It is a tempting trap to fall into - to make our characters ravishingly handsome, achingly beautiful, or even the odd painfully ugly. Not only do we want our characters to be special and stand out and get in good with the opposite sex (or otherwise), but we have been conditioned to think that this is the way things are meant to be. All heroes are handsome or beautiful. It's a prerequisite to saving the world - you have to look good doing it. Hollywood and popular fiction have been telling us for years that the only thing you really need to succeed in life or unlife is good looks and charm.
Today I'm going to make the case that that's exactly the wrong thing vampires need.
I consider this stance from the point of the Masquerade, the veil of ignorance, superstition, and subtlety that vampires have woven around their existence in order to protect both mortals and themselves. The trick of the Masquerade, then, is to not stand out. And let's face it - for good or ill, beautiful people or ugly people tend to stand out. That's sort of how we can tell they're beautiful or ugly, right? Not everbody looks like them, or fairer to say, they don't look like everybody else. But that's not a good way to hide. The best way to hide is to look like one of many of similar things. Therefore, it is in a vampire's best interests to NOT end up like Lestat du Lionscourt, or Edward Cullen, or even Victoria Ash. People remember your face if you're pretty. You stick around in their heads, and that's something that the wise vampire who wants to live for more than a century doesn't want.
But let's face it: even our characters and the living personalities of the Worlds of Darkness are subject to the same sort of foibles and desires that we are: they're just ask likely to Embrace a beautiful character as we are to create one. (Almost exactly as likely, in fact.) Beauty is almost its own qualification; sometimes that's the only redeeming quality of a character, who may otherwise be a complete ass, is something of an idiot, and whose muscles are purely for show. I don't think we can pin the blame on any single Clan in this particular case, for they are all drawn to beautiful people for one reason or another. The Toreador wish to preserve beauty; the Nosferatu wish to spoil it. Nobody really wants people to say about their childer, "Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot who they were".
We have to consider the trail left behind by beautiful or otherwise extremely noticable vampires, however: it's usually a trail of ash. A wise vampire, especially one who believes in the Masquerade, will want to blend in. They won't want to stand out. If people forget my name and face without the use of Dominate, well, so much the better! Less work for me! If they can't remember me, they can't describe me to the cops when the bodies start turning up after my conspicuous departure from town, all drained of blood and with varying looks of horror and ecstacy on their faces. It certainly couldn't have been that mysterious and yet forgettable stranger - he's not pretty enough to be a vampire. This is the trick of the Masquerade: to be the last one anybody suspects of being a vampire.
There's also the terror bit. Let's consider this from what should be our natural perspective on the matter: as prey. Vampires are among us. The smart ones - the ones most capable of feeding on us, sucking at our species' lifeblood like so many overbloated ticks, the ones who will live again to oppress us and keep toying with us - are the ones who follow the precepts of the Masquerade and can move among us freely. We are none the wiser. Recent remakes of old movies have shown us that a vampire can literally be our next-door neighbor. ("Fright Night", for reference.) Out there on the internet is a list of things NOT to do as a vampire, and frankly, if there was a vampire out there who followed that list, they are perhaps the scariest creatures on the planet.
Now, the terror of vampires is not the classic gory-massacre-scary of frenzy or even of their habitual and centuries-old cruelty. Massacres and cruelty are usually pretty obvious and you can see them coming. It's not even the plain and simple anxiety we get when we see the heroine descend into the dark basement in nothing but a negligee and a sharp stick of wood. (If you haven't by now, you should really develop that sixth sense of beginning to hear tense music in the back of your head whenever you're in a dangerous situation. Listen to that music - it's trying to save your life.) The terror of vampires, the terror of the Masquerade, is that we don't see it coming.
It's not the impatient and greedy predators that survive long enough to become a threat. It is the patient and polite hunter, who knows the rules of camouflage and high-class society, one that can make itself home right in the middle of a city of a million or more humans and simply become one of the hive.
At least until it's feeding time.
Then we get a brief glimpse into the terror behind the masque. This is when the violence and cruelty come to the for, and they tear into us like we would tear casually into the ripe flesh of a steak, with as little concern for us as we would have for taking a bite out of an apple. One night, you may be staying late at the office, finishing up your reports. Your boss, a fine-looking man in a clean suit and pressed tie, invites you back to his office for a cup of coffee. You accept, because you really need the coffee, and it never hurts to get in good with the boss. You chat a little, he asks you how your kids are doing, you gently remind him that you're married to your job and don't have kids. He smiles, impressed with your loyalty to the company. In that smile is something unnerving, something toothy, and you say quickly that you have to get back to work. He lets you go for now.
Then, when you escape to the lonely bathroom to splash some water on your face - to wake yourself up and to wash off the nervous sweat - Joe Smith from a couple cubicles down comes in and rips out your throat.
Who is the blame going to fall on, here? The menial office drone who was so busy with his work last night that he can't even confirm you stayed late, or the rich and influential - and good-looking, noticable, more photogenic - businessman who admits he called you into his office late last night "for a sip of coffee"? Well, we say, obviously the drone. There's absolutely nothing suspicious about him, so that makes him the perfect culprit. Get your nose out of the murder mysteries and think like a real cop for a second. Even if he was a person of interest, what exactly are they going to hold him on? Being TOO innocent? NOT having a cup of coffee with the boss? So your murderer gets away scot-free because he knew how to play the game. For all we know he could be an elder hundreds of years old, who has survived this long because, hey, after all, he's just Joe Smith from a couple cubicles down. History will forget about him, and so will the cops.
So I would like to take this opportunity to remind us all once again, myself included, that making a character powerful and special does not necessarily mean they have to be ravishingly handsome, achingly beautiful, or even painfully ugly. (Except for those poor Nossies, who can't help it until they learn Obfuscate 3.) The real trick to maintaining the Masquerade, getting your next meal, and surviving to the next night is to make sure that if people remember you, it's because they don't want to invite you to their parties, or kiss their babies, or maybe get a little dirty in a back room. The true terror of the Masquerade is any predator could be around us at any time, and it's not all menacing shadows and convenient fore-warning howls in the night. It's the terror of those "crazies" we mock who insist that the dead walk, that monsters are all around us. It is the terror of the unknown and unknowable.
The true terror of the Masquerade is that we humans don't even know it's there.
6 Comments
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0 Merits
z.o.o.
346 days ago
I am good-looking, and like Draxod I intend to match my avatar to my own visage. Six years ago, my uncle Peter patronized and enlighted me with equivocated sympathy, "You're not as important as you think you are." he said.--- How much credence does one lend a pretty face while in passing at the grocery store? Only as much credence as one has time to lend before one's own shopping cart passes that of the pretty face's in the opposite direction. One who is of sound mind may then return their attention to the task at hand, namely, the need to return home before one's ice cream melts.--- Here in the world, I take pretty faces for granted simply because they are bound to exist. A face is merely a facility by which a person engages the world. There is no need to malign a player for creating a beautiful, albeit absolutely subjective, avatar face. And this is because pretty faces are bound to exist.--- It is my sincerest hope C.C.P. purposefully creates doppleganger, Kine, NPCs based on every player-created avatar face so as to diminish the premium of recognition on any one face. Furthermore, players should be, "...as pretty as they wanna be." otherwise this form of congregation known as the MMOG may begin to lose its place in the context of entertainment.
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0 Merits
Major Arcana
1 years 11 days ago
Very good points indeed! I will certainly think twice about making my character too good looking or too ugly. As long as there are plenty of beautiful victims for me I'm not going to worry so much. Keyser Söze sprang to mind after reading this!
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2 Merits
Draxod
1 years 14 days ago
It is my sincere intention to make my vampire character as close to my own physical appearance as the game engine will allow. I find it strangely comforting and immersive to see myself reflected in my avatar.I find myself doing this more and more as game engines, for MMOs, become more capable. I was actually able to make my main Sith look recognizably like myself in SWTOR, for example.
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2 Merits
1 years 14 days ago
I've noticed there's a certain tendency for players to make their characters look reasonably like them. For me, it's kind of an ego thing, but obviously this can't hold in cases like playing a Nossie. I think in the medium of computer graphics, where it's really hard to get down to the smallest detail, characters tend to look more attractive by default: smooth skin, uniform height, and we all seem to be thin with just enough muscle. I hope in the WODMMO we'll get the chance to push the extremes a little more.
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0 Merits
CookieMonster
1 years 14 days ago
I find this quite impossible actually. I always try to make my avatars in games look as much like me as possible, but to no avail. It seems as though I can't distinguish the finer traits in my face well enough to put them onto a character in a game :/ I've tried to draw myself a few times too (and I'm a fairly good artist) but I never seem able to get it right.
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-1 Merits
CookieMonster
1 years 15 days ago
Hmmmm. Well, I agree to some extent. I think that, even though I make my character attractive, doesn't mean that he needs to be easily remembered. I think, if you make your character a good enough actor, he/ she could fool anybody into believing he/she was just another drone that really means nothing in the overall scheme of things.
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