Upcoming Fanfiction.net Project

I am currently writing a short and fast-paced fanfic based on the Underworld movies. I have enjoyed the vampires versus werewolves saga since the first movie came out in 2003. This was the same year Evanescence's pseudo-gothic image was all the rage and I was one of their angst-ridden teen fans that followed the raven-haired frontwoman to the franchise's fandom.

Now that I am older and more critical of anything in pop culture, I have noticed that while Underworld remains to be a halfway effective narrative of how love conquers all, the plot, especially that of the first movie, is flawed and muddled. The marketing was misleading. The only reason the franchise is so successful is the generous amount of sex and violence in the films.

Girl with Guns makes effective Freudian imagery in film, too.

Its conventional portrayal of vampires and werewolves also became a breath of fresh air as the release of the sequels coincided with the Twilight films.

Yeah..

But in my most recent viewing of the first Underworld film, I realized that the plot was contrived and complicated. Why doesn't anybody believe Selene when she established herself to be a dedicated (albeit obsessive) Death Dealer? What is Kraven's motivation to keep Lucian's presence a secret when Lucian's whole mission is to destroy vampires? Why doesn't anybody join Selene in her investigation that Kraven is conspiring with Lucian? Since she turned out to be correct even with little evidence, couldn't the narrative have gone a little quicker? More importantly: Why are Selene and Michael in love? And how is the Romeo and Juliet concept supposed to work when Michael is a neutral party and victim of circumstances the whole time?

Underworld creator Kevin Grevioux (werewolf Raze in the first and third movies) came up with the concept after a romantic relationship with a white woman, which was met with disapproval from both his and his girlfriend's loved ones. So why not have Raze be Selene's lover instead of Michael? Raze has been Lucian's second-in-command for centuries and Selene has been a ruthless Death Dealer for centuries. Wouldn't it be more interesting and compelling if an unlikely alliance between them blossoms into a forbidden love affair they have to fight for? I think the fact that Raze is a black man drives the point further.

Read my fics and watch out for new ones here: https://www.fanfiction.net/~aeshnalacrymosa

Reading Anne Rice

When I read the Penguin Classics publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula at the age of 13, I officially proclaimed myself a vampire fan. That was after I had watched the novel’s 1992 film adaptation, which was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. I loved the movie for its awesomeness and smooth storytelling; I loved the movie even more after I’ve read the book, because then, I had a better understanding of the vampire myth.

Unfortunately, despite my claims of becoming a vampire fan, Dracula remained to be the only sample of vampire literature that I actually read.

A few years passed, and many vampire movies became popular. I’ve watched Van Helsing, which I expected to be a mind-blowing back story for Abraham Van Helsing but turned out to be a fanfic crossover of Dracula and Frankenstein, (Seriously, where the hell did Victor come from?! Igor isn’t even supposed to be there!) AND disregarded a few facts about Dracula (only a werewolf can kill him?—puh-lease!) AND threw Abraham van Helsing out of the window. I came across trailers of Underworld and Blade, but never got to watch the movies. After such a time, I felt like I'm not worthy to call myself a fan of the vampire literature.

So, after finally watching the Interview with the Vampire movie, Nosferatu, and a few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood, I decided to pick up Anne Rice’s most popular work. I’ve read and heard people claiming that it’s the next best thing after Dracula, but I also encountered negative opinions. A classmate of mine claimed she didn’t like Anne Rice, but I didn’t ask her why, because I didn’t want to expose myself to negative opinion before making some of my own. Unfortunately, I have been exposed to some on YouTube, but the negative comments about Anne Rice turned out to be pretty tame.

Most of such comments basically said that Anne Rice is long-winded. I am now halfway through Interview, so now I can see what annoys some of its readers and fans. As it clearly explains on the title, it is an interview—a human interviewing a vampire in order to delve into the mind of a vampire, who somehow deviates from the evil vampire stereotype: Louis de Pointe du Lac, who is deeply in touch with his human nature, complains about killing people (and is ashamed of doing it even for the sake of his own existence) and the pains of immortality. It is a fresh story, and people love it for that new taste; however, it is an interview, so it should look like one. But as it approaches the middle of the story, it becomes more like a first-person narrative punctuated by questions from the human interviewer, which gradually becomes less and less essential because Louis seems to drone on and on as if he can tell the story on his own without the need for questions to continue.

At some point, I wondered if having the entire narrative in first-person point of view would have been better, because by the middle, when everything grew more and more intense, it didn’t sound like an interview anymore. It didn’t look like somebody telling a story to somebody else. After all, who would tell a story from over a hundred years ago with complete dialog and explicit detail?—and in an actual conversation, no less?