Night World: Secret Vampire Part 7

There’s really not a lot of funny in a teenage girl dying.

 

Alana: Chapter 10 starts with Poppy setting her death scene, much to Phil’s horror.
Liss: It’s lovely, but very teenage girl. Candles, ambient music
Alana: I didn’t think any of the bands she mentions were real when I was a kid but RIGHT NOW I am listening to what she’s listening to.
Liss: She puts on her best nightgown and it is FLANNEL with STRAWBERRIES on it and my heart is broken.
Alana: Oh yeah, I don’t know why I never remembered that.
Alana: God, Raphael, this music is depressing.
Liss: Oh god, there are stuffed animals involved.
Alana: Er, so back to Death Cab, I suppose.
Alana: Eeyore even
Liss: Phil is not handling this well at all, which is completely understandable. Poppy, however, is calm and asks him to be so as well.
Alana: His mouth is trembling! God, poor Phil.
Alana: One day when we have more time, we need to cast this book. I don’t even know who would be Phil. I love him TOO much.
Liss: I don’t know if anyone precious enough exists.
Alana: Although since watching that Twilight/New Moon double feature, I feel the need to cast Jackson Rathbone in everything. I was going to say “including my pants,” but uh…I feel dirty just thinking it.
Liss: Embrace it, it’s the Jackson Effect. It’s the eyes.
Alana: It is! Oh, and his smile. He’s only…uh…seven years younger than me. Oh God, oh God, I’m a cougar.
Alana: Ugh, “cougar.” Fuck you, America.
Liss: Hahaha
Alana: Did you read that article about the word “cougar”? I can’t even remember who posted it on Facebook. But it was really good!
Liss: I didn’t.
Alana: Of course it’s gone from my browser. Argh. Oh well, I’ll try to find it anyway. But back to the book, James explains what’s going to happen: There’s going to be a last exchange of blood–the final blood battle. Then she’s sleep, “die,” change, and awaken by post-hypnotic suggestion.
Liss: Phil realizes that while Poppy is “resting” and changing, she’s going to look dead. James is over Phil’s emotions, especially when Phil asks for clarification about what’s going to happen to Poppy once she appears to be dead.
Alana: This book is very practical; I love that about it. Nothing about this process is watered-down.
Liss: It’s refreshing, almost.
Liss: James reminds Phil that everyone else has to think that Poppy died from the cancer and they have to play it out as such. Poppy, who doesn’t want to dwell on it, tells her brother to deal with it and move on, since if they don’t do this now, she’ll be dead for real in a few weeks.
Alana: “There was no one better than Phil at bracing himself.”
Alana: Dirty!
Liss: Oh man, it is.
Alana: James sends Phil out of the room, and Poppy worries about post-turning claustrophobia.
Liss: Oh my god, so would I.
Liss: I can’t even watch people spelunk on TV.
Liss: James, because he is great, assures Poppy that he won’t let her wake up in the coffin.
Liss: Unlike Buffy’s friends, he is thinking ahead.
Alana: Ha!
Liss: Seriously, they needed to make a spreadsheet or something to make sure they did everything.
Alana: Also: HA: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/21/AR2009092103503.html?wprss=rss_print/style
Alana: I found the cougar article!
Liss: Nice!
Alana: Only had to scroll back pages and pages of a friend’s links. Good thing I remembered the friend–or guessed well. Also, it came up as “washingtonpost.com” and that was the only page I scrolled through instead of just doing a Find for “cougar.” Go me.
Alana: In other cougar news, we get shirtless James here.
Liss: Oh riiight
Liss: He feeds off of Poppy and then, when it’s her turn, he gives her a show.
Alana: Far more subtle than certain other people taking off their shirts in a certain vampire/werewolf movie that recently hit the theaters.
Alana: Actually I was just thinking about Jacob and the motorcycle incident, but then I realized, Edward in Italy too.
Liss: Look, death by sparkle is a completely legitimate reason to take off your shirt.
Alana: But who looks at someone who’s just hit their head and thought, “They need my entire t-shirt!”
Alana: Ugh, the gasps in the theater every time Jacob was shirtless/on the screen/breathed.
Liss: It’s up there with “staunching clumsy girls’ wounds” and “too many Tequila Sunrises”.
Alana: He’s a nice-looking boy, but I think his face is way more interesting than his six-pack.
Liss: I won’t let myself look because I don’t want to be that old lady.
Alana: I know they couldn’t go from scrawny kid to buff dude, but picking such a babyface…such a good idea.
Alana: Yeah, same here. I was such a MOM at that show.
Liss: I’ve found the thing I find more disturbing than Twimoms, btw.
Alana: I wasn’t a Twi-Mom just one of those moms. Speaking of… http://graphjam.com/2009/11/20/funny-graphs-appeal-twilight/
Liss: I know you weren’t a Twimom!
Alana: No, I mean…I’m represented! On the graph! I’m between “mother of regular girl” and “mother of fangirl.”
Liss: Ah, okay.
Liss: But I find women of a certain age who watch Ghost Hunters and then PHOTOSHOP themselves into picture of the team to be more disturbing to me.
Alana: The only thing I know about Ghost Hunters is that The Exbf met them when he went to the Stanley Hotel last year and said they were very nice, but I can imagine women doing that with, say, the Mythbusters guys. I’m figuring what I see in my head is a pretty accurate comparison picture.
Liss: Yeah. I mean…obsession with fictional characters can yes, go too far, but messing with people who are out there as THEMSELVES is kinda cray cray to me.
Alana: God, if you’re going to Photoshop yourself into a picture, it should OBVIOUSLY be with Batman.
Alana: …uh, “go too far” you say?
Alana: *cough*
Alana: *batcough*
Liss: I have a Photoshopped picture of me as the Baroness from GI Joe.
Liss: I wish Batman was in it too, just because.
Alana: OMG, you should Photoshop EVERYONE into that picture.
Alana: Liss without Flash
Alana: Liss with Flash
Alana: Liss with Batman
Liss: hahahaha
Liss: I love that one
Alana: It’s one of my all-time favorites.
Alana: HEY BACK TO BOOK, WOMAN
Liss: OKAY
Alana: Poppy takes James’s blood from his shirtless self, and then slowly drifts off. He kisses her on the forehead AND IT’S HER FIRST KISS.
Alana: James.
Alana: JAMES.
Alana: Come on.
Alana: You could do better.
Alana: You were totally screwing …uh…Michaela?…and…Bimbo #2.
Liss: Jacklyn
Alana: Yeah
Alana: Poppy doesn’t deserve a little sexins too?
Liss: No, their love is too pure or somesuch.
Alana: PFFFFFT
Alana: Poppy would be awesome to have sex with, cuz she’s such a little goofball. She’d be adorably innocent and get into it and have no limits because she has no—this is getting weird. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. I think I have an affinity for characters who are innocently goofy.
Liss: BRB laughing
Liss: Oh you
Alana: They’re my favorites. There are a few of them in Crusie’s earlier books.
Alana: Anyway, to abruptly shift, Phil comes back into the room and sits down on the bed next to Poppy.
Alana: And Poppy tells him what a great brother he is. *weepy*
Liss: Phil tells Poppy that he’ll be there later for her to talk to, but Poppy thinks that there’s still a chance that she won’t be.
Liss: Ordinarily she would never have taken that chance, but she would have felt like she gave up otherwise.
Alana: Phil overhears her thoughts and responds to them as if she’d spoken them aloud–or maybe she DID speak them aloud. It’s unclear.
Liss: I do not think that she did.
Liss: Ooooo
Liss: It’s another nice, subtle mention that something is going on with the Philster.
Alana: Then we’ve got a page of death.
Liss: And it’s sad and languorous and Phil and James are holding her hands…
Alana: And her last thought is that she forgot to tell James she loved him too
Alana: Even though he knows it, it’s important to her she try to say it, but she can’t get her breath.
Liss: Phil starts to lose it as she drifts off, especially when he sees how much Poppy looks like a porcelain doll.
Alana: And she doesn’t die, like, super-peacefully. It says she “looked astonished.”
Alana: Another touch I really appreciate.
Alana: Poor Phil, he can’t take it.
Alana: He tries so hard, but he can’t wrap his brain around anything for very long.
Liss: He howls. That kills me.
Alana: It’s like “Oh yeah, vampires exist…but vampires don’t exist, so everything is terrible! But wait, vampires exist…”
Alana: In his defense, she’s pretty dead-seeming.
Alana: I wonder how that works.
Liss: He yells at James that he killed Poppy, and when James snarls that she might be able to hear him, Phil goes out and trashes the living room.
Alana: PHIL LOSES IT
Alana: GOOD FOR PHIL
Liss: I guess she’s almost in a coma?
Alana: Straight-laced Phil lets go
Alana: No, it sounds pretty death-like. Maybe she IS dead and then…the blood reanimates her.
Alana: I mean, you can’t fool anyone with “coma-like,” right?
Alana: And that’s what they have to do. Except that Phil is trying to murder James.
Liss: You can if you essentially shut down and there’s a vampire hypnotizing the medial personnel.
Alana: I’ve never seen a dead body, or even one in a coma, so I have no clue. Or even an unconscious person, I guess?
Alana: James talks Phil back to being rational.
Alana: What I find interesting here is that Phil’s resentful of James being in charge, but with a guy like Phil, who likes to please everyone by doing the Right Thing, you’d think he’d be used to being ordered around.
Liss: I think Phil’s the straitlaced leader type, which is why it’s hard.
Alana: But think of all the authority figures he probably bows to on a regular basis, especially when you compare him to Poppy, who couldn’t even really accept her stepfather’s authority.
Alana: I think I just have certain ideas about authority, which I’ve been blogging about lately.
Alana: Even when you’re in charge, you’re still submissive to The System.
Alana: It’s pretty much the ultimate servitude.
Alana: Er, but anyway, James is like “Well, we’re going to have to tell them you flipped out, cuz it’s a mess, but we should get rid of the candles, because they’re suspicious.”
Liss: Phil slowly comes back around to the plan, and they agree that the story is that Poppy felt tired and asked the boys to go watch TV, and when Phil went in to check on her later, she was gone.
Alana: The part that gets me, even though it’s HELLA CHEESY, is “A Christmas angel in June.”
Liss: Phil asks James if he’s sure that Poppy will wake up. James hopes so, and tells Phil that if she dies, Phil won’t have to come after James with a stake, as he’ll do it himself.
Liss: This makes Phil angry, since if Poppy stood for anything, it was life, and James throwing his life away would be an insult to her memory.
Alana: Aww
Alana: “It was a milestone, the first time they’d ever been on precisely the same wavelength.”
Alana: That lasts about two seconds, when Phil calls him a “cold-blooded snake.”
Liss: Oh god, inappropriate pop culture reaction.
Alana: Nooooo
Liss: I’m sorry, I was a child in the 80s, I loved Paula Abdul.
Alana: Heheheh, and now what do you think about her?
Liss: I think she’s made some poor chemical decisions.
Alana: Yeahhhhh
Alana: Anyway, back to Phil, who wants to test out crying instead of breaking stuff. “Crying and crying like a kid who was lost and hurt.”
Alana: By the time James contacts them and they get there, Phil’s mindset is that she’s really, truly dead.
Liss: James comes into Poppy’s room, where Phil is crying, and tells him that his parents are there.
Alana: END OF CHAPTER.

Next up: James mojo and, I believe, Poppy gets reawakened.