Vampires With Hard-Ons?

In True Blood and the novels the series is based on vampires are referred to as undead by mostly Humans, shifters, and the Fairys for the mostpart. When asked about the erection thing or any questions about how their bodies work the vampires always reply with, "I don't know. Magic?" or something along those lines.

One conversation in the show had a vampire character address the fact that he had no heartbeat but could still live like a normal person apart from not being able to go out into the sun. And again it led to him just saying he doesn't know how being a vampire works and that it just does.

My point is that if they don't know how they work then we won't know how they work. Vampires in different myths and stories are different. Some are a different species of human, some are a form of zombie, some are the True Blood kind and others are the Twilight kind.

But in the end they're all about the blood and violence. Why they should or shouldn't be able to get an erection won't change what they are. Just explain how they work.

Presumably there is blood in the veins, or some similar fluid (else they'd look shrivelled), so all you really need to do, is get the fluid into the erectile tissues and then close off the valve with a muscular contraction (which they can do). Even orgasm is simply a reflex contraction. So the real problem is simply how to get fluid into the organ, I can think of two ways off the top of my head.

Spinning very fast and letting centripetal force do the work. Which sounds very silly.

Or two, suction... Which fits very well into sexual interludes.

Problem solved :D

I'm a big fan of vampires, and I've read everything from Anne Rice to Stephanie Meyer (yes, I did. Don't give me crap) including everything in between. Especially with Anne Rice's novels, it's known that their heart doesn't beat and all that other stuff that's already been mentioned. However, it's also known that once they consume the blood, they don't expel it in the same way us humans do food. They also flush after drinking, which would make it seem as if the blood is somehow getting into the veins. Obviously it doesn't just go into their stomachs and disappear. I obviously don't know the answer, but it's something worth thinking about that they get flushed after drinking, which means it would have to be in circulation. I'm a nurse, so I always look at things from a medical perspective.

And, Stephenie Meyer actually answered this question, so here's her answer. Which just makes me laugh.

"Vampires are physically similar enough to their human origins to pass as humans under some circumstances (like cloudy days). There are many basic differences. They appear to have skin like ours, albeit very fair skin. The skin serves the same general purpose of protecting the body. However, the cells that make up their skin are not pliant like our cells, they are hard and reflective like crystal. A fluid similar to the venom in their mouths works as a lubricant between the cells, which makes movement possible (note: this fluid is very flammable). A fluid similar to the same venom lubricates their eyes so that their eyes can move easily in their sockets. (However, they don't produce tears because tears exist to protect the eye from damage, and nothing is going to be able to scratch a vampire's eye.) The lubricant-venom in the eyes and skin is not able to infect a human the way saliva-venom can. Similarly, throughout the vampire's body are many versions of venom-based fluids that retain a marked resemblance to the fluid that was replaced, and function in much the same way and toward the same purpose. Though there is no venom replacement that works precisely like blood, many of the functions of blood are carried on in some form. Also, the nervous system runs in a slightly different but heightened way. Some involuntary reactions, like breathing, continue (in that specific example because vampires use the scents in the air much more than we do, rather than out of a need for oxygen). Other involuntary reactions, like blinking, don't exist because there is no purpose for them. The normal reactions of arousal are still present in vampires, made possible by venom-related fluids that cause tissues to react similarly as they do to an influx of blood. Like with vampire skin—which looks similar to human skin and has the same basic function—fluids closely related to seminal fluids still exist in male vampires, which carry genetic information and are capable of bonding with a human ovum. This was not a known fact in the vampire world (outside of Joham's personal experimenting) before Nessie, because it's nearly impossible for a vampire to be that near a human and not kill her."