My Ted talk on New Moon

Like most people, as a kid i hated new moon. There was something so creepy about it, how she was so in love with Edward that when he left her depression and night terrors lasted for like half a year. how she wouldn’t eat or function and only started behaving like a human when charlie ‘threatened’ to send her to her mother to recover. I hated the fact that she progressively does more and more dangerous things to hallucinate the man who left her.

But I think i finally found a reason to not only enjoy it, but also find it necessary to the plot.

Edward and Bella are fundamentally not the healthiest couple. They’re codependent, and her sense of self seems to evaporate with him near her. She kinda became no one, just someone in love with this man. she would do everything to see him, anything to be around him. her self esteem is so down in the gutters that she’s not surprised that he wants to ditch her because she’s ’not enough’. she folds the photo of them to only show him because she’s ‘so ugly’ in comparison. but then he leaves, and she learns that she can be herself, at least part of herself with him gone.

She still has her own personality, she can still have fun, she can enjoy the presence of other people. she loves her friends, and finds new mystique and new adventures. And it kinda knocks Edward off this pedestal. He’s no longer the only mystical thing, he’s no longer the only fast and strong being, he’s no longer her only path into this supernatural world. But she still loves him. She’s utterly in love with this man even if he’s not here. Obviously then she goes to save him, and he comes back.

Then there’s a big type of struggle in eclipse where Edward is trying to figure out their life together around what her life had become. He’s angry at her putting herself in danger with the wolves (tbf he’d be pissed about her spending time with other vampires too), he can’t fully understand that she loves him but wants to be with her other friends too.

This struggle comes to a conclusion when he finally understands that pulling her apart is hurting her. That she craves seeing her other friends, and that finally, it’s a craving beyond just him- it’s human. She is able to care about the Wolves as well as the Cullens. Whilst she probably won’t ever care for humans in that way, she grows a little bit more assertive, able to say what she wants, when she wants it, and willing to stick by her guns.

But the human girl desperately in love with Edward wouldn’t have looked twice at Jake to ever BECOME friends, if Edward hadn’t left. That girl couldn’t have even asked Edward to sleep together because she’d be too embarrassed even think that he’d find her attractive. She grows to the point where she’s able to ascertain that she loves Edward, but her needs and desires have an important place in the relationship, and that he has to listen to them. And he does- and these two people who are ‘more than soulmates’ finally are able to connect for their forever in an actually healthy relationship.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.