{"id":510,"date":"2010-03-29T10:28:24","date_gmt":"2010-03-29T15:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/?p=510"},"modified":"2013-09-11T14:15:20","modified_gmt":"2013-09-11T19:15:20","slug":"vampire-lameness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/archives\/510","title":{"rendered":"Vampire Lameness"},"content":{"rendered":"

I read this rant<\/a> 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<\/em> (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<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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):
\nPros<\/strong>:
\nNever grow old
\nLive forever
\nSuperhuman strength, speed, etc.<\/p>\n

Cons<\/strong>:
\nNever see the sun or sunlight again
\nHave to drink the blood of humans in order to survive
\nKilled by a stake in the heart
\nSterility
\nSlowly become more and more detached from human emotion and the cares of mortals and their world
\nHaving to avoid or kill vampire hunters or other groups that consider your very existence an abomination
\nWeakness to garlic (this has been steadily relaxed in more recent vampire mythoi, even before Twilight)
\nWeakness 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.)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Now lets take the post-Twilight vampire:
\nPros<\/strong>:
\nNever grow old
\nLive Forever
\nSuperhuman strength, speed, etc.
\nAlways be handsome and youthful
\nYou sparkle!<\/p>\n

Cons<\/strong>:
\nHave to drink the blood of humans in order to survive<\/del> 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.
\n….<\/p>\n

And that’s it. There are really no cons to being a vampire anymore. So as the author<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":635,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions\/635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.moroha.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}