zelda_queen | Breaking Dawn: Chapter 7

Projection Room Voices: Just one more chapter before this section is done. Hang in there.

ZeldaQueen: Thank God. It's not like there can be anything in here that's worse, right? RIGHT?

Projection Room Voices: Playing Media in 3...2...1...

Chapter 7 - Unexpected

ZeldaQueen: Given that Ms Meyer's idea of "foreshadowing" has all of the finesse and subtly of a marching band falling down a flight of steps while performing John Philip Sousa's Liberty March, I find that prospect of something "unexpected" highly unlikely. On the other hand, perhaps it's in relation to the main cast, who have proven themselves to be as gullible as Pinnochio.

Well, the chapter launches us straightaway into Bella's Special Nightmare again, with her trying to protect the pretty vampire baby from the Volturi. The dream ends as she feels her panic turn to "bloodlust" and launches at them while growling. Well, I certainly have no idea where this is going. It's just throwing me on so many loops! (Horray to the NC!)

She wakes up to discover that Edward is not in the house. A note he left explains that he had to go out to find some animals to nom on. Bella grouses about how "big and empty" the house feels without him and goes off to fry some chicken to eat. She's really hungry and starts eating it so quickly that she burns her tongue. Seriously, she's done that for virtually every meal that she's eaten here. When you burn your tongue, it hurts and you can't taste food for days. Meyer, have you ever actually burnt your tongue before? Please try to be more accurate for something. She stops eating halfway through and begins to feel hot and sick. She throws out the chicken and lies on the sofa and oh dearie me I have no idea where this is going.

Edward returns and is all worried about here, just minutes before she races to the bathroom and hurls. She blames this on the chicken being bad. Of course! That's it! It can't be for some other lame reason like...nah, it's got to be the chicken.
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Edward suggests that she go to see a doctor but Bella doesn't want to do that because "Doctors meant needles" Umm...not if you're getting a regular check-up for the flu or food poisoning or whatever one would guess your obviously-not-pregnancy-related health issue is. You get needles if you need a vaccine or a more serious procedure (like surgery), but one would like to think that if you are in that serious of bad health, you'd be more worried about that then being stuck with a pinprick. Ah, what am I saying? This is the same girl who took off the neck brace the paramedics put on her because she thought it looked stupid. She's obviously too dumb to live and would probably last for two seconds without the author favoring her.

To dissuade Edward from taking her to a doctor, Bella goes to take some stomach medicine. While rooting through the toiletry bag for it, she finds something else that Alice had packed for her - a box of tampons. She starts counting and then starts to go into shock as Edward walks in. She tells him that she is five days late for her period. She thus comes to the conclusion that she is pregnant. Wait, wah? Besides the question of how Alice knows when Bella's period is (she's...just really methodical in her packing?) how would Bella jump straight to that conclusion? She says that she's never late, but no one can really be sure. Doesn't it normally take weeks or months before a woman is really certain?

But...this does indeed seem to be the case. She runs off to a mirror, pulls her clothes away from her stomach and sees that she already has a bump showing. After being on the island for two weeks.

GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK!

Bella seems only mildly bothered by the fact that she appears to be a month pregnant after a few weeks and instead starts trying to figure out how she's pregnant at all, since she's only ever slept with Edward and vampires can't have children. After all, haven't Esme and Rosalie been pining away for babies? So then, she figures that a woman's bodies need to make physical changes to conceive and carry the child which an "unchanging" vampire woman's body can't do. She then reasons that a male body doesn't need to make changes to have children, thus vampire men are capable of performing their half of reproduction, but vampire women aren't. Bella, as a human, is still capable and thus is pregnant.

I call time here. First of all, that doesn't make any sense. According to Meyer, all of a vampire's bodily fluids are replaced with venom. This would, presumably, include semen. Meyer has stated that this is true, but that there are different types of venom in the vampire body which mimics the fluid it replaced (so the venom that replaces semen serves a similar purpose, passing on genetic material and the like). That still doesn't change the fact that it's venom. And unless she has specified otherwise, I cannot believe that Bella was not burning down under from said venom sperm. Add in the fact that it's pretty tender down there, and I say shenanigans.

Second of all, it's freaking misogynistic and stupid. Throughout the later part of the series (and especially in this book), Meyer makes it pretty obvious that she's using babies as a symbol of status. The True Love Imprintees of the wolves will be having babies. Esme was made to be sympathetic and pathetic because she lost her baby. Bella has no desire for a baby, yet she is the one who gets one. A special half-human baby which *reads note from the future* is initially believed to be totally unique and the only one ever born. The women in the series who are more powerful or independent than Bella? Rosalie and Leah? They all turn out to be bitter and hateful because they can't have children and are jealous that Bella can. So that rather stupid concept is what Meyer is using to give Bella yet another symbol of status - a baby. But normally, any woman can usually have a baby. So to make sure that Bella is special in that regard, Meyer makes it that virtually all of the female characters in the series are unable to have children. She pulls the plug and redefines vampires solely so that Bella can be the only one to have a baby. The same for the wolves - Leah is frozen age-wise and thus cannot have children. Presumably this is the case with all wolves. And everyone conveniently forgets that Leah can learn to not shape shift and have kids if she wants. In other words, Meyer basically neutered two entire species of mythological females, just to make her avatar look better.

Third of all, I wouldn't trust Bella to raise a stray cat, let alone a baby.

Bella recalls that one day in Twilight when she went vampire searching online - and I already directed you to a person who kindly pointed out the many failings of that search - and recalls the ones she looked up. Oh, and for those of you who recall how she made up the Stregoni benefici? Here, she explains that the entire legend of that one came from Carlisle's exploits from the Volturi in Italy. Which is an obvious butt-pull and makes no sense. The entry talks about them like they're an entire species. One person a species does not make. Also, Carlisle and the Volturi both kept their vampire lives secret. It's hardly like the Volturi publicly went out to eat people and Carlisle stopped them. Perhaps he saved an individual victim who spread the word, but given how the Cullens are apparently just fine with letting other vampires nom on the population of Forks, I find that hard to believe. Anyway, she recalls the ones we heard about her learning about, and some new ones which Meyer was either too lazy to mention before or just made up for now. One of them was the incubus and the succubus, which Bella mentions were used by people to cover infant mortality and infidelity. Technically they're not referred to by name more than once and incubus really were used to explain "unusual" pregnancies, so I have to give Meyer a pass on that one. But like with the Lobishimen, Meyer has screwed things up because incubi are not vampires! They are demons! And again, a ten second search on Google can inform you of this! The first sentence of the incubus entry on Wikipedia tells you this! There is no excuse, Meyer!

Oh, and Bella also figures that Edward's the only vampire male with the self-control to sleep with a woman and not kill her. BITE ME! I find it impossible to believe that with all of the vampires in the world, it doesn't happen more often.

Bella and Edward are standing around, all shocked, when suddenly something happens that gets Bella to feel happy again - she feels the fetus nudge her. Wait, wah? I seem to recall that one can not feel the fetus moving until roughly the fourth month of pregnancy. By that point in time, the mother's stomach is large enough that it's pretty easy to notice. Bella's stomach is apparently still flat enough that she doesn't notice anything different until she moves her clothes off of it. So no way does it look like she's at that point into development.

Well anyway, the phone rings and it's Alice, who seems rather freaked out about something. Bella wonders if she foresaw what just happened, which is stupid because Bella just realized she was pregnant at that moment. Presumably, conception occurred the first or second time they had sex, which was several weeks and a day ago respectively. Since that would have presumably been the defining choice, shouldn't Alice have foreseen this back then? Oh well, it's not like it made any sense before. Why start now? Alice asks how things are going and Bella asks to speak to Carlisle. Before handing the phone to Carlisle, Alice mentions that she foresaw something, but won't say what it was. Bella freaks out:

It felt like ice water had been injected in my veins. If Alice had seen a vision of me with a green-eyed, angel-faced child in my arms, she would have answered me, wouldn't she? While I waited through the split second it took for Carlisle to speak, the vision I'd imagined for Alice danced behind my lids. A tiny, beautiful little baby, even more beautiful than the boy in my dream - a tiny Edward in my arms. Warmth shot through my veins, chasing the ice away.

ZeldaQueen: *rubs head* Okay, this does not compute. Bella has just found out, not an hour ago, that she is pregnant. This is completely unexpected, like if a woman with no uterus finds out that she's pregnant. It just wasn't thought to be possible. And now she has found out that not only is she going to have a baby, but there's obviously something not normal about it. It's growing way too fast. It is also half-vampire, which seems to have never been done before.

So first of all, I'm expected to believe that she's already gotten used to the idea and is having these idyllic dreams about the baby? Give me a break! I can understand a couple getting used to the idea quickly if they were both human and it was a normal pregnancy. But it's not. It's completely out of left field and obviously not normal. They don't know what's going to happen. For all Bella knows, it could end up as a chest-burster. *ducks a note from the future, reads it* Okay, that statement'll be coming back to haunt me. Anyway, in other words, she has something inside of her which is growing in an unknown and unpredictable way and she is not the least bit freaked out.

Second of all, she automatically starts thinking about how "beautiful" the baby will be. Again, it's an unprecedented mutant baby. Doesn't it occur to Bella that a hybrid child isn't going to necessarily be pretty? Apparently, Meyer's "vampires" have 25 chromosomes which is not the same as the 48 that humans have. A half-human vampire child could very well have some sort of genetic problem. For all she knows, it could end up looking like the baby from Eraserhead.

ZeldaQueen: You're welcome. Point is, doesn't any of this occur to Bella? Apparently not, as she has well proven that she has the brains of a trout. Back to the story, Carlisle gets on the phone and of course the first thing she tells him about is how she thinks Edward is in shock. BELLA, YOU ARE THE ONE WITH THE DEMON FETUS IN YOU! EDWARD WILL SURVIVE FOR AN HOUR OR SO WITHOUT YOU FUSSING ABOUT HIM! She's nervous about telling Carlisle about her pregnancy, worried that it's all in her head (of course, she just was eating a few too many eggs and they began kicking her stomach on the way out), but finally spills. Edward manages to come back to life long enough to take the phone from Bella and briefly talk to Carlisle, before hanging up. He says that Carlisle believes that Bella is in fact pregnant (no, you think?) and begins to pack up for them to go home.

Bella is unnerved by how upset Edward is and just stares out the window some. Again, she is very calm considering that she is pregnant with god-knows-what kind of child! If it were me, I'd at least want an ultrasound or something before I felt comfortable. I guess that's a sign that I'm halfway rational. She figures that Edward is so angry because he's worried about the well-being of the baby. Yes, of course! That must be it!

ZeldaQueen: And so she goes off again, daydreaming of the beautiful Edward-baby she believes she'll have, hoping "he would have Edward's face exactly, with no interference from [hers]" That's just...Bella really doesn't see herself as a factor in her family at all, does she? She actually also admits that she never wanted children before now, but all of a sudden she just love's Edward's baby so much and has to have it. Why the flying flip is it always "Edward's" baby? She's carrying the thing! It's just as much her's!

Edward comes back and asks Bella how she feels and assures her that they'll "take care of it". She freaks out and asks what he means and he explains that they'll find some way to remove the fetus before it hurts her. He leaves and Bella is nearly collapsing because she's so scared about the baby and doesn't know how to protect it from Edward and GOD! Tell him you want to have the baby! Or do you think he'd force you to have an abortion? Because if you think he would, you really shouldn't marry such a controlling jerk.

Oh, and the cleaning woman from before comes back under the pretense of bringing dinner, though Bella realizes that it's to make sure she's alright. The woman realizes that Bella's pregnant (erm, how can the cleaning woman see that Bella's pregnant but Bella herself didn't realize that her stomach was all swollen until she found the tampons?) and she begins to argue with Edward in Portuguese. The argument ends with her indicating to Bella's stomach and saying Morte. Well and good and all, but if there has never been vampire/human children before, how would the cleaning lady know about this. We've established before that the vampire that Edward was accused by her of being was not really a vampire and certainly wasn't noted for impregnating women.

Whatever! The woman leaves and Bella hatches her Devious Plan. She waits until Edward leaves, before making a phone call for help...from Rosalie.

And that above just ties in with what I said before, about how Bella and Edward never compromise. Bella never just tells Edward that she wants to keep the baby, she goes behind his back for help (implying that she doesn't believe that he'd take her feelings into account). And Edward never asks Bella what she wants in this mess, he just jumps to the conclusion that she wants the fetus aborted. This chapter is just...I can't believe it.

ZeldaQueen: And now can I have a break?

Projection Room Voices: Good job, take the rest of the evening off. You can start Section 2 tomorrow, with the option to request additional sporking aide.

ZeldaQueen: Yehaw. I need a shower. This chapter left me feeling dirty.

Onward to: Chapter 8: Waiting For The Damn Fight To Start Already (Part 1)

Back to: Chapter 6: Distractions

Return to: Table of Contents