Why are people making vampires sexy?

Here's the thing: I get it, vampires are supposed to be sexy. That whole thing has been the case for the past what, 20 years? I can totally understand why Anne Rice has her loyal following. Isn't the idea of a beautiful, intoxicating and powerful creature pretty alluring?

Of course it is.

Vampires are immortal, super strong, and they never get old. Most people have feared getting older at least once in their lives, so not aging is definitely a selling point. Being impervious to pain and having the strength to impose your will on others sure sounds great too.

But why, oh why, has everything gone so far from the roots of what vampires really started as? Vampires were originally things that were hated and feared.

They were also nowhere near as attractive or as powerful as they are now, in the modern day, represented. It used to be, in the early part of our history, that we thought people could come back to life for all sorts of reasons. Wrongful death, revenge, an important task left undone, you name it.

These "zombies" if you wanna call them that, were usually called revenants. A revenant was the parent category of vampires, if you will. But under this kind of guideline, zombies, ghouls, specters, corpse creepers and almost any other piece of folklore dealing with a resurrection of any kind to some unlife qualifies as a revenant.

Vampires actually used to be really weak initially, as the legends go. People would nail a person's corpse to the floor of their coffin, often decapitating the head and placing holy wafers inside their mouths. Sometimes they would also burn the body or throw the head into a swift moving river. Pretty far reach from the modern interpretation right?

In my opinion, vampires took a little bit more of a hero/villain role in our culture. And as a comic book fan, I can tell you, we want our heroes and villains larger than life. I guess the writers went on about what they heard as a child and expanded on the legend. They must have wanted to make vampires more interesting to their readers. Then the writers and readers that followed followed the same formula.

And on and on until vampires became nearly invincible death machines.

What do you guys think? How does a vampire go from an ugly, deformed weak almost zombie-like creature to a super-powered super model?

Please make sure to let me know via comments here, or follow me on facebook. I look forward to hearing from you.

And we're live!

Welcome to the first ever blog, or post, or whatever you wanna call it for the Raven's Nest! Where we hope to talk about everything paranormal, from tv shows to something crazy on the news, movies and (usually) the real deal behind the folklore.

I'll be talking about why I love or hated the latest episode of Vampire Diaries one day, or maybe even about how frustrated I am at the publishing world in general (penny for your thoughts).

I'm new to this, so please bear with me. If there's anything you want to talk about, please feel free to ask questions. That's what these things are made for right?

Well, that and promoting myself shamelessly... Anyway, without further ado! Let's get into my first rant.