My bloody valentine: are vampire shows romantic or horrific?

During that now distant, almost dream-like lockdown, I watched all eight seasons of The Vampire Diaries (2009), all five seasons of The Originals (2013), and all the episodes of A Discovery of Witches (2018) that were available at the time. All of these feature the common contemporary spin on the fanged creatures, that these human-stalking, gothic architecture-loving fiends are, in truth, incredibly hot, misunderstood young men just looking for love. And, well, each one found an audience, so I suppose they must have been doing something right.

Still, vampire lovers don't exactly sit right. Due to their immortality, most are significantly older than their human paramours; their attraction to humans is often intertwined inextricably by a desire to drain their blood. Vampire fangs are both literally and symbolically penetrative, a means of violating the bodies of victims to satiate themselves, and the great big swoon that usually accompanies the attack is as ridiculous as it is medieval. There's a power imbalance woven into the conceptual fabric of vampirism, and in some instances, writers have extended this to comment on the politics between oppressors and the oppressed. To be attacked, harmed, or even in the presence of a vampire is typically to experience an intense and often detrimental vulnerability. 

I don't, however, think that there's no room for relationship-focused, supernatural TV series'. There's a reason I watched those shows, a reason why First Kill (2022), and Interview With A Vampire (2022) were concepts that made it to air. Cast some people with good chemistry, write some genuinely compelling romantic build-up, and there's no reason why vampire romances can't be a welcome part of mainstream media. But I'd just maybe like the vampires to stop proudly declaring they're 145 years old before confessing their love to a high schooler.