Basic Trope: A vampire is actually good at heart.
- Straight: Vlad is rather kind and doesn't want to harm people.
- Exaggerated:
- Vlad the Vampire is bubbly and affectionate and acts like a cheerful little girl.
- If it weren't for the fact it's 3 AM and Vlad had just told Alice such, you'd never guess that Vlad was a vampire and you'd never know he's struggling with his Horror Hunger, because of how friendly he's being to her.
- Downplayed:
- Vlad isn't a bad person, but isn't exactly pleasant either.
- Vlad is more of akin to The Casanova or a Con Man in terms of getting people to give what he wants as opposed to assault or murder. An asshole sure but staking him would be massive overkill.
- Justified:
- Vampirism is a disease that affects otherwise normal people, and it has no logical reason to alter their personalities.
- Because of all the negative stereotypes from horror movies and scary stories involving vampires, trying to be on good terms with ordinary humans can make vampire life easier.
- Vampires have to get blood from one who is friendly to them, and don't need to feed very regularly, so being polite and friendly makes their desires more understandable but also allows them to feed from a willing volunteer.
- Vampires can get blood from any living creature, and Vlad just happens to dislike the taste of human blood.
- Vlad is a humanized insectivorous or fructivorous bat.
- It's realistic fiction, and Vlad is a Perky Goth who lives a vampire lifestyle
. - As well as being far more moral, it's also more pragmatic to feed from willing people than unwilling ones. Vampires who leave behind trails of death and destruction inevitably attract attention and make enemies.
- Inverted: Vlad is evil.
- Subverted:
- Vald seems pretty harmless, but that's just a facade he puts up to lure in victims.
- Vlad strikes up a funny conversation with Alice, then suddenly lunges for her neck.
- Vlad refusing to give in to his bloodlust is not the sign that he is a good person. Rather, becoming an unstable blood addict would be a hinderance to his plans.
- Double Subverted:
- Vlad starts to become the mask and ends up as a truly nice person.
- Vlad deliberately misses, he was just goofing around.
- Vlad's plan turns out to be a Zero-Approval Gambit that eventually achieves a massive victory for the side of good, Vlad taking advantage of the evil reputation vampires have to achieve it.
- Parodied: Vlad tries to clean up his act, and ends up encountering a series of absurdly violent events, which leave him comically failing in his goal.
- Zig Zagged:
- Nobody's quite sure if the Vlad is really friendly, or if he's just waiting for the right time to strike.
- Vampire society is a mish-mash of factions. Some of them respect humans, other see them as cattle, and nobody's quite sure which side is "winning" underneath the Gambit Pileup.
- Averted:
- Vampirism twists the victim's psychology as much as their mind; whatever morality they had before doesn't survive the transformation.
- Vampires don't appear in the work.
- Enforced:
- It's a kids' show, so there can't be violence, but they want to include vampires anyway.
- The work wants to subvert common expectations of vampires by having some of them be polite.
- The author hates the Always Chaotic Evil trope.
- Lampshaded: "You're rather nice for a vampire."
- Invoked:
- Realizing how mean the rest of his kind are, a vampire decides to be friendly just to be different than the rest.
- Vlad does not particularly feel like chasing down screaming victims, and he really doesn't want to have a Wooden Stake hammered through him, so he opts for an honest night's work and getting blood from willing donors. It's hard sometimes, but at least he can still look at himself in the mirror... metaphorically, of course.
- Exploited:
- Instead of having to clean up expired biohazardous blood packs, blood banks can feed the friendly local vampires before any blood pack reaches its expiration date.
- Whenever the town has a person-related issue to deal with-a serial killer, a group of bandits, etc-they ask Vlad to help out. Vlad, not enough of a Nice Guy to spare killers or bandits, is happy to oblige. The town gets the problem removed and Vlad gets sustenance.
- Defied: Asked to try being nice for once, Vlad laughs at the idea, refuses, and goes back to killing people.
- Discussed: "Why're you so kind? Aren't vampires supposed to be mean?" "Well, I guess I'm just different."
- Conversed: "Since when is Count Dracula a Friend to All Children?"
- Implied: Vlad is never shown on screen, but when Dr. Van Helping from out of town bursts into a pub, freaking out and hollering, "Vlad is a vampire!" the locals shrug and respond, "Yeah, so what?"
- Deconstructed:
- Even though Vlad really is nice, society's expectations of vampires leave him feared by humans and scorned by his own kind.
- Even though Vlad is a genuinely nice guy, he's also in constant danger of losing control. If he's a perspective character at all, it makes sure you know exactly what being a vampire entails.
- Since vampires can retain their morality, most humans see vampirism as a net positive and choose to be turned, leading to human blood becoming a scarce resource. Mass starvation ensues.
- Reconstructed:
- Knowing that humans expect vampires to be bloodthirsty, Vlad hides his identity and decides to live among humans as an ordinary member of society anyway.
- Even knowing the difficulties of trying to be a moral person while having to deal with being a vampire, Vlad remains on the side of good because he's that dedicated to being there. For Vlad's human friends and allies it is even more impressive in a way, which spurs them to help him out in his constant struggle.
- There are laws in place limiting how many people can be turned over a certain timespan, or Vlad makes the downsides of vampirism clear so humans can make informed decisions. Alternately, vampires don't just spend their immortal lives doing nothing; some devote centuries to scientific research and invent a blood substitute, so there'll be plenty of food even if the vampire population grows to outnumber the human one, plus this makes it even easier to remain friendly.
- Played For Laughs: Vlad gets subject to many humorous vampire-related gags, such as accidentally turning into a bat at inopportune times, discussing funny stories about things that happened to him centuries ago, and getting grossed out by garlic.
- Played For Drama:
- When Vlad's secret is exposed, half of the town defends him while the other half tries to kill him. People end up dead in the ensuing fight, and Vlad suffers with the guilt of causing it.
- Dr Van Helping stakes Vlad to death, only to later find out from a grieving Alice that he never hurt anyone in his (un)life. Cue Heel Realization as Van Helping is forced to reassess everything he thought he knew about vampires.
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