I always wanted Hank and Eli to play The Monster and The Old Man Who Warns The Protagonists and to encounter paranormal investigators. With this comic I could do both.
Originally they were going to be Ghost Adventures inspired but I had a eureka moment with Buzzfeed Unsolved/Ghost Files, especially the fandom version of them: a demon pretending to be a skeptic to mess with his human friend.
The fandom of course do a very cute and funny version of that, but it made me think about how messed up and evil it would be if done seriously. Gaslighting in its purest form.
Because the inspiration would be super obvious I considered naming these guys Shaun and Bryan but by the end it had developed way beyond that. Let’s just say, I hope you like these guys because they’ll be back. A lot.
I had something else in mind for this week’s comic but realized I had to make this chapter first. Everything about it sets up stuff for later, including the senior threesome. The vampire clan drama continues in the background no matter how much Eli doesn’t care.
I got a comment on one of my Red Prism comics that said “Finally a human/vampire romance where the human is age appropriate” It got me thinking about if that sort of relationship can ever truly be “age appropriate” so to speak. Prepare for a long ramble.
Something that’s always on my mind when I’m writing Eli and Hank together is that they’re at the same “life stage” relative to each other. Hank is in his early 60’s and has reached that point in life where he has seen fashion trends go in and out of style several times, countries be created and fall, his brain literally can’t comprehend modern music and new words have been created to describehim that he doesn’t fully understand. Eli is the same, times a hundred. Hank is an old human, Eli is an old vampire.
And yet they are worlds apart. A very easy example would be if you asked them what their sexualities are. By modern standards you wouldn’t get a satisfying answer. Hank has a pretty good grasp on straight, gay, lesbian and bisexual but that’s about it. He knows what a transgender person is but would absolutely use transsexual and probably even get it confused with transvestite and crossdresser because those words were in use and not as clearly defined the last time he was part of society. So depending on the day he might tell you he’s mostly straight, bi or “I’m sure you can tell me”
And Eli? He’s from a time when the idea of having a sexuality as something you are and not just preferences was nonexistent. He has picked up the words and concepts along the way but saying you’re a lesbian because you’re a woman who is attracted to women is like saying you’re a Gryffindor because you’re brave. He understands that the words have meaning behind them but he was around when the Greeks talked about erastes and eromenos as sexual roles for men without a concept of homosexuality as an identity. He can’t be bothered to define himself by the words that are important to us now because eventually we will create new concepts and words and categories for humans.
In What We Do In The Shadows they joke about this when Viago talks about how other vampires will see him as a cradle robber for dating a 96 years old woman because no matter how old she is she’s a child compared to him.
So is it more about mental and emotional age? Is it creepy for a 200 years old vampire to date a teenage human if the vampire died as a teenager and is stuck at that age mentally/emotionally? The idea of being stuck at any age wouldn’t really mean they were equals. The vampire still has a lot more experience so being stuck as a mental/emotional teenager just means they would react like a hormonal teenager to everything despite understanding the situation better than a human teenager.
And what about the other way around? Is it creepy for an adult human to date a teen vampire if the vampire is stuck mentally as teen yet has hundred of years of experience?
Is it creepy if the vampire does continue to mature mentally and eventually becomes an adult stuck in a teen body? This was touched on in the British tv series Ultraviolet when a pedophile human was offered a vampire who had been turned as a child in exchange for his services but it wasn’t working for him because mentally the vampire was an adult. If it’s just important for the human to be past a certain mental age is the same true for a vampire, body be damned, or would an adult vampire in a young body be doomed to be alone forever?
I’m asking because I’m genuinely interested in other people’s opinion and thoughts on this. The whole “being stuck at a mental/emotional/physical age” thing doesn’t apply to vampires in Red Prism because they continue to mature mentally and emotionally which is why Eli is so weird. He’s like a super senior. They also age physically though not like humans. Instead they slowly become more monstrous as time passes. I’m still very interested in what makes one human/vampire relationship more creepy to you than another human/vampire relationship.
