because Edward is perfect.

[kippurbird]

Okay, the real chapter twelve here. Last one was really eleven. Apparently I was trying to get to book over that much quicker. Obviously, it didn't work.


Chapter twelve pt 1: Balancing.



Last time Edward made an escape as Jacob Black and his father Billy Black randomly arrive at Bella's home as Charlie shows up. And honestly it is a completely random reason. Despite the fact that Billy and Charlie haven't been talking since they had a nasty fight about the Cullens. But, for this no particular reason, Billy and Jacob show up to watch the game with Charlie as their TV is broken. Why can't they go and watch TV with someone else? Why so that now Bella can worry about Billy telling Charlie about the Cullens being vampires!

There is no particularly good reason for this to happen. There is no reason at all for this to happen beyond false tension. Bella gets to spend the evening worrying about Billy telling her father about the Cullens being vampires. But if you were to stop and think about it logically, why would Billy tell Charlie about the Cullens being vampires? It's such an insane and idiotic thing to randomly say.

Billy: Hey, Charlie, you know that Edward Cullen kid who you didn't see leaving your house and daughter?

Charlie: Yeah?

Billy: He's a vampire.

Charlie: Well, how about that. Look at that Action that this guy took in this game that we're watching of which it wasn't specified because it's not as important as Bella Angst even if it would help define the character and person that I am, having absolutely no point in existence except to bow to Bella's whim.

Billy: Yeah. Well how about that.

See? Doesn't work.

Besides, it's not important except to cause Bella unnecessary and unreasonable angst. Random Plot Encounters aren't there except to highlight something that the author wants to highlight even if they don't make any sense to happen at the time. In this case it's to show Bella's concern of her father knowing Edward is a vampire. A better way of doing this might have been her father bringing up Edward in conversation or something like that. The only thing this encounter does is randomly ram up Bella's frustration level and anxiety. Which is boring to read.

She continues to lie to her father about what she's doing. And thinks nothing much of it.

In the morning she has a mood swing and is all happy and bubbly and humming.

I slept better that night, too tired to dream again. When I woke to the
pearl gray morning, my mood was blissful. The tense evening with Billy
and Jacob seemed harmless enough now; I decided to forget it completely.
I caught myself whistling while I was pulling the front part of my hair
back into a barrette, and later again as I skipped down the stairs.
Charlie noticed.

How about that, the entire bit about Charlie and Billy is completely forgotten about and not important. Basically it happened for no good reason. There's no lingering anxiety or anything. And her mood has completely flipped. She's even whistling! She's never indicated a desire to whistle! Even when her mood has been equally as jubilant. Though she has skipped before.

As usual, Edward is waiting for her. She quickly got into his car to stare at him.

"I couldn't imagine how an angel could be any more glorious. There was nothing about him that could be improved upon."

Now there are several things I could say to that statement. But the idea here is that she is so taken with him that she can't see any of his faults. He doesn't have any faults according to her. Because of this, she can't see how dangerous he really is. His sparkles dazzle her into blindness, turning her into his willing slave.

The two thousand and one question game continues, this time asking about people she knows. Again she thinks nothing of this.

At lunch time, their relationship continues to slide into creepier and creepier territory. Edward tells her that he's going to get her car because he's going off with Alice hunting after school. Meyers also has an awkward sentence structure moment. ""I should have let you drive yourself today," he announced, apropos of nothing, while I chewed." Emphasis mine. While the apropos of nothing is a legitimate phrase, (as well as the name of an excellent bastard in the book series, Sir Apropos of Nothing) it doesn't fit with Bella's style of thinking. It's a very sophisticated phrase and until then she'd been using simplified and small term words. Utterly every day and not to special. To suddenly have this phrase inserted here jolts the reader out of the story.

When Bella says that she can walk home, Edward insists, with a frown that he's not going to let her walk home. He doesn't give a reason for this. Just that he won't. Bella tells him that she doesn't have the key. This is no obstacle according to Edward. This does not bother Bella and she doesn't question how he will do it.

Edward and Alice are going hunting so that Edward doesn't have the irresistible urge to eat Bella and bring her home alive. Isn't that nice of him? Bella continues her suicidal streak when she thinks, "I refused to be convinced to fear him, no matter how real the danger might be. It doesn't matter, I repeated in my head." When your mind is telling you Danger Danger Danger! There's a reason for it and you shouldn't do it. If everyone around her is telling her Danger Danger Danger! There's a reason for it. When the person who you're supposed to be afraid of says Danger Danger Danger! Then it's a DAMN good reason to listen to them.

Bella, having shown all the sense of a lemming continues down towards her cliff.

After discussing plans to meet up the next day and a short discussion of if Edward's family likes her, Bella once again declares that she doesn't understand why Edward likes her.

He smiled as he deciphered my expression. "Having the advantages I do,"
he murmured, touching his forehead discreetly, "I have a better than
average grasp of human nature. People are predictable. But you… you never
do what I expect. You always take me by surprise."

I'm sorry? Exactly how does she do that? Is it because she never stands up to him? But we've already seen that she always does that, so how is that a surprise? That's pretty predictable to me. How about not having any interest in self preservation. Well, no, she's been doing that all along too. So how exactly does she not do what he expects her to do? This is just put there to make it seem like she's strange and alluring as opposed to an utter lemming.

Then the Cullen siblings get involved. First there is "Rosalie, his blond and breathtaking sister" who gives her the evil eye. Then Edward angsts about how Rosalie is only worried about him because something bad could happen to all of them if the two of them stayed public together. He doesn't say what.

And then Alice shows up.

Alice — her short, inky hair in a halo of spiky disarray
around her exquisite, elfin face — was suddenly standing behind his
shoulder. Her slight frame was willowy, graceful even in absolute
stillness.

Does she have curves in all the right places? I bet she does, I do. The halo of spiky disarray reminds me of the crown of thorns around Jesus' head. A weird image to go along with the elfin face and exquisiteness.

They do the small talk of "nice to meet you" and gee her voice is SO wonderful. Just like everything else about her! But not as wonderful as Edward's. And then she and Edward go slinking off to go do vampire things.

She pines.

And then it gets ridiculous and full of Portents. With a capital "P".

I intuitively knew — and sensed he did, too — that tomorrow would be
pivotal. Our relationship couldn't continue to balance, as it did, on the
point of a knife. We would fall off one edge or the other, depending
entirely upon his decision, or his instincts. My decision was made, made
before I'd ever consciously chosen, and I was committed to seeing it
through. Because there was nothing more terrifying to me, more
excruciating, than the thought of turning away from him. It was an
impossibility.

Isn't this full of Portents? Oh no! What if Edward doesn't choose her!? What will she do? Notice how much she puts it that if Edward doesn't chose her she'll die. Her life is over. She has no more reason to live.

This is NOT a healthy relationship.

After school she discovers her truck in the parking lot. She is incredulous, but not worried about the idea that Edward could get into her house so easily.

Instead she decides, when she got home, that maybe she didn't leave her truck key in her laundry pants after all.

She doubts her own reality to make it fit into what would happen with Edward. She doesn't lay blame at him for breaking into her house, this isn't even thought of as a bad thing. It's just as if she'd given him her house key to get the truck himself. Nothing to it.

Better that Edward is perfect than him doing something criminal.

Comments

[acdragonmaster.livejournal.com]

You know, the thing I don't get is, if they're these big bad vampires and all, why on earth are they sitting around a high school? To pretend to be normal? But then they'd have to graduate eventually or they'd look NOT normal, and then we're back to the same problem we'd have if they never bothered in the first place.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Um. Well. You see, you're using logic. Logic does not exist in Bella-Land.

Apparently though, they go to college and then they go to high school etc. Edward, I read somewhere, has several college degrees.

[acdragonmaster.livejournal.com]

...and no one ever notices it's odd that these same names keep cropping up time and again. Unless they're moving every time they change schools, but. What's the point?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

See, what you're doing here and now is world building.

What Meyers is doing is SQUEEE EDWARD IS SO HAAWT I WANT TO HAVE PLATONIC SEXXORS WITH HIM!!!

Can you see the difference?

[subieko.livejournal.com]

Why DO the vampires go to highschool? It's not mandated by law; they could claim to be drop-outs. In fact, they're more likely to be found suspicious if they're around a large group of other people day in and day out. Not to mention being absent whenever it's sunny out. Just staying home as drop-outs would be MUCH less suspicious, particularly if they, oh I don't know, moved to someplace OTHER than a small town where everyone knows each other. Why not a big city? Or why NOT someplace really remote, like Alaska where they supposedly moved from? They could just live somewhere away from other people and not have to worry about all this stuff.

But then there would be no story. *headdesk*

Also, Edward continues to be creepy. O_o Someone needs to slap a restraining order on that guy...

[acdragonmaster.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's MUCH easier to hide in a big city than tiny small rural town. I've lived in both, I know.

[amamelina.livejournal.com]

I never understood that either. I know that they have to move around every year or so, but do they change their names as well (I think in Twilight, it was never mentioned). After all, how many Edward Cullens can there be graduating high school every four years? I'm sure someone would have been suspicious. Teachers move around as well, and it appears like the Cullens have been in Forks before (if the animosity between the wolves and the vampires are anything to go on).

And, wouldn't high school bore him after the millionth time? I know it would me. I'd stop doing high school and be a college student for a while. And change my name every few years (and be friends with people who can get me a new social security number and fake records).

[subieko.livejournal.com]

I agree. I have a few characters that don't age at a normal rate, and thus are forced to fake it--some use magic to disguise themselves, but the vampires don't seem to have that ability, so I'll let that slide--and they have a friend who is VERY good at forgery.

Also, my main 'in-hiding' character did indeed live in a large city for quite a while, although he moved every so often (he was an elf, so he'd been a live for about a century and still looked maybe early 20s at most). Cities are good places to hide. Small towns are NOT!

[acdragonmaster.livejournal.com]

Actually changing names wouldn't necessarily help much and in fact would leave more of a paper trail if you're doing it officially. The thing you want to watch out for is the birth dates- a better method would be to find a way to alter birth certificates, rather than go through the process of a name change.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

But then there would be no story. *headdesk*

Exactly!

[gjohnsonkoehn.livejournal.com]

Or why NOT someplace really remote, like Alaska where they supposedly moved from? They could just live somewhere away from other people and not have to worry about all this stuff.

For normal people, I'd say that the remoteness would get to be too much for them, after a while; humans are social creatures, after all, and even vampires are generally depicted that way.

But, then, these are the Cullens, who until Bella showed up just sort of cliqued around exclusively with each other. So, I got nothing.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

But, then, these are the Cullens, who until Bella showed up just sort of cliqued around exclusively with each other. So, I got nothing.

Makes you wonder why they go through all this trouble to "fit in" when they fit in as well as an elephant in a bucket of snails.

[zoe-i-am.livejournal.com]

Of course "people are predictable" when you can read their freakin' minds!

Are you going to do the whole series, Kips?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

No! He's just become a master of reading people's faces and body languages etc to know what they're going to do and... shit.


I dunno. I'm going to do the entire Inheritance Cycle. I was thinking of doing Breaking Dawn though.

[sarah-k-o-m.livejournal.com]

Do the whole thing, do. I'll post you New Moon and Eclipse, really I will.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

We'll see. I want to do brisingr first and then see what's up.

Not that I'm opposed to it at all.

Also thinking about doing one of those Clique books for shits and giggles.

[falconwhitaker.livejournal.com]

Actually, this girl is stupider than a lemming, because lemmings don't actually leap off of cliffs - that's an urban myth. She's... INSANE. O_O

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

She's... INSANE.

Shush. You're insulting all of us insane people here.

[falconwhitaker.livejournal.com]

Shush. You're insulting all of us insane people here.

Ah yes, my apologies. I'm insane too, I should have thought. May I amend?

She's... STUPID.

[detritius.livejournal.com]

And, unlike lemmings, this girl really does leap off a cliff in the second book.

[falconwhitaker.livejournal.com]

I would beg you to admit that you're joking, but the sad thing is that I don't doubt for a second that she'd do something that stupid. Is it me, or is that just really, really sad?

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

It's in the second book, I believe. She goes all emo when Edward up and leaves her to go to Alaska. There's several chapters in the middle of the book that's all blank pages because she has no life without Edward.

I'm serious.

Sadly.

OMG... I think therefore I am!

[dove-cg.livejournal.com]

But this explains EVERYTHING. Edward can't read her thoughts because she has no life. She's actually just a figment of his imagination. XD

[albijuli]

No luck obtaining a copy of Twilight at the local library! It was either checked out or on hold. GASP. (I did ask for a copy from another branch- oh, how I love the library system!)

Also, friend add please? :)