A gensupereral gripe about vampires

[jollyreaper]

I think we can start laying blame with Anne Rice and spare some for the Sookie Stackhouse novels, not to mention Twilight. The problem with the vampires is that they've been given far too much awesome sauce. They're better than humans in every way and there's just not much of a downside. And especially with the way they're presented in a show like True Blood they're too overpowered. A human has as credible chance against them as a rabbit fighting a wolf. Vampires have eternal youth, super-strength, super-reflexes, super-senses. The only downsides are sunlight (or just sparkling in sunlight), not eating real food (though blood becomes so awesome they don't even miss it), and becoming insufferably emo and gay. (Not gay=dumb, gay=having sex with other dudes.)

I like the idea of inverting the trope just a little. For starters, becoming a vampire would be a severe mental trauma that never goes away. Madness and death are a real possibility. A vamp does not have super-strength but senses and reflexes are sharper. Life burns hotter and stronger from this perspective but this also makes the downsides hurt worse. The blood lust cannot be ignored and a vampire would have to ensure he has a regular blood stash or risk blacking out and attacking people at random in a blood frenzy. The sun is a far stronger danger and the vampire has to have a secure place to hide when it's up. And it's not like he can just find a basement and pass the time with a good book. His thinking goes all mushy with the sun up. It's traumatic and debilitating. Very difficult to defend himself if a human finds his hidey spot. And then there's saying goodbye to food. Blood sustains but does not satisfy. It's like getting nothing but liquid sugar when you'd love bread or fruit or a nice, juicy steak.

So it's possible for a vamp to live for a very long time but few do. Most new vamps are dead within a few years of turning. Some just find unlife as a vampire too miserable to endure. Others succumb to madness. The rest tend to get cocky and get killed doing something stupid.

Anyone else have a preferred approach? I just think "being a vampire is so awesome and there's like never any downside ever!!!!" makes for some pretty dull storytelling.

[pte chib]

I would like to see when the Vamps are not the top of the food chain. I am always annoyed when Werewolves are not quite as fast or strong or the Vamps goobie mental power work better on them.

[Ahriman238]

Or you could just go with the more traditional interpretation of vampires, i.e. a corpse animated by either a restless spirit or the darkest of magics, with no personality, desires, or ambitions save to slake its terrible thirst by bringing a violent death to the living.

Vampires, more than any other monster of myth, overflow with weaknesses. They cannot approach garlic, because they fear aything that would overpower the stench of a rotting corpse. They shun holy ground and symbols, because they are no longer among the saved. Church bells drive them off for similar reasons. They shun mirrors, which reveal that they are souless via lack of reflection. They are incapable of enjoying their unlife, because they have no soul and can feel no joy. They must rest regularly in a coffin containing soil form their homeland, and it is easy to sabotage those and make them worthless. They cannot cross water, whether on a boat or a bridge, without help form mortals. They cannot enter a dwelling uninvited. Supposedly, if they ever see mustard seeds spilled on the ground, they are compelled to drop whatever they were doing and neatly count and stack every last seed, even if this means they stay out past dawn and fry.

Even if you put only a third of those in, your vampires are in many ways weaker or less than humans. Its not hard at all.

BTW, doesn't this belong in Fantasy?

[Stark]

Hes complaining about modern re-re-re-re-imaginings of a folk monster, because they are 'too powerful' and uses the term 'inverting the trope' to mean 'make it more like I want'.

I think it's already IN fantasy. :v

The changing view of vampires is arguably a cultural one, and relatively interesting. Horror monster to soap opera audience stand-in in a century.

[Formless]

I think we can start laying blame with Anne Rice and spare some for the Sookie Stackhouse novels, not to mention Twilight. The problem with the vampires is that they've been given far too much awesome sauce. They're better than humans in every way and there's just not much of a downside. And especially with the way they're presented in a show like True Blood they're too overpowered. A human has as credible chance against them as a rabbit fighting a wolf. Vampires have eternal youth, super-strength, super-reflexes, super-senses. The only downsides are sunlight (or just sparkling in sunlight), not eating real food (though blood becomes so awesome they don't even miss it), and becoming insufferably emo and gay. (Not gay=dumb, gay=having sex with other dudes.)

Dracula's powers and weaknesses

Pros:

1. superhuman strength
2. can only be killed by being decapitated and staked through the heart
3. immortal (obvious)
4. does not have to drink blood on a regular basis
5. hypnosis
6. telekinesis
7. walking on walls
8. telepathy
9. can cast Dominate Animals at will ( )
10. weather manipulation
11. ability to assume animal forms
12. ability to shrink and thus pass through walls
13. ability to create servant vampires by feeding them his blood (as opposed to creating them from just anyone he feeds on)
14. on that note, he has three lady vampires who serve him
15. has loyal human servants from Slovakia and the gypsies

And of course, he has studied black magic, which the novel hints to have been how he turned himself into a vampire. So who knows what all he can do.

Cons:

1. can not shapeshift during the day. Otherwise, he isn't harmed by sunlight
2. several phobias with regards to holy symbols as well as Garlic
3. has compulsions about crossing running bodies of water (must be at either high tide or low tide)
4. is compelled against trespassing unless he can trick someone at least once into giving him permission to be on their property
5. must sleep near Transylvanian soil in order to rest

That's three pros to every one weakness Dracula has. You know how many modern vampires have it as good as motherfucking Dracula here? Motherfucking Alucard, and that's cheating because Alucard is Dracula. Second to this dude are D&D vampires, but they still don't have it as nice because there are so damn many ways to kill undead in D&D and people who make a career out of it.

You would think it was the fact that vampires are superhuman that made them horrific in the first place.

[Captain Seafort]

can only be killed by being decapitated and staked through the heart

Debatable. The two occurred so close together that either may have sufficed. The latter alone was certainly sufficient to deal with Lucy.

does not have to drink blood on a regular basis

He does, however, age if he fails to do so. At what rate, and whether this would ultimately be fatal, is unknown.

weather manipulation

Again, debatable, albeit strongly implied.

And of course, he has studied black magic, which the novel hints to have been how he turned himself into a vampire.

Where?

can not shapeshift during the day.

Yes he can - only at noon, admittedly, but he can shapeshift.

[Solauren]

The problem with vampire is, the magic versions of vampires are fairly easy to take care of by anyone with half a brain.

i.e Vampire must sleep in a coffin full of specific dirt? Okay, wash that out, or put some explosive under it on a timer to go off about 30 minutes after son up. Replied by Holy symbols? Let's go buy a bunch, surround him with them, and then use a flame thrower, etc.

THe reinvention is to make them harder to fight or ignore.

[Formless]

@ Captain Seafort: I haven't actually read Dracula myself-- I swore off Victorian literature after we had to read that horseshit A Tale of Two Cities in highschool. Paid by the fucking word = unforgivably terrible writing. My knowledge of the exact details of Brahm Stoker's story comes from secondary sources like wikipedia.

So, uh, sorry if their details disagree with your reading. I hope the point I was trying to make is clear, though-- Dracula is pretty much the canon for vampire literature in the 20'th century, and his power is undeniable. So jollyretard's ignorant claims that superhuman badass vampires are a new thing is just laughable. Again, what makes them scary as a monster if not the fact that you have little chance against one in a fair fight?

[Stark]

Did you just compare laundry lists and decide one was worth more than the other based on the number of items listed? Are you some kind of retard?

To my knowledge all vampire fiction works on the 'few' 'weaknesses' to build drama; even immortality is a 'weakness' in a dramatic context. Approaching fiction from a vs debate perspective can really destroy your brain and you shouldn't do it. I know the OP complains that vampries are 'too powerful' but also 'too sad', which shows hes missed the point entirely, but the shedding of weaknesses and the refining of strengths is an ongoing thing as the creature is re-examined.

[Formless]

Did you just compare laundry lists and decide one was worth more than the other based on the number of items listed?

Yes, I bring up how many items are on each list, but that's mostly because it is the most immediately indicator that jollyretard is hilariously wrong. His argument is in part based on the supposition that only modern vampires are superhuman in power, that only modern vampires are too much for a human to handle. Both arguments are plainly ignorant-- Dracula is almost all of the things he listed and then some (actually, I forgot to list superhuman agility, so the only thing he is missing from a "modern" depiction is the super senses). Dracula's weaknesses aren't there as a thematic "this is why it sucks to be Dracula" that jollyreaper's own suggestions imply he wants to see in vampire stories. On the contrary, Dracula in the novel holds both power and prestige. His weaknesses are there to make it possible at all for the protagonists to kill him (and to make a connection with folklore). Ergo, even if we go past the superficial, its obvious to anyone versed at all in Brahm Stoker's story that Dracula was "better than humans in every way and there's just not much of a downside" to being a vampire.

[Stark]

Well ignore me I'm an idiot.

I think its pretty core to the Dracula story that he's a super-powerful supernatural demon, but at the same time fundamentally crippled as a person by the 'minor' weaknesses vampires have. Talking about how vampires can lift airplanes and yet are sad about their lot being lame is just crazy - most modern 'vampire' stories use the vampire as a way of talking about alienation and other-ness.

[Captain Seafort]

@ Captain Seafort: I haven't actually read Dracula myself-- I swore off Victorian literature after we had to read that horseshit A Tale of Two Cities in highschool.

I've never tried Dickens myself, but Dracula is a pretty good read, one that I'd recommend.

So, uh, sorry if their details disagree with your reading. I hope the point I was trying to make is clear, though-- Dracula is pretty much the canon for vampire literature in the 20'th century, and his power is undeniable. So jollyretard's ignorant claims that superhuman badass vampires are a new thing is just laughable. Again, what makes them scary as a monster if not the fact that you have little chance against one in a fair fight?

No worries - they're largely nitpicks and matters of interpretation anyway. I've run into the same "Sparklepires are massively overpowered" nonsense myself, repeatedly, and I counter it in exactly the same way - by pointing out that there's damn little, if anything, they can do that Dracula couldn't.

[Ahriman238]

"Dracula wasn't a man who became a monster. He was a monster that tried to pretend, for a short while, to be a man. Human blood could sustain the illusion, but it could never quite complete it."

Writing vampires must be hard. If you include the weaknesses, you create a foe the heroes can destroy with ease, if they're capable of any sort of planning. If you don't, they become Mary Sues with all the powers and none of the weaknesses. Lame.

It'd be kind of funny if every whinging pre-teen who wants to be a vampire got their wish... and then had to deal with the holy ground/symbols, sunlight, garlic, can't cross water etc.

Though the quote up top brings up an issue. Correct me if I'm wrong, it has been a very long time since I read Dracula, but didn't he have to invite an Englishman to his castle and study him for weeks to learn how to blend into society?

For that matter, I seem to remember that when the hunters confront Dracula for the first time, ready with crosses and stakes, revolvers and long knives, he runs.

[Simon_Jester]

It may be a question of viewpoint.

We see Dracula through the eyes of competent people, who are committed to hunting him down and killing him. There is only one of him- he may have minions, but he stands alone as the chief menace of the novel. They know his weaknesses and plan their campaign to defeat him, and the novel ends with his death. So while Dracula is strong and dangerous- a good villain- he still loses in the end, and his great strength doesn't seem unreasonable in the context of a novel where he gets killed.

Some modern vampire stories still do this: vampires are threats to be tracked down and killed, the protagonist is able to do so, so the vampires don't come across as unreasonably strong.

Others don't; they write from the point of view of the vampire. The vampire often survives the story, and is often part of a whole clan/family/circle/whatever of similar vampires. There are no dedicated, professional vampire hunters; if there are, they exist as somewhat inept antagonists to be evaded, outwitted, or killed. So the vampire's strength comes across as just being an automatic "I win" button, and the only meaningful conflicts in the story are between vampires and other vampires.

If Jollyreaper read too many of those, and forgot about the others, that could explain where he's coming from.

[Stark]

Thats a good question of emphasis - in modern shits we usually see the vampires at the pub, or being sad about their partner, or trying to participate in society or whatever. Classically, they were totally apart from 'normal life' and simply a threat that needed to be destroyed, viewed from outside.

So maybe what he really doesn't like is the viewpoint.

[jollyreaper]

The classic vamp of folklore bears more in common with the modern Romero conception of the zombie than anything else.

1) Obviously dead, smelly, not pretty
2) Driven by inhuman hunger for the blood of the living
3) Fairly mindless.

So Dracula was a pretty thorough reboot of the trope to begin with.

In my critique of vamps I'm talking about the modern incarnations, popular conception of what it means to be a vamp. Like if we're talking about zombies it's pretty clear we're talking post-Romero takes and we're debating fast or slow, undead or rage virus varieties. Nobody is thinking Haitian voodoo here.

If anybody did write a horror tale with truly classic vampires, pre-Dracula types, they would be immediately pegged as zombies or ghouls.

My comments are not directed at classic or Dracula vamps but the post-Rice variety, the kind that have been so popular in recent urban fantasy.

[Stark]

Stop saying trope, it makes you look stupid.

PS in Dracula the only reason he lived in a lonely castle was a combination of personal problems and religious guilt. His whole plan was to move to London which, if successful, would probably have led to him complaining about how unsatisfying his life was. Indeed given the small amount of time he gets and that he's being chased the whole time he manages to whinge a fair bit anyway.

The distinction you are seeing may not really exist.

[jollyreaper]

Stop saying trope, it makes you look stupid.

That's your opinion. Why do you think so and which word would you use instead?

[Ahriman238]

I'll be honest, I sort of enjoyed Interview with a Vampire, even though it really dragged at some points, and half the characters were idiots who desperatly needed some sense slapped into them. If only because there's something so human in the "and that's my 400-page story about how much being a vampire sucks, and no sane man would possibly want it." "Right, right. I got it all down. Now, I don't suppose you'd mind making me a vampire?" :facepalm:

[Stark]

From a certain perspective, Interview is actually about the mystique of the vampire for the reader; they hate it because they live it, but we know that people want it anyway. Its a cautionary tale that we know won't work.

[LadyTevar]

Moved out of SciFi into Fantasy where it belongs.

[Kingmaker]

I think a lot of the "awesomeness" creep comes from the use of vampires as sex symbols, and I'm pretty sure vampires have been sex symbols since well before Anne Rice got started. It's just that they've gone from sort of dark/mysterious/menacing to out and out wish fulfillment. Concomitant to that, they became less monstrous and the sex was less implied/actual rape. And just less implied.

I'm sure there is something in there about corrupting the virtue of young women, and how that's declined as a big social worry.

[Stark]

Now we're not worried and foreigners stealing our women as much as rich people stealing our women.

[Majin Gojira]

It'd be kind of funny if every whinging pre-teen who wants to be a vampire got their wish... and then had to deal with the holy ground/symbols, sunlight, garlic, can't cross water etc.

That was done by one of the "Meanwhile!" comic shorts Jhonen Vasquez did. The guy turned into a vampire -- with an enormous head, bad odors from the body and walrus tusks for fangs.

I think the comic "Top 10" also did a story where old vampires were ousted from the top ranks by young, ruthless ones who believed they didn't play to the old Lagosi type--only to find out that they still had all the lame/silly weaknesses and the townsfolk preferred the old types . . .

Anyway.

Vampires became Sex Symbols a long time ago. Like the original Dracula long time ago (playing on the eroticism of the "Kiss"). Hell, Varnae, the oldest literally vampire, has signs of this IIRC. Once that happened, Vampires, symbolically, veered away from their original symbolic importance (disease/the Black Death/etc) to become "The Insatiable". Everything about them became beyond human. Their lives, their power and their appetites. They became the perfect hybrid of Sex and Death (Insatiable in both aspects) that keeps them in the movies today.

Over time, the pendulum has swung from Death over to Sex, and modern vampire stories are usually the result of that.

There are exceptions: "30 Days of Night" being a film example, and even things on the web like the Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency.

You might want to go there for a good dose of "Vampires are monsters that need to be destroyed" stuff.

[Formless]

trope

In my critique of vamps I'm talking about the modern incarnations, popular conception of what it means to be a vamp. Like if we're talking about zombies it's pretty clear we're talking post-Romero takes and we're debating fast or slow, undead or rage virus varieties. Nobody is thinking Haitian voodoo here.

Not quite true-- the high fantasy genre still uses "voodoo" zombies and monstrous vampires resurrected with dark necromantic magic. Furthermore, would you consider "Let the Right One In" to be like Twilight et al?

See, I think the problem is that you've (accidentally) cherrypicked a single kind of vampire and proclaimed that one as "THE modern trope concept of a vampire". Vampires may be a popular creature for the "supernatural romance" genre, but that isn't the only genre that uses them. There is media still where they suffer for their immortality, whether its stories where their bloodlust is explored or the depression that comes from being unable to see the sun. And there are still places where they are frank monsters-- heck, Buffy of all shows depicted them that way.

Now, if you want to write stories where their point of view is explored and made sympathetic, here is my take. In the OP you tried to "invert the trope", but vampires aren't a trope. "Vampire" is a concept with layers and multiple distinctive traits, so what you did was actually take several tropes and invert all of them at once. Not only do you not have to do that, but you don't have to use every possible vampiric trait at once-- indeed, you would soon run into contradictions if you did.

Here is where I would start. Vampires drink blood and are immortal and/or undead. Those are the most central concepts of vampirism, more or less. Undeath is (usually) a source of the vampire's strengths and traditional weaknesses, immortality makes their condition tempting to humans though it can be made a strength or weakness, and bloodsucking is a weakness. This is both because there is a limited supply of blood and because it alienates vampires from humanity at the best of times and makes vampires The Enemy at the worst of times.

Now for the questions. First, what are you intentions for the story, and why vampires? That should be obvious enough, but that kind of question drives all others in any kind of fiction, and the next question. Do you want to tell the narrative from the POV of a human (and what kind: victim, lover, hunter, or friend?), sympathetic vampire or an anti-heroic vampire? Once you answer that, next consider the nature of bloodsucking. The questions you need to ask are: why do vampires drink blood? How often do they need to drink blood? What source of blood must they drink from?

Say for instance you want to depict the vampire as sympathetic, but alienated. You could try, among other things, allowing the character to sustain themselves on animal blood. It has the creepiness that they leave mutilated livestock in their wake, but at least they aren't necessarily dangerous to humans, right? But they also seem all that much more like an asshole if they ever decide to hurt someone and drink their blood. Or you could try allowing the vampire to go long periods without needing blood, so most of the time they seem normal and in control of their behavior, and even able to trick themselves into thinking they are ordinary. Maybe they can even use donated blood, whether from a bloodbank or sympathetic friends?

Maybe they have a craving for blood that seems almost like a drug addict. This might make them seem sympathetic because they have little control over their nature... but you can easily go too far and make it seem so uncontrollable they need to be put down like a rabid dog. You know, like Old Yeller. On the other hand, if feeding on blood is entirely optional, then the vampire either stops being a vampire or their choice to feed on people (assuming they must feed on people and not animals) seems all that much more blameworthy. On one extreme end, if the blood is something they drink solely to extend their own lifespan or fuel their superpowers, you have to go through all the more work just to keep them from seeming like a natural villain.

Now that you've gone through all that, now you can consider peripheral traits like superpowers they might posses or traditional weaknesses they might have. Again, you don't have to give them everything. They don't have to be super strong, for instance, but neither do they need to be weak to sunlight. Yes really-- people might think of that as the betrayal of Twilight, but the real failing there was humoring the sunlight trope at all and making them sparkle like the narrator suffers from schiz-o-vision. As established earlier in the thread, Dracula was not afraid of the sun, and folklore vampires avoided it because the daylight would instantly reveal them to be walking corpses. The only peripheral trait you must establish is "what causes vampirism?" Everything else is customization. You can also start from this question and work backwards, naturally.





So here's an example that I came up with a while back to show how its done. Say vampires are the result of demonic or ghost possession of a fresh corpse, similar to the original folklore. The person who is possessed, however, is the source of the vampire's personality and like all possession stories suffers from the possession. Blood drinking is something the spirit forces upon them as a form of humiliation and punishment if they resist doing the demon's bidding. Any powers the vampire has are a result of the spirit uses, like telekinesis. The demon is weak to exorcism, but the vampire has to be willing to help fight the demon's influence. And the spirit, of course, can help demoralize the human soul with arguments, appeals, etc. Oh, and did I mention that exorcising the demon causes the dead person to finally pass on? As in, finally die? Conflict!