If a story, game, show, or movie contains vampires, I am immediately bored and will suspect the creator of being uncreative. Vampires are not cool. They have never been cool. The are the most overdone “monsters” in any form of media. And they are almost always the same; people with the mannerisms from 1800’s England or France and the dress sense of a 2005 Hot Topic. Why not ancient Babylon? Why not South American vampires? Why are their personalities always the fucking same? Why are they always so fucking formal? Why always the 1800’s; this one bugs me the most because the media often claims that Vampires are thousands of years old, so supposedly they kept up with the times until the 1800’s and then just stopped. It’s because writers who use them are lazy and uncreative.
“Oh it’s a metaphor for the duality of man and how there are secretly monsters living among-” shut the fuck up. Use a different metaphor if it’s that important to your story. But it never is. That’s never important to the story because they are always just so fucking lame. Always the same powers. Always the same weaknesses. They have been done to hell and back.
Use. A different. Monster.
Because the ones you’re thinking of, mostly older examples, are based around Bram Stoker’s novel or in the Hammer Horror vein.
There are, however, many more examples than I can think of which aren’t like that at all. 30 days of night, the satanic rites of dracula, from dusk til dawn, Byzantium, blade, near dark, night watch, day watch, blood red sky, daybreakers, the last voyage of the demeter, cronos, Dracula untold.
Whether you like it or not, vampires are sexy, scary, mysterious, and a quality monster.
If we’re going to stop something, I’d like less of the done-to-death superhero movies. Now they’re trite.
Oh they’re different? Do they still have pointed teeth and go “Hiss!”? Hmm, not very different then, are they?
You just sunk your whole argument. You had a potential point in your original post because you were talking about character traits and backstory inconsistencies, but now you’re talking about fundamental biology. It’s like saying “does a human character still have hair, feed young with milk, and have a 4-chambered heart? Hmm, not very different than any other human character now are they.”
What if every time you saw a regular human in a conflict in media, they did a New Zealand haka? At a certain point wouldn’t you be like, “why is that the default? What purpose does that serve?”
And you are completely missing the point. The argument isn’t “why do all vampires act the same?” it’s “Why use vampires at all?”. They are a LAME monster. They are overdone. Everyone in this thread giving suggestions “oh but in THIS media they are slightly diff-” I DONT CARE! THEY ARE STILL VAMPIRES! THE LAMEST, MOST OVERDONE MONSTERS IN ALL OF MEDIA!
I don’t CARE if they are slightly different because, to me, the concept as a whole is tired and overplayed. Do they have sharp teeth? Do they go “Hiss!” while showing their sharp teeth? Yes? Ok then what you have there is a type of vampire!
Fuck! Are you kidding? Do you really not get that? It’s like if you say you don’t like pizza and then get flooded with people going “Oh but have you tried THIS topping, or THIS style?” and then they get upset and make asinine claims like “You just sunk your whole argument” when you point out that all of that is fucking moot because all of their examples ARE STILL FUCKING PIZZA!
You’re the one who complained about specific aspects of vampire media instead of vampires in general.
To use your pizza comparison, it’s like saying you don’t like pizza because it has pepperoni on, then screaming that everything about pizza is the problem when someone suggests you have a non-pepperoni pizza. You don’t care about the settings, or the mannerisms, or the metaphors, you just hate vampires.
Well, if someone gave you a stale tortilla smothered in ketchup and called it pizza, sure, you’d hate pizza.
My favorite vampire depictions are:
When they straddle the line between sex and violence, representing the dark and frightening Freudian id or Jungian shadow of the human experience. The beast that wants to fuck and kill, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, with only the thin veneer of fancy clothes and quick wit between humanity and depravity.
Or, when the vampire is a metaphor for the exploitative, imperialistic, capitalistic power structures that dominate everyone one of our lives. The elite few who seem to be a different species, but somehow have the world on puppet strings. Those mysterious figures who lurk in the halls of power, charming us and manipulating us and herding us like cattle, ready to be consumed.
Any trope can become a cliche, like you point out, but they become tropes for a reason. I won’t fight you for your preferences and opinions, but be careful of broad statements.
That means you could maybe invent some kind of vampire that you like. Without the mentioned traits that bug you.
Maybe just a pale dude that sleeps alot idk…
That’s, like, your opinion, man…
A vampire is still a vampire at the core. They can be different in all other ways. Same with literally anything.
Why don’t you just get rid of monsters, if they’re all just scary things that aren’t human? They’re all the same.
You both moved the goalposts and made a weaker point.
By that definition pretty much all monsters and even regular baddies are vampires as opening your mouth to show teeth and going “GAAAARRHHHGGGSSS” or smth is pretty universal.
Is Anaconda a vampire? Godzilla? Hulk? Alien?
The ones in Near Dark are more like junkies than barely have their shit together. Any hissing comes from the noises of the semi truck the protagonist used to run down one of them.
Seems like you’re moving the goal post with this comment (from how they act/are used to their definition), which isn’t great conversation or rhetoric. On the other hand, I get where you’re coming from. I felt the same way about zombies back when everybody had their zombie apocalypse plan, discussed fast vs slow zombies, and there were so many movies, TV shows, games, etc. It all felt so lazy.
What do you think other people get out of it? A friend of mine had a view on zombies that was basically: you get to shoot people and not feel bad about it. You get to be clever without ever having your plan tested. You get to feel better than everybody else because surely you’d rise to the occasion unlike those millions of idiots that got bitten.
So what do you think others get out of vampires? Why’s it a turn off for you? What could you change to make them palatable to you? I’m guessing it goes a little deeper than just originality and it might be an interesting way to learn more about yourself, your values, and how that relates to the world beyond the screen.
That’s my cat!