Alarmist Party: Monster Edition

[harpsi_fizz]

This Party Post is for complaining, griping, and worrying about the mass extinction of monsters. Yes, if challenged, I have three "silver linings" to this phenomenon. Yes, I am fully ready to hear it if "No, Harp, see, Isaac Marion wrote a comedy/actually does it right/wrote something good so give it a chance/be lol-trollin" and even abandon my

Comments

[lokifan]

I am so pleased someone else has noticed the whole supernatural male/human female aspect of the vamp etc phenomenon; it's obvious to me but I've literally never seen anyone else mention it.

[rikibeth]

And vampire women seem only to exist as evil deadly seductresses, out to kill or enslave human men. And sometimes women. Look at The Hunger. Look at Carmilla. There's a huge tradition of the lesbian vampire. It doesn't really get a romantic-relationship dynamic, not in the same way as male vampire/human female.

But the vampire mythos as based in English literature (as opposed to its Slavic antecedents, who were more like ghouls) is ALL ABOUT death-as-stand-in-for-sexuality corrupting and destroying innocent maidens. Back beyond Dracula to Dr. Polidori and The Vampyre. So really I guess we have to blame Lord Byron and his sex life

[harpsi_fizz]

So, vampires going from monster to romantic MIGHT be a baby step of progress
If it is, it's a baby step forward and a pogo stick leap backwards, 'cause in the process, they're removing everything about them that makes them vampires (the weaknesses, and even the fangs in some cases). That's just super unfair. Humans need a way to fight back and protect themselves, or else the whole thing falls apart. By Smeyer's logic, there's no reason evil vampires haven't taken over the world. If nothing can really stop them, and if there's no downside, then you'd think there would be a lot more of them. There's no reason to conceal their identity.

I really shouldn't think about Smeyer because at a certain point, I stop wanting to have reasonable talks with her and start just vowing that if I meet her, I'm going to punch her in the uterus.

[rikibeth]

Ah, you're thinking of the horror-genre implications while I was thinking of the romance-genre implications -- yours is more "what if these monsters were real" and mine is "what societal fears are these monsters externalizing", am I reading you correctly?

Have you read stoney321's analysis of how the sparklepires and the entire plot of Twilight reflect a thoroughly Mormon worldview? SMeyer might not have done it consciously or deliberately, but it permeates the work nonetheless. Stoney was raised Mormon. She knows whereof she speaks.

[harpsi_fizz]

Aye, you're reading me correctly. Like I said in my LJ... no, like I said in ONTDCreepy, I'm like "STAY OUTTA MY THINGS >C". I imagine I feel like the Lord of the Rings fans of 1980 who loved the books and were mocked might have felt when Orlando "Legolas" Bloom got squeed all over. ... Yes, in fact, I think that's exactly how I feel.

I mean, shoot, I have a huge deal of reverence and respect for all people older than I am in and out of fandom. When that Dark Shadows movie came out, I was all excited, but I first checked with the folks on my fList who were over 40 to ask their opinions, 'cause I know I'm getting a "screwed up" version of what they loved. You know, so I can love it privately, but have due respect for it. ... Am I rambling? I feel like I might be.

And yes, I did read Stoney's Sparkledurhammen! <3 It was one of my favorite reviews! Pure White and Delightsome indeed. But boy do Mormons get cheesed when you point those parts out to them.

[rikibeth]

I'm over 40 but not quite old enough to have watched Dark Shadows on TV. But, I've been a Tolkien fan since age 7, drawn in by the Rankin-Bass movie but hooked instantly when my parents said "you know there's a BOOK, right?" and, hell, I thought Orlando Bloom as Legolas was pretty cute. I like femmy men... and I was happy that people were starting to love the thing I loved, even if they hadn't been drawn in deeply yet

[harpsi_fizz]

Ahh, you'd like Ivan Fidatov, then. That's who my RP partner writes.

exercise just enough restraint to keep me alive to do it again. That's Ivan! "Blood pets" he calls them.

thoroughly interested in sex, and even if it's not their primary pleasure any more, That's old hedonist Ivan. Works out, too, 'cause he can be easily distracted by pleasing his senses. 'Caurse, that's also how he ended up stuck with his Idiot Fledgeling...

beg me to let them change me, so we can be together forever. That... would be Ivan, except he has had two lovers-turned already, and it ended so poorly both times, and he's been alive for so long (11th or 12th century) that he's got an understanding of just how long forever is. :I Actually, if you have any excerpts from your book about the Turning Discussion, I... ahh, maybe I shouldn't. I just need some kinda idea. 'Cause if he did ask her, right now she'd probably point out just how dangerous it could be.

((Confiding in you, plz feel free to skippit!)) I mean, she's terribly, terribly persuasive and cagey

[rikibeth]

Hee, White Wolf called blood pets "blood dolls". I see you're fine with the Lestat-inspired White Wolf model I love so much

[harpsi_fizz]

yes, I named her Laura Aubrey
I missed the reference, so it's new to me.

He's also not willing to discuss killing Laura if she gets old and decrepit.
That's also something I'm worried about. One of these days, she's not gonna be so young anymore, and unlike the Blood Pets they started out with in the first game (Alice and Chester) she's likely not going to get killed.

But, if you'd like to see it, pm me your email address and I'll share the Google doc with you. I love feedback!
And I want to say yes, but I'm afraid of 1) unwitting Osmosis (or is it diffusion?) and Plasmoptysis, 2) inadequate feedback (I am a matador of it), 3) annoying you when I fall off the face of the earth in May (that's when mortuary school resumes). Now if you had some discussion feedback questions you needed answered, like "I wrote this scene, what does this evoke?" and "in this argument, what are they saying and whose side are you taking, and what do you feel are the motives behind her argument? What? No, she wasn't trying to get his pity, she was trying to

[rikibeth]

Miss Aubrey is the protagonist's sister in The Vampyre, the one Lord Ruthven (in other words, Byron) is trying to seduce and kill. She has no first name. Laura is the vampire Carmilla's target, in LeFanu's story. I'm hoping to make very geeky and thorough vampire fans giggle

[rikibeth]

I should probably warn you I'm a bit of a Byron stan. It's not that I don't see his flaws (and he was, unquestionably, flawed) but I have a very poor opinion of Caroline Lamb's mental stability, and I think Annabella Millbanke was a cold bitch (even if my adored Ada Lovelace's talents probably came from her and not from her father), and as for Claire Clairmont, her behavior was 100% stupid, and I think she took advantage of Byron as much or more as he took advantage of her... it's just that, in the 19th century, the inescapable consequences were a lot worse for her. BUT SHE MUST HAVE KNOWN THAT. Any fule kno sex=babies, and yet she THREW herself at him. Practically dragged him into bed. Idiot.

And he built a cynical shell around a hopelessly idealistic core, and you didn't have to dig deep to see the hurt, and he had a wicked sense of snarky humor, and so... despite his flaws and episodes of being an asshole, I'm a bit of a stan.