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I want to suck your blood - Vampires and the vampire concept

greensun said:
Also xenophobia; the count is a foreigner, from an Eastern European country that is largely Catholic. A group the protestant English of the time looked down on and even feared. Look at how John Harker talks so condescendingly at the woman who handed him a crucifix, he indulges her but makes no bones that he thinks these people are simple and fearful.
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While this is true, note that Dr. Van Helsing is himself both a foreigner and a Catholic.
 
krinsbez said:
While this is true, note that Dr. Van Helsing is himself both a foreigner and a Catholic.
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Oh I know. Dracula is a fairly... egalitarian I think the word would be. Mina Harker and Helsing, a woman and a foreign Catholic, are the ones who help save the day. Sectarianism is wrong, prejudice is wrong. And it leads to ignoring people who are trying to help you and then you wind up in a mental asylum after nearly becoming three vampire ladies Capri-Sun.
 
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greensun said:
Oh I know. Dracula is a fairly... egalitarian I think the word would be. Mina Harker and Helsing, a woman and a foreign Catholic, are the ones who help save the day. Sectarianism is wrong, prejudice is wrong. And it leads to ignoring people who are trying to help you and then you wind up in a mental asylum after nearly becoming three vampire ladies Capri-Sun.
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Indeed.

Note also that, as I've said before, Dracula is positively drowning in homoerotic subtext.

Fun fact: I know of at least one person who noted that, while you can make arguments either way for whether or not Bram Stoker was gay, it's 100% certain he was in love with Henry Irving.

comradepitrovsky said:
Listen, you all would watch Dracula fight the Vampire Pope.
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One of those shows up in
the Orion-era of Matt Wagner's Grendel.
 
Fourthspartan56 said:
Why though? That only makes sense if vampires naturally emphatic (in a psychic sense) or people are capable of warping reality with their belief.
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Unhappy Anchovy had a pretty good breakdown of it and all the traditional vampire weaknesses* on SB:
UA said:
That explanation is bulls---, though. I don't mean that you're wrong, just that it's bulls---. Sunlight harms vampires because it is a well-understood feature of vampire mythology that they fear the sun. Light figuratively represents truth and purity and holiness and so on, which makes it anathema to vampires, creeping parasites of darkness who are associated with vermin.
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But in any case, the important part is how well the origin of the rules surrounding vampires fits vampires as literary constructs. That's the strength of the Molag Bal creation myth: a vampire is, pretty much by definition, a being that must attack and physically violate other intelligent beings for sustenance. Vampires make a lot of sense as rape metaphors, with blood-drinking as the stand-in for sex. Of course these nightmarish creatures who must ravish or corrupt the living to survive come from the King of Rape.

Why are vampires typically burned by the sun? Because vampires are cowardly creatures of darkness, who hide in the shadows to stalk their prey and cannot bear the light of truth. It's symbolic. The idea that vampires are vulnerable to sunlight is not arbitrary, but has to do the symbolism of the sun. Vampires are particularly vulnerable to fire as well. Why? Because fire is often associated with cleansing. It burns away all impurities. Thus particularly spiritually impure or corrupt creatures fear the flames. Similar elements apply to other traditional weaknesses of vampires. Running water? They can only cross still or stagnant water, because running water is clean. Why are vampires harmed by holy ground, or why do they recoil from holy symbols or texts? Same thing: their corrupt nature cannot bear truth or sacredness. Garlic? ...okay, I can't really think of a good reason for garlic. But whatever.
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Tl:dr:
Its symbolism, because like a lot of other mythological creations the vampires symbolically represent certain aspects of the world as does their weaknesses.


*....Except garlic I guess. Garlic is weird.
 
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greensun said:
I'm going to be honest, but I missed that. I didn't really see anything that could be considered homoerotic.
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Really? Stuff like sexy and seductive females repeatedly being described as gross and disgusting or the scene of Dracula telling the brides to back off because Jonathan is his...?

There's also the fact that the book is basically a paean to male friendship, which is oft mistaken as homoeroticism by damnfools who refuse to acknowledge that intimacy isn't necessarily sexual.

At the very least, you can agree that any kind of heteroerotic reading is bull, right?

Speaking of wrong takes on Dracula, I recall reading an essay where at one point the author of said essay writes glowingly about how awesome it is that the scene of Mina being turned is a metaphor for oral sex. My reaction: :o
 
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Vindictus said:
IIRC, Garlic was used by the ancient Greeks as an offering to Hecate in exchange for her protection, and also used as a medicine and/or to ward off evil spirits by a bunch of historical cultures.
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I recall reading a bit in the first installment of P. N Elrod's series about a Vampire Reporter-turned-PI(-later-turned-nightclub-owner) in Depression-era Chicago (I think it was called The Vampire Files? Regardless, I really liked that series), where the protagonist is going over his strengths and weaknesses with his new secret-keeper-cum-employer, and when garlic gets brought up explains that in certain areas, garlic was simply assumed to be an all-purpose anti-bad-juju remedy.

(incidentally, apropos of an earlier argument, I consider this to be a non-obnoxious way of dismissing a traditional vampire weakness, in that suggesting it is presented as entirely reasonable but erroneous, for reasons other than the person suggesting it being an idiot)
 
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krinsbez said:
At the very least, you can agree that any kind of heteroerotic reading is bull, right?

(I recall reading an essay where the author writes glowingly about how awesome it is that the scene of Mina being turned is a metaphor for oral sex. My reaction:o_O)
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It's not heteroerotic, it has major metaphors for rape and sexual assault. Even Johnathon Harker's run in with the Brides is framed as being without his full consent - as they used some magic vampire stuff to get him going. (and if anyone says a man can't be sexually assaulted by a woman, I will slap you through the internet.)

Now that scene in particular isn't supposed to be representative of any one kind of assault, but is very much a man forcing a woman into an act does not want to through force.
 
greensun said:
It's not heteroerotic, it has major metaphors for rape and sexual assault. Even Johnathon Harker's run in with the Brides is framed as being without his full consent - as they used some magic vampire stuff to get him going. (and if anyone says a man can't be sexually assaulted by a woman, I will slap you through the internet.)

Now that scene in particular isn't supposed to be representative of any one kind of assault, but is very much a man forcing a woman into an act does not want to through force.
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EX-actly!
 
So, someone liked one of my posts in which the Count Von Count was discussed, and I would like to share a Sesame Street headcanon with y'all:

How it is that an inner city NYC neighborhood in the '70s and '80s never had any gangbangers or drug dealers around? Answer; the Count eats them.
 
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krinsbez said:
So, someone liked one of my posts in which the Count Von Count was discussed, and I would like to share a Sesame Street headcanon y'all:

How it is that an inner city NYC neighborhood in the '70s and '80s never had any gangbangers or drug dealers around? Answer; the Count eats them.
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I assumed he just hypnotises them to stop being gangbangers and drug dealers?
 
My view is that the city of NYC knows about the vampire lord living there. The neighborhood of Sesame Street is his territory, the dealers and gangs know this, so they avoid it. The government would have sent people in to deal with him, but he is useful.
 
Hykal94 said:
"You wanna buy some deathsticks?"

"You don't want to sell me deathsticks."

"I don't want to sell you deathsticks."

"You want to go home and rethink your life."

"I want to go home and rethink my life."
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"He's right. Why am I wasting my life on minor unprofitable crime like personally selling street drugs? I should be more ambitious!"
 
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