Fish and water; eating cute animals

[foxinthestars]

This is a silly little nit, because when I hear this saying it tends to be well-observed and effective, but I'm still just a little bugged by the one about how fish have no word for water or can't notice water. I don't see why fish (assuming the level of consciousness that would make it a meaningful inquiry) would be any less likely to think about water than humans are about air, which we not infrequently do. In fact we have quite a repertoire for thinking about air: how it moves, how it smells, how it feels in various temperatures and humidities, etc. So if you really think about it, fish would probably have more words and concepts for water than we do. I wonder if there's a more bulletproof analogy that would make the same point...

While I'm being overly sensible about things, I had also been thinking recently about the vampire trope wherein biting someone the vampire loves is even more of a torturous temptation than biting generally, and it struck me that from a certain viewpoint, that doesn't make sense. I grew up on a farm, and at some point Grandma explained to me why she didn't keep rabbits---because she would get so attached to them it made her sick to eat them. She did raise cows, one occasionally becoming a pet, and stopping in the middle of a hamburger to think "this could be Patches" is not a good way to pique the appetite. Obviously a lover isn't the same as a pet, and vampire fiction is supposed to be about psychosexual bullshit where the rules are different, but from a grindingly sensible viewpoint, it seems equally likely that eating a loved one would be sickening and a vampire would want to keep the predator/prey interaction as impersonal as they possibly could even for gastronomic reasons. (I imagine there is vampire fiction that deals with this issue, but the famous stuff doesn't seem to.)

PS: Looking over this, I notice that "sensible"/"sensibility" has completely reversed its meaning since Jane Austen's time.

Comments

[smurasaki]

Hm, well, perhaps if vampires were treated more as parasites (or even as a symbiotic relationship - I'm pretty sure one could get some interesting fiction out of that) than predators, the whole thing would work better. I'm not much of a fan of vampire literature, largely because of all the things we're supposed to accept as readers that make no sense. You've hit on one. Then there's the lack of sense of vampires automatically seeing themselves as superior to humans... when they were human five minutes ago, before they got vamped. (And that one makes even less sense in fics where vampires can live on any blood. Why does the idea of chowing down on humans even cross their mind?) Then - if we're talking romance - the human lover is never creeped out by being with someone who feels like (is) a corpse. Never mind the question of exactly how a corpse goes about doing the nasty in the first place. (I realize some books have dealt with that, but not all of them do.)

tl;dr = vampires, they make no sense to me

[foxinthestars]

I'm finding the parasitic/symbiotic relationship is harder to get my mind around just now and relate to real experience, but that could be more interesting.

If vampires are predatory or parasitic, I think a sense of superiority on their part does make sense as a comforting illusion if nothing else; it would be easier to feel okay about living off of people if you can just put yourself above them in the natural order in your mind (I could relate this to real-world economic inequality, but I'll refrain right now).

But for the most part, yeah... And then there's just not being so much into "psychosexual bullshit." (The one "vampire" thing I'm really fond of is Castlevania, which is kind of "in name only.")

[smurasaki]

Ah, a story that did have vampires considering themselves superior as a comforting illusion could also be interesting. Mostly, of course vampire stories are full of, well, "psychosexual bullshit." Whether or not the writer realizes that, which may be why so many vampire stories sound so very terrible (especially the romance ones - I have a friend who just loves vampire stuff *sigh*).

I think I'd find vampires more interesting if more people did something different with them, as opposed to just assuming the readers accept the usual list of "vampire traits," none of which anyone's supposed to think about much. (Though having them sparkle did absolutely nothing for me.)

[foxinthestars]

(BTW, I'm behind. What does tl;dr mean?)

[smurasaki]

It's short for "too long, didn't read," and at least some places I hang out on line also use it as a sort of summation/abstract/one liner about what they said. Sometimes because they posted a wall of text, sometimes because they just felt like it.