Re: Stephenie Mayer -- the next J. K. Rowling

mimus wrote:
> On Tue, 13 May 2008 04:20:25 +0000, Dan Goodman wrote:
> 
>> mimus wrote:
>>
>>> On Tue, 13 May 2008 00:08:10 +0000, Gene wrote:
>>>
>>>> That's what Time Magazine asks. It says right here that Meyer is 
>>>> the new queen of fantasy. Her bold, original idea? Mix vampires 
>>>> with romance.
>>> Didn't Bram Stoker do that?
>> No.  Dracula is not a romantic hero.
> 
> Sez who? both his history and his trio of vamp, er, hand-maidens, surely
> qualify him-- even though I was really thinking about the other two main
> couples in the book, one of which babes survived and the other didn't.
> 
> What about le Fanu's "Camilla", made by Hammer Films into the very nice
> classic _Vampire Lovers_?
> 

That's *_Carmilla_*, by a stonking great mug of green tea!

I once ran a seriously aberrant AD&D campaign in which all the 
immortal lords of the land were in-yer-face lifts of well-known 
movie vampires, and both Vlad Dracula of the Wolves and Carmilla 
of the Mists had been amongst the last stalwarts of the living 
resistance before being turned.  I forget the ultimate Eeevil 
responsible, but the proximate ****bags were Yorga the Nightmare 
and Orlok the Rat.  The players started off in Carmilla's 
fogbound territory, where the vamp depredations against their 
living subjects were as lackadaisal as pretty much everything 
else, and drugs rather than precious metals were used as currency 
since the vampires gained nothing by nicking them.

So this first-level party eventually runs into Carmilla, who is 
chronically bored and characteristically three magical sheets to 
the wind at the time.  She approves of their uncommon flicker of 
spirit and agrees to release some commandeered peasant girl from 
maid duties in her castle or something, if they'll do her a small 
favour.

This favour is basically to go out and commit minor nuisance on 
the remote border holdings of the fifth and least 'great' vampire 
lord, Lugosh of the Bat, a buffoon who has them in the belfry and 
is a sort of compendium of every hamhock ever perpetrated by Bela 
Lugosi from _House of Dracula_ to _Plan Nine from Outer Space_. 
It isn't actually likely to be bringing them into contact with 
even vampire riff-raff -- first level characters, *hello*? -- but 
it is intended as an ambivalently-intentioned bit of possibly 
lethal education in how ****ed-up the world beyond the dreamy 
decay of her Mists really is.  (Also it is the equivalent of 
throwing sweet papers over your despised neighbour's fence, which 
is pretty hilarious to a mind so toked-up on ilusion magic that 
it is only degrees away from thinking Cheech and Chong are the 
new Laurel and Hardy, if not indeed the new J.K. Rowling; but I 
digress.)

Magic weapons and holy water were precisely as available as you 
might imagine.

Via a long, perverse, and outstandingly jammy course of events 
which I no longer even remember in detail, they ended up *killing 
@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 Lugosh* and precipitating the Great Conflict which was 
supposed to begin when their level was rather nearer double 
figures than it was.  With hilarious consequences(TM).

Carmilla was ultimately supposed to be the romantic heroine 
(evolving from anti-) of the Great Überplot which those ingenious 
chaps and chappesses so consummately derailed.  Happily Real Life 
intruded before too long, and we were all scattered upon the 
winds of the wide world before the true poverty of my plotting 
could be exposed to universal derision.

Whew, *there* was lucky, now!

-- 
Cheers,

Gray

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