In Which I Tolerate Eclipse: Chapter 5 -- Imprint · 3:17pm May 2nd, 2018
Bella and Jacob start talking about Quil. If it sounds jarring coming from the end of the last blog, where they were talking about being human, well, it’s just as jarring reading it. Quil’s the most recent of the Quileutes to wolf out, and he’s ecstatic about it, between the strength, the speed, and the sense of family. Jacob mentions that he and Sam are the only ones who ever really felt bitter about being werewolves, and Sam got over that a long time ago. Bella asks what happened, and, hello, backstory infodump time!
When Sam first turned into a werewolf, no one in Forks knew what was going on, so he vanished and everyone went crazy looking for him, particularly his mother and Leah Clearwater, his high school sweetheart. When he managed to turn back into a man, two weeks later, he naturally couldn’t tell anybody. However, the elders found out eventually, explained things to him, and told him to keep it a secret. Unfortunately, this also meant he couldn’t tell Leah. Sam’s wolfing about put a strain on their relationship, but they managed to keep it together and stay in love — until Emily Young, Leah’s cousin, came to visit, and Sam imprinted on her.
“Sam did love Leah. But when he saw Emily, that didn’t matter anymore. Sometimes… we don’t exactly know why… we find our mates that way.” His eyes flashed back to me, his face reddening. “I mean… our soul mates.”
So imprinting is basically a sort of built-in love-at-first-sight thing for werewolves once they see their soul mates. What happened to Sam? He promptly turned his back on Leah, broke every promise he made to her, and shattered her heart to go to her cousin. This is part of the reason Sam hates the Cullens; their presence changed him, and that change made him leave the woman he loved. Imprinting is messed up.
As for Emily, she was initially put off by Sam’s increased attention towards her, but, “It’s hard to resist that level of commitment and adoration.”, which sounds vaguely creepy. Sam could also tell her what was going on, since she was his “other half”, but when he transformed in front of her, he lost control of himself and scarred her. And accidental physical assault is how they made up; Sam was horrified, but Leah comforted him, and somehow that made everything all better between them. No mention of how the poor woman feels after getting half her face ripped off, by the way. This is all about Sam. What about Leah? This is all we get:
“Poor Emily,” I whispered. “Poor Sam. Poor Leah…”
“Yeah, Leah got the worst end of the stick,” he agreed. “She puts on a brave face. She’s going to be a bridesmaid.”
And that’s it. I find it… in-ter-esting that in a story involving one man and two women, we only get real details of the man’s reaction.
The only other wolf in the pack who’s imprinted is Jared, who imprinted on a girl he sat behind in school. She conveniently had a crush on him, so no awkwardness there.
Side note: during this, it comes out that as long as he turns into a wolf regularly, Jacob won’t grow old and won’t age. In fact, it seems to be more than just “not ageing”; ever since he became a wolf, he's been going through a growth spurt to get biologically older and more fit. In spite of being chronologically sixteen, he’s physically twenty-five and is going to stay that way. The age bit doesn’t make any sense to me and triggers another ageing tantrum from Bella.
“Am I the only one who has to get old? I get older every stinking day!” I nearly shrieked, throwing my hands in the air. Some little part of me recognized that I was throwing a Charlie-esque fit, but that rational part was greatly overshadowed by the irrational part. “Damn it! What kind of world is this? Where’s the justice?”
I’m pretty sure that the first time any sort of obscenity has been used in this series, by the way. And it’s about Bella whining how she’s growing old.
The flow of conversation changes, and Bella asks Jacob about the memory he used to keep Edward out of his head. Jacob was thinking about Bella in the days after Edward left her, how she was so lifeless and barely looked human.
“It’s for me to remember how sad you were, and it wasn’t my fault. So I figured it would be harder for him. And I thought he ought to get a look at what he’d done.”
Jacob’s training himself in psychic defense. Nice. Too bad it’ll never come up again.
However, this upsets Bella. More generally, she’s upset at the way Edward and Jacob go at each other solely because one’s a vampire and the other’s a werewolf. Unusually mature for her, I must say. In fact, she says that if Jacob’s going to keep thinking Edward’s evil just because he’s a vampire (he is evil, but not because he’s a vampire), then she won’t go to La Push to visit him at all.
“See,” I explained. “I don’t care who’s a vampire and who’s a werewolf. That’s irrelevant. You are Jacob, and he is Edward, and I am Bella. And nothing else matters.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “But I am a werewolf,” he said unwillingly. “And he is a vampire,” he added with obvious revulsion.
“And I’m a Virgo!” I shouted, exasperated.
I giggled. That was good.
Jacob agrees to this and says he’ll do his best to keep his anti-vampire sentiments down when she visits. Bella needs to leave then — she doesn’t want to cause Alice and Edward too much distress — but they at least part on good terms and with no additions to the Clinginess Meter.
Clinginess Meter: 11
That was a lot of backstorying. Why are backstories so often given in a single lump like that?
Apropos-of-nothing rant: imprinting doesn’t work that way. Imprinting is a time-sensitive method of learning, generally early in life, of which the behavior of the learning person has no influence. Filial imprinting, the way baby animals know their mother, is the most widely known, but there are other forms. For example, imprinting is thought to play a role in language development. It’s why children can learn new languages so quickly: they’re still in the “critical period” for imprinting that knowledge. Short version: imprinting has nothing to do with soul mates. Twilight is stupid and its form of imprinting is stupid.
…Sorry, I wrote a paper on imprinting for a psychology class and that sort of bad science drives me up the wall.
… It’s ok. I’m calm, I’m not angry, I’m not angry at all.
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Either you got those backwards, or Jacob's physical age is measured in dog years.
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Actually, no. I forgot to put this in (my fault), but Jacob's been growing faster ever since he became a werewolf. Once the change happened, he went through an accelerated growth spurt that force-matured his body to that of a twenty-five-year-old in a few months. Changing.
Ah yes. I've heard about Twilight imprinting. I see it's exactly as dumb as I'd heard... though it does manage to get even worse later on.