Extra 13: Monsters & Lore: Vampires
In the first of our Monster & Lore mini series we discuss the children of the night, and the different ways in which books, shows and movies have dealt with the rules surrounding vampires.
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4th May 2021 @ 5:47 am
Hi. Before I go into my thoughts on the vampires of Carry On, I wanted to tell you both how much I love your podcast. I discovered Shadowhunters through a bit of stumbling around Youtube TV and I hadn’t read the books until after watching the show, and finding a podcast that discusses the show from the perspective of people who had not read the books (in Michelle’s case, at least) was an unexpected delight. Thank you for that.
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Now, about Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. The reason I bring it up is because of Baz Pitch, the main vampire in both Carry On and its sequel, Wayward Son. Baz was Turned when he was about 5, I think, but because he was born magickal, he retains his ability to do magic. This enables him to attend Watford School of Magicks, which is where he meets Simon Snow, the Chosen One. Simon and Baz become roommates and rivals on their first day at Watford, and Simon spends quite a bit of his time at Watford trying to prove to Penny, his best friend, that Baz is a vampire. Carry On is set in Simon and Baz’s final year at Watford, when they’re 18.
The reason I want to talk about Baz is that he’s more human than many, though not all, of the vampires you guys talked about. The very fact that Simon fails to find any conclusive evidence to prove that Baz is a vampire until Baz himself admits to being one means that in addition to aging normally, Baz must be able to eat, go out into the daylight (he plays soccer on the school team), and do everything else humans do. As far as I can remember, the blood that he drinks is treated as fuel, which he can live without for several months at least, and Baz only drinks animal blood. He sees the drinking of human blood as something he can’t come back from. I don’t know whether or not Baz is immortal, I don’t think the books say, but there is an implication that he could be killed in all the same ways you might kill a human. There is an emphasis on burning in that he attempts to burn himself to death at one point, but this could be because of his affinity for fire magic, not his vampirism.
Anyway, all of this was to say that Baz is an interesting example of a vampire in name only, at least in my opinion. Sorry about the long rant.
9th May 2021 @ 11:40 am
Glad to hear you’re enjoying the podcast! 🙂
I’m afraid I’ve never read or even heard of Carry On, but it sounds like a crazy crossover covering all possible bases of genre fiction! haha
If Baz was turned aged 5, how does he age in the book? and do we know at what point he stops aging? or does he retain human attributes in that regard, too, and ages normally?
M Xx
19th September 2018 @ 10:40 am
Brilliant, thank you! That makes the extensive amazon search results make a lot more sense, thank you! haha
I have added bitten to the ever growing ‘to read’ list as no, the plot doesn’t scare me away from it (though doesn’t that sound an awful lot like Maia and Jordan?? I haven’t got that far in the TMI books, so I don’t actually know first hand, but certainly all the twitter whispers and comments gave me the impression that that’s pretty much her book storyline? anyway…) I’m not sure I could read a book series out of order or skip books in a series. I think my inner neat freak would… well. Freak. haha
20th September 2018 @ 8:15 am
I can’t say for sure, because it’s been a LONG time since I’ve read the Otherworld books, and even longer since I’ve read the Mortal Instruments, but I think that even though the plots are similar, Elena’s storyline is handled a little better? She’s definitely given more space to process it than Maia is, given that Elena’s the main character of her story and Maia’s a minor character. The other big difference is that Maia’s story in the Mortal Instruments starts soon after she becomes a werewolf, and ‘Bitten’ is set several years after Elena was turned, so she’s a little more settled into being a werewolf than Maia is.
I TOTALLY get not being able to skip books, I’m the same way. I mostly figured that the plotline would be better to warn for than not, especially considering that the book would be fairly easy to skip and not miss anything from the wider universe.
I hope you enjoy them whenever you get to them!
17th September 2018 @ 9:11 pm
Hi! I tried posting a comment before, but I’m not sure if it got eaten or not, so I thought I’d try again.
Re: vampires and immortality – I actually have read a series where vampires weren’t immortal! It’s from a series called Otherworld, written by Kelley Armstrong. Vampires aren’t a huge part of the books (they’re mostly about werewolves, demons and witches), but one of the books main plots has a vampire couple as the main villains. It’s been a while since I’ve read the series, so I might not have the details right, but from what I remember:
When humans are turned into vampires, their lifespan increases by several hundred years, although they can still be killed in other ways. When vampires reach the end of their lives, they become apathetic and withdraw from living until they basically fade from existence (it’s implied that the apathy is unintentional and vampires don’t actually realize when they start fading). Initially, it’s thought that vampires trade their souls for their increased lifespan, meaning that they aren’t able to pass onto the afterlife (the existence of an afterlife is a known fact in this universe) but during the course of the book the characters find out that vampires DO have an afterlife, it’s just not the same one that everyone else goes to – I think it’s because the act of becoming a vampire corrupts their soul, but I’m not 100% sure.
The whole series actually has really interesting world building with regards to its supernatural elements – ESPECIALLY when it talks about the afterlife (one of the books is narrated by a ghost half-demon witch who hunts down spirits who don’t want to pass on, to make up for crimes she committed when she was alive).
18th September 2018 @ 10:55 am
thanks for that! I just tried to look it up on amazon, to add it to the reading list, as it does sound interesting and I’m always up for more fantasy books, especially when they come as a series! However got a little bit confused with the sheer number of books that came up. Do you know whether the ‘Women of the Underworld’ is a seperate series, from the Unterworld series, or wether that’s just amazon being weird, which it sometimes is?
I’ve found Bitten, which is listed as the first one in the Woman of the Underworld series, and I’ve found Stolen, which is 2 in the Underworld series, but I’ve so far failed to find 1 in the Underworld series… help?? lol
18th September 2018 @ 10:56 am
also please excuse the double posting issue! this shouldn’t happen again, fingers crossed!!
19th September 2018 @ 3:21 am
Yes! ‘Otherworld’ and ‘Women of the Otherworld’ are basically used interchangeably as names for the series. There are thirteen novels, starting with ‘Bitten’, and roughly a billion short stories and novellas narrated by different characters. Wikipedia has a chronological list of all the stories, and I think the author’s website has one too.
The main novels are narrated by different characters, all women, and the main characters of one book will usually have minor roles in a book narrated by someone else.
A warning about the first book: The main character, Elena Michaels, becomes a werewolf when she’s bitten by her then-boyfriend without her consent. She spends most of the book angry with him about that, but by the end she’s forgiven him and they’ve gotten back together. I don’t think it’s really brought up again, so if you’re sensitive to stuff like that, maybe skip the first book? It deals exclusively with werewolves (Elena starts the second book not even believing other supernatural creatures exist), so I don’t think it’s as tied to the wider universe as the second book, ‘Stolen’. From what I remember, the gist of werewolf politics are explained in other books.