When somebody told me she was reading the new faux literary vampire dystopia novel I asked her if she could sense the author’s contempt for her for buying it.
The Passage by Justin Cronin is currently on the best seller’s list. Pretty decent book. I think this is the one cricetus is referring too, but not sure.
Yes, that’s the one. It’s the fact that he was a respected literary figure and then wrote VAMPIRE DYSTOPIA that makes me think he’s just doing the most commercial possible thing and now raking in the dough and sneering at the people who read it. The person I spoke to said it was pretty awful.
Apparently menstrual smells different than regular blood.
I hate to defend the woman who thought vampires should sparkle, but that’s not as dumb as it sounds.
Hey, I said “pretty decent”, not “To Kill a Mockingbird”!
It was half a good book in much the way The Stand was half a good book. The first half when the world is going to shit. After that, gets a bit bleh.
Actually that’s exactly what she said. First part good, then really turned south. Maybe he rushed to finish it before the market fell out?
I started a paranormal YA romance on the thought of cashing in – I am a published YA author, but write much less commercial stuff, figured my agent could sell it. After sharing a few chapters with a friend who reads the genre, I realized I was kidding myself. As a fan, she was insulted by it. You have to believe in what you’re doing to write it well. (I mean, convincingly. Even if it is not done “well.”)
Indonesian/Malaysian. The penanggalang, which came to my attention first as an entry in the early 80s British AD&D monster book, Fiend Folio. She’s #10 (#1 by order) on this list.
Can’t we have movies without chicks getting nekkid in them? Seriously. For a while it seemed that EVERY R rated movie had to have at least one scene in a strip club, with a bunch of young women dancing in G strings and high heels, and never mind that the scene had nothing really to do with the movie.
It’s just another damned fad. There will be a few good examples of the genre, and the rest will exhibit Sturgeon’s Law.
Actually, you probably don’t. I remember when Star Wars first came out. You know what happened? Every publisher sent all the peons scuttling to their slush piles, hoping to dig out a few science fiction stories that might be salable…but those stories were in the slush pile for a reason. So instead of getting a lot of great SF to read, we got a lot of crappy scifi published. And the mundanes, who had been blown away by Star Wars, thought that they liked SF, so they bought the crap, and then eventually got bored with it. Booms don’t necessarily improve a genre, they just tend to get more crap examples published or produced.
That’s the really frustrating thing. Compared to most vampires in fiction, the Twilight vamps are much less sissy than most.
[quote=“Lynn_Bodoni, post:48, topic:547001”]
Can’t we have movies without chicks getting nekkid in them? Seriously. For a while it seemed that EVERY R rated movie had to have at least one scene in a strip club, with a bunch of young women dancing in G strings and high heels, and never mind that the scene had nothing really to do with the movie.
It’s just another damned fad. …QUOTE]
Yes, but I like that fad.
I found the “every movie must have a strip club scene” fad to be excruciatingly boring. You can avoid most of the vampire movies, because you KNOW that they’re gonna be about bloodsuckers. But if I wanted to watch a movie for people who were over 18, I had to sit through half an hour of bouncing titties. Since titties (bouncing or not) don’t do a thing for me, this means that I spent more than a quarter of each movie twiddling my thumbs, rolling my eyes, and otherwise getting aggravated. These scenes interrupted the movie, which otherwise might be quite good, and brought me out of the story.
I have no objections to a movie which is about tits and ass, let’s just be upfront about it, and call it softcore porn, and keep it out of the other movies where it will only be a distraction for half of the audience. Even the people in the audience who might enjoy the sight might also lose track of the story.
I seem to remember both Angel & Spike speaking contemptuously of people who’d read too much Ann Rice.
Then, there’s Buffy Versus Edward…
I’d be interested in some titles of movies which you think are of the “Full of bouncing titties/must have a strip club scene” because I must say I can’t recall many non-porn (softcore or otherwise) films from the past few years that would qualify, with the exception of things like Sin City and a couple of other films clearly aimed at a more “Mature” audience than your standard “R” rated movie.
Obviously there’s going to be nudity in “Mainstream” films, but I certainly don’t recall (and haven’t noticed) it being de rigueur in the way you’re suggesting it is, at any rate.
How so? They don’t even feed on human blood. (and I’m ashamed to admit that I know enough about Twilight to know that what I’m saying is applicable only to the “good” vampires, but still)
I know what you mean…“vampire” has always been my lazy fall-back Halloween costume, but this past year, I couldn’t find a set of vampire teeth to save my life. :mad: Damned “Twilight” twits. :rolleyes:
But I am a fan of the genre…Bram Stoker’s version, Salem’s Lot, I am Legend, etc…
Am currently reading a very excellent novel titled “The Historian” which deals with the Dracula legend.
And some films in the area I love, incl. Let the Right One In (Dutch, I think… They are making an American version but the original is wonderful), Thirst (Korean…Directed by Chan-wook Park (Old Boy, etc) oh, man, some HOT sex, black humor, gore, moral quandry, just all around brilliant, imo 
), 30 Days of Night (very decent adaptation of a graphic novel with some REAL-ASS vampires instead of these tween/pre-menopausal sex idols, GAG me! :p)
Anyway, as you should know, vampires seldom die, and the legend NEVER does, so best be prepared to deal with it for a while. Just “let the right ones in” and enjoy…ignore the tween/commercial CRAP. :dubious:
Neither do the ones in Buffy/Angel. The idea that a good vampire doesn’t drink human blood is pretty common. Twivamps are still at least uberstrong and (really) hard to kill.
Another way it is sometimes pulled off is having the vampire need to feed only on small amounts of blood per person, often obtained from blood banks so that they don’t accidentally take too much. (It’s usually portrayed as addictive.)
Edward v Buffy is amazing, BTW. It’s really well done.
Finally, what an appropriate thread title. It’s generally the vampiric intercourse that pisses people off like this.
The whole issue of the moral/ethical delima seems to be key in the portrayals which seek to make the vampire an empathetic character as opposed to those which treat it as a monster.
Ann Rice’s Interview with the Vampire pretty much defined the genre of the sympathetic vampire character…the innocent victim condemned, through no fault of his own, to need living blood to survive throughout eternity.
And how does he/she deal with that need while still upholding the morals/ethics of the human he/she once was? (preying on animals and criminals and the already dying, etc…)
The old world vampire was simply EVIL and could give a shit about morals or ethics…it took what it needed/wanted without remorse. This version is still being presented alongside the new touchy-feely version, and I think BOTH have a place.
Like Frankenstein’s monster, who was a helpless victim and very sympathetic despite his hideousness, the lovable vampire raises these same issues of science vs nature, discrimination, and gray areas of morality.
The evil vampire allows a cathartic release of our collective fears and anger by providing a definitively EVIL character we can vent our revenge upon with no moral/ethical qualms.
I like both versions, myself, but draw the line at the Twilight bunch. Ick, ewww, TOOOOO sweet and swarmy for MY blood! 
As for vamps gettin’ it on, well, the whole legend is, imo, firmly rooted in penetration and blood (sex). Can be VERY hot, but then again, they ARE dead, so if you stop to think about it too much…EWWWW!
Swedish, actually. Haven’t seen the movie but the book was excellent (for a Swedish novel).
BigT already covered the “good vamps don’t” theory, but I mostly find the differences between Edward and Angel amusing. Angel gets his blood from a butcher that he keeps in the fridge and drinks out of a travel mug like some kind of yuppie vampire latte. Edward kills a bear with his bare hands and drains it because he feels that if there’s no challenge to the hunt (i.e., he could die if he fails), he doesn’t deserve blood.
Which one’s the sissy?
Tell that to Angelus 
ETA : (that said, it’s not like bears are that dangerous - they don’t dish out aggravated damage )