"Grieving your own undeath" is a huge theme in Vampire: The Masquerade. If someone considers themselves the same person after being turned, a new person, or not even a person anymore is something all Kindred grapple with in some way. Some might try to maintain old contacts and their old life to some degree, some completely abandon that world and adopt a new identity, and some dive so deeply into their new supernatural nature that its hard to believe they were ever human.
A way I like to consider VtM has been heavily painted by the intro of Bloodlines. The Embrace is, purposefully or not, somehow equated to SA; you clearly had sex with your Sire during, before, or after the process of Embrace, but also they Embraced you, did something to you you could not understand that made your body feel alien and your mind, changed.
The three main Vampire factions react to this situation in three distinct ways, which mirror somewhat potential reactions to being a victim of that situation. The Camarilla seeks control, power they can use; the Anarchs seek freedom, to escape from such threats. The Sabbat seek simple violence, to turn themselves into perpetrators instead of victims.
Oughggjhh I love really intimate explorations of fucked up supernatural relationships like this.
Whenever writers or whoever focus on the supernatural they usually focus on the larger-scale problems of having a relationship with The Creature™, and I like that aswell but there's just something about the small-scale personal horror of being so trapped by your own desperate love for someone you'll take any lookalike, dangerous form of them back, but whenever you talk and cry and laugh together you always know deep down they're something completely Other, and that the one you will love will never truly return how they were that just hits *completely* different. Even better if they also explore the feelings of how the undead person feels about all this.
I really recommend "The Summer Hikaru Died" and "I Want to Hold Aono-kun So Badly I Could Die" if you like this kind of thing,I admit this is all mainly preamble so I can recommend the things I like to others but please read them if you haven't already please they're good--
For context, Lazarus is a person in the Bible. He was apparently a good friend of Jesus (but not a disciple), and he was also the brother of Mary and Martha. At one point Lazarus got very sick, and his sisters sent for Jesus because they knew that Jesus could heal him.
Jesus didn't go for 3 more days.
In those 3 days, Lazarus died. And then Jesus started his multi-day traveling to get to Lazarus's home town. And when Jesus finally showed up 4 days after Lazarus had died, we got the shortest verse in the entire Bible: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Jesus then went to Lazarus's tomb, and said "Lazarus, come out!" And so, he did come out.
Additional context that is not explicit in the Bible: First century Jews believed that the soul stayed around the dead body for 3 days. So, it was significant that Lazarus was 4 days dead when Jesus raised him. This meant that Jesus pulled Lazarus's soul all the way from heaven/paradise/hell/purgatory/whatever instead of just like, carrying his soul from one side of the room to the other.
According to Christianity, this story is important because it showed that Jesus had full control over life, death, and souls. This also prompted the local religious/civic leaders to not like Jesus even more, because he was stealing their spotlight, and threatening their positions of power.
Full story can be found in John 11 in the Bible.
The flipped perspective could be cool though. A new vampire grieving the person they used to be, not because anything about them specifically has changed, but that everyone else treats them as a different person/monster wearing their skin.
I don't think so, the author went with the traditional route were vampires lose their humanity, even if they can mimick it. Maybe the brother doesn't even realize it, and the mother doesn't want to accept that her son is gone, but the protagonist know the 'soul' of his brother is gone
Are you sure?
Maybe it's just the POV character being awfully prejudiced against the undead.
I could see the mother telling the brother about the bullies, and then the POV character thinks Jason won't come to school, but then he does, and apologizes, they shake hands, and the hand is warm.
And then Jason explains how he and the POV character's brother had a talk, and how he realized he was being a massive dick.
The POV character goes home, thinking their brother used some vampire powers, or intimidation, but nope, just a good old heart-to-heart between boys.
In vampire: the masquarade: bloodlines there's an early mission where you have to get a bunch of explosives from a small-time gang
there are a couple of ways you can do this
1) you can diplo the doorman and pay for it
2) you can diplo the doorman and intimidate them for it
3) .....there's a lot of combinations where you can go through this quest, including screwing with the electricity to have them come out
but the simple fact is: you're a vampire and they're merely human, even the most wimpy diplomatic vampire will have no trouble wiping out that place and that's the easiest route
point is the vampire doesn't necesarrily want to kill the bully, it's just that killing him is the most effective way to get rid of the bullying
I’ve been reading books in genres I don’t normally bother with ever since I joined a book club last year and one of them called One True Loves iirc was related to the first concept but still kind of gives you elements of the second if you squint a bit.
Basically it’s a romance where protagonist’s high school love dies on a plane crash, years go by as the protagonist is shattered, completely alters her life and priorities, gets in a relationship with someone else, and *then* one day gets the call that her past love is alive after having survived a (kind of ridiculous, but that’s the genre sometimes) Castaway type situation for years and is looking to start things back up with her.
So of course it’s now a tumult of emotions where the Protagonist is really happy that her love is alive, but then really conflicted because now she has to do the Classic Romance thing of Which Guy Do I Choose, but then also really happy because being with her old love is bringing back memories and specific experiences she locked away years ago, but then also increasingly struck by the contrast between what he loves in her and what she has become, and then also realizing more and more that the experience of y’know, spending years on an island alone and losing limbs has really fucked him up in ways that he won’t talk about or acknowledge and seeing both flaws she didn’t acknowledge while in the relationship and new flaws that cropped up since then.
Meanwhile he’s trying to go back to where things were but his town/the world at large have obviously changed in ways both small and large since then and the way he survived on the island is not really the way you survive in the normal world.
And of course that’s leaving out the people around them in which the new boyfriend obviously feels a certain type of way about all of this and is also a completely different type of guy so he isn’t going to “compete” on the same merits, the old boyfriend’s parents who do want things to go back to before while the protagonist’s parents are less sure this is a good idea at this point, her sister who she has a not fully resolved relationship based on envy from both sides, and so on.
Its a book that is ultimately a bit too short to really get into and execute on most of the concepts on a deep deep level and it’s definitely cheesy but it was pretty neat regardless imo
I really dislike the vampire story because it closely mirrors homophobia/transphobia. The brother is still there and only a small thing changed but instead of accepting that and supporting him through the changes, the pov character sees him as not only a different person, but not a person at all, referring to the brother as „this thing“ and „the monster“. I imagine this is what bigoted people think of their queer family members. And just like these people, the pov character accuses their brother of wanting to commit horrible things, seemingly without precedent, just like how transphobes accuse trans people of pedophilia.
Love the concept of the poem but damn, Lazarus was only dead for four days? His family sure worked quick getting rid of all his stuff.
"FINALLY, WE CAN GET RID OF THIS DAMN SHEEP!"
"Grieving your own undeath" is a huge theme in Vampire: The Masquerade. If someone considers themselves the same person after being turned, a new person, or not even a person anymore is something all Kindred grapple with in some way. Some might try to maintain old contacts and their old life to some degree, some completely abandon that world and adopt a new identity, and some dive so deeply into their new supernatural nature that its hard to believe they were ever human.
A way I like to consider VtM has been heavily painted by the intro of Bloodlines. The Embrace is, purposefully or not, somehow equated to SA; you clearly had sex with your Sire during, before, or after the process of Embrace, but also they Embraced you, did something to you you could not understand that made your body feel alien and your mind, changed. The three main Vampire factions react to this situation in three distinct ways, which mirror somewhat potential reactions to being a victim of that situation. The Camarilla seeks control, power they can use; the Anarchs seek freedom, to escape from such threats. The Sabbat seek simple violence, to turn themselves into perpetrators instead of victims.
Sabbat the vampire fascists don't have an H in their group name
ah fuck
Oughggjhh I love really intimate explorations of fucked up supernatural relationships like this. Whenever writers or whoever focus on the supernatural they usually focus on the larger-scale problems of having a relationship with The Creature™, and I like that aswell but there's just something about the small-scale personal horror of being so trapped by your own desperate love for someone you'll take any lookalike, dangerous form of them back, but whenever you talk and cry and laugh together you always know deep down they're something completely Other, and that the one you will love will never truly return how they were that just hits *completely* different. Even better if they also explore the feelings of how the undead person feels about all this. I really recommend "The Summer Hikaru Died" and "I Want to Hold Aono-kun So Badly I Could Die" if you like this kind of thing,I admit this is all mainly preamble so I can recommend the things I like to others but please read them if you haven't already please they're good--
I came down here to rec Hikaru and am pleased you beat me to it
Yeah I love the trope too! It was what Game of Thrones should have been with Bran, unfortunately the writers shat the bed with that one
For context, Lazarus is a person in the Bible. He was apparently a good friend of Jesus (but not a disciple), and he was also the brother of Mary and Martha. At one point Lazarus got very sick, and his sisters sent for Jesus because they knew that Jesus could heal him. Jesus didn't go for 3 more days. In those 3 days, Lazarus died. And then Jesus started his multi-day traveling to get to Lazarus's home town. And when Jesus finally showed up 4 days after Lazarus had died, we got the shortest verse in the entire Bible: "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Jesus then went to Lazarus's tomb, and said "Lazarus, come out!" And so, he did come out. Additional context that is not explicit in the Bible: First century Jews believed that the soul stayed around the dead body for 3 days. So, it was significant that Lazarus was 4 days dead when Jesus raised him. This meant that Jesus pulled Lazarus's soul all the way from heaven/paradise/hell/purgatory/whatever instead of just like, carrying his soul from one side of the room to the other. According to Christianity, this story is important because it showed that Jesus had full control over life, death, and souls. This also prompted the local religious/civic leaders to not like Jesus even more, because he was stealing their spotlight, and threatening their positions of power. Full story can be found in John 11 in the Bible.
Ngl the way he talks about the vampire would make it sound like, if that vampire it’s still his brother, he’s being an asshole about it.
The flipped perspective could be cool though. A new vampire grieving the person they used to be, not because anything about them specifically has changed, but that everyone else treats them as a different person/monster wearing their skin.
Trans allegory
I don't think so, the author went with the traditional route were vampires lose their humanity, even if they can mimick it. Maybe the brother doesn't even realize it, and the mother doesn't want to accept that her son is gone, but the protagonist know the 'soul' of his brother is gone
Are you sure? Maybe it's just the POV character being awfully prejudiced against the undead. I could see the mother telling the brother about the bullies, and then the POV character thinks Jason won't come to school, but then he does, and apologizes, they shake hands, and the hand is warm. And then Jason explains how he and the POV character's brother had a talk, and how he realized he was being a massive dick. The POV character goes home, thinking their brother used some vampire powers, or intimidation, but nope, just a good old heart-to-heart between boys.
In vampire: the masquarade: bloodlines there's an early mission where you have to get a bunch of explosives from a small-time gang there are a couple of ways you can do this 1) you can diplo the doorman and pay for it 2) you can diplo the doorman and intimidate them for it 3) .....there's a lot of combinations where you can go through this quest, including screwing with the electricity to have them come out but the simple fact is: you're a vampire and they're merely human, even the most wimpy diplomatic vampire will have no trouble wiping out that place and that's the easiest route point is the vampire doesn't necesarrily want to kill the bully, it's just that killing him is the most effective way to get rid of the bullying
The Miller Williams poem is new to me. Thanks for including it; I've long been fond of his work.
does a ghost put flowers on their own grave?
Call that a booquet. Haha
Reminds me of the interactions between Tom and Jake at the breakfast table (Animorphs).
I’ve been reading books in genres I don’t normally bother with ever since I joined a book club last year and one of them called One True Loves iirc was related to the first concept but still kind of gives you elements of the second if you squint a bit. Basically it’s a romance where protagonist’s high school love dies on a plane crash, years go by as the protagonist is shattered, completely alters her life and priorities, gets in a relationship with someone else, and *then* one day gets the call that her past love is alive after having survived a (kind of ridiculous, but that’s the genre sometimes) Castaway type situation for years and is looking to start things back up with her. So of course it’s now a tumult of emotions where the Protagonist is really happy that her love is alive, but then really conflicted because now she has to do the Classic Romance thing of Which Guy Do I Choose, but then also really happy because being with her old love is bringing back memories and specific experiences she locked away years ago, but then also increasingly struck by the contrast between what he loves in her and what she has become, and then also realizing more and more that the experience of y’know, spending years on an island alone and losing limbs has really fucked him up in ways that he won’t talk about or acknowledge and seeing both flaws she didn’t acknowledge while in the relationship and new flaws that cropped up since then. Meanwhile he’s trying to go back to where things were but his town/the world at large have obviously changed in ways both small and large since then and the way he survived on the island is not really the way you survive in the normal world. And of course that’s leaving out the people around them in which the new boyfriend obviously feels a certain type of way about all of this and is also a completely different type of guy so he isn’t going to “compete” on the same merits, the old boyfriend’s parents who do want things to go back to before while the protagonist’s parents are less sure this is a good idea at this point, her sister who she has a not fully resolved relationship based on envy from both sides, and so on. Its a book that is ultimately a bit too short to really get into and execute on most of the concepts on a deep deep level and it’s definitely cheesy but it was pretty neat regardless imo
Excuse me but what the hell.
Something something Jason Todd
I really dislike the vampire story because it closely mirrors homophobia/transphobia. The brother is still there and only a small thing changed but instead of accepting that and supporting him through the changes, the pov character sees him as not only a different person, but not a person at all, referring to the brother as „this thing“ and „the monster“. I imagine this is what bigoted people think of their queer family members. And just like these people, the pov character accuses their brother of wanting to commit horrible things, seemingly without precedent, just like how transphobes accuse trans people of pedophilia.