Previously: Bella spread her stink around a forest.
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Annie: We open the chapter with Bella, fully dressed, stuffed into her sleeping bag, in the tent with Edward. Bella is freezing and to hit it home, Meyer uses this fun device where Bella is stuttering and beyond just telling us that, she gives us this:
“W-w-w-w-w-what t-t-t-t-time is it?” – I forced the words through my rattling teeth.
That is so unnecessary and annoying.
Marines: Aaaaaand we found this recap’s single phrase that describes the whole series. “This is so unnecessary and annoying” can join such greats as “Shut up, Edward” and “I hope the baby vampires eat you all.”
Catherine: Also: “What have we done to deserve this?”
But wait, so Edward, who constantly babies and coddles Bella to the point that he personally buckles her seat belt and sings her to sleep every night… forgot to get enough supplies to keep her warm? I get that he doesn’t get humans and all but…really? He just zipped up her coat and dragged her to the top of a mountain? Do we…do we award negligent parenting points for this, guys? I mean?
Kirsti: Meanwhile, in news that will surprise precisely no one, Bella asked what time is it, and my post-it note says “SHOWTIME!!! Like I said, showtime showtime.”
But also, if you get into a sleeping bag wearing LITERALLY ALL OF YOUR CLOTHES INCLUDING YOUR BOOTS? You’re actually not letting the sleeping bag do its job. Because it’s designed to warm the air between your skin and the bag. And if you have 45 layers of clothes on? YOU CAN’T GET WARM, MORON. So saith the person who was talked into camping out in below zero temperatures and who found out the hard way that you need to take layers of clothes off to get warm. Especially your boots. You’d think Edward would have picked something up on all his trips to the camping store… (Also, if you camp out in freezing temperatures? Keep your water bottle in the sleeping bag with you. Or at least in the tent. Definitely not outside. Nope.)
Annie: Edward is trying to stay far away from Bella, because he is Mr. Freeze, apparently, and his breath on her would make her feel colder.
Mari: And they want to move to Alaska? Edward is the boyfriend you can’t have around in summer or in winter…
Annie: Edward wants Bella to make a run for it, but she doesn’t want to ruin all of their hard work. Edward wants to know what he can do, and Jacob is outside the tent whinging. Bella wants Jacob to leave, but Eddie explains he’s just worried about Bella and that he can take the cold because he’s all werewolfy. Edward and Jacob argue, but we only hear Edward’s side of it, because Meyer is in love with this device.
Mari: Yeah, she’s apparently in love with a lot of questionable things.
Annie: Finally, Jacob de-wolfs and scares Bella with his human voice. Jake is pissy that Edward told him to go fetch a space heater and he tells Edward whatever plan Jake has hatched is better than Edward’s ideas. Jacob comes into the tent and Edward tells him to give her his coat and then get out. Jake has another idea. He wants to use his body heat to keep Bella from freezing to death. But Edward would rather Bella die than let Jake touch her, and the boys start to talk about Bella as though she is not there. (M: See? Meyer loves that too.)
Jacob starts to unzip Bella’s sleeping bag and tries to climb in while Edward is trying to pull Jacob off her. Bella asks them not to fight so Jacob goes back to trying to climb into her sleeping bag. Bella has no interest in having him get in with her, but he doesn’t care and what Bella wants doesn’t matter.
Catherine: So glad she has two boys like this now. Remember when Jacob was the laid back one that we all appreciated? Jacob’s transformation was into a werewolf and then an asshole.
K: I just pictured that literally, and allow me to recommend NOT DOING THAT.
Annie: Bella finds the cuddly warmth appealing and presses her body against almost-naked Jacob. He whines that she’s cold, then pokes Edward by suggesting Bella would be warmer faster if she were also naked. (K: I mean, he’s not wrong. See also: previous rant about how sleeping bags work.) Bella is still stuttering and Edward is jealous that his dead, marble-like body won’t warm Bella. Bella finally warms up enough to stop stuttering and then Jacob continues to piss Edward off by threatening to kiss Bella, which pisses ME off, because Bella has made it quite clear that she does not want him to kiss her. (C: Can Jacob and Edward just fuck each other and leave her alone?)
Jacob continues to warm Bella up and this goes on for a full page. Bella asks Jacob why he’s so shaggy in wolf-form and it’s because of his hair, which he’s growing out because he thinks Bella likes his hair long and IDK why this is here or why I’m having to recap so many seemingly useless details.
Mari: In better news, we can think about our long forgotten favorite, Taylor Lautner’s Wig!
Catherine: IT’S BACK! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!
K: I’m too busy being distracted by the sentence “I didn’t know the rules for etiquette as they applied to werewolf culture.” But you give zero fucks about Quileute culture and what’s appropriate and inappropriate. Cool.
Annie: Seth has arrived to keep a watch out and Jacob taunts Edward some more. It gets quiet and Bella falls asleep, but not quite, because she’s still aware of what’s going on. (M: ???) (C: Yeah, I mean totally. Have you guys never lived a cheap narrative device before?) (K: Just when we thought we were done with Bella being awake-asleep, IT RETURNS.) (A: LUCKY US.)
Edward and Jacob start fighting again, this time about what Jacob is thinking while being all cuddled up to Bella. It escalates to Jacob telling Edward that Bella could still choose him, because he can do lots of things with Bella that Edward can’t do without killing her.
They’re talking about sex stuff, aren’t they?
And like… do they think Bella is asleep? How fucking passive and under-written is Bella as a character?
Bella thinks maybe she should tell them to stop talking about her like she isn’t there, but she’s ‘too close’ to sleeping, so she doesn’t.
Mari: Know what would wake me the hell back up? Two assholes talking about using me for sex LIKE I’M NOT IN THE (TENT) ROOM. Especially if it was one who I don’t like and one who won’t even have sex with me anyway.
Catherine: Wake up. Smack some people around. Repeat.
K: Double especially if you’re LITERALLY IN A SLEEPING BAG WITH ONE OF THEM SPOONING YOU WHILE HE HAS THIS CONVERSATION.
Annie: Yuuuuup.
Bella is sort of sleeping, but is still able to hear what’s going on around her, so we get more of this disgusting pissing contest between Edward and Jacob.
Jake wants answers from Edward since he feels it’s fair as Edward is constantly reading his thoughts. Jake basically wants to bait Edward and asks about his jealousy and this conversation is so gross and awful because Edward tells Jacob that he’s basically obsessed with Bella’s potential feelings and Jacob says that he’s going to use whatever advantage he has to try to manipulate Bella into choosing him.
They fight more and Jacob tells Edward that Bella’s in love with him too and that she just doesn’t know it, which feels vaguely like a threat. Edward admits to not liking not being able to use his powers on Bella, but that she likes that he can’t read her mind, so he has to be okay with it? IDK.
Mari: Nah, boy. You have to be okay with it BECAUSE YOU DON’T HAVE A CHOICE.
Annie: Then these two terrible boys come to this weird, gross truce and I’m excited this bullshit is wrapping up.
LOL, nope. Meyer is trolling me again, that jerkface. Edward and Jacob continue to talk about their jealousy and how they’re both basically insecure assholes and that’s why they behave the way they do. In case you were wondering that’s not okay. Not romantic.
It’s gross and awful.
Catherine: This is all the super fucking worst.
K: It really really is. But I also give zero fucks about any of this and OH MY GOD SO MANY TREES DIED POINTLESSLY SO THAT THIS BOOK COULD EXIST WHYYYYYYY.
Annie: Bella interupts this awful dialogue to remind us that she is still the narrator of this book and talks about how it’s a strange dream.
Mari: So when she said she was close to sleeping it’s like when you call your friend and they say they are close but they still haven’t left the house? Okay, cool, cheater narrator. Cool.
Annie: Back to the infuriating dialogue. Jacob asks Edward what it’s like to lose Bella, and Edward says it’s hard for him to talk about, but basically when he thought he could leave her, it was easier because he thought it would be like she would forget him and it would be as if she’d never known him. Edward doesn’t really answer the question and tells Jacob that’s how Bella convinced Edward to stay with her because she reminded him of how she was when he left her before. Apparently they are all manipulating each other. Jacob asks about what it was like when Edward thought Bella had killed herself and Edward says he can’t describe what that was like.
Jacob says Edward left because he wanted Bella to stay human. Edward tells Jacob that from the time he ‘fell in love with’ Bella, he knew there were only 4 outcomes: Bella wouldn’t be that into Edward and she’d get over him, Edward would live out Bella’s human life with her, he’d run away and there would be major dramz, or Edward would have to turn her into a vampire so they can spend eternity being horrible together.
Jacob prefers option 1, and he thinks that would have worked if Bella hadn’t been so selfish to jump off a cliff. He believes that if Edward had just stayed away, Jacob could’ve made Bella forget all about Edward. This way, Bella could have had a life, be with her family, have kids. Because that’s what women want from life, right?
Mari: IDK, I’d have to ask a man and see if that’s what I want.
Catherine: I’m not allowed to talk to men without my father and clergyman present. So…
K: I had to go to Mass at work on Friday, and that’s certainly the impression that the male priest gave me during his sermon. Also, cell phones are evil, FYI.
Annie: If you’re being chaperoned by a man, are you allowed to use your cellphone or are they always evil? See, clearly we need a man like Edward in our lives to tell us how to be women.
Jacob tells Edward that he’s probably better for Bella than Edward – And why the fuck are they limiting Bella to these two fuckboys? Why.
Edward said he’s considered it, especially because Bella “takes some looking after, and you’re strong enough that you could protect her from herself, and from everything that conspires against her.”
FALSE. Because Jacob clearly hasn’t been able to keep Bella free from Edward or from his dickface self.
Also. Bella ‘takes some looking after’? She’s a fucking human person, not a puppy. Go fuck yourself, Edward. Bella gets to decide these things because she is supposed to be a living, breathing, nearly grownass woman. Jesus.
Catherine: What if there was an avalanche and everyone died in this part? WHAT IF?
K: Maybe if we close our eyes and wish really hard, we’ll find out??????
Annie: Edward says if Bella were to choose Jacob, he would ‘let’ her go, but he’d watch them forever like the creepy fucker he is in case Jacob became imprinted on someone, so he could swoop in and be Bella’s second choice.
Again, I ask WHY MUST BELLA ONLY HAVE TWO CHOICES? FFS.
The boys agree that if they weren’t natural enemies and both after the same prize, they’d probably be great friends. Creepy fucker BFFs for life!
Edward asks Jacob about the story the elders told because he says Bella identified with the 3rd wife and wants to be in the clearing to ‘help’. Edward explains that Baby Bella needs constant supervision so she doesn’t do anything stupid. (Read: In case Bella tries to exercise her free will).
The new BFFs agree their truce will last until the sun comes up, and Edward tells Jacob that for now, Jacob should just sleep and enjoy the moment. Um, ew? Did he really just say ‘Hey, dude. You enjoy this moment of naked cuddling with my girlfriend’? How very Indecent Proposal of them.
And what’s worse is how passive Bella is through all of this. It leaves me with an icky, uneasy feeling. This is so gross, guys.
Edward reacts to something Jacob is thinking about and Jacob asks Edward to give him and the unconscious Bella some privacy.
NO, PLEASE, STOP.
Edward offers to kill Jacob and he’s all:
“I’d rather not move just now, if you don’t mind.”
So… teen wolf boner, yeah? (M: Awkward wolf boner!) (K: Aww. It’s been a while since we’ve had an awkward boner around here. It’s positively nostalgia inducing, but in a really gross way.)
Edward hums Bella’s lullaby and she falls deeper in to sleep?!? This is some fucked up stuff, guys. Bella needs to GTFO. These boys are creepy and gross.
So who knows how Jacob continues to assault her now. Because she is completely and fully uncounscious, because her boyfriend hummed her lullaby. IDK. (C: Baby!Bella.)
This is just so awful and just when I think it can’t possibly get any worse, IT DOES.
What’s the chance that Victoria and her army of baby vampires show up and kill them all?
Mari: Since they’ve been getting here for approximately 10 years, I’m going with 0% chance. On a brighter note, there is a 100% chance your book is flammable.
Next time on Eclipse: The chapter that breaks the Snark Ladies, Chapter 23.
Fuchsia-haired, caffeine enthusiast, dog person, Raptors fan, sometimes blogger, music & social media geek, freelancer, human being. She/her.
I am a 30-something year-old human woman who lives in Maine. I'm a freelance writer who mostly spends time that I should be doing that, watching T.V. I also love reading and comic books way too much.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
