She actually got hate mail and poor amazon reviews because "I can't believe she made the vampires EVIL. They're supposed to be the HEROES."

::gives up::

They're supposed to be the HEROES

"We call them the Lonely Ones" or however that quotes goes from that episode with the sad wanna-bes.

She actually got hate mail and poor amazon reviews because "I can't believe she made the vampires EVIL. They're supposed to be the HEROES."

I ...

I ...

What. The. FUCK? Look peoples, I'm all "Vampires yay!", but that's because the idea of human-like creatures that are amoral predators fills me with an unholy glee. Sure, they can question the ethics of what they do to survive (that's always fun), but at the heart of it, they're SUPPOSED to be bloodthirsty killers. LITERALLY bloodthirsty, dammit.

I think I need to go watch Near Dark again. And turn it off 15 minutes before the damn ending.

I just read Wicked Game

one of the things that I liked about it -- I believed the vampires were Dangerous.

who'd formed a religion from a bunch of papers from a wizard's laboratory, including shopping lists, family recipes, one or two pages of genuine prophecy, and a pulp fiction novel

Sort of like St. Leibowitz.

To me, the fascination of the vampire mythos is the question of "What would you do to live forever? Would you perform unspeakable acts? Would you kill others to stay alive?" Making vampires fuzzy bunnies seems kind of pointless to me.

Hmm, your version, I like. Maybe it's the gnome swashbuckler factor.

Ah, well, the entire idea began because one of the players was playing a gnome sorcerer/favoured soul called Mayhem, going for mystic theurge. The schtick was that he had all this magical ability, but no way of controlling it. He had the names of all the spells he knew written on cards, and in combat, when it was his turn, he'd shuffle them up and draw one; and that's what he was doing on his turn. (My favourite moment with this was when they were fighting a gnome necromancer in a dungeon, and he turned up Summon Monster I. Another card draw to determine what showed up, and he drew... an octopus. Which promptly dropped onto the gnome and started grappling him. Interesting bit of trivia, incorporeal undead are useless for helping you out of a grapple.)

Anyway, he took the Leadership feat, and he said he wanted a halfling fighter for his cohort. So we worked out this whole backstory for a dinosaur-riding desert halfling tribe. The PCs fulfil a section of the snippet of real prophecy in their holy writings, and since Mayhem was the only gnome in the party, he was obviously Casanunda, their Messiah. (And one particularly ugly PC was clearly the vanquished Baaztor, the hideous beast-man of Draenor, whom Casanunda now kept with him as proof of his martial prowess.) One brother became his cohort, the others (and their mother) became his followers. (They spent their time trying to bridle and ride yet another PC, who was playing a reptilian race.)

That was a lot of fun. It's good to have PCs who are willing to take an idea and run with it.

Making vampires fuzzy bunnies seems kind of pointless to me.

Whereas making fuzzy bunnies vampires is all kinds of right.

Oh, trust me, Jilli-- poor Alyssa was just headdesking like you would not believe. And I was right there with her. It was SOOOO tempting to remind these nutbars that vampire lit went waaaaayyyyyy before Laurell K. and Stephanie Meyer.

::wanders off muttering about damned sparkly vampires::

Whereas making fuzzy bunnies vampires is all kinds of right.

Well, yes.

It was SOOOO tempting to remind these nutbars that vampire lit went waaaaayyyyyy before Laurell K. and Stephanie Meyer.

DRACULA, PEOPLE. READ IT.

(I know you people get it. It's one of the many reasons I treasure you so.)

I have to kind of roll my eyes at all of the ways that vampire novelists come up with to try to make the vampires mysterious but harmless. I really think Joss came up with the best way to have a vampire be a hero without having him be a fluffy little puppy.