It is time to discuss… THE VAMPYRE. Vampires are a staple of fantasy fiction, from toothy Nosferatu to wise-cracking Spike. This week, we talk about how vampires have changed over time, how to keep them interesting in a saturated market, and why they’ve always been sexy. We promise not to do any silly accents.
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I think the ‘sexy vampire’ trope started out for noble vampires. Old vampire lore among peasants made them out to be mindless, soulless killers who had to be buried in a special way to be stopped. It was only the vampires with titles (Elizabeth Bathory or Vlad Tepes) who become alluring masterminds. So capitalism really is the greatest monster!
William, who became Spike, is clearly modeled on Keats, including the early death, the unrequited love, the widowed mother who died of tuberculosis, and his family’s riches-to-rags financial arc, not to mention extremely poor reviews of his poetry. Keats died believing he was a failure as a writer. At the time of his death, he’d sold a combined total of only 200 copies of his three books. The critics mocked him.
https://www.biography.com/people/john-keats-9361568