Assignment 1

I have been reading about vampires since I was about six-years-old. I have read the old Slavic stories, of dead not given proper burials who rose from the dead to terrorize and drink of the living. These creatures were nothing but beasts, wanting food and only food. The stories evolved, making them more and more human, making them capable of thought, feeling, compassion. I’ve heard very far-reaching legends from them being able to transform into bats, spiders or other animals, to being able to make themselves invisible.

I actually have written a book with my own vampires. They age slowly, and can die of old age, but it takes thousands of years so by human perceptions they live forever. They appear human, some are pale, some aren’t, some have dark hair, some are blond, they are as individual as we are. When they go out in the sun they do not burst into flame or die, but their skin starts to smoke, a chemical in their skin reacts with the vitamin D in sun rays causing that reaction, if they’re out for extended periods of time it can start to burn, and like if you had an acid on your skin the only thing that will cease this burning is flushing the affected skin with lots of water. The only difference that is visible difference from humans is their eyes. Their irises are green or blue, red when they’ve fed recently, and the pupils and “whites” are both black. They can reproduce as we do or change people into them, either way they choose. They have the ability to transform, each vampire has two forms. One of these forms is that of a black dragon, they use this form to hunt, which can be blood of any kind, they usually choose human blood purely out of tradition. Their other form is their spirit animal, the animal that embodies their personality. The two forms start at their age and age with the vampire. This is only a basic summary, there’s much more to them but that’s the basics.

I have read many books on vampires; one of them was called Sweetblood which was about a girl who was diabetic and obsessed with vampires. That book made an argument about the origin of the vampire that actually makes a lot of sense to me and what I think probably really happened. In early history they did not know much about medicine or disease and a lot of the time if there was something wrong with you, you were possessed by a demon or something equally absurd. Well, then they had no idea what diabetes even was let alone how to treat it. Untreated diabetes causes sensitivity to light, deep comas with death-like symptoms which they awake from without warning, their gums recede, making their teeth look much longer and they become ravenously hungry, leading to them eating anything, even breaking into neighboring houses and eating raw meat. Naturally it would make sense for the legend to evolve as it has. I have also read the Twilight series, and several other series I don’t remember the specifics of.

As to the books that will be taught in this course I have read Dracula and Interview
With a Vampire and as I mentioned before Twilight and I bought The Historian this summer and have been looking for a reason to read it. I’m also interested in reading Encounters With the Undead. One book I have read that I think would be beneficial to this class is My Swordhand is Singing by Marcus Sedgewick. It is a relatively short book, only about 200 pages, but it portrays the traditional vampires, not the aristocratic ones portrayed in most novels.