Kill It With Homeopathy!
Jun. 23rd, 2010 11:58 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladyspriteI love urban fantasy. It's my genre of choice, and I've been a fan of it since well before it was trendy. It has its flaws, all genres do, but for the most part I can handwave past them to appreciate the story and the world and the characters.
There's one plot hole, though, that I'm running into more and more often, that I just can't get past. It's one of the only things nearly guaranteed to get me to shout, shake my fist in the air, and put the book in Time Out for being bad. And given that more and more of my friends are taking up writing in general and urban fantasy in particular, I need to put out a plea to them, and to all authors, to please never ever ever use this idea.
Killing vampires with bullets made of anticoagulant is Just. Plain. Stupid.
The logic starts with 'well, vampires have blood in them.' Yep. You know what else has blood in them? People. Also chickens, and iguanas, and cattle, and bunny rabbits, and werewolves, and anything else in the vertebrate category. We don't shoot them with anticoagulants.
I've seen settings where the logic chain follows to '...and blood has COAGULANT! And coagulant plus anticoagulant - it's like matter and antimatter! They'll explode on contact! Boom, vampire bits everywhere!'
If this were true, my job would be a lot more interesting, given that I need to store blood in tubes with anticoagulant every time I test a dog for heartworm. All anticoagulant does is keep blood from clotting.
Other authors just stick with the basic logic, figuring that should be enough. Vampires are full of blood; if you shoot them with anticoagulant all that blood will leak out, right?
There's just one problem with that. They *drink* blood. So the worst you could do would be shoot them in the stomach and have their lunch leak out, leaving them hungry. Even if you shot them in the femoral artery, they're dead. Their hearts don't pump, and the blood in their veins doesn't circulate. They can't bleed to death, even if the blood doesn't clot. Everything above the wound may pour out, but everything below will just sit there - and again, why would bleeding damage a dead thing?
This just leaves the explanation of sympathetic magic. Vampires are all about blood, and coagulant is all about... um.... blood. And I'd even accept that, if the authors presented it that way. But it's always couched in terms of science, where it boils down to complete and utter malarky. It's about as logical and scientific as saying, 'Oh no, an attack cow! Cows are full of milk! Quick, shoot it with lactaid! Lactaid breaks down milk proteins!'
'Oh no, a zombie! Zombies eat brains! Shoot it with prozac!'
'Oh, no - attack vegetarians! Shoot them with Beano!'
Please, authors. Just use wood-tipped bullets and call it magic. You're writing fantasy, it's okay to do that. That's why it's called fantasy.
There's one plot hole, though, that I'm running into more and more often, that I just can't get past. It's one of the only things nearly guaranteed to get me to shout, shake my fist in the air, and put the book in Time Out for being bad. And given that more and more of my friends are taking up writing in general and urban fantasy in particular, I need to put out a plea to them, and to all authors, to please never ever ever use this idea.
Killing vampires with bullets made of anticoagulant is Just. Plain. Stupid.
The logic starts with 'well, vampires have blood in them.' Yep. You know what else has blood in them? People. Also chickens, and iguanas, and cattle, and bunny rabbits, and werewolves, and anything else in the vertebrate category. We don't shoot them with anticoagulants.
I've seen settings where the logic chain follows to '...and blood has COAGULANT! And coagulant plus anticoagulant - it's like matter and antimatter! They'll explode on contact! Boom, vampire bits everywhere!'
If this were true, my job would be a lot more interesting, given that I need to store blood in tubes with anticoagulant every time I test a dog for heartworm. All anticoagulant does is keep blood from clotting.
Other authors just stick with the basic logic, figuring that should be enough. Vampires are full of blood; if you shoot them with anticoagulant all that blood will leak out, right?
There's just one problem with that. They *drink* blood. So the worst you could do would be shoot them in the stomach and have their lunch leak out, leaving them hungry. Even if you shot them in the femoral artery, they're dead. Their hearts don't pump, and the blood in their veins doesn't circulate. They can't bleed to death, even if the blood doesn't clot. Everything above the wound may pour out, but everything below will just sit there - and again, why would bleeding damage a dead thing?
This just leaves the explanation of sympathetic magic. Vampires are all about blood, and coagulant is all about... um.... blood. And I'd even accept that, if the authors presented it that way. But it's always couched in terms of science, where it boils down to complete and utter malarky. It's about as logical and scientific as saying, 'Oh no, an attack cow! Cows are full of milk! Quick, shoot it with lactaid! Lactaid breaks down milk proteins!'
'Oh no, a zombie! Zombies eat brains! Shoot it with prozac!'
'Oh, no - attack vegetarians! Shoot them with Beano!'
Please, authors. Just use wood-tipped bullets and call it magic. You're writing fantasy, it's okay to do that. That's why it's called fantasy.
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-23 06:43 pm (UTC)