Don't worry. They probably won't bite. (Images by Frank Ockenfels/Online USA and Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic)

When I was in elementary school, after years of trick-or-treating in a Wicked Witch of the West costume, I decided to be a vampire for Halloween. With the very silly exceptions of Bunnicula and Grandpa and Lily Munster, vampires were monsters back then, and monsters were what Halloween was for.  I ran around in a cape, plastic fangs and a drawn-on widow’s peak, hollering, “I van to suck your blood.” Because that’s what vampires do.

Rather, that’s what vampires did. Now it seems like the average vampire has, for one reason or another, decided to abstain from drinking blood. Monsters are still what Halloween is for, though, so I’m going to spend this week looking at these abstinent vampires (and whether they’re still at all monstrous).

In fifth place are two vampires who might be described as monstrously tedious: Angel of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and Edward Cullen of the “Twilight” series. They’re both intelligent and resourceful, abundantly capable of handling themselves in a fight. But they also like to sulk, brood, whine and martyr themselves. That’s where the tedium comes in. Oh, and spoilers.

Angel was once the notoriously evil vampire Angelus. Spike, another vampire in the Buffyverse, said it was Drucilla who sired him, but Angelus made him a monster.  Thanks to a gypsy curse, Angel gets a soul, and he turns into a sniveling ball of regret and self-loathing. In “Buffy” and “Angel,” he lives off animal blood bought from a butcher. Edward Cullen doesn’t have a gypsy curse to use as an excuse, but he’s similarly angsty, and he lives off the blood of animals he hunts.

They’re cut from the same cloth when it comes to relationships, too. They’re sexually abstinent — Angel risks losing his soul after a moment of perfect happiness, and Edward is a no-sex-before-marriage type of vampire. Angel and Edward fall in love with Buffy and Bella, respectively, and they follow it up with grand pronouncements about what dangerous monsters they are and how Buffy and Bella would be better off without them. They do improve, eventually, but only after Angel breaks up with Buffy and leaves Sunnydale for L.A., and Edward marries Bella and turns her into a vampire.

NEXT: No. 4 — Less whining. More biting.

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