Worst Instances of Vampirism in media

[Brother Oni]

I am curious why there are no Hollywood Eastern Vampire Movies? Like the Hopping Vampires or other ones.

Sure, Hoppers seem silly, but they are considered vampires.

You'd have to spend too much time explaining that they were and how they differ from western vampires, that a movie with them in wouldn't be viable. Everybody knows that vampires drink blood and are vulnerable to a wooden stake to the heart, garlic and crosses/holy water.
Fewer people know about chi draining corpses influenced by taoist magic, which are harmed by sticky rice and dog blood soaked string.

Plus they'd look so absolutely ridiculous to most western audiences that they wouldn't be scary at all.

[Scowling Dragon]

Plus their more like Zombies.

[Brother Oni]

Plus their more like Zombies.

I'm guessing you've only seen pictures of them, because they're nothing like zombies either in the movies or in folklore.

Read up on them, educate yourself: Jiang shi.

[Scowling Dragon]

I'm guessing you've only seen pictures of them, because they're nothing like zombies either in the movies or in folklore.

Well I did see a old movie about them. Don't remember the name.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I know I thought this girl was some kind of Chinese flavored zombie for a long time.

Not that that's accurate per say but given that there is zero prescence for jiang shi in the West... they do still come a bit closer to zombies.

[Brother Oni]

I know I thought this girl was some kind of Chinese flavored zombie for a long time.

Not that that's accurate per say but given that there is zero prescence for jiang shi in the West... they do still come a bit closer to zombies.

Technically speaking, Lei Lei's is a weird kyonshi (Japanese jiang shi) influenced character (her back story is a bit of a mess).

The only reason why they're called 'chinese zombies' is that there isn't a well known western equivalent (revenants come close to what jianshi are, but who knows what they are outside of folklore buffs?), so they get labelled as such like a square peg in a circular hole, using the big hammer of 'no reference frame'.

[123456789blaaa]

A mage can maybe, but an average person cannot. And generally I would assume most of the people the WCVs feed on aren't mages.

So? .

Also Mewthario's post:

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You've never felt exhausted and emotionally drained before? Incidnetally, Butcher is not the first person to come up with the idea of "psychic vampires" that leave their victims mentally rather than physically drained.

is exactly what I was trying to say when explaining how WC vamps drain their victims. Haven't you ever raged so much or had so much fun that afterwords you felt empty and drained? Wasn't it really hard to muster up emotion afterwords?

As I understand the term "noir", the TV Dresden definitely qualifies; it's not all in grayscale or anything, but it's definitely got that hard-boiled-detective, "Life's not a nice place sweet cheeks" kind of gritty-awesome-hopeless-sexy-cynical attitude going on. The first Dresden book was originally titled "Semiautomagic"; that's plenty Noir right there.

I could maybe kinda see this for the first few books (it would be really light though) but after Grave Peril? Naw. The DF files isn't really isn't that cynical or hopeless at all (compared to the works of say...Dashiell Hammett). I mean, theres a scene in Dead Beat where Harry freakin [REDACTED]. That scene is very not noirish. It's also the scene that most people refer to when they want to show someone why the DF is so awesome.

I don't have time to read a lot of books, so if those books aren't great perhaps I should just skip them. From what I hear the later books get metaplot-heavy; where would you recommend I jump in to have the best quality as a stand-alone book?

Mewthario's reccomendation is pretty good but I personally think Summer Knight would be good as well. The supporting characters get reintroduced almost every book they appear in so you won't really be that lost if you skip GP. I think Summer Knight is also even better than GP in terms of writing quality so it would make a better first impression. They're both about equal in terms of introducing you to the series.

Willpell if you do decide to read the rest of the series I highly reccomend reading the first two after you're done. One of the things I love about the DF is that minor things that are introduced in the first books get expanded on and referenced even as far as the 10th book. They also contain vital hints for theorizing. Remember that they aren't bad books. They just look bad in comparison to the rest of the series.

Well it would mean another material besides Jade, but Ivory = White so I find it unsatisfying. I would want there to be a Green Court, a Gold Court, maybe a Gray Court, I dunno maybe Violet for the last one. Blue seems wrong somehow.

Eh I think ivory is sufficiently different in appearance than white that it wouldn't be the same.

Yeah I got that, I'm running with the stuff JB intentionally didn't. IMO there's so much vampire lore that three courts just don't cut it; even 7 courts aren't really enough. Heck I ended up deciding that VTM's 13 clans were insufficient.

Keep in mind that there are many creatures with vampiric properties that aren't part of a Vampire Court. The distinction is important. The creatures in the Courts have a few things in common that other vampire like creatures do not (these observations were gained in the thread I linked earlier).

Here are a few points raised in the thread:

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Cass:

"The distinction may be made because that group says so and has the support of the other Courts-- e.g. an association of creatures gains enough power (and/or numbers) and approaches the other Courts about being recognized as a Court. There's probably some aspect of mutual alliance, and almost certainly some sort of organization to keep fighting over territory to a minimum involved as well.

It may also be in how the group/species works: so far, the three Courts that we've seen in any detail have relied on humans not just for food but for reproduction/propagation. That may be a unifying factor, here: vampires need humans for more than just food; they must be very, very opposed to wiping humanity out as a species. Things like ghouls strike me as more opportunistic in what they eat (and I don't even want to think about reproduction...) and things like the grendelkin (from Heorot) that do require humans to breed might be too few or too scattered/disorganized for being a Court. (Additionally, I don't remember what the grendelkin was eating-- whether it was explicitly and exclusively humans or whether it was anything unlucky enough to be caught.)

Um. Just my thoughts on the subject. "

Sheaman373:

"Interesting points. A further distinction may well be the manner in which they eat. Notice, that in all three cases that we know of in any detail, they don't really eat humans so much as feed off of them. A ghoul (who are canonically able to interbreed with humans, btw, since WoJ states that the ghouls that we know are the offspring of the WN superghouls and humans ) will actually consume parts of the humans they eat, but both BC and RC vampires will only drink the blood, and WC only drain life force. Barring a bite or two, the body is left whole. This may be considered a distinction enough of a supernatural predator that they get their own classification as "Vampire."

Seidmadr:

"Well, all the vampires have the following in common:
Ageless (Blampires and rampires are actually undead, whampires are just immortal)
Feed off of humans. (Blood for the first two, emotions for the latter)
They come from human stock. (Blampires and rampires turn people, whampires are born human and get turned in their puberty)

They have also been organized in courts, based on family trees, so they share organisational traits as well.

This might have been enough to lump them in together. They might even have seen the similarities themselves and been the ones to define the difference."

It's poetic. Incidentally, Thomas is the only WCV I can think of who characterizes his "Hunger" as a separate demonic entity. It's entirely possible that it's just a delusion he maintains to seperate himself from the baser needs that he's ashamed of. His bretheren treat their hunger for psychic energy the same way that humans treat their hunger for food, and the average WCV is quite the gourmand.

This is a very interesting hypothesis. I first saw in on the DF boards actually. Still, while is certainly has merit I don't think it's true because we have a WoJ that Mab could "rip the Hunger out of him".

[Closet_Skeleton]

Jiang shi are more like vampires than zombies because zombies eating people was invented by a misinterpretation of a film from 1968.

I am curious why there are no Hollywood Eastern Vampire Movies? Like the Hopping Vampires or other ones.

Sure, Hoppers seem silly, but they are considered vampires.

Not to mention all the various Malaysian and the odd Indian vampire who actually drink blood, unlike Jiang shi..

Though usually when people use 'asian vampires' they just make them up, like Kuel Jin who aren't really that much like Jiang shi apart from the 'life force' thing, at least not as much as the Cainites are like modern western vampires.

[Starbuck_II]

Side note:

You've never felt exhausted and emotionally drained before? Incidnetally, Butcher is not the first person to come up with the idea of "psychic vampires" that leave their victims mentally rather than physically drained.

Is it wrong to drain people without their permission? Not like fully drain because some here and there....everyone in my family can do it...

In fact, when we were younger my mom used to drain us kids my mom admits.

I did it throughout Hiigh School when I felt tired to others around me. Sometimes I just drained the lights on the ceiling but that can causes it to flash out (and that draws attention).

Does that make my family part vampire?

[123456789blaaa]

Side note:


Is it wrong to drain people without their permission? Not like fully drain because some here and there....everyone in my family can do it...

In fact, when we were younger my mom used to drain us kids my mom admits.

I did it throughout Hiigh School when I felt tired to others around me. Sometimes I just drained the lights on the ceiling but that can causes it to flash out (and that draws attention).

Does that make my family part vampire?

Well, the reason WC vamps are bad is because the act of draining emotions causes the victim to get addicted and mentally damaged.

[Metahuman1]

Ok, relating to some bad Vampire Media. Disney has a live action TV show titled My Baby Sitters A Vampire . What little I've scene of it tends to indicate it's pretty horrible.

Though to be fair, I can't really imagine Disney doing anything good with Vampires that doesn't involve the Marvel Comics Universe.

[Bayonet Priest]

@1234etcnumbersguy

I'm almost 100% certain that Thomas's hunger is referred to as a demon at some point in one of the books. I guess I just assumed that the other vampire types were caused by demons like the WCVs. As for Monster vs Mortal, Nature vs Free Will, eh you got me there. I meant monster in a colloquial sense but by saying "capital M" I confused my point. I meant more to suggest that they were really bad dudes, they really want to eat you. But you're right that they seem to maintain free will unlike Red Court vamps (who seem to go real bad when they finally give in and turn)

[willpell]

Does that include the expanded bloodlines and oriental vampires?

The Kuei-Jin aren't Kindred, so no, but the bloodlines do count as additional "clans" differing only in size. Even they aren't enough though. I ended up expanding them and some variant clans and a few innovations from Requiem, and the resulting number is at least 27 and more likely 39.

@ Psychic Vampires - Yeah I've heard of the concept, but it's more of a New Agey thing and IMO it feels out of place next to actual bump-in-the-night monsters. Also I find it very hard to imagine someone dying of emotional exhaustion (even physical exhaustion is unlikely to do more than make you pass out for 12 hours or so); at worst maybe a coma seems feasible, but more likely you'd recover without harm, unless the "blah factor" was so intense that it drove you to suicide, and I'm inclined to doubt that would happen in more than a small percentage of cases. Bottom line I don't think the idea gives the human psyche enough credit for resilience; it's our bodies that are squishy, not our minds. Mentally, we can adapt to pretty much anything given a little time, unless we're inherently neurotic in the first place, in which case the trigger is just an excuse for a breakdown you were already planning to have. (This is one of the problems I have in the Cthulhuverse as well; HPL was a fragile and twitchy fellow by his own admission, and most of the scenarios which terrify his victims wouldn't have much effect on anybody who has a normally healthy mind.)

(ROFLs at Blam, Ram and Whampires. This is the biggest argument against inventing more Color Courts...they wouldn't pun right because the names start with letters that don't sound funny.)

[turkishproverb]

I am curious why there are no Hollywood Eastern Vampire Movies? Like the Hopping Vampires or other ones.

Sure, Hoppers seem silly, but they are considered vampires.

Holywood? no. But try Mr. Vampire some time. :)

[McStabbington]

No, what I'm doing is like comparing Thor to Indra. Two mythological figures -- the vampire and the succubus -- rooted in the same precursors. Lamia, Lilith, Empusa - human eating, blood drinking harlots of Greek myth who come from a still older archetypes in all likelihood. Then, going Eastward to India and South East Asia where the Vampire myth is synonymous with sexual deprivation and female empowerment. The Slavic region was rife with sexualized vampire folklore, both male and female, who were fertile figures partly due to the presumption that the dead were sexual, given that they have erections post-mortem.
The supernatural harlot and blood drinking corpse were split into different iconography in Western Europe but they carried the same projections of anxiety about sexual violation. Something which was obvious in retrospect to the 20th century.

That's . . . an incredibly dubious assumption. It's true that the Indo-European languages are connected, but they're connected in how they pronounce words. There's nothing necessary about similar pronunciations that result in them meaning the same things, which is what we're really talking about. Since we're talking primarily about languages that pre-dated writing by thousands of years, the theory that Indo-European languages have related semantic as well as grammatic content is based on the sketchiest of logic and absolutely zero empirical evidence.

Moreover, you're missing my main thrust. We do have empirical data about the superstitions of European peasants in the period between 500 - 1500 C.E. And that empirical data says that regardless of where they came from or what the origins of these superstitions were, succubi/incubi and vampires were very, very different from one another and how we view both today. Succubi weren't undead. Vampires weren't erogenous. They had wasting effects on their victims that were a) kind of similar, and b) reminiscent of diseases, but one point of similarity doesn't make two things identical. Witches may be made of wood, as we all know, but that doesn't make them Trojan Rabbits.

[Soras Teva Gee]

@ Psychic Vampires - Yeah I've heard of the concept, but it's more of a New Agey thing and IMO it feels out of place next to actual bump-in-the-night monsters. Also I find it very hard to imagine someone dying of emotional exhaustion

You missed the point that the emotion things is is someway more a means to an end as what's being taken is one's lifefore/soul which is closely linked to emotions and magic in the Dresdenverse. The one victim examined that we know was killed by excessive lust feeding didn't have a heart attack because her sex drive was on overload... she had no medically discernible cause of death.

As well ask what do more typical vampires get out of blood? Certainly not nutrition. The metaphor for life itself is not an uncommon one.

(Also its basically noted that what the White Court does to cause sensation in feeding is beyond say drugs in effectiveness. And its drugs cause addiction because people aren't on the whole up to fending it off mentally)

[Socratov]

You missed the point that the emotion things is is someway more a means to an end as what's being taken is one's lifefore/soul which is closely linked to emotions and magic in the Dresdenverse. The one victim examined that we know was killed by excessive lust feeding didn't have a heart attack because her sex drive was on overload... she had no medically discernible cause of death.

As well ask what do more typical vampires get out of blood? Certainly not nutrition. The metaphor for life itself is not an uncommon one.

(Also its basically noted that what the White Court does to cause sensation in feeding is beyond say drugs in effectiveness. And its drugs cause addiction because people aren't on the whole up to fending it off mentally)

spoilered because of minor details in the books

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indeed, as highlited in Ghost story: "You are a soul and you have a body" (straight from Archangel Uriel) where sould is equal to identity, memories and life force. The fact that your soul gets drained by draining blood (where blood would act as a catalyst), or by rampant lust (where emotions actually give access to the soul) is moot. Even in 'making' a baby it's commented on the fact that to create life you need to invest some of your own (2 people pouring a bit of soul into the new baby). Further on that, it is said that when a moment occurs with your true love (which isn't as common as you should think)you both exchange a bit of soul and leaves a mark that can burn the Raiths. Suggesting that through passion you can exchange some of your lifeforce. that would actually be a nice explanation of the sense of simultanious exhaustion and mental elation one gets after the deed. Now if the Raiths would actually open a one way transaction you would only have exhaustion left. In a weird way it actually checks out.

[dehro]

just because...


I'll be going now.


*scuttles off