Ripping The Vampire A New One

Okay, I know that every vampire story has angst. It's always "boohoo, being a vampire sucks!" with them. But when you really think about, does it ever follow through? Being a vampire is always portrayed as being a majestic, well-toned, lady-killing war machine with a shell of steel and a heart of gold. All the supposed "downsides" are all softened up and practically nonexistent.

That's where this comes in. I want to shatter the common image of vampire. Revive the terror of the original myth and showing just how well it jives with many of today's vampire stories. Which is to say, not at all.

I've come to ask for your help in deconstructing today's glorified vampire. We're going back to the older image of the vampire for inspiration, but there is room for Our Vampires Are Different. Basically, as long as it follows these rules:

• Vampires are immortal
• Vampires need blood/life force to sustain their immortality
• Vampires have a physical compulsion to drink blood. It is not an option, it is mandatory, and it can't be ignored, only put off
• Vampire bites kill, without exception
• Vampires have an innate ability to manipulate the unwitting and the weak-minded through post-hypnotic suggestion that manifests in its speech*
  ^{I'm iffy on this one, may or may not keep}

If anyone would like to add or criticize this basic list, feel free to do so. With these rules in mind, give me your ideas. How do we go about destroying the romanticized image of the modern-day vampire?

edited 2nd Jul '11 11:00:46 PM by KSPAM

Make them ugly, very ugly. And stupid, very stupid.

Don't forget rape/lust!

edited 2nd Jul '11 11:07:16 PM by Five_X

Why must all vampire stories have sex, make them utterly asexuel. And don't make them have complex societies.

What I immediately thought of.

I'm too tired to provide any constructive suggestions right now, but I just wanted to say that you, sir/ma'am, are my hero. Enough of the angsty vamps already.

Good ideas so far. The complex society thing always seemed kinda bullshit. How did they all find eachother anyway? They're not exactly common.

I really wanna drive in the blood lust aspect of vampires. They need to feed, it's what makes a vampire. Nobody ever said they could control it with the Power of Love until recently. I'm thinking of playing with the vampire romance genre by intially having the protagonist fall in love shortly after becoming a vampire but inevitably give into his blood lust and kill her. This deeply scars him, preventing him from ever forming any sort of meaningful relationship without major effort by both parties.

Or, going the other way...

Being a vampire is really, really awesome. Too awesome for basic human decency to survive contact with for very long. They prey on humans for shits n' giggles—sure, we can get our blood somewhere else, but it's funny watching you guys squirm.

Basically, if it's about ripping apart the modern image of the vampire as opposed to building upon the old image, my first idea is a bunch of superhuman, nigh-invincible, stunningly handsome, utterly irredeemable sociopaths who prey on the weak—that is to say, you and everyone you know. They will not make sweet love to you if you're interesting to them, if you're interesting, they'll find you, kill you, and then eat you.

Oh, hey, that just gave me another idea. It always seems that there are these certain humans (teenage girls) that are special to these generally terrifying supernatural beings. For whatever reason, this usually means good sex. Make it mean a painful and messy death.

Now, I admit, this isn't the best way to go about inspiring revulsion and fear. It's kinda Hellsing-ish, and Alucard is pretty awesome. But it does the job of de-romanticizing pretty handily, IMO.

I read a story ages ago where the vampire viewed having actual sex with a human as bestiality - akin to a human wanting to have sex with cattle or other food animals. Would use the lure of sexuality to draw in the victim but feed and kill instead of having sex.

Hmmm. Not a bad idea actually. If you were immortal and insanely powerful and charismatic with no ability to form a lasting relationship with any other human and no real reason to give two shits about authority (which pretty much sums up the vampire), what incentive would you have to behave like a decent human being?

I can easily see how a newly (re)born vampire clinging on to that particular slippery slope for dear life could make for a great deconstruction. Person is turned into a vampire. Person tries to go back to living how they used to. Blood lust surfaces, other vampires show up. Sanity Slippage ensues.

edited 3rd Jul '11 1:25:46 AM by KSPAM

It seems that the angest of a vampire is inverse of how monsterous they actually are.

For example compare Edward from twilight with Alucard from Helsing.

Now which ones angesting?

On a side note I'm not sure if I mentioned it before butI imagine that if crossess repell them its because it's widely known as an execution tool.

In short they see it and their subconcious kicks in and remembers "Oh shit I'm suppouse to be dead."

Basically the vampire is just where the monster and witch folktales intersect.

Any comments on the idea I proposed in my last post?

I like it.

Hell how about you make your vampires sparkle, but do it in a horrible way.

Perhaps make him an authority of his own, with a cult of followers, who protect him when he´s "sleeping", and who are bound to do as he wills or suffer horrible deaths. Also, he can be frighteningly intelligent and manipulative.

Perhaps he spreads rumours of very difficult ways to kill or hurt him, just for shits and giggles? Form suicide cults? Pretend to be a divinity? In a modern setting, a guy who can turn into fog can wreak unthinkable devastation just by stealing military secrets and posting them in the net.

My take on vampires is this:

They're purely biological, not supernatural. Vampirism is caused by a colonial parasitic organism that takes over the body, replacing organs and alters the host to suit it (it's based off several real-life parasites; none of them do everything the vampire parasite does, but everything it does is also done by a real organism). So no magic - no levitating, no turning into bats, none of this "kill the head vampire" schtick. That last bit only pisses them off.

They do absolutely need to drink blood, not just for nourishment but to keep hydrated. They're stronger and faster than normal humans, but the catch is they burn out very quickly. Think cheetah: one quick burst of incredible energy, then a long recovery time during which they're vulnerable, not to mention going into metabolic shutdown during daylight hours. They spend most of the time napping or sitting very, very still.

They're easily killed during the first few weeks of undeath, when the parasite is still trying to get a handle on the human brain and they're instinctual killing machines. Most vampires get picked off during this stage. They do live for quite a while, but they're not immortal. 400 years or so, tops. Garlic? Buggers up their sense of smell. Holy water, crosses, that sort of thing? Doesn't do a thing to them, but they've learned over the centuries that humans carrying icons of faith are much more dangerous to them, since they have a false sense of security. They are hard to kill, even able to survive decapitation if the pieces are put back together soon enough (kind of like how a sea sponge can reassemble after going through a strainer). Burning is the best way to finish one off.

Their biggest asset is a psychotropic neurotoxin they can exhale as a mist or inject with a bite. It puts victims into a passive near-torpor that makes feeding from them much easier. Vamps only take a few ounces of blood per victim, and it's possible a victim can become addicted to the sensation and convince themselves they love the vamp and the vamp loves them. It's all in the victim's mind, though. Vamps have a very alien method of reproduction and a primitive, harem-style social structure where the Q-types continually fight each other for rank and the attention of the ruling K-type (K-types kill each other on sight, Q-types can just barely tolerate each other if there's a K-type around to keep them in line). There is nothing left in them of human emotion, no possibility of one feeling affection for a human, although they can simulate it to a degree in order to get close to potential prey.

Biggest drawback is that they're really not very smart, probably due to brain damage during the resurrection process. They can get by for most of what they have to do by instinct, and they're bound to pick up a few tricks over their long existence, but they're utterly incapable of the grand schemes and complex villainy of most fictional vampires. Humans cook up conspiracy theories and attribute them to the vampires, but really they're like tapeworms on two legs. By modern times most of them have been killed off.

I don't think the angsty Friendly Neighborhood Vampire is bad in and of itself. Bad writers can make any plot device look bad, and lately all anyone seems to think about regarding good guy vampires is Twilight, but there are plenty of well-written books/shows/etc with friendly vampires in them. The Hollows, for example. Or Angel.

edited 5th Jul '11 7:49:31 PM by Ettina

In the old legends, there was a very thin distinction between witches, vampires and werewolves - also faeries. You could make the vampire a woman who gets power from the devil and turns into a wolf-monster (no moon bullshit, that came late in the legends); she just drinks blood because its EVIL muahaha, ya know.

Oh, and the act of drinking should be messy - they don't have fangs, they just rip their victims' throats out and lap up the gush, ya know. Fangs are as new-fangled as silver and full moons in werewolf legends.

edited 8th Jul '11 1:48:02 PM by nekomoon14

Not to mention, fangs don't work that way. At least, not the fangs vampires always have in movies, which are conical. A conical fang would *plug* the hole it made - they're made to dig into flesh and hold. Some folkloric vampires opened up victims with an elongated fingernail or a sliver on bone hidden in the tongue, those would be neat alternatives to fangs.

Totally!

Cirque du Freak has the vampires cutting an incision with their nails, which at the time bugged me because I love the idea of fangs. Fangs are sexy, tee hee.

Vampires, whether male or female, are sexy and The Beautiful People. As noted, though, they treat sex with humans as we would treat sex with cattle (I love that description). My idea, however, is that underneath the sexy is a Humanoid Abomination. The above idea about demythifying vampires would limit this, if you used it, but still, how fun would it be to have Edward come in, the fangirls melt, and then he turns into the goddamned Slender Man and tears them to bits...

I WANT TO DO THIS SO MUCH RIGHT NOW.

I can't decide which idea to go with though, this one or one I've been fooling around with involving a Deus est Machina.

I, too, have thought about including a much more...shall we say, harrowing version of vampires. Me being me, I thought to myself, "Okay, where have I seen vampires that are powerful, lethal, and demand respect?"

Then I clapped my hands together and said Castlevania.

It makes sense, doesn't it? Dracula provides a good baseline for a vampire, but there's still a lot of playing around to be done. For my purposes, the plan is to make him (and in my universe, there are only one or two vampires, tops) less beautiful and more...wrinkly. A Badass Grandpa, if you will — strong, capable, and intelligent, but more than willing to let his peons do all the legwork (i.e. having them drag victims to his lair) for him. Of course, he'd be all too eager to take off his spiffy jacket and transforms into a massive being of unparalleled power when presented the chance.

Well, those are my two cents. Spend them at your leisure.

Have their bishounen/jo human forms be just some sort of "skin" that they wear to blend in with society, to make it easier to catch their prey.