Subverting the Modern "Sympathetic" Vampire in Media

[WonderAndAwe]

As someone who likes the classical vampire story (as in, one where there is an irredeemably evil supernatural monster recieving a painful death at the hands of a good and virtuous human vampire hunter), would it be a good idea to write a story that subverts the modern “sympathetic” vampire by having an entire society of vampires with families and culture and whatnot be hunted and killed en masse by humans in various ways (like forcing entire groups of the inhuman beasts to face the sun and burn), all while maintaining the idea that the humans are heroes and the vampires are villains, regardless of their actions? Could it even work? Or would it seem tasteless despite the fact vampires are supposed to be inherently evil and worthy of a good staking at the hands of vampire hunters? Would they need to fit the classical interpretation in order for a story honestly vilifying them?

Does the historic literary nature of vampires as unholy abominations supercede and justify the violence that would portrayed in this hypothetical story? Or is my want for a work of fiction whose sole existance to subvert and defy the idiotic and frankly disgusting modern interpretation an insane pipedream that could never be gotten?

I hope I don’t sound clinically insane with this… I just really love to hate vampires and modern sympathetic portrayals of them.

 

[DaisymaeD]

Your question is about world building. If you want your vampire subculture to be unsympathetic, then they have to do unsympathetic things. Also, you have to consider the question of how they became vampires–is it totally not their fault, or is there choice involved? Are they nonhuman spawn of Satan, or is vampirism spread among humans like a disease?

I think there is plenty of room for different interpretations of the vampire mythos–see how many “Twilight” fans and haters are out there. But it rests on the quality of your writing. And you need a clear thesis behind it.

 

[Verchiel]

There are movies and books which glorify the Vampire killers as well, and yet this following grows. The Vampyre sub-culture is bigger than ever and not going any where soon thanks to glorifications of non-human human types, strong, immortal, dark and mysterious characters who now are more human like than ever, even having sex and romantic relationships to create more of an allure, we also have the Vampyre sub-culture leaders such as Don Henry, Michelle belanger, Vlad and more. Kids seek these things out of boredom for the most part, the scary ones are those who take this stuff very seriously, seriously enough to become sanguinary feeders (drinkers of blood) while most claim to be Psy vamps feeding on psychic energy. This fascination with monsters has lead in many cases to sexual depravity, torture and even murder. This culture has also lead to the counter sub-culture of Vampyre Hunters and even Werewolves, or sworn Vampyre enemies. Becoming entangled in these affairs will not lead to its demise, it only encourages more of the same.

 

[AMFV]

Well it depends on what purpose the Vampire serves in the story how sympathetic they are. Even in the context of a Catholic story one could represent vampires in a number of ways. For example if a Catholic author wanted to use vampires to represent man’s sinful nature, then they would be wholly irredeemable, and very dangerous, without much morality at all. But if another author were representing them as fallen humans, who had to overcome said natures, it would have the opposite portrayal, that with grace they could work to fight against their own nature.

There is in modern vampire film a tendency towards the “fight against nature” approach for vampires, because there have been many successful works that embody this. The polar opposite would be something like “30 Days of Night” where the vampires are essentially reduced to being a force of nature almost devoid of personality. I would expect this to come and go in cycles though, since the reason for the difference in perspective is the author’s use for the vampire, what narrative role they are playing in the story.

 

[WonderAndAwe]

Well it depends on what purpose the Vampire serves in the story how sympathetic they are. Even in the context of a Catholic story one could represent vampires in a number of ways. For example if a Catholic author wanted to use vampires to represent man’s sinful nature, then they would be wholly irredeemable, and very dangerous, without much morality at all. But if another author were representing them as fallen humans, who had to overcome said natures, it would have the opposite portrayal, that with grace they could work to fight against their own nature.

There is in modern vampire film a tendency towards the “fight against nature” approach for vampires, because there have been many successful works that embody this. The polar opposite would be something like “30 Days of Night” where the vampires are essentially reduced to being a force of nature almost devoid of personality. I would expect this to come and go in cycles though, since the reason for the difference in perspective is the author’s use for the vampire, what narrative role they are playing in the story.

The narrative role is showing how nature ALWAYS wins over nurture and that if something is inherently evil, it can never be good.
The vampires don’t attack humans, preferring to drink the blood of animals, but they deserve to die anyway. They can’t turn other humans into vampires and don’t want to because they want to be peaceful, but they deserve to die anyway. The justification is that since a Bram Stoker is treated as a trusted historian in the mythos, the vampires he recorded are the outcome that all vampires will become. Their origin is told Rashomon-style by both them and humans, but the humans always tell it in a way that paints them as the unholy hellspawn that they are while the vampires tell it in a way that paints them positively. The book would go out of its way to tell you that the humans are in the right and sympathizing with the vampires is bad and SHAME ON YOU FOR SYMPATHISING WITH THEM. It would even have characters question the morality of their actions, only to coming to the conclusion “Oh yeah! They’re vampires and deserve death!” while staking a vampire who’s begging for mercy as it boils in the sun. A good hero can do anything to a villain and still be called the hero, especially if the hero is human and the villain is a classically inhuman monstrosity.

Heck, when watching Hotel Transylvania, I sided with the humans in Dracula’s backstory and thought that yes, he and his family truly did deserve death by human hands for their vampiric nature.

 

[AMFV]

The narrative role is showing how nature ALWAYS wins over nurture and that if something is inherently evil, it can never be good.
The vampires don’t attack humans, preferring to drink the blood of animals, but they deserve to die anyway. They can’t turn other humans into vampires and don’t want to because they want to be peaceful, but they deserve to die anyway. The justification is that since a Bram Stoker is treated as a trusted historian in the mythos, the vampires he recorded are the outcome that all vampires will become. Their origin is told Rashomon-style by both them and humans, but the humans always tell it in a way that paints them as the unholy hellspawn that they are while the vampires tell it in a way that paints them positively. The book would go out of its way to tell you that the humans are in the right and sympathizing with the vampires is bad and SHAME ON YOU FOR SYMPATHISING WITH THEM. It would even have characters question the morality of their actions, only to coming to the conclusion “Oh yeah! They’re vampires and deserve death!” while staking a vampire who’s begging for mercy as it boils in the sun. A good hero can do anything to a villain and still be called the hero, especially if the hero is human and the villain is a classically inhuman monstrosity.

Heck, when watching Hotel Transylvania, I sided with the humans in Dracula’s backstory and thought that yes, he and his family truly did deserve death by human hands for their vampiric nature.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, had what you’re looking for, Vampires lose their immortal souls and are therefore irredeemable barring very extreme circumstances. But I think what you’re looking for is more easily represented by Zombies, because vampires retain their personalities, and we, do not want to believe that anybody who is still themselves is wholly irredeemable, that’s actually a big part of religious truth, to my mind at least.

 

[Verchiel]

Well it depends on what purpose the Vampire serves in the story how sympathetic they are. Even in the context of a Catholic story one could represent vampires in a number of ways. For example if a Catholic author wanted to use vampires to represent man’s sinful nature, then they would be wholly irredeemable, and very dangerous, without much morality at all. But if another author were representing them as fallen humans, who had to overcome said natures, it would have the opposite portrayal, that with grace they could work to fight against their own nature.

There is in modern vampire film a tendency towards the “fight against nature” approach for vampires, because there have been many successful works that embody this. The polar opposite would be something like “30 Days of Night” where the vampires are essentially reduced to being a force of nature almost devoid of personality. I would expect this to come and go in cycles though, since the reason for the difference in perspective is the author’s use for the vampire, what narrative role they are playing in the story.

Your not really suggesting that its “OK” to be a monster if your the “good” kind of monster are you? In Twilight the main family characters called them selves the vegetarians of the vampire world as they only drank the blood of animals, so this makes blood drinking alright? The truth is these vampires represent an abomination, a perversion of gods creation, there are no good vampires or good monsters of any kind and portraying them as such simply perpetuates the same notion as these books and movies which wholly glorify these blood drinking abominations.

 

[Bruised_Reed]

Now I really wish I would have seen Dracula Untold this weekend.

 

[Verchiel]

Now I really wish I would have seen Dracula Untold this weekend.

It was awesome! Told the story of Vlad instead of the tired Bram Stokers novel with old new twists. I have an ancestor that was Imperial ambassador to Constantinople so this made the story even more exciting for me.

 

[AMFV]

Your not really suggesting that its “OK” to be a monster if your the “good” kind of monster are you? In Twilight the main family characters called them selves the vegetarians of the vampire world as they only drank the blood of animals, so this makes blood drinking alright? The truth is these vampires represent an abomination, a perversion of gods creation, there are no good vampires or good monsters of any kind and portraying them as such simply perpetuates the same notion as these books and movies which wholly glorify these blood drinking abominations.

Well I hope it’s okay to be a monster if one restrains one’s darker impulses. Since my belief is that all human beings (bearing the weight of original sin and what-not) are exactly that. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe that any monster, with a soul, should ever be beyond redemption. Because in that respect I like my fiction to reflect reality, as boundless as God’s mercy is, I want my authors to be. But that’s a personal preference. After all I have desires that are sinful and abominable, some very much so, and I don’t want to think that having those desires is sufficient to condemn a person.

Lastly there is no rules against drinking the blood of animals, in Catholicism, or in general Christianity, Judaism has such, but their rules are particularly complex.

 

[WonderAndAwe]

Your not really suggesting that its “OK” to be a monster if your the “good” kind of monster are you? In Twilight the main family characters called them selves the vegetarians of the vampire world as they only drank the blood of animals, so this makes blood drinking alright? The truth is these vampires represent an abomination, a perversion of gods creation, there are no good vampires or good monsters of any kind and portraying them as such simply perpetuates the same notion as these books and movies which wholly glorify these blood drinking abominations.

And that’s what this story would convey: that these things are inherently evil monsters regardless of how human they seem. They might be kindly and hospitable to all people, but the fact they are identified as vampires makes them worthy of death. Every vampire man, woman and child is unavoidably evil, regardless of the actions they do, and is worthy of a swift painful death.
There would even be a folk story told among the humans of a man who was lost in a blizzard and a was found and saved by a family of vampires who nurse him back to health and even show him that they and several other vampires never have and never would kill a human, only for the human to return a few days later to mercilessly kill them all and burn their house to the ground because “innocent vampires don’t exist for their most heinous crime is living.” And this made him a great folk hero to the humans as he was not lead astray by the idea of Good Samaritan vampires.

The audience would probably start seeing parallels to real world crimes against humanity, but the book would subtly tell them “NO YOURE WRONG! This isn’t humans killing other humans, this is humans killing unholy non-human monsters whose very nature from their inception was evil thus making them evil regardless of their actions.” Seeing a creature whose sole purpose boils down to “Literary AntiChrist Villain Archetype” groveling on the ground, beaten and crying, begging for mercy only to be given absolutely none SHOULD be seen as hilarious because the destruction of allegories that represent everything thats against God is a good and wonderful thing.

Look at the “Difficult Passages” of the Bible, the ones where Israel lays waste to Amalek, putting entire populations to the sword. Israel was in the right because they were Isreal and Amalek was Amalek. There were never “innocent Amalekites” or “Amalakites that might have been good people.” Samuel even berated Saul for not killing Agag and Amalekites livestock. The point of them was for God to give a face to the idea of Virtue (Israel) and Sin (Amalek). That to be good in God’s eyes, one must obliterate and despise what is evil. That you can’t let anything that is against God exist.

I’m interpreting those correctly, right?

 

[AMFV]

And that’s what this story would convey: that these things are inherently evil monsters regardless of how human they seem. They might be kindly and hospitable to all people, but the fact they are identified as vampires makes them worthy of death. Every vampire man, woman and child is unavoidably evil, regardless of the actions they do, and is worthy of a swift painful death.
There would even be a folk story told among the humans of a man who was lost in a blizzard and a was found and saved by a family of vampires who nurse him back to health and even show him that they and several other vampires never have and never would kill a human, only for the human to return a few days later to mercilessly kill them all and burn their house to the ground because “innocent vampires don’t exist for their most heinous crime is living.” And this made him a great folk hero to the humans as he was not lead astray by the idea of Good Samaritan vampires.

The audience would probably start seeing parallels to real world crimes against humanity, but the book would subtly tell them “NO YOURE WRONG! This isn’t humans killing other humans, this is humans killing unholy non-human monsters whose very nature from their inception was evil thus making them evil regardless of their actions.” Seeing a creature whose sole purpose boils down to “Literary AntiChrist Villain Archetype” groveling on the ground, beaten and crying, begging for mercy only to be given absolutely none SHOULD be seen as hilarious because the destruction of allegories that represent everything thats against God is a good and wonderful thing.

Look at the “Difficult Passages” of the Bible, the ones where Israel lays waste to Amalek, putting entire populations to the sword. Israel was in the right because they were Isreal and Amalek was Amalek. There were never “innocent Amalekites” or “Amalakites that might have been good people.” Samuel even berated Saul for not killing Agag and Amalekites livestock. The point of them was for God to give a face to the idea of Virtue (Israel) and Sin (Amalek). That to be good in God’s eyes, one must obliterate and despise what is evil. That you can’t let anything that is against God exist.

I’m interpreting those correctly, right?

Again this has been done. 30 Days of Night… The Lost Boys… From Dusk Till Dawn… Buffy (as I pointed out). This has been done multiple times. I’m less fond of it, but it’s definitely been done, and sometimes is as common as the friendly vampire trope.

Edit: Two caveats, the first being, the difficult passages of the Bible aren’t necessarily things that can be understood, or at least not easily. God’s justice is not ours, and his ways aren’t ours, he takes a much longer view things.

The second caveat, is as follows; as long as the Vampires retain a soul they can be redeemed, that would be my opinion, if the process robs them of their moral faculty and their soul, then they can’t.

 

[Bruised_Reed]

As someone who likes the classical vampire story (as in, one where there is an irredeemably evil supernatural monster recieving a painful death at the hands of a good and virtuous human vampire hunter), would it be a good idea to write a story that subverts the modern “sympathetic” vampire by having an entire society of vampires with families and culture and whatnot be hunted and killed en masse by humans in various ways (like forcing entire groups of the inhuman beasts to face the sun and burn), all while maintaining the idea that the humans are heroes and the vampires are villains, regardless of their actions? Could it even work? Or would it seem tasteless despite the fact vampires are supposed to be inherently evil and worthy of a good staking at the hands of vampire hunters? Would they need to fit the classical interpretation in order for a story honestly vilifying them?

Since vampires aren’t real you can do with them what you want. You can even make them sparkle. Mythical creatures usually serve as a theme or metaphor to tell a story. So yes, you could write that story. You’d have make sure your readers understood that your vampires aren’t like other vampires. They’re not Lestat, they’re not Angel, or Spike even; they aren’t that Robert Parkinson guy and they’re definitely not Eve and Adam (Only Lovers Left Alive).

Does the historic literary nature of vampires as unholy abominations supercede and justify the violence that would portrayed in this hypothetical story? Or is my want for a work of fiction whose sole existance to subvert and defy the idiotic and frankly disgusting modern interpretation an insane pipedream that could never be gotten?

Depends on how well you write. Or maybe not; good luck getting enough readers for that genre that aren’t already fans of Anne Rice, et al.

I hope I don’t sound clinically insane with this… I just really love to hate vampires and modern sympathetic portrayals of them.

Aww…you’re so cute.

 

[Verchiel]

Well I hope it’s okay to be a monster if one restrains one’s darker impulses. Since my belief is that all human beings (bearing the weight of original sin and what-not) are exactly that. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t believe that any monster, with a soul, should ever be beyond redemption. Because in that respect I like my fiction to reflect reality, as boundless as God’s mercy is, I want my authors to be. But that’s a personal preference. After all I have desires that are sinful and abominable, some very much so, and I don’t want to think that having those desires is sufficient to condemn a person.

Lastly there is no rules against drinking the blood of animals, in Catholicism, or in general Christianity, Judaism has such, but their rules are particularly complex.

Yes of course we are all Vampyre’s, werewolf would be kool as well if you don’t mind a few flees. And Im sure there are many Catholics who enjoy ripping the throats out of screeching animals and guzzling the hot spraying blood, I don’t see anything odd about that either and Im sure all churches find this an acceptable practice LOL!!,

 

[Verchiel]

And that’s what this story would convey: that these things are inherently evil monsters regardless of how human they seem. They might be kindly and hospitable to all people, but the fact they are identified as vampires makes them worthy of death. Every vampire man, woman and child is unavoidably evil, regardless of the actions they do, and is worthy of a swift painful death.
There would even be a folk story told among the humans of a man who was lost in a blizzard and a was found and saved by a family of vampires who nurse him back to health and even show him that they and several other vampires never have and never would kill a human, only for the human to return a few days later to mercilessly kill them all and burn their house to the ground because “innocent vampires don’t exist for their most heinous crime is living.” And this made him a great folk hero to the humans as he was not lead astray by the idea of Good Samaritan vampires.

The audience would probably start seeing parallels to real world crimes against humanity, but the book would subtly tell them “NO YOURE WRONG! This isn’t humans killing other humans, this is humans killing unholy non-human monsters whose very nature from their inception was evil thus making them evil regardless of their actions.” Seeing a creature whose sole purpose boils down to “Literary AntiChrist Villain Archetype” groveling on the ground, beaten and crying, begging for mercy only to be given absolutely none SHOULD be seen as hilarious because the destruction of allegories that represent everything thats against God is a good and wonderful thing.

Look at the “Difficult Passages” of the Bible, the ones where Israel lays waste to Amalek, putting entire populations to the sword. Israel was in the right because they were Isreal and Amalek was Amalek. There were never “innocent Amalekites” or “Amalakites that might have been good people.” Samuel even berated Saul for not killing Agag and Amalekites livestock. The point of them was for God to give a face to the idea of Virtue (Israel) and Sin (Amalek). That to be good in God’s eyes, one must obliterate and despise what is evil. That you can’t let anything that is against God exist.

I’m interpreting those correctly, right?

Sounds fun to me, we should get together and stake a few,

 

[Verchiel]

I don’t think your in any trouble but–YUK!! LOL!

 

[AMFV]

Yes of course we are all Vampyre’s, werewolf would be kool as well if you don’t mind a few flees. And Im sure there are many Catholics who enjoy ripping the throats out of screeching animals and guzzling the hot spraying blood, I don’t see anything odd about that either and Im sure all churches find this an acceptable practice LOL!!,

I’ve butchered animals… where do you think your meat comes from?

 

[Joe_5859]

So you want to subvert the modern subversion of the concept of subversive vampires?

As others have said, it’s all in how well you write it. If you paint the picture of a scene of a little pale-faced boy vampire playing dolls with his little sister vampire while a big, burly, bearded guy busts through the door and stabs them both in the heart, I think it’s going to be a tough sell for you. But there are other ways to do it.

 

[mikekle]

Again this has been done. 30 Days of Night… The Lost Boys… From Dusk Till Dawn… Buffy (as I pointed out). This has been done multiple times. I’m less fond of it, but it’s definitely been done, and sometimes is as common as the friendly vampire trope.

Edit: Two caveats, the first being, the difficult passages of the Bible aren’t necessarily things that can be understood, or at least not easily. God’s justice is not ours, and his ways aren’t ours, he takes a much longer view things.

The second caveat, is as follows; as long as the Vampires retain a soul they can be redeemed, that would be my opinion, if the process robs them of their moral faculty and their soul, then they can’t.

I think if vampires did exist, the ‘30 days of night’ type would be a realistic expectation, I think they would be vicious killers, who would not be interested in any sexual contact or any other kind of contact with humans, other than feeding on them. They would be pure evil, seeking only the blood of life to maintain their existence. I actually do believe at one time what we consider to be a vampire, did in fact exist, they were probably not truly dead and returned to life, but more than likely under a very strong demonic curse or a race of evil beings created by Satan.

If anyones interested, I read an article awhile back that went into great depth about this topic, originated in eastern europe.

 

[Lost_Wanderer]

And that’s what this story would convey: that these things are inherently evil monsters regardless of how human they seem. They might be kindly and hospitable to all people, but the fact they are identified as vampires makes them worthy of death. Every vampire man, woman and child is unavoidably evil, regardless of the actions they do, and is worthy of a swift painful death.

I can never understand how having fangs and night-based superpowers supposedly makes you ‘evil.’ The worst you can say is that the thirst for blood is intrinsically disordered. And yeah, you can say vampires can suffer from a few more psychological abnormalities.

But really, that is not sufficient proof for a verdict. Are they dangerous? Yep. Are they scary? Oh yeah.

Yet it’s not like humanity itself isn’t a race of monsters. We’ve killed in the name of some reclusive God. We’ve enslaved our own children for the sexual pleasures of men several times their age. Millions more were starved in the name of ‘equality’ and eliminating the ‘bourgeoisie.’

Reminds me of Malthael from Diablo III and I don’t even play that game. It’s just that, with all due respect, it amuses me when some higher being claims to see a particular race or breed as inherently corrupt. And therefore, the time comes to annihilate this so-called infernal race.

That’s like saying you’re evil because you can conjure fire with the wave of a wand and fly on broomsticks.

P.S.

Believe it or not but I actually don’t like vampires all that much, in spite of my defense above. My sister does though. And in a fictional setting, I’d sooner be in the company of a vampire like her than boneheaded paladins who eat, drink, and wear their religion on their sleeve.