this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2024
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In my internal version of the vampire canon, vampirism is definitely a curse passed down from ancient times. When someone gets the curse, their corpse is now inhabited by the spirit of vampirism itself, which flows to fill the imprint their soul left. Like their individual curse of vampirism changes to resemble the soul it replaced. This, combined with the (internal canon) fact that vampirism can only be spread to the freshly dead, results in a brain that is mostly the same and something like a soul that is mostly like what they had before.
Think about other types of eternal (un)life, like a specter for example. In my internal canon, specters usually appear where they died and continue the action they were taking when they died. Like a specter who died in a house fire might appear in the charred husk of the house every full moon or something, just to pantomime burning to death and desperately trying to scratch through a door that won't open.
I think vampires would continue on with their mannerisms and habits that they had before, including breathing. The circuitry is still all connected for it, the muscles still work. On the flip side, the circuitry that causes panic when not breathing is also still connected. I think a vampire could easily "survive" being locked in a coffin at the bottom of the ocean... but it would be excruciating for a century or so until that neuronal connection simply burns out or fades away or whatever. Or maybe that would never happen and it would be eternal suffering.
Highly ironically, you are describing the Buffy & Angel version, except that in that one, they do not breathe.:-) The idea of it, as I understand it, is that vampires were once a type of demon species - demon itself btw basically means "non-human" as in non-human sentient creature - but then when "something happened" (a goddess, or God, or some creature later worshipped as such, or perhaps entirely obscured by time), the original vampires were no longer "allowed" to remain in the human world. However, the Prime Evil did not like that thought, so converted the vampires to put on human flesh in order to hide them from the whatever it is that would not allowed a "true vampire" to exist.
Thus, modern vampires are converted from pre-existing ones by a vampire allowing someone to drink their blood, often biting them in return, which kills the human. As or perhaps after the death occurs, the body becomes "prepared" as a vessel that can hold the soul of a something else from an external, non-physical dimension. Fairly soon then, a vampire soul comes in to take possession of it, keeping it until it dies. Vampires enjoy having a body to ride around in:-). So note that here it is not all "freshly dead" bodies, only those properly prepared.
However, being (originally) non-physical creatures, they are not like humans. As you say, they would take on the personality of their host, although also they seem to be able to pick and choose among the traits - somewhat like humans also do, e.g. a coward could decide to become brave, or a smoker to quit, even though it may take some effort to change. The point though is that vampires wear their human body - or rather, their body that was heavily modified to support vampirism - like a puppet, and the personality is even included as part of that. They also have access to the memories of the deceased host. So they can look and act convincingly like not only a generic human but the exact one that they "possessed", but they are not bound by any of those convictions, e.g. fully able to take glee in their former lover's brutal mutilations and torture, even at their own hands, without a glimmer of a thought otherwise from the (now-dead) human that their bodies used to belong to.
Also they have a "second face" whereby their visage converts from normal human-looking to a more neanderthal-ish brow and the fangs come out, and their eyes turn yellow - essentially they "look demonic" in that form. This may affect their personality as well - the role they play in "blending in" to look like humans, vs. when the fangs come out and they just go for it. I believe it does not really affect them in most ways though - e.g. they are just as strong without it as with - and other than having fangs that are a ready source to tear open blood vessels with (though a fingernail or tool would suffice just as well?), they don't really "need" to do it at all. Though they do seem to enjoy it, more for the pain & suffering that their altered, uncanny-valley-like appearance causes to their victims than anything else.
But, they don't "need" to breathe - perhaps the conversion of the body to support vampirism burns out the medulla oblongata, or maybe they could (and do!) even, like you say just for the fun of it, manage a convincing simulacrum. But they are also EXTREMELY strong, and quite fast, so really all they need to do is convince someone for a fraction of a second before they get close enough to feed... or perhaps to convince someone to invite them inside their homes. Also, ironically they don't even "need" blood - e.g. they could totally survive for years, even millennia, trapped somewhere where they are cut off from access to air, water, contact with others, and yes blood. They just enjoy it is all.;-)
So in this lore, I think the main horror for the vampire to be trapped in a coffin at the bottom of the ocean would be the excruciating boredom, not so much any physical sensation of wanting to breathe but not being able to. Also, many of them literally enjoy the pain sensation:-) - after all the body can't really die all that easily, and unlike humans who also have souls but were born inside their bodies so never really knew of any other existence, vampires, having once been elsewhere, are very aware that they definitely do not need to "fear" death, or at least in the same way that a human might. So the signals can be interpreted differently. Some vampires are better at this than others though - some are more animalistic and controlled more by their immediate urges, while others can rise above them, postponing their tortures in order to wreak even moar havoc and mayhem later.
Okay, that's a lot of text - I hope you find at least some of it interesting:-).
That was super interesting, I love talking about this sort of thing. Really appreciate the thoughtfulness of your reply.
It seems like our conceptions of vampirism differ in how far from human-ness vampirism takes the host. In my mind, vampirism takes the host just far enough away from human-ness that they can never live like a human again, but not far enough that they wouldn't want to. The reason it's a curse is because they're so torn, kind of like drug addiction in a sense. Being addicted to meth is probably torment, but doing meth is ecstasy, so a meth addict might viscerally want to go back to a normal life but at the same time viscerally never want to give up what they have. I think breathing, among a lot of other things (like wearing clothes, drinking wine, conversation, etc) are totally unnecessary physiologically, but absolutely necessary to maintain the appearance of a human, which in turn is necessary for the psychological well being of a vampire. I think without these things (or without blood too) they convert to the monster form, becoming more and more distorted as time goes on without their needs met. Their mind also becomes more and more animalistic, but only to the point that they are confused and scared, never fully immersed in the monster mentality. Like they're aware of how much brain function they've lost which is terrifying. Due to how blood deprivation and social deprivation have essentially the same physical toll, I think their "psychic" nourishment is as important as their blood intake and thus not breathing could be not only the medulla oblongata panicking but also a form of supernatural psychic damage to them.
Also, I've never seen Buffy. Should I watch it? I absolutely loooove vampire movies and shows. I've exhausted everything that is obviously going to satisfy me already so I need to look to others for more recommendations. My favorite vampire movies are Only Lovers Left Alive, Byzantium, Interview with the Vampire, and the original Dracula. Hbu?
There is this one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where a bunch of kids want to become vampires, so they invite a vampire to "turn" them. Ofc the vampire has no intention of actually doing that, but they were all too happy to have the free meals. So as it starts feasting on the people, Buffy was trying to get the others to flee, but they were so ensconced in their belief structure that they would not leave. She had to tell them how "you" can never become a vampire: all you can do is die, and leave your body for someone "else" to take it up - some other entity, a non-human "person" if you will, who may if we are being truthful look a lot like the one that they replaced, but it's all an act.
There is one exemption in that world-universe, where Angel is a human-turned-vampire-turned-human-possessing-the-vampire-body, but the point there is that such a thing is by all accounts the exception, not the rule, and more generally: that vampires and humans are two literal species of beings, so that a human can never "become" a vampire, in the strictest sense, and certainly that is not what happens during the regular "turning" process.
Which I find fascinating b/c in other genres, like Blade and that Netflix Castlevania anime and Underworld, vampirism is more like something "genetic", and you can even get mutations where like Blade himself is half-human, half-vampire, and there is a mostly-physical explanation for that relating to genes that offer some traits and other genes that offer other ones. Underworld even takes it up a notch and introduces like half-vampire, half-werewolf:-). And those "mostly-physical" explanations stand in high stark contrast to the John Carpenter movies, and the older Dracula ones, and the show Being Human, etc. where the explanation is "mostly spiritual/occult" where like vampires (those of high-enough status anyway) can literally fly, and there's telepathy and all sorts of extra stuff. But anyway, whether physical or occult, these all share in common that a human being actually can become a vampire, unlike in the Buffy-verse.
And then that opens up a whole new plethora of options: like what if you felt like you had a cold so you went to bed early one night, died, then woke up having just eaten your most-loved family members? In the Buffy-verse, the vampire soul now possessing "your" body (while the actual "you" has already moved on to wherever souls go - the afterlife) just laughs, but in these others, it is you that just did that thing! Thus there is guilt involved, and you have to start wondering if you are now a higher/superior species so it's okay to eat humans, or else a lower/inferior one that is cursed to need kill humans (as you say, possibly not "need" but you feel such an overwhelmingly overpowering desire that it is basically the same thing), but either way you become separated from them, forever, as you transition into your vampire existence.
And yes, there are multiple paths within vampirism too: those who perhaps don't get blood so cannot maintain their sentience and devolve into animalistic creatures, and even those who don't even need to rip out the throats of their victims but instead drink blood in little tinctures and vials and glasses like high aristocracy, who irl may likewise eat a "pork sandwich" and have no idea whether pork even means cow, pig, or chicken. The latter then may maintain the most "normal-looking" existence, where a high-royalty vampire may literally have never bared their fangs to anything, b/c they have never needed to do such?
Thus, definitely between the universes, but also still very much within each one, there is a whole range of how much human-ness a being still possess, after becoming a vampire. If IQ = Intelligence Quotient and EQ = Emotional Intelligence (Quotient), then we can envision an HQ and/or a VQ as well, or likely they would be the same scale just at opposite ends like the political Left-Right spectrum. But if so, if may actually be more like a triangle or a 2D spectrum, with AQ (Animalistic Quotient) thrown into the mix somewhere too, where e.g. a highly humane human has a high HQ and a highly vampiric vampire has a high VQ, but an animalistic, high-AQ cannot really be much of anything b/c it just flat is too lowly and dumb. Anyway, on that spectrum, perhaps those who choose to be more like humans could decide to breathe, perhaps, while those who aim more towards the opposite side could make it a point of pride to specifically not breathe? In this formulation then, high-AQs may not breathe, and low-HQ, high-VQs may not breathe (while high-HQs do breathe), but for totally different reasons! (b/c when you start to lose your "human-ness", you can do so either by falling towards the AQ side, or the VQ side, either of which takes you away from HQ but by different processes)
I have more thoughts on this: do you want to hear how I think this is a metaphor for life in a Western nation?
Okay so you need to keep in mind that Buffy was from the 90s, and even then it was ironic - I believe the phrase is "high camp", as in it pokes fun at the things that it emulates, though those things are now decades past so it definitely would not "hit" the same as today. That said, it is emo, it is fascinating, it is one of the darkest shows ever allowed to be on television (again, at the time), and it evolves over time to incorporate a whole world of magic and mysticism - and that part you seem like you would definitely enjoy, though it may take a few seasons to get there. I would say check it out - like watch an episode and see how you like it, but even there keep in mind that early on it was still proving itself to an American audience, so it didn't start to get TRULY dark until later. Thus, early on it is more "American teen gurl does not fit in at school angst" than "the fate of the entire world is at stake, and with a demon masquerading as the ghost of his dead friend whispering into his ear, this warlock just betrayed his best friend by stabbing him in the gut and used his blood to open up a mystic portal to unleash hell-beasts who will cause the literal and actual apocalypse". So I am saying, as with all TV from that era, it is hit-or-miss, and so ymmv:-). But it is a cult classic favorite, and for that reason it is good to know about, so do pick at least one episode to see it for yourself, whereupon you can decide whether to watch the whole thing.
So yeah, I recommend checking it out, with those caveats in mind:-). I've mentioned the others sprinkled in above... and you know what? Buffy & Angel somewhat rise to the top as my favorites, I think. It is not like I would want to re-watch them endlessly - things like Underworld hits better for like production values - but it is just one of those that sticks with you, having made an impression on your mind, you know? There's a lot of fluff, but it being a long-form TV show allowed it to really EXPLORE things. Like one guy got possessed by a demonic jackal-demon spirit and ate (I mean in the full literal sense) his school principal, but he was a coward so pretended that he did not recall any of it, so as to avoid talking about it. In the show there is also a particular vampire who falls in love with a human (well, the boys are lining up for that gurl actually) and decides to stop killing, or like, at least tries - but he can't, b/c it's just too much fun. There are so many little STORIES like that, which are super hard to explore in the context of a singular or even a series of movies, but which this long-running TV series was able to work in. It is even somewhat close to reading a more imaginative book, but portrayed as a moving picture video with sound aka a different venue for delivery of that artistic expression of thought. Though again, not every episode is going to be that way for you, and some are downright boring, but even those may stick with you later on, thus are worthwhile in that different, other sense.