Nothing really, zombies already learned to use guns via Day of the Dead in 1985. Considering it was an invention of the godfather of the genre I'll give it, and The Walking Dead, a pass. /DORK

Just because a particular myth was "first" (which is usually debatable anyhow) doesn't make it some kind of authoritative view on what a completely fictional archetype "should" be.

Having said that, vampires in the daytime is bullshit, sparkling or no. Anita Blake had one, too, and it was even stupider (about as stupid as you can get, even) because the vampire in question

Hella weak.

Eh. Our 'traditional' myths of vampires, zombies, and werewolves are horrible bastardizations to begin with.

People who insist that a fictional thing has "rules" which can not be broken have terrible taste and shouldn't be listened to.

Ha ha ha, especially when part of that scope of taste is "Underworld did most everything right."

White Wolf would probably have some contention with that statement, too.

Except that they aren't. Folklore/oral tradition is an organic process, and the basic tale usually has whichever clearly identifiable psychological/societal issue goes along with it. I don't think that the basic versions of the vampire, werewolf, or undead myths are especially horrible or bastardized with comparison to whatever folk tale(s) led to their presence in the collective subconscious.

Regardless of agreement with the stated aesthetic in the OP, there can, indeed, be horrible bastardizations of these stories. At the same time, creators/artists shouldn't be castigated for "breaking the rules" unless the vampires sparkle (I hope there's at least consensus on this one) or if "breaking the rules" is up front and on display. (I'm thinking more of something like "Blade" where they say "ignore the rules--except for the ones that we decided still apply" and less so a "Scream" or "Shaun of the Dead" situation where the deconstruction is intentional.)

...unless, mfb, you are referring to the "resident" versions in US pop culture--specifically the Universal films, etc. in which case you're spot-on. Conan Doyle just wanted young women to behave, and one only needs remember the phrase "that's Frankenstein's monster, Frankenstein is the doctor that made him" to make all the necessary statement on The Creature's place in contemporary culture.

I'm going to bracket this one especially:

It's kind of unbelievable that an article like this would pick out the zombie using the rock as a criticism of Walking Dead, which is a nigh-unassailable monolith of that genre--especially if you're talking about breaking the canon "rules." That amounts to "myth bastardization" as opposed to, say, the Dawn of the Dead remake featuring non-shamblers? Zuh? (Note: I don't actually care that the Dawn remake had non-shamblers. I'm just sayin' is all.)

+1

Yeah, agreed... I don't see how any version of a myth can be considered "canon" when they're drawn from so many different sources over so many hundreds of years.

Yes and no. Stoker and Doyle pretty much started the dashing "Lord Vampire" trope, which many would consider pop culture "canon" for vampires. Mike Mignola and Neil Gaiman have done considerable exploration of the vampire in their books, and they're certainly popular, so I'm hedging here, although I fall on the side of seeing the argument of "Dracula continuum is canon." I don't think so, and I like the "outside" stories (but I sure didn't like "Ultraviolet," holy blecch) as well as a bit of OG White Wolf roleplaying, but I almost completely agree with you otherwise. Hence my sticking to the guns on vampires/daylight, like a dork.

What I mainly take issue with is this:

At this point, the only thing that's really integral to stories about classic myths is pop culture self-awareness. If you have a movie with any sort of modern sensibility that features a vampire, there's going to be some point where somebody asks about garlic and holy water. Every story has a different take (or likes to think it does), and the strongest commonality is that the rube humans always have it wrong with their wacky Dracula stories. The only real exception is zombie movies--generally the protagonists in zombie movies are too busy fighting for survival to toss out quips about how much like a zombie movie this is. (And even there, there's exceptions to the exception.)

What makes a bad bastardization bad isn't how much it varies from "canon", it's whether or not the story is a bad story. I haven't watched Smallville, I haven't read/watched Twilight, but from the descriptions I've encountered, I'm willing to call them bad bastardizations--not because they deviate in their mythology, but because they're just bad literature.

Or maybe I'm just getting tired of the whole urban fantasy thing that seems to be taking over every god damn bookstore.

You forgot to rip Harry Potter a new one for going against witchcraft "canon."

A writer should stay true to their own canon, or if they're writing for another person's series they should follow the rules of that series' mythology. But it's silly to say that fiction writers can't invent fictions that contradict fictions from decades or centuries ago.

I do think the sparkling vampires are ridiculous and awful, but Meyers is well within her rights as a fiction writer to give them life.

Sorry, that's not correct. Shapeshifters predated medieval werewolves in world and even European mythology. Take a look into ancient Greek mythology, for instance.

It's also incoherent to note in one sentence that shapeshifters can be hurt by non-silver weapons, then claim in the next sentence that they have everything good and nothing bad about werewolves. Writing of this quality belongs in a blog, not a News post.

I don't think that word means what you think it means.

Culinary items - garlic in particular - has long been in the arsenal of the vampire hunter, but a cooked piece of beef is an unconventional weapon, to say the least.

Vampires and Werewolves have been portrayed as antagonists of each other in the horror genre. One example that comes to mind is the Howling VI (1991), which was part of the most popular werewolf film series. They even had one movie entitled New Moon Rising, which seems strangely familiar from recent vampire vs. werewolf-themed drivel. Likewise, White Wolf products have been selling the vampire vs. werewolf rivalry since the same year as Howling VI.

In other words, there was a 20-year history of werewolf-vampire antagonism before Underworld.