In Love With All Of These Vampires: Vampirism's Place in the LGBTQ+ Community
Being a teenager can really suck!
High school, secondary school or whatever you call it - being a teenager can really suck! In the 2010s, teenagers didn’t really have the same creative outlets and resources the teens of today have. So, most teenagers I grew up with were forever confused and always eager to piss on somebody’s parade because someone had done the same to them. I was one of the many who marched in the black parade, deep-diving into music, reading and generally anything that was classed ‘emo.’ The cherry on top of all of this angst was my obsession with vampires.
I was the girl who went to school with a bright yellow bag that declared ‘I read books about teenage vampires, deal with it!’ I embraced the ‘weirdo’ label in public but when the early onsets of depression began to hit, vampires felt like my only friends. Now, as an out and proud gay woman, I realise that my obsession might have had more to it than I knew. Queer coding in the vampire genre is the media’s worst kept secret but for a small closeted emo back in 2011, it was her whole world.
Homosexuality and horror have always been closely linked from A Nightmare on Elm Street: Part 2 (1985) to IT: Chapter 2 (2019) but vampirism has had hints of sexual exploration since its beginning. Vampires have often been categorised as the ‘outsiders’ of society in many ways so it is no wonder that a similarly mistreated community found a kinship with the undead. In the late 80s, the world created a new fear of the LGBTQ+ community in the form of the AIDs pandemic. The blame for the spread of the virus was placed almost solely at the feet of gay men. The media, fuelled by religious groups, manipulated the public into believing it was a punishment against the queer community for their apparent sins.Â
The first time I became consciously aware of this was in 2013 when I finally lost myself in the queer-coded chaos that was True Blood (2009). Adapted from the Sookie Stackhouse book series by Charlaine Harris, True Blood was an HBO show centred around a psychic waitress, Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin), and her relationship with the vampire Bill Compton (Steven Moyer). The show’s creator, Alan Ball, transformed the original narrative into the eternally iconic, undeniably camp series we know today. Allegedly, the angle of the HBO series wasn’t to advance the gay agenda but this is where I have to call total bullsh***. And I will tell you why…
Ball has stated that viewing the vampires in True Blood as members of the gay community is, in itself, homophobic because these creatures are often portrayed as villainous. To both agree and disagree with Ball, most of the characters in the show can be viewed as villainous at some point in their narrative whether they are human, vampire or other. We also have characters like Eddie (both a vampire and a gay man) who just want to live a quiet life but instead becomes a representation of the horrors that can occur when people fear something they do not understand. This is a life many people belonging to the LGBTQ+ community have experienced, whether directly or through those close to them.
These parallels between the lives of the True Blood vampires and the LGBTQ+ community are established from the very beginning of the first episode, ‘Strange Love.’ There is a misunderstanding when a shop owner is mistaken for a vampire because he fits the expected aesthetic. For the first few seasons, this theme is continued visually (such as the iconic ‘God Hates Fangs!’ sign), narratively (by the actions and beliefs of the religious group, The Fellowship of the Sun), and by multiple characters.
Overall, True Blood is not a flattering portrayal of humanity as a whole (both living and undead) so it is not a show that comes to mind when I think about LGBTQ+ representation. However, the flawed nature of the queer-coded characters possibly did more to humanise the community for me than other more explicitly queer characters of the time.Â
Going back a little further, however, my queer obsession with vampires did not start with True Blood (and it definitely didn’t end there). I can remember as early as primary school, being absolutely absorbed in the Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (1997) world. I dreamed of having my own Scooby Gang and teaming up to defend the world from the creatures that poured from the Hellmouth. Or even join them, depending on what kind of mood I was in that week. While True Blood might have given me queer-coded characters and motifs, Buffy gave me ‘confusing’ crushes. Of course, there is the heartbreaking relationship between Willow (Alyson Hannigan) and Tara (Amber Benson), but my obsession with queer witches will require its own blog post. For now, let’s stick to the vampires and the slayers…
My ‘confusing’ crushes in Buffy: The Vampire Slayer did not only feel that way because of the women. Yes, that might have been the case when I was younger but after I came out, rewatching the show left me confused when I still found myself falling for characters like Spike (James Marsters). Despite the absolute annihilation that his character arc went through, Spike still remains one of my major pop-culture crushes even now as an out gay woman. It’s hard for me to decide whether Spike is one of the reasons I fell in love with vampires, or if I loved Spike because he was a vampire. Either way, the witty, sarcastic and devilishly charming (pun intended) Brit was a breath of fresh air compared to the boys I was surrounded by at the time.Â
Now, at nearly 26 years old, I have realised why vampires like Spike held such an influence over me. As was the case with many shows and books I consumed as a teenager, I was stuck between knowing whether I wanted to be with that character or simply just be them. In the case of Spike, it was the latter and that is what has possibly led to my own preference for sarcasm and the goth aesthetic. Throw in the fact that the show had more female characters than I had seen in any other show (and more importantly admirable and stereotype-defying female characters), there will always be a large part of my heart that belongs to Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.
So, why did vampires mean so much to me as a teenager?
True Blood and Buffy are just two pieces in a nest of vampire media that became a crucial part of my sexuality journey. It’s undeniable that vampires have their place in the LGBTQ+ community in a variety of ways, whether that is queer-coded or loud and proud. For me though, these shows gave me a way to openly express who I was without explicitly outing myself. People were so focused on the strange vampire girl that they barely gave the girl struggling with her sexuality any serious thought. As a teenager, vampires were my protection until they became a way for me to proudly express myself.
Originally published on WordPress on June 15th 2022