Breaking Dawn Chapter 18 – The bloody Quentin Tarantino chapter.

Previously: Ripping sounds that made us all queasy.
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Annie: Welcome to the bloody Quentin Tarantino Chapter of Breaking Dawn, also known as nope, nope, fucking no, nope.

The title of this chapter is ‘There are no words for this‘. Aptly named. I’m still not sure that prepares us all for what is to come in this chapter, but I’m doing my best.

Kirsti: Come, friends. Let us gather around the Snark Lady Booze Cupboard and drink its full contents before proceeding with this abomination of a chapter.

Marines: I’m on lunch break, but I’ll open up a bottle of something. Unless my employer is reading in this in which case I’m having a well balanced meal and will be back at work promptly. 

Catherine: It’s so rare that Jacob’s narration is right and accurate but…yes.

Annie: Okay, enough procrastination. Let’s get stuck in. Bella’s body is covered in blood that she’s just vomited up, while the sparkle baby is trying to burst from its mother’s body like in the movie Alien. Haha, no. Nope, nope, nope.

Edward and Rosalie take Bella upstairs and Jacob follows. Rosalie shouts for Alice to call Carlisle while she and Edward get to settling Bella in the makeshift emergency room of stolen hospital supplies.

Rosalie starts to strip Bella down and all Jacob can think of is how he’s always wanted to see Bella naked, but now her gross, bloodied, swollen, unconscious body is ruining this for him, because he doesn’t want to look at her while she’s naked and gross. Just naked. In case you need any reminding how fucked up this all is.

Mari: He literally adds “dying is ruining her naked body” thoughts to her dying. JACOB BLACK IS AN AWFUL PERSON.

K: This book is so fucked up. The whole first half of the book is all pro-life FOETUSES COME BEFORE LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE bullshit, and then we’re treated to this IF YOU GET PREGNANT YOU WILL LITERALLY DIE nightmare. Awesome work, Steph. 

Catherine: I remember reading this as a teenager and thinking “What a fucked up thing to be thinking at that moment. Holy shit.” I cursed a lot as a teenager. 

Annie: Apparently, Rosalie and Edward can see through Bella’s body to notice that the placenta has detached and the baby is suffocating. Bella wakes up to shout about how the baby can’t breathe (they don’t actually breathe in utero, so I thought the ‘he can’t breathe’ shrieking was dumb, but whatever) (C: This is a good catch ’cause I actually didn’t even think of that. Haha. Bella’s an idiot.) . Bella vomits up some more blood and Edward tends to her as Alice places a hands-free earpiece in Rosalie’s ear so she can talk to Carlisle.

Rosalie picks up a scalpel  and ignores Edward who is shouting at her to wait for the morphine to spread first, and she slices Bella’s stomach open. Bella is too busy choking on her own blood to complain about it.

The fresh stomach blood is too much for Rosalie to handle and she gets all vampire-blood-crazed.

This is the most ridiculous thing, because Bella is basically covered in blood and Rose has been fine. But a little bit of fresh stomach blood (can’t believe I just typed those words), and she loses all control. Jacob isn’t about to let Rosalie go all om-nom-nom-nom on Bella, so he pounces on her, taking the scalpel to his arm. Jacob and Rose wrestle. Edward gets Alice to get Rosalie out of there and take her to Jasper. He then instructs Jacob to help him.

Catherine: Rosalie’s need to nom Bella’s stomach blood is truly the cherry on top of this sickening chapter. I may genuinely barf. 

Annie: Edward asks Jacob to start CPR on Bella when they hear the sparkle hell-spawn break Bella’s spine.

K: Back when I first read this book, I got to this chapter and was like “The fuck, how is this a young adult book?”. But now, nearly a decade later, seeing it all summarised here? I’m like “NO, BUT SERIOUSLY. THE FUCK. HOW IS THIS A YOUNG ADULT BOOK????????” This is quite possibly the most disturbing book I’ve ever read, and I once read a murder mystery in which a woman was in love with a dolphin. So. (To clarify: I had a similar “THE FUCK?” reaction to that.)

Mari: Everything is actually happening rather quickly, but it’s like my brain keeps tripping on everything. LIKE BROKEN SPINES.

Annie: Which happens to be super convenient, because now Bella can’t feel it when they butterfly her like a prawn. Edward picks up where Rosalie left off, and starts cutting into Bella, while Jacob starts CPR. While Jake works away, he says he can hear the sounds of metal being shredded and looks to see Edward chewing his way in to help get the baby out. Could this get any more disgusting?

K: I think this is a prime opportunity to bring back that gif that I hoarded for like two straight years, because it says it more clearly than we ever could: 

Mari: No one in this scene is having an appropriate enough reaction. Jacob just looks back and is like “oh yeah vampire teeth cutting vampire skin.” And when he puts it that way it sound way more reasonable than “that dad is CHEWING HIS BABY OUT OF THE WOMB.” WAY LESS REASONABLE.

Catherine: Is it appropriate for me to make an ‘eating out’ joke right now? 

Mari: NO.

Annie: As Jacob continues to (badly) administer CPR, he’s shouting cliched things at Bella like ‘Stay with me!’ and then finally the sparkle baby has been all chewed out and is free. Edward whispers Renesmee. Because it’s a girl! Surprise! Jacob is all ‘There goes Bella, always wrong about everything.”

Marines: Um, she’s freakin’ dying right now butthole and her spine is broken and someone just chewed through her stomach cut her some damn slack.

Catherine: Also, they already knew it was a girl. Didn’t they? After it started talking and developing it’s emotional construct while still in utero a few chapters ago.

Annie: Bella was pretty convinced it was a boy, and I think this was a lame attempt at a plot twist or something. Hard pass.

Bella wakes up again and demands to see the baby. Edward gives the baby to her and she moans out ‘a strange, weak croon’. Basically, she calls the baby’s name and says that the baby is beautiful. Edward takes the baby from Bella, who is all cut open, covered in blood, and now also has a fresh wound on her boob from where the sparkle baby with the stupid name bit her. Apparently vampire babies are born with teeth. Edward scolds the baby for biting her mother like everything that has just happened is completely normal and they’re all a big happy family. lol, ew, no, please stop.

Bella passes out or dies or whatever and Jake goes back to CPR again. This is really how none of this works, like, medically. Bella would be so dead by now. (K: SERIOUSLY.)

Edward tries to hand the baby off like a hot potato (M: Jacob tells him to throw it out the window and it made me giggle inappropriately…), then Rose appears and takes the baby away. Jasper and Alice are bad at keeping her away. (M: Like WTF are they even doing while there is a baby delivery/buffet going on?)

Edward asks Jacob to move his hands so he can stab Bella with a syringe of his ‘venom’. Ew. Isn’t this how they got themselves into this mess in the first place? He tells Jacob to go back to doing compressions to help circulate the vampire venom.

K: Did he spit in the syringe? Or…..????

Mari: KIRSTI.

K: You’re welcome, friends.

Catherine: I literally gagged. 

Annie: Ew. Nope.

While Jacob continues CPR, Edward is biting and licking Bella all over, infusing her with his vampire juices like she’s a pork roast. I know this is supposed to be sweet and romantic. IT IS NOT. (K: Wait, this is meant to be sweet and romantic?? If you think this is sweet or romantic, GET THE FUCK OUT. No, this is a FUBAR PSA for abstinence.)

Meyer throws in a line from a nursery rhyme for good measure. That Bella is all broken like Humpty Dumpty and they can’t put her back together again. Jake feels Bella’s gone, that they’re working on a corpse now. Her body has ‘no pull’ for him anymore, that instead, that pull is urging him down the stairs and away from all this mess.

Mari: BECAUSE THE BABY IS BORN, GET IT? OH MY GOD. Like we kept ha ha ha-ing about how Jacob was attracted to an unfertilized egg in Bella’s body or something and IT’S NOT A JOKE. The “pull” has literally ended the moment the baby is gone so if the pull existed when the baby wasn’t even conceived…. IT WAS THE EGG? 

WHAT IN THE EVER LIVING HELL? 

Catherine: Also, if he thinks the “pull” is that he is attracted to her then his first thought after she dies is that he’s no longer attracted to her. Which. That’s a weird thing to think. That’s super fucking weird as far as things go. 

Annie: Edward ‘hears’ all this and shouts at Jacob to go, hitting him and breaking some of Jacob’s fingers. Edward starts beating on Bella’s chest, telling Jake that she’ll be fine. Jacob goes to leave, but the grief is making him move slowly. He mopes about how he’s lost his purpose because Bella was allowed to make her own decisions and chose to sacrifice herself instead of letting people forcibly abort her baby. Jake wants to pour bleach inside his brain to burn out the image he has of Bella’s final hour.

SO DO WE, JACOB. SO DO WE.

K: Seriously. 

Mari: Nothing in this book has ever spoken to me more.

Annie: Downstairs, Rosalie is sitting on the ‘clean’ end of the white couch. Ew. She’s feeding the sparkle baby blood (ew, please, stop). Jake wonders if Rosalie will be happy now, getting her shot at motherhood. He wonders if that had been her plan all along.

Jacob feels the anger taking over him and feels he’d have a really good shot at the baby because Rosalie wouldn’t even see him coming because she was so distracted. Jake decides that Sam was right, that the baby is an abomination and needs to be destroyed and it’s his destiny to do it. That maybe that magic pull he was feeling was his destiny calling him downstairs to murder the sparkle baby.

Oh, god. It’s coming, isn’t it?

Jake knows that Rosalie will try to kill him after and he may or may not fight back. Maybe the wolves will avenge him, maybe they won’t. Jacob figures Bella would hate him for killing her child, but she went and got herself dead, so lol, her feelings don’t matter. He figures Edward will be mad, too, but he’s a jerk for everything he’s done, taking Bella away from him and getting her knocked up, so Jake doesn’t care about that, either. Jacob is feeling sorry for himself and that totes justifies baby murder, because the baby is alive and Bella isn’t.

Jacob gets ready to pounce, but then Rosalie shifts the baby and she looks at Jacob. He sees the baby has Bella’s eyes. And then Jacob isn’t feeling the heat of his rage anymore. He’s feeling something else. That everything that has ever mattered to him, doesn’t anymore. That his little werewolf heart has grown three sizes.

That this infant is his destiny and universe.

K: Because imprinting wasn’t fucked up enough already, WE HAD TO HAVE SOMEONE IMPRINT ON A NEWBORN BABY. NO. NO. I JUST… THERE ARE NOT ENOUGH WORDS FOR HOW MUCH RAGE I HAVE OVER THIS.

Mari: Meyer has him imprint on the baby while the baby who is super smart, well developed and has teeth stares into his soul so she was basically like, “okay how can I make imprinting on a baby as pedo-y as possible?” SUCCESS, GIRL. YOU DID IT. VERY PEDO-Y, VERY UNCOMFORTABLE, WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A VERY LONG NAP NOW.

Catherine: “Now that I’m not attracted to Bella’s corpse I think I may be in love with her baby.” – Things Jacob Black thinks. 

Annie: Again. HARD PASS.

Upstairs, Jacob hears the beating of the tell-tale heart! JK. It’s Bella’s heart. It’s beating fast like a changing vamp heart.

Wheeeeee, did we make it through this chapter? (M: It doesn’t feel like it.)

Byeeeeeeee.

 

Next time on Breaking Dawn: We head back into Bella’s head for the final half of the book in Chapter 19.