Midnight of Dreams: The VLM Soup

I’m not into Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though I did dig Angel once. Yeah, I’ve a thing about the undead and the preternatural. The stuff freaks out my roommate, and I certainly did not get this fascination from my mother. She’s so scared of the dark, she won’t go down the stairs once it’s ‘lights out’.

I started out with Anne Rice – boy, can I quote from her early books! Lestat de Lioncourt was my poster boy for the undead during high school, with whining Louis, out-of-place Armand, and fascinating Marius as runners-up. Nicolas and Magnus do not have the same allure as the Coven of the Articulate, though.

I still have substantial recall of the first lines of The Vampire Lestat, and I admit to being almost word-perfect with Lestat’s “Requiem for the Marquise” in Queen of the Damned: “And does she hear my hymns tonight/Of kings and queens and ancient truths/Or does she walk some distant path/Where rhyme and song can’t find her”

I’ve branched out, though. It’s not just vampires that I find fascinating. Now, I find the combination of vampires, lycanthropes and mythology a very tasty soup for the imagination.

Isn’t lycanthrope a fine euphemism for werewolf? You might be thinking that. Or you might not. Ever read a Sherrilyn Kenyon DH (that’s Dark-Hunter for the unitiated) novel, or an Anita Blake? If you have, I guess you’ve had your lycanthrope cherry popped.

In both authors’ books, the “were” is a suffix not only for wolves, but for panthers, bears, tigers, jackals, and yes, rats. Most kinds of predator mammals, I guess – except the lion. I have yet to come across a were-lion, and I must admit, it doesn’t quite have the same ring as werewolf, or were-tiger.

The term vampire isn’t all about Count Dracula anymore, as well. In Kenyon’s novels, vampire is a generic word applied to several classes of blood-drinkers. We have Artemis’s elite (and hot, Alpha male) warriors, the Dark Hunters, as well as the Apollytes of Apollo (pardon the pun) and the Daimons.

The paradox portrayal of the vampire as sexless seducer has also changed. Blood will always be a part of the vampire tale. It is a significant foundation of vampire literary history. But it is not only about the blood.

That vampires have an emerging sexuality may be a reflection of changing mores. The growing acceptance of the place of sex in the preternatural scheme of things in literature may also be due to the way it is portrayed.

Count Dracula jumping into the sack with his virgin? I agree: Eeew! Turn off the lights! But a date with some sexy “Mad, Bad, and Immortal” like Kyrian of Thrace and Acheron Partenopaeous? I guess ‘immortal’ is a better inducement for getting the reader hot to trot than ‘undead.”

It’s getting a bit late, so I’ll put the cap on the pen. But do watch this space. I’m not yet done with the VLM soup.