What's wrong with outlawing the murder of humans?
Nothing ... from the standpoint of a human. Vampires however are not humans. Vampires are the natural predator of humans so if I were to condemn them for eating humans for their survival then I would also have to condemn humans for eating animals when we could survive on plants. To me vegetarianism is a choice that everyone has the right to make for themselves. I would have a problem with humans eating humans as that would be cannibalism but it wouldn't be for vampires as they are not humans.
I take offense at that train of logic, as the animals humans eat are, generally speaking, not sapient. A pig couldn't beg a human in a shared language not to kill them the way a human could beg a vampire.
Beyond the shared language part I don't see that much of a difference. All animals want to live, including pigs. All life forms strive to survive and we kill and eat them so that we can survive, it's a food chain. Also, if we're going by the definition of "sapience" (being able to act and react with appropriate judgement, wisdom and intelligance in situations) then technically a lot of people wouldn't be sapient. If we're talking the way it's often used in fiction as a marker of "personhood" then I see no reason animals couldn't be their own "people" as well.
I just don't think it's right to force someone inte vegetarianism. There are a lot of vegetarians and vegans who claim that eating animals is amoral because they are living creatures as well. And really, humans are just excepionally intelligent animals, we're mammals.
I don't think any species is superior to any other species on the whole, we all have our place in the circle of life and all that and just because out brains are bigger than other animals doesn't make us objectively better or give us a morality license that says our view of the world is the correct one.
Sorry, it's not like I condone murder or anything I just think Bella's being a bit pretentious in thinking she knows what's best for everyone, especially when "vegitarian" vampires are the in the minority so her (and her family) ruling over and forcing all vampires to adhere to her policies would be a dictatorship.
And I know my beliefs can sound really pretentious too but I don't mean to denote anyone else's opinion, just present my own.
I actually agree on the "Bella's a pretentious tool" in this fic. It's a big problem with the whole Rational Fic genre, really. But I still disagree that animals should get all the rights of people. There's a difference between forcing meat-eaters to be vegetarians and stopping a race of blood-meth-heads from getting their fix.
Of all the many, many things that never clicked about that fic, that one, not putting up with letting other vampires brutalize people for their own pleasure, was the one that actually did resonate with me.
Oh, I didn't mean "let them brutalize people for their pleasure", I don't cheer for the voltouri either (thet're clearly bastards in their own right) and I don't think animals should get "human" rights either (I'm just specualting about how they might think of themselves since currently there's no way to varify that...I think), I have no problem with eating animals, I'm just saying that from the vampires point of view that the two situations are morally comparable, since from what I've seen they all (including Bella) think themselves superior to humans. But I'm not for them killing people for fun, strictly for survival, just like I think you shouldn't hunt animals for sport.
"Vampires are the natural predator of humans so if I were to condemn them for eating humans for their survival then I would also have to condemn humans for eating animals when we could survive on plants." Hahaha so the reason you don't take your own morality to it's logical conclusions is because you are too weak to make a stand against the pitiful moral justifications and rationalisms that are part of the culture you are from. The fact is almost everyone who is rational enough should be a vegan.
"There are a lot of vegetarians and vegans who claim that eating animals is amoral because they are living creatures as well" Not amoral, just evil.
"But I still disagree that animals should get all the rights of people." I disagree that you have rights, please enter this abattoir so I can eat your liver. You clearly are a sociopath, not a human, therefore you deserve no rights! Good riddance to irrational speciesist trash.
Let's sidestep all the other arguments about vampire "vegetarianism" for a second and look at this in practical terms: considering that by the end of the series, Bella and her coven has managed to make both turning into a vampire and having a half-vampire child safe and painless, thus removing the only two major downsides to becoming a vampire, and she's going to make the existence of vampires and the benefits to being one (immortality, super speed, enhanced senses, lack of a need to sleep, etc etc) public, at some point there's going to be no humans left. Even if you disagree with forcing vampires to subsist entirely on animals (which has been shown to only be different from human blood by tasting not quite as good and, IIRC, giving you a clearer head), the supply of human blood is going to run out at some point, as all the humans either become vampires or die. On top of that, since becoming a vampire is going to be a very publicly available option that a lot of humans are going to take, sucking a human dry becomes akin to murdering another vampire.
TL;DR Humans are going to run out anyway. Forcing a diet of only animal blood simply makes the transition easier, in the end.
Human blood, in universe, is like a drug. It doesn't "give you a clearer head" to drink from animals, it's like weaning yourself off heroin with methadone. Every vampire in the world is essentially a recovering drug addict whose first hit, running through the entire body's worth of blood they had to begin with as a first hit.
And the problem there is that vampire-vampire couples are still sterile. Older vampires get stuck in their ways too, with rigid thought processes and an increasingly-apathetic demeanor. Assuming it's a pure transhumanist transition with no downsides is intellectually dishonest and doesn't square with the facts of the case, without factoring in the potential existence of in-universe werewolves and things around the world.
tl;dr: If the newly-minted vampirekind is faced with some sort of black-swan extinction-level-event, they're significantly more screwed than humans would be.
This is why I prefer X-men to twipires. Although they call themselves "homo sapiens superior" as opposed to us regular homo sapiens sapiens, thinking mutants are better is frowned upon in the mutant community.
Bella is not a dictator for passing a law that says you can't hunt a person down and exanguinate them. We have laws that say that, and we still call our governments democratic. There are even laws saying you can't torture an animal to death (in any halfway decent country) no matter what you intend to do with the corpse.
Word to your mother!
...That, that's an expression of approval and support, right? I am bad with hip-hop-isms.
Humans cannot live on plants alone. There are vital nutrients which vegans literally have to supplement themselves with because they cannot come from their diet. Animals are sentient, not sapient.
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From interesting to annoying.
I don't know how to describe this fic. The first half or so is good. It's interesting and Bella excells at getting around problems that shouldn't have to be problems in the first place. She also doesn't immidiately fall for Edward and explores her feelings to see if she actually wants to be with him forever while she's still human knowing she will definitely return his feelings when she becomes a vampire.
But then towards the end she starts expressing opinions, ambitions and intentions that are in conflict with my own way of thinking, such as rebelling against the volturi and starting a new vampire government that will force all vampires to be vegitarians, or activating the Quilette wolf genes without any real conscent first and expressing that she can't understand why not everyone would want to be immortal. In her own words:
In short, she started to really annoy me.