My Sibling The Mythical Being! discussion

Sophia is Ivy's friend in the MSTV series, and if you have anything to say or ask about her, you can do it here!

Spoilers ARE allowed in this discussion, so watch out! Thanks

'Sophia laughed and stood up. "Come on," she said.
"Where are we going?" Olivia asked, getting to her feet.
Cheerleading practice," Sophia replied. "If Ivy's hopping around like a bunny, I need to see it!"' From MSTV #1: Switched!

Love this part!

That is one of my favourite MSTV parts!

Mine too!

Yeah, it is one of my favourites from Switched, but I'm not sure about from the whole series. Too much choice!

We should do more quotes from the books...

You read my mind!

I was reading a little bit of Switched the other day to try and find a quote for our 'Who Said That? (MSTV edition)' and I found this:

"Do you sleep in a coffin?"
"Yes." Ivy almost blushed. "That myth happens to be true."
"But I saw your bed," Olivia said.
"The quilts and pillows and stuff make it more comfortable when I'm doing homework. There's a coffin underneath," Ivy explained. "When I was little I was utterly jealous of Sophia and her sister's bunk bed coffins," she added wistfully.

I never knew (or at least never remembered) that Sophia had a sister. I don't remember her ever being mentioned again either which is strange.

What?! I don't remember that either! I knew Camilla had an older sister in college but Sophia? Weird. I guess they have to be fairly close in age to have twin coffins, do you think she's older or younger? (or a twin, haha)

I doubt she's a twin (though that idea did cross my mind).

Every time I think I've decided that she's probably one or the other (older or younger) I change my mind and think of a reason why it would be more likely for her to be the opposite. I need to know more about this mysterious sister of Sophia!

Haha, me too! Has there ever been any mention of her parents? I think I vaguely remember her saying they'd grounded her when she got that pixie-cut in Double Disaster (MSTV #13). Maybe they're divorced and one of the parents took Sophia's sister with them. Although, that probably would have been mentioned what with the whole thing about Olivia and Ivy being separated, so I don't know if that's very likely.

I recently re-read Take Two (MSTV#5) and this quote caught my eye:

Sophia waved her camera, her white smile lighting up her dark skin.

This is interesting to me because it opens up the idea of non-white vampires. We all know a stereotypical trait of vampires is that they're pale, and this is something that is mentioned in MSTV quite a lot. One example is this one from later in the book:

"You are truly beautiful," he [Spencer] said to Ivy, gently wiping a cleansing pad across her brow. "Your friend [Sophia], too. But you are both so pale."

OK, well straight away this seems to contradict the idea of Sophia's skin being dark, and I'm pretty sure there's been more mentions of her being pale in the rest of the series. So it would be easy to write this one mention (so far it's the only dark skin reference I've found for her but I'll keep my eyes peeled) as just a mistake in the writing.

Buuut, I still think this would be interesting to discuss. I think we can say for a fact that in MSTV, most vampires have pale white skin. What do you guys think about the idea of non-pale vampires?

First I'm going to go all science-nerd on you all. I am by no means an expert on this but from what I can gather, skin colour is caused by a combination of how long you (and your ancestors) spend in the sun and blood flow under your skin. Let's start with the first one, which is the kind of complicated bit. Your genetics determine how much melanin (the pigment that produces colour in the skin) you have. The purpose of melanin is to absorb ultraviolet rays from the sun, preventing you getting sunburnt. So the more melanin you have, the darker your skin is, and the less likely you are to get sunburnt. In other words, this is why pale people are more easily sunburnt.

The key here is that as you are exposed to sunlight, your body produces extra melanin to protect you, which is what gives people tans.

Luckily the latter factor seems to be slightly simpler: those with poor blood flow are likely to look pale, those with a healthy amount of blood circulation may appear to "glow", and those with high blood pressure may appear ruddy-skinned. But how much this actually affects your skin colour depends on your melanin levels - for example if you have lots of melanin and therefore very dark skin, having poor blood flow would not make you as pale as someone with very low melanin levels.

OK, did you get all that? Let's apply this to vampires. I imagine typical vampires are pale for the same reason some people are pale, just on a more extreme level. Vampires spend a lot of time inside in the dark, and they're probably "bloodless" to some extent, right? And that's why they have to drink blood? Ooh, or maybe it's something to do with them being "undead" - it could be they can't produce their own blood?

As melanin levels are caused by not only how much time you spend in sunlight, but your genetics, it seems like a black person who turned into a vampire become a little more lighter in skin tone, but they wouldn't become a full-on white-as-a-sheet stereotypical vamp.

The trouble with this though is that vamps are no longer biting people and transforming them into vampires. And during the time when biting was permitted, travel wasn't as accessible as it is now and communities weren't as diverse (in terms of ethnicity) as they are today. SO the old vampires in ancient Transylvania (if we're assuming that's where they originated) probably weren't coming across - and converting to vampires - many dark-skinned peeps.

Add this to the fact that vamps are only allowed to marry and have kids with other vamps, I imagine they have a pretty small gene pool. It's not like mixed race vampires will start cropping up everywhere in the modern day, even if the vampires are hanging around lots of people of different ethnicities, because they're only allowed to mate with their 'race'. Not unless everyone is breaking the Second and Third Laws of the Night all over the place.

Basically my view on this right now is that black (or any coloured race identity) vampires are definitely possible, but given the vampires' history and practises, it probably isn't that common. And lol, yes, I know all this isn't actually real but I've gone down a massive rabbit hole now and I need to talk this over with my peeps! So, what are your thoughts on Sophia having dark skin?

This is so interesting because at first it just seems like a mistake but it brings up a cool discussion! I don't see any reason why you couldn't have a vamp with dark skin. All you need is a person with dark skin to have a baby with a vamp and if they survived, which we know isn't always the case they would be mixed race, possibly a vampire and possibly have dark skin right. So yes, like you say if people are sticking to the Laws of the Night it's unlikely where the communities are already heavily white, but laws can change. And who is to say that un-pale vamps don't already exist in other communities around the world. All we have seen is Transylvanian and American vamps (and Reiko) in the series so far I believe, correct me if I'm wrong.

When Ivy is in Transylvania she remarks on how backwards vamp culture is. In terms of how strict and judgmental the vampires are. I guess it's probable that racism is mixed in with that seeing as slavery was abolished in the 1800s and for vampires that's only one or two generations ago right? Or maybe there are even vampires still alive that can remember those days, I don't remember how old Charles, and Ivy and Olivia's grandparents are. So I guess vampires with dark skin might have chosen to live outside of vampire communities or in their own vamp communities to get away from the prejudice and hate.

My Sister the Vampire is not the most diverse series by any means. You mentioned in our What's next for MSTV discussion about Camilla possibly being LGBT+. There are many dimensions of this series that could be expanded upon.