Tried of vampires being goody two-shoes?

[The_Everlasting]

Honestly, I wouldn't worry much about this.... Write vamps as you'd want to read them and you're golden.

Thank you I really appreciate that. Now if I could only get myself together to get the damn thing finished!

 

[Mask]

Have become rather sick of the over powered nature of vampires, myself. Especially when they take away their weaknesses to crucifixes and sunlight, and everything else. Dracula, the original vampire, was killed by a sword--and he was meant to be ridiculously powerful.

 

[chaos-in-spades]

Honestly, I am more interested in using the topic of vampires as a metaphor, i.e. overindulgence, lust, violence... All of those delightful sins and darker desires that our consciences and inhibitions repress. The "perfection" you see in so-called "vampire literature" nowadays is just frustrating.

 

[Feo Takahari]

Have become rather sick of the over powered nature of vampires, myself. Especially when they take away their weaknesses to crucifixes and sunlight, and everything else. Dracula, the original vampire, was killed by a sword--and he was meant to be ridiculously powerful.

Seconding this so hard. If there's one thing I really can't stand about the Twilight vamps, it's that they're practically unkillable by everything other than werewolves and other vampires.

Honestly, I am more interested in using the topic of vampires as a metaphor, i.e. overindulgence, lust, violence... All of those delightful sins and darker desires that our consciences and inhibitions repress. The "perfection" you see in so-called "vampire literature" nowadays is just frustrating.

Personally, this is why I like my vampires not totally evil. I dunno about violence, but I like lust, and it's kind of frustrating to see it associated with evil all the time. (Though I went the direct route and wrote a series about heroic succubi instead.)

 

[chaos-in-spades]

Personally, this is why I like my vampires not totally evil. I dunno about violence, but I like lust, and it's kind of frustrating to see it associated with evil all the time. (Though I went the direct route and wrote a series about heroic succubi instead.)

I have considered writing a novel about vampires with this is mind. (Mind you, this was a few years ago, when I was a young teen, so I believe I wouldn't have been able to tap into the kind of depth I would of liked to). It's why I give credit I give to J.K. Rowling for using Remus Lupin's werewolf gene as a metaphor for AIDs. You can treat vampirism as an affliction and not as a moral alignment. I would prefer to read about a vampire who is a "creature of the night" due to the darker urges he/she possesses, and not because he/she is necessarily evil. It gives more character depth. Like Louie, and yes, to a certain extent, Edward, as they both struggle against their nature; however, the difference is that Louie has more redeemable and human qualities than Edward has, who is made out to be more inhuman, similar to a god, by Bella.

I think the perfect writing trick for vampire fiction is comparing vampires to the shadow, the bad qualities within each human, and exposing them.

Heroic succubi sound awesome!

 

[BenGoram]

Have become rather sick of the over powered nature of vampires, myself. Especially when they take away their weaknesses to crucifixes and sunlight, and everything else. Dracula, the original vampire, was killed by a sword--and he was meant to be ridiculously powerful.

Yes! I think if mortals don't have a chance against vampires then it makes the whole "masquerade" idea laughable. The whole world should be like Anno Dracula.

If you want the exact opposite of over-powered vampires, check out The Reformed Vampire Support Group by Catherine Jinks. I've been toying with the idea of powerless vampires in my world-building for a while now.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

That being said, I would say that the whole "I'm a bad-ass, all powerful vampire! 'Rawr!' Come kill me with a stick!" thing drives me nuts. Laurell K. Hamilton wrote the epitome of this in Circus of the Damned where she had a vampire so old he's supposed to be a Homo Erectus. Powerful enough to cause earthquakes and be called "Earthshaker" or something like that. So what does Hamilton do? Has Anita kill him with a stick. *sigh* Seriously?

Why is the sexy, brooding, Prince of Pain so popular? 'Cus sex sells. Has for years. Why do we love to rip on Twilight? Because, at least in America, we love to set popular things on pedestals just so we can tear them down. Look at fan-boy hate on Nickleback. Why was Twilight so popular? Sex. For 3 books, Meyers had readers writhing with the question "Is Bella gonna get some?"

My 2 cents to the Twilight rip... MY problem with the Twilight books rests on many levels. Yes, I have read all the books and seen all the movies - my wife/writing partner made me for market research reasons. She, however, LOVES them and if I ever get her on these forums PLEASE feel free to tease her about it!

But, I digress. *e-hem* Meyers' whole "no sex until marriage" nonsense stems from her Mormon objections to pre-marital sex in a lot of vampire fiction. She set out to write the Twilight books as a knee-jerk moral reaction to "sin." Yeah, ok, whatever. But, shouldn't she at least have written a romantic hero who wasn't emotionally abusive? What sort of message does that send to teenage girls, as sending a message is just what she sets out to do? "It's ok if my boyfriend stalks me, breaks into my house to watch me sleep, alternately loves on and then rejects me, and then dumps me and disappears, leaving me in a months' long self-destructive depression. It's romantic!" *eyeroll*

Then there is the biology behind her vampires. They sparkle in sunlight. Okaaay... it's supposed to make them attractive to their natural prey, which seems to be young girls obsessed with shiny things. Or maybe magpies. Takes disbelief bungee jumping rather than merely suspending it, but ok. However, you're talking about a predator population that lives among its prey - read wolf-in-sheep's-clothing. Yeah, sparkling in sunshine helps them to hide in plain sight - NOT. Interesting idea, but not well thought out.

Also, more biology. They're supposedly living statues, basically? They crack, but don't bleed. Ok, I'll buy that. I'll even buy that they drink blood to survive - sandstone absorbs liquid, so it's lame, but doable. However, getting a mortal pregnant? How does a body made of a stoney material with no circulation system produce enough semen-like fluid to inseminate someone? And don't get me started on erection hydraulics...

And poor Renesmee! Give her a magical, soul-mate bond at birth, them give her centuries to live while her lover only has a few decades. Meyers never addresses that one.

We have vampires in our books - lots of them. We also write urban fantasy. Our vampires are not undead, just different - not sure if Meyers' are supposed to be undead, maybe just different like ours. Our vampires are not indestructable, but they're not easy to kill, and they're immortal until they run into something big enough to kill them. They are flesh and blood, they do bleed, and if you do enough damage they will die - take the head/take the heart = dead vampire. Our vampires do breed, but only under special circumstances, and they can, rarely, breed with humans, though the resulting Dampyr are fairly weak, tragic creatures. Imagine having a child of your immortal body, only to loose them to death in a few decades. Our vampires can eat food, but they need living, humanoid blood every 3 - 4 days to survive. They just don't need to drain a body to feed. Have you ever tried to eat an entire 2 gallons or melted icecream in one go? Human blood has a similar viscosity. The stomach only holds so much, so it would take more than one vampire feeding at once to bleed a body dry. Can a vampire tear your throat out? Sure, but why be wasteful, not to mention an attention-whore? Our vampires are very much wolves-in-sheep's-clothing, living in the shadows of mortal society. All our preternaturals are. In our world, not all the people you pass on the street are people at all - and they all have sound biologies to explain their survival and success, thank you.

 

[Steerpike]

Yeah, ok, whatever. But, shouldn't she at least have written a romantic hero who wasn't emotionally abusive? What sort of message does that send to teenage girls, as sending a message is just what she sets out to do? "It's ok if my boyfriend stalks me, breaks into my house to watch me sleep, alternately loves on and then rejects me, and then dumps me and disappears, leaving me in a months' long self-destructive depression. It's romantic!" *eyeroll*

Teenage girls aren't morons. You could make the same criticisms of Buffy and any number of other works. Is the idea supposed to be that you can't write characters that readers shouldn't emulate, or just that you can't write characters readers shouldn't emulate if you're writing for teens? I don't agree with either of those statements.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I now know exactly how I'm going to go about making a really awesome vampire villain.

"Sparklings vampires aren't scary", says the internet? Challenge accepted, says I.

Have become rather sick of the over powered nature of vampires, myself. Especially when they take away their weaknesses to crucifixes and sunlight, and everything else. Dracula, the original vampire, was killed by a sword--and he was meant to be ridiculously powerful.

As I pointed out before, Dracula could walk around in sunlight just fine, though it reduced his powers.

As for crucifixes and other Christian symbols, that had more to do with the motifs of the story, Dracula being basically a Satanic type character who essentially declared war on God. It makes perfect sense that he would be repulsed by holy symbols, being a creature born out of a complete rejection of God. On the other hand, someone like Edward Cullen being afraid of crosses would be kinda nonsensical because in his story, being a vampire has nothing to do with religion.

Anyway, swords can kill anything, if you get a good shot in. It's the universial weakness. I'm pretty sure that's some sort of rule.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Teenage girls aren't morons. You could make the same criticisms of Buffy and any number of other works. Is the idea supposed to be that you can't write characters that readers shouldn't emulate, or just that you can't write characters readers shouldn't emulate if you're writing for teens? I don't agree with either of those statements.

You're absolutely right. Teenage girls aren't morons. But they are impressionable. Having been one once, I can attest to this. I can definately say that the fiction and non-fiction I read, as well as the movies and TV I watched and the music I listened to as a young adult helped to shape much of my adult paradigm towards sexuality and relationships. That being said, my objection is with Meyers, who set out to be a "good" influence on young female readers. Doesn't that give her some obligation to portray this relationship in a constructive light? Instead of presenting a male protagonist who, while having predatory issues consistent with his natute, is loving and supportive, she presents what really is a fairly one-sided relationship where Bella is persuing love and affection from a reluctant and often abusive... I hesitate to call him a "partner," because at no point do they have a partner relationship, but "boyfriend" seems to be a little light and fluffy for the intensity of the relationship she wants to portray.

On the other hand, Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy, just wanted a cute blonde cheerleader to kick vampire butt because in his experience at that point it was funny and incongruous with the current depictions of vampire slayers. Making her angsty and morally ambiguous was just part of the fun. To quote the series, "She doesn't have issues, she has the subscription." He at no point set out his characters to be any sort of role-model. If anything, there is often a sense in the series of a "See this? This is what NOT to do."

Meyers sets out to tell a morality story, but the message is skewed.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Anyway, swords can kill anything, if you get a good shot in. It's the universial weakness. I'm pretty sure that's some sort of rule.

heh heh... You know, I've been going through my various preternatural races in my head, and you're right. There is nothing in my universe, at least, that can't eventually be killed by a sword.

 

[Steerpike]

Meyers sets out to tell a morality story, but the message is skewed.

I don't agree. However, if your argument pertains to the end result (i.e. the effect on the reader), then it doesn't matter what the intent of the author is. The reader that is affected by one is going to be as easily affected by the other. Personally, I feel the idea of the reader/viewer being adversely affected by either of these is far overblown. But to the extent that it isn't, I doubt any reader who would otherwise be negatively affected is going to fail to be negatively affected simply because the author's intent was different.

 

[Mindfire]

Personally, this is why I like my vampires not totally evil. I dunno about violence, but I like lust, and it's kind of frustrating to see it associated with evil all the time. (Though I went the direct route and wrote a series about heroic succubi instead.)

How is lust not evil?

 

[Steerpike]

How is lust not evil?

How is it evil?

 

[Mindfire]

I now know exactly how I'm going to go about making a really awesome vampire villain.

"Sparklings vampires aren't scary", says the internet? Challenge accepted, says I.

Although, not technically a vampire, Ben 10: Alien Force has Michael Morningstar, a teenage heartthrob with superpowers that he charges by stealing the life essence of his fangirls. And when his powers are fully charged, he looks like this:

But beneath that flawless exterior beats the heart of a psychopath, and the show's creator considers him to be Ben's most dangerous enemy.

Now that I think about it, the show's creator also said that Mike Morningstar was "similar" to a vampire, and the character's first appearance on the show was in 2008, when Twilight was at the height of its popularity...

 

[Mindfire]

Instead of presenting a male protagonist who, while having predatory issues consistent with his natute, is loving and supportive, she presents what really is a fairly one-sided relationship where Bella is persuing love and affection from a reluctant and often abusive... I hesitate to call him a "partner," because at no point do they have a partner relationship, but "boyfriend" seems to be a little light and fluffy for the intensity of the relationship she wants to portray.

To be fair, Bella isn't a saint either. From what I've gathered, she's whiny, selfish, and emotionally manipulative.

 

[Mindfire]

How is it evil?

By definition.

 

[Steerpike]

By definition.

First definition that came online:

lust
[ lust ]

• sexual desire: the strong physical desire to have sex with somebody, usually without associated feelings of love or affection

Not seeing the word "evil" in there. I guess if you have your own personal definition, usually having a religious connotation, then you might define it as evil. But then there's the very answer to the question you posed - not everyone agrees with your definition.

 

[Mindfire]

First definition that came online:



Not seeing the word "evil" in there. I guess if you have your own personal definition, usually having a religious connotation, then you might define it as evil. But then there's the very answer to the question you posed - not everyone agrees with your definition.

I dont take lust and simple attraction as being synonymous, much like the killing/murder dichotomy.

 

[Steerpike]

I dont take lust and simple attraction as being synonymous, much like the killing/murder dichotomy.

Like I said, it's definitional. So the answer to your question of "how is it not evil" is that not everyone adopts your viewpoint and definition of it