Why I love Breaking Dawn

*Spoiler Alert* They get married and have a baby and live happily ever after.  During all that, other shit also happens.

Phew!  OK, now that you know how it ends...

Breaking Dawn gets a bad rap around here.  I haven't been a part of the online Twilight community until very recently, and I've noticed many of y'all are down on my book.  I don't know what that's about, to be honest.  I've read some of the complaints, and I understand them, and I'll even concede a few (Renesmee???  WTF??!  That's not a name!!!!), but I cannot sympathize at all.  Overall, I love this book.

OK, to begin with, I have this pathological romantic sensibility which leads me to believe a "happy ending" is (get your minds out of the gutter) getting married and having babies.  Yes, I know, how very un-feminist of me.  Let me clarify that this is what constitutes a happy ending for me with regard to my fictional characters.  I understand that not everyone wants to get married and/or have babies, but I did/do, and what a lovely ending for books and movies and shows!  (IMO, anyway.)  So when I started Breaking Dawn, I wanted Bella and Edward to get married and have sex.  OK, but seriously, because Meyer had been dangling it in front of our faces for three books and indicating that she was finally going to give it up in BD, and I stayed up extra-extra late reading to get to the honeymoon and then... fade to FUCKING BLACK???!!!  You whore!!!  You dirty, twat-teasing whore!!!  WHERE IS MY SEX????  (I had not found fan fiction yet, of course, or I would have gone right there to get my smut before I continued with the real book.)  I nearly threw the book across the room.

Aaaanyway, when I started the book, that's what I wanted for them.  It did not occur to me that they would get pregnant (because, really?), but the more Bella wanted eggs and kept vomiting everywhere and sleeping all the time, I began to suspect that maybe, just maybe, there was going to be a sick, twisted baby story.  I love babies.  I do not love creepy, bloodthirsty, I-will-eat-you-from-the-inside monster babies.  (Who does? Anyone?  Bueller?)  That's very scary.  I also hate Jacob, so when we took his perspective for a third of the book, I was less than pleased.  Those two aside, I fucking LOVE vampire Bella.  I might have hated how we got there (and I think a lot of that was just shock-value, which I never appreciate), but I love the destination.  VampBella is WAY better than simpering, self-doubting Bella.  It's like she finds herself as a woman, and that I can totally get behind.  Also, the relationship between Edward and Bella is SOOO much better once they're equals.  Once she can also take care of him.  It's nice to be taken care of from time to time, but after awhile you begin to feel like an invalid.  While I think I would have made a wonderful lady of leisure back in the day, I'm sure I also would have been bored out of my fucking skull after awhile, and things would probably have gotten a little Dangerous Liasons just to liven the place up.  So I love the J Jenks storyline, and the shield superpower that allows her to have a little fucking dignity for once.  I also LOVE the last chapter, when she finally lifts her shield and he sees into her head, and then they make mad, passionate love all over the house.  Oh, wait, that last part is just in my head.  I'm sure they kiss chastely.

I could do without Jacob and Renesmee, but that's kind of also why I love them because they each tie the other one off so neatly, plot-wise.  Go imprint on a creepy-ass newborn, you would-be rapist, that seems fitting.  I can't wait to see how they play that in the movie without the Megan's Law people picketing every screening.

I love how Bella figured out Alice's clues, I LOVED the wedding, ditto the honeymoon location (I wish TH and I could have gone to Isle Esme on ours!), I love that nobody dies (HP broke my heart with the folks JK killed off - although that story definitely grows as it goes, and death is necessary, I still don't have to like it), and I just basically love that after all you go through in the books, it's a sticky-sweet ending.  I desperately wanted a sticky-sweet ending.  I was rooting for those two, and I love that they win.

My favorite of the saga is Twilight, followed by Breaking Dawn, then Eclipse, and New Moon last.  I'm sure I'll write posts about each of the other three as I go along, I just needed to say my piece about this one.  Don't hate too much on BD, everyone, it has a lot going for it, despite Renescob and the pregnancy from Hell.

Thoughts?