ParanetOnline
McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: WyldCard4 on January 29, 2008, 07:24:02 AM
-
Vampires, Werewolves, and Elves as Evil Beings
These traditional monsters have been glamorized by our culture and I am planning on writing truly evil versions of these being, any idea on divorcing them from the sympathy that our culture provides?
This is what I have so far.
Vampires are dead and vile, they concern themselves with dark pleasures, and they rape and murder and steal at whim and lack the slightest empathy or remorse.
They kill and hurt each other to keep their own inline and have cultures darker than any human one.
Werewolves I have more trouble with. They are hard not to make sympathetic if they are cursed with that state and are barely Werewolves if they are not, I have the idea that they are the personification of the wild that we try to tame, monsters who seek to tear down our every wall and tear us down to the state of beasts but I fear that too many would see that as a blessing despite what I attempt to convey.
Elves are the darkest Fae who are dark and cruel and alien.
They seek to torture our children to make them like themselves and torture men for unknown reasons.
They are the easiest as they are often depicted as cruel but are still depicted as far to bright for my tastes, any ideas for making these things dark again?
-
Terry Pratchett did a good job of turning elves evil, making them vicious, malicious creatures that take people over through their glamor and basically bring wreck and ruin to the world. Lords and Ladies is a good book of his with that as the storyline.
Vampires and werewolves...I've seen them being evil baddies plenty of times, more in the traditional sense. I guess the modern stories, especially the paranormal romantic type have been casting them in tortured hero type of molds, or sympathetic outcasts, but you should find plenty of source material in folklore and myth that shows their bestial sides.
-
They are the easiest as they are often depicted as cruel but are still depicted as far to bright for my tastes, any ideas for making these things dark again?
What purpose do they serve in the story ?
I'm not particularly drawn to making beings evil for evil's sake, because it's harder to give them consistent motivations and have them make sense within the history of their world if that's all they do, and because it's a trivial way of getting cheap sympathy for whoever opposes them. So I may well not be the right person to answer this question, but anyways; it would be easier for me to suggest how to make them dark if I knew why they were dark in the first place.
Tolkien's elves, unlike much of the subsequent fantasy versions of elves by people who have only read Tolkien and Tolkien imitators, are very much Miltonic angels; can't go wrong going back to "Paradise Lost".
-
Elves are the darkest Fae who are dark and cruel and alien.
They seek to torture our children to make them like themselves and torture men for unknown reasons.
I don't know if this is true even in the original stories. It's suggested that they steal human children because they themselves are sterile and the few children they manage to have are usually very sickly. That's why they often kidnap healthy human children and women who are of breedable age.
There is a book though called At The Bottom Of The Garden you might try reading. She's only got one detail wrong. Marilyn Monroe was NOT the model for Tinkerbell.
http://www.snopes.com/disney/films/tinkerbell.asp
Other then that her facts and research are pretty much spot-on. And she's pretty nice. I e-mailed her about the Tinkerbell thing and she didn't mind that she was corrected.
-
There is no need to 'make' these things dark.
Go have a look at the oldest stories and legends about them.
THere's plenty of 'dark' there for you.
-
With the Elves, take a cue from Rob Thurman and Karen Marie Moning. In Moning's latest series, the Fae see humans as little more then monkeys, and in Thurman's novels, they are a race of psychopaths.
-
Vampires, Werewolves, and Elves as Evil Beings
Werewolves I have more trouble with. They are hard not to make sympathetic if they are cursed with that state and are barely Werewolves if they are not, I have the idea that they are the personification of the wild that we try to tame, monsters who seek to tear down our every wall and tear us down to the state of beasts but I fear that too many would see that as a blessing despite what I attempt to convey.
Well, folkloric werewolves aren't cursed with a disease but are Satanic sorcerers who use magic to shape-shift. In other words, they *want* to be that way and went through the effort of learning magic and making the necessary sacrifices to the Devil to gain the ability.
The belt-using werewolves in Fool Moon are an example of the Satanic sorcerer variety (even though Jim's cosmology doesn't posit Satan as the ultimate source of evil.)
-
Well, folkloric werewolves aren't cursed with a disease but are Satanic sorcerers who use magic to shape-shift. In other words, they *want* to be that way and went through the effort of learning magic and making the necessary sacrifices to the Devil to gain the ability.
The belt-using werewolves in Fool Moon are an example of the Satanic sorcerer variety (even though Jim's cosmology doesn't posit Satan as the ultimate source of evil.)
There are other ways, like being born on the wrong day; sleeping in an open field, under a full moon; drinking water from a cursed spring; drinking water from a wolf's foot print; being the seventh son of a seventh son. It depends on the source.
-
Werewolves as a primal hunter spirit sort of thing works too. Something along the lines of the Predator, the Canim, or the Erlking (or a mix of all three).
Elves in the older version as malicious tricksters and such, or expand teh definition to include things like sirens and other ancient perils.
Vampires are traditionally evil, it mostly depends on where they fall on the savage/evi-genius spectrum
-
As has been said before, all of these are already dark in the original traditions. Vampires seek immortality by stealing the life of others to add to their own. Some devoured the persons flesh in addition to drinking their blood. ( Read the original Dracula where he gives his wives a baby to eat so that they won't bother his guest if you want evil vampires.) The idea that they would just take a little blood which the person could then regenerate like they had given to a blood bank was a later idea. It was a persons life they were consuming not just some plasma.
Werewolves were magicians who transformed themselves so that they could kill and maim without it being traced back to them. Psychopathic serial killers trying to hide the evidence.
Elves were more amoral than immoral. They saw humans as toys to be used and discarded, providers of servants for their courts. Humans purpose was to serve the elves.
-
Rob Thurman did a good job with werewolves and Elves/Fae, in his Nightlife, Moonshine, and forthcoming Madhouse books. Elves are viscious cruel rage filled psychopaths. Werewolves are thuggish stupid gangsters. other races also exist. I highly recommend this series by the way
-
Thank you all for your many detailed and well thought out answers.
The Satanic sorcery idea had never dawned upon me and answers a lot of the reason I asked about this and something I forgot to talk about in the OP. a big part of the problem was thinking of a way for each to be different and have a part in the setting.
In answer to the question of what the story is about, it is an idea I have been kicking around for awhile.
A story where there is an end of the world scenario and it is like flipping over a stone for the supernatural, it had been hiding for centuries, weak and failing for millennia unable to fight humanities numbers and innovation until humanity blew itself up
.
Both the Dark and the Light are present in the world and both rise again with the Dark believing that it is its last chance to destroy humanity and the Light doing the right thing and defending it.
The story will (or would as I have yet to even plot it out) be about the human race’s gathering together to destroy the supernatural once and for all. The Light to will die for reasons that would spoil the plot if I ever where to write this.
The Werewolves as evil magicians is very good as they could represent the humans who valued life over good and turned to the only ways they could survive in the new world, much like SM Stirling’s Dies the Fire series with the cannibal Eaters.
The Elves and Vampires I am completely satisfied with now and your answers give my all the information I need to make them Evil and not tragic.
Thank you all very much.
-
Rob Thurman did a good job with werewolves and Elves/Fae, in his Nightlife, Moonshine, and forthcoming Madhouse books. Elves are viscious cruel rage filled psychopaths. Werewolves are thuggish stupid gangsters. other races also exist. I highly recommend this series by the way
Rob Thurman is a woman. Check out her website.
-
Both the Dark and the Light are present in the world and both rise again with the Dark believing that it is its last chance to destroy humanity and the Light doing the right thing and defending it.
I still don't get what the Dark's motivation is in this scene.
There was an anthology a few years back called Under the Fang, which was about a world vaguely after a nuclear war and winter where vampires had taken over, which might be worth your looking at - on the grounds that it's what any reviewers are likely to compare a book of this sort to. The only story in it I remember sticking was a Chelsea Quiin Yarbro/Suzy McKee Charnas collaboration, about exactly what you wound expect it to be about if you have read their respective vampire novels.
-
I still don't get what the Dark's motivation is in this scene.
There was an anthology a few years back called Under the Fang, which was about a world vaguely after a nuclear war and winter where vampires had taken over, which might be worth your looking at - on the grounds that it's what any reviewers are likely to compare a book of this sort to. The only story in it I remember sticking was a Chelsea Quiin Yarbro/Suzy McKee Charnas collaboration, about exactly what you wound expect it to be about if you have read their respective vampire novels.
The Dark is scared.
It has been weakening for most of history and sees this as it's last chanece to survive into the future without man to hunt it down and drive it out, the Dark and the Light are in a state of balance but humanity tips that balance as it is free to act on its own.
-
Rob Thurman is a woman. Check out her website.
Didn't know that. There is no indication of it in her name, or the about the author. Hell ive been to the website a few times, never picked up on it
-
I liked the way J.R.R. Tolkien did it in that the Dark elves were typically the orcs that were elves but subverted by Sauron's cruel power to become what they are presently.
-
Actually, Elf is a catch-all term like Fairie. The true dark elves of legend are the Dwarves.
-
Actually, Elf is a catch-all term like Fairie. The true dark elves of legend are the Dwarves.
At least in the northern Europe area (ie the Norse domain)
-
Wanna see vampires as nasty, evil beings intent only on destruction? watch "30 Days of Night"......
-
Wanna see vampires as nasty, evil beings intent only on destruction? watch "30 Days of Night"......
A really good bad movie.
Another good one is I am Legend. Its viral, but they are described as basically vampires whose high brain function is suppressed, so they are very animalistic.