This is a question I’ve been asking myself lately. Pictured here is my character Ares, done by the lovely Rammaru. Check out their art if you ever get a chance, as you can see it’s gorgeous. But anyway, Ares here is a perfect example of a vampire from my lore in my novel series. They have an entire jaw full of dagger-like teeth as opposed to just two fangs–with their canines being slightly more prominent. I see comments all the time that people are sick of vampires. But is this really the case?
From my perspective, which might be bias because I do love vampires, they are on the rise again, only this time with more badassery and less sparkles. It’s no secret that I despise Twilight. As a giant paranormal romance fan (What? It’s fun to read!) that series was a miss for me not only due to the characters, but due to the lore. One of the major problems I have is that now every time I say I write or read vampires, I immediately get asked, “Oh, do they sparkle?” I can promise you that unless you throw glitter onto Ares, he’s not going to sparkle. He can summon spined chains to rip you apart, certainly, but would only do so if you’re evil. So be careful.
What do I mean about on the rise, though? Well there’s been constant chatter about the 2020 series Dracula on Netflix. I’ve heard good things about it, and while I have yet to see it myself, I think it’s bringing vampires more to the light (Hah) and out of the shadows. The big series though that I want to praise, something I saw myself, is Castlevania season 3. I binged the third season last Sunday, and I have to say, it was amazing.
I’m a huge fan of how vampires are depicted in this. Savage, but with the ability to feel and even form relationships. This series is choc full of GORE, something that I personally love. The brutality and mercilessness of vampires is shown in this light, which is great because they’re not puppies. They are monsters. While I write vampire antiheroes, every single one of mine personally will always have blood on their claws. It’s something important about vampires that I really enjoy. The three sisters were great as well, those were new characters I really took a liking to. I don’t want to spoil anything in this blog post though, so the final thing I’ll say is to go and watch it. I might write a blog post with spoiler warnings about season 3 sometime in the future.
Not to mention, the Vampire the Masquerade game, Bloodlines 2 is coming out soon. I think this will continue to hype up vampires and restore them to their former glory. Back before the ‘sparkles’ nonsense (No offense Twilight fans.)
So, do I think vampires have lost their fangs quite yet? Nope, far from it. They’re flying up from the shadows once more! My character Jasper, in this beautiful art piece done by Cryptid, thinks so too. (He’s Ares’s brother. Charmer, right?)
Des M. Astor 