Lyra Selene, Author of Amber & Dusk.
Lyra Selene is the author of forthcoming novel Amber & Dusk (Scholastic 2018).
She saved the world. A lot.
I didn’t discover Buffy the Vampire Slayer until sophomore year of college, years after the original series had ended. I checked out the first season on DVD from my university library, vaguely remembering half an episode I’d watched at a friend’s house in middle school and looking for some way to procrastinate. (This is pre-Netflix, folks.) I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
Who’s ready to sink their teeth into a little vampire discussion? (Pun totally intended.)
“Why yes, I do use my cheekbones
to cut glass.”
I recently read an interview with James Marsters, who played Spike in ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer,’ in which he discussed what it meant to him to play a vampire and how the representation of vampires in the media has changed since ‘Buffy’ aired.
“In the world of ‘Buffy’, vampires were supposed to be ugly and very quickly dead,” Marsters commented. “Joss [Whedon]…didn’t want vampires to be romantic. That’s why in Buffy when we bite people we become hideously ugly. Because in ‘Buffy’ vampires are a metaphor for all the problems you face in adolescence. So, the vampires of today are very different.”
I thought this was a really interesting take on vampires, especially coming from someone who played one on TV for years. And it’s true: although vampires have been around since at least Victorian times, in the past few years, the plethora of books, movies, and TV shows about vampires tend to present vampires in a much sexier, romantic way than they used to. So why the change? And why, at the end of the day, are vampires so damn fascinating?
