I'm surprised this topic hasn't been brought up already, but I can't find it so here goes.

What do you think of the portrayal of vampires in general? Would you write about them, or read a book/watch a movie about them?

Do you have a problem with 'good' vampires?


My parents hate anything to do with vampires, although I have never asked their reasoning. However recently with all the sudden increase in books and movies about vampires, I've been trying to work out what I actually think of them myself. I haven't reached a conclusion yet, but I thought it might be an interesting topic for discussion.

Vampires are...interesting. I haven't thought about them much myself, so I don't have this well-thought-out post to make, but here goes.

Portrayal of vampires in general: I'm not terribly fond of the romanticizing of vampires into hot sexy men (or women). I mean, they're dead. Dead is not sexy. It's not hot. It's cold and creepy and DEAD. Werewolves at least can be more shapeshifter than undead, but I don't think you can really do vampires in a way that has them alive.

Would I write them? Not generally. If they fit into a story idea I had, though, yeah, I'd do it. In fact, I think there's one idea floating around in my head somewhere that has vampires. But I wouldn't look for a way to fit them in. I would read/watch something with them in it, though, assuming I was interested in it for other reasons. They're not something I look for, but I'm not utterly opposed to them if they're done well.

As for "good" vampires? Well, that kind of depends. If you can be made a vampire against your will, I hate to think that your soul is automatically damned (I can change that if asked, but I mean it in the literal sense) when you didn't choose it, didn't do anything. So in a situation like that, I wouldn't mind if there are somehow "good" vampires struggling to do the right thing. If it's your choice to become a vampire, though, I think I would have a harder time believing in "good" vampires.

I used to be really upset by the whole vampire craze until I watched Daybreakers. The tag line is: "In the year 2019, a plague has transformed almost every human into vampires. Faced with a dwindling blood supply, the fractured dominant race plots their survival; meanwhile, a researcher works with a covert band of vamps on a way to save humankind."
It is interesting because there are so many spiritually good qualities to that movie. The "living dead" quality of the majority of the characters reflects on the state of mankind in the real world. We are the living dead because of sin. Remember Genesis 2:17, "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” There is also a huge redemption quality in that movie because the protagonist comes alive again (stops being a vampire) by exposing him self to controlled amount of sunlight. It is extremely painful, but it sort of starts his heart again. Later, people come alive again by eating/drinking the blood of a person who used to be a vampire. To me there is a lot of Christian symbolism in that. Christ even told us, "Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life..." (John 6:54). To me, vampires can be a great way to show another side of humanity, a side we don't really want to see but that we need to deal with.

All of that said, I don't really like the sexy vampire idea, but vampires are supposed to be really good at seducing people, so maybe there is a point to that. I think the part that lost me in the first and last twilight movie I watched was that the vampire was even more beautiful in the sunlight. I was thinking the sun was going to show him for who he really was, an ugly monster, and then the girl was going to love him despite that. I think that would have been really beautiful and more true to the world in which we live. The girl could have been a Christ-like figure in that moment in the story, loving the unlovable. Instead, I felt they made a god-like figure out of vampires at that point, so they lost me.

Just a last word. Anytime one focuses on an evil creature as the main character, I think we need to remember how evil humans truly are. If you are going to have vampires as the "good guys", then I think the reader should in some way be reminded that this is the state of humanity. We are the monsters, and we need a savior. That isn't to say you couldn't take your antihero down a path of self destruction. That too can be a lesson, and it can be really good to see the depths of evil as a warning against following that path.

Interested to see what other people say.

The original Dracula movie with Lugosi (is that right?) was absolutely fantastic.

I don't really have an opinion on them either way, except the current trend is annoying and scary, to really think about it. People glamorize death and cannibalism. .

There are definitely some really good symbolic ways to use vampires in stories. As already mentioned, they are a really good symbol for humanity. Forcibly taking someone's blood corrupts them as well. Perhaps if someone voluntary gives up their blood might be able to reverse it?

Frankly, I'm not quite certain why everybody seems so much in turmoil over vampires in particular. People have been commandeering and stealing from legends and fantasy tropes for a long, long time – you can't really complain about the particular way this particular legend had been transformed popularly.

If you want to complain, complain about JJR Tolkien...before he came along, Elves were tiny, mischievous, heartless imps.

No...you can't really say 'vampires are dead'. You can say that the legendary vampire archetype is that of a dead human reanimating and sucking blood from live things. But it's only an archetype – an archetype you can do what you want with. Dragons used to be predominantly beast-like monsters that were killed by heroes – but in most modern fantasy, dragons are intelligent, and are often cooperating with humans or are in possession of a political standing similar to humans. That doesn't mean they aren't dragons. It just means that people aren't completely sticking to the archetype when it comes to the way dragons are portrayed. Similar thing to vampires.

So, if they want to portray vampires as beautidul and desirable men and women, there's nothing wrong with that, in my opinion. Speculative fiction is where you speculate – make things up, you know. The idea of humans that are beautiful and desirable, but have the almost uncontrollable desire to drink blood, could actually be a very interesting idea to work with in a story.

I agree about this.

I haven't watched the movie or read the books, so I can't give an argument specific to 'Twilight', but I don't really agree with the idea that the only great way to portray a vampire is to make it seem like a monster at some point in the story. Simply because the earlier legends of vampires had them beast-like corpses walking around with bloated, rotting flesh hanging from them does not mean that it is absolutely necessary, story-wise, for a vampire to be monster-like in some way. Frankly, I like the idea of vampires never seeming like monsters – always looking beautiful, even in the sunlight.

Now after all that defense of the current vampire trend...no, I don't think it's good thing. But I dislike it in the same way that I dislike most non-christian writing. The authors write immoral stories. They do it with vampires, they do it with witches, they do it with plain old men and women. Most of the stories, I don't like, because of what Varon said.


But that is not a dislike of the actual idea of vampires – merely of the way that authors take the concept and use it in their stories.

Well said, Kidh.

Thankyou, Andorin.

One of the best takes on vampires I've seen, or rather, the one I liked the most was in Night of the Living Dead Christian by Matt Mikalatos. Now granted, that book may not actually count because just about every mythic or pop culture monster can be found in it, all used as metaphors, but it's good. In that book, vampires steal other's life force, and use it for themselves to live longer, and then leave their victim when there's nothing left to give. I think that, really, that's what vampires are, when you boil them down. In the book, there's one vampire character.

She wasn't always a vampire, until she got stuck in a manipulative/abusive relationship, and the guy in it slowly transformed her into a vampire by using her. She did get out of the relationship, but by that time, she'd been turned. Then, even though she just escaped from one, she started another one, this time as a vampire, and the cycle continued for a while, until we get to when the book is set. At that point, she's changed, as much as no longer using people, but still a vampire.

That's what I think vampires are at the core, usually. Most didn't choose to become vampires. They were turned into monsters against their will, so there's really an undercurrent of tragedy to them involving their fundamental nature and struggle between that and any humanity that is still left.

*wanders off to HWSF with ideas of space-parasites turning people into vampires*
Actually, we may have a thread on them in HWSF somewhere, not including Jay's one on the cyborg vampire assassins.

*Reads Varon's post. Looks for 'really liked this/very well said' button. Doesn't find one. *

I know I am not saying much, but I am taking it all in. Thanks for all the thoughts!



That makes sense to me, *Nods*. I guess it would depend on why you chose to be a vampire. If it was out of sacrifice for someone or something, or to save someone then that would be different as well I suppose.



I've never heard of that, Andorin, I'll have to look into it.

I haven't ever seen Dracula, although I have heard a lot about it of course. I don't know, the whole drinking blood thing just gives me the creeps.

I loved your post, Juliet! Working more on my fantasy novel as well, and figuring out some of my world building has shown me how much you can change things from their original purposes, and basically make what you want out of them.

That sounds interesting, Varon. It is certainly a different take on Vampires from the stereotype kind these days. Yes, I have seen them portrayed as Tragic, and most of them (from what I can gather) long to be human again in most cases.

Hm...we've actually head quite the lengthy debate on Vampires (and the general ingestion of blood) in this forum before...to my surprise it seems to have vanished entirely.

Yea, I did look before I posted but couldn't find anything either. I wonder if it was on HWSF?

:EDIT:

I found it! Strange that neither of us could find it before.

The Original Vampire Discussion