Twilight, Chapter 7

I’m trying to get better at this. I really am.

It’s just… Packing… And college… And this is painful…

But that’s why you read this, isn’t it?

I hate you all…

Chapter 7: Nightmare

Is this going to be a theme?  Bella lying all the time? Because that’s what it seems like. She never tells Charlie what’s really going on, and I have to wonder how confused he’s going to get throughout the course of this story.

Bella decides that she doesn’t want to think. Okay, that’s totally cool. I do that all the time. The end result generally has to do with Criminal Minds, Doctor Who, or Redwall. Because that’s how I roll. Bella puts on music. Loud music. With too much bass.

First, how can there possibly be too much bass? Second, she uses a CD player. This book was published in 2005. I’m relatively (very) certain that MP3 players were prevalent at that point. Teenagers did not use CD players to listen to music on headphones. They used, and still use, MP3 players. Trust me, Meyer, it is actually a Thing.

But I have more class (and more knowledge) than to drone on and on about how adults have no idea what’s going on in popular culture, so we’ll leave it with an incredulous look and move on from there.

So the really loud music stops Bella from thinking, and she listens to the CD over and over, and she learns all the words (that fast?) and then she falls asleep.

And she dreams. And I want to kill myself.

So in this dream, she’s back in the woods from last chapter, and Jacob and Mike are trying to ~save~ Bella from something that they won’t tell her about. Bella refuses to run, because she needs to know. So, in a bout of TELLING US EXACTLY WHAT WILL FUCKING HAPPEN foreshadowing, Jacob turns into a wolf and tries to defend Bella. Mike is screaming. A light is coming through the trees, and Bella is fascinated.

It’s Edward. Of course it’s Edward. I mean, did anyone not see that coming? If you didn’t, I reserve the right to smack you upside the head.

So Edward beckons Bella, all sultry-like, and smiles with pointed teeth. “Trust me,” he purrs. “You’re delicious.”

Yes. He purrs. He actually fucking purrs.

I’m done.

I’m done.

But not really, because I have to do this. *groans*

So wolf!Jocob goes in for the kill, but Bella is all protective and shit, and screams “NOOOOOOOO!” because that’s what women do when violence is threatened, and then she wakes up.

It’s five-thirty in the morning, and Bella’s light is still on, and she’s still in her clothes from the day before. She tries to get comfortable by stripping off her boots and jeans, but she’s far too distracted by the fact that Edward is probably a vampire to fall back to sleep.

So she showers and gets ready for the day (at five-thirty, remember) (also, Charlie went fishing), then decides that it can’t be put off any longer. What can’t be held off? Also, I’m sure it can. You can just ignore it, babe. You don’t have to do everything you think of.

Bella hates using the Internet in Forks. Why? Because her modem is outdated, her free service is substandard, and dialing up takes too long.

Dialing up takes too long.

It is 2005 and she is still using fucking dial-up? Meyer, what the hell decade are you living in? With CD players and dial-up? Are you shitting me?

Moving on from the obvious technology impairment (you’ll have to bear with me on these points; I’m the Magical Technology Goddess and get So Very Frustrated when people act like idiots about technology), Bella loads Google her favorite search engine. And she searches “vampire”.

She uses a single word search parameter.

Does she not know how this shit works? It searches for any instance of the parameter. Any instance AT ALL.

I have powerful Google-fu, as my physics teacher calls it. I am good at finding things. Naturally, this would seem a bit absurd to me, and my status as Magical Technology Goddess makes me scorn this even harder.

But my eight-year-old sister knows how to search better than this.

Bella, baby, what is it that you want? Do you want vampire myths? Do you want the common traits of vampires? Do you want to know how to cook a vampire? Do you want to know how to cook for a vampire?

Well, that last one’s easy. Keep your neck uncovered.

But ask the search engine what you want. I don’t care if it’s Google, Yahoo, Bing, or whatever the hell else people use. Ask for exactly what you want, and you will get it. Trust me. I’m the Magical Technology Goddess. I know what I’m talking about.

Again moving beyond the Utter Rage, Bella finally finds a site called Vampires A-Z and starts reading the articles.

I have to ask; is Meyer describing her own personal vampire research? Because the Complete Fucking Fail (CFF; it is now a Thing) would not surprise me coming from her.

Anyway, so Bella goes through the descriptions of different types of vampires, and can’t find anything that fits Jacob’s story and what she has noticed herself. Nor do the Cullens match any of the standard vampire mythos.

Wait, I think I just hit the nail on the head! MYTHOS! *sarcasm*

Bella, baby, I’ll try to use small words. This thing, “mythos”, is an important thing. Respect the thing. All mythological creatures have one. Including vampires. A mythos is a collection of generally accepted beliefs that can be changed to fit an author’s needs. Having a mythos means that, were these creatures actually real, all these stories wouldn’t necessarily be true. Some might. All of them might. Or none might. You never know.

So Bella feels embarrassed that she even believed this, and decides that displacing the blame would be a good idea, so it’s not her fault that she believed it, but the town’s fault. I don’t even know at this point, okay? I just don’t even know.

Bella runs out of the house, and I start pitching a fit about the writing. First off, this bit:

There was a thin ribbon of a trail that led through the forest here, or I wouldn’t risk wandering on my own like this. My sense of direction was hopeless; I could get lost in much less helpful surroundings.

Italics are mine. Just wanted to focus your attention.

That is backwards. My dyslexia confused me, so I spent about five minutes or so working it out in my head. The way this bit is worded makes it seem like it would take a forest that is much denser/more confusing to get Bella turned around. It should say, perhaps, “I could easily get lost in more helpful surroundings,” or “I could get lost in only slightly less helpful surroundings.” The second option is better, because it implies that she is pretty confident that she won’t get lost, which corresponds with the reason that she is daring to go out there in the first place; there is a trail, and she will be okay.

There’s that, and then there’s this:

[The trail] snaked around the Sitka spruces and the hemlocks, the yews and the maples. I only vaguely knew the names of the trees around me, and all I knew was due to Charlie pointing them out to me from the cruiser window in earlier days. There were many I didn’t know, and others I couldn’t be sure about because they were so covered in green parasites.

Again, italics are mine.

If she only barely knows the names of the trees, why mention it at all? Why not just say, “It snaked around the trees”? It’s again like Meyer’s trying so hard to make it look pretty and poetic, and I’m starting to feel sorry for her, because she failed so completely.

The last bit I take exception to has to do with Bella knowing that a tree has fallen recently because it wasn’t entirely carpeted in moss. Moss doesn’t grow that fast. I don’t care where the hell you live, or how wet it is, or how dark, but plants take time to grow. Meyer, your ignorance is showing. I’d suggest covering it up.

So Bella sits on her fallen tree and thinks, and apparently it’s a bad idea because it’s so much easier to believe out in the forest. Or something.

And then there are three pages of going over the same thing repeatedly and coming to the same conclusion every single time and I’m starting to wonder exactly how stupid this girl is.

Then Bella flashes her own ignorance by saying that “when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now.”

HAVE YOU NEVER SEEN DRACULA?!? THIS IS WHAT VAMPIRES FUCKING DO. THEY DRAW YOU IN WITH THEIR OVERT SEXINESS AND THEN THEY EAT YOU. WHY DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THIS I THOUGHT YOU JUST READ ALL ABOUT VAMPIRES WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WOMAN RUN THE OTHER WAY AS FAST AS YOU FUCKING CAN.

Anyway, after I rage for a bit, Bella heads back home, having decided that she doesn’t care if the Cullens are vampires, because she still wants Edward to eat her. She works on her Macbeth paper (great play, actually. BANQUO and other such things) and feels peaceful because apparently making decisions is hard but once they’re made she’s cool and this decision is so very easy to live with and I mutter something about the difficult choice normally being the better choice and nothing worth having is easily gotten and the road to Hell is paved with good intentions and every other thing I can think of to make Bella see that this is a Bad Idea. But, of course, it doesn’t work.

Bella’s day is productive, Charlie comes home with fish, Bella decides that she needs to look up recipes for fish and is all tingly about being with Edward when she goes to Seattle and I roll my eyes and start gagging.

The next day, Monday, is sunny, and Bella opens her window. Which opens smoothly. Without sticking. Or creaking. Or anything. And she hasn’t opened in years.

OH MY GOD HE HAS BEEN IN HER ROOM ALREADY HASN’T HE HOLY SHIT THE FUCKING CREEPER.

Oh, hey! Bella has curly, brown hair, apparently.

Anyway, so Bella goes to school and she’s early because she was eager to get outside, and then Mike shows up and they start talking, and the paper comes up, and Bella’s topic appears to be whether Shakespeare’s treatment of female characters is misogynistic. LIKE THIS BOOK?

You know, she probably said yes, but it doesn’t matter, because the world is supposed to be misogynistic. Or something.

*shoves The Angry Feminist away* Not letting you rant, sweetie.

Anyway, so Mike asks Bella to dinner and Bella shoves the fact that Jessica likes Mike into Mike’s face. Mike gets distracted, and they go to class.

There is a shopping trip planned that night for dresses with Jessica, and Bella says maybe, because Lauren is going and Bella and Lauren don’t like each other. Then lunch comes.

And the Cullens aren’t there.

And Bella gets mopey.

Seriously Siriusly, she mopes for the rest of the day. She gets hit with another wave of disappointment when he isn’t in Biology, and I perform the Patented Mr. Knightly Hands-Free Facepalm. And then she’s so glad to leave school so she can mope and pout outwardly, and I facepalm so hard I fall over backwards.

This is also a Thing, by the way, facepalming over. It’s new. All the cool kids are doing it. By which I mean me.

Then Jessica calls to postpone the plans to the next night because she’s going with Mike, and Bella mopes harder. Bella then e-mails her mother. It’s really short and contains no news. Because, you know, we teenagers tell our parents nothing, I said NOTHING, DAMMIT, YOU CAN’T MAKE ME.

Bella decides that it’s time to read, and goes to her small collection of books.

Small? Babe, I’d have more books than anything else. I’m packing for college, and I already have two boxes full and more books still to pack. Books are everything.

So Bella reads Jane Austen and whines because there’s an Edward in Sense and Sensibility and an Edmund in Mansfield Park and I say just suck it up and imagine Billie Piper, because that shit is sexy.

She falls asleep on the lawn, and wakes up when Charlie gets home. They have dinner, and then sit down to watch television, and Bella tells Charlie about the planned trip the next day and apparently the last names of the two people you’re going to hang out with are The Details? What about where you’re going and when you’re leaving and when you’ll be back and will there be boys or booze or boobs and the million and two other questions my mother asks me when I’m about to leave? But whatever. I suppose different parents have different levels of not giving a fuck concern.

It’s sunny again the next day and the Cullens are out again and Bella mopes more, but the shopping plans are a go and Lauren isn’t coming, so that makes Bella (somewhat) happy. Leaving town also makes her happy.

That last one I can empathize with. Not so much the shopping. *gags*

There’s that! I leave in seventeen days, so let’s see if I can finish this by then!


OTHER CHAPTERS

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 8