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.
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.