Typology Vampire |
Total Entries 25 |
Representative Dracula |
A “Sub-Trope” of “Our Monsters Are Different”… [“Our Vampires Are Different”] deals with everyone’s favorite undead bloodsuckers. The purpose of vampires in the story varies quite widely. They may serve as the “Big Bad” or as a metaphor for something, be it addiction or denial of aging, or even communicable diseases like the plague or an STD. There is some danger of the vampire character being too on-the-nose for the metaphor. The “baseline rules” below are largely literary and cinematic inventions from the 20th Century with only limited ties to older works and the original folklore. For instance, a vampire’s weakness to sunlight is not from folklore, but may have its origin in the 1819 novella The Vampyre. Sunlight holds no relevance to its vampire, but moonlight heals and revives him. Next up is the 1897 novel Dracula, which vampire suffers only the loss of his vampire powers in daylight. Following this build-up, the 1922 film Nosferatu was the first piece of media to portray sunlight as deadly to its vampire. It’s been a thing ever since, which over a century later may seem like it’s “always” been a thing… The sheer number of different and contradictory myths that have built up around vampires over the years have made it difficult to explore all of them in great detail. To deal with this, writers have started putting multiple types of vampire into their setting, with the explanation that different myths describe different types of vampire. These are often referred to as “bloodlines”, although any term suggesting shared descent or culture may also be used… ~ Our Vampires Are Different – TV Tropes
|
