Apparently, Vampires Aren&#39;t Sexy. Or Interesting.S

Who would've thought? Annalee does a post about why vampires have a reputation for being sex machines, and the comments get filled with people who eagerly begged to differ. And not one mentioned James Brown!

Annalee's Thursday edition of irregular sex column Fully Functional (That's a column about sex that runs on an irregular schedule, not a column about irregul - Oh, you understand. Never mind.) certainly seemed to raise the ire of the vampire haters in our audience:

QimatPower: "I just wanted to make this clear: vampires are not interesting. (I felt this way before Twilight, 30 Days of Night, True Blood, Let the Right One In, and everything else.)"

Indigen: "Nice article but I'm left a little mystified, because I never found vampires sexy. I understand the perversity of the whole schtick, and I know there are people out there into bloodletting and domination etcetera, but are there really that many of those people to write a whole article addressing every reader as if they agree? Nobody I know would."

Convair 990A: "Hmm. I have a hard time conceiving of them as anything other than highly-optimized killing machines along the lines of a xenomorph from LV426 or something from Skynet... Modern anti-Victorians can read all they want into Bram Stoker, but I think the common thread remains: These things are not your friends and they're not acting in your interests. You're an ultimately expendable and ambulatory supply of resources for them that just happens to share some aspects of external appearance with them."

Kaiser-Machead: "Sure, they're sexy in pictures, but just imagine the smell of carnage on their breath..unless you're into that sort of thing, then vamp away."

Okay, maybe not that last one. But still; dissent was clearly in the air - Even those who agreed that blood sucking = teh hawtness had nits to pick:

Belabras: "Really, Braum Stoker's Dracula is more about power than seduction - Dracula himself is regarded as repugnant by everyone who encounters him, but he is able to dominate others through his supernatural power. He's not a player, he's a rapist."

theizz: "You have to read Dracula in the context of repressive Victorian society. Dracula was popular b/c he allowed readers of both sexes to think about forbidden sex without feeling ashamed. It's not that the human characters (and readers) are depraved for finding Dracula sexy, it's that hypnotic sex appeal is one of Dracula's powers and the humans are too weak to fight it. The humans are absolved of guilt. The women get fantasize about a sexy lover and the men get to fantasize about "respectable" women clamoring for and enjoying sex."

bonniegrrl: "That's one of the few things the Victorians got right in my book — erotica masked as vampire tales of terror."

Thankfully, some commenters were trying to be constructive and helpful to those tracking the sexy vampire trail:

Spiral: "I wonder if we could pinpoint the exact time vampire myth changed. Earlier myths had vampires as repulsive, ugly, more zombie-like beings that just happened to be alive after their time and needed blood- you see that myth picked up more in things like Nosferatu. At some point they became young, beautiful and sexual. Was it the Victorian era, or is their a source before it where the myth changed?"

geekgrrl: "my rudimentary guess would be, it seems more like a change in locale.. you found the repulsive, board-up-your-windows vampires in Eastern Europe, but they took on a sexier stance in the West. like you said, i'm sure there was a turning point, but travel made it more pronounced."

MinervaAlpaca: "That's Polidori's doing. He based his vampyre, "Lord Ruthven," on his associate Lord Byron—and thus popularizd the idea of the vampire as a dashing Byronic seducer."

AngryEddy: "At what point did they all start shopping at Hot Topic?"

taxbaby: "I think I remember that from Stoker. Didn't Jonathan Harker describe the 'three sisters' as wearing chokers and Invader Zim T-shirts?"

But, in reality, only Killa_Charlie truly got to the heart of the matter:

Why are they so sexy? Cause we're all 14 year old girls in reality.

Factually incorrect, perhaps - in reality, I'm actually male and twenty years older than that, sadly - but on some cosmic allegorical level, so, so true.