"My eyes were on Edward, as usual..."
It's night time, and the vampires are playing baseball. Why we need a special name for what they do is beyond my comprehension but Bella isn't paying attention to the game, she's watching dreamboat Edward. We get it, he's good looking and she can't take her eyes off him. At this point in the story this is a fact that has been established so for the author to remind us constantly that this is the case makes it less and less believable. It also makes me think that her idea of infatuation is based less on her experience and more on what tween girls do when they seem someone like Justin Bieber or whatever teenage heart throb is in vogue at the time. Then something happens, finally something related to the concept that we call "plot."
"Alice?' Esme's voice was tense." Alice grows rigid, which we know is related to her prescience. Remember the prologue? Where Bella was talking about how she expected to die, maybe we've finally come back to what this story is supposed to be about.
"I didn't see it--I couldn't tell.' She whispered." What I like about this is that she isn't talking to anyone in particular, she's pulling the old Gandalf move where some little detail has been missed and the only way to work it out is to chide herself aloud. Gandalf actually has the best rationale for speaking out loud, that it's an old habit of the wise to speak to the smartest person in the room, i.e. himself. We see this kind of thing currently in House M.D., Dr. Who, and any incarnation of Sherlock Holmes. The reason is simple: no one else could possibly understand how the detail was missed as they are the only ones that could possible have interpreted it in the first place. It's lonely at the top for them, thus as it is for Alice. Only she could know that three vampires are on their way, that they have heard the baseball game being played. She missed it somehow, probably because she was too busy tossing pitches that her family members could hit.
Three Vampires. Unlike every other interaction that Bella has had thus far with other people this time she might actually be in danger. Three creatures are coming that will, in fact, want to eat her. So what should the Cullens do? The best course of action is to have Edward take Bella away from the field. Edward doesn't think that he can get her back in time. But, back where? He doesn't have to get her home before they show up, he just has to get her away from the field since it was the noise of the game that drew them in the first place. A simple distraction will be all that it takes, Carlisle and the rest keep playing while the girl is shuttled to safety. Instead they stand around waiting.
"Three!' he (Emmet) scoffed, 'Let them come." This is where Emmet is established as the protector of the clan. He defies the coming Vampires like Theoden King at Helm's Deep spits upon the invading force from Isengard. His reaction though is a bit extreme. Alice hasn't said whether they are friendly or not, Edward hasn't been able to perceive them with his ESP, but Emmet is all jacked up ready to fight. Maybe it's just that he's preparing himself but it doesn't come off that way.
"I stated the obvious. 'The others are coming now.'" Lest we forget that Bella is present she proceeds to add nothing to the situation. In this case she's doing one of two things: either observing the very fact that everyone is talking about, giving us the fun but deleted scene of the Cullen clan looking at her, rolling their eyes, and one of them saying, "sooooo, anyway..." Or she knows they are coming imminently which is not possible because she doesn't have any perception powers that would give her that information. This is probably one of the numerous times in the book where she should just be quiet.
The three come out of the woods. Not just come out but one enters the field and then steps back to allow a second to place himself in front. This would be the leader of the group, Laurent. Vampire movies are typically similar when they aren't about Dracula. The bad Vampire always has a name like "Laurent." We've seen, "Viktor," "Markus," "Deacon Frost," "Damskinos," "Reinhardt," so "Laurent" fits in with the cliche, although he's missing some "k"s in his name. We're given some descriptions of the three, but since it's night it is really hard to establish how Bella could make out the details like Laurent's olive skin beneath his pallor. The other annoying this is that Meyer relies on her "cat" fetish to describe their movements as Feline. At this point it's pretty over done.
What is nice is how the three tentatively approach the others. This is described as being like predators that are meeting up with others like them on alien turf. It makes a good deal of sense that this would be the case because that is what they are doing, literally. Laurent explains his presence, "We're heading North, in fact, but we were curious to see who was in the neighborhood."
The sound of the game attracted them, I'll but that. Superhumans playing baseball would be a distinct sound so naturally their feline curiosity got the best of them. Laurent explains that they've eaten just outside of Seattle and Carlisle invites them to his house, his permanent house. Laurent is shocked, "Permanent? How do you manage that?"
Again, a good exchange. Meyer has established that modern vampires have to be nomadic hunter/gatherer types if they wish to remain inconspicuous. I like the shock of Laurent, because it's clear envy. He wants to know how to not have to constantly be on the move, however he's not going to like the answer which is "vegetarianism." Carlisle won't explain it here because he wants the intruders away from Bella. But he asks about their travels to see where they are from, "We've been on the hunt all the way down from Ontario..."
None of that sentence makes sense with the information we've been given. First off, they already hunted outside of Seattle. So they are fine now. Then again, Nomadic types of the prehistorical sort we're basically always on the hunt so we can overlook this lapse. The one we can't is the inconsistent direction the three are heading in. Laurent has already said they have been heading North, but now they've hunting all the way down from Ontario. If they came from Windsor Ontario and travelled to Forks, they would be heading West and slightly North as the crow flies. Any other location in the Canadian Province is going to be from the Southwestern direction. In this case "down from Ontario" makes sense. But...Laurent said they were heading North so why are they coming down from Ontario?
Two possibilities: Meyer is an idiot or Laurent is lying. The former is strange because you would have to be a complete idiot who has never looked at a map to know that for the most of the United States, Canada is North. There is a very small percentage of the landmass of Alaska in which Canada is not North and excepting the cases of Detroit and Buffalo where you travel East and West respectively to get into Canada, your ignorance would be of such magnitude that writing a book would be impossible. The latter position is equally untenable because there is no reason for Laurent to lie. Not even a, "wow I just killed eight people in your area." My conclusion, bad writing she messed up the details of the traveling trio. It's surprisingly the only reasonable explanation.
Then the Trio gets wind of, literally they smell her on the wind, of Bella's humanity. Her organic humanity because she clearly doesn't have the emotional kind. This sends them into a the kind of state a coiled snake gets, or a ready-to-pounce cat. Which makes, again no sense, because they've just eaten. It's a bit presumptuous of them as well as she could be the Cullen's snack, a comment that Laurent actually makes. Emmet and Edward start snarling but Carlisle calms them down tells Edward to take Bella home and the three will accompany the rest to the Carlisle residence. As all of this occurs the women are absent. They contribute nothing and are ignored while the men take to the business of important matters.
It's a queer fact, because maybe someone should have just asked Alice how it turns out. Which leads me to believe that her powers are going to come and go for expedience's sake.
It's night time, and the vampires are playing baseball. Why we need a special name for what they do is beyond my comprehension but Bella isn't paying attention to the game, she's watching dreamboat Edward. We get it, he's good looking and she can't take her eyes off him. At this point in the story this is a fact that has been established so for the author to remind us constantly that this is the case makes it less and less believable. It also makes me think that her idea of infatuation is based less on her experience and more on what tween girls do when they seem someone like Justin Bieber or whatever teenage heart throb is in vogue at the time. Then something happens, finally something related to the concept that we call "plot."
"Alice?' Esme's voice was tense." Alice grows rigid, which we know is related to her prescience. Remember the prologue? Where Bella was talking about how she expected to die, maybe we've finally come back to what this story is supposed to be about.
"I didn't see it--I couldn't tell.' She whispered." What I like about this is that she isn't talking to anyone in particular, she's pulling the old Gandalf move where some little detail has been missed and the only way to work it out is to chide herself aloud. Gandalf actually has the best rationale for speaking out loud, that it's an old habit of the wise to speak to the smartest person in the room, i.e. himself. We see this kind of thing currently in House M.D., Dr. Who, and any incarnation of Sherlock Holmes. The reason is simple: no one else could possibly understand how the detail was missed as they are the only ones that could possible have interpreted it in the first place. It's lonely at the top for them, thus as it is for Alice. Only she could know that three vampires are on their way, that they have heard the baseball game being played. She missed it somehow, probably because she was too busy tossing pitches that her family members could hit.
Three Vampires. Unlike every other interaction that Bella has had thus far with other people this time she might actually be in danger. Three creatures are coming that will, in fact, want to eat her. So what should the Cullens do? The best course of action is to have Edward take Bella away from the field. Edward doesn't think that he can get her back in time. But, back where? He doesn't have to get her home before they show up, he just has to get her away from the field since it was the noise of the game that drew them in the first place. A simple distraction will be all that it takes, Carlisle and the rest keep playing while the girl is shuttled to safety. Instead they stand around waiting.
"Three!' he (Emmet) scoffed, 'Let them come." This is where Emmet is established as the protector of the clan. He defies the coming Vampires like Theoden King at Helm's Deep spits upon the invading force from Isengard. His reaction though is a bit extreme. Alice hasn't said whether they are friendly or not, Edward hasn't been able to perceive them with his ESP, but Emmet is all jacked up ready to fight. Maybe it's just that he's preparing himself but it doesn't come off that way.
"I stated the obvious. 'The others are coming now.'" Lest we forget that Bella is present she proceeds to add nothing to the situation. In this case she's doing one of two things: either observing the very fact that everyone is talking about, giving us the fun but deleted scene of the Cullen clan looking at her, rolling their eyes, and one of them saying, "sooooo, anyway..." Or she knows they are coming imminently which is not possible because she doesn't have any perception powers that would give her that information. This is probably one of the numerous times in the book where she should just be quiet.
The three come out of the woods. Not just come out but one enters the field and then steps back to allow a second to place himself in front. This would be the leader of the group, Laurent. Vampire movies are typically similar when they aren't about Dracula. The bad Vampire always has a name like "Laurent." We've seen, "Viktor," "Markus," "Deacon Frost," "Damskinos," "Reinhardt," so "Laurent" fits in with the cliche, although he's missing some "k"s in his name. We're given some descriptions of the three, but since it's night it is really hard to establish how Bella could make out the details like Laurent's olive skin beneath his pallor. The other annoying this is that Meyer relies on her "cat" fetish to describe their movements as Feline. At this point it's pretty over done.
What is nice is how the three tentatively approach the others. This is described as being like predators that are meeting up with others like them on alien turf. It makes a good deal of sense that this would be the case because that is what they are doing, literally. Laurent explains his presence, "We're heading North, in fact, but we were curious to see who was in the neighborhood."
The sound of the game attracted them, I'll but that. Superhumans playing baseball would be a distinct sound so naturally their feline curiosity got the best of them. Laurent explains that they've eaten just outside of Seattle and Carlisle invites them to his house, his permanent house. Laurent is shocked, "Permanent? How do you manage that?"
Again, a good exchange. Meyer has established that modern vampires have to be nomadic hunter/gatherer types if they wish to remain inconspicuous. I like the shock of Laurent, because it's clear envy. He wants to know how to not have to constantly be on the move, however he's not going to like the answer which is "vegetarianism." Carlisle won't explain it here because he wants the intruders away from Bella. But he asks about their travels to see where they are from, "We've been on the hunt all the way down from Ontario..."
None of that sentence makes sense with the information we've been given. First off, they already hunted outside of Seattle. So they are fine now. Then again, Nomadic types of the prehistorical sort we're basically always on the hunt so we can overlook this lapse. The one we can't is the inconsistent direction the three are heading in. Laurent has already said they have been heading North, but now they've hunting all the way down from Ontario. If they came from Windsor Ontario and travelled to Forks, they would be heading West and slightly North as the crow flies. Any other location in the Canadian Province is going to be from the Southwestern direction. In this case "down from Ontario" makes sense. But...Laurent said they were heading North so why are they coming down from Ontario?
Two possibilities: Meyer is an idiot or Laurent is lying. The former is strange because you would have to be a complete idiot who has never looked at a map to know that for the most of the United States, Canada is North. There is a very small percentage of the landmass of Alaska in which Canada is not North and excepting the cases of Detroit and Buffalo where you travel East and West respectively to get into Canada, your ignorance would be of such magnitude that writing a book would be impossible. The latter position is equally untenable because there is no reason for Laurent to lie. Not even a, "wow I just killed eight people in your area." My conclusion, bad writing she messed up the details of the traveling trio. It's surprisingly the only reasonable explanation.
Then the Trio gets wind of, literally they smell her on the wind, of Bella's humanity. Her organic humanity because she clearly doesn't have the emotional kind. This sends them into a the kind of state a coiled snake gets, or a ready-to-pounce cat. Which makes, again no sense, because they've just eaten. It's a bit presumptuous of them as well as she could be the Cullen's snack, a comment that Laurent actually makes. Emmet and Edward start snarling but Carlisle calms them down tells Edward to take Bella home and the three will accompany the rest to the Carlisle residence. As all of this occurs the women are absent. They contribute nothing and are ignored while the men take to the business of important matters.
It's a queer fact, because maybe someone should have just asked Alice how it turns out. Which leads me to believe that her powers are going to come and go for expedience's sake.
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