I know why the vampire sparkles!
I finally read Twilight, and after hours of internet research, I’ve found a solution to a major problem I had with the story. I know why the vampire sparkles!
Of course, innate body glitter is just the latest thing wrong with vampires at large, so I’ll start with the broader picture and work my way to the answer to that new riddle.
First, I assert that vampires must be giant, highly evolved insects. That makes sense because most of the hematophages in the natural world are bugs.
Second, like many real bloodsuckers, vampires must feed before they reproduce. However, unlike anything in the natural world, vampires seem to reproduce entirely through horizontal gene transfer. If they don’t kill their victim outright, then vampire genes invade the host and trigger…
Metamorphosis. According to Twilight, the process takes days and is excruciatingly painful, which is logical given that the victim undergoes complete hystolysis and histogenesis without the benefit of a pupal stage, let alone general anesthesia.
But wait! How do vampires retain the memories of their human lives? Well, butterflies are apparently able to remember things they learned as caterpillars. While it’s doubtful that the same processes would apply identically to higher-order animals, anything is apparently possible with enough suspension of disbelief.
Furthermore, vampires appear to be ectothermic, or never warmer than their environment. ‘Cold-blooded’, in other words. Their stone-like ‘skin’ also seems more like an exoskeleton than warm, soft, human tissue.
What about vampires’ superhuman abilities? The Tiger Beetle is technically ‘the fastest running land animal’. The strongest animal is the world is the horned dung beetle. Insects also have incredible vision; most see colors invisible to humans and bees see in color at five times the speed we’re able. Vampires and other insects don’t breathe like we do, nor do they possess a human heartbeat. As an added bonus, invertebrates are notoriously hard to kill.
By now, I’m sure you’re all with me; vampires are bugs. But what kind? It took me a while to figure it out, but now I’m convinced that vampires are nothing more than overgrown, parasitic…
There you have it. Vampires are gorgeous, metamorphosis is a key part of their development, and they are natural experts at camouflage and mimicry. Some butterflies have even been observed feeding on blood.
Why do they sparkle? That’s easy: Vampires, like butterflies, are covered in tiny iridescent scales.
Guillermo del Toro’s debut movie, Cronos, was a highly original vampire flick (about the only vampire flick that I personally really liked). At the heart of the Cronos device, which converts people to vampires, is indeed a giant bug…
I remember hearing about that movie, although I’ve never seen it. Under my own power, I would probably never have read Twilight. I am just not a fan of vampire stories.
But this was fun.
And now I want to watch Cronos.
Cronos is a vampire flick for people who don’t like vampire flicks. It has its grotesque touches–this is Guillermo del Toro, after all–but they don’t overwhelm.
Apparently Hollywood wanted to buy the remake rights (Cronos is mostly in Spanish) but del Toro, to his credit, refused.
Another example that comes to me: in Bruce Sterling’s novel Schismatrix, a person is killed by a swarm of white butterflies. There are other insect images in that novel, although no real vampire themes.
Personally, I’ve never particularly cared for vampire movies. The original Dracula is, in my opinion, not a great novel, not as deep as say Frankenstein. Dracula is merely a monster; whereas the monster in Frankenstein is complex and interesting. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I like the Coppola version of Dracula a lot (except for Keanu Reeves in it); he gives Dracula a plausible and interesting backstory.
I also liked the Coppola film because one of its premises is the major real-life antecedent to the Dracula legend: Vlad Dracul (“Son of the Dragon”), voivod of Wallachia.
Most vampire treatments show them as etiolated decadents, including that of Anne Rice. Making Lestat a rock star was a stroke of genius, but much of the rest was hothouse vaporings of the neo-Victorian kind. Twilight is that trend brought to its terminal and most boring conclusion, including the neo-Victorian (now Mormon) insistence on virginity and utter female dependence.
And, as many other people already noted, insects cannot exceed a certain size for numerous reasons — surface area/volume ratio for gas exchange being a major one.
P. S. The aristocrats-versus-proletarians distinction of vampires and werewolves that lurks in Twilight is made explicit in the Underworld trilogy. The first film of was interesting, if flawed; the less said of the second, the better; and the last one (strictly a prequel) had strong chemistry between its starcrossed lovers, as well as a female paladin figure. Who would have thunk that Michael Sheen could play such a convincing hunk!
It seems to me that I read about a vampire myth, from some part of the globe that escapes me, in which the vampire could transform, not into a bat like Stoker’s vampire, but into a large white butterfly or moth…
There’s a comment about that somewhere below, I think.
Fred Saberhagen’s interpretation of _Dracula_, _The Dracula Tapes_ is most interesting and gives the Dracula depth. You might appreciate it. Saberhagen went on to write other books based on his Dracula–_The Holmes-Dracula File_, _An Old Friend of the Family_, and numerous others, those these are, IMO, the best of the series.
And I like P.N. Elrod’s vampire books, too. She makes the human as well….
Thanks for the recs.
Aren’t there limits on the size of a bug based on (1) the degree to which an exoskeleton can support internal organs without them liquifying under their own weight and (2) the amount of oxygen available in the atmosphere (the bug’s lungs, IIRC, are basically gills, and there’s a point where their surface area physically can’t be large enough to offset a reduced concentration of O2, and I was under the impression this was why bugs were larger when Earth’s atmosphere was more oxygen-rich than it is today)?
If so, then maybe the vampires are a new species with buglike and humanlike traits resulting from convergent evolution.
You’re right! I intentionally left size limitations and oxygen requirements out of the post.
If I had gone there, I would have suggested convergent evolution and speculated an evolved physiology seen in no other species.
I’m glad you brought up the point, because without an entirely new direction in insect evolution, the Twilight vampires remain utterly unjustifiable. In my humble opinion, ha.
This is fun stuff. But, I have a small bone to pick. First you make the comment that most hematophages are insects, then you determine that vampires are related to common butterflies rather than something within the order Hemiptera or Diptera (which contain the majority of the hematophages).
My other bone is with modern vampire stories in general. What happened with vampire origin protocol? In Bram Stoker’s story ‘Dracula’, Lucy only becomes a vampire after she dies, not as a result of staying alive. But these days a vampire actually has to kill its victim to keep it from becoming a vampire. Does that seem backwards? It’s not just ‘Twilight’ (although they seem to take a lot of other liberties). ‘Blade’ and the Anne Rice stories are like that too. Ugh…
The rules for creating vampires are incredibly inconsistent: sometimes anyone who is bitten changes, sometimes those who are killed by vampiric exsanguination change, sometimes only virgins can become vampires, sometimes a vampire has to bring her to the brink of death and then feed her his blood. Come to think of it I think Dracula in the original book by Bram Stoker fed Mina his blood in order to control her.
I sort of prefer the old version – control through blood exchange – to most of the rest I’ve seen. I don’t think it makes any more sense scientifically, but I can better embrace the idea of blood compulsion than I can most of the rest. Some magical thinking makes more sense than other magical thinking, I guess.
Indeed. Without the sparkles, I would have done as you suggest and left the butterflies out of it. But it was really the sparkles I was trying to ‘justify’ with science. Of course, without the rest of it, the bit with the butterfly scales doesn’t stand up, does it?
Still fun to write, though.
I agree that vampire origins seem to have as many mechanisms as there are vampire stories. It’s one reason why I find it so hard to get into most stories about vampires. In the case of Twilight, I had to read it subversively just to make it through. I mean, there wasn’t even a ‘villain’ until almost the end of the book, and even then he was more interesting than the main characters. I was a little sad when he died.
I seem to remember in at least one regional variation on the vampire myth (god knows which mind you…) that simply being killed by a vampire was enough to turn you into one, e.g. being run down, shot, etc. That particular flavour of vampire was vulnerable to pretty much every anti-vampire method you care to name though
Yeah, there are a few like that. It’s just too much fun reinventing old tales to ever give the tropes a rest, I suppose.
This made my day. Just wanted to let you know.
As an aside, in Stargate: Atlantis, the Wraith (who are essentially physic/soul/energy-sucking vampires) are proved to have evolved from a particularly nasty blood-sucking bug. A bug that is incredibly hard to kill, and does not release its victim until said victim dies.
Twilight vampires as evolved bugs or bug/human hybrids make a great deal of sense, really. Yay for applying science to teen lit!
I’m glad you like it!
I didn’t know that about the Stargate bug – I might have cited it as an example of something similare already in use in SFF, otherwise. But I suppose I would then have been forced to concoct a biological excuse for their whole ‘psychic’ component, which you may notice I avoided in this post. I would have to go with sophisticated psychological trickery and vampire-secreted hallucinogens if pressed on the issue, to be honest, and that would be stretching the existing science a little thin, ha.
BRILLIANT.
Thank you!
That makes perfect sense. I always thought butterflies were creepy. Now I know why. Incidentally I just finished reading “le Hussard sur le Toit” (by Jean Giono) and there is a disturbing scene with butterflies feeding on cadavers of cholera victims…
One has to wonder if it’s the blood/flesh that the corpse-feeding butterflies need, or if they are just moisture opportunists. I’ll just add that to my research list!
Hee! In truth these books (yes, I tried the read the second one even though the first one made me want to throw the book against the wall…I didn’t ’cause I was reading on my iPhone!) have never made much sense to me. At last, you’ve provided some science upon which to base my distaste of the sparkly vampires! They’re big creepy bugs!
I don’t dislike butterflies, far from it…but a six foot tall butterfly intent on mating with a human, that’d be pretty freaking disturbing. Especially if it was a couple hundred years old, and the human was only sixteen. Ew.
Does the ew factor also apply to the Human/Elven couplings in The Lord of the Rings? Very similar dynamics apply.
Age-wise, you mean? Actually, yes. I have never quite found that believable (except, I suppose, where the long-lived Dunedain are concerned; at least there might be a few hundred years in which to gain some appreciation of that person as an “adult” depending on how old the elf in question happened to be and when they met). But still, there’s a reason I’ve never gotten into LotR fan fiction. The ick factor is very high for me, there, across the board.
However, I do think there are some other possible factors at play there, at least, because Tolkien did enough world-building to allow for that sort of speculation. Elves seem to reach a sort of plateau of emotional maturity, which seems to me related to their place in the societal structure of their given enclave/family. Arwen, for example; why on earth else should she still be arguing about her life decisions with Elrond? Longest daddy-apron-strings EVER? Cut the cord, already! The Silmarillion seemed rife with that sort of thing. My take on it is that for elves, those not already at the pinnacle of the leadership structure can never reasonably hope to get there as the leaders are immortal; so they don’t ever really have to grow up. Assuming, then, that one of these emotionally stunted elves meets an already grown and mature (for a human) human…then yes, I can see that working for a time. They’re both at sort of the same place in life, they’ve just arrived there at vastly different rates. Doomed love, of course. But that makes for more interesting fiction, right?
Vampires, however, are born human. They’ve presumably done some amount of maturing prior to the change. In the Twilight books, certainly (at least the one book and a few chapters of the second I ever read of them) the vampire “teenagers” seem immature. So do a lot of the other vampires they encounter. So maybe they stop at that age emotionally as well as physically. But the author doesn’t address the vamp culture issues in a way that makes it clear why that should be so. She just has this old-ish dude showing up and obsessing over this Mary-Sue because she smells good (oh wait, no, she can’t be a Mary-Sue, can she? Because of the endearing clumsiness). Perhaps I’m just reacting to a lack of depth in the world-building, I don’t know.
Your arguments are among the strongest against immortality (terminal stasis and infantilization, even if we have infinite Lebensraum).
I rant, I know. But I just…am not a fan of the Twilight books.
I personally think that the pseudo-incestual relationships that vampires tend to have with one another (especially if they had that relationship while one was still human) is creepier than the age gap.
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Care to comment on the lack of a circulatory system, or any metabolic processes, whatsoever?
Also — I know this was about vampires…. but the shapeshifting werewolves must exude a TREMENDOUS amount of heat when undergoing their nearly instantaneous shapechange — and what protein is responsible for that, exactly? Meyers says that its “genetic”.
I had considered that the lac operon model would actually make sense provided the shapeshifting occurred over an extended period of time (a month or two, both human->wolf and wolf->human, each) when vampires were present in the area — if vampires emanated some kind of vapor or scent that triggered the transcription of certain genetic sequences, causing the human to quickly gain muscle mass, grow more hair, and alter their physical appearance; although nothing as radical as FULLY shapechanging.
The most plausible form of lycanthropy (other than the mental illness) that I’ve seen essentially just made your skin contract so that your hair, nails, and teeth looked longer. It was a “documentary” called Werewolves: The Dark Survivors and the cause was a mutant strain of rabies and porphyria that only showed symptoms for a few hours every couple months when blood toxins reached a critical level.
Vampire metabolism is a problem, definitely. They are big animals and they require a liquid diet? They’d have to feed constantly, and their waste would be prolifically foul!
The circulatory system is a size problem as much as the problem with strength/speed/structural integrity. The only way I can thing of to make their physiology work is to speculate that they must co-opt certain of their human host’s internal structures – lungs and bones especially. I imagine giant, sparkly, hematophagous butterflies could persist if they supplemented their insect excellence with the use of mammalian lungs/air sacs and an internal ‘exoskeleton’.
But that is a real stretch.
I think that all the vampire writers got it wrong. Vampires aren’t immortal – rather, they’re more like mayflies, with incredibly short lifespans. An all-blood diet wouldn’t allow for more. This also explains the overwhelming craving for food, to keep them going that little bit longer. So they burn out quickly, but not before their desperate bloodsucking has created countless more vamps to perpetuate the cycle.
Nice work! One small bone to pick though regarding little animals being super strong. This is something that is often mentioned but frequently misunderstood. Animals such as ants and beetles are indeed super strong relative to their weight, but only because they are tiny. It all has to do with scaling laws – volume and hence mass (and hence, if we stick to Earth, weight) scales as length cubed, whereas muscular strength only scales roughly linearly with the length. If I were scaled down to half my size, my strength to weight ratio would be four times what it is. Scale me down to the size of an ant and I get super strong too!
All I’m trying to say is that if vampires – like insects – are super-strong, they also must be super tiny! (freaky tiny scaly bloodsucky vampires.. shudder)
You’re absolutely right! As I replied above:
The circulatory system is a size problem as much as the problem with strength/speed/structural integrity. The only way I can think of to make their physiology work is to speculate that they must co-opt certain of their human host’s internal structures – lungs and bones especially. I imagine giant, sparkly, hematophagous butterflies could persist if they supplemented their insect excellence with the use of mammalian lungs/air sacs and an internal ‘exoskeleton’.
But that is a real stretch.
Thanks for bringing scale to the conversation!
say it with me — “edward cullen is a pretty butterfly”
*groan!*
this is soo interesting! I was charmed by Twilight but the thought that vampires sparks in the sunlight like a diamond gave me doubt. Now I can tell my friends why.
[...] vampires (up to and including the sparkliness) via revised taxonomy. Ladies and gentlemen, vampires are insects. Uncategorized [...]
[...] vampires (up to and including the sparkliness) via revised taxonomy. Ladies and gentlemen, vampires are insects. Info [...]
In the Anne Rice novel the tragic character of Claudia is changed as a child but she matures into a woman trapped forever in the child’s body so in that world they do evolve emotionally
That was a fabulously tragic twist, and one of the best reasons to read the story.
[...] July 26: Apparently, the vampires in Twilight are butterflies. Of course, that only applies to sparkly vampire humans; vampire bees are a different species [...]
This is so much fun! Awesome theory.
I like the idea of the metamorphosing butterfly, but I propose this variation: Perhaps the Twilight vampirism is caused by parasitic insects (or insect-like organisms). So, rather than metamorphosing, one is converted to a vampire by an infestation by multiple parasites that turn the individual’s body into a sort of hive. That would account for the individual retaining their memories and a shell of their former self, while still taking on other insect-like characteristics.
This vampire-as-hive theory would also account for the vampire’s immortality — constant turnaround of individual parasites could result in the appearance of an immortal entity.
Of course, this makes the vampires far less sexy than if they were butterflies — sorry Bella!
You immediately made me think of Julie Dillon’s recent artwork: Honeycomb It’s not the same thing, but ooh, the mental image.
Ahhh, at last it has been explained. Now, if you can only explain how that ignorant bint Meyers can actually get published with this shit….that would be a post.
As an editor myself, I can tell you that somewhere out there is a publishing house where quality took a backseat to sales. I’m not saying they made the wrong decision – what the publisher made on the Twilight books is enough to keep them publishing better books by better writers even if those aren’t themselves bestsellers – but a part of me hopes that someone out there feels like a sell-out for passing that first manuscript up to the decision-makers.
One good thing I can say about the Twilight books is that they got a bunch of people reading who wouldn’t ordinarily read at all. And there is nothing wrong with that.
thank you for FINALLY explaining that to the internet.
Now everyone will want to be a butterfly
I would expect it is actually because they are described as their skin being cold and stone like…perhaps the stone has a high mineral or silicate content that sparkles. Much more likely and much easier to say in 2 sentences or less…heh.
K.
The explanation Meyer has proposed is that the venom changes each individual cell to a kind of mineral-type content that glitters like the granite countertop slab you see at slab yards sometimes. As for the lack of waste after feeding on blood… I will guess that the blood directly turns into the venom she describes. Since the structure of the vampire’s organs etc remains the same, I would say the ingested blood somehow travels via capillary action through their system (she describes a slight flush on the vamps after feeding) and turns into venom through contact with the changed cells. The venom then is used for their bodily functions (mainly muscle contraction and nerve function since they move, feel, smell, think etc). Maybe the waste is expelled through the pores on their skin???
This is fun!!! Thanks for posting!
Eliminating waste through one’s pores sounds awfully messy… But it still sounds more likely in a higher animal than mineralized skin cells.
Now that you mention it… excreting through the cells does sound messy, but as for mineralized cells… what are you… a carbon chauvinist?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry
[...] Yes, hideous insect people. Bookmark at:StumbleUpon | Digg | Del.icio.us | Reddit Posted on July 27, 2010 at 15:02 by Jillian Pullara · Permalink In: Around the Intertubes, Science · Tagged with: insects link of the day, sparkle, twilight blog comments powered by Disqus var disqus_url = 'http://www.geekingoutabout.com/2010/07/27/jills-link-of-the-day-why-do-vampires-sparkle/ '; var disqus_container_id = 'disqus_thread'; var facebookXdReceiverPath = 'http://www.geekingoutabout.com/wp-content/plugins/disqus-comment-system/xd_receiver.htm'; var DsqLocal = { 'trackbacks': [ ], 'trackback_url': 'http://www.geekingoutabout.com/2010/07/27/jills-link-of-the-day-why-do-vampires-sparkle/trackback/' }; (function() { var dsq = document.createElement('script'); dsq.type = 'text/javascript'; dsq.async = true; dsq.src = "http://geekingoutabout.disqus.com/disqus.js?v=2.0&slug=jill8217s_link_of_the_day_why_do_vampires_sparkle&pname=wordpress&pver=2.33"; (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] || document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).appendChild(dsq); })(); « Previous post [...]
I love you. You’re brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you very much!
And all this time I thought they were actually horrible Snake People… Hideous Insect People seems to make more sense.
Snakes do have a bit of a shine to them. Hm…
[...] coisas fazem muito sentido e chega a ser uma comparação curiosa e engraçada. O blog ‘I like a little science in my fiction‘ diz ter descoberto um motivo plausível para os vampiros brilharem. Para eles, vampiros não [...]
[...] I Like a Little Science in My Fiction has written an excellent post that explains how and why Meyer’s vampires sparkle. It all comes down to their many buggy comparisons. The theory starts with the knowledge that most of the hematophages in the world — a fancy word for blood eaters — are bugs. Like fleas, vampires must feed before they reproduce, which triggers a painful metamorphosis. Like butterflies, vamps can remember things from their lowly caterpillar/human days. They’re cold-blooded, and have a hard exoskeleton instead of soft, pliable skin. Their speed is like that of the super-fast Tiger Beetle, strong like the horned dung beetle, and have eyes that put our human versions to shame. [...]
[...] you’re interested, someone thought long and hard about why Stephenie Meyer’s vampires sparkle. Because if anything merits serious, scientific research, it’s [...]
Vampires can be done well. At least I think I did them well. I was asked to write a short story on the subject of Fire for an anthology, and I ended up writing a vampire Christmas story. I combined three of the world’s great mythologies and created a story that shows Christmas was originally a vampire celebration, that got co-opted by other cultures and its meaning forgotten. This story, ‘Bite Deep’, is part of the now-defunct Heat of the Moment anthology, although it will be released soon as a stand-alone ebook short story from the same publisher.
Marc Vun Kannon
http://authorguy.wordpress.com
Hilarious! I love it! ^_^
Wonderful! Glad you like it!
There’s actually a wonderful literary work that hinges on this concept — A. S. Byatt’s Morpho Eugenia, that comprises the first half of Angels and Insects. It was made into a equally good film. But Byatt is a real author, and her work is not mind candy.
I’ll look into it!
This reminds me of an ep of the original “Outer Limits” titled “ZZZZZ” where bees change their queen to become seemingly human so she can mate with an entomologist in order to advance her species. Very creepy (for the 60s).
Someone else mentioned that one to me, too. I feel like I’ve missed out!
any thoughts on the chromosome change?
Wasn’t it addressed with the horizontal DNA transfer?
Great analogy! I have a bachelor’s in Biology and now write fantasy romance/erotica. I’ll definitely bookmark your blog for more smiles!
Thanks!
Marsha
Excellent!
For an alternate vampiric taxonomy/ontogeny scheme, see Peter Watts’ book Blindsight (http://www.rifters.com/). He posits a subspecies of human with a genetic defect that makes them obligate predators of humans (some brain protein they have to eat), and develops a pretty plausible phenotype for something recognizably vampiric but also, yknow, reasonable from an energy-budget perspective.
Pretty diametrically opposed to Ms. Meyer’s treatment.
I’ll look it up – thanks for the rec!
[...] I Like a Little Science in My Fiction has written an excellent post that explains how and why Meyer’s vampires sparkle. It all comes down to their many buggy comparisons. The theory starts with the knowledge that most of the hematophages in the world — a fancy word for blood eaters — are bugs. Like fleas, vampires must feed before they reproduce, which triggers a painful metamorphosis. Like butterflies, vamps can remember things from their lowly caterpillar/human days. They’re cold-blooded, and have a hard exoskeleton instead of soft, pliable skin. Their speed is like that of the super-fast Tiger Beetle, strong like the horned dung beetle, and have eyes that put our human versions to shame. [...]
LOL great post. I’ll bookmark it for future entertainment!
i am a grown up professional with a science background … but i AM a Twilight fan (hold the tomatoes!) **not** because of the “great” writing style or (relatively lack of) plot, but for the plethora of characters Meyer came up with – and the combination of a wide selection of memorable characters (memorable good or memorable bad) and a sucky plotline breeds fanfiction. I mention all this because there’s a really good twilight fanfic out there that’s sort of based on the possible “pathogenesis” of vampirism, some 40 chapters of it.
*spoilers below*
This fanfic’s vampire lore is slightly different from Meyer’s (e.g. the victim has to take in some vampire blood after losing most of his own blood instead of transform after a simple bite), but keeps most of Meyer’s… it’s actually some really dark funny parody. Her theory goes something like this: it hypothesizes that the “victim” is infected by a virus when the vampire blood enters his blood, and this virus attacks, invades and then (through some genetic recoding) transforms all human cells. The sparkling skin has something to do with UV light, and her vampires ARE weaker in the sun (even when cloudy) but they can still show themselves. They don’t die in the sun but the UV makes the cell-cell bonds get weaker or something like that (and the orientation of the skin cells gets rearranged) so while the vampire sparkle, he is still more vulnerable to attacks. The Bella in this fanfic actually used this “fact” to make a UV-light-blade to stab Edward in the gut LOL. and the doctor in the fic (Carlisle, for you non Twilight people) spends his non clinical research days to look into the blood smears of patients with bone marrow cancers, to see if he can find some haem-oncogenic cell lines that are immune to this virus.
A few other pieces of cool stuff in that fic but i can’t remember it all. Oh and the fic was completed in mid June 2010 so it didn’t plagiarize from any theories posted here
OH.MY.GOSH!!! This had me rolling around on the floor in laughter!!! My husband is a Physics teacher and so he saw this from a scientific point of view but I tell you what, I saw this as pure entertainment – and a brilliant piece at that!
Glad you liked it!
[...] know why the vampire sparkles! Source: I like a little science in my fiction I finally read Twilight, and after hours of internet research, I’ve found a solution to a major [...]
[...] by Musicmancz By comparing the features of the Twilight vampires to known creatures, ktholt at Science in my Fiction discovered why vampires sparkle, and have all the other abilities they possess. It’s [...]
[...] found an article written by I Like A Little Science in My Fiction who took that task of explaining why the vampires of Twilight sparkle, among many other things. [...]
Love this, I really do!
Thank you for sharing.
It’s not just it’s entertainment value, but the scientific factor that entertained me. We can all sit and argue as to if anything in the Twilight series makes any sense. It’s a fantasy book, it’s geared towards tweens…
Take it with a grain of salt people.
I personally enjoyed the books, I didn’t feel the need to tear them down just because they have plenty of silly and undefineable aspects. It was just a fun read. Some people read romace novels, some people juggle baby geese!
But you apply scientific fact to a bit of sillyness to make me think AND smile. It’s nice when someone like me (who is obviously not as educated as many here) can absorb such a debate and enjoy science (no matter how silly the subject matter).
Also, I never considered that parallel with LotR Elves/humans. Some great theories here.
Wouldn’t it be similar to say any ammount of Alien/human interbreeding?
I wonder…
You should read Athena Andreadis’s book ‘To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek’. She has given much clear thought to human/alien hybrids, among other things.
[...] I would say most of my family is not aware I am a writer. An artist, yes, as I often wear my beaded creations and occasionally show off my drawings (maybe after some prodding that is.) Except for my mother, I don’t think anyone else realizes what I do with my time. It’s not that I hide it, it is just that the rest of my family gives me this blank look when I begin to speak of phrasing, alliteration, proper punctuation and such. Even the few book discussions I have had with my sisters have resulted in strange looks. (I think I agree with @sandykidd on why vampires sparkle.) [...]
[...] I Like a Little Science in My Fiction has written an excellent post that explains how and why Meyer’s vampires sparkle. It all comes down to their many buggy comparisons. The theory starts with the knowledge that most of the hematophages in the world — a fancy word for blood eaters — are bugs. Like fleas, vampires must feed before they reproduce, which triggers a painful metamorphosis. Like butterflies, vamps can remember things from their lowly caterpillar/human days. They’re cold-blooded, and have a hard exoskeleton instead of soft, pliable skin. Their speed is like that of the super-fast Tiger Beetle, strong like the horned dung beetle, and have eyes that put our human versions to shame. [...]
This was so interesting!
I’m glad – thank you!
How about one of those giant green moths? Those seem to glow and the only appear after dark! Loved reading this! I was issued a lifetime Twilight ban by my wife after laughing aloud in the theater at the first sparkle scene. I was trying to be a Twilight fan, but that scene killed it for me
What, Luna Moths? My college roommate got buzzed by one of those and freaked out. They’re huge! (Wish I’d had a video camera so I could have sent the clip in to AFV, ha.)
But yeah… I’m not sure I could watch the movies without MST3K-ing them. Or possibly roffling myself to death. (Either way, I’d better set up a camera, eh?)
[...] vampires (up to and including the sparkliness) via revised taxonomy. Ladies and gentlemen, vampires are insects. This was written by lindbergh. Posted on Tuesday, July 27, 2010, at 11:04. post a [...]
You are flawed with respect to the memory of butterflies:
Butterflies do not remember forraging on green leaves and scaling tree limbs as they once did in the catepillar state- they fly to the nectar producing flowers of which they have a newly formed appetite.
Butterflies will not remember how to form a coccoon and re-enter that evolutionary state.
Butterflies do not remember the restriction they once had of being confined to ground transportation.
Butterflies definitely have a different set of drives than caterpillars, that’s for sure. That’s one of the most interesting parts of metamorphosis – that a single organism’s life can be coded for such distinct behaviors and needs at different times.
However, there was that article I linked to about the research showing that butterflies can recall at least some of what they learned as caterpillars. It may not be memory as we know it, but that there is any continuation of mind after complete metamorphosis is interesting to think about, anyway.
73 comments and nothing pithy about putting a stake/pin through a vampire/butterfly and sticking it to a wall as being one of the only ways to truly take care of them?
Curious.
Good one!
[...] Why Edward Cullen Sparkles: A Scientific Paper of True Facts of Science. [...]
Oh, goodness! I needed that laugh! Thanks, ktholt!
Happy to make you lol!
Great article…
Thanks much!
Twilight still sucks. And that isn’t the myth of vampires in the slightest, I give you credit for your research but its in vain because the original vampiric myths were based on the Undead and/or demonic possession. Most originally based in the stealing of essence and life energy more so than straight up blood. That came thanks to europe and america. As for that. All your points about the stone skin and such is void, because Undead don’t need to breath, their hearts don’t have to pump, they don’t have any warmth or comfort, and various other points you tried to accredit to insects. And the point of them being freakishly strong, which keep in mind you noted them being butterflies which are amazingly pathetic when compared to the rest of the insect world. Your only logic being that they are pretty and glisten in the sun, when your other points would’ve been stronger but that, in turn, would have destroyed the point for this blog. Anyways, I digress, my point is that Twilight spat in the face of classic vampiric literature and is a mockery of anything that can be dubbed so. TWILIGHT FAILS! That is all.
You do realise that it was meant for a fun joke to insult twilight right? I agree Twilight definitely sucks and vampires do not sparkle!
I’ll bet you’re a hit at parties.