Maybe vampires have already taken over the world, and just run everything from behind the scenes to keep us tasty little sheep from panicking and ruining the taste. Now, that would be some scary vampires.
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Tried of vampires being goody two-shoes?
- Thread starter murersr
- Start date
Maybe vampires have already taken over the world, and just run everything from behind the scenes to keep us tasty little sheep from panicking and ruining the taste. Now, that would be some scary vampires.
Also, yes, vampires can be from whatever origin suits the writer and their world. Some are natural, some are religious (LOVE Ireth's idea for having them made by the Crone, btw)... ours happen to have been created by a Demon Lord tricking an old blood god into breeding with a human, and then getting a friend to tinker magically with the resulting offspring until she was happy with the final product. She figured that there were mages making were-critters, so what the heck, let's see what she could make.
Vampires don't even have to drink blood. I've seen them consume souls, psychic energy, sexual energy, dreams... heck, they could feed off the sticky glue on the backs of posties, if there was something predatory about that. Just think, a whole world with un-sticky posties!
Mindfire
Istar
Well if the vampires have already won, what's the point? That'd be like starting off Lord of the Rings, with Sauron already having killed Frodo and taken the One Ring. The story is over. Evil won. Roll credits as the children in the audience cry themselves to sleep.
Feo Takahari
Auror
My favorite: ink.
It's only over until someone rebels. Heroes tend to be very reactive--"I have to stop the evil villain's plot!"--so it's sometimes fun to see them take an active role--"I shall plot to overthrow the villain!" (In this case, our heroes could be humans breaking the system from the outside, vampires breaking it from the inside, or even a new breed that hunts vampires--they just need to have or find enough power to destabilize things.)
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You're telling me you can't think of a compelling story line in a world where Sauron won? There are all kinds of stories you can tell in that kind of world. Hundreds of them.
Have you ever read Sanderson's Mistborn books? I'll let him describe the idea in his own words, from his website:
"I wanted to take the standard fantasy story I'd read a dozen times - that of a young peasant hero who went on a quest to defeat a Dark Lord - and turn it on its head. What if the Dark Lord won? What if, in the final climactic moments, he killed the hero and took over the world? Hence, MISTBORN. A thousand years ago, the prophesied hero from lore rose up to overthrow a great and terrible evil. Only, he lost, and the Dark Lord took over and has been ruling with an iron fist for a thousand years. Ash falls from the sky in this barren land, and mists come every night, deep and mysterious."
Scribe
Mindfire
Istar
I haven't read Mistborn. Perhaps I will. And it's not so much that a plot where evil wins is inconceivable, it's that I can't think of a reason anyone would read it. Such a story can only go in two ways: Star Wars: The Remix or a super-depressing story where we just watch the bad guys be jerks to everyone.
That's a far too limited viewpoint, Mindfire.
Mindfire
Istar
Perhaps it is. But I'm generally not fond of "the hero loses" stories. Probably something to do with my upbringing.
Doesn't have to be a 'hero loses' story. The Dark Lord could have won 1000 years ago, and you can have plenty of stories set within the resulting milieu, including ones where the hero wins.
Mindfire
Istar
Samurai Jack was awesome! They need to finish it. If Powerpuff Girls can get a new episode years after the fact (I am not kidding) surely Samurai Jack can get one! And I wouldn't count that as an example of the hero losing, because there was always the understanding that he would triumph in the end. It was just a matter of when/how long it would take and what he would have to overcome to get to that point.
Mindfire
Istar
Ohhh. That's a bit different. I thought we were talking about an anti-climactic "Game Over. Lol." type of story.
Oh. I interpreted the post about vampires having won to mean a story that takes place in a world where the vampires won, but not necessarily being about how they won and squashed everyone like bugs
I had a nightmare before waking that I'm gonna share here, because I'm the sharing kind. Yes, this thread is giving me nightmares lol!
I dreamed I was in service to a powerful vampire in a major city. My cohorts and I were plotting against him, I think to extort money. One day we stopped to pick up his deposit bag at the bank, a regular errand, and made a discovery. In the bag were deposit receipts dating back over the last year. Apparently the bank had put them in the bag by mistake. He suspected something! The dream ended while I was going over those receipts, horror dawning.
Now here's the scary part. Real conflict with a vampire isn't about the physical confrontation. Irregardless of vulnerablities or advantages, when it's really scary is when it's a chess match with a mind cunning and amoral enough to have survived, and indeed thrived, for centuries in the shadows of a hostile world. How does a human feel in this world? How does the oxen bull feel knowing his bretheren in the field are meals on the hoof? What happens to the oxen when he is no longer of any use? No matter how well you serve, at the end of the day your boss sees you as food with an experation date. Not to mention short lived and inevitably replaceable.
No matter how sexy, how "goodie-two-shoes" a vampire is, at the end of the day he still looks at the mortals around him and sees interactive Happy Meals. I like it!
I dreamed I was in service to a powerful vampire in a major city. My cohorts and I were plotting against him, I think to extort money. One day we stopped to pick up his deposit bag at the bank, a regular errand, and made a discovery. In the bag were deposit receipts dating back over the last year. Apparently the bank had put them in the bag by mistake. He suspected something! The dream ended while I was going over those receipts, horror dawning.
Now here's the scary part. Real conflict with a vampire isn't about the physical confrontation. Irregardless of vulnerablities or advantages, when it's really scary is when it's a chess match with a mind cunning and amoral enough to have survived, and indeed thrived, for centuries in the shadows of a hostile world. How does a human feel in this world? How does the oxen bull feel knowing his bretheren in the field are meals on the hoof? What happens to the oxen when he is no longer of any use? No matter how well you serve, at the end of the day your boss sees you as food with an experation date. Not to mention short lived and inevitably replaceable.
No matter how sexy, how "goodie-two-shoes" a vampire is, at the end of the day he still looks at the mortals around him and sees interactive Happy Meals. I like it!
There are plenty of stories where the "bad guys" have won and that's the starting point. Take for instance the following movies.
The Matrix - The Machines have won
Daybreakers - The vampires have taken over the world
Actually if you think about it every story that of the form "Evil Overlord/Corporation/Government rules the world and the people must rise" is a story where evil has won. Eg 1984.
If you look at TV
Firefly - takes place within a world where the "bad guys" won.
Battlestar Galactica. - The whole series is based on the fact that at the beginning the good guys got their asses kicked by the bad guys.
This is just the stuff that I can come up with off the top of my head. I'll bet there are a gazillion more.
