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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Squizzle" data-source="post: 4533644" data-attributes="member: 76486">Of course, my preference is setting- and context-dependent, but in terms of my platonic ideal of vampires? I like the alien, inconceivable monster.The human brain dedicates a tremendous amount of real estate to community interaction: facial recognition, group bonding dynamics, emotional awarenesses, etc. That's because we are fundamentally Pleistocene-era pack hunters, physiologically, and have all of the baggage that entails. We love forming communities, to locate food, to acquire and defend territory, to create mating opportunities, and so forth; groups underlie everything that we do, in a very real way, as humans.Vampires are different. Vampires can only exist where there are people to be "turned" to vampirism, so by default, they exist in a prey-rich environment, feeding on something that has no particular special defenses against them; they're eminently able (and arguably better off) hunting solo than in groups. If they do appear in groups, the pack dynamic will be informed by their own special internal relationships of dominance and external relationships with the prey population, which are entirely different from our relationship with a herd of fast-moving gazelle on the savannah.Vampires can only reproduce through predation: the act of hunting is also the mode of furtherance, for them. Any vampire will have had as a (literally) formative experience as a vampire the state of being prey to another. Lists of what makes a good dinner and what makes a good candidate for the generation of offspring for vampires would share many, many traits. Vampires are apt to put everything, everything, everything into the context of predator/prey relationships. Their cognition is so fundamentally alien as to be innately off-putting and practically inaccessible. They are insectile, ravenous predators at all times. They do not think like we do, and even if they behave superficially like we do at times, it's as a hunting strategy. They are alien hunger.I also prefer that they be ambulatory corpses, not basically living but somehow unkillable. If they have a heartbeat or can get erections casually, they're not my favorite sort of vampire.</blockquote>

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