#buffy daily

[buffytheslayrposts]

Cordelia gettin' real

[duckysprouts]

buffy the vampire slayer but it’s mina and jonathan hunting dracula for 7 seasons

[bangelgifs]

BtVS 3.12 ⟺ AtS 5.20

⤷ Requested by @oveliagirlhaditright

[anim-ttrpgs]

Exerpt from the Vampire rules for Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy.

[vamplire]

me consuming every piece of vampire media instead of having a social life:

[all-seeing-ifer]

I wouldn't say I think buffy is already suicidal in season 2 the way she is in season 6 and arguably lage season 5 but I do think ALL THINGS CONSIDERED it feels... a bit telling that buffy hears a story about a guy in the 50s who killed himself and just Immediately understands and identifies with him

[meggettes]

it’s so wild watching movies that originate major pop culture phenomena

currently watching Dracula (1931) and i can’t stop thinking like oh okay so this is where it all comes from

but then also listening to @re-dracula and hearing the original-original, watching Drac is especially feeling like discovering the missing link

[liam-summers]

There are other people in the room? Don’t know them. - Buffy & Angel 

[kitkat-the-muffin]

I'd watch a TV show about an older Quincey Harker one day discovering that he's not quite as human as he thought he was, and he goes through a journey of self discovery as he reads through his parent's writings and investigates a strange rise in blood loss cases across the country (cough cough lady in a hat, bloofer lady victims, captain of the demeter, etc)

Essentially I want Quincey Harker to be the Danny Phantom of vampire hunters. A young boy who's cursed with the powers and abilities of his adversaries while accompanied by a quirky cast of characters

[evermore-grimoire]

The Evermore Grimoire: Slayers

Xin Rohn was a Slayer active in China during the Boxer Rebellion who was killed by a vampire named Spike. In 1900's, the Whirlwind (a powerful group of vampires) were also in China; Spike would later state he was obsessed with Slayers, and sought Xin Rong out to fight her. She and Spike fought in a Buddhist temple, and Xin Rong managed to give him a permanent scar over his left eyebrow with her sword. Highly skilled in armed combat, the Slayer had the vampire pinned up against a wall, ready to stake him, but an explosion outside the temple rocked the building and she lost control of the situation. Spike was able to knock her stake from her hand, catch her, and bite her neck. When Buffy Summers questioned him how he killed Xin Rong, he explained: "Lesson the first: a Slayer must always reach for her weapon. I've already got mine." Xin Rong's last dying words were, in Mandarin: "Tell my mother I'm sorry." to which Spike replied: "Sorry love, I don't speak Chinese." He threw her to the ground and left her body in the temple, having killed the first of two Slayers that would give him notoriety as a Slayer hunter.

artwork by Paul Nong

[fictiongods]

Me, when all you asked was what time it was, for the fifth time that day: no you don’t get it— they’re the chosen two. But the universe hates them and tries to pull them apart, but they kept falling back into each other. They hate each other so much they can’t breathe. They can’t stop thinking about each other. They have dreams in which they feel so close they don’t know whose mind is who. They just fade into each other cause they have no idea where the line is. They’re so soft and are so desperate for the other one to get them but they can never truly connect cause the narrative won’t let them speak to each other. They are so tragic and sad and sometimes disturbing. They are basically soulmates if you read it that way and they are THE tragic love story just like one of them was always trying to do—”

[alpaca-clouds]

The Horror Of Vampires?!

A friend and I talked about something recently, and frankly it really made me think about this. Officially vampires are creatures associated with horror literature and horror media. However, most people do not really interact with vampires that way? Like, sure Interview with the Vampire and Castlevania for example do get marketed as horror - but... People usually watch horror to get creeped out or spooked. But people usually watch vampire-adjacent media either because "vampires are hot" or because it makes for good action. I mean, I love my vampires - I spoke about it this week. But I (who was afraid of his own shadow as a kid) never once in my life considered vampires as "spooky" or "scary".

And looking back on the history of vampire media... This is not exactly a new development, right?

Lord Ruthven and Varney

We could start whenever with vampire novels, as the vampire genre goes back until the 18th century. However, I am going to start at the beginning of the 19th century wth The Vampyr by Polidori and the Varney Penny Dreadfuls by Rymer. Because these two already quite well show that vampires were not really creatures of horror back then.

Because neither story really was horror even back in the day. The Vampyr was mostly just Polidori poking fun at Byron. While some of the themes we find in Dracula later are present here, ironically it is quite clear that Polidori did not quite think about it the same way that Stoker did. (Or to put it differently: Polidori hung with a very different crowd than Stoker.)

The Varney stories are mostly just... confusing in this regard. The Varney story is most notable for being published as a penny dreadful first - and it seems the writer or rather writers were not quite certain whether Varney was an actual vampire or just a metaphoricial one. One way or another, Varney definitely was portrayed as more and more sympathetical over the run of the novels, and his death in the finale is actually quite tragic.

Dracula and Carmilla

Dracula and Carmilla were probably the one thing that actually was meant to be read as horror. And while we, who definitely would be considered to be "sick bastards" by Victorian standards, would not necessarily consider it this way, it was definitely meant to be read this way back in the day.

Both novels definitely play of the same ideas for horror. A very Victorian kind of horror. Because the horror in both novels is very much based on the idea of "corruption of the innocents" and the "alien who comes to corrupt".

Nobody is gonna argue that both books are extremly queer, which is exactly part of the horror. This was written by Victorians, who were quite appalled by the idea of queerness. Many paragraphs have been written before about Bram Stoker, who very probably was queer himself, writing Dracula with a mixture of xenophobia, antisemitism, and internalized queerphobia. Dracula is all the things that the Victorian society feared. The "stranger from the East" who comes in and corrupts the young people (Johnathan, and Lucy mostly, while Mina is obviously incorruptable).

The same is somewhat true for Carmilla. Carmilla comes in and corrupts a young girl into queerness. The queerness here is the basis of the horror.

Again, we do not quite read it this way these days. But that was what made those novels horror - and maybe it was what kinda made sure that vampires would not stay horror for long?

The Blood of the Vampire

Another book that came out close to the end of the century and already goes very deep into making the vampire sympathetic is The Blood of the Vampire by Marryat. While this story leaves it open (as do many vampire stories of the day) whether it is truly vampires involved here, there is definitely the suggestion... However, we read the entire story from the point of view of the vampire, and the horror is in fact that this young girl does not understand what is happening to her, and that she through her nature accidentally kills people.

I am Legend

Okay, I will admit one thing: Of all the vampire novels released between 1990 and 1970 I have only ever read I am Legend. Now, I am Legend is pretty much somewhere between vampire novel and a zombie apocalypse. Now, if you only know the Will Smith movie, you do not know anything about this story, mind you. Because the twist is completely different.

Now, for the most part the horror of this novel - and this is definitely horror - comes from the decay of society, and how a human being completely isolated will usually use his mind. Sure, part of this are the vampires, but the protagonist's mind is actually a way bigger part of the horror than the vampires.

Especially as the final reveal of the story is: "Vampires are actually quite alright. And they will be the future of humanity."

Salem's Lot

Salem's Lot is another story that definitely features vampires as horror creatures. And to be fair, I am struggling to say much about it because there is just one simple fact: I find King's writing incredibly boring and even kid!me (who, again, was afraid of everything) never found King's stories very spooky or frightening. For the most part I would argue that Salem's Lot has not much horror that is specifically connected to the vampires being vampires. They are just "monsters" that can turn pretty much everyone against you. That is the horror here. The big difference between vampires and zombies would probably be the very specific weaknesses of vampires - and the fact that they are cunning, which zombies usually are not. But generally speaking, the vampires here could be easily replaced with any other kind of monster tht could easily turn other people into "monsters" themselves.

Still, from all vampire media that I have read, Salem's Lot is probably the one example of a story, where the vampires are horror creatures just on the basis of being vampires - and where the book never really bothers even the slightest of humanizing the vampires in any way.

Interview with the Vampire

Just one year after Salem's Lot, though, the novel would release that would very much change vampire literature forever: Interview with the Vampire. Yes, this was officially a horror novel. However, I never read it as horror - and I doubt most folks who read it did. Instead this book and the ones following it, very much is the exploration of the psychology of vampires. Anne Rice's vampires are very sad, very dysfunctional people, who really just want to find some peace and happiness, but are quite unhappy. If anything the thing that is the horror here is not the vampires, but their existence. Because to them existing as vampires becomes a sort of psychological horror to itself. This is obviously especially clear when it comes to Claudia, who is cursed to forever exist as a child in a world that never will respect her and see her as a full person.

As you can see: I am not even arguing that there is no horror in here to be found - but the horror is not "scary vampire", but "being a vampire is fucking scary". Mind you, it is this aspect of the vampire that I found always quite fascinating, and that admittedly got a bit too lost for me on the long run...

So, this was pretty much the point where vampire media changed forever. At this point vampires were hypercharged and suddenly became very omnipresent in media to never go away over the next 50 years. And yes, from the 80s onwards I have read a whole lot more of the vampire media that has been released. However, I will not go much into many details from here on - rather than going into the three distinct types of vampire media that we have now.

Vampire Romance

I am blindly gonna argue that probably the biggest subgenre of vampire literature is vampire romance. Based on the fact that romance is the biggest genre of literature in general, you know? A lot of Urban Fantasy falls into this, too.

Now, generally speaking almost all vampire romances are the same: We have a human main character, most of the times female, who falls in love with a vampire, most of the time male. There are queer variants of this, but very little where a male human falls in love with a female vampire (or the other way around). Sure, I can think of a few novels like that (mostly stuff about non-white vampires, ironically), but generally speaking: Most of this is a tiny female woman or girl, falling in love with daddy dom vampire.

While sometimes the romantic vampires can be dangerous, I can hardly call them horror. Sure, there might be a scene or two - depending on the author - where the vampire goes into a blood frenzy and might be dangerous to their human lover, but in general vampires in this subgenre are depicted as something great, amazing, hot, and desireable. In quite a lot of books the main character ends up becoming a vampire, or at least yearns for it.

So, no. The vampire romance definitely falls out of the horror aspect.

Vampire Hunters

Probably the most varied type of vampire media we have around today is media about vampire hunters. While vampire hunter media was around forever (technically speaking the oldest I have read were from the 1910s and 1920s and published in pulp magazines, featuring usually vampire or general monster hunters - it even seems that this is where the entire "werewolf vs vampire" thing comes from), it really took off in the 90s with Buffy.

Vampire Hunter alligned media usually is more targeted at a male audience, though there are some stories that are more targeted at women. Either way: While the main plot here usually goes about hunting down either one specific vampire or just your average monster/vampire of the week, there is quite a lot of those that have a lot of sideplot focused on romance/sex and a wide cast of side characters. Generally speaking a lot of those stories however will be best described as "action", which is probably why we see this type of vampire story most commonly also in visual media - be it games, shows. comics, or movies.

However, one way or another: Very few of these actually go heavily into horror. While at least some of the games can have some creepy and anxious moments, and a lot of media here goes into splatter and gore... There is rarely a whole lot of actual horror in it. After all, in the end this genre is very much about a power fantasy - which is simply the opposite of horror.

Vampire Horror (?)

Between all the other vampire stories there are some vampire stories, that aim at least to be horror. Del Toro's The Strain definitely falls into this. And in general I have read a total of four books, that actually fall into the genre - while also being completely unable to recall the other three titles, as they do not seem to be in the Wikipedia list.

And this was actually what got me thinking about this the most. Because... out of all those books, only one actually worked for me. And that was a book written from an indigenous perspective doing the same thing that Castlevania Nocturne does: Equating colonialists with vampires.

However, I am not quite sure whether this was because I identified with this perspective, or whether it was because of these books it was the only one not taking place in a semi-modern world.

See, here is the thing: In a modern setting vampire are just not very scary, no matter what you do. And that... Well, it leads me to a theory.

What makes a vampire scary?

So, let me talk for a moment about this. What actually is the horror of the vampire?

From all the novels I have read, I would argue that the general ideas of horror within vampires come from one or more of the following ideas:

Vampires can corrupt anyone into their ways. One horror aspect of this is, that they can turn anyone against you. Even your lover, your family, your friends can fight you on the next day.

Vampires can corrupt you. They can "infect you" and make you live out your darkest desires - be those of sexual or a violent nature.

Vampires can hide in plain sight. They can appear as human for the most part and can hence sneak up on you rather easily.

Vampires usually are incredibly hard to kill (unless you have sunlight).

The last part is the biggest issue.

I will now say it again: Originally vampires could go out into the sunlight. The entire thing with "vampires die in the sunlight" actually goes back to the Nosferatu movie running out of budget for an epic final battle and people ran with it. But it is exactly this that makes vampires so often not work as horror. Because it is a very easy, obvious solution to killing them.

A few days ago I saw a post on my timeline on how monsters that are visible are actually a lot more scary - and I kinda agree. But generally I think that a main issue with vampire horror is, that the "weaknesses" are just too silly and too obvious.

In general I think vampires would work better in a sort of psychological horror, that goes more into the first two aspects of it. Because the vampire as a monster... I am afraid it just does not work anymore these days - if it has ever worked.

And a part of me really would love to write some proper horror with vampires at some point. But I don't know if it can even work. What do you think?

[147days]

you showed me colors you know I can't see with anyone else

[juniperhillpatient]

hot & totally neurotypical normal girls with no tism just endlessly repeatedly watch & rewatch the same early 2000s network tv shows on repeat & chuckle internally whenever anyone suggests something as ridiculous & outlandishly unlikely as watching a “new show”

[gothhobbithoe]

"Giles I'm sixteen years old I don't want to die"

This was only in the first season how many times will they break my poor girl? She's so YOUNG with such a heavy burden and she's all on her own