megwrites

Three vampire cliches/trends you can't stand

There's really only one vampire characterization that I can't stand, which is when "vampire" is used as short-hand for a "dark and dangerous" character, often as the bad-boy type. I'm very tired of the "sexy (usually male) vampire" theme, especially when the vampire part is glossed over or somehow instantly redeemed to make way for a HEA. I kind of feel a vampire story should end tragically or at least ambiguously.

So, with that in mind, my ultimate vampire is either Robin McKinley's Constantine (because he's not at all physically attractive, and other reasons) or Cassidy from Preacher because he kind of fails at life. Heh. I like Whedon's vampires, too, but not so much for their vampireness.

Incidentally, did you ever see New Amsterdam? It was a short-lived TV series about a guy who was immortal - though not a vampire and didn't have any supernatural powers, aside from not dying - until he found his One True Love. Okay, the last part is a little *handwave* whatever, but I thought the show was exploring some interesting ideas about immortality (like, seeing your wives/lovers and children grow older and die) and history (John Amsterdam has lived through a lot, and they reference this) and even love (I'm not sure how the series would have ended if it had continued, but I thought they were possibly heading in the direction of not giving him a One True Love, which is sort of unusual for network TV.

I really liked that he fell in love before - everyone he married, he loved, and that he loves his children, too - and is willing to fall in love again, partly to break the spell/curse and partly because that's just who he is, or how life works, maybe).

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chomiji

... I did not recognize any of those songs ... .

>is old<

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I never was all that into vampires, honestly. I read the LKH stuff to begin with because she was a vamp executioner and a zombie-raiser, and I thought that was way more interesting than most takes, until it became not so interesting. Buffy I liked for the dialogue and the dynamics of the group--later, Spike, too.

Vamps and most of the urban fantasy suite have never made me all that excited; it was usually an in spite of, not a because of, model.

That said, when done with good characterization and just enough new to it, I can count a vampire novel amongst my top books EVAR; see, Sunshine, by Robin McKinley. Which may be the only vampire novel on my shelf at this point. I got rid of my LKHs at some point, and never owned any of the rest of it--strictly lending library stuff.

Unless you count Gerald Terrant in C.S. Friedman's Coldfire trilogy, which I guess we should. Now THAT's a vampire.

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I rather liked New Amsterdam, for much the same reasons. An immortal who wasn't all super-tragic! Just a little bit normal-tragic! It worked pretty well.

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Which, btw, is my way of saying "take me with a grain of salt." I'm not your target demographic, and never was, and honestly, I'm not sure other writers should answer these questions anyway, because we are so often prickly and weird about things.

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I'm very tired of the "sexy (usually male) vampire" theme

Me, too. Especially since it seems like the sexiness is limited to a certain kind of attractiveness.

I saw most of New Amsterdam before Fox gave it the axe. I wanted to like it SO BADLY because I completely think that Nicolai Walder-Costau is awesome and have mercy he rocked me when he played in Wimbledon, but the show failed for me in several ways.

I got a little upset with the premise, because it really bothered me that his immortality came because he was a little less bad than all the other Dutch invaders and so a Native woman gave him immortality. Because if she had that power, then why didn't she give all the Native warriors immortality so they could defend themselves?

And the whole "I must find my one true love" thing actually irked me, because it meant that no matter who he fell in love with, he was always going to be searching just so he could use her to undo his curse. And the woman who played his supposed "one true love" (I saw the finale) annoyed the heck out of me. And um, what about the woman who knows that her job is to help him die? I wish they had explored how fucked up that actually is.

But his son, I totally loved. I thought he was very awesome. I mean, what do you do when your dad is immortal and kind of not a good dad? I would also have appreciated if he wasn't a cop, because I liked that show better when it was Forever Knight, yanno.

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Actually, it's the people who hate vampires or have gripes about them that I want to poll, because I think looking at the critics/detractors of something is a good way to look for stories that aren't get told or different ways to come at something by eliminating the things that had been done to death.

Urban Fantasy interests me, and so do the criticism and dislikes of it, so feel free to unload about anything else that bugs you about the genre ;)

I've had Sunshine recced to me before, and it's on the list for my next book buying run. Can I ask what makes it better than other vampire novels?

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Don't feel old. They were all very obscure songs. Here's the list:

You Are the Blood - Sufjan Stevens
Bloodsport - Sneaker Pimps
Christmas Song - Dave Matthews Band
Forests & Sands - Camera Obscura
Into My Blood - Carina Round
Blood & Wine - Dustin Kensrue

Save for maybe the Dave Matthew Band, I really wouldn't expect ANYONE to have heard of these bands/performers. They're really quite obscure, especially if you're into different genres of music. They're mostly sort of indie rock/alt/folk sort of mixes.

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I didn't recognize any of those songs either, though I did recognize one of the lyrics from a f-lister's handle.

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Can I ask what makes it better than other vampire novels?

Mel! Who is not a vampire and only one of the minor characters in the story, and if McKinley were to write a Sunshine-universe sequel, I'd want it to be about him, but she has a bad track record with sequels, so I doubt that will happen.

Also, Con, the 'good' vampire, is *not* gorgeous or sexy, not at all sexually aggressive \o/ (though not anti-sex either a la Edward Cullen), and remains quite Other throughout the book. I don't mean he's unsympathetic or unchanged...but he doesn't get de-vampired or more human, I guess.

McKinley is a BtVS fan and I think that comes across a little with Sunshine, the narrator. It's not so similar that it seems like a rip-off, but the influences are there. Sunshine is older and more mature than Buffy, while at the same time a bit more out of her depth because she doesn't have a Watcher and hasn't been fighting vampires since she was 15.

I like the world-building as well. In some ways, it's like another character in the book. It's set in an Alternate Contemporary America (um, where there are no POC, I think); I've seen it described as 'post-apocalyptic', but to me, it's more pre- or during the apocalypse. Like, things are bad, but they can still get a lot worse and there are still people (human and supernatural) fighting the good fight.

I can't remember if you've read McKinley's other work? It's, to me, very much a Beauty & the Beast story, but more of a grown-up version -- it's closer to 'Rose Daughter', anyway, than 'Beauty'. The narrative style is a little bit slow and tangential; she branches off and tells backstory or side stories from the main plot, but it's essential and does move the plot along, just in a less than direct way. Which is sort of McKinley's signature style.

I love the ending too. [spoiler]Because Con and Sunshine don't end up HEA. I like to believe they become partners who fight ~~crime~~ evil, and don't have sex with each other. Platonic OTPs! And the Big Final Battle, as well as smaller, everyday battles, are still ahead of them, so the ending is open-ended/ambiguous, while resolving to my satisfaction the emotional beats and this chapter of Sunshine's life.

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Yes! Like he was a bit cynical because of how long he's lived and his experiences with love, but still very hopeful. I also loved how badly he kept his "I'm immortal" secret; it was like he wanted to be found out. Heh.

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Oh, yeah, the origin of John's immortality is definitely full of fail.

I'm okay with believing that John believed every woman he fell in love with was "The One," and that even when he realized she wasn't "The One," he didn't just fall out of love with her, even as he started to look for the next The One. But, yeah, definitely problematic, and I don't think the show explained his curse very well -- like, when he found his OTP, was he going to drop dead on the spot? Or finally become mortal again and age normally. At times, I thought the actor was playing it like it was the former, or maybe it was the plots with him getting shot and stuff. I don't recall the finale; I'm not even sure I saw it, but I'd be totally okay with him not ending up with anyone, or only breaking the curse when he stops looking for love or something other than OTPness.

Omar was fantastic! His relationship with John was by far the highlight of the show.

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Thinking about this a little more, I think why I like that John has fallen in love a few times, and that he possibly does not/will not have a One True Love, stems from reading too many romance novels in which the characters only fall in love once (and if you were a woman, you didn't have sex before that person, while the standards were vastly different for men). So anything that was even a little more complicated than OTPing to such a degree was something I tended to like.

And in regards to vampires, if they've lived for a long time, I think it's possible they'd have more than one "love of their life" too. Or other types of tangled relationships, like when characters have a lot of history together (which, huh, explains part of my love for the X-Men -- the not aging thing or very slowly getting older since their creation is a bit vampiric).

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So anything that was even a little more complicated than OTPing to such a degree was something I tended to like.

I agree that I'm tired of the HEA endings, or at least what the current definition of "happily ever after" entails. I also hate the idea that anyone has just one love of their life and will never be happy again.

I think my grandmother's a good example. She's been married three times. One she divorced, the other passed away and the third she's still with. And yes, she loved her second husband - but she also loves her third (who she knew from high school but never dated, oddly enough) and they're both the love of her life in a way. And I imagine she thinks about the husband she lost every day, but she also thinks about the husband she has and loves every day, too. Life happens and you do have to get back out there again and live.

I come from a family where everyone has been divorced, so I resent any implication that somehow you can only have one love of your life or that if you marry again either you're marrying someone who's second best or your previous relationship "didn't count" or "wasn't real love".

I think I would've liked the premise of John's immortality in New Amsterdam if it a) hadn't come from such a problematic place and b) had examined and owned up to it's fuckedupness (not a word, I know).

And if they hadn't tried to stick a mediocre cop show in the middle of it, that would've helped, too. :)

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aberrant1.livejournal.com

I'm another SOOO-not-your-target-demographic commenter. I've hated the sexy-vampire trope since before Laurel K. Hamilton. And only at that point because that's when I started being bombarded with sexy-vampire images (my roommate was an annoying goth wannabe-artist). I would've hated them earlier if I'd known about them!

That said, there's probably still a lot of interesting things you can do with vampires. The basic idea behind it -- people who are compelled to live on other peoples' blood and then turn them into vampires, too -- is actually really cool and inherently dramatic, and I can see why people love it so much. I can even get behind the tormented angsty vampire, because, well, yeah, a normal person turned into a vampire probably would be tormented and angsty, at least at first.

But sexy? Uh, no. Gross.

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That's all right. I *want* to hear from people outside the "demographic" for vampire books (whatever that is, IDK) - because those are the people who, oddly enough, have some of the best insights into the genre.

You're another person who's commented that the entire idea of making vampires sexy and romantic is the biggest turn off when it comes to the genre. Which is something I'm going to keep in the back of my mind because I'm pretty sure there's something to be mined there for a story - turning the idea of a romantic vampire hero on it's head in someway.

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aberrant1.livejournal.com

I do want to state for the record that I'm not turned off by romantic vampires because "eew, romance, for girls! I want my vampires hideous and evil and manly!" Because I've seen complaints like that in forums.

My problems with it are: 1. The simple one: it's about one step removed from necrophilia. Creeps me right out, and not in a good way.
2. The "sexy bad guy" trope squicks me pretty often. I'm sure there are ways to play up the Forbidden Romance angle, but there are many other ways to write a young woman (usually) helplessly drawn to someone who's going to kill her/turn her into a vampire/whatever. Of course, there's a ton of unexamined creepy sexual issues in there to play with, and more power to you if you want to subvert them!

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takumashii.livejournal.com

They are putting out a YA novel called Blood Ninja, or Ninja Blood, which is about vampire ninjas. By the time people are combining vampires and ninjas, or vampires and pirates (this exists; it's called Vampirates!), I think you can say the trend has pretty well run its course.

(I don't think that the author has actually done any research into Japanese monster mythology, though I could be wrong. I don't have my reference to hand--I think there's precedent for bloodsuckers in Japanese monster myths, but they wouldn't track too closely to European-style vampires.)

I can still be won over by the same things that win me over in any novel: characterization, plotting, interesting prose, attention to detail, some convincing reason why the story should be about a vampire instead of something else. (Scott Westerfeld's "Peeps" worked for me on that level, at least.) But vampires are a definite minus for me at this point.

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Yes--that thing about Con. The vampire remains strange and Other the entire book. THAT is an achievement alone. McKinley could write pretty kick-ass SF with actual ALIENS, I think.

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