Not signed in (Sign In)
Categories
- Main Junction
- CROSSED
- London Zoo
- Freakangels
- Music
- Printheads
- Culturegasm
- Web Nuggets
- WorldWeird
- Blogs
Welcome, Guest
Vanilla is a product of Lussumo:
Documentation and Support.
Printheads: your preferred literary vampire
Bottom of Page-
I haven't read any of the Sonja Blue books in a very long time, so I can't really speak to how dated they are now, but I do remember them being a lot of fun. It felt kind of like "vampire punk" to me at the time.
Incidentally, Sonja Blue was also my introduction to the World of Darkness vampires - that crossover novel ... A Dozen Black Roses, I believe it was called. For a long time I thought the worlds were one and the same, so it was an interesting surprise when I discovered otherwise. I still miss playing Vampire: the Masquerade.
I have yet to really delve into the New World of Darkness material. Read a bit about it when it first came out, but I was not really playing much anymore by that point. -
Nobody mentioned Morbius yet? <a href="http://www.spidervillain.com/SpiderManCovers/MarvelTeamUp/MTU3/Page1.jpg">I loved that shit when I was a little kid</a>...
-
Incidentally, Sonja Blue was also my introduction to the World of Darkness vampires - that crossover novel ... A Dozen Black Roses, I believe it was called. For a long time I thought the worlds were one and the same, so it was an interesting surprise when I discovered otherwise.
It's been speculated that the whole of the White Wolf roleplaying thing was ripped off wholesale from Sunglasses After Dark, but when it came to suing, Nancy Collins had to take the attitude that she couldn't beat them, so she'd profit by joining them instead.
I'd say that even more than Anne Rice's stuff, the Sonja Blue books are responsible for the whole hideous 'Paranormal Romance' genre that's blighting the genre market at the moment, but in themselves they're extremely enjoyably nasty little pieces of work. Nancy Collins' stuff really does have a quite disturbed streak running through it, where most of the imitators that I've tried (and mostly thrown at the wall in disgust) have been little more than Mills & Boon with fangs.
I predisposed to giving horror type stuff a chance as comfort reading, but it's all pretty damn awful these days, and isn't written for me, but for middle aged women who want their 'other' as tamed safe escapism.
I wonder what it says about me that I find proper splatterpunk and the really twisted stuff far more comforting? -
i really like the idea that a vampire will evolve depending on the blood they drink...
it would allow for rat like nosferatu, and animalistic type vamps, as well as the more civilized human like vamps... -
@Oddcult
Oh, come on, Sonja Blue isn't all to blame.
There's Laurel K. Hamilton and her Mary Sue Anita Blake to cast derision at as well.
@all
Since this is the vampire thread I need some help.
Years and years ago, probably close to fifteen to twenty, I saw a vampire movie on television and I can't remember it's name (I think it had the word "doctor" in the title). I remember that the main character is a vampire-hunting doctor who, at one point, takes an iron cross out of a graveyard or cemetary and forges it into a sword as vampires could only be hurt be "blessed weapons." The time period of the movie was around Victorian (I think) and it was live action, not an animation.
Help me out? -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Kronos,_Vampire_Hunter
I Googled 'vampire doctor sword forged cross' and got that entry. ^_^ -
I tried to read a Laurel K. Hamilton "Anita Blake" novel... I think it was called Obsidian Butterfly. The fact I can't even remember the title should give some clue as to how engrossing it was (or wasn't as the case may be).
I read some of the Sonja Blue stuff and thought it was decent.
My wife is a big fan of the Saint Germaine novels by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, but I haven't tried reading any of those. From what she tells me they are more "historical" novels than horror novels. -
- CommentAuthorIndigo Rose
- CommentTimeDec 5th 2008
Okay, so my favorite vampire book is actually Agyar by Steven Brust (since he never says the word vampire, mentions drinking blood, or anything of the sort, but he's been around a long time, can't go out in daylight, preys upon humans in some unnamed way, and can't be easily killed...) but it's not anything like your typical vampire book.
Someone HAD to bring up VtM and Vykos... oh no. I have played/run that game for a long time now. I'm shocked by how many of you think the Tremere were a good thing, since they were a twink developer's pet character made into a brood. (plus they destroyed the awesomeness of the Salubri) As for the Tzimisce, I can't say I liked them more or less than others. When they were done right, they could be fantastic, but they had a tendancy to go very wrong. I did fancy the Gehenna plot that had Tzimisce as the big win (unless stopped by Saulot), but that's beside the point.
I had been playing Vampire for a while before Buffy became popular and could not handle that show's treatment of vampire characters, I thought it rather pansified them, but that may just be me. (sorry Joss, I think you're a genius, but I couldn't handle Buffy)
I guess my favorite vampires are always well made VtM characters (and Fatima is way more awesome than the thing that calls itself Vykos... Anatole has them all beat for amazing) I read some of Anne Rice's and liked a few of the beginning books, same with the Anita Blake series (until about book 4 or 5), I am Legend was an interesting little short story, and so on...
Oh, and Twilight vampires sparkling in the sun For The Lose. -
-
CommentAuthornick3pointone4
- CommentTimeDec 5th 2008
lots of people mentioning V:tm but no one mentioning robert weinberg? i thought his two trilogies were the best out of all the world of darkness fiction. -
-
@acacia
Thank you! -
@ScottS
Obsidian Butterfly is, as you have already determined, not a good Anita Blake novel to start with. (The argument could of course be made that none of them are.) I've always interpreted it as the last half-decent novel before the main focus is simply sex. Previous novels have, you know, more stuff than just sex.
If you're ever motivated into giving the series a second change, I recommend just reading the first three. -
-
CommentAuthorBrandon Seifert
- CommentTimeDec 5th 2008
One of the things I find most interesting about vampires in historical fiction is that they're inevitably from the upper class. We're talking about human-looking creatures that suck our blood to live -- which is a great metaphor for old-school aristocracies when you're a peasant. Whereas, say, zombies, they're invariable the common people.
I like that metaphor, and I feel like it's been lost along the way. I'm all for rethinking and reinventing classic concepts, but I think that's one of the stronger parts of the quintessential vampires codified in the 19th century. (Although I'm just as guilty as anyone for making middle-class and working-class vampires in my stories -- although now that I've had the "society's parasites" metaphor pointed out to me, I'll definitely be using it.)
I have trouble pointing to my favorite take on vampires -- apart from Dracula, which is a classic for a reason. I can, however, point to my least favorite take on vampires: 30 Days of Night. Unstoppable juggernauts who engage in wholesale slaughter are not what I'm interested in when I read a vampire story.
(Plus, just staying focused on my problems with the vampires themselves and not the problems I, as an Alaskan, have with the story as a whole: I can't get past the algor mortis problem. One of the stages of death is that your body cools to the temperature of the place it's in -- so if you're a vampire in Barrow, no quantity of warm clothing will keep you from freezing like a side of beef if you're outside at -60 F. Even drinking hot blood isn't going to help -- I know just how quickly your cup of coffee freezes solid on a really cold day in Alaska.) -
-
@Brandon Cyphered
"One of the things I find most interesting about vampires in historical fiction is that they're inevitably from the upper class. We're talking about human-looking creatures that suck our blood to live -- which is a great metaphor for old-school aristocracies when you're a peasant. Whereas, say, zombies, they're invariable the common people."
Good point -- though in much of the actual folklore there isn't such a distinction.
I would guess, any vampire who lived long enough and who kept the cash found on it's prey, would become "upper class", whatever their humble origins. Maybe that's why the flaunt their fancy lace -- a case of "nouveau riche" ostentation:) Besides it's hard for a vampire to maintain a working class attitude, of being honest and hard-working... they either have to be a scavenger on the bottom, or a predator at the top. -
@Oddcult
It's been speculated that the whole of the White Wolf roleplaying thing was ripped off wholesale from Sunglasses After Dark, but when it came to suing, Nancy Collins had to take the attitude that she couldn't beat them, so she'd profit by joining them instead.
Which is interesting, because didn't White Wolf AND Collins try to sue over that relatively recent vampire/werewolf movie (the name of which I seem to be blanking on at the moment - Kate Beckinsale was in it)? -
Underworld. That's the name I was blanking on...
(Should have figured it would come to me 10 seconds after hitting "add comment.") -
-
CommentAuthorJamesMacDonald
- CommentTimeDec 6th 2008
Yup, and their logo was on the sequel's credits.
Underworld's plot and elements were far from unique, but were aparently close enough to a Whitewolf published short story set in their World of Darkness that a judge sided with them. -
-
-
CommentAuthorJustin Wrote This
- CommentTimeDec 6th 2008
Despite links to the long-disliked World of Darkness, including the aforementioned A Dozen Black Roses, the Sonja Blue stuff was always enjoyable to me. A little dark and grim, a little blunt, but enjoyable.
Oddly enough, I also tried to start reading the Anita Blake books with Obsidian Butterfly, and immediately developed an irrational hatred of the series. That was an awful, terribly written book. Just awful. I tried reading the other series by the author, the fairy-realm...thing, and was just overwhelemd by the unnecessary sex. They're bloody erotica.
Anyone else less than interested in the new Underworld film, Rise of the Lycans? I liked the first two for entertainment, but doing a third... set in medieval times... without Kate Beckinsale... meh. -
-
- CommentAuthorIndigo Rose
- CommentTimeDec 6th 2008
@Justineger - I'm not one to defend Laurell K. Hamilton, since her books have gone so terribly wrong, but as ZJVavrek pointed out, Obsidian Butterfly was where it was starting to go downhill. I do often point people to the first three or four, but forewarn them that the rest are irredeemable crap. I did like the first ones when I read them, the character concept was enjoyable. Maybe I just found raising Zombies for a living to be far too amusing to not like the little Executioner. Also, out of curiosity, any particular reason why you dislike Word of Darkness so much? -
I'll agree with all those putting forward The Historian, which I also thought was an lovely contrast to the popification of vampires - although it spends a lot of time on historical detail and scholarly activities, it still gave me the chills at certain key points (the waiter with the bite marks, anyone?), which is key for a story about being hunted by and hunting vampires.
Blood: The Last Vampire is also awesome (great art, plenty of fighting), although the spin-off series Blood+ was absolutely and hilariously awful. Interesting take on the science, but falling into the usual shojo anime series traps.
I notice Christopher Moore's You Suck hasn't been mentioned yet. Not as epic as Lamb, but a hilarious take on Vampires in the Modern World and a quick read.
Omae ga Sekai o Kowashitai Nara (If you wanna break out of this world) by Fujiwara Kaoru is also worth a read. She's well known for her often disturbing josei (adult women's) manga. This one has an almost identical storyline to Twilight in that normal girl develops crush on pretty vampire, but deals with it in a much more serious way. Her vampires aren't amoral psychopaths, but they don't really give a fuck about humans either, which I find more "realistic" than either extreme.
I have to admit, though, that the first handful of Anne Rice's vampires will remain my favourites, mostly just because they appeal to my melodramatic, romantic nature. I know they're ridiculous, but they're thorough and the interesting pseudo-history and homoeroticism gets me every time. -
-
CommentAuthornick3pointone4
- CommentTimeDec 6th 2008
@justineger dude rhona mitra >>>>>>> kate beckinsale -