The Vampire Lestat & Victimhood
Every vampire is both a victim AND a villain. That’s the whole point.
Nearly every single vampire has been murdered (consent or no, accident or no, it’s still murder when a human/former human kills a human being!) and even if they immediately changed every negative personality trait they had as a human (which is unlikely!!!! because vampirism freezes you in stasis, and augments your strongest personality traits, which can make even compassion become nightmarish), they still need blood to live, immediately, and desperately in the early years (and, AGAIN, (consent or no, accident or no, it’s still murder when killing a human being).
Mistakes will be made no matter how perfect and controlled a vampire tries to be. Harm will be done to those around them because they are predators. They think like predators. They feel like predators. They are predators!
Predators can ofc be harmed by other predators. Predators can be harmed by their prey. Predators can be harmed by their surroundings. I could go on and on.
But that doesn’t change the fact that they are still predators. Even veggie vampires are STILL taking life. In fact, it’s almost essential that vegetarian vampires take life when feeding, unless they are able to set up a cattle farm or similar.
And that’s the existential & essential point of vampirism - humans are the exact same way. We are apex predators. The crunchiest, most holistic, off the grid, woke, pacifistic one of us cannot completely mitigate damage done. Bc we ARE apex predators. Nearly all of us ARE villains. Remote tribes in thick forested jungles likely still have interpersonal conflict. Our actions hurt others, even when we try not to. I drive the speed limit, and usually below it, but I still hit squirrels. Not only that, my car is directly contributing to the climate crisis. Even the vegetables I eat are harvested by the blood and sweat and tears of someone else, to say nothing of the once living flesh I consume. The clothes I wear come from all over the world, and probably some fairly unpleasant corners of it. My favorite kind of yogurt poisons rivers. I am gentle with my children, but I am rude to strangers sometimes. I am rude to my children sometimes!
I can be thoughtless, churlish, annoying, self-centered, prejudiced, egotistical, and so can you, dear reader.
The best of us try to be less of that, and more “good”. But even good is subjective. What’s good to me is not always good to you, and vice versa.
And now we’ve circled back to the vampires. Armand was a child sex slave, but he’s also the oldest vampire which, just starting off, means he’s likely killed the most people. Lestat was absolutely groomed for incest & isolated almost his entire life, but he also makes a habit of ruining whatever anybody else is doing. Louis was closeted & toxically masculine out of sheer necessity, but he’s also cold and calculating, and although he doesn’t eat people anymore, he’s very very very good at killing. Etc etc etc.
my point being, none are perfect victims. And none are total villains. (Yes, gawd I hate to say it, even Gabrielle). It is not the Pain Olympics. It is the people with personality disorders and superduper trauma who just happened to be vampires now show. Please free yourself from the nonsense of puritanical thought.
