I’m about a century behind on my vampire media, so this may already be a thing, but I’d really dig some stories about ethically-conflicted vampire hunters. Not the sort of trite, pat thing where some vampire hunter who thinks of vampires as soulless demons suddenly has an epiphany that “Oh gee! Vampires might be people too!” I want to see a vampire hunter who is fully aware that vampires are just as human as they are but who nevertheless feels a moral obligation to do something about these totally-just-like-them, soul-having human beings who tend to have an uncontrollable propensity to murder other people.
Because. let’s face it, unless you have a vampire setting in which vampires are completely capable of perfect self control, even the nicest, most pacifistic vampire who lives in the wilderness and tries very hard to subsist on squirrels has a very real potential to nevertheless end up as a serial killer, and even if they only “slip up” very occasionally, they will have an eternity to keep making those slip ups. What’s more, there are very few settings where you can just send vampires to vampire jail or put them on vampire probation after trying them in court for the occasional act of vampire manslaughter. I really want to see some vampire hunter that does the utilitarian moral math and decides, terrible as it is, that it’s to everybody’s benefit to take down vampires because their survival isn’t worth however many victims they’re going to eventually rack up – somebody who feels awful, but genuinely believes that some people shouldn’t keep cutting other people’s lives short while extending their own well past the years human beings are generally allotted.
I want a vampire hunter who has to agonize about taking down the poor guy who’s a genuinely good person who never asked to be un-Dead but who just ate seven tourists in the last month because they can’t keep it together. I want a vampire hunter who really wants to give out second chances, who really does sympathize with the brooding penitents questioning their humanity, but who still feels they have to come down on the side of people who’s time is limited. I want a vampire hunter who maybe, instead of questioning the reality or fate of vampires’ souls, questions their own, wondering whether or not they’ll be forgiven for taking innocent lives in the hope of saving more. We’ve gotten to the point where vampires are sympathetic figures, but it seems that we still (as the backlash to Twilight indicates) want them to eat people, and I could go for some fiction dealing with the dilemma that should bring up.
germansingergirl
vaporwave
2087
