I’m going to agree with lillalette on points one and two.
Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles saw me through many a sleepless night while I sat up with the baby. All those hours of eating Pb&J, nursing, and reading until dawn and collapsing…
Gosh! I felt just like a vampire. Sort of. Except for the PB&J and the baby.
Anyway, those are my kind of vampires!*
FB
*except Armand. I’ve always had an unreasonable hatred of him. He’s like the vampire version of Pitiful Pearl.
Supernatural here. They can be sympathetic, except for Dracula- he should just be a predator-seductive perhaps but still predatory. Mina’s pity for him in the novel was either a sign on her being enthralled by him, or conversely the purity of her soul in spite of the blood taint.
Incidentally, in Stoker’s novel, Van Helsing has one passage where he discusses mysterious Carpathian caverns with life-prolonging minerals perhaps empowering Dracula, but that bit of scientism doesn’t last long.
Anne Rice fan here so I’ll let THAT speak for itself. She writes of both types of vampires, too. There are the “human” vampires that pine for their lost mortality (well, not Lestat anyway) and then there is a brief meeting with the dumb, brutal, and zombie-like monster that has a very limited awareness along with the unquenchible hunger. Both types exist in her world.
Not much of an Anne Rice fan here… I tried to read her stuff, just never got into it.
In general I like my vampires dark and sexy (Angel and Buffy does good things for me 
) but I am also a HUGE White Wolf fan.
Oh TelcontarStorm… That’s the Ravnos. Always wanted to play one but never got a chance to. I’ve usually played Gangrel, and tried a Toreador, Malkavian and Lasombra…
I actually liked the quasi-scientific explanation of vampires from the Blade movies. It’s a disease, albeit one that bestows kick-butt kung fu skills, but a disease none-the-less.
The greatest vampire character EVER is Cassidy from Garth Ennis’ Preacher. A one-hundred-year-old bisexual alcoholic Irish vampire with a dirty mouth and a few dark secrets. Who can forget his classic meeting with Lestat-wannabe Eccarius?
Cassidy: …I’ve never met another, yeh know, another before, except when I got bit, obviously… to tell yeh the truth, I sometimes thought I was the only one.
Ecarius: The wind brought me scent of your passing, too. No, my friend, you are not alone in the darkness. You are like me, a lord of nightfall, piercing veins and drinking crimson, walking in the shadows of the mortal world… they fear us, and banish us to the blackness of their nightmares – yet there we flourish and grow strong… for what are we, but the evil in their own hearts? We are a dark mirror to them, reflecting back their self-doubt and self-loathing. We are –
Cassidy: Aw, FUCK ME…!
Ecarius: I’m sorry?
Cassidy: Yeh’re a wanker, aren’t yeh?
Ecarius: “Wanker”… is that one of the more Western European translations?
Cassidy: TRANSLATION?
Ecarius: Mm. Of whampyre.
Cassidy: Are you takin’ the fuckin’ piss? It means you spend too much time playing wi’ yerself. Yeh’ve got yer head stuck up yer own arsehole. WANKER: NOUN. ONE WHO WANKS.
The best vampire movie ever is still Lost Boys. Kiefer Sutherland rocks the mullet. Yum!
For some reason (and without looking at your screenname) I just new that this had to have been written by a girl. I don’t know why.
snicker Yeah, does pepperlandgirl Dig Bad Boys? 
I don’t really have an avowed preferrence between mystic and scientific. I really enjoyed reading all one-hundred and twenty-seven of Lumley’s Necroscope books (they’ve got DAMN cool covers). I enjoyed The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned (buddy that gave them to me told me to read those first, then go back & read Interview if I felt like it & I never did) but I kinda got tired of the limp-wristed romantic vampire. And that’s when I discovered Buffy.
These things are supposed to be monstrous and evil. Any seductive aspect is merely to soften the victim up for the kill. Like a cat playing with a mouse - it doesn’t need to, since it could just as easily pounce and rend and eat. It does it because it can.
The best stories are about how you STOP them. How they work is incidental, whether by supernatural or scientific means.
Good call on Cassidy, Nichol_storm. I can’t believe I forgot about him. Now I may have to go reread that series again.
I prefer vampires as supernatural, although Matheson’s I am Legend is great. In the Blade movies, you can instantly disable and quickly destroy vampires – even the super-vampires called Reapers – with a UV light, which makes you wonder why the good guys bother firing off so many bullets.
If I ever write a vampire story, it’ll be drawn from the original folklore, before it got mixed with Gothic Romanticism in the 19th century. Pitiful ghosts, really.
A big Anne Rice fan here and I prefer my vampires in the Lestat or Marius vein.
Emotional, wise and immature at the same time, they can be like pop stars with way too much money. Societal and natural laws don’t apply to them (much). Yet they must exist in our world and be nearly invisible in doing so.
The do have the option of ending their immortality if it becomes too much for them (well, maybe not Lestat and the first two). And I love the way Rice describes their feeding, as being equivalent to a mortal’s orgasm. But unless they choose to give their victim the Dark Gift, they must “end” the relationship with death. No cuddling for them and it makes re-encounters virtually impossible. I think I prefer my own mortal sexuality than that, but I wouldn’t mind being a body thief for a while and give it a go.
Another vote for never, ever seeing Queen of the Damned. I couldn’t sit through the whole movie. It was absolutely awful, and I thought the book Queen of the Damned was so very enjoyable, particularly the parts that related the beginning of vampirism (IMHO, of course).
Lean, bleached-blonde, smoking, with a, oh, wait, pepper already beat me to it.
I once tried to write the Great American Vampire novel, but I abandone the project after being attacked by one too many plot bunnies.
Anyhoo, I have three different varieties of vampire, but they all straddle the line between the Eastern European folkloric vampire and the literary vampire.
Variety 1 is based on the idea that an evildoer who has never received his/her comeuppance in life is doomed to become a vampire after death. Basically, someone who is a psychopath but was not punished for his/her crimes can rise as a vampire in death, especially if they died an unnatural death, such as accident or suicide. This is the truly, truly evil variety that lives to kill, enjoys creating mayhem and dominating others, and generally being very nasty. These creatures can create…
Variety 2. These are created either through having been preyed on over a period of time (there really is something to the 'three bites and you’re out" theory) until they die, or are “sired” in the fashion of Jossverse or Anne Rice vampires, by being drained of blood then by drinking the blood of a vampire. These types may or not be evil, depending on whether they were evil in life. The “sired” type is more likely to be evil, because an evil person is more likely to want to become a creature that lives by feeding on human blood. If they were a good person in life, they struggle with the fact that they are dependent on human blood for survival, try to feed without killing, maybe occasionally sire another vampire for companionship…
Variety #3 exists to explain the idea that vampires can shape-shift. In some EE folklores, a werewolf can become a vampire after he/she dies. This is the only variety of shape-shifting vampire. In life, they are confined to tuning into whatever were-animal they were bitten by, on the full moon. After death, they can pretty much turn into whatever the hell animal they want to, pretty much at will, but only at night.
All of my vampire varieties can go out during the day (my main vamp character undied in his early twenties, and artificially ages himself by exposing himself to sunlight for brief periods of time.) but they don’t have the supernatural strength, or the ability to climb vertical walls or squeeze through spaces that would challenge a hamster that they have at night, and their hypnotic abilities are at minimal strength.
Vampires start off really nasty, basially walking, blood drinking corpses. After a period of a few weeks, their intelligence returns, and, if they were a good person in life, so does their conscience. They find ways of reintegrating into society, and eventually those who really don’t like the idea of feeding on human blood find alternatives that can include animal blood, raw critters such as crawfish or live lobsters, live culture yogurt, eggs laid by free-range chickens and psychic energy. A widely varied diet of things that still have life in them is necessary to replace human blood, however, especially the psychic energy (my vamp makes his living as a psychologist, and basically soaks up the energy released in therapy sessions, leaving the clients feeling a bit tired but emotionally relieved).
I like green cuddly ones that like to count.
From Brian Lumley’s Necroscope/Vampire World series, especially Lord Canker and Lord Radu.
I might have to read them again, but as far as I can remember Lord Canker was sorta a noble/honest/generally nice guy, although resembled anthro wolf by his description I think.
And personally, well…he could “roxxorz my boxxerz” anytime, if you get what I mean 
Has anyone out there tried the “Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter” series, by Laurell K. Hamilton?
First book’s title is Guilty Pleasures.
Set in St. Louis, Missouri, it’s a world where vampires, zombies, ghouls, and lycanthropes (were-creatures) exist - publicly.
The protagonist is an animator, a person who has the innate ability to raise the dead (i.e., make zombies) and has some measure of vampire resistance.
I’m on the second of … 8? books and I’m lovin’ em.
Vampires as in Anne Rice’s vampire chronicles. Not Buffy style, like savages. And vampires in Anita Blake books as mentioned above…they are similar to those created by Anne Rice…flamboyant with personalities and very powerful. Seductive and gothic too. that’s what makes a good vampire for me. heehee
I thought the Anita Blake vampires were certainly interesting; the Elder Vampires in these books date back to a time when human life was cheap, even to other HUMANS, much less vampires, which means that the elders tend to be remarkably cruel-for-fun’s-sake.
Still… I tend to regard the Anita Blake vampire as “sex vamps” rather than “scary vamps.” Sexy? Certainly. Interesting? Sure. A good read? Yes.
…but scary? No. At no point in ANY of the Anita Blake books could I say I was actually “scared.”
“In suspense” was about as good as it got… but, hell, I can be “in suspense” while reading a mystery or thriller. The idea of being seduced and sucked dry by a sexy vampire chick… well, yeah, death is scary.
…but the possibility that I might rise in three days as a soulless thing, a mere reflection of what I was? Feeling no true emotions other than hatred and hunger, and relying on vague recollections of memories past in order to pass as human in order to get close enough to feed on them?
That’s HORROR.
Anne Rice, in her examination of her own vampires, manages to brush up against horror more than once, simply because her vampires are able to feel their own humanity bleeding away over the years. They aren’t connected to humanity, and over time, they can even lose their connection to each other. They get lost along the way… and that, too, is horror.
But it takes a writer of Rice’s caliber to pull it off… and even then, I think, she lost a lot of it when she began writing novel after novel about Lestat. Lestat just has too damn much FUN being a vampire…
I think consistentsy is the key. There was a great “realistic” explanation in Ultraviolet, but Buffy is great too.
I like my vamps to be mysterious badasses. Once they get older. But the younger ones to be all, “WTF? I don’t like this!” I’ve met too many people who “want to be vampires” to tolerate stories about people looking to become vamps (goddamn kiddy Goths).
But once they get over that, I like them to be dangerous and brutal. `Cause, yeah. Sexy helps, but not neccessary.
And I prefer curse over UV.
And Underworld, despite all the yummy yummy vinyl, bugged me because the vamps could all be killed SO easily, and were so weeaak. “Eek! Hand to hand combat with an equally old Lycan! I am dead. Poot.” The only weapons they had were guns. And they were all political. Weenies. I wonder how they ever enslaved the Lycans in the first place. I laughed every time a Lycan and a Vamp hiss/growled at each other. “Grr! I am a man beast with big tteth and claws!” “Hiss! I have . . . long teeth and pale eyes. Oh, what the hell?”
And another vote for never EVER see Queen of the Damned. One of the WORST movies ever made.
TelcontarStorm- I’ve played this game with friends. Tzimisce or Cappadocian, I am. Apparently. Ahem.
I definitely enjoy Buffy… but I also thought the presentation of vampirisim in Salem’s Lot by Stephen King was quite interesting and well thought out.