A Twilight Renaissance? I’m Game

tl;dr: in twilight & new moon, smeyer portrays jacob & edward as a symbolic choice between life & death. but instead of sticking w/ this portrayal in eclipse, smeyer twists the thematic argument from “life or death” into “life or eternal life,” setting the stage for total fuckshit — i.e. bella “choosing” edward.

jacob black, edward cullen. from new moon on, they’re pitted as rivals — natural enemies & bella’s suitors. but jacob & edward also represent the theme of bella’s series arc: the choice to stay human or become a vampire. life, or death.

in NM, jacob embodies life: warmth, happiness, nature, healing, rebuilding, the natural path of life. we see it in his characterization,

The smile broke across his face the way the sunrise set the clouds on fire. (new moon, 109)

Like an earthbound sun, whenever someone was within his gravitational pull, Jacob warmed them. (72)

“I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun.”  (eclipse, 347)

& in how he makes bella feel;

“Ever since [Bella] started hanging out with Jacob Black, I’ve [Charlie] noticed a real improvement. She has some color in her cheeks when she comes home, some light in her eyes.” (new moon, 200)

I felt much, much healthier around Jacob. (78)  

even smeyer admits, “From the very beginning…[Jacob] was so alive.”

bella’s nightmares in twilight & NM compare jacob & edward, serving as the foundation for what they represent. jacob’s symbol matches his character: “A light coming toward me from the beach.” from the forest, he warns her to run away from edward, who “would walk through the trees…his eyes black and dangerous… He would be beautiful as an angel, and his teeth would be pointed and sharp…” [fangs, ffs smeyer] (146)

eddie “angel of death” cullen got his thematic role set up in twilight. spoilers, he’s death. in NM, his leaving “kills” bella, “excising my most vital organs and leaving ragged, unhealed gashes[…]that continued to throb and bleed…” (59). as a zombie, bella pulls dangerous stunts to "see” him, up to & including jumping off a friggin cliff. “I saw him, and I had no will to fight.[…]My subconscious had stored Edward away in flawless detail, saving him for this final moment.” (181). the closer bella gets to death, the closer she gets to edward. since death is the terminus, edward’s presence symbolizes the end of bella.

that said, E&J start off on kinda equal footing (despite smeyer’s racial biases). a shared thematic trait balances out the scales, summed up by wolfpack leader sam uley: “If you choose to stay with us, I can’t make any guarantees about your safety.” (169) tbh, makes sense. life is dangerous. death is a gamble. stay or go, nothing’s guaranteed.

still, bella must choose: human or vampire? life, or death?

eclipse, down to the name, illustrates this choice. not just in E&J’s fight for bella — we see this theme in rosalie & jasper’s backstories, in imprinting, in bella &  edward’s engagement negotiation — it’s fuckin everywhere, man  

“You see it everywhere,” Jacob said, his voice suddenly distant. “Nature taking its course — hunter and prey, the endless cycle of life and death.”

ok so i’ve bonked u over the head a million times w/ this point. now what? well, fuck everything u just heard. we’re done w/ it. in eclipse, smeyer warps the argument & her characters to make the choice seem like a forgone conclusion.

lemme say first, bella ain’t set up thematically to reject life like she does. by eclipse, “[Jake had] become essential to my survival.” (187); like edward, “Jacob had become a part of me, and there was no changing that now.” (193) jake still symbolizes life: “comfortable, easy as breathing. I was the natural path your life would have taken…” (347)

bella has several other reasons to choose life, noted below. meanwhile, her one reason for choosing death is edward. no jk tho lmaoo edward is death. — right?

I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know how to do this. How to say goodbye to Charlie and Renée…to Jacob…to being human. […]In theory, I was anxious, even eager to trade mortality for immortality. After all, it [death] was the key to staying with Edward forever. (155)

“’Edward, […]there’s no point to forever without you.’”  (159)

wew baby, check it: death — “a big, dark abyss that I couldn’t know until I leaped into it” — is what makes immortality meaningful. ofc! without it, immortality has no gravity, no gravitas, no allure. but instead of embodying death, here edward is separated from it. he is not her death, as in, her end. now, he (& 💖eternal love💖) is her reward for death. NM sets the stage for a choice between life & death; now, in eclipse, this choice becomes life vs eternal life.

here’s where things get fucky.

while smeyer twists the argument into life vs immortality, she also twists her thematic image of “life” (aka jacob). so in NM it’s love, rebirth, yadda yadda it’s easy asf.

now, in eclipse, life is a battle to the end,

“Until your heart stops beating, Bella,” he said. “I’ll be here — fighting. Don’t forget that you have options.”

“I don’t want options.” (188)

life is not defined by love or even happiness but simply ‘PaSsIoNaTe EmOtIoN,’

“I hate you, Jacob Black.”

“That’s good. Hate is a passionate emotion.”  (190)

life is violent & strips away your agency,

I knew he would take advantage of the situation. His hands caught my face and his lips found mine with an eagerness that was not far from violence. (306)

& above all, life is pain.

[Jacob’s] happiness was somehow also pain. Almost tangible — it burned against my skin like acid, a slow torture.  (308)

by turning jake from soft & sunny into sulfurous & suffering, smeyer reframes the choice in a new light. (gotta tip the scales for edward since he’s already a violent murderer & an abusive partner💀). now life is dangerous, much more so than ~eternal life™~: it is temperamental, painful, unsafe, fleeting, toxic; nothing is guaranteed except an end. tl;dr fuck life that shit sucks

immortality, on the other hand, is a comfortable albeit tedious monotony, eternal love & matrimony, a plethora of opportunities btyb obscene wealth & near invincibility —   & now, a guarantee. no longer is death portrayed in the same way life is. in fact, that’s not what we’re talking about anymore.

in fact, we’re not talking about anything at all.

There wasn’t any choice to make.

final nail in the coffin (heyo!) — bella tells us this debate was over before it even began. lmao,,, what ?? ok. never mind that we’re now 1,689 pages into the saga. never mind that in this universe, immortality aka vampirism is just another flavor of death. never mind that the consequences of endless, isolating, heartbreaking vampire immortality could totally work within the thesis smeyer spent 3 books building. never mind. we’re done.

look, books can shift the prism of their thesis, their theme, their arguments, no doubt. but they can’t backpedal. they can’t shut down their thesis. it ain’t the way.

“I never had a choice.”

sure, sure.  

smeyer uses bella as a mouthpiece to dilute the message. she separates edward from death, his nature, to re-frame the thematic debate. she subverts jacob’s character into a non option. but what’s written is written; we still see the choice. other characters acknowledge the choice. bella shows us she has a choice. thru the eyes of a teenage girl madly in love & doomed to die, ok yeah, life vs. ~eternal life~ is a no-brainer. but that’s not what bella is getting. that’s not the choice she’s making. & we all know it.

team jacob or team edward? humanity or vampirism? life, or eternal life?

bella is actually very interesting in an entirely accidental way and i had an absolutely fucking WILD talk about twilight bella with a friend that involved like, beauvoir, heidegger and tolstoy HAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH

But the gist of it is that Meyer tries to write her as "different from all the vapid girls" and "mature and altruistic" and whatever the heck

But what we get is a teenager who is shown to have suffered a certain amount of neglect and is not dealing well with it

Many times she is shown to take a motherly role towards her own mother. She's constantly shown to do the same for her father, and even among her friends she takes on the responsible, 'adult' role.

But this is romanticised in a way that sorta obfuscates the true nature of what it is; a teenager that is not interested in teenager things, a kid who feels alienated from their peers of the same age range, that's always a person with a certain degree of suffering.

"You're mature for your age" is something that gay kids hear because they're suppressing their sexuality and can't explore it as straight kids can, so they bury themselves in books. It's a thing poor kids hear because their socioeconomic situation does not allow them to have leisures, so they start working part time early on. It's something kids who struggle socially hear because they fail to connect with their classmates and instead take on activities that are deemed "adult" and "productive".

Being called "mature for your age" is one of those compliments that shouldn't be a compliment PARTICULARLY for teens because the things that force you to mature faster are things that ostracize you from your peers and no one deserves that. This is the case for Bella - she doesn't connect well with the other kids because she's more responsible than them because she HAS to be, given that her mother is neglectful and her father is... Kinda apathetic.

And the truly horrifying thing about twilight is that when Edward walks into the picture, she gets to be that kid again. She's a teenager and now she feels like it - she has a silly crush on a boy! Butterflies in her stomach! Bella's so called love for Edward relies on him giving her the opportunity to finally just be a gooddamn kid.

And because he is a) an old man and b) pretty damn smart, he is able to use this to his advantage. This is especially clear in Midnight Sun, but the gist of it is that "You're different from other girls, you're young but so mature" are classic words that you get from those twenty-something dudes dating 14 year old girls.

It's awful. He's textbook predatory with her. He threatens to break up, leaves, causes immense suffering, and then comes back when she's already starting to move on. She's a kid. She's a literal kid, one who's trying very hard to be a grown up because she has more responsibility than she should have.

She's a kid who doesn't feel protected by her family, and the Cullens offer her that. He takes this safety all away at his whims, causing her such immense emotional pain, to a point where she'd do anything to not have it happen again, because she's a KID and everything is INTENSE and it's her very first boyfriend and she's heartbroken.

He plays yo-yo with her feelings to keep her under his thumb. I fucking hate it. She marries him at like 18 not because she's so in love or whatever the fuck, but because he keeps making her feel insecure with their relationship, and she needs to somehow make this solid, so she does it in the only way she knows, and he once again gets exactly what he wants. His leaving and coming back, his mercurial moods, his isolating her from her friends, it's all about making sure she can't leave, and then they're married and he bites her and it's infinitely harder for her to break this dependency bond.

THE TL;DR IS THAT TWILIGHT IS A MESS BUT PEOPLE ARE UNFAIR TO BELLA AND NOT HARD ENOUGH ON EDWARD TBH