[2.07] Are vampyres REALLY the 'bad-guys'?

The idea that vampires are evil, or at the very least, bad guys, is fairly well established among the legends. Remember, the original vampires in lore were creatures that fed upon humans and usually killed them. Plagues and viral infections were sometimes ascribed to vampire attacks. The romantic vampires, as portrayed by Bela Lugosi and written about by Anne Rice were nowhere close to the rotting corpses that came and destroyed whole families (or sometimes whole villages) in the legends. As a result, the vampire didn't get a very good reputation.

It was postulated by some people (Calmet, for example) that vampires were souls who were so evil or lost that they were unable to go to the afterlife. The association with Satan or some other malicious force was easily made. However, beginning mostly with Bram Stoker and carried on throughout today, the vampire is perceived to be a highly erotic being who would rather seduce than kill. The original idea that the vampire exists for the sake of harming others is not very prevalent in modern literature. So the question "Are vampires evil?" depends upon the context. Today's stories postulate that the vampire doesn't need to kill to feed. As a result, the idea vampires are, by nature, 'evil' is misplaced today. In my opinion, vampires are no worse than some of the humans that we see on the news every night.

According to many Churches, because they directly relate to the taboo "For the blood is the life thereof" and ingest blood which is forbidden in the Old Testament and Torah (and probably the Koran as well). Vampires have been traditionally allied with demons and are seen as 'of the devil', not to mention that any form of theft is a sin, including that of energy.

In modern times Vampirism is seen as a lifestyle choice of consenting adults, that if conducted carefully and conscientiously, harms no-one...

...depending on where you live...

In some places the activities involved with bloodletting practices would make you liable for an assault charge.

Most people here take a non-judgemental approach to Vampires. There is no good and bad unless your actions hurt someone. It ties in with what you think a Vampire is, ultimately.

It's all a matter of perspective really, isn't it? Humans have long feared that which they do not understand, vampires easily fall within this category. This is where the notoriety comes from. To me no vampires are not the bad guys but beings doing what they need to survive.

Yes perception is everything. Man see’s good and evil nature doesn’t it’s just life.
Being a good murderer makes you a good soldier and defender of peace, it’s all perception.

I don't know if I agree with the assertion that is so popular now days, that the Vampire is the other thus it is one of our deep human fears. I do think that we as humans tend to deal with the 'other' parts of ourselves by driving them outside ourselves to fear face to face. If you think about it, the Vampire is a creature that greatly resembles ourselves in some ways. It is a creature that sustains itself on the blood of creatures lower on the food chain. I think that in some ways, the Vampire persists because it is a way that our brain deals with the fact that in order to survive, we must do the same. Feed upon other life, weather in animal, mineral or vegetable form. In that way, the Vampire is no different from a predator in any section of the world.

Its a shame that the Vampire almost always is the bad guy in much mainstream literature, but once again I think that is just a sort of societal angst about other humans that seem to have odd habits, particularly in the Modern age.

Vamps are not "bad guys" like movies and literature use to say.
This idea came from a culture that uses to create prejudice against anything that is different of their own conception of beauty.

I always saw vamps as a part of us, a part of human nature.As I grew up i was tottally convinced that vamps are humans and also spirits, because that are some vamps we don´t see.
But I never felt harmed by them, except in two times, by psy-vamps.

Besides, I relate well with them. They´re nice people as anyone else, they´re like me, but have different tastes, like blood for example.
And that´s all.

I say were like humans in the aspect of behavior and the one thing that's misrepesented is that in just about everything. We have Terrorist Vampires or "Bad Guys" just like we have.. our saints and those guide us to what we need to know to survive.

Hardly.
They seem evil by our society's standard of morality and humanity's concepts of good and evil. Humans themselves are vampires. They also take life to preserve their survival. I find it amusing how human vampires appear in modern literature, I find it particularly amusing in Rice's vampire chronicles. They claim to be evil and detached yet they still cling to a human morality. "Only hunt the evil doer." This philosophy also makes them appear hypocritical.
I don't see the vampire as a "evil" race because frankly I don't believe in such concepts. They are man-made inventions as far as i'm concerned. Like some in this thread said, perception.

smiles

HF