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Or, my smeyer saga continues.
AHOY THAR, META! Or, random thoughts on Part II:
Summary: author insert and Mary Sue Extraordinaire Bella is pregnant with a human/vampire hybrid abomination, courtesy of vampire hubby Edward's supersperm. Meanwhile, werewolf doormat Jacob still can't bring himself to stop loving her, despite the 10,000,000 good reasons he's been given to do just that in the preceeding 1,930 pages.
Reactions:
Why, how about the chance to marry and bone former Love of Your Life Bella's abominable offspring!!! That's right!
Breaking Dawn Part II has been brought to you by:
But let's not get carried away here. There's probably no need to get all creeped out by the obvious ick factor: since it's only been one whole month from insemination to delivery, I'm sure we can anticipate said child magically aging from newborn to marriageable in a similarly abbreviated timeframe.
And then suddenly stopping right at that age. Because god knows this accelerated aging is not going to follow through to its logical conclusion: accelerated old age and death.
After all, nothing is more buzzkill-worthy than narrative consistency when it would fuck with your yourneed to dispose of pesky characters/plot developments that would screw up your happily-ever-afters.
1And ooh I wish could remember the name of the Danish hosipital miniseries that featured a woman whose fetus developed into a fully grown adult while still in utero.
2Bar a couple of five-pages-or-fewer throwaway epilogues in previous books.
これで以上です。
AHOY THAR, META! Or, random thoughts on Part II:
Summary: author insert and Mary Sue Extraordinaire Bella is pregnant with a human/vampire hybrid abomination, courtesy of vampire hubby Edward's supersperm. Meanwhile, werewolf doormat Jacob still can't bring himself to stop loving her, despite the 10,000,000 good reasons he's been given to do just that in the preceeding 1,930 pages.
Reactions:
- smeyer sure is working through a whole lotta sublimated ambivalence toward pregnancy and motherhood. Bella's baby is literally parasitic, destroying Mommy as it grows; it grows at nine times the speed of a normal human baby1; it's so strong its quickening leaves her with internal bruising, and its movements later crack Bella's ribs and then break her pelvis and spine; and the only way to deliver it is by a vampire ripping Bella's stomach open with his teeth sans epidural/other painkillers.
- I think it's pretty damn telling that Bella's pregnancy and delivery are the first and only instance in the series2 where the story is not told from Bella/smeyer's POV. It's not even told from Bella/smeyer's most-perfect-soulmate-ever Edward's POV.
It's told from spurned-but-still-totally-devoted would-be-suitor werewolf Jacob's POV. We're supposed to believe that Bella's love for this Fetus of Doom is so powerful and pure that she's more than willing to undergo the hell it's putting her through. But smeyer isn't writing about Bella undergoing it in the first person. Pregnancy has literally removed Bella's agency to tell her own story. - These chapters were creepier than 95% of the stuff I've read in novels that were intended as horror. We are talking some good, effective, stomach-churning prose here. Except, I think smeyer intends for the audience to come away feeling warm fuzzies for Bella's selfless mother love. In other words, these chapters find her producing good writing quite literally despite herself.
- Oh! Speaking of that spurned-but-still-totally-(and against all plausible suspension of disbelief)-devoted would-be-suitor werewolf who can't bring himself to be away from Bella even though she'll never love him but still plays him like a seasoned cocktease all the same? Well, Jacob, you don't get Bella, but smeyer, tell him what he's won!
Why, how about the chance to marry and bone former Love of Your Life Bella's abominable offspring!!! That's right!
But let's not get carried away here. There's probably no need to get all creeped out by the obvious ick factor: since it's only been one whole month from insemination to delivery, I'm sure we can anticipate said child magically aging from newborn to marriageable in a similarly abbreviated timeframe.
And then suddenly stopping right at that age. Because god knows this accelerated aging is not going to follow through to its logical conclusion: accelerated old age and death.
After all, nothing is more buzzkill-worthy than narrative consistency when it would fuck with your your
1And ooh I wish could remember the name of the Danish hosipital miniseries that featured a woman whose fetus developed into a fully grown adult while still in utero.
2Bar a couple of five-pages-or-fewer throwaway epilogues in previous books.
これで以上です。
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From:
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DUDE. I KEPT CHECKING TO SEE IF YOU WERE ONLINE SO I COULD JUMP YOU ABOUT JUST THESE THINGS.
AND HAHA YOU DID NOT DISAPPOINT.
(I have caught up on much Breaking Dawn wank because BD wank seems to surpass all past smeyer wank when former fans turn against themselves. Did you see the Amazon discussion, the 'don't burn it--return it' campaign?)
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(I still have ~150 pages of BD left to go. It's just unbelievably...difficult to read. No book should take me over two days to get through. This one's taken five.)
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Thank you. I sometimes feel compelled to skim series that I've started, even if I don't care for them. But you've just squashed my curiosity very nicely and saved me the horror.
From:
no subject
The first three books were bad. But enjoyably bad, like eating five packages of twinkies at a sleepover. This last one...woah. I was *not* prepared.
From:
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From:
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The Danish one. Kingdom Hospital, wasn't it? Something like that!
(I haven't read the books, but reading
--Ah, no, it's The Kingdom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Kingdom_%28television%29) (Kingdom Hospital was the 'Stephen King's' American remix...) Holy bejeezus that was a weird series.