Editing Vampire (section)

===Modern Vampires===
[[Image:M1182225 99060207172 VCVladMain 873x627.jpg|right|thumb|400px|[[Vlad von Carstein]] of [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle]] fame. He'd mutilate the unholy tard out of [[Gay|Tinkerbell]] [[Twilight|Cullen]]. [[Rip and Tear|AND HOW]].]]
In the late 1800s, vampires were still widely regarded to be nasty little weirdos like Count Orlok, creeping around in the night looking freakish and completely the opposite of sexy. Literary examples go back as far as the 1740s, though the works that codified vampire as we'd come to know it wouldn't be codified proper until the 19th century, with the likes of ''Carmilla'', ''Dracula'' and ''The Vampyre''. Carmilla in particular was one of the first notable instances of a lesbian vampire, and actually predated ''Dracula'' by about 27 years. From this root a popular archetype would emerge, primarily in 20th Century film, of the lesbian vampire would who seduce a straight woman, the already-present themes of vampirism-as-sexual-predation amplified by the presence of a then-"taboo" sexuality, and people took notice of the unfortunate implications - [[PROMOTIONS|once most of 'em finished fapping to it, anyway.]]

As for ''Dracula'', the novel by Bram Stoker laid much of the groundwork for modern vampire stories: Dracula was originally a thin elderly man with a hooked nose, pointed ears, thick eyebrows, thick mustache, blue eyes that went flaming red when he was mad, and hairy palms, though his appearance became more youthful as he fed on blood. There were also three female vampires who lived with Dracula in an ambiguous relationship that held both familial and romantic/incestuous overtones, and they tried to seduce people into surrendering to them. This novel also added weather manipulation to the powers of vampires, though it's implied as a product of Dracula studying black magic rather than an inherent vampire ability (in fact, one oft-forgotten aspect of that novel is that Dracula was a practitioner of black magic even before he became a vampire, and that this was in fact the origin of his vampirism).

Though hints of their romantic and sometimes erotic aspects had long begun to manifest around the time of Carmilla, and even well before then, it was Tod Browning's adaptation of the aforementioned ''Dracula'' that elevated the vampire from their typical creepy unattractive status to the suave ladies' man inspired by the film's star Bela Lugosi. The film "rehabilitated" Dracula into an eloquent and charming (if manipulative) fellow, the likes of which would be firmly embedded into the public consciousness along with the traditional weakness to sunlight (which we incidentally owe to 1922's Nosferatu; before this, even Dracula himself could walk in broad daylight, though his powers were weakened, and if he'd shapeshifted he was stuck in that form until noon). 

Lady-types developed a metaphorical hard-on for vampires, and vampires supposedly got literal hard-ons for ladies until 1976, when Anne Rice published the first book in her series, ''The Vampire Chronicles'', which established a more... primal interpretation: Vampires had free will, but all of their needs paled before the all-consuming need for fresh blood to feed upon. This is where we started to see more classical portrayals, the vampire pulling triple-duty as sociopath, glutton, and sophisticate all at once.

Discussion of the vampire mythos and their descent into [[Mary Sue|Suedom/Studom]] cannot be had without careful analysis of the culture at this time. Vampires, up through the 1980s, had always been associated with gothic horror - it's one of many reasons that there was such a resurgence of Victorian-style fashion amongst the Goth crowd, which admittedly a lot of [[/tg/]] finds [[Promotions|impossibly]] [[/d/|hot]]. Goth culture celebrated vampire mythos for this very reason; they were a ''worthy'' bit of admirable folklore, the source of many an interesting BBEG, and an inspiration for a lot of things ''in'' Goth culture. This "classical" archetype is what we would see with most Vampire portrayals throughout movies, comic books, television series, and so on during this time.

Sadly, in the early 1990s, cross-contamination by the "Emo" subculture caused this to bottom out in a parasitic fashion - Emo glutted itself on anything it could encounter and claimed that it belonged rightly to it, and Goth subculture, with its established fashion sense and habits, was a natural target. The prevalence of Emo bullshit caused the bulk of the Goth subculture to retreat back to its Victorian roots, but not before Emos had secured vampires as "their own." Similar fates would happen to other genres: Grunge, Punk, and even the Beat movement would all likewise be absorbed by Emo attempts to claim it, which is why many stereotypes - including Emo fashion, music stylings, and predilection towards poetry - persist to this day.

More relevant, however, is the damage that Emo subculture did to the popular perception of vampires, romanticizing them into individuals for whom the taste for blood was little more than a dietetic quirk. [[Edgy|Identifying with the angst of the undead condition]] to the point of hanging all their pots on that one hook, these teenyboppers would drag the reputation of the vampire down to levels of "[[Grimderp|brooding wangsty limpdick loser]]" as it was increasingly associated with make-up, bad poetry, and incense lit to conceal the smell of pot so the "vampire kid's" parents don't come in and scold them in front of his friends from high school. Emos continue to drink tomato juice from plastic Halloween goblets, dress up like shitty vampires, and whine endlessly about how they supposedly hate life to this very day, whilst everyone else who remembers the good old days just shakes their head in disgust, goes "son, I am disappointed," and walks off, depressed.

...and then there was the ''Vampire: the Masquerade'' LARP scene. Yet even that paled in comparison to the influence of one infamous work... 
<!--VtM LARPers and the like definitely deserve a section here, so if someone with the apropos knowledge could oblige?-->