(Before we begin, a tiny confession: I've never actually, you
know, liked vampires all that much. There are a fair tiny few who I love
quite a lot - notably Caroline from The Vampire Diaries, Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jessica from True Blood, and Con from Sunshine
- but, on the whole, drinking blood is icky and the whole "eternal
love" thing makes me want to find a spoon and gag myself with it, and
those are pretty much all of my feelings about them.
So all I'm
saying is, if you think vampires are the coolest tortured soul tragic
hero sexy beast creatures of the night in the history of ever, you might
not entirely appreciate my take on them.)
(Also, I'm aware that
this may not be the most original idea ever, but two of the biggest
vampire shows on the air right now were inspired by book series, and
Dracula is coming to NBC this fall, so clearly originality is not a huge
deal, right?)
Our Hero
Let's call her Hannah, shall we? (I'm not absolutely totally certain this is her name, but it'll work for now.)
Hannah is an adorable young Asian woman who's been a vampire for about
four hundred years (or maybe five hundred; the smaller details of her
backstory are not particularly important at this stage of the writing
process, and either way she is more than twice as old as, for example,
America). She's always hated being a vampire, but about one hundred
years ago (more than that? less? yet more backstory), a chance encounter
made her see that, duh, there are a lot of bump-in-the-night-y things
out there that are even worse than her (including other vampires), and
she could be saving people from them. Superstrength, superspeed, and
immortality make it pretty easy to be a hero. Well, if killing monsters
makes you a hero. Which I'm fairly certain it does.
When the show
starts, Hannah is teaching herself Dutch, Polish, and Sanskrit in her
spare time. These are in addition to the twenty-four other languages she
already speaks fluently. Because, well, wouldn't you do the same thing
if you were never going to die?
She's independently wealthy
(because everyone already knows vampires always are), but travels around
working a lot of odd jobs because it helps her a) stay in touch with
humans and b) hear about monsters who need killing.
Hannah is one
of twelve vampires - ever - who can walk around in the sunlight without
bursting into flames and dying instantly. How she got this power is a
pretty crucial part of her backstory; it nearly killed her, and paying
for it was not easy.
Her best friend (who won't introduce herself
until the last few minutes of the first episode) is a ridiculously
powerful witch.
Vampires: They're Freaking Monsters
If you're a little too familiar with other series, you might be under
the impression that, once you get past their homicidal tendencies,
vampires are downright cuddly. Well, not on my show.
Technically, they only "need" to feed about once every other month, but
vampires want to kill whenever they're awake. If they get bored, they
are likely to go on killing sprees that are as bad as anything you'd see
on Criminal Minds. If you think you can take them, you're wrong.
They're fast enough to sneak up behind you and snap your neck - or, for
that matter, rip off each of your limbs one by one, tear out your
heart, whip out your spine and use it as a whip, et cetera - several times over and over and over before you ever even feel like you're possibly being watched.
(As for the whole "but they're so sexy" thing . . . well, yes, they're
nice to look at and they know it, but they still very much want to kill
you. You have absolutely no chance of "taming" one, no matter how great
your blood smells. Even if you do manage to find one who's willing to
keep you alive for a while, they will eventually get bored and decide to
kill you, and, well, they're strong enough to smash through stone with
their bare hands. Do you really want one grabbing you and, you know,
thrusting?)
So basically, if you know they exist, you should be
totally afraid to go outside after dark for any reason unless you're
lucky enough to live in a town with a witch.
No Romance
No, I'm totally kidding. Hannah falls in love with a human, and they
officially start dating a few episodes into season two, but there is no
extended "Oh look, here's her love interest! Aren't they cute together?
Have we mentioned that they're in l-o-v-e (even though they just met two
minutes ago)?" scene in the first episode.
When they do finally
kiss, reactions will be mixed: Some fans will be overjoyed; some fans
will wonder where the hell that came from; some fans will yell, "Well,
this just got interesting!"; and . . . some people will stop watching.
Villains
I haven't given this an awful lot of thought - other than "Hey,
wouldn't it be cool if Hannah fought a bunch of trolls all the time?"
and some hazy ideas about an immortal wicked witch - but, trust me,
there would be some villains you could actually hate. You'd cry when
they killed your favorite supporting character, you'd cheer when Hannah
killed them, and THEY WOULD NOT GET THEIR OWN SHOW.
Witches
Alright, let's be brutally honest for one second: I'm not a writer.
I'm probably never going to write any part of this story in any format.
So it's completely stupid to speak of spoilers, but I'd spoil quite a
few truly excellent scenes (some of which might actually come as a
surprise) if I said anything - other than "They hate each other, A LOT" -
about the relationship between witches and vampires. (Since Hannah's
best friend is a witch, other vampires basically view her as a
biological freak. It is absolutely unheard of for a vampire and a witch
to not want to kill each other.)
Oh, well, one thing I can reveal
is that, since you can't make someone a witch, there are less of them
than there are vampires in the world. Fortunately for us, witches are
obviously way more powerful.
Absolutely No Werewolves
The only thing more boring than a werewolf is a werewolf who shows up
on a vampire show for some obligatory Fang vs. Fur action.
Obviously (unfortunately), they do exist, but they are never allowed to
appear onscreen. Whenever they're mentioned, someone has to
dismissively point out how pathetic they are.
Fairies
Kind of a big deal.
Mostly because I'd like there to be a fairly important recurring
character who is a gay guy with some fae blood who discovers that he can
start fires with his mind - in other words, a literal flaming fairy.
Heh.
But seriously, fairies are awesome. They could wrap up the
entire vampire-witch thing in about ten days. If they gave a shit.
So, that's it. All I'm saying is, I would totally watch this.
P.S. Have I mentioned that Hannah's best friend in the world is a witch? Because it's kind of important.
