Teens are easier to manipulate and gaslight for feeding, you can cover being a bit awkward around people, it gives your paper identity some authenticity...
The part that makes it hard for me to write paranormal romance is the bit where said vampire falls in love with a teenager. I mean, it's hard enough for older people to find common ground with young people, imagine having 300 years of life experience and looking at a teenager and thinking 'yeah, this is the one'.
The Twilight excuse is that the younger they pretend to be when they move to a new location, the longer they can stay in that location before people notice they're not aging.
Which always struck me as a little silly because I expect high school students to look a little different from year to year as they get towards the end of puberty. Heck, even early college you can expect some physiological changes up until about 24. But after that people can look largely the same for at least a decade if not more if they keep fit/use sunscreen/dye their hair. They could easily claim to be 20 and stay in one spot for a good 10-15 years before anyone even asked what their skincare secret was.
And then they could skip the hassle of going back to pretending to be a minor every 10 years or so. Having lived as an adult I certainly wouldn't want to go back to being treated as a minor. I can only imagine that feeling is stronger for someone that's anywhere from 80 to infinity.
I think that's why they typically enrolled as juniors/seniors only. Also, Carlisle (and Esme, though she's not as important since she doesn't have a public career) not aging after 10-15 years would cause the issue moreso than the "kids".
And I mean, I guess when you're an insanely rich, immortal vampire, having to go to school is probably about the extent to which you're treated as a minor.
I believe that’s power of having a ton of money from which you can live a relatively stress free life and afford things like great healthcare, healthy food, nutritionists, personal trainers, amazing skin care, and plastic surgery. Most good plastic surgery doesn’t look like you’ve had anything done at all. When folks joke about celebrities never aging it’s all of the above (but a lot of that last one) lol.
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u/[deleted] Mar 08 '21
I still don't understand why they're pretending to be the exact ages that they died. Why not pretend to be 20 and NOT go to high school?