With all the buzz surrounding Smeyer possibly releasing a new book + her previous claims that a future book in the series would be in either raspberry or leah's POV, there's this notion i've been seeing for a while now across the fandom (whether here or outside tumblr, post and/or comment) is the idea that Leah would imprint on one of the hybrids "so she can get over her prejudice against vampires/be more compassionate to the Cullens" (iirc i recently even saw it on a youtube comment the other day, that's how i got reminded of it)
...i'm sorry, but Leah is the one person (every one in the Quileute tribe, really) who has EVERY right to hate vampires, precisely because of what they did to her people *and* what she lost from the forced transformation triggered by the vampire presence (she lost Sam to a werewolf imprint, and she lost her father from his shock upon witnessing her transformation). And she is in NO way obligated to play nice with the Cullens, especially from her perspective, they came back to their area AND later on endangered more of the children on her tribe to phase prematurely because they invited more vampires. One of them literally injured her brother (*cough* Bella) while the rest just watched and did nothing to stop it.
and when she thought she was finally free to start anew with Jacob's tribe, Jacob's imprinting with Rigatoni basically shackled the pack with the Cullens (i feel bad for jacob in this, because in a way he really did end up becoming a "slave for life", something he used to joke with Bella....)
if anyone should get over their prejudice and learn more compassion, it's the Cullens (especially the "kids" like Edward, Rosalie and Alice constantly throwing slurs at them) to the Quileutes, NOT the other way around.
Oh, God, yeah, the idea that Leah needs to be 'redeemed' by learning to like the Cullens (or Bella, for that matter) drives me up the wall.
I AM genuinely worried she'll imprint on Nahuel, though. I just feel like it would be very SM for there to be this love triangle with Jacob/Nessie/Nahuel but then Nessie chooses Jacob and oh no, what do we do with the leftover Nahuel? Oh, Leah's single!!!!
I've said from the beginning of this blog that it makes ALL THE SENSE in the world for the Quileutes to hate the Cullens. It doesn't matter if the Cullens didn't know their presence would trigger the transformation, they DID know they weren't wanted there. (It seems like this was 100% an author choice, a "the story needs to happen!" thing because for their own safety and secrecy it just doesn't make sense for the Cullens to move back to a place where they know people know they're vampires. It's just a stupid, pointless thing to do just for their OWN protection). But it sounds like SM googled 'rainiest place in US", found Forks, moved the Cullens there, THEN found out about the local reservation and co-opted them to make vampire-hating werewolves so in story it just . . . doesn't make any sense.
They're also, like, you know, actual serial killers. However you interpret the Sam/Emily mess, NONE of the wolves have ever killed a person. All of the Cullens except Carlisle have killed people (Rosalie and Edward did so intentionally, not slip ups, but they've still killed). I can't blame Billy & co for not wanting blood-drinking killers to move into their area. Like that's enough. Even if, like SM, you don't see the larger issues of racism and colonialism, that's reason enough to be like, GTFO. They Cullens might be trying to be good but by their own account, mistakes happen. See: Bella's birthday party.
But it never made ANY sense to me that the Cullens would hate the wolves. "They're our natural enemies." I mean, they aren't actual Children of the Moon werewolves, though? And even if they were, so what? The whole Cullen experiment is rejecting traditional vampirism, why are they sticking to the "we hate werewolves!" thing when they've thrown out everything else? Again, I know: so the story can happen. And in any other setting this would be pretty standard vamp vs wolf beef, with the name calling and all that. But when you make all your vamps rich and white and your wolves poor and Indigenous, you set up a lot of really ugly implications whether they were intentional or not.
So yeah, Leah doesn't need to learn to love the Cullens (or Bella), the Cullens should learn to respect the wolves more, and frankly it's a tragedy that they are stuck together for the foreseeable future because of Nessie rather than a happy ending. The Cullens should leave but now "nooo you can't take Nessie away!!" ugh. I hope Leah doesn't imprint on Nahuel and be forced to keep phasing forever and be immortal for him. BELLA chose immortality. That's what she wanted. Jacob didn't want it. Leah sure as hell doesn't.
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