I'm fascinated at the disparity between a real thing, and how it's portrayed in popular culture, and the real life general consensus. Pop culture wishes it could dictate how people actually think and feel about certain things, but people still form their own opinions.
Vampires are generally thought of as Bela Lugosi "bluh bluh I vant to sahk yer blhaaad bleh" types, that are rich and can turn into bats. And they sleep in coffins and crumble into dust if the sunlight hits them (what about certain lightbulb types?), and they're killed by a stake to the heart.
Visual design is basically shorthand, to convey a lot of basic information real fast, to the viewer. That's why tropes and cliches are a thing, and why there are so many stock character types, in all stories. Speaking of, a hilarious thing is media has their own stock character types, but IRL, lots of people have a set of "stock characters" in their own heads about common types of people. And in a way that the MSM doesn't want.
(I'll have to link that text file about people types)
You know the Romanian Vampire. I mean that accent. It's kind of hard to clearly talk about national views of monsters and mythological things of other nationalities. That sentence is convoluted. Okay, so you know "Chinese Vampires", they're stiff corpses that hop around. They don't have eastern european accents and go "bluhhh bluhhh", and IDK what socioeconomic class Chinese Vampires are commonly thought of as being from.
The American concept of a generic stock Vampire, tends to have a Romanian accent and dialect. And they might hail from some Eastern European country like Transsexual Transylvania or something. Like how Americans have a general concept, of the stock white bedsheet ghost that says "boo". Chinese conceptions of ghosts are radically different from our view.
And then, the American concept of "stock psychoanalyst". What accent does he have? What does his hair look like? Is he Austrian and has crazy gray hair that sticks up funny? Why does he need an Austrian accent and wacky gray hair? Because he's basically a knockoff of Freud (fraud. also a scat rat and butt bandit), and Einstein (one "stone". also a sped. the whole thing's a joke.)
Why are Irish cartoon characters given red hair, when that's uncommon and most Irish people have brown hair? Because there was a really popular Irish actress ("ess") who is now forgotten, who had red hair. And people liked that, took it, and ran with it.
Why are American concepts of stock Vampires Eastern European and rich? Because that was a popular character from a popular movie, and thus knockoffs were made.
Turning into bats? Sounds like one of those "skinwalker" type stories. Harry Potter series had some thing about super advanced wizards of a rare skill set, being able to turn into animals. There are Mexican legends about witches that can turn into crows and fly away. There are British legends about witches turning into cats and rabbits.
But Vampires are fascinating, because they seem to be a dressed-up, fantastical version of something extremely plausible.
- Drink blood. Eating human flesh is optional.
- Wealthy, live in mansions.
- Can turn into small bats and fly around.
- Being exposed to sunlight kills them
- Stake through the heart...
Stake through the heart, you probably heard of Rasputin. Story goes, he was impossible to kill through poisoning, stabbing, bludgeoning, freezing, something like that (I didn't look it up. History's fake.), and the thing that killed him... Was pnumonia. Basically, a magical entity person, that won't be killed by knives, bullets, blunt objects, temperatures, but instead by something extremely simple and basic on paper... But brutally difficult to pull off.
There are types of woods that are regarded as having special properties. The Holly Tree (Hollywood's named after it) is a tree regarded as being magic. There might be a special kind of wood that's inherently extra good at killing psychotic lich wizards.
Blood drinking and cannibalism are real things, and are kept secret. There's a lot of things kept secret, but discreetly mentioned in the open. Lotta red herrings mixed in, too. There's a "Kuru / Laughing Cannibal" disease, and another tell of cannibalism is the tongue getting holes in it. Cannibals are said to suddenly lock up and tremor and cackle uncontrollably.
In Fallout New Vegas, a character on Freeside talks about people consuming "strange meat", and suddenly getting the shakes real bad.
Also Fallout 3 had a clan of Vampires who were the "dramatic novel" type. One couldn't control his bloodlust and murdered his parents.
The elites are said to be "shapeshifters", and that could be taken in many different ways. There are the "turn into 8 foot tall lizard" ones, or the "latex masks and body doubles" ones. There are also stories about "organic robotoids" and "human clones", which are different from each other. And I mentioned those "witches turning into crows and rabbits" tales. Bats are hard to spot at night, and they move around in jittery circles. They're said to have terrible vision and rely on sonar. There could be something to that.
A simple allegory for the bat transformation, without the witch stuff, is the bat form symbolizes silent, unseen travel. Someone who could turn into a bat and fly around, could easily vanish one morning and suddenly appear somewhere else, inexplicably. The elites are said to be able to do that. That they have underground railways that only they have access to. There's a legend about an under-ocean railway that connects California to Japan. (Flat Earth).
Death by sunlight? The sun and broad daylight often symbolize being able to be seen clearly, by everyone. The sun itself is a general topic of interest, for another page. There's supposedly a disorder that causes severe skin burning from sunlight. The way things are today, there's no need for a "special disorder" to be burnt by the sun, which is now cranked up 7 times higher than it was in the 90s. Biblical prophecy, look it up. Anyway, exposure to sunlight could be an allegory for the deeds and secret lives of Vampires, being exposed for all to see. This kills them.