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moonflower77a post i wrote during a private exchange with a moderator on the resonance site. i just thought it might explain some of the reasons why i want the race to be, well, exactly what it is at the moment.
Zeph, on 03 Dec 2014 - 9:08 PM. said:
Your particular character concept is extremely sensitive as we have refused time and again more "stylized" vampire characters.
I may have been too sensitive and protective about our race concept too because it has a long history and cost us a mind-boggling amount of time and effort. The characters themselves date back five years, for the race it's around seven, I think. In 2007, we came up with an idea for a species who would be a metaphor for the internal, subjective third space - all the situations where we come face to face with the (other) inside ourselves, whether through violent urges we have trouble controlling, disturbing thoughts and internal images that don't seem to be our own, or strong, overwhelming emotions that cannot be defined, categorized and labelled. We decided that they should be ex-humans with a dual nature, which manifests in frequent states of affect - negative-tinged, based on anger (daara) and positive-tinged, associated with the sex drive (naqtaara) - accompanied by a physiological shift. This became the core of the concept and hasn't changed since.
However, we weren't sure what ought to carry that second nature or cause the transformation from human to on of them. Because both of us had been watching "Earth: final conflict", the race started out as partial energy beings who had an extended lifespan and were stronger than average; they had that round glow in the center of their palms, like Liam Kincaid did in the beginning, which could intensify and become a full-scale beam of energy. For some reason, this didn't feel satisfactory and I experimented with the idea of a virus, similar to the superviruses on your site, or, say, the one that turns humans into vampires in "Blade", but I didn't like this either. I wanted the cause of the transformation to lend itself to the most varied interpretations from insiders and outsiders alike - from a damaging, traumatic change to a curse that means, at best, that one has become a semi-demon, and at worst that one has lost one's soul, but illness was the one connotation I did not want to be there. On the whole, there seemed to be something deficient about the idea, or unsuitable for this particular species, so we abandoned it. At present, they bite humans and inject a special type of saliva (technically, venom) that is stored in their maxillary glands. Smaller quantities injected over a longer time lead to mental bonding and, eventually, enslavement and loss of independence, while a larger quantity given at once causes the human to transform and an even deeper bond forms between sire and offspring. The line between the two is blurred, in that they do have a good instinctive sense of how much a human may receive without the risk of triggering a full transformation, but there is always a chance of overshooting the mark. Some magic is involved as well, but we haven't specified the precise way it works. (For the game, I removed any references to the venomous bite and mentioned in passing in Ibgxe's personal history that the transformation was due to the magic ritual only, as otherwise the race would have become even more vampire-like than they already were)
Two of their most distinctive features, a dark complexion and high body temperature, appeared around the same time as the concept did and are still there. Both were products of my adverse reaction to parts of the Ricean mythos, such as her vampires being not just pale but "white" (so much they seem to glow in lamplight) and cold to the touch. I found these physical qualities to be tiresome and overdone, as far as vampire-like creatures go, and not attractive in the slightest. But the underlying cause of these traits has changed over the years. When the ihr were energy beings, the high body temperature was directly linked to the presence of energy in their bodies. The darker pigmentation resulted from a reaction of their skin to the energy during the transformation, similar to the "radiation tan" produced by exposure to large doses of gamma-radiation; it was the most pronounced in Europeans with the lightest (pink or white) complexion and absent in Africans. Afterward, they came to have melanosis n(ot) o(therwise) s(pecified) and a fast metabolism accompanied by the requisite high temperature whose mechanics were never elaborated upon. It wasn't until this year that we tied the melanism to the genetic heritage of the human initiate, or specified the timeframe in which one had to eat in order not to succumb to frenzy and coma and the necessary quantities of different nutrients. We were also uncertain about other, smaller details and several years passed before we could get them down in a way that felt right. For example, we had long agreed that in (daara) or (naqtaara) there ought to be a switch to the game face/fight-or-flight form, where the facial muscles are rearranged and the eyes become bright orange and more refractive, but we didn't have any distinct visual image of what one's face would look like in that state.
When I began to play tabletop VtM, I realized that I wanted our race to resemble the Kindred, but with a few major differences. In effect, what we did was take that version of the vampire and rewrite it so as to eliminate that which crossed the line for me as a Christian, but retain most of the archetypal elements that can trigger a strong emotional response and are, to a large extent, accountable for the race's appeal. I'm all too aware that the vampire myth in its Western form, the one we know from popular culture, rests on several pivotal Christian symbols - the actual, physical death and rebirth (think Jesus Christ), blood understood as the life-force or soul of a human being rather than a food source for a predator or parasite, which seems to be implicit even in mythologies that do portray it as "plain" food, and the fact that blood causes a mystical transfiguration (think the Eucharist). For me, personally, the first element is somewhat less offensive, and I guess I would be allright with their being undead as long as the magic that animated them didn't involve the sharing of blood. But then it's not quite as essential as the second element, and there is variation among different mythologies in this respect, with some having "dead" vampires, such as Anne Rice's world or VtM, and others having "living" ones, such as your site or "Blade".
Without these two elements, there would have been no vampire myth in the first place. This was why, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, my obsession with Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" led me directly to Orthodox Christianity. Something about the symbolism of these books resonated with my entire being, and later I recognized the same "something" in church, only in its true, uncorrupted form. Because of this alone, I'll always feel grateful to the genre and I hope to be be able to pay my dues to it one day, whichever way I can. But this is also the reason why I don't want our book to be about vampires. When I'm reading or watching someone else's work, or when I'm playing VtM, I have no problem distancing myself from the fact that I'm dealing with a perverted form of basic Christian rites - a dull, dark mirror reflection of them, if you will. But I didn't want my own publishable book to be about them. These things are too sacred for me now to play with them in a warped form.
After the race were re-defined as "ordinary" predators, rather than beings who consume the metaphysical life essence of other creatures, two more aspects of the vampire mythos ceased to make sense.
The first is the need to feed on humans, as opposed to any other mammals. Different mythologies have provided different justifications for this, such as animal blood being less tasty (so that the vampire would be left with an unsatisfied bloodlust that is hard or, eventually, impossible to overcome) or less nutritious (so that it wouldn't sustain the vampire for long), but these are understandable only as long as the vampire feeds on something more than just blood. After all, humans are sentient and most theologies do consider their soul, or the subjective quality of their life, if you will, to be different from that of other higher mammals. But from the perspective of common sense, each of these is weak. The differences in blood content between various mammal species should be negligible and all of them should be about equally nutritious; taste, while not the same, shouldn't matter that much as carnivores will accept the widest range of meat, and there is no reason why they shouldn't do the same with blood. Besides, one would think that a sentient predator would be grossed out by the idea of hunting a species that looks exactly like themselves, not to mention a species they used to belong to in the past, no matter what weird morality shift they may have undergone. (Of course, frenzy is a whole other matter - by definition, it involves complete loss of control, so if the state was triggered by hunger, one would attack any living creature in sight without being aware of what one is doing. If it happened to be a human or another of one's own kind, one could be scarred by the deed upon finding out, go into shock and suffer from guilt, regret and PTSD-related phenomena for a long time to come). Cannibalism is common among lower organisms, but if one looks at higher mammals - yes, they can and do fight to the death with members of their own species over a potential mate or territory, but don't kill them for food. There are exceptions, such as male felids devouring a litter of newborn kittens, but they do so more to demonstrate their dominance over the female and to make sure it's their genes that get passed down, when they mate with her afterward, rather than those of another male. The same goes for smaller, weaker carnivores who occupy a lower ecological niche. A leopard may kill a cheetah, and a lion may kill either a leooard or a cheetah to eliminate potential competitors, but not to eat them. When it comes to food, each of these three felid species hunt various herbivorous (hooved) mammals whose behavior, habits and appearance are unlike their own.
The second is that a vampire who does feed on animals is presumed somehow less dangerous. Again, this is more or less logical if the vampire preys on them in the metaphysical as well as the physical sense; perhaps downgrading to consuming the soul/life essence of non-sentient or semi-sentient creatures really does render them harmless. But if they are to be a regular predator, they ought to retain the same instinct to hunt, injure and kill, which means they would be just as dangerous to humans, despite not seeing the latter as food; they would be likely to commit violent crimes, be prone to rages and quick to resort to using their fists and boots.
In a nutshell, this is how we ended up having a race who were distinctly vampire-like, even more so than actual vampires in some mythologies, with a certain "back to the roots" feel, and who posed just as much of a threat - but who, in fact, weren't vampires.
To cut a long story short, this was slow, painstaking, scrupulous work. There was a time when I and my friend talked and exchanged notes every other evening and our conversations lasted hours at a time (now it's a couple of hours once in 3-7 days as she doesn't have a constant internet connection), and I don't think there is a single bit of detail that wouldn't have been discussed at length beforehand. I guess this is why I have that knee-jerk response whenever anybody attempts to make me adjust the concept, even if I know that this should be done. Any changes feel like a step in the wrong direction, away from what "ought to be" there. A gap appears to form where there used to be meaning and I don't know how to reassemble the remaining parts to make them fit back together. It's like this gigantic Jenga tower - each time you pull out a plank you can't be certain that it won't crumble, and the more planks you take, the closer you come to that point. Most importantly, the race-specific peculiarities have become an integral part of the character by now, and when some of them are altered or removed, I feel I can't recognize him; he is no longer the Ibgxe I have come to love/hate. I'm not sure how much of this could be felt on your end, but I'm afraid I could have come across as rigid or even aggressive more than once. In retrospect, I feel ashamed of myself for forcing that concept in where it may not have belonged, and for resisting any modifications despite the fact that this was probably frustrating for you and inconvenient for the game in general.
Once again, I have to thank you for the opportunity to compile a race description, because this has helped us round the concept up and decide on some finishing touches. The deadline proved to be be very useful for this, even if it had to be extended again and again and two weeks turned into five months. For example, we realized that we wanted to have the old-school, fairytale-like abilities layered over the understandable and scientifically plausible physiology, which brought the race closer to the vampires from Stoker's universe.
Zeph, on 03 Dec 2014 - 9:08 PM, said:
We set up our vampires a certain way and do not compromise on this as the last thing we are willing to do is degrade to some twilight version of them.
I know what you mean. Whenever an author makes an attempt to write vampires into mundane reality like Charlaine Harris, or depicts vampires as glorious super-beings and the prospect of being turned into one as desirable, like Stephenie Meyer, most of their appeal is lost. I think vampires were meant to be walking archetypes rather than another sentient species similar to ourselves, who may have a distinct culture but aren't alien in any real sense of the word. Besides, they appear to stand for some of our fundamental fears and concerns, including the fear of physical, psychological and spiritual violation, the fear of losing one's soul or selfhood, or the fear that one might lose control over one's own darker side. As such, they have to remain (other): foreign, mysterious, dangerous. This applies even if they are seductive and alluring, whether with a sexual subtext, or, say, because they embody absolute freedom with no social regulations, no self-restraint and no guilt or regrets. (Though. of course, some people can be deluded about what it means to become a vampire, and, just like any other dark or unhealthy phenomenon out there, vampires may be romanticized for all the wrong reasons).
We had this tendency in mind while we were working on our race. The idea was that the ihr, who aren't even vampires in the first place, should be worse and more dangerous than these dampened-down versions of the vampire. If left to their own devices, without the sire's guidance and a strict social framework to belong to, especially if they had to struggle for survival, they start to degrade, the way VtM vampires do - as their humanity drops, they become increasingly deranged, and, in the final stages, lose their self-catering and hygiene skills, their ability to communicate with others in a reasonable and comprehensible manner, even their speech. Even in the best-case scenario, though, the world the ihr inhabit is a dim, impoverished, fragmented one. Yes, it's still possible to fight for one's creativity, conscience, intelligence, self-awareness or ability to reflect - for all the things that make us sentient - and to retain them; after all, so do we, after we are born into a flawed nature that makes us damaged, weak, prone to sin and sickness. But for the ihr, it's that much harder. Besides, it's an open question whether or not they have souls - the general consensus is that the soul is gone once one succumbs to daara-madness, and most think that the soul was missing in ihr who suffered from severe emotional shutdown and behaved like sociopaths, but a small minority believe that the soul is lost at transformation, so that the ihr are soulless on the whole.
Because of this, being made ihr was seen as undesirable at best in our universe (at worst, it was just that - a fate worse than death). Granted, humans and ihr had co-existed side by side for centuries, and humans were used to having them as their neighbors, but the attitude toward them had never been anything other than ambivalent. There was that terror of waking up one night and finding out that one is no longer human and has lost part or all of one's personality, memories, preferences or values, and of knowing that such ex-human creatures live right across the valley or behind that hill over there. Besides, humans were uncomfortable around the ihr because they could recognize themselves in them; the race appeared to hold out a mirror to humanity, demonstrating its darkest and most savage traits (which was all the more relevant considering that each ihr literally used to be human once). Ihr often became allies in tribal wars and fought against other mixed conglomerates of human and ihr clans, and human communities would sell or sign over those who were thought of as a burden - the old, the deformed, the crippled, the otherwise disabled, the terminally ill, extra children - to the local ihr, but as soon as these people were "taken", they were thought to be gone, dead to human society. If one of them remembered and cared enough after the transformation to visit their home village, they were locked out of any home they approached (including the one that used to be their own). In the street, people ignored them, looked through them and refused to speak to them or respond to their questions, as if they weren't there. It was common practice to carry those found unconscious and obviously bitten out into the desert or bush, as far as possible from the village wall, to be taken by taken by those who had claimed them as their own.
The typical response upon learning that a person somebody else knew had been abducted by a feral pack was to wave one's hand and say - there, ypu may well forget about this person, they are gone, dead. The rule of thumb when dealing with somebody who had been "taken" was this: it's best to cut any contact with them, but if one does have to associate with them for some reason or other, one has to remember that he or she is no longer the person one knew - they may walk the same and talk the same, but they aren't the same at all. To a considerable extent, this was true. While "the darker self" couldn't introduce anything that hadn't already been there in the original personality, it tended to turn one into a twisted, corrupted version of one's former self. Accentuated personality types grew maladjusted and turned into personality disorders; those with strong dissociative/conversion mechanisms locked their emotions so far away they could no longer access them and started to act like cold, callous, rationalistic machines; strong emotions were exaggerated out of all proportion and spiraled out of control; latent mental illness was brought out onto the surface; psychopaths with explosive or perverse tendencies turned into absolute monsters; odd people went stark raving insane. In some cases, when one's worst traits had been well-hidden, buried deep in the unconscious, and surfaced after the transformation, or when the transformation triggered massive dissociative mechanisms, such as emotional compartmentalization and detachment, the result did look like a "different person".
So no - they aren't white, soft or fluffy. I would describe their average level of morality as close to that of the vampires in "Lost Boys" or the Whedonverse, or around Humanity 0-6 in VtM - not high at all, but that's putting it too mildly - with the existing exceptions proving the general rule. But I can certainly see how a character like this could still pave the way for defanged versions of vampires, which I probably dislike as much as you do, simply because they would set a precedent for other vampire-like characters.
Zeph, on 03 Dec 2014 - 9:08 PM. said:
Your particular character concept is extremely sensitive as we have refused time and again more "stylized" vampire characters.
I may have been too sensitive and protective about our race concept too because it has a long history and cost us a mind-boggling amount of time and effort. The characters themselves date back five years, for the race it's around seven, I think. In 2007, we came up with an idea for a species who would be a metaphor for the internal, subjective third space - all the situations where we come face to face with the (other) inside ourselves, whether through violent urges we have trouble controlling, disturbing thoughts and internal images that don't seem to be our own, or strong, overwhelming emotions that cannot be defined, categorized and labelled. We decided that they should be ex-humans with a dual nature, which manifests in frequent states of affect - negative-tinged, based on anger (daara) and positive-tinged, associated with the sex drive (naqtaara) - accompanied by a physiological shift. This became the core of the concept and hasn't changed since.
However, we weren't sure what ought to carry that second nature or cause the transformation from human to on of them. Because both of us had been watching "Earth: final conflict", the race started out as partial energy beings who had an extended lifespan and were stronger than average; they had that round glow in the center of their palms, like Liam Kincaid did in the beginning, which could intensify and become a full-scale beam of energy. For some reason, this didn't feel satisfactory and I experimented with the idea of a virus, similar to the superviruses on your site, or, say, the one that turns humans into vampires in "Blade", but I didn't like this either. I wanted the cause of the transformation to lend itself to the most varied interpretations from insiders and outsiders alike - from a damaging, traumatic change to a curse that means, at best, that one has become a semi-demon, and at worst that one has lost one's soul, but illness was the one connotation I did not want to be there. On the whole, there seemed to be something deficient about the idea, or unsuitable for this particular species, so we abandoned it. At present, they bite humans and inject a special type of saliva (technically, venom) that is stored in their maxillary glands. Smaller quantities injected over a longer time lead to mental bonding and, eventually, enslavement and loss of independence, while a larger quantity given at once causes the human to transform and an even deeper bond forms between sire and offspring. The line between the two is blurred, in that they do have a good instinctive sense of how much a human may receive without the risk of triggering a full transformation, but there is always a chance of overshooting the mark. Some magic is involved as well, but we haven't specified the precise way it works. (For the game, I removed any references to the venomous bite and mentioned in passing in Ibgxe's personal history that the transformation was due to the magic ritual only, as otherwise the race would have become even more vampire-like than they already were)
Two of their most distinctive features, a dark complexion and high body temperature, appeared around the same time as the concept did and are still there. Both were products of my adverse reaction to parts of the Ricean mythos, such as her vampires being not just pale but "white" (so much they seem to glow in lamplight) and cold to the touch. I found these physical qualities to be tiresome and overdone, as far as vampire-like creatures go, and not attractive in the slightest. But the underlying cause of these traits has changed over the years. When the ihr were energy beings, the high body temperature was directly linked to the presence of energy in their bodies. The darker pigmentation resulted from a reaction of their skin to the energy during the transformation, similar to the "radiation tan" produced by exposure to large doses of gamma-radiation; it was the most pronounced in Europeans with the lightest (pink or white) complexion and absent in Africans. Afterward, they came to have melanosis n(ot) o(therwise) s(pecified) and a fast metabolism accompanied by the requisite high temperature whose mechanics were never elaborated upon. It wasn't until this year that we tied the melanism to the genetic heritage of the human initiate, or specified the timeframe in which one had to eat in order not to succumb to frenzy and coma and the necessary quantities of different nutrients. We were also uncertain about other, smaller details and several years passed before we could get them down in a way that felt right. For example, we had long agreed that in (daara) or (naqtaara) there ought to be a switch to the game face/fight-or-flight form, where the facial muscles are rearranged and the eyes become bright orange and more refractive, but we didn't have any distinct visual image of what one's face would look like in that state.
When I began to play tabletop VtM, I realized that I wanted our race to resemble the Kindred, but with a few major differences. In effect, what we did was take that version of the vampire and rewrite it so as to eliminate that which crossed the line for me as a Christian, but retain most of the archetypal elements that can trigger a strong emotional response and are, to a large extent, accountable for the race's appeal. I'm all too aware that the vampire myth in its Western form, the one we know from popular culture, rests on several pivotal Christian symbols - the actual, physical death and rebirth (think Jesus Christ), blood understood as the life-force or soul of a human being rather than a food source for a predator or parasite, which seems to be implicit even in mythologies that do portray it as "plain" food, and the fact that blood causes a mystical transfiguration (think the Eucharist). For me, personally, the first element is somewhat less offensive, and I guess I would be allright with their being undead as long as the magic that animated them didn't involve the sharing of blood. But then it's not quite as essential as the second element, and there is variation among different mythologies in this respect, with some having "dead" vampires, such as Anne Rice's world or VtM, and others having "living" ones, such as your site or "Blade".
Without these two elements, there would have been no vampire myth in the first place. This was why, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, my obsession with Anne Rice's "Vampire Chronicles" led me directly to Orthodox Christianity. Something about the symbolism of these books resonated with my entire being, and later I recognized the same "something" in church, only in its true, uncorrupted form. Because of this alone, I'll always feel grateful to the genre and I hope to be be able to pay my dues to it one day, whichever way I can. But this is also the reason why I don't want our book to be about vampires. When I'm reading or watching someone else's work, or when I'm playing VtM, I have no problem distancing myself from the fact that I'm dealing with a perverted form of basic Christian rites - a dull, dark mirror reflection of them, if you will. But I didn't want my own publishable book to be about them. These things are too sacred for me now to play with them in a warped form.
After the race were re-defined as "ordinary" predators, rather than beings who consume the metaphysical life essence of other creatures, two more aspects of the vampire mythos ceased to make sense.
The first is the need to feed on humans, as opposed to any other mammals. Different mythologies have provided different justifications for this, such as animal blood being less tasty (so that the vampire would be left with an unsatisfied bloodlust that is hard or, eventually, impossible to overcome) or less nutritious (so that it wouldn't sustain the vampire for long), but these are understandable only as long as the vampire feeds on something more than just blood. After all, humans are sentient and most theologies do consider their soul, or the subjective quality of their life, if you will, to be different from that of other higher mammals. But from the perspective of common sense, each of these is weak. The differences in blood content between various mammal species should be negligible and all of them should be about equally nutritious; taste, while not the same, shouldn't matter that much as carnivores will accept the widest range of meat, and there is no reason why they shouldn't do the same with blood. Besides, one would think that a sentient predator would be grossed out by the idea of hunting a species that looks exactly like themselves, not to mention a species they used to belong to in the past, no matter what weird morality shift they may have undergone. (Of course, frenzy is a whole other matter - by definition, it involves complete loss of control, so if the state was triggered by hunger, one would attack any living creature in sight without being aware of what one is doing. If it happened to be a human or another of one's own kind, one could be scarred by the deed upon finding out, go into shock and suffer from guilt, regret and PTSD-related phenomena for a long time to come). Cannibalism is common among lower organisms, but if one looks at higher mammals - yes, they can and do fight to the death with members of their own species over a potential mate or territory, but don't kill them for food. There are exceptions, such as male felids devouring a litter of newborn kittens, but they do so more to demonstrate their dominance over the female and to make sure it's their genes that get passed down, when they mate with her afterward, rather than those of another male. The same goes for smaller, weaker carnivores who occupy a lower ecological niche. A leopard may kill a cheetah, and a lion may kill either a leooard or a cheetah to eliminate potential competitors, but not to eat them. When it comes to food, each of these three felid species hunt various herbivorous (hooved) mammals whose behavior, habits and appearance are unlike their own.
The second is that a vampire who does feed on animals is presumed somehow less dangerous. Again, this is more or less logical if the vampire preys on them in the metaphysical as well as the physical sense; perhaps downgrading to consuming the soul/life essence of non-sentient or semi-sentient creatures really does render them harmless. But if they are to be a regular predator, they ought to retain the same instinct to hunt, injure and kill, which means they would be just as dangerous to humans, despite not seeing the latter as food; they would be likely to commit violent crimes, be prone to rages and quick to resort to using their fists and boots.
In a nutshell, this is how we ended up having a race who were distinctly vampire-like, even more so than actual vampires in some mythologies, with a certain "back to the roots" feel, and who posed just as much of a threat - but who, in fact, weren't vampires.
To cut a long story short, this was slow, painstaking, scrupulous work. There was a time when I and my friend talked and exchanged notes every other evening and our conversations lasted hours at a time (now it's a couple of hours once in 3-7 days as she doesn't have a constant internet connection), and I don't think there is a single bit of detail that wouldn't have been discussed at length beforehand. I guess this is why I have that knee-jerk response whenever anybody attempts to make me adjust the concept, even if I know that this should be done. Any changes feel like a step in the wrong direction, away from what "ought to be" there. A gap appears to form where there used to be meaning and I don't know how to reassemble the remaining parts to make them fit back together. It's like this gigantic Jenga tower - each time you pull out a plank you can't be certain that it won't crumble, and the more planks you take, the closer you come to that point. Most importantly, the race-specific peculiarities have become an integral part of the character by now, and when some of them are altered or removed, I feel I can't recognize him; he is no longer the Ibgxe I have come to love/hate. I'm not sure how much of this could be felt on your end, but I'm afraid I could have come across as rigid or even aggressive more than once. In retrospect, I feel ashamed of myself for forcing that concept in where it may not have belonged, and for resisting any modifications despite the fact that this was probably frustrating for you and inconvenient for the game in general.
Once again, I have to thank you for the opportunity to compile a race description, because this has helped us round the concept up and decide on some finishing touches. The deadline proved to be be very useful for this, even if it had to be extended again and again and two weeks turned into five months. For example, we realized that we wanted to have the old-school, fairytale-like abilities layered over the understandable and scientifically plausible physiology, which brought the race closer to the vampires from Stoker's universe.
Zeph, on 03 Dec 2014 - 9:08 PM, said:
We set up our vampires a certain way and do not compromise on this as the last thing we are willing to do is degrade to some twilight version of them.
I know what you mean. Whenever an author makes an attempt to write vampires into mundane reality like Charlaine Harris, or depicts vampires as glorious super-beings and the prospect of being turned into one as desirable, like Stephenie Meyer, most of their appeal is lost. I think vampires were meant to be walking archetypes rather than another sentient species similar to ourselves, who may have a distinct culture but aren't alien in any real sense of the word. Besides, they appear to stand for some of our fundamental fears and concerns, including the fear of physical, psychological and spiritual violation, the fear of losing one's soul or selfhood, or the fear that one might lose control over one's own darker side. As such, they have to remain (other): foreign, mysterious, dangerous. This applies even if they are seductive and alluring, whether with a sexual subtext, or, say, because they embody absolute freedom with no social regulations, no self-restraint and no guilt or regrets. (Though. of course, some people can be deluded about what it means to become a vampire, and, just like any other dark or unhealthy phenomenon out there, vampires may be romanticized for all the wrong reasons).
We had this tendency in mind while we were working on our race. The idea was that the ihr, who aren't even vampires in the first place, should be worse and more dangerous than these dampened-down versions of the vampire. If left to their own devices, without the sire's guidance and a strict social framework to belong to, especially if they had to struggle for survival, they start to degrade, the way VtM vampires do - as their humanity drops, they become increasingly deranged, and, in the final stages, lose their self-catering and hygiene skills, their ability to communicate with others in a reasonable and comprehensible manner, even their speech. Even in the best-case scenario, though, the world the ihr inhabit is a dim, impoverished, fragmented one. Yes, it's still possible to fight for one's creativity, conscience, intelligence, self-awareness or ability to reflect - for all the things that make us sentient - and to retain them; after all, so do we, after we are born into a flawed nature that makes us damaged, weak, prone to sin and sickness. But for the ihr, it's that much harder. Besides, it's an open question whether or not they have souls - the general consensus is that the soul is gone once one succumbs to daara-madness, and most think that the soul was missing in ihr who suffered from severe emotional shutdown and behaved like sociopaths, but a small minority believe that the soul is lost at transformation, so that the ihr are soulless on the whole.
Because of this, being made ihr was seen as undesirable at best in our universe (at worst, it was just that - a fate worse than death). Granted, humans and ihr had co-existed side by side for centuries, and humans were used to having them as their neighbors, but the attitude toward them had never been anything other than ambivalent. There was that terror of waking up one night and finding out that one is no longer human and has lost part or all of one's personality, memories, preferences or values, and of knowing that such ex-human creatures live right across the valley or behind that hill over there. Besides, humans were uncomfortable around the ihr because they could recognize themselves in them; the race appeared to hold out a mirror to humanity, demonstrating its darkest and most savage traits (which was all the more relevant considering that each ihr literally used to be human once). Ihr often became allies in tribal wars and fought against other mixed conglomerates of human and ihr clans, and human communities would sell or sign over those who were thought of as a burden - the old, the deformed, the crippled, the otherwise disabled, the terminally ill, extra children - to the local ihr, but as soon as these people were "taken", they were thought to be gone, dead to human society. If one of them remembered and cared enough after the transformation to visit their home village, they were locked out of any home they approached (including the one that used to be their own). In the street, people ignored them, looked through them and refused to speak to them or respond to their questions, as if they weren't there. It was common practice to carry those found unconscious and obviously bitten out into the desert or bush, as far as possible from the village wall, to be taken by taken by those who had claimed them as their own.
The typical response upon learning that a person somebody else knew had been abducted by a feral pack was to wave one's hand and say - there, ypu may well forget about this person, they are gone, dead. The rule of thumb when dealing with somebody who had been "taken" was this: it's best to cut any contact with them, but if one does have to associate with them for some reason or other, one has to remember that he or she is no longer the person one knew - they may walk the same and talk the same, but they aren't the same at all. To a considerable extent, this was true. While "the darker self" couldn't introduce anything that hadn't already been there in the original personality, it tended to turn one into a twisted, corrupted version of one's former self. Accentuated personality types grew maladjusted and turned into personality disorders; those with strong dissociative/conversion mechanisms locked their emotions so far away they could no longer access them and started to act like cold, callous, rationalistic machines; strong emotions were exaggerated out of all proportion and spiraled out of control; latent mental illness was brought out onto the surface; psychopaths with explosive or perverse tendencies turned into absolute monsters; odd people went stark raving insane. In some cases, when one's worst traits had been well-hidden, buried deep in the unconscious, and surfaced after the transformation, or when the transformation triggered massive dissociative mechanisms, such as emotional compartmentalization and detachment, the result did look like a "different person".
So no - they aren't white, soft or fluffy. I would describe their average level of morality as close to that of the vampires in "Lost Boys" or the Whedonverse, or around Humanity 0-6 in VtM - not high at all, but that's putting it too mildly - with the existing exceptions proving the general rule. But I can certainly see how a character like this could still pave the way for defanged versions of vampires, which I probably dislike as much as you do, simply because they would set a precedent for other vampire-like characters.