Here's an article by Alan Edwards, originally at this link, but reposted here with edits for language. My comments are inserted throughout.
A Friday Rant: Angsty Vampires
Posted by Alan Edwards
First off, sorry it's been so long since I rapped at ya (thanks, Jim Anchower) but, well, crap happens. This week, it happened for me a lot. Back to the show. Oh, and serious profanity ahead.
Ocean Elf: Thanks for the warning, I've edited it out for reposting here on this site. But I completely understand the tooth-gnashing vexation that drove you to its utterance.
Alan Edwards:It's ubiquitous now. It's as ingrained in our culture as breathlessly reporting on the antics of a bunch of skanks and meatheads. It's everywhere we go, everywhere we turn.
Angsty flaring vampires.
Oh yes, I'm making light of it. My human mind cannot imagine the trials and tribulations of the aged vampire, whose last tenuous ties to humanity seem to fray ever further with every passing century, and how that forces him into contemplation of all that has withered and died around him while he must endure, lithe and handsome as ever. The ennui that sets in, the yearning to connect with a human heart and yet cannot, for he is forever separated from those beautiful yet flawed creatures. He attempts over and again, skipping around the country to pose as a high school student so that he can find that innocence that he himself has lost and can never regain but like a moth to flame he must fly ever closer, knowing he shall burn but oh, the beauty and lure are too intoxicating and he must strive to satisfy the yearning in the soul that he has lost. Or, perhaps he alights to Europe, preferably France, where he can clothe himself in the latest fashions and slip through the night, the nattily-dressed loner, brooding as he looks on some relic of the past, seeing it as a reflection of himself, a lost piece of history thrust into a world so alien to their youth, yet forced to remain, unchanged and overlooked by the seething masses of people too wrapped up in their short but wonderful lives to notice them.
Flare you, Anne Rice. I blame you for all this crap.
Ocean Elf: Hehe! Lestat oh, poor, poor baby. *cough, cough* I never understood the appeal either.
alan edwards: Yeah, it must be really flaring tough to be a vampire. All the immortality and super strength and speed, the dashing good looks, the need to never work a crappy shift at a flaring Burger King to help pay for the hamgoddam mortgage and the three snot-nosed brats back at the house. It must be un-flaring-bearable to outlive every mookface and tool that ever lived. Healing every wound but the ones that strike your precious heart must be terrible, so much worse than the paraplegic who will be stuck in a chair for the rest of his life.
Ocean Elf: Oh, I can't resist making an addition to this! The man is paralyzed in the first place after and because of a narrow escape from one of your bloodthirsty vampy attacks!
alan Edwards:Oh, for all of these gifts, you'll never again see the sunrise.
Ocean Elf: and since you're a vamp, you're not even supposed to like the sunrise anyway. If you chose to be a vamp, your own fault for making the most selfish choices a character could make. When offered a way to become unvamped and turned back to normal, you refuse. Okay, your choice, no sympathy from me. It's clear you'd rather go on parasitizing humans and moaning on pretentiously, melodramatically about how your life - er, excuse me - 'un-life,' sucks. No love from me.
Alan Edwards: You know what, I flaring hate seeing the sun rise. Either I'm up way too flaring early to do something I don't want to do and accommodate someone else's schedule, or I've been partying all night long and the sun is like the jerkface bouncer coming up and telling everyone to get out, party's over. So suck it up, you flaring pansy.
Ocean Elf: hehe! That's what he does best, actually, - in the literal sense. Couldn't resist. *Grin*
alan Edwards: But oh, they must feed on humans, taking their blood in a ritual that is basically a nine-flaring-minute orgasm, apparently.
Ocean Elf: *Disgusted scowl* Yeah. Ewww! Repulsive.
alan Edwards: Yeah, that must be pretty flaring rough.
Ocean Elf: Yeah, only for the unwilling victim, not for the vamp, obviously, or any human characters whose minds are so utterly screwed over that they would actually like it. My stomach is starting to rebel just by my recalling having to read such gag-worthy sanguination from people's writings in the past.
alan Edwards: I go through that every time I eat a microwave burrito, myself. So flare you.
Ocean Elf: eh? Weird mental image of you sinking a fang into a burrito. It doesn't quite compute.
Alan Edwards: I know I personally often go to jungles and watch the apes, sadly forlorn that no longer do I have to eat live ants and throw my crap at other things that are looking to flaring eat me. I really flaring miss connecting with my Inner Ape, and I too fret that I no longer have that innate Apeness that makes them so innocent and yet too distant for me to ever reconnect with.
Ocean Elf: *Snicker* Yeah, we lowly apes compared to the most wonderful perfect misunderstood predator vampire. *Jeer*
Alan Edwards: What the hex do vampires want to reconnect with their lost humanity for anyway? I sure as crap don't try to connect with my cheeseburger.
Ocean Elf: *Grin* Here, here! Lol
alan Edwards: I don't flaring get it.
Ocean Elf: neither do we at Meme-Manglers. Vampires are selfish, carnal, animalistic predators, humans are their prey, not their soul-mates. And they like it that way. Vamps have a really good con game going. Make human characters feel too messed up enamoured of and sorry for them to mind being caught and drained dry. The reason they haven't made humans extinct in fiction is because thankfully not everybody is that stupid.
Alan Edwards: I could totally see some vamps playing the Angst Card, you know, trying to pick up that hot gender of choice at the bar by being all brooding and sensitive while simultaneously knocking some dude 30 feet across the room with a backhanded swipe. I imagine that gets them a lot of action. I'd respect them if it was a flaring act.
Ocean Elf: I wouldn't respect them, nothing could make me do that. But it would make a lot more sense. Let's face it, the vamp is a self-serving cad, and that's putting it kindly. Don't expect me to feel sorry for him.
alan Edwards: What happened to the vampires of yore? The amoral badarse creeps looking out some castle window making some creepy remark about the children of the night just to make someone mess their pants? That's how a vampire should act. Top of the Food Chain, baby, Top of the flaring World.
Ocean Elf: Who need to be treated as any other plague or pestilence and annihilated. Because when all's said and done, feeling sympathy for/having a crush on a vampire makes about as much sense as romancing the influenza virus, the anthrax bacteria, etc..
Alan Edwards: You can go ahead and Masquerade my trash. Like Tracy Lords and Stephen Dorff in Blade. They had it right. That's how a vampire should act.
So flare you, angsty vampires. Go bite yourselves in the ear. While you're shedding your blood tears and putting on your flaring inch-thick eyeliner, look in the mirror (presuming you can see yourself. If not, that would explain the crappy eye makeup) and tell yourself this: quit acting like a stupid moony 15-year-old little moron and act like you enjoy yourself. You're bloody immortal. Live like it.
Stinkfaces.
Steven | June 17, 2011 at 10:45 am
Alan. You are a God.
Ocean Elf: Uh, no. The word is 'good' at telling it like it is where vampires are concerned.
Steven: Vampires as depicted in modern literature are teh
Ocean Elf: *Scowl* 'teh' = chanism. Not cool.
Steven: flaring lame. The “Blade” films, while saddled with some problems of their own, are some of the only modern vampire movies that make what should be some incredibly frightening creatures (I mean THINK of all the crap they can do, all the power, all of that raw and unbridled primal animalistic hunger!) actually SCARY and intimidating! (John Steakley's “Vampires” does a nice job, too…too bad the movie version blew).
Vampires should be scary, not a metaphor for angst-ridden hormonal thirty-somethings who are having mid-life crises and want to spend eternity intimidating people with Gothic makeup and who are essentially walking pedophiles. That's not scary: that's just sad.
Ocean Elf: Actually that is horribly creepy. And I don't mean thriller movie creepy, but the skin-crawly kind.
Steven: Don't get me wrong, there is some good Paranormal Romance out there. And there's some crap…..ok, there's a LOT of crap, enough that it's largely turned me off to the genre.
Wow, now you got me ranting, and that's not easy to do. Well done! =D
Alan Edwards | June 17, 2011 at 11:01 am
Hahahahahaa sweeeeet. FEEEL the Hate within you, my son. That was a fun mini-rant.
I remember reading something you said about Blood Skies, and wanting to bring that terrifying aspect of the vampire back to the forefront. I think it acted like a grain of sand in my brain, only instead of a pearl I formed a lump of coal or something.
I also think there is good paranormal romance out there. There is also a lot of not-so-good. Unfortunately, the Undead Mary Sues of the world stalk the bookshelves in numbers too great to be defeated.
Ocean Elf: That's exactly what they are, and the role-players are seriously fanatical about defending them. Say anything against vampires even in character, and watch the sparks explode at you from every direction!
Jen Kirchner | June 17, 2011 at 11:06 am
You made me choke on my coffee. Also, I read this twice. It's just THAT GOOD.
I <3 you, man. /forehead L!
Alan Edwards | June 17, 2011 at 11:09 am
/forehead L all the way!
Scott Lambeth | June 17, 2011 at 11:52 am
Thirty Days of Night, now those were flaring great whites with legs. The only scary vamps exist in Call of Cthulhu.
Ocean Elf: *Grimace* Which sucks out loud. Cthulhu is everywhere, it has become a fiction meme right along with the angsty vampire.
Steven | June 17, 2011 at 4:10 pm
YES!!! Forgot about that one, great vampire flick!
Ocean Elf: Bleckh… Just not into anything H. P. Lovecraft… AT All…
Peter Fitzpatrick | June 17, 2011 at 2:24 pm
I think we're at the point where you can forgo any warnings regarding profanity forthcoming in your blog, I think we've come to expect it at this point. :-) Ocean Elf: No, because although you regulars are cool with it, there's always a chance someone new will come along and get put off if they don't like that sort of language. Case in point, me.
Alan Edwards | June 17, 2011 at 2:27 pm
I just want to warn someone's grandmother that wandered here by mistake. But you're probably right.
Ocean Elf: I'm no grandma, but I am a very straight-laced sass who sometimes goes looking for stuff that speaks out against annoying trends, and that's how I found this blog. I don't agree with everything here, certainly not the bit about his dogs being his kids thing, nor his feminism, *grimace* which is ultimately why I eventually unsubscribed. But there's enough good stuff in these rants about vamps, HP etc. that's fit to repost on my own site with language edits.
Christopher Simmons | June 17, 2011 at 4:54 pm
…says the guy dressed up as Lestat in his profile pic … :)
Alan Edwards | June 20, 2011 at 9:23 am
Hey now. Brother gotta eat.
Rikki K | June 19, 2011 at 10:48 am
I have a fondness for cuss words, but I'm a classy dame like that. ;)
I've been searching for some vampire tales that curdle the blood and force me to never leave home without my garlic necklace but sadly they are hard to find these days. I'm the child that used to sneak out of bed when i was 6 years old to watch monster movies after my parents were asleep. Where are all the vampires that terrorized entire villages? Where are the vampires that liked to play with their food, dragging out the psychological torture as long as the heart was beating? Where are the evil vampires I hastily discarded my virginity as a precautionary measure to avoid?
Granted, I've still got a soft spot for reading about them, but can someone please invent the vampire equivalent of Prozac?
Closest story I've found recently that contained some vampires that were violent and completely morally ‘other than human' has been from feedbooks. http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/20586/bad-blood
When the first couple of pages made me gasp in shock at the depravity, I knew it contained some vampires I could respect and fear.
Ocean Elf: *Disgusted scowl* no. So much no! So dang very much NO!
Rikki K: About Anne…..ugh. I think I have more of an issue with the “I wrote this way for years and years and oh i found god so now i'm sorry for it all” than I do with the bastardization of traditional vampire lore. That's the crappiest thing I can think of, feeling the need to apologize for the life you've lived and the things you've created.
Ocean Elf: *Scowl* But would it tick this commenter off less if God wasn't involved? I'll bet! *Rolling eyes*
Alan Edwards | June 20, 2011 at 9:23 am
I had NO IDEA that she went all repentant about what she wrote. For heck's sake.
Ocean Elf: That's admirable, for heck's sake! You were doing so great up until now. if someone's sorry about the crap they wrote, and it was crap, then all the more power to them, I say!
Alan Edwards: That's pathetic.
Ocean Elf: *Scowl* no, that's great. Pathetic only comes in when you try to remake a sadistic stink face into a nice guy, for any reason.
alan Edwards: And honestly, I enjoyed some of Rice's stuff, when it didn't deal with angsty bullcrap. Lestat was fun, the way I'd want to be without the maudlin whining.
Pavarti K Tyler | June 19, 2011 at 2:22 pm
Genius, I mahy have just fallen in love with you! I'm an Indie writer who works as an accountant on the side too!
Alan Edwards | June 20, 2011 at 9:24 am
That's awesome! So there's at least 3 of us out there. Ledger Power!
Steven Montano | June 20, 2011 at 11:11 am
We are LEGION!!!!
Rebecca | June 20, 2011 at 12:38 am
LOVE IT! Spot on. It's one reason why I don't read vampire books. And I'd do it this way – pick human victims that were the scum of the earth to feed on. It would be great to run around at night and not worry about personal safety. :D
Alan Edwards | June 20, 2011 at 9:25 am
It's tough – I love vampires as a mythological being, but fear what I'm going to get every time I pick up a book about them.
kendallgrey | June 20, 2011 at 8:22 am
I believe there's a direct correlation between the brilliance of your posts and the number of swear words you use, my friend. Hahahaha! Loved this one.
Ocean Elf: It's simple. the more passion, the more vividly the message gets through in the post, but it's just fine without the swearing.
kendallgrey: IMO, the whole angst thing was cool when Anne Rice did it, but it wears thin all these years later. I guess people like to humanize the inhuman – make monsters more relatable or some crap.
Ocean Elf: Ha! No kidding! Nailed right on the head.
kendallgrey: But I agree – if you're gonna be bad, then be bad and leave it at that. :-)
Ocean Elf: Yes!
Alan Edwards | June 20, 2011 at 9:28 am
I agree with you – back in the proverbial Day, it was cool and different (for a little while. She lost me on the Bone Thief or Body Thief or whatever the flare that was supposed to be).
And I think you're right. The more profanity I put in, the more popular the post. Coming tomorrow: flare flare flare flare, flare flare, FLARING flarITTY flare flare flare. Bam. 10,000 views.
Ocean Elf: whew! Good thing there is search and replace.
Patricia Royal | June 20, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Wow, glad I stumbled upon this article. Have to agree with it too. I am getting sick of the whiny vampires moaning about lost humanity. Now I love vampires but, seriously, sink those fangs into some flesh!!!! Gives me shivers when a vampire bites an unsuspecting human. Been working on my own little twist on the vampire myth and there's very little whining about lost humanity and a fair bit of killing. Not horror, mind you, but I tried to stay far away from the emo vampire that sparkles.
Alan Edwards | June 20, 2011 at 12:12 pm
I approve of this. Maybe if we all work together we can drown out the mass of wailing and whining emo vamps and give them back their teeth.
Christopher Simmons | June 21, 2011 at 1:25 pm
Oh, I think Anne actually had a second reversal, didn't she start back on the vamps again?
Alan Edwards | June 24, 2011 at 12:54 pm
Now this is starting to sound like a soap opera. Or a desperate plea for attention. Or an attempt to cash in once more of the Vamp Craze.
Ocean Elf: I vote for option 3.
Pingback: Guest post by Alan Edwards: Why Do We Love the Undead, Anyway? :blood skies
Ocean Elf: Originally it started out as exploration and expression of some of humanity's deepest fears, but now, I don't know what the heck is so fascinating about them for a lot of people.
—
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