sf/f TV development news - 2013

[Christopher]

Kegg wrote:

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Which I explicitly stated, twice. The point being that restricting instrinic properties of vampires in fiction to folklore is pretty limiting.

Of course you don't mean vampire works that are centuries older than motion pictures. Or even a decade older than motion pictures (though a couple decades older than Nosferatu), you basically just mean Bram Stoker's Dracula, apparently.

No, I mean every work of fiction or lore that has not adopted Nosferatu's innovation of vampires being killed by sunlight. Obviously nothing before that movie would've used it, and at least some works after that movie have not used it either, including I Am Legend and, ugh, Twilight.

And also:

Then the only intrinsic part of the vampire idea is that they're called vampires (if that). They don't need to suck blood, be undead, have the ability to change into wolves or climb walls (to cite Bram Stoker), they just need to be identified as vampires.

Well, yeah, that's basically my point. Burning up in sunlight is not an intrinsic trait of vampires because it's not used in every vampire story. I think that's a very straightforward statement. I don't understand why you object to it. It sounds as if you're reacting to the word "intrinsic" as if it were some kind of value judgment, as if it were somehow offensive to say something wasn't intrinsic. I don't understand that. I've already pointed out the definition of the word.

By analogy, holodecks are not an intrinsic element of Star Trek stories; they're something used in a lot of ST stories that came out after a certain date, but they weren't part of the original conception and they aren't used in every ST story. It's as simple as that.

So no, I'm not talking about folklore versus fiction. I'm talking about stuff before 1922 versus stuff after 1922 -- and there's a lot of vampire stuff, both folklore and fiction, from before 1922. Surely you don't deny that? Not to mention, again, the various works of fiction after 1922 that have portrayed vampires as able to survive sunlight.

That's all I'm trying to do here: to make the simple point that it is possible to tell vampire stories that don't include them dying when exposed to sunlight. I don't understand why that's objectionable to you, since it's a matter of documented fact.

[Kegg]

Christopher wrote:

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t sounds as if you're reacting to the word "intrinsic" as if it were some kind of value judgment, as if it were somehow offensive to say something wasn't intrinsic.

Nope, that is not what I wrote nor does it resemble what I wrote.

I'm pointing out that this use of intrinsic makes it a meaningless tautology.

Working with this logic, the intrinsic property of a vampire story is:

Something that is called a vampire is in the story.

If I wrote a story about a race of people who are secretly ancient sea monsters called vampires, who mostly eat kelp? Boom. That's a vampire story. Maybe they also live in dusty old castles in Eastern Europe and opine they don't drink wine (because they'd rather eat kelp), but that's kind of a big difference there.

And that's all well and good, obviously. There have never been a canonical set of 'rules' that vampire stories have needed to follow, or that you could find to be true of all the most famous/popular/acclaimed/your personal list of best vampire stories.

But you're not left with any 'intrinsic vampire lore' to fall back on. Death by sunlight isn't being excluded from a canon, there is no such canon.

[stj]

What is intrinsic to the vampire is illicit sexuality. If they are intrinsically sexy and their supernature involves semen, aka blood, they're vampires.

[Mr. Adventure]

stj wrote:

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Borg aren't zombies, because the sexy moments are when the tubules go in. Direct visual analogue to biting.

You have a lot of great theories but I'm not sure I'm biting (no pun) on this one.

[Christopher]

Kegg, I just don't understand why you're making such an argument out of this. All I'm trying to say is that it's possible to tell vampire stories in which the vampires aren't killed by sunlight. If you don't like my choice of words, okay, but it's not what this is about.

[Temis the Vorta]

Mr. Adventure wrote:

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You have a lot of great theories but I'm not sure I'm biting (no pun) on this one.

That particular theory has occurred to me, too - unpack vampires all the way, and you end up with transgressive sex, and the same is true of the Borg. That's why the picky little details like sensitivity to sun or even drinking blood don't matter. People like vampires for the sexual component and that tends to overwhelm all other attributes.

To the extent that faux-vampires like the Borg and the Wraith work, they tap into the sexual aspect of vampires. So you could change the details around a lot, and still have something that is vampiric at its core. and more importantly, will draw an audience.

[RJDiogenes]

So the Borg in Abrams Trek will be young, good-looking models and give off lens flares?

[stj]

Alice Krige, Jeri Ryan and Susanna Thompson. They're the Borg for a reason.

[Greg Cox]

The interesting question is: how far can you diverge from what people think of as the "lore" before it stops becoming a "vampire"?

Back when I writing the Underworld books, I used to run into confused fans who didn't grasp that the UW vamps didn't necessarily play by the same rules as, say, Buffy vamps or Anne Rice vamps or whatever. ("But vampires can't get pregnant! Everybody knows that!")

I do think, however, that if you're going to deviate from some standard bit of lore, you need to address that clearly and right away, just to avoid confusion.

"Contrary to popular legend, Selene could still see her reflection in the glass," etc.

[Vendikarr]

Greg Cox wrote:

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The interesting question is: how far can you diverge from what people think of as the "lore" before it stops becoming a "vampire"?

Back when I writing the Underworld books, I used to run into confused fans who didn't grasp that the UW vamps didn't necessarily play by the same rules as, say, Buffy vamps or Anne Rice vamps or whatever. ("But vampires can't get pregnant! Everybody knows that!")

I do think, however, that if you're going to deviate from some standard bit of lore, you need to address that clearly and right away, just to avoid confusion.

"Contrary to popular legend, Selene could still see her reflection in the glass," etc.

I could see vampires promoting misinformation in lore and fiction, just to throw victims off guard.

[Greg Cox]

Vendikarr wrote:

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I could see vampires promoting misinformation in lore and fiction, just to throw victims off guard.

I can think of at least one novel in which the whole sunlight thing turns out to be a myth perpetuated by vampires for their own protection!

"Surprise, foolish mortals! Sunlight has no effect on us at all!"

Stuff also tends to slide in and out of the lore. To my knowledge, Stoker invented the turning-into-bats business, which was a staple of a vampire movies for generations, but that seems to have largely fallen out of vogue these days . . . .

[sojourner]

^Along with the turning into wolves and fog.

[Temis the Vorta]

Premiere dates for sci fi & fantasy series.

Avoid The Neighbors at all costs.

[Christopher]

Then there's the Dresden Files universe, in which there are several "courts" of vampires with different attributes, and Stoker's Dracula was an accurate description of one of those courts, whose numbers have dwindled sharply in the decades since Stoker "outed" their weaknesses. (The problem being that, IIRC, those vampires are vulnerable to sunlight, which wasn't actually from Stoker's book.)

[Guy Gardener]

We all have our own distinctly particular sexual signatures that's probably as unique as a blood type.

Personally I think I make love more like a zombie than a vampire, but I'm sure if we could be honest that we all know which monster from the hammer vault that we fuck like most.

Oh gods.

The surging popularity of mummy porn frightens me.