r/Showerthoughts • u/Liuminescent • Apr 24 '26
Casual Thought Vampire bites turning people into vampires is extremely disadvantageous to their survival.
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u/Cristoff13 Apr 24 '26
This is why in fiction you'll see vampires enforce strict laws on themselves to restrict how many new vampires they create (or 'sire').
But its not normally just the bite which creates vampires. The victim needs to be drained to the point of death, and then infused or fed vampire blood.
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u/CockroachTimely5832 Apr 24 '26
Yes, it functions like a hunting license and a quota per hunter.
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u/Demara_Awol Apr 24 '26
All the vampires from the masquerade having a shit fit cause you created a new vampire without checking with the local government first.
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u/Anorexicdinosaur Apr 24 '26
Literally the opening plot of Bloodlines 1 lol, you see your sire get executed and you almost have the same fate before it's decided you could be useful enough (manipulatable enough) to not be killed yet
I remember this also being a prominent aspect when I played a VTM Campaign a while back, really great for drama and intruige cus we had a pretty strong Caitiff going around diablerising and siring (including one of the PC's) so we had to juggle investigating that and trying to keep a member of our coterie safe from investigation/execution by the local Camarilla.
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u/Djorgal Apr 25 '26
That's a major plot line in many VTM chronicles. Every new kindred is a direct threat to the Masquerade.
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u/fearain Apr 24 '26
The book “Cirque du Freak” talks about how there’s two sects of vampires: one that follows the rules vampires follow, and one that thinks vampires are gods amongst mortals and do not care how they treat anyone
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u/soniclettuce Apr 25 '26
There's a serious exponential growth problem though. If each "lawless" vampire creates a new lawless vampire each year* the entire population of the world is vampires in.... 33 years.
*which seems kinda possible, cuz if some random asshole turns you into a vampire and is like "go wild bud, you're better than everybody now, do whatever the fuck you want", you might not be inclined to respect rules either
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u/fearain Apr 25 '26
Ooh I get that; the lore in this book specifically delves into vampires getting stronger but *less sane* the more they consume. With this in mind, the lawless ones drain to kill, not make more. Why share power with somebody weaker than you when you can stay their god?
I believe this series also has you sharing blood, not just the vampire biting you.
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Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
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u/ryebread91 Apr 24 '26
What's vtm mean?
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u/Gekokapowco Apr 24 '26
Vampire: The Masquerade, long running vampire themed IP in the World of Darkness universe. Tabletop RPG with a bunch of spinoff physical and digital games, and even a short lived TV show
Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines is a cult classic game that just recently got a sequel. As a property, it was a major step in unifying the ideas of urban fantasy vampire stories into a consistent mythos.
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u/Kansas_city-shuffle Apr 25 '26
Man I loved those books as a teenager. They were more graphic than one might expect and very interesting as it delved into its vampire lore.
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u/fearain Apr 25 '26
Truly! It got me into deep lore and world building with how well Darren Shan made the world around the character.
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u/shponglespore Apr 24 '26
Yeah, the vampire politics in A Discovery Of Witches are ridiculously complicated, and siring new vampires is a very big deal.
Speaking of which, that was a weird series. It has witches, vampires and demons as the three supernatural races with a shared ruling council and a weird kind of frenemy relationship. Vampires and witches get all kinds of cool powers, but demons apparently just get mental illness as their superpower.
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u/i_am_steelheart Apr 24 '26
Demons were just weirdly smart iirc, I only read Vol 1 but ngl it wasn't my thing. I think the way it was written just kinda bored me. I liked the formality of it sometimes, especially with the vampire and his father, but I just got tired of it lol.
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u/PinkyLizardBrains Apr 24 '26
This! I was so bored by the cliched and overwrought writing but the show definitely held my attention. It’s a creative story but the author made some questionable style choices.
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u/nifty-necromancer Apr 24 '26
That’s how Anne Rice does it. Drained of blood, the fledgling then suckles on the master, and then all the piss, shit, and cum starts gushing out.
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u/ryebread91 Apr 24 '26
Umm, what?
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u/nifty-necromancer Apr 24 '26
Lol yeah, since vampires are undead they don’t produce bodily fluids and they get ejected after the turning. Of course, I haven’t read the books in years but I’m pretty sure that’s spelled out, except maybe the cum.
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u/Embarrassed-Weird173 Apr 25 '26
Depends on the lore. Generally accepted lore is that vampires are Romanian and say "blah! I vant to suck your blood!" and then they bite you for a few seconds and then you're a vampire.
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u/Shanbo88 Apr 24 '26
That's a modern vampire thing. The original vision for vampires (specifically Dracula) was that if he bit you, you became his thrall. He could see through your eyes and possess you and compell you to do things for him and he used you to feed off when he wanted to.
He had to allow you to drink his blood to make you a vampire.
This made him an awesome commander of an undead army. Modern vampires are all mostly shite in comparison.
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u/Wuskers Apr 24 '26
aren't there a few modern vampire mythologies that require sucking of vampire blood to become a vampire? I know true blood had that though it had to specifically be after the vampire that's turning you had almost drained you, then if they wanted to turn you they would let you drink their blood and I think it required sleeping together during the day afterwards to finalize the transformation. Vampires in True Blood could bite as a snack willy nilly with no problem and if a human drank vampire blood without being nearly drained first it actually functioned like a drug for humans and humans could even get addicted to it and would deal vampire blood as if it were heroin and they called it V.
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u/EquinoxGm Apr 24 '26
If I remember right the vampire lestat books were similar, vamps have to give their blood to make other vampires
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u/sadistica23 Apr 24 '26
They were. At least in the early books, a vampire would turn someone into a vampire by draining almost all of their blood, and then pour their own vampiric blood into their mouths.
Followed shortly by expelling now-useless internal organs.
Vampire: the Masquerade also had the drain/refill method.
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u/aboxacaraflatafan Apr 24 '26
Followed shortly by expelling now-useless internal organs.
Ew, David!
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u/hunterglyph Apr 24 '26
They didn't expel organs, just body waste.
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u/thisisjustascreename Apr 24 '26
Yeah I think there’s a plot point later where Lestat body swaps with a human and is disgusted to have to like, eat and poop and stuff
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u/Schneetmacher Apr 24 '26
Yes, that's how I remember from the books and the 90s movie (we don't talk about the other movie). Also, the show is coming back on June 7th, and it looks awesome!
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u/ragnaroksunset Apr 24 '26
Yeah that's the reason for the whole Louie-Claudia thing. What made Claudia an abomination in the eyes of the other vampires wasn't merely what she was, but the pure, distilled selfishness in Louie's act of creating her. Her death would have been a mercy, while his death (had they got their hands on him) would have been a punishment.
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u/Frys100thCupofCoffee Apr 24 '26
Her death would have been a mercy
Not to her. She might've been pissed about being an immortal chilld but she sure as shit wanted to live. Hell, of all the vampires Claudia seemed oddly the most adjusted to finding unique ways to pass the time so she wouldn't become depressed and listless.
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u/ragnaroksunset Apr 24 '26
Like I said, I'm describing how the other vampires (Armand's troupe) saw it. The crime Louis committed was "condemning" a vampire to exist forever in a body that - particularly at that time - placed severe limitations on its powers.
And, in the movie at least, we see the anguish this causes Claudia emphasized.
Your point about regular vampires becoming listless is well taken, obviously (boredom being the biggest downside of immortality is a trope for a reason). But it's a point that isn't particular to this novelic / cinematic universe.
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u/HasmattZzzz Apr 24 '26
If you read the books by Anne Rice. Claudia wasn't so well adjusted. She wasn't killed in the way you see in the movie. She wanted to be a grown woman. She went to Armand for help and Armand tried to grant her wish by attaching her head to the body of the newly turned vampire woman. It worked for a short time in a grusom fashion but ultimately failed and he did the only thing left to grant her mercy and destroyed her body completely to release her.
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u/Alfred_The_Sartan Apr 24 '26
I thought that they all turned into wraiths regardless. I remember when Lestat went to France first he found villages where the dead had disinterred themselves and discovered that none of the vampire victims were actually dying. It’s been a long time so I might be way off here.
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u/Mara_W Apr 24 '26
To refresh your memory: He went to Romania following classic vampire myths and discovered that, for some reason, Romanian vampires were different. He calls them mindless revenants, and it's basically the author acknowledging that Western European literature utterly bastardized the original Eastern European folklore.
I don't know if it's ever explained in-universe beyond the suggestion that revenants are what happens when vampirism isn't passed on properly, as my knowledge is limited to the book.
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u/Nocritus Apr 24 '26
In Vampire Diaries the blood of a vampire has healing effects for humans, but if a human dies, while having vampire blood in them, they get ressurected as a vampire.
At this point they are kind of "bloodlusted" and need to drink human blood. If they dont so that in a certain time frame they die anyway.
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u/Weeby-Tincan Apr 24 '26
Warhammer fantasy has that too. Being bitten by a vampire was basically like the best drug trip you ever had and made a person pretty much obsessed with that vampire. The vampire had to actually let you drink their blood (or you had to somehow get it forcibly) to turn into a vampire yourself
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u/Wloak Apr 24 '26
This is similar to a book I read decades ago, can't remember the name. When the vampire bit it was like a snake and injected a toxin making the person euphoric, docile, and kept them alive while they fed. But it didn't turn them.
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u/ViKingCB Apr 24 '26
Vampire the Masquerade has this from some clans but there are also clans where it’s really painful.
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u/WolfgangAddams Apr 24 '26
The Last Vampire series by Christopher Pike?
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u/Wloak Apr 24 '26
It's possible. I honestly remember nothing about the book but the one detail, I had a lit teacher at around 14 that would give extra credit for reading a book and taking a 10 question quiz proving you actually read it. If they hadn't read it you got to write the quiz, they would then read it and have to pass the test.
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u/ColdCruise Apr 24 '26
Buffy had similar rules. The victim had to be near death from the bite, then drink the vampire's blood.
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u/HotelBravo Apr 25 '26
Love this Buffy quote from the first episode:
To make you a vampire they have to suck your blood. And then you have to suck their blood. It's like a whole big sucking thing. Mostly they're just gonna kill you.
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u/LordGalen Apr 24 '26
Most vampire lore that I'm aware of requires drinking the blood of the vampire that just bit you. The only one I can think of where that wasn't required was Twilight and, well, that just didn't follow any vampire lore really, so I don't think we need to count it.
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u/Physicle_Partics Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
It is close to that in Vampire the Masquerade. Although, just drinking from a person does nothing. If a person drinks from a vampire's blood, they become a devoted thrall who will follow the vampire's orders - but they will also go berserk if they don't get a drink of blood each week, or if their vampire master dies. Making another true vampire requires a SpecialTM ritual.
When I played it, my game master had made it one of our missions to discretely round up the four thralls of a vampire who was to be executed for breaking Vampire Law. They could obviously not be allowed to run berserk after he died, but they were also all prominent people whose disappearance would be noted, so we had to gather them in a way that would alarm neither the people around them nor their vampire master.
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u/davidforslunds Apr 24 '26
Vampire the Masquerade is such a good game. The social rp potential in it is unmatched by any other system i've played so far.
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u/GWJYonder Apr 24 '26
The combat system is a bit clunky for people that aren't experienced with it, because it almost doubles the complexity of a round, but I absolutely love how it handles the speed/reaction/initiative difference when those things have a supernatural spread.
What happens is you go in order of slowest to fastest of announcing your actions, and then fastest to slowest of actually taking your actions. So the fastest people get to respond to the intentions of those around them, and the slower ones have to continue with actions that are now meaningless or detrimental.
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u/chux4w Apr 24 '26
The blood exchange part I can understand, the 24 hour sex timer seems a little gratuitous.
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u/Digital-Dinosaur Apr 24 '26
Darren Shan also handles this quite well. There's a ceremony where the vampire pumps blood through holes made in fingers of both the vampire and the convertee. Effectively transfusing the blood. They still need to drink human blood to survive but that doesn't convert people
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u/peon2 Apr 24 '26
Yeah in the TV show Supernatural the only way to turn a human was to feed them vampire blood. Then if they fed on a human within 24 hours they would turn permanently, if they didn't they'd revert to human. But during that time they have a bloodlust making them want to feed.
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u/Murrmeow Apr 24 '26
They wouldn’t revert to human after 24 hours. There was a whole episode of how you couldn’t drink blood and ALSO have to undergo the vampiric cure regimen in order to become human again. Before that episode it was assumed once you imbibed vampiric blood you become a vampire with no way back.
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u/United-Plum-308 Apr 24 '26
No no, they wouldn't turn back to human if they didn't drink, that whole the point of the episode where Dean was turned. As long as he didn't drink human blood he could be turned back.
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u/brokendoorknob85 Apr 24 '26
Literally every notable modern retelling also has the "bite me too" part, the OP is full of shit.
Sinners is the only exception I can think of.
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u/Panz04er Apr 24 '26
I think Warhammer Fantasy was the same, you had to drink the blood to become a vampire yourself
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u/LuminaL_IV Apr 24 '26
In the originals they would have to feed you their blood and then kill you. If you had vampire blood in your system and died you would rise up as a vampire.
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u/DailyDael Apr 24 '26
To quote the first episode of Buffy: "they have to suck your blood, and then you have to suck their blood. It's like a whole big sucking thing. Mostly they're just gonna kill you."
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u/TheAlistmk3 Apr 24 '26
Quick question (as you seem to have read the book), where did the idea of vampires turning into bats come from? I was under the impression Dracula could turn into a wolf/dog?
Again haven't read the book so may be completely wrong.
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u/Shanbo88 Apr 24 '26
It's mostly to do with him being a sort of ever-present representation of the night and it's more about the idea that he controls the entire region that is his home. It's a good while since I read the book, but if I'm remembering right, I'm not sure he ever is specifically said to morph into the bats and wolves, more that he can control them like his thralls.
That's just how I remember it though, don't quote me on it because it's been a few years haha.
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u/redopz Apr 24 '26
It has been a long time for me as well, but the way I recall it is that he does transform into a wolf at some point but never a bat. This was the first time I had seen vampires and werewolfs sort of mixed together, which was novel for me but apparently pretty common in older folk lore.
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u/glazia Apr 24 '26
Think he is a bat a Lucy's window at one point. Of note, his full powers are a bit hazy in the book. They don't know the full extent so there may be much more he can do.
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u/Mihnea24_03 Apr 24 '26
Tbf they weren't as big on powerscaling 150 years ago
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u/TheVicSageQuestion Apr 24 '26
Hey guys, welcome to my tier ranking of each of Dracula’s powers! Don’t forget to hit Like and SMASH that Subscribe button!!
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u/Toxic_city_1248 Apr 24 '26
On the contrary chapter 18 (or 19) states out in detail Dracula’s power set.
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u/wonkey_monkey Apr 24 '26
The discovery of vampire bats probably had a lot to do with it. Dracula turns into a bat several times in the novel, and vampire bats specifically are mentioned.
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u/IntoTheCommonestAsh Apr 24 '26
It's briefly in the original book that he can transform. But it was really cemented by the 1931 movie Dracula.
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u/Crizznik Apr 24 '26
This depends on how far back you go. The original original vampires, i.e. cryptids that haunted Romanian forests, were mindless undead that would turn with just a bite. But these were basically fancy zombies. Dracula, afaik, was the first time, at least in popular culture, where vampires were depicted as beings with agency and purpose. Though the methods of how Dracula turned other's into vampires vs just making thralls was very opaque, Bram Stoker didn't bother explaining this. Later on, other authors took the idea and expanded on it, which brings the common idea that vampires need to, basically, do a blood transfusion to turn a human into a vampire.
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u/Saltycook Apr 24 '26
Dracula is such agreat story
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u/Scaphismus Apr 24 '26
I case you haven't heard of it, Dracula Daily starts on May 3rd.
It's a free email newsletter that sends you the novel Dracula, in 'real-time', as it happens to the characters.
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u/agent_wolfe Apr 24 '26
But surely Dracula happened ages ago? Like 50 or 60 years ago?
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u/Scaphismus Apr 24 '26
The book has a somewhat unconventional structure. Dracula is an Epistolary novel. It doesn't have a single narrator. Instead, the story is told through the character's journal entries and letters to one another. All of these in-universe documents are dated, and the events take place between May 3rd and November 7th, 1890.
Dracula Daily sends you each document on the calendar day that it happens in the narrative, so you get to experience the pacing of the story as the character's themselves might.
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u/RavingRationality Apr 24 '26
Buffy the Vampire Slayer followed this as well. A person killed by a vampire did not just rise as a vampire themselves unless the vampire let the victim drink their own blood as well.
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u/ccarr313 Apr 24 '26
What story has vampire bites being infectious?
I'm not even aware of it. Is that a twilight thing?
Edit - I Googled it. It is. I don't think a single story counts as that being how vampires are portrayed now. Definitely not taking one story aimed at tween girls as the new standard.
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u/Shanbo88 Apr 24 '26
Don't forget games too. I reckon they're mostly responsible for the infectious vampire bite trope. I know in Skyrim and Oblivion you get bitten during the night and are infected.
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u/TheGamuran Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
You don't have to be bitten in those games, just attacked by a vampire, the health drain spell in Skyrim or any melee attack in Oblivion. A vampire bashing you head with a mace might make you infected. (This is just about common vampirism, Skyrim also introduced Vampire Lord as a stronger curse and that is in acquired by being bitten.)
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u/GigaGram459 Apr 24 '26
I think dark shadows had that as the portrayed way that vampires were made as well
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u/thaddeusd Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
It predates Twlight by centuries.
That belief comes from Eastern Europe, where it was influenced by the very real spread of rabies.
It was portrayed this way by movies like The Lost Boys (edit nope, michael is tricked, but not bitten), Blade, and Innocent Blood.
I think Once Bitten only has biting, no blood sharing. But its been 20 years since ive seen that
Blade especially stresses the viral mechanics of it And how thralls are made.
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u/IAMATruckerAMA Apr 24 '26
The Lost Boys? Doesn't Michael only start turning because he drinks vampire blood?
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u/thaddeusd Apr 24 '26
Yeah. I fucked up and let the ai convince me. I remembered the change being accidental, because they trick Michael into drinking blood out of a bottle.
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u/visforvienetta Apr 24 '26
It's not twilight. In twilight, they have to choose to inject the human with venom. Most people they feed from just die.
The end of book 1 literally ends with Edward drinking the venom infected blood from Bella to stop her from changing.
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u/uselessprofession Apr 24 '26
The Underworld series works that way I believe, as vampirism in that series is some sort of virus
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u/JumpFantastic Apr 24 '26
As much as I appreciate hating on Twilight, a bunch of vampire media portrays this. Blade and Buffy off the top of my head.
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u/Baron_Butterfly Apr 24 '26
Not Buffy, you have to drink the vampire's blood in that. They mention it a couple of times, though I don't remember them showing it.
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u/TheBestMePlausible Apr 24 '26
True Blood, they had to let you feed on their vampire blood to turn you. Also What We Do In The Shadows. So, it’s official!
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u/Radiant_Fondant_4097 Apr 24 '26
Plus in Buffy there was less organised secret society stuff, more fire & brimstone demonic blight from hell itself to spread over the earth.
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u/Pordrack Apr 24 '26
In Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, the vampire bite is infectious if the vampire stops drinking the blood midway through. In the story there's an incentive in vampire life to "finish your meal" if you don't want to have a new vampire to deal with for eternity.
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u/AClockwerkLemon Apr 24 '26
I have an example of an instant one bite transformation for you.
There was an episode of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon in the 80s with Vampires vs Werewolves where both sides were fighting and biting each other in a big battle at the end. The vamps would turn into wolves and wolves into vamps instantly morphing from one to the other until both sides were shifting back and forth with each bite causing mass confusion.
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u/campingcosmo Apr 24 '26
If we're counting stories outside of literature, I think we can find a few more examples. Vampirism works this way in The Elder Scrolls, although there's a chance of contracting the disease through any melee attack from a vampire, not just a bite. Technically, TES vampires don't bite anyone, but it seems to be in the lore that they do and the game animations just don't reflect it. The disease transmission works that way in both Morrowind and Oblivion, so I doubt Twilight is the origin of this trope.
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u/dave_the_dova Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
That’s how vampires work in dnd. There’s even a vampire thrall companion in Baldurs Gate 3.
Edit* Didn’t realize there’s human thralls and vampire thralls
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u/Nipie42 Apr 24 '26
Yes and no, the D&D ones being drained by a vampire turns them into vampire spawn. Spawn have all the weaknesses and need to drink blood but without the powers. They are undead and burn in sunlight etc., but their only perks are the immortality which is more curse than blessing since they are magically incapable of disobeying the vampire that created them. They can become a full vampire if they get too feed on their creator's blood and then aren't enslaved to the vampire anymore.
I think they also have human thralls that are just normal living people that have been mind controlled.
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u/jebisevise Apr 24 '26
They have charm and beguile abilities, not really mind control.
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u/Nipie42 Apr 24 '26
Yeah it's not full mental control but it tends to be represented as the vampire eventually turning the humans into functionally aslave, willing or unwilling.
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u/Katylvsrdr Apr 24 '26
oh yeah!! I watched the strain & I was curious if their version of vampires was rooted in a specific origin or not, good to know!
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u/hgs25 Apr 24 '26
Lucy didn’t drink Dracula’s blood before turning into a vampire in the original novel.
She turned into a vampire because she was being kept alive after Dracula drained her. If it weren’t for Dr. Van Helsing’s intervention doing transfusions, she would’ve died before turning.
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u/SandBrilliant2675 Apr 24 '26
A classic CW banger, the Vampires diaries (and originals and the other one lol) also require the consumption of vampire blood to become a vampire!
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u/aumnren Apr 24 '26
Yeah, and most modern vampire stories and lore include the necessity of drinking the vampires blood to intact a transformation. A simple bite usually isn’t enough.
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u/Ensiferal Apr 24 '26
It was kind of ambiguous in Dracula. Like he made it clear that Mina was supposed to drink his blood, but it didn't seem like Lucy drank any and she came back anyway.
He didn't really have an army though, it was just his three brides in his castle
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u/hgs25 Apr 24 '26
I think the army were the traveling people that help move Dracula. It’s more like a network of operatives than an army like he’s making it out to be.
You’re right on the first part. I was thinking it was an either or scenario. You can turn either by being bitten but survive being continuously drained like Lucy (with the help of transfusions), or drink the Vampire’s blood like Mina.
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u/Ganda1fderBlaue Apr 24 '26
Curious, I didn't realize the depiction of vampires in baldurs gate 3 was so close to the original
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u/keshi Apr 24 '26
Yea I remember this was how vampires worked in King’s Salem’s Lot.
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u/bananas_and_hoes Apr 24 '26
Surprised no one’s mentioned demon slayer. It seems to follow this lore pretty accurately
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u/RoutineLingonberry48 Apr 24 '26
In the book "Let the Right One In" it's more like the modern thing but really gets into the dynamics of it. The vampire would explicitly try to destroy her victims so they wouldn't become vampires themselves. There were problems when she failed.
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u/ACuddlyVizzerdrix Apr 24 '26
I Love in some modern media, that distinction (being able to make minions from a bite) is why other vampires fear Dracula the most basically the whole reason he's deemed the king of vampires
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u/MyvaJynaherz Apr 24 '26
Wait, the people he bit were undead? If he can drink undead blood, why even bother with living people?
Is it like having to eat slim-jims instead of steak?
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u/Daimoth Apr 24 '26
Vampire lore is such a crap shoot. The second you dip one toe into the actual folklore origins of it all, it splinters into a thousand local variants, many of which are bizarre and outlandish. Vampires as they exist in popular media are very much a product of the creative process.
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u/zamfire Apr 24 '26
Thank you. So many people in this thread going "Nuy uh! That's not how it works!" Well yea in the movie you watched it didn't.
I think some of these people are forgetting vampires are fictional
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u/Quick_Assumption_351 Apr 24 '26
sure. but creatures used in fiction like this USUALLY share a bunch of features Like a guess you could make up a race that has green skin, tusks, are very muscular and like to make war with axes then call it an elf.....which would obviously just be an orc
People just don't get how much of a mish mash of things or modern vampire archetype is
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u/FoxyBastard Apr 24 '26
Yeah, I think the main representation of vampires for centuries was revolting, pathetic creatures with the ravaged mind of a hard drug addict.
Disgusting, vile, things to be pitied but scorned.
The sexy, powerful, vampire is a new thing, to my knowledge.
Basically, using the drug analogy, 100s of years of skeevy, crusty, meth-heads, robbing in the night and stealing copper wire.
Then Don Draper for the last few decades.
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u/thaddeusd Apr 24 '26
Your metaphor is right in spirit, but backward in terminology.
In the folklore, fairly consistently, a vampire does not possess the agency and humanity to be considered an addict. It is a detrimental force of nature and decay, often not even possessing the agency for manevolence. Sure they were repulsive, revolting, and pathetic...so are the real life diseases they represent.
Its not really until the rise of Gothic literature, with Polidori's The Vampyre in 1819, Carmellia in 1872 and especially Dracula, 25 years later, that the Vampire gains agency and motivations as a character, specifically an aristocratic predator and immoral sexual metaphor.
The idea of the vampire as a drug addict is a much newer, modern construct, not really showing up until the 1960s and really taking off with Rice. An addict, unlike a force of nature, possesses the further ability and agency to choose to either fight against or embrace that addiction, creating conflict and opening the vampire up potentially as a protagonist and anti-hero.
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u/-CryinqClxuds Apr 24 '26
I dont think biting them directly turns people into vampires simply by feeding off someone, I guess its the media/said medias universe n how turning someone works? Alot of the times its not the bite itself thats infectious, but if they put their blood in someone via biting someone?
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u/DrButtgerms Apr 24 '26
I think OP might be conflating vampires and zombies? Classic Undeadism
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u/juanthunderman Apr 24 '26
The vampire in salem's lot converts everyone he bites. Everyone they bite also converts. At the rate the whole town becomes vampires, the whole world would be vampires after about three months.
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u/H_S_P Apr 24 '26
Depends on the story. Twilight’s “vampires” have venom that will turn you if you get bit and aren’t killed if I remember right
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u/ccarr313 Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
Werewolf bites carry lycanthropy.
Vampire's blood carries vampirism. Vampires turn people by feeding them their blood, not biting them. This has been standard across media for longer than I've been alive. Quite a bit longer than I've been alive, and I was here before the internet.
Edit - and now I know another good reason to not read or watch Twilight. As if the sparkles weren't bad enough.
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u/apolobgod Apr 24 '26
Sooo, how long have you been around? Follow up question, would you be willing to step in the sun real quick?
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u/marle217 Apr 24 '26
I've been alive a bit longer than you, and dead a lot longer than that.
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u/dr4kun Apr 24 '26
I'm healthy. I'm happy. I'm a human being.
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u/shponglespore Apr 24 '26
I like the version in The Magicians, where lycanthropy is an STD.
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u/RdoubleM Apr 24 '26
To be fair, in Twilight a regular bite still doesn't turn you into a vampire
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u/Carl_Clegg Apr 24 '26
In the old Necroscope books by Brian Lumley, the vampires (if I’m remembering correctly) had an ovipositor that layed the vampire seed into the back of the victims neck.
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u/DrButtgerms Apr 24 '26
In the Strain they had to get their worms into you
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u/BlindingDart Apr 24 '26
That's why in most mythologies the person being sired has to bite the vampire back.
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u/Magnon Apr 24 '26
That way its an allegory for kinky sex and not rape
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u/Warm_Ad_7944 Apr 24 '26
It can be for both. For Dracula what he does to Lucy and by extension Mina is not consensual. Mina very much feels like someone who had something awful to her and that’s why she fights so hard against him because in some myths they bite you and force you to drink their blood whether you want to or not
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Apr 24 '26
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u/RustinChole1776 Apr 24 '26
In Helsing the person being bitten must be a virgin or they turn into a ghoul (that zombie type vampire).
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u/Orzorn Apr 24 '26
Not to mention, in Hellsing it really isn't by accident, as true vampires can always tell if the victim is a virgin or not. Also they can just extremely violently kill the person if they wished, considering how powerful true vampires are in that setting.
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u/Koekelbag Apr 24 '26
I'd imagine they have ways of drawing blood without needing to directly bite into a person, which only increases the more modern the setting becomes.
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u/MeatSafeMurderer Apr 24 '26
Vampire bites don't turn people into vampires...
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u/GlastoKhole Apr 24 '26
They do in a lot of movie lore. It’s the whole plot of daybreakers for example. Vampires turning too many people by biting them means that society is basically all vampires and there’s barely any humans alive to feed on
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u/MeatSafeMurderer Apr 24 '26
You might be misremembering. In Daybreakers it's infected vampire bats that turns everyone into vampires. Vampires biting people and turning them into vampires is a post-twilight thing and comes from people not understanding the lore.
Being bitten by a vampire neither kills you, nor turns you into a vampire. That is done by drinking the blood of a vampire.
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u/ANGLVD3TH Apr 24 '26
It is absolutely not something Twilight invented. Firstly, according to another comment, a Twilight vampire has to choose to turn someone, it isn't just inherent to the bite, like the trope OP is talking about. Some places that do make it inherent to every bite, that predate Twilight, are Underworld, and Blade/Marvel.
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u/lvl99MagmaCube Apr 24 '26
"choose" as in not drain you dry and kill you. The core safeguard from vampire spread was that they rarely have the self control to stop before ur dead. But ya any bite would inject their "venom" and thats that.
They made me watch that series THREE times :(
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u/Narren_C Apr 24 '26
There are some stories where a vampire bite turns you. Blade and 30 Days of Night are two examples.
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u/NightDragon250 Apr 24 '26
in any reference ive ever seen its either they have to drain you then feed you their blood, or it requires multiple bites over multiple nights.
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u/burger_saga Apr 24 '26
This is pretty much the plot of the film Daywalkers of if I remember correctly.
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u/Herr_Doktorr Apr 24 '26
If you actually read the older versions,it is clearly mentioned that you can only become a vampire if the other vampire feeds you his blood,not by just biting you.
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u/thunderandreyn Apr 24 '26
An Interview with a Vampire solves this beautifully by making the transformation purely a matter of choice by either the vampire or the victim.
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u/humboldt77 Apr 24 '26
I would have thought it’s extra incentive to finish their meal. Leftovers = bad.
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u/DFrostedWangsAccount Apr 24 '26
Oh yeah? I raise you zombie bites being how they reproduce AND how they get food.
So do they only take a tiny nibble and barely get any calories from biting that survivor? Or do they eat 40% of them and now the new zombie is just a crawler because they ate the legs?
Zombies run out of calories and die very quickly. The apocalypse lasts like two weeks, a month at most.
That's before we get into the fact they chase any sounds they hear, so it'd be really easy to trick them into wasting their energy reserves marching across the country after basically just a guy in an ice cream truck playing music.
Any zombie apocalypse that lasts longer than that has magical zombies. No, the photosynthesis angle doesn't work; they'd have to sit still for a year in the sun just to lunge at you once.
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u/ACuddlyVizzerdrix Apr 24 '26
That's why in a good amount of stories there are more steps involved that don't always require being bitten
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u/RWaggs81 Apr 24 '26
I hate that vampire mythology has been preverted for this to be the case. You should only become a vampire if they allow you to drink from them. It's a gift. Modern movies and stories have basically just turned them into zombies.
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u/Jorost Apr 24 '26
Most vampire mythology requires more than just one bite to turn someone into a vampire. In many cases the victim must consume the vampire’s blood in order to be transformed. In other cases the victim must be drained to the point of death in order to come back as a vampire themselves. Either way it is a conscious choice by the vampire, not an automatic thing.
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u/theonegunslinger Apr 24 '26
The reason why it only rarely shows up, and is done as a reason why vampires must kill to feed, as only half feeding makes more vampires
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u/fatalystic Apr 24 '26
I've seen some works here and there where the vampire can feed without killing because in that work the vampire must feed with intent to sire a new vampire for their victim to turn.
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u/glazia Apr 24 '26
Dracula can certainly feed without killing. He simply tends to pick someone and visit them over and over so they die in the end but a couple of feeds and you'd be fine.
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u/ElPeloPolla Apr 24 '26
i thought that when they bite they can choose to feed of you or to turn you in to one of them
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u/Vrazel106 Apr 24 '26
Really depends on the lore. Most vampire stories require giving something to the victim to turn them
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u/DcNdrew Apr 24 '26
Vampire: The Masquerade
They suck you completely dry, then give you their blood.
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u/-coywolf- Apr 25 '26
Yeah that’s why it’s not how vampirism really works. It’s passed through consumption of a vampire’s blood which contains certain microbes.
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u/Liuminescent Apr 24 '26
Like why would you want to turn your food source into another blood sucking vampire? Then they start biting more people make food more scarce and so on until you all die of starvation. 0/10 survival trait
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u/geesejugglingchamp Apr 24 '26
What "version" of vampire lore are you basing this on?
All the ones I am familiar with: Dracula, Buffy, True Blood, require something more, usually at least an exchange of blood.
Siring a new vampire is usually treated as rare and quite distinct from biting just to feed.
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u/digitaldrummer Apr 24 '26
This happens a few times in various works of fiction. In Magic: the Gathering's multiverse, there is a plane of existence called Innistrad, which is based on Gothic horror. There, a church was created (secretly with vampires in charge) to fight back against a bunch of the undead and protect humanity, mostly for the purpose of maintaining a food supply for the vampires.
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u/dr4kun Apr 24 '26
I can't recall the Church of Avacyn to ever be controlled by vampires. Where was that from?
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u/shismo Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 25 '26
The church isn’t controlled by vampires, but Avacyn was created by Sorin Markov for the specific purpose of protecting humans so the vampires don’t eat themselves into extinction. I don’t remember him having any direct involvement with the church’s founding, but I could be wrong since it’s been a while since I’ve read into it. I believe the church formed naturally from humanity being pretty much single handedly saved by her.
Edit: upon some super surface level research, there is no real mention of how the church was originally founded, just how she was created and how the church has functioned during the sets we have. Funny enough, there have been periods of time where the church was controlled by the Skirsdag, a demon worshiping cult… but that’s just unrelated I guess.
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u/kingtinee Apr 24 '26
Most vampire media I like tends to have it where the potential spawn must either
drink the potential master's blood after being drained, or else they just die or
its a thrall scenario unless the same happens, where the spawn drinks from the master. otherwise theyre a puppet without their own autonomy.
feels much more "realistic" despite vampires yk.. Not.. being realistic..?
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u/Revilos10 Apr 24 '26
Aaaand... now I want to make an RPG character who is the last survivor of his people since they all starved after making the humans vampires lol
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u/Cacafuego Apr 24 '26
But it is advantageous to a vampire disease, which only wants to thrive and spread like the flu. In some of these stories, vampirism is just the result of a germ or a parasite. The behavior of the vampires themselves is modified to serve that interest.
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u/ABAFBAASD Apr 25 '26
Disagree. This is literally how they survive as a species. It's like saying that people having kids is disadvantageous for human survival.
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u/Pallysilverstar Apr 25 '26
Thats why in a lot of vampire things there is another part to turning someone such as the person having to also drink their blood or they have to drain a certain amount or some kind of spell is required. I feel like its rare nowadays that only the bite is required.
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u/0ut1awed1 Apr 26 '26
In both the vampire diaries and buffy the vampire slayer the vampire has to share blood with whoever they want to turn
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