Discussion

{DISCUSSION} Vampires: The Illogical

Melanie Noell Bernard

Note: It’s supernatural month! All discussions this month will be about supernatural creatures or worlds!

Vampires: Classic vs. Modern

Vampires are one of the most classic supernatural creatures. They’re so commonplace that readers, or even the general public (aka non-readers), know exactly what they are. Or at least they know the basic traits: pale, blood-sucking, undead creatures that stalk the night. So, they’re easily one of the most recognizable supernatural creatures despite what form they may come in. Even so, some people like to screw with the classic vampire to make it ‘their own.’ -.-

The Classic

The classic vampire is the one everyone knows and understands. It’s a supernatural creature that needs no explanation, but I’ll throw out the details just so we’re on the same page. Classic vampires are undead creatures that drink the blood of humans to survive, and are immortal except they can be killed by sunlight and by being staked through the heart. Now that that’s out of the way, let’s talk about all the ways writers have screwed them up in recent decades.

The Re-makes

Classic vampires are a tried and true supernatural creature. They’re easily recognizable and have been proven to amass fans in large hordes across various medias(literature, film, art, etc.) As a result, they’re an easy thing to write about. Yet, for some reason, writers(for stories and film) seem to love to screw with the classical vampire. After all, everyone wants to be unique, right?

Wrong!

Hasn’t anyone ever heard not to mess with a good thing? If so, why do they constantly feel the need to change vampires? Why do they feel the need to mess with a classic and make it ‘their own’? Why don’t they just make their own dang creature?! Whatever the writers need for this monstrosity is, they do it and I’m here to discuss all the things wrong with that.

‘Good’ Vampires

As we all know, vampires are creatures that drink the blood of humans to survive. They literally feed on humans, making them the apex predator. Making them the one thing humans should fear and yet… they don’t. For some ungodly reason, writers just love to make vampires ‘good’.

They want them to have a conscience. They want them to feel bad about drinking the blood of and killing humans. They want them to be… human. Well, guess what? Vampires aren’t human! At least not since they, you know, died and came back to not-life!

I mean, think about it. How many people do you know become friends with a cow or chicken or deer or whatever animal they generally eat? They don’t. Why? Because they eat them! Predators and prey don’t become friends. They don’t even interact unless it involves hunting or surviving. So, why should vampires be different?

Moving beyond friends

What’s worse than becoming friends with your food? Falling in love with your food. And, for some reason, this has become such a staple in the vampire world nowadays. Twilight. Vampire Diaries. I don’t know if this phenomenon was common back in the day, but sure is present in modern entertainment. And it’s garbage.

I understand the whole belief that ‘love is the most powerful thing’ and ‘love conquers all’, but that would mean we also have to believe in ‘love at first sight’. Why? Because vampires eat humans!

They’re only thought should be: ‘mm! That looks like a juicy piece of meat!‘
Not: ‘oh my gosh! He/She’s so pretty! I can’t him/her!‘

Yet for some reason the vampires don’t just eat the humans. The vampires stop and contemplate it and weigh the pros and cons and yadda yadda yadda. -.- Think about it, if you were hungry and there was a cow before you and you had the ability to kill it and eat it (and that was how things were done. You couldn’t pick up cow from the store.) Wouldn’t you eat it?

Pro-Creation/Hybrids

As if falling in love with prey weren’t bad enough, let’s follow the modern entertainment path to their next step: freakin’ procreation and hybrids. (The fact that this category exists just absolutely baffles me, but it needs to be talked about.) Why is this category here? Why am I talking about it? Because neither are possible!

Procreation isn’t possible for one main reason: vampires are dead! They have no blood. They have no functioning organs. They should, therefore, have no living eggs or sperm to come together and make babies. Even if a human were to somehow ‘mate’ with a vampire, there would still be no baby because one part of the pair is still dead! And no. In vitro fertilization doesn’t work either because there are no eggs and no sperm! (I especially don’t like procreation of vampires because it insists that vampires get to have a family and a happy ending. Screw that!)

As for human/vampire hybrids. Ha! Don’t make me laugh. The reason hybrids aren’t possible is because, again, vampires are dead and humans are alive. Now, I never read Vampire Academy. So, I don’t know what possible reasoning the author could give for these hybrids, but logically they can’t exist. Something cannot be both dead and alive.

I love vampires, truly, I do. However, I hate what writers have done to them. I want my classic, blood-thirsty, fear-inducing vampires back. How about you?

And check out last week’s discussion:
“Zombies: The Weakest Link“

30 thoughts on “{DISCUSSION} Vampires: The Illogical”

  1. Pingback: Discussion Highlights: Vampires: The Illogical | Melanie Noell Bernard

  3. To be honest, I prefer the ‘classic’ vampire. So over the Twilight bullshit, and how people have this romantic obsession with them! Like, I really liked Lestat from ‘Interview With The Vampire’ (not the Queen of the Damned). I liked that he hunted people … but, because he could read thoughts, he picked ‘bad’ people (not that he had any problem killing innocent people, but I liked that he picked bad people). I felt like he was one of the best vampires (again, not the Queen of the Damned stuff) in a long time.
    The original vampire lore – Dracula – comes from Vlad the Impaler! Vlad loved to impale people – and do so in the slowest possible manner! He usually impaled them through … a ready made hole (I’ll let your mind wander where for men and women), so that the stick would go through the entire body, and the victim was alive by the time the stick came out through their mouth (gravity would slowly push the victim further down the stick). He loved to impale people when having dinner … and if any of his staff reacted, he’d allegedly impale them, too. His blood lust was so strong, and he impaled so many people, that it’s said that he was never, ever defeated because people grew sick just by looking at the fields of impaled bodies!

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    1. To be honest, I don’t fully understand how Vlad the Impaler could be the first Dracula. Yes, he was a cruel, twisted warrior, but did he drink their blood? Did he refuse to walk into the sunlight? I like the more scientific discussion of vampire origins, including porphyria.

      Either way, I think we both agree that vampires are meant to be evil, blood-thirsty monsters. That’s the most important part of this discussion.

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      1. He was rumoured to drink their blood … but it’s so hard to tell what’s fact and fiction. I mean, in regards to those types of things, people could exaggerate. He certainly did enough things to warrant a good level of fear – and I don’t doubt people would have shared rumours of him.
        Regardless, when Bram Stocker learnt about Vlad the Impaler, that was his inspiration. I’m sure he just envisioned the rest – like, it wasn’t a historical piece, but someone that fascinated with death is pretty interesting. And that cruel and barbaric. Like, he just takes the cake.

        He also might have drawn inspiration from a few serial killers who liked to bathe in, and drink the blood of, young servant girls because they wanted to stay youthful and have really white skin and they thought it could be achieved that way (that certainly added to the ‘vampirism’ idea).
        Most definitely! I don’t like the idea of romanticising vampires. It’s not a turn on for me, at all. I don’t get it!

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        1. I think girls are just trying to push romance into everything and hide the darkness in people. Too many younglings not wanting to see the darkness. But the dark side has cookies! Join us, young Anikin! MWahaha! Wait. Wrong fandom. Woops!

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  4. I don’t ever stop to think much about it. I don’t care much about vampires, so I don’t dwell on them. I will say that by acknowledging that a creature is supernatural, then you acknowledge, at least to a point, that there is a certain element to them that does not bend to accepted human reality.

    You call bull on their ability to procreate, but I say that it’s just as believable as them bursting into flames when they walk out into sunlight.

    I must prefer the original vampire myth to the remade ones.

    Side note: I just read a Junior Readers version of Dracula. It’s 48 pages long, and has a bunch of full page illustrations. It was really cool.

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    1. Huh. I never would’ve put procreation in the same sect of supernaturalism as bursting into flames, but I guess that just goes to show we believe in what we’re told. I expect vampires to be the way I was originally told they were. Anything different just seems… wrong, you know?

      Dracula for young readers? Was it appropriate? I mean, Dracula isn’t really a happy story. :p

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      1. If a person’s “rebirth” can be solely attributed to the supernatural, why not an actual birth? (mind you, I’m just arguing for the sake of arguing. )

        Would I read Dracula to a 4 year old ? No. But my 7 year old? Yes. It’s a story, and she understands what is fiction. Especially when it’s distilled down to its most basic element.

        Think of the sheer amount of violence they see if they watch tv with parents that don’t closely monitor what they watch. Whereas when introducing a story like Dracula in book form, you can have all sorts of cool discussions with them about myths, superstitions, the first occurence of a creature , etc. As you read.

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        1. I think you’re losing me a bit on what you mean by ‘rebirth’ (and please! Argue more for the sake of arguing! It’s so much fun. ^.^)

          Mm. I guess I can see your point of view on the Dracula for children part. As long as they understand that it’s fiction, it could open a whole new world of imagination possibilities for them. Though, I would be worried about scarring them with the grittier details and goodness knows my parents didn’t care what I watched, but I was too absorbed in animal planet to care about anything dark and gritty. :p

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            1. Ah! Okay. Now I see what you’re driving at. You’re saying that because creatures are reborn when they become supernatural (in this case vampires), why should vampires not be born? I think that’s because once you become a vampire, you no longer grow. If you were to be born a vampire, you’d (logically) stay a baby, no?

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              1. Hybrids may grow, depending on genetics. But again, it’s trying to apply logic to the illogical. We know these creatures are make believe / from the imagination. Trying to apply science to make believe doesn’t really work. There comes a point when you have to acknowledge and accept that not everything about them can actually make sense.

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                1. No! I refuse! throws a tantrum :p
                  But I understand what you’re saying. These aren’t creatures of science. They’re creatures of myth and lore, which have no basis in science (usually), and therefore these creatures don’t have to bend to the rules that we accept as fact. Perhaps I just need to take my ‘science’ hat off once in a while. ^.^

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      1. They do in the first one… but later on Selena gets pregnant and becomes a Lycanpire, which allows her to walk in the sun at the end of the movie. The first movie is close to classic vampires, the second… sort of follows it… the third and forth – forget about classic.
        I do like how they approached the change but at the same time they started to get away from the classic vampire after the first movie. 🙂
        (Yeah… I’m a little obsessed. They made pealther and trench coats cool before the Matrix did. XD)

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        1. Oh man. It’s been a while since I watched these, but you’re absolutely right. Selena was pregnant. And they did start to get away from the original. I wasn’t sure about the werewolf/vampire hybrid logistics either. That seems… unlikely.

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          1. Yeah… they are making another one that is coming out. Selena is going to be woken up in the future as the mother of the new breeds and she has to fight clans or something…
            I don’t know. I’ll go see it because of the fangirl in me but I don’t expect to be impressed by it. XD

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  6. Turning them into part human livers has made for some daft films and tv stories to serve the teenage girly market. It’s about time we had them back to what they should be…

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      1. It’s funny hearing g that from a young girl lol.
        But it’s true… I mean sure you have tiny sub plots and characters that interact in all kinds of ways. But keep sci fi, horror and fantasy as it should be, otherwise it gets polluted.
        Maybe we should invade the romantic stories with scifi to get them back lol

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          1. I can tell, it’s good to see that. I’m often told that there are girls that like sci-fi, I’ve found a few of them on WP of which you are of course some of the more prominent!😆

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