Hello, faithful readers. I feel compelled to apologize for the break in updates, but despite how much has been happening for me lately, a quick look at the calendar indicates it's only been a week or so. My sense of time has been thrown quite wildly off by this whole recent affair, I suppose… but enough about my anxieties. Today, I would like to discuss the opposite.

You've seen the title. I’ve been a vampire for a few weeks now, and that means the question of ethics in bloodsucking has been quite firmly at the forefront of my mind. I dedicated some time to it within the behemoth I put out last week, but I was far too caught up in a flurry of assorted testing at the time to give it the proper attention.

Now, I've had no choice. I have a non-negotiable need to drink approximately 500 milliliters of human blood each day, and that has to come from somewhere, and directly taking it will inevitably inflict a mind numbing and absolute control on the… donor, I suppose. And on top of that, my body now pulses with predatory instinct which insistently pushes me towards the manner of being we expect of vampires in ways both big and small. This is all a rather serious problem for someone like me.

I’ve made no secret over the years of my disdain for the majority of vampires, and I would think the grievances are obvious. Humans, no matter how delicious, should not have to fear having control of their lives randomly stolen from them just because they happened into a vampire’s turf. They should not be killed just because said vampire is especially hungry. As a trans woman, I would generally record an anti-“unceremonious murder and/or assault” stance, personally; others may be different, but who cares what they think?

Of course, the experience of being a thrall is not quite so violent in every case, there are certainly those who express genuine care for the people whose souls they hoard, and in my current state I find the idea annoyingly yet persistently intuitive. It doesn’t really change the ethics of the situation, though… humans can be encouraged to drink water and eat vegetables without being violently brainwashed, after all. More effectively, even.

If I might lean on my transsexual status for a moment to illustrate this point: I know more or less for sure now that the shape of my body came about during my enthrallment by Violet Russel-Gray back in the early 1900s. I don’t conclusively remember what prompted this, but even if it had been under the most warm and happy of circumstances, it would not have changed the hole I had to dig myself out of once Violet died.

Because she did die, completely unpredictably, and once she did I was left without any idea of whether that decision had actually been ‘mine’. For a long time, it was just another hold she had over me, something I had to reject if I was ever to be free of her ghost. It was only in the 60s that an old friend helped me sort through the feelings, and when that time came, the time I had spent ‘detransitioned’ was an invaluable asset. I had had time away from it all, away from the decisions someone else had made for me; only then could I finally decide for myself.

I believe it is a matter of basic universal respect to afford that opportunity to all creatures, human or otherwise. Perhaps there is some other neophyte vampire reading this who feels similarly. So, what do we do?

To solve a big problem, one must split it into smaller problems. First, there is the surprisingly difficult matter of simply not killing humans. I did say I need around a pint each day, after all, and that is not an amount humans are consistently able to part with more often than roughly once every eight weeks. Though, in practice, it’s more like once each week… Observing the general health of my begetter’s thralls alongside the amount she takes from them seems to support the theory that vampiric saliva, or perhaps some other side effect of blood drinking, accelerates blood regeneration considerably.

It’s still only once per week, though, so this means that regularly drinking from at least seven people is an absolute necessity to avoid eventually killing someone. So that’s the first step, then: find seven people who will agree to help with this, and then don’t kill them. One further complication, though: if you have the slightest bit of fondness or attraction towards them or towards the scent of their blood, you will be bombarded by unfamiliar urges more powerful than anything the human body is capable of experiencing, which will, without intervention, drive you to immediately kill them.

This implies that the majority of vampires likely have a formative experience of killing a loved one briefly after being turned, whether by immediate shock due to blood loss or due to motivated ignorance of how often blood can be safely taken. That checks out with past testimonies, and it would frankly explain a lot.

So if you want to avoid that unpleasantness, you must learn to control yourself. In the abstract, while not hungry, normal self-control is mostly sufficient, but I have quickly learned that that is a privilege of circumstance. Certainly, it is best to avoid situations which spark intense urges to begin with, but you will not always be so lucky. When you are beset by the sorts of intense, full-body urges that tend to accompany both affection and hunger, the best ally is redirection. You must turn the urges against themselves.

Thankfully, there are various biological quirks we can work with here. Blood tastes better when taken at a moment of climax, so it would be a simple waste to take it before then. Most vampires find their dominant desires to be bolstered by their new power, including myself, so some prattle about how drinking one’s blood is an ‘honor’ which shouldn’t be given away so freely can be quite effective. Vampires are more than capable of having anyone they want, so directing the urges towards some other faraway person who is yet more attractive can help. I have also gotten some mileage from fixating on the attacks from loved ones my carelessness would provoke, though that may be too personal.

These ideas work best as mantras. Recently, whenever I find the urges are getting uncomfortably powerful, I make an effort to mutter things like ‘She’ll taste better later’ and ‘I’m too good for her’ to myself, and it does help. Even the basic act of focusing on something else does a lot; recite the alphabet if you have to. Or, maybe not the alphabet, given the loaded letters at the front… But you get the point.

With all of these tools, and with the help of an N95 mask¹, I managed to take a ride on a streetcar last night for the first time since being turned. Hopefully, with time, the muscle will become more trained… I know there are a few vampires out there for whom this is barely a concern.

So that’s step one: no murder. We have crossed the moral threshold of the Ten Commandments (disregarding all the fornication). Next, there is the more complicated, more insidious part: finding ways to respect the people we aren’t killing.

Yet again, biology and instincts work against us, here. Charisma warps every interaction into unconditional worship, and when hunger only increases with lust, that situation inevitably ends in enthrallment. It’s all-consuming, strangling everything that might have been shared companionship until nothing is left but withered remains which seem every bit as fulfilling. Vampires are still social creatures, after all; if you are assured ceaselessly by your thralls that their ‘love’ is just as real as a love that is not the product of brainwashing, you’re eventually going to start believing it. Or, at least, you’re going to start believing that you don’t care, because you’re not going to care.

It is convenient that we have such simple methods of text communication these days. In a world where some people maintain entire friend groups in cyberspace, where even some vampires forgo the traditional fortified sanctum in favor of simply texting thralls to order them around, it is simpler than ever to speak to people without fear of charisma tainting the whole affair. I honestly do not know if I would have lasted so long without that convenience. I certainly would not be writing to you all now.

Even so, there are times when in-person communication cannot be avoided, and as we are all quite aware these days, total physical isolation can be a bit of a strain on the psyche. Thankfully, it is possible to minimize the effects of charisma, if not to fully erase them.

Charisma is a complex thing, as I am discovering, and it is important to watch all the details of what you are doing and saying carefully. My begetter has a remarkably skilled sense of it for someone so young, even if she typically uses that sense to amplify it rather than diminish it. My sense is considerably less developed, but I have picked up on a few less intuitive things one should watch out for:

• Hand movements are a common vector. Pay attention to where your hands and fingers lead people.
• Ask yourself, if there were a string between you and whoever you’re talking to, what would you be doing to it?
• Attempting to just ‘sound boring’ will usually backfire. Your voice should sound literally neutral, if you can manage it.

I’ve had limited opportunities to test these techniques on humans, and most of those opportunities have made use of my begetter’s thralls, but I have also confirmed with my colleague, Dr. Linda Ashford², that my control is better than it was last week.

I also did get a chance to try recreating and inverting that horrible audio sample we tested previously, saving it on my own computer this time. The audio sounded almost identical to my ear (as inverted audio generally does), but the volunteer listener I enlisted from among my begetter’s thralls was quite disturbed by it. It was actually quite difficult for her to get a good listen to it, as she reported an unbearable compulsion to throw off her headphones and get as far away from them as possible. Thankfully, I had had the good sense to muffle and quiet it a bit this time, so there's no lasting damage. I still deleted the file for good measure.

I need to run more proper tests, tests which involve my begetter, proper sample sizes, and actual linguistic analysis, but that will be a much more elaborate effort. For now, I hope the hypothetical troubled vampire reading this will find my loose summary helpful, and perhaps even have some use for it in maintaining their preexisting relationships. I hope any humans at risk of unwilling predation, or at risk of their own reckless hunting practices, find use in it as well; it can only help to recognize what is being done to you in such a situation. May we one day live in a world where such knowledge is commonplace.

Anyway, if we are able to avoid killing people, and able even to have normal conversations with said people, then all that is left is to somehow find a way to satisfy our romantic, sexual, and dietary needs with the proper respect. That is, with continuous informed consent.

To get consent in the first place should be simple enough once we have a handle on our charisma. I know from decades of experience that there is no shortage of people out there who wonder about the experience of enthrallment, and no shortage of people who get off on imagining such things happening to them. Some of those people are reading this right now. There is only so much I can say to prepare someone for the experience of being enthralled, but that is true of many sexual acts. What’s important is that I have no need to hide anything, at first.

The issue reveals its true face in the interplay of the ‘continuous’ and ‘informed’ parts. The simplest way to release someone from enthrallment is to erase their memory of being enthralled, but that is obviously not a functional foundation for an ongoing sexual relationship. To quote an acquaintance, asking someone to engage exclusively in a sort of sex they cannot remember having is ‘kind of a weird pitch’. And yet, some information control is necessary, so much so that I would recommend that anyone who has previously been enthralled by me skip the next two paragraphs.

I mentioned iterating on this process last time, and that has basically consisted of attempting, each time I drink from someone, to bring their recollection as close to the truth as possible, and trying to separate the abstract knowledge of having been previously taken from the visceral experience of enthrallment. First, I simply made them forget and ignore the bite mark; then, I made them remember having had sex with me and recognize the bite mark as a hickey; then, I made them remember having kinky, mind-control oriented sex with me, and see an especially visceral hickey reminiscent of a bite mark; and most recently, I have even had some success with simply making them believe they have been released from enthrallment, that such a thing is possible, such that there is no need to obfuscate the bite mark at all. Each lie is closer to and more respectful than the last, but each requires an increasingly delicate touch.

It is convenient, then, to have such a powerful tool for mental manipulation at my disposal, disconcerting as it is. It is also convenient that this is not the first time I have engaged in erotic hypnosis. Still, confident as I am, I have made a habit of giving those I release a ‘failsafe’ trigger recording, which they are compelled to listen to (at a safe moment, of course) should they realize that they are still technically under my thrall and wish to return to obliviousness. That way, if I slip up (as I have many times already), they will not be dependent on me to resolve the situation.

It is in these details that ethical vampirism is found, I think. In trying to do whatever I can think of to remove the power I hold outside the confines of sex. I am unable to use my hypnosis to remove the effects of charisma (perhaps due to my own lacking understanding), but I am able to use it to grant humans a conscious choice, each time they look into my eyes, of whether they will fall into trance, and so I do. I am forced to hide some things from those I have enthralled, but I can attempt a net neutral situation where so little information has been hidden that to know the full truth would not impact the decision of anyone, and so I do. I am tempted always to see humans as mere ends, but I still possess every ability to talk to them like equals and develop an actual relationship, and so I do.

The key is to maintain that image of a person with an inner world. Humans are the prey of vampires, my prey, and there's no way around that; but they can also still be friends, colleagues, and lovers, all without being overwritten by our whims. We can be symbiotic predators, we can control this, and so we must.

Perhaps that means nothing to the hypothetical vampires in the audience. Perhaps you are all just satisfied with your utter emotional stagnation, with never tasting this side of symbiosis. Perhaps it all just sounds like a great big fuss. That's fine. But you may want to consider this:

Humans like being bitten. They like being enthralled. So I have heard many times over the years, because it is literally true. It's an incredible experience; I liked being bitten, and enthralled, in the parts I can remember. What I didn't like, what most of humanity at large doesn't like, are the murders inflicted and lives ruined with total disregard. The irreversible loss of agency. The terror with which they have to spend every moment once they understand how possible it truly is to lose themselves.

So what do you think will happen if I can give them the former without the latter? Do you think I will be staked within a decade like so many of you are? Do you think I will fail to sustain myself, that you will all outlive me? Or do you think, perhaps, that I will outlive you all, basking happily in the moon as my prey crawls freely back to me?

Even if you will not act ethically for its own sake, I will, and I will be richly rewarded for it. Karma never fails to find its way back to us. So try your doomed path, if you must. We will see in time who is the more effective predator.

1. I can't spread human diseases anymore, but masking is still a convenient way of hiding fangs and muffling smells without drawing much attention.
2. Linda has made a full recovery, thankfully. She wanted to thank you for all of your well wishes, and for all of the death threats directed at myself which we are choosing to take as well wishes.

Comments

Dr. Linda Ashford
Well that was rather a bit menacing at the end, but I can see the empathy behind it. Always happy to help as you learn to navigate all this fuss.

📝Dr. Luma
I'm happy you left this comment here such that I might have a chance to clarify. Yes, speaking from newfound experience, I do expect this ending to resonate more with the typical crop of vampires, for the same reasons why it was rather satisfying for me to write. Hopefully everyone else in the audience can understand I'm being a bit dramatic.

SmallManForYou
Right so is That what they're calling it Now

ch
Clicked on this as soon as I saw it. I really appreciate you breaking this stuff down, I feel like I never realized how much you guys barely even know what you're doing. You're really making me feel like there's some hope… even if I guess you're, uh, kind of working through something at the end I guess. Thanks for making this. I hope it can help someone out there.

seeker_of_knowledge
Pathetic how easily this blog manipulates people like you. Every time I look back at it there's more and more of you gormless jokers ready to take the bloody enthralled chancer at her word. Or maybe you're all just frauds, too.

ch
Genuinely what the hell is your problem

seeker_of_knowledge
Alright then, go on with your pathetic game. I don't care anymore. People like you disgust me almost as much as that bint you all worship.

DEUS_VULT_420

“TO NEGOTHHIATE EVIL IS TO BECOME THAT WHCIH IS EVIl”

—Jhon 3-11

Gerogero
?

DEUS_VULT_420
yes john mtathew said it i am Certain

cakegirl
this article gave me alot to think abt… like, I think I rly get what ur sayin, and like, its real, right, but like… like idk, ig I do kinda just wanna get taken and kept forever? idk if thats weird, ha… ig i just feel like u could probably make better decisions than me? and ig being trans mostly just makes me kinda anxious rn? and also itd be rly rly hot lmao 🥴

CrinchoJinjo

Step one: get a friend group, and a job, and a house

Step two: learn to take care of yourself!

Step three: Learn to DECIDE!

Step four: watch out for all the SEX FREAKS in the comments. You're probably not the worst here at decisions (because I'm here, hahaha), and really, who’s not bad at decisions? So be careful, because some people are gonna be WEIRD about it.

cakegirl
what are u talking abt

CrinchoJinjo
Sorry, I was high. Like I said, just terrible decisions. I forgot to even drink water today

📝Dr. Luma

This must have been hard to write. I'm happy to see my article was able to draw these sorts of feelings from you. I suppose nothing I've said here is truly a universal prescription, though I do think that you deserve the same basic respect as anyone else.

But on some level, I empathize. I have had similar feelings many times before. Autonomy can be a curse, at times… Perhaps someday I could provide that for someone in a safe and controlled manner, but I am not eager to test such things in my current state. Or rather, I am too eager.

cakegirl
oh wow hehe 🙂 can i be ur thrall then 😳

BloodyMary
Oh Lilith, it’s sooooo cute seeing you try to act all menacing! You’re finally starting to become a real predator… But you won’t outlive anyone, silly! You’re already dead!

demonTitties
Yo that’s so sick! It’s like reverse charisma that’s crazy. Reminds me of that one guy from like backrooms level 5 or something

Octopussy46
Holy shit dude level fives my vibe

Gravely Yours
Cool to see you’re trying… You kinda sound like a supervillain at the end there. Is that, like, good

📝Dr. Luma
It helps more than it probably should.