Vampires have been a mainstay of paranormal fiction and TV for generations, from Dracula to Twilight to The Vampire Diaries. We all know and (mostly) love them. Who wouldn’t want a sexy bad boy feasting on their blood?
The origins of vampires aren’t exactly shrouded in mystery—unless you count the fact that there are so many “origin stories” that things have become a bit confused. Bram Stoker borrowed a real-life person (Vlad the Impaler) as the inspiration for his story, and since then we’ve seen any number of different variations on vampires. But is it any wonder that there’s a lot of confusion (do vampires burn in sunlight? Or do they glitter?) when they appear in the folklore of every country and language under the sun, and people used to believe they really existed?
That’s right, there is real-life evidence that people believed in vampires. How do we know this? Because they used to exhume corpses that were suspected of vampirism and deface them: cut off limbs, stake them, or otherwise take measures to prevent them from rising from the grave.
But where did this very real fear of vampires actually come from? Would it surprise you to find out that it may have had its roots in medical diseases? Probably not—these days everyone’s probably heard of porphyria, which had symptoms remarkably similar to the modern conception of vampirism. But in fact, porphyria is not alone in inspiring the vampire mythos. Here are four illnesses that contributed to rising paranoia about vampires in the eighteenth century.
Vampirism: Symptoms and Signs
But first, what is a vampire?
Developed a sudden allergy to sunlight? Hate the smell of garlic? Feel a sudden, burning desire to chow down on someone’s neck? You may be a vampire. Here’s a handy checklist of symptoms to look out for:
Disclaimer: This is by far not an exhaustive list. Consult your doctor if concerns persist.
Got any of these? Probably nothing to worry about. Here are four other illnesses that explain these symptoms.
1. Porphyria
Porphyria is an illness affecting the production of heme, a part of the haemoglobin in our blood. Although today severe cases are fairly rare, and treatable (albeit not curable), at the height of the vampire hysteria in Europe it may have been particularly common in rural areas with limited gene pools. The symptoms include skin blistering when exposed to sunlight, gums receding (which would have made teeth appear more prominent and fang-like), and urine turning reddish-brown (the same colour as blood). Interestingly, one of the prescribed treatments was drinking animal blood to replenish their own.
2. Rabies
Rabies is a disease which has been linked both to the vampire and the werewolf mythos. Although there is now a vaccination, it used to be fairly common in Europe. Conferred by bite or blood-to-blood contact from animals to humans, it caused symptoms such as aversion to light, aggressive/delusional behaviour, and biting. Many early tales about vampires, particularly in Slavic folklore, refer to them as having beastlike behaviour, rushing at their victims, and biting them. Interestingly, there was also a major outbreak of rabies in eastern Europe around the time that the vampire was gaining traction in folklore.
3. The Plague
Even with modern medical understand, pandemics are scary things. In the past, with limited knowledge of the spread and treatment of diseases, they were even more terrifying. It’s not surprising, therefore, that vampire scares often coincided with waves of the Plague, which spread around Europe in the 1300s and 1400s. Humans contracted it from rats, and would develop symptoms such as fevers, chills, and weakness. Although it extremely rare today, the disease is still fatal if left untreated.
Suffers of the plague would often develop lesions around the mouth or emit a black purge fluid from their mouths after death. This led to the belief that they were drinking blood to keep themselves alive. Archaeologists have uncovered bodies amongst plague victims who had been buried with bricks in their mouths. This is thought to have been a method of preventing them from climbing out of their graves to drink the blood of the living.
4. Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (also known as consumption or TB) is a virus which destroys the tissue of the lungs. Although there is a vaccine, and it can be treated with modern antibiotics, the illness is fatal if untreated. It could be transmitted from person to person by air and spread particularly in poorer communities in the 19th century.
Tuberculosis suffers exhibited symptoms such as physical weakness, coughing up blood, and fevers. If one person in a household became sick, they would often infect the other family members. Because people at the time didn’t understand how diseases spread, it wasn’t a leap of logic to believe that a recently deceased relative was draining the life out of their family members, like a vampire would. The most famous case of this belief was Mercy Brown, in New England, USA… But that’s a story for another day!
Evidence of belief in vampires in Slavic folklore dates back to the 9th century, with notable periods of vampire hysteria over the centuries following that. These periods are often linked to the spread of highly infectious diseases. The vampire has been used as a symbol for all sorts of things over the centuries, often representing the unknown or the foreign, but it may well have found its origin as an early attempt to understand what we now explain through science and medicine.
Sources:
Sledzik and Bellantoni: Bioarcheological and Biocultural Evidence for the NewEngland Vampire Folk Belief (http://www.yorku.ca/kdenning/+++2150%202007-8/sledzik%20vampire.pdf)
Welcome to my new blog: all things magic.
I’ve been obsessed with magic more or less my entire life. As a child, I binge-read books like The Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, The Magician’s House, and the Septimus Heap saga. (Full disclosure: I still reread all of those occasionally, even as an adult.) In recent years, I’ve graduated to writing my own books about magic—the culmination of which will be published on 21 July 2021. This has meant an awful lot of research into magic: what is magic and where did the idea come from?
When I write, I love including titbits from actual history, real beliefs in magic which have existed throughout civilisation. In this blog, I’ll share some of my learnings and experimentation with you, along with tips for writing about magic, and a few fun projects to bring more magic into your own life.
I hope you enjoy, and please do leave a comment! I love talking to people.
Without further ado, let’s jump right in.
THE ETYMOLOGY OF "MAGIC"
Magic can mean different things to different people, but at its core it describes the process of harnessing supernatural forces in order to manipulate events, things, or people. This definition encompasses a vast variety of practices, depending on culture and historical context, including divination, curses, protective enchantments, and many others.
The concept of magic goes back as far as human civilisation. It developed alongside religion and science as a mode of understanding and explaining the world around us. (Magic, variously, has been used to explain everything from the spread of diseases, to medicine, to early alchemical experiments.) Depending on the civilisation in question, magic plays a lesser or greater role in human consciousness. In fact, it is often impossible to define strict lines where magic ends and religion or science take over.
There are a myriad of terms to describe magic and the practice thereof in English: magic, witchcraft, wizardry, sorcery, thaumaturgy, and enchantment, to name just a few. Practitioners of magic are variously called magicians, mages, witches, wizards, warlocks, and sorcerers. Merely the profusion of terms associated with the craft indicates how prevalent the belief in it must have been.
The English word “magic” comes from the French “magique”, which in turn comes from the Latin terms “magica” and “magicos”. These originate from the Greek “magos”, meaning “member of the learned or priestly class”. The term “magic” displaced existing forms in English which derived from Germanic: “gaeldorcræft” (“enchantment”), “wiccecræft” (“witchcraft”), and “drycræft” (“dry-” meaning “magician”, from the Irish “drui” (“priest”), which is the source of the word “druid”). The existence of these terms in all languages, going back thousands of years, demonstrates that magic has always been an integral concept in human consciousness. It also reveals a close association with both learning and priesthood.
Magic has had mixed connotations over the years. In fact, much of the early Greco-Roman and Judo-Christian traditions relating to magic concerned the need to protect oneself against sorcery. This carried over into the Christian tradition, which associated magic with demons. The notion of magic as something evil spread as the rest of Europe converted to Christianity. The extant Germanic, Celtic, and Scandinavian religious beliefs were strongly associated with magic, and the Church labelled these beliefs “pagan” in order to condemn them. This struggle continued throughout the medieval period, and eventually culminated in the witch hunts.
In spite of this widespread persecution, a proliferation of magic-related texts from the medieval period, the use of magic as a theme in literature, and the continuation of magical beliefs up to the modern day, demonstrate that magical beliefs did not diminish with the spread of Christianity. They continued to hold sway in Europe as a mode of rationality (term coined by Jacob Neusner to mean a method of explaining natural phenomena) up until the Age of Enlightenment, when science began to win out as the preferred method. In other cultures around the world, magic continues to play an important role in belief systems.
Magic has been critical to the development of modern-day societies around the world and continues to hold importance in the human consciousness: one only has to look at children’s books and fairy tales to see that magic is still an integral part of our upbringing and an important stage in the development of our individual psyches.
This blog will explore what magic really means to modern-day society: real-world examples of how the belief in magic has manifested, how different magic systems are represented in literature, the importance of magic to our consciousness, and how each of us can bring a little bit of magic back into our lives. I look forward to taking this journey with you.
Until next time,
Margot
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Hello, writer friends. How was your January? Mine’s been awful, and the less said about it the better, truth be told! De Klerk frontier was invaded by the Covid armies, and unfortunately they got a bit of a foothold… We’ve beaten them back and reinforced the walls, and so far so good, but being under siege is never a good feeling.
Anyway!
Today’s blog post is all about character traits. If you’ve been on the writing circuit a while, you’ve probably seen some variant of character development worksheet.
NanoWrimo has one, which I have used on occasion.
Selfpublishing.com also has one, which looks promising.
You’ve also probably read a book or five and thought, “The main character is such a Mary Sue. Is clumsiness really the only flaw you could come up with? Really? Does the main character have to wail about how she’s so ugly every ten lines, when we know that every guy thinks she’s HOT?”
You might have even printed yourself off one of those forms and sat to it, trying to figure out how to make your character stand out, without being a Mary Sue. How to make your character flawed, without making people hate them. How to make your character diverse, without making them stereotyped.
That’s what today’s blog post is about.
Character flaws are one of those things that come up time and again in writing advice. We have to have them, and we love to hate them. No one wants an annoying main character, but there’s nothing more annoying than a perfect main character! It’s also just plain difficult to sit there and think constructively about what you’re going to make bad about each character. After all, their personalities have to serve the plot, be consistent with their history, and just make sense. And that’s quite tricky to master, because obviously we don’t want to get a PhD in psychology just to design characters.
I know, I know, it’s difficult.
But I’m here to tell you that it’s not as hard as you think.
We’re going to design a character, quick as anything. Well, actually, I’m going to be lazy and grab one from the manuscript that I was totally not just working on instead of writing this blog.
Her name is Marta. Marta is pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. She’s a smuggler. She’s sassy and street-smart and a great fighter. She’s also very politically adept, outgoing, and excellent at conversation.
Sounds a bit Mary Sue-ish, right?
Truth be told, it’s all in the writing.
Every positive character trait has the chance to be a flaw if cast in the right light.
That’s right, guys.
You don’t need to sit there and think of extra character flaws. Just list the person’s good points, then figure out how those can become negative traits. Their greatest strengths will also be their greatest weaknesses.
Why?
Because, like beauty, it’s all in the eye of the beholder.
Let’s go back to Marta. When she meets her love interest, they drive each other crazy. Why? Because she’s smarter than him and talks circles around him. Intelligence is a pretty common strength in book characters, especially main characters. That’s okay, you can make your character smart. And some people will admire it. But think about how much it will annoy other people. Being smart can be a bad thing, too. A smart person might be prone to showing off, or they might disregard advice from people they think are stupid.
This works for other character traits, too. Someone who is laidback may ignore obvious signs of danger. Someone who is helpful may come across as smothering. Every character trait can be both positive and negative—and will usually be both. How a person comes across will depend on the situation, and who they’re interacting with. Two stubborn people are unlikely to appreciate stubbornness in one another.
Sounds easy enough, right? But figuring out what your character’s flaws are is only half the battle. The harder half is writing them convincingly.
How to convey character flaws in your writing
Demonstrating a flaw is not the same as demonstrating a virtue. You want the reader to like your character, therefore you will put them in situations where they shine. Creating conflict, putting your character in the wrong, is trickier and takes subtlety.
Your main character is going to think they’re right, even when they’re wrong. That’s just human nature. Unless low self-confidence is their character flaw, they’re not going to be constantly thinking about their own flaws. In fact, even if it is, it’s not useful for them to be thinking about their own flaws all the time. This is likely to annoy the reader, and flaws need to have real consequences.
If stubbornness is a person’s flaw, they need to get into arguments.
If they’re bad at taking advice, they need to make mistakes which could have easily been avoided.
If low self-confidence is their flaw, they need to be awkward in social situations, struggle making friends, or avoid situations where they feel uncomfortable.
If you have a person who is otherwise confident, but very critical inwardly, you haven’t created a convincing character flaw; you’ve just created an alien.
The medium for demonstrating flaws lies in how they interact with others and how others react to them. Think about how other people might perceive your MC. Would they get annoyed that s/he is being stubborn again? Do they talk right over your character because s/he lacks self-confidence? Do they dislike coming to your character for help because s/he always lets them down?
Teasing out these reactions is vital to demonstrating character flaws. Not only that, but it’s a natural and organic way of creating conflict. Rather that using situations to create conflict, or secrets, think about the normal misunderstandings that arise on a daily basis. A few examples from my everyday life:
- Getting annoyed at someone because it’s the fifth time they’ve talked too quietly and you’re sick of asking them to repeat themselves.
- Getting into an argument with someone who has interrupted you three times in the same conversation.
- Getting annoyed with someone because they laughed at something that you didn’t mean as a joke.
All of these situations boil down to one person’s flaws butting heads with another person’s flaws. Including them in your novel provides conflict, and will also make your characters seem human. It also gives you opportunities. After all, every second book has a teenaged character whining at an overcontrolling parent for not letting them go to a party. Why not switch it up? There are a thousand other reasons why a teenager might argue with their parents.
How are you demonstrating your main character’s flaws? What are they? Why are those flaws important to your novel? In general, why is it so important that our characters are flawed? Comment below to join the discussion.
