New Moon Chapter 23 – A kind of toilet

Previously: Bella fights her sleep for what felt like an eternity.
—

Catherine: Bella wakes up again. At the beginning of every chapter she must wake up. It is the prophecy.

She immediately remembers she had a bad dream that was also a thing that actually happened to her and takes like, 3 paragraphs to remind us of this thing that just happened to her. 700% of this book is just Bella rehashing things that we already had to suffer through once. In another life, we Snark Ladies must have sinned terribly.

Marines: I’m amazed by this get rich quick scheme: tell a story, but really a quarter of a story, and spend lots of time repeating that quarter.

Kirsti: I’m just sad because it means we have to read 300 pages more than we otherwise would. And that’s just for this book.

Catherine: It’s how Meyer affords the golden shrine of Bella and Edward that she has in the foyer of her mountaintop mansion.

Anyway, Bella had a scary dream about monsters who were ‘all the more ghastly for their genteel civility‘ and an angel who was hard to let go of to wake up.

“This dream did not want to be shoved away into the vault of dreams I refused to revisit.”

Who the fuck has a ‘vault of dreams’ they refuse to ‘revisit’? Bella is equating the trauma of her boyfriend breaking up with her with something that causes PTSD or other anxiety disorders. A few dreams about wolves shape-shifting into pale, sparkly dickheads does not mean you’re having traumatic flashbacks, Bella.

K: I have dreams that I’d rather not have again. But I’m pretty sure if I tried to put them in some bullshit vault, my brain would be all “LOL NOPE LET’S DO THAT AGAIN IT WAS FUN”. 

Annie: Depression, suicide, now PTSD? What else can Bella trivialize, minimize or stigmatize? 

Catherine: When she finally wakes up it takes her a minute to remember that all of the stuff that happened in Italy was real. Which would be understandable if I wasn’t talking about a loooonnnnggg minute. I am. It takes her another fucking paragraph.

She thinks about how ‘Jacob or school or work or something‘ is waiting for her and tries to drum up the strength to get through another day without Popsicle dick.

Mari: In which dick is “horrible person” and not “penis” because Bella still hasn’t gotten any. We’re still closed-mouthed kissing and face stroking, you guys. 

K: Yeah, because his teeth will poison her. And frankly, the knowledge that they can only ever kiss with cats-bum mouths makes knowing what’s to come for their relationship SO MUCH WORSE.

Annie: Which, coincidentally enough, is the theme for the whole series: It gets so much worse.

Catherine: I’m sorry, I’m stuck on ‘cats-bum mouths’ and I can’t stop trying to claw the image from my brain. Into the vault, cats-bum mouths!

But then what should happen but Count Fuckula himself showing up.

“Something cold touched my forehead with the softest pressure.”

And guess what, guys? He was creepily watching her sleep again. Aw, missed you, old buddy. Not really. (M: At least “old” was truthful and accurate.)

Bella sees that Edward is lying next to her and she reacts to it like a silent movie actress…for some reason.

“Oh!” I gasped, and threw my fists over my eyes.”

Annie: …So she punched herself in the eyes? Because when you use the words ‘threw’ and ‘fist’, that’s what I picture.

Catherine: Sounds about right for Bella.

Instead of remembering that everything that happened in Italy was real and that he’s really next to her, she STILL thinks it’s a dream and that she “forced her imagination to get out of hand” and fully hallucinate Edward. This girl has been awake for a solid 2 minutes at this point.

K: My favourite is that she thinks the reason this is happening is that she “stalked her hallucinations“. Because that’s a thing you can do.

Catherine: Then she thinks oh well as long as I’m having a delusion I might as well enjoy it. I cannot express to you the stupidity of this part so I will provide a series of quotes from it followed by Leslie Knope reaction gifs and hope that will suffice.

“This was very good as delusions went. The face, the voice, the scent, everything—it was so much better than drowning.”

“The beautiful figment of my imagination watched my changing expressions with alarm. His irises were pitch-black, with bruise-like shadows under them. This surprised me; my hallucinatory Edwards were usually better fed.”

“I blinked twice, desperately trying to remember the last thing that I was sure was real. Alice was part of my dream, and I wondered if she had really come back at all, or if it was just the preamble. I thought she’d returned the day I nearly drowned…”

Mari: I’m going to go ahead and say that quotes and gifs did indeed suffice and provided an excellent excuse for me to not even read this part in the actual book. 

K: Indeed. I wonder if we can persuade Leslie Knope to read the next two books for us. 

Catherine: Nah, she’s a Harry Potter girl.

Finally FINALLY Bella realizes that Edward is not a hallucination and she’s not dreaming. So obviously she assumes that she’s dead.

“I’m dead right?” I moaned. “I did drown. Crap, crap, crap! This is gonna kill Charlie.”

Look, I can see what Meyer was trying to do here. She wanted a sweet, somewhat comical reunion scene for Edward and Bella and she also thought this would be a good way to remind us one last time of what Bella went through and how even when she is physically in the same bed as Edward she can’t believe it.

But here’s the thing, Meyer. I’m gonna tell you something you may not want to hear but that you need to accept: You’re not funny. These books have never successfully made us laugh except in instances where we were doing it derisively because they FAILED SO HARD to make us feel what you intended.

In trying to make this scene funny she ended up just making it cloying and making Bella look even dumber somehow. The girl takes 3 pages to realize that: 1. She’s awake 2. Edward is there 3. Edward is really there.

It’s irritating because we already went through a whole 3 chapters of her being reunited with Edward. Yes, this is their first chance to properly celebrate but holy shit. No one spends an entire 10 minutes after they wake up trying to figure out if what happened to them yesterday was a dream unless they have serious brain damage. Also, we already did the ‘If you’re here I must be dead and in heaven’ thing when Edward saw her again 2 chapters ago. You can’t do it twice.

In conclusion, Meyer:

Mari: I’m clapping. This was even better than the Leslie Knope gifs, my friend. 

K: Agreed.

Annie: Ahmahzing. 

Catherine: Aw! Thanks, you guys. I’m thinking of printing this out, decoupaging it onto a nice brick and flinging it through Meyer’s window. 

Anyway, after Edward takes from page 500 to 503 to convince Bella that she’s alive and he’s really there she admits that she was ‘wasting time being an idiot’. I feel like much of their relationship must be spent that way. She must get nothing else done.

Edward tells her that she’s been asleep for 14 hours. She asks about Charlie and he tells her that since it’s after 1 in the morning, Charlie is asleep but that he was very mad when Edward showed up with a passed out Bella in his arms. Charlie banned Edward from the house so Edward had to sneak back in the window to creepily watch her sleep. The stalkers entrance of choice.

K: My favourite part of this? This quote: “His eyes were sad. ‘Did you expect anything else?’ My eyes were mad.” Because it reminds me of the episode of Gilmore Girls where Lorelai and Sookie go to some musical and declare it to be the worst thing they’ve ever seen, and they make fun of it thusly: 

SOOKIE: I feel so very bad. Yes, I feel so very sad.
LORELAI: I’m sad, I’m mad, I’m sad, I’m mad.
SOOKIE: I’m mad, I’m sad, I’m mad, I’m sad.
JACKSON: I’m sorry – that’s better, rent a theatre.

So yeah. That was literally all I could think of. 

Annie: Oh, I’d much rather be watching Gilmore Girls than reading this book. Byeeeeeeeeee.

Catherine: Yes, lets all go watch Gilmore Girls instead…Ugh are we still reading this? Fine. Edward says that he isn’t surprised by Charlie’s reaction and doesn’t blame him but:

“I was going to have a few words with my father—perhaps it would be a good time to remind him that I was over the legal age of adulthood.”

I can tell that I’ve grown up a lot since loving these books as a teen because all I can think is: Oh really, bitch? Your 18 year-old ass wanna start paying the bills, then? No? Then shut the fuck up.

Mari: Also, being 18 or not 18 has very little to do with why your father would FREAK THE JEFF OUT if you ran away to Italy and then your WEIRD ex-boyfriend showed up carrying a passed out you like a sacrificial lamb, okay? 

K: YUP. I’ll be 33 in a couple of weeks, and my parents would still be like “WHAT THE SHIT STAY AWAY FROM OUR KID” if that happened to me. 

Annie: Charlie’s house? Charlie’s rules, girl. Bella has zero human decency, though, so I’m not at all surprised she’d pull this kind of shit. 

Catherine: Bella asks what the story is that they’re gonna tell Charlie about why she was gone. Edward tells her he didn’t come up with one but she was gone for ‘just’ three days. Just. So, it’s totally not a big deal or anything.

They decide to worry about it later since they’re newly reunited and wanna do nothing but gaze into each others eyes and think about Jesus and not have sex. Bella wants to keep Edward talking because ‘this temporary heaven wasn’t entirely complete without the sound of his voice.’

She asks him what he was up to while he was gone and he waffles a bit about how he was trying to learn tracking and not just crying and wanking of course not. (M: Sparkle jizz to match sparkle tears.) (A: Oh, man. I can’t unread that. Thanks, Mari.)

When she presses him further he starts apologizing to her about leaving her behind to deal with Victoria on her own. He insists that he didn’t realize Victoria would come back, and he’s so sorry that he had to leave her in the hands of those disgusting werewolves. He hates that she had to depend on another race… of mythical beings to protect her. Why, she could’ve had her reputation ruined! Those savages! They’re barely human! Unlike Edward who is not at all human.

K: Actual quote about the werewolves: “the worst thing out there besides Victoria herself.” Um. How about THE VOLTURI? Or Jasper when Bella gets a goddamn papercut? Or that seedy bar full of potential rapists in Port Angeles? STFU, Edward.

Catherine: I mean, right? The werewolves have never actually intentionally hurt her. You have, Edward, you dildo. 

Bella still thinks at this point that he’s going to leave again. She figures he just wanted to make sure she was home safe and then he’s gonna hit the old dusty trail. (A: IF ONLY.)

By the way, just so you know, nothing is happening to advance the plot in this chapter at all. The plot is done. They saved Edward and the Volturi let them go and now it’s just EMOTIONS for about 1 more chapter and a epilogue. So… get excited.

Mari: Are you trying to lose us our 10 readers?

Catherine: No! Please come back! I didn’t mean it. Things get interesting later! Shit gets weird! Bella totally fucks a hot centaur!

Bella schools her face by ‘drawing on all my months of practice with trying to be normal for Charlie’ (that failed because he wanted to send her away, remember?) and says Edward’s name.

“His name burned my throat a little on the way out. I could feel the ghost of the hole, waiting to rip itself wide again as soon as he disappeared.”

I REFUSE to believe that Stephenie Meyer could write ‘the ghost of the hole’ and not be thinking about Bella’s vagina being haunted. I REFUSE.

Mari: I spent too much time trying to think up an amalgam for vagina and a word that means ghost. I’ll never get that time back, friends. Ghostgina is the best I came up with. 

Annie: Vaghost?

K: It’s like Buffy’s Tragic Magic Vagina, only haunted. Bella’s Mostly Ghostly Twat, perhaps??

Catherine: That sounds like the porn parody of a Goosebumps novel.

Bella tells Edward that he can’t let guilt over her ruin his life and he shouldn’t feel bad if something happens to her and all that other stuff that’s the opposite of what you would tell an ex who up and left you out of nowhere. What I mean is, this part plays as really insincere because Bella isn’t pissed at him for leaving.

She also guilts him about trying to commit suicide because: ‘Think of Esme and Carlise.”

I’m surprised she didn’t burst into flames after saying that.

She makes sure to point out that anything that happens to her is her fault because “it’s just part of how life is for me.” Which seems like Bella owning up and taking responsibility until you remember that the only reason Victoria is after her is because Edward put her in that baby seat and brought her out to baseball one day. So still very much his fault at its root.

Edward interrupts her by calling her by her full name ‘Isabella Marie Swan’. Have they said her full name before in the series? I felt like her middle name was Nicole or Accident or something. Whatever. There it is. (M: Isabella Ghostgina Swan, you bring your haunted nether regions over here this instant.)

Edward tells her that he didn’t ask the Volturi to kill him because he felt guilty, he did it because he couldn’t live in a world without her. Also, he felt guilty. She says that when he says this he ‘almost looked mad’ so I guess she’s not attracted to his sexy curtains of anger voice anymore now that he’s really there with her.

Edward also notes that he should’ve double checked with Alice directly after he heard about Bella’s death from Rosalie (since ‘lie’ is the last part of her name, hello) but:

“What was I supposed to think when the boy said Charlie was at the funeral?”

‘The boy?”

I know what you’re thinking, it’s because Edward is super old, not because he’s racist. But no, that makes it worse. The old thing makes it way worse. Think about it.

Mari: BECAUSE HISTORICAL RACISM! Oh, sorry, you were supposed to think about it on your own, but the fact that Edward is really old and was born five years after the Supreme Court upheld Plessy v. Fergusson, and during a time where Native Americans were still fighting for their lands… 

It’s one thing for someone today not to understand why you shouldn’t call a minority “boy,” but Edward should know. HE SHOULD KNOW. 

Annie: HE SO SHOULD KNOW. Now, Stephenie has already proven that she’s rarely historically accurate. So there’s that. Or she’s doing that on purpose, because she loves her racism. Because she’s also done a bang up job of proving her love of racism, too.

K: As someone who doesn’t live in the US and had no idea of the racial connotations of this, I thought Edward was just being a grumpy old man who thinks that young people should respect their elders. This is so much worse than that. O.o

Catherine: This is another thing that E.L. James stole from Meyer, the romantic lead calling the other guy vying for the heroine’s love ‘boy’. In both cases the ‘boy’ in question was not white and yeah, that makes a fucking difference Meyer/James. IDK what type of magical post-racial society you live in in your minds but it’s not this one.

Bella, genuinely surprised, asks him why it would matter if she was dead. Remember, she still thinks he left her because he fell out of love with her and that he’s planning on leaving again soon. And because she’s an idiot, she thinks that someone who had fallen out of love with her would lay next to her all night stroking her face.

“He stared deep into my eyes with his sincere, earnest gaze. “I’m a good liar, Bella. I have to be.”

One of those things is not like the other. Edward admits that he lied to get her to let go of him, hoping that him saying he didn’t love her anymore would force her to get angry instead of sad. Which just proves that neither of these two idiots actually knows anything about the other.

Edward marvels at how easily she believed his lie.

“But how could you believe me? After all the thousand times I’ve told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me?”

Oh fuck you, Dracula dick. You’re really gonna shove her away and then get surprised that she let you shove her away? You industrial-sized piece of shit.

Mari: And it wasn’t like, “I don’t love you anymore!” but then she still saw him in school, sneaking shy glances. HE LITERALLY MOVED HIS ENTIRE FAMILY AWAY AND PLANTED VAMPIRE PLANTS AT HIS HOUSE TO TAKE OVER WHILE HE WAS GONE. Something like that. Point is that not much says, “I don’t love you anymore” like disappearing off the face of the Earth. So… it wasn’t one damn word.

Catherine: How dare you take my packing up my life and moving to another country as a hint that I didn’t want to be around you anymore! Silly girl. 

Bella starts to cry. Not because she’s happy, no because she thinks this confession means she is definitely dreaming after all. (M: DAMMIT BELLA. YOU ARE AWAKE.)

Bella tells him that it never made sense for him to love her because he’s good looking and she’s not, basically. Those aren’t her exact words but that’s the overall message here. Edward decides to kiss her to prove that she’s awake. But Bella doesn’t want to kiss him and there’s a little creepy rapey stuff thrown into this shit salad for seasoning:

“He caught my face securely between his iron hands, ignoring my struggles when I tried to turn my head away.
“Please don’t,” I whispered.
He stopped, his lips just half an inch from mine. “Why not?” he demanded.”

Romantic!

K: Nothing says romance like a lack of consent! OH WAIT.

Catherine: Bella tells him that she doesn’t want to kiss him because after he leaves again the memory of the kiss will make it worse. Edward realizes that she hasn’t really let him touch her since he came back.

Mari: SERIOUSLY? He was groping her face and swaddling her and cradling her and probably burping her IDK ever since Italy. 

Annie: OR! Or maybe he’s just now realizing that all that touching wasn’t completely consensual so maybe he… Nope. No. Never mind. That makes it worse.

Catherine: This touching reunion sure is going to some dark places.

He asks her if it’s because he’s too late and she has moved on. If she has, he agrees that that’s fair but asks if she could still love him after everything he’s done to her.

Bella says that yes, of course she could still love him and she never stopped loving him and blah, blah. She also tells him there’s nothing he can do about it. Which is creepy because we know she means it.

Then they kiss and Bella is totally into it. Or at least, she ‘couldn’t fight it’ and her ‘will crumbled into dust’. Which is the same! Right? (M: The date rape drug market says: yes!)

They start heavily kissing in a less than ‘careful’ way and at one point she says:

“I could feel his marble body against every line of mine.”

I bet Bella gets really turned on during class field trips to museums.

Before things can get too un-Christian, Edward pulls away and tells Bella that, oh by the way, he’s not planning on leaving again. There’s a joke here about burying the lead and vampires being dead but I’m so tired, guys.

Edward tells her that he only left to give her a chance at normal human life and that he’s not strong enough to leave again. Then he blames her for the danger he brought into her life.

“It seems you can’t be safe, no matter how many miles I put between us.”

She asks him not promise anything that he can’t carry through on and anger ‘glinted metallic in his black eyes‘.

Boy, he sure does jump to anger very quickly and often.

K: On the plus side, we get to bring back our old favourite game – What Colour Are Edward’s Eyes Today?

Catherine: Black! But also metal? He has robot eyes.

Bella tells him she doesn’t think he’s lying necessarily but he might change his mind in the future. You know, just like people are always telling Bella she will.

Edward admits that he was coming back before he found out she was dead anyway and that he was past trying to live without her. So he went through all that and dumped her like hot garbage just to come crawling back in a year? Ugh. Dick. Face.

How great would it be if she just refused to take him back? Let’s all picture that book for a second.

…

Ah. That was nice. Anyway.

Eddie tells Belly this schmaltz:

“Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light and reason. …And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn’t see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything.”

By the way, he’s thinking of Meteoroids. Meteors are the ones that cross into the Earth’s atmosphere and fall from the sky in a fiery ball of destruction. So. (M: Huh. Mistakenly accurate.)

K: Clearly these two are meant for each other. They both have terrible metaphors to describe how much life sucks without the other.

Catherine: Bell tells him that his eyes will adjust and he says they can’t and we’ve taken this metaphor too far now, Meyer. Stop.

There’s more stuff about how boo-hoo they were without each other.

Annie: OMG, why isn’t this book over yet? We get it, they were sad and mad, sad and mad. Okay. Move on.

K: DUDE. You missed out the most important part of the story: EDWARD HAD A HOLE TOO. “It was like my heart was gone – like I was hollow.” 

Catherine: If Edward is hollow and marble does that make him a kind of toilet? I mean, yes right?

Edward calls her ‘love’ which never sounds right in an American accent and we find out that he manscapes.

“He arched one perfect eyebrow.”

Which is the first thing that has made me feel any respect for him in this entire book.

Mari: Dude, if you don’t sleep all night, I would definitely figure you’d have an intense beauty regimen.

Catherine: If I could get that 8 hours back my eyebrows would look like that actress, you know, Cara Delviginarnar. That’s close. You all know who I mean.

Also, we find out that the tracking that Edward was practicing was on Victoria. Apparently he lost her in Texas and she turned around and came back to Forks. Bella is beside herself to find out that he was hunting Victoria because it’s dangerous. And he says he was and that he still is. Bella gets angry finnnnalllyy and forbids him from tracking Victoria again. She thinks about how Edward going up against Victoria is worse than Jacob doing it, even if Edward is arguably harder to kill.

So, sorry Jacob! She gives less of shit about you then ever now that her boyfriend’s back, hey-la hey-la.

Mari: And I’m really happy that you think you have powers and supernatural ability, Jacob, but obviously no. Nonwhite people with power…! A-HA-HA. 

Annie: Mari laughed. (Sorry, couldn’t resist).

Catherine: She tries to get his mind of off Victoria by reminding him that the Volturi are still coming to verify that she has been turned. He brushes that off, telling her that they have a while before they have to worry about that. Edward says that the Volturi never do anything quickly and he wouldn’t be surprised if she was 30 before they even thought about her again.

“Horror washed through me. Thirty.”

First time I’ve ever identified with Bella.

K: RUDE.

Catherine: Ew get your OLDNESS away from me, Kirsti! I must stay youthful for Edward! 

Bella takes his causal mention of her aging to mean that he’s not gonna stay after all because he’s obviously not planning on turning her. She starts crying again. This is the second time in the chapter that she’s crying tears of genuine sadness during this joyful reunion.

Mari: Is this kind of like when you are reading a romance story and it makes you hate all of humanity? Kind of? 

Catherine: It’s similar!

Edward assures her that he’s never gonna leave again and she asks if he’s gonna stay but let her get ‘all old’ anyway. He says that he can’t be without her but he doesn’t want to destroy her soul.

Bella remembers how upset Edward looked when Aro suggested he change her and she wonders if he really cares that much about her soul or if he just doesn’t want to have to spend that long with her.

Jesus, this girl. One or two low self-esteem thoughts about a relationship every once in a while is completely normal but Bella’s are CONSTANT. She questions whether or not he really likes her fucking constantly. It’s not clever character building, it’s just irritating.

“But what about when I get so old that people think I’m your mother? Your grandmother?” My voice was pale with revulsion—I could see Gran’s face again in the dream mirror.”

Wow. Gran travels all that way through the inter-dimensional plane to say hey and this is the thanks she gets. Nice.

Edward assures her that he won’t care and he’ll always find her beautiful, of course, if she felt like she didn’t want to be with him anymore…

K: Edward, dude. That’s kinda nasty. I’m pretty sure the nursing home will find it weird when you’re closed mouthed kissing your “grandma” to the point where she’s basically having an orgasm over nothing.

Catherine: Oh God, that mental picture.

Bella doesn’t answer that, but instead reminds him that she’s gonna die at some point. Not. Quick. Enough.

And his answer:

“He’d thought about this part, too. “I’ll follow after as soon as I can.”

At what point should this book just be police evidence? One more time for the people in the back: Stop casually mentioning suicide as a plan B in your book for teens, Meyer. It’s fucking gross.

Bella actually does say that that plan is ‘sick’. Even though that was EXACTLY her plan if she couldn’t get to him in time in Italy. But whatever. She needs to get that mirror back and look a little closer.

Bella reminds him that the Volturi is coming to turn her no matter what, even if she is thirty (the terrible word that is never spoken except in italics). He tells her that he has plans in place for that. Getting angry, she asks if all of those plans revolve around her staying human and he confirms that they do.

She pushes him aside and gets out of bed. He’s all, where are you going and she says she’s going to his house.

He asks her how she’s planning on getting there and she tells him she’s gonna drive. He mentions that will wake Charlie and Bella says that she’s already in so much trouble it doesn’t really matter. ‘Cause she’s also a piece of shit.

Edward tries to stop her but eventually agrees to give her a ride. She agrees since he should be there anyway to ‘air your views.’

“My views on which subject?’ he asked through his teeth.
“This isn’t just about you anymore. You’re not the center of the universe, you know.” My own personal universe was, of course, a different story.”

See, she could’ve just left it at…*deep sigh *

Bella says that if he’s gonna bring the Volturi down on them for something as ‘stupid’ as leaving her human then his family ought to have a say. A say in what?

“My mortality. I’m putting it up to a vote.”

And the chapter ends. I’m absolutely sure Meyer will find a way to make it so that Bella is still somehow waking up at the beginning of the next chapter. (M: “I fell asleep on the way to Edward’s house and woke up…” etc.) This chapter, the romantic reunion between Edward and Bella is 21 pages of them lying in bed talking to each other. 21 pages of Edward trying to convince Bella that he was real and planning on staying with her and giving us a few throw away sentences about what he was doing while he was gone. 10 pages would’ve been overkill for this type of scene but this was 2 FUCKING 1.

I think this may be the longest single scene in the entire book, especially considering NOTHING happened. We are all dumber for having read this and may god have mercy on our souls.

 

Next time on New Moon: Mortality vote in chapter 24.