Tag Archives: vampire diaries

Top Ten Reasons I DO NOT Want to Be a Vampire

Posted on by
2

Last week, Emmie Mears wrote a blog post enumerating the top ten reasons she wants to be a vampire.

She said WHAT?

This week, I’d like to offer a rebuttal. In spite of the fabulous eyelash extensions she-vamps seem to get upon rebirth, the super-speed and super-strength, the eternal youth, and the occasional ability to turn into a bat, vampires are nasty parasites, little more than a sexually-transmitted disease. I’m just not down with signing on for that… and here’s why:

1. Vampires are parasites.
The definition of parasitism calls it “a type of non mutual relationship between organisms of different species where one organism, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host.” In the human-vampire relationship, vampires win… until humans die out because of global warming, and then the vampires are screwed because their only food source is gone. I can’t agree to join a race with such a glaring single point of failure. Plus, then I could be classed with things like tapeworms and fleas… ew.

So queenly, she relies on her servants for life.

2. I’m a vegetarian.
Those blood-colored juices coming out of your steak give me barfy feelings… so how could I possibly want to drink blood? I don’t like eating animals, so I definitely couldn’t like drinking humans.

I’m with Jessica: gross.

3. You’re just as likely to end up an animated corpse as a carnivorous supermodel.
Some alternate series, like Ilona Andrews’s Kate Daniels series, portray vampires as meat puppets, controlled by necromancers who retain their humanity while they make their stinky minions do their bidding from afar. I also hear that in Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, vampires are nasty animated corpses… and that’s a bestseller! I’m just saying, it’s a big gamble: sparkly, stone supermodel or rotting puppet. And I’m not willing to take the chance.

This is what Angel is going to look like in 1000 years, Buffy.

4. Vampirism is a sexually transmitted disease.
Ever notice how vampire-lovers frequently end up vampires themselves? There’s a reason for that. Vampirism is passed through the exchange of bodily fluids, after all. And, since I’m monogamous, I’d be pretty darn upset if that particular disease got passed on to me.

This can’t be sanitary.

5. Murder is bad.
We have these things called laws, and those laws say that killing people is bad. If your very existence depends on committing murder, you’re probably a fellow. And also, not a very nice person.

“You can’t do that. It’s wrong.”

6. Eternal life is overrated.
In Kelly Armstrong’s Women of the Otherworld series, vampires don’t live thousands of years… because they get bored. You can only go to high school so many times before it makes you suicidal. Plus, look at Godric in True Blood: after you’ve seen the world go to hell—repeatedly—and take your offspring with it, there’s really nothing left to live for.

High school biology again? I think I’m going to be sick!

7. Blood is salty… and salt equals bloat.
This is just Feeling Attractive 101, folks. Don’t go eating a bag of chips before a hot date, because it will make you look and feel all blimpy. And, even if you do look like a supermodel, if you feel like you can’t fasten the button of your jeans, you’re just not going to have the self-confidence to seduce that sexy young ingenue next to you at the vampire bar. 

And you can’t even check a mirror to make sure you don’t look like this.

8. I like food. And hot blood is just not as satisfying as hot tea.
I admit it: I look forward to meals. I like pie. And popcorn. And black bean burgers. I get positively murderous if I can’t have a cup of strong, sweet hot tea in the morning… now just imagine if I hadn’t had my hot tea for a century of mornings. That’s not a pretty picture. And we already talked about how killing people is wrong.

Giles looks much happier with his drink of choice.

9. SAD would get a lot worse.
No sun, ever? I already have to use a sunlamp for three seasons of the year. If it made me burst into flames, I’d cry every single day. And, in some universes, vampire-tears are blood. Worse, in other worlds, vampires can’t cry AT ALL. Depression + no tears = murderous Kristin again, and that whole murder-is-wrong thing causes a problem.

That’s not a good look for anyone.

10. I like to wear colors other than black. And corsets are so confining.
Sure, vampires look badass in their chest-exposing black shirts and their cleavage-exposing shiny corsets. But I like a little variety in my wardrobe… and really, my default uniform is jeans, t-shirt, and Converse sneakers. And no one would be intimidated by a short vampire in beat-up Chucks wearing a shirt with owls that look like Doctor Who.

Because the wannabe look is just SO cool.

This Road… It Leads to Nowhere!

Posted on by
4

How do you feel about series with no projected end-date or endgame? 

If you may recall, I went through a brief period of addiction to The Vampire Diaries (the television show, not the books). And, yes, I know, shame on me. But call it a guilty pleasure.

Then, one day, when I was half looking for something fluffy to read and half looking to see where the television series was headed, I read the Wikipedia entry for The Vampire Diaries novels, and I discovered that author L. J. Smith originally wrote the series as a trilogy. She then added more, and a little more, and now the series will be continued by a ghostwriter, since Smith signed a “work for hire” contract, and the copyrights to the series belong to her publisher.

It hit me: this series is headed… nowhere.

It’s a soap opera. It will continue until it doesn’t.

That sort of ruined it for me. Everything that we’re working toward has no significance, and once we find this artifact or beat this enemy, we’ll just need to find another artifact or beat another enemy. There are no happy (or sad) endings, unless someone dies. It cheapens the current struggle, because, in the end, what’s it all worth?

I’ve often wondered how writers of novel-series manage to juggle their eventual goals for their characters when their contracts keep getting extended. If you project three books, with X midpoint goal happening in book three, what do you do when, after book two, you get an extension to seven books? We’ve all seen series completely derailed when this happens. *coughSwordofTruthcough*

Any ideas how this works? How would you manage it? How, as a reader, do you feel when you realize you’re being led by the nose to an undetermined end?

Freudian Friday: Alaric Saltzman

Posted on by
1

Yes, readers, your wish is my command, and at Laird Sapir‘s request, this week’s psych patient is Alaric Saltzman, history teacher, vampire hunter, guardian, murderer, and all-around interesting guy from The Vampire Diaries.

Interesting sidenote: I got Laird’s request in a comment to an earlier Vampire Diaries Freudian Friday entry on the very same day that I turned to my fiance while I was watching the show and said, “Wouldn’t it be weird, as a thirty-something single guy, to live with an 18-year-old girl you’re not related to? A really hot 18-year-old?”

Um, yes. Yes it would be weird. But I digress. Here’s the normal disclaimer: this post is about the CW show The Vampire Diaries, not L. J. Smith’s series of novels by the same name.

He will always be Warner Huntington III from Legally Blonde to me.

Alaric shows up on the show as a history teacher, mysterious vampire hunter, bitter widower, and love-interest for main-character Elena’s aunt in season one. We learn that Alaric’s wife, Isobel, died a couple years before, murdered by Damon Salvatore—or WAS SHE?

No. She was not. She was, in fact, turned into a vampire at her own request. We also learn that she had an affair with Elena’s “uncle” John, and that Isobel and John were Elena’s birth-parents. (Confused yet?) So that makes “Rick” Elena’s… step-birth-dad?

When Elena’s aunt dies, Alaric sticks around to act as guardian to her and her younger brother (cousin?), Jeremy. Rick makes friends with Damon Salvatore, joins the Founder’s Council, and overcomes his issues enough to become a decent guardian for Elena and Jeremy.

It’s more complicated than that, though. He’s briefly possessed by an evil vampire, his (first) girlfriend becomes a vampire before she dies, his “friend” Damon kills him a couple of times, and his new girlfriend reveals that his protection-against-the-supernatural ring is actually giving him a second personality that prowls the town and kills other members of the Founder’s Council.

Yikes. Poor guy.

So here we have a man who hated the vampires because they fascinated his wife and, to his reckoning, killed her. Then he gradually learns that vampires are people, too. In a super-sad scene from season one, he confronts Isobel without his supernatural protections, trying to prove he trusts her, in spite of what she is, and she compels him to move on and forget her. She later kills herself.

He opens up, shows his vulnerabilities, and promptly gets passively stomped on. He finds a group of trusted friends and adoptive family, and then an evil vampire uses him to infiltrate their defenses. His wife gave him a ring to protect him, but that ring is turning him into a vicious killer.

If that doesn’t teach him not to trust a good thing, what will?

Relationship-wise, his wife chose to become a vampire and abandon him. His first girlfriend became a vampire (not by choice) and then died. His second girlfriend is trying to protect him—and his alter-ego stabs her.

His best relationships are with Elena and Jeremy, two kids he’s not even related to, and Damon Salvatore, a frenemy if ever I really saw one. Alaric protects Elena and Jeremy, and he trains Elena to protect himself, satisfying that apparent need in him to do something good, to take control in a world where supernatural rules and humans have few defenses.

Teaching Elena to defend herself.

His friendship with Damon is mutually self-destructive: everything I touch dies, and you kill everything you touch, therefore we must have something in common. It also crystallizes his relationship with the supernatural: he likes it, he’s willing to work with it, but he hates it a little, too, and it will kill him at a moment’s notice.

So how do we reconcile Alaric’s need to protect the weak and fight against the supernatural with his fatalistic attitude that he cannot do anything right, and that everything supernatural is tainted? He fights against the supernatural, but he relies on it to protect himself, setting him up for a confusing simultaneous hatred and reverence.

Elena’s friendship saves him several times: she has faith in him, even when he doesn’t. And his desire to protect may overcome his tendency to despair.

But what will he do now that he cannot even protect himself? Will he overcome his backwards-reverence of the supernatural now that he cannot depend on a magical ring to save him? Will he finally own his natural, human talents and accept himself as a strong human who has fallen victim to the supernatural, but can overcome it?

What do you think, readers? What’s Alaric’s trouble? Have you even thought this much about him? And would it be weird to be a thirty-something guy living with a hot 18-year-old girl?