Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Well seeing as how every single vampire seems to be rich, it’s obvious.  Their valet/maid does it of course!

It’s not coming up--says it’s “Currently unavailable”.

Or maybe that is what they really sell there souls to the devil for, not eternal life.

“...and does it say in this contract, mr Beelzebub, that each hair will always be in perfect position. It does? Well then here is my soul where do I sign.”

God knows there are some mornings I’d go for that!

The undead need not Aqua Net, for they do not bleed, breathe, fart, or get hat hair.

Well, that’s the usual vamp reason for anything: it’s because he’s, like, undead, ya know. It’s, like, magic.

When reading vampire lit, there are lots of things one must take with a grain of salt (lots of grains, in fact) because alot of facts and logic don’t match up.

Keep reminding yourself it’s fiction.

But if you take it with a grain of salt--or many grains--then the vampires have to stop and count the grains and then things go all to hell.

Really--it’s an old trick to stop vampires.  Salt or rise.  They have this obsessive counting thing, apparently.  Or at least they did back in the 18thC.

Who cares, dude?  They’re hot.  I’m like sooo not into logical.  Bite me!  No, I mean it - bite me, now, and I’ll fix your hair.  Soon as I have a cigarette.

Natch!It’s one of their supernatural powers! For the female vampire this means perfect hair and make up. I mean, ladies, would become a vampire if you knew you had to spend your eternity looking like you were attacked by a wild pack of clowns? Not I!

Maybe Nora Roberts can tell us.  I just finished “Morrigan’s Cross” (bought it yesterday and couldn’t put it down) and this exact question was asked, but never answered.

So, Nora, can you tell us how Cian always manages to look so damn hot, or do we have to read the next two books in the trilogy to find out? ;-)

Actually, that’s just the vampire using his undead mojo on the hapless female to make her *think* his hair is freakin’ perfect. ;-)

I concur.

Well my vampires can see their reflections. otherwise I couldn’t do mirro r sex scenes, could I?
I’ve said it’s all ‘disinformation.’ Vampires have heard the legends, said “Oh yeah, that’s true,” so that people are given the wrong clues.
There’s a scene in “The Haunting” where the hero (a vamp) waves at his reflection in the mirror and makes the heroine relax. Well wouldn’t you?

Mine can’t see his reflection, and his hair is a mess.

But when it wasn’t a mess (pre-1945) it’s because he had a valet.

Exactly the sort of thing they made a joke of on Angel by having his hair distinctly not perfect (and having him notice it while in Pylea).

/geek-out.

What I don’t get is, if the vampire doesn’t see his reflection, why also, does he not see his clothes reflected?  Is there such a thing as vampire clothing?  Beccause, come on, everything gives off a reflection!

:-)

I’ve often wondered that too, Michele - I’ll buy the looking-good-despite-not-having-a-reflection thing, but the non-refelction of clothes things has bothered me. More after the fact than while I’m engrossed in the world that has been created, though...and more in tv/films than in books.

Does anyone else find that it’s easier to suspend your disbelief and turn off that ‘meh? That makes no sense!’ voice with books than films and tv? (When it comes to consistency in a world an author/director/etc has built, rather than stoopid historial/scientific/etc mistakes.)

Well, I’m not a vampire fan, but blind folks manage to do their own hair by touch, no? They can tell if it’s all laying down, facing the same the direction and what-not. I would guess that vampires could do the same thing, although it seems they might want to pick a simple style to make it easier…

They have this obsessive counting thing, apparently.

So vampires are like the Rainman?  Now I’ve got this odd combination of “I vant to suck your blood” and “Of course, I’m not wearing any underwear” running amock through my brain.

Tee hee… Angel joke! There was an episode of Buffy where Spike just got the Buffy Bot and she spouts stuff he programmed: “Angel’s bloody stupid. And his hair stands straight up.” o)

As far as the invisible clothes, I read a book a long time ago (can’t remember which one) which explained it by saying that anything touching the vampire is rendered reflectionless. Makes as much sense as anything else I could come up with.

“Angel’s bloody stupid. And his hair stands straight up.”

Yes!  Loved that!

There’s a memory now teasing my mind about someone discussing Buffy or Angel and the whole vampire-mirror thing and I seem to recall this person guessing that perhaps the lack of reflection in the mirror had something to do with the vampire’s lack of a soul.  I believe whoever-this-was commented that there was an old belief that what a mirror reflects is a person’s essence and when you’re alive you have one and when you’re dead you have a different one, but when you’re neither, like a vampire, there’s nothing to reflect.  I never really did any research into the mythology of it, so I don’t know if there actually was such an “old belief” and/or if that theory holds any water.  So many people have interpreted vampires so many different ways (especially lately), all the whys and wherefors have become one big jumble to me and I find I either just go with the latest “take” or get annoyed by it and don’t question it much any more.

(In some future time, I wonder what people will make of the sheer volume of entertainments we’ve had lately based on vampires and witches and demons, et al.)

Dang, I’m spamming as if I’m taking part in a Monty Python skit or something - but I just had another thought tangentially related to the topic at hand.  That is, I wonder about how it came to be that male vampires=evil=must be suavely good looking and that female witches=evil=must have warts and green skin and wild, Medusa-like hair.

OK, end of spam - I swear!

Well, this isn’t true for ALL vampires, but at least for the vamp in the comic--how hard is it to slick all your hair back?  All you need is some heavy-duty mousse and a comb.  Even I could do that, and I’m style-retarded.

Either that, or it’s the hundreds of years of experience doing their hair in the same way over and over and over.

I don’t dig the ‘reflected soul’ deal, fiveandfour, because that would mean that my soul becomes uglier in public restrooms, Macy’s dressing rooms, and any time I don a bikini.

And I don’t believe a bikini would mess with my soul. My soul is a bikini-clad beach-vixen.

My hair always looks better when I *don’t* have a mirror. Not sure why . . .

sometimes i look at my hair in the morning and say hmmm, the bed head aint so bad this morn...but ive never woken up to hmm, coffin head is lookin kinda funky....

that reminds me of when your watching a movie and it not the singing and dancing mice that bug you it is that they have cowboy boots on that makes you go huh? the fact that they are singing and dancing doest faze you.

The no-reflection thang only ever applied to silver mirrors (silver nitrate being the same reason vampires don’t show up in traditional photographs)—the souls of the cursed undead are perfectly visible in cheapass chrome- or nickle-backed mirrors.

It’s all about the silver, baybee!

This has nothing to do with vampires, but the world should know that the date of this post is also my birthday.

Hey, get hip to the trip.  There are the Old School vampires (Varney, Dracula, Max Schreck as Nosferatu), all of whom are burdened with distinct limitations and bad fashion sense, and there are the New Age, post-Rice vampires, who can do any fucking thing they please.  Hell, they can wear black thongs instead of black capes; they can get sun tans; they can heart Oprah; THEY CAN HAVE MULLETS.  Long as they got some age on ‘em, a full bag of tricks, and a desire to exsanguinate people, they’re good to go.

On the reflection thing...I saw a movie recently that did a neat twist on it.  It was Nightwatch (I think) the russian vampire flick.  Didn’t care for the movie overall, but one scene where this guy was chasing a vampire through a building, the vampire was invisible (for some vampish reason unbeknownst to moi).  But the only way to see the vampire?  In the mirror.  So the chaser chased him into a room with a mirror and the reflection showed the vamp.  But when the chaser wasn’t looking in the mirror, he still couldn’t see the vamp.  Try doing a fight scene where you can only fight an opponent you can see in the mirror!  That was pretty cool.