On The Occasion Of Jacob Black Imprinting On A Newborn Child OR Forks, I Love You, But You're Bringing Me Down

Well, sure. It had to come to something like this, this ultimate perversion. We deserve it—we kept reading, after all. Edward and Bella walked away from mass slaughter, and we kept reading. Jacob's advances toward Bella became increasingly aggressive and intrusive and she loved it, and we kept reading. Sam Uley abused his fiance and it only strengthened their relationship, and we kept reading. Quil Ateara imprinted on a two-year-old, and we kept reading. We shouldn't have encouraged Stephenie Meyer, because now this has happened: Jacob has imprinted on a newborn baby. He has fallen deeply in love with a baby. A two-year-old wasn't young enough for Jacob's taste—he needs it straight out of the womb.

(That wasn't even fresh enough for him, really. A few chapters ago Jacob noted seemingly in passing the way Bella's increased girth had somehow increased her gravitational pull—language remarkably similar to what he earlier and later employs to describe the sensation of imprinting. In other words, he was attracted to the child before it was even born.)

(And of course, it warrants articulating at the start here that writing a morally reprehensible book isn't even a bad thing, per se. But Twilight seems to consistently fail to understand its outrageousness. It is casually evil. Plot action is often totally unrelated to the outrages taking place in every chapter: Child molestation and domestic abuse and religious bigotry are just THERE, nothing said or done about them. They are window dressing. S. Meyer seems to consciously evoke Lolita with the names “Claire” and “Quil,” but it's almost as if she read Lolita and thought “Isn't it sweet how much Humbert loves this girl? She must feel so lucky.”)

Read it one way and it's the ultimate chauvinist desire for a pure wife, right? No other man will EVER touch Renesmee. Whether she likes it or not. What if she wants to date other people some day? Well, why would she, right Jacob? Right Quil? You wouldn't let her, would you, in the end? Hell, the total submission of the female's will is just another check in the pro column! Even when you put aside that Stephenie Meyer claimed to study feminism (at BYU, but at some point there are just too many layers of irony to penetrate), this development is troubling. Even without the overtones of pedophilia, this development is troubling.

(Edward and Bella's love, recall, is suggested to be somehow better because neither of them has ever felt anything for anyone else. So this is even better than that. Renesmee will never even understand the possibility.)

(Lesbian Fanfiction author “Janine” rather skilfully turned that ridiculous notion about Bella never liking anyone else on its head: it's because she's gay. What if Bella actually HAD given birth to a boy? Would Jacob have imprinted on it? Or would S. Meyer have considered that “wrong”?)

(What does it say about Stephenie Meyer that there are multiple supposedly healthy relationships between adult men and female children and no relationships whatsoever with same-sex couples?)

But the overtones of pedophilia ARE there, of course, they are in stark, screaming relief. Renesmee aged quickly in the womb, but at this moment, she is a baby that Jacob is in love with.

S. Meyer only addressed the pedophilia stuff with Quil Ateara and his own infant bride to the extent that it seemed like she was vaguely aware people might object to such a thing. But in the end, she ignored any objections: Bella got angry, Jacob expressed the counterargument, then they rode their bikes. Neither side won. And not coming out and expressly condemning this, not writing a plot line where a big rock falls on Quil Ateara before he can lay a hand on Claire, is a morally evil thing to do.

Why, why, why? Why on earth would you do this? Unreliable, mentally unstable narrators are one thing, but outside of Henry Darger the mentally troubled author is not something we're accustomed to.

(Especially in the mainstream. Because of course, Stephenie Meyer's work is not outsider art. It is the most mainstream of the mainstream; the YA Universe has realigned itself around Twilight, like they all imprinted on it. This is the mainstream. I repeat: this is the mainstream.)

(Lolita is a consciously morally evil book; Nabokov dares us to empathize with the charming Humbert Humbert, like David Chase did with Tony Soprano. Lolita is also an exploration of the unreliable narrator. Twilight is none of these things. S. Meyer is no V. Nabokov and Q. Ateara is no H. Humbert.)

S. Meyer can downplay the pedophilia and try to make it acceptable to the parents who might actually read this thing and be smart enough to freak out about it (WHY HASN'T ANYONE FREAKED OUT ABOUT THIS) because the universe of Twilight is a sexless one. Full grown men can love babies because they aren't going to fuck them because no one fucks anyone. Or so her twisted logic would seem to suggest.

And yet somehow the desexualized atmosphere of Twilight makes it more sinister, because the absence of sex starts to seem less like prudish avoidance and more like deliberate withholding. The way some reformed pedophiles will take pills to reduce their sex drive. These books are full of increasingly evil urges but these urges are never carried out. The sexless air of Forks, WA therefore takes on an air of chemical castration.
Surely, (S. Meyer and) Jacob will insist that his love for Renesmee is chaste and pure and adoring. As Jacob once said of Quil, for now he will just be a particularly attentive babysitter. And maybe that is true; S. Meyer designed this particular version of imprinting, it can be whatever she says it is. Maybe there truly is not a sexual element of the attraction (given S. Meyer's generally bogus understanding of what attracts people to other people, I would accept that she believes this). Except his love won't always be chaste, and even if Renesmee reaches his age in just a few years, for a while he will be lovingly changing the diapers of the girl he will eventually have sex with. After they get married, I'm sure, because that, in S. Meyer's mind, somehow makes it better.

And at what age will that marriage occur? When Renesmee gets her period for the first time? What makes her a woman in Jacob's estimation? He, of course, will be the one to decide.

Also: Jacob was once sexually attracted to Bella, to the girl's mother. Picture Jacob and Renesmee on the bus at the end of The Graduate. Will they just never tell Renesmee about it?

Also: S. Meyer is a Mormon, and the LDS Church has its own grim (and sometimes very recent) history of polygamists and their child brides. Why invite the comparison and then not condemn it, unless you are trying to suggest it's okay?

Will Jacob imprint on Leah, too? Don't rule it out!

Every further angle through which to view this only makes it worse. Every attempt to rationalize it only digs the hole deeper.

Everything about this is maddening, shocking, confusing, appalling. The sort of hyperbolic rage I would normally fly into is insufficient, because there isn't even really a funny angle to this. It is awful and shameful. There is some solace in the fact that these characters are not real. But their author is real, is still out there. Despite the myriad psychosexual issues on display earlier in these books, until now I would not have told you that kids should not read it. Now, I'm not so sure.

How perverted S. Meyer will even DEPICT this perverse twist is an open question. But if I may venture a guess, the same thing will happen as before, with Quil. Characters will get angry, and then do nothing. S. Meyer won't quite bring herself to bless this kind of union, but very notably will not condemn it either. And that absence of a resolution, that attitude that there is no need for resolution with Quil Ateara speaks scary volumes.

Thoughts?