STRONG STOMACHS ONLY (please, it's a little on the gross side)

DarkDesireX · Apr 17, 2009

I'll keep this relatively quick and to the point.

Vampires drink blood. In paranormal romance novels vampires have sex.
I've read a number of books where the vampire will drink from his partner
during sex. Of course, this is part of the fun of making love with a vamp.

My question is this: How many of you romance readers would be comfortable reading of a vampire performing orally on a woman during that time of the month?

Nakhlasmoke · Apr 17, 2009

Ahaha I did always wonder what happened at that point.

dgrintalis · Apr 17, 2009

Technically, I don't think menstrual blood is really just blood. I think it's part tissue from the uterine wall.

mario_c · Apr 17, 2009

This was a subplot to 9 1/2 Weeks, as a ex-GF pointed out to me.

It's logical for a vamp, and if I recall thru my hazy memory, vampires are supposed to be scary. Take that horrible feeling and make it nastier than even those who have been there can imagine...

Nakhlasmoke · Apr 18, 2009

dgrintalis said:
Technically, I don't think menstrual blood is really just blood. I think it's part tissue from the uterine wall.

Vampire at a bar with his vamp buddies, discussing the ins and outs (as it were) of oral technique : "It's not that I mind, really, I mean, tit for tat and all that, but it's the chunky bits that really throw me, yanno"

dragonjax · Apr 18, 2009

Pretty sure Ann Rice went there in MEMNOCH, A DEVIL. Lestat said that there was a difference between menstrual blood and non-menstrual blood. But yeah, Lestat performed orally on a menstruating woman in the book.

Gillhoughly · Apr 18, 2009

It's been done, though I don't remember which writer(s) did it. I'm sure a google search might turn up a lead. This was in the 90s before "paranormal" had been so solidly coined as the name for the genre.

I understand one writer made an especially erotic job of it. It was not Rice. I never found any of her stuff to be remotely erotic. (Which is ironic, since she wrote erotica before she got that crush on Lestat. I make a point of not falling in love with my own characters. I love them, but not in a squicky way.

)

I gave it a wide wide skip, because, well, EWW!

In "A Dream of Dracula" by Leonard Wolf (essentially a book length essay on Drac and pop culture) he's got a description of a Hell's Angel-type biker "drinking" from a young woman as part of the initiation to get into the gang. I was MUCH to young to be reading that sort of thing and only bought the book because I thought it was a Dracula novel.

And again, EWWWW!

The book read like lecture notes for his classes and quite put me off vampires for some while.

Academics. Sheesh. The wrong ones can make anything dull.

Recall if you will John Cleese's sex education class in Monty Python and the Meaning of Life. Rated R. Don't go there if you think it will scare your parents.

necia phoenix · Apr 18, 2009

Thats just one thing I am not all that interested in. I'm sure that some would find it all erotic and whatnot but...

no. I think it would be a case of book hit wall. Not really that is gross it just... eww.

Satori1977 · Apr 18, 2009

I think it depends on how it is handled. I don't see it as being erotic though. So I am not sure about showing the act itself...but can see it brought up in conversation.

scarletpeaches · Apr 18, 2009

I wouldn't have a problem with it at all, but why it would be 'erotic' as opposed to 'liable to set off his bloodlust and therefore lethal' I don't know.

ETA: Also, the mods may disagree with me but I see nothing gross about menstrual blood. We discuss sex, violence and all sorts on this board as long as it's in context, so I don't see why having a period should somehow warrant a warning.

Susan Gable · Apr 18, 2009

Ick. Complete and total ICK.

I would be put-off by it, yes. Now...if you're writing a horror novel, and you intend to put me off by it, then...it works.

But if you're writing paranormal romance, and this is part of the vamp and heroine love-making...ick. No, thank you.

SP, I don't think it's HAVING a period that's the disturbing part being discussed here. I think it's what's being DONE with that period that's invoking the squick factor (and hence warning) here.

Susan G.

scarletpeaches · Apr 18, 2009

I've always thought menstruation should be tackled in a vampire novel. I mean. It's blood. They've gotta at least smell it.

Unless every woman in your book wears garlic tampons?

Deb Kinnard · Apr 18, 2009

Squick. Fine for some, maybe, but since vampire fic isn't my thing, don't think I'm going there.

brainstorm77 · Apr 18, 2009

scarletpeaches said:
I've always thought menstruation should be tackled in a vampire novel. I mean. It's blood. They've gotta at least smell it.

Unless every woman in your book wears garlic tampons?

@ Garlic tampons.

jennontheisland · Apr 18, 2009

Lestat did it, but that wasn't romance.

I don't think I've ever seen a romance that focused that closely on the heroine's menstrual cycle. I mean, yeah, it's acknowledged sometimes, but usually in passing. I don't like vamps, so if there was a scene like this, I'm likely to never read it, but even so, sex during menstruation (with anyone) is just ick for me. Not a sexy time. Never mind the hero, or the vamp/blood thing, I'd have trouble buying that the heroine was into it.

mlhernandez · Apr 18, 2009

LOL. Garlic tampons!

Seriously, though, I've always wondered why the vamp heroes never had to fight their blood lust for the heroine when Aunt Flo's in town. If it's handled well, I wouldn't be averse to reading it. I mean, that's already a fetish for some non-vamp people so I would assume vamps might be more inclined to try it out.

scarletpeaches · Apr 18, 2009

I would have thought they'd be less inclined to try it, what with the whole 'getting carried away and having to dispose of a dead body' thing.

Calla Lily · Apr 18, 2009

Garlic tampons--great one, scarlet.

Warning, gross description follows:

F. Paul Wilson did in the novel version of Midnight Mass. Quite brief--the vamps are completely evil, they turn the President, and make him, on national TV, lap the blood from a menstruating intern's vagina.

That was it--but what an powerful image.

shameless · Apr 18, 2009

I vote no. Can't get past the "ick" factor. :e2faint:

I think the book Endless Love had a scene where they got funky while she was on her period and they stole the sheets from the hotel room because they figured a maid would think someone was murdered. I must have read that twenty-five years or more ago, and you know what happens to your memory as you... Hang on. What were we talking about?

Gillhoughly · Apr 18, 2009

Thanks for the warning. That's one F. Paul Wilson book I'm totally not needing to read!

Yes, the cycle is a wonderful *beautiful* **natural** thing.

But still--EW!

There's a story in Truffaut's book on Alfred Hitchcock, where in an 1926 silent by the master of suspense the cinema hero was to carry a woman in from the ocean.

Little problem-- the actress said she couldn't go into the water.

Hitch couldn't understand what was wrong. She wouldn't explain. Finally he sent his wife over. One whispered conversation later his wife returned to tell him the actress wasn't going into the water because it was --you know--for her.

Hitch didn't know. He was mystified. Everyone else seemed to get it, but he didn't. A married man in his 20s and he didn't know anything about *it.*

Finally his wife took him to one side and explained it to him.

He was rather freaked out to say the least. It was all news to him.

And he still had a scene to shoot. A waitress from a nearby hotel was drafted.

Bukarella · Apr 18, 2009

Um. No.

I guess I have weak stomach. heh!

scarletpeaches · Apr 18, 2009

I'd probably be banned if I said when I was at school, the phrase used to describe the act of going down on a woman when she was on the blob was giving her a 'rainbow kiss'.

So I won't say it.

Lainey Bancroft · Apr 18, 2009

Ah, yeah. Not. 'Bout as sexy as diarrhea.

But then, I don't care for vamps in general, so there ya go. :Shrug:

(would buy garlic tampons, though, ya know, if I ever suspected I'd be stalked at that time of the month.) :roll:

scarletpeaches · Apr 18, 2009

See that's the thing. If she was wearing a (normal) tampon...then...what's the problem? Unless it was the blood he wanted to get at...

*is now thinking about vampires buying packets of u-*

Nonevermind.

firedrake · Apr 18, 2009

I don't think it would work for me. Menstrual blood has a such a distinctive, overwhelming smell, it would intrude too much into my head just thinking about it.

Thumbs down from me.

*rushes off to store to buy garlic and tampons*

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