Literature / Straight Outta Fangton

Straight Outta Fangton is a Dark Fantasy Urban Fantasy series by C.T. Phipps which takes place in The United States of Monsters series. It is a Affectionate Parody of the genre verging on horror comedy where everyone is a smartass familiar with monster tropes and movies but serious crimes occur.

Peter Stone is a poor black vampire who has been exiled from the vampire-run city New Detroit. Forced to work in a convenience store, he finds himself frequently drug into conflicts among the city's undead as well as conspiracies against the vampire race by the Fantastic Racism-suffering public.

The books are notable for being a World of Snark set in a Broken Masquerade world where vampires have revealed themselves after the 2008 housing crisis. They live in the revitalized city of New Detroit, which they have turned into a massive tourist trap. Not all vampires are wealthy, though. Most of them are actually quite poor, as only the leadership has access to the vast fortune they've made exploiting vampire tourism. The series deals with class issues, race, and also Lighter and Softer depictions of vampires (which is revealed to be an in-universe ploy by vampires to exploit the public).

The books in the series so far are:

• Straight Outta Fangton (2017)
• 100 Miles and Vampin' (2019)
• Vampiraz4Life (2021)

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Series Wide

• Afrofuturism: Peter Stone's status as a black vampire is routinely dealt with and gives him a perspective on both regular prejudice, classicism, and culture as contrasted to the Fantastic Racism as well as vampire tropes (Vampires Are Rich, Vampires Are Sex Gods) which don't fit his experience. He routinely fights the government, hate groups, the religious right, and white vampires from previous centuries.
• Broken Masquerade: Vampires came out of the coffin in 2008 when they bailed out the US economy in exchange for legal protections.
• Council of Vampires: The Council of Ancients rules the Vampire Nation. There's also a lesser City Council in New Detroit.
• Daywalking Vampire: Played with. Youngbloods a.k.a. any vampire less than a century old are vulnerable to sunlight and die after exposure. Old Ones are immune to sunlight but become incredibly lethargic and most spend their days reading or other non-intensive tasks (watching television, playing video games, and listening to music). They can do things if they must but are at their weakest. Ancient Ones, by contrast, suffer no ill effects and have full access to their powers day or night.
• Deathless and Debauched: The vampires in The United States of Monsters universe are debauched sex-addicted bon vivants who get a drug-like rush from drinking blood. This is particularly noticeable in Straight Outta Fangton where we find out about the wealthy among them's harems and vast palaces. We also discover that this is only the Old Ones as the Youngbloods don't have enough money to live so decadently, averting Vampires Are Rich.
• Dhampyr: Exist in this universe as a product of a vampire having a child with a human or each other.
• Dracula: Derided in-universe as a fame-seeking glory hound.
• Eldritch Abomination: The Elder Gods who created the vampire race are these and were put to sleep or killed by their former followers.
• Exposition of Immortality: The Old Ones are quite fond of this.
• Fallen-on-Hard-Times Job: Peter Stone works as a convenience store clerk. This is despite the fact he's a former Iraqi veteran, security guard specialist, and oh yes, a vampire. Played with as it's discovered a lot of vampires have graveyard shift jobs as people don't hire them and only a few Vampires Are Rich.
• Fantastic Racism: Most religious communities in the United States condemn vampires as unholy, which turns out to be correct as they are repulsed by religious symbols.
• Fang Thpeak: In-universe, talking with fangs makes you sound like Sylvester the Cat. And that totally destroys any credibility you have as an undead fiend.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Peter is one of these, for the most part, but even he has no problem slaughtering rooms full of humans if he's given reason to. He also suffers the same Horror Hunger as every other vampire and will devour anyone if he gets too hungry. So it's a Downplayed Trope.
• Fur Against Fang: Played with. Some shifters hate vampires and some vampires look down on shifters but the two species are related. Also, many vampires employ werecreatures.
• Frozen Fashion Sense: Vampires have this to an extent with some dealing with said trends better than others.
• Hemo Erotic: The Bite, as its appropriately called, releases a chemical that results in not only humans not bleeding to death when an artery is hit but causes indescribable pleasure for both drinker as well as victim. So much so that many vampires describe it as a combination of heroin and sex.
• Holy Burns Evil: Vampires are affected by holy items to the point of hearing Jesus or Buddha's name causes them a headache.
• Horror Hunger: All vampires have this but it actually lessens with age with Ancients only needing a little bit of blood to sustain themselves. Any vampire, no matter how moral, will feed on anyone if they go for too long without feeding though—including on children. Vampires refer to it as the Need.
• Immortality Immorality: This is apparently a major contribution to the evil of vampires. Peter Stone, the protagonist, observes that immorality causes you to become extremely cynical about most moral systems more than the power inherent to the form. After all, why care about people who will gone in a few decades anyway?
• Immortality Promiscuity: Old Ones inevitably keep harems of men and women as well as regularly sleep together in blood orgies. This notably is off-putting to many Young Bloods who consider it to be immoral depending on their cultural backgrounds. Given the Bite is inherently sexual, though, most eventually lose such hangups.
• Kiss of the Vampire: A vampire bite is apparently so pleasurable that both vampires and humans find it to be akin to one long drawn out orgasm. This notably makes the newly-turned monogamous heterosexual Peter Stone uncomfortable even as other vampires gleefully indulge in it.
• Looks Like Orlok: If you live to be an Ancient One, over a thousand years old, you gradually start becoming a deformed demonic-looking creature. The protagonist, Peter Stone, says the men look like Orlok and the women look like Medusa. Thankfully, they can all shapeshift so it's actually less of a curse than it sounds but most don't care enough to bother.
• Living Forever Is Awesome: The Old Ones live unlives of decadent hedonism funded by vast wealth they've accumulated. However, most of the Old Ones are secretly hiding some tragic secret and overcompensating. The Ancient Ones are so old and jaded they don't care about anything. They don't quite get to the point of Who Wants to Live Forever? but vampirism isn't particularly awesome either. Youngbloods, by contrast, can go either way as they haven't yet come to terms with their immortality.
• Monster Progenitor: Lamia is said to be the first vampire. There's some hints vampires are even older than this.
• Noble Demon: About the best you can expect from any vampire who hits the Old One age category. They become jaded to humanity and treat humans (along with other supernaturals) as decidedly lesser beings. On the other hand, some maintain some sense of chivalry and nobless oblige. Others don't.
• Non-Heteronormative Society: Vampires equate blood with sex and sex with blood so all of them eventually become bisexual/pansexual. They also polyamorous and keep harems of mortals for feeding purposes, at least the rich and powerful ones.
• The Older Immortal: Thoth is this to Peter, Ashura is this to Thoth, and Enil is this to everyone else as he's over six thousand years old.
• Religious Vampire: Thoth is a Voodoo priest despite the fact vampires are explicitly harmed by religious symbols and invocations. Thoth explains that he is fully aware of the contradiction and that it is why it is doubly important to feel that way. He later mentions a Noodle Incident where he escaped hell thanks to his patrons.
  • Melissa is also still a Southern Baptist despite them explicitly condemning vampires.
• The Renfield: Called Bloodsworn (polite) or Bloodslaves (rude). They are humans given vampire blood and who gain a portion of vampiric powers. They are able to be mentally dominated by their masters, have their minds read, and are still vulnerable to being killed by normal means. They can live potentially forever, though.
• Romantic Vampire Boy: The trope is mercilessly mocked by the protagonists. It is stated that vampires use it as a way to get close to victims and discourage hunters by pretending to be less dangerous than they are.
• Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: The series' vampires sit squarely in the middle of the friendliness road. They don't need to kill when they feed, infect only people they choose, and can even feast on animal blood with difficulty. They are, however, mostly amoral with the best any vampire over the age of 100 getting is to be a Noble Demon. Every vampire also suffers from a Horror Hunger and blood tastes so good that every vampire is, by nature, addicted to it. They're also all damned by God according to Thoth.
  • Peter Stone is a very friendly vampire (comparitively) and so is Gerard Saint Croix from the The Bright Falls Mysteries but Thoth is a Noble Demon while other vampires are just pure evil.
• Stronger with Age: Vampires have three stages of life with Youngbloods (weakest with many weaknesses), Old Ones (stronger with fewer weaknesses), and Ancient Ones (nosferatu-like immortals). The protagonist states this resulted in a gerontocracy.
• Time Abyss: Enil the Second Eldest is 6,000 years old and predates most civilizations. He also likes to be called Eddie.
• Undeathly Pallor: Averted with Peter and Thoth who are both visibly African American and African Haitan men. Played straight with Enil who is bone white but states he was born in South Africa... six thousand years ago. Notably, he Looks Like Orlok too.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Vampires are divided into three categories of Youngbloods, Old Ones, and Ancient Ones. Youngbloods suffer most of the traditional weaknesses of vampires, Old Ones can ignore most of them while being unkillable save by another vampire, and Ancient Ones are hideous Nosferatu-looking creatures who are closer to gods than men. They can have children and these children have a chance of manifesting shifter traits or coming back as a vampire when they die. They are also linked to demons as apparently they were created when ancient demons shared their blood.
• Vampire Monarch: Every vampire-run city has a voivode who is the ruler of the city or territory. They answer to the Council of Ancients.
• Vampires Are Rich: Man are they ever. They bailed out the US economy in 2008. Subverted in that apparently a lot of their vast wealth was fraud and they manipulated events to appear like heroes.
• Vampires Are Sex Gods: Some of them, particularly shape-shifting Old Ones, are. Most aren't.
• Vampire's Harem: Thoth has one of them as does Ashura. They are full of beautiful humans of both sexes that are addicted to being fed upon. Its implied this is common of the richer Old Ones. Thoth is also stated to be married to three vampire women who are married to others as well.
• Vampires Own Nightclubs: The point of New Detroit was to exploit vampire tourism for all it was worth.
• Vampire Procreation Limit: This is the policy of the Vampire Nation in Straight Outta Fangton by C.T. Phipps. In order to create a new vampire, you have to have permission of the voivode of the area. This is a recent rule, though, because so many humans were turned in the wake of the Reveal. Many of the newly created humans do not adapt well and eventually go feral or commit suicide. This is obviously bad news for their publicity
• Vampire Variety Pack: Since the undead of the series were designed by a tabletop game writer so they are a complicated necrology indeed.
  • Youngbloods are the weakest of vampires and designed to reflect vampires that have a lot of weaknesses (verbena, silver, holy items, stakes, sunlight) as well as an almost feral submission to their bloodthirst. They are also usually the slaves of their creators. They are very strong and fast, though.
  • Old Ones are vampires like Count Dracula and wield powers like shapechanging or psychic abilities. Death Is Cheap for them as well with only another Old One or Ancient One able to kill them (or special weapons like the Merlin Gun).
  • The Ancient Ones Looks Like Orlok (or Medusa) and are ancient debased things that lose most of their desire to do anything but wield fantastic powers. They spend most of their time sleeping or living in ruins or they could easily take over the world.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: The people who hate vampires usually have no problem blowing up the people who are friends of vampires, tourists, willing victims, or just in the way. Vampires are also humanity's somewhat tepid defense against Eldritch Abomination creatures.
• Villain with Good Publicity: This is revealed to have been a hundred year plan by the undead to make sure the public was accepting of them when they appeared to the world. Everything from Dracula to Twilight were designed to make vampires appear sexy and romantic versus terrifying.
• Voluntary Vampire Victim: Vampires have plenty of these due to their reputation as sex gods. They also have set up predatory loans to get people to become willing blood donors as an alternative to paying them off.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Thoth finds this attitude ridiculous but suicide is incredibly common among vampires, particularly after their first kill or the realization the Need will dominate the rest of their unlives to the exclusion of all else. Religious individuals also tend to kill themselves once they realize that vampires really are accursed from God.

Straight Outta Fangton

• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Renaud is in charge of whatever group he's involved in, mostly because he's effectively invincible and has mind-control powers.
• Big Bad: Renaud is a centuries-old Knight Templar, embraced by Lamia, that organized the alliance between the Network and Southern Vampire Hunters to eliminate the Council of Ancients. He also is the one who created Melissa and dumped her in Peter's bathroom.
• Black-and-White Insanity: Renaud believes all vampires are evil and therefore he must kill them all, as well as anyone who associates with them. He also is free to use whatever methods he wants as well as his vampire powers (plus Black Magic) to help him achieve this aim. Even if it gets countless innocent humans killed.
• Bullet Time: Pete develops the ability to slow down time as his powers grow.
• Classical Movie Vampire: Yorga (a shout out to the Count Yorga movies) resembles classic movie vampires, to Peter's disbelief. He wears a tuxedo and cape, keeps his hair slicked back in a widow's peak, and speaks in Vampire Vords. It's Obfuscating Stupidity.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: The second oldest vampire alive, two Old Ones, a Raksasha, an immortal, and a vampire assassin are just barely able to put up a fight against Renaud before he wears them down.
• Daywalking Vampire: Renaud is supposedly this but we never see it as our hero is a (non-daywalking) vampire himself.
• Defector from Decadence: Renaud thinks he's developed this but he's actually the most monstrous vampire of them all, being a Deconstruction of the heroic vampire character. Melissa and Kali are both this as they break away from Renaud's group to fight him.
• Expy: Renaud is called an Evil Connor Macleod, but he's more a vampire Kurgan crossed with Nicholas Knight. He is an immortal Hunter of His Own Kind who broods tragically on Who Wants to Live Forever? while wielding a katana under a trench coat.
• For Want Of A Nail: Combined with Spanner in the Works. Renaud's plan would have gone off flawlessly if not for the fact he'd assumed Melissa would go insane and be killed rather than be rescued by Peter in an act of compassion.
• Fully-Embraced Fiend: Subverted with Melissa who immediately turns against her fellow vampire hunters and helps the vampires once changed BUT was actually doing it out of moral reasons as well as her longstanding doubts.
• Hypocrite: Renaud is a murderous, psychotic, evil vampire rapist who uses the powers of evil gods to fight vampires in the name of God.
• Improvised Cross: Melissa deals with Graff Yorga with a cross made of plastic straws, and it works due to her faith.
• Loophole Abuse: Old Ones can only be killed by fellow Old Ones, so Thoth made a dagger from his dead creator's bones to kill him then used it in later assassinations.
• Love Makes You Stupid: All of Renaud's former lovers tend to think the world of him, despite how badly he treats them.
• More than Mind Control: Renaud uses religious fanaticism and romance to control his minions.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Both Jumping Jack Flash and Graff Yorga employ this. Jumping Jack Flash dresses like Seventies pimp, makes bad jokes, and pretends to be drunk. He is actually a dangerous killer and highly cunning immortal assassin. Graff Yorga is a centuries-old vampire who dresses like a Classical Movie Vampire who speaks with a thick Romanian accent while working at a fast food restaurant. This is to allow him to hunt victims easily.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Melissa tells Renaud exactly what a pathetic self-hating loser he is, as well as how much of an enormous hypocrite he is, once his mind-control of her wears off.
• Revenge Before Reason: Much of the plot depends on Peter being less interested in stopping Renaud and more in killing Eaton.
• Shout-Out: The opening is a shout-out to Clerks with it explicitly spelled out.
  • It then immediately dives into a discussion of black vampires and how few of them there are.
• Tragic Monster: Renaud is shown to be this despite having long since crossed the Moral Event Horizon multiple times. Voivode Ashura tries to invoke this with Eaton but it falls on deaf ears (for good reason).
  • Jumping Jack Flash relates his Dorian Gray-esque backstory only to get called "Rapey-Boy" for his trouble before being dismissed as a monster.
• Transhuman Treachery: A rare heroic example as being a vampire convinces Melissa she was wrong about their evil.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Peter is this, being as powerful as a hundred year old vampire for reasons even he doesn't understand. Then he gets much-much stronger..
• Vampire Refugee: A Deconstruction with said character being a Fantastic Racism Black-and-White Insanity Hypocrite who every other vampire justifiably thinks is a psychopath.
• Vampire Vords: Parodied with Count Yorg who is Obfuscating Stupidity. He speaks with heavy Vs and is compared to the Count from Sesame Street.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: The Human Rights League is willing to blow up a hotel full of human tourists in order to frame the vampires for it. Melissa also admits to one of her congregation framing a nearby vampire for rape so he'd be killed. By her, it turns out.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Peter is genuinely surprised and irritated by the fact that vampires have to count sesame seeds. David makes references to Sesame Street's Count whenever it is brought up.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: We discover how useful 'floating' can be when it's used to scare the hell out of a vampire hunter.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: How many religious humans view vampire hunters and vice versa.
• And Then John Was a Zombie: The final line is revealing David is a zombie now.

100 Miles and Vampin'

• A Lighter Shade of Black: The vampires in the conflict with Gog and Magog. Lampshaded by Peter that Thoth is a "bad guy who kills other bad guys."
• Amusement Park of Doom: The climax of the book takes place at one of these.
• Asshole Victim: It's difficult to think of Rebecca Plum as anything but this. She's a "Bleeder" and kills all of her victims.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Gog and Magog. Magog is already defeated at the start of the book, however, so it's really just Gog.
• Bittersweet Ending: Gog and Magog are defeated but Enil, David, and most of Thoth's allies have been killed in the process. This results in the vampire rulership of New Detroit being weakened enough that they're overthrown with Thoth captured. Worse, David ends up dying for a final time after being unable to live as a zombie.
• Cycle of Revenge:
  • Thoth, Lucinda, Yuki, Magog, and Gog are trapped in a cycle of this. Thoth and Yuki end up definitiely winning.
  • Peter has this with Jackson. David ends up killing Jackson.
• Dead All Along: Peter killed Enil's son at the very start of the book, so all of Enil's actions to save him were pointless.
• Demon Lords and Archdevils: Gog and Magog are two of the most powerful demons in Hell.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The protagonists manage to destroy Gog by sicking all of the souls of hell on him after he successfully possessed Enil the Vampire.
  • This is after A group of powerful vampire Old Ones use their magic to kill and bind Magog.
• Evil Versus Evil: A bunch of ruthless murderous vampires versus demons.
• Fate Worse than Death: David decides being a predatory undead is worse than passing onward and lets himself die.
• Government Agency of Fiction: The Department of Supernatural Security (DOSS) is a bunch of crypto-fascist The Men in Black who hate vampires. They're also wholly corrupted by supernatural forces themselves with the ones in this book being soulless servants of Gog.
• Heroic Sacrifice: David makes one when he's finally Killed Off for Real.
• I Have Your Wife: Enil is blackmailed into doing Gog's bidding by the threats to his mortal family.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Enil is willing to help them against Gog until it's revealed that Peter kiled his son.
• Ninja Pirate Robot Zombie: Yuki is a werefox dhampir with demon blood. Peter attempts to invoke this before someone points out they're all just variations on humans infected with demonic magic anyway.
• Revenge: A major motivation for every character in the story.
• Sixth Ranger: Lucinda, the Queen of Mexico, is an incredibly powerful vampire and Thoth's lover.
• Take That!: Rebecca Plum is a thinly veiled cariacture of Stephanie Meyer. Stephanie Meyer is mentioned as existing in the universe, however.
• White-Haired Pretty Girl: Yuki is a beautiful woman of mixed African, Spanish and Japanese descent, and she has white hair.

Vampiraz 4 Life

• The Alliance: What Thoth has been setting up between shifters, mages, and vampires.
• Ambiguously Human: Melvin Johnson is something Peter has never encountered before and he initially mistakes for an angel. He's actually Thoth's shadow.
• Badass in Distress: Thoth has been imprisoned by the Council of Ancients. Peter assumes he's being tortured or worse. It's actually a Gilded Cage complete with orgies of Voluntary Vampire Victim types.
• The Bad Guy Wins: Not any of the ones that Peter is opposing. However, Nathaniel Hawthorne of the Red Room books is elected President of the United States.
• Back from the Dead: David returns as a ghost then a human being. He finally becomes a vampire at the end.
• Cessation of Existence: Forsythe asks this as an alternative to being tortured for all eternity for his crimes in Hell.
• Character Development: Peter lets go of his guilt for killing a young girl under the influence of his Horror Hunger. Torturing himself for years and feeding only on animals hasn't made the world a better place.
• The Chessmaster:
  • Thoth manages to finally establish his bonafides as an Evil Genius by playing everyone against one another then emerging on top even while imprisoned by the Council of Ancients.
  • Lucinda is also revealed to be one as she is actually the goddess Tiamat-Abaddon.
• Cool House: Ashura has an actual castle in the middle of the woods that is invisible to normal mortals.
• Crossover: The protagonists of The Morgan Detective Agency and Bright Falls Mysteries are major characters here.
• The Devil: Tiamat-Abaddon is the Queen of Hell and ruler of the infernal. She makes Peter an offer to serve her or be destroyed. Peter assumes it is An Offer You Can't Refuse. It turns out he can refuse and does by Take a Third Option.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: The parallels between Fantastic Racism and the Far Right are everywhere.
• The Dragon: Susan the Hell Knight is one of Tiamat-Abaddon's best assassins. Peter can kill her as many times as he wants but she has Resurrective Immortality.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Peter becomes a producer of B-movies with his friend Arthur and Lucien Drake. This makes him a multi-millionaire. He is finally free from his day job and David has been brought back from the dead as a vampire. Thoth has also founded a supernatural alliance that will replace the Council of Ancients as rulers of New Detroit. Oh and Peter is married with Mina with a baby on the way.
• False Flag Operation: The Templars plan to release a bunch of thirst-crazed vampires on the public to turn America against them.
• Gilded Cage: Thoth is kept in one of these by the Council of Ancients as both a recognition of his status as an Old One as well as because he's kept valubale information from them. Thoth fully believes he'll be killed if he ever gives the latter up.
• Grand Theft Me: David has his ghost placed in a new body by Melvin Johnson. This is effectively resurrection and David is quite happy about it.
• Hero Antagonist: Reverend Hellman is a descendant of Van Helsing and a hero. He is also someone who plans to cure or kill every vampire in New Detroit but draws the line at the Fantastic Racism of the Knights Templar.
• It Gets Easier:
  • Arthur advises Peter to accept this and realize that being a vampire requires him to be at least a little bit of a bastard.
  • Jane kills a bunch of humans during this book, which she notes is not her normal MO.
• Killed Off for Real: Elisha, Forsythe, Jumping Jack Flash, and Fatimah all meet their end.
• Knight Templar: The actual Knight Templars show up as modern day militia nuts.
• Maybe Ever After: Whether Peter and Melissa will ever get together is left ambiguous despite the fact the former is now married with a child. This is because Peter and she make peace while vampires are prone to having extended open relationships. After all, they have all eternity to rekindle their romance.
• Odd Friendship: Peter develops one of these with Jane Doe the weredeer and Arthur the vampire after they team up against the Knights Templar.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The third book takes place in early 2020 and deals with Covid-19 affecting vampires as well as the rise of the Far Right.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Tiamat-Abaddon, the ruler of Hell, turns out to be this. Despite literally being The Devil, she is happy to let Peter kill one of her enemies and make atonement for slaying Gog. He wasn't really a friend anyway and had always been just been going through the motions of getting revenge.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: A rare case where this is a positive development as Peter finally accepts his vampire nature.
• Tom the Dark Lord: The Hell Knight is named Susan.
• Van Helsing Hate Crimes: The motives of the Knights Templar in a nutshell. They plan a number of domestic terror plots that are designed to trigger backlashes against the supernatural.
• Warrior Therapist: Arthur proves to be this to Peter, helping accept his vampire nature.
• Western Terrorists: The Knights Templar are a Western domestic terrorist organization with an anti-vampire agenda.
• What Does She See in Him?: A humorous example where the fantastically beautiful elder vampire Ashura and the dumpy geek Arthur are together. Peter wonders what Arthur sees in her because she's a narcissistic monster.

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