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author_by_night[Error: unknown template qotd]I'm inclined to choose werewolves, of course. Two words - Remus Lupin. ;) But vampires are kind of cool too.
I'm writing both a vampire and a werewolf, and it's interesting. Both are good, but the vampire always has that inner demon that sometimes comes out. My werewolf is a good person, but once a month he's a monster - and he will kill you.
Modern fantasy/sci fi seems to want to redeem both - I mean, you go from Dracula and The Wolfman to Buffy and Harry Potter, which have vampires and werewolves that are not inherently evil. In Buffy you have Angel and Oz, and in Harry Potter you have Remus, and there's a scene in one of the books where a vampire is at a Christmas party - and seems fairly harmless, although at one point they mention him looking hungry. And of course Twilight... I wouldn't call Twilight my favorite book series, but it does show werewolves and vampires as redeemable.
I do wonder how that came about - when the "monster" suddenly grew a human being's face. When the "monster" became okay. I suppose even in Dracula, there's some of that - not the redemption, but the implication that vampires can still think like human beings. Evil, sick and twisted human beings, but human beings. He plans how exactly he is going to kill his victims, rather than randomly chase them in a dark forest at night.
This could be an interesting thing to research, actually. Anyone have their own input?
I'm writing both a vampire and a werewolf, and it's interesting. Both are good, but the vampire always has that inner demon that sometimes comes out. My werewolf is a good person, but once a month he's a monster - and he will kill you.
Modern fantasy/sci fi seems to want to redeem both - I mean, you go from Dracula and The Wolfman to Buffy and Harry Potter, which have vampires and werewolves that are not inherently evil. In Buffy you have Angel and Oz, and in Harry Potter you have Remus, and there's a scene in one of the books where a vampire is at a Christmas party - and seems fairly harmless, although at one point they mention him looking hungry. And of course Twilight... I wouldn't call Twilight my favorite book series, but it does show werewolves and vampires as redeemable.
I do wonder how that came about - when the "monster" suddenly grew a human being's face. When the "monster" became okay. I suppose even in Dracula, there's some of that - not the redemption, but the implication that vampires can still think like human beings. Evil, sick and twisted human beings, but human beings. He plans how exactly he is going to kill his victims, rather than randomly chase them in a dark forest at night.
This could be an interesting thing to research, actually. Anyone have their own input?
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Date: 2008-06-16 06:35 pm (UTC)My impression is that those two monsters became sympathetic when they started being "cursed" rather than doing it to themselves via witchcraft or dealing with the devil. For vampires that would be with Dracula (not the count, but Mina) and for werewolves it would be the movie era, with Werewolf of London, and later The Wolf Man cemented that.
Personally, I'd be thrilled to see a return to the heartless, damned flesh-eating vampires from, like, six centuries ago. Before they grew style and taste and charm, back when they lived in graves for real.
(Eternal nocturnal enemies? I'd love to know when that trope started. At one point, werewolves turned INTO vampires after they died.)
(Werewolf fan all the way.)