How do you like your vampires?

In My Humble Opinion
1

And I don’t mean “Over easy with a side of bacon” (although I do prefer mine sunny side up…get it!). I mean, do you like when movies and stories try to explain vampirism scientifically, or leave it up to mysticism?

Yesturday, I went out and saw Underworld, and they did a rather piss poor attempt at trying to explain vampirism and lycanthropy in my opinion. It’s nothing new, but seems to be a bit more prominant to me lately with the likes of this movie and the recent Blade films. Maybe it’s just an attempt to make vampires easier to kill, but being able to take out one of the “Lords of the Night” with an overpowered flashlight just seems rather lame to me. What’s lamer is that one of my favorite moments having to deal with vampires vs. technology comes from that live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles show from a few years back where Donatello tried to use an ultraviolet light device on the vampires and they just laughed. “The curse” says they can’t stand sunlight, but the reason isn’t the rays…it’s because it’s a curse. Mystical rays of the sun and all, not just because they’re sensitive to UV light. Personally, seeing as how all these legends come from myths and the terrified recesses of mankind’s mind from ages ago, I like the idea that there are just some things science can’t explain or combat.

So, what’s your opinion? Do you like your vampires to be dark and mysterious, or able to be explained with a few test tubes and double D batteries?

2

the moment they try to explain it, it becomes science fiction.

3

For me, too many hours spent playing White Wolf’s Vampire: The Masqurade had permantly put my mind on one mode of vampirism. The Myth is just too much fun.
Gimme my Cannites traveling in a caravan with the gypsies, throwing around illusions and sickking your dog on the neighbors.
Clan anyone? :smiley:

4

See, I’ve got the skinny on this one, as I’m currently editing my 14-yr-old’s work-in-progress titled The Shadowdancer.

So I know that “Every vampire has to survive a 50 year long manhunt to be considered strong enough to be a true vampire.” Initially, they are “vampire spawn, the weakest of vampire forms” needing to live "ten years in their new form, kill[] a vampire hunter, betray[] and murder[] a vampire whom he had served, and drnk the blood of a vampire mixed and boiled with unholy water under the new moon."* Having done that, one is brought to Necropolis to begin their exile.

Now do you want me to explain all about Sylvereins as well? See, “Sylvereins are arisen paladins…”

5

I like my vampires like my coffee: dark, bitter, and keeping me awake all night.

Never mind.

6

Mm… call me a purist, but I grew up with the idea of “vampire” as “supernatural.”

“Supernatural” to me means “inexplicable, except when you shift from scientific to mystic.”

This doesn’t mean that certain scientific phenomena couldn’t work. Maybe ultraviolet light IS what burns a vampire to ash when he wanders out in daylight. But, by the same token, all the big-time literary vamps – Dracula, Varney, Lord Ruthven, and all of them – could, on occasion, wander outdoors during daylight, although one gets the impression they didn’t much like to.

…but when you try to boil the whole thing down to a rational explanation, like Richard Matheson does in the novel “I Am Legend”… what you wind up with just isn’t scary.

It takes someone like Richard Matheson to BEGIN with a scaaary vampire novel… and gradually defuse the horror of vampirisim… and still wind up with a very readable book. The ending still manages to be powerful.

Too many others have tried to do the same thing, and wound up with a bad pastiche of “Dracula” and “Night Of The Living Dead.”

The Vampire is a supernatural creature, a thing of myth and legend, and this is why we like him. He’s powerful, he’s sexy, and everyone wants to be like him. Or her, for that matter.

I also think this is part of the horror appeal: the fact that the vampire is, at the core of things, damned. My fave vampires have always been in the Bela Lugosi/Christopher Lee mold… things that may once have been human, but now are ultimately consumed by their own dark desires and needs. They can pretend to be human, sure. They can even be charming, even seductive.

…but don’t be fooled. This is a hunting behavior. There isn’t a trace of love or affection in it – only the desire to consume what there is of YOU and replace it with death… or the eternal shadow that is Vampire.

In recent years, modern film, fiction, and fanfics have spawned a sort of subtype of vampire: the Romantic Eternal, a sort of critter that can subsist very well on animal blood (or simply purchase the human kind from blood banks), and is more or less human, aside from a distaste for sunlight and a sort of morbid addiction. Anne Rice kind of fed this new archetype, by exploring the transition from human to vampire from within, in her novels… but she never forgot for a minute that vampires are NOT human, and never really can be.

Others haven’t been quite so scrupulous, and I can’t say the idea appeals to me. I like my vampires as soulless bloodsucking monsters, not introspective Goth blood addicts…

I am also fairly convinced that if vampires were real, they would NOT dress like they were trying out for bit parts in “The Matrix.”

7

I’m with you, El Elvis. I just watched Underworld last night, and the UV bullet idea didn’t sit right with me. I like the ‘curse’ explanation better than the test tubes.

I actually like how Joss Whedon portrays them on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. If you’re not familiar with how that is, go buy/rent the DVDs. You won’t be disappointed.

8

I recently saw “Nosferatu” (the original one) for the first time and was really struck by the way the vampire was portrayed in that movie. I think the suave count-type vampire is all wrong, like it’s a blast to be a vampire. Nosferatu portrays vampirism as a terrible disease that dooms its victims to an eternity of suffering. I also thought it interesting that the vampires fangs are not his canines like in “Dracula” but his incisors, like a rmouse or a rat. That made more sense to me as I thought about it. A vampire is really vermin living off the detritus of society, much like a rat. He lives his life in hiding and in the dark only concerned with his next meal.

I must say it’s not quite as fun as the debonair count, but probably more realistic (if vampires were real, they’d probably behave more like Nosferatu).

9

…like I like my women…

cold, pale, and sucking the life out of me…

10

Matters not, as long as it is consistent. I’ll take them mystical or scientific, as long as you make your rules and stick to them.

Too many authors seem to think that just because it is horror, you can make up your rules as you go along, and then break them at the end because it is time for the heros to win. Bah. The Battlestar Galactica of vampires. Puke city.

Scientific vampires can be just as scary, and mystical vampires can be totally banal. It all depends on how good the writer is.

11

If a vampire can’t vamp, what’s the point really?
The whole thing should be sexy, not scary or it’s a waste of time.

12

Umm, my family originally comes from eastern Europe, and my grandparents occasionally related bits of folklore. Vampires were damned scary and about as far from sexy as it is possible to be. Unless you are turned on by blood-drinking ambulatory corpses, that is.

13

I am in the exact same boat as TelcontarStorm.

14

I don’t care if my vampires are sauve European aristocrats or terribly cursed, barely human monsters. I prefer their curse or blessing, however you and the writers prefer to view it, to be of a supernatural origin. Like hypnoboth, I need my vampire story to be internally consistent.

Also, if my vampire is a thousand years old, he needs to be a badass. None of these stories about guys who have spent centuries killing humans every night while eluding or successfully warring against everybody from the peasants to the church to modern police organizations to powerful supernatural entities, only to be defeated by some bumbling teenage kid with a squirt gun full of pilfered holy water. You know?

15

“Sauve,” of course, is the proper Transylvanian spelling for “suave” . . .

16

Supernatural. The nosferatu type preferably. All original vampire myths are damn SCARY. Not sexy.

17

Lean, bleach blonde, smoking, with a drinking and gambling problem. And a thing for strong women who can kick his ass. Or if he’s not available, I’ll settle for the brooding one, but I stress settle.

In all seriousness, I like the sexual aspect of vampires the most. So I like stories that play up the sex/death thing. For me Bram Stoker’s Dracula was clearly about sex, sex, sex, but after some discussion in class, I came to see that it had a lot of other wonderful, rich themes. Which is nice, but still, sex sex sex. Carmilla is pretty obvious with the sexual themes, I’d think you’d have to be pretty dense to miss that. I love the image of the slow seduction of death. The desire that is killing you and will kill you. Giving into “it” because you don’t have a choice. So in the end, I like my vampires to be that seductive. Brutal thoughtless death isn’t interesting to me…I like Dracula’s ways of doing things.
Suave or monstrous, supernatural or in the realms of sci-fi, he/she should have a distinct air of seduction.

18

With a stake through the chest…

19

… like an old soul in a young body, and really guilty about having to kill to live. The idea of having an aversion to making solid attachments because everybody you know is going to either die and age around you or find out what you really are. More guilt. Dash of depression. But smack in the middle, a heightened appreciation of raw, fabulous beauty.

Anne Rice’s stuff pretty much hit the nail on the head (coffin?! :D) for me in that respect. I must say her stuff really resonates.

20

I like my vampires to be the Anne Rice version – inhuman, but at the same time enthralled with humanity and with their own loss of humanity, along with the purely aesthetic aspects of the world. Decadent and sexy as hell.

Oh, and if anyone has just discovered the Anne Rice books and likes them, do not, I repeat DO NOT see the movie version of Queen of the Damned, especially if you liked Pandora. It is horrible, horrible, I say!