Literature / Vampiru

"Planet of origin... Vampiru?"

Vampiru (now renamed Cross) is a Web Serial Novel on WattPad, written by ShaylaRah, found here. It is a mixture of the vampire and science fiction genres. As of December 2013, it is completed and edited, and a sequel called 10:30, The Day Before Yesterday is in progress.

There's a new teacher at Dani Tamari's school - Professor David Cross. What no one knows is that David is really an alien vampire, who's hiding on Earth after killing his father. Meanwhile, a whole load of alien vampires, led by Lady Terror De Mon, are recruiting humans to their cause and murdering Earth's leaders.

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Both books provide examples of:

• Aerith and Bob: Terror, Nightmare, Grievous, Attykcca, Vlad, Carmilla, Ruthven, Orlok, Abihira, Legina, Angerona, Anahita, Sébastien, Moon, Phantom, Gadget, Sirius and... Dani, Edward, David, Lacey, Jackson, Janice, Niall, Celeste, Gareth, Steven, Jack, Biff, Richard, Autumn and Christian.
• Author Appeal: Works by Charles Dickens, Watership Down, Dracula and Lost in Space are all mentioned.

• Brick Joke: In Cross, Boone tried to behead O'Hara with a pillow (It Makes Sense in Context). In 10:30, The Day Before Yesterday, O'Hara is afraid he'll try to do so again.

• Deadpan Snarker: David, Dani, Dracula, Abihira, Sirius...

• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: David, Sirius, Abihira and Dracula.

• Humans Through Alien Eyes: David spends half his time pointing out all the "odd" (to him) things about humanity. Other non-humans also do this, to varying degrees of cynicism.
• Lemony Narrator: Phantom has quite a dry sense of humour. He/she/it even stops narrating at times to snark at the reader!

• Our Vampires Are Different: These vampires:
  • Are from outer space.
  • Cry blood instead of water.
  • Females don't have breasts.
  • They reproduce asexually (whatever that means) and can have up to five hundred children. Sibling rivalry must be a problem.
• Our Werewolves Are Different
• Ship Tease: Dani/David, which is hinted at several times. Hopefully Ship Sinking still applies and the author's just messing with the reader's head...
  • Ship Sinking: Word of God says there will not be a romance between Dani and David.
• Switching P.O.V.
• Tom the Dark Lord: In 10:30, The Day Before Yesterday, there's a character with a dozen arms and eyes. Their name? Leslie.
• Undeathly Pallor: All vampires.
• Vampires From Outer Space
• World of Snark

Cross provides examples of:

• Above Good and Evil: Phantom sees itself as this.
• Abusive Parents: David's father.
• Action Girl / Damsel out of Distress: Dani. When Grievous tries to rape her, she picks up a copy of Little Dorrit and hits him over the head with it. Repeatedly.
  • And again, when she's attacked by a werewolf.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: Abihira.
• Ambiguously Evil: David. Murdering your father, running from the police, killing a random drunk, manipulating a twelve-year-old girl... Enough said.
  • Vlad and Abihira also qualify.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The way Nightmare tortured a werewolf bears a strong resemblance to some of the methods used by the Gestapo.
• Animalistic Abomination: The werewolf.
• Asian and Nerdy: Autumn, the only explicitly Asian character, is a nurse. Gadget, the computer expert, hasn't been described but is probably Northern Irish like most of the characters.
• Asshole Victim: David's father.
• Attempted Rape: Grievous tries this on Dani.

• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Celeste's line: Mangez merde, vous chienne. It means "Eat s***, you bitch".
  • After Nightmare kills a man, the crowd start yelling "Killer", "Madwoman", and "Someone call the police!" in Romanian.
• Blackmail: Terror is doing this to some government official on another planet.
• Breaking and Bloodsucking:
  • Dani struggles to sleep after watching Dracula late one night. When she closes her eyes she pictures herself standing in the bedroom watching Dracula lean over Mina. Any action she takes suddenly places her in the bed with Professor Cross drinking her blood.
  • In a variant, Cross rescues Dani one night, hypnotizes her to sleep, and takes her home. He places Dani back in her bed, lost in thought from his problems, and several minutes pass before he realizes he's feeding from her wrist.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Between David's parents.

• Cannot Cross Running Water: Implied by this line:
  Narrator: ... [N]ot far away, running water could be heard. That was a most unwelcome sound. [David] didn't know if water on Earth was poisonous, but fear of the deadly water on their own planet was too deeply ingrained in every Vampiruan for them to see it as anything but an enemy.
• Character Title: "Cross" is the surname David chose for his alias.
• Chekhov's Skill: Nightmare's ability to raise the temperature of objects.
• Contrived Coincidence: Dani, David, Nightmare, Grievous, and Abihira all end up in Rome.
• Crash-Into Hello: Dani first meets David when she crashes into him.
• Creepy Ravens: David takes the shape of a raven in chapter 29, freaking out the InGEN team. Nevermore, his pet who is really Terror in disguise, is also a raven.
• Damsel in Distress: Dani and Celeste.

• Did Not Get the Girl: In the references to Dracula's past, he was in love with Mina. Obviously, he didn't get her.
• Disposable Sex Worker and Disposable Vagrant: Mentioned.
  David: [thinking] The only humans likely to be up at this time were drunks or whores. Neither would be missed, and killing one would be doing humanity a favour. There were only two problems: humans tended to notice the deaths of even the lowest of the low, and he had no wish to drink blood poisoned with alcohol or disease.
• Dissonant Serenity: Nightmare wonders why Sébastien was so upset... after she had just tortured and murdered a werewolf. While licking blood off her hands.
• Dracula: Vlad Dracula and his cousin, Nicolae (AKA Sébastien).
• Easily Forgiven: David, to some degree. Yes, he killed his father, but Jackson and Lacey (and, apparently, the author) think he was quite justified in his actions. He is forced to stay on Earth to help clear up the mess he's partly responsible for, though.
• Evil Counterpart: Abihira for David.
• Exactly What It Says on the Tin / In Which a Trope Is Described: "When In Rome... Literally!" and "In Which The Catacombs Are A Nightmare".
• Flash Step: David crosses a room thirty metres wide in five seconds.
• Foreshadowing:
  • In chapter 4, Dani stays up late watching Dracula (1931), and has nightmares about it that turn into images of herself and David.
  • While Dani is being held prisoner in Sébastien's mansion, she hears someone mentioning locations in Rome. Guess where the latest chapters are taking place?
• Freudian Excuse: David was abused by his father.
• Funetik Aksent: O'Hara and Orlok.
• Fun with Acronyms: Inter-Galactic Emergency Network.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Celeste is half-human, half-werewolf, and turns into a werewolf.
• Hot for Teacher: Gareth says that most of the girls have crushes on David. Whether or not this lasts after they have to sit through one of his classes isn't mentioned.
  • Word of God says Dani and David will not have a romantic relationship. Thankfully.
• Identical Grandson: According to Terror, Abihira greatly resembles her mother.
  • Dani is descended from Mina, and looks slightly like her.
• Identical Stranger: Dani looks slightly like Mina.

• And he pales in comparison to certain other characters - Sébastien, for instance, is annoyed when Nightmare killed a werewolf... because she made a mess of the floor.

• Literal Cliffhanger: A variant at the end of chapter 36.
• Looks Like Orlok: Orlok.
• Loophole Abuse: Used by Dani to justify going outside during dinner time.
• Madden Into Misanthropy: Dani was heading this way after her parents' deaths. She's snapped out of it by the sequel.

• Massive Numbered Siblings: Common among vampire families.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Terror De Mon, and her children Nightmare and Grievous (her other child, Attykcca, is an Odd Name Out).
  • Gadget is the InGEN team's computer expert.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Lady Terror De Mon, Nightmare De Mon, Grievous De Mon.
• Narrative Profanity Filter: In chapter 22, one character tells another to light a "freaking" candle. As the narrator comments afterward, "freaking" was not the word used.
• Narrator: Phantom.
• No Name Given / Only Known by Their Nickname: Gadget is always called Gadget.
• Noodle Incident:
  • This exchange:
    Boone: Sir, we've picked something up on the monitor.
    Jackson: What is it this time? Another passenger plane that happens to have gone off schedule somehow? Another secret government test?
  • That time Abi got caught in her own web.
  • The Moscow incident.
• No Periods, Period: Averted. Dani goes on her period and as a result awakens David's hunger and indirectly causes the death of a drunk.

• Our Zombies Are Different: Nightmare's army. Made from aborted babies.
• Pun-Based Title:
  • "When In Rome... Literally!", in which the main characters and three villains end up in Rome.
  • "In Which The Catacombs Are A Nightmare", which is a pun on Nightmare being (sort of) in the Catacombs of Rome.
  • "Seeing Red". Nightmare's clothes are red, and her explanation of her plans makes David, Dani, and possibly Abihira see red.
• Punny Name:
  • Possibly unintentional, but David's alias is David Cross. Traditional vampires are afraid of crosses.
  • Celeste's mother is called Moon.
• Put on a Bus: Most of the characters in Northern Ireland.
• Ruthven
• Self-Made Orphan: David killed his father. And doesn't regret it..
• Shout-Out:
  • Dani has a picture of the characters of Lost in Space on her wall, she watches Dracula (1931), and her favourite book is Watership Down.
  • The voice in Dani's head likes to be called "Phantom". Dani and Phantom... Is that a Danny Phantom reference or unintentional?
  • Vlad's full name is Vladislaus.
  • Dani uses a copy of Little Dorrit to attack Grievous.
  • Chapter 35 has one to Poe's The Raven.
  • Chapter 37 has one to Frankenstein. And before that, a werewolf was described as "...something Dr. Frankenstein might have dreamed up".
  • Vlad's middle name is Alexandru, which is the name of one of Dracula's followers in Department 19.
• Strong Family Resemblance: Between Abihira and her mother. And between Dani and Mina, though in that case it's downplayed.
• Take That!:
  • Edward's name might be a Take That! to Twilight.
  • Another Take That! to Twilight comes from Nightmare.
  • David also gives a Take That! to politicians in chapter 31:
  David: [to Terror] The day you apologize for anything will be the day that a politician tells the truth.
• Tall, Dark, and Snarky: David.
• The Voice: Dani frequently argues with her subconsciousness. David does at times, too. It hasn't yet been explained if a character's subconsciousness is another character entirely... or someone else speaking into their mind.
• This Is Reality: Used at least once when Dani is a prisoner in Sébastien's mansion.
• Titled After the Song: Chapter 38, ""Crazy" Is, I Believe, The Medical Term", gets its title from a line in an Icon For Hire song, "Iodine".
• Token Minority: Most of the characters are Northern Irish or aliens, so Akiko "Autumn" Tsukiyama stands out a bit because she's Japanese.
• Too Dumb to Live: Dani. She tells Edward about InGEN, after promising not to tell anyone. And then Edward apparently told Terror.
• Trash of the Titans: Edward's room, which "could charitably be called a mess".
• Vampire Vords: Orlok.

10:30, The Day Before Yesterday provides examples of:

• Alliterative Name: Sirius Sangue.
• Big Rotten Apple
• Body Horror: That corpse. Dear god, that corpse...
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Christian.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • "The Obnoxious Person", who first appeared on the plane and reappears later.
  • Helena and Hazel have both been mentioned before.
• Curtains Match the Window: Helena, who has red hair and red eyes.
• Disappeared Dad: Helena. Technically a Missing Mom too, since she's adopted.
• Evil Redhead: Montparnasse.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Leslie, who has multiple arms and eyes (and no gender). Subverted, since their real name is Saelethaemonta.
• Gender-Blender Name: Hazel is a man and Leslie isn't anything at all.
• Humanoid Abomination: Leslie, for a given value of humanoid.
• Let Me Get This Straight...:
  Captain Black: So let me get this straight. You want us to go with you to stay with someone you don't know, and we're waiting for an alien to come and take us there. Is that it?
  Hazel: More or less.
• No Biological Sex: Leslie again.
• Not Quite Dead: Nightmare.
• Older Than They Look: Christian, who was born in 1889.
• Our Demons Are Different: Mephysto looks like a demon and has a demonic-sounding name, but she (yes, she) might be just another alien.
• Public Domain Character: Victor Frankenstein and Adam appear in chapter 18.
• Shout-Out:
  • The policeman Leslie lives with is called Claude Faustus.
  • Leslie, when described by Officer Murray, sounds similar to Pitch, but with more eyes and arms.
  • One of Grievous's assassins is called Montparnasse.
• Take That!:
  • The reference to Marvin McGinty is obviously one to Martin McGuinness.
  • Vlad gives a Take That! to the film versions of Dracula.
• The Grim Reaper: Helena's job.

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