If vampires are overrated, does that mean werewolves are too?

[Bricona]

We all know that vampires are done and over done by now. With Twilight, True Blood, Vampire Diaries, the Twilight's own satire that came out, vampires are pretty donezo. But what about werewolves. Since werewolves have been seen to be the subset of vampire storylines, are they also overrated?

 

[Nik]

I fixed that by having some of my plausible vampires' victims be affected by neurotoxins in the bite which derange their brain unto animalistic: They *behave* like animals, but are not otherwise changed...

 

[Xelah]

Well, you could always take the twilight method for making vampires and do no research prior to publication.

Here's what I'm doing:
They can only eat chest hair.
Sunlight causes them to turn into unicorns.
If they eat a power pellet, they can eat ghosts.

(I might have stolen that last one from somewhere, but I think nobody will notice)

 

[Boneman]

Well, you could always take the twilight method for making vampires and do no research prior to publication.

Here's what I'm doing:
They can only eat chest hair.
Sunlight causes them to turn into unicorns.
If they eat a power pellet, they can eat ghosts.

(I might have stolen that last one from somewhere, but I think nobody will notice)

Dammit, there's going to be a real shortage of Female vampires in your story, if the chest hair is anything to go by...

And I'm convinced that the market is always ripe for an intelligent treatise on Vampires rather than the Twilight c**p we've been inundated with...

 

[Xelah]

No way, there are plenty of female vampires; my story is set in Alabama.

 

[Xelah]

Eh crap, I just realized something. If my vampires can only eat chest hair, then power pellets must be made from chest hair somehow. =/

 

[Bricona]

Well, you could always take the twilight method for making vampires and do no research prior to publication.

Here's what I'm doing:
They can only eat chest hair.
Sunlight causes them to turn into unicorns.
If they eat a power pellet, they can eat ghosts.

(I might have stolen that last one from somewhere, but I think nobody will notice)

Ha!

Twilight seriously feels like the girl started writing a book and never heard of the word vampire before. It's like she started writing about something else and was like, "Wait, this is kind of like vampires. I'll SAY THEIR VAMPIRES! Not glitter fairies."

Sunlight causes me to turn into a unicorn.

 

[Malloriel]

Vampires have been popularly romanticized; what once dominated superstitious minds and filled people with both fear and dread has morphed into something teenage girls giggle and Twitter about. Werewolves haven't been given as much the same treatment, so I don't personally feel that they've oversaturated the market as have the modern interpretations of vampires.

That said, I do think that the "blood feud" between vampires and werewolves IS overdone. There is a Roman myth which does support the idea of a bitter rift between them, due to the betrayal of Dacian vampires to the Romans' werewolves, but it's just one myth. In much of the rest of Western and Eastern Europe, there was a deep association between both of them. In Greece it was believed that if a werewolf died, it would come back as a vampire, while in Germany, Poland and Northern France it was believed that if a person died in mortal sin, they would return as a blood drinking wolf.

I think that with as much variation as there is within the werewolf mythos, there's still a lot to be covered and explored within literature. Which is why I think it's a bit silly when you find someone who wants to argue about what makes a werewolf a werewolf, and how Garou differ from Lycan. They are different in that one is French while the other is Greek, and thus influenced by the cultural definitions, but the people who argue their points to me usually go off of modern definitions, some established by movies, others established by popular gaming systems, rather than what inspired both genres.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Vampires overrated? Yes, these days, I believe they are.

Werewolves? Not necessarily. You have to remember that werewolves and vampires don't always actually mix, and there is the fact that werewolves are based off an old plausible fear. Even these days people who don't really understand wolves still fear them. Vampires-or what we think of vampires today-are based off Bram Stoker's Dracula which was based off Vlad the Impaler back in the fifteenth century, while werewolves are actually based much older-lycanthropy first actually mentioned in ancient Greek mythology. There is also the fact that vampires have been highly romanticized by way of stories like Twilight, while werewolves are not so much. Yes, werewolves were in Twilight, but they only had passing mention in the first volume. There is also more a degree of mystery to werewolves-the aspects of the moon, the shapechanging, werewolves being able to blend into normal society by day, etc.

 

[Toby Frost]

What I find tiring is the vampires+werewolves equation. There's a sort of alternative (urban?) fantasy mythos involving vampires, werewolves, wicca, ghosts and the odd unexplained demon that can be just as boring as the more cliched elves-dwarves-wizards epic fantasy stories. I think that when you find yourself in a world of strange beings and supernatural powers and you immediately know exactly what goes where, there's a problem.

 

[Vladd67]

I suppose a vampire can feed and leave the prey alive and the feeding has been romanticised whereas a werewolf eats a person alive and it's very hard to romanticise being ripped apart and reduced to a bloody piece of meat. With that in mind it must be difficult to sell to the Twilight audience and so it is possible werewolves will be just a side show.

 

[Bella Donna]

I have always loved both vampires and werewolves, but I hate the idea of them being romanticised. Werewolves have a lot more mileage in them, IMHO. I mean, how cool is the Underworld series?

I'd love to know more about the Roman/Dacian myth. Where can I find out about that?

 

[Sapheron]

I believe the problem in vampires lies in the range of roles they have taken before. They've been the hero, the antihero, the arch enemy, the evil minions, the mysterious neutral, the glittering retard thing, and countless others. Whatever you portray a vampire as, someone reasonably well known has probably done it before. Werewolves, on the other hand, almost always appear in the same one or two clearly defined roles, so have scope to be developed, adapted and changed to make them seem fresh.

Alternatively, perhaps I'm wrong; maybe vampires are easier to write about if you're a less able writer, resulting in larger quantities of lesser quality about them and we're just tired of it piling up?

 

[Bella Donna]

I believe the problem in vampires lies in the range of roles they have taken before. They've been the hero, the antihero, the arch enemy, the evil minions, the mysterious neutral, the glittering retard thing, and countless others. Whatever you portray a vampire as, someone reasonably well known has probably done it before. Werewolves, on the other hand, almost always appear in the same one or two clearly defined roles, so have scope to be developed, adapted and changed to make them seem fresh.

Alternatively, perhaps I'm wrong; maybe vampires are easier to write about if you're a less able writer, resulting in larger quantities of lesser quality about them and we're just tired of it piling up?

Fair dues, but I think there's mileage in both of them yet.

 

[MistingWolf]

I bought the book Twilight, but I haven't even opened it yet. I keep hearing, "Don't do it!" and the more I read the Anita Blake series, and hear about the sparkly Twilight (amongst other not-so-nice alternative names) vamps, the less I want to read it. Maybe I'll save it to be a novelty one day, in pristine, unopened condition.

I think vampires are a little overused now, but maybe later on when the hype fizzles out, they can be brought back in a fresh way. Werewolves, I agree, still have some room to be explored and developed. I'm not sure if I said before, but even I have my own version of how werewolves came to be, and it's a little opposite of the traditional ways.

 

[Bella Donna]

I'd love to see that, Wolf.

YouTube - Alex Reads Twilight: Ch.1

This ought to save you the bother.

 

[Rebell L]

I think the standard (popular) werewolf is overdone; the virus, uncontrollable biting, wanting to eat people and hating on vampires.

I think werewolves have a lot of stuff going on that people sorely miss. Most of the wolves I've seen look based on film versions than the older myths. You are supposed to turn into a werewolf if you drink from a paw print. Keep in mind that there are also other were creatures that are not necessarily werewolf spinoffs, and that the virus is not the only thing that can turn you into a werewolf.

 

[Bella Donna]

Drink from a paw print? Interesting.

 

[MistingWolf]

That video was funny! Thanks for saving me the torture. Now I know I don't want to read it myself, but I'll be happy to listen to Alex summarize it.

In my version, the wolf turns into a person.

 

[Malloriel]

I'll be honest; I was once inclined to read Twilight, but it was specifically because I don't think that one really has a right to go in and bash about something they haven't bothered to understand. That said, I always kind of dreaded the possibility that Stephanie Meyer's writing, as a whole, would be the kind of underwhelming drivel that young adults/young teens could readily eat up, but which, when looked back upon later, is the sort of thing one shakes their head at ever having read. For me, that author was Christopher Pike. I gobbled up his little novels, probably really just novellas, as fast as I could find them, especially his series "The Last Vampire". That is, until I left the fourth grade. As of a few years ago, I picked up the only book of his I'd held onto into adulthood (The Last Vampire: Black Blood, incidentally), and discovered that by opening it up to any page at random, I could find a passage that made no sense whatsoever, poorly written, and full of angst. I like to think my excuse was having read them when I was in second grade, but that really says so little about his abilities if I could only enjoy them when I was seven.

I'm about halfway through Alex's summary, and just seeing the pained expressions on his face, hearing the actual words from Ms. Meyer's books and thinking things similar to what he says in response, I know I would never have been able to force myself to finish it except by sticking to the goal of reaching the end. That would ensure that little of it stuck with me, though, because it's a far different matter reading because you enjoy it, and reading just to get it over and done.

Thanks for that link, Bella.