Hi,
My name's Jen. I live in Sydney in Australia. I'm 20, and a uni student. I suppose i ought to clarify that I'm human, as is the custom here. :)
I'm thinking of writing an essay for uni about vampires (sounds ridiculous hehe), specifically in terms of vampire media and vampirism (real or fake) as a cultural form/practice. So if anyone here knows of any articles or anything please email me about them. jeva02@yahoo.com.au
Anyway, I've been lurking around this forum for a couple of weeks, just kinda taking in a lot of opinions about vampirism, the depths (or shallows) of its reality, the myth, the views from modern fiction. I find it all fascinating. In my mind I wonder why ppl in general, in the way of a natural curiosity, love to discuss vampires. I find in interesting from a psychological perspective (i'm a psych major, i can't help wondering this stuff) why people seek to become vampires (of the sort read about in Anne Rice).
This has all become a bit more complicated since I read about people who say they are a kind of real vampire that i had never heard of. That is, those who are basically human, but drink blood as well. I also read about those who feed off others' energy (sorry can't remember the specific term).
So this has really made it interesting. It's hard to know what to believe, especially since there are probably many people out there who fit the description of these real vampires, but who actually have explainable psychological or physical illnesses, or maybe the medical and psychological explanations are only a part of the whole which is vampirism. Don't bite me, real vampires, but maybe thereshould be a real psychological disorder in which people want to/or believe that they are vampires? That's not to say real ones don't exist, but it would explain a lot of people who truly believe they are immortal vampires- I'm just hypothesising! I'm not going to deny the existence of real vampires because i don't think science and medicine can explain everything.
Anyway arguing over what's a real vampire or not shouldn't be the point, as seems to be the case on this forum, often. I came here to discuss the possibilities, and was glad to read that that is partly what this forum is for.
;)