And this is when you know you've been reading too much urban fantasy

[megwrites]

I've been told I think too much, and I believe it is true. Because I have some burning questions concerning the scientific nature of the whammy* the supernatural.

For instance, if vampires don't breathe, how do they speak?

What bits of the sunlight are so bad for vampires? Could they hop in a tanning bed and be just fine? Is the UV rays, the light in general?

After vampires drink blood, where does it go? If it doesn't go anywhere wouldn't they get bloated like a tick? Do they metabolize it? The implications of this are both staggering and disgusting. Somewhere in my head, there's a story that starts with the line: "He pissed blood every day".

If you're a werewolf and you lose an organ as an animal that you don't possess in human form, does it affect you?

What if you ate something that was poisonous to you as a human, but not as an animal or vice versa. Canines are well documented for their inability to eat chocolate and birds can eat holly berries, but humans can't. Do the contents of your stomach remain constant? Would you kill yourself by eating a huge thing of chocolate just before a full moon?

Not to mention questions of what happens if a werewolf/shapeshifter is pregnant. Especially if they shapeshift into something that's not a mammal.

Can you retain language and consciousness as an animal? Animal brains are often very different in shape, size, and structure from ours. Even close primate relatives don't have our exact brain make up. There are areas of the human brain or structures that don't exist in other creatures. If you do become a complete animal in your animal form, where do your human consciousness and brain patterns go?

Yep. I definitely think too much. And as I'm nearing the end of "Dead Witch Walking", I get the distinct impression that finishing it will hurt less if I stopped confusing the situation with facts.


* This is funnier if you have seen X-Files and remember "Pusher".

Comments

[skaldic.livejournal.com]

on Vampires and light -- I've always understood it to be UV -- it's the element that's absent or limited in most artificial light. Which means, of course, that full spectrum lights are an effective deterent.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

Hmm. That's an interesting thing to mull over. Although, I wonder what it means for them that moonlight is just reflected sunlight. I mean, after all, the moon only shines at night because it is reflecting the rays of the sun that hit it.

Although, scientifically, I don't know if the moon reflects UV rays or not. That's something I'll have to look up. Huh.