Do you remember when the media-cycle last turned around to Vampires? Twilight was a big part of that zeitgeist, but so was True Blood, Being Human and a re-release of LJ Smith's Vampire Diaries, which was part of a previous vampire cycle in the mid-nineties. If I recall correctly, it was preceded by witches - remember Charmed and T*Witches? - and followed by werewolves. Then aliens, some more witches, and now we're stuck on zombies. We've been stuck on zombies for a while now, actually. It's a bit interminable.
I read the first Twilight book in order to see what all the fuss was about. It was okay. Went down easily, like junk food, but when you thought back over what it contained you felt a little bad. Like the whole magical soulmates aspect; for a species that doesn't breed via sex why would you even need sexual attraction? How would the mechanism for establishing one perfect soulmate even work, and what possible benefit could it have? Especially because the same or a related factor made Bella smell delicious so Edward nearly ate her before realizing that she was his true love anyway.
There's also the way the book presented certain behaviours as romantic when they'd more typically come under domestic violence in the real world. Abusers make their victims stay by convincing them that this is what love is - we don't need popular fiction helping to maintain the charade. From my recollection, Edward hits three out of this list, and hits fifteen out of the one used by Kar3ning. For both, the point of concern is one.
At this point you may be wondering why I've entitled this post 'defence of sparklepires'. That's because I've been thinking about vampiric abilities and the various explanations for them.
My favourite vampire story is David Sosnowski's Vamped. The author has a wonderful way with words, and the world he's built is amazing. Marty, the main character, is one of the original vampires who decided to take over the world. Now they've succeeded. Blood is grown in vats and can be ordered by the pint, all flights are red eye, and everyone's gone back to their day jobs. There's some great world building in the book, and you can tell the author's considered every little aspect. One thing he doesn't really go into though, because it's not strictly relevant and because Marty doesn't know, is how and why vampires work.
It was LJ Smith, I believe, who came up with my favourite theory for vampiric bloodlust. I think it was in The Vampire Diaries where vampire blood was described as a virus which attacked bone marrow. Someone who had been infected would not be able to produce normal, oxygen-carrying blood, and if they did not obtain some would go on to die of oxygen-starvation. When they do drink human blood, their own blood rapidly kills the red blood cells, hence why they require regular top-ups.
What neither Smith nor Sosnowski cover is why vampires are photosensitive. Traditionally, it's because the sun is 'holy' and vampires are 'evil' which isn't saying much. What do the words 'holy' and 'evil' mean in this context, apart from two things that are in opposition? What is the actual mechanism that causes damage?
In some ways, it would make more sense for zombies to be photosensitive. Heat speeds decomposition; the virus which encourages the host to only be active at night, when it's cooler, and to hide in cold places during the heat of day would last long and spread further than a virus which ignores that and speeds the decomposition of the host.
Meyer, at least, address this in Twilight. Her vampires avoid sunlight because...they sparkle. She even has an explanation - the sparkling attracts prey. She also explains the mechanism, which is to do with the structure of vampiric skin. If you don't reject it on principle as non-traditional it explains itself very nicely.
It does, however, beg another question. What was the vampires' original prey? Humans certainly don't provide the arms race necessary to produce super speed, strength, and sparkly attractive skin. We're very good specialized tool-users, but a predator could get by on just one of those, never mind all three and psychic abilities on top.
Which leads to my personal theory; the vampires are aliens. The vampire virus originally came from somewhere it was necessary for those traits to exist, for survival. Then they were dropped on this planet, where they vastly outclass their prey.
The other alternative is that their prey either disappeared - possible since they'd have to be very fast, probably became nocturnal, and very good at hiding - and at the same time vampires developed the ability to eat humans. If vampires developed the ability to eat humans before their prey became so good at hiding the arms race would have ended there and then; why try to go after the hard prey when the easy one is right there, being a sitting duck? And, of course, if they developed it much later they would have have starved.
In short; I like the sparklepire thing because it makes sense, but only if you then assume that vampires are aliens. Which is still more logical than sunlight being holy.
I have mentioned this before, but I'm a huge fan of Luminosity and Eclipse, Twilight rewrites by Alicorn, with Bella as a rationalist heroine.
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