WIP

Give Me a Reason

While browsing the news this evening (dragging my feet before I open the Word file and start writing), I came across the following story -

iris implant turns guy's black eye blue, abcnews.com

Basically, this guy had a head injury when he was younger, which caused bleeding into his brain and destroyed the iris of his one eye. They were able to save the eye, but when he came out of surgery his eye had turned completely black. He had one blue eye and one black eye.

Although scifi and fantasy books would make this out to be totally cool or sexy, this guy has to wear sunglasses all of the time - even on cloudy days. Because -

"In natural daylight the size of the pupil might be two millimeters," said Dr. Kevin Miller, an ophthalmologist at UCLA's Jules Stein Eye Institute. "He has essentially no iris, so his functional pupil size is 12 millimeters or 12.5 millimeters, so light just comes pouring into the eye."

In other words - all of that light really HURTS and could further damage his eye.

This condition is caused by injuries, such as in this guy's case. It is also a congenital issue, and X amount of babies are born with an absent or partial iris.

The guy got an (artificial) iris implant which from the sounds of it is mainly cosmetic. The iris won't be able to react like a normal iris, so he will still have to wear sunglasses.

But his eyes are the same color and the one won't do that weird red reflecto thing when he poses for pictures.

Ahem.

Why am I going into all of that?

Well, the light sensitivity inevitably made me think about Twilight and the lame reason for why vampires do not go out on sunny days.

Bella: mumbles something about diamonds, says his skin is beautiful.

Edward: "Beautiful?! THIS IS THE SKIN OF A KILLER!"

No. No. No.

I'm not exactly a Twilight hater. I read the book. Didn't hate it (though I did hate the first half of the book), but that (My skin sparkles when I go out in sunlight and people GAWK!) simply is not a good enough reason.

If you want me to love what you write, then please give me a solid up reason for everything.

Like, with vampires - they are generally portrayed with those creepy black eyes that turn red sometimes. And they prefer the dark shadowy places.

Well, maybe you could work in a natural type of condition to explain WHY they are like this. Especially if you are writing a sort of vampire story where the vampirism is genetic. The vampirism could simply be what people call the descendants of certain families. They don't have to be DEAD people. They could simply be magicians or such - people who have more abilities than the average person. And they, like Elizabeth Bathory try to use blood to gain energy, rejuvination, or powers - or whatever. And of course, they don't necessarily have to kill their victims. And they don't have to be animal like and fangy. Maybe they just need a little sip (because blood smells disgusting and is bound to destroy your innards if you make a habit of drinking a lot of it, and honestly I couldn't imagine making my characters reliant on the stuff for fuel every day, because they'd be dead in less than a year, or they'll wish they were dead) to take over the world and overpower all opposition. :)

I guess what I'm saying is give me a reason and aim to make it somewhat believable - especially if you are writing urban fantasy or paranormal.

When you read odd stories like the one above, you have to assume there is something in there that you could use - maybe not right now, but perhaps later?