Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Difference between revisions

 

== Anime and Manga ==

** Her Master, Alucard, ''functions'' as a [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampire]], but only because Integra's [[Kid with the Leash|got him on a leash]].

* Mosquiton from both TV Series and OAV of ''[[Master Of Mosquiton]]''. Nice vampire... until he drinks blood, anyway.

* Arcueid Brunestud from ''[[Tsukihime|Shingetsutan Tsukihime]]''. Good vampire. Also very cute (except when she's hot in a [[Dark Action Girl]] kind of way).

** However, it's outright stated that Arc is ''very'' much an exception to the rule - most Nasuverse vampires are ''far'' from [[Friendly Neighborhood Vampires]], more usual being the [[Ax Crazy|utter psycho]] types.

** There's also [[All There in the Manual|Zelretch, Van-Fem (he's non-hostile, anyway), Enhance, Merem (sorta)]], and {{spoiler|Sion}}. Presumably, Yumizuka would have qualified if [[Demoted to Extra|they hadn't cut out her path]].

** Note though that although Arcueid was never evil, she was originally [[Emotionless Girl|not so friendly.]] It was only {{spoiler|after Shiki "killed" her that she turned all [[Moe]] and lovable.}} This is perhaps why she had no interest in romance until Shiki.

** It's also implied that the other True Ancestors were perfectly decent fellows, if maybe a bit aloof. Oh and they probably killed people who put nature out of balance. But except for that or until [[Face Heel Turn|becoming a Demon Lord]] they don't seem to have been really ''bad''.

* Pachira from ''[[Magical Pokaan]]'', who's really just looking for a boyfriend and [[A-Cup Angst|a larger bust]]. She wants the boyfriend to let her bite him, but only with the best of intentions. Otherwise, her vampirism only shows up when it's plot-important.

** Pachira manages to subsist on tomato juice, and, in fact, donated blood when she sees a cute guy working at the blood donation clinic.

*** Moka's mom, Akasha Bloodriver, was one of these too, with the daughter's power-limited alter ego taking very much after her. Which doesn't stop her from being one hell of a badass when she needs to be, {{spoiler|since she is a Shinso, the most powerful monster category in the manga's universe.}}

* In the manga ''[[Vampire Knight]]'', all of the Night Class students take special tablets rather than drink blood, but Kuran Kaname is the only one who really fits this trope. Arguably, so does {{spoiler|Zero and Yuuki}}

* Rai, Seina, and Regice from [[Noblesse]]. The latter explicitly states that term "Noblesse Oblige" was created by their protection of human.

* In the first episode of ''[[Phantom Quest Corp]]'', Ayaka initially encounters a vampire who she believes to be behind a string of vampire attacks. It's later learned that he's a reforming (and ''anemic'') vampire who's trying to kick the bad habits: learning to tolerate the sun, crosses, and garlic. His only real problem is the need for blood (which must still come from clean virgins for his body to take it). As it turns out, one of the victims being targeted by the real perpetrator (a reincarnated Dracula) is his girlfriend, who's been offering her neck willingly to help with his problem (and he's been careful enough to limit himself to 200cc's per quarter).

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

 

== Film ==

** [[Word of God]] states that {{spoiler|Oskar's fate is that he'll be turned into a vampire as well, so there'll be two of [[Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire|them]], wherever they end up living.}}

* The animated children's movie ''The Ketchup Vampires'' featured...well, vampires who drink ketchup instead of blood.

* Vampires in the [[The Saga of Darren Shan]] are brave, follow a strict moral code, and don't kill the people they feed on. The Vampaneze, on the other hand, cannot be definitively labelled as 'friendly' or 'otherwise'.

* Alexander Sterling, from ''[[Vampire Kisses]]'' is another vampire boyfriend, who has to protect his girlfriend from vampires of the not-so-friendly type.

** In ''[[Discworld/Monstrous Regiment|Monstrous Regiment]]'', Maladict {{spoiler|or should we say Maladicta}} is addicted to coffee. When he runs out of coffee everyone becomes very, very nervous.

** In ''[[Discworld/The Truth|The Truth]]'', Otto Chriek devotes himself entirely to researching light and color and becomes the ''Ankh-Morpork Times'''s "iconographer."). He deliberately cultivates a stereotypical yet humorous vampiric appearance in order not to be taken seriously -- and thus, not feared. {{spoiler|[[Crowning Moment of Awesome|Until he gets to de Worde's father, of course.]]}}

** Acknowledged, subverted, and averted in ''[[Discworld/Carpe Jugulum|Carpe Jugulum]]''. The Magpyr Family don't go on rampages of terror or paint the town red. They are (with one minor exception) [[Affably Evil|polite and civilised]], with only the slight drawback of overusing their mental powers to take over places (but still doing it peacefully...ish). They also set up communities where villages "willingly" donate blood to Vampires whenever they want it. Subverted with the character of the Old Count Magpyr, who was very much of the old school of vampiring; living in an ominous mountainside castle etc. This was actually a clever move in the long run because the Count realised that the fastest way to avoid being killed permanently was by giving people a fighting chance in order to level the playing field. This takes the form of deliberately leaving holy water in his own castle, having lots of ornaments which can be bent into religious symbols and big wide windows for letting the sunshine in. This method worked much better, so much so that the Old Count was actually respected and liked by the locals despite technically being a stereotypical monster vampire.

*** He was apparently given to telling his Igor, point blank and apparently unprovoked, that the day vampires won every time would be the day they truly died. Granny charges him to "teach [the Magpyr children] to be stupid," but he sounds like a pretty smart guy to me.

* [[Tanya Huff]]'s ''[[Blood Books]]'' series has vampires who are pretty much just like they were in life, only now they live forever and drink blood. The main vampire character in the series is a romance novelist, for heaven's sake.

* ''[[Kitty Norville]]'' suggests that her various listeners aim for this on her Midnight Hour radio show. In practice, it's been a mixed bunch: Rick, Alette, and the Washington D.C. shapeshifters are nice, if slightly isolationist, folk who just happen to be afflicted with a common chronic disease and immortality. Kitty {{spoiler|and Ben}} are pretty much the same way, although more aggressive in dealing with Unfriendly Neighborhood Vampires. The neighborhood part seems to be attached to the friendly one, as vampires or werewolves that don't have some normal civilized life to focus on end up [[Always Chaotic Evil]].

* In the [[Incarnations of Immortality]] book ''Under a Velvet Cloak'' (eighth and last, deals with Nox), the vampire colony obtains small quantities of blood from local livestock about every week or two. Their major interaction with unconverted humans is for sexual activity.

* In ''[[The Vampirates]]'', despite being widely feared by humans, the Vampires are kind, treating their donors gently and seeing them as friends. Lorcan's affection for Grace is particularly sweet.

* Vampires in the ''[[Night Watch]]'' books, despite being inherently Dark, generally strive to be good people. Anton's neighbours are a family of vampires, yet he had no idea they were anything other than decent human beings until after he was recruited by the Night Watch; after he gets over the initial shock, their relationship becomes strained, though they remain on good terms. Also, vampires invented blood transfusion technology so they'd have a way to feed without having to kill people; the fact that it saves human lives is just a fortunate side-effect. Unfortunately, they do have to suck blood straight from the neck on occasion, which can cause problems.

* While it's [[Not Using the Z Word|never said outright]], Silas seems to fit this trope in ''[[The Graveyard Book]]''. It's said several times that he belongs to neither the living nor the dead, and near the end of the book he confesses to having a monstrous past in which he did much worse things than the Jacks have done. In the present he's Bod's fierce protector.

* Edward Cullen from Stephenie Meyer's ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'', who battles for the heart of Bella Swan against the other friendly minority Jacob Black, a [[Wolf Man|werewolf]]. At least he's a Surly Neighborhood Vampire-- the rest of his 'family' fit this trope pretty well too, like Carlisle, vampire doctor and upstanding member of the community, and his wife and their 'kids'.

** This is one of the few things about Vampires she doesn't do too bad a job with. Aside from the Cullens, Vampires are shown to be [[Complete Monster|Complete Monsters]]. Even among the Cullens, some of them still struggle to varying degrees with the hunger. In fact, that struggle is a major plot point.

* In the [[Ravenloft]] novel ''Vampire of the Mists'' by Christie Golden, the elf Jander Sunstar, in what is apparently a unique case, retains his essentially good character after becoming a vampire. He feeds from animals and on rare and non-lethal occasion the hopelessly insane, and goes on to oppose Ravenloft's most famous villain, fellow vampire Count Strahd Von Zarovich.

** Unfortunately, {{spoiler|We learn from later Ravenloft sourcebooks that his [[Heroic Sacrifice|suicide-by-sunlight]] at the end didn't stick, due to [[Diabolus Ex Machina|the Dark Powers]] not wanting to lose such a wonderful toy, and that due to the nature of Ravenloft, [[The Dark Side]] trumps '''any''' amount of [[Heroic Willpower]] given enough time. The several centuries he's been stuck there managed to corrupt him from actually heroic [[Chaotic Good]] to a [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] variant of [[Chaotic Evil]].}}

** Vampires in that world are a significant minority of the population (along with ghouls) that behave just like humans with special powers; either good or bad. In addition to Bones, Spade, Dave, Juan, Tate, Rodney, and Annette are all quite friendly for undead.

*** [[Old Master|Mencheres]] isn't bad, if a bit cryptic sometimes.

** For now. Based on the general trends of the series and the revelation that undead vampires feed to make a tentative, temporary connection to their missing souls, they're clearly being set up for more sympathetic characterization down the line. Whether this will ever affect their relationship to regular people is much less certain.

* Prince Garrid from [[Tales of the Frog Princess]]. He seemed to be cunning, cold, and even something of an asshole before he and [[Love Redeems|Li'l fell in love.]] After that, he's shown to be funny, [[Tall, Dark and Snarky]], and a pretty nice guy in general.

* ''[[Family Bites]]'' by Lisa Williams, features Friendly Neighbourhood Werewolves who look and act like big, friendly dogs, and Friendly Neighbourhood Vampires who [[Vegetarian Vampire|drink animal blood]] ... except for the younger son, a [[Casanova]] who drinks from [[Kiss of the Vampire|consenting women]].

* [[Bunnicula]] ruthlessly drinks the life juices from its victims, which he requires to live (he's greatly weakened when Chester the cat uses garlic to prevent him from attacking anyone.) Subversion? Heck no. Bunnicula is a vampire ''rabbit'', and sucks the juice out of ''vegetables''. Toward the human members of the family and other pets, he's quiet and nonviolent, Chester's paranoia notwithstanding.

****** They talk about that issue in one episode in Season Five (under the guise of talking about the Hunchback of Notre Dame after English class). Tara says something like, "But he's not really good. He has no moral compass. The only reason he does good things is to win the love of this woman who could never love him back. That's how you know it can't end well..."

** ''[[Angel]]'' might even be the [[Trope Namer]], as Lilah refers to Angel as "Our Friendly Neighborhood Vampire" in the season 1 episode "Five By Five."

* The ''[[Tales from the Crypt]]'' story "The Reluctant Vampire" involved a vampire who shied away from directly drinking blood from humans, rather getting it during his night watchman duty at a blood bank.

* ''[[Being Human (UK)]]'' features not only a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire, but also a Friendly Neighborhood Werewolf (locking himself away during transformations) and a Friendly Neighborhood Ghost (who only scared people because she was confused about what happened to her).

* Juliet van Heusen, from [[Wizards of Waverly Place]]. Her parents, not so much. This may result from Juliet's parents giving her a soul.

* ''[[The X-Files]]'' episode "Bad Blood" has a vampiric clan traveling the country in an RV caravan and generally being lawful citizens (they even pay taxes, as one of them points out). The villain of the episode is actually the only one of them who has trouble keeping low profile and their representative apologizes for his behavior before they disappear into the night, leaving Mulder and Scully drugged but otherwise unharmed.

 

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Unsurprisingly, a number of players in ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' will play these, ranging from Red Cross employees (cut out the middleman; bitten humans are going to get transfusions anyway if properly diagnosed) to energetic geeks who play too much DDR (pale? Of course I'm pale. Ahh, curs'd daystar, bane of my existence!). Some storytellers claim this is becoming almost as tired a cliche as the [[Obviously Evil]] ones or the [[Gloomy Goth|brooders]]. These people are wrong, because few things are as giggle-worthy as a room of black-clad vampires playing Mario Kart and asking for one part blood, three parts Mountain Dew. ''[[Vampire: The Requiem|Requiem]]'' carries on the tradition - it's easy to imagine a vampire who leaves her Carthian Movement meeting and hits the all-night arcade.

*** However, you can end up doing horrible things during Frenzy whether you want to or not. Also, it's specifically mentioned that some vampires take it upon themselves to break others of excessive humanity, considering holding yourself to a high standard a naive impediment. Therefore in some ways ''Masquerade'' can still actually be more forgiving -- although frenzy is still an issue, you can feed on anything no matter how powerful you are, and other vampires are less likely to attempt to sabotage and manipulate you into monstrous behavior for the hell of it.

** Actually there are two flaws in their gene seed: The Red Thirst which causes them to develop vampiric tendencies and usually manifests in battle, although it can manifest also outside of it leading to several cases of missing civilians near Blood Angels or their successor chapters encampments, and Black Rage which manifests before battle causing theme to relive Sanguinius's death and turns them into raving maniacs.

* ''[[Ravenloft]]'' mostly completely averts this, but one of the sourcebooks has an adventure featuring a carefree [[Roma|Vistani]] youth that has been newly-turned against his will. The PCs can with care convince him curb his new appetite and help save the rest of his family from the vampire that bit him. The epilogue text implies he will eventually give in to his blood hunger, though.

* Rachel Alucard from ''[[Blaz Blue]]'' prefers [[Little Miss Snarker|snarking]] and [[Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?|tea]] to blood-draining. {{spoiler|In fact, she's only had one victim, and even he didn't die.}}

* The friendly part's debatable, but [[Blood Rayne]] is basically a vampire who kills Nazis.

* Sierra of [[Suikoden]] is a rather friendly example of this trope and only too happy to help kill [[Complete Monster|Neclord]], before becoming attracted to one of the characters.

* In ''[[Drawn to Life]]'', there is a vampire who drinks tomato juice instead of blood.

** Hilda in ''From the New World'' is Keith and Joachim's little sister. She joins up with Johnny because he rescued her from Roswell. She aspires to be some kind of magical girl heroine whom all children can look up to...and saving the world seems like a good place to start!

* Loue from ''[[A Witch's Tale]]'' definitely qualifies. He doesn't even feed on humans, he likes tomatoes!

* In ''[[Sluggy Freelance]]'', Sam is a parody of these; he attempts to be brooding and angsty, but often switches right back to the sleazy, upbeat guy he was pre-vampirization. One arc had him walking right into a ''[[Buffy]]'' parody.

** It's worth noting that Sam is NOT a [[Vegetarian Vampire]]; though he is generally a good guy and avoids killing people, he has no problem drinking people's blood and when he thought he had killed one of his victims, his reaction was "oh, well".

* In [[Life Sketch]], vampires are so commonplace that it came as a huge shock when one of them started attacking humans. {{spoiler|And even then, it wasn't a real vampire.}} They even serve blood in restaurants like the O.K. Cafe, where [[Buffy the Vampire Slayer|Spike,]] [[Twilight (novel)|Edward]] and [[A Witch's Tale|Loue]] frequently hang out.

* A recent page of ''[[Triquetra Cats]]'' introduced Circe SinClaire, a friendly jovial vampire sorceress, who survives on clone blood, who acts as surrogate mother to a young kitsune.

* The plot of ''[[Last Blood]]'' revolves around the last human survivors of a [[Zombie Apocalypse]] and the vampires who need to keep them alive to avoid starvation.

* Nina Delacroix in ''[[Eerie Cuties]]''; she was born in Easter, and thus needs chocolate instead of blood... and she even feels bad about "killing" a chocolate bunny. The rest of her family drinks blood, but they don't kill the people they feed on.

* Liz from ''[[Blip]]'', by her own admission, used to be evil, but she's turned her life around and hasn't killed anyone in centuries. She gets her fix from raw meat and large quantities of animal blood stashed in her basement.

* Scarlet Blutt from [[Pleasure Bon Bon]] combines this with [[Ethical Slut]].

* Secret from [[Keychain of Creation]]. She's a cute, sweet, demure [[Broken Bird]]... [[Death Knight]].

* Various vampires from [[The Kingfisher]] see themselves as moral, with varying degrees of truth. The youngest remaining vampires - Jack, Darren, and Tristan - are essentially human, unless in a blood frenzy. Vitus is the preachiest nice-guy character in the comic.