Vampires

[salinea]

When I was 10 years old, I watched Coppola's Dracula, which convinced me of two things: #1 Winona Ryder was fucking hot; #2 antagonistic love stories with reincarnation and a bit of eros/thanatos aesthetics were really fun. Like, really, really fun.

When I was 12 year old, I watched Interview with the Vampire, which convinced me of two things: #1 Brad Pitt was fucking hot; #2 vampires were okay. I mean, immortal life and powers to do whatever you want? Sounds neat.

So it was the early 90's, and I was primed to love vampire stories.

Fast forward to the night of Halloween 1998; after a couple of false starts I have managed what have been one of my goal for the last two years : find a role-playing game club which I could join and play with. The game? Vampire:the Masquerade. They explain the premise of the game, and the setting of the chronicles (Los Angeles, and one of player is The Prince of the setting) and help me make a character (a Toreador street artist - you can laugh, they did - neonate) in between a whole lot leering and sexist jokes. Upon a few minutes into the game we were stuck into a gunfight and I was realising that #1 all other characters were rather powerful, I was not #2 This was apparently a game about amoral superheroes in trenchcoat fighting with katanas and shotguns who happened to live by night even though they had explained it to me as a gothic punk game of personal horror. During the next couple of years which I spend a this rpg club, playing a wide selection of games, Vampires was without question the most popular and frequent game - whether I wanted it or not. I made a ridiculous amount of characters for it (my default archetype became the Gangrels with anarch leanings, mostly cuz of the claws ♥); and soon came to utterly loathe Vampire the Masquerade. It wasn't just the whole superheroes by night thing. I had loved Highlanders the TV shows when I was 14, I could deal with katanas, and a few years later I would love Buffy the Vampire Slayer, including the vampires. VtM was a game which concept appeared to be about a bunch of immortal people who are so fucking bored than instead of enjoying their powers and immortality to enjoy stuff from the world, they would waste their time and energy in endless meaningless and frequently mind-numbingly boring power struggles, with a result of crushing hierarchy being out to bore to death or outright your average new vampire and their player. About as fun as dealing with my university administration. And sadly, my loathing for VtM soon became a disgust for vampires in general

But wait a minuted, in between 94 and 98, I spent the years of life where I was reading the most fucking ratio of books a weak, a period of my life where I was pilfering the SFF shelves of the local public library to fill my absence of social life. There were no few vampire book in those shelves. Between Ann Rice, Poppy Z Brite, King's Salem's Lot and classics like Carmilla. Honestly I forgot most of them. Actually that's my point : the majority of them were utterly forgettable. Derivative variation on the theme. Sure, the conceit of vampires appeal from a baseline aspect to my kinks and are a powerful fantasy. But could they be interesting in the face of the near parodic triteness of the thread bone cliché that they most often were? Not really. Vampires qua vampires do not do it for me. Oh, but give me vampires with a twist? Give me vampires reinvented with imagination and flair? Then I'll love it.

My favourite vampire novels : Tim Powers' Stress of her Regard, where vampires are half stone half reptile creatures which inspire poets and artists while feeding of their vitality. CS Friedman's Season of Madness, which mixes vampire with aliens invasion of earth and symbiotic energy vampires on a medition on change and memory. CS Friedman's, again, Coldfire Trilogy, in a gothic fantasy SF blender exploring sacrifices and a vampire that prefer to feed on fear. Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust with a visual feast mixing gothic to cyberpunk and western aesthetics.

Yet most of the time when I read about the new cool vampiric story in town (or the new uncool one which everyone loves to hate) screaming for my attention they always seem to fall back to the same old boring tropes. Bo~ring. So most of the time when I'm sold something as vampires, I won't even give it two seconds of my attention. I already gave Charlaine Harris a chance, must I really try the TV Show? Even if everyone tells me it's better than the books, exactly what does it have of new and original to bring to the vampire show? And why does Bill always look so constipaded on pictures?

Okay, but sometimes, you get lucky. Like Setona Mizushiro's Black Rose Alice, in which she appears to be trying to out Yuki Kaori Yuki Kaori, and in the two volumes of her manga I've read so far, actually comes close. Vampires as parasitic plants that seed into people. Dual personalities in a same bodies. Feeding by using insects and arachnids. Sex as death. Brilliant. Why is it so fucking hard to get that sort of stuff?

I leave with you with a fun AMV :p

Comments

[gogoratchet.livejournal.com]

Bill's a hilariously fuddy-duddy character, that's why he always looks so constipated! He's got a stick up his butt. I love him for it.

True Blood definitely isn't for everyone, but I do think it is trying to do something new. Charlaine Harris's novels were bland, contrived love-mystery novels...but I thought the premise was interesting. (Just the vampires come out into normal society aspect. That part is explored to much more interesting avenues in True Blood)

True Blood's vampires are pretty standard in their mythology, the difference is in the execution. If that doesn't appeal to you, I totally get it! I mainly like the show because I like its tone and characters. I really don't care that much about the "vampire" aspect.

Anyway, TB thoughts aside...I mainly agree with you on vampire stories. There's a long history there that can make writers lazy. If a vampire show/movie/book has interesting characters and plots, I won't turn it down...but it will take more convincing than normal to make me believe that it could have that!

[keelieinblack.livejournal.com]

This is so much why I still feel slightly ashamed of my vampire fixation. As an idea it has a combined fascination and horror mix that it's difficult to get anywhere, but my god if it hasn't become one of the dullest paint-by-number things in all of fiction. *grump*

I agree on the ♥ for Black Rose Alice! Setona Mizushiro, why are you fantastic? (I do wish it had come with some sort of "warning: spiders!" label--it's a brilliant idea but I really wasn't prepared to see them climbing out of someone's mouth. Though I guess that was the point!)

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

but I thought the premise was interesting. (Just the vampires come out into normal society aspect.
The Anita Blake series did it first ^^ and yes, i think it's an intriguing concept as such; if they do interesting things with it.

I was trying to be more introspective about my taste than trying to harsh on other people's taste. I have some kinks I will love no matter what and boring, formalised stuff I read and reread all the time. It just happens that vampires can't play that part for me, for a strange quirks of mine XD

and basically, I agree entirely with your last line!

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

guilty pleasures can be tasty indeed. I totally have some which are just as repeatitive and silly as some vampire stories out there - just, not vampires. I'm not entirely why (aside from DAMN YOU VTM!)

That spiders ♥ I had shivers it freaked me out so much on first vision. It really works great as an idea!! And the idea of vampires as vegetal? It's so elegant! Mizushiro really is my new favourite mangaka along with Nakamura Yoshiki.

[kethlenda.livejournal.com]

I cannot say enough good things about The Stress of Her Regard.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

It is a very good book ♥

[darksumomo.livejournal.com]

Funny you should post about vampires. In one tab I have this story about Halloween costumes...

Detroit Free Press: Boo! Princesses, vampires and MJ hottest costumes

Vampires -- thanks to "Twilight" and "True Blood" -- aren't dead this season.

...in another, I have my YouTube playlists, which has this in the video games folder. Recognize the voice? It's Azula (at least, her English language one).



And in the third folder, I have Darths and Droids, which recently made a reference to Vampire: The Masquerade.

Vampire: the Masquerade is the classic roleplaying game of angsty reflections on life, death, love, and tragedy. Oh, it's also got vampires in it.

We're not sure exactly when vampires stopped being horrific and became vehicles for adolescent angst, but we suspect roleplayers might have to own up to some of the blame.

If I could find a version of Vampire: The Masquerade that worked in Vista, I might actually play it.

So, it looks like I was ready for you. >;-[

[werthead.livejournal.com]

Let's see if I can sell TRUE BLOOD in one sentence:

It has Michelle Forbes as a totally awesome villain and doing some crazy magic shit involving a giant pig which freaks out Frank Sobotka from THE WIRE :-)

TRUE BLOOD doesn't do much that's new with the vampire mythos at all, except that the vampires can be seen in mirrors, have no fear of holy symbols or holy water, don't have a problem with garlic and are only set apart from humans by their aversion to sunlight and superior speed (all of which has been done before). The biggest departure is that vampire blood itself has really potent, narcotic-like effects on humans, leading to the vampire becoming the hunted prey as much as vice versa, which leads to some interesting role-reversal.

Previously, the last vampire series I saw which really impressed me was ULTRAVIOLET. It showed vampires as they probably would be if they really existed, as completely amoral, calculating beings whose human emotions died a long time ago and who go to incredible lengths to ensure their existence is kept secret. Oddly enough that had a WIRE connection as well, as it was Idris Elba's first major role. Now that I think about, Stringer Bell: Vampire Hunter would be an awesome series in its own right ;-)

[darksumomo.livejournal.com]

One of the odder books I read was Fred Saberhagen's "The Holmes-Dracula File. Looking back on it, I now see it as fanfiction of public domain characters by a professional. At the time, I had no idea such a thing existed. Oh, well, at least it was memorable.

[flo-nelja.livejournal.com]

Tiens, j'ai une meilleure expérience de Vampire the Masquerade que toi. D'un autre côté, je n'ai joué qu'avec un seul groupe, qui était excellent, et c'était en grande partie des home rules, donc je ne peux pas vraiment défendre le jeu en général...
Il faut dire que personnellement, je préfère l'aspect "être un vampire est une malédiction" à "être un vampire est trop cool", donc...

Mais bon, je suis entièrement d'accord sur le principe de "le concept est bien, les livres dessus pas toujours".

Mais j'en ai lu trop peu pour avoir envie de chercher des histoires "with a twist". En fait, je serais très heureuse de trouver une nouvelle sur les vampires russes d'origine, qui sont pourtant trèèèès classiques (ils peuvent épouser des humains normalement, et les enfants sont soit des vampires, soit des humains avec la capacité de reconnaître les vampires à vue, et qui en général deviennent chasseurs de vampires. Ca a du potentiel pour faire de la bonne angst familiale, je n'en ai jamais vu qui dépassait le niveau conte de fées en psychologie)

[modillian.livejournal.com]

I can agree with you on a lot of points. Buffy aside (and it does have its share of problems, hooo boy, I'm just glad they made as much of vamps as they did too), lots of vampire fiction has beaten the tropes dead and deader. To me those vampires-with-a-twist stories sound awesome and re-invigorating for the genre.

[matitablu.livejournal.com]

Eh, I know where you're coming from! I consider myself a vampire fan but in actuality, there are very few books/movies that match my tastes. I'm most definitely looking forward to the movie Strigoi, which is a comedy but is supposed to draw from the original Eastern European folklore, something that I very rarely (never?) saw represented in media.

Btw, you might want to give a try to Let the right one in - I mean the novel. The movie is really cool and true to the book, but the novel actually has its vampire mythology more fleshed out and has storylines that didn't fit in the film. I liked it a lot because it felt like something different and at the same time Lindqvist was definitely "doing it right", because, while there is a human side to his vampire, that didn't obliterate the dark side of it. It's a heartfelt and scary story at the same time.

Re: True Blood I've heard contrasting reviews about it... it's on my "to watch... someday" list, if not for the reason that all those Alexander Skarsgaard picspams I keep coming across sort of whetted my appetite, so to speak. /shallow

[twhitesakura.livejournal.com]

I loved Anne Rice's books as well as Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don't know if you'd be interested in reading a manga called "Vampire Knight". It's ongoing. There's also a anime and season 1 is complete. It's not as complex as some of the stuff you might like, but I thought the characters were well done. Of course, it's shoujo and pretty. XD

Here's the 1st part of episode 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gfYxNeSVLA

[williamjm.livejournal.com]

I've never really been that keen on vampire fiction as a genre, I don't really find most of the typical vampire clichés interesting to read about/watch. Often when I do like a vampire book/film I think it is often despite the vampires rather than because of them - for example, I really liked Fevre Dream but I think that was as much for the historical setting and the human characters than the vampire characters (although I think it is one of the better examples of vampire fiction).

I agree that The Stress of Her Regard was one of the most interesting portrayals of vampires. Although it isn't my favourite Tim Powers book (I found the main character increasingly irritating as the book went on), the supernatural elements were very well done. I seem to remember hearing Powers was working on a loose sequel to it as his next novel, which should be interesting.

[quietliban.livejournal.com]

This is pretty much what my issue with the vampire genre is; it's all so done and the things that are 'new' and 'popular' have been done a long time ago by other people and much, much better. Or at least, they weren't posturing that they were OMG, so breaking-edge. They were vampire novels or they were teen-vampire novels and if you read books you knew they were there.

Nowadays, it seems marketing has taken over and quality isn't so much of an issue, which makes me sad.

Also, thanks for mentioning The Stress of Her Regard. I'll check it out. And I want to second Let the Right One In-- I haven't seen the film, but the book was very refreshing in terms of vampire novels.

[berylia.livejournal.com]

Après avoir vu les deux saisons de True Blood et en marathon qui plus est, je ne saurais que trop ne pas te le recommander. C'est bien simple, les deux seules choses qui m'empéchèrent de m'endormir furent mon tricot et le superbe fanservice de folie dans deux épisodes. Sinon, on suit des aventures d'une bouseuse à Bouseuxville avec son bouseux de frère et ses problèmes de bouseuse, ajoutez à ça qu'elle est totallement cruchonne et qu'on ne revit dans cette série qu'avec les personnages secondaires (Lafayette ! Eric ! Pam !), il vaudrait mieux que quelqu'un de bien intentionné ne te passe que des extraits.
Oui, tout le problème politique des vampires qui sont out of the closet (ce que dans Anita Blake on a comme déjà installé (ils ont leurs droits civiques)) c'est chouette et intéressant, mais vu que nous on suit la plouquette du bayou ben on s'ennuie.