Consider vampires...

[charliesmum]

We got our lovely fast computer back, and it only cost $80 for a new hard drive. So yay and stuff.

Charlie had a great 2nd day with the new minder - she took him to the pool, where he got to play with his best friend. I'm so pleased Charlie is finally having a real summer holiday.

The boyfriend played with Charlie in the pool, and is a lovely young man. Gonna be a teacher.

Anyway, I had a vampire dream last night, probably because I just read a Lauren K. Hamilton book about vampires, but it also occured to me that I dream of vampires when I'm feeling particularly overwhelmed. I think vampires symbolise to me the act of letting go, of having someone else be in control, in charge, and then I don't have to make any decisions. I was wondering if that was part of why they have such a lasting appeal to writers and movie makers and people who like to wear black alot.

It's really odd. Zombies aren't sexy at all. Werewolves, well, Lupin maybe, but over all they are either savage monsters or tragic figures. Ghosts are either scary or vengeful, or both, but never particularly sexy, but Vampires get all the girls. (or boys if you're Anne Rice)I think it does all come back to control, or losing control, which frankly is what sex is about in some ways.

What do you think?

Comments

[cactus-wren.livejournal.com]

What I want to know is which LKH book did you read, and did you like it? I've read all of her books, the Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series. You must have read one of the early AB ones since you said "Werewolves, well, Lupin maybe, but over all they are either savage monsters or tragic figures. ", because were's come into play alot further along in her series.

Glad Charlie is finally getting some fun out of his summer - and his sitter, lol. I'm happy she's turned out better than the last one.

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

I've had extremely good 2nd hand book karma this summer, and I got a hard back book of 3 of the Anita Blake stories, Guilty Pleasures being the first one. I haven't read the 2nd two yet (and forget what they are called) I gathered Guilty Pleasures was among the first of the series, but keep forgetting to look it up. I liked the book. Humourous and interesting, and an 'alternate universe' that didn't confuse me too much.

There were wererats in this book. Not sexy. :)

[cactus-wren.livejournal.com]

The series is really good up til number seven or eight. Then they start to go downhill a bit (IMO), too much focus on sex, not enough focus on the thing that originally drew me to the series - supernatural/mystery stuff. Book three, 'Circus of the Damned', is one of my favorites. As are six and seven (The Killing Dance & Burnt Offerings). My copies are a bit battered, but if you want to read after book three and don't want to buy them, I can let you borrow my copies.

Ooh, and Rafael - the king of the wererats - ends up sounding like very, very sexy goodness after you read more about him in the other books.

[erynnef.livejournal.com]

Those books are great. It's like reading crack- you neeeeeed more.



It gets slutty down the line, dude. Not much sluething, and a whole hell of a lot of whoring. The last book was a disappointment. Up until that point, I was hooked.

And the wererats kick ass.

Total OT

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

I didn't want to post this on your journal, since you said your sister reads it and I don't want to cause any more drama than you are already dealing with, but it sounds to me like your sister is extremely jealous of your happiness, and is trying to sabotage it, whether she realises it or not.

My sister-in-law's step-sister was exactly the same way, and took every opportunity she could to turn the attention to herself - including running away with some guy and marrying him before Nikki's wedding. Some people just have trouble being happy for people. Sad but true.

I hope your sister straightens up, but I think you are right in telling her straight out how you feel, so many brides try to smooth things over, and you don't need to be walking on eggshells from now until your wedding day.

Re: Total OT

[erynnef.livejournal.com]

No worries. Elaine is the baby, and usually gets her way. She's been doing what troublesome teenagers do, and it's bad. My parents, at this point, can only do so much.

My day got worse since now my dad is upset, and he didnt need to be told all this today, but, Ms. Drama needed to call him at work and tell him all of it.

You gotta love little sisters.

[wolfma.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! for Charlie!

That's an interesting point about vampires.

[october31st.livejournal.com]

Vampires, eh? Well, off the top of my head:

-They always seem to be attacking young, virginal girls
-Being immortal, they always seem to have accumulated a lot of money and status along the way, and therefore seem to be impeccably groomed, have the best of everything, live in mansions, etc.
- There's a sense of control with them. Whereas zombies and werewolves just sort of... lunge at your throat, they always seem to be exceptionally well-mannered, polite, seductive to the point of being hypnotic. They know exactly how to behave to win you over. THEN they lunge at your throat :P
-Less messy. Zombies eat your brains, werewolves savage you, vampires just bite your neck hard enough to draw blood. Kinda kinky ;)

That's all I could come up with, but I know what you mean... there's a weird sort of attraction to them, if in a rather dark, sadomasochistic way.

[deviantauthor.livejournal.com]

Vampires are just a lot of fun to write because you can do anything with them.

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

Well, that's true. I wrote a vampire story myself that I'm rather proud of.

[deviantauthor.livejournal.com]

Cool!

If it's original, I know of a place taking submissions.

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

Really? It isn't a short story - it's more book sized (though still kind of short, I want to say around 30,000 but I forget)

[deviantauthor.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sure enough.

I'll toss you the link in mail and you can take a look and decide.

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

Vampires...well, there's the whole sex/death connection, which goes way back, plus the youthful immortality, plus the exchange of bodily fluids, if you want to get technical, plus...well, most people seem to think that Dracula's attack on Mina Harker in Bram Stoker's book was meant to be a repressed Victorian metaphor for rape.

I think it's because vampires are superhuman, but so strictly bounded; werewolves are very hard to defeat without overwhelming force, but there are a million ways to put off a vampire. They can't come into your home unless you invite them, is the major thing. So, yeah, huge power/control/death metaphors, and the exchange/giving of life thing. It ties in very neatly to sex. But then, it also depends on the writer; most tend to make their vampires sexy, but I've read a few whose vampires are mostly scary-eww monsters. The best example I can think of are the vampires in Robin mcKinley's "Sunshine". While there is some limited sexual attraction (though that's mainly part of working out a friendship) for the most part they are very "other" and almost asexual. As well as scary monsters.

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

Mina Harker in Bram Stoker's book was meant to be a repressed Victorian metaphor for rape.

Rape or seduction, I always thought. I mention it in my own vampire story that I wrote, even. :)

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

I read a Dan Savage column about a guy who had a zombie fetish. And I know they make "horror porn", which kind of disgusts me because it conflates sex with fear and I find that disturbing.

That said, I've totally studied the business about why vampires are perceived as being sexy, and I can't remember a lot of the details. Just that vampire fiction, if I'm not mistaken, began with LeFanu and other writers around that era, and in books at that time - at least in American books written by men, which was obviously most of them - women were generally perceived either as perfect household goddesses or as whoreish temptresses. Female sexuality was demonized very literally in the form of vampires.

But I can't remember what's cause and what's effect here. Were women written as vampires because vampires were sexy and dangerous, or did vampires become sexy and dangerous after LeFanu got the ball rolling? You'd have to ask chavvah. I'm forgetting so many details I might as well just be making shit up.

[charliesmum.livejournal.com]

I'd always believed Bram Stoker's Dracula was a thinly disguised story about sexuality in a repressed time. From what I understand, his wife was kind of cold. I think he liked the idea of there being a kind of creature that could control women, and make them all wanton and stuff.

I don't know who LeFanu is. I need to go look him up. My own vampire fantasies started after seeing Frank Langella in "Dracula '79" based on the play that he also starred in. He was really dead sexy in that. You totally wanted him to win in the end.

[slammerkinbabe.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I know Frank Langella! By which I mean, I know who he is, and I met him once and he was very nice. He was really really really good in "Match", which was a short-lived Broadway play that I liked even if the reviews were mixed.

I am sure as I think about it that women were written as vampires because vampires were already perceived as sexy but evil and dangerous, rather than the other way around. LeFanu wrote, well, vampire stories - almost exclusively, I believe, and I think he also *slightly* predated Stoker, but - am I remembering any of this correctly at all? - there was a boom in vampire fiction in the Victorian period and slightly before, which is when both of them were writing. Which makes sense, because I think it also coincided with a boom in Gothic fiction? I don't know, I could be making that last part up.

It makes sense on some level that vampires would be perceived as sexy... the threat that they present is, as octobr31st pointed out, portrayed as dangerously refined. They *seduce* their victims; even in the instances when they aren't seducing them sexually, they draw them close with a sort of menacing charisma. And then the actual neck-biting is a form of penetration, of course. Then when they're done, they've "brought you over"; there's a mixing of blood and identity there which is also pretty symbolic of sex. I 'unno.

Goddammit, now I really do have to ask chavvah about this. I'm messed up on the history, and this stuff is what she's studying.