too many vampires

Ok, I gotcha. That makes sense...I just misunderstood what you were saying before.

Well, as long as we're being respectful of other people's opinions...

The point I was making with the well-read comment was simply that readers of Twilight are not always people who don't read anything and so think that Twilight is the greatest thing ever created...there are also people who have read books that are much better written than that and still enjoy it.

 

i've read series which others hated, still i'd find a few people around who had the same passion for it as i. it was poorly written and full of cliches, but i liked it alot.

i guess individual tastes are what makes this world go around, what someone doesn't like another does. always makes me at least look at the other's view, see something new i might have missed.

so i've found this to be an interesting thread to read.

 

Do I think Meyer's writing is great? Deff. not. Am I still strangely obsessed with Twilight, a little. I'm not as obsessed with the books as I am with the movie. I love the idea of someone's work becoming a film, and I love that I can watch step by step as it happens on the internet. I think it's move envy then anything else. Who me, envious... never. Lol.

I watch True Blood as well and I'm super excited for it to start up again this summer. Again, do I think it's great... I don't think either are very good, but they're both very entertaining, so I enjoy them.

As for vampires, I absolutly adore them, have since I was a kid. Same goes for the furry howling creatures we know as werewolves. I think that just like humans all vampires are different, unique. There are the sexy power hungry vampire's who use their beauty as a lure, much like humans do. Then there are the few tortured souls who never wanted to be a monster, and the few who embrace it and slaughter for the fun of it. I like to hop around like a tree frog and hit all the different kinds when I write about them.

 

Lol castle.. that 'quote' is the title of my book ><

 

I have mixed feelings about vampires. They can be really entertaining, and whenever I feel like looking at gorgeous men on TV or in movies that haven't gone for a swim in a sea of gross spray-on tan, vampires are there for me.

I don't mind if more authors pump out vampire novels. If their treatment doesn't appeal to me, I just won't read their work, simple as that.

If anything irks me about vampire fiction, it's the weird, disturbing theme of vampires falling in love with humans - and then pursuing the romance as if it's the most natural thing. [I get humans falling in love with vampires if the vampire is actively using his/her mind control powers on the victim.]

Come on, some of you have read the descriptions (from Twilight) of Bella sleeping in Edward's arms, pressed up against his "cold stone chest." Have any of you ever put your arms around a cold statue? Would you want to sleep with that and be held by that? Not me [shudders]. I find absolutely nothing enticing about embracing a big, icy-cold, man-shaped hunk of titanium. Bella was a necrophiliac with some additional issues for which I do not have a name, or Edward hypnotized for four books. Oh, wait - I remember now that he didn't.

The TV series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, also had this disturbing theme of vampire/human romance. Will someone tell me what's the attraction to a cold, dead body that likes to breakfast on your kind? Sure it looks good, but that's about it.

I do commend the Twilight series for Bella's having to become a vampire herself if she wished to remain with Edward. A warm, breathing, ever-changing human growing old with an undead, unchanging blood-sucking creature is just too weird for me to accept.

If you want to a see a vampire story that gives a more realistic spin on vampire/human love, watch Angel. One of the secondary characters, Kate Lockley, is attracted to Angel, the vampire protagonist of the show, but she keeps her distance no matter what and remains highly skeptical of him. Never do they enter into a romantic relationship. Now that's a theme I wouldn't mind seeing more of in vampire lit.

Sorry if I went too long off topic.

 

I think that's basically it. I don't see stories with ugly vampires (unless they're the completely unsympathetic antagonist). It's just a fetish for pale skin, blood and "mysteriousness".

 

Don't forget immortality, forbidden love, and alienation from society. Those are the themes that I believe draw so many youth to the popular vampire fiction.

 

The other day I d/l'ed a "science fiction" purchase from fictionwise.com after giving its rather misleading sample pages a read...

A friggin' vampire story in sci-fi getup!

<-- not happy

 

That's how they get you, Wrey...

 

Oh, yeah. I was gotten good. I'm reading along, everything is groovetastic, sci-fi things are science fictioning around with some space ships over here and some aliens over there, and... wait.... what's that?.... fangs? Oh, man!

 

So, basically, it sucked?

 

LOL! Just kidding.

 

Vampires, Zombies and werewolves are over done to the extreme. Vampires were overdone when they had those two ridiculous Vampire series on TV. Buffy and the other being Angel.

This whole twilight thing... I could cry!

I think the only decent Vampire movie in the last few years has been 30 days of night. As for Vampire books, I've never finished one because they are all so damn cliche and trite. You always know what is going to happen. There is a hunter, a vampire and a tragic story. *ya-awn* Even in 30 days of night, you could pick out what was going to happen, but at least it was a little (i mean very little) inventive.

THe other thing that really annoys me about vampires, werevoles and zombies, everyone thinks they can write it and create a great horror story. Just because you have one or all of the above, DOES NOT MEAN IT IS HORROR!!!!!!!!! argh!

 

A few weeks ago, one of the writer's groups that my husband goes to got together at his apartment for a social evening. It's fairly predictable that if you put nine writers in a room with alcohol, things will either go horribly wrong or extremely silly.

We got silly. We started on vampires, and before long we were populating our own "Mansion of Misfit Monsters." We had a hemaphobic vampire, a vegan werewolf, a nudist mummy, a pacifist zombie, but the group was split on the shape-shifter who couldn't make a decision.

That discussion could have gotten us a group rate at the local mental hospital.

 

Really? I thought it was mediocre at best...

 

Whoa, wait a minute here. In the story I'm currently writing, everything from myth to folklore exists. Werewolves, vampires, ghosts, faeries, the kraken, Nessie, merrows, gryphons... You get my point. My concern is that vampires are the main antagonists from the first part. The other parts following the first focus on other things: Demonology, magic, Greek and Norse mythology, Nazi occultists, necromancy... Again, you get my point. Should I rework the plot here?

 

I liked it--not my favorite movie but I enjoyed it. Things were quite slow at the beginning, but that hagrid-looking guy with the shotgun and the leghold traps really made my day.

 

Not necessarily. I have a novel in the editting stage that has vampires (or rather vampire), and I'm not going to burn it because Twilight was a pundit of snot. If it's original and interesting, there's no problem with it. Not to mention that if you were to finish it and successfully get it published, it would be a few years at least before it appeared on bookshop shelves, by which time the Twilight furore will have hopefully died a long overdue death.

 

Banzai, it might not have been the best movie brought out in the last 10 years, but for a vampire movie, it was pretty good.

I am so sick of garbage like Buffy the Vamp Slayer, Underworld, Blade, Twilight, etc. It is just all so damn similar, cliche, trite, *ya-awn* material! I would rather sit and watch Care Bears and Thomas the Tank Engine than a vampire movie. It took Dan a lot to convince me to watch, 30 days of night, and I am glad that I did. It might not be the best, but at least it was different. It portrayed Vampires like the carnivorous animals that they are. Not artsy fartsy, pansies... The hunt in packs, they feed on humans blood, they don't go to ballrooms and dance the night away, they don't go have sex in some whore house, they hunt, they feed, the end!

 

And it had that hagrid-looking guy with lots of hair and a shotgun. Did I mention the bull-dozer and the leghold traps? That DEFINITELY made my day.

 

I never really had any problem with Buffy, to be honest. Joss Whedon actually is really good at writing TV shows, which is something that can't be said in regards to Stephanie Meyer writing books.

My problem with 30 Days of Night, really, was that it did the thing which horror films seem to increasingly be doing (and which I think misses the point of horror), and substitute gore for atmosphere and pacing. Shoving a load of gore into a film doesn't make it scary (in my opinion), it just makes it grotesque.

 

I guess it is a difference in taste.

Buffy is formulaic and as realistic as a episode of the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers. I like my horror movies to take more than getting beat up by a chick to be overcome.

In a thesaurus, the definition of horror is fear and revulsion. Horror films are movies that strive to elicit responses of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Buffy failed to elicit the fear, horror and terror response in viewers, if you ask me. Although, I think people were quite afraid that it would never be taken off TV!

 

Maybe that's the difference. I've never really seen it as being intended to be horror, but as a teen drama with a supernatural backdrop. Same way as I don't think Twilight is intended to be horror, but rather chick lit.

Just for reference, my problem with Twilight is the poor writing, bizarre attempts at originality, and the number of uninformed morons lauding it as the greatest thing since Shakespeare...

 

I think some people just struggle actually deciphering 'Horror' from other genres, and what 'Horror' is at all. Blood and guts does NOT = horror.

Just because something features vampires doesn't make it a rubbish wannabe horror series either- Buffy was fantastic, it was a comedy drama amongst supernatural activity. It was immensely successful and still is today.

I don't see how anybody could've thought that Buffy was set out to scare people, to be honest. It was never meant to be that, at all. If anybody thinks that, then either they really didn't pay alot of attention or they really sucked when researching the show, if they did at all. Joss Whedon is a fantastic writer, In my opinion.

Twilight was just poor fiction to begin with. Call me a literary snob if you like, but the whole thing was just pumped out to make empty shell characters for 13 year olds to fall in love with so that the institutions made alot of money and could associate themselves with a hit saga. Some people have no pride...

 

I personally like the classics, Camilla, Dracula... I enjoyed Anne Rice's world though they are rather emo for me now. And I did really like the original Lost Boys movie, the second one wasn't so good.

I've read Twilight, after I watched the movie of course, because I'm not big on buying books based on popularity. I actually prefer obscure books to ones that are on the top ten sellers lists.

I wasn't too impressed with Twilight, though my second reading of it has shown me just how bad it is. I don't even think the writing is that bad for YA, but the story itself, the whining, sniveling, worry wort of the MC makes us want to gouge our eyes out. I'm not big on EMO style stuff. Plain and simple.

I did like 30 days of night, as well as I am Legend, though they are a cross between vampires and zombies. I enjoyed 28 days later, 28 months later, and the Dawn of the Dead series, though I hate the Night of the living dead series (they are just way too corny for me.)

I am torn, because I think vampire books with some romance in them is fine, like Dracula...but the seduction has to be part of the dance to capture the victim, not the whole plot like Twilight.

Eventually I write a good vampire novel. One where the vampires are scary like they're supposed to be.