T.03.05 Imprint

In Which Imprinting is a Nightmare

SumUp: F-

Yeah, I'm summing it up immediately. Normally, I try to describe the plot and editorialize slightly, then rant at the end.
Not here. Oh no.

The chapter is the end of a continued conversation between Bella and Jacob. During which they go over the history of Sam and Emily and Jacob describes Emily's injury and how Sam left Leah for Emily, turned into a werewolf and hurt Emily. Leah still loves him. It would be a decent conversation about a painful love triangle, except...

The reason for this love triangle is a newly introduced concept called imprinting. Imprinting is a lazy way for Meyer to introduce true-love without any basis other than magic that is never to be described or expanded on. It's bad enough that we're dealing with main characters whose love is entirely based on some undefined true-love magic wand, but now the werewolves have their own version. And it's ugly. Essentially Sam sees Emily for the first time and Sam = super in love and vice versa. It's absolute, unquestionable and eternal. And that's bull. Imprinting is a horrible concept in a litany of ways:

• Imprinting cheapens the very idea of love. The great love of Sam and Emily goes from beautiful and dramatic to a simple magic fact with no history or basis. Actual love requires effort, dedication, even sacrifice. True relationships involve a construction of trust and support to succeed, and even then they sometimes fail. This is dramatic; every hurdle, every victory, every disagreement, every possible ounce of drama and value that love involves produces drama. Imprinting is a cheap facsimile requiring no effort on the character or author's part. This is the instant-pudding version of love compared to a chocolate mousse souffle and romantically it is, in equal measure, horrifying and empty.
• It's lazy on an epic scale. Now Sam and Emily's relationship can be defined without bothering with the difficulties of background and characterization. His abandonment of Leah is forgivable, not because he's a real person who deserves a second chance or who is trying to redeem himself in a new loving relationship, but because he had no choice. Just toss "imprint" out there and you're all done with the mucky details of feelings and motivations and life.
• It destroys characterization via mind control. It robs characters of choice, of decisions, of (again) drama. You never have to wonder what a character will do if their loved one is involved, because they are defined by their magical compass of love. There can be no betrayal, no hidden motives, no affairs, no weakness and that creates flat, lifeless, dull characters.
• The real complexity of the spell Meyer is describing is astonishing but she never bothers to delve into it. Imagine you love someone and will do anything for them. They require both your kidneys to live. We don't have the rules of imprinting spelled out, but I'm guessing this is an impasse that is impossible to resolve. Even the simplest ideas of this ultra-love go beyond not cheating or not loving other people. Every need, every true desire of your imprint partner becomes an explicit order to you, one that you will carry out happily. How do you resolve any conflicts in the needs of two people? It happens. Life is never fair and relationships are never truly equal every moment of every day. 
• It establishes an ugly choice in your character's actions. Imprinted characters must either be paragons of virtue or eternal fountains of forgiveness.  How could one half love the other if, while separated, their lover was a murderer or a rapist or something equally horrible? Sam is therefore locked into the role of white knight or Emily becomes impossibly joined to a monster she can never not forgive, never deny, never escape. This takes the idea of abused spouse to a horrifying logical extreme.
• Ultimately, it's a wholly repugnant concept. Yes, they're characters in a book, but we're supposed to be imagining these existing in some kind of reality. Imagine for a moment that you or someone you love could be linked like this to a person you/they've never met without any consent, without any foreknowledge. This is mental hijacking, emotional robbery, the destruction of any and every other relationship you have at the drop of a hat combined with an eternity of mental servitude to another person. Their reciprocation is irrelevant. Your bliss is imaginary because you've been given an emotional lobotomy. In any reality other than Meyers', this would be treated as a scourge to be wiped out utterly. A mental defect of the worst kind. It's absolutely sickening in design.

There is no forgiveness possible for an author creating something this repulsive, this ill-conceived. 
Any value in the Jacob & Bella conversation is a tiny buoy dragged under by the weight of the Titanic cancer of this chapter.

This... bewildering need Meyer has to cheapen romance in a ROMANCE NOVEL seems pathological. It rivals her similar need to undermine every ounce of climactic tension. I can't begin to understand why she refuses again and again to describe actual relationships, despite clear evidence that she has some ability to do so. I'm literally shaking with anger at how stupid this concept is and I don't know why she insists on adding it. Why can't Sam just have a flaw? He liked Leah, but he -loves- Emily? Why is it necessary to introduce something so ugly and flimsy instead of doing the homework to make something dramatic and realistic? Irving's kidneys, I'm sick of this.