Geek that I am, I've been playing this game called "Vampire Wars" on facebook for the last few weeks. The game itself is not that great, really. I don't know why the hell I keep coming back to it. It's kind of a bare-bones role playing game. All text-based, like old time D&D games. You earn skill points and strength points and all those other things RPG types are familiar with.
The thing appears to be wildly popular. Facebook (which I spend way too much time on, by the way) offers a lot of these type of games, but the Vampire application really seems to have a following.
This got me to thinking. As a writer, I've always resisted entering the vampire genre, but there really does seem to be a built-in audience for anything undead. My feeling was always that the vampire tale had been "done to death" so to speak, and done quite well. From Bram Stoker to Anne Rice, what more could there be to say?
Now I'm beginning to re-think that. Maybe the vampire mythos enjoys such an enduring place in the human imagination for a reason.
On the one hand, they are a romantic monster. Elegant, sophisticated and beautiful -- sexy even, in the hands of many authors. But for all their power and allure, they are the most tragic of all mythical creatures. They have what we all wish we could have, immunity from death and suffering, but it is this very quality that renders them hopeless and alone. They embody the things we wish we could have, and yet suffer from the same fundamental problems that we do.
So if they are "us", then there's always more to be said.
Sunday, December 7, 2008
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