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I read the four books of Twilight. Yes, I enjoyed them while I was reading. No, I do not enjoy the fangirls. I am a mad Harry Potter fan, but I don't go around calling it the finest piece of literature I have read. I can imagine as one of the more entertaining books someone has read, but, well... I can't stand a lot of things relating to the books.

When I get bored, I read fanfiction of random works. Seriously, I've read Bear in the Big Blue House fanfiction. I've read weird stuff. So I was reading Twilight fanfics for a while before I read Breaking Dawn last month. The depressing thing is, I'm mixing up what happened in the book and what happened in the fanfiction because the writing styles were so similarly in need of spellcheck. Maybe we can blame the editors of Breaking Dawn, but the writing style is Meyer's. I'm sorry, that's just... oh my gosh.

Yeah, everyone has their favorite character. I'm a girl, so usually this favorite is also female. In this case, she is Leah Clearwater. I have no idea why, but whenever the main characters are impractically romantic, I tend to favor the realist. This happened in Pride and Prejudice, for example. I am a hell of a lot like Elizabeth, believing in true love idealistically and such, but she was so ridiculously judging of others, that I could not champion her. Jane was a right little weepy martyr, Lydia was an imbecile (hilarious, but dumber than rocks), Mary was meh, Kitty only got better in the end, I couldn't stand Caroline Bingley's conniving, and nobody likes Mrs. Bennet. So this left me with Charlotte Lucas/Collins. I dunno, but I just sympathized with her practicality in marrying. Charlotte was freaking 27, and really did not have all that many options for marriage. Props to her for choosing security over becoming an unfortunate spinster pining for that man.

On a similar note, Bella bothered me. A lot. She became awful, leading Jacob along and making it seem like he had some sort of hope. I liked Alice, but her personality was strange. Rosalie scared me in a good way, but Meyer did not flesh her out how I would have liked, and her part in Breaking Dawn was freaking selfish. So this leads me to the story's Charlotte, Leah.

Now, Leah did act like a b***h, but what would you do if the man (or woman, if that's how you swing) you loved suddenly fell for your cousin/best friend because of "fate". Yeah, I'd be bitter too. And then you're stuck with half a dozen teenage boys in your head for hours at a time? I can feel for her, and am upset that the authoress left Leah without a future. Oh, she's Jacob's "beta" and that's power, but she's got no mate, no college education, few friends, guilt because her dad may have died because of her phasing, genetic dead end-ness, freaking bloodsuckers EVERYWHERE, and the prospect of living forever.

Many of the male wolves imprinted, right? Meaning they have soulmates that they will stop phasing for at some point to die with. 'Cept for Jacob, since he can happily live forever with his ickle sea monster. Leah? No soulmate for her. And even if she did find a guy that was not mystically bonded to her, there still would be no chance of children. Those maternal instincts over Seth did not come from nowhere. Happy Leah could have been a loving mother. But no, fate (Stephenie Meyer) took that future away from her and she can't even die correctly. What's forever if there's nothing left to live for?

It would have been awesome to have a Jacob/Leah relationship. Some of the best bits from Jacob's POV came from their bantering. Yeah, Leah's older than Jacob... by one more year than Bella is. So not that big a deal. There'd probably be a lot of arguments in their relationship, since that's how they are, but it could easily collapse into laughter. Jacob could make Leah laugh. Heck, if anybody could make her smile again, I'd be thrilled. Even if not every girl "needs a man" to get by, I figure the least Meyer could have done after establishing the powerz of tru luv in four books was leave the one who deserved it most with something.

Nah, Leah's only a minor character. Minor characters are just mechanisms to help propel the story forward, or maybe provide themselves as foils. Poetic injustice, is what it is.