The childs, particularly girl child, are in love with all things vampire lately, mostly thanks to the film What We Do in the Shadows and Terry Pratchett's Carpe Jugulum. Finding vampire, or rather, Vampyre, related culture is a thing for us now. I took a chance and introduced the childs to Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv series from awhile back (it happens to be on Netflix). I had no idea how they were going to react (tacky? scary?) but turns out that they Love It.
Buffy is, according to the childs, silly and fun (my baby hipsters love the kitsch), but has way too much kissing and not enough killing. It's one of the few shows they both want to watch at the same time.
Here is the childs' unguarded Buffy watching expressions. Fear faces. More than likely it's because Giles is kissing someone (old people kissing, ewww!).
Our little house and my low tolerance for noise that I do not generate means that everyone watches their shows with their personal speaker in order to keep the volume low. A semi-prone person means a cat in sitting on them.
Having watched Buffy when it first came out, I love hearing all their Buffy jokes (like the three faces of Angel - the straight face, the straighter face and the heavy brow ugly face. It's much funnier when boy child makes the expressions.) Or when one starts whining about not having enough time to study because one must go save the world, a.k.a. the Buffy defense, but it still does not get one out of homeschool work time.
Other than Buffy, I plan on showing the childs Lost Boys (probably okay, haven't seen it in awhile - it may turn out like that day when I showed them Dude, Where's My Car? and regretted it within the first 10 seconds of the movie) and Interview with a Vampire. Girl child will probably love that and the boy will hate it.
Whatever we watch, girl child's allegiance to What We Do in the Shadows will stay firm. I'm going to say that if you cut her in half, WWDINS quotes would be going all the way through. They've threatened to put out a sequel about the werewolves (not swearwolves) which she eagerly awaiting, if Taika Waititi could get on that, that'd be great, thanks.
So, world, what have you got for age appropriate-ish vampire culture? Graphic novels, movies, books? Humour and/or heavy irony is appreciated. Got any suggestions for us?
I think the trouble with vampires is that so few fall in that sweet spot between adorable (Bunnicula by James Howe) and sexy (Sookie Stackhouse novels by Charlaine Harris). There are the Buffy novelizations and comics (I've only read a handful and the gore/kissing is similar to the show). There's Princess Decomposia and Count Spatula by Andi Watson which is a little cute, but good. I know my kid has read a ton of manga about vampires, but I've long since given up on tracking those. Gail Carriger's Soulless books have been adapted into comics, but there is a fair bit of kissing. I watched My Best Friend is a Vampire many times as a teen, but there is that whole '80s movie sex thing happening. I also loved all those "true" books about witches and monsters and so on as a kid and I'm sure there are plenty about vampires.
ReplyDeleteIt's not about vampires, and it might not be suitable age wise (too long since I've read it to remember), but I can't help but think of Martin Miller's Lonely Wearwolf Girl http://www.martinmillar.com/pages/lonelywerewolfgirl.html
ReplyDeleteMy girl LOVED My Babysitter is a Vampire, and so did I. It was on Netflix when she watched it. Similar sense of humour as Buffy, and similar Monster-of-the-week structure. Way less kissing/sexy stuff too.
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