Building Catholic Vampire Lore (Honor At Stake)

Yesterday, I mentioned how I made Honor At Stake a book out of Buffy-inspired fan fiction. But how does one do that?

In the beginning ... get the vampire lore down.  How does it work?

Step one: I want my Dracula back.

And I mean the original Bram Stoker Dracula. Something that made sense.

In the Buffy verse, those who turn into vampires (while they MIGHT have the personality and characteristics of the people they were when they were alive), are basically possessed by a carbon copy of a demon.  This is one way to make the original Dracula story make sense, especially with Lucy being pure and virtuous when alive, and a killing machine when she develops fangs.

Heck, someone in the comments section of one of my last posts insists that's exactly what Bram Stoker had written.

But do I want to do that? Seriously, that seems very quick and easy, doesn't it? Instant killing machine? I don't want to use something that could be a cheap knockoff.

Though on the other hand, I want crucifixes and holy water to work on these creatures of the night.  Why? Because I am sick and tired of these secularized vampires in my vampire fiction. Even Fred Saberhagen, whose Dracula novels I loved, ejected religion almost entirely.

I want that back. Yes, I had no problem with Saberhagen doing that, but he was the first in my experience to do that ... about twenty or thirty years ago.

Another reason I wanted  religious artifacts to work on vampires?  Logically, if left unchecked, the forces of darkness would easily overrun everybody if they so desired. And if there are demons from Hell, there is going to be a God in Heaven. And He will do something to cover our asses. Thank you. Period. The end.

... In which case, then what?  No, seriously, if I'm not going for instant killing machine, just drink blood, how do I make vampires affected by holy items?

Because here's the most important question: How am I going to circumvent free will?

Oh, well, duh, that's the easy part: I incorporate free will.

One of the things people may not be aware of with me is that I play video games.  Yes, I've blogged about it before, but it's been a while.

One of the more important parts of many role-playing video games is Aristotle's ethics: character is shaped by one's actions, motivations, and even words and thoughts.  What we do is who we are. We're formed by actions.

And what if it's the same for vampires?  The more evil or virtuous they are, the more powerful they become.  Day to day people, who just want to get home and take a nap after a long day at work, will probably be generally unaffected by holy artifacts, but they won't be very powerful either.  The vicious have problems being within line of sight of a church.  The virtuous have no problems.

.... How does that work though?

If you look through the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, he created an outline of the abilities of a post-resurrection body. This would include the ability to rearrange the atoms of one's body to slip between the spaces of the atoms in a wall -- because a post-resurrection body would be something the owner would have complete control over, because the soul would be so bound up with the body.

Well, if that's the case, why can't we expand this list into a this hypothetical extension that includes shape-shifting? Like into a bat or something?

In this case, that would make vampirism an imperfect resurrection -- or an imperfect death. If it was perfect, they wouldn't need blood.  Heh.  And the actions that form the vampire would join the body and soul tighter together, and thus increase the vampire's control over their own body, and then can do dang near ANYTHING. BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH

Ahem...

So, this might be the start of something big. I'd be able to keep crucifixes vs. vampires. I could have good vampires, evil vampires, and all of the Dracula-esque superpowers.

Hmm... does that mean my vampires are walking corpses with fangs and a personality? Or are they alive?  Answer: perfect control means they don't need to breathe or eat, but they can if they want to. And let's face it, if they keep their body processes going, they create blood by eating regular food.

We won't even go into blood from the chalice. Heh heh heh.

The next step, of course, is to add vampires to our history.

Were vampires part of the French revolution as part of the nobles being beheaded, or were they part of the peasant rushing forward to catch blood with their bread?

Do I have Nazi vampires? Commie vampires?

Why not both? After all, why else would they have death camps?

Of course, this would require some vampire spies, right?

Ooh, a Cold War with vampires, isn't that fun?

Obviously, this can go on for a very, very, very long time.

And I'm a historian by training, so guess what? I have more background than I have wanted for creating vampire biographies.

This was all so much fun. Enjoy Honor at Stake.

E3 Roundup

If you don't already know, I'm on a blog called The Catholic Geeks.

As opposed to my radio show called the Catholic Geek, singular.

Anyway, I did a whole bunch of blogs on E3 this week, that make for a nice collection of upcoming games.

Enjoy.

Microsoft Opens strong at E3
Halo 5: Guardians
Recore   New IP
New controllers
Dark Souls III: Die Hardest.
Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2
Tom Clancy’s The Division

Rise of the Tomb Raider Gameplay at E3
Dedicated to one game. Only.

Fallout 4 at E3
Yup. Fallout is back.

E3 Is Doomed.
YAWN.  Doom is back

Dishonored ... Again

Super Smash Bros.

Playstation Event Fights Back with Exclusives

The Last Guardian -- new IP .... first announced 8 years ago.
Horizon: Zero Dawn -- new IP
Hitman
Street Fighter V
No Man’s Sky -- new IP
Dreams -- new IP
Firewatch -- new IP
Destiny: The Taken King.
Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate .... sigh.  AGAIN
Final Fantasy 7. The Remake.
Call of Duty: Black Ops III
Star Wars: Battlefront
Uncharted 4

Ubisoft wages war For Honor

War For Honor -- a new IP

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands.

EA Brings back Mass Effect and Mirror’s Edge

...And Star Was: BattleFront

Square Enix Blows Up E3

Hitman

Just Cause 3

Rise of the Tomb Raider

Kingdom Hearts

Deus Ex

Nintendo isn't dead yet, With

Xenoblade Chronicles

Star Fox Zero

Super Mario Maker

Mass Effect 2 Music: The Long Walk

Video Games: the Next Generation?

I try not to make this a blog for solely my own personal opinions, I have another blog for that, but I read an article last week that kinda annoyed me. I deeply appreciate the artwork, the graphics, and even the storytelling of some games. The graphics of the upcoming Lara Croft game, or the storytelling of the Mass Effect trilogy, could go toe to toe with movies, and could certainly replace some actors.  I mean, seriously, look at the video below.
  

  

How long did it take you to see that this was NOT live action?

But for all that, there’s been an ongoing debate in the video game community that goes something like this – the last round of major video game consoles came out in 2005 (the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3), and the technology has advanced soooo much since then, surely it is time to move on.

You might smell a bit of burning rubber at this point. That’s my brain hitting the brakes hard and going “huh?”

When the Xbox 360 came out, game companies needed to increase their hired programmers tenfold as games transitioned to HD. The PS3 came out at the same time, and it came out in Blu-ray, which was even higher definition, and made the costs of making games so prohibitive that it took years before the PS3 had a solid roster of games.

But now the game companies themselves insist that the next generations of consoles must come out, so they can use the latest and greatest technologies. Their logic is that they’re losing money because their games are not as shiny as they could be.

Really, everybody? First, I quite literally don’t know what I’m missing. So I can’t see how I can be biased against your games because there’s something better out there – because, as the companies themselves have noted, there isn’t anything better than the current generation. Is there really a problem with getting the most out of the technology we have?

Let’s take a look. To the right, this is the original Xbox game Halo: Combat Evolved. Dinky by today’s standards, but I remember when I saw it and said, “Awesome.” It’s still a nice looking game.

Fast forward ten years. There was a rerelease of the original game with Xbox 360 technology, and it was called, to no one’s great surprise, Halo: Combat Evolved. Anniversary.  

You can see the difference. The position of the body isn’t as stiff, the graphics are more detailed, the colors are richer. It is visibly better.

And now, finally, we look at Halo 4, using the exact same Xbox 360 graphics. It already looks like they’ve gone through another generation already.




Here’s a side by side or two, just to make it even clearer.

I’m hard pressed to imagine how anyone could think that we’ve hit the limit of the current generation of gaming technology, since Halo 3 and Halo 4 are the same generation. Will the next round look even better? Of course. My question is – is there a rush?

Second, could there be another reason why companies are losing money? Let’s think about this a moment. Their video games are $60, or $70, brand new. They’re not cutting costs on the games, and with gaming seasons that have over a dozen new, top-shelf games coming out at the same time, do they seriously expect people to drop over $700 on their products? Does anyone have $700 just lying around anymore?

I think I would rather pay $14, or even $30, on a used game – games that the distributors like Gamestop make money on, but the original publishers don’t. There have been so many games played that way, there has been talk of making video games non-sellable my giving out a one-time code that make the game unusable to anyone else.  If you want to trash the video game industry, make it impossible to play used games.)

So, what is the problem with the current generation of consoles? Well, let's see -- coding has filtered down to street level. Anyone who knows what they're doing with a computer can probably start putting together their own game -- and anyone with a Kickstarter account can finance it. Low-rent competition is good for the soul.

Maybe I'm just a backwards Catholic, who acknowledges that progress is cumulative. You can't get to point Z while simultaneously jettisoning point A-Y -- Catholics throw out nothing. Don't believe me? Look at the Vatican archives sometime. But most atheists, so-called "progressives" (of all sides of the spectrum), and now the video games, try throwing out everything from the past, and hope really hard that no one else will remember it either -- be it how many atheist regimes disintegrate, or how truly dark the "Dark Ages" could have gotten without the Catholic church.

I prefer to get the most out of what's there than try to move on and pretend that last console (or, on the larger scale, the last few hundred years) didn't happen.

Week-In-Review 7-23-11

Well, this week has been interesting.

Monday
The week started with Killing Captain America ... again! Those bastards.  Let's just say that I expect a movie tie-in is at work.

The music blog was all about flying cars and Babylon 5.  You'll see.

I also did a nice little article over at Examiner.com about martial arts and childhood obesity.  I'm told it's quite good.

Tuesday

This was the day I learned the good Muslims can't be good Americans ... well, if you believe one army private. I don't, but what can you do?

It also came the same day that Hollywood once again has proven to me that if I ever do a film on A Pius Man, I'm going to take the money and run very, very far.

And music blog for the day was Harry Potter, Pirates, and Mass Effect. Long story.

Wednesday

The music of the day was taken from the soundtrack of Mass Effect.  Enjoy  It's really rather neat.

Thursday

The day that, once again, all my irritation of politics is justified, as someone at Salon.com tries to examine the Politics of Captain America.

A note o n this one: The author of the article tripped over my blog post, and insists that the whole "fiscal policy of Captain America was all tongue-in-cheek."  Read it yourself. See what you think.

Music Blog: Video Game Music Mass Effect.

I decided to take a little break from Tom Smith's amusing filk songs, and figured I'd go for some nice, quick action music clips from the video game Mass Effect.

So, sit back, relax, and if you're at work, get the headphones. It's going to be fun.

Music blog: Tom Smith Does Harry Potter, Mass Effect 2

Apparently, JK Rowling made the birthday for one of her characters the same day as "Talk like a pirate day."

Guess which one it is.

And, as you've probably noticed, I have a great respect for Video Games lately, especially with voice acting, and particularly music. 

So, Mass Effect 2 makes it on today.

A Pius Man: The Video Game?

I'm starting to think that if I ever wanted A Pius Man to come to a screen, it might be a computer screen.

A while back, I did a blog post on who might play who within a movie for A Pius Man ... a year later, the post needs updating. But that'll be tomorrow.

But, in the long run, it does become a matter of ... well ... why bother? Seriously, even if the novel were picked up tomorrow, and made into a bestselling novel,

Why? Well, I believe that Hollywood is in trouble.

Click the video for a few seconds. About a minute.



This is a video game.