But you get to drink Pina Coladas at Trader Vic’s, have Beef Chow Mein at Lee Ho Fooks, walk with The Queen, and have perfect hair, all whilst hanging around London! What are you whinging about? 
Seriously though, I’m sick of Vampires too. As someone said upthread, they’re not “sexy”, they’re not “heroic”, and they sure as fuck aren’t role models. And the fact every other book and TV show coming out these days features a “Vampire” somewhere just beggars belief, IMHO.
Neil Gaiman thinks we’re about to hit the end of the current vampire wave, and I hope he’s right.
There’s stuff about vampires that weirdly plays into half a liberal and half a conservative agenda. Just for once it isn’t gorgeous physically beautiful cheerleader airheads realising that the nerds are a better deal than the jocks; it gives the female nerds something to hope for too in these boys more glamorous than just jocks because they’re better than human. At the same time it is conservative because nobody said sex, sex isn’t on the menu - you are! It’s not so far from Christian sacrifice and so on because Bram Stoker’s Dracula was a sort of inversion of Christian myth.
Modern vampires are sexy and better than human, not the tawdry and sleazy and insane like his, but they still do it through a very conservative devotion of her to his leadership where he recognises something special about her more than just a pretty face and big boobs, so it knocks the straight-to-bed approach out with something deeper. All we need to learn to make it perfect is that the vampires have sworn off blood except the Holy Blood of Jesus (GHAAACK!)
Nothing wrong with more to attraction than worth-bed. Nothing wrong either though than more and not instead of. Why can’t you really appreciate each other’s inner qualities and be best friends and respect the special secrets you’ve trusted each other with and have a wonderful time showing it in bed? It’s still very much one or the other, nor both: he’ll go for your looks or for something more (and your throat) - and then too it is still very much, you (girl) wait for him to choose you. That is rarely the case - girls know men will flock around them even when they don’t want them to, but that still leaves them in the command seat of dismissing the prats and being the ones to choose. These vampire films usually follow the old 1950s format of her hoping to get his attention and him being the one in control, except where they show female vampires in a traditionally anti-male light.
To add to this: This is what vampires are all about. They gain great power; they have super-human strength and super-human charisma, they can turn into mist/bats and can (in some traditions) summon demon servants. But this comes at a price. They must murder humans and drink their blood for sustenance, they can never feel the warmth sunlight on their skin. Shiny supermen who drink deer blood or some sh*t are not vampires.
The Vampire is supposed to either embrace the power and become an inhuman killing machine or try to hold on to his* humanity and, refusing to murder other humans, face true death.
Or maybe Setebos. But I really can’t see anyone falling in love with the Many Handed as a Cuttlefish.
On werewolves: The wolf is the most badass animal,** and werewolves combine wolves with humans, so how they not be awesome? In fact, I have an idea for a novel about a werewolf. It’s set in a medieval world and the werewolf protagonist is a mercenary. Killing humans, werewolves, other werecreatures… blood for gold, it’s all the same to him.
*I am using the masculine as the default singular pronoun. If you don’t like it too bad.
**Odin is represented as a wolf and Odin the most badass god. If you disagree with this then we must agree to disagree. Or go to war over it, your choice.
On preview:
I often wonder how many men Helen of Mycenae (before she was Helen of Troy) didn’t run off with.
Too late to edit:
Sparta, Helen of Sparta.
Not in the books I’ve been reading.
I need to read the ones you’re reading.
The ones that are just vampire sex? Well, the most recent was Touch the Dark by Karen Chance.
I didn’t see any hint in there about anything deeper than a straight-to-bed approach.
Well…are they very sexy? I hate reading sex scenes in books. They’re all just so bizarre.
Honestly, I can’t tell. Other than in my early teens when friends and I would sit around bookmarking places in romance novels for later, I don’t really have much grasp of what other people find sexy. For me, sex with a vampire is really gross, so the grossness wins out over everything else.
They were pretty explicit, I think, but not really long. It was basically one vamp trying to seduce the main character, if I remember correctly.
I think it was a book that another Doper sent me, so I can send it to you if you like, along with any sequels if I have them (I only read the one).
Popular web movie critic James Berardinelli just posted a pretty cool essay, I Hate Vampires. He’s pretty much in agreement with majority opinion in this thread.
Excerpt:
Even cooler, he’s posted half a dozen clips of classic movie vampires through the years, any of whom could eat Edward for lunch.
I had a conversation yesterday with a woman who just was GAGA over EDWARD!!!111!!
Her husband, shall we say, was less than enthused. Because I see this family 5 days a week on the sidelines of football, I held off on saying something like, " So, how long have you been interested in stalker-pedophiles?"
I decided to issue a mental restraining order for myself to keep me from verbally teabagging her in the future.
The operative word in the OP is shit. I still don’t mind vampires when they’re done well. Being Human is an example. Most of the extremely popular vampire stuff these days, like Twilight, is shit.
Hmm. This one looks like it might be fun. MOBY, Iggy Pop, Henry Rollins, Alex Lifeson, Alice Cooper, Malcolm McDowell …
Canadian movie though, so who knows if it’ll see US release.
The Fearless Vampire Killers. Sharon Tate at her hottest, just goofy fun.
Covering a vampire in dung is part of a restoration ritual in Hmong culture. A friend of mine said that his family even knew a guy who’d been a vampire and was restored to life in just that way.
Just thought I’d mention that.
Great post.
Didn’t SDMB use to be more abstract style posts, and less “I think personally this or that inconsequential thing.”
Well, isn’t pretty much everything that we post a personal opinion?
I certainly think so.
Oh my god, that movie was horrible.