The Madness Continues, New Moon Review 6

Yes, folks, it’s true. I’m back. I took a sanity break from these reviews and if I’m being perfectly honest, I’m not sorry I made you wait so long for this one. I could say I was, but I’d be lying. Taking a break from this series has been so wonderful and it took all of my strength to pick this book back up again. I’ve got a few new readers, so shout out to them. Be sure to share this blog with everyone you can. If I’m gonna give myself a public lobotomy, I at least want a large audience to make it worthwhile. Now, onto the review, shall we?

*Just a reminder/tip, a lot of the pictures I post are animated GIFs, but for some reason half of them don’t move if you’re on a computer. If it looks like it ought to move and isn’t, just click on it to see it properly.*

New Moon, chapter 6: Friends

First of all, I want to say that, while I hadn’t exactly forgotten how big of an asshole Bella was, I’d forgotten what it was like to have to be in her stupid, self-involved head all the time. God I hate her so much. So. Fucking. Much.

So we left off with Bella at Jacob’s place with the bikes. If you’ll recall, she bought a couple of motorbikes with the intent of putting herself in danger. Because that’ll show Edward…The chapter starts off in Jacob’s garage, where he’s deconstructing the bikes to assess how much work they’ll require. As usual, he’s perfectly pleasant. Also as usual, Bella is an asshole.

“While he worked, Jacob chattered happily, needing only the lightest of nudges from me to keep the conversation rolling.”

How condescending is that? She’s treating Jacob like a plate spinning on a pole. She just sits back and watches the plate spin, giving it a little nudge here and there to keep it spinning. He’s not a person to her, he’s a tool.

Jacob, who has no idea that Bella couldn’t give two shits about anyone but herself, happily talks on about himself and his friends, somehow genuinely enjoying his time with her. Before long, the two friends he’d been telling her about show up. Because Stephenie Meyer is a fucking hack writer, each one of them embodies one of only two male personality types found in this series; one is skinny and awkward and shy; the other is huge, muscular, and immediately hits on Bella. But Meyer isn’t done yet. Oh, no. She takes the gender stereotypes even further when she has the boys go gaga over the bikes.

“Many of the words were unfamiliar to me, and I figured I’d have to have a Y chromosome to really understand the excitement.”

I am so tired of the sexism in these books. Meyer, your limited understanding of the world, particularly gender roles, is astounding. Not surprising given your Mormon background, but astounding nonetheless. I have a Y chromosome and couldn’t give two shits about cars, nor do I understand more than three words of care repair terms. And there are PLENTY of women who are into that shit. Auto repair is not a gender-specific interest, you stupid, ignorant bint. Welcome to the 21^st fucking century, Stephenie.

After a few minutes, Bella decides to go home and leave those with the Y chromosomes to their fun. As she walks back to her truck, she comes to a startling revelation.

“I was enjoying myself—how strange.”

No, Bella, it’s really not strange. That’s how you’re supposed to be around friends who treat you well. Everything you feel around Edward is wrong, dumbass. Bella has a genuinely good time hanging out with Jacob. She smiles and laughs and even comments that she’s not faking it. What twisted message is Meyer trying to send here? I mean, she’s framing this new relationship as healthy and good, so she obviously knows how to write one. And obviously we know Bella will eventually get back with Edward. Meyer has gone out of her way to show the stark differences between Bella’s relationships with Jacob and Edward. She’s clearly painted Jacob’s in a positive light and Edward’s in a negative one. So why the fuck is she still going to have Bella get back with Edward? Oh, I remember. Because Meyer is in love with Edward and since Bella is a fictionalized version of Meyer, she has to be with Edward. Because of reasons.

Also, someone please go back through all my reviews and count up all the dashes Meyer uses. It’s completely absurd. And I promise you, this is just a random sampling, so the actual number she uses in her text is far bigger.

So Bella and Jacob make plans to start shopping for parts the next day and she goes home to cook dinner for Charlie. Charlie asks about her day and as usual, we’re subjected to the special brand of assholery Bella reserves just for her father.

“The interrogation had to stop when Charlie began chewing, but he continued to study my face as he ate.”

Bella, asking about your day is not a fucking interrogation, it’s conversation. What is your problem? It’s like your ideal day is one where no one looks at you, talks to you, or makes any sort of acknowledgement that you even exist.

For some reason, she starts stalling to avoid going to bed. I think it’s because she’s afraid of having the nightmare again. It’s dumb. She says she cleans the kitchen twice. How the fuck do you clean the kitchen twice? I can’t even call Bella dumb for this one; this moron award goes to Stephenie Meyer. Also, hack points for using the word “dither” seriously.

“As I climbed the stairs, I felt the last of the afternoon’s abnormal sense of wellbeing drain from my system, replaced by a dull fear at the thought of what I was going to have o live through now.

“I wasn’t numb anymore. Tonight would, no doubt, be as horrific as last night. I lay down on my bed and curled into a ball in preparation for the onslaught.”

SHUT UP, BELLA! Jesus! I feel like Meyer was going for this:

But ended up with this:

I just want to strangle Bella. Get over it already! It has been FOUR MONTHS. Shut up shut up SHUT UUUUUUUUUUP!

She’s surprised to wake up the next morning well-rested and without having the nightmare. And she’s still mulling over how not terrible it was to hang out with Jacob the previous day. She’s genuinely surprised that she enjoys spending time with him. Has she never had a friend before? I mean, that’s how you’re supposed to feel when you have friends, so I can only infer from this that Jacob is her first real friend.

“I hadn’t forgotten the reason for what I was doing. And, even though I was enjoying myself more than I’d thought possible, there was no lessening of my original desire. I still wanted to cheat.”

And there Meyer goes, reminding us that Bella is just a manipulative asshole who is using Jacob to get back at Edward, who isn’t even there to witness her acting stupid. God she’s the worst fictional person ever created. She found someone who makes her happy, far happier than Edward ever did. She was obsessed with Edward. She enjoys Jacob. I really don’t understand why she’s still so hell-bent on “cheating” when she’s actually happy now. Not even romantically happy. Just enjoying life. Jacob makes her smile and laugh and not feel bad about herself. Bella has even said how much she loves that he doesn’t seem to judge her or look at her like she’s a crazy person or a screw up. Since she started hanging out with him, she’s in a good place. So why the fuck is she still going to try to put herself in danger? She’s such a moron. HOW IS SHE A SYMPATHETIC CHARACTER?!

So Bella and Jacob go out and scrounge for parts and, once again, Bella has a great time. Aside from that, nothing terribly exceptional happens. They make plans to hang out the next day and Bella goes home. And then we get another Stephenie Meyer classic scene where she has Bella narrate every last fucking detail of reading an email from her mother and responding. If you were to trim out the unnecessary narration and just have the meat of the story in these books, I swear they’d be half as long as they are now. So much of this series is just filler bullshit and it’s such an indication of Meyer’s poor writing skills. It makes for really fucking tedious reading and I sorta just want to kill myself when it happens.

She goes to bed that night and, because Meyer hates her own characters, she has Bella have the nightmare again. There’s no reason given. She’s still happy  and she hadn’t been thinking of Edward. But it gives Bella the opportunity to bitch about how of course she couldn’t go two nights in a row without waking up screaming because her life is just so awful. Ugh.

It’s now Monday and she goes to school for the first time with a clear head. Suddenly, she comes to the startling realization that she isn’t the center of the universe. She notices that no one is paying her any attention whatsoever.

“It was like I wasn’t there. Even my teachers’ eyes slid past my seat as if it were empty.”

Gee, could that be because you’ve been completely ignoring everyone for the last four months, Bella? You think that could be why no one gives a shit about you anymore? Maybe if you hadn’t been ignoring them like an asshole, they wouldn’t be ignoring you now.

At lunch, she has the balls to not just sit with her friends but try to interact with them AS IF NOTHING AT ALL WERE OUT OF THE ORDINARY.

“‘Hey Jess,” I said with put-on nonchalance. “How was the rest of your weekend?’

“She looked at me with suspicious eyes. Could she still be angry? Or was she just too impatient to deal with a crazy person?”

Bella, here is a bag of dicks. I invite you to eat them.

It has been two fucking days since you were awful to your supposed best friend. Yeah, she’s still angry, especially since you haven’t bothered to apologize at all. And you have the nerve to call her impatient? Really? You ignore her for four months, manipulate her into going out with you just to get your father off your back, and act like a complete twat while you’re out and you’re judging her for not being happy to see you?

She goes to class after lunch and not only are all of her friends apparently in class with her, but everyone is just talking to each other. Not sure where the teacher is or why there’s no class going on, but since when does anything in Meyer’s world have to make sense? Here we come across another instance of Meyer technically using a word correctly, but it’s such an uncommonly used word that it was clearly only used to make her sound smarter than she really is.

“…the chair squealed stridently against the linoleum…”

Not loudly, not noisily, stridently. Because I guess “vociferously” would have been too much? I don’t even know.

So Bella is sitting there listening in on everyone’s conversations trying to catch up on the four months she was mentally on vacation and she starts realizing how much everyone has changed. The girls in her group have radically altered their hair styles and Bella, who has sat with them every single day of those four months, is only just now realizing. She has no idea when it happened. She’s that self-absorbed. I’m sorry, but here again we see Meyer exaggerating things way beyond real life. I’m sorry, but if one of the girls in your little group chops off all her hair, you notice. No matter what is going on in your life, you notice that shit. It’s so unrealistic that Bella has been in such a fog for four months that she’s literally missed everything that’s gone on around her. Gimme a fucking break.

She hears Angela mention seeing a “bear” and Lauren, the resident bitchmeister, laughs and makes fun of her. This is the moment Bella chooses to jump into the conversation and it’s about as awkward as you can imagine. She mentions that she overheard those two hiker’s talking about a huge bear and turns to Mike for backup. Everyone sort of just stares at her like she has a dick for a nose, which I found a bit over-exaggerated as well. But he eventually confirms that it’s true and everyone just went back to their conversations.

Obviously these “bears” are meant to be werewolves. I honestly don’t know how people who see them think they’re bears since bears and wolves look literally nothing alike. At all. Whatsoever. But I guess the people of Forks, Washington are all just fucking morons that way or something.

Angela thanks Bella for sticking up for her to Lauren and Bella has another Asshole of the Year-worthy narration when Angela asks her if she’s okay (that bitch).

“This is why I’d picked Jessica over Angela—though I’d always liked Angela more—for the girls’ night movie. Angela was too perceptive.”

Bella, you are the biggest piece of shit in the history of assholes. Not only are you shamelessly admitting (albeit in narration) that you use specific people for specific reasons, but you admit that you don’t even really like Jessica, your supposed best friend, as much as Angela. God, you are such a cold and calculating bitch, manipulating everyone you touch. Everyone serves a purpose for you. You’re such a terrible person, I can’t even stand it. You really do deserve every horrible thing that has happened to you and will happen to you before this awful series is over.

This chapter was just such shit, you guys. Not only didn’t it really press the plot on (because if every chapter did that, these books would be three chapters long apiece), but it somehow even further cemented Bella as the single biggest asshole in literary creation. It was nothing but her manipulating people and showing us just how self-involved she is and then being flabbergasted that anyone might not welcome her back with open arms after the last four months. More than ever, I hate Bella Swan.