Breaking Dawn Chapter 05 – Facing the unknown

Previously: Jacob got so pissed at Edward for thinking about sexing his wife.
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Marines: Stephenie Meyer is terrible at transitions so instead of cutting to their arrival at their honeymoon destination, there is this weird crap where we start at a gate in Seattle headed to Houston? But then Bella wakes up and they are in front of the gate to Rio de Janeiro? How did she wake up off the plane? I’m guessing Edward just threw her over his shoulder and carried her because that is 1000% something he would do.

Catherine: Definitely not a good sign that she’s already missing several hours of time. 

Annie: Also, I’m pretty sure customs wouldn’t be cool with having some dude carrying an unconscious woman around, right? 

Mari: I mean. Maybe he vamp-ran.

Bella sleeps the entire way to South America and wakes up as they are landing. Honestly, honestly, someone tell me what the point of this was. If you literally had nothing to say and had to make your protagonist sleep for like 15+ hours to get from one place to another, JUST CUT TO THE NEXT PLACE. THERE WAS A CHAPTER BREAK, FOR GOD’S SAKE.

Kirsti: SERIOUSLY. This is such a waste of time.

She also tells us that they fly first class and that she spends the whole flight to South America “with Edward’s arms cradled around me.” Y’all, if you are SHARING a first class seat, you are definitely not making the best of first class. Enjoy your giant cushy enormous seat all to yourself, girl. Why the fuck would you sit in first class and make it as close to economy as you can get?! (As someone who’s spent a LOT of her life on long haul flights, I get a little ragey about stuff like this…)

Annie: We should really write Meyer a ‘How to not write rubbish’ tip sheet, as she keeps insisting on writing more books. Unless she’s being paid like Dickens was (by the word), there is absolutely no fucking reason for this than to torture us.

Mari: I don’t know why we’re getting mad this early. It’s the honeymoon scene.

Bella and Edward leave the airport and Bella still has no idea what’s going on because she can’t understand the instructions Edward gives the driver in Portuguese. She guesses that they might be headed to a hotel and she gets nervous. She likens it to “stage fright” and it made me giggle. Even though she has no idea about anything ever, she apparently knows they’ve approached the western edge of the city, and beyond that, they head to the docks. Edward leads Bella to the smallest yacht, but in case we get any silly ideas about this yacht being lesser, Bella clarifies that it’s faster and more graceful than all the others. Is this commentary on penis size or what’s happening right now?

Annie: It must be. Because otherwise we’d have to add ‘knows a shit ton about boats’ to Bella’s list of hidden interests and I’m not prepared for that.

Mari: Edward helps Bella onto the boat and she’s super amazed at how good he is at boating because he’s never mentioned a boat before. She also thinks about how he’s good at everything.

1. He’s never mentioned boats because you guys don’t effing talk unless it’s about hurt in your soul, or whatever.
2. He’s good at things because he’s 100 years old. I’m not impressed.

Catherine: Also, he doesn’t sleep. So he has ALL of the time to practice getting good at things. Definitely not impressed. Although, heads up, Bella, whether or not his hours of night time tug boating is going to translate into sexual prowess is still up in the air. 

K: You just had to use the word “tug” in the same sentence as “sexual prowess”, didn’t you… -_-

Mari: They ride for a bit, Edward enjoying the speed and Bella cursing her humanity, until he points out an island up ahead. It’s Isle Esme aka a private island that Carlisle gifted his wife, which they are now borrowing. Edward carries Bella off the boat along with the luggage because v strong vampire is v strong. (K: Not luggage, Mari. STEAMER TRUNKS. WHO THE FUCK USES STEAMER TRUNKS?! OMG IMAGINE HOW THE AIRLINE STAFF REACTED AHAHAHA.) There’s a house on this island and Bella’s “stage fright” is even worse now that she knows they’ll be staying in a house as opposed to a hotel? If you ask me, the only explanation is that she knows that if he sexes her to death here, no one will know or find her.

We get vague descriptions of the house itself but specific mentions of Bella’s beating heart and fuzzy vision. They reach the bedroom and there’s a whole glass wall, the decor preferred by vampires who like to see themselves sparkle, I guess. There’s also a huge bed in the middle of the room. The room is a little toasty and Edward says he did that on purpose. (When? Did he run over here in at some point to turn up the AC? I guess they could have private island staff, but I prefer the idea that he ran to Isle Esme with a boat on his back.) Bella says Edward has been very thorough and he says he’s trying to make this night “easier.” Wow. Sexy.

“Had there ever been a honeymoon like this before?
I knew the answer to that. No. There had not.”

Edward proposes a swim and “allows” Bella a minute or two to gather herself, though he tells her not to take too long. He takes off his shirt and dramatically walks out into the night toward the ocean. Bella gets so hot and bothered, she actually checks to see if her skin has burst into flames. (K: If anyone has read Empire of Storms by Sarah J. Maas, just know that I had a “DEAR GOD PLEASE NO NOT AGAIN” moment when I read that.)

Next, she goes through her stuff that Alice packed and doesn’t recognize anything as actually belonging to her. She’s also looking for a pair of sweat pants to swim in, though, so maybe it’s a good thing she had some help packing. (K: Also, who wants to wear sweats on their wedding night??) Noticing all the lingerie, Bella promises to make Alice pay for packing unacceptably one day. Bella looks out toward the ocean and sees the rest of Edward’s shed clothing and has more hot flashes.

Catherine: I mean? Does she not know what sex is? She’s acting like she doesn’t know what sex is. 

Annie: This just makes me feel more uncomfortable than I was already feeling. I mean, Bella is basically crying out that she isn’t ready for sex, right? Like, she may really want the sparkle peen, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready for the sparkle peen.

Mari: Bella combs her hair, brushes her teeth twice and then decides on a full on shower and shaving her legs.

K: I get that homegirl is trying to kill time because she’s nervous about the sexytimes. But surely someone told her to just wax them for her honeymoon.

Mari: That might require friends. Oh, and realistic depiction of anything ever by the author.

Afterward, she tries to think about what to wear to go swimming. “Not a swimsuit, obviously.” Um… why is this obvious? Why is it obvious that she wouldn’t wear a swimsuit to swim? Can someone help me with what I’m missing?

Catherine: Because she wanted to wear sweatpants? I guess? IDK I’m really confused. 

K: Because the Sparkle Peen can’t get through a swimsuit? IDK, that’s all I’ve got.

Mari: That was no help.

Faced with this dilemma, Bella starts having a panic attack and hopes that Edward doesn’t come check in on her.

I prayed he wouldn’t decide to come look for me before I could pull myself together. I could imagine what he would think if he saw me going to pieces this way. It wouldn’t be hard for him to convince himself that we were making a mistake. And I wasn’t freaking out because I thought we were making a mistake. Not at all. I was freaking out because I had no idea how to do this, and I was afraid to walk out of this room and face the unknown. Especially in French lingerie. I knew I wasn’t ready for that yet.

I don’t know, guys…

1. She’s young still and having sex for the first time can be nerve-racking, especially for someone who has been indoctrinated to prize their virginity. It can also be scary IF YOU AREN’T READY.
2. This whole thing reeks of I’m ready! I swear! It’s not that I’m not ready! It’s the French lingerie! Really! THE FRENCH LINGERIE. It seems like something you would say IF YOU WEREN’T READY.
3. She isn’t ready to “face the unknown.” Which is sex, right? So… SHE ISN’T READY FOR SEX?
4. Shut up about the French lingerie, dammit.

OH MY GOD, WAIT. I READ FURTHER ON.

THIS IS ALL A PSA ABOUT BEING MARRIED BEFORE YOU HAVE SEX.

How did people do this—swallow all their fears and trust someone else so implicitly with every imperfection and fear they had—with less than the absolute commitment Edward had given me? If it weren’t Edward out there, if I didn’t know in every cell of my body that he loved me as much as I loved him—unconditionally and irrevocably and, to be honest, irrationally—I’d never be able to get up off this floor.

1. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
2. CONFIDENCE, FOR ONE. People who are interested in sex aren’t bartering fears and imperfection. I’m not saying that everyone is out there banging with 100% confidence all of the time, but dear god. There are humans out there, Bella, who don’t consider themselves walking imperfections. And yes, a trusting and loving relationship helps but a- it isn’t necessary and b- exists outside of what you’ve deemed your perfect relationship and c- FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF.
3. Where in the blazing heat of hell is this coming from? YOU LITERALLY DID NOT WANT TO GET MARRIED. YOU THOUGHT YOUR COMMITMENT WAS ABSOLUTE BEFORE YOU HAD THE DAMN CEREMONY.
4. Yes, he loves you “irrationally.” He’s wanted to basically kill you since he met you AND THAT IS IRRATIONAL.
5. My insides feel like jelly.

I cannot believe we built up all this crap about Bella not wanting to get married and only wanting to have sex to get to this moment where she’s about to have sex, but she has to pause and give us a literal panic attack because…? Thank God she’s married? THIS MAKES NO SENSE.

Catherine: Meyer is super religious. She has said in interviews that she wanted to have Bella and Edward wait ’till they got married to boink because of how Jesus cries when you boink strangers who you don’t share perfect love with. Does that help clear it up? No? Okay, picture a perfect flower opening it’s delicate petals. Now picture Stephenie Meyer’s face over that flower frowning at you, you fucking heathen. 

K: “FUCK ALL THE WAY OFF” may be my favourite thing you’ve ever written, Mari. (I have nothing else to add, because everything Mari and Katy have already said is glorious and I 100% agree.)

Mari: I know, I know about Meyer, but listen– put aside whatever you feel about purity culture and fornication. The thing of it is that her message DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE. WHAT IS THIS PANIC ATTACK TEACHING US? And let’s not even get into the fact that somewhere in this whole message Meyer is hiding in her unsexiest abusive relationship, there is the fact that SEX WITH EDWARD CAN ACTUALLY KILL BELLA. THIS. THIS IS THE TIME WHEN SEX CAN KILL SOMEONE, MARRIED OR NOT.

I HATE IT.

And now I’m tired and I have 13 Kindle pages left.

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Bella gets up and marches out in her towel, now determined since she’s reminded herself that she loves Edward and he put a ring on it. Outside, she quickly spots Edward and describes his skin as “a perfect white” again so we can add rage seasoning on top of our rage patty and be on our way to a full rage meal.

Seeing Edward’s exposed back muscles while he looks up at the moon magically dissolves all of Bella’s shyness and she drops her towel. Bella assumes that Edward can hear her approaching, but he doesn’t turn to look at her. When she reaches him, she comments on the beauty of the moon and he says some stupid shit about Bella’s beauty in comparison. Bella places her hand on his chest and thinks, “white on white; we matched for once.”

K: But this series isn’t racist or anything. Nope. Not at all.

Annie: It isn’t racist at ALL. I don’t understand why you keep saying it is. Can you please provide specific examples of when this series was racist?

Mari: Edward says that he promised they would try the sex thing, but tells her to speak up if he does something wrong or if he hurts her. Bella tells him not to be afraid because they belong together. Edward pulls her deeper into the water and we cut to black.

Praise the Lord because, while I knew this was cut to black, this was even more chaste than I expected.

Bella wakes the next day in Edward’s North of the Wall arms and thinks how silly she was to panic the night before because it’s all great. She laughs at herself when her stomach grumbles because being human is the silliest. When Edward asks what’s funny, she says that she can’t escape being human and this of course makes Edward grumpy-pants. Bella tells us that a lifetime of insecurities make her sit there and wonder what she’s done wrong. She asks Edward what she’s done, and he starts yelling at her because she’s downplaying the pain she’s in. Bella still doesn’t get what’s happening so he tells her to look at herself.

At first, she can’t, because she’s covered in feathers. 

“Why am I covered in feathers?” I asked, confused.
He exhaled impatiently. “I bit a pillow. Or two. That’s not what I’m talking about.”

They are going to have a totally serious fight coming up now, and I’m only going to be thinking about Edward biting pillows like a goddamned dog.

I’m going to wake the neighbor with my laughing. We gotta move on fast.

K: Whereas I always laugh hysterically at that because the first snarky recap of the Twilight series that I ever read argued that there was more sexual tension between Edward and Jacob than Edward and Bella, and was all “OHHHHH DID JACOB TURN UP IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, EDWARD??” So. 

Mari: Edward is actually pissed because Bella is covered bruises. She tests them, but they don’t hurt much and she doesn’t remember them hurting. Edward broods some more about what a monster he is. Bella is like, “bro. I’m fine,” but that makes Edward even more upset. Bella doesn’t know what to do since using her words isn’t working at all so she yells at him because like five minutes ago she was perfectly happy and now Edward is ruining her post-sex buzz. (A: Which is behaviour that is textbook abusive, btw.)

Bella keeps trying to use her words and say that they had expected it would be tricky, but they did well considering it was their first time and with some practice they could get better. This makes Edward livid because she’s admitting to having expected that Edward might hurt her while having sex. He yells at her for having foreseen that this was possible.

1. This is all so gross, I don’t know how it’s grossest. It’s weird to defend Bella because Edward did leave marks on her, but she’s not really hurt and she’s not fussed about it. She bruises easily. I guess it sucks the most in context because anything Bella wants or finds sexy or desirable is always shut down. We literally culminate to this moment of YAY MARITAL SEX! and Bella is STILL punished for it, which is the problem with purity culture in the first place: it punishes sexuality, especially in woman, in a loop.
2. WHAT THE HELL WAS EDWARD WORRIED ABOUT IF NOT THIS? Why is he suddenly like omg you KNEW I could hurt you??
3. Shut the hell up, Edward because you literally put her life in danger every crappy day you breathe her same air BECAUSE YOU WANT TO DRINK HER BLOOD. Give me a damn break. You could step on her toes and basically kill her. She got a paper cut and almost died. This is ridiculous.

Catherine: +1 so much to all of this. After this book was released a lot of people were complaining that Bella woke up covered in bruises after they had sex for the first time and how that proves that they’re in an abusive relationship but like! For once FOR ONCE it actually doesn’t. It’s okay to get bruises during sex if 1. That’s what you were expecting and 2. You’re completely fine with it. What’s not okay is shaming Bella’s sexuality since the damn girl has so many fucking hangups already. Maybe this entire series is just about Edward being afraid of vagina and trying everything he can to avoid it. 

K: SERIOUSLY. TO ALL OF THE THINGS. I have a lot of rage right now.

Mari: Bella just lets him anger all over her and when he’s calmed his tits, she tells him how perfect last night was her, even if it wasn’t for him. Edward feels bad because he had a wonderful time too, but not a regular wonderful time oh-no-no. See, Carlisle explained to Edward before the honeymoon that being a vampire means you super enjoy sex. He also asked his brothers about vampire sex:

“They told me it was a very great pleasure. Second only to drinking human blood.” A line creased his brow. “But I’ve tasted your blood, and there could be no blood more potent than that… I don’t think they were wrong, really. Just that it was different for us. Something more.”

1. 
2. FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST. WE GET IT. Her blood is the best but it’s not even as best as her sex is the best and vampires have the best sex, but Edward and Bella have the bestest sex and WE GET IT. MAKE IT STOP.

Bella keeps insisting that she’s happy and Edward is like “nuh-uh” so Bella has to list the moment she’s been happy before this. It’s the most disgusting and depressing list so naturally I’ll share it with you all:

“I wasn’t this happy when you decided that you loved me more than you wanted to kill me…” UH, WHAT? I mean, I would also be happy if someone did not kill me, but that’s not this. This is saying that he still wants to kill her, he just loves her MORE than the desire to kill her. THANK YOU FOR REMINDING US THE ENTIRE BASIS OF THIS SERIES: LOVE CONQUERS MURDER.

“…or the first morning I woke up and you were there waiting for me….” WHEN HE SNUCK INTO YOUR ROOM TO WATCH YOU SLEEP?

“Not when I heard your voice in the ballet studio…” GIRL, WHILE YOU WERE GETTING ACTIVELY MURDERED? NOT A HAPPY MOMENT.

“or when you said ‘I do’ and I realized that, somehow, I get to keep you forever. Those are the happiest memories I have, and this is better than any of it. So just deal with it.” You need better happier moments, STAT.

Catherine: They already did this fucking ‘list your happiest moments in our toxic waste dump relationship’ thing on the mountain in Eclipse, too. Meyer just does the same shit over and over and pads out the book to 700+ pages with it. 

K: All I have to add is “With those as your happiest moments, GOOD LUCK SUMMONING A PATRONUS, BELLA.”

Mari: Edward decides to stop being angry and gets out of bed when Bella’s stomach growls again. Bella brings the conversation back around to Puppyward biting all of Esme’s pillows and he can’t even be non-broody for a second because those pillows could’ve been Bella. She’s more concerned with all the feathers in her hair. She asks if Edward wants to help her wash them out, but he’s gone back to being a virgin and Bella laments the fact that her honeymoon is over.

K: You guys. “It’s all dried in. I’m going to have to try and wash it out.” It. Not “them”. I’m not convinced she’s talking about feathers here……… 

Annie: And that just leaves me with so many questions about the biology of vampire sex…

Mari: Please stop it immediately.

After her shower, Bella goes out to the kitchen to find Edward cooking, something he learned from the Food Network, which again– not impressive when you haven’t slept since the Food Network was invented. Bella scarfs down her food and tries to kiss her husband but he won’t kiss her back. Bella sighs because she knows that there are no more sexy times in her immediate future. Edward confirms.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to set up a PO Box where you all can send me alcohol thank you very much.

 

Next time on Breaking Dawn: Bella tries to trick her husband into more sex in Chapter 06.