I will not hold Twilight against anyone, no matter how terrible and full of insipidness it may be. We all have our sweet teeth for the mundane, and if I’m allowed to drool over a thousand vapid (but beautiful) actresses in sci-fi flicks, I will not deny Team Edward to anyone. I have no problem with mediocre prose (as you can see, I’m full of it), no problem with bad acting, no problem with poorly sketched characters and half wit motivations. I don’t even have a problem with Robert Pattinson’s constipated facial expressions (someone needs to explain to Pattinson that teen angst has nothing to do with bowel movements).
The one thing I do have a problem with is the glitter! Why in the world would vampires sparkle? By making vampires that glitter in the sunlight, Stephenie Meyer unwittingly unraveled the very heart of being a vampire.
Problem with Twilight’s Vampire Mythos
Vampires were not always loveable, huggable twinkling heartthrobs. To understand what’s wrong with Twilight’s sparkling teenpires, you have to understand the legend behind vampire mythology. In Bram Stoker’s Dracula, for instance, vampirism is a thinly veiled metaphor for venereal disease, in Twilight it’s an even less veiled metaphor for being a teenager. Stoker’s message is if you’re partying all night, bad things will happen—namely blood sucking and gonorrhea. Twilight’s message is that being a monster is awkward and vampires get sparkly zits.
The reasons vampires come out at night is because it’s scary. Just a scary camp fire tale. The night is scarey, super strong dudes creeping around at night with fangs are even scarier. That’s not to say a vampire in the day light is better, it’s actually much worse because there’s nothing to stop him. That’s 24 hours of feeding. Stephenie Meyer’s vampires though are only stopped through social embarrassment. Part of being a monster is being socially unacceptable, so being looked down upon socially is hardly a deterrent for being a monster. That’s like saying a werewolf won’t attack because of a bad hair day. If I am a Twilight vampire, I go on a sparkling rampage. Sparkling would not deter my blood lust. I’m going to eat humans like they’re Twinkies, and I would have no problem being the world’s fattest vampire. I have no qualms about glowing in front of people or my food thinking I’m ugly. In fact, most hamburgers have very few nice things to say about me.
Twilight takes away the terror of vampires and replaces it with minor anxiety. She’s created a world where vampires are all but unkillable by human standards. No stakes, no garlic, no sunlight. Her vampires must be ripped apart by something as strong or stronger. Where are the limitations? What’s to stop them? Oh, yes, endless love. Meyer’s vampires can love. Of course, their love is roughly the same as domestic violence, “I only suck you, because I love you.” Loving a human for vampire is probably like loving your cat. 3.2% of the world are actual vegetable eating vegetarians, if those numbers are the same for vampiric vegetarians then 96.8% have no problem starting the day with a nice hearty slab of human.
How Long Would it Take Twilight’s Vampires to Destroy the World?
Let’s say a vampire needs to feed once a day, then a healthy vampire family of seven with no restraints could devour the planet in about 2.6 million years. Not too much to worry about, but the Cullens could go through a small town like Forks, WA (population 3120) in a little over a year. And yes, they’re only eating pets, but doesn’t someone notice that thousands of poodles are missing?
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The three evil vampires in book 1 were dining on a person every day or two.
So given one human per vampire per week, and a population of 300 vampires, what’s our time line like, and should we account for human/vampire breeding trends?
Given a 300 vampire population, and one human per week per vampire, there is 448,207 years worth of food.
Now if the Cullens did eat humans, given your estimates let’s say they would split 2 humans per month (since most humans are smaller than your average bear)… they would go through the town of Forks in 130 years.
These milder eating habits would definitely make it easier to hide a vampire population.
Breeding is a little stickier though because Meyer didn’t set up any sort of vampire conversion limitations. They could theoretically convert as many vampires as they wanted.
Unstoppable Killers x Unlimited Army = World Domination