This video is sponsored by Raycon.
Hello my Beautiful Watchers and welcome back to Twilight breaking Dom, my review series
covering the original Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer.
Sigh, you might have understandably thought that because this was the last book we were
nearly done with this debacle.
Well surprise we’re not.
Before I explain I fear I must apologize to Twilight fans in advance.
At the start of these reviews I desperately wanted to try to avoid going nuclear on these
books and becoming yet another critic who makes you feel bad for liking them, especially
after so many of you were really helpful when I asked for input on what made you a fan…
But uh I just can’t pretend like I’m not horrified by these books anymore.
Though maybe this won't upset as many of you as I fear as I’m given to understand this
book is considered pretty off the rails even by lovers of the series as a whole.
It's usually listed as the culprit by people who drifted away from the fandom.
Breaking Dawn is the fourth and final book in the Twilight saga, published in 2008.
As I mentioned in episodes past, Meyer’s original plan was for Twilight to be a stand
alone work then just for personal satisfaction reasons she wrote an extensive epilogue novel
called Forever Dawn with no intention of publishing it.
After the success of Twilight and the sequel books Meyer converted the existing Forever
Dawn story into Breaking Dawn and claims to have changed very little, just a few updates
to take into account the events she had now written into New Moon and Eclipse like Jacob's
much larger role in the story.
It is the single longest book in the series, capping off at 756 pages compared to Twilight’s
498.
I’m not sure if this is due to the length or the reason for it but the book is split
up into three semi distinct stories which to my mild confusion are also referred to
as books.
Books one and three are told from Bella’s perspective but book two follows my former
lad Jacob.
If that sounds almost sensical don’t worry Meyer would never miss an opportunity for
an extra writing decision that seems so pointlessly weird it physically hurts my brain, for you
see the three books are not of an even length.
Book 1 is 7 chapters, book 2 is 10 then book 3 is 20 chapters long.
So yeah…
Meyer changed the hitherto solo POV character for 25% of the middle of the last book in
a four novel saga.
It’s a BOLD strategy Cotton, let's see if it pays off for her.
Spoilers for a future Lost in Adaptation but I can totally see why the film was split into
two and it wasn’t a cash grab as I had hitherto assumed.
There is just NO WAY a single film that incorporated this entire book of books would have been
in any way watchable.
I’m sorry to report that I’ve decided I have to take it one step further so this
is the first of three videos on Breaking Dawn.
I know, I’m annoyed too.
Plan A was to do one video but that immediately went right out of the window because of the
sheer obnoxious length of the book compared to its predecessors, then plan B was to split
it in half like the film adaptation did but I still couldn’t fit all of my thoughts
and feelings into the runtime.
So with the book already conveniently split into three parts, Plan “Oh gods make it
stop” C became the only logical option.
I’m also dispensing with the former category format partly because I don’t have any positives
left to talk about and I think a recurring gag where I shrug comically in that part of
the video would get old very fast.
Right, let's jump into the compressed version of the story shall we?
SKETCHES
Oh, Jacob, I’m so glad you’re here.
I wouldn’t miss your wedding day, Bella.
Nothing in the world could upset me today except for you know finding out that you’re
planing to have sex with your husband but THAT would never happen.
Umm I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU!!!
Oh heavens I hurt you during our first time having sex because I’m so strong and yet
so uncontrollable in the heat of passion.
Yeah it was hoooot.
We must NEVER have sex again while you’re human.
I’m a MONSTER!
What?!
To hell with that, we just started having sex after like 3 books, I mean years.
I’m not giving it up now.
What?
Nooooo!
I shall not!
GIMME THAT VAMPIRE DICK.
AiiiiiiiiI!
Get away from me!
Wait, wait.
Edward, come back.
Edward, I-I think I must be pregnant somehow.
Edward?
Edward?!
And here's the extended synopsis.
The story starts with Bella driving around the vehicle that Edward had insisted on buying
her, and as of yet unavailable to the general public high tech armour plated supercar designed
for keeping high profile politicians and crime lords safe from harm.
Gosh with the amount of time spent talking about it in the first chapter I just cannot
wait until this car plays a super important role in the story later.
Bella is pretty bummed that there's missing person pictures of Jacob plastered all over
town as apparently since the last book he had permanently transformed into a wolf and
had been traveling across America and Canada living as a full time animal.
She and Edward tell her parents about them getting married.
Her Dad hates the idea but her mother is 100% on board despite the fact that being consistently
anti young marriage was her only consistent character trait for 3 books.
We’re given a reminder that after pages of incredibly awkward bargaining and negotiating
in the last book Edward had agreed to have sex with Bella while she was still a human
right after the wedding.
Bella makes an off-hand comment about how their arrangement probably looks like a shotgun
wedding to the casual observer and Edward gets all mopey because it's not it because
vampires can’t have children.
Bella then thinks about i.e. expositions a bunch of information about the Denali vampire
clan, the only other known family of vegetarian vampires, acting as if they've been an actual
part of the story until now and not just people who have been mentioned off-hand once or twice.
Tanya Denali, a vampire who apparently once unsuccessfully tried to fuck Edward apparently
had to watch the Volturi burn her vampire mother alive because she had become so desperate
for a baby to look after she had vampirized a toddler.
This is a big no no for the self-appointed head vampires because none adult vamps are
tiny murder machines with the minds of children but the bodies of supermen and an unquenchable
thirst for blood.
Bella is dying to know where her honeymoon will be because of course it's a surprise.
Evidently Edward’s kink is never telling her anything no matter how much it involves
her.
At the wedding Jacob unexpectedly emerges out of the woods to make amends with Bella
but it is short-lived because she makes an offhand comment about how she’s about to
get laid while still being a human and he’s so upset that she would put herself in danger
that he…
Puts her in danger by almost transforming into a werewolf and tearing everyone at the
wedding apart.
Fortunately his pack turns up to drag him off.
Oh my sweet boy.
He is truly lost to me.
Edwards whisks Bella away to a private island owned by his father Carlisle and named after
his mother Esme.
Ok I got the impression in the first book that these guys were just you know doctor’s
salary rich, not Richy Rich cartoonish rich.
I had to go back and search for an explanation for this and the only thing I could turn up
was the vaguest suggestion that Alice uses her clairvoyance to commit stock fraud.
Anyways the long awaited controversial cross species shagging finally happens...
I think.
As soon as they so much as touch hands, the story doesn't just pan over the window it
jumps right out of it and flies off into space.
When they wake up Bella is on cloud nine but Edward is in a self loathing shame spiral
because he apparently went into super lust mode during sex and bruised her up pretty
badly because he couldn’t control his vampire strength.
The fact that she’s pretty into it means nothing to him so he swears off having sex
with her again until she’s a vampire and spends the next week doing everything he can
to avoid it.
Then suddenly Bella is very pregnant.
Yeah she wakes up and appears to be several months into the process.
She deduces that vampire women can’t have children but the men can and assumes that
in the thousands upon thousands of years of vampire/human history not once has a male
vampire ever tried having sex with a human woman and not killed her during with their
mightly roughness.
This turns out to not be entirely true later but we’ll get to that.
Bella is suddenly all about having Edward’s baby but he immediately realizes it will definitely
kill her to bring this pregnacy to term so starts organizing an abortion.
Fearing that he won’t give her a choice in the matter Bella calls his sister Rosalie
who she knows is also baby crazy to ask for protection.
And that’s the end of book one.
As far as I’m concerned Edward has completely reverted back to his original awful self.
The sheer overwhelming amount of manipulation he so casually partakes in on a day to day
basis is just gross to be honest.
He just seems to naturally default to having zero interest in Bella’s agency as an informed
consenting adult.
Don’t get me wrong, It’s perfectly reasonable to be horrified if you accidentally injure
your significant other but the fact that she has to rage at him to get him to shut the
fuck up and listen to her long enough to explain to him that she loved every second of it and
wants to do it again as soon as possible shows how unimportant her feelings are to him.
It's not much better on the rare occasions when he acts his centennial age either.
To me it just makes him more creepy because he ends up acting way more like a father to
Bella than a husband.
*shudders*
Topping all of that though has got to be the ultimate proof that Edward is a vile toxic
asshole to Bella, she immediately (correctly) assumes that he would force her to have an
abortion against her will if he felt it was right to do so forcing her to secretly appeal
to another vampire to stop him.
Involuntary treatment to save a patient's life is a deeply divided moralistic subject
but I think we should all be able to agree there should never be a situation when someone
is 100% certain that their husband will definitely not take their wishes into account.
Unfortunately Bella has also backslid away from all of her feminist character development
of the last book and just accepts Edward’s controlling nature as an annoying but not
worth fighting over part of his romantic nature.
She even makes a joke about how he spent most of their honeymoon manipulating her into getting
his way.
It appears that the colossal amount of wheelspining and reactionary backpedaling that Meyer puts
into her characterizations has managed to last all the way to the end of the series.
This is almost certainly partly because of Forever Dawn.
Time and time again we’ve seen examples of this kind of character development erasure
happening when people write finales before the middle and insist on sticking to it.
I can’t decide if Bella’s mother’s out of the blue complete acceptance of Bella’s
teen engagement was due to Meyer realizing that she had written herself into a corner
by making her the key reason for Bella resisting Edward’s proposal but not having a plan
to explain why she would come around at the exact same time her daughter did...
OR just another example of her believing that none of the rules apply to this particular
couple she created because they are the one true embodiment of love in its purest form
and no one could possibly stand in their way.
Meyer confuses me yet again with her inconsistent approach to if vampires are trapped at a certain
level of maturity forever or not by confirming that if a vampire turns a child the child
never grows up mentally, though that could JUST refer to children because they haven't
finished developing physically as well as mentally.
Meyer’s…
Insensitivity when it comes to portraying anyone except white people continues with
a cameo appearance from a south american woman who just happens to be stereotypically hardcore
superstitous so she is the only person on the Cullens’ private island who has figured
out what he is but she’s too timid to do anything about it until she sees that Bella
is pregnant.
As it happens she’s also conveniently knowledgeable of vampire legends concerning cross species
breeding so she lays down some dark foreshadowing of Bella’s impending doom.
So no one knew that vampire men could get human women pregnant.
Hmmm.
In the next part of the story the Cullens do some research and find SOME evidence that
this very occasionally happens but the babies always tore their mothers apart at birth.
There's several things that seem irredeemably off about this to me.
Firstly: Carlile, the supposedly GENIUS doctor never even considered that this might be possible
enough to discuss it with them beforehand.
That's just not how doctors do.
Medicine doesn't work on a “well I’ve never heard of this happening so I just assumed
it was impossible” train of reasoning.
He would’ve done SCIENCE, you know.
And secondly: look I’ve been on the internet long enough to know that if some sort of sexual
act is possible someone, probably a lot of someones, have tried it, recently, probably
this morning.
I’m just not buying it not being common knowledge.
But enough about that, we have to discuss the much MUCH more important biological question
here……
How does Edward get an erection if he doesn't have a heartbeat or any blood.
This has been a recurring joke and or meme that's followed Twilight around since the
start and I made the great mistake of trying to look up if Meyer had ever answered a question
about this and uh...yeah, she kind of did and it’s a terrible, terrible thing.
Venom penis.
Edward’s erections
are filled with venom.
Not replacing his semen, just the blood required to you know “stand to attention”.
The venom penis is a canonical part of the Twilight universe...Venom Penis.
Whether or not Bella was going to VENOM PENIS sorry...
Sorry, ahem.
Whether or not Bella was going to go to college before she turned into a vampire was a regularly
disputed subject between her and Edward with Bella taking a not giving a hoot attitude
right up until she found out how good human/vampire sex is and completely reversed her opinion
becoming all for it.
Edward takes on a “ugh, you're killing me with these 180s Bella” attitude which I
think is exceptionally hypocritical coming from someone who’s consistently behaved
like he’s a completely different person in every book in the saga.
At first Bella’s dislike of her decadently fancy wedding was mildly endearing to someone
who also feels uncomfortable being the center of attention in big crowds but by the time
it was finally over the amount of complaining she partook in would’ve grated on the nerves
of even the most sympathetic of readers.
Just insist on a smaller wedding if you hate it that much, don’t let your sister in law
guilt you into things.
Honestly it just made me dislike Alice in the end by really highlighting how overwhelmingly
vain and materialistic she is.
And on top of all these plot issues, there’s also the classic Meyer overuse of adjectives
and numerous tangents that contribute nothing to the story.
This book could probably have been about the same length as its predecessors if an editor
had had the balls to cut out all the boring and/or completely unnecessary sections and
consistent repetition of already thoroughly covered topics.
In conclusion: Book 1 of book 4 is very much the calm before the storm of awful but as
you can see I still had a lot to complain about.
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Thank you for joining me my beautiful watchers and I do hope you will return to see me continue
this uphill battle to completing this series of reviews.
In the meantime if you’d like to try to ease my suffering just a little, there's no
better way of helping out a Youtuber than by protecting them from the horrors of the
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Please take care of yourselves out there and I will see you soon.
We don’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time (oh no)
Wouldn’t you much rather get off on an exhausting hike?
(Oh yeah!)
We don’t have to take our clothes off to have a good time (oh no)
And I don’t want to see the lingerie my sister bought for you (cause that’s weird)
Much love and appreciation to my patrons of honor: Shelby Hotz, Sam Cucinotta and Etel
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Guys, guys.
I know you like playing through curtains but I let you in here on the proviso that you
were good.
And I know you don’t speak English but I need you to honor the agreement.
*kitty crash* Ooh.
Oh buggers...Come here.
Now you’re getting publicly shamed.
You have to apologize to the beautiful watchers..for interrupting the shot.
Can you say sorry?