Today’s vampire love is all about cringe losers

polygon.com:

The allure of vampires is as immortal as the undead creatures themselves. But while vampires have always been supernatural icons of sexiness, what that sexiness manifests as, and how it reflects the aspects of human desire commonly left out of mainstream media, has evolved.

In the Victorian era, vampires like Dracula and Carmilla represented the forbidden. Their monstrosities — from lizard-like wall crawling to long, needle-like teeth — were prominent, but at the same time, there was still something about them that the books’ protagonists found physically compelling. A hundred-some years later, during the midst of the Twilight craze, young adult authors sanded off vampires’ more undesirable traits to make them the ultimate object of adoration for teen girls. Sparkly and occasionally played by Robert Pattinson, these vampires represented a type of desire usually left out of mainstream media: namely, the young female gaze.

Now, just a few years after Edward Cullen, the Salvatore brothers, and other YA-friendly creatures of the night mesmerized teenagers, vampires have a totally different appeal. Their darker traits aren’t amplified to be dangerously sexy, nor have they been transformed into something ethereally beautiful.

No, today’s vampires are more “realistic” in how they actually have to deal with real life. To put it bluntly, they are pathetic little shits.

Being a vampire sucks (pun very intended). Forget tortured Byronic figures or beautiful immortal teenagers; life as a regular person who also has a craving for blood, sensitivity to sunlight, garlic allergies, and other vampire-specific complications is rough. As normal people surviving undead life, they’re actually a bit pathetic, which is exactly what makes