Jamie Chambers

Bloodsucking Fun

Another year, another Halloween, and vampires are once again the “in” thing. Thanks to Stephanie Meyer and her angsty, sparkly vampires of the Pacific Northwest we are seeing a renewed interest in our pale, fanged pals. Not only do I get to see the Twilight Saga everywhere, but my daughter is newly-obsessed with the show The Vampire Diaries (that imaginatively focuses on the unlikely love of a high-school-attending vampire who can walk in sunlight and a somewhat sullen brunette). But even I’ve gotten in on the act, submitting a short piece of “prose poetry” to my friends over at Vampyr Verse.

My earliest memories of vampires came from horror comics. These were monsters without apology, scary bastards who ripped people out of cars, drank their blood, and left their bodies hanging in trees. And that interpretation went along with my early gaming impression of them as well, where vampires were in the earliest D&D rulebooks as powerful undead that could level-drain your ass with a single hit. I do vaguely recall my Mom talking about Barnabas Collins from Dark Shadows, but I wouldn’t learn more about that show until well into my adult life.

Cropped from the original Ravenloft cover by Clyde Caldwell

Being the sad gamer-geek I am, I’ll have to confess that Strahd von Zarovich from the original Ravenloft adventure-module was the first time I really saw the vampire as a more tragic figure or interesting character. And even if Tracy and Laura Hickman borrowed from the mythology of Dracula and sprinkled in bits from other vampire-writers, they still managed to create a very compelling, and now iconic, character—and what is probably one of the best adventures ever written for a roleplaying game.

It was Strahd that really got me more interested in vampires as characters—as opposed to evil that should have its ass kicked. Strahd still needed to be put down, of course, but you could feel for the guy before you staked him, chopped off his head, and stuffed his mouth with holy wafers.

At some point in the nineties I worked my way through a copy of Interview With The Vampire. And while I was interested in Anne Rice’s take on the undead, I absolutely could not stand the character of Louis. I can appreciate the novel now a bit more from an adult perspective, though I wouldn’t necessarily call it entertaining. I read the original Dracula by Brom Stoker and have to give the author credit for ushering in the modern age of the vampire, even if the book itself isn’t a favorite. On the gaming side I never jumped in on phenomenon of Vampire: The Masquerade, even though my non-gamer girlfriend at the time was really interested in the live-action version and made me purchase the Mind’s Eye Theater boxed set (that came with cheesy vampire fangs).

Then along came a girl named Buffy, who got me thinking about vampires (along with high school, relationships, and life) all over again. Joss Whedon managed to rebuild the vampire mythology in a relatively simple way—vampires are again soulless bloodsuckers who need to be staked—yet still offer a window for interesting characters and tragic figures. It worked so well that a vampire became the central character in its spinoff, Angel.

There are too many other pieces of vamp-culture to easily name, from the vampire detectives of Forever Knight and Moonlight, dozens of novels from Elrod to Saberhagen, from board games (Dracula’s Revenge) to video games (Castlevania, anyone?). Vampires have been messing with my mind for most of my life.

So what makes vampires keep on coming back from the dead, culturally speaking? It’s been analyzed by folks a lot smarter than me, but I think a big part of it is wish-fulfillment-fantasy tempered by such a heavy price that most people would not willingly go through with it. Imagine being immune to age and disease, to be strong and powerful, and exist apart from the normal cares of the workaday world. Now imagine you have to kill to live, to be forever apart from normal people while you watch them age and die while you live on, unchanged. That you could never feel the sun on your face or feel the beat of your own heart.

It’s hard to say what my favorite take on the undead might be. I think they all have their place. Just like I might enjoy butter pecan on one day and Ben & Jerry’s Karamel Sutra on another, I like having vampire variety. Sometimes vampires should be scary monsters that need to be killed (George Clooney-style in From Dusk Till Dawn). Other times it’s great to have the vampire-viewpoint to let us take a look at our own lives from a different perspective. Vampires are pretty much all good in my book.

But c’mon, gang, sparkly vampires … ?