In Which Bella Sleeps With Jacob
SumUp F-
Yeah, straight to SumUp because this is some hardcore BS manipulation by Meyer to create a situation where Bella and Jacob sleep in the same sleeping bag while Edward the cuckold looks on. This is moronic on every. single. conceivable. LEVEL AAAAGH @#$%^&
Remember a whole chapter ago when Alice warned them it was snowing in the mountains? Remember the fact that Bella works at a sporting supply store and that the Cullens are stocked to the rafters with camping gear? Because we start the chapter with Bella freezing to death in a tent at two in the morning. Nobody packed a winter sleeping bag or a heater or heat packs or any of the thousands of other items you can buy to camp in the cold. Hey Edward, a propane tent heater costs less than 100 bucks. They also have these little chemical-packs that produce heat for a few hours. They cost a dollar each. Instead of buying that new motorcycle, you could have bought a few thousand and your girlfriend wouldn't be freezing to death in front of you. You could have built a mattress out of them. With barely a hiccup in your family fortune you could have constructed an IGLOO out of heating packs and cans of Sterno.
Oh, and Edward is afraid to breathe on her. You don't breathe, idiot. Maybe if the author was keeping note instead of setting up this ludicrous situation to get Jacob and Bella into bed together.
But the Cullens don't have to worry about the cold, so they'd forget. No, no they wouldn't. They don't take tents on their hunts, I'd wager. They don't sleep, remember? So if they're going to sit down and figure out what Bella needs on Mount Iceberg, the tent is just the first of a dozen things they'd have to remember. Why pack a crap sleeping bag if Alice knew and told them it was going to be freezing? If they're buying camping gear, they at least have to understand the mechanics so they don't buy idiotic gear. These people are supposed to LOVE this girl and they sent her into the snow with flip-flops and silk sheets?
So Jacob shows up with a PARKA and climbs into the tent. Obvious plan A: have him wear the parka for a minute and then put it on her. Problem solved. Plan B: Have him climb into the sleeping bag WITHOUT Bella and warm it up. Plan C: Go werewolf an lay next to her when you're not a shirtless teenager. Or a hundred other ways he could warm the tent without climbing into bed with her.
But that's not what Meyer wants. She wants a shirtless Jacob to climb into bed with Bella so they can cuddle while Edward watches. It's ridiculous in the extreme. Meyer schemed to set this up. Period. This isn't something the characters would have done, Meyer wanted the readers to coo and giggle about Jacob sleeping with Bella, so she constructed a flimsy and transparent plot to make it happen. All respect I might have had for this series has long since left, but I really wasn't that far into outright hatred and loathing. I just moved a few notches in that direction, though.
Once we've established the sex scene, we move on to cheating the narrative. I complained bitterly about Meyer cheating the First Person Narrator with things like Psychic powers, but now we go even further. While Bella is dozing, Edward and Jacob have a long conversation. Meyer wants the reader to hear this conversation, but Jacob and Edward are never going to have it in front of Bella. So what do we get?
"I was too far gone to ask them to stop talkign about me"
"the conversation had taken on a dreamlike quality to me, and I wasn't sure I was really awake"
"What a strange dream it was"
"... this whispered dream"
That, ladies and gents, is cheating. Bald, unrepentant, lazy cheating by Ms. Meyer. She wants her cake (the ease of writing and stylistic immediacy of a first person narrative) and wants to eat it (having a conversation outside the narrator's hearing). Now it's not like it never happens, people eavesdrop or find other ways to hear a conversation about themselves, but Meyer can't be bothered to work this out. After all, she's gone through all the trouble of having the whole sordid love triangle in this tent! Why waste such a perfect opportunity? So we get a whole chapter of not-sleeping Bella hearing intimate details about her boyfriends.
So what topics do Jacob and Edward cover while sitting/laying next to Bella? Bella, of course. They both love her. They don't want to lose her. There's some great character insight, and it's impossible. No teen boys are going to sit around and calmly discuss how much they love a girl with a rival. This is some bizarre, narcissistic fantasy world where hot guys talk frankly about intimate feelings within hearing distance of the girl they both love. Edward describes the blindingly obvious logic of turning Bella into a vampire. Jacob pushes him to see that Bella would be better off with a less immortal boyfriend. They agree to disagree. Riiiiiight.
Edward also give Jacob explicit permission to continue trying to woo Bella. The stalker gets permission from the boyfriend. The FIANCEE no less. Sinclair's garters... the hell... I don't even...
Ugh.
They also realize that Bella is planning to try and help, which of course they won't allow because that would make her something other than a damsel in distress.
I just... whatever.
F-
Zero points.
No, this gets negative points. This is horrible. This is irredeemable tripe.
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