#or have i absorbed some of his delusions through osmosis

[icarusbetide]

you know what, if we discovered some diary entry proving that john adams had a sickening, unrequited, one-sided love affair with hamilton, i wouldn't be too surprised. that amount of ink spilled on dedicated, almost eulogistic hatred that grew more potent with the passing of literal decades? that can only come from a place of ardent devotion.

[secret-engima]

Please don’t feel obligated to answer, I’m just curious why you don’t like vampires? Is there a specific reason or more just general dislike?

Hm. Gonna preface this by saying I have nothing against people who like the vampire tropes? I know people have a lot of fun with it, and this is just not my cup of tea, but since you asked imma give a short rant now.

Admittedly a good part of my dislike is my Christian sensibilities angrily smacking at the concept of the Undead in general like a cat smacks furiously at an invader in its box.

But mostly I just-

Really really do not like or get the idea of undead things. Reincarnation is a fun trope I've come around on, and characters "dying" or getting super close to death and then being magically saved and restored to normal is also a trope that is really fun to play with. See all my Nox spinoffs XD.

I'll even take "has a healing factor that keeps them from dying/staying dead under all circumstances" ala poor Ardyn, because at the end of the day Ardyn IS actually fully alive and that's half his problem.

But "100% dead and still wandering around causing problems"? No thank you. My ability to hand wave fantasy stuff can't manage to cover that one. *especially* since Vampires are dead and yet CAN APPARENTLY HAVE KIDS WITH LIVING PEOPLE????

*cat smacks the concept off the table like a glass of water*.

Also the blood drinking thing low-key annoys me and freaks me out, for similar reasons as the "dead but can have children" thing. Like- why blood? Why usually only human blood? In the vampire tropes I have unwillingly absorbed through osmosis, it always seems like human blood is somehow "better" than animal blood, or that animal blood is incompatible entirely? Like- dude. it's just blood. It's got all the same ingredients and building blocks. Either suck it up or go the vampire version of vegan.

I've seen some people do versions of vampires that only keep the blood drinking thing thing and some of the powers and insist they're actually alive, which confuses me more because if you're alive WHY DO YOU NEED BLOOD SO BAD. Sounds like anemia and/or severe iron deficiency and (especially in more modern AUs) there are *medications for that*.

Also if vampires and zombies (which is another trope I severely dislike) are ALREADY DEAD THEN HOW CAN YOU KILL THEM? Like- this thing is canonically already DEAD. Why does a wooden stick through an organ that *no longer functions* going to make it lie down and stop moving around? Or for zombies, why does a bullet or sword to the brain, an organ that *can no longer be producing signals because that is the definition of dead* make them suddenly decide to stop running around biting things????

*flails* I know that a lot of fantasy does not make sense but the Undead thing, like Vampires and Zombies, just seems *so utterly pointless to me*?????

That and it's always coupled with some kind of intense desire to kill/eat humans over anything else and the very sour part of me is just: ah. So we're just doing this for the horror porn. Okay.

It just feels like there are a thousand more creative monsters someone could make or use in their fic to be scary, or to do their morality investigations with. I don't get why two of the popular options boil down to "it's a corpse with grandiose ego issues" and "it's a corpse that for some reason feels hunger even tho the stomach is probably rotted out and either way definitely doesn't work".

I DO get that the idea of some kind of dangerous Other race lives among humans and blends in and occasionally gets the munchies is interesting to play with. I get that there is an element of potential world building in there that can be fun. But I continue to screech at the sky and ask WHY DEAD THINGS THAT DRINK BLOOD in the same tone I screech at many video games WHY GIANT SPIDER BOSS. It feels like it would be so easy to just like- make a fae culture? or aliens? If it was fae then you could even have the "humans can be turned into them" since that's a thing in mythology I think. All the fun of creepy world building and secret societies and none of the corpses running around getting delusions of grandeur.

So yeahhhhh that's my rant on why Vampires (and zombies) really bother me.

But I do know that people like them so like. Whatever. Have fun. I'm just gonna sit back here and be confused.