STOP SCREWING UP VAMPIRES!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously, though. I don't claim to be a psychic, but I'm starting to notice a disturbing trend that's been going on for a few years now. Now back when I was a kid, there was some halfway-decent vampire fiction out there. From the Eastern front we had Vampire Hunter D and Hellsing and all that good stuff, and from the West...well, admittedly it wasn't always so great. But we had the old classics to look back on, Lugosi and Lee and the like. We had Blade, bitches. And let's not forget I Am Legend (the book, not the movie). Hell, even Lifeforce was OK in a sort of mid-80's kind of way. My point is, vampires used to have some dignity. They used to be symbols of fear, intrigue, and the dark side of the human spirit. They were demonic yet sympathetic, and they were a powerful literary tool; in short, they were legends.
But it's all gone down the drain now, hasn't it? What happened, you may ask? What could have possibly driven the final wooden stake into the heart of vampire fiction? I'll tell you what happened: Twilight happened.
Oh sure, it started innocently enough. I thought it was another fad at first. "Vampire romance novels? Big deal. Anne Rice has been doing it for years, and you don't see me complaining." Oh, how young and naive I was then. I'm an older, more cynical bastard now, and I can see Twilight for what it really is: a sick joke with no punch line.
Now, I don't have a huge problem with teenage romance novels. I just let them have their space and they don't bother me. But when they muscle in on the vampire territory, that's when I bust out my katana and carry on about how there can be only one. The scenario of Twilight has been played out endless times before, and more competently at that. But now this new generation of genre-blind teenage yahoos is getting sucked into this latest maelstrom of mediocrity, and C'thulu help them if they fall in.
Oh, and it gets worse. Now that Twilight has spread throughout popular culture like a skin deformation, imitative vampire fiction seems to have popped up, as if this were some insidious game of Whack-A-Mole. HBO brings us True Blood. The recent remake of Blood: the Last Vampire just came out. Even the Underworld series has fallen victim to the curse of Twilight. It's only going to get worse from here. This influx of vampiric entertainment is overexposing the vampire, like exposure to the sun. Only vampires aren't just going to sparkle like Ed Cullen. They're going to burn, and we'll never be able to reconstitute their ashes. They'll be gone from the face of the earth. And it'll be all our fault, too. Because we eat this up. Like any other phenomenon, Twilight has a vocal fanbase. And, well:
Exactly. It's a sad day when we begin to humanize our monsters to the point where they essentially become us. Don't get me wrong, the humanization of the vampire, the werewolf, etc., is all well and good, but too much of a good thing is blasphemy. It's madness! (Madness? THIS! IS! TWILIGHT! *boot to the head*) Now if you'll excuse me, I'll just mosey on out of here. But before I go:
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