MJ,
In light of the culmination of your story, I found this interesting.
http://omnibussanctis.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/vampires-are-people-too/#comments
Eric
Interesting indeed.
I did not make my vampires redeemable, which is odd in a way because it sort of flies in the face of much that I said in Faith and Gaming: Deals, about how the one who makes a deal with the devil only thinks he is unredeemable. Still, I did (in the unfinished book no one has read) connect the final defeat of the vampires to the return of Christ).
I agree with comments there, that the connection between real soteriology and fictional characters is difficult. How does Dracula find redemption? In Stoker, he doesn't--he ultimately finds destruction. In Angel, the vampire-with-a-soul is a metaphor for the struggle within all of us, which is much what the vampire is (or is supposed to be, whether or not realized) in Vampire: The Masquerade. For the traditional view, though, this is the creature that has made its choice and will never be tempted by goodness again.
Interestingly I read a note earlier today in a book I'm reading, which cited something from Augustine. Augustine wrote something like this:
What if God were to offer to give you everything you ever wanted or imagined wanting, told you you could do whatever you wished, indulge in any sins without facing consequences, but that you would never see His face?...What I see in the vampire, in the main, is someone who took that bargain.If you shuddered at that last part, that is the pure love of God within you.
Yet I agree that, at least in my understanding of Christian theology, such a person is still redeemable up to the moment of death. I think what the blogger suggests is viable.
--M. J. Young
The question, then, MJ, is whether you consider the vampire's moment of death to have passed or not. In most treatments of vampires, they are already deceased. Their soul has departed and their body is animated by something else - demonic possession, necromancy, bacteria, or whatever. Do you mean that a vampire could be redeemed via Christian theology up to the moment of his final death, when his vampire body is destroyed irretrievably?
Harry, that really is the key question: are they dead or are they alive? Has the spirit gone to its eternal judgment, the body animated by some other being--or is this the ultimate corruption of a human spirit?
The vampire metaphor seems to require the latter--this really is Vlad the Impaler, Count Dracula, surviving lich-like into the centuries, no longer truly alive but not dead either. This is a person who has been tempted by the promise of a counterfeit immortality, made a bargain with evil, and survives in a state of eternal living death. Part of the horror of Stoker's version (from the book) is that this monster is a corrupted human--unredeemable perhaps, but still human.
The Buffy solution, that these are corpses animated by demons and kept from decay, is really a D&D trick--these are orcs, creatures which we can kill with impunity because they can never be anything other than cruel soulless predators. If they were people who might be redeemed, we would be wrong to kill them, but should instead evangelize them. That, though, would not make for exciting weekly episodes, nor would it fit well into non-sectarian television.
The metaphor suggests that they ought to be redeemable, that they ought to be people who, like Darth Vader, have gone so far over to the dark side that they do not believe they can return. As I comment in Faith and Gaming: Deals, no one is ever irredeemable, but one advantage (of several) the devil gets by letting someone make a deal with him is the poor fool thereafter believes he cannot be saved. (I note that the hero in Faust was saved in the end, so even in the original story that was not so.) If we take the vampire to be a metaphor for fallen humanity at its most depraved, it must be redeemable.
My vampires, in the world I usually use for vampires, are not that. Their bargain is that they have died, no longer mortal, no longer able to be redeemed, but they have managed to keep a connection between spirit and body. I have not delved into how they do this (very implausible from the perspective of a dichotomist--but it is fiction, after all). I would guess that they died, and that they were then animated by their own spirits much as a zombie is animated by some other spirit, so that they have a human spirit controling a human body, but the connection is inhuman, more of a marionette sort of thing. This would also explain my suggestion somewhere that a vampire is tougher than a human in part because they don't have much you would be able to call "vital" organs. The body doesn't have to function; it only has to be mobile.
So interesting ideas all the way around. What are your thoughts?
--M. J. Young
It makes me wonder what your take is on good-aligned vampires. The ones who maybe were embraced unwillingly, or who came to their senses later on. Maybe they're not Christian, but they do more good than evil - they feed only out of necessity and never so much as to hurt people, they spend most of their time fighting crime, some of them even have decent relationships with people. (I loathe to use Angel as a role model for anything, but he is sort of case-in-point of this most of the time.) Or the vampire woman in League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, who was a vampire and who was kindof a jerk, but did more good than harm and worked for the good of the world. Are these good people in an unfortunate circumstance? Or are they irredeemably damned even though they do good works?
(Personally I believe a person is defined by a combination of their actions and their intent, so someone who undertakes a horribly evil action, like becoming a vampire on purpose, for an exceptionally good cause, like being able to defend his family and home in eternal vigilence or to share eternity with his love who was turned unwillingly, comes out more or less neutral, with a balance toward good if he actually delivers on such intentions.)
Osevens, can God use someone that doesn't believe He exists to do His work? I recently had an experience with just this thing. Sometimes I embellish stories that I tell, to make them sound more interesting to the listener. I'm sure we've all done that, at some point or another. I asked an Atheist friend of mine what he thought about that, as someone who claimed to be a moral human being. He told me that it was wrong, and that I was still lying, no matter what I called it. Up until that point, I didn't fully realize that I was in fact lying about a story that I had told. I just thought of it as embellishing the story to make it more interesting, something I'm sure we have all done. Now I realize that this was wrong, thanks to my Atheist friend. If you don't think God can use an Atheist to do His work, read Numbers 22 verses 21-41. God makes a donkey speak to make its owner see the error of his ways. If God can use a donkey, God can surely use an Atheist. (I mean really, what's the difference between the two, ya know?) Maybe God could even use a vampire.
It is of course entirely hypothetical. We're asking whether a fictional creature whose origins suggest it is fully and thoroughly evil might in some cases be good. As the creator of Multiverser, I have to say of course in some cases a fictional creature which is identical in every recognizable way to one that is thoroughly evil could be good; you just have to accept that the creature is not identical in some meaningful way to those which are thoroughly evil.
It is an understandable mistake to think of Christianity in terms of "good beings" and "bad beings". It is far more accurate to say that Christianity divides beings into "friends of God" and "enemies of God". Being an enemy of God does not mean that you are a "bad" person or that you never do anything good for others; it means only that you are working against Him, opposing His desires for His creation. Being a friend of God does not necessarily mean that you will always do that which everyone perceives as good, but only that it is your desire to be the sort of person who gets along well with God. Seen in the context of friends and enemies, most people try to please their friends, but few do so consistently.
If you take vampirism as requiring a choice, that vampires have decided to make themselves enemies of God, then you've settled the question fairly directly: they might want to help people, they might actually do so, but they are still enemies of God, working against Him.
If you take vampirism as something more like a transmissible disease, that you can contract this without any decision on your part (no one chooses to get the flu, even if we are sometimes careless about protecting ourselves against it), then again you've answered it: it is entirely possible to be a friend of God and contract this disease, even to be forced to do horrible things because of the disease which you completely regret and wish to stop but cannot without His miraculous intervention. Like all Christians, you are working to advance God's will in the world--you're just not very good at it, which is also like most Christians.
So either way the Vampire is a metaphor for Christianity, but it is a different metaphor. It can be a Faustian monster, someone who has made his choice and aligned himself against God, but who still does good because even in rejecting God he cares for people. It can be a Christian's inner battle, that I who want to do good find evil within me and need deliverance from the body of this death.
Thus what I think is that the "good" vampire can be handled either way--as an enemy of God who wishes to do good in the world, or as a friend of God struggling against evil within himself.
I'd be interested in Eric's thoughts on this subject. Are you lurking, Tad?
--M. J. Young
I enjoyed the "Vampires are People, Too" article. (Incidentally, I'm just now getting around to reading Anne Rice, largely because I like to start reading series from the beginning, and haven't been able to *find* Interview with the Vampire until now.)
I like what MJ said about everything dealing with vampires being a Christian metaphor--they're just different metaphors. In his books, with the unredeemable vampires, the metaphor is more about the people fighting them than about the vampires themselves, because they're already lost. I could probably go further with that, but I'm going to stop talking about the Multiverser novels at this point, largely because, as far as I know, the second book isn't out yet. I helped edit it, so *I* know what happens, but I really don't want to spoil anything for anyone, and at this point, it's hard for me to remember what happened in the first book versus the second.
What you do with vampires really depends on the style of game you're playing. If all you want is a scary, evil, tough opponent, they should be soulless. Maybe they were humans who made a choice and have fallen so far that they can't be redeemed. (Perhaps becoming a vampire willingly, turning away from God completely for the sake of power and immortality, is that unforgivable sin Jesus mentions.) Or, perhaps they're no longer human, but something demonic. If vampirism can be contracted involuntarily, maybe at the moment of death, the person's soul goes off to its eternal destination, leaving the body free for something demonic to take over.
On the other hand, if you want moral complexity, vampires should be redeemable. That could mean that being a vampire automatically makes you an enemy of God, but is a sin from which a vampire might repent (this works more with the "choice" model). If becoming a vampire is not a sin in and of itself, then there are lots of interesting moral quandaries to play with. If you're a dangerous monster that needs to feed on others to live, should you continue existing in that state? Getting blood from a blood bank may well be killing someone just as much as drinking the blood straight from the person, it just keeps the vampire from seeing the consequences of his actions. So, maybe it's better to just go watch the sun come up. Or is that suicide?
And for players interacting with redeemable vampires, can you just kill them without compunction? If they are currently going around killing people, do you have to care that they might be redeemable? On the other hand, how do you react to them if they haven't harmed anyone, and if they're trying to make the best of a situation they had no hand in?
All good points.
One of my guilty pleasures is Robert Asprin's Mythadventures series, known affectionately as the Skeeve and Ahz stories (Ahz, not to be confused with that other wizard Oz). Like Kelly, I read series from the beginning, and I just managed to identify and acquire stories five through ten--and to read number five before my daughter-in-law absconded with them all (which is fine, because I am really reading Lee Stroebel's The Case for Christ, and the Skeeve and Ahz stories were distracting me; besides, she is a voracious reader, and will undoubtedly have finished them by now, so I'll get them back soon enough). In <i>Mything Persons</i> the adventurers visit a dimension which is the native world of vampires (all "demon" creatures come from their own "Demon-shuns" in these books). The vampire who befriends them there says that most vampires drink animal blood, and human blood is actually an acquired taste of the very rich--the ones who can afford to travel to other dimensions on holiday. That's sort of backwards from the usual position, but I doubt anyone would have serious trouble with a creature that lives on the blood of animals, as long as those animals were the same kinds of animals we normally eat.
So there's another way of handling it--sort of like saying that some humans are cannibals, but it's only the cannibals who will eat you, because the rest of humanity would be very upset at the idea.
--M. J. Young
At times I am quite happy with my ideas and thoughts, judging them to be of great worth. Most times I find what I say to be somewhat useful. Other times, I don't have a clue. This is one of those other times.
I have enjoyed learning from this thread, but I have nothing more to add to it.
Now, I could go on for some time on how to improve Book #2...
Eric
I have seen a couple stories playing with the idea that vampires could subsist on animal blood. One really good one, which I wish I remembered the name of, involved a Catholic vampire. Like most vampires, killed people and did horrible things to survive, for hundreds of years. Then, finally, he repents of what he has done, and refrains from killing anyone else. He drinks the blood of animals to survive, but explains that it isn't as nourishing as human blood. It sustains life, just as living on Big Macs and candy bars will sustain life. Abstaining from human blood also weakens the evil within him that tempts him to kill and to create more vampires.
The story is from the point of view of the priest who he asks to hear his confession so he can be absolved of his sins.
I've kind of stayed out of this discussion, because I didn't feel I could contribute. I just thought of something. Vampires are fictional characters. To my knowledge, the only set in stone rule on them is that they have to drink the blood of victims to live. If they are fictional, then that would mean that the writer of the story is god to their universe. In some ways, the writer actually has more power than a god. At least the God of Abraham cannot control people's actions. You can control the actions of your characters. My point is, the vampires in your stories can be or do anything you want them to be. You are their god. Who are they to argue with you?
While there is some sense to that, the other side of it is that your readers do not regard you as god, and they will argue with you.
--M. J. Young
Exactly. Sure, you can play with ideas in any way you want, but readers often expect that if you're going to call something by a certain name, it will fit the traits they ascribe to that name. The vampires in Buffy are different from Bram Stoker's Dracula, from Anne Rice's vampires, which are all different from Laurell K. Hamilton's or Kim Harrison's vampires. But they all have the basic concept that vampires are undead, drink blood, are harmed by things like holy symbols and sunlight. Most, but not all, have them as evil.
Also, the more you deviate from what people expect, the harder you have to work to make sure that your ideas are actually internally consistent.
Like in the movie "John Carpenter's Vampires" where the vamps were created by a black mass, and are hence immune to faith. Except 1)They would be more vulnerable. OR 2) They would have some resistance which could be overcome by someone sufficiently faith filled both make more sense than Carpenter's bald assertion of immunity.
You may also wish to examine the tag 'vampire' where we have something like fourteen (if I remember right) varieties of vampire for Multiverser.
Eric
Which is to say that John Carpenter fails Kelly's test. His vampires don't make sense.
You may also wish to examine the tag 'vampire' where we have something like fourteen (if I remember right) varieties of vampire for Multiverser.
Good point. Every version of vampires exists somewhere in the multiverse. If you want to mess with a character's head, putting them in two worlds, back to back or a couple apart, with very different "vampires," both called the same thing, would be a good way to do it.
Kelly. Coding on this board is done with < > not [ ] So you can fix that.
Thanks, John. Now it's fixed. (Kind of annoying that the "Allowed markup" note at the bottom tells you what tags you can use, but not how they're formatted. And the other forum I'm on that doesn't use HTML uses [ ] for tags.)
We put a sticky on the board, Coding On This Board, but I don't remember how complete it is.
--M. J. Young