Creating new creatures vs using the old classics

[Etola]

Originally Posted by Paichka

I did, and I'd like to clarify what I meant because I've been feeling bad, like my comment might have been taken as a slight.

I like my vampires to be monsters. You know the movie "30 days of night"? I like my vampires to be like THAT. Monstery. Eeeeevil. Dead monstery eeeeevil that doesn't try to SEDUCE its meat, it just rips its head off. An awesome-sauce predator.

I DON'T like my vampires to be angsty brooders with massive sex appeal, a la Jean-Claude from the Anita Blake books. That doesn't mean that if a book includes a vampire that IS broody-sex-on-a-coffin, that I won't like it. I worship Buffy, after all.

I have to agree with this. I read an article somewhere about trends in different genres, and the article talked about the growing boom in paranormal romance (you see them everywhere nowadays!), explaining that vampires were the new alpha male for romance. But in making them so, I think the sheer horror of vampirism has been romanticized and watered down. Often you will even see stories where vampires get all the benefits but none of the drawbacks, which feels like a cheat to me.

One woman I talked to in a convention said it best, I think: "They're vampires, not bloodsucking fairies!"