Darth Wiki / The Aspen Valley Incident

The Aspen Valley Incident is a novel by The Evil Oboist.

Victor Larousse, a transient vampire hunter of half-vampire parentage, gets called to the cheerful little town of Aspen Valley, USA to deal with an unusually large vampire population. So far, the city government has managed to keep the story hushed up, but it isn't long before the vampires multiply out of control. Unfortunately, Victor's efforts to solve said problem are often thwarted by some members of the city government, including the mayor, who also has it in for Henry Matheson, Victor's host and 192-year-old vampire. Henry runs an ambiguously legal medical clinic where he patches up bite victims as well as shot-up gangsters. There's also another Dhampyr, Bianca Anzino, who tries to pass as a human and works as a chef in an Italian restaurant. Hilarity Ensues, until the plot takes an extremely dark turn...

The Evil Oboist wrote it partially as a response to The Twilight Saga. She challenged herself to write a vampire story without romance or needless angst, with a male main character. Of course, given Victor's rather unhappy life, some angst ensues, but the author has worked hard to make it realistic and keep it from taking over the story. Part of the plot involves him overcoming the guilt he's accumulated and moving past his beloved girlfriend's death, but the main plot is definitely about him getting rid of the vampires and solving the mystery of why they're there in the first place.

The Aspen Valley Incident provides examples of:

• Action Girl: Alicia is implied to be one, since she only appears in Victor's dreams. Also Bianca, sometimes. She firmly resists hunting vampires because Victor asks her to, but once the vampires start hurting her business...
• All Gays Are Pedophiles: The court tries to use this against Henry.
• Anti-Hero: Played with. Victor is far from a squeaky-clean hero, but his motives are generally good and he doesn't hurt the innocent. Henry is idealistic and very kind, but is always pushing the envelope when it comes to his clinic. Bianca comes closest to being a true Anti-Hero, since she can be a real bitch and her motives are largely selfish.
• Author Appeal: Action girls, redheads, badasses, vampires, moral ambiguity, cats...
• Auto Erotica: Victor and Alicia's first time.

• Badass Longcoat: Henry again, when he confronts the mayor at the end
• Badass Normal: Alicia, a human vampire hunter. Too bad she wasn't quite badass enough...
• Battle Couple: Victor and Alicia
• Berserk Button: For Victor, seeing a vampire threaten a mother with a child. For Henry, indirectly causing Clarissa's death.
• Bilingual Bonus: Lucien always addresses Victor in French. Additionally, Victor has a dream sequence where the dialogue is in French.
• Blind Without 'Em: Henry got an eyeful of sunlight one time, and therefore has to wear glasses.
  • Smart People Wear Glasses: They do have the added advantage of making him look more intellectual.
  • Four Eyes, Zero Soul: ...And scarier when he gets angry.
• Boring, but Practical: Using a stake or knife to kill a vampire, as opposed to a gun that shoots silver bullets.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: "I've got apple juice... orange juice... milk... A positive... B positive..."
  • Also, Henry's shopping list: tortellini, fruit, chicken, T.P., Taser cartridges.
• The Can Kicked Him: Victor kills a vampire in the nightclub bathroom.
• Children Are Innocent
• Clear My Name: Henry is wrongfully accused of killing Clarissa. The fact Henry, Victor, and Bianca all returned to the apartment at the exact same time after being out all night only to find Clarissa dead and Molly nearly so should be enough to clear Henry's name, but the town higher-ups have it in for him.
• Cute Little Fangs: Subverted, because even though Victor is only half-vampire, his teeth are just as sharp and scary as a full vampire's. Every other characteristic of his is fully half-vampire and half-human.
• Deadpan Snarker: Bianca, though the others have their moments
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Bianca. Only without the Defrosting part.
• Dhampyr: In this story, they have half the powers and half the weaknesses of vampires. They must eat food in addition to blood to survive, and they have yellow eyes.
• Earn Your Bittersweet Ending
• Embarrassing First Name: Eugene Victor Larousse
• Erotic Dream: Victor has one that turns into Fan Disservice when it segues into a dream about Alicia's death.
• Fan Disservice: Alicia is in a Black Bra and Panties. Only problem is, she's hanging from the ceiling, tortured, and dying.
• First-Person Smartass
• Food Porn: Victor likes to think he's a pretty good cook and describes what he's making in detail. Also, Bianca's black forest cake is known for miles around, and the restaurant is always packed. Expect descriptions of what everyone's eating.
• Freud Was Right
  Victor: I'm sure Freud would have a field day if he ever heard about my dreams.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Henry
• Fun T-Shirt: Alicia and Molly both wear t-shirts with unknown indie bands on them.
• Gay Aesop: It seems to be turning into one of these, no matter how much I try to stop it from doing so.
• Genius Bonus: The hospital is called Raphael Hospital. The church where Clarissa goes to preschool is the Church of Saint Matilda. The church that refused to baptize Victor was Saint Martin's Church. Henry and Lucien go to see Macbeth. Others are scattered throughout—if you get the reference, there's a lot of foreshadowing to be had.

• Healing Factor: When Victor gets seriously injured by a gang of vampires, he's better a few days later. One of his Dhampyr characteristics is quick healing.
• Heroic Bastard: Victor. He met his father exactly once, when he was sixteen.
• Heroic BSoD: Henry, when Clarissa gets killed
• Ho Yay: I'm sure there will be Victor/Henry slash, whether I like it or not.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Victor is about 6'4", Alicia was pushing 5'3".
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!
  Henry: No, McCarthy... I'm not going to kill you. And do you know why? Because I am not. Like. You.
• Kids Are Cruel: Victor's childhood and adolescence was marked by his schoolmates shunning him or pushing him around. To make things worse, it wasn't even completely because he was a Dhampyr—he was just funny-looking in general.
• Lean and Mean: Henry was not given any blood while in jail. When he gets out, he's not happy or healthy, to say the least.
• Loners Are Freaks: People don't think Henry's evil because he's a loner. He's a loner because they think he's evil.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: How the mayor plans to get rid of Henry.
• Mercy Kill: Victor throws a water balloon full of holy water at a vampire and melts his face. He remarks that it feels like a mercy kill when he finally kills him with a knife.
• Missing White Woman Syndrome: Clarissa may be white, but in contrast to the usual way this trope happens, she isn't blonde or blue-eyed. Her death is publicized not because she was an adorable little blonde girl, but because she was under Henry's care at the time.
• Moral Event Horizon: The government's obstruction is just annoying until Clarissa dies as a result of it.
• Morality Pet: Clarissa is Henry's, sort of. Henry is a major workaholic, but now that he is raising her, he tries to not work so much and to spend more time with her.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot:
  Victor: For vampires, dhampyr blood is like steak, stuffed with tiramisu, drenched in chocolate sauce, topped with gruyere cheese, on a bed of raspberry truffles, served on a giant white chocolate macadamia nut cookie by a hot chick who is also drenched in chocolate sauce.
• Noodle Incident: Sometimes happens when Victor references his past adventures.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Everyone in the city government
• Our Vampires Are Different: Not really. They do, however, get uglier and less human-looking the more they kill.
• Pædo Hunt: The court accuses Henry of being a pedophile in addition to a child killer, leading to some in-universe Unfortunate Implications.
• Papa Wolf: Henry will not like you if you kill his seven-times-great-granddaughter
• Pass Fail: Victor can immediately tell that Bianca is not completely human.
• Pointy Ears: Vampires and Dhampyrs have them. Bianca's have been surgically altered to look like human ears.
• Precision F-Strike:
  Bianca: They'll make it look like an accident. They'll drag him out into the sunlight after the trial, whether he's innocent or not.
  Victor: ...fuck.
• Punch-Clock Hero: Killing vampires is Victor's job.
• Really 700 Years Old: Henry looks 30. He's actually 192.
• Right-Hand Cat: Heroic example: Victor's cat, Abraham Van Helsing.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: The Mayor seems to think that he's exempt from the law.
• Shout-Out: Abraham Van Helsing again. Also to Watchmen, when Victor says he could totally "pull a Rorschach" and refuse to help anyone, but he doesn't.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Victor and Alicia
• Straight Gay: Henry.
  Victor: So what's her name?
  Henry: His name is Lucien.
  Victor: Oh. Sorry... I didn't mean to assume...
  Henry: That's all right. It's not super obvious, and I'm not exactly a one-man pride parade.
• Take That!: To Twilight. Of course.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Henry, when he wears something other than scrubs and a lab coat.
• Too Dumb to Live: All the people that go out at night despite being consistently warned that this will get them killed.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Victor and Bianca.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: Bianca. Also a Shout-Out to Firefly when she sticks a vampire's ear into her bra.
• Warm Bloodbags Are Everywhere: Over almost two hundred years, Henry has all but erased his thirst for living blood. He now only drinks donated blood or animal blood.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The hardest problem I'm having with this is keeping it apolitical. Vampires can be a metaphor for gays or ethnic minorities, and I've managed to make it both.
• You Remind Me of Alicia: Molly reminds Victor of Alicia.