Intimate with the Vampire by Rocket88

Review by Celeste   [other reviews by Celeste]

Reviewed:

A story like this has two strikes against it when I start reading it. Strike one: I don't like senseless pain as a part of sexual relations. Pain and violence are reasonable under the right circumstances; and I'll even grant that there are occasions when it can be pleasurable to be either the giver or receiver of pain. However, I think people who enjoy being tortured by another person often have serious emotional problems. And so I expect the author of a story that involves pain or violence to show me that there is a point to this activity. Strike two: I don't believe in vampires. I find "Dracula" so boring that I have never watched the entire movie. I think the notion of vampires is generally silly.

Under these circumstances you may be surprised to know that I really liked this story. Strike two evaporated first: lots of things that are generally silly can become interesting if I suspend my disbelief and if the author does a good job of presenting the story. That's what science fiction is all about. For that matter, that's what most of this newsgroup is about. My other objection evaporated just as easily: sure, there was pain and violence in this story; but it occurred in a surrealistic context that seemed to have a point to it. If I granted that there may be preternatural beings that have the power to seduce people and steal their souls, then this kind of activity made perfect sense.

If the author's goal was to give me nightmares or to make me live in fear or anticipation that things like this might happen to me, then he has failed (I hope!). However, if he wanted to entertain me with a damned good story, then he has succeeded. Now, here's my favorite part: this story was originally submitted about two months ago. Here's what I said about it in CR 45:

"As I have said before, I am not an aficionado of vampires, werewolves, witches, or other preternatural forces. Nevertheless, I think this story has considerable potential --especially for people who understand the ground rules of vampires better than I do. The problem with this story is that it lacks even rudimentary proofreading. The author is obviously intelligent, and so he/she attempts to use fairly sophisticated ideas and sentence structures to convey his/her plot. But the mistakes are so glaring as to convince me that the author simply doesn't want to spend the time to make the story reader-friendly. I mean, does the author really think that it makes sense to "lye" in a motionless embrace? Lye is a chemical that cleans my plumbing. And then near the middle of the story I read these lines: "The fire grew more intense. MailFirst...Save As... She said. MailTheres pleasure.Save As... And with out another word she opened her mouth and gently covered mine." This garbled writing may be the result of a faulty mailer rather than poor writing skills; but it certainly is annoying. In addition, throughout the story the verbs are frequently screwed up. As I said earlier, the author is obviously intelligent; and so he/she sometimes starts using a past perfect tense or the subjunctive mood correctly, but then all of a sudden we're in the present tense and indicative mood. There are several instances of misplaced modifiers, like this one (which also contains a comma splice): "It was if she never used these feet to walk, scented and soft, I put her toes into my mouth using my tongue to wet them." Literally, this sentence means that the guy sucking the toes smelled nice and was soft; and I doubt that's what the author intended. A few lines later we hear about "the beating of her hart." A hart is a male deer. What does the author really mean here: "...my mind soured as I clung tightly as the sweat that gummed my body to hers was causing my arms to slide." I think the guy's mind "soared", but the sentence clearly says that it turned sour! Here's one more that I kinda liked: "My flesh was ripped and I needed to explode, I wanted orgasm, I started to beg to her. Mailplease dont stopSave As..." Finally, I think a succubus is a ghostly visitor that goes under the person being visited; this critter sounds more like an incubus. {Note: I was wrong about this; the author was right. I checked.}

"I don't derive sexual satisfaction from making fun of authors' mistakes, and I don't mean to give the impression that I want to humiliate this author. For me to say that a vampire story has potential means that it _really_ has potential. I myself recently spelled "waist" incorrectly in Celestial Reviews (although I was actually copying the words of a different writer). Mistakes happen. But when mistakes accumulate, readers get annoyed and wonder why the author hasn't gone to the trouble of preparing the text properly. Creative ideas are the most important part of a story, and I think this story may have creative ideas. But there's no reason why creative ideas cannot be presented more coherently than this.

"It's not just English teachers who get upset at this. English teachers may be the only ones who know why they're upset; but readers in general will find this presentation to be annoying. I urge this author and others like him/her to take advantage of my offer to find free volunteer proofreaders. This could possibly have been an excellent story if the author would have given it the care it deserves. (Rating: 4)"

As you will notice from the title, this author accepted my invitation to receive proofreading assistance; and that's why this is labeled version 2.0. There are two major differences between the present and the previous version of this story. First, the grammar and style no longer stand in the way; the reader can now react to the ideas of the author and can feel the emotions that the author wanted the reader to feel. Second, I don't know this for certain, but I imagine the proofreader challenged the author by asking him to clarify some of the ideas that originally seemed unclear.

It is important to point out that these improvements are not just something that please English teachers. Ordinary readers - no, I'll go further -- even borderline imbeciles who themselves communicate only by grunting and yanking on their penises would have been mainly confused by the original version but will enjoy this story in its present format. If this sounds like an advertisement for my proofreading service, so be it!