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the curious case of the child vampire

full disclaimer this is just a collection of my own thoughts and opinions on child vampires in literature, i might be jon snow and know nothing. 

child vampire’s have proven to be a pervasive moral dilemma in fiction. they’re fascinating--but why?

the idea of immortality is, truthfully, a very childish thing. because children have no real concept of time or how things will change, an eight year old has no true conceptualisation of what the future looks like. but the true issue with the child vampire is, in my opinion, that the vampire is intertwined with concepts which are inherently adult, and therefore the transgression of the child into an ‘adult’ state is the real problem. 

the vampire itself has long been associated with queerness and gender non-conformity, with a history dating back to foundational texts like stoker’s dracula (1897) and fanu’s carmilla (1872), through to more modern examples like rice’s vampire chronicles (1976 onwards). and while i believe this does contribute to the overall concern regarding child vampires--it can be noted that several non-english western texts adapted into english speaking western films remove aspects of gender non-conformity from child monsters--predominantly, the concern is something not unrelated, but still very different.

sexuality. the child vampire presents one of western society’s ultimate taboos--child sexuality. not only is the vampire seen as a sexual figure in general (with the act of biting often read as symbolising sexual penetration), but the child vampire presents the problem of an adult mind--one that might crave sexual intimacy--and the child, and therefore forbidden, body. the taboo of the child vampire is less about ‘never growing up’ and ‘being unable to care for themselves’ (as texts like twilight or interview with the vampire would suggest), and more to do with the transgression of the child (or perceived child) into the world of the sexual. 

official apology for using the word penetration. my bad.

#monsters #monster theory #monsteracademia #vampires #child vampires

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Since childhood, I have been faithful to monsters. I have been saved and absolved by them. Because monsters, I believe, are patron saints of our blissful imperfection, and they allow and embody the possibility of failing and live.

Guillermo del Toro, in his Golden Globe acceptance speech.

#monsters #monster theory #guillermo del toro #i just think abt this quote a lot

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the ring (2002) dir. gore verbinski

here we go, the world is spinning. when it stops, it’s just beginning. sun comes up, we all laugh. sun goes down, we all die…

#film: the ring #literally watched this yesterday lmao

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Let Me In (2010) dir. Matt Reeves

#film: let me in

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I’ve done some Twitter threads on this topic, so thought it might be nice to do a Tumblr post too. One of my pet peeves is when people act like adult fantasy (or sci-fi for that matter) is just a straight white dude thing and that diversity only exists in young adult fantasy. That’s such a disservice to all the authors of marginalized identities currently writing adult fantasy!

Authors and books below the cut, including links to Goodreads. I’m not providing trigger warnings (if I make the post too long Tumblr starts freaking out about it), but you can use the search function on Goodreads reviews to find more specifics. 

Keep reading

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I found perfection here. I’ve created it. A perfect organism.

Alien: Covenant (2017) dir. Ridley Scott

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Vampire film motion posters

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An interesting point came up recently in my research regarding representations of children in popular culture. Texts about children or for children written by adult authors inherently are viewed through a lens of adulthood--they carry with them adult social conceptions of what childhood should be, not what it is. But texts about children and childhood written by child authors often lack the language and knowledge to fully conceptualise themselves and accurately describe their experience as children, thereby making it essentially impossible for there to be a truthful depiction of childhood and children in literature. 

#This is a rabbit hole

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Sometimes I remember that there’s a massive beef in the paleontological community between Jack Horner and Robert Bakker and it’s so big that when they both worked as advisers on the Jurassic Park films, Spielberg made 2 characters based on them and had a T. rex eat Bakker’s character as a favour to Horner.

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so women are supposed to grin and bear the books, the comics, the movies, the plays, the tv shows, the stories, the sci-fi, the translated ancient poems, the fucking millennia of men writing about their self inserts torturing women and it being declared as High Art by other men, we’re supposed to read it in our free time, study it in classrooms, include their styles in our own writing, accept their cultural influence as natural, watch it in the cinema, write about it, talk about it, accept it, aspire it, but men can’t tolerate three seconds of female wish fulfilment of a woman snapping the wrist of a creep without feeling personally kicked in the balls.

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current thesis mood is having an existential crisis about the foundational assumptions of modern society. also time. 

#Thesis Blogging

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in relation to that last post: a work being a ‘product of it’s time’ does not immediately make it excused from modern criticism. just because sexism, racism, homophobia or other such attitudes were the norm for the period in which a text was written does not mean a) that it should not be critiqued from those literary perspective in modern times to create meaning for modern readers and b) that people who are affected by those attitudes (women, queer people, POC, and so forth) are somehow ‘lesser’ for not wanting to partake in texts that treat their people poorly. this is a contributing factor to academic gatekeeping on the part of old cishet white men. the vast majority of texts considered ‘classics’ and worthy of academic prestige and discussion are texts that appeal to this group of people because they have the most sway in academic circles. 

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me connecting my intro paragraph to my conclusion

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why the fuck does english have a word for

but not for “the day after tomorrow”

???