Friday 19 June 2009

Mr Darcy, Vampyre ...

... Really?


This new vampire craze is starting to annoy me. (I'm looking at you, Stephenie Meyer). The idea of vampires being romantic was an unspoken rule. Now everyone's jumping on the 'Vampire is my boyfriend' bandwagon.

Remember when Nightmare on Elm Street came out? Freddy Kruger was a genuinely frightening character: he kidnapped children and murdered them in the boiler room. Now we see five-year-olds running around with Freddy's claw on. We've become immune to the idea of him. He's just a silly character.

If this begins to happen to vampires, I might actually die. What happened to the badass Bram Stoker/Joseph Le Fanu/Anne Rice - style vamps? Those who sent terror straight to our hearts yet, at the back of any girl's mind, there was this strange fantasy of the creature of the night coming through your bedroom window.

Now we've got the Twilight series, the Sookie Stackhouse series, the Vampire Diaries, that one where they've taken Henry Fitzroy and turned him into a vampire (who nows spends his days being a detective, apparently ???). I don't like this. I don't like it at all. Vampires are becoming less and less gothic, and more and more fluffy.

At least there's still a chance to dive into my werewolf and witches books. No-one's sodomised those yet.

Worth checking out: 11 Vampires Cooler than Edward Cullen.  

6 comments:

Eva said...

I agree; I'm much more into old-school vampires. Although I don't think I ever fantasized about Stroker's Dracula!!! Rice's vamps are a different story of course. ;)

Amanda said...

I've never been into vampires at all. I saw a movie in 5th or 6th grade that grossed me out so much that I've disliked vampires ever since. I finally broke down and read Twilight because of friends' encouragement, and ended up reading the first two books before giving up. The only real vampire book I've ever liked was PEEPS by Westerfeld, which is completely different from any other vampire book I've ever heard of or read. I recently opened up the first Sookie Stackhouse book and only managed a few pages before giving it up. Bleagh.

Ceri said...

Eva - Obviously you've never seen Dracula 2000. Dracula played by Gerard Butler (300, Phantom of the Opera) - gives the vamp a whole vat of sexiness ;-) hehe

Amanda - Obviously not to everyone's taste then. :-)

Ceri said...

Ooh, Amanda - I should also ask. As someone who isn't a fan of vampires, does this new craze drive you nuts at all? I'm a fan and it's driving me crazy to visit book blogs and films sites, etc. and see everyone talking about squishy vampires as if they've just been invented.

Alexis said...

I 100% agree with you; I really don't understand the whole vampire phenom that's going on now. My friends have tried to explain that having a relationship with someone like Edward Cullen would awesome, but I can't help thinking "yeah, awesome in a necrophile sort of way." I much prefer the vampires that used to scare the crap out of me when I was little -- the kinds that would put young innocents into trances and lure them into their huge mansions in order to kill them. Not the ones from Twilight or that HBO show where they act angst-ridden all the time. Really, these new vampires are no different from many excessively emo kids I used to go to school with -- they're very pale, scowl a lot, have relationships that can't seem to properly function, and probably if I ever got close enough they would've wanted to bite me.

Amanda said...

Sorry, I just saw this. I didn't realize there was an option for follow-up comments on the embedded form. Nah, the craze doesn't bother me. I just tend to skip those reviews, or skim through them, just like I would do with other books that don't interest me.