New Moon Chapter 05 – Anti-Human

Previously: Bella walked towards some skeevy guys and heard Edward’s voice in her head.
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Marines: Now would be a good a time as any to link you to this interesting thing Meyer wrote about New Moon (spoiler warning) just in case you’ve never seen it. Basically, she talks about talking to the characters in her head, and how she wanted them to do things, but they said no.

My favorite part was:

“NO! I didn’t want Edward to leave. I pitched a fit every bit as violent and tearful as those I’ve seen in New Moon discussion forums. I tried to talk him out of it. I presented him with other plot options. I begged. Edward remained unmoved.”

My least favorite part was:

“Side note: there are those who think Bella is a wuss. There are those who think my stories are misogynistic—the damsel in distress must be rescued by strong hero.

To the first accusation, I can only say that we all handle grief in our own way. Bella’s way is no less valid than any other to my mind. Detractors of her reaction don’t always take into account that I’m talking about true love here, rather than high school infatuation.

I emphatically reject the second accusation. I am all about girl power—look at Alice and Jane if you doubt that. I am not anti-female, I am anti-human.”

I might be jumping the gun here but:

1- Your stories are misogynistic for many more reasons than just Bella being a damsel in distress.

2- We already have and will continue to poke fun at this book for its depiction of Bella’s grief. I get that breakups are awful and you can even find videos on YouTube about why they cause physical pain (scientifically!). I’ve been there. You’ve probably been there. NONE OF THAT changes the fact that we are experiencing the poorly written grief of two of the most annoying and useless characters ever created, who also spent like 6 months barely liking each other and duck face kissing so give me a MF break.

3- “Detractors of her reaction don’t always take into account that I’m talking about true love here, rather than high school infatuation.”

GIRL, WHAT.

NO.

HONEY.

HOW OLD ARE YOU?

4- The existence of Alice and whoever the hell Jane is do not make Bella any less of a damsel in distress. And just because you have a couple of side characters not encompassing every weak female stereotype ever doesn’t make you a feminist. So, please stop. Try again. Try better reasons.

5- “I am not anti-female, I am anti-human.”

WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN.

STEPHENIE, HONEY, YOU ARE A HUMAN? I THINK? WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Annie: You know, it would explain SO MUCH if SMeyer wasn’t actually human. Like her inability to understand how faces work. Or how relationships work. Or how people work.

Catherine: Haha! Ha…..oh, wait, is she serious? Holy shit.

For the record, Jane get’s introduced in this book and she’s basically a psychotic baby so…not like, a great female role model. 

Kirsti: I’m laughing so hard that I can’t breathe. This entire thing is so fucking awful, and that anti-human line is the blowfly on a cake made of bullshit.

Mari: Okay, sorry. I got sidetracked. I was saving that link up. I hope this is a short chapter. (K: Don’t be sorry. It was glorious.)

We start with Bella at work and Mike is like, “you can just go home, trust me.” Bella tells us that she hadn’t been numb lately and the world is too loud for her. She’s probably shouting like you do when you have headphones on, which explains why Mike is like, “FFS, GO HOME.”

There are two customers in the shop talking about big bears and I have absolutely no idea why we should care, but I appreciate the opportunity to bring up Youth Mauling Bear again. Eat them all YMB!

Annie: It’s because Stephenie is trying to introduce plot before chapter 21 this time around. Very sneaky, Steph.

K: Meanwhile, I’m too busy being grossed out about the fact that one of the customers has a face that’s “tanned and wind-whipped into an impressive leathery crust.” LEATHERY CRUST. He’s like an overcooked pie. 

Mari: A skin pie. Ew.

On the way home, Bella tells us how she wakes up screaming from a reoccurring nightmare every night: she’s searching for something until she figures out there’s nothing to search for. #deep

Catherine: It’s a metaphor for us and this book. (M: True and it can often feel like a nightmare.)

K: How the fuck has Charlie not staged an intervention when his daughter is waking up screaming EVERY FUCKING NIGHT FOR MONTHS??

Mari: #plot

Bella keeps driving around aimlessly and reminds us for the second time in as many pages that she can’t feel numb anymore. She doesn’t want to think about things that will hurt her, but since the entire four months Edward was gone amounted to empty pages, she literally has nothing else to think about. She remembers his words about how it will be like he never existed, but she’s bummed because as she thinks those words they “[lack] the perfect clarity of my hallucination last night.”

Yes, friends, she’s bummed about NOT hallucinating.

Bella has to pull over because she’s too emoshuns to drive.

“I curled over, pressing my face against the steering wheel and trying breathe without lungs.” 

We should keep an ongoing list of things that happen to girls who are lol-totally-not damsels in distress when their boyfriends break up with them:

1. You go into the woods to die
2. Break-up comas
3. The moon disappears
4. You start to hear really angry velvet in your head
5. Your lungs disappear, but somehow, you gotta figure out how to breathe

Rough.

Catherine: IDK, I’d love a nice break-up coma right now. Sounds relaxing. 

Mari: Maybe we’re working you too hard, Katy.

Bella thinks about how years from now she might be able to look at these 6 months when she was 17 as the happiest of her life. She thinks how dumb it was that Edward took his pictures and gifts because they won’t erase how he ~*changed*~ her. On the inside.

“Even my outsides looked different- my face sallow, white except for the purple circles the nightmares had left under my eyes. My eyes were dark enough against my pallid skin that- if I were beautiful, and seen from a distance- I might even passed for a vampire. But I was not beautiful, and I probably looked closer to a zombie.”

The Ongoing List of Things That Happen to Girls Who Are LOL-Totally-Not Damsels in Distress When Their Boyfriends Break Up With Them:

1. You go into the woods to die
2. Break-up comas
3. The moon disappears
4. You start to hear really angry velvet in your head
5. Your lungs disappear, but somehow, you gotta figure out how to breathe
6. Maybe you’d turn into a vampire, but you are too ugly, so you are actually a zombie

Bella then starts banging her head against the steering wheel to distract herself from the other pain and my dear, dear girl: get some help, please.

K: Seriously. The rage-filled Post-It I stuck to the page says “Bella, honey. You need medical and psychiatric care, ASAP.”

Mari: I think I missed something because apparently Bella views Edward’s “it’ll be like I never existed” as a promise on his part…? Like he promised it would be like he never existed, but that’s not true because he’s all Bella thinks about ever, so he broke his promise…?

Okay, girl, that doesn’t make sense to me, but you go with it. Since Edward broke his “promise,” Bella decides it’s way dumb to keep her promise of being safe and not killing herself, or whatever. Bella laughs to herself, but she still doesn’t have any lungs (#5 you guys) so she’s gasping for air. Apparently, darkly laughing to herself about how dumb it is to not be reckless makes her feel better, and she calms down.

Bella says that to be reckless in Forks would take a lot of creativity. GIRL. Since you got here you’ve almost got hit by a van, eaten by your boyfriend, eaten by your boyfriend’s family, I’m pretty sure you almost died in gym class like 54 times, you tripped in the forest during a field trip and then almost died in the forest like a hot chapter ago. GIVE ME A BREAK. JUST GO OUTSIDE AND WAIT A MINUTE. YOU’LL PROBABLY ALMOST DIE.

Annie: Fingers crossed! Get to it, girl. Put us out of our misery!

Catherine: There is a ‘bear’ running around, so…

K: Failing that, she could just go play on the highway.

Mari: Whatever. This BS about how Bella will feel better if she breaks her part of the promise keeps going on and on. Also, when Bella said she was driving around “aimlessly” she really meant “recklessly” because she just realizes where she is and doesn’t even know how she got there. Right now, she’s at the corner of Contrivance and DANGER because the house she’s in front of is selling a motorcycle. Bella goes on for a paragraph about kismet and fate, maybe to distract us from contrivance and haaaate.

Also, I thought maybe we had a motorcycle tag because of that one time Throat Punch Todd got a motorcycle on Sweet Valley High, but Elizabeth wasn’t allowed to ride it because if she did she would probably lose her virginity and get herpes and die (or whatever), but then she rode it and crashed and went into a coma, BUT it turns out out our only motorcycle tag is from that one time Spike motorcycled to Africa. So.

K: I listened to a sample of an audiobook read by James Marsters the other day and just the sound of his voice caused me to dry heave, so I think it’s safe to say that reminders of that one time Spike motorcycled to Africa are still a big fat NOPE where I’m concerned. Season 6 continues to be my Battle of Serenity Valley, it would seem.

Mari: Adulthood trauma.

Bella decides that maybe this wasn’t kismet, but there are all kinds of ways to be reckless, and now she’s seeing them. WHY DOES ANY OF THIS MATTER? Why is Stephenie trying so hard to convince us that Bella buying a motorcycle and being reckless is totally something she’d do. It just does not require this much explanation. Here:

“Edward told me to be careful, but I didn’t want to.”

BOOM.

Catherine: Or just, “I’m a teenager and my hormones are crazy and sometimes I do dumb things”. Like, we get it, Meyer. No explanation needed. 

Mari: Oh my god, she spends the next page talking about how reckless and stupid motorcycles are and how Charlie gets called to the scene of traffic accidents all the time and OF COURSE Charlie made Bella promise way-back-when never to ride a motorcycle. Of course.

Bella finally gets out of her truck and goes up to the house to ask about the price for the bike. The boy who answers tells her to take both the bikes for free because they don’t work. Kid helps her load them into her truck and asks what she’s going to do with it. She mentions taking them to someone named Dowling.

“He snorted. “Dowling would charge you more to fix them than they’d be worth running.”
I couldn’t argue with that. John Dowling had earned a reputation for his pricing; no one went to him except in an emergency.” 

Bella starts thinking about how she’s never had trouble with Wow. Free. Truck because Jacob kept it in such good shape. Light Bulb!

She drives away all happy and goes home to call her dad and ask directions to the Black’s place. He happily gives them, probably thinking his daughter wants to socialize with someone for purely unselfish reasons. Ahahahahaha. 

Annie: Proving how little Charlie knows his terrible, horrible daughter because she is the wooooorst. The worst. She doesn’t do unselfish. 

Mari: Bella continues to be a menace on the roads that can only think of Edward while she’s driving. She gets to Jacob’s house and he comes out to greet her all jovially. And then Meyer does a thing I HATE in literature:

“His excited grin stretched wide across his face, the bright teeth standing in vivid contrast to the deep russet color of his skin.” 

Nooo, authors, please stop describing non-white skin tone in contrast to white teeth. STOP. You really, really don’t have to tell us how brown or black a thing is BY TELLING US HOW NOT WHITE IT IS. I hate it. If she calls his skin tone any kind of food item, I’m out of here.

Catherine: I can’t remember if she uses a food item but she uses the word ‘russet’ a lot. A lot a lot. 

K: The white teeth brown skin thing is terrible and it needs to stop. Also, that’s a horrifying description of a grin, and it makes me think of that guy who cosplayed as the Joker a few years ago and the internet lost its shit over him:

Mari: Anyway. Bella tells us that Jacob still has his wig, but now he’s got muscles too. Also, she’s really surprised because she smiles at him genuinely and is actually happy to see him. When she rushed over here to ask for his labor, she wasn’t sure if she would be happy to see him.

Honestly, she’s shocked.

“I realized that I was pleased to see him. This knowledge surprised me.
I smiled back, and something clicked silently into place, like two corresponding puzzle pieces. I’d forgotten how much I really liked Jacob Black.” 

I never forget how much I hate Bella Swan.

Jacob takes her inside and Billy is really nice to her. Meanwhile, Bella just keeps being shocked at how nice this is, but also doesn’t let us forget that she’s here to use Jacob. Luckily, Jacob was just about to work on his car, so Bella joins him in the garage.

Jacob talks about his progress on the car his dad got him last spring and Bella halts the conversation because spring has the month of May and prom happened in May and Edward was at the prom so we can’t mention the spring.

Figuring 1 minute into this visit is a good enough time, Bella asks Jacob about fixing the bikes for her and keeping it a secret. He agrees. Bella offers him the second bike in exchange for lessons as well. She asks if he’s old enough to drive it and Jacob jokes about how Bella missed his birthday (he’s 16 now) but it’s cool because he missed hers too. He says they can have a joint party to make up for it and Bella calls it a date, and then regrets her enthusiasm. She doesn’t want to give Jacob the wrong idea.

I think she means about having feelings for him but it’s possible she means that she likes him or fun or dates or laughter or happiness or life.

K: Meanwhile, I’m over here in a place where you can’t get your probationary licence until you’re 18 and when you’re on your learner’s permit, you have to have a fully licenced driver in the car with you at all times, so LITERALLY NONE OF THIS WOULD BE PLAUSIBLE. 

Mari: They’re in Washington, though, girl. So it goes.

They sneak the bikes out of Bella’s truck and into the garage. Bella gives Jacob the better looking bike and offers to pay for all of the parts out of her college fund. She won’t need college anymore because education is useless if you don’t have true love, I guess.

Annie: Or if you’re dead. To me, my whole read on this situation was Bella’s lack of self-preservation and will to live. She wanted to ride the bikes, because motorcycles=death to her. Or maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part, because I just want Bella to go away.

Mari: The Ongoing List of Things That Happen to Girls Who Are LOL-Totally-Not Damsels in Distress When Their Boyfriends Break Up With Them:

1. You go into the woods to die
2. Break-up comas
3. The moon disappears
4. You start to hear really angry velvet in your head
5. Your lungs disappear, but somehow, you gotta figure out how to breathe
6. Maybe you’d turn into a vampire, but you are too ugly, so you are actually a zombie
7. You can’t go to college, maybe because you are dead.

Anyway, Bella ends the chapter by thinking about how convenient it is that Jacob was so accepting of all her secrecy and nonsense. She calls Jacob a gift from the gods and we all knows she means The Great Contrivance Spirit.

K: Aww. Welcome back, old friend. How we haven’t missed you.

 

Next time on New Moon: Bella meets Jacob’s friends in Chapter 06.