Oh, and one more thing. Where do people get the idea that Vampires are akin to mindless Zombies? In every famous classical Vampire story, they have always been extremely cunning, very intelligent, and seducers. Twilight has not deviated from this at all. If anything, Nosferatu and its ilk has deviated from "classic" vampire (as in the grandfather: Dracula), not Twilight.
Dracula was not a "classic" vampire.
Sure, if we're talking about vampiric characters in literature, I guess he'd be a good place to start. But he isn't where the whole "vampire" thing started. Vampires existed in folklore for hundreds of years before Stoker ever thought about writing a story about them. He based his "vampire" more on the whole Vlad Dracul story than on any vampire folklore.
Traditional folklore portrayed vampires more like zombies than living things. They slept in the dirt, they smelled bad, they had precious little self-determination. They basically existed solely to feed on the living. They weren't romantic, they weren't crafty.
When I see people making statements like this about the Twilight series, I don't believe they have actually paid attention to the story.
The classical vicious Vampires you describe match the portrayal of about 99% of the Vampires in Twilight. You see, the Cullens (Edward and company) are an exception to the norm. That's the point of the whole story - they are in the minority and trying to do something different than what is common among Vampires.
So, yes, Twilight is very much telling a story about classical, blood-thirsty, cunning, completely evil, Vampires. But it is contrasting those kind of Vampires with a small group of "Vegan" Vampires. In my opinion, it's not difficult to believe that these type of Vampires could exist in any classical Vampire tale.
But, see, you're starting from a false premise. You think that Dracula is the archetype we're all working from. Which isn't the case.
Fine, lots of vampires in Twilight are relatively similar to Dracula. Great. But that doesn't make them any more true to the folklore that Dracula bastardized.
As for the whole romantic vampire thing... I'm not going to complain. Like I said, I've enjoyed a lot of the literature quite a bit. But that doesn't make it any truer to the folklore.
As for
Twilight specifically... My big complaint, first and foremost, is that it's truly horrible writing.
Bad structure, bad characters, bad plot, bad dialogue, bad everything. It's genuinely painful to try to read through it. I haven't encountered many authors that were that painful to read. So I'd be complaining about
Twilight even if it was about walruses rather than vampires.
But, if we're going to limit the discussion to purely vampiric topics... I'd have to say that my biggest complaint is that the vampires don't die in sunlight.
That's one thing that has largely remained consistent over the years, and it's a huge aspect of what makes a vampire what it is. Vampires are anti-life. Living things all derive from the sun. Sunlight makes plants grow... Animals eat the plants... Other animals (like us) eat those animals... Eventually we die and get decomposed back into the dirt for the plants to eat... Vampires break that whole cycle. They eat and eat and eat but don't die (on their own). They're a foetid infection that needs to be rooted out of the dirt and left to shrivel in the sun.
Even the most romantic vampires out there - like Anne Rice's - still had trouble with the sun. No matter how cute and cuddly and attractive they got, they still couldn't face the light of day.
But
Twilight's vampires don't die in the sun. They sparkle. That throws out the whole anti-life thing right there. That, I think, alters the beast enough that it doesn't even qualify as being a vampire. Maybe they're supernatural... Maybe they're evil and drink blood and stuff... But they aren't vampires.
If I write a story that features people who turn into giant bunnies when the full moon comes out, it isn't a werewolf story, no matter what I call them.
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Topic: Obsession with "New Age" Vampires? (Read 7546 times)