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.
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.
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…
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’s, like, your opinion, man…