Writing Tips and Reviews

Let's Talk About Vampire Stories

If you think I'm going to talk about Twilight then get that out of your mind right now. 

I'm not the biggest fan of vampire stories, they're copy and paste formulas if nothing else. Meaning that there's a couple ways that the story is done and anything else is rare. In most cases it's about vampires taking over the world and humans trying to either coexist or wipe them out. And most of the time love between a vampire and a human takes center stage. Looking at you Crusade Series. Those books were so boring to me, I don't care about your love triangle then the third party dies or whatever happened to him. Not interested.

So why bring up this poor excuse of a genre that is so copy and paste that a four year old could make a hit novel on it? Code Vein. If you don't know yet, I'm obsessed with Code Vein, the story, the characters, the world, all of it is just amazing. It's like a vampire story but there's no human revolution, no love between human and vampire, none of that copy and paste that every vampire story has.

The vampires, revenants, are creatures created to combat the QUEEN, a being who was feared and hated by everyone. Their purpose afterwards was survival, finding blood beads (a human blood substitute) to keep themselves from losing their humanity and becoming a lost.

While there is conflict between humans and the revenants, it's about what rights do humans have in a world like that and what revenants have to do to protect the humans. Humans are rare in this game, you meet one in the entire game and she's scared to death of revenants due to how they treated her. While it is about humans becoming sources of blood, they're not only that. When she met Louis and his team, he treated her like any other person saying "I believe there has been enough sacrifice" meaning he doesn't want her killed or treated poorly.

This highly differs from the usual "eliminate humans" or "make them slaves" mindset writers have given vampires in their stories. Even following the vampires is rare in this genre as it's the humans we usually watch go through hardships. Vampire Knight, Seraph of the End, Shiki, yes Twilight and the Crusade series for western media, all focus on the human protagonists. While in different ways, it's all really the same. Vampires have taken over and humans either try to coexist with or exterminate the vampires.

We get none of that with Code Vein and it's refreshing. We get to know the characters and how they don't want to become a lost or lose their human memories. As Yakumo says "I'll look like a revenant, but on the inside I'd be the same as the lost." We never get to see conflict like that in vampire stories. One vampire maybe, but not the entire species. They're afraid of dying permanently, they're afraid of turning into the lost, they're afraid of losing everything that makes them still have their humanity.

Oh that's right, I haven't mentioned that each time they "die", really their body's cells separate and go back together when it's safe, they can lose a memory. So that's a big piece of making them sympathetic. Most vampire stories focus on the vampires being the bad guys, they're the ones who enslaved humanity for reasons of drinking blood, they see themselves as the "better" race. Like I said, it's become copy and paste.

Seeing the struggles of the revenants makes them sympathetic and human. They're closer to humans than the stereotypical vampires. Some of them are asses, some are nice, some are fearful, these are shown in humans in typical vampire stories but in Code Vein it's shown in the revenants. Most of the time when people show a sympathetic vampire, it's one who didn't want to become a vampire, or the one who fell in love with the human. They never go into the others of the species because those vampires are supposed to be evil and nothing else.

Shiki is the only vampire story I've seen to do something like Code Vein. But it is the final episodes so it's not really all the exciting.

There's no conflict between humans and vampires in Code Vein, it doesn't need that to be a good story. It explores what it means to become a revenant and the difficulties that come with wanting to stay yourself. The enemies are the lost, the heroes are those who are looking for a better future for both humans and revenants. Both species are suffering so the heroes are trying to find a way to find peace between the two. While it sounds like the typical coexisting formula, it's not. There's no fight between humans and revenants, revenants aren't the bad guys who enslaved humans. Instead, it's the red mist that enslaved them and it's the lost who are the bad guys. Both elements that are out of control.

So, that's all you need to make a good vampire story. Be creative, if you copy and paste a formula it's going to get old. Mix in new ideas, new themes, new ways to change up the story. Branch out. Be more adventurous like Code Vein.