Assume for a minute that all those hordes of screaming Twilight fans are actually right- no not about Twilight actually being any good, since they're clearly delusional about that - but that vampires actually do exist. If this is true, then I think we can be pretty damn sure that they would be absolutely nothing like how the books and movies have painted them. Especially the whole hanging around high schools and stalking teenage girls. Yuck: just yuck. Do you have any idea just how annoying teenage girls can be? By the time you're in your twenties they're already annoying, and by the time you hit your mid-thirties, it's like dealing with an entirely different species. Now imagine if you were four-hundred years old and having to listen to some teenager explain the intricate details of a life they've barely had time to even consider having.

Anyway, my point is this: the vampires of legend couldn't possibly exist in our world. They would have had to adapt and had to do it quickly in order to blend in and to survive.

6. SLEEPING IN A COFFIN WOULD SUCK

First things first, seriously: a coffin? Yeah I know it looks cool in a morbid sort of way, but that's only in the movies and it's for a handful of scenes. Do you know how tedious it would be to have to get into a coffin every single night? Half of the time I either pass out on the couch or flop into bed after a particularly hard night of partying. Say what you like about vampires, they are known to throw or attend some heavily major parties, so you know old Vlad is not going to make it to his coffin every single time. Half of the time, he's just going to say screw it and pass out under the coffin. Not that it should matter anyway, since the first thing any vampire is going to do is get a nice place and then make it as sun-proof as possible.

Look, I may be willing to buy into the possibility that some random vampire freak may actually like the whole safety and routine of the coffin, but seriously, by nature most human beings are lazy as fuck. Give them an excuse (or a lot of money) to skip out on a tedious activity and they sure as hell will take it. First thing that goes is the coffin: trust me on this. Why have such a restricting space as a coffin when you can have an entire bedroom or an apartment? Last I checked you couldn't exactly fit a 42" plasma into a coffin. Or turn over to sleep on your side or on your stomach. Not everyone is comfortable sleeping on their back you know, and that's the only position that sleeping in a coffin really offers, which really sucks, considering that about 41 percent of you actually prefer to sleep on your sides. In a foetal position. Not judging you, but yeah: try pulling that off in a coffin. Hell, try pulling at anything in a coffin.

Make me into a vampire, but don't touch my fucking bed. Not when you can get panels installed in your windows to block the sun, and these days they sell some seriously heavy-duty light-proof curtains that are so damned awesome. They're also expensive, but worth it and believe me, your modern day vampire is going to be spending a lot in curtains because...

5. SLEEPING THE WHOLE DAY IS IMPOSSIBLE

Apparently your average vampire is supposed to automatically go to sleep from the time dawn hits until the sun goes down. While this is great for a convenient plot-device, it's not so practical in real life especially for a species that is supposed to be great at surviving almost anything. It means the hero in the story (not you) can stomp around the vampire's lair (this is usually the dusty basement or crypt without any proper WiFi to watch Netflix on) and make as much noise as he wants, all because the vampire is asleep. And of course the vampire is vulnerable only at this time because he sleeps like the dead.

In a coffin of course.

Do I really need to tell you just how fucking stupid this is?

Now I don't know about you guys, but the most I can sleep in one go is about six hours. I usually pass out around 2AM and then wake up around 8AM to go assault the first coffee pot I see. Even when I've gone asleep at 5AM, I don't make it past 11AM and that's me trying really hard to grab another 5 minutes. Six hours of sleep, on average is a good night of sleep for me. Some people need eight hours, some other lazy bastards claim they need ten hours of sleep. Can you imagine that? Not everybody sleeps the same is my point, but look at any vampire legend and the bullshit starts leaking pretty quickly when they talk about sleep.

Even if your modern vampire goes to sleep at 5AM, the sun doesn't go down for a minimum of another 12 hours, and that's not even taking summer months into consideration when the sun is going down somewhere between 8-10PM. This is why Netflix and a good stack of movies would be a vampire's best friend. Even waking up in the afternoon in an ordinary sleep schedule, your average vampire still has a few hours to kill. So that poor schlub who bought into the whole coffin idea is going to find himself massively screwed and bored. Meanwhile, your modern vampire who has adapted and put some thought into this, has got himself a nice comfortable apartment that he can stroll around in, maybe take a shower if he feels like it, binge watch some House of Cards or whatever is available... whatever. Maybe he even has a job that doesn't require him to leave the house during the day and he can work entirely during the afternoon. The point is, that guy is at least comfortable and being productive instead of lying around in a coffin waiting for the sun to go down, just because he didn't think ahead.

Speaking of thinking ahead...

4. INVESTMENTS AND RICHES DON'T WORK THE WAY YOU ASSUME

... there's this whole misconception that all vampires are going to be rich. This of course buys into the convenience of plot and allowing them to go all over the world on a whim, but also is a bit of wish fulfillment. After all, if you yourself were alive for a two hundred years, you would have had some foresight to invest some money or hide a bag of gold in a bank somewhere so that it conveniently collects interest over time and by now, of course you're a fucking millionaire.

Good luck with that, but no. We all know that you would have blown through that money a long time ago and unless you owned a time machine, thinking ahead for the future would have been an abstract concept. Even now when we can have a much better idea of how the entire world is shaping up, it's next to impossible to really look ahead twenty years and realistically picture what the future holds. Now imagine how hard that would be if you live a century ago when the world was a much smaller place.

Not everyone gets money management classes, least of all the people who were born rich. They usually have people who manage that shit for them. All they know is that they have money and it's a seemingly never-ending fountain of riches... until the day it suddenly dries up.

We've had huge stock market crashes, two world wars, and a whole lot of missed financial opportunities that present day you looks at and says "I would have invested in those" but the truth is, that everyone at the time would have warned you against investing in the lightbulb, in the automobile, that nice Gates kid working out of his garage, and especially against investing anything in 1990's Apple because they were about to go broke, anyone could see that. Your average vampire probably would have gone broke a long time ago.

But assuming that a few of them have survived and gotten lucky with investments or a well-organized crime syndicate (what? It could totally happen!), you're forgetting a very important fact.

3. NOT ALL VAMPIRES ARE 300 YEARS OLD

Sure, you may have your longer lived vampire who's managed to survive or outrun rampaging villagers with the pitchforks and the torches with the almost psychotic need to burn themselves a vampire, but at some point, some younger vampires would have been created. Either out of loneliness or the burning need for a species to procreate (basic survival instinct comes down to eating, sleeping and making some sweet, sweet love to the nearest attractive non-family member of the opposite sex), new vampires would have come into existence. In the movies and the books, this comes from turning a human being into a vampire, by whatever mysterious methods they have on hand. I won't even get into that part of it, but let's assume your vampires have a pretty good handle on the situation.

In any case, unless they have a plan and rules about turning only trust-fund kids who they manipulate over a period of time to be extremely loyal to them, your average vampire isn't going to be very rich at all. In fact, he may even be some poor schlub who works the night shift at your local 24 hour porn shop and still struggles to pay the rent. Not to get too specific of course, just as an example. Maybe this hypothetical vampire would even be only about a year old in vampire time and have more experience being human than vampire.

Forget about the whole romanticism of being a vampire for a while and consider how much of a screw-up you'd be if you got turned into a vampire tomorrow and had to discover everything including how to survive as a vampire by yourself. I know some of you would be ready to go full tilt psycho and start biting people on the neck for blood... until you discover that it's not that easy. Or even necessary. That's why...

2. RANDOM MURDER IS BAD

So you're a vampire now: great. Big whoop. You can't just go around killing people like some psycho. The movies and the books tend to gloss over a lot of shit, but this is one of the big ones and they make it look so easy. Listen, murder is hard even if you have a gun... unless you are a full blown psycho who gets off on killing people. For the average person it's a big fucking deal to even think about pulling a trigger. Ordinary murder is usually a crime of passion, emotions boiled over for whatever reason... but then you have cold-blooded murder, which is a hell of a lot more complicated. Look, besides the residual guilt of killing one person, there's also the fact that murder attracts a lot of attention, and in this world where everything is connected, killing a lot of people is going to lead back to you at some point.

This goes against that whole self-preservation instinct that modern vampires would have built up over the years, so naturally there would be rules about who is recruited to be a vampire, and then once that happens, a general code of conduct that is strictly enforced by other vampires. I think the first rule would definitely put the kibosh on that whole random killing of people. See it's different when one psycho is out there murdering people, but imagine a city with over 500 vampires and then imagine the body count if murder was allowed. Got the picture? Good.

"What about the blood?" I hear you asking. Well I have good news for you...

1. THE BLOOD IS A DRUG, NOT FOOD

It turns out you don't actually have to kill anyone to drink their blood. That whole blood thing is just one big fat lie blown out of proportion by legends, then movies and of course, all the books. You see, biology doesn't work that way and there really isn't enough nutritionally speaking for blood to be a good choice of diet. Plus there is a high risk of infection from hepatitis, HIV or other viral and bacterial illnesses to consider. To be honest, basic human nature doesn't work that way at all and if you are turned into a vampire in your twenties, you have twenty plus years of human instincts and habits to get rid of. Quitting food is not like quitting smoking, and that shit is hard. Eating is a huge part of human habit, and even as a vampire, it's going to be a hard one to break. Besides, food just tastes good and last time I checked, blood wasn't very tasty at all. However if you were to look at the depictions of how blood is consumed, you'll notice a common factor, which is that your average vampire seems to luxuriate in the blood, almost as if it makes him high. And all of a sudden it makes sense. The need for the blood isn't hunger, it's addiction. If you know any addicts, then you already know just how bad it can get.

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AUTHOR'S NOTE

I love vampires, I really really do, but to be truthful, a lot of it breaks down under close examination, so I've begun deconstructing the vampire myth in a series of novels, while trying to see how to keep certain parts of the legend fun and realistic. It's a challenge and its a lot of fun.

Read my novel  HOW NOT TO VAMPIRE