YOUR BREAKING DAWN QUESTIONS ANSWERED
It is impossible to be in the world of YA and not mark the release of Breaking Dawn, which came out this Sunday to wild fanfare. I saw many vampires and werewolves on the subway on Friday—many more than normal. All were heading to the bookstore! I like big events in which many, many people crowd bookstores. And I like the fact that people are so excited to read!
There’s been a lot of talk about Breaking Dawn since it came out. It’s sparked a spirited debate. Again, I saw, hooray! So much book discussion!
In fact . . . the discussion is EVERYWHERE. My inbox is flooded with questions from people who want to know what I think about the book and the issues it raises. As you know by now, I don’t shy away from the hard questions. Today, I wanted to talk about a few of the critical questions. I hope this can in some way inform your arguments, or maybe just add to your general knowledge base.
***WARNING: MILD SPOLIERS AHEAD, BUT PROBABLY THINGS YOU HAVE HEARD ALREADY IF YOU ARE, YOU KNOW, ALIVE AND CAN READ***
ARE VAMPIRES REAL?
Vampires are 100% real, but, of course, they don’t behave in the way you see in stories. Real vampires are extremely boring.
Vampires do not generally attack anymore because the government carefully regulates them. The Red Cross was invented as a cover organization to provide them with all the blood they need. It is generally assumed that this marks the point at which vampires actually stopped being cool, putting on awesome outfits and hunting their prey. They became lazy and complacent, sitting around waiting for their blood deliveries in their underwear.
Mostly, vampires hang around the house, spending almost all their time online, leaving incredibly tedious and needlessly complicated comments to discussion boards and updating their blogs. All vampires have blogs. You have never read one because they are so boring, no one ever links to them. They also run Wikipedia.
It is a tremendous act of charity that so many writers take on the subject of vampires and make them sound glamorous. Vampires love to read vampire novels, but being the annoying creatures they are, they tend to obsess over all the wrong details. Instead of noticing all the sexy and cool things that the vampires in the books do, they will focus on minutiae (“in chapter three, the author says the main character’s car is forest green, but in chapter eight, it’s more like lime!”).
Make no mistake, though. Vampires are dangerous. Given the chance, they will come into your house and talk to you—about obscure literary theories, the history of the tractor, the taxation system in ancient Mesopotamia—whatever takes their fancy. Because they don’t need to breathe, they can talk and talk and talk until you die. And then they eat you.
ARE WEREWOLVES REAL?
No, of course not.
WHY DO YOU THINK BELLA CALLED HER BABY RENEESME?
Why does anyone do anything? Here is a picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, as carved from a 2,000 pound block of cheese. Why did someone do this? I HAVE NO IDEA. I mean . . . what do you do with it? Do you eat it? Do you just keep it around until it molds? Do you keep it in a refrigerated unit forever? This kind of thing keeps me up at night and makes me feel like I don’t understand anything. It also really makes me hungry for a cracker. Do you see what I mean? DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN???
ARE YOU READY FOR MARRIAGE?
As more or less everyone knows by now, whether they’ve ever read the books or not . . . Bella and Edward get married. Edward is 17 by way of 80 (vampire years), and Bella is 18. Getting married at eighteen is a fairly shocking prospect these days, at least where I come from. How do you know if you’re ready? How do you know if the time is right?
I found this highly informative two-part video that will tell you everything you need to know about this question. Please watch it carefully.
If you want to continue learning, please watch the second half, in which more graphs are produced:
IN THE BOOK, THE VAMPIRES ARE VERY SHINY. DO YOU HAVE ANY SHINY THINGS THAT YOU CAN SHOW US?
Thank you for asking! Yes I do. Not only is this shiny, but it is the best disco number of all time. I have personally just watched this twenty-five times in a row, and if I don’t get one of those sparkle outfits, I will die. (If you look closely, you will notice that their microphones are color coordinated to their outfits. Oh, Abba. You and your constant perfection!)
Today’s Scarlett winner is kuri-skoldpadda. The summer of Scarlett giveaway is almost over, but not YET! So another book to another random commenter. Do you have any more book-related questions I can answer, about any books at all?
Posted: Thursday, August 7th, 2008 @ 5:43 am
Categories: books, contributions to society, services to literature, vampires.
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