I kid. I know I shouldn’t neglect you, Twilight blog, but these books are just so bad. Someone found me on my gaming tumblr, of all places, to ask when I would be making another post, and I just can’t say no to that. I respond very well to nagging when it comes to Girl&Twilight.

Anyway, when we last left off, Bella was going with Jacob to meet his wolfie friends.

Bella essentially begins the chapter by saying that all the First Nations boys look the same, and the boys respond with rage. Not towards her internal (and probably slightly accidental on Smeyer’s part, but that’s clumsy writing for you) racism, but because she is there at all. Bella sort of cowers while Jacob deflects the insults being thrown at Bella, insisting she can help them. It’s not very effective.

“Right, protect her!” Paul roared in outrage. Another shudder, a convulsion, heaved through his body. He threw his head back, a real growl tearing from between his teeth.
“Paul!” Sam and Jacob shouted together.
Paul seemed to fall forward, vibrating violently. Halfway to the ground, there was a loud ripping noise, and the boy exploded (pg.325).

I would like you to take a moment to really appreciate that last paragraph. He seemed to fall forward (he didn’t actually?). Precisely halfway to the ground (so he’s hovering now?) he exploded. As in, literally exploded. Somehow this explosion resulted in Paul being a werewolf now.

Except he isn’t a werewolf, because Smeyer doesn’t actually seem to know anything about werewolves. I mean, lycanthropes usually don’t transform at will and need a full moon to trigger the transformation, but not all lore goes that way so I’ll give Smeyer a break there. I do want to point out that Jacob and his friends don’t transform into werewolves though. They transform into very large wolves. Not man-wolves. They’re more shapeshifters than lycanthropes. This bothers me. So I am going to refer to them as wolves from now on because lycanthropes they are not.

I also want to point out that there exists a wolf named Paul. Is this hilarious to anyone else? No? Just me? Paul the big, scary wolf.

Anyway. Jacob transforms/explodes to fight with Paul the wolf. Bella is puzzled because she can’t figure out how all that wolf fit inside Jacob.

Jacob and Paul fight, and Sam orders the other boys to take Bella to “Emily’s.” Along the way, the boys chuckle about oh haha that Paul he is always losing his temper and Jacob shredded his last pair of sneakers and Billy can’t afford any more ohoho and then they make bets on which wolf will bite the most out of the other because it’s such a manly man sport to fight each other and Bella is just standing there like

and honestly I am feeling the same way.

The boys (Embry and Jared) resolve to go to Emily’s because “she’ll have food waiting” and they ask Bella if they can drive her truck because she looks like she’s going to be sick or have emotions or something girly like that. The boys bet on whether or not Bella will puke. Bella doesn’t puke. They also say stuff about the vampire treaty but I’m assuming it doesn’t matter because Smeyer’s plot devices never really hold from chapter to chapter, so whatever.

Emily is Sam’s finacée (Sam is the leader of the wolves). Embry tells Bella not to stare at Emily. When Bella asks why she would stare, Embry uncomfortably replies that “hanging out around werewolves has its risks.” Emily and Sam’s house is more of a tiny shack. Emily is very beautiful, but she has huge, terrible scars down one side of her face. Scars that look suspiciously like scratch marks from a wolf’s claw. Bella later notices scars up Emily’s arms and hands, too. Bella just dismisses it like it’s no big deal: “Hanging out with werewolves truly did have its risks, just as Embry had said.” Sam enters as Bella remarks how deeply in love Emily and Sam seem to be. He kisses her scars before he kisses her mouth. Is this supposed to be romantic? What is the moral of the story here? Being with someone so violent he nearly kills you is okay as long as he seems to love you the other half of the time? I feel like that is the message I am getting from Twilight as a whole. It is so not okay.

Emily refers to Bella as the “vampire girl” and Bella refers to Emily  as the “wolf girl.” This is more underlying misogyny on Smeyer’s part again, like the biggest part of these women’s identities is through the men who are their partners. Emily’s only roles so far seem to be being concerned for her fiancé and the other boys, who seem to be like her adopted sons, and preparing meals for everyone. Very traditional female roles, here.

Eventually, all the wolves in their human form are in Emily’s shack, eating muffins. Jacob explains that the red-haired vampire (Victoria) is after Bella because the Cullens killed her mate. It is acknowledged that this is illogical, which makes the plot even stupider… even the characters point out its stupidity. In any case, they devise a plan to catch and defeat Victoria. Jacob tells Bella she should stay in La Push as much as possible, and he will make sure Charlie is often at Billy’s too. Sam stops him to ask Bella if that plan is okay with her, and I can’t decide if that is a nice thing for him to do, or if he is just sort of pushing chivalry around.

Bella goes home that night, and a very confused Charlie tries to figure out why Bella is suddenly best friends with Jacob again and hanging out with the group she had thought was a cult that morning. Bella is just like “oh we made up, they’re fun.” Charlie also lets us know the story the rest of the world heard about Emily’s face: she was supposedly mauled by a bear.

In bed that night, Bella wonders if Jacob is right and she is a hypocrite after all. She wonders if she would still love Edward even if she knew he had killed many humans. It is understood that he almost certainly did. It is also understood that Bella would almost certainly love him no matter how bloodthirsty he is, and it wouldn’t have kept her away from him. Her justification?

Love is irrational, I reminded myself. The more you loved someone, the less sense anything made (pg.341).

In this long past-due episode of Girl&Twilight, Stephenie Meyer coughs up the entire plot of Twilight to use again. Because, you know, it was so riveting the first time around. She also is ruining Jacob so there is next to nothing redeeming about this book at this point.

I think the number one reason I hate this series so much is because no one knows how to communicate. No one knows how to have a simple conversation to convey basic information to each other. Honestly, I can sum up the entire chapter for you in a few short lines:

are you a werewolf?
yes. I am.
let’s still be friends.
okay cool.

Except this shouldn’t even have to happen because we have known Jacob is a werewolf since the last book but here we are so let’s just get to it.

Bella drives to Jacob’s house extremely early in the morning to tell him off for being a crazy murdering wolf. Not because she’s worried he’ll go to jail or something, but because she’s worried it might reflect badly on her if she’s friends with a killer. Billy is suspicious when she shows up and understandably doesn’t want to let her in, but she trots up the stairs to Jacob’s room anyway where she watches him sleep for a few minutes. This makes her stop feeling angry and instead want to protect him, so she tells Billy she is going to the beach and he is to send Jacob to her when he wakes up. For some reason Billy is cool with this whole intrusion.

Bella waits at the beach for about a page until Jacob shows up. They have the same annoyingly angsty, circular sort of conversation as usual and it’s killing me. I mean, Jacob already knows that Bella believes in vampires so I don’t see why it’s such a huge deal to just tell her he’s a big puppy dog.

Jacob is really pissed. He is even more pissed when Bella says she is there to warn him. He yells at her and calls her a hypocrite for being afraid of him and sarcastically apologizes for not being the right kind of monster. Ouch, Jacob. When did you become such a jerk?

This makes Edward talk in Bella’s head again which is neat and stuff.

“Be very careful, Bella,” his velvet voice warned. “Don’t push him too far. You need to calm him down.”

Even the voice in my head was making no sense today.

I listened to him, though. I would do anything for that voice. (pg.307)

Again with the creepy self-aware insanity. And word to the wise, Bella? Don’t do anything for voices in your head. That’s usually not a good call.

Bella tells Jacob that if vampires can find a way to live without killing people, so can werewolves. Jacob stops being angry and says, “wait, you were talking about killing people?” and Bella is like “um yeah what did you think we were talking about,” and Jacob is like, “your disgust for wolves obviously!” and Bella goes “nah it’s okay that you’re a giant puppy dog sometimes as long as you don’t kill people,” and Jacob is like “lol okay cool let’s hug.”

Actually his exact words are “are you sure you don’t mind I morph into a giant dog?” What the fuck am I reading.

Said words are then followed by repeating, possibly verbatim, the words Edward said to Bella over and over again: that he is very dangerous and he shouldn’t be around Bella because he can’t control himself and she might get hurt.

RED FLAG RED FLAG

ANYWAY my predictions were correct and the wolves aren’t the ones killing people. They are trying to kill the vampires that are hunting people, but they are usually too late and that’s why they’re getting pegged as the killers. They killed Laurent and that makes Bella happy, but when Jacob describes the vampire they are hunting now, Bella realizes it is Victoria and she completely loses it. Like, really. She has a fit, convulsing and sweating profusely and vomiting and even Edward is like totally freaking out in her brain and it’s all very fun.

Eventually she explains to Jacob what is up, and he runs off into the woods to let his doggie friends know that they need to have an emergency meeting. When he comes back, he explains that he had to go transform into a wolf to tell them because all the wolves can hear each others’ thoughts all the time. Wow Smeyer that is a totally new plot device smashing job.

They go to meet Sam and the other wolves, but not before the chapter ends with Smeyer making a “who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?” joke.

So here we are. Vampires are after Bella and some big strong boy has to save her by killing the vampire. ORIGINAL PLOTS SUSPENSE WOOO

When we left off last time, Bella had awoken in the middle of the night to a scratching on her window. Who could it be?

VICTORIA??

That’s what Bella thinks, as her heart pounds in her ears, flinging the window open, only to see… Jacob, up in a tree.

Jacob, what are you doing in a tree?

Jacob somehow swings into Bella’s bedroom through her open window and immediately begins trying to apologize for being an ass to a very confused Bella. She tells him she doesn’t accept his apology and tries to make him leave, since she is somewhat understandably flustered to have a shirtless man standing in her bedroom in the middle of the night. Yeah, by the way, he is shirtless, and huge.

Bella calms down a little bit, and Jacob tries once more to apologize. He’s being more like his usual nice Jacob self and less like his awful Edwardish self from the last chapter. Jacob struggles to speak, saying that he wished he could tell Bella what is going on, but that it isn’t his secret to tell. They acknowledge that Bella can understand that, because she’s had a secret like that, too (like her boyfriend being a bloodthirsty vampire, for example?)

Jacob decides that although he is bound to keep his secret, if Bella can figure it out on her own, then that should be okay. He tells her that she already knows his secret because he told her when they first met on the beach. Of course, all Bella can remember of that day is Jacob telling her that Edward is a vampire (all I can remember of that day was it was the first time I didn’t want to gouge my eyes out reading this thing). Jacob is sad that Edward is the only thing Bella can remember about that day, if totally unsurprised. At least they finally get it out in the open that they both know that Edward is a vampire so they can stop doing that stupid song and dance.

Before Jacob leaves, he apologizes again to Bella, this time for breaking the promise that he made that night at the movies, that he would never hurt her. JACOB YOU ARE SO WONDERFUL

Jacob leaves once Bella promises him to think more about the stories he told her at the beach that day once she has some sleep. That night, Bella has the same dream she had the night she found out Edward was a vampire. I really hate that Smeyer uses dreams like this so often. It feels like such a cop out. Instead of just, you know, piecing events together and using a little logic, Bella always has things come to her or be explained to her in dreams. In case you have forgotten, Smeyer basically copy-pastes the dream for us. She’s in the meadow, and Jacob is telling her to run from Edward, then Jacob turns into a giant wolf. Bella wakes up in hysterics… seriously.

But Charlie didn’t come in, and eventually I was able to strangle the strange screeching coming out of my throat. (pg,292)

Is she possessed or something?

This dream does its job to chug the stupid plot along, and makes Bella remember the story Jacob told her about the vampires being the enemies of the werewolves, and how Jacob’s people are the brothers of the wol… HOLY SHIT

JACOB IS A WEREWOLF???

OMG PLOT TWIST I DID NOT SEE THIS COMING

Bella’s head then nearly explodes trying to figure out why so many mythical creatures are wandering about her small town, and that her only friends hadn’t even been human, not even Jacob.

What did this say about me? I knew the answer to that one. It said that there was something deeply wrong with me. Why else would my life be filled with characters from horror movies? (pg.294)

Why indeed, Bella? Once again, this self-awareness utterly disturbs me.

Bella realizes she must apologize to Jacob for thinking he was in a scary evil cult, and she must thank him for saving her from Laurent. She rushes downstairs to head to La Push, but she’s stopped by Charlie who is wondering where she is going so early without breakfast. He tells her not to make any stops along the way to Jacob’s because there have been even more wolf attacks. There is a bounty on wolf carcasses, so that means there will be lots of hunters in the woods and he is worried Bella might get accidentally shot. This news makes Bella freak out because if wolves are being hunted, Jacob is being hunted.

Charlie can’t understand why Bella is so upset about wolves being killed.

“You aren’t turning into a tree-hugger on me, are you?” (pg.296)

Oh boy. No daughter of mine is a dirty liberal!, you mean.

Bella is torn. Charlie leaves, and she sits on the kitchen floor to try to put things in order in her mind. Should she tell Charlie not to hunt the wolves? Should she warn Jacob? Or does this mean Jacob is a murderer, and he and his friends are the ones responsible for the hikers going missing?

I’m going to guess and say it’s actually vampires killing people and the werewolves were there trying to save the people, and they just got the blame because vampires can run incredibly fast and all that, but, uh, it’s just a hunch.

It seems several weeks (or possibly just one week) have gone by since Bella last saw Jacob. This is making her all kinds of crazier. She is having even more nightmares and hyperbolizing the abyss into which she is falling even more than usual. She copes by calling Jacob every half hour one day (truly, every half hour, from breakfast to bedtime), but no one picks up no matter how frequently and desperately she calls.

Bella says she is partly glad that Jacob isn’t around her because it means he is safe from the vampires that are once again following Bella, but she seems an awful lot more concerned about where Jacob is and what he is doing than she is about the high probability of being eaten by vampires at any time.

One day, Bella has a revelation about what happened to Jacob. He must have joined a cult! Bella saw a documentary about cults on PBS once so she knows this for certain. Shortly after, some men in white coats come to put a straight jacket on Bella and cart her off to the insane asylum with the rest of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade. Just kidding, Bella actually goes to call her Dad the Police Chief to report that Jacob has joined a Scary Evil Native Cult, and no hospitalization occurs (sadly).

Charlie practically tells Bella she is delusional and that Jacob certainly isn’t a cult, and that Sam Uley can’t be running a cult because he is a very nice man who does a lot to help the Native youth. Bella is not consoled. She launches a “rescue mission” to “kidnap” Jacob from Sam Uley’s “frightening, compulsory gang”. Seriously.

Driving into the Reserve, Bella meets Quil along the road, who magically justifies Bella’s erratic and illogical behavior. Quil is Jacob and Embry’s friend, in case you have forgotten. He says he’s really worried about Jacob, too, because he hasn’t left Sam’s side in ages. Why the hell aren’t the elders worried, Quil wonders.

A group of teens are hanging out A LOT! Something is DEFINITELY UP.

Bella drops Quil off (thanks for that pointless diversion, Quil) and decides she shall wait in Jacob’s driveway until Jacob comes home. Thankfully, it doesn’t take long.

Jacob has changed a lot. In good ways and in bad ways. The good part is that Jacob is a total fucking hunk of man. He’s grown some well-drawn abs and has cut his long hair short. The bad part is that he is basically Edward now. He’s sulky, moody, violent, mean to Bella, and utterly unable to communicate without first writing a soap opera.

Jacob is with Sam and the gang/cult/his friends, and Bella demands to speak with him alone. Jacob asks Sam for permission.

Sam nodded once, his face unperturbed. He made a brief comment in an unfamiliar, liquid language – I could only be positive that it wasn’t French or Spanish, but I guessed that it was Quileute. (pg.264)

Right! Because if it isn’t one of the two most common Romance languages, it MUST be Quileute!

Jacob and Bella go into the woods to talk, where they both have emotional fits. It’s basically a typical conversation between Bella and Edward. The same dramatics and dripping teen angst. Jacob says that what’s happening isn’t Sam’s fault. In fact, Sam is helping him, but he can’t say what is wrong. Bella says she wants someone to blame if she can’t blame Sam. Jacob pretty much says that he knows the Cullens are vampires and he hates them, and he hates that Bella loves them, and it is their fault. This revelation (or whatever it is) makes Bella start hallucinating again, and Edward’s disembodied voice tells Bella not to push Jacob too hard while she pries for information.

All I have to say about this is what the fuck is going on.

Bella asks Jacob if he is breaking up with her. Bella, that is not what is going on. Have you been paying attention at all to the last 200 pages?

The conversation gets nowhere, and eventually Jacob runs into his house and Bella drives home. Charlie is waiting for her. Billy called ahead to tell him that Jacob and Bella had a fight. Poor Bella really has no one left in the world now. Except her dad, but she hates him. I would really feel sorry for Bella if she wasn’t such an idiot. She’s too pathetic to pity.

Bella goes to have a shower, and when she returns downstairs she finds Charlie yelling on the phone to Billy. Billy blamed the whole event on Bella, saying it was her fault for making Jacob have an unrequited crush on her. Charlie is standing up for her, telling Billy not to be such a sexist jerk! YEP, STILL THE BEST DAD EVER.

The chapter ends with Bella hearing the sound of fingernails on her bedroom window in the middle of the night. Is it Edward? Is it a raccoon? Is it me? Find out next time on Girl & Twilight.

Jacob doesn’t call Bella the next day, so Bella calls him instead. Billy picks up, and very brusquely tells her that Jacob is sick and won’t be able to talk or see her for a while. This sends Bella into total stalker mode. I mean, she makes Edward look like an amateur. She calls Jacob “several times a day for the next two days” but no one picks up (why, I wonder), and she even goes to the hospital to ask if Jacob is staying there. He isn’t. Still unsatisfied and suspicious, Bella makes Charlie call Harry Clearwater to inquire into Jacob’s illness. Harry says that Jacob has mono.

Bella decides she’ll “give Billy a week” before she, I don’t know, breaks into his house.

Luckily for us, Smeyer doesn’t spend too many pages talking about Bella’s Jacobless week. Despite her promise to herself to lay off on the creeping, Bella calls the Black’s three times that week anyway, though no one answers. She starts having fits again, waking up screaming and talking about how her life is nothing but a gaping void of nothingness. She still hasn’t gotten any psychiatric help, I see.

Finally, a week passes and Bella calls. Billy picks up this time to say Jacob didn’t end up having mono after all and he is fine now, but he went to Port Angeles for the day to hang out with his friends.

Which leaves Bella forever alone again, and boy, is she ever not taking it well.

Although she spent the last chapter telling Jacob to move on and stop wasting his time on her since she’s still not over that other guy, Bella is devastated that Jacob seems to have actually taken her advice. Charlie stumbles upon Bella rapidly losing her mind in the kitchen, and asks her if she wants him to stay home with her. Bella talks Charlie into spending the day fishing by lying to him again, saying she’ll study with Jessica all day. Before Charlie leaves, he makes Bella promise not to go into the woods because there is another bear attacking and kidnapping people or whatever.

I wasn’t really listening to his warnings; I was much more upset by the situation with Jacob than by the possibility of being eaten by a bear. (pg. 231)

Awesome, Bella, I’m really happy for you.

I wasn’t going to call Jessica. As far as I could tell, Jessica had crossed over to the dark side. (pg.232)

What does that even mean? Is Smeyer trying to win points by making a Star Wars reference? Or is the dark side just full of regular people who have finally had enough of Bella’s shit?

I could drive to La Push and get my motorcycle – an appealing thought but for one minor problem: who was going to drive me to the emergency room if I needed it afterward? (pg.232)

What the fuck. Do people actually factor things like this into their plans?

Naturally, Bella decides the best thing to do would be ignore Charlie’s one request and go hiking in the woods, alone, searching for the meadow again because somehow finding it will do something. Anyway, we already know Bella is going to find the meadow since that is the title of this chapter, so let’s just skip through the pages of Bella stumbling through the woods and talking about how ~*empty inside*~ she is.

When Bella finds the meadow (and Smeyer writes as if this accomplishment is surprising), she loses her mind yet again.

If I’d discovered the meadow with Jacob . . . well, there was no way I could have disguised the abyss I was plunging into now. How could I have explained the way I was fracturing into pieces, the way I had to curl into a ball to keep the empty hole from tearing me apart? (pg.235)

Bella, really? Cut it out. I’m getting tired of this.

While Bella is writing some bad poetry, suddenly PLOT TWIST Laurent steps out of the woods and Bella is, for some unthinkable reason, pleased to see him. Laurent is one of those vampires who wanted to play baseball. He went to live in Alaska to become a “vegetarian” but SURPRISE he isn’t a “vegetarian” anymore and OH NO he wants to eat Bella!

We know all this because Laurent spends 5 pages or so narrating his intentions and motives. It’s the same thing James did in the last book. Is this how Smeyer thinks villains speak? He explains how Victoria will be mad because she didn’t get to kill Bella and all this stuff that I bet you don’t care about and neither do I.

Anyway the bad writing makes Bella hear Edward’s disembodied voice again. Which is fantastic. He tells her to lie to Laurent about the Cullens. No problemo, Edward, lying is what Bella does best!

It doesn’t work very well, though, and just as Laurent is about to end our suffering by eating Bella, Bella is saved! By a bunch of wolves that are as big as horses. Smeyer says that. They are as big as horses. It wasn’t a bear killing people in the woods this time, and it wasn’t vampires, either. It was wolves. As big as horses. WHO WOULD HAVE GUESSED.

FOR SOME REASON, when the reddish-brown wolf looks at Bella, she thinks of Jacob. Why oh why was this included. This is completely illogical save for the fact that Smeyer is obviously gleefully bludgeoning us with that foreshadowing thing again.

Bella is really confused that Laurent is afraid of five wolves that are as big as horses, and even more confused when the horse wolves scare Laurent away. The wolves leave, too, and Bella spends three pathetic hours trying to get out of the woods. Actually three hours.

At home, Charlie asks Bella what the fuck happened and why is she covered in scrapes and bruises and woods. For once, Bella doesn’t lie. Then again, I’m not sure what sort of story she could have made up to get out of this one. She tells Charlie that she went into the woods against his warnings, and that it isn’t a bear killing people, it’s wolves the size of horses.

So maybe the book is finally getting somewhere. Vampires are after Bella again, so the plot of the last book is being recycled, which is, you know, refreshing.

In this chapter of New Moon, Meyer picks up and drops various inane plot points that seem to go nowhere for pages and pages while Bella rapidly descends into legitimate insanity over her separation from Edward and her growing affection for Jacob. By legitimate insanity, what I mean is that it is my unprofessional opinion (based on my roommate’s copy of the DSM-IV) that Bella has a textbook case of Borderline Personality Disorder and should seek help immediately.

First, about my absence. I apologize for the slowing and halt of posts, but I think I should be back on track now. First there were exams, then the holidays, then a bunch of crazy things happened and I am only now settling into a routine of 30 hour work weeks and two classes and learning Spanish and trying to make it to the gym sometimes and still having time for my boyfriend and video games. What I am trying to say is I think I might have actually gotten a life, Internet. I didn’t mean to.

Anyway, I can commit to two chapters minimum a week on my days off work. Hopefully more because I don’t want to be reading Twilight forever.

Without further ado, Chapter 9: Third Wheel.

If Bella were a real person rather than a fictional character, she would need professional medical help immediately. The worst part? Smeyer is still glorifying the way Bella acts. Is Smeyer unaware, or just mentally unstable herself?

In case you are not familiar with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), here is what we are dealing with:

A pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and affects, as well as marked impulsivity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging (e.g., promiscuous sex, eating disorders, binge eating,substance abuse, reckless driving).
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior such as cutting, interfering with the healing of scars (excoriation) or picking at oneself.
6. Affective instability due to a marked reactivity of mood
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness
8. Inappropriate anger or difficulty controlling anger
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms

This is going to be like shooting fish in a barrel.

1. Chronic feelings of emptiness

“I was like a lost moon – my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation – that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity.” (pg 201)

First of all, Smeyer should be put in the Writers’ Prison for that embarrassing attempt at a metaphor and for foreshadowing the use of the title of her book like that, and also in Science Prison for not understanding what gravity is and isn’t. Beyond that, holy fuck, Bella. First you are a zombie, and now you are a fucking piece of rock in space spinning mindlessly around an invisible planet. What the fuck.

Look, I get it. Heartbreak sucks. I’ve been there. And I have completely gotten over it, despite my actual mental illness. Bella, seriously, go to the ER. The only thing more disturbing than how frequently and clearly Bella is expressing that her life is over is how Smeyer is almost glorifying this aspect of Bella. I don’t think Smeyer knows how Romeo and Juliet actually ends.

2. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment and 3. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging and 4. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, threats or self-injuring behavior

The chapter continues with Bella talking about riding her bike.

I was getting better with my bike, which meant fewer bandages to worry Charlie. But it also meant that the voice in my head began to fade, until I head it no more. Quietly, I panicked. I threw myself into the search for the meadow with slightly frenzied intensity. I racked my brain for other adrenaline-producing activities. (pg. 202)

This part is becoming less funny and absurd and more and more sad. It’s Smeyer’s language that really bothers me. Bella isn’t self-harming, she is “pursuing adrenaline-producing activities.” It’s as if Smeyer knows exactly what she is doing and is trying to portray self-harm in some sort of positive light. Look, Smeyer. You spend an entire book and a third drilling into our heads that Bella is the world’s biggest klutz and that merely moving causes her harm. Doing something like riding a motorbike is Bella’s way of cutting. It is not okay to glorify this sort of thing. These are real problems that lots of real people really have.

This point also brings us to
5. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation, delusions or severe dissociative symptoms

I don’t think I have to spell this one out for you. She hears Edward’s voice. In her head. I don’t think I need to argue too much as to whether or not she is delusional. It’s glaringly obvious at this point.

6. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self.

This isn’t particularly evident in this chapter, but was painfully real all through the first book. Bella’s constant comparisons between her and Edward (remember that time she and Edward accidentally matched their clothes? Bella’s reaction was something along the lines of “why does he always look like a runway model when I look so ugly?”) and the way she acted when she was new at school are both solid cases for “unstable self-image.”

7. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.

This is perhaps the more well-known, or at least most characteristic criterion of BPD. At least, it is where most of the stigma comes from: the manipulation of others, which is often paired with habitual lying. Beyond that, Bella has an extremely warped view of the people in her life (Mike is “vile”, Charlie is “unfair” and “smothering”, the glorification of Edward; and, in this chapter, Bella’s twisted view of Jacob becomes even more absurd).

The rest of the chapter pretty much plays out like an example of this criterion.

It is Valentine’s Day, but Bella didn’t notice until Jacob gave her a little thing of candies and asked her to be his Valentine. Bella panics a little, wondering how to not lead him on while still leading him on. So she invites him to go to the movies with her. Makes sense to me.

The next day in school, Bella invites Mike to the movies with her as well. Thinking he’s finally getting to go on that date, Mike is overjoyed… until Bella invites everyone else she knows. Mike is clearly bothered by this, but agrees anyway for a chance to hang out with Bella. Just in case this all wasn’t insulting enough, Bella tells Mike they are going to need him for his minivan.

In the end, everyone either says they can’t go because they hate Bella, or because they are sick with the stomach flu. So it’s just the three of them: Jacob, Mike and Bella. The two boys fight for Bella’s attention, and Bella denies them both, while observing their actions in an almost evilly amused way.

It wouldn’t bother me so much if Bella wasn’t so completely aware of how she is manipulating these boys. I’m starting to wonder if Smeyer is just evil at this point.

Yet I knew I wouldn’t send him [Jacob] away, regardless. I needed him too much, and I was selfish. Maybe I could make my side more clear, so that he would know to leave me. (pg.217)

and just two pages later

But I needed Jacob now, needed him like a drug. I’d used him as a crutch for too long, and I was deeper than I’d planned to go with anyone again. Now I couldn’t bear for him to be hurt, and I couldn’t keep from hurting him, either. (pg.219)

Let’s see… you could keep from hurting him by not being a MANIPULATIVE EVIL BITCHFACE. Or, in case you are actually ill and can’t help it, if you would just listen to your concerned father and GET SOME PSYCHIATRIC HELP ALREADY.

Instead of just going to the movies with Jacob and enjoying his wonderful company, instead of just admitting that Edward was a jerk and he is long gone, instead of accepting her feelings for Jacob and returning the feelings he has for her… instead of acting like a sane human being, Bella also invites Mike, who she knows still has a crush on her along with the entire cafeteria crowd, who Bella doesn’t even like.

Why? Because she doesn’t want to admit she likes Jacob, so she uses Mike’s feelings for her to her own advantage. And she strings Jacob along anyway, to boost her self-esteem or something to see him pining for her.

And Smeyer doesn’t write as if this is wrong. She writes as if this is totally fine. The self-awareness of it all is so fucking spooky and depressing.

Then there is the lying that Bella seems to just do for fun. On the way to the movies, Mike asks why the radio isn’t on, and Jacob tells him that Bella doesn’t like music.

“How can you not like music?” Mike demanded.

I shrugged. ”I don’t know. It just irritates me.” (pg.209)

ARE YOU KIDDING ME, BELLA SWAN.

YOUR FAVOURITE BAND IS LINKIN PARK.

FUCK OFF.

Bella lies constantly. To everyone. When someone incessantly lies when there is no reason to lie, that person has a serious problem. That person may be Stephenie Meyer.

Bella decides they are going to watch a super gory movie because Bella is still afraid of seeing people holding hands, and Mike runs to the bathroom after a little while to be sick. Bella and Jacob go to check on him, and wait for him outside the bathroom. While they are sitting there, Jacob puts his arm around Bella. Bella finally tells Jacob that she doesn’t like him like that. Jacob becomes EXTREMELY ADORABLE AND WONDERFUL and tells Bella that he understands she’s still hung up on He Who Must Not Be Named, and that he will be happy as long as Bella likes him best, even if it’s just as friends. He says he’ll be happy as long as she is as happy as she can possibly be, and that he will always be there for her because she knows she is sad a lot of the time. Oh my goodness, Bella. You are not worthy. Marry this divine creature immediately.

If you recall, Edward said similar things to her about how “he’ll never hurt her,” but it was coupled with throwing trees around and generally scaring the living bejesus out of her.

Despite being more or less PERFECT in this chapter, Bella’s view of Jacob is incredibly warped and delusional. I don’t know how to even begin with this mind fuckery.

How much I wished that Jacob Black had been born my brother, my flesh-and-blood brother, so that I would have some legitimate claim on him that still left me free of any blame now. Heaven knows I had never wanted to use Jacob, but I couldn’t help but interpret the guilt I felt now to mean that I had. (pg.218)

Okay. So Bella just spent the past half hour or so holding hands with Jacob while he spilled his guts to her about how much he likes her and how he will always be there for her and how much she means to him. It was adorable and cute and so very plain that they should be together, that they like each other, that they could have something good and beautiful and healthy.

Instead of enjoying her time with Jacob and being grateful to have him in her life, Bella reacts to this by wishing she could be free of the “guilt” of liking Jacob by being related to him.

I CAN NOT EVEN BEGIN TO EXPLAIN HOW FUCKED UP THIS IS. “I’m sorry Jacob, you are very attractive and I love you very much but we cannot be together because I’m not really into that incest thing!” WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK

BELLA ARE YOU ACTUALLY SAYING NO TO THIS HUNK OF MAN?

SERIOUSLY. HE IS SWEET, THOUGHTFUL, AND HOT. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

Please, Bella. Check yourself into a mental hospital immediately before you hurt yourself or others any more than you already have. It’s getting really sad at this point.

In this chapter, Bella reaches a new creepiness high score. Jacob and Charlie reach new awesomeness high scores. It’s really just high scores all around.

Jacob is teaching Bella how to ride a motorbike, and Bella is whining incessantly, as per usual.

I tried to tell myself that the fear was pointless. I’d already lived through the worst thing possible. (pg.182)

The worst thing possible, if I need to remind you, being her first boyfriend of 6 months dumping her whiny ass.

There are over 4 pages of Jacob telling Bella how to ride the bike, and you’d think after that much detail I’d have an idea of how to ride one myself, but I absolutely don’t. Smeyer does this clever thing where she talks about the bike like it’s a wolf, saying it’s ‘snarling’ and ‘growling’ and things like that. I wonder why, you guys?

Just as Bella is about to start the bike, she hears Edward’s voice in her head, telling her to stop being so reckless. Bella is very pleased to learn that the mixture of adrenaline and recklessness makes her hallucinate that sparkly vampires are chastising her.

“Go home to Charlie,” the voice ordered. The sheer beauty of it amazed me. I couldn’t allow my memory to lose it, no matter the price. (pg.186)

Very good, Bella, keep it up, you are just racking up those creepy points.

She finally sets off on the bike, very fast, and she crashes because Jacob hadn’t taught her how to steer (really, Bella? use your tiny brain) and also because she was too focused on listening to Edward’s disembodied nagging.

Unsurprisingly, Bella gets all bloodied up again, and Jacob insists on rushing her to the hospital. See, this is what I really like about Jacob. He doesn’t want Bella to bleed to death, and he doesn’t immediately begin blaming her, even if this time it is mostly her fault.

Bella, on the other hand, is more concerned about Charlie finding out their secret than losing all of her blood through her forehead, which is what is happening. She convinces Jacob to hide the bikes and let her clean up before going to the hospital so she can lie to Charlie. Jacob begrudgingly agrees as Bella once again manipulates him into doing what she wants.

The most disturbing part about all of this isn’t the lying, and it isn’t even how gleeful Bella is that she is hallucinating and has her ex-boyfriend scolding her in her head. The really disturbing part is that Bella is planning ahead and thinking about more situations she can get herself into to make the hallucinations happen again. She is actively planning to get herself into danger and planning to hurt herself.

At this point, I would suggest Bella call into the ER and get treated for being suicidal and demonstrably crazy. Crazy as in, having a mental disorder of some description. As in, she needs some serious help.

It is fairly obvious that Charlie didn’t buy Bella’s lies, and Jacob, knowing they are lies, is concerned, too. Someday, Bella will listen to the only two characters in this series that I like and everyone will live happily ever after… RIGHT?

Since she obviously isn’t going to be riding any bikes anytime soon, after Bella gets several stitches in her face, she tells Jacob she wants to start hiking. She plans to use Jacob (surprise) to find The Meadow. You know, the Meadow where Edward first sparkled for her? They hike, and it is unsuccessful, and the chapter ends with the two making plans to try again tomorrow.

Oh, and Jacob tells Bella that she might taste good. WHY

The chapter opens with the same melancholic song and dance as Bella is going to see Edward’s abandoned house.

I wasn’t sure what the hell I was doing here. Was I trying to push myself back into the zombie stupor? Had I turned masochistic — developed a taste for torture? I should have gone straight down to La Push. I felt much, much healthier around Jacob. (pg.159)

1. Smeyer, did you just say hell? Bad Mormon!
2. Did you really just define ‘masochistic’ for us in case we were too stupid to know what it meant when you think your tween audience knows words like ‘chagrin’?
3. Thank you for being self-aware, Bella. It is disturbing but comforting.

Bella wants to go see Edward’s house to see if she can hear his voice in her head again. The fact that she is aware of her insanity only makes the whole thing spookier. Bella doesn’t hear Edward’s voice but manages to leave before the pages of dripping emo goo get too bad.

After that pointful diversion, Bella goes to visit Jacob like usual and the first part of this chapter is never spoken of again.

Jacob is being FUCKING ADORABLE like usual. He is still the only character that Smeyer has created who is actually fleshed out and not an utter abomination to behold. These qualities even rub off on Bella a little bit, and she becomes more tolerable in Jacob scenes, as well, though she seems determined to remain Just Friends. Jacob wants to be More Than Friends.

It bothers me that Smeyer doesn’t seem to believe in women having straight male friends who are just male friends. Can we have a little more Harry and Hermione in here? Their friendship makes me so, so cheerful.

Now that Bella is talking to Mike again, he takes his first opportunity to ask her out while they are at work. Bella is nice enough to actually say yes this time, and mature enough to say that it will be as friends and not a date. But still, why can’t Smeyer accept the idea of a male being friends with a female without wanting to bang her? Also, Mike, why do you still want to date Bella?

Smeyer goes on for a while about how things are like they were last January when Bella moved to Forks and it’s supposed to be metaphorical and symbolic that things have come “full circle” or whatever. She is trying to be subtle about this theme but it isn’t working.

Bella’s friends at school have immediately changed back into being the most accepting people ever. Except for Jessica, and Bella can’t understand how Jess isn’t still her best friend and is still angry. She wonders if Jess wants a “formal written apology.” Gee, Bella, I WONDER why Jess hates you at this point.

A few days later, Jacob surprises Bella by having the bikes all done and ready to go. He even tied little ribbons around Bella’s bike like it’s a wrapped gift. JACOB YOU ARE SO CUTE.

On their way to ride in secret, they see some boys jumping off a cliff. Bella freaks out but Jacob explains that they are just cliff diving into the water and it’s how the Native boys show how tuff and cool and cool and tuff they are. Bella wants to go cliff diving because she thinks it is reckless. Is this the plot of the book? Bella looking for reckless things to do because Edward told her not to?

Jacob spends way too many pages talking about this “gang” on the reserve lead by Sam Umbry, the guy who found Bella when she was trying to drown herself in a puddle in the forest. They are a goody-goody gang and this bothers Jacob, especially because Sam is waiting for Jacob to join the “gang.” Embry, one of Jacob’s best friends, just joined the gang even though he hated the gang too, and now Embry won’t talk to Jacob anymore. Jacob says he’s going to have a “coming of age” transformation soon and everyone always joins the gang after that.

It is honestly like Smeyer is dancing around with a big sign for ten pages that reads “JACOB IS A WEREWOLF BUT YOU DON’T KNOW THAT YET LALALALA FORESHADOWING”

At least it’s not spoiled on the back of the book this time.

Bella and Jacob hang out all the time now, which makes Bella a happy and normal person. She laughs now (and is always surprised by her own laughing). She isn’t having nightmares anymore. She doesn’t think about Edward constantly. In fact, I think he was only brought up once in this entire chapter, and it was so Bella could say that thinking of him doesn’t upset her anymore.

Right now, I’m really enjoying this, the interaction between Bella and Jacob. It’s so real. I want them to be happy together. I wish I didn’t know that this feeling will be ruined soon, because there are honestly a few times in the past few chapters that I feel Smeyer isn’t completely irredeemable.

The biggest issue I’m having with this chapter is Smeyer’s showcase of sexism. I seriously don’t understand this. Smeyer is a woman. How can she have such a negative attitude towards her own gender? Why does she portray every single female character as a poster child for awful female stereotypes? Has she been at the Rush Limbaugh?

One day when Bella is helping Jacob work on their new bikes, two of Jacob’s bizarrely-named friends stop by.

Both boys stopped short when they saw me. The thin boy glanced swiftly back and forth between Jacob and me, while the scrawny boy kept his eyes on me, a slow smile spreading across his face. (pg.139)

Men reacting to a woman as though she exists for sex and sex alone… check!

Many of the words they used were unfamiliar to me, and I figured I’d have to have a Y chromosome to really understand the excitement.(pg.139)

The notion that women don’t know anything about “man things” like cars… check!

A little while later, Bella gets up to leave, saying she has to go make supper for Charlie. What I mean to say is she needs to get away from these men and their complicated man toys and back into the kitchen where women belong.

It’s not just Bella, either. The incidental females in this chapter are worse. I am seriously having a hard time believing  a woman wrote these characters, because it truly seems like they were created by some terrible, misogynistic man.

Charlie and Bella have supper at the Black’s at one point with another family, the Clearwaters. The Clearwater daughter is described as always talking on the phone, even at the supper table. The Clearwater wife’s only comments are about dieting.

Because that’s all women do. Talk on the phone, make food for men, and worry about their waistlines.

At school, things are finally realistic. Bella notices that no one is paying attention to her anymore, that her friends are sick of her shit and they not talking to her anymore, that she has no idea what is going on. She only just now notices that her friends have changed their hair. Everyone is floored when Bella actually opens her mouth to speak. Bella is finally angry at herself for being so non-existant last semester.

At the end of the chapter, though, Bella’s girl friends start talking to her again and it seems like they are concerned for her and that things might be okay between them. Truly, Bella’s friends are otherworldly saints.

Not much happens in this chapter besides sexism and Bella coming alive (I guess those sound like things happening, but it’s not very interesting). I did learn, however, that Bella’s first day in Forks was on my birthday. Great.

Short blog is short, so here is a groovy kitteh.

When the chapter opens, Bella is at work with Mike, hating her life and being the awful human being that she is. I mean it, she actually refers to one of her customers as “leather-face.” What the fuck, Bella? Mike tells Bella to go home early, so Bella gets into her truck and begins driving around aimlessly in the rain, wondering how to feel numb again. Someone needs to take the My Chemical Romance away from Smeyer, because it’s starting to sound like 14-year-old Amy-jean’s poetry in here. Bella talks about how she can’t even think his name. She goes on for a page or so about this nightmare she has every night in which there is nothing and this is supposed to be some sort of metaphor for how Bella’s life is a gaping void without You Know Who‘s presence.

I curled over, pressing my face against the steering wheel and trying to breathe without lungs. (pg.124)

What does this mean.

Why is it its own paragraph.

But fear not, mi compadres, because Bella is about to magically snap out of her self-imposed melancholy, and it only took 100 pages! (can I take a moment to point out we are now about 130 pages into this thing? WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS BOOK)

Some amazing things happen around page 125:

1. Bella stops being miserable
2. New Moon no longer sounds like an emo song
3. Smeyer doesn’t use the word “topaz” or “dazzle” even once
4. I turn the pages without wanting to perform seppuku

Bella suddenly concludes through several leaps of logic that I am unable to follow that she has to get back at Edward by doing the opposite of what he wanted which was “don’t do anything reckless or stupid.” Bella figures it is time to stop being Miss Mopey-Pants and do something reckless and stupid.

Inspiration hit me like a bolt of lightning — not unreasonable, considering the storm. (pg.129)

Smeyer, please stop trying to use metaphors.

I feel like I should probably be saying something along the lines of “it is bad that Bella is looking for ways to harm herself,” but at this point, we are so far off the deep end and I am so desperate for something to happen that I honestly don’t care right now. I sort of hate Bella anyway.

Bella, having pulled over on the side of the road earlier so she could consider all this, notices two motorcycles for sale on the side of the road. She decides it is destiny, and goes to buy them. The boy selling them says they are free since they don’t work, and helps Bella load them into her truck.

But even with all the huge log-haulers barreling around the turns, mostly people walked away. The exceptions to that rule were often on motorcycles, and Charlie had seen one too many victims, almost always kids, smeared on the highway. He’d made me promise before I was ten that I would never accept a ride on a motorcycle.

. . .

It clicked together for me then. I wanted to be stupid and reckless, and I wanted to break promises. Why stop at one? (pg.127)

Bella then drives to La Push, which excites me. Do you guys remember what is in La Push?

OH BABY

Despite the fact that Bella plans on using Jacob for his mechanical know-how, she promptly forgets her manipulative ways when she arrives at his house and beings chatting with Jacob and Billy. You see, Jacob has this magical power that makes Bella behave like a normal person.

Smeyer actually spends a paragraph describing how Jacob looks (which is major hotness, by the way. But Smeyer doesn’t say “major hotness,” or “perfect,” or “topaz” even once. She actually describes how he looks, and we are actually allowed to conclude on our own that he is major hotness). It is so refreshing to see Smeyer spend time on a character that isn’t a Cullen.

It’s so refreshing to see Bella acting like a normal human being, to see two characters really having a conversation with each other, enjoying each other’s company, to see Bella smiling and laughing and… and…

This is what a relationship should be like. Jacob automatically and without effort brings out the very best in Bella. The very best in Bella might just mean not being a total monster, but still, that is an improvement!

I needed to reign in [sic] the enthusiasm before I gave him the wrong idea—it was just that it had been a long time since I’d felt so light and buoyant. The rarity of this feeling made it more difficult to manage. (pg.135)

Don’t manage it, Bella! Embrace it! Please embrace it!

Smeyer also decided to rain on my parade by not knowing the difference between reign and rein. Unless her enthusiasm is the reigning king or queen of a country, she ought to take the reins off her editor and let him or her out to pasture.

In exchange for giving Jacob one of the bikes, Jacob agrees to help Bella fix them up and give her riding lessons. Oh Jacob! Give me riding lessons!

Bella says she is going to use some of her college fund to pay for the repairs. This is a bad idea, kids, but I am going with it for now because things are interesting now. This means I am going to get to read a lot more Jacob, right? This means Bella will be less annoying, right? IS THIS BOOK ABOUT TO BECOME TOLERABLE?

As we skulked back to the makeshift garage, I contemplated my luck. Only a teenage boy would agree to this: deceiving both our parents while repairing dangerous vehicles using money meant for my college education. He didn’t see anything wrong with that picture. Jacob was a gift from the gods. (pg.136)

‘A gift from the gods’? Oh… it really is still you, Smeyer.

YOUR THOUGHTS ON JACOB. GIVE THEM TO ME. No spoilers.