Vampires suck

I’ve recently delved back into the world of the Wamphyri.  I picked up a copy of Brian Lumley’s Necroscope: Invaders, which is a series of his I hadn’t read.  Something caught my eye as I was putting the book down last night.  On the dust cover was a quote from some literary magazine about how Lumley returns vampires to their roots, treating them as the monsters they are instead of like rock stars.  That’s very true; wamphyri are truly Lovecraftian monstrosities in Lumley’s work (like we’d expect anything less from one of the most prominent mythos authors).  However, it got me thinking about the current glut of “sexy vamps” that have taken over the genre.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I attended MarCon this year at the Hyatt Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio.  I happen to live in Columbus, so it was pretty convenient.  At the con, one of the panels was specifically for writers, and one of the guests was a lovely woman who happened to be an agent who represented “Supernatural Romance” authors.  Huh…supernatural romance…is that a thing now?  Later I noticed a shelf at the local used book store labeled “supernatural romance”.  Hmm, o.k.  That shelf has expanded into a whole case now, and is threatening to squeeze out the regular horror selections.  That shelf is filled with Laura K. Hamilton novels, the True Blood novels, and yes, the horrible Twilight novels, among about a hundred knock-offs.

I’ve heard plenty of people who say, “vampires are so over played.”  They’re right, at least in party.  These “sexy vamps” are over played, and there is only one true culprit behind all of this.  That’s right…the reason vampires are sparkly nonsense now is…Joss Whedon.

Evil bloodsucker or beefcake?

I am a huge fan of Buffy, and Spike, the bad boy vamp turned hero, is one of my favorite characters.  But I realize now, that was the gateway to the Cullens and other pansy-vamps we have today.  Never mind that Spike (or his inferior counterpart, Angel) would beat the unliving crap out of any of the sparkle-vamps.  The point is, they were the romantic vampires that led to the Harlequin stories we have today.

Damn you Joss Whedon!

The truth is, though, Joss never lost sight of the fact that vampires, as a whole, were an unrepentant evil.  Drusilla, as an example, or the Master; these were evil, soulless beings who feasted on human blood.  There was even an episode that explored the dangers of humans foolishly worshiping vampires as dark souls in need of companionship.  That episode starred a quite evil Spike, in fact, feeding his way through the idiots.

Where did this get lost?  Was it simply in the repressed Mormon wet dreams of Stephanie Meyers?  It would be easy to blame this shift to romanticize vampires on the influx of female writers in the horror field, but that’s not at all fair.  There are plenty of female authors who write about monstrous vampires who rape and pillage their way through the text.  It’s also not at all a female thing – see the above Joss Whedon, who has a penis the last time I checked.  (O.k., I’ve never checked…but I do assume…it’s the beard, gives it away.)

No, the blame falls in two places.  First, the publishers, who like anyone who runs a business, believe that there’s safety in the familiar.  People have been buying romance novels for years.  Add a vampire and it still sells, only now it sells to the horror fan crowd as well.  Second, of course, is us, the consumers.  If Twilight had bombed on the book shelves, there wouldn’t be a movie and media blitz campaign for it.  But people bought it up by the truckload.  The fact that most of the folks who purchased the books happen to be of the ovarian persuasion isn’t a reflection on the gender.  Rather, it’s a reflection on how repressed so many women are in feeling they can’t reach out to more legitimate horror tropes.

Monsters are a man’s sport, apparently.  No reason they should be, but unless you put the monster into a romantic relationship, women don’t feel comfortable with the story.  That, again, is not a gender issue, it’s a society issue.  Boys who play with dolls are made fun of.  Little girls who read horror stories get the same treatment.  But wait, it’s a horror story about a teenage girl in love with a vampire!  Oh, NOW it’s o.k., just like giving a little boy a doll in army greens and a plastic machine gun makes it totally cool for him to play with it.

Lumley gets it

I guess my rambling point here is that vampires, as a genre, aren’t really over played or need to go away.  We just need to get back to what they really are: blood sucking monsters who kill people because they can.

 

Very Good Writing – Why Loki Won in The Avengers

Spoiler Alert!  Avoid reading this post if you haven’t seen The Avengers.

No really, look away!

O.k., let’s talk about The Avengers, the highest grossing movie so far this year, and the movie on track to potentially unseat James Cameron’s Avatar as highest grossing movie of all time.  Specifically, I want to talk about the writing and Loki, the film’s key villain.  More specifically, I want to explain how Joss Whedon managed to write the perfect Xanatos Gambit.

For those who don’t know or didn’t click the link above, a Xanatos Gambit (named for the villain Xanatos from Disney’s Gargoyles cartoon) is a plan that literally cannot fail because win or lose, the villain wins.  This is one of those “I wanted you to beat me all along” scenarios, where defeating the villain somehow means the hero still loses.  This isn’t changing your plans to compensate or getting lucky, this is planning all along for every possible outcome to lead to what you want.  And Loki in the Avengers does so perfectly.

First, let’s get some background on Loki, God of Mischief and Lies.  Check out that title – he’s the god of lies.  Now in both the Marvel cinematic and comic book universes, being a “god” doesn’t really make you the embodiment of whatever you’re the god of; the comic book universe DOES have those things (Death, Eternity, Aeon, etc.) and the cinematic universe may gain those things (based on the Thanos cameo), but generally Thor is not the embodiment of thunder, and Hercules isn’t the embodiment of strength, etc.  It’s just what they’re really good at, because they are actually alien beings from another dimension.  Loki, then, is not the embodiment of lies and mischief, but he’s really good at it.

Loki really has only one goal in life – take over Asgard.  He wants to rule.  He feels Thor, his half brother, is not fit to take over for Odin and he wants that power for himself.  Loki does not care one wit about Midgard (aka Earth).  He’ll put it in peril to distract Thor, but Loki is all about controlling Asgard.  Re-read those last two sentences – Loki doesn’t care about Earth!  So why, in The Avengers, is he trying to take over?  That very question is asked by Tony Stark during the penthouse scene.  Tony comes very close to puzzling it out, but Loki distracts him with his villainy goodness (badness?).  Why does Loki was to rule Earth?  And what Earth would be left to rule with the Chitauri tearing it all up?  What throne is he looking for?

The answer, of course, is that Loki doesn’t want to rule Earth.  He doesn’t care about it.  He never did.  He allowed himself to be captured, he allowed himself to be defeated (and yeah, Hulk smashed him good, but he didn’t have to stick around for the big fight).  It was all part of his plan.

Let’s examine that plan: first, Loki appears and steals the tesseract.  Why?  Well, to set things in motion.  He knew stealing the cube would cause Nick Fury to call in the Avengers.  Remember the ending of Thor – he’s been spying on the whole operation for some time now.  Then, Loki gets captured.  He clearly could have escaped, but instead he let himself be taken.  Cap and Tony mention this on the Quinjet just before Thor shows up, and Black Widow eventually gets from Loki what his plan is – to set off the Hulk on the helicarrier.  Only Loki is the god of lies…you think he really got played by the Black Widow?  Nope, he WANTED them to know what the plan was.  Then when it happens, and the Hulk goes berserk, they blame it on Loki and it really brings the team together.

And that’s what Loki wanted.

See, Loki wanted them to defeat the Chitauri.  He wanted to lose the battle in New York.  Why?  So he could be taken back to Asgard.  That was his plan all along.  He never cared about conquering Earth.  He never cared about defeating the Avengers.  He just wanted a ride back to his home, the place he DOES want to conquer.  And he got it, first class accommodations right back to Asgard.  You can even see the smirk at the end when he’s got the gag on.  It’s in his eyes.  He won, and the heroes all thought they did.  What better than to beat your enemies and make them think they won?

Now you may ask why Loki would betray Thanos in such a way.  I mean, Big Purple is no one to mess around with.  But I think Thanos was the co-architect of this plan.  Why?  Because he wants Loki back in Asgard too.  Just sending him back wouldn’t work – Loki has to be brought back by Thor so that Odin does not suspect he’s still working with Thanos.  See, with Loki back in Asgard, and knowing that Odin feels incredibly guilty about Loki in general and usually lets him off with little more than a slap to the wrist, Thanos has the perfect operative within striking distance of the one thing in the whole universe he REALLY wants (well, more than Death).

What is it Thanos wants?  Did you miss it when you saw Thor?  It’s easy to miss, but…

That’s right…in Odin’t vault is none other than the Infinity Gauntlet.  And now Loki is right there, and he broke into it before without much trouble.  Loki losing to the Avengers was the best possible outcome for both Loki, who can now try to take over Asgard again, and Thanos, who now has potential access to the Infinity Gauntlet.

The bad guys won this round, and meanwhile the heroes are off eating Shwarma and thinking they won.

And all of this points to one thing – Joss Whedon is a fucking genius.  This is Machiavellian planning at its best, and the payoff clearly won’t come until at least Thor 2 or Avengers 2.  It’s a perfect set up, and with luck we’ll eventually see that the “win” in the Avengers was actually a loss.  Of course, that’s not to say the heroes didn’t really win anything.  They did…because while the battle was nothing more than an elaborate smoke and mirrors to get Loki back to Asgard, the formation of the Avengers is actually the biggest win for the side of good you could hope for.

It’s all about the long game, and writers who understand and can use it.

 

The best movie of 2012 will be Cabin in the Woods

O.k., so you might know about this movie that Joss Whedon is heavily involved in, planned for this summer, which will likely be one of the best movies ever.  No, not the Avengers (though I do have high hopes it will be awesome).  I’m talking about Cabin in the Woods, the movie written and directed by Drew Goddard and co-written and produced by Joss Whedon.

The movie is about a group of teens who go to a cabin in the woods and die horrible deaths.

Actually, that’s not quite true – that’s just the premise.  The actual story involves a lot more than that, including some white collar scientist/NASA types, and, according to folks who have seen the movie, is like an extra long episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Should we be surprised?  Drew Goddard was one of the writers for both Buffy and Angel, and his producer and co-writer is Joss “Geek God” Whedon.  Goddard is also the writer of Cloverfield, which vomit inducing shaky cam aside, wasn’t a bad movie.

But there’s more, my friends.  Look at this picture of the titular (I love that word) cabin:

Look familiar?  Does this help?

JOIN US!

That’s right, you primitive screwheads, the cabin is clearly a love note to Evil Dead.  You have Joss Whedon, Drew Goddard, and now Evil Dead.  Can this movie suck? I don’t think so!

Additionally, this movie is meant to serve as Goddard’s and Whedon’s stand against horror movies sliding more and more into “torture porn”, a cause I wholeheartedly endorse.   Joss said, “The things that I don’t like are kids acting like idiots, the devolution of the horror movie into torture porn and into a long series of sadistic comeuppances.”  Hell yes, My Master…er…Joss.  Hell yes.

Go see this film when it comes out next month.  You won’t be disappointed.