Comments on: The Virtues of Vampires

By: John Markley

John Markley — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:24:58 +0000

A lot hinges on how much of the change in personality that occurs over a person’s lifetime is the result of more accumulated experience, and how much is physiological. Without knowing more about that, I don’t think we can really say what a man who is centuries old but physically young would be like.

Also, what Daemon said.

By: Daemon

Daemon — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:37:14 +0000

Forget cranky old men. I want to have more books where the main character vampire is still an inhuman bloodthirsty walking corpse, and the non-vampire main character doesn’t choose to overlook this in order to get a piece of undead ass. Or having the vampire be disturbed at the idea of having sex with food. Preferably both.

Seriously, the sexy vampires are so very, very, very boring.

By: weaver

weaver — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 02:55:03 +0000

About the only thing I liked about Interview with the Vampire was in the present day scenes when L’Estat complains that he doesn’t understand modern art.

By: Mia

Mia — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 13:41:39 +0000

If vampires don’t age physically maybe they also don’t age mentally or emotionally. If you get turned at sixteen then you are sixteen forever, mind, body and soul. That would suck.

By: Tansy Rayner Roberts

Tansy Rayner Roberts — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:08:32 +0000

You’re absolutely right – there aren’t enough vampire stories that do this, and they ALL should.

I loved cranky old man Angel too. And the fact that Spike was so blatantly stuck in the late 70’s, early 80’s and had no problem with this.

Immortals are FUNNY.

(I remember the line from the first ep of Buffy too where she spots a vampire in a club and Giles thinks it’s her impressive Slayer skills and she points out that the guy is wearing a jacket that is from the wrong decade.

By: Satsuma

Satsuma — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:32:27 +0000

Can you imagine how fabulous Twilight would be if he behaved like the cranky old man he is? On the other hand, moody teens can act quite the same… Stephanie Meyer might deserve more credit than I’ve been giving her if that was intentional, haha.

By: undeadbydawn

undeadbydawn — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 01:15:34 +0000

I always kinda though, the thing about being immortal is that you have an awful lot of time. You have hundreds of years to set things up to that you are untouchable and, eventually, the brief lives of those around you become a very temporary inconvenience – or at best a whimsical indulgence. You would also know *absolutely fucking everything* due to having quite a few lifetimes in which to study whatever interests you.

Then there’s the feeding. As Will Hindmarch alludes to above, you’d either have to be virtually invisable or very very streetwise to get yourself some blood. Perfectly prepared to completely fuck up anyone that gets in the way, in fact. So you want to know how to fight, because no level of charm is gonna win every time.
And yes, you’d drift off because life can be immensely dull at times. You’d also get pure-grade pissed at the same old idiots [new face, same idiot] making a complete arse of running the world. Then you’d make sure that *you* and your people ran the world.

After all you’ve had hundreds of years to work on it.

By: Shane Hoversten

Shane Hoversten — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:29:36 +0000

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and disgusted by it for a long time, and finally a bit gratified by an episode of True Blood, the one where Godric, who is two thousand years old, gives this beat-down reprimand to all the other vampires saying, essentially: you’ve lived hundreds of years and what have you learned? How have you grown? He finds it all so tiresome that he kills himself, which has almost been my reaction, too.

This, more than the crankypants thing, is my real issue. A lot of being a cranky old bastard has to do with increasing aches and pains, physical decay, and cognitive decline, to none of which vampires are subjected. So that’s fine if they want to be more contemporary; but even the most cloistered vampire who spends all his time worrying about hair and fashion, as all popular vampires seem to do, must surely accrue some powerful amount of perspective, and experience?

Apparently not. Most of them, as they’re conveyed in popular fiction, would be tedious in the extreme to sit next to on an airplane.

By: Felix Gilman

Felix Gilman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:26:23 +0000

bad Imhotep! no cursing

By: Will Hindmarch

Will Hindmarch — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:26:13 +0000

The key to comedy is timing, and mine is for shit. Doesn’t help that my joke was lousy to begin with. Sorry, folks.