I just read "Eyre Affair".. I liked it a lot. I wonder though; Acheron doesn't show up in pictures, has a lust for blood/death, has lived a really long time, and *SPOILER* was killed with a silver bullet. How often is he even in daylight? What do you think?



Post Edited (10-10-05 16:13)

Not a bad theory...

...except that there is no real tradition of killing vampires with a silver bullet - that's a confusion with werewolves.
Also, vampires can roam around in daylight but they have to be well covered; there's even a section in 'Dracula' where the Count is seen lurking on the street in daytime but he's wearing a broad-brimmed hat, long coat, etc. (it doesn't mention sun-screen or pink zinc on his nose though).

The first literary vampire, Ruthven, was able to get around in the day easily enough, as was Varney (Varney was staked and beheaded any number of times and finally ends it all by throwing himself into a volcano). From memory, Sheridan Le Fanu's Camilla doesn't really seem affected by the sun but I'd have to reread it to check.

Murnau's film 'Nosferatu' is the main source for the 'killed-by-sun's-ray's' idea. So, vampires apparently do have to sleep during the day and don't wake easily but, then again, I've known a lot of people like that.

Is there any reference to Acheron drinking the blood that he 'lusts' after? If not, then he's obviously missing out on all the fun in quite a big way.
So, apart from the fact that there's no linking evidence at all, it's not a bad theory.



Post Edited (10-11-05 07:38)

Isn't Acheron specifically called half human, or something about betraying his half human origins, at one point? Sorry I don't have a copy of the book right now or I'd look for the passage.

Half- human seems to be a rough guess. He can't be totally human: no human coud be that horrendously evil. I'm sure it later implies (WOLP, not really spoiler) that his family has a long heritage of evil, but this could be my brain misremembering things and making them up...

If he was a vampire, of course she'd have thrown rice at him, stuck a post-it on his chest, stolen his sock, put a brick in it and thrown it in a river.

Darn. You've set my D&D statting brain off now. Not what I wanted.



-------
Turn the silliness to eleven!

Vampires aren't non-human or partially human, they are post-human.

Barefoot Andy said that "no human dould be that horrendously evil."

I'm not sure that I would agree. I would come down more on the side that ONLY humans can be that horrendously evil.

I was meaning that someone (whoever) who called him "half-human" with that thought, not as a statement of my own point of view. I'm at no point denying human potential for either good or evil.
But in Nextian world, there's lots of things which aren't quite human that can be so truly evil.



-------
Turn the silliness to eleven!

Isn't his name and those of his siblings a giveaway?
All named after rivers of the underworld and surname Hades.

Added reference:
see heading note to Chapter 22.



Post Edited (10-17-05 14:20)

Out of curiousity, does the note on Chapter 22 in Eyre Affair mention Aornis? I can't remember and don't have a copy of the book handy.



-------------------------
Metaphors be with you!

I always thought he was just meant to have a little bit of demon in him, but nothing specific. After all, his powers seem to be fairly arbitrarily chosen.

The note on Ch. 22 doesn't mention any of Acheron's family. I think tieff was referring to the line: "Felix didn't share any of Acheron's more demonic abilities" (paraphrasing). I don't think the line was meant to specifically imply he was a demon or anything like that, I think it was just a description of his powers.

I don't think he's meant to be a vampire or a demon or anything else that has a name. He's just meant to be Something Else.



__________________________________________________________

"We are born alone, and we die alone. In between, how about a drink?"
~ Mr. Nutty

Interesting responsa everyone... after reading the follow-up books (I'm in the middle of Something Rotten) I rather wonder at the possiblility of the Hades family being fictional...

Hmm... that's possible, but there is a lot of weird stuff in Thursday's Outland that seems like it could come from fiction but just belongs there (Spike's clients, for example). Her world is surreal enough for the Hades' to fit in just fine. (Besides, none of them behave like other Pagerunners such as Kaine: they still have their full supernatural powers in the Outland, whereas Zhark can only use his in his own book.)



-------------------------
Metaphors be with you!

I like the whole fictional theory, but you think that would have been unravelled a bit more if it were true. I have an idea though, what if Hades (and Aornis) real but could harness the power of the fiction world? It's a theory I don't know I just finished Something Rotten, but I read TEA way back last summer, so my memory is a tad fuzzy I think i'll read it again some time.



SpecOps-27 Wordage is our business Grammar is our game.

(Just as a warning/reminder, although this hasn't happened yet…Be careful not to give any spoilers to the other three books here, at least not without lots of SPOILER WARNINGs and flashing red lights and things like that…)

I've always interpreted Archeron (and his family) as demons, or more likely half-demons. I mean, they're named after parts of the underworld, which is associated with hell, they seem to have the demonic tendency to be very, very good at lying, and the whole silver bullet thing seems to be a fairly generic undead/monster/evil being issue (although I think it's usually werewolves, not vampires, that can be hurt by silver).

I agree with MS. JFf may surprise me in the end, but I sort of think that we aren't ever really going to find out exactly "what" the Hades family is, it just matters that we know who they are and what they are like.



-------------------------
Metaphors be with you!

I'm very sorry for being very pedantic right now ... but actually only werewolves are killed by a silver bullet - at least according to Stoker... This gives the Acheron question another twist, don't you think?