Hey so, I need to rant cause like this is low key upsetting me. Possible vampires SMP hot take incoming
The “hot take the vampires as a queer allegory thing is problematic and offensive” thing is one not that hot a take and two not really correct?? I say it’s not a hot take, cause I’ve seen it all over my dash recently, but I do really like and respect the posters so I don’t want to block them. However most of this criticism feels very shallow and a complete misunderstanding of allegories and what the “vampires are a queer allegory” means.
Firstly, I should state what the general argument against the queer allegory is (from what I’ve seen, take it with a grain of salt and do your own research). From what I’ve seen, the argument is that it’s actually pretty offensive to compare the vampires to the queer community as the vampires are monstrous creatures who take away people’s bodily autonomy and forcefully turn them into something they don’t necessarily want to be. And while I can understand and respect where this argument is coming from, to fully subscribe to it, it feels like you have to disregard what the actual allegory is. Because, like I’ve said in other posts, allegories aren’t a one for one comparison a lot of them time. Sure they can be, but not most of the time. Additionally, I’ve seen arguments in a similar vein saying that “the vampires aren’t a queer allegory because there are creators in the server that are still humans that are queer so it doesn’t even make sense” which definitely misses the point of an allegory, but more specifically I think it’s rooted in a confusion of queer allegory and queer coding. To further explain the difference, queer coding is the idea that a writer/creator hints at a character LITERALLY being queer through symbolism and small details, whereas queer allegory is the use of a character in a story who is not necessarily LITERALLY queer but their story and/or life reflects the real life queer experience. These are not mutually exclusive and can be used together (ie Merlin/Emerys is queer coded through is relationship with Arthur and is a queer allegory through his magic), but they are very much not the same thing.
To me, the argument that “the queer allegory in vampires is that queer people are taking away people’s bodily autonomy” is akin to saying “the queer allegory in BBC Merlin is that all queer people are terrorists” which like you CAN read it that way if you WANT, but that doesn’t mean you SHOULD read it that way. The allegory in Vampires (and Merlin tbf) is that “there is a part of yourself that you can’t change but you have to keep it hidden because if it’s revealed, you will be shunned, ostracized and even hurt/killed by the general population/community” which I feel most queer people (myself included) can relate to.
To quickly clarify some things about this as well: the goal of this post was not to convince you that “you can ONLY read the vampires as a queer allegory and you HAVE to interpret it this way or you’re objectively wrong!!1!!” Because that’s not how interpretation works and even in this medium, the allegory isn’t uniform or applied to all the creators. I merely wanted to point out that if you want to interpret the vampires as a level of allegory for the queer experience, you can, without it inherently being problematic. I think the idea that this interpretation was problematic comes from a mix of media literacy death and cancel culture, especially in fandom. In this day and age it’s become increasingly hard to dislike something without it needing to be morally wrong and therefore justifiable to hate, when really, you don’t need a reason to just dislike something dude. It’s ok to be a hater, but you don’t have to make something someone else enjoys morally reprehensible when it isn’t. Disliking something shouldn’t have to be a matter of morality, but rather a matter of taste.
