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1 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 9:24 am, permalink

Oh how I miss Forever Knight…

Vampire-reinvention is so common and so ongoing it’s almost amazing we still talk about it. Then again, who ever expected sparkling vampires?

Bram Stoker abandoned the traditional idea of revenant-like vampires (with OCD no less. Yeah, I’m not making this up), but it’s important to recall that Dracula didn’t disintegrate in sunlight either.

(You can thank the film Nosferatu for the whole “sunlight is deadly” theme.)

Authors often take pride in diverging from the “classic” (read: Stoker’s) vampire. Rice’s vamps time and again laugh at crosses and garlic (and at the undead who fear them irrationally). Moreso than werewolves, ghosts, wizards etc. vampires, I think, are the most varied of all the classic supernatural beings (maybe tied with faeries/elves, but that’s another story).

But there are a lot of authors who try to incorporate “traditional” vampires, “classic” vampires, and “new” vampires. Jim Butcher comes to mind as the Dresden Files have three vampire Courts: Red (movie-monster vamps that slough their human skin to reveal bat-creatures beneath), Black (Draculean masters of dark magic), and White (sexy sexy sexy vampires who, while close to human, are super-powered, yet must fight their dark urges).

I’m sure there will be more and more “good guy” vampires becoming more and more innocuous, but I think the more traditional villainous ones will also make a comeback.

I hope.
2 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am, permalink

Personally, I’ve never got the connection between “vampires” and “sexy.” Let’s be clear — vampires are, at their core, undead blood-sucking creatures of the night.

Don’t tell me that doesn’t make them bad people.

While I don’t get the “sexy” part, though, I can certainly see the appeal of vampires in fiction.

1. They’re immortal. Who wouldn’t want to be immortal, honestly? All of this “death gives life meaning” crap is basically just rationalizing the fact that we’re all going to be worm chow eventually. Living forever has a certain appeal.

2. They’re powerful. Almost every version of vampires in folklore and fiction describes them as superhuman in some way. Who doesn’t have fantasies of being more powerful than the lumbering, slumbering herd of humanity around him? All genre fiction and a goodly portion of myth and legend are about those who are set apart from humanity because of their specialness. Vampires, though, are made, not born, which means anyone can become a vampire, no matter their lowly birth. And, also, there’s no real work involved, so anyone can become a vampire without having to work out a lot or study or anything that, you know, requires effort. Vampires are a path to power without cost.

3. Vampires are tragic. Well, they can be tragic, anyway, of humanity but forever apart from it, the ultimate outsider, always struggling with their bestial nature. Even relatively early tales of the “gentleman vampire” such as Varney the Vampire features a hero who struggles with what he has become. Dracula and his bastard offspring, Count Orlok, are in fact relative rarities in the modern telling of the vampire tale in that they embrace and exploit their fundamentally evil natures.

4. Vampires are predators. Unlike almost every other creature in the world, humans have no natural predators per se. The idea of being eaten — by a shark, a polar bear, whatever — is one of the most horrifying concepts we have. Vampires are predators who prey upon humans, which sets them above us in the food chain, and that very concept is inherently terrifying.

5. They’re outsiders. As such, vampires are not bound by the rules and strictures of “civilized” society. They’re the eternal bad boys, which may have something to do with their alleged sexiness. I don’t see it myself, but others obviously do.

All that being said, a lot of the developments in vampiric lore, especially since “Interview with a Vampire” was published, have definitely evolved well past the point of self-parody, the currently popular “Twilight” series being the epitome of that in some ways.

A problem I have with the concept of vampires in the “Twilight” books (full disclosure — I haven’t read any of them, so I’m going with second hand knowledge here, but I’m not discussing the literary merits of the books, just how they seem to present vampires) is that there doesn’t seem to be any downside to being a vampire. Sure, they have to drink blood, but they don’t have to drink it from humans; they can control their bestial urges. They don’t have a problem with sunlight, which is certainly a relatively recent addition to vampiric lore, but still an element that added to the tragic quotient. They can even breed, producing children. What, really, then, is the downside?

Another issue I have is that the horror element of vampirism has been leached out. As mentioned before, the vampires of “Twilight” don’t have to prey on humans. In the “Underworld” films, vampires are presented as fearful predators, but they are never shown attacking or preying on humans at all. They’re essentially just superhumans.

In the early ‘90s, a group of my friends and I played the roleplaying game “Vampire: The Masquerade” obsessively. The way our storyteller ran the game, though, never dealt with the “personal horror” element, even though the writers of the game tried to emphasize that. Our characters were, essentially, just like Champions superheroes who had all taken the same limitation, “Allergic to sunlight.” From what I’ve heard from others, that’s basically they way a lot of people played the original Vampire game, and probably the new version, as well.

Another tendency that has bothered me that has evolved since the Anne Rice novels is the concept of vampiric society. Vampires are predators, and very often, predators are solitary beings who don’t tolerate others hunting in their territories. The idea of vampires banding together into societies seems rather counterproductive to both remaining hidden from humanity and being able to hunt it.

That brings me to yet another issue, that of population. Of course, the creator of a work of vampiric fiction can define how much blood a vampire needs each day, whether it can feed without killing its prey, how humans are transformed into vampires and so on. Even so, it seems that there are simply too damn many vampires around. The Vampire RPGs defined the vampire to human ratio as about 1 in 100,000 or so, meaning that, with a population of nearly 7 billion people, there could potentially be nearly 70,000 vampires in the world. Seventy thousand undead, blood-sucking creatures of the night, and no one but a handful of nutjobs with wooden stakes ever notices? That just doesn’t seem reasonable.

What ultimately gets to me, though, is a core component about vampires. Other than undead, blood-sucking creatures of the night, what are vampires, really? They’re glorified serial killers. And, honestly, I’m not terribly comfortable romanticizing the concept of serial killers, even fantastic ones.

In my view, a change up in vampire fiction would feature very few true vampires, a mere handful in the world. They would be creatures of unimaginable power, so powerful, in fact, that they’d really need to be handled more the way that Lovecraftian writers deal with the Elder Gods — more terrifying by their absence. The real villains that the hapless heroes deal with would more likely be the creature’s minions, who protect it while it slumbers.

Basically, I’d just like to see more horror in my horror stories, and a lot fewer goo-goo eyed adolescents.

But maybe that’s just me.
3 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 11:31 am, permalink

There is a brilliant movie out there called “Perfect Creature” which is a quasi-steampunk world where vampires are the established theocracy. The thing is in this world, there are no female vampires. People stand in lines for “church” to donate blood (as in a here’s the needle, would you like a sugar cookie kind of way) for their blood drinking patrons. Vampires in this story represent logic, wisdom, and the rule of law. Why? Because they are in charge. What are their limitations? Lack of ability to reproduce sexually (no women) and the usual sunlight, stake through the heart schtick. Though, a stake through anyone’s heart is generally fatal.

Only you’ve got a vampire who embraces his baser appetites, and he’s going around killing people. Having sex. I won’t even go into the rest, for fear of spoilers, but the whole thing is very noir, steampunkish even (towering cathedrals, 1920’s-30’s tech). Think “Dark City” mixed with “Equilibrium.”

But, the premise of the story, hey, why not? How long have vampires been limited to the shadows? At best, you’ve got vampires like Dracula or Louis and Lestat who live off the fringes of humanity, offering their “gift” to hapless narrators. Sometimes twisting things with implied and blatant homoeroticism, coming off as elegant or fiendish –as with Underworld. Underworld was cool to me because it went beyond the dark shadows (pun intended) of vampire lore. The vampires were tech-savy. Enjoying aristocratic lifestyles, fighting their secret war.

Perfect Creature was great because the characters are limited more to a clerical/theocratic function, with the knowledge that their fates hang from a string because their needs (blood) are fed by their B.S. religion.

And why not? There are cult leaders out there who’s biggest thing going for them has been choice of eyewear (Jim Jones, David Koresh) to hair styles (Charles Manson), or love of track suits (Heaven’s Gate’s very own Marshall Applewhite). At least with vampires they have superstrength, longevity, high intelligence AND charisma.

Why the hell not? They are total cult/religious iconography in the flesh! And hey! What’s a little blood? When I was in college, I sold my plasma for $20 a week, just for beer money. That is to say nothing of eternal salvation of the soul! Lot’s of people would be waiting in line on that hookup.

But, on the flipside, I have to say this. What the heck? The guy twinkles? Well shine on you crazy diamond! Vampires have become the new unicorns for adolescent girls. I won’t even get into the phallic/freudian imagery this implies. Two horns are better than one? What?

Anne Rice took the vampire and made it a homoerotic allusion for cancer or AIDS, detracting from Bram Stoker’s tuckerization of actor Henry Irving and depiction of Lord Byron (with the ethnic flair of Vlad Tepes). Where Stoker’s take was a souless monster with brutal charm, Rice’s was the dandy, the sexually ambiguous fop with fangs that dabbled in pederasty.

Twilight Represents the highschool girl’s crush on the guy with the motorcycle. Sure, he’ll probably grow up to be a dentist, but for now, he’s emo, listens to the Cure and Bahaus, and understands her more than Jeff the jock or Clint the D&D-playing Star Wars geek. He’s also the older male. The forbidden fruit of college guy that could be 22 or 250–to high school girls, 22 and 250 aren’t much different. Sorta like David Bowie in Labyrinth, who single handedly catapulted many prepubescent girls into early woman hood just by the mere suggestion of…well, his junk. Next time Dave, wear a codpiece or something.

David’s Bowie aside, vampires will continue with us, representing the fear of death, the possibility of unblessed family members seeking vengeance, avaricious aristocrats, a debilitating disease, or a dream date who is constantly c*ckblocked by parents and peers.

Vampires are in every culture to some degree. Whereas I want to mock Twilight, I will say this, Anne Rice and Bram Stoker did not make the vampire cannon. People should do what they will with this monster. But please keep him/her dangerous.
4 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 11:43 am, permalink

Clint, are we going to be welcoming our new vampire overlords any time soon? I’ll have to stock up on black clothing.

Lamar, I like a lot of your points, especially about the contradictor social/pedator aspect. From what I’ve read of Twilight, the main vampire is 100+ years old, yet attends high school. To me it seems like the last straw of immasculating vampires. No longer are they on the fringes of civilization, they are in Algebra, doodling in notebooks. *gag*

I think one of the reasons the whole “preying on humans thing” is avoided in a lot of fiction and role playing is not that it’s unsettling, but it gets boring fast. A good author can make you feel the predatory need, the hunger, the thirst in a well-written scene, but how many of those do you want to read? After a while it’s just exsanguination porn.
5 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 11:53 am, permalink

“After a while it’s just exsanguination porn.”

Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Like any element in fiction, it has to be used deftly or it becomes just another thing.

It’s like violence in general. On the whole, violence itself is boring, but the threat of violence is endlessly fascinating. In order for that threat to be valid, however, there sometimes has to be some harsh violence — just a spoonful, though, just enough to establish it as a genuine threat.

My argument is that, in vampire fiction, authors have removed the predation, the violence, which removes the threat of what vampires are.
6 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 11:56 am, permalink

What? No mention of Henry Fitzroy, from Tanya Huff’s Blood and Smoke novels? I wonder what his professional opinion of the Twilight novels would be — after all, Huff made him a romance writer. *g*
7 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 11:56 am, permalink

Michael, LOL! I didn’t know Edward was in high school. You’d think he could at least get his GED by now.
8 • K. Tempest Bradford said:
August 15th, 2008 at 12:05 pm, permalink

Ide, no mention from me only because I have not read them. I’m not a big vampire fan. Sherwood may have mentioned the Huff novels. Are they the ones recently made into a Lifetime series?
9 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 12:07 pm, permalink

A lot of genre fiction today is written by — nothing derogatory meant — fanboys. This is true in comics, true on television, true in movies, true in popular genre fiction.

And, honestly, fanboy fiction is often rather like food cooked by a chef who has decided that what people really like a about a certain dish is the garlic fried in butter, so we’re not going to use anything else, and just eat great big bowls of garlic fried in butter.

Fanboy writers — I’m as guilty of this as any — often write a means of wish fulfillment, and often reduce a piece to just what they think is essential about a piece.

A good story, however, like a well-cooked dish, is a blend of different elements. Sometimes, the thing that appears to be the reason we like that story, the thing we remember most, only has power because it exists within the context of all the other elements of the story. If we look closely, we might even see that the thing we remember most about a story is actually in that story only a very little bit, just enough to add flavor, but isn’t overused.

It’s the difference between a great dish and a bowl of garlic fried in butter, or the difference between erotic and porn, or the difference between a great story and fanfic.

What “Twilight” sounds like — and I haven’t read the books, so I don’t know — is adolescent girl wish fulfillment fantasy. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, other than that Bella, the heroine, from what I’ve heard, actually never does anything at all in the stories but moon over Edward. In other words, she never becomes her own person, just an extension of the man in her life. I’ve known a lot of women like that over the years, so I can imagine that sort of fantasy would appeal to some.

Personally, I find that sort of thing rather reactionary, and certainly nothing that would interest me, but to each her own.
10 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 12:44 pm, permalink

Someone else brought up the Blood Books in the comments to Sherwood Smith’s entry a few days back. (Smith hasn’t read them either. I added another comment to mention the Smoke books.) The Blood books were indeed made into a TV series, which aired on Lifetime, but wasn’t made by Lifetime. They got the lead character, Vicki Nelson, quite right, and improved on the books in some respects (adding Coreen as a regular character, which she wasn’t in the books, and making her Vicki’s sidekick, for instance) and it was a great show, although they changed a couple of things about Henry: they made him a horror graphic novelist instead of a romance writer, and they, unfortunately, also removed his character’s bisexuality. (His main recurring male lover, in the books, is Tony Foster, who becomes the lead in the Smoke books, and they couldn’t use him for the series because Huff retained the adaptation rights to the Smoke books separately, but they didn’t show Henry with any male lovers at all.)

It’s worth noting that the Blood Books actually just predate the TV series Forever Knight, although Huff began writing them specifically because she wanted to get a devoted readership in order to be financially successful as a writer, and she’d seen that vampire novels had faithful audiences.

Henry Fitzroy is a very interesting variation on the vampire myth. Huff based him on a real historical figure, the bastard son of Henry VIII who died in his teens. He has several of the classical vampire limitations: sleeping all day, being vulnerable to daylight, and relying on blood to survive; and he’s definitely aristocratic in background; but he’s rounded out by unusual characteristics: he’s still a Catholic, he hates demons and dislikes the supernatural in general, he must work for a living (again, as a romance writer! and under a feminine pseudonym, too), and he’s not tormented by his nature as a vampire. (Huff also chose to portray vampirism as something closer to a medical condition than a curse.)

One of the strengths of the Blood and of the Smoke books has been that the vampire isn’t the sole lead character in them. He’s a love interest, which is kind of what Meyer did in Twilight, but Huff’s books are much less centered on the romance, and they are much more adult. Vicki Nelson is an adult woman, *she* is the private investigator, and her love triangle with Henry and Mike Celluci, a human police detective, isn’t ultimately mutually exclusive of either relationship: she can love both of them, and have working partnerships with both of them, in complementary ways. (The TV series doesn’t cover quite the same ground as the books do: it explores Vicki’s relationships much more slowly, over a shorter timespan, than the books, which happen over a number of years.)

And, in the Smoke books, Tony, who met Henry when he was much younger and more impressionable, is in the process of establishing his own identity and of working out a way of relating to Henry on more equal terms than that of a willing but basically powerless human in relationship with a super-powered immortal predator (although Henry tries to remain a moral predator).
11 • Mallory said:
August 15th, 2008 at 12:56 pm, permalink

It is my opinion that the exploration of vampires is often a way to explore the transformation in patriarchal roles between men and women with the (monsteresque aspect being the teeth) – I often think we need a million stories to explain such changes to ourselves…
12 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:02 pm, permalink

“It is my opinion that the exploration of vampires is often a way to explore the transformation in patriarchal roles between men and women…”

I’m sure that there have been writers who have done that. However, I think that assigning it as the meaning of an entire genre is simply an attempt to enforce, and thus legitimize, one’s own agenda onto the issue, however legitimate or specious that agenda may be.
13 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:10 pm, permalink

Mallory: I agree. In a patriarchal society, there is a relationship of oppression between men and women (of men oppressing women). The vampire’s supernatural power over humans reifies in fiction the social power men have over women, which is naturalised in patriarchal ideology. Although the symbolic value of the vampire isn’t limited to that, of course; and the transfomations of roles in that context isn’t necessarily the intent of even most of the stories in which it is explored. Conversely to the powerful, seductive male vampire, female vampires can represent patriarchal anxieties about women’s power, reifying in fiction the ideological demonisation of the oppressed. (Nor do metaphors for characters in imbalanced power relationships map out to gender only.)
14 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:13 pm, permalink

“The vampire’s supernatural power over humans reifies in fiction the social power men have over women, which is naturalised in patriarchal ideology.”
15 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:15 pm, permalink

“The vampire’s supernatural power over humans reifies in fiction the social power men have over women, which is naturalised in patriarchal ideology.”

I think that may have a great deal more with how some readers wish to interpret certain tropes within vampire fiction than anything inherent in the fiction itself.
16 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:21 pm, permalink

*nod*

Meanings aren’t inherent to a symbol.

Higher upthread Michael Gordon says that Edward Cullen attending high school is “the last straw of immasculating [sic] vampires”. To some (to many, most of the time to most), a vampire’s just a vampire.
17 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:21 pm, permalink

(…but note the connotations of _emasculating_ the vampire myth!)
18 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:29 pm, permalink

Eep! On the counts of socio-gender-based metaphor use, I am found guilty. (I was originally going to go with “neuter” but felt inclined to bust out a two-dollar verb instead.) As long as we’re all talking about analogies in vampire fiction, instead of assigning allegorical meaning, I think we can all agree that vampires are a wonderful trope to layer on as many meanings as we can.

Now, I think the real issue is how vampires represent the bourgeoisie…

*
*
[SPOILER ALERT REGARDING BREAKING DAWN]

From what I’ve heard, the most terrifying vampire in the book is the unborn fetus that drinks its mothers blood, breaks her ribs when it kicks, and is altogether something quite out of a prenatal version of the Omen.

[end spoiler]
19 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:32 pm, permalink

I think Michael was using the term “emasculating” in its more figurative meaning of “to remove power from,” rather than in any more literal sort of meaning.

Although it might be an interesting analysis of “Twilight,” in particular, and other “romantic vampire” works in general on how these sorts of works are popular with women because they embody some women’s idealization of romantic ideals as a means of sublimating their own sexual anxieties and fear of male sexuality, and that the romantic male characters in these — and, arguably, most contemporary romantic fiction — are literal attempts to “emasculate” and, thus, feminize the male protagonists, making the males more like the females, essentially becoming a wish fulfillment fantasy of female narcissism.

I think that’s rather a bit of hooey, myself, but it still might be interesting.
20 • Rae Bryant said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:35 pm, permalink

No doubt, in ten years, the vampire will be a pixy dust Tinkerbell with slightly sharp teeth, good for opening tin cans. Can we say Disney?

Vampires are the sexual personifications of all things viral. They are the dark shadows in the night, every good girl’s heaving bosom dream. I want my vampires dangerously smooth, breath-taking, with a really sharp . . . fang. Where, oh where, have all the cowboys gone . . .

Mr. Sparkly-Pants is a children’s story, Disney World knock-off. Brother’s Grimm could write him better. Not to diminish the success of the Twilight series . . . . Just, can we not keep the children’s stories where they rightfully belong?
21 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:40 pm, permalink

…another author, who dealt with vampires in an original way over 20 years ago, is Suzy McKee Charnas, in her “Vampire Tapestry”. She had a lot to write about the vampire myth in the series of essays posted on her website:
http://www.suzymckeecharnas.com/index_Essays.html

Note too the essay titled “The Beast’s Embrace”.

(Her character, a solitary vampire, the lone of his kind in the world, was also named Edward: Dr. Edward Weyland.)

Lamar: that’s what “connotations” means; multiple associated meanings.
22 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:41 pm, permalink

In defense of Twilight (did I just say that?) it may get a lot of kids more interested in serious vampire fiction. I started off on Bunnicula of all things! (He was a vampire bunny who sucked vegetables. I kid you not.) Of course that was when I was six years old. By 14 I was reading Jeanne Kalogridis, P.N. Elrod, and, of course, Laurell K. Hamilton.
23 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:44 pm, permalink

Rae has some good, uh, points.

I, personally, don’t get the “sexy vampire” thing, but then, that may be because I’m male, and don’t have the same romantic/sexual fantasies that women have.

In that respect, vampires represent the ultimate bad boy. Why is it, though, that women seem endlessly attracted to “bad boys?”

Now, there’s a mystery.
24 • K. Tempest Bradford said:
August 15th, 2008 at 1:54 pm, permalink

OMG Bunnicula! I’d forgotten but I loooved those books. Particularly the one where the dog and cat have to stay at a kennel. It was a fun take on the vampire mythos, though not all the books dealt with the vampire bunny.
25 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 2:11 pm, permalink

Why Vamps are Hot (uh, Sales Wise. Yeah.)
What’s up with all the hottie vamp stories? Well, to begin with:

1. Werewolves have fleas. And shed on the furniture. And as odd as it may sound, people seem more accepting of someone feeding on the blood of animals to live than someone who enjoys the occasional can of Alpo. It might be the breath thing, I don’t know.

2. Frankenstein Monsters would seem like natural husband material. After all, plenty of women go for hulking men with monosyllabic conversational skills who like to just sit around and stare at shiny objects (e.g. watch other men in tight pants running around in a shiny box). And, as explored in Young Frankenstein, they would in theory have anatomically huge … feet. But fiction-wise, it makes for poor dialogue, and hard to pull of the whole “show don’t tell” thing. Plus, they are fugly.

3. Mummies – well, first of all, it is usually men who have the mummy complexes. But beyond that, they suffer from three deficits. First, their brains were yanked out through their nose – so, as with the Frankensteins, they aren’t much for dialogue, and perhaps worse in some people’s eyes, they end up conservative Republicans. Second, their hearts were removed, and their … feet are shriveled. Kind of puts a crimp on the love thang. Finally, the older they get, the more they are set in ancient, outdated ways and they are obsessed with protecting their own fortunes. Wait, I already mentioned they’d become conservative Republicans, right?

4. Stranded Aliens Who Have Adopted Human Form – Often, these beings end up needing a lot of help adjusting to and surviving in our society. And it just so happens there are plenty of women who just love to take on a project … er, I mean man, like that. However, frequently, these beings become obsessed with environmental or humanitarian issues and seek to address them in highly implausible and single-minded ways (i.e. they become left-wing liberal extremists), and are often also on the run from unbelievably stereotyped military persons. Nobody really wants to come second in a relationship — even to, say, the survival of humanity. And who wants to be constantly on the run? I mean, yeah, road trip? Sure. But fleeing from the military? No thanks.

Now, I focused mainly on male representations, not out of any sexist impulse, but because much of the vamp fiction is about a human woman falling for a male vamp. Certainly, the Bride of Frankenstein was much more intelligent and attractive and independent than Frankenstein’s Monster, so different reasons for focusing on vamps may apply in the reverse cases. Ultimately, though, I think it just comes down to being able to pass as a sexy human, regardless of gender.

But why focus so much on vamps, and not other romantic or erotic traditions (hello, Thousand and One Nights!)?

Well, first, vamps are popular and trendy. I know this seems like a backwards argument – they are popular because they are popular. But so much of fiction is emulation, and writing what you know, and right now writers have been raised on vamp fiction, inundated with variations on Buffy and Angel, and Anne Rice, and so are inspired to write … vamp fiction. And likewise, publishers like to print what they know is going to sell. Unfortunately, as with so many forms of copying, each generation of copies seems to be more and more watered down and full of reproduction errors.

Second, vamps are humans – with a dangerous twist. It doesn’t take as much of a stretch to project real life relationship models and issues and traditional romance novel bad boy allure onto a vamp.

And a bunch of other reasons better expressed by the others on this blog.

So fine, we’re stuck with vamps for a while, until someone comes up with something better and sells a lot of books (and movies) about it.

Still, while vamps are often foreign, they tend to be pale-skinned Euro-trash foreign. Not a lot of Blaculas running around on the book covers I’ve seen. Yet many cultures have myths and traditions of creatures that feed on souls or blood. And I’m not just talking about the Anime and kung-fu vampire films. So why aren’t they being used more if you want to mix it up a bit? Or you could even overlay the Stoker/ Rice/ Whedon vamp models over other cultures and create interesting results. A Tibetan Buddhist vamp? An Iranian Muslim vamp? A black Scottish vamp? What if vampirism hit an African nation during a famine? Obviously, some scenarios would be more romance, and others more horror.

And isn’t it a bit creepy when centuries-old vamps fall for teenage girls? I mean, that was always the biggest suspension of disbelief issue for me with Buffy and Angel. How could a couple-hundred-year old vamp fall in serious, emotional love with a sixteen year old high-school cheerleader? At least in the movie American Beauty they conveyed the wrongness and implausibility of such a “love” being based on anything beyond an arguably unhealthy kind of lust, and/or emotional issues that have nothing to do with the girl in question.
26 • Nora said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:01 pm, permalink

Lamar,

I’m finding your reactions to this thread more interesting than the conversation itself. You seem very resistant to the suggestion that vampires could represent male/female power dynamics, to the point of being dismissive and condescending. Particularly toward those in the thread who have female-sounding names. Not sure if you noticed you were doing that or not.

Clint,

Thanks for the recommend! “Perfect Creature” is going on my Netflix list.
27 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:08 pm, permalink

Does anyone have examples of a pairing of a female vampire and a male human? Randy’s comment about the age difference thing got me thinking about it. Are relationships between younger men and older women just too taboo? I mean, look at Aragorn and Arwen. She was about two thousand years older.

Since we’ve got nine participants, I’m going to risk busting out some flash fic I wrote a while ago:

Confession

How can you tell when a vampire is lying?

It’s lips are moving.

Corny, yeah, but all-too-often true. And it’s not because we’re evil–though let’s be honest with ourselves. The fact of the matter is that every time you crack open a piece of vampire fiction and find the resident blood-sucker waxing philosophic on his or her condition, it’s 90 to 95% complete bulls***. You want to know why? Simple. We’re embarrassed. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. We hold the power of life and death, not mention mind-control, shape-shifting and weather manipulation, what the hell could we be embarrassed about?

Well, nosferatu these days are a sensitive bunch. No one’s willing to admit they might even know someone with a garlic aversion, let alone undead OCD. Back in the day it was common as dirt for vamps to count every seed in their path or untie every knot laid over their coffins. Today? Not a one. And the ones who won’t even confess to the slightest queasiness at the sight of a cross? Come on Mr. Unholier-than-thou.

But here’s the rub: there’s a lot of different vampires out there, and the census bureau is too chicken s*** to find out how many have which powers/weaknesses etc. (Terrible thing happened to the one idiot interested in studying fang size.)

These piddling I-can-cross-running-water-if-I-want-to issues are actually pretty far from the point. There’s still one big, looming, insurmountable different among the arterially challenged. Are we soulless monsters or angst-ridden anti-heroes? Are we good guys with an allergy and addiction, or villains through and through?

The sad truth is that the vast majority of us are a little of both. Again, no one’s going to admit it. The fangbangers don’t want anyone to think they’re weak, and the new-age gothites don’t like to remember that they’re a heartbeat away from uncontrollable frenzy.

You want the truth, the real deal? Well then, lean in close, friend, and I’ll whisper it in your ear…
28 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:19 pm, permalink

To cite some authors of colour: Octavia Butler’s last novel, “Fledgling”, was about vampires. (I haven’t read it, though.)

Brandon Massey has a short story titled “After the Party” in which a black man, driving home while still wearing his Blade costume, is stopped by racist cops who are acting strangely…

***

I haven’t seen “Perfect Creature”, either, but I’d like to comment on something in Clint’s description of it: “What are their limitations? Lack of ability to reproduce sexually (no women)”.

Female vampires typically don’t reproduce sexually, either. If the vampires are all of the same sex, can they even be said to be _men_, since their species has no physiological characteristic on which to found gender divisions? Except by assimilation with human gender characteristics?
29 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:31 pm, permalink

While we’re examining social/cultural issues explored through vampire fiction, here’s another: religion/faith.

In traditional vampire mythos (meaning Eastern European medieval. I apologize for my Eurocentrism.) the efficacy of crosses etc. against the undead was never questioned. Modern writers, however, have gone in a number of different directions:

1) No religious symbols have an effect (unless the vampire really believes they do)
Example: Anne Rice

2) Any religious symbol can have an effect, if the wielder has faith (or in some cases extreme faith).
Example: Laurell K. Hamilton

3) Nope, sorry, it’s just Christian symbols that work.
Example: Buffyverse

I did come across a short story once that took #3 to an extreme. Vampires invaded American by attacking Jewish communities first and all the silly Jews died because they didn’t have crosses. It kind of sickened me. (Plus, if the vampires were smart, wouldn’t they have attacked Asia first?)
30 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:34 pm, permalink

Ide, you’ve just got to check out the movie. Taken out of context, my comments don’t make much sense. But, logically, yes, if you have only one gender, there’s no male or female.

There’s a lot more to the movie than I let on.
31 • Rae Bryant said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:37 pm, permalink

“Does anyone have examples of a pairing of a female vampire and a male human?”

Hmm, off the top of my head, I’d have to say that female vamps traditionally take the subservient role, and therefore do not “create” their own. They lure, and menage, but purely for a, uh, suck ‘em, leave ‘em scenario. (Is this PG13? I mean blood!) There must be something out there that has derivated from the traditional strain, but nothing grossly commerical that I can reference.

Wouldn’t that twist the femmies–a she-vamp with a heart or a vengeance. That’s series material, right there! And some say that vamps were on the out . . .
32 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:37 pm, permalink

Fledgling is a good recommend. Thanks. I haven’t read it yet, but had my eye on it. I believe it also reverses the typical age issue, although to the extreme, with a young girl (physically age 10) protagonist and her relationship to an older male. And Butler is a safe bet for good and meaningful fiction.
33 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:38 pm, permalink

Speaking of Blaculas, has anyone watched recent episodes of The Venture Bros? One of the new characters, Jefferson Twilight, is a Blade-like character than hunts blaculas, and can see them with his “blood eye.” His powers to detect vampires do not extend to caucasian vampires. “Just blaculas.”

Jefferson Twilight is made of Awesome.
34 • K. Tempest Bradford said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:41 pm, permalink

Michael @ 29:

A Jewish friend of mine told me about a book or movie similar to what you describe – perhaps the same one – wherein a Rabbi and a priest battle a vampire and the Rabbi decides to convert to Christianity once he sees that crosses can repel vamps and the Star of David cannot (or something like that). My friend regarded it as really tacky and offensive, as the conversion was literally the work of a moment and based on a stupid premise to boot.
35 • Nora said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:42 pm, permalink

Ide Cyan,

Iirc, Fledgling centered on a young girl who was a brown-skinned vampire, first of a new breed of genetically engineered (with genes from humans) vampires designed to be less vulnerable to sunlight. The whole story was about how the pale “pure” vamps reacted to this — some with violent horror at the idea of “miscegenation”, and some more welcoming though still uneasy with the change.

From a sexual standpoint, what was interesting was that Butler’s protagonist looked younger than she was (she was adult, but looked like a child), yet was predatory in the way she targeted bigger, stronger males as food sources (humans) and prospective mates (other vamps). But then, Butler has always liked inverting traditional power dynamics in her fiction.

There’s also L. A. Banks’ Vampire Huntress Legend series, about a black female vampire hunter who hunts (and occasionally sexes) vampires and other monsters (most of whom are PoC). I haven’t read past the first book, but it’s basically “Buffy done with realistic urban demographics”. =)

And your comment about female vamps not having sex reminds me of Poppy Z. Brite’s vampires, who were kind of the anti-Anne Rice — not turned/undead humans but a splinter species (and not a very successful one), grungy/unwashed, truly sociopathic, and gleefully omnisexual. In this case the female vampires could reproduce, but didn’t, because the offspring would be vampires and would kill their mothers by draining her blood and chewing their way out. ::hork:: The male vampires would sometimes impregnate human women and thus continue the species (killing the women in the process), but most of them avoided doing this. (The first book focuses on the child of such a liaison, who eventually blunders across and has a power struggle with his father; I’m guessing this is one reason why the male vamps might hesitate to screw their way through the female population.) But most of the vampires just kept to gay sex because it was safer for all involved.

…Man those books were interesting. I need to go back and re-read, now. =)
36 • K. Tempest Bradford said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:43 pm, permalink

Also, Lamar, I must agree with Nora as regards you reactions. Please take a close look at the way you’re using words as it’s coming off as dismissive.
37 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:48 pm, permalink

Henry Fitzroy can wear his own crucifix.

In the Doctor Who serial “The Curse of Fenric”, any symbol of faith can repel the vampires (haemavores), including a secular red army Soviet pin, because it’s faith itself that has an effect.

***

Older female vampires with younger male humans: Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie in The Hunger, Lauren Hutton and Jim Carrey in Once Bitten, Fright Night part II, Grace Jones in Vamp, and those are only examples from movies from the 80s.
38 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:49 pm, permalink

Tempest, that’s the one. I don’t recall whether he actually converts or just is willing to wear a cross to protect himself. That was actually the starting point of the story. It got worse…

On Buffy, there was a scene once where, after Angel goes bad, they need to put up crosses in all their houses and Willow makes sure to hide them so her parents don’t see. I think they missed an opportunity there to make the mythos more accessible. They could have had Willow put up a mezuzah or even some fanciful Seal of Solomon type thing. Alas.
39 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:53 pm, permalink

For female vamps (Lauren Hutton), check out “Once Bitten” starring Jim Carey.

Plus, there’s Jamie Gertz on The Lost Boys. Thanks to this Blog for a Beer, I’ve had “Cry Little Sister” stuck in my head all day.
40 • Nora said:
August 15th, 2008 at 3:55 pm, permalink

“Does anyone have examples of a pairing of a female vampire and a male human?”

Plenty, but they’re not very popular these days because they’re so very been-there done-that. In some literary analyses the original vampire story was the Biblical Lilith, who wouldn’t put up with Adam’s crap and got cursed for it by God. I’ve seen any number of stories and books speculating that she ended up a demon or vampire as a result. (I think Whitley Strieber wrote the most recent one.) There’s also the preponderance of sexy female vampires in male-dominated genres, like the US comics world (Vampirella, anyone? And Marvel’s Lilith, who I think was the daughter of Dracula).

But the modern boom in vampire fiction, spurred by Anne Rice’s successful “vampires for women”, seems to be dominated by male vamps. No surprise there, given the target audience. It’s worth noting, though, that Anne climaxed (::cough::) her original trilogy with the story of Akasha, the first and most powerful female vampire (and black at that), who pretty much wrapped emo Eurotoy Lestat around her little finger. So even amid the modern boy-vamp craze there are still female vamps to be found.
41 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:00 pm, permalink

The last of the Blood Books by Tanya Huff, “Blood Debt”, also features a female vampire, although her identity is spoilery.
42 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:01 pm, permalink

Mmm, I do know a lot of the examples cited for female vampires, but I can’t help but think there’s a huge difference between the highly romanticized pairings of human women and vampire men, and the more illicit relationships between vampire women and human men.

But that’s probably just my perceptions.
43 • Rae Bryant said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:02 pm, permalink

“Does anyone have examples of a pairing of a female vampire and a male human?”

And yet, in each strain, the she-vamp is brought down by “the man.” Hmm, still room for a successful she-vamp, but it must have a current event appeal . . .

Hillary Grows Fangs
The Clinton Chronicles: Blood for Hillary

Any ideas?
44 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:02 pm, permalink

“You seem very resistant to the suggestion that vampires could represent male/female power dynamics, to the point of being dismissive and condescending.”

Nora and Tempest,

I’m not trying to suggest that vampires can represent male/female power dynamics. Like all fictional elements, vampires can be used to represent whatever it is that the author of a given work wishes to explore.

What I’m saying is that what a reader chooses to read into a work doesn’t necessarily mean that that was the author’s intent, or even that that particular interpretation is valid.

When the only tool one has is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. Likewise, when one insists upon interpreting everything through the lens of a given agenda, whatever that agenda happens to be, it essentially requires one to enforce that interpretation upon works where it isn’t necessarily relevant.

Nor am I attempting to be dismissive. Far from it. While I’m happy to consider any idea anyone wishes to discuss, I’m not willing simply to accept any idea as valid, and if I disagree with something, I will certainly say so. That isn’t being dismissive; that is engaging in debate, which is a cornerstone of engaging conversation.

And, if I find someone’s comments to be offensive (I found Mallory’s comment to be essentially misandronistic, even if it wasn’t intentional), I will certainly say so, as well, although I try to be polite about it.
45 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:03 pm, permalink

That should be,”I’m not trying to suggest that vampires can’t represent male/female power dynamics.”
46 • Rae Bryant said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:07 pm, permalink

OMG, Once Bitten! I had forgotten all about it. One of Carey’s earlier ones. Mildly entertaining in a cheesy sort of way, but I think I’d rather cuddle up with Bunnicula.
47 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:18 pm, permalink

Nora, I totally spaced and forgot to say “you’re welcome” for the recommend. I hope you enjoy it!
48 • Juan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:24 pm, permalink

At the rate/direction this vampire fad/thing/whatever is going, I must say this (with tongue firmly in cheek):

I WANT A VAMPIRE FOR A PET!!!

I would name it George and I would love it and squeeze it and pet it. I know I’m good with pets and George would be properly groomed, bathed, trained and cleaned-up after so he won’t run away or hurt no one or nothing.

I’d have a dapper collar and leash so my mother can borrow George and go on her exercise walks by herself, my younger nieces would love playing with Georges hair–putting bows in it or fashioning pigtails, and I can pretty much walk around at night without worry about my surroundings as much.

*bounces* Pet vampire! Pet vampire! Pet vampire!
49 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:30 pm, permalink

ObVampireAnimalTakenToExtremes: Fred, the Eternal Snail, in Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum’s novel “Vampire Science”. (They had to stake it with a toothpick!)
50 • Juan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:37 pm, permalink

“Does anyone have examples of a pairing of a female vampire and a male human?”

I remember some movie that starred Nicholas Cage–I think it was him–who may or may not have been bitten by a vampire. Though the film is more about him with the supposed female vampire sending him into a downward spiral for the rest of the movie.

And there was a movie shown on sci-fi channel sometime ago. I think the male lead was a PI or a cop and he teamed up with a female vampire to stop a recently undead mafia boss.

And, of course, there is Underworld.
51 • Ide Cyan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:40 pm, permalink

Juan: that movie is “Innocent Blood”, with Anne Parillaud.
52 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:43 pm, permalink

Once Bitten is good, but does not have the emotional depth and moving social commentary of Bordello of Blood, whose main vampire is a female named (surprise) Lillith (Angie Everhart demonstrating the incredible scope of her talents). Though if you liked Once Bitten, you probably would prefer Fright Night.

Innocent Blood starring Anne Parillaud was pretty good, a dark comedy with a female vamp lead who battles the mob.

And Ultraviolet has Milla Jovovich as a kick-butt female vamp lead who takes on all comers and wins.

Eddie Murphy’s Vampire in Brooklyn is debatably a decent vampire film with African American vamps.

And to get real obscure, Ganja & Hess is a 70’s film made by black artists about black vampires in Africa. I’ll be honest in that I haven’t seen it yet (hard to find) but have heard that it is good. Just don’t get the edited “Blood Couple” version, as I understand it ruins the film.
53 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:44 pm, permalink

But my fave vamp movie is Vampire Hunter D.
54 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:45 pm, permalink

Concerning Tempests prompt about where the vampire genre might be in 10 years, there seem to be two basic strains that vampire strains have taken in the past few decades. One is the romantic, heroic vampire, while the other is the gory, violent mindless monster vampire.

The romantic vampire of today really has its roots all the way back in John Polidori’s “The Vampyre,” one of the works that came out of the summer in Geneva that also produced “Frankenstein,” and which was reputedly based on Lord Byron, and to some degree this archetype has informed most of the more recent romantic vampire characters. Lestat, certainly, is a Byronic character. Even Dracula has something of that in him; we sometimes forget that the novel is, in a way, something of a love story.

The violent, mindless monster vampire can certainly be traced back to traditional revenants and other creatures of folklore, even werewolves.

What both paths seem to have in common is that both present the vampire as an outsider from the norms of society, and not bound by social structures.

On the one hand, a vampire is a monster, and outsiders are often presented as monsters in every society. On the other hand, a vampire is a rebel, free from those things that bind us and cause us fear, such as social pressure and the ultimate fear, that of death.

I think a possible path that vampire fiction in the coming decade may attempt to do is to combine these two different characterizations — the vampire is free to be a monster. I’m not sure I particularly like this path, myself, unless it allows the vampire to fall back into its role as the story’s antagonist, not protagonist.

Another path is the further humanization of vampires. Rather than being undead, blood-sucking creatures of the night, vampires will be just like us, only more so. Vampires will go from being monsters to being paragons, the epitome of human existence. Again, this isn’t a path I’m particularly interested in.

It’s terribly difficult to predict these sorts of things, though. Honestly, though, has vampire fiction really changed that much since “Interview with a Vampire.” I remember when the book came out, it was viewed as something of a landmark because it was so different from the “traditional” presentation of vampires, which was basically Dracula in the classic Universal movies and the Hammer Studios version, which had both given way to parody.

I suppose it’s likely that the current visions of vampires will also give way to parody, and some other vision we can’t predict will come along.
55 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 4:50 pm, permalink

For what it’s worth, when I write vampires I try to have them be both romantic heroes and bloodthirsty monters. It’s a challenge, sure, but I think it’s worth it.
56 • Juan said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:03 pm, permalink

Thanks Ide. =)

And I found the Nicholas Cage one to be Vampire’s Kiss.

And there’s also the female human – female vampire pairing in The Last Sect.
57 • Nora said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:12 pm, permalink

Rae,

And yet, in each strain, the she-vamp is brought down by “the man.”

Probably because, as I see it, female vampires are a male fantasy — power-as-kink, embodying rampant female sexuality. I think that’s why so many female vampires in comic-bookland are dressed like dominatrixes. They’re as much the “bad girls” that men so love to lust after as vampires can be the bad boys for women. And yeah, from what I’ve seen these bad girls inevitably get brought down, usually because they’ve become too bad/powerful and moved beyond the area of safe lust-object into unsafe object of terror. It’s not fun fantasy anymore, so they have to go.

Whereas in the vampires-as-done-by-women fiction that’s popular these days, we usually see the bad boys get redeemed, and transformed from a lust-object and useless (well, useful for one thing, but useless otherwise) “bad boy” into a safer and more versatile object of love.

S’how it seems to me, anyhow.
58 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:17 pm, permalink

Where will the Vampire Trend be in 10 Years?
Good question. Here’s my best guess.

1. Fang-ee (from Pixar Studios) is number one at the box office for three weeks. The “tickle me Fang-ee” doll results in parking lot camp-outs and toy-aisle fist fights that Christmas.

2. The Vampire Channel (spinoff of the Lifetime Channel) debuts on cable. Red Neck Diaries starring David Duchovny becomes an instant hit.

3. John Carpenter and Wes Craven team up to create the cheesiest, bloodiest vampire movie ever made with a bad 80’s style heavy metal rock soundtrack. No, I mean, even worse than their last ones. The thousands of gallons of fake blood used on the film causes a minor ecological disaster in southern California.

4. The Judd Apatow gang (40 Year Old Virgin, Pinapple Express) bring you Stakey Bud, a comedy about a gang of slacker stoners who get fed up when the drug business is taken over by vampires, and decide to take back their streets for honest dealers that don’t ask “How much will you bleed for weed?”.

5. Emo is officially replaced by Vampo. Vampo bands sweep the college campuses. Hot Topic sees record sales, although their hard-core shoppers are none-too-happy that vampire fashion has become polo shirts, khakis and loafers.

6. Jerome Corsi writes a book offering proof that Obama is a vampire, filled with absolutely indisputable, fair and balanced facts.
59 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:22 pm, permalink

Nora. I think you nailed it. I agree that how a vamp is portrayed often has as much to do with the author’s own desires or views regarding the opposite sex as anything. It is an extension of their own fantasies. Not always, but often.
60 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:23 pm, permalink

Barack a vampire? But everyone knows he’s fighter, not a sucker.

http://www.barackula.com/
61 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:33 pm, permalink

Nora, while I agree with your analysis, mostly, I really disagree with your assertion that “the she-vamp is brought down by “the man.”” In most recent examples, the female vampire survives and even triumphs. Selena in Underworld, Vampirella in the whatever latest version of the Vampirella comic there is, Milla Jovovich in Ultraviolet.

As far as your assertion about vampires-as-done-by-women, well, your comments seemed dismissive and condescending. Not sure if you noticed you were doing that or not.
62 • Nora said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:37 pm, permalink

Lamar,

Nor am I attempting to be dismissive. Far from it. While I’m happy to consider any idea anyone wishes to discuss, I’m not willing simply to accept any idea as valid, and if I disagree with something, I will certainly say so. That isn’t being dismissive; that is engaging in debate, which is a cornerstone of engaging conversation.

I’m well aware of what debate is. There’s no reason — other than condescension — for you to explain it to me, thanks.

And I wasn’t objecting to your disagreement. Disagreement’s fine. I was objecting to the method of your disagreement, and the fact that any proposed analysis that didn’t josh with your own was called, among other things, “reactionary,” the province of “goo goo eyed adolescents”, and “a bit of hooey”. Please try to contain your withering contempt. It’s a bit much for you to complain about others trying to make their explanations fit a preconceived agenda when you resort to snide ridicule to defend your own.
63 • Chuck said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:48 pm, permalink

Vampires sparkle now?

Well, heck, if Meyer can change that (and it’s her story, she can do whatever the heck she wants), then why don’t we (in a good-natured fashion) change the rest of it…

1. Holy Water:

Holy water no longer burns vampire. Instead, the water droplets will turn the vampires polka-dotted — each dot a different color (by the power of God).

2. Crosses:

Vampires will no longer recoil in horror at the sight of crosses. From now on, the vampires will spring backwards into a well-executed tumbling run away from the cross. The judges will give it a “10″.

3. Garlic:

If you show cloves of garlic to a vampire, the vampire will say, “I can’t smell that. But I just happen to have a garlic press here in my pocket. Just let me…” *squish* “…there ya go. These little gadgets are miracles; it was so hard preparing garlic before someone invented these things — that was our complaint all along, really.”

4. Wooden Stakes:

If you plunge a wooden stake into a vampire’s heart, the vampire will stare at the stake for a moment and say, “Oh, excellent, I’ve been looking for a place to hang my coat.”

5. Rushing Water:

The real reason vampires can’t cross rushing water is because bridges collapse if vampires get too close. (You know how it works: the presence of witches causes milk to spoil, and vampires cause bridges to collapse. It’s magic … or something.) Fortunately, the “nice guy” vampires can detect bridges from a long way off (it’s magic … or something), and will find some other way to get where they’re going. Naturally, it’ll take a while.
64 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:52 pm, permalink

Nora,

“What “Twilight” sounds like — and I haven’t read the books, so I don’t know — is adolescent girl wish fulfillment fantasy. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, other than that Bella, the heroine, from what I’ve heard, actually never does anything at all in the stories but moon over Edward. In other words, she never becomes her own person, just an extension of the man in her life. I’ve known a lot of women like that over the years, so I can imagine that sort of fantasy would appeal to some.

“Personally, I find that sort of thing rather reactionary, and certainly nothing that would interest me, but to each her own.”

I was expressing an opinion stating why a particular work didn’t appeal to me. Perhaps you don’t consider a work in which the main female character subsumes her entire personality until she is little more than an extension of him to be reactionary. And, hey, to be honest, I may have an incorrect understanding of the work, but I was expressing my opinion about what I understood it to be.

“Basically, I’d just like to see more horror in my horror stories, and a lot fewer goo-goo eyed adolescents.

“But maybe that’s just me.”

Again, I was expressing an opinion and a preference, and attempting to do so in something of a humorous way. Apparently, you didn’t get the joke.

“Although it might be an interesting analysis of “Twilight,” in particular, and other “romantic vampire” works in general on how these sorts of works are popular with women because they embody some women’s idealization of romantic ideals as a means of sublimating their own sexual anxieties and fear of male sexuality, and that the romantic male characters in these — and, arguably, most contemporary romantic fiction — are literal attempts to “emasculate” and, thus, feminize the male protagonists, making the males more like the females, essentially becoming a wish fulfillment fantasy of female narcissism.

“I think that’s rather a bit of hooey, myself, but it still might be interesting.”

I was calling my own hyperbolic idea hooey. I was, in effect, ridiculing myself. Again, humor.

Something that you may wish to consider, Nora, is how much your criticism is directed at me not because you disagree with me or don’t like the manner in which I choose to express myself, but simply because I am male.

It seems that some forms of bigotry aren’t tolerated — nor should they be — while others are.
65 • Nora said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:53 pm, permalink

Nora, while I agree with your analysis, mostly, I really disagree with your assertion that “the she-vamp is brought down by “the man.””

Wasn’t my assertion. I was quoting Rae. Though I did agree with it in regards to female vampires created before the current vampire fiction boom.

In most recent examples, the female vampire survives and even triumphs. Selena in Underworld, Vampirella in the whatever latest version of the Vampirella comic there is, Milla Jovovich in Ultraviolet.

Selena and Violet aren’t meant to be purely male fantasy, though. Like most post-Buffy treatments of the vampire mythos, I think they’re meant to appeal equally to men who like to see hot bad girls playing with ~~phallic objects~~ swords, and women who like to see female characters with agency. Hollywood does whatever will make the most money, and once Joss Whedon proved that female viewers will flock to vampire material featuring empowered women, we started to see a lot more of them. Selena and Violet are a perfect example of this.

Vampirella, though, is what I’m talking about. Like most of the female vampires created pre-Buffy, I think she represents far more male fantasy than female. (Does this look like female empowerment to you?) Maybe they’ve started trying to retool her characterization for the Naughties; that would be the smart thing to do, to take advantage of the huge female audience for this sort of thing. But they’re going to have to put more clothes on her first, and probably shrink her tits to something less sympathetic-wince-inducing (for women), if that’s the plan.

As far as your assertion about vampires-as-done-by-women, well, your comments seemed dismissive and condescending. Not sure if you noticed you were doing that or not.

Please provide examples.
66 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:58 pm, permalink

Your post:

Rae,

And yet, in each strain, the she-vamp is brought down by “the man.”

Probably because, as I see it, female vampires are a male fantasy — power-as-kink, embodying rampant female sexuality. I think that’s why so many female vampires in comic-bookland are dressed like dominatrixes. They’re as much the “bad girls” that men so love to lust after as vampires can be the bad boys for women. And yeah, from what I’ve seen these bad girls inevitably get brought down, usually because they’ve become too bad/powerful and moved beyond the area of safe lust-object into unsafe object of terror. It’s not fun fantasy anymore, so they have to go.

Whereas in the vampires-as-done-by-women fiction that’s popular these days, we usually see the bad boys get redeemed, and transformed from a lust-object and useless (well, useful for one thing, but useless otherwise) “bad boy” into a safer and more versatile object of love.

S’how it seems to me, anyhow.
67 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 5:59 pm, permalink

Your post:

elena and Violet aren’t meant to be purely male fantasy, though. Like most post-Buffy treatments of the vampire mythos, I think they’re meant to appeal equally to men who like to see hot bad girls playing with phallic objects swords, and women who like to see female characters with agency. Hollywood does whatever will make the most money, and once Joss Whedon proved that female viewers will flock to vampire material featuring empowered women, we started to see a lot more of them. Selena and Violet are a perfect example of this.
68 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:00 pm, permalink

Just to clarify things. Even though it says “Harris Comics” at the upper left of that cover, it does not mean I had anything to do with Vampirella. Just sayin’.
69 • Lamar Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:01 pm, permalink

Your post:

I’m finding your reactions to this thread more interesting than the conversation itself. You seem very resistant to the suggestion that vampires could represent male/female power dynamics, to the point of being dismissive and condescending. Particularly toward those in the thread who have female-sounding names. Not sure if you noticed you were doing that or not.

Is that enough, or do you want me to find more examples of you being dismissive and condescending?
70 • Rae Bryant said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:03 pm, permalink

Yes, “she-vamp” taken down by “the man” is my assertion. I own it and will loan it out to anyone for a good price. I have no qualms about pimping out my assertions for hire. Male, female, she-male, if you like it, please by all means, put in a bid.
71 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:06 pm, permalink

A recently-turned vampire friend of mine described an epiphany she had not long ago.

“I was watching television, just flipping channels you know, and this horrible image came up on the screen. It was this man and woman with giant hair, and she had, like, seventy pounds of makeup on, and they were asking people for money and singing. It was frightening. It took me several minutes to realize that right behind them was a giant cross — I’d been looking at a cross for several minutes, and didn’t even notice.”

She thought at first her lack of response to the holy icon was the result of a kind of desensitization training. But then she did some research on ghoulgle, and apparently, it turns out that holy water and crosses haven’t worked since Nietzsche declared that God is dead. Go figure.
72 • Chuck said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:09 pm, permalink

>Does anyone have examples of a pairing of a female vampire and a male human? Randy’s comment about the age difference thing got me thinking about it. Are relationships between younger men and older women just too taboo?

Oy! That idea just merged with the whole “cougar” culture thing in my head.

Vampire Cougar Romance. It’s a new subgenre. She’s on the prowl.:-)

And if you want to integrate certain high-profile incidents in the news, you could have a female vampire who’s a junior high school teacher…

*tackled*

*dragged away*
73 • Nora said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:10 pm, permalink

Lamar,

Something that you may wish to consider, Nora, is how much your criticism is directed at me not because you disagree with me or don’t like the manner in which I choose to express myself, but simply because I am male.

This would certainly be a valid criticism if I’d shown a pattern of disagreeing with every male in this thread, as you’ve shown a pattern of condescending to every female. Since I haven’t shown that kind of pattern, I would ask you to please back up your assertion with some evidence.

Or you could just stop trying to point fingers at me in order to deflect attention from the fact that you haven’t addressed my criticism at all.

That said, I agree with you that the “Twilight” series is female adolescent wish fulfillment. I’m not defending them; I think the books suck, pun intended. I’m defending the various analyses of why modern vampire fiction works, as offered by the women in this thread. I don’t necessarily agree with all their points, but I think their points are as valid as your own, and as deserving of respectful, reasoned response. I see no reason for you to dismiss these analyses out of hand the way you have been, and certainly not in the condescending way you’ve done. Likewise, I see no reason for several other people in this thread to turn it from a discussion about a popular subgenre to ridicule of that subgenre — and its fans.

The thing is, I’m not a fan of vampire fiction, modern or otherwise. I find vampire mythology uninteresting and most modern treatments of them tiresome. However, I recognize that it’s a bestselling genre that’s currently dominated by female authors, meant to appeal primarily to a female audience, and in many ways it represents one of the most successful recent attempts by SF to attract a broader, more diverse audience. So when I see a bunch of guys in this thread snickering with each other over something they admittedly “don’t get”, don’t read, and don’t want to read, and ignoring/dismissing any women who offer up their own opinions, I have to wonder what’s really going on here.

(Sorry if this posts twice. Thunderstorm here; power flickered.)
74 • Rae Bryant said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:14 pm, permalink

Is it possible that vampires as genre machination and icons can be analyzed in each critical approach. For instance, if taking a historical criticism approach, one can just as legitimately take a feminist approach, as one might take a Marxist approach. For instance if broken down into classes, the various vamps might symbolize the differences between commoners and the bourgeois, the mystification between aesthetics as exemplary of reality and reality itself.

In that case, perhaps, blood itself, becomes the exhange by which classes base their wealth. Virgins, would therein, hold the rare commodity, whether they are common or well-to-do. Male or female, too would be valuable based upon purity of blood, rather than gender. Hmm, anyone up for Lancanian Criticism?

And BTW: No one said anything about my The Clinton Chronicles: Blood for Hillary idea. I’m hurt, very hurt, and feeling a bit depressed, now. I worked really hard on that one, I did. Guess I’ll go eat worms . . . .
75 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:15 pm, permalink

As for crossing over moving water, the loss of that weakness actually was the result of desensitization. After all, with the advent of modern plumbing, we are almost always crossing over moving water. You couldn’t cross the street without crossing a sewer line or storm runoff.

But perhaps by means of compensation, they cannot pass between two coffee shops. That is the real reason that so many Starbucks open stores right across the street from each other. It is part of the government’s secret vampire containment plan, kept hush hush so as not to alarm the public.
76 • Nora said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:15 pm, permalink

Is that enough, or do you want me to find more examples of you being dismissive and condescending?

Were those previous posts in which you quoted sections of what I’d said meant to show that? Sorry, there was no explanation attached, so I had no idea what you were trying to point out.

The only example that seems condescending to me is the one where I pointed out your condescension. And yes, it was; I was trying to employ the same style that you were using, to illustrate my point.
77 • Rae Bryant said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:18 pm, permalink

“I was watching television, . . .”

OMG! That’s good stuff right there!
78 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:22 pm, permalink

Rae, that was pretty darn funny. I’m still waiting on external approval of my comment that vampires are this generation’s unicorns. Nothing but chirping crickets.

Save some of those worms for me, please.
79 • Chuck said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:37 pm, permalink

Relating to previous comments about “emasculated” or “feminized” vampires (but for the sake of my argument, I’ll take that to mean “weakened.”)

Why not have a weakened vampire? (Whatever their gender.)

Vampires occupy a sort of predator role. And when you look at real predators in the wild, you’ll find that they’re not necessarily in charge of the ecosystem (“King of the Jungle, or whatever title you want to apply).

For instance, lions can’t necessarily (and often don’t) march in and take whatever they want — a lion would get its butt kicked if it tried to take the big bull wildebeest. Lions, and other predators, often have to be opportunists, focusing on stalking and hunting the weak, sick, old, unwary, and the outcast.

Maybe you could apply the same to a vampire who, by necessity, has to prey on the weak and vulnerable because a strong individual, or several individuals, could cause trouble for it.

Plus this weak vampire, and others like it, would also have to do its business without alerting humanity to its existence. Just look at what happens to cougars that attack or kill people — the local humans will send hunting party to kill it.

If you took the idea of the weak (yet still potentially dangerous) vampire, combined him with the “nice guy” vampire, and threw in a girl/woman with an “Ooooooh, poor baby” mindset whose love life is composed entirely of “picking up strays”, then you might have a story that’s…

Well, I’m not really sure what it’d look like. Ew.:-)
80 • Chuck said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:42 pm, permalink

Randy Henderson said:
>But perhaps by means of compensation, they cannot pass between two coffee shops. That is the real reason that so many Starbucks open stores right across the street from each other. It is part of the government’s secret vampire containment plan, kept hush hush so as not to alarm the public.

That’s genius-level thinking.:-)

Vampires are nothing but a rural problem now.
81 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:43 pm, permalink

Rae – no slight meant on your Clinton joke. I just don’t think people want to talk about her vampirism, because she has done some historic and important things as a woman, and pointing out that she is a vampire kind of distracts from that. Then it becomes about her being a vampire, not a woman. Sort of like how Republicans ignore that W is really just a side of Texas barbequed beef given human form (but sadly not human intelligence) through dark magics, and then escaped the Skull and Bones laboratory to carry on the Bush dynasty.

My point is, really, these persons should be judged on their achievements (or lack thereof), not on their supernatural conditions. Let us not call Clinton a “vampire” woman, but simply a woman. Let us not call Bush a “beef” man, but simply a huge missed steak. Ya know?
82 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:44 pm, permalink

Chuck said: “what about a weakend vampire?”

You mean one that only sucks blood on Saturdays and Sundays?
83 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:45 pm, permalink

Clint – the unicorn comment was genius. Although the two horns might have been a bit much
84 • Clint Harris said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:49 pm, permalink

Thank you, Randy. I thought so too (as far as being a bit much). But this software has no edit function.

While we’re on the subject, post #25 was aces.

Rae’s comment on Hilary was funny as well, but you both have her classification wrong. Hilary is more akin to Candyman or Bloody Mary. If you say Hilary three times in a row–

URK!
85 • Michael Gordon said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:50 pm, permalink

And here’s another thing about Buffy… (no collective groans, please)

The mythos robs the vampires of any choice in whether they are heroes or villains. Vampires automatically “lose their souls” upon turning, which basically gives the heroes carte blanche to kill enemies without worrying about moral issues. Or there’s Angel and Spike who are “cursed” with souls, and again have no choice. Even though Spike is still a bad boy, he makes no choice in that matter.
86 • Chuck said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:50 pm, permalink

Clint Harris said:
>Chuck said: “what about a weakend vampire?”

>You mean one that only sucks blood on Saturdays and Sundays?

Dammit, I KNEW there was something in need of proofreading. (Typing and posting too fast.)
87 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 6:55 pm, permalink

As anyone who has played paper-and-dice RPGs, or for that matter played out imaginary battles as kids, can tell you, weaknesses are important. Omnipotent characters, or annoying kids who have invisible shields that block your every imaginary attack, get really boring really quick.

But on the flip side there is menace. If they don’t pose a credible threat, one that seems near-impossible to defeat, then what’s the point? If they are little more than humans that suck blood, then why should I care about them any more than humans that suck down my last Jones Cream Soda without asking? In either case, I’ll just put the smack down on em. BOO-YAH! Take that, Sparkles McSparkly!
88 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 7:00 pm, permalink

Michael @ 85:

Actually, this was yet another flaw of the Whedon-verse (not that Whedon ain’t awesome anyway).

The “soulless” vampires DID exhibit choice and emotion. Spike was all nice and friendly long before he got his soul. And although that was in large part due to the convenient “chip” in his head, that doesn’t explain his love for Buffy, his kindnesses to Dawn, his treatment of Buffy after he discovered the chip no longer worked regarding her, and his going through the pain of getting a soul.

And Harmony, for examp, tried to be good and fit in and drink only pigs blood, etcetera while working for Angel.

Yeah. I watched the series way too much. Whatever.
89 • Chuck said:
August 15th, 2008 at 7:14 pm, permalink

Randy Henderson said:
>Clint – the unicorn comment was genius. Although the two horns might have been a bit much

I’m still trying to figure out what a vampire elephant would look like. Would the two tusks be noticeably longer?:-)

And using the trunk to siphon blood… Something’s just not right with that.
90 • Rae Bryant said:
August 15th, 2008 at 7:20 pm, permalink

“Let us not call Bush a “beef” man, but simply a huge missed steak. Ya know?” *LOL* You rock, Randy!

All right, Clint! Now, I’ll need to do the dark mirror test. Hilary, Hilary . . .

Oh, you all should really never put these things in my head.
91 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 7:27 pm, permalink

Chuck @89:

A look into the mind of Randy –

For some reason, your mention of an elephant made me think of Ganesha, which made me remember that Kali (goddess of death and destruction) is sometimes considered a vampire, since she drank a demon’s blood in order to defeat it, and devotees used to leave her blood offerings, and she’s sometimes depicted drinking blood, etcetera. Maybe she made the elephant a vampire to spite Ganesha, due to his dominant popularity in modern Hinduism or something.

So my mind went to the elephant therefore being Hindu. Thus, if you staked it, it would probably be reincarnated.

Which then made me wonder what a reincarnated vampire’s soul would be like? Would it carry over the evil of its acts as a vampire? Would it get a pass on the vampire stuff?

Yep, my mind is a mess. But maybe I’ll get a short story out of all of that. Who knows.
92 • Randy Henderson said:
August 15th, 2008 at 7:51 pm, permalink

@86

What about Vampire Weekend? Great band.
93 • Silvia said:
August 15th, 2008 at 11:31 pm, permalink

Hmm, I don’t know about female vampires. Aside from Carmilla my literary female vampires have been very weakly drawn. For example, in the Last Vampire (a sequel of the Hunger) the powerful predator turns into teenager in luuuv when she meets a strong, powerful man.

I think we are supposed to laugh at Lauren Hutton in Once Bitten, as in look at that silly cougar.

And I don’t think a 100 year-old female-vampire attending high-school and falling in love with the local jock would fly very well.
94 • K. Tempest Bradford said:
August 15th, 2008 at 11:53 pm, permalink

Lamar @ 69

I actually don’t see anything particularly condescending or dismissive in any of the posts you copied from. Perhaps you should stick to discussing the topic instead of trying to one-up folks. Thanks! Now, back to our show.
95 • Lamar said:
August 16th, 2008 at 12:21 am, permalink

Nora,

“This would certainly be a valid criticism if I’d shown a pattern of disagreeing with every male in this thread, as you’ve shown a pattern of condescending to every female.”

That is completely and utterly untrue. I am completely offended by your assertion, which is not only untrue and unfounded, but also unsupported by any statements I made on this thread. I made perfectly reasonable statements. You are the one who made a claim about my “pattern” of behavior that cannot be supported by logic, reason or fact, nor will you be able to do so. I demand an apology, not that I expect it from someone who deliberately attempted to take my statements out of context and to deliberately misrepresent them, which is nothing more than lying. You, madam, are worse than a bigot; you are a bigot with a sense of entitlement.

Tempest,

“I actually don’t see anything particularly condescending or dismissive in any of the posts you copied from. Perhaps you should stick to discussing the topic instead of trying to one-up folks. Thanks! Now, back to our show.”

With all due respect to your interpretation, I did find Nora’s statements both condescending and dismissive. I am completely offended by her belief, apparently, that she can simply scold me like a errant six-year old without being challenged, and I am saddened that you appear unwilling to recognize this. I apologize for getting your thread off topic. In the future, I will know better than to dare ever express my opinions on this site.
96 • Nora said:
August 16th, 2008 at 8:52 am, permalink

Lamar,

I’m going to steer you towards this great article, which applies more to racism but can be spackled over sexism too. Because you’re doing everything that article suggests not doing, and then some.

My criticism has been very specific: I think you’ve been dismissive and condescending towards those in this thread whose opinions have differed from your own. Maybe it’s coincidence that they all have names which sound female to me — or maybe that’s an unconscious reaction on your part. It’s okay if so; it happens. We’ve all been raised in a sexist society, and that tends to affect our language and thinking. We all have to watch out for that. (A great example is Chuck in this thread, catching the problem inherent in complaining about the “emasculation” or “feminization” of vampires. Since “female” does not inherently equal “weak”, and since vampires aren’t default-male, he suggests we should use a word that’s not gendered, like “weakened.” I agree.)

Anyway, since I’ve called you on this possibly-unconscious mistake, you should treat it as if I’ve said your fly is open. Nobody intends to walk around with their fly open, but sometimes we just forget. And the correct way to respond to someone who’s told you “your fly is open” is not to have a hissyfit and accuse that person of being a pervert for looking at your crotch. The correct response — which any six-year-old would do, now that you mention it — is to go, “Oh, seriously? Whoa,” and look down to see whether it really is open. And zip up if so.

I’m not going to apologize for telling you your fly is open, Lamar. If you want to be offended by that, fine. No sweat off my back if you’re determined to walk around with your dick hanging out. But unless you do something about that little problem, you’re eventually going to run into other people who will notice it, and point and laugh. They won’t be doing this because you’re merely expressing opinions; they’ll laugh at you because you’re expressing them badly, in a way that reveals your unconscious prejudices. So you might want to get around to zipping up eventually, whether you do it because of me or not. Your call.
97 • Nora said:
August 16th, 2008 at 9:03 am, permalink

Silvia,

And I don’t think a 100 year-old female-vampire attending high-school and falling in love with the local jock would fly very well.

This reminded me — Blood and Blood+, an anime film and TV series respectively, featured exactly that. Saya was nearly 200 years old, and masqueraded as a high school student because it was simply easier (that’s what she looked like, and she would’ve been harassed for truancy if she didn’t play along). She didn’t fall in love with a human, though there was some possibility she might have because she’d lost her memory of the previous 150+ years; eventually she ended up with another vampire-like guy (the biology of the vamps in that series was entirely different from the mythological version). But it occurs to me that we see female vampires a lot more in Japanese manga/anime than in Western stuff. Vampire Princess Miyu — another teenage-looking female vampire, who hunted other vampires and supernatural creatures. Lament of the Lamb, Blood Alone, and I think the female protagonist of Vamipre Knight is going to turn out to be some kind of proto-vampire — those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head. Seems like vampirism is treated as an allegory for female coming-of-age in that genre. Makes sense, given the blood symbolism… Though maybe it doesn’t scan completely, because I can think of a lot more manga that contain hot male vampires as the love interest of human females. Well, some things are the same across culture. =)
98 • Randy Henderson said:
August 16th, 2008 at 6:33 pm, permalink

If you want an example of a “cute” vampire, there is also Chibi Vampire, a Manga series that was also made into an Anime series.

She is actually different from other vampires, in that she has to inject her blood into other people, as she produces too much.

Also, a human boy character’s unhappiness makes her produce blood even faster, so one of the main plot points is how she makes him happy, by doing things like making him boxed lunches.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xf80ra7vH6E
99 • Randy Henderson said:
August 16th, 2008 at 6:35 pm, permalink

On a completely unrelated topic, scientists are close to perfecting invisibility cloaking materials. The lead scientist on the project says in the interview that we could have clothing made of these metamaterials in 30-40 years. I’m sure the military applications will come much, much sooner.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93661771&ft=1&f=1001
100 • Randy Henderson said:
August 16th, 2008 at 6:50 pm, permalink

And this post I’m doing just because I wanted to be post number 100

What do you think of vampire bites producing narcotic or euphoric responses in the victims due to some agent in the vampire’s saliva or injected from their teeth?

I don’t have any strong resistance to the idea, except it’s been done to death. But is it really necessary? I should think normal psychological and biochemical responses to something like that would be enough, and more interesting if you explore them well.

And yeah, I know, it is often used as an analogy or allegory on addiction, etcetera. But even then, addiction does not require an artificially induced pleasure effect. Not only are there the obvious non-chemical addictions such as gambling and sex, but there are psychological addictions to giving or receiving abuse or pain, to danger, to World of Warcraft, etcetera.
101 • Randy Henderson said:
August 16th, 2008 at 6:53 pm, permalink

And by non-chemical addictions, I mean of course external chemicals. Yes, I know that the body produces chemicals that reinforce addictive behaviors.
102 • Michael Gordon said:
August 16th, 2008 at 9:45 pm, permalink

I think the drug-saliva is just more fast acting and universal than a purely psychological addiction. It works for situations where the hero is being bitten and must fight the drug’s effects. In long-term addiction storylines, the more psychological approach is often more interesting.

On a related note, what do people think of the Scification (neologism?) of vampires? Even in non-SF works vampirism is very often referred to as a virus (and spread like one) and numerous powers/weaknesses are explained in scientific terms (rapid healing, photosensitivity etc.) Completely unscientific aspects like not reflecting in mirrors have been almost universally abandoned.
103 • Randy Henderson said:
August 16th, 2008 at 10:39 pm, permalink

Ah, well, writers of quality vampire fiction quickly realized they had to get rid of the non-reflection thing. I mean, how else are you going to describe a character except find a contrived reason for them to look in a mirror and think about their own appearance? Hello! Duh.

As for the science angle, yeah, I mean, just because the real reason for vampirism is a virus, that doesn’t mean fiction about vampires needs to stick with that.
104 • Silvia said:
August 16th, 2008 at 11:41 pm, permalink

“Completely unscientific aspects like not reflecting in mirrors have been almost universally abandoned.”

It seems to vary a lot. Buffy, with its idea of vampires as a type of demon, clearly takes an unscientific approach. St.Germain has to carry earth from the place where he was born. And there’s, of course, the much more “logical” vampires which could exist in our own world which can be explained as a virus.

How ever, I would caution about the word “universally.” Many other cultures have vampire myths that, if exploited more often, would often show some very unscientific characteristics. Latin American folklore is rich with “sucking” female creatures that eat babies. It’s just that Westerners are more familiar with Dracula and its kindred (no mirrors, shadows, crucifix). But for example, would you know how to deal with an Ole-Higue?
105 • Michael Gordon said:
August 18th, 2008 at 12:54 pm, permalink

“But for example, would you know how to deal with an Ole-Higue?”

Thanks to Wikipedia, I now would. Unless Wikipedia is working with the Guyanese demons to lure us into a false sense of security.

It is interesting that the grain-counting thing is one of the few similarities to European vampires.

I’m trying to think of non-European vampires in fiction. Chinese (hopping) vampires have become a bit more well known these days, but I’ve come across only a small number of other types. I lauded Jim Butcher in my first post for incorporating three versions of vampires in his books, but now I’m thinking what we really need is a United Nations for the Undead.
106 • Anonymous said:
August 19th, 2008 at 10:54 am, permalink

Is there going to be a winner this week? I counted 11 participants.
107 • K. Tempest Bradford said:
August 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am, permalink

woo! crazy week and a miscommunicaton made us late (again, yes, again) awarding our winner for this (last) week’s BfaB. The conversation was wonderful, wide-ranging, and highly enjoyable. If I could give you all 410, I would. But the prize ultimately goes to Rae, because “The Clinton Chronicles: Blood for Hillary” makes me giggle, “she-vamp” taken down by “the man” is SO true, and her other commentary was just as insightful and fun. But props should also go to Nora, Ide, Randy, Clint, Silvia, and Michael.
108 • Rae Bryant said:
August 24th, 2008 at 1:23 pm, permalink

A big thank you! I must also give some big-time props to Nora, Ide, Randy, Clint, Silvia, and Michael. This was a super fun blog, and highly educational. You all know your vamp-lore!

Thank you K. Tempest, and everyone else.

All my best,
Rae
109 • Fantasy Magazine » The Opposite Of Life By Narrelle M. Harris said:
August 27th, 2008 at 3:00 pm, permalink

[...] Twilight series: Breaking Dawn. Tweaking the fundamental nature of vampires isn’t new (see this rousing discussion from two weeks ago) but the nature of those tweaks is the difference between simplistic Mary Sue [...]
110 • Cheryl Holland said:
August 28th, 2008 at 8:02 am, permalink

*I lauded Jim Butcher in my first post for incorporating three versions of vampires in his books, but now I’m thinking what we really need is a United Nations for the Undead.*
There is actually a fourth vampire court – the Jade court, which are Oriental. They haven’t turned up yet though, just been mentioned in passing.

*I did come across a short story once that took #3 to an extreme. Vampires invaded American by attacking Jewish communities first and all the silly Jews died because they didn’t have crosses. It kind of sickened me. (Plus, if the vampires were smart, wouldn’t they have attacked Asia first?)*
There’s a scene in The Fearless Vampire Killers (I think) where someone is attacked by a Jewish vampire and gets out their cross, only to be told “You have got the wrong vampire…” and get bitten anyway.

Good debate, I wish I’d caught it.
111 • Michael Gordon said:
August 28th, 2008 at 8:56 am, permalink

Good points Cheryl, I forgot about the Jade court. I believe the Jewish vampire bit is an old joke, but it raises an interesting idea about the effect of the faith of the vampire (rather than the vampire slayer).

So here’s what I realized about Non-western vampires. It’s not just that they are rare in fiction, appearing usually as a one-time occurence, but they also tend to not have undergone the same civilizing effect as the European variety. Where are the romantic hero hopping vampires or the conflicted, guilt-ridden Ole-Higue? Other than the Kindred of the East RPG I don’t think I’ve ever seen any complexity given to these brothers and sisters in darkness. It’s time for a change, I say. Let’s send all the demons to high school! That should set things straight.
112 • Cheryl Holland said:
August 28th, 2008 at 2:40 pm, permalink

*So here’s what I realized about Non-western vampires. It’s not just that they are rare in fiction, appearing usually as a one-time occurence, but they also tend to not have undergone the same civilizing effect as the European variety. Where are the romantic hero hopping vampires or the conflicted, guilt-ridden Ole-Higue?*

The difference comes in that the western vampire evolved in a specific set of cultural and literary circumstances, specifically those of 19th century Romantic fiction. At the time it was fashionable for young men with a certain amount of wealth to go on the Grand Tour – basically a road trip of Europe, which was popularised by Lord Byron.

John Polidori wrote a story called “The Vampyre” which was probably the first to feature the vampire as we know it: pale, aristocratic, not sparkly, and with a tendency to travel a lot. “The Vampyre” was attributed to Byron (who Polidori knew), and there were all sorts of comparisions of the vampire and him. The literati were at the time (as now, I suppose) quite closely connected and so the whole thing snowballed from there.

There’s obviously more to it, but I don’t want to turn this into an essay! There’s a good account of it in Christopher Frayling’s “Vampyres” if anyone’s interested, plus it has some good old vampire stories to boot (pretty much the ones he talks about).

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