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And this is when you know you've been reading too much urban fantasy
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".
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".
no subject
In the Kitty books, for example, it's established that lycanthropes can't maintain a pregnancy. They can get pregnant, but the zygote is lost as soon as the mother shapeshifts.
In _Being Human_, there's quite a bit of discussion in one episode about werewolf eating habits: namely, that the amount of meat the wolf eats wreaks havoc with the human digestion system for the first several months. Their solution appears to be that the werewolf's body eventually adapts, so even when in human form, the were isn't quite human.
"Nightworld," a series of YA novels by LJ Smith, states that vampires aren't after the blood for food; they're after it for air. Apparently their bodies can't make hemoglobin. So their systems have adapted to strip out the hemoglobin from the intook blood. Presumably the rest is treated as waste, which should mean that the vampires just have to pee a lot.
I can't remember if the Harrison books deal with any of these questions, mostly because I gave up on them very quickly as bad writing in general.
no subject
I'll admit that the Kitty books were better at the internal logic deal that most. I appreciated, for instance, that she says that a person stays the same mass when a wolf, so a 140 pound woman is a 140 pound wolf and invokes the conservation of mass as the reason why. Because it made sense. It didn't force me to forget all I know about science (and living with a forensic scientist, I know so much!).
This is also one of the things that I liked about the Jossverse in the later seasons of Angel. There was an attempt to sort of show that science and magic are married to each other, that the rational exists side by side with the irrational and that sometimes, they are one in the same. Of course their science was bunk sometimes, but at least they tried.
I can't remember if the Harrison books deal with any of these questions, mostly because I gave up on them very quickly as bad writing in general.
You are not wrong about the bad writing. I'm trying my best just to get through the first book and it's been a chore. I don't think they're well written, and the heroine is the embodiment of everything that annoys me about the latest trends in urban fantasy heroines.
She's self-obsessed, too dumb to live, her looks are every Mary Sue I Ever Wrote (the bright red hair that's an oft mentioned feature and the green eyes? Please, Harrison, I did that crap when I was 12), doesn't think before she acts and thinks that's somehow a virtue, doesn't seem to care about the consequences that her actions have on other people, labels herself as good at her job when she's really not, and generally has a hard time acting like a rational adult.
What's sad is that all these heroines would make stunning villains or comic reliefs, but unfortunately, for some reason, they keep getting starring roles.