I don’t understand the point…
…of questions like this.
How is a blood slurping guy (vampire) sexy? … Just wondering what the appeal is?
Grr. You don’t like it? Fine. It seems to me that questions like that are not borne out of genuine curiosity, but a need to display disgust. Or to garner attention. They are the second cousin to the “Am I the only one…?” questions. (No, you aren’t.)
Why does anyone have to explain why they like something? It’s like saying, “why do you like ice cream* — it’s discharge from a cow tit!”
*Which is also cold; and often, white. Aside: yes, I’m tired.
Or is it just another symptom of the paranormal glut in the market? Is it borne of frustration, perhaps? I guess that’s kind of how I felt when Westerns were so popular: Can someone please explain to me what the appeal of a cowboy is? They’re always so effin’ dirty!
ETA:
Okay, here’s my real answer: Drinking blood is sex. Pure and simple (okay, not simple, but still). It’s intimate, it’s surrender, it’s procreation, and it’s been that way since Polidori made his vampire an aristocratic monster instead of a ragged, disgusting peasant. Before 1820, a vampire would never make a good romance hero. After Polidori, after Stoker–hell yeah, they do.
The difference isn’t as much in the vampires, but in Society. Dracula was sex. He was dark uncontrollable need and desire. But, in 1890s Victorian England, that wasn’t such a virtue.
Poor Lucy, she just had to die. Why? Because she was figuratively fornicating with three men (naughty girl!) when she allowed her three suitors to give her a blood transfusion. Succumbing to Dracula wasn’t her only sin…she had three guys at once, too. No wonder they had to cut her head off.
Miss Aubrey in The Vampyre? Killed by Lord Ruthven, yes — but at the hands of the vampire, it made it much more than just death. It was ruin. In Regency times, we all know what that means. And poor Aubrey, driven too mad by Ruthven and his memories and his promise and what happened to the poor little innocent Greek girl (you just know it wasn’t just her blood Ruthven took in the forest), he just couldn’t stop it.
So vampires, and the drinking of blood: that’s sex. Sex, sex, sex. And, in modern times, without the ‘dirty’ attached to sex, without the ‘ruin’, without the threat of ETERNAL DAMNATION…that surrender, the exchange, the release, the feeding…it’s all part of the fantasy of romance. Particularly, I think, erotic-y romance. Throw in immortality, the promise of eternal love, the power and the dark beauty, the danger…and you’ve got a fantastic hero (or heroine.)
It’s not a fantasy that appeals to everyone, of course. But here’s my question: how can you not think vampires are sexy?
