In which Spike has opinions.

For those not familiar, Spike is one of my headmates. Which means that he's technically "not real," but don't let that bother you, because he's got something to say.

Now, by that I don't mean that I have something to say but I'm hiding behind Spike because I think that this opinion is silly or something to be ashamed of. Frankly, it takes a tremendous amount of courage (and a real willingness to risk looking like an asshole) to admit that you have a headmate with his own opinions in the first place, much less that he is a vampire.

Did I mention that he is that Spike? In fact, he is. Not literally; that's the mental form he takes.

And oh, yes, he has opinions.

Spike has loads of opinions, but the opinion that we're presenting now - and if you don't want to hear it, feel free to stop reading/unfollow/whatever - concerns modern media.

Spike's not a perfect guy, you know. It's not even on his list of ambitions, which run mainly toward "eat, do whatever the heck you want, repeat as necessary." So he's not big on the whole social justice thing.

However, he HATES vampire stories.

According to Spike, vampire stories are nearly always messed up in some way. Taking a cue from the concept of the "male gaze" as described by feminists, he attributes this to an effect he calls the "human gaze."

Basically, very few movies about vampires are written by anyone who actually gives a shit about vampires. They're written to entertain humans. So the vampires are made out of whatever mythos people think are neat or funny or catchy, they talk with funny accents and get into ridiculous relationships with humans *cough* (Spike begins communicating directly now) - no, see, the kind of humans that a vampire would break just as soon as look at, because our self-control isn't that good. Unless we're being human, which is another story entirely. But yeah, you've got this vampire character who sees this human for five minutes, decides he's in love, spends four books trying not to eat her and you just wish he'd put her out of his misery already.

Or else the vampire is some big, bad villain who's out to get some helpless maiden - Jason Patric counts in that - and it's up to the heroic human man to save her from certain death at the hands of Count Large Ham. Of course, he dies. It's usually a he. Though for some reason woman vampires are all preying on other women, as well. No respect for the fact that a real vampire woman could take out a 6'4 male bodybuilder if she put her mind to it, no, the victim has to be someone that a human woman could take on. It's bullshit.

If he's not the Big Bad Villain, there are only a few other roles: the Seductress (basically the same as the BBV but with tits and a lot of hair), the generic, probably-not-even-sentient mook type (seen in 30 Days of Night and there's a bit of that going on in The Lost Boys as well, not to mention Buffy; let me tell you, the creators of that show are slanted), and of course the "good" vampire; usually the same romantic lead I talked about earlier, he might eat people but he hates it, or he lives on animal blood (you know, to make his heroism more palatable to the audience), and just to prove that he's really not a bad guy he tends to embark on some quest to become human. If he can't, he just spends every possible minute reminding his audience that he really, really would be human if he could.

The other recourse is to do a story from the point of view of a human who as just gotten turned into a vampire, and has to learn to cope with OH MY GOD, BEING UNDEAD and basically it turns into one colossal excuse to fill the story with teen-age angst fits. You know, we do have those, but I'm not exactly happy with humans putting them on display for their own enjoyment. That's really sick.

Anyway, the point is, it's always really about the humans. Human wish fulfillment. Humans overcoming some big, shadowy demon in order to earn their place as a man. Or just proving how utterly fucking amazing they are by taking out one of Humanity's oldest fears. Humans using vampires as a cheap replacement for whatever kind of romance is taboo during their time. Dear Mrs. Rice and your thinly-veiled gay stand-ins: who's supposed to stand in for the gay vampires? No one, that's who. It doesn't work.

You never hear about the day-to-day lives of vampires. Stories are never told from our point of view unless we pass some ridiculous standard of heroism set by humans. More often than not, we die, because no one really knows what to do with a vampire who is unapologetically a vampire after the end of the story. You've got to change - learn to play by their rules - or you die. Hell, learn to play by the rules and you'll probably die anyway, because how else is a good heroic vampire supposed to redeem himself?

Oh, and don't even get me started about the few stories that do try to get it from our perspective. Vampire Diaries. Vampire Knight. That's not realistic. It's nothing but wish fulfillment, a glamorization of vampire lives; it has nothing to do with how we live and everything to do with humans looking for a socially-acceptable medium to express their vicarious hedonism. Sorry to be the one to break it to everybody, but real life was never so interesting. And it's pretty fucked up of you to think you can keep pretending otherwise just because you, personally, don't know any vampires.

Thank you for your time, you probably think this is complete bullshit and I don't have a leg to stand on because oh, gee whiz, I'm actually an imaginary person and I just inconveniently forgot about that in earshot of real human beings. It's okay. I'm ready for it.

A Breakdown Of "I Kissed A Vampire"

"I Kissed A Vampire" is a web musical that spans three episodes. Directed by Chris Sean Nolan (not to be confused with Christopher Nolan), and starring a whole slew of white people, it tells the story of confused teenage vampire Dylan, his girlfriend Sarah, and Dylan's self-appointed mentor vampire Trey.

Dylan is played by Lucas Grabeel. Those who have seen the High School Musical films know him as Ryan Evans, Sharpay's fey underdog of a brother. Sarah is the adorable Adrian Slade, who previously had not done any film acting but has a history in theatre. And Trey is filmed by Andrew Seeley, the singer who filled in for n00b Zac Efron in the first HSM film and a decent actor in his own right.

The first episode opens with Dylan, angsting about his newly-acquired vampirehood. Not only is he having problems with fangs and blood cravings, but he's really worried about his best friend and proto-girlfriend, Sarah. Any time they get too close, he gets a sudden urge to go for her neck and the whole thing gets awkward. It's a simple and obvious allegory for teenage sexuality and the Awkward Boner, but it works well enough. He performs the song "Outta My Head," expressing his regret that he can't get close to Sarah but also can't stand to be apart from her, with plenty of imagery that seems to be borne of his vision of himself as an intrinsically corrupted and dangerous thing.

After that, the story switches to Sarah, who expresses herself with "Forbidden Planet." The song, with an interesting mixture of aggressive and submissive imagery, conveys the fact that Sarah is very much in love with Dylan and really, really wants to just get it on with him already, but his avoidant behavior is leaving her confused and frustrated. Finally, she decides to visit him and find out what's going on already.

The end of the episode introduces Trey, and the beginning of the second episode fleshes him out. Trey's basically the opposite of Dylan. He's confident, to the point where he is aggressively sexual, and tries to encourage Dylan to be the same way. The song "Love's In Vein" is pretty much Trey's ode to casual sex, implying that a monogamous relationship is a waste of time and that what Dylan should really be doing is sowing some wild oats, with a backup dance crew of seductive lady vampires to drive the point home. Dylan's not into it, which frustrates Trey.

Who should show up at this point but Sarah? She's here and she wants to know why Dylan's being so weird. Trey, sensing opportunity, decides to use Sarah to try to manipulate Dylan into vamping out, and uses his vampire powers of hypnosis to convince her to come to a party. Dylan is against it, but Sarah, under Trey's influence, advises Dylan to "live a little" and they leave.

The third episode opens at the party, where Trey's backup dancers are revealed to be his harem of hypersexual vampires. Trey gives Sarah a drugged drink, then encourages Dylan to take advantage of her altered mental state and kiss her. Dylan refuses at first, but when Trey pushes him he goes for it. His fangs come out again, though, and he stops himself. Trey gets frustrated and decides to seduce (read: rape) Sarah himself. Through the song "Just A Little Peck," Trey and Sarah dance and flirt with one another while Dylan, who is being held back by the dancers, continues to angst about the possibility of hurting Sarah.

The scenario climaxes when Trey starts to bite Sarah, which gives Dylan the courage to break free of the dancers and fight him off. This apparently causes Sarah to snap out of the effect of her drink, and she asks Dylan what's going on. Avoiding the topic of vampires, he instead goes on the "confession of love" tack, and Sarah kisses him. The last song, "Happily Afterlife," consists of Sarah and Dylan vowing to be together forever, no matter what weird stuff might happen.

It's pretty silly, but it's also very interesting, which I will now get into.

First of all, you have Dylan. Realistically speaking, there's nothing groundbreaking about this character; he's the typical virgin whose horny best friend is encouraging him to do something he's not ready for (straight out of an 80's movie.)

However, his character is important, both as a role model to teenage boys and an example of a genuinely good (i.e., safe and dateable) vampire boyfriend for young women.

Dylan's character bears a great deal of similarity to the better-known Edward Cullen, whose refusal to have sex with his girlfriend is only matched by his determination to control everything she does for her own "safety" - manipulative at best, abusive at worst. Dylan, on the other hand, is against manipulating Sarah in any way. Certainly he does not find it necessary in the end to terminate their relationship just because there is a chance that she might be hurt.

The downside to this is that he doesn't give her a chance to terminate the relationship based on that, though. He avoids letting Sarah know that he is a vampire repeatedly. This is largely because he's convinced she won't believe him, but it has the unintended side effect of removing her ability to make an informed decision and is NOT COOL, GUISE.

Sarah is, without a doubt, my favorite character. When she's first introduced, she is the epitome of what white teenage femininity is "supposed" to be - wholesome, blonde, yadda. But within a short time of her introduction she is revealed to be quite sexual, and unapologetically so. Yet she is never portrayed as a "slut" - in fact, the clothes she wears in sexually-aggressive mode are almost as wholesome and modest as her regular outfit. She's a good girl who also has needs and isn't afraid to vocalize them.

Again I feel the need to compare the story to Twilight, as its mortal, vampire-loving heroine is also wholesome-seeming but with a not insignificant sex drive. However, there's a huge difference between the stories. Whereas Bella's sexuality is portrayed as rashness, and Edward as a sort of hero who saves her from herself by refusing to have sex with her, Sarah's needs are shown to be valid and worthy of fulfillment.

Trey is the character whom I feel is most likely to be misinterpreted. This is because of certain traits that, to be honest, cause me some pretty mixed feelings. Basically, one way to look at Trey is as an incredibly powerful, confident, and dominant vampire - in other words, sex in a can. He's hot, no doubt about it. But he is also manipulative, misogynistic, self-centered, and an attempted rapist, and this is in no way a good thing.

My main problem with that is that I don't feel the story comes down hard enough on him for what he did. Dylan does stop him, but really he suffers no consequence for manipulating Sarah - in fact, while the main lovebirds are confessing their love for one another in the final number, Trey is in the background having fun with his harem. The message appears to be that Sarah isn't a toy, but all those nameless girls in the background are. The fact that the vampire women have a significantly "sluttier" appearance than Sarah - big, curled hair, sensuous movements, more pronounced makeup, and more revealing clothes - gives the unfortunate impression that any girl who acts in such a manner is fair game for an asshole's collection of sexually available women. Not awesome.

There's also the fact that the "good" characters have blonde hair - often used as a shorthand for purity - and the "bad" characters have brown hair, implying some kind of corruptitude. Yeah, right.

I have to say that I really have a soft spot for this musical. There are some unfortunate implications (a nice way of saying "harmful messages") in the story, but it's also got some good things in it, and the soundtrack kicks ass. So does Drew Seeley in that funerary suit, yes indeed.