TVD Week: It Begins

You may or may not remember that back in June, I possibly promised a week’s worth of Vampire Diaries blogs. Maybe you forgot, maybe you hoped it would never come to pass, or (ideally) you’ve been waiting anxiously for TVD week to start. Well I’m here to announce friends that it has finally arrived! In honor of season 3 of Vampire Diaries (or TVD for those who get sick of writing it out over, and over, and over again, and are well aware of the bad-joke ramifications of calling something “VD”) being released on DVD this upcoming Tuesday, I am devoting a full week of entries to vampires, friendship, love, and the wonders of TVD!

Now if you watch the show, or plan to watch it at some point, be wary of spoilers. Sooooooooooo much happens in the show that it is impossible to say anything without some sort of spoiler. I will be respectful though and try to avoid anything too major, mainly from season 3. Seasons 1&2 are a little more open for abounding spoilers.

Additionally, I will start the week off with a few more general posts on vampires so even if you’re not a TVD fan, you have a little somethin’ somethin’ to get your fix until my next non-TVD post.

One of the things I was surprised to love about TVD was its take on vampires. I’m a big vampire fan. I’ve always loved vampire books and movies, despite the fact that some of them scare the crap out of me. When I was a teenager, I worked at a used bookstore so it was fairly easy to find new vampire books in the horror section.

Then one day, this strange new trend started called paranormal romance. The emergence of paranormal romance fiction deserves a pros & cons list of its own, but that’s not what we’re here for today. At first, I was excited. This meant a huge influx of new vampire-related reading material. Unfortunately, I soon realized that not everyone who writes should, and when people are trying to be unique while using a stock type situation/character (such as vampires) they fall into this trap where they try to make their vampires cool and distinct, and instead they wind up retarded and sparkly.

But I’ve always enjoyed comparing the different myths on vampires, and how they emerge in fiction.

Take, for instance, the mirror thing. In some versions, vampires don’t have reflections. Good examples would be Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Daybreakers, and the Real Vampires Have Curves series which I love, because Glory often discusses the difficulty of putting on makeup without a reflection. True dat. This one is fairly inconsistent though, and doesn’t really mean much as opposed to other areas of the lore. So what if someone doesn’t have a reflection? It’s really only used to identify vampires, and can too easily be excused as a trick of the eyes.

Better areas to explore are things that repel vampires. Garlic, for instance. I don’t find this one to pop up too frequently, but it gives a whole new appeal to garlic bread as anti-vampire assurance. Crosses are controversial. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, sometimes, as in the Anita Blake series, it’s not the symbol that’s important but your faith in it. I like that version. Series where crosses always repel vampires are basically endorsing Christianity. Not that I’m against it (we are NOT getting into religious debate people, let’s focus on the vampires here), but I like my vampires to be more universal.

Now some vampire lore areas are ones people have heard of, but it’s hard to find examples. Such as vampires cannot cross running water. In fact the only instance of this I can recall off the top of my head is actually in the book I Am Legend when Neville proves this one is just a myth. Yet I had heard that one before, so I’m not sure where it originated. If anything I think it’s an honest mistake confusing vampires with fairies, as running water is supposed to be protection against fairies. Or maybe early vampires were thought to be an offshoot of fairies? That’s a totally interesting concept that I should explore some day in a story!

This looks like Christmas with my family...

For the most part, the vampires of TVD aren’t encumbered by the typical vampire issues. Garlic doesn’t bug them. They can eat, and drink alcohol like it’s going out of style. No problems with mirrors or videos. But they do, however, have to deal with the house issue.

Vampires cannot come into houses unless invited. While this isn’t true in some versions like Twilight (hard for your main male character to be such a sketch stalker if he can’t wander into houses as he pleases), it is true in other popular series such as True Blood and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have to say I quite like in True Blood how you can rescind the invitation, because it makes it interesting to watch the vampires getting thrown out of the house.

Sadly TVD doesn’t have that option. Once a vampire has been invited in, you’re basically screwed. Better move. Although be wary of apartments. Damon at one point goes on a little ramble about how it works. Public buildings are open to vampires. Owned houses are always safe. Apartments are tricky depending on the lease.

Now one has to ask, why do the creators of vampire fiction go with some myths over others? Why do they create the limits in such a way? And I am personally convinced that when it came to the house invitation issue, the TVD think brains decided against rescinding invitations because they want it to be easier to kill people. Yeah, that’s right, this isn’t just some little teenage fantasy where the vampires are good and no one ever dies. People die ALL THE FREAKING TIME. In fact, stay tuned this week as that will be a separate post all on its own.

What I mainly like about TVD is that I do think there are some pretty unique features to their vampires. Sure, they have some of the basics, but they have some interesting new stuff going on too.

But this is already fairly long, so you’ll have to wait until tomorrow: How to Make/Kill Your Own Vampire.