Once you put a vampire in a soap opera, it's pretty much downhill from there.
Huh?! Barnabas was a fascinating character and it was the fact that he was a character in a soap opera that allowed him to become so fascinating because soaps are an outlet that allows all sides of a character to be fully explored and one in which an audience can watch that character evolve over years of storytelling. And make no mistake that Barn could be quite monstrous. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn't watched DS for any length of time during his tenure. Maybe they should come over here and read some of the topics that have been created just to discuss how monstrous Barn could be. But at least the author does also say -
But he was also a monster, and people tend to forget that. They romanticize him.
Saying that some fans romanticize Barn is certainly an understatement. But then, we've discussed many, many times how a blind eye is all too often turned to Barn's decidedly less than admirable qualities/actions.
Lestat, who, for all his fan following among the 'vampires are sexy' camp, shouted to the heavens on more than one occasion that he was a monster and wasn't afraid or shy to prove it to you at the drop of a hat by ripping your throat out.
The same could be said of Barn - definitely the shouting to the heavens that he was a monster. But when it came to proving it, he wasn't always as premeditated as Lestat.
As for
Twilight, I do find it fascinating that people seem to only want to focus on Edward as if he's the only vamp in the series. But the truth is that he is not. And there are indeed monstrous vamps in the
Twilight universe - and they do monstrous things - and teenage girls (or guys) are not swooning over them. But clearly the people who criticize
Twilight for its vamps being romantic icons either choose to ignore the vamp characters who certainly are not, or they have no idea that those vamp characters exist because they've never actually read a book or seen a film and are merely criticizing
Twilight based on a preconceived and uninformed idea of what it's all about. But then, so what else is new - for eons people have been criticizing things without any personal knowledge of them...