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In the traditional hollywood sense of the term, no he isn't a real vampire. However the fact that he needs to drink blood puts him in that sort of category. I would call him a sparkly leech myself. The movie was terrible. The book wasn't much better. I think a more accurate portrayal of vampires and lycans, for that matter , was done in the underworld saga.

There are several types of vampires. The blood sucking variety is only one species of them. There are also was has been coined the term psychic vampires. They drain the life force or "aura" off of an individual and the individual rarely even knows it's happening. Most times the "psychic" vampire doesn't even know that is what they are doing. A good way to see this is to consider people you know and determine what your attitude and feelings are around them. If you are in a happy, good mood and you encounter either a friend or person and you are around them for more than a few minutes. Suddenly you just feel drained and depressed for no apparent reason whatsoever. That person or somone in close proximity is a psychic vampire. They may or may not know it.

Furthermore, the most dangerous is the vampire that not only drinks blood but is also a psychic vampire. They have full knowledge of their abilities and are in the truest sense of the term "sociopaths". They care not for individuals except for the life they can drain from them. Encountering one of these individuals is quite dangerous. Most people don't survive the encounter. I
The blood sucking "true" vampire, not some goth nut that thinks they are one, avoids people most often. They only come out at night not because the sun can damage them, however there are some that do have the disease, but because it is easier to feed in the darkness.
An evil psychic vampire can totally drain an individual of their life force and do it in broad daylight with a crowd of people around. The person will just collapse and their life ends. "Natural" causes is usually the term coined for such incidents that science neither can explain nor choose to explore "super" natural possibilites.

This shiny crap from twilight is nothing more than an authors ideas and has no basis in either legend or myth or even fact for that matter.

I think the sparkly vampire thing was stupid it was like... "Oh hey look Vampires" Throws the book over shoulder and creates own version, and the La Push boys weren't really werewolves as the Vultari said they were more like shape shifters.

Granted the books were SERIOUSLY slow I read all four books because a family member said that they were really good, and suggested them because I like the whole Vampire/Werewolf thing but to be honest it left me wanting to strangle someone as far as the portrayal of Vampires.

i understand why all of you dislike the twilight series, but the point is that's how she wanted to portray the vampires as. Its like a thing that it hasn't been discovered for. Just trying to make a new idea of vampires without following the same idea that vampires are these dark, unsociable people, etc. Maybe that was what she was aiming for. And i have to agree, the twilight books really weren't that good. But Anyways for the vampire parts of the books, that's why we called it fiction.