even the vampires in folklore are as a rule more dangerous and dark than your typical Twilight vampire. And since Twilight, you seldom find anything else but those whiny wannabe vampires. ANd Astarion fits right into that.
Funny how everyone is blaming Twilight ...
Have you actualy read the Bram Stoker's Dracula?
Especialy that part, where Dracula uses his supernatural powers to practicaly seduce (or mesmerize, w/e) young woman?
//Edit:
Or mentioning vampires ... and looking at my profile picture ...
Have you seen Hellsing?
Do you know why Seras was turned into Vampire (actualy even Vampire Spawn), and not ordinary Ghoul? :P
My point here is simple ...
Vampires was allways sexualized, Twilight just focused a little more on that part and lot less to everything else.
Dracula uses his powers to get slaves and food. And he anything but sexy in the book. He looks dead and smells bad. So it is more about him using some kind of brainwashing to get to his victims. If I remember correctly, Van Helsing warns the group, not to look into his eyes. Dracula was made sexy by Hollywood. In fact, the old movie by Murnau, Nosferatu, while not allowed to use the original names, was much closer to Bram Stokers Dracula than most of the later movies - and the vampire there was hideous (think Nosferatu frum Vampire the Masquerade - that clan was basically made after that movie).
I don't know Hellsing, since I'm not at all interested in manga. But the point is, that mangas, like Twilight and even Anne Rice and otehr modern vampire stories came long after Bram Stoker wrote his masterpiece. The sexualisation wasn't there from the beginning, it came with the movies, starting with Bela Lugosi.
I'm ok with sexy vampires as long as you have the other kind too, but nowadays, you mostly have the angsty teenager one. And the sexsymbol, who is not dangerous at all.
I think, Vampire the Masquerade did a good job in portrying different kinds of vampires from different kind of lore background. I wish something like that would be more represented in nowadays media again.
Lowkey, Twilight isn't about vampires. Much like Astarion, really. At the end of the day, it's all about the angst-ridden bad boy going to town on the self-insert character. That's what the trend is. The vampire bit just happens to fit right in, and enchance the danger and angst aspects.
So much this.
