Okay, the blood-ketchup thing make me

at the same time.
I'm no expert, but it seems to me that recent vampire books, TV shows, and movies that stretch the "rules" are a positive thing. I do understand why some people want vamps to be plain old scary and monstrous, and that sort of story is fun in its way. But that makes them awfully one-dimensional. As NightAir said back when this thread was first started, vampire stories are human stories. Making the vamps one-dimensionally monstrous pretty much knocks them out of the "human" part of the story, and they are reduced to a foil for the "real" people to fight against. Whereas a vampire with more humanlike emotions and thoughts is a wonderful way to explore the human condition from inside, with the added powers, lusts, torments, etc., of vampirism giving the storyteller more "tools" to use, so to speak.
One of the things that immediately appealed to me about Moonlight was the fact that vampirism isn't a "curse" or a "damnation." You don't lose your soul when you're turned; you don't wake up totally evil. Moonlight vampires have lost much and gained much as a result of being turned, but they haven't lost their souls. They remain
people--and, assuming they get through the rough transition, they can choose what sort of vampire-person they want to be. That makes them seem much more real to me, and much more appealing. And (sorry, Mr. King) not at
all like horror-story vampires, although Moonlight-world stories can easily incorporate elements of horror.
The same goes for straight romance. Much as I loved the romantic aspects of Moonlight, I loved the fact that the romance was only one aspect of a very complex world. I'm not very fond of formulaic romances, whether they have supernatural creatures in them or not. So Moonlight was the perfect world for me. A world of huge possibilities, that felt realistic and yet wonderfully unlimited in its scope.
I guess that's why I'm still here after all this time...
