Category:Our Vampires Are Different: Difference between revisions

|-|

Strengths=

** A variation of this is to give them their own unique "gifts" (telepathy, for example) that make them more distinct from their brethren, though all share the same aforementioned set of "normal" vampire powers.

** The original folklorish vamps were either disease ridden monstrosities or soul-sucking ghosts; in either case, their mere presence was likely to harm you, and though you could ward them off at night you couldn't actually kill them until the daylight hours, and sometimes you couldn't properly kill them at ''all'' since, being evil spirits, the best you could do is stop them from coming back.

** No heartbeat/breath. Sometimes the no breath thing means they can't do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but if they can talk, they must be able to take air into their lungs and expel it intentionally. Little logic problem there, but we're talking about ''vampires'' so logic should take the day off. However Vampires do not need to breathe, it seems to be a reflex they have left over from being alive hence they can never drown, suffocate, or be poisoned.

** No brain activity, [[True Blood|(making them easily recognized by telepaths)]].

** Body temperature: Vampires, being dead, are almost always at room temperature or colder.

* [[Immortality]]

** Technically, they are dead. Pretty [[The Undead|spry]] for a dead guy, though.

** Vampires don't age as we mortals do. Sometimes, this is genuine eternal youth. Sometimes long periods of time undead can result in a pretty inhuman-looking character. Sometimes, they age like us, just at a much slower rate.

 

A work will usually address these baseline rules even if they're not enforced. Sometimes an unused rule will be explained away as a [[Fake Weakness]] propagated by the vampires themselves.

* Can pass through locked doors. Can sometimes alter their bodies to slip ''through'' impossibly small spaces.

* [[Vampire Invitation|Cannot enter certain locations, especially homes, without invitation]].

* If killed, can be restored to unlife with the proper procedure. One early version of this, appearing in both pre-Dracula stories ''[[The Vampyre]]'' and ''Varney the Vampyre'', is that a vampire will be revived and healed automatically if its corpse is bathed in moonlight.

* [[Evil-Detecting Dog|Animals react with fear or aggression]] towards them.

In Stoker's novel and earlier vampire lore, sunlight did not cause vampires to go up like flash paper. Several times in the novel, Dracula appears in broad daylight with no ill effects. He is simply incapable of using at least some of his vampiric powers during the daylight (he cannot change form except at dawn, noon and dusk, but still seems to be able to charm wolves to some degree). Sunlight causing a vampire to suffer pain and damage, glitter, smolder, or go up like a one man pyrotechnic band was pretty much wholly created by Hollywood, and specifically, by F.W. Murnau in ''Nosferatu'', the first film to use this idea and probably its inventor (which incidentally was made in 1922 in Germany, when a typical Hollywood film consisted of Buster Keaton being chased by a bunch of coppers).

 

 

Differences may be reinforced by [[Phantasy Spelling|spelling it "Vampir"]] or [[Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe|"Vampyre"]], or using [[Not Using the Z Word|a clever synonym]] like "nosferatu" "sanguinarian" or "strigoi". If the differences are emphasized by overt mocking of other authors and unused vampire tropes it becomes [[Your Vampires Suck]].