I’ve always been kind of bugged by the bit in BaG where Marius stays at the bottom of a canal for an hour, because it suggests they don’t need to breathe. I remember seeing something in PL that seemed to refute that, so then I was irritated at having to mentally explain away the BaG reference. I’ll have to go back and see what the PL thing was now…
Yeah same! I remember that part in BaG.
But… if we don’t count PL as canon, then there’s no discrepancy. Well. There MIGHT be. I just can’t remember breathing being specifically mentioned elsewhere.
This is one of those situations where I wish I had vampiric super-fast reading so I could skim the whole damn VC and gather up all the vampire physiology facts. *siiiigh*
//The fact that they don’t need to breathe is early canon stuff. They can bury themselves alive, for goodness’ sake. And wasn’t Mekare in a box underwater? That didn’t exactly have oxygen.
I think they can inhale and exhale, and may need to breathe when they’ve drunk blood in order to oxygenate it, but they can definitely go without breathing for long periods of time.
This is part of why I’m so opposed to attempting to bring “science” into it. There’s nothing scientific about vampire magic. (I do not count PL as canon, but I don’t count most of the later books either.)
//My only suggestion in response to this (which may be a load of crap) is that they can breathe, and may do it reflexively or in order to drink or speak, but they don’t need it in order to continue functioning. As a result, they remain unaffected and do not suffocate or black out from lack of oxygen the way that a human would. Alternatively, you could say that if they breathe to oxygenate the blood they’ve consumed, the contents of the blood is what sustains them. This would render the physical act of inhale/exhale unnecessary because they already have the oxygen content that they require, having already taken it in; their bodies just process it differently because they no longer use the majority of the human body’s major functions in the same way. It could also contribute to how a vampire’s body responds to deprivation of blood; it’s possibly reacting to the lack of oxygen ordinarily used to maintain the body’s stability?
//Dear lovely person, whom I unfortunately cannot address by name due to the obvious,
Today in particular, it is I who find myself grateful for you. I don’t know what prompted words this kind, or what I did to deserve them, but thank you. What you have given me in sending this is no small gift.
I hope that your days are bright and your nights ripe with the scintillating taste of possibility. I hope that you laugh like the colours of sunset and spill words like ripples of ocean water. Most of all, I hope that you believe yourself capable of extraordinary things, because you are.
Since memories triggered by scent are the strongest…
Send my muse a scent and see how they’ll react to it.
Blood is a multitude of things for me. I am not certain I can form them all into words.
Hunting. The heady drum of mortal pulses as I extinguish them, swallowing them down.
Pleasure and pain.
Crimson and copper from the fount of Daniel’s throat and every other place on his body that I can draw from. Love and desire.
The sweet, redolent sting of heat and the first touch of safety when I first tasted Marius.
Fear. Dim shadows. Extinguished light.
As with all things, one could speak forever and only begin to reach the heart of it. Blood is a well of memory, held within our veins, waiting to be tapped.
Send “slurred words” to hear my muse describe yours whilst ridiculously drunk.
So many associate you with flames, with fire and the quick-spark flash of your temper when you are wounded deeply. I remember you like the sound and sensation of Paris rain; the way that it maps itself over stained glass and air-spun spires and seeps into every possible crevice, marking even stone in its passing. It turns the bare bones of a city lost in time into a thing of wonder, hidden amongst the tendrils of fog so that only a few may pass through it without becoming lost. That is you, a secretive kingdom unto yourself that others cannot resist trying to explore, trying to understand. By your very nature, you change everything around you. You are as inevitable as that rainfall and you will not be denied. The maddening part about it is that you are rarely conscious of it. So few divine the strings of your mysterious code that some doubt that you are ever to be moved.
I know differently. I know something of the grace and rage and determination that you possess, enough to know that I should never have tried to hold it and keep it for my own. You ran through my fingers like water whenever I tried too hard to grasp you. These hands are not hands that could contain you or touch you as you were really meant to be touched, and they never should have tried.
I-want-my-IWTV 