Sunshine Book Club Week 8

[accidentallymel]

And so we have reached the end! What are your thoughts? How did you like the book?

I think one of my favorite parts of Sunshine, besides, like, everything, is Rae's reaction to getting out alive - her shock and the choices she makes in the end there, when they survive after she was sure they couldn't are so in-character and perfect. I love the

Comments

[accidentallymel]

Oh I definitely agree that he's probably considering her relationship with SOF during the interrogation - and I'd say by that time he's probably gotten enough of his brain back that he's thinking, if not quite as in depth as your speculation, at least along those lines. I don't know how much about human politics he knows about/cares about, though - vampire politics seem to be quite different, and it's certainly been a while since he was human, y'know? But he probably has a grasp of the basics, at least insofar as "SOF looks unkindly at alliances between humans and vampires" goes.

Definitely not an abstinent type, but maybe he just doesn't play with his food? My general impression was that Bo was a big fan of the "savor" that torment provides, and that had come back to bite him (and, presumably, all other vampires who live in the same way). So there may not be any "truly clean death" between a vampire and a human, but if you make them as clean as possible you aren't left accountable to the recoil of the torment? *shrugs* More worldbuilding questions, what else is new?

[biggersandwich]

Yeah, I'm not sure he'd care at all about the internal SOF politics if he knew about them, but I'm sure he's well aware that they have extraordinary powers when it comes to vampires and he'd rather that they weren't applied to him.

Con says he grew tired of it, but it's not clear if that means he stopped or cut back or did it differently. Obviously, he was considering killing someone for Rae, so he's not that far reformed, but it isn't really clear if that would have been one of his regular killings or if the magic required it and he would not have otherwise done so.

[accidentallymel]

Yeah no - I don't know if reformed is the word I would use, necessarily? Because like you said, he thought about killing someone, and clearly he has to eat, although it's not entirely clear what he does eat, like, at the end there he needs to eat but Rae doesn't seem bothered - is this because she doesn't think he's going to kill, or because she is just not thinking about it?

[biggersandwich]

Well, I at least get the impression that he thinks of himself as reformed? It's just clear that doesn't quite go as far as typical human ethics...

It's not impossible that at the end he's going to go eat some deer? (To which I have no objections, because I've lived places with urban deer and fuck 'em, the pests.) At least he doesn't spend all that time whining about how animal blood just doesn't taste the saaaaaaaame and it's somewhat implied that there are in fact a different set of pleasures in eating them so he probably does quite a bit. But yes, it is another loose end because it's never really ruled out that he might be off to taste some human!

[accidentallymel]

Yeah trying to apply human ethics to a vampire doesn't really get you very far in Sunshine's world, huh? (Also can't tell which particular set of abstinent vampires we're mocking with the "animal blood just doesn't taste the saaaaame" spiel, which - one of my favorite fics ever involves the Doctor being deposited by the TARDIS in the Pacific Northwest and chasing the Cullens off of Earth, because they're actually aliens, I HAVE A LOT OF ISSUES WITH SMEYERS' VAMPIRES, OKAY)

[biggersandwich]

It was a general, all-purpose sort of mock, really. I've seen it done well as a world-building detail or part of discussion about how vampires are supposed to be this representation of sensuality, but it's actually a very narrow form of it because most possible kinds of sensuality are lost to them, even if what remains is particularly intense. Of course, I've also seen it done where you just want to smack the characters and make them stop whining that it's super hard to not kill people and they're basically saints because now their food is kind of bland, how terrible for them. SMeyer's vamps are a particularly ridiculous example though because why on earth are they even vampires when she doesn't want to use any of the mythos at all????

[accidentallymel]

AMEN