Why we play Vampires and other Dead Things rather than Fairy Oysters.

If you were looking for a hard answer to this simple question, then you are not paying attention to yourself. In fact, you would not be on this website if you preferred Fairy Oysters – whatever the hell those are.

We play creatures of the night because they are far more powerful phantoms of our own frustrated need to overpower our demons than are everyday people. We can be superhuman in strength, in emotion, in pathos and angst while playing out our fantasies of overcoming all the nasty things that happen to us; things that we cannot control or overcome. Vampires have become the sensuous super people of dreams. Lycans and demons and vampires – all dead and yet somehow more alive than our counterparts – become our placeholders. In them we find satisfaction where life offers helpless frustrations.

This isn’t a bad thing, especially if you are able to see it. In this revelation we can relax – even overcome. But let’s not lie to ourselves. We do it to feel powerful. We do it to live lives we are not otherwise able to live.

Sometimes, like those men who say that they read Playboy for the articles, we imagine that it is entirely a literary exercise. Were that true, we would not come back time and again to reprise our roles. It’s not really for the writing with most people. If it were, then writing would improve and change, evolve and seek new ground, become deeper and more artistic. Sometimes we do that – at other times we just fall back on the same old devices that work at protecting us from feeling our own weaknesses, desiring power in a world where power is an evil and we have little of it.

I love this genre, and I enjoy writing in worlds that make sense to me. I suspect that you do, too. It is interesting, otherworldly and liberating. I say, let’s enjoy this liberation.

In the end, though, we need to also understand that we love to read and we love to write. We all want to be recognized for those extraordinary moments when the writing is fantastic, wonderful and glowing – to transcend somehow beyond ourselves; to truly be purveyors of fiction, stories, plots and amazing characters.

I see nothing wrong with this so long as we grow and learn. If we don't, then we’re like porn sites – the same self-satisfying stuff that never changes, plays on the basest of animal needs and ignores that there is higher ground on which to explore. Sex satisfies - love overcomes.

This is an essay, not an indictment. We have a great deal of remarkable writing going on here, and we have some average stuff wrapped in colors, inventive presentation, and purple prose offered up as though it was poetry.

We should not be full of ourselves, but rather full of the mystery and adventure that comes from collaborative writing – writing in a venue where we can never quite know what is coming next, never fully predict where the other characters might go or how they might react. In a perfect collaborative writing world, we imagine where things are going and are surprised when they go somewhere else. It’s like reading a good book or watching a good movie – it’s those gasp moments when we laugh or cry because together we have created something greater than the parts. At the same time, we know that the rules of those worlds, their physics, are immutable. It is in that very paradox that we are relieved of our fears and our sometimes feelings of powerlessness or emptiness. We know what to expect, yet never expect what might actually happen.

We play dead things and magical beings because they give us power and they usher us into danger and safety. They give us the liberty to explore new worlds, hopeful relationships, poignant disappointments and powerful moments of vengeance and mercy.

Would that life gave us these things. It does, but often in the worst possible ways. Instead, we create worlds where we can know love and pain, anger and revenge, devious and harmonious plots, and characters that enable and define us – who do not question what they are in the way that we question ourselves.

I love this. Without it, I think life would be paler and less satisfying – and far less tolerable. We write better worlds – worlds where the individual actually means something – worlds where danger is an advantage, and where love conquers all.

Very well said, my friend! I thoroughly enjoyed reading your thoughts on the subject.

Quoting Valis on 06/29/2010 11:22:27 We should not be full of ourselves, but rather full of the mystery and adventure that comes from collaborative writing – writing in a venue where we can never quite know what is coming next, never fully predict where the other characters might go or how they might react. In a perfect collaborative writing world, we imagine where things are going and are surprised when they go somewhere else. It’s like reading a good book or watching a good movie – it’s those gasp moments when we laugh or cry because together we have created something greater than the parts. At the same time, we know that the rules of those worlds, their physics, are immutable. It is in that very paradox that we are relieved of our fears and our sometimes feelings of powerlessness or emptiness. We know what to expect, yet never expect what might actually happen.

I can't come up with appropriate commentary.  I can't top it.  I can only highlight this and second it strongly.

I have nothing else to say but, I agree.