I read this rant over at i09 on why all vampire fiction is completely lame now. I have to agree with pretty much all of it. I find it interesting that the author never even once mentions Twilight, although she does mention sparkly vampires. It’s more of the entire genre (and yes, there is enough of it now that it can be called a genre, in my opinion) of post-Twilight vampire fiction: everyone is beautiful and handsome and all-around awesome, and they are sad about being vampires even though there is not a single detriment to being a vampire anymore.
To review, let’s look at the pros and cons of the traditional vampire (which I define as the most commonly accepted traits of vampires in various pre-Twilight fiction):
Pros:
Never grow old
Live forever
Superhuman strength, speed, etc.
Cons:
Never see the sun or sunlight again
Have to drink the blood of humans in order to survive
Killed by a stake in the heart
Sterility
Slowly become more and more detached from human emotion and the cares of mortals and their world
Having to avoid or kill vampire hunters or other groups that consider your very existence an abomination
Weakness to garlic (this has been steadily relaxed in more recent vampire mythoi, even before Twilight)
Weakness to crosses/holy symbols/faith (also steadily relaxed, although I thought that White Wolf’s World of Darkness dealt with this one well. It depended on the faith of the wielder of the holy symbol vs. the strength of will of the vampire.)
So you see there was a real serious price to pay for immortality, hence all vampires being crippled by some combination of guilt and ennui.
Now lets take the post-Twilight vampire:
Pros:
Never grow old
Live Forever
Superhuman strength, speed, etc.
Always be handsome and youthful
You sparkle!
Cons:
Have to drink the blood of humans in order to survive Not anymore! Now most mythoi have them either be vegetarians (i.e. drink animal blood), vampire researchers have developed an artificial ‘blood substitute’, or vampires run the blood bank.
….
And that’s it. There are really no cons to being a vampire anymore. So as the author of the rant points out, if there are no cons to being a vampire anymore, why are they all so angtsy and mopey! It just becomes poor fiction when characters have no motivation to act the way they do.
I’d hardly call “killed by a stake through the heart” a con of being a vampire. Assuming, of course, that we’re comparing it to being a human and not, for example, a starfisih.
Also, there have been a lot of pre-Twilight vampires who fed off of animal instead of human blood. Blood bank operating vampires are not new either.
I like Sunshine by Robin McKinley. Vampires are sadistic monsters that murder to live and are not ever attracted to their cheeseburgers.
There is one (and apparently only one)vampire who chooses not to torture his food before he eats it. In exchange for this he is less burdened by ennui then those who routinely play with their food.
Also the main character is a baker who makes cinnamon rolls as big as your head.
And really what else matters.
Twilight has left a bad taste in my mouth when it came to the whole vampire genre cause it completely ruined the scare factor of one of the most awesome horror monsters of all time. I recently seen Let The Right On In which has restored my faith in the genre and look forward to more movies like it. Hollywood needs to leave Twilight behind and get back to what truly works.