Black Writing: Horror Usergroup

Firestalker

Firestalker · Aug 28, 2009

Important

Okay, guys now that I'm back i want to make sure that this group does not die a young death. I need your help to do that. So far its been Me, Cobra, Jiggity and some other great users like Black Ghost, CrisCaraway, Eraqio and Rubric that have kept this group alive by posting. So if you reading this then try to make some new interesting topics that go under the horror genre.

Ok, now back to the topic. Vampires. We're not talking about your average vampire here. No that would not and cannot be considered horror. No pampered vampire like those of Twilight *No offense to all and any twilight fans. Twilight is a good fantasy series and i like it too, but we are not talking about those vampires today* no medieval vampires either. We're talking about strong, smart killing machines. If you've watched '30 Days of Night' you know what i mean. So anyway what do you think about Vampires being portrayed as bloodthirsty creatures that care more about blood than sex and love? Do you think that vampires should all be created as civilized human-loving humanoids or as blood thirsty smart monsters?

Is it good or bad?

*Hope you guys reply cause i took a long time to write this!*

[b]Important 
[/b]
[i]Okay, guys now that I'm back i want to make sure that this group does not die a young death. I need your help to do that. So far its been Me, Cobra, Jiggity and some other great users like Black Ghost, CrisCaraway, Eraqio and Rubric that have kept this group alive by posting. So if you reading this then try to make some new interesting topics that go under the horror genre.
[/i]

Ok, now back to the topic. Vampires. We're not talking about your average vampire here. No that would not and cannot be considered horror. No pampered vampire like those of Twilight *No offense to all and any twilight fans. Twilight is a good fantasy series and i like it too, but we are not talking about [i]those[/i] vampires today* no medieval vampires either. We're talking about strong, smart killing machines. If you've watched '30 Days of Night' you know what i mean. So anyway what do you think about Vampires being portrayed as bloodthirsty creatures that care more about blood than sex and love? Do you think that vampires should all be created as civilized human-loving humanoids or as blood thirsty smart monsters?

Is it good or bad?

*Hope you guys reply cause i took a long time to write this!*

Jamie_rocks

Jamie_rocks · Aug 29, 2009

I don't know: Twilight biased me. 30 Days of Night was awesome though, and I think vampires are supposed to be the traditional, bloodthirsty, cold killing machines.

Firestalker

Firestalker · Aug 29, 2009

Exactly. Twilight and the other vampire films/stories are great, true but the traditional Vampires were indeed also... great, they are what Vampires are supposed to be, maybe a little more civilized than those in 30 Days of Night, but still bloodthirsty killing machines. Right?

Cobra

Cobra · Sep 4, 2009

Vampires should be intelligent but bloodthirsty creatures that utilise their immense speed and strength to slaughter not just one human, but hundreds. They should wade through a sea of blood and leave corpses and new undead in their wake.

Firestalker

Firestalker · Sep 7, 2009

Thank you Cobra, I rest my case...

Rubric

Rubric · Oct 7, 2009

But Cobra, why sew the seeds of your own destruction?

Sure the feeling of omnipotence is wonderful, but what do you get when you mow down a few villages? Hunters! Sure these guys are angsty wimps but they've got the power only a protagonist can have plot-armour.

Also, these new undead you're leaving in your wake? The idea of a hunting-his own kind vampire isn't new, and from a tactical point it makes more sense to have human minions.

I'm a fan of the classic vampire with the classic weaknesses. Vampires actually got powered down (they used to only be killable through a combination of limb severing, garlic feeding and decapitation), before they got powered up again by the likes of Meyer.

In today's society the vampire is the CEO of the bloodbank, the head of research at the Sunscreen company, or a retailer at the local Black motorcycle helmet and trenchcoat TM.

The reason they get to enjoy the heady heights of immortality is because they feed smart, not often.

Cobra

Cobra · Oct 7, 2009

I'm not saying they shouldn't have human minions, just that they should use their own talents when they want someone dead. As for the new undead, I'm talking about them turning humans into their vampire slaves so the slaves can serve them better.

Eraqio

Eraqio · Oct 19, 2009

you know I posted something on Vampires actually

two things

one is a poem and the other is actually kind of a catalogue of the different kinds

"Vampire Field Classification Guide"

I think, well yeah, hit that up and see what you think.

Francis Michael Buck

Francis Michael Buck · Apr 14, 2010

The novella I'm working on now (I've got sixty some pages so far, about two thirds done probably) is about vampires, though they're pretty different from typical fare. For starters, I wanted to make them extremely realistic and believable, and to look at them through scientific lens rather than a mystical one. In addition, I also wanted to focus on the concept of immortality (technically they're not TRULY immortal, they just age very, very slowly). I wanted to investigate how it would change someone's personality to live for hundreds of years while remaining youthful. Many of them kill themselves before three hundred years due to insanity. Basically I wanted to get into the actual psychology of what would it be like to be vampire, the gifts and curses of it, and how horrible of life it could be. I wanted to go against the overly glamorized and sexy vampires of most fiction, which I find never gives a strong sense of how messed up a life these people would really have if they existed.

For example, in my book the vamps are able to heal from wounds very quickly (small cuts go away in minutes, larger injuries can take hours or days). This has a profound affect on the and mindset and culture of the vamps, since for them violence is not nearly as big of a deal as it is to us, and so in many ways they use violence as a means of communication. Breaking someones arm or cutting their face open is akin punch in the nose for us. In addition, I wanted to delve into how these people have lived so long and fed so many of their desires, sexual and otherwise, that they've become numbed to sensation. The merger of violence and sex is a natural connection for them, yet even that has become "old hat", and their sexuality, drug usage, and violence must be taken to absolute extremes for them to even gain pleasure from it anymore (though this is only true with certain characters).

It's a much more cerebral sort of tale, with a lot of philosophical discussions and concepts embedded into it. It is very much a character study. I've also sort merged the idea of a secret vampire society with an aspect of crime drama. Since vampires must keep their existence hidden from the world, and since they burn to death when exposed to sunlight, they are forced to come out only at night and thus many of them make their livelihood through criminal means. Drug trafficking, prostitution, car theft, and even contract killings are just a few of the ways the characters make money. Obviously this leads them to falling into an even more dangerous and violent existence.

Primarily, though, I really wanted to focus on going against the grain of other vampire fiction. I never actually call them vampires, or even mention the word once in the story itself. Upon reading it, you wouldn't even realize what these characters are until the end of the first chapter or so. There's only seven chapters, but they're generally longer than typical book chapters and each one focuses on a different character, which anachronistically detail a series of tragic events that continuous spiral more and more of out control, all taking place over the course of four days. All the characters are morally ambiguous; there are no real "good" or "bad" guys, just people reacting to each other and the world around them (just like real life).

This story is totally different from other stuff I've done, and believe it or not I didn't actually try to write this as an "answer" to Twilight or anything (though certainly the current buzz on vampires played into my mind). I've never read the Twilight books so I can't really comment on them fairly, but I've heard opinions going both ways and I do know some things about the story (who hasn't heard of Bella and Edward by now?). My story idea started from simply wanting to write something about people living hundreds of years of a youthful existence, and how dramatically this would affect them and their relationships with one another. Making the characters vampires just seemed kind of a natural direction once I got further into it, especially the with darker nature of the story and themes. I do intend to post the story once I get through the rough draft (probably another month or two), but I suppose if someone really wanted to check it out I could give them a look. When I am seriously writing something that I intend to finish, I always go straight through without looking back. So I've literally yet to even read over what I've got down and I know for a fact that several parts are going to have some major changes.

The novella I'm working on now (I've got sixty some pages so far, about two thirds done probably) is about vampires, though they're pretty different from typical fare. For starters, I wanted to make them extremely realistic and believable, and to look at them through scientific lens rather than a mystical one. In addition, I also wanted to focus on the concept of immortality (technically they're not TRULY immortal, they just age very, very slowly). I wanted to investigate how it would change someone's personality to live for hundreds of years while remaining youthful. Many of them kill themselves before three hundred years due to insanity. Basically I wanted to get into the actual psychology of what would it be like to be vampire, the gifts and curses of it, and how horrible of life it could be. I wanted to go against the overly glamorized and sexy vampires of most fiction, which I find never gives a strong sense of how messed up a life these people would really have if they existed.

For example, in my book the vamps are able to heal from wounds very quickly (small cuts go away in minutes, larger injuries can take hours or days). This has a profound affect on the and mindset and culture of the vamps, since for them violence is not nearly as big of a deal as it is to us, and so in many ways they use violence as a means of communication. Breaking someones arm or cutting their face open is akin punch in the nose for us. In addition, I wanted to delve into how these people have lived so long and fed so many of their desires, sexual and otherwise, that they've become numbed to sensation. The merger of violence and sex is a natural connection for them, yet even that has become "old hat", and their sexuality, drug usage, and violence must be taken to absolute extremes for them to even gain pleasure from it anymore (though this is only true with certain characters).

It's a much more cerebral sort of tale, with a lot of philosophical discussions and concepts embedded into it. It is very much a character study. I've also sort merged the idea of a secret vampire society with an aspect of crime drama. Since vampires must keep their existence hidden from the world, and since they burn to death when exposed to sunlight, they are forced to come out only at night and thus many of them make their livelihood through criminal means. Drug trafficking, prostitution, car theft, and even contract killings are just a few of the ways the characters make money. Obviously this leads them to falling into an even more dangerous and violent existence.

Primarily, though, I really wanted to focus on going against the grain of other vampire fiction. I never actually call them vampires, or even mention the word once in the story itself. Upon reading it, you wouldn't even realize what these characters are until the end of the first chapter or so. There's only seven chapters, but they're generally longer than typical book chapters and each one focuses on a different character, which anachronistically detail a series of tragic events that continuous spiral more and more of out control, all taking place over the course of four days. All the characters are morally ambiguous; there are no real "good" or "bad" guys, just people reacting to each other and the world around them (just like real life).

This story is totally different from other stuff I've done, and believe it or not I didn't actually try to write this as an "answer" to Twilight or anything (though certainly the current buzz on vampires played into my mind). I've never read the Twilight books so I can't really comment on them fairly, but I've heard opinions going both ways and I do know some things about the story (who [i]hasn't[/i] heard of Bella and Edward by now?). My story idea started from simply wanting to write something about people living hundreds of years of a youthful existence, and how dramatically this would affect them and their relationships with one another. Making the characters vampires just seemed kind of a natural  direction once I got further into it, especially the with darker nature of the story and themes. I do intend to post the story once I get through the rough draft (probably another month or two), but I suppose if someone really wanted to check it out I could give them a look. When I am seriously writing something that I intend to finish, I always go straight through without looking back. So I've literally yet to even read over what I've got down and I know for a fact that several parts are going to have some major changes.

Redfang18

Redfang18 · May 8, 2011

Talk about vampires, eh? Try the vamps of Anne Rice. Those are my kind of vampires. The heck, I happen to have a certain number of Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles. I'm not telling though. It's against my internal vow to speak of it more.

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