Many people call themselves "vampires."
There are just goths. They're nothing but people who where gothic clothing. Then there are people who dress up like vampires. Goths with fangs.
There are people who act like vampires, lifestyles. They walk around with the fangs and work night jobs and sleep during the day.
There are people who are fetish vampires. They simply like the idea of Dracula taking them. Or, being Johnathan and having Dracula's wives take them in the night. Some of them just really have to be bitten on the neck to enjoy sex. Some have to see blood. That's their sexual preference, even if it may be unsafe.
There are roleplayers. These are people who have played too much Vampire: The Masquerade and go around calling themselves Toreador and holding roses and such. They also often only come out at night.
These people are alright people. But, in general, I try to avoid them.
Psychic vampires are very, very, different.
Psychic vampires didn't even call themselves vampires at first. No one's really sure what they called themselves at first, but there was a big movement of psychics who really did not like these people who were draining the energy of other people and wanted to use a negative word to attach to them, and thus labeled them vampires. This didn't really piss them off, until all the other types of vampires (see above) suddenly decided that if they were fetish vampires, they must be psychic vampires, too.
Lemme rewind. Here is the most simple definition I can give of a psychic vampire. A psychic vampire is a perfectly normal being who feels that zhe has a need for psychic energy from a source other than hirself. The vampires feel they have the need because they feel that if they have not gotten energy in a certain amount of time (different for each person) they get certain physical symptoms like inability to concentrate, crankiness, stomach problems, sleep problems, and weakness.
Read though that definition again. Note how the psychic vampire feels that way. That doesn't have to mean it's true. By the mere fact that the person in question has convinced himself of that, that makes it true.
So... A psychic vampire may actually have that need for psychic energy. Obviously, if you're a psychic vampire you feel that way. That's peachy keen. You can feel otherwise. You can think we're delusional.
But... the trick is that even if we're making it up, we're so convinced of it, that our delusions have become real to us. We've become so convinced that we need psychic energy, that the instant we realise we've gone for so and so long without it, we've gotta have that hit.
Actually, there are a lot of people intimately involved in the community that feel that this is all a delusion that's become real to us. Generally, unless you run upon a butt of a vampire that you should then hit, most vampires don't care why you think they have that need. But that, at the end of the story, you say, "Okay, fine, you want some energy, cool."
About ethics... there are problems with this, too. New vampires especially use... questionable methods to get energy. It's easier. Every conversation you have with someone just walking down the road, you're exchanging energy. If some kid is whining to you, there's an inbalance of energy. Psychic vampires naturally know this and if they haven't practiced in energy work on a more structured scale, they basically just whine and make scenes and drain from one single person.
And that's the big key for ethics in the vampire community. If you want to understand how we see the ethics of feeding, put on hold any skeptics of whether we exist or not and just think, "Okay, they do have a need for energy. Now they want to do it ethically."
It would be extremely unethical for me to take Quantum here and take a whole bunch of energy out of him. He, in theory (and there are arguments about this too, a whole nother bag of worms) could feel tired and lethargic, and this could ruin his day. This could also mess up his energy body. It's like cannibalism or even rape on an energetic level.
On the other hand... if we do in fact have a need (remember, we're looking at this from a vampire's perspective for a moment), we have to find some way to satisfy this need. The ideal way we do this is called ambient feeding. Imagine if you will a concert or club. When you're in there, whether you're into metaphysics or not, you feel the energy. Concerts produce an overflow, an excess of energy that's just boiling over and so overwhelming.
So what a vampire does is take some of that excess energy. It's just a small, small bit of energy from a whole lot of people, and it completely fills the vampire up. This does not drain anyone. This is not going to harm anyone's energy body. This energy was at excess anyway.
This is how vampires, who know what they're doing get around the ethics of it. Unfortunately, (if you recognize our existance, of course) you could very well walk past a vampire who doesn't quite know what they're doing, and just randomly tries to drain you.
Unfortunately, there's an A&E special with Michelle Belanger in it coming up in October of all months. I'm sure she said something smart during her interviews but she also went to a goth party with the A&E crew. Hmm... lets think about what they want to put on the TV... lady trying to be serious and trying to put a new perspective on a subculture ooooor a bunch of freaks running around with glowsticks.
Oh the glory.
In the psychic vampire community, just like any discourse community, there are certain gatekeeper words that if you say them, you made it so are not allowed into the community. You have exiled yourself. Some of these things being...
- "Oooh I can't go into the sunlight."
- "Oooh my fangs are growing in."
- Any refrences to Vampire: The Masquerade.
- The words "No one at school understands me."
And, of course, when anyone says anything about how they know some secret past of the vampire. Or illuminati. Or how they're related.
We're not all idiots. Just please remember... that idiots have louder voices. |
