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.
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.