random thought while reading more Twilight...

[ratcreature]

So, I started reading the second part -- though I'm not that far along yet -- and I really don't get how this vampire reaction to blood is supposed to work. Apparently even a little blood, like from a paper cut, taxes their control, unless they have lots of practice like Carlisle. Okay, whatever.

But how does that work while they are in a school where half the students will bleed three to five days per month?? Granted, it's not a lot of blood, but more than from a paper cut, so they must smell that. And it's not like they growl a lot at random girls from what I gathered. Is this explained somewhere? Did I miss something? Does menstrual bloood smell icky? What? I don't get it.

Comments

[marag.livejournal.com]

I've never read the books, so I have no idea what the author thinks, but menstrual blood is totally different than what's in your veins. Yeah, it has some blood in it, but it's mostly got all kinds of other stuff. Remember, it used to be the uterine lining that was going to support a baby :D

I very much doubt that a vampire could drink menstrual blood.

[ratcreature]

I guess their senses might be more finely honed, but it's still blood, even with slimy gunk in it. It's not so much that I think they should want to eat it like fresh blood, but that the smell doesn't bother them at all, when in this vampire version even tiny wounds smell strong enough to make them hungry. Well, at least the abstinent vampires refraining from eating human. It just seems odd that it isn't even mentioned. E.g. if I had a vampire boyfriend reacting this strongly to blood smells I'd ask, just to be on the safe side...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

Do you really think it's odd that it's not mentioned in this kind of book?

[ratcreature]

Yeah. I mean, it is a book aimed a teenage girls from what I gather. And it's not like menstruation wasn't something that's quite present for that age group. I don't expect it to be central or anything, but it's not like it was that taboo as a subject in YA books from what I remember of reading in the "first falling love" genre. Admittedly when I was a teenager I skewed towards reading embarrassingly sappy lesbian romances rather than het ones, but I vaguely recall "girl falls for boy" ones too, and bodies weren't *that* absent in YA?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_inbetween_/]

I haven't read Meyers but I thought this kind of thing was very absent in her books in general.

[ratcreature]

It seems to be in these books, but I don't think this is due to genre demands. I get not wanting to include lengthy sections dealing with bodily fluids, I can see how that would be jarring (and potentially kind of gross). But considering that the protagonist's vampire boyfriend talks a lot about her smell, I don't think some mention of it changing over the month or a sentence or two dealing with the blood smell aspect to satisfy our curiosity would have been out of place. I can't be the only one who wondered about this while reading.

[saturn-girl.livejournal.com]

If Judy Blume had written Twilight, she would have mentioned periods. :)

[ratcreature]

Heh, true. I suspect if Twilight was that kind of YA book a lot of things would go a bit differently.

[brownbetty]

I very much doubt that a vampire could drink menstrual blood.

Way to shoot down a beloved BtVS smutfic premise!

[ratcreature]

I admit to being squicked by menstrual blood in smutfic because it always reminds me of my oversharing biology teacher, who told us how much he used to like to fuck his girlfriend while she was having her period (without a condom since there was no pregnancy risk) before AIDS as he pitied us that so much stuff was now high risk behavior...

On the bright side at least he wasn't creepy about it, not like one of my high school art teachers who always stood too close, talked about whores and shoe fetishes and asked female students (at least pretty ones) what they did with their boyfriends in the shower (which also embarrassed said boyfriends who of course were also in the class). But still, I did not need to know that my biology teacher used to have a thing for menstrual blood.

[marag.livejournal.com]

Late response, but may I say...

EWWWWW!!!! Call me a bad bisexual, but that sounds gross to me. Suddenly, I find myself glad I was never really in BtVS fandom. :D

[brownbetty]

Hahaha, I was about to share with you the plot point of a BtVS fic I read, but then I realized just in time that you PROBABLY didn't want to know.

[marag.livejournal.com]

::wipes brow:: Oh thank you! Yes, I strongly suspect that I don't want to know.

It's like the person on my flist who feels compelled to post links to the worst Torchwood fic she sees, y'know, the serious Lord King Bad fic with tough guys crying? And then I feel compelled to read it. And then I cry.