Context Hat

I keep getting email from people who claim to be real-life (real-unlife?) vampires, informing me that what I have written is untrue, misleading and insulting to the undead. About 50% of these emails contain dark threats warning that I had better remove the page "or else". In an effort to stave off further messages from such folk (yes, yes, I know you're not one of them...), here's a statement of the context in which the piece occurs.

It's a story for kids.

I wrote a whole bunch of stories for children in the age 6-9 range, called The So Book of Spoons. The aim of the series is to parody the kind of stories that children in this age range are currently subjected to, and to this end I took well-known tropes and sent them up. The classic "Hammer Horror" vampire myth gets the treatment, sure, as do mad professors, dinosaurs, unicorns, space people, mince pies that eat butterflies, and everything from 1001 Nights to Chinese folklore and Christian miracles.

I know what I wrote about vampires is untrue. It's fiction! Part of the point is to show that if everything people were told about (in this case) vampires were true, the whole concept would collapse under the weight of its contradictions and inconsistencies.

As for being misleading, well it's only misleading if you read it out of context then run off an email without bothering to think for a split-second that there might just be some irony involved here.

Oh, and as far as being insulting to the undead goes, well OK, if you believe it insulting, I apologise, it's not intended that way. I'm sure you often find yourself the subject of far more appropriate and directed abuse in your day-to-day (night-to-night?) existence anyway.


Copyright © Richard A. Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk)
21st January 1999: vampwarn.htm