[UA] How many vampires are there?

[Royal Minister of Stuff]

--- Michael Price <nini_pad at yahoo.com> wrote:
(snip)
You put this stuff about vampires in just to set me
off, don't you? I should probably explain even
further.  I've liked vampire hunters since I was a
little kid.  We all went out to see "The Lost Boys"
and I was gaga over the Frog Brothers, but everyone
else kept going on about the cool vampires.  They
assumed that, because I liked the movie, I dug the
monsters, not the men.  If wasn't being forced to read
Camu at the time, I would have gotten tired of
explaining myself.

Anyway, I, of course, have some opinions...
> How many (Vampires in UA) do you think there are?  
> How rich/powerful do you think they get?  
Not very.  For all that it was a very slow movie with
some poor opening performances (particularly by John
Malkovitch) "Shadow of the Vampire" got one thing
right.  There's one interesting scene in the movie. 
Willem Defoe's character, a real vampire recruited by
Malkovitch's Murnau, expresses sadness over reading
"Dracula."  He explains that Dracula had no servants
when John Harker came to visit him and the combined
humuliation and difficulty of waiting on someone all
by himself must have nearly broken the ancient
vampire's heart.

Money decays and things fall apart.  It gets harder
and harder to accept the "new" ideas of proceeding
generations, especially if you were in power because
of the "old" ideas.  Political power only lasts as
long as your supporter's interest and interest shifts
from year to year, so that older politicians are
constantly running to keep up.

Plus, vampires are both socially unacceptable in and
of themselves and predisposed toward doing brutal and
shocking acts, even if they don't kill for their
evening meals.  I've seen medically sterile leeches
applied (they're used to keep blood flowing through
damaged capillaries during microsurgery) and it makes
me shudder.  It takes a very specialized taste to
enjoy having blood sucked from your flesh.

Now, a vampire that manages to rise above his or her
heritage is a great thing, someone to be admired. 
They would have to face all sorts of delimmas, but it
could be conquered. After all, I see vampires as
clinging reminders of corrupt medieval nobility,
skulking in dingy apartments (they would have had to
sell their estates years ago) and living off goofy
retainers with romantic notions of chivalry and
noblesse oblige tearing their hearts apart.

Personally, my favourite book about vampires to date
has been Terry Pratchet's "Carpe Jugulum," but, I'll
admit, I'm a silly bastard at heart.

> After all some
> of them have been practising their skills for a
> while
> now and could command large prices for various
> "services".

I think maybe one vampire in a thousand could do that
and I think, if the vampire were any good at those
services, they'd be an even more sickening failure at
basic human interactions than the average UA mage.

>   I'd just like to hear people's theories.

Well, you asked and, last I checked, I was people.

PS. I'm TRYING to trim my responses, but I just can't
express my deep emotional need to devaluate any even
remotely attractive aspect of the molting vampire myth enough.

=====
-- Rp Bowman, Royal Minister of Stuff
The Electronic Nation of Yokeltania:
http://www.geocities.com/yokeltania/

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute with Yahoo! Messenger
http://phonecard.yahoo.com/

_______________________________________________
UA mailing list
UA at lists.uchicago.edu
http://lists.uchicago.edu/mailman/listinfo/ua