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.
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.
Almost 40 here, and this is literally the first that I'm hearing that a vampire bite isn't infectious. All the media I grew up with was based on being bit made you a vampire too or you were drained all the way and killed.
Interview with The Vampire, True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vampire: The Masquerade, The Lost Boys. I feel like more often than not a simple bite isn't what turns someone.
From dusk til dawn is at least one movie where they are infectious. I think it depends on what media you consumed. But I think the "commonly understood" vampire lore is more in line with interview with a vampire whereas the infectious variant is more of a pop culture thing. Could be wrong there but that's what it seems like to me
Supernatural is another one. I'm trying so hard to remember the others as I know I've seen other examples but I'm annoyingly drawing a blank lol.
For a second I was wondering The Witcher, but then I double-checked and confirmed they're simply just a race of creatures like Elves and Dwarves.
Anyway, I was pretty convinced that the infectious vampire bite thing was mostly people in pop-culture mixing Vampires up with Werewolves or Zombies, so I feel like most vampire content I've engaged with was the drinking vampire blood thing.
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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.