The Vampire, Undead, and Bloodsucker thread

[felice]

10 hours ago, Lord Patrek said:

Like the Friedman, Peter Watts' Blindsight was another interesting case of vampires in space.

Yes, that was a fascinating book, highly recommended. I found the followup Echopraxia disappointing, though; it just seemed a bit unnecessary, really.

[Teng Ai Hui]

On 10/30/2020 at 9:46 PM, C.T. Phipps said:

Eh, go ahead.

I don't think that vampires are in special need of defending as a genre.

I think Salem's Lot suffers in that King intended the vampire info to be a shocking reveal.  Yet, this is usually spoiled by the cover art and/or the back cover description.  Also, the defeat of the vampire is very quick and anticlimactic.

Edited November 2, 2020 by Teng Ai Hui

[The Marquis de Leech]

5 hours ago, Teng Ai Hui said:

I think Salem's Lot suffers in that King intended the vampire info to be a shocking reveal.  Yet, this is usually spoiled by the cover art and/or the back cover description.  Also, the defeat of the vampire is very quick and anticlimactic.

Salem's Lot is actually my favourite King book. Since it is a pre-Anne Rice depiction of vampires, I think the book benefits by being an unashamed treatment of vampires as monsters, as opposed to emo aristocrats.

[Inkdaub]

That's why Dracula is so great as he can pull off both to a certain extent.  I had a co-worker who hated the Anne Rice vampires and insisted vampires be 'loathsome'.

I am a fan of Salem's Lot as well. 

[Gigei]

Uh, the whole reason why Anne Rice vampires were so popular when she wrote Interview with the Vampire is because they made vampires hot and sexy.

Though, as we also discussed in these same forums back in the day, Anne Rice vampires are not the sort of monster you would want to meet in a dark alley. They may be charming as fuck but they ain't cuddly. *shudder*

The thing about Anne Rice vampire is that they are all told from the vampires' (and hangers-on) POV. One can therefore expect that the vampires consider themselves irresistibly beautiful, charming, good fun to be around, etc. Classic vampire books, which are told from the POV of victims/vampire hunters, show them as disgusting monsters who should all be killed.

IDK why I wrote that all out, lol. So, from the perspective of a fangirl Lestat would be "an immortal rock god" but from the POV of a victim's widow he would be "that lunatic murderer." Both are 100% true. 

[The Marquis de Leech]

4 hours ago, Gigei said:

Uh, the whole reason why Anne Rice vampires were so popular when she wrote Interview with the Vampire is because they made vampires hot and sexy.

Though, as we also discussed in these same forums back in the day, Anne Rice vampires are not the sort of monster you would want to meet in a dark alley. They may be charming as fuck but they ain't cuddly. *shudder*

The thing about Anne Rice vampire is that they are all told from the vampires' (and hangers-on) POV. One can therefore expect that the vampires consider themselves irresistibly beautiful, charming, good fun to be around, etc. Classic vampire books, which are told from the POV of victims/vampire hunters, show them as disgusting monsters who should all be killed.

IDK why I wrote that all out, lol. So, from the perspective of a fangirl Lestat would be "an immortal rock god" but from the POV of a victim's widow he would be "that lunatic murderer." Both are 100% true. 

Well, yes. The distinction between pre-Rice vampires and post-Rice vampires is that the former are antagonists and the latter are protagonists. It's actually why Lindqvist's Let the Right One In is actually thematically more akin to Rice vampires than the pre-1976 version. 

The problem is that after over forty years of Vampire Psychological Studies (at best) and Vampire Porn (at worst), having stories where the Vampire is an unabashed monster actually feels vaguely refreshing. The Old Vampire was played out in the 1970s, but that's so long ago that modern audiences don't remember that.

[C.T. Phipps]

Quote

Classic vampire books, which are told from the POV of victims/vampire hunters, show them as disgusting monsters who should all be killed.

Monsters? Yes. Disgusting? Ehh, that's really just Dracula and even then he was a sex symbol as early as the 1924 play version.

Polidori's The Vampyre is all about how Ruthven is having sex with every married woman in Europe, leaving them heartbroken. He then climaxes (phrasing) by marrying the protagonist's sister for maximum torture.

Carmilla is also about the hot vampire babe on innocent allusion to lesbianism but not REALLY because that would be wrong but is there if you look. Except, not really.

Varney the Vampire is the first "good" vampire story and it's like the third one ever written.

The vampire as combined with the incubus as the archetypal "Great Supernatural Seducer" has been there since the 19th century.

Edit:

Stoker also was aware of the fact that men and women loved Dracula for the sensuality of it. For those who think Dracula should be repulsive, there's POWERS OF DARKNESS that is basically another version of Dracula written by Stoker. It makes Dracula into proto-fascism ("ethno nationalism" which is the same thing) and world domination. It's also about the sex with Harker having regular hook ups with one of the brides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Darkness#Differences_between_Dracula_and_Powers_of_Darkness

So Stoker was fully aware that men and women would both want to have sex with his undead creations.

Edited November 3, 2020 by C.T. Phipps

[Jo498]

On 11/2/2020 at 7:37 AM, Inkdaub said:

That's why Dracula is so great as he can pull off both to a certain extent.  I had a co-worker who hated the Anne Rice vampires and insisted vampires be 'loathsome'.

But they are loathsome. Seductiveness does not mitigate evil, quite the contrary. If someone is a supernaturally dangerous powerful killer (or rather transformer to a fate worse than death) it doesn't matter that s/he is also an immortal seductively glamourous sexy "rock star". There is simply no way the latter characterization could "balance" the former or somehow make it morally acceptable. This is different from the attraction of pirates or rebels because they often have a just cause, at least to some extent. Despite the ingeniosity of Rice or the woman who wrote the stuff "True Blood" was based on this is an extremely implausible case to make for vampires. Furthermore, to keep it exciting, all these books/movies/series also have obviously evil vampires, so the repulsion humans have is completely justified (because if something is so bloody dangerous and powerful as vampires usually are, one simply needs to err on the side of caution). The best one can do plausibly, I think, is to evoke a certain pity like with a rueful but madly driven serial rapist/killer who cannot master his impulse.

[Jo498]

On 11/2/2020 at 1:06 AM, Teng Ai Hui said:

I think Salem's Lot suffers in that King intended the vampire info to be a shocking reveal.  Yet, this is usually spoiled by the cover art and/or the back cover description.  Also, the defeat of the vampire is very quick and anticlimactic.

That one is dealing with some kind of vampire is also rather obvious from the actual cases of the vampire's victims, isn't it? While it goes with a certain tradition, to me it seems often very difficult to find a balance between the superpowers of vampires on the one hand and the options of quick and easy defeat. Because daylight or garlic are too easy, some authors simply skip them and they become even more ridiculosuly powerful than before.

[Gigei]

On 11/3/2020 at 3:31 PM, C.T. Phipps said:

Monsters? Yes. Disgusting? Ehh, that's really just Dracula and even then he was a sex symbol as early as the 1924 play version.

Polidori's The Vampyre is all about how Ruthven is having sex with every married woman in Europe, leaving them heartbroken. He then climaxes (phrasing) by marrying the protagonist's sister for maximum torture.

Actually, that was one of the things I was talking about. The Vampyre is told from the POV of the brother and is pervaded by a sense of dread and horror, especially in the latter part once he realizes what Lord Ruthven is. If this was Anne Rice the brother would be a fanboy who wants himself and his sister to becomes vampires.

I like both Polidori and Anne Rice.  There's something to be said for both approaches.

Edited November 6, 2020 by Gigei

[unJon]

I see Pat mentioned it already, but everyone should read Blindsight. Awesome book. 
 

for the record, I enjoyed Salem’s Lot.

[Jo498]

Now that I think about it, are there two versions of the Salem story by King (one novel one novella or short story)? Or did King also write a very similar short vampire story? As I seem to recall it, neither was bad but especially the long version didn't live up to the hype as it supposedly was the book that put King on the map but reading it 30+ years later it seemed a fairly "standard" vampire/horror story? And one reason could have been that I had read the other version long before and then remembered common plot elements.

[C.T. Phipps]

11 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Now that I think about it, are there two versions of the Salem story by King (one novel one novella or short story)? Or did King also write a very similar short vampire story? As I seem to recall it, neither was bad but especially the long version didn't live up to the hype as it supposedly was the book that put King on the map but reading it 30+ years later it seemed a fairly "standard" vampire/horror story? And one reason could have been that I had read the other version long before and then remembered common plot elements.

Jerusalem's Lot is a prequel that is an homage to H.P. Lovecraft's "Rats in the Walls."

 

[TheLastWolf]

Fevre Dream

Twilight saga

Cassandra Clare's

Et cetera 

[IlyaP]

On 10/31/2020 at 8:21 AM, Derfel Cadarn said:

Trivia: The Ladybird Dracula book (for kids) freaked me out for months and gave me no end of nightmares. The artwork was creepy as fuck. My mum ended up taking it off me.

Hot staggering fuck, I remember reading that as a kid when I was still learning English, a few years after we came over from the Soviet Union! There's something so immediate and unsettling about the image that still unsettles me even now!

[All Cats Are Bad]

Vampires are cool.

[felice]

14 hours ago, SaltyGnosis said:

Vampires are cool.

Well, room temperature as a rule; how cool that is will vary with place and time, but yes, certainly cooler than the average human in most cases.

[All Cats Are Bad]

hah.

Vampires are neat.

[TheLastWolf]

5 hours ago, SaltyGnosis said:

hah.

Vampires are neat.

As long as they use straws. Blood does tend to get messy

[All Cats Are Bad]

fine, vampires suck.

 

...

 

...

 

I fucking dare you.