Jacob Black deserves better
Listen, I won't act like I'm not a Bella hater, but quick little rant, Jacob deserved so much better than ramshackle and being slave to his literal mortal enemy.
Firstly, we need not forget that when Jacob phases for the first time, he is a literal child, he's 16 (forced into an overgrow man's body) and because smeyer hates letting her characters age at every turn, he won't continue to age until he stops phasing. Which he will never do since he has to keep up with the immortal possy for the rest of his misirable existence. Jacob is forced into becoming everything Billy didn't want for him. Against his will he becomes a warrior, is forced into responsibility being offered the position of alpha and basically being 'beta' of the pack, and he simultaneously loses and gains friends and family.
Jacob is genuinely, the best, male character in the series, up until smeyer nerfs him so we all crawl back to egghead with Bella. Before his transition to werewolf Jacob is a sweet kid with a pretty simple existence. He has friends, helps take care of his dad, goes to school, works on his mechanical projects, is excited to get his driver's licence and has an innocent crush on his dad's friend's daughter. He's a normal kid dammit. Not to mention the issues he probably has from his dead mom, mostly absent sisters and being his dad's caretaker at a young age.
Bella straight up uses him through the whole series. In New Moon, she uses him to overcome her depression, spending all her time with him, flirting with him, at one point even kinda dates him when he gives her the conversation hearts, and she has the audacity to ask him if he's breaking up with her when she won't actually commit to him in the first place. She gives him every reason to think she likes him and fully admits to herself that she's taking advantage of "her own personal sun". Hell, she agrees with him that being with him would be easy.
I will die on the hill that Jacob represents life and her relationship with egghead is an allegory for addiction. Smyer nerfs Jacob so hard, partly because she's certainly prejudiced and mormonism is heavily reflected in her books, I could go on a whole rant soley about how the Quileute tribe is abused in her books and how she deliberately makes characters suffer. She purposefully makes Jacob angry, and all the wolves for that matter, completely throwing away any of his prior characterisation. Which, the funniest part of that whole ordeal is that Bella is still in love with angry wolf Jacob and refuses to let the poor boy live. Quite honestly, polyamory was right there, and okay with egghead. Of course the icing on the cake is ricky ticky toby, who's existence makes absolutely no sense, neither does it make sense for Jacob to imprint on her and be biologically tied to living out his worst nightmare. It makes so little sense it barely even works in cannon. The wolves don't know why they imprint, the leading theories are for reproduction and strength, rigatoni doesn't really do either.
Jacob deserved to imprint on a normal person. He deserved to be allowed to move on and be with someone who actually cares about him and gives him autonomy. His wolfy soulmate should've been someone who could give him a normal life where he can live and heal, not be the demon spawns slave.
I could rant about this for literal hours, I'll spare you the absolute research paper I could pull out of my head.
Anyway, go learn about the Quileute tribe and maybe donate if you can.
https://ko-fi.com/abvermillion
