I love all things creepy and monstrous. I didn't always, but I have for a good long while now. However, sometimes I feel compelled to pick things apart. It's probably because when I write fiction I like to take a monstrous character and throw them into awkward situations for my own amusement, or at least think of how day-to-day trivialities really would be hard for someone trying to blend in.
I'll probably do a few of these, but for now, let's start with my favorite ones: vampires.
Say someone's become a vampire. A hungry bloodsucker just treated them like the most disturbing juice box in the universe and surprise! Now our hero is also one of the soulless undead! What will they do now? Well, that's the million dollar question, isn't it?
For argument's sake, our new vampire is a normal person. Not royalty or nobility, not even particularly well-off. The kind of person who's got to work for a living. How are they going to manage to keep their job? Granted, when one's diet consists solely of blood food bills are no longer a concern, but a vampire does require shelter from the all-consuming rays of the sun. Ergo, rent money is still necessary. To my understanding though, many jobs have daytime hours and vampires are kinda allergic to sunlight. They'd have to find a new line of work, which may or may not allow time for them to find victims to feed from.
Or maybe our vampire has an internet-based job and never sees the light of day anyway. There's a metaphor somewhere in here, but I just don't know where. Hrm.
This is the sort of thing I find has been avoided in fiction by having your vampire be a person of means, or at least be sired by one. If they've had centuries to accumulate wealth and power it's a different ball game entirely. They needn't worry about the mortgage on Stately Vampire Manor, because Stately Vampire Manor's long since been paid for. Similar deal goes for the new fledgling who's the personal pet of a wealthy old vampire. Unless of course, wealthy old vampire grows tired of them.
Then there's the moral dilemma. Pretty it up all you want, there's no escaping what vampirism really is: cannibalism and murder. They've gone in one fell swoop from Average Joe to fanged corpse with a hankering for hemoglobin. After sinking their brand new pointies into someone's throat and slurping away until the victim gasps out their last feeble breaths, the gravity of the situation will hit them. Assuming that they've never killed anything bigger than a cockroach before, this is going to be one hell of a shock. Undead or not, I'd assume a new vampire still identifies to a large degree as human. You and I both know how much the guilt this causes the fledgling in most settings; it's been done to death. If you feed, you kill someone. If you don't feed, you'll probably kill someone you know and care about. Someone who has a reason to be around you often.
If it's typical for the vampire to truly have no "soul" and suffer rapid humanity loss, thinking of their former fellow humans as no more than food there's no problem here. Ones who are not "soulless", however, are the first reason why characters that jump at the chance to be vampires kinda irritate me. You know, like teenage girls with vampire boyfriends.
Unless our hero's got no friends or family, their newfound condition will make social interaction hard, won't it? Reason two that characters who jump at the chance to be vampires irk me. You can only make so many excuses as to why you can't meet someone during the day before it looks like you're avoiding them. "Sorry Mom, I'm a nocturnal undead horror who thirsts for the blood of the living" isn't exactly something your mother's going to buy.
...well, my mother might, but that's neither here nor there.
Let's also factor in the awkwardness of going over to someone's house and being totally unable to eat any food offered. Or they might be concerned about why you've become so pale lately. Or why you keep glancing down at their neck and biting your lip.
As this is getting to be longer than I originally intended, I'm going to stop here and pick up in another post.
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