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pellicano-sanguino · 5 years

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Wasted potential in fiction is worse than a story that’s just bad overall.

If someone had asked me couple years ago what vampire books I liked the most, one I would have definitely brought up was Vampire Winter by Lois Tilton.

It’s a post-nuclear story, where a vampire is at first joyful that the fallout clouds cover the sun both day and night so he is free to hunt whenever he wants but things get worse rather soon. Turns out humans who have been exposed to the radiation have turned undrinkable, poisonous for even vampires. Also, the amount of survivors is small and getting lesser by the day as desperate people leave their shelters to find food and supplies and run from looters, risking radiation poisoning. The vampire who used to kill his victims without mercy is at a situation where he can’t afford to lose a single healthy human to avoid starvation. So he strikes a symbiotic deal with a bunch of humans: since he is unaffected by radiation, he will wander out and bring them food, medicine, even books to pass their time, in exchange for blood donations. This is what I remembered from the book, and thought it good, because I’m a sucker for interesting relationship dynamics between a vampire and their donors.

However, I re-read the book recently and was surprised. It wasn’t nearly as good as I remembered it. The interesting symbiotic relationship between the vampire and his donors only lasts a short period of the book and then they go their separate ways and the vampire for some weird reason just goes back to killing his victims again. Also, there was a lot of completely unnecessary violence towards women. The book tries to have a message of “in hard times it’s better to spare lives and co-operate than divide into groups all against each other” and that “every life is precious” but then goes and has the donors leave behind a mentally handicapped girl for the vampire to kill because she would just be “a burden” for the survivors. Also, there’s a fucking gang rape scene. I’m... confused... how did I ever convince myself this was a good book?!

The problem was that my memories were too focused on the one part of the book I found super fascinating. The vampire-donor symbiosis plot was such a great story idea that I actually forgot the rest of the book is shit. I was too intrigued by the story’s potential I failed to notice it doesn’t properly utilize the great idea it had and just turns into a gross masculine violence fantasy.

It’s a shame, because with little changes, this could have been an awesome book. But it completely wasted its potential and left me much more disappointed than would have been the case if it were just a regular old shitty vampire novel with nothing new and interesting added.

I just finished a new book that has the same problem and it infuriates me. It’s a book that has some really great parts but then goes and ruins everything. This book is called Pure Mua (”Bite Me”) by Terhi Tarkiainen. I know, writing about a Finnish book in Tumblr might be useless, since what are the chances Finnish vampire enthusiasts will find my posts, but I want to vent my frustration about it somewhere. So here goes.

Finnish vampire fiction is a rare species. There are some short stories but the only novel I can think of is Jarkko Laine’s Vampyyri, which is a very... specific Finnish literature category; a “tuskapaskakirja” (literally, pain-shit-book) where everyone is miserable and things just get more and more depressing until the whole garbage reaches a lame anticlimax like a bowl of ice cream I accidentally put in the refrigerator instead of in the freezer. Not my kind of book. So, when I heard the rare species had spawned a new book, Pure Mua, I got curious.

My expectations about the book were mixed. I generally don’t like modern Finnish literature. The few books of it that I had to read back in high school or by getting them as gifts were at best incredibly boring and at worst insufferable pretentious artsy junk. However, this book looked like it aimed to be entertaining, not fake deep and for intellectuals only. It whispered a promise of genuinely embracing its own cheesiness. And, well, I do like cheese.

So I read the book. And my opinions remain conflicting with one another. I can’t really say if I liked it or not because for every part that was done well there was something that seriously rubbed me the wrong way.

The story itself is really well written. The text flows naturally and is pleasant to read, the narration is occasionally very witty and humorous. The plot twists are unpredictable which is unfortunately rare in this genre. Vampire fiction is so full of reused story ideas that they often turn out rather predictable. But this book surprised me several times. Of course, unpredictability shouldn’t be valued by itself. Writers who intentionally lead the reader in one direction only to pull a carpet under their feet or who make their characters behave in unreasonable and inconsistent manner just to get a juicy plot twist, usually don’t produce good quality stories. These plot twists however feel natural and well planned, not there just for the shock value. The plot also escalates constantly, forcing you to read chapter after chapter because you don’t want to leave it at an intense cliffhanger.

Since the vampire fiction is full of reused story ideas, it’s rare that I come across a book that has something I haven’t seen before. The basic premise of this book is that since vampires aren’t classified as humans, human rights don’t apply to them and there’s a ring of illegal slave trade where a “kennel” produces “specimens” for the rich assholes who want to turn their fantasies of dating a hot vampire into reality. Human trafficking basicly, only with vampires. I have not bumped into this story idea before. Usually the power dynamics are reversed, the vampires being the cruel monsters who do horrible things to humans. I know the whole “humans are the real monsters”-trope is old and overused, but surprisingly rarely does it happen in vampire fiction. I guess it’s because to a lot of friends of this genre vampires are a power fantasy and they wouldn’t enjoy seeing them tamed and subjected to something as horrifying as human trafficking.

So, the book turns the traditional vampire/human power dynamics upside down. However, the protagonist actually doesn’t want the pet vampire her nutty parents bought her as a birthday present. She tries to find a way to safely release him back “into the wild” but has trouble coming up with a solution on how to do it and ensure he won’t be recaptured by the trafficking ring again (since he is chipped).

Next I’m going to spoil the last plot twist of the book. Turns out the trafficking ring is led not by humans but by a loony communist vampire who has a diabolical plan. He intentionally made vampire pets a trend among the filthy rich and then once every elite household in Finland has one, he intends to shut down the safety chips that give the vampires electric shocks if they attack their masters and let the hungry, abused, vengeful vampire slaves drink all the greedy capitalist pigs.

And this is... supposed to be the main villain of the book. I’m supposed to be appalled and horrified by this impending slaughter of innocent humans. Well. Does it make me a monster if I say I think this is a great plan? Everyone who buys a personal sex toy from a human trafficking ring deserves to be devoured by ravenous vampires. The fact that the victims of slavery aren’t technically human here changes nothing since their intelligence is identical to ours. And creeps who would buy a vampire would definitely buy a woman or a little girl too.

Everyone who thinks slavery is a fun hobby that the elite should be allowed to do again deserves to be killed by their slave.

The slavery theme is one of the reasons I have such conflicting opinions about this book. It’s such a horrifying scenario and you really, really want to see the main vampire freed from it, you want to see him and the main character succeed in their attempt to destroy the vampire slave trade. But then the book decides to focus less on the horrors of slavery and... actually romanticize prostitution. The vampires in this book’s universe are all nymphomaniacs and addicted to sex. Umm... ok, your world, you do what you want. But I really can’t stand the stereotype of seductive, nymphomaniac prostitutes, who do it because they enjoy their “work”, considering how the harsh reality of prostitution is something completely different. “She likes it anyway” is a lie slimy old men tell one another to feel less guilty when they go to Thailand to “play minigolf.” Hurk. Hork. Barf. I know this is fiction and the vampires aren’t human (and we don’t see female vampires) but I really wish people would stop writing this character type. Also, I hate stories where a noble person saves a prostitute and is “rewarded” by their love (in other words, gets to fuck the prostitute anyway, feeding into the idea that “nice guys” who protect women from creeps deserve sex as a reward.)

I give the book one point for the scene where the protagonist starts to caress her slave when she’s super drunk but then is startled and horrified at what she did, thinking that she has become a monster.

If there’s one thing I hate even more than romanticizing prostitution, it’s sexual violence. Thank goodness this story doesn’t have that but it’s bad enough that one male vampire constantly threatens the protagonist with rape. And I’m supposed to care about this guy and worry about what will happen to him. There’s something so disgustingly... male... in the thought process that when you want to hurt someone, your first thought is rape. When a woman sees a person they love being abused by someone, she might beat the abuser into a fine pulp but no, women do not rape, women do not use sex as a torture devise. If a guy gets hard from anger and wants to fuck someone he hates there is something seriously wrong with him and he needs to seek help. Men are scum!

This book isn’t a particularly pleasant read for a feminist anyway. With the exception of the protagonist, all female characters are lazily written, unconvincing, misogynistic cardboard cutouts. Male characters on the other hand are, with the exception of the main villain, painted as flawed but sympathetic. The protagonist has a stalker ex who doesn’t understand the concept of “no.” I was convinced this creep would turn out to be a villain in the end, trying to kill the protagonist because “if I can’t have you, no one else can!” Because everything he said and did kept raising the red flags. But no, I’m supposed to find him charming and loveable and his stupid bratboy jokes soooo hilarious. The book wants me to think of all the women except protagonist as either mean-spirited bitches or dumb blondes (your “I’m not like other girls”-complex is showing...) and feel sympathy towards a creepy stalker and a guy who threatens women with rape. Right. Is this some het culture bullshit or just what exactly am I not getting? Also, if your only way to make the heroine likeable is to turn all the other women into cartoonishly evil or ridiculously immature and stupid so that she'll look better in comparison, the reader will become suspicious of her character (because exaggerating the faults in others while claiming you yourself are perfectly innocent is a strategy used by narcisstic, manipulative jerkfaces).

I’m also rather disappointed that the book relies on stereotyping Fenno-Swedes. Fenno-Swedes are the Swedish speaking minority, descendants from rich Swedes that were given land here back when Finland was part of Sweden. Because many of them are still in the upper class, having inherited their ancestors land and wealth, the middle and lower class Finnish speaking Finns tend to be racist towards them, considering them smug elitists and disgustingly rich capitalists who never had to work for their wealth. Making the main character a Fenno-Swede and then giving her behavior that strengthens the prejudice against “bättre folk” is just really lazy writing, it’s like having a romani character and having her do shoplifting. Sure, the protagonist wants to be different than her gross parents who would buy a sex slave as a gift, but her attitude towards money is the same indifference. Oh, I smashed my phone to pieces because the phone call made me angry. Oh well. Pappa betalar.

There’s a scene where the protagonist and the stalker ex witness a protest that consists simultaneously of racists who want to close the borders and unemployed who blame the government for their poverty (right. You really want to draw “equals as” sign between crazy nationalist bigots and unfortunate people trapped in unemployment hell? Fuck you, fuck you so much.). The protagonist asks where all this hatred comes from and the stalker ex explains that when a person is in a bad situation in life they seek scapegoats to blame for their troubles, whether that be foreigners or politicians. But since we’ve already gone the route of giving the protagonist stereotypical Fenno-Swede behaviour, why not let her voice the opinion of “If the lower class is angry at the upper class it’s because they project unfair blame onto the rich, surely their suffering has nothing to do with the elite’s greed and misuse of power.” Now, opinions like this wouldn’t matter to me normally, because characters are allowed to be flawed, but when those flaws rely on harmful stereotypes, it’s disappointing.

I want to like this book. It’s so genuine and entertaining and well written. But I threw up in my mouth so frequently while reading it that I don’t think I care to read it another time. If it was written a little differently, I would probably love this book. But there’s no use crying after wasted potential. I can’t help but praise the book for the parts that are really good, but I can’t recommend it either. I would have preferred it to be either all good or all shit, not this mixture of gold and rust.

#vampire books #terhi tarkiainen #pure mua #lois tilton #vampire winter

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