#vampire myth

[mask131]

Vampires before they were cool... (2)

In my last post, I left you by the 16th century. But it was the 17th century which was the BIG century for the evolution of the vampire myth.

During the Middle-Ages, the vampire manifestations were mostly localized in Western Europe: vampire tales came from the British Isles, from France, from Spain, from Portugal. However, throughout the 16th century, these phenomenon rarefied themselves in the West… Only to brutally amplify and multiply by the East. In the 17th century, vampires popped up everywhere in the Balkans, in Greece, in Russia, in the eastern part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. In fact, by the 17th century, vampires had turned so rare in Western Europe that some people (like Voltaire in France) would later believe vampires were “invented” by the 17th century and did not exist prior to this date��

Why such a big shift? Well, sociologically speaking, Eastern Europe was a poor and isolated part of Europe at the time. The great innovations and inventions of the Renaissance had not crossed over to the East, unlike things like the vampire tales, which travelled very fast – and while the bourgeoisie and the city-dwellers of Eastern countries were educated, the rest of the population, the peasants and the folks of the countryside, usually did not know how to read or write. It was a fertile ground for folktales to take root and superstitions to manifest themselves… But there was a second reason that amplified this one: a religious difference. In Western Europe, it was a time of hunts and persecutions of all kinds – be it the Catholic Church and its Inquisition who led a merciless fight against anything deemed an “heresy” or a superstition contradicting its canon beliefs; or the Anglican Church of the Stuarts who caused one of the largest witch hunts of history. These phenomenon caused the disappearance and erasure of the vampire myth in Western Europe… But to the East, the Byzantine-descending Church had a more open-mind and a greater tolerance when it came to local folk-beliefs, even including superstitions in its rites and practices: as such, the vampire myth was welcomed by the religious authorities – a case being the brucolacs of Greece.

The Greeks have very ancient beliefs when it comes to the dead who do not rot and get out of their graves: the archetypal case is the one of the “vrykolakas” (usually re-written as “brucolac”). They were people turned undead because they were not buried in a holy ground (death by suicide, or being excommunicated). However when the legend of the vrykolakas started they were… harmless and pitiful creatures. They were tormented souls who only sought to escape the physical body they were trapped within, and did not harm humans: to send them to an eternal rest, the Church just had to remove its excommunication and their soul would be at peace. However, from the 16th century onward, the nature of the vrykolakas changed with the arrival from the West of these yet-unnamed harmful undeads. And this lead to a confusion with werewolves.

Yes, werewolves: “vrykolakas” was also a Greek term to designate werewolves, who were very present in the folklores of the Balkans or the Carpathians. The werewolf myth was, just like the vampire myth, crystallized by the Christian medieval beliefs. And just like the vampire, it had an “official” recognition: Sigismund, king of Hungary and leader of the Holy Roman Empire (1368-1437) had the Ecumenical Council of 1414 recognize officially the existence of werewolves, and in the 16th century the Roman Church led official investigations on lycanthropy. Between 1520 and the mid-17th century, more than 30 000 cases of lycanthropy had been reported in Europe (in the West, France was the most touched, while in the East they were found mainly in Serbia, Bohemia and Hungary). A rumor started spreading around, about how when werewolves died they turned into “blood-sucking undead”. This led, in the end of the 17th century, to the apparition in popular culture of vampire-werewolves entity. They were found in Silesia, Bohemia, Poland, Hungary, Moldavia, Russia, and of course Greece, where the peaceful brucolacs were turned into bloodthirsty monsters ; and by the 18th century they covered pretty much all of Northern and Central Europe. Every country had its own terms, its own names, and its own traditions when it came to these undead: “upir”, “brucolac”, “blutsauger”, “vulkodlak”… In Slovakia and Romania for example, the “dead that walks” was accused of every misfortune: famines, diseases, disasters and misfortunes were supposedly all caused by them, and it could only be solved by opening their graves and plunging a stake in their bodies. People feared the “strigoi” and the “moroi”, these corpses that got out of their coffins at night to drink the blood of the living, and they were FAR from the glamorous vampire we think of today. They were these fleshy, bloated corpses that wandered around with their eyes bulging and wide-open, never blinking, repulsive monsters with barely anything human left in them. To recognize one, you had to a find a corpse that was still fresh despite being buried for quite some times, and who had nose either on its mouth or nose. Then, you needed to pierce it with a stake, or removed its heart to burn it. In Romania, the families of the recently deceased brought wine and bread on the graves in hope of appeasing them. Slovakians rather sent elderly ladies in the cemeteries to stab graves with hawthorn branches or old knives: five in total, four for the limbs and one for the chest, to “nail” the corpse to its coffin. Eyes were closed with coins so they wouldn’t open, mouths were filled with garlic and wired shut, and if these rituals were useless a special person would be brought to destroy the corpse by decapitation, fire and religious symbols – a holy man, or a “dhampir”, a man rumored to be half-vampire… In Romania, many, MANY people could turn into vampires, not just werewolves: seventh sons of seventh sons, babies born with a caul o with teeth, individuals who had both red hair and blue eyes, and of course all the criminals, suicides and other disgraced people who did not receive proper burial.

All the fuss and commotion in Eastern Europe ended up alerting the capitals of Western Europe. In October of 1694, the French review “Le Mercure Galant” (a courtly magazine for the nobility) had an entire issue dedicated to these vampires of the east. By the end of the 17th century, while the word “vampire” still did not exist, it was a true mass psychosis, an “epidemic of undeads” followed by ferocious “hunts” during which corpses were dug up to be “killed again”… At the beginning of the 18th century, the authorities decided to take measures to calm things down and quiet this upcoming chaos. Though at this moment, the mass panic about vampires still relied on rumors, oral culture and other travel-tales: there was no written text or official report per se… Until the 18th century, when the authorities stepped in.

Cases of so-called “vampires” were studied and mediatized in Austria and Serbia, Prussia and Poland, Moravia and Russia. When the plague hit the eastern part of Prussia in 1710, the local authorities dug up themselves the corpses accused of having caused the epidemic. But two specific cases became the most famous and spectacular ones, making vampirism a full European thing.

The first was the death of a peasant: Peter Plogojowitz. He died in 1725, but his small village of Kizilova quickly called him a vampire and accused him of having caused eight deaths within the village. Testimonies talked of Plogojowitz being seen in people’s bedroom at night, trying to strangle them. When the grave was opened by the authorities, it was testified that his body had not yet rotten, and that fresh blood was on his mouth. He was quickly staked and burned. The second case was the one of Arnold Paole, a peasant from the small town of Medwegya who died falling from a cart in 1726(27?). He had apparently confessed to his fiancée, some days before his death, that he had encountered what he thought to be an undead… Paole himself was accused of having turned into a vampire, and caused the death of the village’s cattle and four people. His body was ug up and pierced with a stake. The case of Paole was extremely interesting because an authority was sent to study the case: Johann Flückinger, who investigated in his quality of both high-ranked major and army doctor. The result of his presence was the famous “Visum et Repertum” document, a 1731 report of the entire case and his conclusion, cosigned by other doctors and officers, and where (according to Antoine Faivre) the word “vampire” first appeared in the history of written texts, spelled “vanpir”. The “Visum et Repertum” became an object of curiosity for all the ruling classes of Western Europe: we know that Charles VI of Austria and Louis XV of France were both invested in the outcomes of the Plogojowitz and Paole cases. The Paole case was notably described with many details in “Le Glaneur”, a famous Franco-Dutch review often read at the Versailles court (issue of march 1732) – and it was in this “Le Glaneur” issue that the word “vampire” first appeared in the French language, spelled “vampyre”. The very same year and month, an article was published in the “London Journal” which brought over the word “vampire” to the English language.

These two cases also led to a LOT of treaties and dissertations being written about vampires, by both pseudo-scientists and actual men of the Church, which in turn caused intense debates and huge controversies among universities and literary circles. The first of those treaties is from the latter part of the 17th century, published at Leipzig in 1679, “Dissertatio historica-philosophica de Masticatione Mortuorum”, by Philip Rohr. This text tried to explain why the dead would “masticate” in their graves by explaining it was a demonic possession of the corpses. This book caused a huge controversy in the 18th century, splitting people in two sides: either you agreed with Rohr’s supernatural explanation, either you deemed this an ignorant superstition. Another famous treaty was published in Leipzig, in 1728 this time: “De Masticatione Mortuorum in Tumulis Liber” by Michael Ranft. This book opposed and discredited the thesis of Rohr by claiming the devil had no power onto the corpses of the dead, and that while the “undeads” would influence the living, they could not appear to them under any tangible form. Many other treaties would follow, such as Johann Christian Stock’s “Dissertatio Physica de Cadaveribus Sanguisugis” (1732) or Johann Heinrich Zopft’s “Dissertatio de Vampiris Serviensibus” in 1733.

Though the most famous of them all is Dom Augustin Calmet’s 1746 Parisian text, “Traité sur les revenants en corps, les excommuniés, les oupires ou vampires, broucolaques de Hongrie, de Moravie, etc », published in two volumes (Treaty on the undead in body, the excommunicated, the upirs or vampires, brucolacs of Hungaria, Moravia, etc). This Benedictine monk and famous commentator of the Bible wanted to refute the belief in vampires: to do so, he collected and analyzed an enormous amount of trivia, testimonies, folktales and “cases” surrounding vampires. While his work is mostly a naïve collection and compilation of anecdotes, it still held in the future a huge importance for the study of historians, sociologists and anthropologists, as it is one of the most complete catalogues of vampire phenomenon of its time. Other high-ranking members of the Church also tried to express the official position of their religion on vampires: Giuseppe Davanzati (archbishop of Florence, patriarch of Alexandria) wrote in 1774 “Dissertatione sopra i vampire”, and the pope Benedict XIV (Prospero Lambertini) wrote a few pages about vampires to discredit their existence in the fourth book of his enormous “De Servorum Dei Beatificatione et de Beatorum Canonizatione” (1749). Unfortunately, these anti-vampire testimonies were perceived as the Church giving a form of credit and recognition to these undead…

In France, meanwhile, the authors of the “Encyclopédie” (aka the very first encyclopedia ever) were greatly annoyed and irritated by this obsession for vampires. Voltaire, in his 1787 “Philosophical Dictionary”, wrote an entire rant about them, while Rousseau denounced the belief in vampires in a letter he sent to the archbishop of Paris. Both wondered how such superstitions could become so popular in the age of “reason and progress” that was the Enlightenment. But indeed, all these texts and treaties about vampires simply helped spread the legend, making people who had never heard about these monsters learn all about them – and most importantly, it popularized and stabilized the use of the term “vampire”, and its Latin equivalent “vampirus” (though it was still spelled differently depending on the countries and time eras: vampyr, vampyre, wampire…).

However the 19th century would see the end of the actual belief in vampires. While at the end of the 18th century vampires were still the hot talk of universities and literary salons (especially in France and Germany), the actual “cases” and supernatural phenomenon the myth built itself upon were rarer and rarer. The ideas and philosophies of the Enlightenment had finally made their way across Eastern Europe, plus the great era of the plague was over: education and health worked together to erase the vampire from people’s minds, especially as the industrialization of Europe changed heavily the lifestyle of people and the landscape of the countries. There were still cases of vampirism in the 19th century, but they were isolated, and we never saw any mass panic or large-scale “vampire hunt” as there used to be. The vampire was a manifestation of ancient and primal fears in a world filled with superstition, darkness and disease – in this new era of the miracles of technology and wonders of science, dominated by materialism and positivism, the vampire had no place in people’s hearts… The early 19th century still has magazines and newspaper talking from time to time of an Hungarian or Serbian remote village where coffins are opened in quest of vampires, but nobody is interested anymore, everybody focused on gas-lamps and railroads. Nobody dreams of the vampires, except maybe for the Romantics, who are repelled by this era of bourgeoisie and businessmen dominated by obsessive work, absolute religion and social hierarchy, and in the vampire find back this nostalgia of a distant, frightening, fascinating “magical past”…

And thus the vampire would move from a being of religion and science, of superstition and newspapers, to an entity of poems and novels – from Ossenfelder’s poem to Stoker’s Dracula…

[aikoiya]

DP HC - Hemovores Can't Stomach Ectoplasm

I feel like ectoplasm would just be uniquely toxic to hemovores & Pillar Men. Just uniquely so.

I don't think it'd have the same effect on them as, say, sunlight or Reiki or Hamon would. As in burning & purification.

More so, it'd be more like acid to them.

The reason being that while ectoplasm is technically "ghost blood," it isn't literal blood. Or, I suppose that another way to put it is that it's the blood of the dead whereas hemovores persist off the blood of the living.

Supernatural even says that one way of harming a vampire is with "dead man's blood." And you can't get much deader than a ghost, now can you?

That, plus the fact that ectoplasm is radioactive makes it even more dangerous to them.

Though, I feel like halfa blood would at least be consumable for hemovores, but still deadly. Like, instead of acting like acid, it'd act like poison.

I think only those like Vlad are able to sustain themselves off of ectoplasm & that's largely because I hc him as half-lugat, half-ghost rather than half-human, half-ghost like Danny.

As such, he requires a balanced diet of human food, living blood, & core-plasm. However, the blood from an actual corpse would still affect him negatively.

[fieldsofwax]

Why TVD is the most meaningful vampire story & Delena cures the curse of vampirism

I believe all of TVD's lore goes back to the fear off loss of loved ones- Elena has guilt that her primal/dark nature (vampiric) caused the loss of her loved ones (her parents died after picking her up from a rowdy house party), causing her to pursue vampirism (she says she liked how Stefan would 'never die,' like her parents did) which means eternal unchanging love. She fears all that has come with her vampirism because she fears abandonment. Damon felt his humanity caused the loss of his love Katherine (in trusting Stefan with her secret), and pushes away love & his humanity out of fear of abandonment. But, he eventually chooses to become human to be able to love Elena fully. they both sacrifice the promise of eternal and unchanging love despite their fears of loss. their love taught them to accept change as the truest form of love-and that the eternal and unchanging is a false kind of love. To love one another even as they both change, for all that they are, and change one another. Therein, their love imo broke the doppelganger/original vampire spell that started with Silas and Amara (its intention was to preserve their love forever) as the doppelgängers of them did not choose one another (Stefan & Elena) and they chose to love through acceptance of death and letting go of the desire to preserve it. I see them being endgame as symbolically curing vampirism, and this is also why I think their children will have the cure in their blood, carried on through them. This is such a deeper message than people realize, a spiritual take on love- it doesn't fetishize immortality but celebrates humanity (unlike twilight).

[reinekes-fox]

Thanks! x3

Also, prove that I am not making this shit up, its so awesome!

obsessed. also makes sense when you remember than butterflies drink blood

[wildnya]

nya: real questions from us

how do vampires wipe with those long ass nails without getting poop stuck under them or scratching themselves? or is that a common thing?

wild: do they only urinate? at least the ones who only drink blood

[danystargaryens]

WARDROBE ∞ APPRECIATION Katherine Pierce ♡ (1.13)

[daffydalcop]

Interview With The Vampire Relationship as Greek Mythology

Claudia and Madeleine as Orpheus and Erudice

Lestat and Nicholas as Apollo and Hyacinth

Louis and Armand as Odysseus and Calypso

Armand and Daniel as Eros and Pysche

Lestat and Armand as Theseus and Ariadne

[kayascodelorio]

ERIC BOGOSIAN as DANIEL MOLLOY INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 2.02―Do You Know What it Means to Be Loved by Death

[the-modern-typewriter]

could you write us more vampires !!!

also u the baddestt ❤️❤️❤️

"Your kind don't look so perfect in the sun," the human said. "It feels like shining a light through a counterfeit. Seeing all the flaws. I love it. Hi~"

The vampire stared at them, eyes wide and viciously frightened and simultaneously filled with a sort of bewildered wonder at the gentle warmth washing over them. It would have been adorable if they weren't a complete and utter monster, devoid of whatever humanity they'd once had. Poor mite. They were so new, weren't they?

"Gosh, really, though." The human leaned down, pressing a kiss to the vampire's forehead. "Just look at you," they murmured. "I could just eat you up, pumpkin. Who were you when you still had a beating heart?"

The vampire's skin was so cold that it almost felt blistering. Sharp. When they were a kid, they'd once made the stupid mistake of licking a metal lamppost in winter, because they'd heard it was so cold that your tongue could get stuck. It had seemed absurd. Impossible. They'd been so sure it couldn't be true. It had taken hours for them to finally be able to move away again.

Kissing a vampire always reminded them of those hours. No matter how many times they did it, they still half expected to end up with a frozen lips, unable to pull away, except with the vampire the scant hours by a lamppost would tick over for forever until all that was left was the dark.

Infernal, gorgeous creatures. How could they not be obsessed? Of course, the other hunters didn't approve, but then. Their track record spoke for itself.

The vampire was still staring when the human moved back. Of course they were.

It was an old myth that vampires burned in the sun, but an even older misconception. Exposing a vampire to the sun only got closer to revealing the truth of them; a dead thing in a box, guttingly vulnerable. They could not move, could not speak, could use none of their devastating array of night-time gifts. In the dark, the vampire was nigh unstoppable, uncageable, unbeatable, certainly too beautiful to deny.

But oh, in the daylight...

It was why every hunter who had been there since the start knew to find the vampire's lair before the moon began to rise. To follow the butterflies to an undead grave, or to whatever more modern alternative the creatures found in the many centuries of increasing refinement that followed. Same thing, though. A vampire in a guarded mansion, hunkered down behind thick walls of sun-blocking glass, was still just a pretty dead thing in a much bigger box. The human had found them all. Seen them all. This one had curled up in the first place that felt instinctively safe like a stray cat, hadn't they? They hadn't even thought to lock themselves in from the inside.

"I know, I know." the human said ruefully. "You thought you were safe. They all do. You were oh so careful! You only ate one of the locals and it was an accident, honest, you just woke up so hungry. You couldn't help it."

They picked the knife up from where they'd set it down and traced the tip along the deceptively soft line of the vampire's mouth.

The vampire's pupils turned to pinpricks of terror.

"Still," the human said, "one local is enough for them to call me around these parts. Bad luck for you, my friend, isn't it? If you'd got turned in a city, you might have had a chance! Sorry."

The vampire, predictably, said nothing. It was the only thing the human found themselves wishing for. To be able to talk with a vampire, not just at them, because certainly it would be foolish of them to risk getting near one at any other time.

The human sighed. They trailed the knife down, dug it into the vampire's neck, where the two distinctive fang marks rested.

"The lucky thing for you, is that I need to find your maker," they said. "Can't just kill you. Or maybe that's unlucky? I suppose that depends on you. As said, most people wouldn't make something like you round these parts. They know better. So how did we get here? I'm rambling. Anyway." They watched, idly, as blood trickled down the vampire's throat. "I know you can't tell me anything, killer, but you're going to try. Flick those pretty eyes up for me twice for yes. Down for no. Okay?"

The vampire was unblinkingly still for a moment, still staring at them, face involuntarily smooth. Then their eyes flicked up twice.

The human beamed. "Good! What a good leech. Now. About the last things you remember when you were still alive...do you remember meeting a tall, dark haired man, by any chance? Voice to die for. Body to kill for. Soul made for sin, etc. etc."

The vampire's eyes flicked up twice.

"Mm, thought so, thought so. Did they give you a name?" They tried a few of the aliases the vampire had used the last few times. No dice. "Okay, moving on..."

By the time evening came dangerously close, they had everything they needed. They plunged the blade into the vampire, regretfully, and rose. They cast a glance up at the sky, calculating the minutes and the seconds, before heading home to do some research.

They were back. The bastard was back.

Less than two days later, they got a call about another fledgling vampire that needed hunting. Could they help? The curious thing was that this one had a note in its pocket when it died.

Honey, I'm home.

You coming out to play tonight?

[aikoiya]

Yes, just yes.

I actually have thoughts that Vlad has strigoi ancestry, which would allow him to drain wealth like a vampire drains blood.

At the same time, I like the idea that he was revived as a half-lugat half-ghost. Meaning, he wasn't revived via medical intervention, rather he revived himself with the force of his own desires as lugats are brought back from the dead to pursue something they wanted in life.

Danny Phantom Randomness (Vlad Vs Dracula)

(Note: This is concept art from an cancelled Don Bluth animated film about Dracula we were robbed of which makes me sad. Just wanted to put that out there even though it’s slightly unrelated to the topic at hand.)

Ok, so I’m sure that collectively as a fandom we all know that Vlad was loosely based off Dracula, aka Vlad The Impaler. And according to the wiki page, “Plasmius is more vampiric than Masters, as this was the producer’s original intention, although it was rebuked by Nickelodeon, who considered it too “occult.” But again, no matter how much they tried to deny it Danny Phantom IS a show about ghosts, supernatural creatures, and various different popular characters from well-known urban myths and legends. Honestly, I wish there had been more of them besides Pandora and Wulf the werewolf…

Anyways, there’s plenty of fanfics out there that do go the extra mile to make Vlad a vampire who drinks ectoplasm and stuff like that but what if he was actually RELATED to the original vampire by the same name as him and that’s why his ghost form looks the way it does? What if vampires were real too just like ghosts since they technically fit into a similar category as half-ghosts because they’re the undead…?

I just think it would be funny to see Vlad meet Dracula, aka the source of his name-sake, only to be treated like a child by an immortal being that can’t be overshadowed and can pretty much do everything he can but better. Dracula has superhuman strength, teleportation, the power of flight, can possess people (even hypnotize which Vlad can’t do in the show at least since that would make it way too easy to take over Maddie and Danny’s minds), and regeneration to name a few that’s the same as a lot of ghosts. That said, Dracula has the usual weaknesses of any vampire like his powers are weaker during the day, holy water and silver burns him (think of these as Blood Blossom equivalents), and his “obsession” is an unquenchable thirst for blood.

I’d love for this Dracula to specifically be like the Dracula Untold version who was ruthless to ultimately save his family and his people. He loved his wife and son more than anything which would be nice to see as a tie in to Vlad’s feelings for Maddie and Danny. Of course, Dracula would have none of his poor-pitiful-me act and call Vlad a disgrace to their bloodline.

Dracula would encourage Vlad to find his one true love who will only have eyes for him from the bottom of her heart, not pine over someone who has chosen another since he has known a love that transcends death because every century or so Dracula searches for the reincarnation of his beloved. And if she has married another he’ll protect her from afar knowing that she does not always remember him when they meet  again and he basically has to prove his devotion all over again like a 50-First Dates sort of deal otherwise whenever she’s single.

As for Danny, it’d be a similar scolding. Dracula would point out how fighting a child is unbecoming of him, especially if he views this boy as a son. Therefore, Vlad should be helping him, not making his life harder because Danny has already faced more horrific battles than any 14 year old boy should.

“It’s not a child’s place to defend his country.” ~ Dracula Untold

Hopefully something Dracula said will resonate with Vlad because if not, its hard to say if they share the power of immortality too and the old vampire has better things to do with his free time. I dunno, I’m probably rambling but it was a fun idea in my head so I had to share it. Especially since I have drawn Vlad in a costume inspired by the classic vampire along with the Phantom of the Opera which I couldn’t stop thinking about when I discovered that little piece of Don Bluth history above about Dracula getting a redemption arc. And I’m a big fan of redemption arcs for our favorite fruitloop too!

[cheesy-cryptid]

tw // blood, body horror

“Honora…“

“Not now, Benito! We've just uncovered—-“

“No…look!”

🥀🐦‍⬛🧛🍂

Tropical gothic my beloved i am SO back 🩸 decided to make a fake book cover about filipino monster hunters solving mysteries together

[manichewitz]

i dont think yall understand how floored i was when i found out that the interview with the vampire books are actually incredibly erotically gay for real and not just light queercoding or fan's gay ships?? bc this changes everything. i had always assumed anne rice hated fanfic authors for making her male characters fuck, but no, she just wanted to be the only author making her male characters fuck

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[nerd-at-sea5]

do you think vampires have the same medical conditions for their entire lives?

like can you imagine a vampire chasing someone down and grabbing them to start sucking their blood and then the vampire pauses, bc they got really dizzy and is like ‘ah shit. i need my electrolyte packet. just. don’t go anywhere ok, i’m still gonna eat you. i just gotta sit down for a sec.’ and then they have to check their heart rate and everything before actually killing the guy.

[clarasghosts]

really hoping this story arc ends with guillermo realizing he loves the vampires more than he loves his job and the normal, human life it represents. sure, he'll never be a vampire, but that doesn't mean he has to go in the opposite direction and live a conventional life, either. why must it be one world or the other? he has a family and a home with them, one that's far kinder and more loving than what he's currently choosing in the human world (it should not escape our notice how cruel the human characters were this episode, how nadja was the one directly calling out the ethical problems, and how guillermo - trapped between the two - was conflicted and trying to stamp out his moral concerns). what he needs now is to find a way to forge a new life for himself, one where he can be with the people that he loves, while still maintaining his humanity.

[player-1]

Oh boy, I sure can't wait for Intervallo 7.5, where the bus goes on yet another wacky roadtrip while the gang goes to Hong Lu's home district and learn about his extremely complex family dynamic and the many many references to the original novel, it's multiple remakes, and/or the series adaptation.

The next Walpurgis is most likely the Safety Team with Netzach as the next Announcer; and the next LobCorp IDs might connect to Abnormalities of denial, blissful ignorance, or the constricting force of family (Queen of Hatred, Queen Bee, Void Dream).

Even if the Sinners adjust to the fact that one of their members is a Second Kindred Bloodfiend, everyone keeps eyeing Outis just in case she tries to kill Don mentally or physically. She's still salty about the "betrayal" of having a definite threat in their ranks and were possibly waiting to backstab them at any moment (...Did something happen with Eurylochus, Outis?).

And even if she's also adjusting to a modernish life without the fanatic belief in Fixers, Don Sancho Quixote the Second reads them the riot act on their multiple attempts to prove she's a "real vampire" and committing elder abuse: shining light in her eyes or putting her in direct sunlight, putting garlic in her food, Dead Butterfly's coffin and Hundred Sins cross mace in her face cause Christian symbol or possible vamp bed, chasing her with a water bottle or spray bottle, so much water, so much water...