In Which I Beg for Sweet Release From Breaking Dawn: Chapter 36 -- Bloodlust · 10:43am Jul 27th, 2018
Hmm. “Bloodlust” implies a throwdown. Could we actually end this series with a big vampire fight? Here’s hoping!
The Volturi arrive, with thirty-two fighters and forty witnesses, outnumbering the Cullens’ nineteen and seven. There are also seventeen werewolves, but Bella still thinks of them as children for some reason and doesn’t count them. Edward claims that Alistair was right about the Volturi inventing a charge to destroy the Cullens with. I’d just like to note that all of these allegations come from the people being judged. “Hey, it’s not our fault, they were making stuff up! We totally didn’t do anything wrong!”
The Volturi don’t attack, and Carlisle takes the opportunity to step forward and say that Nessie isn’t an immortal child. Irina is called forward to confirm that Nessie is the child she saw, but she’s confused as Nessie has grown since then. Aro calls Edward forward to get the truth from him, as since Nessie is clinging to Bella, he assumes that Edward is somehow involved. Bella thinks this is a ploy for Aro to get access to the thoughts of everyone in the area; the idea makes her so angry that she’s suddenly able to have full control over her shield.
The shield blew out from me in a bubble of sheer energy, a mushroom cloud of liquid steel. It pulsed like a living thing — I could feel it, from the apex to the edges.
[…] My shield exploded a good fifty yards out from me effortlessly, taking only a fraction of my concentration. I could feel it flex like just another muscle, obedient to my will.
Well. Isn’t that convenient.
Edward steps forward and Aro takes a long time reviewing his memories. When they’re done, he asks to see Nessie, as “the justice we intended to deliver no longer applies”. Holy shit, he’s actually reasonable! They decide to meet in the middle, each side bringing a few guards. Aro and one of his bodyguards both compliment Bella on how hawt she is as a vampire, oh dear alicorns stop shilling her. Aro’s fascinated with Nessie, as she’s something he’s never seen in his long life, and agrees that he was wrong about her being an immortal child.
However, Aro then notices Jacob and the werewolves. The book (or, to be more precise, Bella’s biased narration) tries to make it look like he’s grabbing on something to pin against the Cullens, but given how weird he acted at the end of New Moon, it’s kind of plausible that he was so tunnel-visioned that this really is the first time he’s noticed them. He points out that they seem quite attached to the Cullens, but Edward gives a reason why:
“They’re committed to protecting human life, Aro. That makes them able to coexist with us, but hardly with you.”
Sure they can coexist with Aro. They coexisted with a score of human killers for the past month without complaint, right? Aro is intrigued by the idea of “guard dogs”, but needs to reconvene with the rest of the Volturi first.
Clinginess Meter: 60 x 6
Chapters Left: 3
Chapter title: “Bloodlust”. What doesn’t appear in all of these nineteen pages: bloodlust. The Volturi have been nothing but reasonable so far.
Trivia:
- None of the band members of U2 knows where the name came from. Their first names were Feedback and the Hype; when they changed the name, it was chosen from a list of six names. Part of the reason it was picked was because it was the one they disliked the least.
- Apollo 13 was saved with duct tape. After their oxygen tanks exploded, the improvised doohickey they used to remove carbon dioxide from the lunar module’s atmosphere was held together with duct tape.
- One of the oldest known writings in the world is instructions on how to make beer.
- Sean Connery was chosen as the role of Indy’s father in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade because Steven Spielberg and George Lucas felt that since James Bond was the conceptual father of Indy, it was only natural to have the quintessential Bond play his actual father.
- Speaking of Spielberg, his first movie, the made-for-TV Duel, was adapted from a story in Playboy. The story itself, about a murderous trucker stalking a driver on a desert highway, was inspired by an incident when a semi tailgated author Richard Matheson on the day of JFK’s assassination.
- Samuel L. Jackson likes saying “motherfucker” so much because he stuttered when he was a kid, and saying “motherfucker” helped him get over it.
- Many Australian aboriginal languages lack words for relative direction like “right”, “left”, “forward”, etc. All directions are done using “north”, “south”, etc., no matter how small they are. One wonders how they’d work in space.
- Tennis player Serena Williams has a cameo in Avatar: The Last Airbender, since she liked the show so much. Specifically, she’s the guard who brings Iroh tea during “The Day of Black Sun, Part 1: The Invasion”.
- During the Battle of the Bulge in World War II, the Nazis blared German propaganda at the Allies. Mel Brooks (yes, that Mel Brooks) countered by setting up his own sound system with music from Jewish jazz musician Al Jolson.
- The casting of J. K. Simmons as J. Jonah Jameson in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies was so perfect that the producers of the Amazing Spider-Man movies explicitly said JJJ didn’t appear because anyone else would be a huge letdown. Can you blame them?
- The driver of the bus Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on in 1955, James F. Blake, had once “driven” her before. In 1943, Parks was going to register to vote, but entered the bus through the front door. After she’d paid her fee, Blake told her to enter through the back door (as was required by law) and subsequently drove off before she could re-enter.
- While watching Back to the Future at the White House, Ronald Reagan thought Doc’s incredulous exclamation of “Ronald Reagan? The actor?” was so funny that he had the film rewound so he could see it again.
Apollo 13 is and forever shall be one of the greatest achievements of human ingenuity. All hail duct tape.
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Turns out even NASA can’t improve on duct tape.
That's some of the best trivia you've come across to date. :D
And how Aboriginal-made game controllers would work. North-north-south-south-west-east-west-east-B-A-start?
Also, this entire build-up was entirely pointless.
Serena Williams, really? Damn, I didn't even know it was her. Also, I liked the movie version better, where we see a vision that has some of the members on both sides getting slaughtered, though sadly it was only a vision Alice showed everyoje
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And not only for Apolly 13.
Moon dust is nasty. It's everywhere, abrasive and statically charged, which does a number on any rovers sent to the moon.
So duct tape is used to fix and prevent damage.