(no subject)
So I've been watching these Vampire Academy trailers for weeks and thinking to myself that I must be missing something.
Tonight, I looked up from my Kindle at just the right time to see one where it says, "From the director of Mean Girls."
Oh. Now it all makes sense.
Not to disparage Vampire Academy, or any other institution for the training of bloodsucking fiends, but I really miss when vampires were fucking horrific. Like, don't get me wrong, I am fine with sympathetic vampires. Angel was alright and Spike was cool, and I was a big Vampire: The Masquerade fan, so I'm down with vampires that also have actual feelings and thoughts beyond BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD. But I really miss when there was actually something to sympathize with. Like, I'm going to give you guys an example from a Vampire: The Requiem game I was a part of.
I played a Mekhet. Both my character and the other character in the game (a Daeva for those curious) were newly made. In mortal life, my character was a disgraced spy turned private investigator, and entirely without meaning to, for the first few sessions I'd been playing it as if the vampire thing was just a change to Connor's business hours and dietary requirements. Obviously the situations he was getting into were stranger (ask me about the time he discovered a brand new dimension or inadvertently almost sundered a truce between the vampire governing body of Baltimore and the local werewolves) but like he just didn't seem to be getting that this was more than just a change of circumstances. This was not deliberate. I didn't even realize how ho-hum I was playing it.
Now, he still had a connection to mortality. See, there was this girl. (I know I know shut up.) She was one of his first cases when he opened up shop, missing twin sister, cops had moved it to cold case. He found her sister...s body, and helped catch the guy. (I can't remember for sure but I think I had it where the guy got off on a technicality.) After that he sort of kept in touch because like any good private eye with emotional issues he sort of got attached when he absolutely should not have. He never crossed that line but both of them sort of flirted with their edge of the line on occasion. (Perp ended up fed to Connor for his first meal upon waking. Should've made that guilty plea after all, it would've been healthier.) So Connor and Arthur are investigating a rash of very public frenzies, trying to figure out why all these fine upstanding vampires are going bugfuck crazy in public for no discernable reason. They eventually find ectoplasm (I think) and figure out that it's some sort of spirit, which is werewolf territory. Luckily there's a tense treaty in place, so a meeting is arranged and (after Connor nearly sunders the treaty inadvertently) the werewolves agree to scratch our backs if we scratch theirs.
The werewolves have some internal struggle that the vampires know little about, basically all they know is one group called the Forsaken don't like another group called the Pure, whatever we don't care about this shit just do what they want so we can get this spirit thing taken care of. So the Pure tribe is successfully tracked down, and Connor and Arthur actually go in with the wolves to drive off/kill this pack. This may not have been a great idea, but it (seems to, at least) make a very good impression on the ally-wolves. Connor, while acquitting himself very well, gets torn the fuck up something fierce and has to burn juuuuuuuuust about all of his blood supply to not die. He manages to make it back to his office afterward, but he is on the verge of losing his shit in a hunger frenzy and he needs to feed. He doesn't want to just grab some stranger off the street because there's no connection to humanity there, he's certain he'll lose it as soon as he sinks his fangs in and kill whatever poor fucker he's just stuck like a cafeteria milkbag, and he absolutely does not want to kill anyone. He had to kill somebody once as a mortal and the shadow of that act still hadn't completely left him.
So he calls The Girl.
The thought process here, in-character, is that Connor figures the emotional connection he has with her will give him enough humanity to cling to in order to feed safely. Out-of-character, I was going to toss a few experience points into the Retainer merit at the end of the session, which was right around the corner, and make The Girl the retainer. So she comes over and he just blatantly tosses the don't-tell-the-mortals rule aside. He shows her his fangs, makes a really good case for not being a monster, and she agrees to let him feed off her.
Now the way feeding when on the verge of frenzy works is this: You make a certain number of Willpower rolls per point of blood you're taking, up to the point where you're nourished enough to have successfully staved off the frenzy. In my case, it was 3 rolls. I rolled the first time, easy pass. I rolled the second time, ANOTHER easy pass. I've got this shit in the bag, at this point I think I even had a bonus on my last roll.
And that roll is fucking TANKED. I mean just taaaaaaaaaaanked. The dice literally bounced off the table, hit me in the eyeballs, and then landed on a heretofore unseen side where the numbers are represented by ALL MIDDLE FINGERS. It was a bad roll, is what I'm saying. So after convincing this innocent girl he truly cares for that he wasn't a monster...he drains her fucking dry and comes back to himself just in time to watch dumbly as her body crumples to his feet. Almost worse, he then has to make an immediate call to his sire to have her body disposed of. He's trying to process the shock and horror of what he's just done at the very same time that he's asking for the body to be "disposed of" as if it's some kind of discarded fast food wrapper and not the body of a girl Connor thought he might have loved.
That is a sympathetic vampire. Someone that tries, and maybe sometimes even really believes that they're not a monster...but at the end of the night, being reminded, often brutally, that they really really are. These new vampires, a lot of them don't have that, and it's something I'm going to miss if this new sort of vampire is more than just a passing trend.
Tonight, I looked up from my Kindle at just the right time to see one where it says, "From the director of Mean Girls."
Oh. Now it all makes sense.
Not to disparage Vampire Academy, or any other institution for the training of bloodsucking fiends, but I really miss when vampires were fucking horrific. Like, don't get me wrong, I am fine with sympathetic vampires. Angel was alright and Spike was cool, and I was a big Vampire: The Masquerade fan, so I'm down with vampires that also have actual feelings and thoughts beyond BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD. But I really miss when there was actually something to sympathize with. Like, I'm going to give you guys an example from a Vampire: The Requiem game I was a part of.
I played a Mekhet. Both my character and the other character in the game (a Daeva for those curious) were newly made. In mortal life, my character was a disgraced spy turned private investigator, and entirely without meaning to, for the first few sessions I'd been playing it as if the vampire thing was just a change to Connor's business hours and dietary requirements. Obviously the situations he was getting into were stranger (ask me about the time he discovered a brand new dimension or inadvertently almost sundered a truce between the vampire governing body of Baltimore and the local werewolves) but like he just didn't seem to be getting that this was more than just a change of circumstances. This was not deliberate. I didn't even realize how ho-hum I was playing it.
Now, he still had a connection to mortality. See, there was this girl. (I know I know shut up.) She was one of his first cases when he opened up shop, missing twin sister, cops had moved it to cold case. He found her sister...s body, and helped catch the guy. (I can't remember for sure but I think I had it where the guy got off on a technicality.) After that he sort of kept in touch because like any good private eye with emotional issues he sort of got attached when he absolutely should not have. He never crossed that line but both of them sort of flirted with their edge of the line on occasion. (Perp ended up fed to Connor for his first meal upon waking. Should've made that guilty plea after all, it would've been healthier.) So Connor and Arthur are investigating a rash of very public frenzies, trying to figure out why all these fine upstanding vampires are going bugfuck crazy in public for no discernable reason. They eventually find ectoplasm (I think) and figure out that it's some sort of spirit, which is werewolf territory. Luckily there's a tense treaty in place, so a meeting is arranged and (after Connor nearly sunders the treaty inadvertently) the werewolves agree to scratch our backs if we scratch theirs.
The werewolves have some internal struggle that the vampires know little about, basically all they know is one group called the Forsaken don't like another group called the Pure, whatever we don't care about this shit just do what they want so we can get this spirit thing taken care of. So the Pure tribe is successfully tracked down, and Connor and Arthur actually go in with the wolves to drive off/kill this pack. This may not have been a great idea, but it (seems to, at least) make a very good impression on the ally-wolves. Connor, while acquitting himself very well, gets torn the fuck up something fierce and has to burn juuuuuuuuust about all of his blood supply to not die. He manages to make it back to his office afterward, but he is on the verge of losing his shit in a hunger frenzy and he needs to feed. He doesn't want to just grab some stranger off the street because there's no connection to humanity there, he's certain he'll lose it as soon as he sinks his fangs in and kill whatever poor fucker he's just stuck like a cafeteria milkbag, and he absolutely does not want to kill anyone. He had to kill somebody once as a mortal and the shadow of that act still hadn't completely left him.
So he calls The Girl.
The thought process here, in-character, is that Connor figures the emotional connection he has with her will give him enough humanity to cling to in order to feed safely. Out-of-character, I was going to toss a few experience points into the Retainer merit at the end of the session, which was right around the corner, and make The Girl the retainer. So she comes over and he just blatantly tosses the don't-tell-the-mortals rule aside. He shows her his fangs, makes a really good case for not being a monster, and she agrees to let him feed off her.
Now the way feeding when on the verge of frenzy works is this: You make a certain number of Willpower rolls per point of blood you're taking, up to the point where you're nourished enough to have successfully staved off the frenzy. In my case, it was 3 rolls. I rolled the first time, easy pass. I rolled the second time, ANOTHER easy pass. I've got this shit in the bag, at this point I think I even had a bonus on my last roll.
And that roll is fucking TANKED. I mean just taaaaaaaaaaanked. The dice literally bounced off the table, hit me in the eyeballs, and then landed on a heretofore unseen side where the numbers are represented by ALL MIDDLE FINGERS. It was a bad roll, is what I'm saying. So after convincing this innocent girl he truly cares for that he wasn't a monster...he drains her fucking dry and comes back to himself just in time to watch dumbly as her body crumples to his feet. Almost worse, he then has to make an immediate call to his sire to have her body disposed of. He's trying to process the shock and horror of what he's just done at the very same time that he's asking for the body to be "disposed of" as if it's some kind of discarded fast food wrapper and not the body of a girl Connor thought he might have loved.
That is a sympathetic vampire. Someone that tries, and maybe sometimes even really believes that they're not a monster...but at the end of the night, being reminded, often brutally, that they really really are. These new vampires, a lot of them don't have that, and it's something I'm going to miss if this new sort of vampire is more than just a passing trend.