Teenage Snogging Vampires

I suspect I may cause mild offense to some with this post, so let me say right here, right now, the necessary truths.

Stephanie Mayer has sold more books, is more read and beloved, than I have imagination to fully grasp.  The fact that people read her books like they were sent from Mount Sinai are a testimony to the fact that they have tuned into something that most writers, myself include, haven’t tapped, and that is a remarkable achievement, whether intended or otherwise, and she deserves nothing but respect for it.  Vampires can be cool… certainly of all the fantastical creatures to waltz across the silver screen, they seem to have the best dress sense and weaponry, and the vampire myth has in its time offered, and continues to offer, cool and interesting ways of telling cool and interesting stories.

But!

… and this is an entirely personal but…

I am so bloody bored of hormonal teenage snogging vampires.  In fact, I am bored of so many kinds of vampire… dark, broody vampires who answer with a maximum of three words at any given time…

“How’s the bloodlust?”

“Under control.”

“Did you enjoy your book on the philosophy of Socrates?”

“Yes.”

“Are you concerned about killing your own brother in order to stop occult powers of evil sweeping across the world?”

“No.  Crossbow.  Now.”

In much the same way often the best way to appear smart in the face of sheer intellectual befuddlement is to nod and smile as though you are wise enough to appreciate the argument being presented, without wishing (though it is within your power) to tear it to shreds, so it seems the key to being cool vampire-style is saying almost nothing at all while looking quietly tormented by What Must Be Done.  Black leather is in; cardigans are out.  Blood is being drunk because of insatiable lust, and you can just bet that there’s a lot of heavy breathing and cleavage happening at the same time.  I mean, I’m not a fan of the vampires = sex argument, because I think vampires if done well can = something more, but I gotta say, the recent trend is certainly towards the sex end of bloodlust, ideally with a bit of emotional trauma thrown in.  Ultimate relationship challenge!  Brad, I love you… but if we fall in love truly one of us will have to die…!  Generally, if your vampire is wearing leather, s/he is into technology, reacts badly to ultraviolet light and has really straight hair.  At the other end of the spectrum, there’s your vampire in big-flowing-robes-with-knobbly-bits, who likes intoning in ancient languages while standing in the middle of occult symbols, and will often speak in sentences of more than three words, but without any particular meaning…

“How was your book?”

“I read between its pages the firey truth of the fall of our kind, and tasted the dust of damnation.”

“So… good, then?”

“As good as moonrise to the wolf.”

“That good, huh?”

“The moon is to the wolf what the falafal is to the lonely traveller upon the suburban highstreet at two a.m..  Both hunger.  Neither are grateful in the morning.”

And so on.  Only without the sensible connotations.  Yet this is still a generalisation – vampires have taken every possible form.  If you were a teenage girl at roughly the age I was, you would have had to bury your head in the syrup sponge and custard not to have found out every detail of the events of Buffy the Vampire Slayer at any average school dinner; vampires then went through a period of killing werewolves and visa versa, they fell in love, the conducted horrible experiments, they walked in the day, they walked only in the night, they walked in the day and the night but didn’t like either, they had swords, they had guns, they had magic, they had machines.  Dracula’s a fine example of this flexibility, and also, perhaps, of why vampires endure so long in our literature.  The guy is just next to impossible to kill!  Crosses, stakes, garlic, sunlight, even when you think you’ve got him there’s always some prat who goes and spills blood in the wrong place and poof, there you are, back dealing with an intractable enemy again.  The rules are there to be perpetually bent.

A historical footnote… there was indeed a Vlad the Impaler, who was killed in the fifteenth century by the invading Ottomans, thus, in my mind, giving brownie points to one of my favourite collapsed empires… even if they didn’t make it into the literature that followed…

All that said!  Like a hypocrite (and attempting to disguise my shame by admitting to it) I can see the use of vampires.  I’m even prepared to use them in the world of Urban Magic.  But my question is this… if humans can only take blood types that match their own, surely the same rule should be applied to vampires?  Imagine how difficult it would be to haunt the night if you had to stop in front of your prey with a cry of…

“Now, trembling mortal, I shall drink your blood!  But can I just check… it is A- isn’t it?”