I’m not the kind of person who goes around criticising others for the sake of it, or pointing fingers and calling people or their ideas stupid; it’s just not nice. Meyer was inspired to write Twilight based on a dream she had about the two main characters Bella (human) and Edward (big sparkly vamp), and what’s wrong with that (apart from the sparkling thing)? In case you hadn’t realised by now, I’m a big believer in signs, whether they be horoscopes, gut feelings, magpies, people’s behaviour or even dreams. Maybe Stephenie Meyer is the same, maybe she interpreted her dream as a sign that she should write a book, and that’s fine. The book actually has a pretty good, if well used, basic plot: boy meets girl, boy turns out to be a vampire, boy wants to eat girl because she’s totally awesome, boy finds some inner strength to resist. Hey presto, you have yourself one happy ending where nobody get’s drained of blood, except maybe a Bambi. It’s basically a book about high school, with fangs. That’s all good, until Stephenie Meyer decided that once her characters had passed these supposedly insurmountable obstacles, of Bella being the dinner and the date all in one, like some shampoo and conditioner combo, they should start procreating! This is what I have issues with!
Any self-respecting vampire book, movie or TV show knows that a human-vampire relationship can’t end with a happily ever after. It just can’t. The fact that one half of the couple is alive and well, and the other is essentially a glamorous corpse is not something you can brush under the carpet and forget about when it’s convenient for your plot line. One of them will age, one won’t. One will always want to eat the other; I’m not a psychologist yet, but even I can see that this would put undue strain on even the most stable relationships. They would never be able to have children. I’m sorry Stephenie Meyer, did you fail biology when you were at school? Just in case you missed what I said, I’ll repeat it: they would never be able to have children! Did you get it that time? I love vampire shows, I have all the seasons of Buffy and Angel on DVD, I watch The Vampire Diaries and Being Human religiously, I think True Blood is interesting enough. Do you know what all these shows have in common? Female humans in relationships with male vampires. Do you know what else they all have in common? None of them can have children. Ever. This very topic was wonderfully, awkwardly, covered in Season 2 of Buffy. For those of you not in the know, at this point Buffy the vampire slayer is still in a relationship with Angel, a 150+ year old vampire, and for a school assignment Buffy had to look after an egg like a pretend child.
Buffy: Oh, I told you, that faux parenting gig we're doing at school. (faces him) Like I'm really planning to have kids anytime soon. Uh, maybe *some*day, in the future, when I'm done having a life, but... right now kids would be just a little too much to deal with.
Angel: I wouldn't know. (looks at her) I don't... Well, you know, I, I can't. (Loosely interpreted, I take this to read: I don’t produce sperm. Well, you know, I, I can’t...BECAUSE I’M DEAD!)
Buffy: Oh. (looks away briefly, then back) That's okay, um... I-I figured there were all sorts of things vampires couldn't do. You know, like work for the Telephone Company, or volunteer for the Red Cross, or... have little vampires.
And that’s how it should always be. But no, Stephenie Meyer decides to be different. It’s one thing to be different by having sparkly vampires that don’t burn in the sun. I’m entering into the book/movie aware that it’s about mythical creatures so I’m not expecting factual accuracy, my disbelief is already suspended and I can stretch it further to believe that vampires sparkle. Whatever. I cannot not not, no matter how much of my disbelief I suspend or hang upside down or throw out the window, believe that corpses can produce sperm to fertilise an egg and make a baby. Sperm, no matter how freaky and alien it may look, is still a living thing. Dead people (vampires) cannot produce anything living as it takes blood and oxygen and hormones, all things that dead people no longer have otherwise they wouldn’t be dead, and hence no sperm. This is a fact that appears to have conveniently passed Meyer by. Yet throughout the books she reminds us constantly, mostly through Bella’s whingeing, that Edward is cold to the touch, and feels like stone...a bit like a corpse, perhaps? And if it is in fact the case that dead guys can produce sperm and make babies, then what about the women in Stephenie Meyer’s book? Why can’t Rosalie have children with Emmett? Why is it one rule for men, and another rule for women? Because if you’ve got one dead person able to procreate with apparently zero difficulty, then why not 2 dead people? If you’ve got one dead person in the relationship, you may as well have a million for all the difference it will make.
So, I don’t know if Meyer's planning to write any more books, or if she's planning to write any more about vampires in particular. It’s great that she follows her dreams (literally), but next time hopefully she'll follow them through a science book, or at least an advisor who can tell her when her ideas are getting a bit silly again. It would save a lot of people a lot of distress I would imagine.
“Edward hesitated to test himself, to see if this was safe, to make sure he was still in control of his need. And then his cold, marble lips pressed very softly against mine.” Bella Swan, Twilight
Love, Lalita xxx
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