Thread: Is the vampire genre dead?

Everywhere I look - 'Twilight', 'True Blood', House of Night, Cirque du Freak... it never ends. Whether some of the recent vampire stories are interesting / well-written / what-have-you or not, it doesn't matter. Have vampires and other assorted supernatural creatures (werewolves, ghosts, witches, etc.) been overused in recent years?

No it's cyclical. I remember when "Interview with Vampire" came out and how big the vampire genre became. It got so big I remember vampire cults started coming around again. Then it died down and ten years later it has started back up. Everything is a cycle.

Is the vampire genre dead?

Irony intended?


Way I see it, I'd sure hate to be trying to sell a teen angst vamper right now.

It's undead.

That's the thing about the vampire mythos: it keeps coming back from the grave.
Twilight and Anne Rice and Blade are only the most recent examples of a new character dragging the bones out of the crypt. Vampirella did the sexy comic turn on it, there was a rash of blackploitation films like "Blackula", "Innocent Blood" and "The Vampire Killers" both spun out new interest, "Lost Boys started a whole vamp-as-punk thing... then there was Buffy.

What interests me is the way each new rebirth modifies the genre. Untangling what we understand as the properties of vampires ends up being a search through literary additions that's practically Talmudic. Somebody decided they couldn't see themselves in mirrors or could be killed by silver bullets and that would become part of it, and maybe fall away in the later incarnations (like Rice's little adornment that their hair would grow back in their sleep).

It's not that different from what happens to Messiahs, deities and other myths, actually.

BTW, to see what the standing wave image of what a vampire is like, you don't have to search movies and books. Just go to a halloween party and see what the vampires look like. Phenotypes of the evolution

I really wish it would die. Or at least go into a state of abeyance for a while. I'm sick of hearing about vampires and high school girls falling in love with each other, making googly eyes at each other, and doing nothing for four hundred pages. I'd be fine if I didn't read another vampire novel in my lifetime.

Blade's not new, Lin. Otherwise your argument works. The character appeared the year after Bernie Marshall's star turn, in the Tomb of Dracula comic.
I did some deconstruction of the myth-cyle here a while ago:from myth to madness

I'm sick of hearing about vampires and high school girls falling inlove with each other, making googly eyes at each other, and doingnothing

Acxtually I kind of like high school girls in love stuff. But not if they do nothing

I don't think the Vampire/Gothic genre ever really dies, it just gets saturated at points as someone's take on it makes money and copycats appear. At those times you have to work harder to rise to the top of the pile.

Frankly, I don't like the current trend with Twilight, Vampire Diaries, etc. but luckily it too will pass in time.

There is something lurking here, blood is vital it is not some flushing unction to make us blush and seem coy! Blood rises and falls as the tide of war and stains the sword of mars red. It is also the place of pathogens, of sickness and off disease. Why are we as a society saying we find the corpse the paramour of our loving devotions an eternal bridegroom to our passions but take no care that we may be taken by a newly dead loved one and dragged to a grave ourselves? In Romania stragoi, and vampires were relatives. Imagine the horror of driving a stake through your fathers heart! Or of fearing you would drain the life out of your sisters and brothers killing everyone you know and love. Or imagine the wretched face of a plague victim sprawled out on your doorstep and being forced to feast on that rancid blood. There is horror here still. We need only tap the richest veins yet undiscovered.

As an adendum. Some blood relatives (pun avoidable but what the heck) of mine wound up in a book called Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. So I'm not all displeased with the current state of affairs. The image of Abe Lincoln with a Gatling gun arm will stick with me for a while.

Originally Posted by lin

Acxtually I kind of like high school girls in love stuff. But not if they do nothing

Where's the fun if they don't do anything?

Originally Posted by playerpiano

As an adendum. Some blood relatives (pun avoidable but what the heck) of mine wound up in a book called Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. So I'm not all displeased with the current state of affairs. The image of Abe Lincoln with a Gatling gun arm will stick with me for a while.

I've seen the book, and I'm wondering if I should buy it just for the fun of it.

Probably a better idea than buying it for a deeper grasp of American history.