You must log in or # to comment.
“The only way they’d be a threat is if people were so horny for them they abandoned all caution and reason-- ah.”
Even with no powers they are a formidable force. They may have lived 100s or 1000s of years amassed great wealth and knowledge during that time. So they’re trapped inside but they can get one of their minions to go out and get you. Now if we’re talking about a universe where they do have powers like superhuman speed strength perception etc then you’re even more fucked. Nowdays they got AR15s and FPV drones so dont feel so safe behind your thin walls and garlic.
Also, they can’t come into your house unless you invite them.
Imagine how un-scary every other monster would be if they had that rule.
Makes me wonder if it started as like a cautionary tale about not opening the doors for strangers
Ahhh! The monster that would go on to be synonymous with kink culture and non-con smut has a consent mechanic BUILT IN to the lore.
What makes them scary isn’t the fear they’ll hurt you. It’s the fear of being one.
Wasn’t the original inspiration for them something about skin retracting after death?
Depends on where and when you are talking about. There was a doctor in the 60s that proposed a misunderstanding of the disease Porphyria was the ancient origin of vampire folklore. The disease makes you extremely photosensitive, making your teeth seem longer and fang-like by causing your gums to recede, and causes your urine to appear red.
Other people have suggested that rabies was the origin, for more obvious bite related reasons.
One of the most recent vampire hysterias in history was caused by the spread of tuberculosis in the United states in the 18th and 19th century. The disease made you pale, cough up blood, and gave you a complexion that was considered by Victorians to emanate youthful beauty. People dying of consumption would be blamed for deaths in the family or community, being accused of stealing life from the people around them.
It probably varies by culture and it’s so old that there probably isn’t one true vampire origin. Most cultures seem to have some kind of story about a dead person who eats people.
A ‘fun’ one that I heard was that back in the day sometimes people weren’t as dead as they thought when they buried them - catatonic, epileptic, or some other kind of comatose. If they were in a shallow grave, they might wake up and escape before wandering around town. Likely with some kind of trauma or brain damage that might make them erratic, or just simply that people were afraid that someone they had buried got up for a stroll.
The solution then is to find some means of keeping them in the ground. Burying them deep, coffins chained shut, staking or decapitating the deceased. This is not much comfort to you if you weren’t as dead as you were declared, but at least your neighbours will sleep better.
Eh, depends on the work in question. Vampire: The Masquerade vampires 🧛♀️ are quite powerful, and a normal human basically doesn’t stand a chance. Unless the human has true faith, which basically hard counters vampires.
Sunlight yeah but that is the whole stick. Find where they are hiding in the day but oh they tend to be somewhere where its impossible to get sunlight to it. Otherwise they are like homelander. why garlic to in the thought. its like a minor aversion usually. Holy water for the fiction that uses that is generally a bigger deal and of course the whole wooden stake, bow and arrow is useful but it hard to be super accurate with that when a thing is zipping around like the flash.
The original Dracula similarly gets his ass handed to him at each turn in the pages of the book. I think he has like one W before the ultimate L.
Huh? He drains Jonathan and leaves him so weak he’s out of the story for months. He successfully migrates to England, killing the entire ship’s crew on the way. He lives in London for months, killing many locals while he does so. He kills and transforms Lucy. He comes incredibly close to also turning Mina. His minions kill Quincy Morris in the climax of the story.
For sure, it’s a very old book that really doesn’t follow the storytelling conventions we would expect today in terms of how the pacing of tension and the back-and-forth between protagonists and antagonists work. But it’s a far cry from “one W before the ultimate L”. Hell, basically the entire first half of the book is all Ws for D.
Idk, when I read it, it seemed he killed like 3 people “on stage” and one was by turning. The ships crew is kind of a throw away mention. I didnt really feel like the first half was all Ws. Maybe because all the people he supposedly kills are just a number, and the main cast is all gods among men seemingly fit perfect for the job of stopping Dracula. It just felt silly and not that deadly reading it to me. But he just moves to London, needs his dirt, and it says months but as soon as the protagonists catch on he is almost immediately ousted. So yeah that’s a win but only because he stayed under the nose of some other normal humans. Idk it didnt read as all that powerful to me.
Yeah he doesn’t actually kill that many on screen. Lucy, Renfield, I’ve seen some say he killed Mrs Westenra (though my memory is her death was natural), and I think we can also credit him with the deaths of the baby (more directly killed by his Brides) and Quincy (more directly killed by his Roma allies).
the main cast is all gods among men
It is true, the heroes lack the degree of struggle we’d expect in modern novels. I’d rather describe them as men among god, given the themes of the book.
But I think looking at number of on-screen deaths is missing the point of it. It’s kind of the equivalent of analysing the quality of a movie by looking at how many dings Cinema Sins gave it/how many plot holes it has. It’s ignoring the themes, the tone, everything that actually matters. By runtime, Dracula is on top longer than he’s not. The entire time Jonathan is in Transylvania, the entire length of Mina and Lucy’s conversations, his trip to England, and even a fair while in England. Even once the heroes of light start fighting back, he is simultaneously in the middle of turning Mina.
He felt scary to readers a the time, and I contend he is still frightening to readers today, because of all that. Because although he isn’t the sort of unbeatable cosmic horror of something like Lovecraft, he is a deeply personal horror that can be threatening you without you knowing even after you know he’s there and are trying to fight back.
Its definitely a times thing. Like nowadays if you wanted that you’d have Dracula kill most of the main cast if not all, only losing his life on the last one. Vampires just have too many rules to be scary for me.
And with all their weaknesses, some stories don’t even get any powers. They’re just a creepy guy who drinks blood and can’t go outside much.
Don’t forget to spread some dirt from their homeland so they can sleep properly
He has never read Peter Watts’ vampires, but It’s ok, i used to be in that “vampire not scary” camp.
deleted by creator
