#also i am by no means the expert here i am just autistic about vampires

[mynqzo]

Hey heard you like vampires what are your thoughts on Twilight

it gets an unprecedented amount of hate mostly for being a show with an audience of young women and girls (so therefore people think oh girls like this so ew). its also undeniable that twilight very much shows the progression of how vampires are depicted in media and is an important facet in the history of vampire mythology especially in books/movies. it being a romance movie with cliche and maybe cringe scenes doesn't take away people's right to enjoy it and by extent its version of vampires (id argue that twilight vampires are just a spiritual successor to vampires like lestate or 'romantic vamps' in general)

with that being said, it is the straightest and most mormon vampire depiction which therefore makes it less enjoyable for me! vampires, historically, existed to represent minorities and people who were considered outcasts to 'normal' society and were first and foremost used as caricatures for racist, lgbtq-phobic and sexist stereotypes, so i feel like their reclamation by queers, poc and minorities in general is the only good way to depict them. bram stoker's dracula represented the english man's fear of jewish immigrants (and immigrants in general, the visual description of dracula in that book plays into popular caricatures of jews during those times), eastern europeans, and queer people (dracula and jonathan yada yada as well as the wives of dracula initiating a saucy moment with jonathan which was a man' job because the man was the pursuer and the woman was pursued, but the roles were reversed. also, i don't think i need to tell you how fangs, blood and the extension of dracula through his wives were used as a gay metaphor). and carmilla by sheridan le fanu, depicting the imagery of a predatory lesbian hunting for innocent upper-class women. during these times vampires were not yet characters with complex personalities and values, but folklore monsters in a way, a way to show an enemy and defeat it rather than learn to understand them, which was a product of its time.

fast forward to the vampire chronicles and especially interview with the vampire by anne rice, vampires became complex people, who's oddities were considered alluring, beautiful, queer and unabashedly proud of it. descriptions of androgynous men, womens love of each other, several nods to gay culture throughout the books with the characters themselves having more to them than just being monsters (with that being said there are several critiques of an interview with the vampire, esp the original book, it is by no means the creme de la creme of queer rep in vampire literature!)

so, circling back, twilight vampires were in themselves like that, kind of. edward wasn't exactly the most macho man as was popular to faun over in media, he was, kind of, more androgenous and sensitive and a character with complex values and thoughts - but that doesn't take away from the fact that the book is lacking a lot of soul and seemingly doesn't show the true reasons why vampires became so popular (amongst young queers especially who found themselves relating to this sense of otherness because of who they were. it is a very sanitized version of a vampire romance, which doesn't mean its bad or that people shouldn't like it! but i'm just saying.

huff

#also i am by no means the expert here i am just autistic about vampires #ask #and there is so so much more details that i didnt write #so this is very generalized