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

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

I suspect that it's simply because the writer didn't want to deal with the topic, or maybe just didn't think of it. I totally think you're right, though. I grew up in rural Alaska, and I know that bears are drawn to the smell of menstrual blood (as well as the blood on sheets and things that were used in childbirth). Vampires might be more gourmet about blood than your average wilderness predator, but it still should smell like blood to them.

I don't think I've ever seen menstruation addressed in ANY vampire novel I've read, come to think of it! Of course, I don't read too widely in the genre...

[ratcreature]

I'm not all that familiar with the vampire genre either. If the vampires here had been just able to smell blood really well, even if they liked the smell, I still wouldn't have found it odd that menstruation wasn't mentioned, but the book makes such a big deal out of the vampires' reactions to just a little blood, and emphasizes that not reacting takes a lot of control from them. And when it is stressed like that, as if they were sharks or something with an instinctual reaction, it just seems odd that being around menstruating women is not thought of at all. I mean, we are in the girl's POV and I can't imagine her not at least wondering about that.

[fic-kitty.livejournal.com]

Nope, this topic isn't addressed in any book I've ever read on vampires, no mythology, and precious few fanfics, even :P And hey, if Anne Rice won't touch it... really though, I would bet good money that if she did think to put it in, or even if she didn't, the editors would have piched a fit about it, because yes, its a book aimed at teenage girls... and Menstruation is a taboo subject in a lot of the western world. I can't speak for europe, but I know that Judy Bloome is still the height of racy "God, It's Me Margret" books and she was writing in the Sixties.

*shrugs* maybe she just couldn't think of a classy way to cover it. I say its alright that she left it out entirely, because as my own writing teachers have told me, it doesn't matter what you do in your novel, as long as you commit to it, and if she's going to commit to not touching the subject, then I don't have any particular methedological problem with it.

[fic-kitty.livejournal.com]

height of racy blah blah blah in the states and canada, should have been in there :P

[ratcreature]

It has something of an elephant in the living room though, the way she talks about the vampires instinctual reactions to blood smells, and the way Edward smells Bella all the time, yet it's as if menstruation doesn't exist. It's not that I expect a lot of focus on bodily fluids, but it's like-- hm, okay so in fiction you usually don't see characters using the toilet, which is fine, you don't really want to, but if a sequence of events is set-up in a way that there is no possible room or opportunity that a character could have use a toilet over a long time, then you'd notice, because it is just wrong and ridiculous. Even though you don't want to hear about toilet breaks in detail and they are usually absent in fiction, but in this case the circumstances make the absence noticeable. The menstrual blood thing here was kind of like that for me.