CharacterExploration: Jacob - Not Your Typical Prince Charming

Jacob Black
By:

Krum Cake

In any other story, Jacob could have been the hero.

Isn’t that what heroes are supposed to do? To fight for the ones they love, no matter the cost? Turn the tables and look at the world of Twilight from a new perspective, where Jacob is no longer the trusty friend, the other man, or the enemy. From this new point-of-view, he is the protagonist. He’s in love with a woman, but there is another man—a man that Jacob, for reasons he hardly understands, was raised to hate. He sees how hurt the woman he loves is when this other man leaves, and he sees that being with the other man means death for the woman he loves. Things are rarely ever black and white, but when the situation is skinned to the bone, there remain just two options: to give up, or to fight for her.

It’s true that there is sometimes beauty and honesty and even catharsis in giving up, like Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding. But although Jacob could see how happy Bella was with Edward, he could also see

elements of their relationship that were unhealthy. Giving up would have meant watching Bella continue in a relationship with a man who used to sneak into her room and watch her sleep at night, and how could he find any beauty in that? So he fought. He stumbled along the way, some of his tactics were questionable, and he ultimately failed. But he never gave up on the woman he loved.

Jacob could have easily been the hero of Twilight. But this is truly the age of the vampire, and when his story is told from another perspective wherein he is just a supporting character rather than the protagonist, he doesn’t stand a chance.

He is perhaps one of the most abused characters in this fandom, second only to Mr. Michael Newton. So I’m prepared to get my hands dirty and my knuckles bloodied as I dig to uncover the many faces of Jacob Black as we know him in canon and as he is represented in fanfiction.

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Understanding Jacob: a History

The best way to understand canon Jacob is to take a look at his life and see what events and other crazy shenanigans shaped him into who he is.

Pre-Twilight:

• His mom dies in a car crash when he is young, leaving his father, Billy, to raise three children on his own. HARDCORE SUCKAGE.
• He grows up with two older sisters—who probably talk about tampons and men’s asses and *NSYNC all the freaking time.
• Every now and then he chills with his dad’s friend’s daughter, who seems pretty cool and would rather talk about Boo Radley and Stuart Little than Justin Timberlake.
• His sister Rebecca actually ran off to Hawaii with some surfer dude in order to escape the pain of Sarah Black’s death. There are some buried emotional issues in this family, for sure.

Twilight:

• Heyyyy-o, Boo Radley chick is here to stay, and she got rather pretty over the years. NICE.
• And she flirts with him!
• …just to get information out of him. Ouch.
• His dad sends him on this weirdo mission to go stalk Bella at her prom and warn her to stay away from the Cullens or…he’ll disapprove of her? Whatever. Jacob gets money out of it.

New Moon:

• After he hears about her crazy depression, Jacob is randomly approached by Bella one day, and she has motorcycles and is all, “LET’S DO THIS!”
• They hang. A lot.
• Like seriously, a lot. They do homework, chill in the garage, and IT IS AWESOME.
• Whoa. She’s a girl. And she’s pretty, smart, funny, and…holy shit…he’s starting to really fall for her.
• Meanwhile, his two best friends magically transform into major jackasses and stop hanging with him in order to prance around with dickhead Sam Uley, and that sucks. Hard.
• So on one hand, he’s dealing with Bella, who is hurting and very fragile, and he’s learning that piecing a heartbroken girl back together is insanely hard work. And on the other hand, he’s losing the only other friends he has to something he doesn’t quite understand…
• Until…SHABAM! Jacob the man-wolf emerges, and
  
  suddenly his whole world has turned upside-down, because WTF IS GOING ON, and his brain is overloaded with information and he feels like he might be going a little bit crazy and suddenly he understands Sam and Embry and Quil’s behavior, except it still doesn’t really make sense, because HOLY SHIT HE CAN TRANSFORM INTO A WOLF, THIS SHIT IS CRAZY.
• Also, he is suddenly a buff twenty-five-year-old (physically) whose internal temperature is 108.9 degrees, which is an incredibly convenient excuse to run around La Push shirtless. How can life suck so much while being SO AWESOME at the same time? And don’t lie. We all wish we could wake up one morning and be, like, super hot. You’d run around shirtless, too.
• Meanwhile, his friend’s dad dies of a heart attack and Bella, the girl whom he is growing to love, flings herself off a cliff. Just another day in the life.
• Just when it seems like things are going well with Bella, her ice cold vampire boyfriend comes back and she’s happy again and all Jacob can think is FML. For serious.

Eclipse:

• The girl he loves doesn’t love him, but his mortal enemy instead.
• He’s like this giant hormonal sixteen-year-old stuck in the body of a twenty-five-year-old, and the only thing even remotely close to action that he’s getting is the rare glimpse of Leah Clearwater naked after phasing. And seriously? What a bitch. He wouldn’t touch her with a ten foot pole.
• Well, there is that night in the sleeping bag, FOLLOWED BY A REAL, HONEST-TO-GOD KISS FROM HER, AND SHE BETTER NOT BE FUCKING AROUND THIS TIME, BECAUSE HE LOVES HER, DAMMIT, HE LOVES HER, AND—
• BAM, totally injured by a crazy newborn vamp, no time to think about this shit.
• Except she makes him think about it anyway by visiting him while he’s healing and…what’s that? Do his ears deceive him? She loves him? HOLY FUCK.
• Oh, but she can’t live without Edward.
• And she’s marrying the leech?
• Essentially, his brain explodes, and he goes all feral wolf on everyone and disappears into the woods.

Breaking Dawn:

• SHEER INSANITY.
• Woman he loves marries his worst enemy, blah blah, this is old news by now, but it still hurts like hell.
• Oh, and now’s she’s back from the honeymoon and she’s preggo and dying. Sweet. (But not really.)
• Edward, after having gone over the deep end, tells Jacob that he can…father Bella’s babies? WTF? Okay, he loves her and all, but even he’s got to admit that that’s just a tad creepy.
• All he wants to do is imprint, dammit, because that would be way easier than loving someone who is going to be killed by a demon fetus or be turned into a vampire or possibly both.
• Wish granted! He imprints! On…the demon baby. OH HELL. Life will not cut him a break.
• His best friend, the woman he used to love, is now a cold, dead vampire. Which means she smells gross.
• AND, in the midst of all of this, he broke free of his original pack and became Alpha of his own pack, which totally wasn’t stressful and overwhelming at all, probably.

In short, it’s not easy being Jacob Black. Not by a long shot.

So, that’s what we’ve been given. How has this translated into fanfiction?

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The BFF

This is a role that Jacob fits into quite snugly. Throughout the series, Bella often referred to him as her “personal sun,” and he has a personality that matches that description. He offers large smiles, envelops with warm hugs, has a lightening fast sense of humor, and genuinely cares about those around him. BFF Jacob is the self-same Jacob who sacrificed working on his beloved Rabbit in order to fix Bella’s bikes.

This version of Jacob is almost always cast in the role of supporting character, there to encourage the protagonist and to provide comic relief in the form of his snarky wit. He is generally “always the friend and never the boyfriend,” which may or may not bother him, depending on the plot. Out of all the

variations of Jacob, he is the closest thing to canon, and most often reflects pre-transformation Jacob, who is warmer and more happy-go-lucky than post-transformation Jacob.

But just because he is playing the best friend archetype doesn’t mean that BFF Jacob has to be a cliché or cookie cutter character. We’ve all seen those movies where the best friend is a 2D plot device used simply to prove that the main character isn’t a friendless loser. But sometimes the best friend is just as complex as the main character, if not more. One of the most well-known examples of this is in

Innocent, Vigilant, Ordinary

by

Oxymoronic8

. In the story, Jacob is Bella’s other half, but in a way that is more platonic than romantic, which is something both characters are learning the hard way. Jacob is Bella’s best friend, but there is a depth to his character that transcends the usual best friend cliché.

A more lighthearted portrayal of BFF Jacob can be found in

Shuffle, Ball, Change

by

Fiction101

. Jacob once again plays the supporting character to protagonist Seth, and his sharp, teasing sense of humor shines in a way that is far from flat and enhances the personality of the story itself. The following excerpt is taken from a scene in Seth’s point-of-view in which he and Jacob are discussing the fact that Seth, a high school teacher, just—horror of horrors—imprinted on one of his students:

Does it really matter where she sits?” Jake asked exasperatedly. “When she turns eighteen and is no longer sitting at the back of the classroom you can take it from there.” You know your life’s pretty messed up when a guy with a milk mustache starts making sense.

“Man up,” I repeated. “I can do that.”

“Good.” Jake grinned as he grabbed my head and gave me a noogie. “And if you can’t I heard that the forecast for tomorrow is cloudy with a chance of balls. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll get lucky and find a pair.”

I flipped him off. “Or I could ask Nes to lend me yours.”

“Son of a—” He made a swipe for me but I easily dodged it.

“By the way, I need a favour.”

“Brother, mother, psychologist. What next? Does he need me to shit a rainbow too?” Jake mumbled, turning his gaze to one of the many overpriced ceiling fans that decorated Chez Wolf. “What’cha need, kid?”

In spite of the fact that we may have teased the crap out of each other, when it came down to it we were brothers in every way that really mattered. We always had each other’s backs.

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The Creeper

We’ve all bumped into him in fanfiction. Creeper Jacob is a severe distortion of his canon character and his existence is similar to that of a vicious rumor: somewhere, deep down, there is a tiny seed of truth, but it has been so twisted and convoluted that its origins are hardly recognizable.

It would be incredibly biased of me to ignore the roots of Creeper Jacob’s many incarnations. It’s not enough to simply say, “People just hate Jacob.” Why, exactly? Here are my speculations, all of which come from canon events:

1.

He loved Bella even when she didn’t love him back. He kept hoping even though she repeatedly tried to enforce the fact that their relationship was purely platonic. While I previously cited this as

behavior of a heroic protagonist, it could be argued that this is behavior of a guy who just won’t get a clue. And that’s just ew.

2.

He purposely got Bella in trouble with Charlie when he was angry by leaving the motorcycles in her front yard. With fronds like these, who needs anemones, right?

3.

He kissed Bella and she just took it. Then, when she punched him for it, he laughed in her face. This is not exactly honorable behavior.

But Jacob’s biggest crime is not one that he had any control over:

4.

He was not Edward.

Honestly, Jacob never stood a chance. After Edward enchanted audiences everywhere in Twilight, there was no turning back. And even when Edward left Bella, most readers’ loyalties still lay with him. And suddenly Jacob was just there. For Jacob, the events of New Moon were simply life, but from a reader’s standpoint, he was just another obstacle in the way of Bella and Edward’s Happily Ever After. And it appears as though a majority of readers could never really forgive him for that.

And thus Creeper Jacob and all of his cousins were born. Rapist Jacob, Abusive Jacob, Stalker Jacob, Stupid Jacob, Rageaholic Jacob, Evil Husband Jacob, Kidnapper Jacob, Beer Gut Jacob…the list goes on and on.

These are not fair portrayals of Jacob. They’re just not.

But acknowledging and understanding the problem is half of the battle, if you’ll excuse my use of cliché. I’m not saying it’s necessary for Jacob to be a golden boy in every story, because not even Edward gets that much reverence in this fandom. I can’t make anybody like Jacob and I can’t stop people from using him as a villain. But where’s the harm in having a well-developed, complex villain? That is completely respectable.

I feel like Creeper Jacob is a good lesson for all writers. Each story, whether it is a published novel or a piece of fanfiction, needs its fair share of unlikeable characters. And while it’s fun to mercilessly write about bitchy cheerleaders or brainless jocks or rapist werewolves, stories begin to lose credibility when some characters are given thorough, deep personalities and others are just depthless plot devices meant to purposely rile the emotions of readers.

Love Jacob or hate him. Just develop him as a character, please.

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The Annoyance

This sounds negative at first, but believe it or not, Annoying Jacob is different from Creeper Jacob in a million different ways. Annoying Jacob is that snarky guy hanging around in the backdrop, pushing everyone’s buttons and pissing the hell out of them simply because he can. And most importantly, he’s funny…in that “Oh my God, ahaha, I’m dying, but no, seriously, I want to punch you in the face” kind of way.

We all know a guy like Annoying Jacob. He’s not exactly your friend, and you like to roll your eyes at him a lot, but sometimes when you’re lying in bed and you can’t sleep, your thoughts turn to him for a second and you go, “Goddamn, that guy’s fucking hilarious…the bastard.”

He’s usually seen bugging the crap out of Leah or even Rosalie, but that’s not to say a fic featuring Jacob directing all his poisonous snark at Jasper wouldn’t be absolutely priceless.

Kobe Grace

’s Jacob is pitch-perfect in her Leah-centric story

Waiting for the Sky to Fall

in that he is the perfect mix of annoying and caring.

He’s moody and nosy, but there’s no denying his concern for Leah. It’s sweet, even if you want to punch him sometimes. And to think, he’s been confusing people since he was nine freaking years old:

"I hate fourth grade,” Jacob exclaimed dramatically as he neared.

“Already?” said Quil. “It’s only been a week.”

“I don’t care — I hate fourth grade so much. I won’t make it to the end of the year.” He looked at Quil and Embry solemnly. “You guys, if I don’t make it, you can have all my Digimon cards.”

Leah tilted her head in his direction. “What’s his problem?”

“Mr. Wright told the fourth-graders that they’re doing times-ing with two digits this year,” explained Embry, who himself was in fifth grade. “Jake here doesn’t think he can handle it.”

“What?” Leah rolled her eyes and smiled. “Aw, Jake, it’s not so bad. You just have to know your tables real well. And then just make sure that you keep track of the order you’re doing the numbers in.”

“But I can’t do that! You should see the homework Mr. Wright handed out today — it’s crazy. There are numbers everywhere!”

“It is math, Jake,” Quil pointed out.

“Yeah, but it’s crazy killer math. Math that kills. Did you know,” he added grimly, “that math is what killed my mom?”

Okay, seriously? I’m torn between punching the kid and hugging him.

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The Romantic

Romantic Jacob is probably the exact antithesis of Creeper Jacob. He is generally a leading player in romance stories, paired with either Bella or Nessie.

He has all of the warmth and teddy bear qualities of BFF Jacob with just one exception: he’s not just in the background.

Describing Romantic Jacob with words just doesn’t do him justice. You have to feel him.

Caffeineaddict13

has a number of one-shots and drabbles that make my heart ache with their beauty. Yes, most of her stories are Jacob/Bella, and they are gorgeous. They’re incredibly emotional without being over-the-top, and Jacob is both beautiful and in-character and heartbreaking at times. Although all of her stories are worth devouring, I strongly suggest

Hate is a Strong Word

and

For the Last Time

.

Another great writer of Romantic Jacob is

blueandblack

. And while her portrayal of Jacob throughout her various one-shots might not seem incredibly romantic at first, it feels real. She writes him as a true teenage boy, and Bella as a true teenage girl, and there is beauty in their connection. Jacob’s romance is all in the way he speaks, jokes, calls her “Bells.” Her stories often sting of heartache, like

Better and Worse

, but it’s not all hopeless, such as in the aptly named

Happy Ending

.

He’s not your typical Prince Charming; he’s just a teenage boy who doesn’t always say the right things and can’t fully keep his emotions in check, but he makes you melt, absolutely melt.

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Krum Cake

’s loyalties lie with Team Quileute, thus making her an awkward black sheep of the Twilight fandom. She is an unmotivated, procrastinating college girl and the author of

Well, This Sucks: Life According to Seth

, which means she spends her free time writing some fictional guy’s diary. She is obviously not a loser at all.

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Archived Explorations:

Upcoming Characters:

Angela, Rosalie, Paul/Quil/Jared, James/Victoria.