Created 1 years 64 days ago
by
HfxTenor
Gamer, Singer, Trainer, Storyteller, and all-around swell cat.
Been playing WoD since the original VtM came out back in 1991, though I've been into RPG's since the D&D red-box in Grade 6.
First book I ever read: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe (I have the hots for sinister female leads thanks to this novel)
Favourite Movie: The Sound of Music
Favourite Computer Game: Any adventure game by Sierra On-Line, particularly the Gabriel Knight series.
Merit: 5 Flaw: 0
blood
chronicle
Horror
Humanity
plot
sex
V:tM
vampire
violence
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World of Darkness Blog
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One of the guys in my gaming group really doesn’t like to play V:tM. He prefers to play mortals in the World of Darkness. I’ve always wondered why he had such an aversion or distaste for playing a vampire, but he recently made a comment that opened my eyes. His words exactly were “Vampires are supposed to be violent inhuman monsters, not runway models with super-powers that also happen to drink blood.”
Vampires, as plot devices in mainstream modern culture, have become overly-romanticized super-sexualized metaphors for teen anxiety over sex, loneliness and body-image. It’s why so many people groan at the mention of “Twilight” (one of my favourite words will now forever be associated with sparkly pretty boys who have no fangs) or “The Vampire Diaries”.
Another blatant example - the Underworld movies. Not a fat vampire to be seen. Heck, even though it’s subjective, it can be said there’s not even an ugly vampire in the mix either. In fact, the vampires in Underworld didn’t actually drink blood on-screen until the very end of the movie when Selene bites Michael. A vampire movie during which the “vampires” don’t even drink blood? These ain’t your fathers’ vampires, I reckon.
Gradually, over the past 100 years, the vampire has morphed from being an inhuman predatorial serial killer into a glamorous sexual metaphor. The monstrous terror of the unknown was boiled away, leaving nothing but concentrated sex and danger. Now beautiful undead models sparkle in the sun in Twilight, explode into a pile of cherry jello when you kill them in True Blood, or cry tears of sensitive blood when they fall in love with, and thereby doom, a human.
We’re encouraged to follow suit in the World of Darkness. Characters must stick to the codes and parameters of Humanity, agonizing with a “woe is me” mentality any time we do something immoral. A character that actually has the audacity to enjoy being a vampire walks an extremely fine line with the constant threat of losing their character forever to the Beast, or being forced to join the Sabbat. Thankfully, they introduced the idea of all vampires being able to follow different paths of morality other than humanity in future supplements.
I realized that I was very much guilty of living up to my friend’s conception of the game. All my NPC’s are gorgeous, everyone is tortured with guilt over their monstrous undead natures, moping and crying all the time, that is to say anytime they’re not seducing mortals and having lots of sex. I’m good at maintaining gothic darkness and mystery, but the fear and horror of the genre rapidly fade away in many if not all of my Chronicles. My vampires had become runway models with super-powers who can’t go out in the sunlight.
Being an eternal optimist, I’m taking this as a good epiphany. It’s time to put the terror, blood, claws and fangs back into my Chronicles. I may even do something drastic and adopt the nWoD notion of allowing the players to pick whatever Path of Morality they want, as opposed to forcing them all down the Humanity road.
How do the other Storytellers and players out there keep their Chronicles and characters from becoming too......human?
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Thylbanus
1 years 48 days ago
Sexy for some reason seems to focus on just sex. In reality sexy is more that being sexual or engaging in sex. It is a feeling, a state of mind, both subjective and objective. When one feels sexy, what can be said of them, of their state of mind? Well they feel attracive, confident, powerful, manipulative, commanding, demanding. Basically - a vampire. But going back to the sex aspect of sexy, sex is violent (and I'm not quoting Ministry). Sex is forceful. Sex is powerful. Sex is animalistic. But all this pales to what Vampires really are, and that is sensual. In this case again, I'm speaking of the literal translation of sensual, and that is "of the sences." In giving up their soul they have manifested themselves totally in the real world. Our spirits keep us numb to the totality of the world. Our spirits cloud the perception and manipulation of the world around us. Vampires have that stripped away. Now, everything is more real, more evocative, more frightening, more visceral. New vampires are overloaded with sensation, emotions get out of control now that their blinders have been removed. Neonates are flush with power and revel in their new found powers. This is the danger of youth, though too. This is why so many don't make it to ancielle. This power has it's price. The same effect on vampires as morals. We must consider why successful people commit suicide in the real world. When all the hard work and effort put forth leads to grand success, they then turn and take their own lives. They get all that they were looking for, but then the weight of it is too much for some to bear. This is mirrored in the vampire. When the headiness wears off and all the childlike behavior yields more enemies than friends, they feel the walls start to close in on them. They feel lonely, guilty, isolated, hunted. Some face the sun, others go out in a blaze of glory, the minority learns to survive and supress these urges. They get older, more wise, and more evil. But only evil in the regards to Humanity, both in meaning humankind and their own. Is a lion killing to be evil or to survive? We don't begrudge the lion it's meal, but at the same time we do if they kill humans. The movie "The Ghost and the Darkness" is based on a true story of the Tsavo mankillers. A pair of male lions that killed many people during the construction of the Kenya-Uganda Railway. They were given the monikers "The Ghost" and "The Darkness" out of fear. They were thought to be evil spirits or deceased shamans who came back to life to plague the living. It's an unfortunate thing that to survive, one must get past their Humanity since they are now something else, they are no longer human. This is what lead to the other Paths of Enlightenment. To that point, old vampires, after centuries of repression and supression of these urges, now, like a drug addict, crave these feelings again. This is why they make progeny, not as children, but teachers. But their long nights of supression also leads them to supress their childer, in this making the sire/childe relationship strained at best, adversarial at worse. But even this hatred is something to be cherished, to be savored. This is the context in which a vampire exists and why it is so appealing. This is what makes vampires sexy, it's animalistic. This is why it is called "The Beast." So yes, human "woe is me" crying vampires have a place just as the more vile and sinister vampires have their place. They exist in the same world and are really just the difference between young and old.
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Saerain
1 years 53 days ago
I don't agree that the path of humanity means that the vampire must be self-hating, and that assumption is actually a big part of the sour taste Requiem sometimes puts in my mouth. What's implicit in that assumption is that the Beast is ‘the true nature’ of the vampire, and I definitely don't accept that kind of thinking. I also think it's an assumption that actively serves the Beast. I see nothing immoral about the feeding itself, and the game mechanics of both VTM and VTR would seem to agree with me. And really, the necessity of blood and the deadliness of the sun is all there is to vampirism, if you ask me. All else is down to how the vampire deals with this state of affairs, and I see no reason that enjoying it should be synonymous with immorality. Not in any way that couldn't also be applied to mortal life, at any rate.
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Saerain
1 years 53 days ago
I mean, I take the point that the power a vampire possesses should make various immoral acts much more tempting, and that's how I interpret this idea of ‘the Beast’. But as far as I'm aware, as far as what mental faculties the Embrace eliminates to make them ‘monstrous’, vampires are basically just psychopaths. All they lack is empathy. And while that is frightening to many for interesting reasons, even psychopathy doesn't preclude you from following logical paths to really remarkably ‘good’ behavior. You won't get the same high from it that someone with the usual dopamine responses would, but you can absolutely still see it as the preferable outcome—provided it allows you to survive.
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1 years 53 days ago
I, too, have always had problems with reading the Beast as something separate and totally inimical to a vampire. I usually play "the Beast" as something that exists not only in all vampires, but in all living creatures. This is how Animalism works, to me - the common animal communicating. The difference is that when a vampire is Embraced, they lose a lot of those things that made them human - empathy, impulse control, selflessness. While they may not lose these things immediately, it is usually too painful for a vampire to continue worrying about them; also, all the other vampires who go around with Humanity 2-3 are more than happy to exploit high-Humanity vampires, and that turns more than one Golconda hopeful bitter and cynical. Sure, not every vampire has to revel in the immortality, but those who do spoil the rest of the bunch.
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Saerain
1 years 53 days ago
In that last sentence, did you really mean immortality or immorality? Because part of what I was trying to say is that I don't see that revelling in being a vampire must be immoral, and I'm curious, if anyone really disagrees, why that might be.
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Seven
1 years 59 days ago
I absolutely agree with you. I don't mind games and movies increasing the 'sexual' aspect of vampires, but they should never appear just 'pretty', never appear human, and should always remain frightening. They may be good at mimicking humans for a time and at tricking mortals, but at the end of the day they should be vampires. They are predators and, often from the mortal perspective, monsters. They are not human and should not seem to be human. Even those that regret their loss of humanity regret it for a reason - they are no longer human and can only deny their new nature for so long. I don't mind them being beautiful and/or sexy, in fact I enjoy it quite a bit ;) - but I prefer that they also retain that oft frightening/disconcerting 'not human' aspect to them as well.
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1 years 59 days ago
That brings up some interesting questions as to how we can reconcile finding something inhuman to be sexy. (No Gangrel jokes.) Don't get me wrong - I think that's exactly how it should work for the World of Darkness - but I'm wondering why people find "real" vampires, who are cold, pale, and lack most bodily fluids to be sexy. There's got to be some sort of romanticizing going on, because I sure as heck like my women warm.
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Malena
1 years 59 days ago
Don't forget that the vampires are not only the blood and flesh but also supernatural creatures. I think that's the reason why are the vampires attractive, something alluring/addicting that the people around them can feel but can't explain. Heh, a bit like tricky pheromones! ^^
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1 years 60 days ago
I always try to throw in a couple Nosferatu or 1-2-dot Appearance characters, just to make myself feel like I'm not falling into this trap. Even a lot of Nosferatu I've seen are kind of pretty in weird ways, and there are at least two canonical Nosferatu (Kli Kodesh and Mnemach) who seem to have completely countered the Clan curse. When NOSFERATU start looking pretty, you know something's wrong.
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Malena
1 years 64 days ago
As a Storyteller I rather never roll humanity for my players. There are really malicious creatures and their characters are quite the same. ^^ I allow to take other Paths and to create ones if they look good. It's also easier when the situation forces the characters to achieve their goals rather than to make something moral, but also choosing that immoral way easily is considered our (Polish) "national flaw". The "terror, blood, claws and fangs" are present in nearly every chronicle of mine, especially in the one when we play Elders - even if everything happen in the beautiful sceneries and every sin is committed by beautiful vampires. I must say that any of the characters in that story can be defined as 'good' and when it comes to the mortals, ancient Roman system rules - most of the ghouls and ghouls-to-be just have the hell made of their life if their lords had a quarrel with something or they got upset after meeting with each other. In their mind it is still quite normal way of behaviour, even if it was found something fitting a millennium or two ago... In my, Slavic, part of the Europe, the darkness & mystery isn't as associated with the vampires as psychical beauty is. It is rather necessary for the vampires and similar creatures because in all traditional pre-christian folk-stories they were always extremely beautiful. It was their way, as predators, to allure the prey they want to kill, just like Drosera "allure" the insects. We just agreed that turning into a vampire makes one somehow attractive, like in Anne Rice's books. The second kind of Slavic vampires, not as connected to the beauty, was thought to be drastically depressed and suffering from the rejection both in their live and after that - they come back to find somebody who can fulfil their loneliness - their wives, children, friends, society - and take them to the other side. Also Dracula, who is the stereotype of a violent vampire, was never thought to be a one, he was called a "devil", never a "vampire". If you may ask your friend *why* the vampires should be "violent inhuman monsters" it would be interesting to get an answer, as the folklore, tradition and even most of the significant authors (Goethe, Poe, Le Fanu, Tolstoj, Stoker, Polidori, Rice) don't say anything about it. As I play in our PbP exactly a seductive undead model (^^), we will see how much not only of the clan flaw, but also the national flaw I can play using such a stereotypical character... ;)
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