Help! I know next to nothing about vampires!

In terms of vampire types, it's mostly a gradient between monster and mere superhuman.

Try to find a copy of The Lost Boys. It's an older movie about vampires somewhere between monster and superhuman. If you want straight up monster vampires, watch 30 Days of Night or Salem's Lot. Twilight or Queen of the Damned are examples of vampires that are hardly even monsters, though I wouldn't recommend watching Twilight as it would be a good two hours of your life you'll never get back.

"You must excuse me, I'm not feeling quite myself. Woke up today inside, inside of someone else" -Devildriver
"obviously the fact that he had a hoof instead of a foot turned him into a homosexual" -AngryMidget

Listen to Orfn; don't watch Twilight. :)

Good sources to start with:
'The Encyclopedia of Vampires, Werewolves and Other Monsters by Rosemary Ellen Guiley
Bite:A Vampire Handbook by Kevin Jackson

Important novels:
Dracula by Bram Stoker (the basis for all of them)
I am Legend by Richard Matherson
Salem's Lot by Stephen King
Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindquist

But in general, take the stuff you like from research and stories and leave the rest. You can have a lot of freedom for this if you want.

Thanks guys. :)

And I've already been warned off Twilight. Vampires don't sparkle, ffs.

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If I were you I would hold off on viewing or reading anything vampire related until December. Write your novel as a vampire virgin. Create your own type of vampire with their own set of strengths and weaknesses.

30 Days of Night is terrifying. Best Vampires as monsters movie I've seen.

Something that is important to remember about vampires is the rampant sexuality. I'm not saying that vampires are sex gods, what I mean the is desire to consume a person's life or essence.

Consider the morality of it (Kill one person every night for 200 years? That's nearly 37,000 people).

Is your vampirism widespread? Do ordinary people know about them? How are they perceived?

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"If there must be trouble let it be in my day, so that my child may have peace." Thomas Paine

:) Thanks! However, I wanted some sort of guideline to at least pull some of those strengths and weaknesses from. :) I was more hoping for a list of stuff than "here go read this!" >_>

03: Lost / 04: Won / 05: Won / 06: Lost / 07: Lost / 08: Lost / 09: Here's to breaking a losing streak!

There are so many different variations on vampires ranging from eloquent, sexy demons-of-the-night to crazy, blood-craving monsters that'll tear your throat out in a heartbeat... (heh.)

My advice? DON'T read anything on them. Short of the few things you will absolutely need to know, like being undead, drinking blood, and having a nasty aversion to sunlight. And generally, people are turned into vampires either by being bitten by them, or, if you want to get more complicated, drinking/sharing their blood.

It might just be me, but I think it could be interesting on your part to try to answer your own questions without looking to what you think is conventional. What I mean is, instead of asking what all vampires should be like, ask yourself what YOUR vampires should be like. Maybe a stake through the heart doesn't kill them. Maybe the stake has to be made of silver. Maybe you have to behead them. Maybe you have to burn them. Maybe you have to play Britney Spears to get them to die. Who knows! The point is, that when you are done, they'll be YOUR vampires, not just any old generic vampires.

You follow? ;) Happy writing.

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2009: Blue Soul (continuing w/ rebel-status :P)

for becoming a vampire, it's common that a vampire bites a human. then, usually, the human has to drink the vampire's blood.
a stake through the heart (wooden or silver, depends on which legends you want to believe) can kill them. some say silver hurts them, some say that's werewolves. maybe when they don't feed for a certain amount of time they just wither away? there's always beheading, which is fun. burning.
there could be vampires that are made and, if you want to make reproduction possible for vamps, ones that are born. i would assume that the ones born are more powerful.
they usually don't sleep, but can sometimes go into this almost trance/sleep like state. they usually wouldn't need sleep - they're vampires. (:
as for the sun and garlic, well, that's your choice. i think for my vamps sun is painful after direct contact for awhile and they tend to dislike garlic. enhanced senses and garlic? not a good mix, but i don't think it would hurt them.
there's also the thing about vampires feeding - well, obviously they feed off of humans. i was watching a tiny bit of queen of the damned the other day and if a vampire was to drink the last drop of a human, it would end up hurting them/killing them because it's... well, it was a little confusing. it's their last essence of life, really.
a lot of humans bitten are written not to feel the pain, but rather a pleasure in it. vampires can sort of use hypnosis and put humans in a trance to get them to feel/do what they want.
i hope that helped. :3

i highly recomend a film called Near Dark

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best. Voltaire

Vampires can be killed by sunlight, a wooden stake through the heart, or beheading. Otherwise they live forever, without aging. Humans change into vampires by drinking a vampire's blood. Vampire's sleep during the day in safe, dark places (such as coffins). Since they never see the sun, they are pale. They can be threatened by crosses because of their religious purity. I don't think they have souls (can't remember how often that's the case).They hate garlic, but I'm fuzzy on why. I think part of the fascination with them is that they live forever but it's a tortured existence.
Wikipedia might have some more general stuff.

Just depends on what you read. Some of the mainstream, basic things are:

Sunlight = MAJOR sunburn.

Wooden stakes through the heart, decaptitation or burned by extreme heat with the askes scattered are the only ways to kill them.

Pale skin, fangs, blood sucking. (But you don't have to necissarily kill the victims. They could only take enough blood to survive.)

On turning, either exchanging blood or venom in the vampire's fangs.

Look on wikipedia for anything else. Those, above, are just the basics. :)

TWLOHA: Rescue is Possible

To paraphrase Terry Prachett

There are as many legends about vampires as there are diseases, which mean some make you very ill and others make you walk funny and avoid fruit.

But seriously
Shroudeater.com is a good place with a lot of folk lore arranged by region. There are no set rules for any vampires. One person might say, "ONLY ACTIVE AT NIGHT!!!" But then you find three or four from Central Europe that needed the sun to function.

Take a look at all the legends and see what you like.

http://therathskellar.blogspot.com

What do I need to know, beyond they're blood sucking weirdos?

Traditionally, vampires are said to be the undead souls of people who commit suicide. They are too wicked to go to heaven because they took a life, but too good to go to hell because the life they took was their own not someone else's. So they are condemned to walk the Earth between the living and the dead, not quite alive, but not quite dead. They are very similar to zombies, the main difference being that zombies have no mind of their own and vampires have free will to come and go as they please.

They waste away into nothing if they do not eat human blood. They are farther curse though, by the fact that drinking human blood causes the human to become a vampire as well. This than leads to vampires who do not want to drink blood in some stories.

How can they be killed?

Traditionally they can not be killed, because they are already dead. They can only be warded off and held at bay.

What different kinds of vampires are there?

Every culture has vampire myths, most going back thousands of years. The traditional vampires as we think of them today, comes from the Carpathian myths, and is based on a very real person: Prince Vlad Dracul aka Vlad the Impaler. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlad_III_the_Impaler who was of course the ruler of Transylvania in the 1400' and is where Count Dracula myths come from.

Do they sleep? How?

They must sleep in the coffin they were buried in, and carry dirt from their grave with them every where they go. This myth comes from Vlad, because his body vanished from his grave and it is said that he became an undead and took his coffin with him.

How are people turned into vampires?

I think I just explained that.

What's the fascination with them?

I think every one has a different reason.

I have a list of things that vampires are supposed to be able to do, ect, here it is if that helps you out any.

Things that make a Vampire a Vampire:

- drinks blood
- is undead
- looks like Bela Lugosi ;)
- dresses like Bela Lugosi =P

"Regular" Vampires have the following abilities:
"Super Powerful" Vampires also have the additional "rare" abilities:

Movement Abilities:

-Inhuman Speed
-Unearthly Reflexes
-Vertical Ascension (climbs walls)
-Gliding (with help of cape)
-Bat Form
-Mist Form
-Flight
-Move Silently

Rare Movement Abilities

-Clown Frenzy
-Astral Projection
-Dodge Daylight
-Spider Climb
-Cat's Grace
-Shadow Conceal

Offensive Abilities

-Fangs
-Vampiric Claws
-Enhanced Senses
-Animalistic Frenzy
-Superhuman Strength
-Mind Control
-Wolf Form
-Horrific Transformation
-Glamor

Rare Offensive Abilities

-Pyrokinesis
-Corrosion
-Control Mall Santas
-Ironic Annihilation
-Purge Blood
-Pestilence
-Mummification
-Blood Soaked Vengeance (Carrie)
-Hellfire
-Demonic Familiar
-Bloodletting
-Vampire Lord
-Summon Horseman
-Shadow Transformation
-Bone Spikes
-Demon Summoning
-Telepathy
-Drain Youth
-Raise Zombies
-Invisibility
-Shadow Manipulation
-Blood to Ashes
-Command a Wolf Pack
-Command Rat Swarm
-Cause Madness
-Intoxicating Bite

Defensive Abilities

-Fast Healing
-Impervious to bullets
-Intimidation

Rare Defensive Abilities

-Veil of Thorns
-Winged Guard
-Premonition
-Indestructible
-Iron Skin
-Create Illusion
-Immunity to Religious Icons
-Immaterial (can walk through solid walls)
-Resistance to Sunlight
-Immunity to Silver

(This list was copied from the Zanga Game Vampire Wars, btw)

YES! I'll second these. If you only read one vampire novel - let it be Dracula! Practically everything we know about vampires today, came straight out of Dracula. Dracula pretty much created the modern day vampire. Better yet, watch Bela Lugosi's Dracula. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0021814/ Best vampire movie ever made - even if it was made in 1931. No body embodies the vital essence of being a vampire the way Bela Lugosi did. OMG! That guy was freaking amazing!

Don't watch the movie version of I Am Legend though. The movie is nothing like the book. Well, yeah, watch it, it is a great movie, but know that in the movie you will not find a single vampire! The book has vampires, the movie does not! When they made the movie they took out the vampires and stuck in zombies instead. That is one book you can not judge by it's movie.

The Lost Boys is a great introduction to vampires. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093437/ It just reaks of every classic vampire cliche, but it does it in such a way that you don't realize it's full of cliches. I esp love the twist on the flying vampires, by them riding flying motorcycles. That was pretty cool.

Twilight was a good movie if you watch it with the knowledge that these vampires are really freaky and don't act like your traditional classic vampire. They are like renegade-I-Don't-wanna-be-a-vampire type vampires. So it's a good thing to watch to see how non-traditional vampires could be handled. Just remember it is heavy on the chick-flick so if the thought of watching lovey-dovey romance chick-flick makes you sick, yeah, you might want to avoid it.

Queen of the Damned? I just did not get that movie at all. Vampires? Really? What vampires? Where? I'm not seeing them. The whole movie had me going - What the heck is this thing anyways? I found it incredibly boring and a huge waste of time to watch.

Underworld is another one. It's like - okay - I'm ready for the vampires to show up now. Where are they? Heeellloooooo? Where are these so called vampires that are supposed to be everywhere? Underworld is not recommended if you have never seen any other vampire movie, because basically, all it is is a bunch of mega wealthy emo dudes and emo chicks fighting werewolves. They don't do anything other than dress like vampires. And really, you got to do more than live in a big house and wear skin tight emo goth leather, to call yourself a vampire!

wait - What? Those were vampires????????????????????? I thought they were zombies??? Really? Yow! I'll have to watch it again. I really thought they were zombies. LOL! Yeah - VERY monster in that one. I guess they could have been vampires. I just watched it thinking these are great zombies! Oh well. Actually, I watched it looking for the Bruce Campbell cameo that was supposed to be in it, but wasn't in it, and I didn't realize that his cameo was cut until after I watched it 3 times trying to figure out where the hell he was in it! LOL!

Incubus: Fear the Night

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