Midnight Sun Chapter 4

I went back to school. This was not the right thing to do, the most inconspicuous way to behave.

Really? I would say one of the least inconspicuous things you’ve done is continually attend high school. That’s probably one of those things you should skip if you want to remain undercover. I mean, if you’re really not that concerned about being covert, why not walk around wearing a t-shirt with a picture of bloody fangs captioned with “I like to bite” while drinking a chilled cup of Type O?

Eddie notes that some people have elected not to show up, using the accident as an excuse to ditch. What? Otis, did you ever skip class? I did and I never, ever, needed an excuse. ‘Well, I was going to go to Algebra but I heard someone I don’t really know wasn’t seriously hurt recently. Now, I’m taking the week off.’ Bella must be damned important if everyone grieves over her little boo boo. Which completely contradicts the author’s statements that she’s perfectly normal. Ed wanted to ditch too but he’s so perfect that he can overcome the desire and continue school. Plus he already has a ton of unexcused absences that line up with the annual sunny days of forks(an average of 131 per year).

Like a stalker. An obsessed stalker. An obsessed, vampire stalker.

Really Otis? An obsessed stalker? As opposed to the casual stalker that shows up in blue jeans and a Hawaiian shirt because it’s casual Friday? We already knew all this, his stalking was, perhaps, the one, single thing you dared let us infer, you stupid twit. And stop being redundant.

The floor was green. A deep, verdant shade of emerald that could settle down and feel right at home amongst a well groomed lawn. And like a lawn, it was beneath him. Beneath as in below, not lacking in class. It was a somewhat classy floor being as it was comprised of thousands of tiny blades of grass. On further consideration, he thought it might, in fact, be a lawn. Unless the weather had decided to take a brief holiday and rain inside for once and, just to make things interesting, the crickets had come along.

That’s being redundant for the sake of humor. Your’s, Otis, is being redundant because you love reiterating things we already know! ‘Edward is hot. Edward is hot, rawwrk! Otis want a book deal! Rawrrk! Otis want a book deal!’

Then Ed starts trying to rationalize saving Bella. ‘I had to save her. If she’d been crushed by the van and started bleeding I might have started licking it off the ground like a dog. And we all know that dogs are the most disgusting animals in existence outside of wolves, of course. No, better to save her for later so that I may enjoy my drink in peace.’

Everyone asks Ed how Bella and Tyler are doing. Because Ed, while not as important as Bella Ugly-Duckling, is still more important than anyone else. They figure that he must have a near direct line to the great harpy in the sky with the typewriter.

Ed goes to meet Bella, I think. It’s not very clear. One minute Ed is thinking about how he always beats Emmett at wrestling and the next Ed is talking to Bella. They prattle on about her name, her bloody god damned name, for a it. ‘I prefer Bella but no one wants to call me by my special name, ugh I am tortured.’ Bella noticed that Ed called her that unlike everyone else, i.e. the boring dumb people, who calls her Isabella. No, Bella is in no way a Mary Sue, why do you ask?

Let’s see, Ed runs out of air and has to inhale and thus smell Bella. ‘It burns!’ And then they do the retarded slide examination scene. He touches her and, what does he feel? Is it revulsion because the thought of bestiality disgusts him? Is it panic because he’s going to leave a bruise on her and have to talk to the police? Or is it an “electric shock”? Of course it’s like touching a bare two twenty line. How else do you know it’s love?

Ed then detects Mike wishing Ed would go away and Ed feels the same way. Ed chooses that moment to wax about Bella’s beauty. See, she’s beautiful in a different way. She’s “interesting”. She has a narrow chin, wide cheekbones and an asymmetrical face. All I can manage to picture is either a fruit bat or a gargoyle in a wig. Either way, it’s a little late to start adding character detail.

They do their little lab experiment and Ed quickly gets bored by the world. Hmm, what to do, old chap? Catalogue those bones you dug up a century ago? Maybe do some more work on that thesis you’ve been working on? Oh, you’re going to read the minds of your family because you don’t trust them.

Out of left field, Ed starts talking about fighting Jasper and defending Bella. What? Oh, I see what you’re doing here, Otis. You want to try and whitewash Ed even more than he already is. So you’re going to try and throw the one likable character under the bus and show us all that Ed is really the defender of weak, fragile Bella. Go ahead, that only makes me like Jasper more.

Ed then says Jasper is the best fighter among them but that he has the advantage of mind reading. Well, therein lies the problem, Otis. See, if Jasper has as much practice as I think he does then his fighting style isn’t thought out. He doesn’t have to think ‘oh, now I should punch him in the face’, he just does it. Jasper can probably fight while wrapped in a mental state of sweet nothingness and Ed will be desperately trying to fend off someone he can’t predict.

The Cullens have a big meeting at their dining table and Ed realizes that he’s willing to fight them all for Bella. Which is supposed to show how much he’s in love but what it really does is show us that this man has absolutely no loyalty to anyone.

Blah blah blah, Ed is talking about running away for a bit. No, says Rose, that won’t do. Carl says they could all just leave, they’ve left rumors behind before. Ed starts yelling how they’ve never left eyewitnesses and evidence behind. What evidence? I don’t know about you Otis, but a single anecdote isn’t enough to prove there are vampires.

That Carlisle, a medical doctor who should know enough about basic science to understand this, and the rest for that matter, should panic over the thought of an unreliable witness is stupid. It’s more than stupid, it’s contrived. If one witness was enough to start a serious investigation, I could make a living claiming I saw a dragon living in the swamps of Louisiana. Heck, maybe I can. Let me just file this federal grant application…nope, they want something more concrete than my hearsay.

They bicker for a second and then Alice steps in and asks Jasper, or “Jazz” as she calls him only in this installment, to not kill Bella. Apparently Alice can see the future where her and Bella are going to be BFFs and that meanAlicewould be upset if she died. Or rather, her future self would be upset, except she’ll never have known Bella and so she won’t have been friends so it’s really the potential to be friends. And why wouldAlice want to befriend someone because her future vision told her? Wouldn’t that be disincentive because it smacks of predestined future? Or maybe I’m the only one that would try bucking the system.

Alice has some sort of vision which she hides from Ed for a second but then he catches a glimpse of it. Then he pays spectacular homage to Darth Vader when he shouts “no!” a couple of times. And then we get hit with it, WHAM!, their love is predestined. Ed pretends like he’ll fight it and Alice tells him to just try. Yes Ed, try and fight the puppeteer’s strings that Otis wrapped around you. They were so light you never felt more than the merest tug. But now, now that you want to fight her desire she tightens them. It’s too late for you to do anything more than go through the motions and hope she’ll allow you to die.

Emmett laughs at Ed for being destined to fall in love with a human. See, Emmett once had sex with a gyro when he was a human and desperate and Ed has given him crap about it for the last fifty years. Now Emmett gets to return the favor, forever.

Ed stomps off, angry that he’ll never get to see his play on Broadway now that a girl has come into his life. Then he reveals the vision that Alice had, it was her and Bella hugging only they’re both clearly immortal.

If it’s preordained then why the hell did we have to suffer through four books and five movies, Otis?! Why no make it a nice and neat trilogy that has better pacing and then you can pretend the lack of character development is because so much happens? It’s because you’re a damned hack, Otis. I hope your claws dislodge the Q key as you’re blindly pawing at the typewriter and chokes you to death. I can see the headline now, ‘Q slightly less useless today.’