The surge in urban fantasy leaves me wondering if I’m the only person on the planet who is not taken with the idea of vampires. Indeed, I think they are, to put it simply, gross.
I like urban fantasy in theory, but in practice I’m usually just repulsed by all the vampire sex. (Okay, and demon sex and werewolf sex and okay, maybe it’s just the sex.)
Start with bloodsucking, throw in mind-control and general assholishness and the entire vampire scene is just nasty.
Am I alone? I feel alone!
Although I read urban fantasy, it is only the ones with Vampires on the peripheral. I’m not a big fan of Vamps (well, I *was *a fan of Barnabas Collins in my youth.)
I love vampires, but don’t consider them sexy. I don’t look for sex in my literature.
The tag line for The Lost Boys was “Sleep all day. Party all night. Never grow old. Never die. It’s fun to be a vampire”. What’s not to like about that?
I started a thread a few years ago expressing confusion and amazement over the sudden popularity of vampires. So no, you’re not alone.
I don’t understand the sexiness of the ones that are portrayed as cold, non-breathing animated corpses. I love the novel Sunshine, for example, but it’s really weird that the main character is attracted to the vampire, since her description of his physical appearance is very unappealing. He doesn’t breathe and has skin the color of old mushrooms, for example. But at least he isn’t cold to the touch, which seems like it would be a very big deal.
I do see the attraction of the ones that are described as close to human in appearance. I find something compelling about extreme strength and power paired with terrible vulnerability.
There’s stranger.
On a non-porn art site, I ran across (& then fled from) an artist drawing…pin-up zombie girls.:smack:
Scantily clad & in an advanced state of decomposition.
Ick.
I hate vampire-as-romantic-interest vampires. It doesn’t help that a few of the more famous authors of this sort of thing seem to be rather crazy about their vampire characters.
They’re not sexy. The movies unfortunately have mistaken unnatural hypnotic powers and blood sucking to mean vampires are sex machines.
I think that vampires who are little more than animated dead people, and vampires who are surly, whiny jerks, are obviously unappealing. But I love vampires who are human-like, and still good and kind. It’s hard to find them, so I don’t read a lot of the vampire stuff out there.
There’s something appealing about the idea of having to learn to live under the weight of tragedy, to me. The amount of loss you can suffer as a human is limited by the length of your life – but think of how many friends and lovers could be lost in a life that was 200, 300, 400 years long? And if they are still a good person, and keep hope, after all that…it’s really sweet and inspiring. When I write about vampires, they’re basically just regular people, with long lives lived with lots of loss and what amounts to a chronic illness for which they need medicine.
If the OP hasn’t seen it yet, I recommend John Carpenter’s Vampires, if only for the mini-rant James Woods has early on when explaining the real deal to the newbie priest.
Glenn Cook’s vampires are universally portrayed as monstrous. Always so in personality, and often physically as well. “It looked like what it was; a corpse that had dug it’s way out of it’s grave to feed on the living” and “eyes the color of urine” are two phrases I recall.
Ya know what’s really creepy?
People that think they’re vampires.:rolleyes:
I don’t think they’re really creepy, just insanely huge dumbasses.
A few years back, I interviewed a guy who looked around our big old building and he said he’d really like to LARP in it after hours. I suppose many of you will know that LARP means Live Action Role Playing, but I had no idea. Anyway, he and his friends got together a LARPed about being vampires.
I might have hired him anyway, but the rest of the interviewing team was weirded out by it.
You’re not alone. Yes, I’m familiar with the allegories and symbolism in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I don’t care. If you’re evil, undead, and need to feed on human life to survive or any of the above, I don’t want you nibbling on my neck. I am not your lunch and I don’t find you sexy.
I suppose to some people, vampires are the ulitmate bad boy, and Bill Door makes them sound like the ultimate frat boy, but they’re not for me.
Modern vampires are rank poseurs. Yeah, you’re all real terrifying with your immortal youth and sex powers and Eurotrash languor and fashionable leather dusters. Sure hope that never happens to me, let me tell you.
You know who the real vampires are? Zombies. The modern zombie is much closer to the genuinely scary vampire of folklore. They’re stinky and rotting and unsexy and you’d rather shoot yourself in the head than turn into one.
And of course, what’s really scary are 90% of the Google ads being targetted to readers of this thread. (all the way down at the bottom of the page). Scroll right to see what else comes up. shudder.
*** Ponder
Interesting! Apparently, if I can draw vampires, I can become an Original Gothic Artist! That’s good to know. Evidently Blick Art Materials has the ability to transport me back to 12th century France, and will do so in exchange for hand-drawn vampire pictures. Which is pretty damn weird, but whatever.
Also, I now know how to contact The World’s Largest & Most Experienced Cord Blood Bank.
especially the ones portrayed in the movie Underworld, whose vampires were basically humans with guns.