Vampire Use In Contemporary Fantasy

[Richelle Mead]

What gets me is why most authors don't let their vampires eat regular food, or if they do, they go and vomit it up sometime later.

If it cheers you up, my vampire side characters eat regular food.  One of them gets so paranoid about it that he actually goes on a low carb diet.   

[Willowhugger]

I think its important to note that the Vampire market has mostly been expanding by leaps and bounds to become it's own sub-genre because several authors have managed to create a market for it where it didn't exist before.  This actually means that people are going to be less burned out than people expected.  I'll go down with a list of things that have occurred in the past 10-20 years that have had a major impact on the market.

1. Anne Rice's Interview with a Vampire series.
2. White Wolf's Vampire the Masquerade and it's LARP
3. Joss Wheldon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
4. The Blade Trilogy
5. The Anita Blake series that is more a literary benefit.

Urban Fantasy has been slowly expanding as a market because the trail has been slowly but surely pathed by people adding daily to it.  The Hellblazer series I tend to actually think started the Urban Fantasy genre some thirty years ago.  Chris Carter's The X-files is the biggest gift of it to the world today (though aliens are now utterly passe again as a part of urban mythology).  Neil Gaiman and others have also added to it.

Hell, even Harry Potter.

In general, I think that vampires will always have a place in fantasy because they fulfill the role of an easily usable mythological monster.  They're also very flexible creatures for their usage.  You've got the Byronic "I'm cursed" hero types and romantic leads that everyone since Frank Langella has been harping on (though I'd love to see some more sexy female vampires honestly).  You've got the mindless monster style vampires that are always good for cannon fodder.  You've also got the intelligent ancient evils at work as well.

Vampires I don't think will ever become passe since there's so many ways to do them.  Does no one remember how people said that Hammer Horror had completely tapped out the genre (probably not but my father believed that).  In my books, I tend to use them as a combination of ravenous monsters and intelligent manipulative scum.  It's no coincidence that I also make one of the heroes' lovers into a vampire but I keep her villainous.  Why? Because I think they work better as femme fatales than genuine people to be interested in.

I also think that even movies of questionable content like Keanu Reeve's Constantine will help keep the urban fantasy world alive.  More work equals the fans expanding.  I honestly don't believe that Christian mythology would be taken seriously as a genuine work for fantasy were not there some genuinely fun pieces incorporating it.  I'm referring, of course, to works like The Omen and The Prophecy where they work wonderfully.

Sadly, it's been a while since the Howling and werewolves need a shot in the arm.

[resurrectedwarrior]

If anyone's interested, the latest Dragon Page podcast has a recording of a WFC 2006 panel discussing vampire fiction. I haven't listened to it yet, but it looks interesting. You can find the podcast at www.dragonpage.com.

[The Corvidian]

In my stories, vampires, and to some extent, the werewolves are the whipping boys, because they cause the most trouble. Many vampires, at least those who are from Eastern Europe think that they are the "Masters of the Night" and, that the other supernatural creatures rebelled against them centuries ago. They also think that North and South America have little or no supernatural presence, and that they can move in at will. My main characters like change their minds, usually the vamprie ends up with broken limbs, and/or dead. The werewolves have their whole pack/gang mentality, and with some, it gets them into trouble. They go into supernatural clubs and hangouts, and they get their butts handed to them.

[terioncalling]

Sadly, it's been a while since the Howling and werewolves need a shot in the arm.

I'm actually currently working on a werewolf story if any takes interest.  Whenever the writer's board gets up'n runnin' I'll post the first chapter of it.


Also, on the vampire thing, I wondered if anyone had ever heard of this odd method of killing vampires that I found on the Encyclodpedia Mythica: stealing his left sock, filling it with stones and throwing it in a river.  That one just makes my brain go "...gwah?"

[fjeastman]

Read a book called Moon Called not too long ago, forget the author, a mid-list traditional fantasy writer I think ... sort of about werewolves.  The protag is actually a native american skinwalker, but in the first book all that means is she turns into a coyote through innate magic instead of transforming physically into a wolf like her foster family.

Wasn't terrible.  One of the current spate of:  "Faeries and Supernatural Creatures Revealed Themselves In the World" setting books, as opposed to the Dresden style "They're There, But We Don't Know It".

Course it's also got vampires and faeries in it.  My favorite part is the faeries were more germanic than english victorian revisionist.  One of the characters is an old german gremlin.

--fje

[novium]

I read an urban fantasy book a few weeks ago that had most of the usual urban fantasy creatures, but no vampires. It was pretty good, actually. Apropos of nothing, but it was unusual enough that I thought I'd mention it.

[carpathic]

I don't use them, they are WAY overused. They are however convenient for an author because there are already a good set of preconceptions...you don't have to re-invent the wheel for a character that way.

[The Corvidian]

Read a book called Moon Called not too long ago, forget the author, a mid-list traditional fantasy writer I think ... sort of about werewolves.  The protag is actually a native american skinwalker, but in the first book all that means is she turns into a coyote through innate magic instead of transforming physically into a wolf like her foster family.

Wasn't terrible.  One of the current spate of:  "Faeries and Supernatural Creatures Revealed Themselves In the World" setting books, as opposed to the Dresden style "They're There, But We Don't Know It".

Course it's also got vampires and faeries in it.  My favorite part is the faeries were more germanic than english victorian revisionist.  One of the characters is an old german gremlin.

--fje

Her name is Katherine Briggs, and the sequel comes out in a month or two.

[The Corvidian]

Sadly, it's been a while since the Howling and werewolves need a shot in the arm.

I'm actually currently working on a werewolf story if any takes interest.  Whenever the writer's board gets up'n runnin' I'll post the first chapter of it.


Also, on the vampire thing, I wondered if anyone had ever heard of this odd method of killing vampires that I found on the Encyclodpedia Mythica: stealing his left sock, filling it with stones and throwing it in a river.  That one just makes my brain go "...gwah?"

The vampire sock method showed up in the cartoon Jackie Chan Adventures.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

My take on why vampires stick around in contemporary fantasy; it's a combination of a pile of sex-related stuff*, plus the fascination of the outsider - in its more annoying forms, the outsider who angsts on for pages and pages and pages about never seeing the sun again - and the sort of repulsive fascination of disease imagery [ see also, nineteenth-century romanticisation of consumption. ]

Having just watched A Bridge Too Far on DVD last night, the title of this thread is making think of more practical uses like "if we swim over and chain a bunch of vampires to this bridge tonight, they'll all go boom at dawn and burn it down." That's probably not hemplful.

*As Gregory von Bayern says in The Dragon Waiting, vampires persuade their paramours as young men maidens; there's a little pain and a little blood but not as much as you think of either, and of course nothing's going to happen to you. And then one day you wake up... ill.