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

EarthScorpion said:
I do, however, disagree somewhat about the "primacy" - or, rather, the primacy of the vampire is just one form born of the aristocratic vampire and thus passed down to their descendants (like vampire-as-sexy-celebrity). There's certainly place for what might be described as pre-modern vampires - the original folklore kind of wicked souls who claw their way out of their grave (often linked to deals with the devil or cursed blood) and who are dead, taking life from others to sustain their own existence. These vampires are not what I would describe as lordly or princely or even pre-eminent - they're wretched, cursed souls, damned by their nature, serving the devil and evil due to their own vices, sins and moral weakness. They're pitiful, crippled by their weaknesses (driven away by the chiming of church bells, burned by silver, repulsed by icons of faith), and all they can prey on is the ignorant or those away from God's love. This is a much more low-key kind of vampire, who in the folklore rather more exists to be beaten - often as a morality lesson tied to the necessity of faith.
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This kind of fits in with what I think of as the 'ideal' vampire as well. I feel that vampires are always better when they're less of a pale aristocrat with superpowers, and more of a folkloric monster that (sometimes) wears a people-suit. It lives on the margins of society, subjecting those that stray too far out, whether in terms of faith as you mention, or just geographical proximity, to a horrifying fate.

There's a lot of tbe said for the Vampire as a stand in for inequality or exploitation, but I feel that it's place should be that of the wolf of European folklore, playing on our fears of darkness, isolation and the unknown.

I think Dracula is interesting in this regard because it kind of combines both of these elements rather seamlessly. Count Dracula is an aristocratic figure with a lot of wealth, and commands influence through indirect means, but the way he directly interacts with people is a lot different than a human; the way he skulks around public places, picking off isolated people in the comfort of their bedrooms is in some ways more characteristic of a poltergeist than a person.
NonSequtur said:
I agree with some of the points, namely vampires as corruptive and injuring those around them, but I find myself rather at odds with the vampire as top of the supernatural food chain - or at least in the images conjured by Ford's examples. Vampires should be strong, yes, strong enough that it takes a powerful and heroic person to fight them toe to toe, but their power shouldn't be in punching dudes or throwing lightning or making golems out of blood or whatever. They should probably have a presence so terrifying it turns soldiers into cattle, twisted minions they can summon from hidden cellars and all manner of human slaves broken to their will, but physically their most noticeable characteristic would be how difficult it is to kill them permanently. Political power and privilege should be theirs in some way - castles, grand estates and the like - but vampires as grade-a face wreckers who throw down like fanged superheroes just sounds stupid to me.
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It kind of depends on how one pulls it off I think.

I prefer it when they're shown as apex predators wearing a human skin, rather than pale super heroes/villains with powers if that makes any sense.
Jace911 said:
This also depends on how you approach your story. A vampire with physical prowess fits in a story about martial heroes, warriors, hunters, etc etc. A vampire with predatory cunning and intellect makes for a good antagonist in a thriller/mystery story.
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I think a monster that can viciously dismember the human members of the cast in any attempt at a direct confrontation lends itself pretty well to a thriller/mystery story. That's what Dracula was after all.
Jace911 said:
I'm not a big fan of biting/embracing with sexual undertones, partially because I just don't really touch on sex in my writing and partially because I just don't get the supposed allure of biting someone on the neck and drinking their blood. I know a lot of vampire fiction talks about how it's a euphoric experience for the victim but I find that somewhat distasteful too and a bit at cross-purposes with the aforementioned themes of corruption and exploitation. Being bitten by a vampire shouldn't be like a drug high, it should feel like you're being drained of your life because that is what's happening. A person's reaction to being a vampire's late night snack should be a mix of primal terror and uncomprehending horror, not an orgasm.
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Yeah. It's kind of a hamfisted attempt to draw a link with biting during sex, but it doesn't work because as anybody who's had blood drawn through an IV knows, having your blood sucked out of you really really hurts and not in a good way.
firefossil said:
Vampires were originally metaphors for sexual depravity
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This isn't necessarily the case. Vampiric folklore is very scattered and has a lot of variation, but prior to the mid 19th century they were never a consistently sexual figure. My knowledge of pre-Victorian vampiric folklore is very limited, but from my recollection Vampires were, more often than not, deformed, disgusting creatures that did...decidedly un-sexy things to the people they got ahold of. Sexual themes were not uncommon, but they were almost never present in a good way.
 
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So if the "preferred" (I'm using quotes not in a derogatory sense; rather to indicate this is not a universal default but instead something being proposed by the OP) setup is that Vampires are the "top dog of the supernatural world", is the intent that they are "top dog" without any real competition (i.e. a world with just Vampires and Humans), or "top dog" in a world with varied competition (so Vampires, Humans, Werewolves, Ghouls, Zombies, etc.; all the way up to some of the varied kitchen-sink approaches we see in past and present popular literature)?

If the former, is there supposed to be room for Humans to resist/fight back at all?

After all, if Vampires are the Aristocrats, is there not always at least a risk of the Peasants rising up?
 
I dislike stories where vampires are simultaneously treated like a potentially incurable disease with vampirism, and also treated as an own species.

It draws to mind the idea that they're innately and inherently evil and terrible, which I dislike.

Having vampires have a pathological urge to do things without free will or agency also feels a little odd to me, though less so then the disease species ideas.

Though I just prefer superhero stories in general, and many vampire types have a nice power set.
 
KnightDisciple said:
So if the "preferred" (I'm using quotes not in a derogatory sense; rather to indicate this is not a universal default but instead something being proposed by the OP) setup is that Vampires are the "top dog of the supernatural world", is the intent that they are "top dog" without any real competition (i.e. a world with just Vampires and Humans), or "top dog" in a world with varied competition (so Vampires, Humans, Werewolves, Ghouls, Zombies, etc.; all the way up to some of the varied kitchen-sink approaches we see in past and present popular literature)?

If the former, is there supposed to be room for Humans to resist/fight back at all?

After all, if Vampires are the Aristocrats, is there not always at least a risk of the Peasants rising up?
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I was mostly thinking of stories with a supernatural milieu when talking about vampires being at the top of the list. In a story where it's just vampires and humans then by definition the vampires are top dog because last I looked humans aren't immortal superhumans. :V

That isn't to say that human characters shouldn't have any means to fight back or win in a conflict. Defeating monsters is a time honoured tradition, after all. It's more a question of presentation rather than story outcomes; everything that appears in a story is bound by and exists for the purpose of promoting the narrative, but that is not necessarily the case when we're talking about how it appears. Managing aesthetic is an important element in storytelling.

On that note the surrounding elements of the story can be informative in this regard. Most vampire stories are set in the modern day. I'm working on a story concept currently and initially it was set in the real world of last year, but I've since changed my approach to a fantasy secondary world and that has changed my approach to the vampire and their presentation. The things I felt I could do with a vampire changed, even though the character remained similar.
 
the atom said:
because it kind of combines both of these elements rather seamlessly. Count Dracula is an aristocratic figure with a lot of wealth, and commands influence through indirect means, but the way he directly interacts with people is a lot different than a human; the way he skulks around public places, picking off isolated people in the comfort of their bedrooms is in some ways more characteristic of a poltergeist than a person.
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In fact, one of the biggest indicators Harker gets in the book something is up is that after Dracula claims that the servants were simply around at different schedules he catches him miserably cooking and making the food for Harker by himself in the castle kitchen.

For such an ancient, aristocratic figure to be relegated to secretly making food by themselves for their guest, despite their wealth and nobility, is very characteristic of the vampire as a non-primacy figure.
 
While I agree with everything in the OP about vampires being the embodiment of human selfishness and corruption, I don't think that's all there is to them. To me, they also represent chaos.

In many cultures, the night is believed to be a time when the normal laws of nature are weaker, or the gods of order are dormant; vampires are nocturnal. The natural order is for the living to eat the dead, a rule that everything from plants to apex predators follow; vampires are dead people who eat the living.

They break all the rules, not just human ones.
 
Dear god, I fucking love the Vampire Counts from Warhammer Fantasy. Please, let's talk about these guys.

Just look at their mandatory equipment list from the Tabletop RPG.


 
Since nobody has posted in a day, I'll give reviving this thread a shot.
So, there are 5 types of vampires in Warhammer fantasy,

1. Von Carsteins - Vampires as nobility
2. Lahmians - Vampires as seductive manipulators
3. Strigoi - Vampires as monsters, twisted by feeding on corspe blood and vermin
4. Necrarchs - Vampires as defiers of the natural order, transgressing what man was meant to know
5. Blood Dragons - Vampires as anti-heroes, dark mirrors of a knightly aristocracy

Tell me which ones you guys are interested in hearing about. These are in descending order of context required to get them.
 
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So there's been a vampire RPG revealed at E3 called...wait for it....Vampyr.



So I was a fairly intrigued by the premise of a vampirism epidemic during the Spanish Flu pandemic after WWI. But what really got me hyped is how they plan to do leveling and feeding.

Vampyr brings an innovative RPG leveling system to E3

People are more than walking bloodbags and every feeding has consequences. Combined with the disgust the protagonist has towards his condition, and the game seems really set up to build guilt toward your actions, which is something I've seen very little of in many vampire games.

Bite Joe-- the poor fellow from the E3 demo-- and his son will be fatherless. Bite a merchant, and his store will be affected. Bite Joe's kid, and all those other relationships will change. Because Joe dies in the demo, "the behavior of the NPCS he was connected to will change forever," says Philippe Moreau, Vampyr's creative director. "The merchant joe was threatening will now prosper, and his son will now run away, and you can feed on other people and get a different result."
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During our E3 demo, a developer "mesmerized" a man on the street and led him in a swirling cloud of evil evil darkness to a wooded path, where he then, you know, did the deed. Blood sprayed. The victim fell to the ground, sobbing: "My boy… who will look after him now? I tried. I tried to be good father!!" Then the UI dinged: the player had levelled up.
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Not to mention they seem to be pulling from older vampire lore as well.
You are apparently vulnerable to various vampire restrictions of lore: you cannot enter homes without an invitation, for example, which may make investigating some potential victims more difficult.
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All in all, an interesting game many vampire fans should keep their eyes on. Though it definitely seems like storytelling will be what makes or breaks this one, since LiS didn't have the best combat.
 
Reminds me of how in the Laundry Files series, it's stated that most vampires commit suicide once they realise that they are obligate anthropophages - that they must kill a person just to survive a few more weeks. The next book, The Nightmare Stacks, is apparently going to explore this from the point of view of a vampire character.
 
runeblue360 said:

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Imagine something like a mixture of the Old Count and an inverted version of the 'everyone knows vampires don't exist' curse.

Vampires follow the clichés. They literally can't think of doing otherwise. If a human friend points out to them that their behavior is cliché and makes recommendations, the vampire will listen and possibly even agree.

By the time the human has left the room though, the vampire will have forgotten the entire conversation. Repeat until Renfield realizes the futility of it.
 
NegativeHorizon said:
So there's been a vampire RPG revealed at E3 called...wait for it....Vampyr.



So I was a fairly intrigued by the premise of a vampirism epidemic during the Spanish Flu pandemic after WWI. But what really got me hyped is how they plan to do leveling and feeding.

Vampyr brings an innovative RPG leveling system to E3

People are more than walking bloodbags and every feeding has consequences. Combined with the disgust the protagonist has towards his condition, and the game seems really set up to build guilt toward your actions, which is something I've seen very little of in many vampire games.




Not to mention they seem to be pulling from older vampire lore as well.


All in all, an interesting game many vampire fans should keep their eyes on. Though it definitely seems like storytelling will be what makes or breaks this one, since LiS didn't have the best combat.
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I'm actually interested in this game, which says something cause I'm not particularly interested in anything related to Vampires.

Hellsing, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and the game Vampyr are the only things involving vampires that I'm interested in.


Hellsing vampires are kinda weird(discounting Alucard cause he isn't a vampire, he is a demon) since they don't have the crippling OCD as they do in some myths(The Count of Sesame Street is a surprisingly mythologically accurate vampire), or the need to be invited in. They do however have a weakness to silver, sunlight, and need to drink blood.

JoJo vampires only have these in common with most vampires: the need to drink blood, and dying to sunlight.
 
Insufficient Dakka said:
Is that supposed to be canon or something? Because he's a vampire and a half. The terms also aren't mutually exclusive.
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Not canon I just view him as a demon due to his level, there is no one who on his level. Well, maybe if the Major had accepted the deal he could have been.


Insufficient Dakka said:
Aside from the counting obsession, what's vampiric about him?
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Honestly? It's the counting thing. How many vampires in mainstream media have the OCD?
 
Ford didn't anybody teach you that brevity is the soul of wit? :V

Anyway, I feel that the basic elevator pitch of the vampire, in all forms, is "social parasites". Whether that is scumbag rich people (Dracula), scumbag gay people (Carmilla), or just general scumbags (WoD vamps), the vampire is the monster that wears our skin and feeds on our innocents. It's a very conservative, xenophobic thing, which is why the backswing now that we're more progressive than Victorian English petty bourgeoisie is for vampires to be dregs of society with their own societies (Lost Boys, Anne Rice, things that play up the Nosferatu ugly vamp). Sometimes you split the difference and end up with Blade or the Cams or Night Watch or Twilight: a complete hierarchical society of underground ubermench.

I also believe that the wickedly cultured thing that you like the most about vampires, Ford, is pretty much entirely a construct of Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula. Carmilla was weird and unpleasant; Dracula was a creep with hairy palms who was a generation behind the times. That's entirely second or third generation copying at work. Honestly, a lot of the things you like are vampiric ubermenchen tropes that are incredibly recent. Like, Anne Rice and WoD recent. Although with the Japanese connection, it's more KONO DIO DA, which is the mythos Xeroxed so many times it basically has nothing to do with Victorian vampire lit.

Also, you forgot to mention the sympathetic vampire trope, which comes from Varney the Vampire, a contemporary to Stoker's Dracula and Carmilla. It also set most of the tropes we think of with vamps too. This idea has had lasting influence on vampire literature, so it's omission is glaring.

Edit: my own tl;dr is a fundamental disagreement on the idea of vampire as predator (that's the werewolf's bag when they aren't allegories for gay fucking in the woods), replacing it with vampire as parasite (which is why they're called leeches, suckheads, et.al.) You can't say "but they are monsters that eat you" because fucking every monster eats you.
 
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FourthWall said:
Ford didn't anybody teach you that brevity is the soul of wit? :V

Anyway, I feel that the basic elevator pitch of the vampire, in all forms, is "social parasites". Whether that is scumbag rich people (Dracula), scumbag gay people (Carmilla), or just general scumbags (WoD vamps), the vampire is the monster that wears our skin and feeds on our innocents. It's a very conservative, xenophobic thing, which is why the backswing now that we're more progressive than Victorian English petty bourgeoisie is for vampires to be dregs of society with their own societies (Lost Boys, Anne Rice, things that play up the Nosferatu ugly vamp). Sometimes you split the difference and end up with Blade or the Cams or Night Watch or Twilight: a complete hierarchical society of underground ubermench.

I also believe that the wickedly cultured thing that you like the most about vampires, Ford, is pretty much entirely a construct of Bela Lugosi's portrayal of Dracula. Carmilla was weird and unpleasant; Dracula was a creep with hairy palms who was a generation behind the times. That's entirely second or third generation copying at work. Honestly, a lot of the things you like are vampiric ubermenchen tropes that are incredibly recent. Like, Anne Rice and WoD recent. Although with the Japanese connection, it's more KONO DIO DA, which is the mythos Xeroxed so many times it basically has nothing to do with Victorian vampire lit.

Also, you forgot to mention the sympathetic vampire trope, which comes from Varney the Vampire, a contemporary to Stoker's Dracula and Carmilla. It also set most of the tropes we think of with vamps too. This idea has had lasting influence on vampire literature, so it's omission is glaring.

Edit: my own tl;dr is a fundamental disagreement on the idea of vampire as predator (that's the werewolf's bag when they aren't allegories for gay fucking in the woods), replacing it with vampire as parasite (which is why they're called leeches, suckheads, et.al.) You can't say "but they are monsters that eat you" because fucking every monster eats you.
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I think you make a lot of solid points here, although I think one could also argue things the other way. One thing I'd disagree with outright though is werewolves being the monster that eats you more fundamentally than vampires are, or it being equally applicable to all monsters. Werewolves will savage and kill you, absolutely, but consumption isn't as key an element there, you know? Indeed it's quite common in werewolf literature for them to throw up what they've eaten the morning after, and be horrified when they see a child's hand or whatever.

With werewolves I think the key thing is the beast, the ravening, the ferocity, the curse of becoming a wolf to your fellow man, in the most primeval sense. (Good werewolves are, essentially, tamed wolves, i.e. dogs- as Terry Pratchett pointed out.) They may kill you, they may even tear a bite or three from your flesh afterwards, but the actual consumption and drawing sustenance from that consumption is kind of secondary if it's even there at all, you know? One could quite plausibly have a werewolf who lives entirely off of fish fingers, chips and peas. There are also quite a lot of werewolf stories where the beast doesn't even really seem to eat people, just kill them and move on.

In contrast, with vampires, they need to drink blood. Many are obligate anthrophages and even for those which aren't, it's still this absolutely massive drive, usually like a sexual drive or stronger. Human beings are their food source, they're defined by their need to feed off of us, even if it's by fighting against that impulse. The leech-like and other parasitic elements tie into that, I think, so that one could definitely say that eating people is rather more foundational to them than the werewolf or, say, the kappa or the redcap. Of course it isn't the only angle you can take with them (there's also the sex angle, although that can obviously be heavily interlinked with the consumption one), because culture doesn't work like that, but it's definitely a big one in my opinion.
 
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