So after seeing all those innocent humans being killed...

[ShadowDog]

That's a pretty clever observation, Duckie.  I think you're on to something here.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Perhaps this anti-vegetarian attitude was inspired by the dogma of Troll 2? =o

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

Or Meyer's husband is a butcher.  He came home and told her his sales were down and she had to cut back on her budget.....

*Poof*....Bella's a vegan.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

It's a standard problem for ALL vampire genre movies, TV shows, and novels.  One math professor calculated how many people all the Sunnydale vampires shown over the 7 year life of that series would have had to kill if they only ate once a night per night they were shown in the series.  He had all kinds of variables like excluding a certain number Buffy was shown staking the first time they appear on screen and stuff, but the final tally was still over 100,000.  That many people dead and the national guard wasn't called in?  That Mayor must have had some pull.

It's a serious problem you have to deal with if you set out to write in the vampire genre.  Which is why I think Bram Stoker had Dracula feeding off the same person for days and weeks so it comes across as some kind of wasting disease and the death at the end doesn't draw much attention.  With that kind of feeding pattern you could live off 12 or so babes a year and never draw massive attention.

In factoring the math, one has to remember that the vampires don't need to drain an entire person (a whole group can get a good feed off one victim), and they can drink animal blood as well. They just prefer to kill people. Presumably, most of the vampires are keeping a low profile, sticking to red-cross hijackings and squirrel blood until the fateful night they give in and meet Buffy's stick.

What I really don't understand, though, is why vampires even bother with a pretense of secrecy in Meyer's world. They're stake-proof, sun-proof, and generally unkillable by humans for very ill-defined reasons (is it the super speed just lets them overpower people, or the granite skin? How would they take flamethrowers and napalms? What if you tossed one into a volcano?)

[Plastic Self-Cleaning Duck]

It's a serious problem you have to deal with if you set out to write in the vampire genre.  Which is why I think Bram Stoker had Dracula feeding off the same person for days and weeks so it comes across as some kind of wasting disease and the death at the end doesn't draw much attention.  With that kind of feeding pattern you could live off 12 or so babes a year and never draw massive attention.

Also helps that infant mortality rates were huge back then.  Consider that they're only recently starting to understand a little about SIDS.  Villager in the 1800's and before finds their infant dead for no apparent reason was easy to sell on the idea of creatures who stole souls or the life-force.

What I had a hard time understanding was why Dracula was moving in the first place.  Yeah, the locals were on to him.  But they'd been that way for hundreds of years and they were well fed. They were feeding fine ever before they went after Harker.  And the locals knew the things that would protect them....so did Van Helsing and yet Dracula managed to get past them there in England.  Just as likely he could find enough clods who fell asleep on guard or messed up their garlic distribution back home as well....

And if your goal is to start somewhere fresh, why make sure that the first Brit you encounter disappears?  You'd think it would be in your best interest to protect that one human and get him home safe.

To my mind that was one thing that the play and Tod Browning's Dracula gets right. He tells Renfield (who works alone and seemingly has no family) to destroy all record of their connection before coming to Transylvania - just in case Renfield doesn't survive the trip.  Harker had Mina and a family and was a clerk in a large law firm all of who weren't letting it go

[stormcloud96]

I think the short answer here, is Bella is an American teenager, knows exactly what she wants and is going for it at all costs. I often use the excuse I was young and stupid (even if it was last week) as a kind of joke. But its just the teenage mentality. Hence why teenagers can relate and we cannot. The thought of caring for anyone beyond yourself is just not even a possibility. Yeah I didn't appreciate Edward knocking Tofu, it tastes just like chicken, and I happen to be a vegetarian, and am very satisfied. Once you get past the cravings for meat, the thought of eating it disgusts me. I'd eat human meat though, if nothing else out of curiousity.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

What I had a hard time understanding was why Dracula was moving in the first place.  Yeah, the locals were on to him.  But they'd been that way for hundreds of years and they were well fed. They were feeding fine ever before they went after Harker.  And the locals knew the things that would protect them....so did Van Helsing and yet Dracula managed to get past them there in England.  Just as likely he could find enough clods who fell asleep on guard or messed up their garlic distribution back home as well....

And if your goal is to start somewhere fresh, why make sure that the first Brit you encounter disappears?  You'd think it would be in your best interest to protect that one human and get him home safe.

To my mind that was one thing that the play and Tod Browning's Dracula gets right. He tells Renfield (who works alone and seemingly has no family) to destroy all record of their connection before coming to Transylvania - just in case Renfield doesn't survive the trip.  Harker had Mina and a family and was a clerk in a large law firm all of who weren't letting it go

I think Dracula wanted to become an English Gentleman, because that's what all the cool kids were doing at the time.


Also, Stormcloud, teenager does not equal sociopath. Don't denigrate an entire age group in the name of cutting Meyers some slack. I was a teenager, and I had functioning ability to emphasize, to recognize I was sometimes in the wrong, and to relate to the Other.

[The Manatee]

It's a standard problem for ALL vampire genre movies, TV shows, and novels.  One math professor calculated how many people all the Sunnydale vampires shown over the 7 year life of that series would have had to kill if they only ate once a night per night they were shown in the series.  He had all kinds of variables like excluding a certain number Buffy was shown staking the first time they appear on screen and stuff, but the final tally was still over 100,000.  That many people dead and the national guard wasn't called in?  That Mayor must have had some pull.

It's a serious problem you have to deal with if you set out to write in the vampire genre.  Which is why I think Bram Stoker had Dracula feeding off the same person for days and weeks so it comes across as some kind of wasting disease and the death at the end doesn't draw much attention.  With that kind of feeding pattern you could live off 12 or so babes a year and never draw massive attention.

I always wished they'd do a Buffy episode in the style of Cops. May look like mayberry but we have a serious, serious gang problem here. The slayers on the westside, and the vampires downtown. It is NOT safe to walk the streets at night.

But most of the vampires she was slaying were noobs from other kills who never got one kill anyway, she dusted them as soon as they rose. They are not really alive so there's no reason to think they'd have to feed every night anyway.