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I remember my first “vampire” movie quite well.  Before my father had a chance to cancel our subscription to HBO (the damage had already been done), I managed to sneak in a screening Interview With The Vampire, starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt.  It was a gruesome film that made me feel sorry for vampires, because they never aged and only came out at night.  I found it a bit selfish on the maker’s part to turn a human into one of their own, even though I adore Carlisle Cullen.  If you’re not fond of the night creatures, then this post won’t interest you.  But if you find yourself comparing present-day gothic writers Anne Rice to Stephanie Myers, then welcome.  I’d like to clarify here that this is a learning experience for me.  I do not claim to be a vampire expert.  Like many of you, my fascination was piqued by the Twilight series, which is hardly revolutionary.  People have been writing about these characters for over two hundred years, and the current trend has only complicated our theory on what makes a vampire. 

After plowing through the Twilight series, I was fully on-board for the vampire craze.  Luckily I finished the series in December of 2009, just in time to look forward to True Blood (which originally aired in 2008) and The Vampire Diaries, which premiered in the fall of 2009 (yayyyyy Damon).  While it would be far more educational to draw up a flow chart of different types of vampires, it’s more worth our while to compare and contrast today’s three mainstream depictions: Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries.  If you’re anything like me (and deep down, you know you are), you take note whenever Bill or Eric does something you thought wasn’t possible for vampires.  Why do the True Blood vamps sleep at all?  Why do they turn into gummy red goo and the Vampire Diaries peeps crackle away into veiny stone?  And why does Edward dazzle in the sun while Bill sizzle like a kebob?  Join me, won’t you, as I try to connect my favorite vampires and explain why it’s necessary to have three different interpretations.  And I must know-which kind do you love the most? Love. Not like.

Continue reading What’s In A Vampire? 

Let’s start with Twilight.  When I first opened the book I was
smitty-kitty with Edward Cullen.  He was so kind, yet he was a
vampire!  He wanted to suck Bella Swan dry because she was his “own
personal brand of heroine.”  Yet, somehow he went against all that was
right for his kind and fell in love with the lamb.  He fed off wild
animals to keep his hunger at bay.  He was as fiercely protective of
humans as he was of his own Cullen coven. Everything that shaped my perception of the vampire began with Twilight (I was too young to delve into Interview With The Vampire. That was just an introduction).  Congrats to those of you who were well-studied in the subject long before the book was published.  I gave into the phenomenon eighty or so years late, so I suppose you could say I’m an amateur.  So be it.  Here is what I know of the vampires of the Twilight saga (with a little “refresher” from TheFrisky.com):

• They dazzle in the sunlight.
• Their eyes determine if they’ve fed or not AND burgundy eyes mean they feed on human blood! Black indicates a thirsty vampire, while golden eyes indicate that the vamp has hunted and is satiated (for the time being at least).
• The only way to kill another vampire is to rip it to shreds (bye bye James).
• They don’t sleep, cry or have any blood of their own.

Once I finished the Twilight series, I gave True Blood a whirl.  The first time around, I hated it.  You have to understand.  I had just come off this supernatural love story that made me want to draw hearts on the face of every vampire I saw.  Then to be exposed to the darker, full-of-guts side of vampire lore was a shock to my system.  I knew that HBO had the means to push the envelope, but it was just all too much for me to handle.  With that said, I was offered up the chance to start recapping True Blood episodes for Socialite Life (my editor sensed what a nutjob I was and thought “alright, let’s let ‘Crazy’ tell us her weekly thoughts on each episode”).  For that, I thank him, because it forced me to sit down and commit to the first two seasons.  It was a challenge at first, but I quickly grew addicted (bless you, HBO OnDemand).  I still can’t stomach the opening credits, but I really enjoy the show.  Based on the book series The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris, True Blood‘s protagonist makes Bella seem even more of a delicate dandelion than she already is.  While the love story is more or less the same, True Blood makes Twilight look like a chidren’s program Nick Jr.  Some interesting things I learned about the True Blood vampire:

• They sleep during the day.  Sleep is a source of their energy (in addition to feeding on human blood).
• Bill feeds on human blood, but he’s still humane.
• Once killed by fire or wood, a vampire turns into a pile of sticky red goo. 
• They don’t dazzle in the sunlight.  They burn like a marshmallow, then pouf! Up in the smoke.
• They bleed tears, which makes me want to urge them to stop wasting good blood.

And then we have The Vampire Diaries, which, in my humble opinion, trumped the other two over the course of its first season.  If you’re into the series, you know what I’m talking about.  The casting fit the bill for a CW hit.  Ian Somerhalder as Damon Salvatore, the Eric to the tweenie’s Sookie?  I can’t get enough.  He can feed on me any day (ok, that was a little weird).  The Vampire Diaries provided me with the right amount of gore, fear and sex.  As my friend, an embarrassingly obsessed Twihard says, we just wanna see the human and vampire have sex.  Since Bella and Edward took forever to get to that part, we have Stefan and Elena (and Bill and Sookie) to thank for breaking the ice. Based on a series of novels by L.J. Smith, the show had me holding my breath at the end of every episode (the writing was pretty good by CW’s standards since it’s helmed by Kevin Williamson).  And the finale?  It took me a solid two days to absorb the culmination of everything that had happened since the show premiered.  The Vampires Diaries vampire:

• Turns to stone when killed by wood (same as True Blood’s vampire)
• Can drink alcohol and get drunk (how is this possible if the only thing they crave is blood?).
• Are kept at bay by vervaine, a dry weedish sort of flower.
• Turn all crumbly and veiny when killed by wood (or fire).
• Need a special ring to be able to go out during daylight (and not go up in flames/dazzle).
• Turn into something strange and scary when they’re turned on/crave blood. I’ve come to love that face.

Of course, there are many similarities between the vampires mention above (speed, a sixth sense, good looks), but with so many interpretations, who are any of us to say which one is correct? So I guess the real question is-which is your favorite?