#anton bohnsack

commissions | tip jar

hey so remember when i said i haven't forgotten about this fandom

More The Little Vampire doodles on my sketchbooks :D Based on the books, of course. I'm just trying to figure out how to draw them properly in my style for my ideas ;)

idk how many of you know or care about a German children's series called The Little Vampire, written by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg 1979 onwards. (There was a book series first, then two tv series, and also an English language film featuring Richard E Grant. The latter, while it didn't really capture the essence, might have put it on the map for US Americans. Anyway,) Its premise is that a preteen vampire and his little vampire sister make friends with a mortal boy. They run into the quirky oddities one can expect from a kid's series, including keeping their natures secret from their respective families, hanging out despite different lifestyles and routines, (effectively Devil's Minioning the boy, Anton, who barely gets any sleep and loses interest in anything but vampires), and avoiding sunlight, vampire hunters, and other vampires who might want to eat the boy. The idea that child vampires are a liability because they can't sustain themselves is an interesting one to consider if you disconnect The Little Vampire from being a kiddie franchise and just take the characters at face value. How come they still act like children? Is it an odd Peter Pan thing in that they can't grow up because their minds are stuck as well as their bodies? Or are they mentally adults but just enjoy the freedom their childlike appearance gives them? Or is it somewhere inbetween where they are so attached to their family arrangement that any change in habits and lifestyle never really occured? One point that fascinates me in this regard is the blood red ruby plot. Tl;dr: it's a ruby set into a ring which the family (read as: vampire coven, except they're actually related) has looked after for a long time, but has hidden so well it has become lost, and must now be found in order to pass into the care of the next family. If the family don't retrieve it, they face being ostracized. Taking the kid gloves off, I've started to think that this could mean the children would no longer be protected and might be free game for other, less lenient vampires to hunt and kill if they thought they might endanger vampire secrecy. Or they may no longer rely on protection from vampire hunters. I don't know if any creator used the theme of child vampires before Anne Rice did with Claudia in 1976, and I don't know if Angela Sommer-Bodenburg was inspired by her three years later. Media travelled more slowly back then, maybe she had the idea on her own. In any case, it's interesting to look at how differently the same theme is treated in different stories, and how the Anne Rice treatment could heighten the stakes (huh).

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