#Bella x hardin | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

humans4vampires · 3 years

Note

I caught some of your meta on your posts and I peeped around and saw a little Hardin Scott commentary. I saw you unpack this a bit in a chat but I want to hear more so I’ll ask again: If we sub out Jacob for Hardin, who would Bella pick? Edward or Hardin?

Wow, okay. Let's unpack!

I'd say it really depends on the situation; whether or not we're merging plot lines from both series or if we're just hard-swapping Hardin for Jacob in the Twilight Saga. I have so much to say about the two universes colliding, which I would dare say would have a different outcome and a much more compelling storyline, but since you asked this question specifically, I'll just cover what I think would happen if we swapped Jacob Black for Hardin Scott, cold-turkey, without any other peripheral character changes or introductions.

Edward Cullen versus Hardin Black (neé Scott)

Hardin Black is angsty, a little aggressive, and very popular amongst his friends and peers. He's charming, enough so that he's charmed the pants off of most of the girls his age, so he's quite sexually experienced by the time he meets his childhood friend, Bella Swan when she returns to Forks to live with her father.

Charlie Swan knows Hardin well enough to know he doesn't want him hanging around his teenage daughter, but his dear friend, Billy Black hopes that Bella might be a good influence on his gruff son. Charlie keeps a close watch on them when they're together, though he quickly assures himself that Hardin won't be pulling any tricks on his daughter.

Bella and Hardin were a volatile pair together, and both had no issue telling the other what they thought of them. Hardin found Bella to be a boring, plain-Jane, goody-goody, which only was made more apparent in her choice of a boyfriend; the incredibly tame and aggravatingly perfect, Edward Cullen. Over a fish-fry dinner with Billy and Hardin, Bella made a passing comment about Edward to Charlie, to which Hardin's response was, "Even worse than the Newton kid."

Bella saw Hardin as a fuck-boy, to be entirely honest. To her, he was rude and crass, spent too much of his time looking for destructive things to do. And once Edward came into the picture, she saw all of Hardin's flaws in direct comparison to her perfect gentleman in Edward.

Things changed, though, when Edward left Bella in the time during New Moon. Bella spent months essentially catatonic before discovering her new-found passion for adrenaline charging adventurism. Who better to create chaos with than Hardin?

Now, here's where some things take a turn. Hardin isn't interested in wholesome 'fun' like our sweetie pie, Jacob Black. Hardin drinks and parties and stirs up trouble. Bella falls in with Hardin, but does a good job of leveling him out a bit. They bond over their shared love of classic literature and spend their days recovering from their wild teenage nights by reading passages to each other on an old quilt on the beach in La Push.

Eventually, the two build a strong and trusting relationship, full of witty teasing and more balanced joy. They spend less and less of their time with friends at parties and more and more time alone. Bella proves to be a good equalizer for Hardin and Hardin a good measure of happiness for Bella. The two do end up having sex and continue to have a sexual relationship leading up to the time Hardin transforms into a werewolf.

Both Bella and Hardin manage to help each other with a lot of their varying emotional baggage, and in many ways, they are able to supplement each other well. Hardin's fear of abandonment is well cared for in Bella's over-attentiveness and need to be the "parent," while this quality in Bella is better balanced by Hardin's more carefree and narcissistic tendencies. In this, I mean to say that Hardin encourages Bella to let loose and think of herself first - which becomes even more liberating for Bella when the two begin their sexual relationship.

I'll pause here to unpack this more: I'm not just putting in this saucy tad-bit for your reading pleasure. You cannot have Hardin as a character without the sexual chemistry with the female protagonist. At his core, he's still an adaptation of Christian Grey and Harry Styles. This is not a comment on Harry Styles' sexual prowess, just to be clear - but Christian Grey is sex personified, and thus, is Hardin Scott (or Black, in this case). Which is so interesting to think about, considering Christian Grey is just an adaptation of Edward Cullen, thus, Hardin has enough at his core to be a strong contender for Bella. And, Bella Swan, at her core, is very in-tune with her sexuality. Stephenie Meyer may not be overly colorful with Bella's lustfulness, but it's obvious and apparent throughout the series. Bella and Hardin would have sex eventually and this would complicated things for the both of them, especially when Edward returns.

Now, as the whole werewolf thing unfolds and Bella is forced, by Hardin, to separate from him, the gravity of their relationship and their sexual encounters pushes Bella to another breaking point. She feels rejected and isolated with Hardin distancing himself and the feeling that she loses Edward the more she let's Hardin in hits her harder in Hardin's absence. Not to mention, her relationship with Hardin isn't exactly as easy-breezy beautiful, Cover Girl, like her relationship with the subbed-out Jacob was. Jacob, remember, is very go-with-the-flow, sunshine with a candy-coating sweet - and Hardin is very much not. All of those character flaws that make Hardin who he is are still there. Their relationship is tumultuous, which makes Bella question herself and exacerbates her insecurities.

There's not much time between the two reuniting after the werewolf is out of the bag -Get it? like the 'cat out of the bag?'- and when Bella leaves for Italy to save Edward. This moment triggers Hardin's abandonment issues big time and this is the moment Bella spends the next three books trying to overcome with Hardin. She does come back with Edward and she does continue her relationship as she did in Eclipse and Breaking Dawn, but with the added layer of sexual history and intense chemistry with Hardin throughout the rest of the saga, Bella struggles much more with her feelings for both men. Sex complicates things in a big way and definitely proved her feelings for Hardin very early on in the saga.

This also adds so much more complexity to her relationship with Edward, who very much knows what happened while he was away and very much blames himself for how Bella and Hardin's relationship developed - as he did with Bella and Jacob.

Ultimately, do I think that Bella would choose Hardin over Edward in the end? No. But Hardin does present a compelling swap that I'd say could keep you truly wondering if she was going to change her mind at any point.

I would like to assert here that Renesmee should never have happened like that and I will not even discuss the repercussions.

In the end, Bella would choose Edward for all the things that Hardin is not and cannot be; a perfect God-like creature that shifted her entire perspective of what life was and what life could be. Hardin, or Jacob, could never compete with that.

But the saga would have been so much more dynamic with the tension and the complexity that sex brings to a love story. Imagine Bella tossing and turning at night, Edward agonizing over hearing Hardin's name on her lips. Imagine Edward being tormented by Hardin's mental replays of his nights with Bella every time he looks at her. Imagine how much more conflicted Edward would be about his sexual relationship with Bella! The added complexity of his feelings of her being with Hardin and being nervous!! Oh, I can't even go into that right now...

It would make so much more sense for him to want to commit to her in marriage too! He'd want to solidify their love in a new and different way than she had with Hardin. And it would probably be the reason Bella would agree to it.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.

#Edward cullen #bella swan #hardin scott #after we collided #after we fell #jacob black #twilight fic #twilightsaga #twilight imagine #the twilight saga #Bella x hardin #bella x edward #edward x bella #bella x jacob #jacob x bella #new moon #bookofthels

61 notes · View notes

somethingoriginal127 · 4 years

Text

liking “toxic” (some are debatable) ships doesn’t make you a bad person. indulge yourself in your fictional guilty pleasures, i promise it’s ok they’re fictional.

While I understand it can be a problem for impressionable teens watching shows and reading stories with “bad boys” and characters who (according to opinion) don’t have redeemable qualities, you shouldn’t be attacked for liking these ships bc most of us are mature enough to know the difference.

while constantly talking abt how some want a “Damon” or i “want a Stefan” or a “Chuck Bass” or a “Hardin Scott” “Edward” “Jess” we also understand in real life what a healthy stable relationship is and consist of and that these relationships aren’t an accurate portrayal of it. most know how to separate the real world from fictional.

with the exception of a couple ships cough *lolita* that just rlly aren’t ok i think it’s ok to let others enjoy whatever ship based on the trope and not the fact that they’re “toxic” to you or most.

*disclaimer* : i don’t mean disagreeing bc you don’t like the same ship but people making other people feel like terrible human beings for liking a ship

38 notes · View notes