I_Write_Ivre
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- Posted: Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:26:23 +0000
This thread is here to explain all vampires, in mythology, literature, visual media, and any mixture thereof. This encompasses how all vampires, world and culture wide work.
This thread is a tool to educate and broaden one’s mind and keep from narrowing one’s opinion on any mythological creature, vampire, elf, dragon, orc, dwarf, lycanthrope or any other common supernatural creature. Hopefully this guide will aid writers, readers, and editors on the concept in their work.
Vampires: the definition: Is a vampire purely a creature that drinks blood? To the modern western culture and those that take influence from it, yes. To the whole world and its history: Absolutely not.
A vampire is a creature that was MEANT to be a predator upon humans. A vampire is a creature that takes the life of a human for sustenance, essentially the hunter whose primary diet is us. It can eat flesh, bones, drink blood, take souls, drain energy, or just plain waste your life away.
Examples:
Lamia-Ancient Mesopotamia. Originally a cursed queen who murdered her children, the myth spread into a variety of monstrous beasts, all female and all who eat children or babies, often blind and sometimes sounding like a cat. They tend to hide in dark alleys
Mulo-Romani tradition (no specific geographic location): Mulo take different forms, depending on troop and time period. A Mulo is often a young woman, a woman with children, or a wolf who hunts people. As a human, they lure people close to them, only to blood your blood and eat the soup (how they get it is kind of vague).
Ijiraq- Inuit (Northen Canada)-A creature that kidnaps children, often babies form their mothers. Sometimes has a horn like that of a Narhwal and is a metaphor for the death of women and children, or their disappearance.
Vampires: the evolution
Vampires have changed from a mere thing that goes bump in the night and kills people and people need to accept that. You DO NOT need to accept versions you feel are badly written, but the fact that the vampire in society and literature has changed. The hunter has become the gatherer and even the baker, lawyer, or dictator.
Vampires in literature do not need to change with society, but society’s views and versions have.
Vampires: the weakness All things need a weakness. As a character, vampires need a weakness. As a race, vampires need a weakness. As a species, vampires need a weakness. Weakness can be metal, magic, or sunlight.
Overall, most weaknesses of vampires were symbols of good and holy. This is not necessary as society has veered away from taking religion literally for the most part, but this does not degrade the legends, new or old, of vampires. Though not universal, many are immediately recognizable as weaknesses of vampires and they and their connotation, now and historically, should be considered.
Examples:
Vampire Chronicles-America: To my knowledge, holy symbols did not affect Anne Rice vampires
The Ghost of Silver cliff: The vampire's weakness is (Malaysian) Holy water, but also vinegar.
Vampire Princess Miyu-Japan: Holy symbols do not hurt the vampire main character.
Jiang-Shi: Jiang-Shi can only be dispatched by a Daoist Priest. Any other religion, or a Daoist holy symbol, won't work.
Vampires: the powers: Vampires, for the most part, were meant to be more than just lions or tigers or bears (oh my). Vampires had an advantage over us, which kept us afraid of them when we invented sticks that went boom.
Nearly all vampires have some sort of power, craft, and/or magic geographical, climatic, or environmental, or zoological.
However, this is not to say that vampires can’t overpower or outsmart their weaknesses. If they happen to do so, the weaknesses still need to be there in the first place.
Examples:
Carpe Jugulum, Discoworld Series- Through force of willpower, the vampires managed to overcome stereotypical detriments
Vampire apprentice, Japan-A vampire uses special sunblock to prevent burning in the sun.
Vampires: the taxpayer: Above, I said that vampires were MEANT to be predators. This does not mean a vampire cannot sit on the couch and eat pizza.
This type of vampire is an offshoot, though not the newest or only version. But there must be a need for such a niche for a creature to move to it. Why would a vampire stop creeping through forests and move into a city? There are pros and cons for each situation, and both should be weighed carefully, both by the vampire and the author.
Examples:
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter – America: Most vampires would like to just lead their own unlives and resent the prejudice against them. Some even use human avatars to taste food.
Vampires: the metaphor: Vampires in Europe began as metaphors; our psyche feared an aspect of society it did not like and could not solve and a belief in a creature was built upon it. In Polynesia, a different fear crated the belief in a similarly acting creature of a very different form and origin.
Even today, vampires often mean or stand for something, be it AIDS, human misery, corruption, or the dream of violence and explosions that embodied the decade. It is easy to see the fear of someone straying form the norm and seeking a supernatural element to blame.
Vampires still imply something primal about the human psyche and human nature, but they are not bound to any sort of ideal or anti-ideal. Nor must whatever metaphor they are be a concrete and definite one instead of nightmare fuel.
Examples:
Mulo-Romani (no specific geographic location: Mulo sometimes used human victims hot as food, but to seduce in attempts to ruin their prey’s lives by ruining their reputation so thoroughly, they would be forced to leave the troop. Victims (female) of the these vampires gave birth to half-vampire offspring (dhampirs). This was a metaphor for unwanted/unexplained pregnancies and unwanted babies
Succubi/incubi -Western Europe ( mostly just before the enlightenment): Succubi and Incubi were demons sent by Satan to seduce men and women (sucubi seduced men, incubi women). They used their sexy bodies to cause anything from wt dreams to pregnancies. These are mythical scapegoats for good people straying from the enforced celibacy ordered by the church.
Pennanggalan- Malaysia: A head with entrails and sometimes spinal cord, these creatures are attracted to babies, sometimes even in the womb. I have heard a few tales of them killing mothers as well. This is a metaphor for the unpredictable perils of childbirth.
Vampires the side effect: Vampires are unusual in the menageries of mythical creatures we’ve created over the ages. Like zombies, many vampires are thought to be able to make a victim one of them or use them to create more.
Their potential for inciting fear in enhanced as a creature that not only can breed and increase its numbers, but can do so from decreasing yours.
From a biologist’s view, this is fails utterly. Changing a food source into more of your kind is a quick way to starvation. Soon there will be no food and too many of your kind.
This creates a strange intermediary and secondary new kind of mythical creature: a vampire victim. A vampire victim can usually be spotted through varying symptoms, but they are not treated or perceived as human or at least fully human when discovered.
A vampire victim need not become a vampire. A victim might birth a new vampire, merely remain food, act insane, die, be granted a small amount of power in exchange for being food, or cause a small tornado in their room.
Vampires have also been known to cause environmental effects, such as terrifying the animals in the vicinity, withering plants, breaking glass, or changing the lighting or weather. Often there is a ‘feeling’ or notice that something strange or different is about, be it emotionally or physically.
Examples
Mulo-Romani (no specific geographical location): Mulo victims, when not dead, were inexplicably pregnant. Many mothers don’t remember conceiving.
All over the world: Bit marks tend to be in obvious places. Sometimes they get discolored or react to objects that ward off vampires.
Anita Blake: vampire hunter-America: Aside from bit marks, most victims show signs of not remembering the previous day. Some even share a mental link with the vampire
Vampires: the appearance: The biggest debate, which encompasses many subspecies of the same debate, is their appearance. There are two main schools of thought: ‘vampires must be ugly’ and ‘vampires must look good’ and the two tend to go after each other like twin sharks in the womb.
The answer, I’m sorry to impose, is neither. Vampires can be either, including in the same mythology.
Dissecting the appearance of a vampire is like anthropology. The appearance determines what it needs to survive. How does it take it and how does it consume it? It must be appear to actually be able to do such a thing, even with the aid of magic. A magical rabbit cannot eat meat without a change in appearance. Appearance influences the role it not only does take in society, but CAN take in society. An ugly vampire would have a hard time posing as an aristocrat. Appearance can even influence powers. A vampire covered in bells would have a problem stalking its prey while a vampire appearing to be an attractive human would have an easy time seducing prey (hiding the bodies would be something else).
Conversely, as appearance influences al aspects of the vampire, a vampire is not an actual thing. A vampire is fiction and just as easily (possibly more) appearance can affect aspects, aspects influence appearance. A vampire that burns in the sun might want a usual haircut if that part can set the rest aflame. Or if the vampire is arrogant, he might not. Both of those aspects influence what the resulting vampire will appear as.
There is also a rising argument that vampires vary, mostly appearing average.
Examples:
Mulo-Romani (no specific geographic location): Mulo were the very first vampire stories to be introduced into Europe (excluding Celtic, Roman, and Greek myths). They can be both hideous corpses (when discovered as Mulo), or remain beautiful. They can also look average
Buffy: the Vampire Slayer-America: Vampires look normal until they suddenly become bloodthirsty and take on a ‘scrunched face’ look.
Wendigos-(Canadian and Native American tribes around what is now the Michigan/Ontario area): Wendigos are bestial animals that hunt human live wolves hunt deer. They are pretty much made of fur and teeth.
Potato Vampire-American: In the goosebumps TV series, an episode ended with finding a vampiric potato.
Dresden files- Vampires fall into both beautiful and an ugly categories. They wear beautiful skins, yet are themselves ugly. (Thanks to The Hidden Ghost)
Vampires: the mistake
The worst mistake writers make is often made with vampires (these days, that is. It used to be elves and then ninjas). Vampires are not plots.
Vampires have no conflict in themselves. Vampires are not rising actions. Vampires are not climaxes (no matter how make sex jokes you want to make about fangirls). Vampires aren't even resolutions.
Vampires aren't premises either. They aren't even full sentences. The story has a vampire? A vampire what? A vampire bunny? A vampire bat? Is it comic relief? A main character? A force of nature? As a writer, shouldn't you know more about your story than 'vampire?' As a writer, shouldn't you wait until there's more to a story premise and plot than 'vampire' to think you know what it's about?
Vampires can influence plots. They can make things happen. But they are not the event themselves. A writer who cannot separate such basic parts of a story is like a writer who can't tell a noun from a verb.
Examples:
Anita Blake: Vampire hunter-America (A detective has to solve why vampires are being murdered. It turns out it's for a voodoo ritual
Master of Mosquiton OAV-Japanese: A woman resurrects a 1/4 vampire and they go to the moon. They also fight some guy who can turn into a centaur.
Dracula-British: Dracula drives a man crazy, kills a woman and tries to seduce another woman. He runs away as his old adversary tires to kill him. He loses.
Vampires: the conclusion: Concepts are elastic. But there is only so much elasticity to them. The concept of a vampire could be stretched to include lagomorphs, and very possibly a spaceship-planetoid, but the elasticity snaps at the often mentioned 'fire breathing dolphin that poops jellybeans'.
Vampires themselves are just concepts, hard to limit off completely and always changing. As writers, we are artists and as artists we must accept that art changes and evolves. We, as artists can influence such evolution and while biological evolution can cause something to die off, ours follows no such rules. We can change, spread the population of, or even ‘bring back form the dead’ any concept we want, as long as we take care not to stretch it to the point of breaking.
Vampires: the resources:
Here are what little I can find:
Wikipedia-vampires (also mentions many examples in literature)
Encyclopedia Mythica (vague and takes a long time to navigate, sadly)
Starz Inside: Bloodsucking Cinema (Netflix instant, only about cinematic vampires, though many are based off legends and books.)
A meeting of vampires and hunters
Good, bad, origins,weirdness and trivia Many, many pages of details on all kinds of vampires in most forms of media
The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead, 2nd Edition-Very, VERY thorough book that includes pretty much everything world wide. (Thanks Tampopo_Hoshi!)
The Everything Vampire Book: A large dictionary of pop culture vampires in literature, TV, and film. I have not read it, but it doesn't say anything about history or mythology.
This thread is a tool to educate and broaden one’s mind and keep from narrowing one’s opinion on any mythological creature, vampire, elf, dragon, orc, dwarf, lycanthrope or any other common supernatural creature. Hopefully this guide will aid writers, readers, and editors on the concept in their work.
Vampires: the definition: Is a vampire purely a creature that drinks blood? To the modern western culture and those that take influence from it, yes. To the whole world and its history: Absolutely not.
A vampire is a creature that was MEANT to be a predator upon humans. A vampire is a creature that takes the life of a human for sustenance, essentially the hunter whose primary diet is us. It can eat flesh, bones, drink blood, take souls, drain energy, or just plain waste your life away.
Examples:
Lamia-Ancient Mesopotamia. Originally a cursed queen who murdered her children, the myth spread into a variety of monstrous beasts, all female and all who eat children or babies, often blind and sometimes sounding like a cat. They tend to hide in dark alleys
Mulo-Romani tradition (no specific geographic location): Mulo take different forms, depending on troop and time period. A Mulo is often a young woman, a woman with children, or a wolf who hunts people. As a human, they lure people close to them, only to blood your blood and eat the soup (how they get it is kind of vague).
Ijiraq- Inuit (Northen Canada)-A creature that kidnaps children, often babies form their mothers. Sometimes has a horn like that of a Narhwal and is a metaphor for the death of women and children, or their disappearance.
Vampires: the evolution
Vampires have changed from a mere thing that goes bump in the night and kills people and people need to accept that. You DO NOT need to accept versions you feel are badly written, but the fact that the vampire in society and literature has changed. The hunter has become the gatherer and even the baker, lawyer, or dictator.
Vampires in literature do not need to change with society, but society’s views and versions have.
Vampires: the weakness All things need a weakness. As a character, vampires need a weakness. As a race, vampires need a weakness. As a species, vampires need a weakness. Weakness can be metal, magic, or sunlight.
Overall, most weaknesses of vampires were symbols of good and holy. This is not necessary as society has veered away from taking religion literally for the most part, but this does not degrade the legends, new or old, of vampires. Though not universal, many are immediately recognizable as weaknesses of vampires and they and their connotation, now and historically, should be considered.
Examples:
Vampire Chronicles-America: To my knowledge, holy symbols did not affect Anne Rice vampires
The Ghost of Silver cliff: The vampire's weakness is (Malaysian) Holy water, but also vinegar.
Vampire Princess Miyu-Japan: Holy symbols do not hurt the vampire main character.
Jiang-Shi: Jiang-Shi can only be dispatched by a Daoist Priest. Any other religion, or a Daoist holy symbol, won't work.
Vampires: the powers: Vampires, for the most part, were meant to be more than just lions or tigers or bears (oh my). Vampires had an advantage over us, which kept us afraid of them when we invented sticks that went boom.
Nearly all vampires have some sort of power, craft, and/or magic geographical, climatic, or environmental, or zoological.
However, this is not to say that vampires can’t overpower or outsmart their weaknesses. If they happen to do so, the weaknesses still need to be there in the first place.
Examples:
Carpe Jugulum, Discoworld Series- Through force of willpower, the vampires managed to overcome stereotypical detriments
Vampire apprentice, Japan-A vampire uses special sunblock to prevent burning in the sun.
Vampires: the taxpayer: Above, I said that vampires were MEANT to be predators. This does not mean a vampire cannot sit on the couch and eat pizza.
This type of vampire is an offshoot, though not the newest or only version. But there must be a need for such a niche for a creature to move to it. Why would a vampire stop creeping through forests and move into a city? There are pros and cons for each situation, and both should be weighed carefully, both by the vampire and the author.
Examples:
Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter – America: Most vampires would like to just lead their own unlives and resent the prejudice against them. Some even use human avatars to taste food.
Vampires: the metaphor: Vampires in Europe began as metaphors; our psyche feared an aspect of society it did not like and could not solve and a belief in a creature was built upon it. In Polynesia, a different fear crated the belief in a similarly acting creature of a very different form and origin.
Even today, vampires often mean or stand for something, be it AIDS, human misery, corruption, or the dream of violence and explosions that embodied the decade. It is easy to see the fear of someone straying form the norm and seeking a supernatural element to blame.
Vampires still imply something primal about the human psyche and human nature, but they are not bound to any sort of ideal or anti-ideal. Nor must whatever metaphor they are be a concrete and definite one instead of nightmare fuel.
Examples:
Mulo-Romani (no specific geographic location: Mulo sometimes used human victims hot as food, but to seduce in attempts to ruin their prey’s lives by ruining their reputation so thoroughly, they would be forced to leave the troop. Victims (female) of the these vampires gave birth to half-vampire offspring (dhampirs). This was a metaphor for unwanted/unexplained pregnancies and unwanted babies
Succubi/incubi -Western Europe ( mostly just before the enlightenment): Succubi and Incubi were demons sent by Satan to seduce men and women (sucubi seduced men, incubi women). They used their sexy bodies to cause anything from wt dreams to pregnancies. These are mythical scapegoats for good people straying from the enforced celibacy ordered by the church.
Pennanggalan- Malaysia: A head with entrails and sometimes spinal cord, these creatures are attracted to babies, sometimes even in the womb. I have heard a few tales of them killing mothers as well. This is a metaphor for the unpredictable perils of childbirth.
Vampires the side effect: Vampires are unusual in the menageries of mythical creatures we’ve created over the ages. Like zombies, many vampires are thought to be able to make a victim one of them or use them to create more.
Their potential for inciting fear in enhanced as a creature that not only can breed and increase its numbers, but can do so from decreasing yours.
From a biologist’s view, this is fails utterly. Changing a food source into more of your kind is a quick way to starvation. Soon there will be no food and too many of your kind.
This creates a strange intermediary and secondary new kind of mythical creature: a vampire victim. A vampire victim can usually be spotted through varying symptoms, but they are not treated or perceived as human or at least fully human when discovered.
A vampire victim need not become a vampire. A victim might birth a new vampire, merely remain food, act insane, die, be granted a small amount of power in exchange for being food, or cause a small tornado in their room.
Vampires have also been known to cause environmental effects, such as terrifying the animals in the vicinity, withering plants, breaking glass, or changing the lighting or weather. Often there is a ‘feeling’ or notice that something strange or different is about, be it emotionally or physically.
Examples
Mulo-Romani (no specific geographical location): Mulo victims, when not dead, were inexplicably pregnant. Many mothers don’t remember conceiving.
All over the world: Bit marks tend to be in obvious places. Sometimes they get discolored or react to objects that ward off vampires.
Anita Blake: vampire hunter-America: Aside from bit marks, most victims show signs of not remembering the previous day. Some even share a mental link with the vampire
Vampires: the appearance: The biggest debate, which encompasses many subspecies of the same debate, is their appearance. There are two main schools of thought: ‘vampires must be ugly’ and ‘vampires must look good’ and the two tend to go after each other like twin sharks in the womb.
The answer, I’m sorry to impose, is neither. Vampires can be either, including in the same mythology.
Dissecting the appearance of a vampire is like anthropology. The appearance determines what it needs to survive. How does it take it and how does it consume it? It must be appear to actually be able to do such a thing, even with the aid of magic. A magical rabbit cannot eat meat without a change in appearance. Appearance influences the role it not only does take in society, but CAN take in society. An ugly vampire would have a hard time posing as an aristocrat. Appearance can even influence powers. A vampire covered in bells would have a problem stalking its prey while a vampire appearing to be an attractive human would have an easy time seducing prey (hiding the bodies would be something else).
Conversely, as appearance influences al aspects of the vampire, a vampire is not an actual thing. A vampire is fiction and just as easily (possibly more) appearance can affect aspects, aspects influence appearance. A vampire that burns in the sun might want a usual haircut if that part can set the rest aflame. Or if the vampire is arrogant, he might not. Both of those aspects influence what the resulting vampire will appear as.
There is also a rising argument that vampires vary, mostly appearing average.
Examples:
Mulo-Romani (no specific geographic location): Mulo were the very first vampire stories to be introduced into Europe (excluding Celtic, Roman, and Greek myths). They can be both hideous corpses (when discovered as Mulo), or remain beautiful. They can also look average
Buffy: the Vampire Slayer-America: Vampires look normal until they suddenly become bloodthirsty and take on a ‘scrunched face’ look.
Wendigos-(Canadian and Native American tribes around what is now the Michigan/Ontario area): Wendigos are bestial animals that hunt human live wolves hunt deer. They are pretty much made of fur and teeth.
Potato Vampire-American: In the goosebumps TV series, an episode ended with finding a vampiric potato.
Dresden files- Vampires fall into both beautiful and an ugly categories. They wear beautiful skins, yet are themselves ugly. (Thanks to The Hidden Ghost)
Vampires: the mistake
The worst mistake writers make is often made with vampires (these days, that is. It used to be elves and then ninjas). Vampires are not plots.
Vampires have no conflict in themselves. Vampires are not rising actions. Vampires are not climaxes (no matter how make sex jokes you want to make about fangirls). Vampires aren't even resolutions.
Vampires aren't premises either. They aren't even full sentences. The story has a vampire? A vampire what? A vampire bunny? A vampire bat? Is it comic relief? A main character? A force of nature? As a writer, shouldn't you know more about your story than 'vampire?' As a writer, shouldn't you wait until there's more to a story premise and plot than 'vampire' to think you know what it's about?
Vampires can influence plots. They can make things happen. But they are not the event themselves. A writer who cannot separate such basic parts of a story is like a writer who can't tell a noun from a verb.
Examples:
Anita Blake: Vampire hunter-America (A detective has to solve why vampires are being murdered. It turns out it's for a voodoo ritual
Master of Mosquiton OAV-Japanese: A woman resurrects a 1/4 vampire and they go to the moon. They also fight some guy who can turn into a centaur.
Dracula-British: Dracula drives a man crazy, kills a woman and tries to seduce another woman. He runs away as his old adversary tires to kill him. He loses.
Vampires: the conclusion: Concepts are elastic. But there is only so much elasticity to them. The concept of a vampire could be stretched to include lagomorphs, and very possibly a spaceship-planetoid, but the elasticity snaps at the often mentioned 'fire breathing dolphin that poops jellybeans'.
Vampires themselves are just concepts, hard to limit off completely and always changing. As writers, we are artists and as artists we must accept that art changes and evolves. We, as artists can influence such evolution and while biological evolution can cause something to die off, ours follows no such rules. We can change, spread the population of, or even ‘bring back form the dead’ any concept we want, as long as we take care not to stretch it to the point of breaking.
Vampires: the resources:
Here are what little I can find:
Wikipedia-vampires (also mentions many examples in literature)
Encyclopedia Mythica (vague and takes a long time to navigate, sadly)
Starz Inside: Bloodsucking Cinema (Netflix instant, only about cinematic vampires, though many are based off legends and books.)
A meeting of vampires and hunters
Good, bad, origins,weirdness and trivia Many, many pages of details on all kinds of vampires in most forms of media
The Vampire Book: The Encyclopedia of the Undead, 2nd Edition-Very, VERY thorough book that includes pretty much everything world wide. (Thanks Tampopo_Hoshi!)
The Everything Vampire Book: A large dictionary of pop culture vampires in literature, TV, and film. I have not read it, but it doesn't say anything about history or mythology.
