Until my dying day, I will deny that those are real vampires.
Not afraid of sunlight? Not repelled by crucifixes or holy water or garlic? Casting shadows and appearing in mirrors? Not sleeping in coffins? Being "sparkly"? No fangs at all?!?
"Vampires" my butt. Those are, at most, people with severe eating disorders.
Taken at the Best Buy in Burlington, North Carolina.
So I wound up watching, of all things, the movie Twilight and its immediate sequel New Moon.
Ehhhhh... they were okay, I guess. I still don't think that Edward and his kin are real vampires. I mean: they aren't afraid of daytime, they don't sleep in coffins, they aren't repelled by crucifixes or garlic, they don't have actual fangs...
Those aren't vampires. They are, at best, people with severe eating disorders.
(I still think that Anne Rice will always be the master of vampire fiction. Akasha would have incinerated the entire Cullen clan without batting an eyelash... and we all know it! :-)
Yes, there are pictures. And if y'all behave nice I might post them...
-- attributed to one "jayrunquist"
(Okay seriously, for all of y'all going to see Eclipse tonight, hope you have fun :-)
'Nuff said.
And I have to report to all two of this blog's faithful readers that much to my surprise, I enjoyed Twilight more than I had anticipated. So far as vampire fiction goes I'm still going to consider Dracula to be the high bar, along with Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles (the first several books anyway). But in Twilight I found a satisfying fulfillment of something I hadn't realized there had been a dearth of: a thoroughly modern-day American vampire mythos.
And that's the thing that makes me want to read the other books in the Twilight series: Meyer does establish quite a deep and empathetic lore in her tale of Bella, Edward and the Cullen clan of vampires. Yeah, they're vampires. I can finally buy into that. Up 'til now, what little I'd known of the vampires in the Twilight books had caused me to muster up a "meh". I mean, "vampires" who aren't afraid of sunlight, aren't repelled by garlic or crucifixes, etc.? Those aren't vampires, those are people with severe eating disorders at most. But having the read the book I kinda like this updated take on the vampire physiology, just as I thought Anne Rice had a brilliant and even sensible basis for vampires in her literature.
In other aspects, Twilight reads much like any romantic novel aimed at adolescents and young adults... and that's fine too. Vampire fiction cuts across a huge swath of genre. In this case it didn't detract from my personal appreciation of the novel at all, and I don't foresee it being a hindrance in my reading the other installments of the Twilight series either.
So if, like me, you've been wandering the bookstore aisles and inwardly debating whether Twilight is a book worth sinking your teeth into (or at least sinking into your wallet and plunking down money for), I'll have to give it a good recommendation.
And maybe sometime I'll even draw up the courage to watch the movie...
Twilight is the first book in a series written by Stephenie Meyer about a clan of "vampires". No, I haven't read the books. But these alleged nosferatu aren't afraid of sunlight, aren't repelled by garlic, aren't stopped by running water and aren't turned away by crucifixes. Those aren't vampires: they are, at most, people with severe eating disorders. Anyhoo the books are wildly popular (but y'all know that already right?) and Twilight just became a hit movie.
And to think that some people say I go too far with Star Wars :-P
