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!