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The Logic of The Little Vampire part 6: A Further Study - Strength, Speed, and Mutagens

I'm not talking about drugs.

Vampires, among their various traits, have superhuman strength and speed, but the latter is especially demonstrated in canon, when Rudolph, desperate for food, beats Tony to the door and suspends himself upside down on all fours on the door. This comes back later when he and Tony team up to get Tony's bullies the McAshton boys, when Rudolph flips onto the footboard and stops them at once. Superior strength is never actually demonstrated, except in the perhaps dubious case of Gregory attacking the caretaker and trying to stay out of view of Rookery. As this could be any number of things, I'll not worry about it. There is another note to make here, though. Logically, it makes sense for super speed to require super strength, as it calls on the muscles to work harder than average for whatever period of time needed.

The general idea of the original post is that venom acts as a steroid, but its effects are permanent, indicating that venom is a mutagen instead. Given the vast diversity of the powers bestowed upon the vampie after being bitten, as well as the physical changes which result in cravings of and access to blood, intolerance of sunlight, and similar effects, this actually makes a lot of sense. It accounts for many elements of the general vampire mythos (powers, physiological features, etc.) as well as those found in the movie (which is pretty good at preserving most of them rather well). Venom being a mutagen does have its consequences, however. Mutagens are permanent, if not for the individual expressing them, then for their offspring, and their offspring, and their offspring after that. It never is fully explained what becomes of the vampires after they regain their humanity/are able to walk in the sun again, but if venom as a mutagen (or whatever caused their curse in the first place, and "curse" can connote a variety of things) is permanent, then there is a chance that, as humans, the Sackville-Baggs retain their vampire powers (a possibile meaning of "Like Some Daywalker").

This line of thinking also makes me wonder about Tony's powers, discussed in considerable detail in Part 2. I mention there that Tony is fundamentally different from every other previous owner of the house for the past three hundred years, which is the only logical way we can have the plot to this movie in the first place. However, if there is a chance in this universe that vampire powers are caused by a blend of magic and science in the form of a curse-induced mutagen, there is a chance that being a sympathizer, as described in the aforementioned article, is genetic, as well. This implies that there have always been vampires, and there is no evidence against this statement at all. This film also flat-out tells us that in this world, though nobody believes in it, magic exists. For all we as the audience know, there are multiple cases like that of the Sackville-Bagg family and there have been throughout history, all over the world. The second half of the implication that Tony's powers are genetic is that for as long as there have been vampires, there have been sympathizers, who may have been magically created/altered the same way vampires have been, or who may have simply been mutants in the original human population who survived the vampire attacks because of what they could do. Therefore, sympathizers have higher fitness in case of vampires, and they produce more sympathizers, and sympathizers continue to exist in the world. As both of Tony's parents are perfectly normal (Dottie is more sympathetic to Tony in the general sense of that word), this suggests that if sympathy abilities are genetic, they are recessive, perhaps polygenic, and it's simply random chance that produced Tony.

In sum, even the most unusual and even supernatural events have the potential to be linked to natural (or preternatural) causes, especially in a universe where it seems magic has always existed.

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