious vampires escort them deeper and deeper into their clutches? Whether or not Edward still wants her or is protecting her out of a sense guilt.

No fair. Vampires can't read her mind but I HAVE TO!

Shit happens in the court of the Volteri, but it lacks any substance, depth, genuine tension or style. For your sake, pick up any Anne Rice book, (they lack real difference between them, so whatever,) and insert any sequence where a group of vampires meet and greet (and eat), and you'll be better off. For kicks, try this with any Laurell K. Hamilton book and maybe take a bold hit off your bong and actually have a good time. In the end, the vamps decree that Bella is neat because her brain chatter interferes with all vampire powers, rendering her immune. Further, she knows too much about vamps to live, so either she stays in Volterra or the Cullens make her a vampire. Vegi-vamps says "Okiedokie" and bail.

Major emotional upsets and character conflicts snare and tangle within the last two chapters. Instead of addressing this, Bella and Edward snuggle and don't resolve anything between them for the next ... (flips pages) entire chapter. Instead we once again are treated to two ginormous flights back to Washington and don't make with any dialogue until getting to Charlie's doorstep. Given Meyer's habit of nuking her own pacing by sending characters fleeing over long distances, first to Phoenix, now to Italy, I expect the next book involves a rocket ship.

The rest of the book is a downhill shit-slide. At the poopie end, the Cullens vote to make Bella a vampire on Edward's timetable, Bella is grounded as fuck but still gets to date Edward, and Jacob tries to sell her down the river but opts for a cease-fire because he wuvs her so much. Edward proposes and in the most offensive move to date, Bella rejects the idea of marriage so young (despite desperately flinging herself at his fangs to be made his vampy mistress) and further bemoans the idea of waiting for either of these until she's thirty because that's fucking ancient. To an 18 year-old, yes, but fuck you Bella!

To summarize New Moon, Edward dumps Bella, she writhes in mental anguish and fails to rebound, some stuff with Italy and vampires, Edward and Bella get engaged, and Jacob is thrown over faster than U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker could overturn Proposition 8. Insert witty joke about Team Jacob the underdog here, because I'd rather be drinking.

Exeunt with Hautboys: Chapters 15-19

Let's take stock here of actual threats in the Twilight series thus far.

In the last book, three evilvamps showed up. One of them tried to eat Bella and was squished by the Cullens. The second, Laurent, bailed in the first book but returned in the second to track Bella and down and reveal the last vamp, Victoria, is plotting a grand, bloody revenge against Bella for the death of her mate by the Cullens, (read: above squished.) Then the wolves descended and tore the shit out of him. This leaves one vampire. Just one.

Five werewolves, and arguably an entire tribe of Quileute Indians, verses one vampire with a solitary goal of rendering Bella into a smear and an afterthought. (Bravo, lass!) Why are Meyer's supernatural entities so full of strategy fail? Why must they always split up to go hunting away from their places of safety and numbers and their quarry's singular goal? If the Cullens could count on their fingers with any accuracy in the last book, these vamplings would never be an issue. But no. The werewolves scatter to track Victoria and leave Bella to wander into danger around the homestead with only a handicapable babysitter.

In Chapter 15, Bella's near-death experience comes not at the hands of Victoria, nor from the quintet of newbie werewolves guarding her. Told to remain safely in La Push, Bella decides she needs her hallucinatory Edward fix and jumps off a cliff.

I've argued long and loud that the single most terrible aspect of the Twilight series is the protagonist and narrative voice of Bella. And now I must make it official. Bella is the only real antagonist in these stories of whiny teenager verses self. Again, if this were a complicated cautionary tale about the sexualization of young girls in modern society, even with the Mormon undertones, I would appreciate it. In Joan Jacobs Brumberg's The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, the author discusses the risk of today's feminine youth acting without the protective if prohibitive moral guidelines and supervision once provided by previous generations, and the danger of sexuality introduced to girls lacking the emotional maturity to handle it. Put a pretty vampire face on the preying media trying to sell an adult and idealized body image to teenagers, and you have Twilight: the Sensemaking, the most romantic after-school special ever.

Maybe I'm grasping at straws here. But I can't accept Meyer's books at face value because they suck donkey balls. There must be an undertone, a deep, baseline of theme I'm not grokking. I must justify the attention I'm throwing into this trash in some means or I'm left with only my literary rage to keep me warm against the long stretch of wintry night the next two (plus one novella) books promise.

That or else I'll begin hallucinating Joss Whedon's cautionary snarl, "Crazy crisp dialogue. Incredibly tight plotting. Big emotion." and "Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck."

Oh, Joss! I'm so lost without you. *sniffle*

Right, Bella tosses herself off a cliff, nearly drowns, and her ass gets rescued by Jacob. During her recovery, she undergoes a complicated analysis of Shakespeare, focusing on Paris from Romeo and Juliet, and trying to determine if Romeo dumped his rebound Capulet for Rosalind, would Juliet shack up with Paris. The answer is a resounding I DON'T FUCKING CARE! Yeah, we get it. Jacob isn't your first greatest love. But you should grow a spine and try to move on and be happy because that's life and it only gets worse, so find the fuzzy that makes you happy and fuck it relentlessly.

Also, if Jules hadn't taken vows with Romeo, I do see her retreating back into the safety of her family and marrying Paris, hating Montagues, and raising the next generation of Verona gang bangers. Romeo would trip from one emotional high to the next until he finally shacks up with Mercutio and finds true slashy love. And then gets killed by Verona gang bangers. Jerk.

Bella can't make a decision, even when Jacob gives up on gentle reasoning and takes a page from the previous book and goes for the sweeping emotional gesture and tries to kiss her. They are predictably fashionably interrupted by the appearance of Alice Cullen. Why Jacob doesn't lay into that one out of spite and claim his vacillating bride, I don't know. But he leaves so Alice can roll out the plot contrivance of the book. Her visions showed Bella leaping off a cliff but nothing else. Instead of keeping this to herself, she tells Rosalie who then tattles to Edward, who takes his Claudio act further and not only claims responsibility for Hero's Bella's death, but decides he too must die.

The audience goes wild.

For some reason, Bella decides she has to stop this shit, so the "snapping narrative" is reduced to a crawl to accommodate a trans-Atlantic flight to Italy. Why? Because instead of waltzing back to Forks and throwing himself to the very capable wolves in a thematic display of contrition for Bella's death, Edward jaunts off to beg death at the hands of the only (other) vampire family in the world, the Volturi. The who? Yeah, they got some mention in Twilight in a conversation better suited for making out. Chapter 19 ends with her and Alice and a stolen car arriving in Volterra, just before the strike of noon when Edward plans on outing himself to the crowd and forcing the Volturi to end him.

Gee, I wonder if she'll make it on time?

Flat tire! Flat tire! Flat tire!

Don't Angst So Close to Me: Chapters 9-14

I will say this for Bella. She gets shit on by men a lot.

All this quality time with Jacob not only mends Bella's broken heart, but incites guilt. Like any teenager who has never been in love, Bella assumes her emotional baggage is some form of lifelong curse and actively refers to herself as "damaged goods." I did this when I was sixteen. I couldn't tell you why. Her habit of mental flagellation continues, now focusing on her sin of feeling better about her life and being with a boy. Even her recurring, wake-up-screaming nightmares of loss persist like they did for every gothy heroine I wrote while I was “damaged goods”. (Her name was Raven. Always.)

During a woefully contrived group date, Jacob decides BFFing doesn't help sling the man meat and tells Bella how he feels. She turns him down and he doesn't mind. In fact, he promises not to stop hounding after her sweet, skinny, white ass and in fact swears he will resolutely defend her for evarz. Then he stops returning her calls. Big shocker.

Bella convinces herself he's been brainwashed instead of chasing more accessible tail. In a fit of neuroses she decides to secretly confront him. (Hooray for caution!) Before leaving, Charlie makes her swear she won't go anywhere near the forest, since people are being eaten by bears near daily. She promptly wanders out into the woods and trips over one of the evil vamps from the last book. Bella would find good work in slasher flicks.

A bunch of ginormous wolves chase the evilvamp off before he can sink fang into her. Every time Bella does something stupid that leaves her exposed, shit happens. Edward accused her of this in the first book. I thought he was being cute. No, it's a staple of the Twilight experience; stupid Bella tricks. If this were a tabletop RPG, Bella's player would roll straight 1's for Wisdom checks. I haven't seen a character lead into rape-able situations by the plot so overtly since Dragon Pink. (Mostly because I'm behind on my H.)

Bella finally catches up with Jacob and finds out he's a werewolf and he wasn't dissing her because she wouldn't put out. No, really. And now that she's got the skinny on the local vampire issues, she's part of the wolfgang.

… teehee!

Old Ass-Hat, New Moon: Chapters 1-8

I apologize for the delay in jumping back into the Approaching Twilight project. But one must cleanse one's creative palate. I did so by diving into the multitudinous oeuvre represented in the Borders in-store catalogue; Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert, Scott Pilgrim vs the World vol. 1-3 by Bryan Lee O'Malley, and the previously pimped How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. Thus armed with my memory of quality prose and creative amusement, I sallied forth into the sequel, New Moon.

Keeping with previously established form, Meyer fails to write an introduction that gives a damn about the rest of the book. Chapter 1 reacquaints the reader with the droll, nails-on-chalkboard narrative voice of Bella and her addiction to her martyrdom, angst and demigodboyfriend. She suffers a nightmare in which Edward macks on an ancient version of herself and proceeds to fixate upon her eighteenth birthday as some form of rite of passage into old age. While a coming-of-age story would inject some literary credence to Meyer's storytelling, this lasts long enough for Bella to selfishly spazz on anyone who tries to celebrate her birthday, because being shown attention and affection when one reaches legal age is horrible!

I hate Bella.

At least the awkward birthday party at the Cullen's ends with bloodshed. Jasper, the newest recruit to vegi-vamp central, loses his shit when Bella slices her hand open on a papercut and winds up at the bottom of a WASPy dogpile. Bella flings herself into a glass table and gets stitched and preached by Doc Cullen while the others cover their mouths and noses as if Bella were a walking pile of sun-rotted diapers. (I feel this way a lot, too.) Despite all this, Bella continues to beg Edward to make her a bloodsucker so she won't have to grow old while he remains Highlander-hot and young. His response to this? Dump the bitch.

Hooray for Edward.

What follows is a surprisingly clever piece of presentation. After the initial crisis of Edward leaving her and Bella wandering Ophelia-like until being rescued, the chapter ends and the next page reads October. Turning, the next reads November, the next December, with the story not picking up until January. I liked this a lot. As someone who has survived a crisis so life-churning that reality fades into gray for months at a time, this resonates honestly.

Of course, then the story picks back up and sucks on down the block.

Chapter 4 begins with Bella's father Charlie threatening to ship Bella back to her mother in Florida, because that's how he shows he cares. Bella's autopilot begins to waver when she hallucinates Edward's voice when she waltzes into potentially dangerous situations. Clamoring for her fix, Bella flings herself into ever more dangerous situations, heedless and selfless until she discovers the true meaning of the life she so callously tried to spend on Edward carefully crafts a plan of reckless behavior so no one will notice. That's exactly how a closeted, martyr-prone teenager acts when she finally rebels. With caution.

However, as previous stated in plot-contrivance-land, her antics do fling her at rebound-boy Jacob who is more than happy to indulge her not-so wild behavior. While inching forward in her mad-cap race for Edwardian reminders, Bella starts living.

And as someone dragged along behind this train wreck of adolescence like a Pekingese tethered to a mobile home, I'm gladdened by the smoother path Bella takes up. She's proactively chasing down her future, hanging out with a living boy who likes her because she's a girl and not forbidden fruit, and recovering her solidarity a piece at a time from the shards of heartbreak.

Good for you, baby. Try not to fuck it up like you do.