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Post by WildKnight on Jul 7, 2011 18:11:30 GMT -5
What you just described is effectively an animal with a very particular hunting style (and the ability to mimic sounds to lure in prey is found in nature...). It exists to survive and to eat, and it preys on the most plentiful and convenient animal nearby. If it were in the Savannah and the plentiful animal were zebras instead of in the city and the animal being humans, you'd be talking about a lion.
For me, that's not compelling for a story. A story needs emotion to drive it. The reason vampires have captured the human imagination beyond the simple, intangible fear elicited by every other "bump in the night" (no matter what name you use for it) is that they are, in fact, "us." Vampires let people express things that are otherwise taboo (admittedly, often only in coded language).
I can assure that if only your vision of "vampire" existed, we wouldn't be talking about vampires at all right now.
On a pseudo-related note... you seem hell-bent on making everything that had human shape and preyed on humans in any form of myth a "vampire." I understand that this is a popular way to go when discussing vampire myth, but it's a major logical fallacy as well.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2011 18:22:33 GMT -5
Lions don't knock on people's doors, and spook them for several days, or weeks before killing them. Vampires did that sort of thing whenever they felt like it in myth.
If only those type of vampires existed then we wouldn't have crap like twilight either, and that wouldn't be a bad thing.
And the argument isn't a "fallacy" whenever the creature in question hunts and stalks humans before drinking their blood. There are several creatures that were humanoid, but not vampires in mythology. Gods, demigods, cyclops, nymph's, Sirens, dyads, nephilim, angels, sasquach, leprechaun, and the list goes on and on. To say that I was "hell-bend" on making everything that preyed on humans in mythology a vampire is a fallacy statement. There's a distinct difference. Grant it, not every example I gave did hunt humans, but plenty of them did, or gave them grief. The key difference is being an undead blood drinker.
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Post by WildKnight on Jul 7, 2011 18:32:00 GMT -5
Actually, plenty of creatures harry their prey before killing it.
At any rate, your criteria of being dead and drinking blood casts an awfully wide net (and I suspect that many of the myths you're referring to actually had creatures that devoured flesh rather than drank blood, but I'd have to look into it further to be sure), and certainly includes far more creatures that were mindless and bestial than the sort you describe, so it still ends up ringing false.
Let me ask you this; can you name a story or movie where vampires are as you prefer them to be? Because for the life of me, I can't
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2011 18:44:36 GMT -5
The "Nuh uh," statement of if something is intelligent because it knows speech, and can hunt still isn't convincing me. Knowing speech and being smart enough to hunt always requires intelligence.
If you read vampire myth's you would realize that vampires aren't actually limited to just drinking blood. That misconception wasn't really that popular before Bram Stolker. The truth is they devoured flesh, and drank blood in early myth's. That's where the idea for the modern wimpy vampires came from. The original ideas were much more beast like than humans, but still very intelligent. That's why Bram Stolker ripped them off to make Dracula. Because they were bad *ss.
Stories, yes, movies no. I've read more books on the occult than I would care to name. Movies tend to fallow Stolker's style of work more. In hard core occult books it's not "stories" per say. It's definitions of what they are, and what they do. Even reading about what they are and what their history is is still much more entertaining than the hollywood crap they put out, or other crappy novel's. The only two vampire novel's I like are Salem's Lot, and Dracula. I know dracula is more of the modern style vampire, but it's still well written.
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Post by WildKnight on Jul 7, 2011 18:57:56 GMT -5
Er... s'what I said... the vampires you're describing are like animals, and therefore not compelling...
Even the vampires in Salem's Lot aren't anything like what you're describing.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2011 19:05:53 GMT -5
I know it's not compelling to you, but it is compelling to me. They aren't just like animals, they are more like hunters who live in the wild. They are at least as intelligent as they were when they died, if not more so. In some cases they were in cities, but still pretty much the same. The undead of myth do not have human emotions. The human emotion in those kinds of tales come from a completely unexpected source...the humans.
Also, I know that the vampires and Salem's Lot are not like the ones from myth, and I didn't say they were. I still like the book though. It's a good read.
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Post by WildKnight on Jul 7, 2011 19:09:17 GMT -5
I agree, and I guess ultimately that's what I'm getting at. There are great stories following the modern vampire mythology. Just because Twilight sucks is no reason to act as if its ALL Twilight.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2011 19:18:12 GMT -5
I didn't say all of it sucked. I still admitted to liking Salem's Lot, and Dracula. However the bulk of it is kind of bad. Dracula 2000, all of the dusk till dawns except for the first one, interview with the vampire, queen of the damned, and every other vampire movie I've seen wasn't that good. I did like the very first Dusk Till Dawn, but after that it started going down hill. Bram Stolkers Dracula was good. Most TV show's with vampires are pretty bad though.
It's not my fault that TV hasn't put out many good vampire movies, or TV shows. In order to make a good vampire novel that's enjoyable you really need to take a step back and make the vampires more like the monsters they are suppose to be, and focus on the humans for the human emotions. If not they are just going to keep churning out crap.
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Post by WildKnight on Jul 7, 2011 19:25:25 GMT -5
Well, at any rate, I disagree with your basic premise about vampires and emotions, but I do agree that most vampire stuff is crap. But IMO, most of everything in every genre is crap.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2011 19:31:34 GMT -5
I can live with agreeing to disagree. That's how most of our conversations end anyway, but I still respect your opinion.
I do wonder though, because to me the first Dusk Till Dawn movie was probably the most believable portrayal of vampires I've seen in over 10 years. I watched part of 2 when I has half drunk, and heard the other ones were bad. In that movie they were vampires, and that's all they were doing was luring people in, and feeding. The humans did what they could to survive. I mean, you can't tell me you didn't enjoy that more than Louis complaining about his problems in interview with the vampire.
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Post by WildKnight on Jul 7, 2011 19:41:56 GMT -5
Actually I found Interview much more interesting than Dusk Till Dawn. I did enjoy DtD, but it was far from what I'd call great story-telling. It was just a lot of boobs and violence.
There's plenty of room in life for boobs and violence, but I vastly prefer to be challenged to think by what I'm watching.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2011 23:58:42 GMT -5
I don't know, Interview with the Vampire was little more than an excuse for Tom Cruse to suck on Brad Pitt's neck.
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Post by Dhark on Jul 8, 2011 22:07:01 GMT -5
Let me ask you this; can you name a story or movie where vampires are as you prefer them to be? Because for the life of me, I can't Absolutely. The movie: 'Once Bitten'. NOTE: This is taken completely out of context. I just found that to be an amusing Vampire movie... and if ALL vampires could be cougars like her... dang.
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Post by WildKnight on Jul 8, 2011 23:14:29 GMT -5
*grumbles*
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preach901
Puny Human
College ruined my brain.
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Post by preach901 on Jul 9, 2011 0:58:23 GMT -5
Vampires can be a variety of different things. Depending on which mythology you follow u can see differences in vampires. Like if you follow the Myth that there are distinct vampiric clans,(which is basically another word for species) each "clan" have almost completely different traits once you exclude undeath and the need to feed on living creatures. Like the Gangrels I believe, are basically vampiric barbarians who slay for fun.
IMO, almost anything is better than Twilight which has been pretty much the target of the emo comment. maybe those crappy vampire shows too. They make Vampires into utter jokes. SPARKLING are u serious? VAMPIRES DON'T SPARKLE.
They also say that wolf dude is a werewolf which he obviously isn't. He is based of of an American Indian belief of "skin walkers" I believe they're called. Where some people within the tribe were said to be able to take the form of an animal, which was usually their spirit animal.
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