Eleven Problems With Eclipse

"Wait, I'm confused."

1. Stephenie Meyer's narrative devices are rarely employed with any specific purpose.

When we started this book I objected to the use of prefaces in The Twilight Saga. Not one of them has served the narrative in any way other than building nebulous anticipation, which is also accomplished by putting those vague quotes on the back of the book. It's redundant. And it's not like Twilight books work their way toward show-stopping resolutions or twists, so what are we even anticipating? Eclipse also has some serious problems with various between-paragraph punctuation: sometimes there is an extra space between paragraphs to indicate a shift in focus or a transition in time, sometimes there are a few asterisks instead, and sometimes there are enormous jumps in chronology with no break or extra punctuation whatsoever. And don't even get me started on ellipses! S. Meyer had one inspired turn back in New Moon when Edward left and we got those blank pages, but every other "form over content" trick she has tried has been a swing and a miss.

2. The Edward/Jacob tension is fundamentally bogus and yet it's the engine that's supposed to be powering most of this book.

Read Eclipse one way and it's kind of a great mystery story: what is the deal with these killings in Seattle? Unfortunately that isn't the central thrust of the book; the central thrust of the book is "will Bella chose Jacob or Edward?" And of course, she essentially already has chosen Edward before the book has even started. Here's what I wrote in "Amores Perros":

[I]t's sort of irritating to watch Bella/S. Meyer leap through increasingly narrow rhetorical hoops in order to justify [the tension]. I love Jacob (as a friend), I can't bear to hurt him (as a friend), I miss him (as a friend). It's almost like we're expected to ignore those parentheticals, like we're supposed to see this the way Jacob does.

It becomes almost impossible to read the book the way S. Meyer intended you to read it because it's impossible to understand what that way could have been. Are we supposed to think of Jacob as a valid option or not? For most of the book, it seems like we are not. And suddenly toward the end it seems like we are.

Bella also has this terrible habit of making every problem seem like the worst problem. TRIAGE, BITCH! Were it that the vampire army plot seemed more dire than the Jacob/Edward drama, I might not be so offended by this. There is a real problem in this book and a problem that is entirely the result of/a creation of Bella's brain. And yet Bella treats the latter as more serious than the former, or seems to, which makes us hate her even more.

3. Several plot threads disappear completely.

Who are Angela and Ben, exactly? Why do they seem so important at the beginning of this book? After all of my outrage over Quil imprinting on a two-year old, why is it never mentioned again? Very early in the book, after Alice has a vision at the cafeteria table and Bella asks what it's about, Edward says she's been seeing Jasper in a strange place. It's made clear later that she was seeing something else at the time; was Edward just making something up or is there a dropped subplot somewhere in there?

"You lost me."

4. Alice's visions being inconsistent is okay up to a point, but several of S. Meyer's exceptions seem irreconcilably nonsensical.

Alice's failure to see any of Victoria's involvement in the creation of the vampire army is incomprehensible. How did Victoria manage to create an army and then come and find Edward and Bella without EVER thinking about it? That is the explanation offered, and when it is presented to a reader in the middle of a life-or-death situation it's easy to just say "okay" and keep reading because one wants to know what happens next. But books should not ONLY work on that level, and Eclipse only works on that level.

Similarly: in New Moon the wolves are presented as volatile - they cannot control their phasing in and out of form. By Eclipse all of them seem to have gained a measure of control, and Jacob's control is presented as expert. Yet the justification for Alice's inability to see any aspects of the future that involve wolves is still presented as due to that volatility. From "Windowstill":

“Carlisle theorizes that it's because their lives are so ruled by their transformations. It's more an involuntary reaction than a decision. Utterly unpredictable, and it changes everything about them,” Edward says… As Jacob and the gang get better with the self control, wouldn't Alice's visions also improve? It's totally fine that S. Meyer wants to have a bunch of strange rules and exceptions to those rules on which to build her story; that's what Inception does too. But her explanations are so flimsy, and always voiced by characters as maybes: this could be what is going on, but we're not really sure. Nobody's really sure, least of all S. Meyer.

Adding on to that, she has a bad habit of having characters call attention to plot problems. If Alice sees something she should't have the ability to see, someone else will say "Hey, it's really weird she was able to see that." It's like S. Meyer's guilty conscience did a re-write on this book. Sometimes we get stuck with particularly ridiculous scenes of exposition, like when Bella explains to Edward that Victoria created the vampire army and he asks her a series of questions: how would Victoria know about vampire armies? How would Victoria know about Alice's powers? Bella magically has a solution to every problem. At the end of the scene Edward notes, "You're very perceptive today." Huh!

5. Bella should not actually be opposed to marrying Edward, Edward should not care about marrying Bella.

Bella is supposed to be an old soul, Edward's family makes a concerted effort to keep up with the times. And yet on the issue of marriage both of their stances are out of character: Bella fears being thought of as "that girl," fears rumors that she might be pregnant, fears her mother's reaction; Edward is stuck on this old-timey vision of pre-WWI romance, and tries to argue against the "transitory customs" of the modern era. YOUR CUSTOMS WERE TRANSITORY TOO, WHICH IS WHY THEY NO LONGER EXIST, BUDDY!

Bella wants to be with Edward forever and has no problem fathoming the eternal commitment of their relationship, yet she has a problem with making it official for the above reasons. That doesn't make any sense! Conversely, Edward's family, for the purposes of survival, tries to keep a low profile. A marriage certificate is not exactly low profile. From "I Will Bury You In Time":

They are both going to be immortal vampires living largely off the grid – you can't tell me that any of the Cullens are carrying around legit forms of ID. A marriage certificate is just begging for a joint investigation from the IRS and INS. And we all know what happens when multiple federal agencies get together. David Koresh knows what I'm talking about.

If you're keeping track, there are really more reasons why Edward is wrong than Bella. You can basically prove him wrong from any angle you like! But three wrongs don't make another wrong any less wrong.

"Does anybody understand what is going on here?"

6. Imprinting is horrific, and not treated as such.

SPEAKING OF WRONGS AND WRONGNESS. The first problem with imprinting is that when you are writing a romance novel, you probably shouldn't incorporate a magical Indian spell that forces people to love one another unless you are writing A Midsummer Night's Dream and making simultaneous ironic commentary about love and magic. And obviously S. Meyer is not doing that stuff! She undermines herself with the very concept of imprinting, but also makes it an irritatingly vague rule among members of the wolf pack. Like Alice's powers, it's something no one fully understands so S. Meyer doesn't have to fully understand it either.

But that isn't the HUGE GLARING PROBLEM with imprinting. The problem is its close associations with domestic abuse, infidelity, and CHILD MOLESTATION. Sam Uley leaves Leah for Emily, which obviously upsets Emily until it doesn't anymore. From "No, Non Je Regrette Rien":

[Sam] just WORE [EMILY] DOWN! Perfect! Jacob also says that “weirdly enough” the whole thing where Sam ripped off Emily's fucking face was what really brought them together. PERFECTER. “Weirdly enough,” indeed, Jacob. Weirdly enough, my heart is so warmed right now by this wonderful story that my blood is LITERALLY boiling and my skin is melting off!

That same "wearing down" thing is employed later when Quil imprints on a two year old girl. Bella is outraged, and we're outraged, but Jacob (and strangely, S. Meyer) tries to calm us down.

“Quil will be the best, kindest big brother any kid ever had...And then, when she's older and needs a friend, he'll be more understanding, trustworthy, and reliable than anyone else she knows. And then, when she's grown up, they'll be as happy as Emily and Sam.”

(Again, when specifically will these transitions (from ward to best friend to lover) occur? Has S. Meyer thought about that?) And maddeningly, this excuse that a guy can make a girl love him by sheer force of will comes up. That is a seriously dangerous notion, S. Meyer. Again, how did she meet her husband?

“Of course. But why wouldn't she choose him, in the end? He'll be her perfect match. Like he was designed for her alone.”

S. Meyer should think this is outrageous, and sometimes it feels like she does. But not most of the time. This is from when Bella observes Jared and his imprint victim, Kim, and the way he looks at her.

It was like a blind man seeing the sun for the first time. Like a collector finding an undiscovered Da Vinci, like a mother looking into the face of her newborn child.

A MOTHER INTO THE FACE OF HER NEWBORN CHILD. JESUS.

7. In Breaking Dawn, there better not be any references to vampires being like stones or Quileutes being "russet-colored."

WE GET THAT JACOB HAS BROWN SKIN. WE GET THAT VAMPIRES ARE HARD. ENOUGH. (I really love early in the book when Bella says "his face could have been carved from stone" to indicate Edward being angry. HIS FACE COULD HAVE BEEN CARVED FROM STONE ANYWAY!)

8. Edward and Bella so frequently misunderstand each other that I can't be sure they really like each other.

This is more of a New Moon problem than an Eclipse problem, but it still occurs regularly here. S. Meyer's only trick is "this person doesn't understand what this other person actually means." Edward thinks Bella wants to be a vampire so she can fuck other vampires, Bella doesn't think Edward wants her in his family. Their real reasons for opposing each other are even dumber. Jacob thinks Bella's attempts to restrain him when he sexually assaults her are actually gestures of wild passion. The Cullen family misinterprets the vampire army to be a threat against them, not Bella. And so on, and so on, and so on. It's especially troubling when it comes to Bella/Edward misunderstandings - aren't they supposed to know each other really well?

9. The books' relationship with sex is convoluted and terrifying.

We've talked before about the issues around Edward and Bella, and really, the problems are too numerous to list here. But let's talk about what happens between Bella and Jacob by the end of the book. Is Jacob a rapist or does he really show Bella that she loves him when he repeatedly forces her to kiss him? A Judge in Tennessee recently wrote that gays should be forced out of the military, but that lesbians already serving should essentially be subject to corrective rape by male soldiers. I wish I was kidding.

“My solution would get the distaff part of our homosexual population off our collective ‘Broke Back,’ thus giving straight male GIs a fair shot at converting lesbians and bringing them into the mainstream.” (via Pride in Utah)

This line of thinking is remarkably similar to S. Meyer's.

10. The heavy plot of this book eventually amounts to pretty much nothing.

This only really works as a complaint for the series as a whole. At the beginning of this book, Edward wants to get married and Bella doesn't. Victoria is alive, and the Volturi are a looming and vague threat. At the end, Edward wants to get married and Bella doesn't want to as much, Victoria is dead, and the Volturi are a looming and vague threat. Not only is the vampire army subplot basically a gigantic distraction (what's the point of reading a long series if you feel like the author is spinning his or her wheels?), but it's also kind of stupid. From: "A Wolf At The Door":

Can I just say how dumb and out of place I think this whole army plot is? It's like S. Meyer is trying to slip some J.R.R. Tolkien shit on us. An army is marching on Forks? Isn't this series supposed to be about interpersonal (and intermonsternal) dynamics? Why so much military history and strategy as of late, then? It's probably just to postpone the fucking; S. Meyer is running out of ways to keep these characters out of each other's pants. And war is a fairly predictable side-effect of sexual frustration, is it not? That's why the Swedes never fight. So I guess it works, on that level.

Unlike the distraction-heavy plot of New Moon which nonetheless advanced Edward and Bella's relationship, I don't feel like this story advanced much of anything.

11. Outrage after outrage is piled upon us until we don't care about anything anymore.

The irritating vampire army subplot is really just a way to connect every individual set piece in which S. Meyer bludgeons us with her convoluted morals. I only flew off the handle once or twice during New Moon; this book nearly gave me an aneurysm:

Imprinting, then imprinting with a two-year old. Edward's irritating religious convictions becoming more and more well-defined, until it turns out he's trying to make sure Bella gets to go hang out with Jesus. The incredibly sexist portrayal of Leah Clearwater. Jacob's rape kiss, and then his CORRECTIVE rape kiss later on, which makes Bella realize she loves him. By the time Jacob forces himself on Bella a second time, we've given up. We let S. Meyer force herself on us, too.

Also: scent-science. Also: the fact that vampire strength is correlated to the size of the animal they eat. Also: the fact that because vampires are seemingly made of stone, they are also very set in their ways. These are not moral outrages, they are just outrageously stupid. I'm not sure which set is worse.

The entire collection of Blogging Eclipse posts can be found in the directory.

THE BITERION COLLECTION: Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire

When Deathly Hallows Part 1 came out, a lot of other Twilight blogs found a way to shoehorn in HP coverage along with their normal beats. I'm normally pretty good at that sort of trickery; when I was my high school newspaper's arts editor we wrote about movies and albums that had come out years ago under the guise of holiday gift guides and the like. This time I resisted the urge, because I knew when I had the time to watch it again I wanted us to talk about Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, the film responsible for (arguably) launching the career of Robert Pattinson. In Goblet of Fire Pattinson plays Cedric Diggory, the doomed student chosen from Hogwarts to participate in the dangerous Tri-Wizard Tournament, in a role that mostly requires handsomeness in a paranormal situation. He excelled at being handsome in paranormal situations, and pretty soon another one of those roles came up. And the rest is history.

(By that, obviously, I'm referring to The Haunted Airman, which flopped and derailed Pattinson's career. Oh, and then he joined the cast of Twilight.)

So: Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire.

Mike Newell was not in an enviable position when he was tasked with directing this flick. In the first place, it's a long, overstuffed book (I mean that in a good way) with several elaborate set pieces that don't fit well in a single film. In the second place, Newell had a tough act to follow. Alfonso Cuaron's Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban was spectacularly executed, single-handedly visually and emotionally saving the series from Chris Columbus's clunky hands.

Regrettably Newell did not rise to the task; there's recidivism in his take. He brings back Roger Pratt, Columbus's boring Director of Photography, and the visual verve all but vanishes from the series. (Luckily David Yates brought it back in his own grim way for the final four films. I still would have loved to see Cuaron get another shot; I firmly believe he is this reason this series is any good.) The Qudditch World Cup sequence that opens the film is passable, and Harry's battle with a dragon is pretty great, but a few of the visuals are unforgivable, especially this:

The story which is pretty good in the book, is clumsily retold here. (Don't even get me started on the fucking hedge-maze.) I've observed before that the Twilight films manage to make the story more coherent by simplifying them. That is certainly not true of the later Harry Potter films, and this one kicked off the trend. Of course, there is one element of this story that makes very little sense in both iterations of the tale: Mad Eye Moody, a new professor at Hogwarts, turns out in the end to not actually be Mad Eye Moody but rather one of Voldemort's men in disguise.

Yet throughout the film, he behaves exactly as (we will later learn) Moody would, antagonizing Draco Malfoy and being an unorthodox but skilled teacher (disliking the Malfoys and being a talented educator being two of the hallmarks of the "good" characters in these books). Why is Voldemort's man ("Barty Crouch… JUNIOR!") such a skilled actor?

Anyway, we're here to talk about Robert Pattinson. Unfortunately, there is very little to say. He appears for the first time at the five minute mark or so, says "Hi," and then doesn't speak another line for 45 minutes.

He does well with what material he is given, and he is given even less material than say, Kellan Lutz in the Twilight films. His job is to look pretty, and then die. He does a great job at both. Spoiler alert:

He dies! It is the general consensus of Harry Potter fans that the first two films are the worst films. I posit that this is not the case. Chris Columbus had to kick off a series that was hopefully going to go on for seven films. That is not the time to be an auteur! He had to get the series start enough well enough that it could continue, and he delivered. I know he was not necessarily solely responsible for assembling the film's brilliant cast, but he was responsible for not blowing their potential. Plus, the first two Harry Potter films are the most childish and family-friendly. Thematically, he's a match for the material. His work looks bad in the face of both the maturity of the later Harry Potter books and the accomplishments of later directors (particularly Cuaron). Cuaron realized the potential of these stories, but he wouldn't have had the opportunity had Columbus not come first.

Which is why I am saying that HP1 and HP2 are not the worst films of the series, this one is. It's long and kind of boring and yet there is still a palpable sense that aspects of the story are being left out. For every clever visual there are two boring and pandering ones. Newell had the opportunity to see Cuaron's film and continue down that (critically lauded) visual path, and he said "pass." That is almost as unforgivable as this:

YIKES, Mike Newell. It's still not a bad film; it's definitely better than Twilight and maybe on par with New Moon. The actors are great as always, and Emma Watson is notably in top form. The last act of the film is great and dark, and the moment in which Cedric Diggory's father mourns over his son's corpse is genuinely affecting and disturbing. But when I watch Harries Potter 3, 5, 6, and 7A now, I can't help but think what could have been here. I don't get that feeling with 1 and 2; the actors were young, the stories were simpler, and Chris Columbus had a hard sell ahead of him, launching this franchise. Mike Newell had it easy, and he didn't make the most of it.

Previous entries can be found in the directory.

A Picture Of Horrible Words Is Worth A Thousand Words

Holy shit. This is via @DignityWithLove via @247Greene. Click to enlarge.

Related.

WHOOPS

UPDATE: DaveJohn and I have resolved our differences, the post now more clearly reflects my authorship (though somewhat passive-aggressively).
Hey, does this look familiar? It looks REALLY FAMILIAR TO ME. Apparently ONTD saw fit to take my entire post and reprint it, crediting me (sort of) with a tiny little link that reads "source" underneath their only addition to the post, a picture from Dr. Strangelove because maybe the joke in the title wasn't clear enough for ONTD readers? I got a kick out of commenters complaining about getting bored reading it (that Emily Bazelon quote, which you will note I ATTRIBUTED TO HER, was too heavy for them I guess) but other than that I get very little other kicks out of this. Mostly because this DaveJohn character (who is on Twitter, why not say hi to him for me?) appears to be taking credit for what I have written. Everyone is telling me that this is how ONTD does business, but last time I appeared on their page I was much more clearly attributed. So yeah, that happened.

The Antisocial Network OR How I Learned To Stop Bothering And Hate The Mob

For a few weeks now we've been looking at the bizarre new world of Twitter accounts centered around the hatred of Ashley Greene, actress and current girlfriend of Joe Jonas. It is entirely possible that this trend has been going on since the inception of Joe and Ashley's relationship, but the amount of fuel sufficient to get these people on my radar was added after Demi Lovato's airport breakdown on or around November 1st. Many fans, either in the name of support for Lovato or simple animus toward Jonas & Greene, have followed the lead of accounts like @FuckUJashley and @TrashTheAshley. Similarly named Twitter accounts have proliferated.

Some of the earliest salvos from these accounts were inspired, if misguided; my initial reaction was to laugh and not give it further thought. But as some of these accounts have persisted and gained notoriety, they have become increasingly less clever and simply mean.

I've personally found it difficult to really see this as (cyber)bullying, given that Ashley Greene is a celebrity currently getting paid eight million dollars (EDIT: whoops, more like 2.5 million, I was thinking of Greene's original demand) to appear in The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn. But the relationships that are forming between these accounts and the way talking points (Ashley is a dog, Ashley has "saggy boobs") are parroted between participants are darkly reminiscent of the horror stories we have heard about Phoebe Prince and others. I started to worry less about Ashley Greene and more about these anonymous authors. Ashley Greene is rich and famous, but these people running these accounts are not, and could easily do this to someone else in the future. This is Emily Bazelon, writing at Slate:

"It's a cousin of all the old forms of meanness, but it's also causing trouble in new ways that we need to understand. Because cyberbullying is so easy, it may draw in kids who wouldn't shout insults in the cafeteria or spread a slut rumor while hanging out with friends after school. Press a button, and your jeering text or e-mail—or nude photo—can go out to the whole school. You can do this while feeling distant from the cruelty. You can do it without thinking. You can do it without a clique of mean girls (or guys) to egg you on. All of this hits teenagers in a developmental weak spot, playing on their young brains' tendency to act on impulse."

And that is exactly what is happening here, as more and more of these accounts appear and grow ever more popular. The legal landscape on cyberbullying is obviously still very muddled, and tends to only apply to intra-student behavior in school systems, but if Ashley Greene were simply one of their classmates, these people could be prosecuted in several states, including my own.

Not that I am of the opinion that any of these people should be prosecuted (though think of it this way: what if they were talking about President Obama?). They should get help! Remember that all of this is coming from the world of Disney-and-Jonas-Brothers-fandom. A lot of these kids have to be young. What is going to happen to them in a few years? In the comments a while ago someone said "I weep for the future." So do I!

Yesterday @TrashTheAshley, one of the bigger names in Ashley-hating, reached 2,000 followers. So I unfollowed her. I've spent the last few weeks trying to wrap my head around this bizarre trend, but I'm done trying. It used to seem funny, but I'm not sure it ever really was. Here's a quote for you:

"Many people think of bullying as getting beat up in school, but it is so much more than that. For me it was all of the verbal harassment I had to deal with. People say sticks and stones may break your bones but names can never hurt you, but that's not true. Words can hurt. They hurt me. Things were said to me that I still haven't forgotten."

That's Demi Lovato. Could she have wanted this?

This Is Totally For Sure Ashley Greene's Facebook Page (No It Isn't)

Huh: I mentioned Ashley Greene's Facebook "like" page earlier because someone linked to it on Twitter this morning. The same Twitter account, @AshleyMJonas (clever girl), just posted a link to facebook.com/AshleyMGreene1987, which purports to be Ashley Greene's actual Facebook profile. And uh, this is what it looks like [click to enlarge]:

Now @AshleyMJonas used to be a Twitter account dedicated to hating the Ashley Greene haters, it was @TrashTheTrasher or something like that. I found out about them because the hater accounts were all up in arms about it. Admirable effort, though I guess getting those guys riled up is pretty easy.

But this. This is pretty half-assed, fake Ashley Greene! Two friends and one like! Very detailed! Very good facsimile! Wouldn't you wait to release this onto Twitter until you built it up a little? Frankly, I'm a little insulted. Anyway, obviously I sent a friend request. We'll see what happens next, my life is the last shot of The Social Network right now (MLITLSOTSNRN).

UPDATE: Success

"Ashley" is now uploading photos at a RAPID clip. 87 photos and counting! Oh man.

Celebrities Have Thanksgiving Too

I guess Joe Jonas and Ashley Greene had Thanksgiving together, which seems like a normal thing to do. Still, some sites are wondering, what does it mean? Are they getting engaged? Is Joe's family mad at him? No. But feel free to speculate. Hey, fun fact: did you know that the most popular Facebook page for Ashley Greene (there are dozens) lists her as "Actor/Director"? Told you it was fun!

This year I am thankful that we are finally starting Breaking Dawn. Spread the word.

Ashley Greene In The Most Transparent TV Interview Ever Recorded

George Lopez: So do you have an amusing anecdote about flying in airplanes?
Ashley Greene: Why yes, as a matter of fact I do. I have a funny story about how Joe Jonas and I basically could have committed a terrorist attack because security screening in Abu Dhabi is startlingly deficient.

George Lopez: Oh, great. Do you have a second, thematically similar anecdote?

Ashley Greene: As it happens, yes, I can tell another 45 second story about that sort of thing.

George Lopez: Is it cool if we weirdly plug this play that you saw the other day?

Ashley Greene: Yes, I understand that TBS does not have a lot of money and Conan O'Brien is getting most of it now, that is fine.

George Lopez: Here is a question you are probably incapable of answering since it is mostly rhetorical, I am moving toward a commercial break.

Ashley Greene: Oh, actually I'd like to tell a vaguely alarming story about how I was basically molested at a bank once.

George Lopez: I'm not sure what to say about that so I will mention your DVD and kick to a commercial. Then as the music plays I will tell you about how your mother probably should have called the police.

Blogging Eclipse Part 36: Zen & The Art Of Motorcycle Accidents

BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 36: Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Accidents

Epilogue! What is the narrative purpose of an epilogue when you have another book coming? I'm only really bringing this up because when we started this book I questioned the need for a preface, and I think I was on to something.

I'm beginning to question the logic of these glimpses into the future we get at the start of each new installment. Much like visiting a psychic, we get a bunch of vague sentiments that only make sense when they make sense - when they fit somewhere…These flash-forwards have no function in terms of dramatic irony - we don't get enough information for that. And since these books are not exactly aggressively plotted it's hard to even remember what was in the preface by the time you get to the climax.

Do you remember what happened in the preface to Eclipse? Me either! I also said this:

One would think that of all the threats facing Bella, Victoria's at-bat should come first; Chekov once said that if there's a Victoria on the wall in the first book she needs to kill someone or be killed in the third.

Nailed it. But anyway, there is kind of a purpose for this epilogue. Meet our new narrator, Jacob Black! WHAT? Previous entries can be found in the directory. (By the way, this is the last official installment of "Blogging Eclipse." We'll do some final thoughts after the holiday before I start "Blogging Breaking Dawn." Thanks for reading.)

Epilogue: Choice

We learn that Jacob Black is suddenly narrating our story via a handy header that reads "Jacob Black." Okay then. I mean, it's a little on the snout (because of wolves) but what is your alternative? In this scene, Jacob is standing somewhere with Leah Clearwater, so I suppose the first few lines could be like:

"Hey, Jacob! Something something something."
"Something that confirms I am Jacob," I replied.

Oh, whoops, that is basically what they are anyway. So okay, it is very firmly established that Jacob is narrating now. He's standing somewhere talking to Leah, and she's being annoying. S. Meyer makes some minor stylistic changes to accommodate this shift, which is nice. I'm glad Jacob's narration isn't indicated by a different font or something like that, which you have to admit wouldn't be that surprising. Most noticeably, he uses a lot of sentence fragments in keeping with our notion of Jacob as a moron. It would be kind of inspired if there were spelling errors too, but there aren't. He's plenty misogynistic, though!

I remembered back to when I used to think that Leah was pretty, maybe even beautiful. That was a long time ago.

YA BURNT LEAH! Jacob doesn't think you're pretty anymore! Leah starts bitching all shrewishly about something. Women, am I right Jacob? But seriously, she's apparently upset because Jacob's thoughts have been poisoning her dreams:

"I don't even like Bella Swan. And you've got me grieving over this leech-lover like I'm in love with her, too. Can you see where that might be a little confusing? I dreamed about kissing her last night! What the hell am I supposed to do with that?"

S. Meyer has quite a few inspired little tricks relating to the wolf-pack hive-mind here, pity that it took us until now to hear about them. Jacob counters that he has been forced to experience homo-erotic thoughts about Sam Uley because of his connection to Leah. Does that mean Sam Uley experiences homo-erotic thoughts about HIMSELF? (Whoops, I just found my next fanfiction.) It took me a little while to realize our characters were in human form, because of stuff like this:

"Really, kid." She ignored me, throwing herself into a sprawl on the ground next to me. "You have no idea how hard this is for me."

That's what she said! Leah, I mean. Do you think a few more clauses could have ended with the word "me" up there? But the point is, she's in human form, throwing herself into a sprawl? I hesitate to call that unladylike, but it would be in keeping with the tone of this epilogue. Leah (or as Jacob calls her, the "bitter harpy") antagonizes Jacob, telling him Edward will probably kill Bella during the vamping. From Jacob's perspective, we get a little more detail as to the Incredible Hulk-like process of transforming; he gets a "red haze" in his eyes and a "slide of fire" down his spine. But he calms himself, Namaste and all that. Jacob's taunting about Sam Uley in response is too much for Leah though - she heads for the woods.

(The running theme of this chapter is characters being able or unable to get a hold of their horses. Leah can't, and Jacob can for a while but something will soon happen that causes him to lose his cool; will Edward be able to keep himself calm enough during the sex and/or vamping? Did I just blow your mind with my ability to access the central thematic thrust of this epilogue so easily? I've had 35 installments worth of practice.)

Jacob tries to work through his emotions. It's an echo of Bella doing the same thing earlier in this book, but even dumber. He doesn't care so much that Bella chose Edward over him, but what really upsets him is the fact that she's going to be a vampire. But what REALLY REALLY upsets him is that she could accidentally die. But what SUPER MEGA UPSETS HIM is that he doesn't think Bella will die, he actually trusts Edward not to fuck it up, and he resents that trust. I refuse to believe that Jacob operates at more than one level of emotion at a time, let alone three! Consider my belief suspended.

In another parallel to Bella's worries, Jacob then wonders if he'll want to kill Bella when he sees her as a vampire. Hey, she was worried she'd want to kill him! This is a page or two after he bragged about having his temper in check by the way; he didn't phase even though Leah did in response to their little fight. So why are you worried? Either you're a zen master or you're not Jacob!

He leaves whatever vague place he is and heads home. He bitches about the "retarded" sling and crutches he is pretending to need as a result of his fake motorcycle accident. So we are to understand that some time has passed, and I respect S. Meyer for not coming right out and saying "it had been four weeks" (or worse, having a character say "Jacob, it's been four weeks!"). Jacob goes home and complains about his father being particularly chatty; He thinks Billy seems nervous about something. I sense utterly no emotion coming from Jacob with regard to his father, their relationship is identical to Bella's relationship with Billy. That is, he is too thinly drawn a character to meaningfully interact with anyone.

Anyway, Billy is trying to avoid telling Jacob that that they have been invited to Bella's wedding. he eventually hands Jacob the envelope.

It was heavy, stiff paper. Expensive. Too fancy for Forks. The card inside was the same, too done up and formal.

Just like how Alice likes her men: done up and formal. And crisp and white and thick. "Bella had nothing do to with this," Jacob laments ("Damn straight"-Alice Cullen, probably wearing a headset while also yelling at a florist). Along with the invitation is a note from Edward. He's inviting Jacob apparently against Bella's wishes. "But I know that, if things had gone the other way, I would have wanted the choice," he writes. I never got the "choice" motif, I guess because I never saw Bella ending up with Jacob as a valid possibility. I don't think that is a result of coming to the books after-the-fact as I have, either; it's pretty fucking clear this is where we've been headed for a while. But whatever, I guess now there's a cliffhanger for the next book: will Jacob come to the wedding? I know it doesn't have the same kick as "Will Victoria kill Bella?" but it'll do.

The answer is still probably no, though. Jacob gets up and leaves the house; he turns into a wolf and starts running. In his head, Quil and Embry offer their telepathic condolences in another inspired little turn. They beg Jacob to let them accompany him on the spiritual quest he is apparently embarking on, but Sam Uley chimes in and tells them to leave Jacob alone. He even orders them to return to human form to leave him with this thoughts. Nice guy, that Sam Uley. Except for the face ripping thing.

Jacob keeps running and running; he remarks that he could keep going like this forever. GOOD. It's too bad there isn't an actual end to the earth that Jacob could run off of, that would be great. "I would never go back," he resolves. YES. PERFECT.

I pushed my legs faster, letting Jacob Black disappear behind me.

(Wait, I thought Jacob was the narrator! JKJKJK) He's leaving forever! HOORAY! Good fucking riddance, Jacob! Yeah right. I can dream, but I'm not that naive anymore, my life is Twilight. See you next book, fuck face!

The Apparition Looks Like A Horror Movie

The first stills from the eventually-to-be-released Ashley Greene horror flick The Apparition (they are going to change that title soon, right?) have surfaced, and it is clearly a Modern Horror Flick. Note the square-jawed, tousle-haired young man. Note the half-naked sexy girl. We already know this is about a young couple who is haunted by, naturally, an apparition. It involves a college experiment gone wrong, as I recall. So far, so movie. I bet they have a friend who helps them with their investigating, and that friend is either actually evil or dies. I bet there is at least one creepy professor. I bet these two are having relationship troubles (AG looks tired, but is wearing a shirt not a bra, so it isn't sex-tired, it's all-night-fight-tired) that are either exacerbated by the ghost or fixed by the adversity and all that. The movie ends with AG and Tousle Jaw seeming to escape danger, but the jump scare right before the credits implies that maybe not. I'm fairly certain I just predicted the whole thing. Level of nudity will be determined by the rating: if it's PG-13, we'll see that dude's ass. If it's R, we'll see AG's boobs.

I remembering reading something AG said a while ago about how this role really stretched her acting muscles or something? Clearly it is stretching the acting muscles where you have to be good at having little clothing on while wearing a stressed-out face, but Ashley Greene was already good at that!

Cyberbullying Open Thread

I want to explore the legal landscape on cyberbullying, and luckily Emily Bazelon at Slate has written a long series of articles on this subject. The Ashley Greene Hate is an unfortunate trend, and it is upsetting that anyone would spend such a significant portion of their time doing this to anyone. That Greene is a celebrity is almost re-assuring - this is not another Phoebe Prince. Would this be legal if she was, though? What if these accounts were not directed at a star of Twilight, but rather some eighth grader? Conversely: what if these twitter accounts were directed at the president? Do these differences matter? Should they? Keep in mind also that our particular case has an international component; several of the AG-hating accounts claim to hail from other countries like Brazil. What is the state of free speech protection in South America? There are a lot of question to ask, and I am looking for the right people to interview.

My knowledge of cyberbullying and sexting and the like is very slight, so I am boning up in the meantime. And you should too! Leave your opinions and any relavant info you might find in the comments.

BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 35: Take Your Wings Outside, You Can't Fly In Here

If you can believe it, this is the last chapter of Eclipse. We've been doing this since fucking JULY. Good riddance, Eclipse! Next time we'll deal with the epilogue, and soon we'll be getting started with Breaking Dawn. Get fucking ready. Previous entries can be found in the directory.

(The above photo is my modest contribution to the amazing Jumping Rob meme. Wonderful stuff can be found here, thanks TheTrace360.)

ALSO: DEATHLY HALLOWS! Did you see it? Talk to me here.

Chapter 27: Needs

Bella drives out of La Push and starts crying hysterically; she pulls over to the side of the road so as not to crash. Way to perpetuate multiple stereotypes about women in a single swipe, Bella! You're a credit to your gender. Edward shows up after a few minutes, apparently getting a tip off from Alice. (“Doesn't take a psychic to figure out that shit.”-Alice Cullen) He pulls Bella into his arms and she starts sobbing harder. Probably not the reaction he was looking for! He drives her home and sneaks off to her room while Bella tries to get past Charlie. Of course, when she walks in the house and he sees her tear-streaked face, Charlie thinks Jacob is dead. Ha ha!

“No, he's only dead to me,” I said.

I wish. But Bella does indicate that she's broken it off with Jacob. Charlie understandably wonders why she chose this moment to tell him. Why did she? I'm assuming that if werewolves heal at super-speed, Jacob's only going to be in traction for a few days, right? His bones weren't reduced to fucking DUST. Give the guy a few days! You already busted his balls and a vampire busted the rest of him – his heart was all he had left! You know it was harsh if I'm advocating sympathy for Jacob. Once upstairs, Bella tries to take the wolf-charm off of her wrist and fails. Edward tells her not to anyway - “It's part of who you are.” The way these two talk about having to live with the pain caused by Jacob, you'd think the motherfucker actually was dead. All that happened was they broke up, and they weren't even dating!

I knew that the new tear in my heart would always ache. That was just going to be a part of me now. Time would make it easier – that's what everyone always said.

(Between the “knew” followed by “new” and the fact that Bella also talks about the kind of “tear” that you cry on this page, that first sentence could use a tune-up.) Here's a fun little exercise for people who are grieving: try to explain why you are upset in one sentence. You probably should be able to! If you can't, don't cry in Edward's arms all night! But that's what happens. Edward questions whether Bella's made the right choice; hard to blame him for looking for a way out. (“Are you sure you want to be with me? Jacob is pretty great!”-Edward Cullen) In response Bella picks up a copy of Wuthering Heights and starts quoting it at Edward. What? How aggressively can you force a literary allusion into your novel before the pages start to rebel against you? If you squint hard enough you can see the rest of the text straining away from this section. Maybe there was just a printing error on my copy, but whatever. “Cathy's a monster,” Bella says, “but there were a few things she got right.” Edward responds that “Heathcliff had his moments, too.” So what these two are basically saying is “we're assholes, but our love redeems us.” I agree with at least the first part.

Next morning Bella announces they need to go see Alice. When they roll up to the Cullen house, she's standing on the front steps waiting excitedly. Naturally, she seems about to “break into a celebration dance.” That's Alice for you: she even looks like she's dancing when she isn't moving. It turns out Bella has decided to really make a go of this wedding thing, and she's putting Alice to work. Weirdly, Bella's chief motivation for this decision seems to be the fact that it will make Alice happy. I mean, that would be my motivation if I were a character in this book, but it's not usually Bella's motivation to make ANYONE feel better. I'm not saying Bella is self-centered, but she did just recently draw an analogy in which she was THE EARTH and boys were ORBITING AROUND HER.

Anyway, there's a weird section that follows when Alice takes Bella upstairs to see her dress, which she already has in her possession – it's indicated that she has had it in her possession for some time. We're either meant to understand that Alice ordered the dress a few months ago or like, several decades ago. To wit:

“These things take time, Bella,” Alice explained. Her tone seemed... evasive. “I mean, I wasn't sure things were going to turn out this way, but there was a distinct possibility...”
“When?” I asked again.
“Perrine Bruyere has a waiting list, you know,” she said, defensive now. “Fabric masterpieces don't happen overnight! If I hadn't thought ahead, you'd be wearing something off the rack!”

I went and googled Perrine Bruyere, and I got a bunch of articles of people talking about how THEY googled Perrine Bruyere and they couldn't find him either. The only reason I was curious was when Alice finally whips out the dress, Bella looks it over and seems to understand that it is deliberately old-fashioned to turn Edward on. That's gross, Alice.

“Nineteen-eighteen?” I guessed.
“More or less,” she said, nodding. “Some of it is my design, the train, the veil...” She touched the white satin as she spoke. “The lace is vintage. Do you like it?”

So are we meant to understand that Perrine Bruyere made the dress in 1918? And that Alice ordered in in 1918? HOW LONG IS THAT WAITING LIST? Or are we meant to understand it is just 1918-style? Is there a such thing as 1918-style? (“[Bruyere's] got promise... and he specializes in what I needed,” Alice says, in what is either a telling detail or a poorly indicated joke.) I don't know much about wedding dresses, but this scene is very confusingly written. And she doesn't even say what the dress looks like!

But the important moment comes when Bella asks Alice if she can see her dress, and Alice is stunned. “I wouldn't want my maid of honor to wear something off the rack,” Bella says. Alice is so excited that she kicks Bella out so she can plan more. Exeunt Alice for this book, I'm guessing. Dance on, you crazy diamond.

Edward and Bella go to the meadow, so you know we're wrapping up for real. Doesn't it seem like we've been in the denouement phase for a long time here? Didn't Victoria die a few years back? Anyway when they get there Bella explains to Edward her rationale for having a big wedding: Alice's happiness is part of it, but also she's seeing it as a goodbye for her parents. I have to admit, it's a kind of clever suggestion – when fathers walk their daughters down the aisle it probably seems to some fathers like they are losing their little girl forever. This time it really is that. (“It's more literal than you can possibly imagine.”-Jasper Whitlock) It's nice that Bella has found a way to make peace with the fact that she is abandoning her parents, which is why it is weird that Edward suddenly goes “Deal's off.” Huh? You're getting cold feet now, dude? GET IT COLD FEET BECAUSE HE'S A VAMPIRE?

Actually, Edward feels remorse for being such a weird religious zealot the last few books. FINALLY. “I've clung with such idiotic obstinacy to my idea of what's best for you,” he says. “My way is always wrong.” PREACH IT, BUDDY! This is what I have been saying all along! He tells her they can try to vamp her tonight, and says he'll still keep up his end of the bargain, which is not a euphemism for getting a boner. Well, it kind of is. At last, Edward is siding with the rest of us, at least inasmuch as he thinks he should fuck Bella too. Is this book going to end with a crazy sex scene?

He starts kissing her and Bella almost goes for it, but this time she's the one who stops them. Well, the vampire shoe is on the other Bella foot! She insists on giving Alice her fun (which sounds sexy in this context, but isn't), and on giving her parents a proper goodbye. That's all well and good, but then she goes Full-Edward. “Your soul is far, far too important for me to take chances with,” she says. SHIT, BELLA SAYS THAT? Is it fucking Freaky Friday?

At then end of the last book, Victoria and The Volturi were still around – we had threads to carry us into the next book. Has Victoria been replaced by the scourge of stubborn religiosity? Is that our new villain? It's like Bella swallowed the Kool-Aid right after Edward finally vomited it back up. He saw the light and she returned to the dark. He got his cock out as soon as she put her chastity belt back on. Alas.

It starts to rain, which makes the coming nuptials seem more ominous than S. Meyer probably intended. Edward and Bella leave to go tell Charlie they're getting hitched. Presumably, he will kill them both and the next book will be about totally different people. Hopefully.

I'm spending most of the day re-watching the Harry Potter movies because apparently I have nothing better to do. Anyway, over on my tumblr I will be doing a lot of writing about them as well as screen-capping like a motherfucker. Some of it very much pertains to our purposes.

Catching Up: Deathly Hallows Edition

In the comments on a recent post, someone suggested that @TrashTheAshley and @FuckUJashley and all of the other hate accounts are actually the same demented person. Maybe that's true, though I can't understand the in-fighting, if that is the case. You can't even get your act together in your own brain? Unless these accounts are being run by BELLA SWAN herself, I find it hard to believe. Plus, every fifth hate-tweet becomes the "top tweet" when you search @AshleyMGreene's replies. These hate accounts have fans! A lot about this is sad and ridiculous, but the fact that so many people unironically enjoy it might be the saddest. No, actually, this kind of thing is.

In other news:

• The Kellan Lutz/Ashley Greene lacrosse film (which is a thing) which used to be called Warrior but is now called A Warrior's Heart has been picked up for distribution, and will be released "sometime next year" like every other Ashley Greene film. Okay, we'll see. Does any other actor have as much trouble getting a fucking movie in theaters as this girl? A long time ago we talked about the "Ashley Greene curse" when her departure from Scre4m seemed to derail that movie, but it has a firm release date (April 15, 2011)! Maybe we had the vector of the curse wrong.
• Zack Taylor, respected celebrity journalist, is now reporting that Neurogasm is asking Ashley Greene and Joe Jonas to sponsor their product. How? Release a sex-tape? Taylor doesn't reveal his source, but it's probably me, and I was joking. My photoshop skills are about as good as his, so I can see how he'd be thrown off thinking I was the real deal.
• DoliDoli.com has a weird game where you can dress up Ashley Greene's head and shoulders, if you are into that kind of thing. I tried to "save result" when I took at stab at it and the above photo downloaded onto my computer. So I think they are still working the kinks out.
• RobstenLust.com has a bunch of screencaps from the Robert Pattinson/Kristen Stewart commentary track on the upcoming Eclipse DVD. Look how flirty!

Lastly, The Examiner has a round up of Harry Potter cast members saying nice things about Twilight cast numbers. At least I think they are nice things? Here's Tom Felton on Ashley Greene:

“Ashley’s a wonder to work with and she looks fierce on the screen," he explained.

My favorite part is "he explained." Meanwhile, I guess Emma Watson talked some shit about Twilight? We'll get into that next week. Because none of this really matters this weekend, right? DEATHLY HALLOWS IS OUT. AHHHHHHHH! I think it is clear what we should discuss in the comments, once we have all seen it. We can also talk about these things if you want:

1. Blogging Eclipse pt. 34: Sundowner
2. Blogging Eclipse pt. 33: When The Curious Girl
3. There But For The Grace Of Jashley Go I
4. I'll Have My People Cyberbully Your People

BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 34: Sundowner

I'm starting to feel like maybe I can reach a reconciliation of sorts with Jacob. He's still a creep here, but you can see him dialing it down. The first few layers of his manipulative outer crust cracked when that newborn crushed him, maybe. Plus, we're clearly, finally moving on to some other phase of his relationship with Bella for Breaking Dawn; S. Meyer is admirably not dragging this triangle out any longer. Maybe I just like him better because Bella's finally kicking him to the curb? Previous entries can be found in the directory.

The song from which this post takes its title is here. Public Service Announcement: Ivana XL's music is available on iTunes. Buy it, help a struggling artist out!

Chapter 26 (cont'd): Ethics

Bella pulls up to La Push at about seven or eight and Billy Black tells her “Yo, Jacob's home, smell ya later because you'll be a vampire and we'll be repulsed by you” (I'm paraphrasing). She peers through a crack in Jacob's door (what is with this girl and the never knocking?) and sees him waiting for her, face all blank and shit. It's more difficult for her to look at him, “knowing that I loved him.” Oy gevalt. Then S. Meyer makes a particularly bad judgment call transitioning from one paragraph to the next:

I wondered it it had been this hard for him, all the time.
Thankfully, someone had covered him with a quilt.

WHOOPS! Maybe rethink that juxtaposition, S. Meyer! Bella's happy to not have to see the extent of his injuries (not the extent of his boner), but as soon as she says hello Jacob seems to realize this is his Dear John letter. Bella asks if he's in pain, and he says Carlisle overdid it with the painkillers. (“What do you got? Anything good? Do you need all this percocet?”- Alice Cullen)

I bit my lip. I was never going to get through this. Why didn't anyone ever try to kill me when I wanted to die?

Well if there are plenty of painkillers around you could just overdo it too, Bella. I think it would make everyone's lives easier, especially mine. Jacob asks how she's doing, but I don't think it's like a Joey Tribbiani-style “How YOU doin'?” Bella's shocked that Jacob even cares at all. “Maybe he had taken too many drugs,” she says. S. Meyer really loves painkiller jokes, huh? Maybe she'd be kind of fun to hang out with after all! What Jacob really wants to know is how mad Edward is at her for kissing him. I see what you're doing here, Jacob. Bella tells him Edward wasn't mad, which disappoints him.

This is when the possibilities for just how much manipulation is going on get a little too mind-boggling. Jacob pretended he was going to kill himself to get Bella to kiss him, hoping apparently that it would piss Edward off enough that he'd dump Bella. So did Edward react admirably not out of the goodness of his heart, but rather just to dig the knife deeper into Jacob's back? Has anyone told the truth about ANYTHING? I never though Eclipse would obliterate my sense of the truth as deeply as Rashomon, but there you are!

(Want to fuck up your life for a few years? Watch Rashomon, if you haven't already, and discuss it at length with a few other intelligent people. For optional extra credit, read That Noble Dream by Peter Novick. Whoops, do you feel incredibly isolated and disillusioned now? Akira Kurosawa and I just broke your brain forever, you're welcome.)

Bizarrely, Bella is not hurt by the fact that Jacob is still playing her for a fool, she's pained by the realization that he's still holding out hope they can be together. When she actually does make a caustic remark about Jacob's suicide threat, she takes it back immediately. That is still a valid thing to be mad about Bella! It happened this morning! Gallingly, Jacob says he doesn't care if she's mad about it or not, he'd do it again. Good to know! When the Quileutes get together to tell wolf stories do they ever do one about that Boy Who Cried about them? Jacob's happy that the resultant kiss led Bella to realize she really loved him. I don't even WANT TO GET INTO the dark fucking psychology in that shit. How fast can Stockholm Syndrome set in?

Bella expresses frustration that no one is mad at her. She wants to be punished! If you're into that kind of thing, there's a section here that reads like an excerpt from someone else's Twilight-themed BDSM fan fic:

He grinned. It didn't touch his eyes. “You want me to haul you over the coals?”
“Actually... I think I do.”
He pursed his lips as he measured how much I meant it. A smile flashed across his face briefly, and then he twisted his expression into a fierce scowl.

Get your whips out, freaks! But as soon as Jacob jokingly starts to yell at her, she starts crying. Don't ask for it if you don't want it! Anyway, Jacob seems to realize that Bella isn't going to pull the trigger, so he starts loading her gun for her, pushing the conversation toward a conclusion. “I'll be your friend,” he says. “I won't ask for more than that.” She's understandably like, “Yeah the fuck right.” Then, on the last line of page 597, Jacob says “You know that story in the Bible?”

That's the end of the page. My heart skipped a fucking beat. But it's a fake out; we don't veer off into weird religious territory like we have in the past. Zealotry is apparently exclusive to male vampires.

Instead Jacob just talks about Solomon. “I'm not going to cut you in half anymore, Bella,” he says. Bella sees through that one immediately too. How did Bella get so smart all of a sudden? Force me into kissing you once, shame on you, Trick me into kissing you twice, I'll finally start calling you on all your bullshit! That's how the saying goes, right?

So Jacob drops the games and goes for the straight-up appeal. “The worst part is knowing what would have been,” he says. He arrogantly insists that he was “the natural path” Bella's life would have taken. Aren't you sixteen, buddy? How do you know Bella's natural path wouldn't have been to college and way the fuck away from you forever?

I get that people have problems with the idea of Young Romance – Edward & Bella getting engaged when she's only 18 years old – because in our divorce-saturated society, the talking-point is “exercise caution” before you jump in to that sort of thing. I don't necessarily subscribe to that line of thinking, and when people throw neuroscience at me like, “your brain doesn't finish developing until you are 25” or whatever, I subscribe to it even less. (If subscribing less is something you can really do. “I'd like only six issues a year, please.”) Neuroscience is bullshit. I think you can meet the right person at a young age. I don't think there is a such thing as a “soul mate,” but I think there is a such thing as “a person who is really good for you who you should be with.” And within the narrative framework of a fantasy novel, I'm even less inclined to tell Edward & Bella not to rush in, and not just because Where We're Going, We Don't Need Divorce Lawyers.

All of that said, even my credulity is way fucking strained when Bella agrees with Jacob completely and starts talking about how she has “two soul mates.” Shut up, Bella. Jacob moves the conversation to a different, even dumber place. “He's like a drug for you,” he says, in a weird callback to Edward's terrible metaphor about how Bella was his “brand” of heroin. “But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun.” This metaphor is already tenuous enough, but Jacob & Bella keep going.

“I used to think of you that way, you know. Like the sun. My personal sun. You balanced out the clouds nicely for me.”
He sighed. “The clouds I can handle. But I can't fight with an eclipse.”

Hey, that's the name of this book! Wasn't Edward “a drug” earlier in this metaphor? Is he a giant rock of crack cocaine in the shape of a moon now? I'm trying to wrap my arms around this. Technically, I guess we should remember that the shadow in a lunar eclipse is caused by the earth itself. So is Edward the earth and Bella the moon in this metaphor? Because we all know the sun and the moon aren't meant to be together no matter what Paula Abdul says. Jacob probably shouldn't have gone down this road, or S. Meyer should have specified which kind of eclipse we're dealing with. But Jacob pretty much resigns after that speech anyway, and asks Bella when the vamping is going to happen. Well, either that or she's asking when he's going to have sex.

“How long do you have left?”
“That depends on how long it takes Alice to pull a wedding together.” I suppressed a groan, imagining what Alice would do.
“Before or after?” he asked quietly.
I knew what he meant. “After.” […]
“Are you scared?” he whispered.

She says she's worried about the pain (again, could go either way). “I've never been much of a masochist,” she says. Really, Bella? Weren't you just asking Jacob to rake you over the coals? Haven't you been semi-consciously screwing yourself over for over a thousand pages? Aren't you dating a vampire and cock-teasing a werewolf? Didn't you just stab yourself in the arm with a sharp rock? Not a masochist? Really!?

Down The Rabbit Hole

I'm kind of amazed by the mental hoops the Jashley-Hating Twitter Mob have to jump through in order to do what they do. They frequently complain that Ashley Greene and Joe Jonas have abused and bullied Demi Lovato, and in response they bully and abuse Ashley Greene and Joe Jonas. One good turn deserves another, I suppose, but they proceed to bristle at the counter-hate they themselves inspire, as of they can't grasp their particular position in the middle of this downward spiral. @FuckUJashley tells Ashley Greene to die, then someone tells @FuckUJashley to die, and @FuckUJashley acts as though this is outrageous. Nothing should shock you guys! Accept what you hath wrought!

That is disturbing! But so is this:

Ashley Greene thankfully continues to ignore all of this, but unfortunately her friends have been sucked in, addressing haters directly.

Why do that? Were it that they at least were bringing some maturity and perspective to the situation, but they seem to have the same hate-blinders on as the Anti-AG camp.

WHOOPS! Consider that one again, @hlindner! Obviously we passed the point where much of this was funny a long time ago. Now it's just upsetting. Which isn't to say that there aren't occasional bright spots. @FuckJoesDog has been obsessing over Ashley Greene's breasts, which he perceives to not be as perky as he apparently expected. The picture he keeps sending people is from the Sobe shoot. I don't know what kind of support he expects body paint to have, but I don't see what the problem is. However, it did lead to this tweet, which is really one for the ages:

SO AMAZING. Shine on, you crazy dog fucker.

Who's Afraid Of Virginia The Wolf?

Ladies and Gentlement, Catherine Hardwicke does Little Red Riding Hood:

Well, okay. First Wuthering Heights got the Twilight re-packaging treatment, then, less understandably, Pride & Prejudice. Now Little Red Riding Hood has been SERIOUSLY Twilightified, this is some next level-shit. What now, fucking To Kill A Mockingbird? Can we make Boo Radley a vampire? How about making Mr. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness a werewolf? Fuck, why don't we do a Twilight Remix on fucking Gatsby? Dude throws great parties, the ladies love him - are we sure he wasn't a vampire already? I'm just spitballing here!

Important Question Regarding The Health Of Jashley's Sex Life

Photo Courtesy of my brother Alex's Facebook page. Stock up now, Alex!

With an FDA ban looming, FourLoko has announced that their beverage will no longer contain caffeine and other energy drink chemicals. Which leaves it as what, one of those Smirnoff drinks, basically? So concludes a particularly silly chapter of the War on Drugs. ("All of those ingredients are legal, fuckheads."-Alice Cullen) But what about other hip new beverages? Is Purple Drank safe? Is NEUROGASM? If the FDA bans Neurogasm - which might not even be legal anyway? - will Joe Jonas and Ashley Greene ever have sex again? These are important questions that our legislators are not taking into consideration.

Dissension In The Ranks

How do you guys expect to get something trending if you can't get your act together? And what's with the chutzpah of @TrashTheAshley, insisting that his or her name be the trending topic? The rising hate-tide is going to lift all hate-boats, dude! And I really think @FuckJoesDog should reconsider that twitter name. Yikes.

Meanwhile, @TrashTheAshley has started a tumblr. Shit just got real(er), and shit just got more personal. The plot thickens! Earlier: Blogging Eclipse part 33.

BLOGGING ECLIPSE, pt. 33: When The Curious Girl Realizes She Is Under Glass

When S. Meyer titles a chapter “Ethics,” you know you're in trouble. Previous entries can be found in the directory. (Also updated: JASHLEYGATE, A Directory)

Chapter 26: Ethics

Bella sits in Alice's bathroom getting a makeover in order to keep up with her alibi for Charlie's sake; Alice combs her hair with a “slow, rhythmic motion.” OKAY. Bella, Alice, slow rhythmic motions. We're off to a good start, but S. Meyer ruins any potential this scene might have had. For one thing, Bella's thinking about Jacob; he's injured and she wants to see him. It turns out she's already visited him once, an event we've skipped over. We learn about it via some incredibly clumsy flashbacks – S. Meyer will do stupid things like have Alice say something in the present and then talk about something Alice said a few hours ago, during the first visit to Jacob, without really indicating the transition. It's jarring. Later Bella will be talking to Charlie and then mention seeing Jacob “when Charlie left.” But she's referring to when Charlie left La Push earlier in the day – she's still having a conversation with him now. Recall that S. Meyer has previously used every kind of punctuation imaginable to indicate time jumps. What makes her think she can hang us out to dry now? It's some of the worst flashback writing I have ever seen, and I watched every episode of Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip! (Sorry Aaron Sorkin! The West Wing and Sports Night and The Social Network are amazing!)

Alice stresses to Bella the importance of keeping up appearances. “It's more important now than ever that Charlie stays safely in the dark,” she says. As Bella gets up to leave, Alice comments how hot she looks in her new dress.

“Huh? Oh. Er – thanks again for the clothes,” I mumbled out of courtesy rather than real gratitude.
“You need the evidence,” Alice said, her eyes innocent and wide. “What's a shopping trip without a new outfit?”

It's indicated throughout that Bella is really distracted thinking about Jacob. Is S. Meyer distracted, too? Why does Alice get reflexively defensive (eyes innocent and wide) about shopping when Bella didn't even protest? The only explanation I can think of is that Alice was actually coming on to Bella and walked it back a little too hard when Bella didn't return the vibes. Or S. Meyer is just a bad writer, maybe, I don't know.

I'm struggling to find a way to write about this chapter, because the chapter itself seems to be struggling. We drift lazily back and forth from Bella's feelings about seeing Jacob the first time to Bella's feelings about sitting in Alice's bathroom getting a makeover to Bella's feelings about potentially seeing Jacob again. It's hard to know what is important, what we should be focusing on, or even what is happening when.

There are those cryptic allusions to visits to Jacob past and future. We also are meant to understand that Alice (or someone) has come up with a story for Charlie to explain why all of Jacob's bones are broken, but we don't hear what that story is for a while. Instead, Bella starts asking Alice unrelated questions. Poor Alice. At the start of every book she gets to be this fun, mild-trouble-making weirdo, and by the end of every book she's just stuck explaining plot mechanics. “There's no hurry,” she says to Bella at one point. “If you realized how much extra morphine Carlisle had to give him – what with his temperature burning it off so quickly – you would know that he's going to be out for a while.” Why do we even – ? Nicely shoe-horned in there, S. Meyer! If his body is burning it off why would he be out for a longer than normal amount of time? What in the - ?

Alice becomes even more baldly an expository device as the conversation goes on. Bella asks why Alice's and Jasper's powers work on her, whereas Jane's and Edward's and Aro's don't. Alice shares her complicated theory that Jane, Edward, and Aro all work on the mind, where as Jasper works on like, the endocrine system or something, and she works with physical outcomes. Okay, fair enough. She takes a lot longer to explain it, of course.

She watched my face to see if I was following her logic. In truth, her words had all started to run together, the syllables and sounds losing their meaning. I couldn't concentrate on them.

SO WHY DID YOU EVEN ASK? Bella brings it up for our benefit, apparently. Thanks, Bella! It's maddening that aspects of this chapter can be so difficult to understand and other parts can be so ridiculously transparent: Bella asks if Alice still sees her becoming a vampire, and Alice understands that Bella is agonizing over the Jacob/Edward decision. For our purposes in this particular quote, S. Meyer's original italics are rendered in all caps:

She put her arms around me. “I'm sorry. I can't really EMPATHIZE. My first memory is of seeing Jasper's face in my future; I always knew that he was where my life was headed. But I can SYMPATHIZE. I'm so sorry you have to choose between two good things.”

THIS HAS BEEN YOUR VOCAB MOMENT BROUGHT TO YOU BY ALICE CULLEN. Speaking of vocab, Alice is the first of two people to have “unfathomable” eyes in this chapter. Later, Jacob's eyes will be described with the same word. What is this, an episode of Mad Men?

Bella goes home. Charlie, of course, was at La Push during the battle, and thus saw the injured Jacob. Hence Alice's insistence on getting the story straight. But Charlie, like Alice, has become an instrument of the plot. “I told you those motorcycles were dangerous,” he says almost immediately. If it wasn't clear enough for you that the Cullens and the wolfpack are passing off Jacob's injury as a motorcycle accident, a few paragraphs later Charlie says, “Pretty much the whole right side of his body got crushed when he wrecked that damn bike.” OH I GET IT WE'RE PRETENDING JACOB WAS IN A BIKE ACCIDENT, RIGHT?

Alice insisted that Charlie stay “in the dark,” so she probably should have killed Billy Black if she wanted that to happen. Because Charlie proceeds to talk about what a weird day he had: Billy was on edge the whole time, and cut their fishing trip short when he heard a wolf howl. Then there was some really loud howling all around the reservation while they tried to watch the game and Billy made nervous phone calls. Essentially he recaps the entire plot of the last few chapters from his point of view. But then an injured Jacob showed up and Charlie forgot about the weird stuff until just now. OH DID HE. I would be less bothered by S. Meyer's lazy writing if she didn't seem so paranoid about her lazy writing, inserting these weird intratextual defenses like she does. Charlie also notes that Edward, who was apparently with the injured Jacob (you'd think that fact would make Charlie suspicious but magically it doesn't) seemed genuinely distraught over Jacob's welfare. Oh, that's sweet. Are they going to be best friends now? Don't we have another book to get through first?

(Hey didn't Bella cut her arm open? Is Charlie going to notice?)

Bella flashes back again to seeing Jacob the first time. He looked really fragile, and she feels really guilty about it. She says she wishes there were two of her, so one could be with Jacob and the other with Edward. Still haven't separated guilt and love, eh Bella?

As if shit wasn't fucked up enough, Charlie abruptly says that he's feeling “superstitious” after his weird day on the Rez, and he feels like he is going to lose Bella soon. We're really just laying all of it on the line, huh? Is S. Meyer really that bored with writing this book? Is Breaking Dawn just going to be A FUCKING OUTLINE?

“Don't be silly, Dad,” I mumbled guiltily. “You want me to go to school, don't you?”
“Just promise me one thing.”
I was hesitant, ready to rescind. “Okay...”
“Will you tell me before you do anything major? Before you run off with him or something?”

Or become a vampire or whatever. Thoughts?