Sunday, August 16, 2009

Introducing the Vampirometer


Choose one of the following:

Additional points gained or lost from the following list:

Maria Lima's Matters of the Blood Vampirometer rating: 2
Kat Richardson's Greywalker Vampirometer rating: 1



Aaron Polson said...

This is awesome. I'm going to do a spreadsheet.

Danielle Ferries said...

Can't see that you've missed anything. It's pretty impressive.

Jameson T. Caine said...

How about:

Vampires exposed to sunlight die or suffer bad burns. (+ 1 point)

Vampires exposed to sunlight sparkle like a disco glitter ball. (- 100 points)


Jeremy D Brooks said...

How about "doesn't consume bio", a la "Lifeforce"? Not sure if that's positive points for originality or negative points for not suckin' blood...

Lertulo said...

Dresden, of course. I'm too sleepy to run the numbers now though. Bet it comes out negative, though I own all 11 books...

What's the modifier for multiple classes of vampires with different traits?

Catherine J Gardner said...

Fantastic. I need to store the pluses and minuses for the next time a vampire creeps into my plot.

Alan W. Davidson said...

You may have something there, KC. All of the supernatural creatures of the night could be rated in a large trade paperback format. I can picture them now, piled on tables at Costco.

Jamie Eyberg said...

I need to start reading more vampire novels just so I can try this out.

Carrie Harris said...

I'm with Jameson. You need to reference the sparkles.

K.C. Shaw said...

Aaron--A spreadsheet will make it Serious Facts. :)


Jameson--lol! I forgot about sparkly vampires. I'll have to add that in there somewhere.

Jeremy--I sort of covered that, but not very clearly. I might reword it. Personally, I'm happy with blood-sucking vampires but I'm willing to entertain the idea of vampires that feed on lifeforce.

Lertulo--You mean the different individual vampires have different vampiric skills? That one's in there somewhere (just can't remember how I worded it). It's a plus! Or did I misunderstand what you were asking?

I've only read the first three Dresden books and I don't remember the vampires well enough to give them a Vampirometer reading. Dresden's werewolves are far more varied and interesting, as I recall.

Cate--I think your vampires would be off the chart.

Alan--The Big Book of Monster Ratings! It could even be a weekly update with up and down arrows to see who's climbing the charts and who's tanking. The Monster Top 40!

Jamie--I'm tempted to dig through my 'to read' pile and pull all the books with vampires to read them next.

Carrie--Yeah, sparkles need to be in there somewhere for sure. Although I'm pretty sure Myer's vampires are well into the negative numbers even without it.

Lertulo said...

Actually, rather than individuals having different traits, I meant a story that encompasses three different races of vampires. :)

Anyway, I tallied up the Dresden vampire categories. The Black Court vampires, not surprisingly, did best on your list: they came out as +5. These are the ones that the MC says were basically outed by Anne Rice: that Dracula was written to teach people how to deal with the black court, and as a result everyone knows they hate garlic (hey, you missed that one in the vamp-o-meter) and dread the sunlight.

The red court didn't do so well: they're kind of your basic watered-down vampire without much flash either way, and sure enough the vamp-o-meter landed them a solid zero. Lots of points lost from cliche.

The white court did better than I thought. These are the weakest form of vampire, but they're all about energy and sex: they landed at +3. But there's a catch: there's a protagonist who is a white court vampire, and he's both angsty about it and in love with a human. Add up all the negatives for this guy and the white court gets dropped down to -1.

K.C. Shaw said...

Oh, I see what you mean! It's rare to have more than one type of vampire in the same world. I'd forgotten that's how Dresden did it. He deserves an extra +1 in general for that. I'll have to add that in too when I revise the Vampirometer.

Catherine J Gardner said...

Woot! Woot! Woot! I've just enquired about a certain man named Jack... :)

K.C. Shaw said...

lol, how did you find out before me? Oh yeah, you're four or five hours in the FUTURE. :)