I feel certain that I’ve written something like this before, but for the life of me I can’t remember, and instead of searching my Google Drive for it, I can just write it anyway. After all, it is on my mind after finishing Blood and Wine and rereading Cabinet of Curiosities and looking at all the stuff del Toro did for Blade II in his notebooks.
Also, I realized that I did not sing myself the vampire killing song as I played Blood and Wine as much as I really would have expected.
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Making Vampires Scary
I want to be clear: I don’t think vampires need to be scary for a story to work. I’m not someone who thinks that vampires belong to horror and only horror--they’re a fine addition to other genres and subgenres, particularly fantasy. So everything I’m talking about in this Note isn’t me saying “this is what authors need to do.” In any case, writing’s a creative endeavor and people can do whatever they want with their fantasy monsters as long as it makes sense and tells a good story.
But all that being said: you ever notice how few vampires in fiction are actually scary?
Part of the reason for that is that in a world of oversaturation of the fantasy genre (not that I mind), they’ve become just another fantasy creature or race. Yeah, they’re a species that’s dangerous because it sucks blood--unless they’re one of the variations that only drains emotions, which for some reason some authors depict as not as big a deal but that’s for another time--but they’re just another fantasy race. Sometimes they just get by with animal blood, it’s fine.
For me, sometimes this is gotten around by making vampires explicitly demonic. I find that a far more intimidating take on the creature. But this doesn’t always work. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has the vampires as a sort of type of demon spirit that possesses human bodies, but then it goes and defines ‘demon’ as basically any supernatural creature of non-terrestrial dimensions. Sort of like aliens, but supernatural. Which basically makes them another in the long line of creatures, and not a particularly threatening one. The show makes up for it by making other monsters the Big Bads of the seasons, and also lots of drama.
Going through Cabinet of Curiosities (which is the book that shows Guillermo del Toro’s collections and notebooks), the section on Blade II reminded me why the Reavers in that movie were so freaky. I wouldn’t say I found them terrifying, but they were definitely unsettling, and not just because their jaws opened up in this weird, freaky way. I mean that helps--that when revealed, their true form is just so wrong to human sensibilities.
But more to the point it’s how the Reavers act in the story. They’re not just vampires, they’re vampires that aren’t hurt by anything but sunlight--and indoors, or at night, you’re just plain screwed when they show up. And even other vampires are terrified of them, because they’re stronger and can infect them as well. It’s not just that it’s a vampire, it’s that it’s a monster that seems unstoppable by any human means.
If it starts coming for you, you’re dead. Or a vampire too, I guess. No one is safe from it.
I’ve also been playing The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, specifically the Blood and Wine expansion lately, and it’s got vampires out the wazoo (which is great, because the main game was sort of lacking in that regard). And most of the vampires you come across are just a type of monster with a taste for blood and a general batlike shape. Others are…
...the bruxae are scary, okay? Not just that they appear as these weird, pale, corpse-like women that turn invisible as they bat you around. But the fact is that when you encounter them in the wild, they’re disguised like normal women in hooded cloaks. And in the city of Beauclair, there are tons of these women just walking around. Are they all vampires? I don’t know! But they could be! There could be vampires all over the darn city!
And the Higher Vampires are worse, when they get ready for battle they get these elongated faces that remind me of rodents or bats, and two-foot-long claws. And worst? They can’t be killed. Higher Vampires can only be permanently killed by another Higher Vampire, which means when you fight Detlaff at best you’re only going to be able to put him down for a bit. Which is a bit anxiety-inducing because Dettlaff is always on edge. Regis keeps telling you he’s not a bad guy, deep down, but because of the circumstances he’s about to explode at any moment, and you know there’s not much you can do about it. At the end of his final boss fight, Geralt slices him in half and his body starts pulling itself back together.
Not to mention in the story mission titled ‘Night of Long Fangs’ we see him calling down a vampire apocalypse on Beauclair. It’s messy. There are people running and screaming, bodies and blood throughout the streets, demonic bats circling the spires, buildings all around are wrecked or on fire, and the city guard and local knights, all trained and experienced fighters, can’t do jack except hole up in the bank building. Geralt has to convince them to retreat to the castle because there’s nothing they can do but regroup while he tries to fix this by meeting the vampire’s demands, or appealing to a higher authority.
I think what I’m getting at here is that a truly scary vampire is not a creature in the story that’s stronger and faster than humans, or drinks blood. It’s that it’s a predator. It’s our predator. And sometimes this is played with in a less than literal sense--The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires very much plays the vampire as a molester and suburban predator, using his privilege and the bigotry of the time to get away with everything he does.
And that is scary, though that’s not exactly what I was going for. A scary vampire for me is one that’s something obviously higher up than us on the food chain. A creature that is built for preying upon humans, and in a straight fight there’s not much we can do. You can’t fight it, you can only hope to not be the next target.
Unless, of course, you’re a half-vampire undead-slaying machine like Blade. Or a witcher. Or whatever. But even then, it’s a close fight.
[Let me tell you, Dettlaff kicked my can several times in that boss fight.]
It’s a monster you can only run from.
And I suppose that makes any good monster, vampire or not.
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