Fifty More Horror Clichés That Should Be Left to Spoil

#35: Controlled Vampiric Bloodlust

  From what I stated about The Twilight book series back when talking about the overly romanticized tone of recent vampire stories, most would probably assume I outright hate everything about it.  However, that is far from the truth surprisingly.  Though I know outright the book series is extremely problematic, I do like a few things about Twilight.

  For those who have read my book review on the first Twilight book, you would know that I actually do enjoy a majority of the background characters.  I particularly love Alice Cullen due to her surprisingly complex, tragic backstory as well as her awesome future seeing abilities that do not seemed forced into her character.  The last two Twilight films were pretty well directed, especially during the final battle in Breaking Dawn: Part 2.  If you have not seen that final fight for yourself, I highly recommend looking it up for the amazing amount of well choregraphed action along with a few heart wrenching scenes.  The films are additionally a guilty pleasure to watch due to the cringe-worthy acting that is so bad that it is good.  From time to time, I still do watch the first film in the Twilight film series just to laugh a little bit on a particularly bad day.  I know not everyone is into the type of humor I like, but in all seriousness, watch the film at least once so you can at least see where I am coming from.

  The aspect I like most though is the author's strong attempt to depict the real struggle many of the vampires have in the series with their blood cravings.  For those who do not know about this aspect of vampire lore, basically a part of being cursed with the immortal curse that is vampirism is controlling the endless thirst for blood.  This craving can be compared very closely to drug addiction, where the vampire in question is constantly in agonizing internal conflict about whether or not it is morally right to give in and experience their next blood-fueled kick.  It is a part of the vampire medium that tragically is not spoken about too much, and seriously I do not know why.

  Besides being creatures of dark mystery, vampires are unique for still showing traits of their lost humanism from time to time.  This trait makes the vampire character in question much more complex, and adds just enough humanism to not take away from the supernatural angle of the monster.  The endless bloodlust is a small element of this remaining humanism that gives the vampire character a healthy amount of internal conflict for the audience to get behind.  It is this addictive bloodlust that make vampire characters just relatable enough for the audience to like, even if they are to act as the main antagonist of the narrative in question.  Adding this small amount of conflict into these vampire characters is an element that many authors wrongly miss out upon just to create a more lustful unneeded romance story.

Please do not misunderstand at all though that I think the bloodlust depicted in the Twilight vampires is at all perfect.  Though I think the conflict is perfectly explored in the first two books, by the time Eclipse comes along, this element of the lore starts to strangely get ignored for the sake of plot convenience.  If you want a great example of this aspect of vampire stories, I highly recommend reading Interview with the Vampire in place of Twilight.  The book in question does a much better job of depicting this internal conflict in full force throughout the plot, with the cast of vampires actually facing dire consequences for giving into their addictive habits.  All Twilight really does is hint heavily at the bloodlust playing a huge part in the plot only to abandon it completely to make the cast look more pure.

  The endless hunger for blood in vampires needs to be more implemented into fiction.  Not only does it create great internal conflict for the vampire characters in question, but makes these mysterious monsters just complex enough to make them into potentially terrifying villains with more relatable motives.