Are Vampires hyper-sensitive souls, or are they non-feeling creatures that mostly live to feed?

Most answers you’re going to get are going to be very general speculation. To get a serious answer to the question, you need to collect tome Vampirical evidence, and then analyze it.

Speculation’s okay, as long as its on topic.

I only know two and not very well yet. But I’d say yes to passionate and hedonistic.
As far as narcissism, that hasnt been my experience.

Rather stoic if you asked me, part of the dark deal I suppose. Still, moments of humanity seem to manifest yet are likely ephemeral and fleeting as if chasing a decades old high without success.

@elbanditoroso Most “authentic” lore on Vampires I have found was written by Rom (Gypsies). The literature is rather folkloric, like, you can catch it from having an old pumpkin.

Nineteenth Century vampirism deals more with psychic vampires which are persons who drain your energy and belong more in the annals of the Theosophical society. Very little relation to the Vampires of books, movies, and modern culture. .

“which is it?” ?

Clearly it varies, as you pointed out, both in fiction and in the various other perspectives (many of which offer a variety of types of vampires), and from individual to individual, and from time to time even for the same individual.

I would also say that’s certainly not the only parameter that varies with them. Reducing things to binary questions rarely provides insight.

Why? Are they good or bad?

Interesting question.

Vampires are not all the same. We have different backgrounds, history, family, friends and other external variables that shape us into what we are. Much the same as you, sir.

I do have extremely heightened senses. I’m aware of my surroundings at all times. I can smell your fear and I can sense your inner demon and their ambition towards me. Some dogs have this same sense but not all, sadly. In your darkest moments of your life is how I would describe a nearly-normal day for me. I feel alive during the winter and fall months when I see everything dead around me. The cool crisp air I thrive to breathe. The depression is relaxing.

In regards to love, passion or general interests I’m the exception to others. I don’t love nor have an interest with it. Love is a wind up toy that runs down quickly. My string has been pulled before and pulled completely out. I’m now the beast you reference in search of the next bite.

I applaud your question that lacks judgement on us.

Mastema and I share a similar life so most of my answer would only echo his.

I do however seek love and the embrace touching others, both physically and emotionally. I want to be loved and cuddled and I want to feel your heart in my hands.

Most importantly, I want to sink my fangs into your neck…

@Yellowdog Were you asking me “Why? Are they good or bad?”

If so, it seems to me that before you can ask for an answer of minimal detail such as that, you must establish enough context for the answer to be at all meaningful. Otherwise it’s not much more meaningful than asking the same question about everyone named Gwendoline, or all two-year-old baby boys.

You’re also talking about presentations by different physical authors, and each writer and each of their works present different views on different fictional universes often with different types of vampires and different specific vampires with different perspectives on each vampire.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is just one vampire in just one story in just one fictional universe, and yet in that universe there are multiple vampires and multiple other characters’ perspectives on those vampires.

Meanwhile in Joss Whedon’s Buffy-verse there are also different kinds of vampires, and we see different perspectives at different times from different perspectives on various vampires who evolve in various ways (including morally) over time.

If you went and binge-watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, you would see that your question is a theme for several vampire characters there, and that each issue asks that and other questions and shows various perspectives on possible ways to relate to those vampires’ moralities. And that’s just one fairly lightweight fantasy TV show.

Not to mention that there are thousands of other fictional, historical, and current real-world contexts for the world vampire, each with their own endless possible perspectives on them. And that you haven’t even defined good or bad.

@Zaku I was joking with the “good or bad” thing—that’s as binary as one can get.

@Mastema2 and @UnholyThirst88 I greatly applaud your answers as Vampires. I DO believe that Vampirism has arisen out of the collective unconscious, and that people practice and identify with it. It has a stronger grip on humankind than mere role-play or self identity.

The vibe I’m getting is that it resonates with people who prefer darkness, winter, autumn, and death—and that the gripping feelings of death and desolation are both restful and exhilerating—and that resonation with these feelings is where one feels one’s most true self. The Vampire is hyper-sensitive to the point that what matters is a Vampire is allowed just to BE, and do what is natural to them, and can’t stand being anywhere else than where they truly are.

I don’t think the depression and desolation are good feelings, though I can resonate with finding solice in darkness, even pitch dark, and winter.

@Yellowdog Are you inviting us in…?

You’re slowly opening a door darling that I’m not sure you want opened… Much like dangling a sweet piece of meat in front of wolves…

I was a Goth even in the 1980s when it was merely called being Gothic.

I resonate well with everything about Vampirism except that I do not find it depressing. It is the only time I feel good about existing is when I am completely alone in a dark Gothic Episcopalian church I have access to, and I sit in the darkness, hearing nothing but maybe air conditioning. I do not find it depressing at all.

I find Halloween and Zombie culture to be kind of gauche because death and autumn leaves are sacred as lost love—(not decay and rising corpses) and yet I think the beauty I see in death and lost love is the same inspiration that Vampires and true Goths thrive upon.

My only desire is for you to be content being what you are, and not molested by the kische and low-brow posers.

My, my…I do believe I’ve found my new midnight snack…

I could listen to you all night. Until I bit you…

I’d probably let you, just to experience it,

Regretably, although I know that many people live as Vampires, and identify with them, and that it is a part of the collective conscious, it isn’t quite reality. Vampirism is slightly unreal, and that’s precisely what makes it so “otherly”.

If you’re referring to a reality where Vampires don’t die, turn into bats, or constantly crave blood then those are for TV.

I do get excited by blood and I do bite, and do it well…