Hello, my inexplicably faithful readers. It would seem it actually has been some time now since my previous post, so I can make good on my ever-present desire to apologize. Or I would, if that were something worth apologizing for. I have been busy with a great many things of late, and as I have tested and examined my condition more thoroughly, I have only uncovered the scope of the daunting task which remains. To share more than I have thus far without further study, replication, and review would be professionally irresponsible to say the least, and I would like to still consider myself capable of professionalism.

To wit, I have been drafting this post for some time, but I am only rendering and releasing it now in search of a rigor that is desperately needed at present. Basically, I need to ground both myself and my research in what is real and observable. My unusual aging already had a way of distorting the world around me, and the downright alien concerns of a vampiric existence have only exacerbated this— As such, I've found the trap of aimless and unstructured testing to be haunting my every attempt at actually doing my job.

I'd like to cease with the random dubiously religious rituals and the haphazard collection of data from those who happen to chance upon my orbit, and instead focus on preparing proper studies. This is something you all may be able to help with— My sample size for vampires is unlikely to expand beyond myself and my begetter for the time being, but I am speaking to a remarkably substantial quantity of humans right now.

The department head has graciously proposed a few study concepts which may be workable under these conditions. These include:

• Confirming or denying the existence of a universal ‘home’ factor which interfaces with vampirism
• Preliminary regression analysis of blood flavor profile vs. personality traits, blood type, enthraller, and metabolic state
• Effects of enthrallment on neurological activity, particularly with respect to the limbic system
• Testing the efficacy of various vampire defense measures, such as gaze warding and charisma unawareness techniques

Please contact me via electronic mail if you are located in the San Francisco Bay Area and have interest in participating, especially if you will be moving soon, if you are neurodivergent, or if you are presently enthralled¹. Note as well that no further research is being performed on the source of vocal charisma at this time, and that any enthrallment will be carefully limited, as I must not be so pathetically weak as to shove whoever enters my vicinity directly into my mouth.

If any of you agree to this, I can assure you that you will be treated with the utmost care and consideration. My own academic career started under study, due to my unusual aging, so I refuse to allow myself to show anything less than the cordiality and respect that was once offered to me. Something so formative as that can never be negotiable, no matter how simply it could be betrayed. I am in great need of such things.

…

I feel my professional tone is failing to express the weight upon my heart at the moment. The strain with which my cold hands pluck at this lap-top computer from the floor. The memory of those same hands splintered with plastic shards after I carelessly destroyed yet another tape recorder earlier tonight, only for those shards to be forced out in suffocating painlessness. The many, many things which I do not speak of here, which I dance around, due to any number of sensible reasons that I can't know whether to trust.

I fear I’ve overstated the simplicity of this path. I spent so much of my youth compartmentalizing and introspecting and carving my way out of the mental prison I was left in, only to require such a great and delicate effort to do the same for others after I take them. I spent so much of my adulthood dissecting and analyzing this from an academic perspective, only to struggle to apply the method consistently. I spent so much of the time inbetween learning to leverage, appreciate, and control the desires left for me by past traumas, only to assault literally the first human I smelled after being turned.

I don’t think I ever mentioned that, did I? I’m sure I had some reasonable excuse. Or perhaps I didn’t. I've made my amends with the victim, I'd like to say, and I've tasted her blood consensually now, I'd like to say, but will it even matter in the long stretch of time? Does it even matter to any of you?

Well, I suppose while we're here I may as well be straightforward about the rest for once. List of examples… The extensive use I've made of those I too-intuitively think of as ‘my begetter's thralls’, and the deplorable sense of entitlement I feel towards their bodies and their blood. My desperate whining that got me banned from a BDSM club when I proved myself incapable of fairly charming anyone my actions had not already hurt. My pervasive habit of expecting those around me to tolerate repeated ‘mistakes’ in which I casually threaten their autonomy and their lives, and of surrounding myself only with those who will for one reason or another. Even now, I do not know how accurately, if at all, I frame these things.

I set out originally to prove that this path is possible, that one can live as a vampire without becoming a monster, but I must take this time to impress upon you that that conviction is not a recommendation. Even in the world I hope for, the world of harmony between species, I expect most vampires would need the immovable yoke of the begetter for a time as they learn to control this horribly corrupting power, just as I must rely on immovable principle to fill a similar role in a world nearly bereft of trustworthy begetters. This is nothing to be taken lightly, though I couldn't blame you all for thinking otherwise given my phony disposition.

As I write this, I sit terrified, having just learned firsthand the potency of rejection and the conditionality of any given coping mechanism I can offer or internalize. It's all well and good to tell myself that I can ‘get her later’ right up until the point when I can't and my recklessness is rewarded with unfathomable backlash from the soul I'd thought under my control. To be lonely is to be terrified, and to be terrified is to be frustrated, and to be frustrated is to be hungry. Hungry, desperate, and in possession of a veritable abuser's utility belt which begs to be used and insists relentlessly that the human for whom you purportedly care is begging as well. If that thought does not appeal, and it shouldn't, then please, do not yet follow in my footsteps.

Even still, I hide myself behind excuses. So much meandering, so much flowery language, as if my own weakness is not the common factor behind every time I have ‘lost control’ and hungrily tackled a fellow person to the ground. I have failed to apply sufficient rigor, and that is the end of it.

Apologies for the extended ‘trauma-dump’. I do not wish to garner pity, nor will I accept it. I simply hope that with this post I can make the non-literal stakes of my decision clearer. To be sure, this path has done much to help me understand vampirism, almost as much as it has intensified my disdain. So the first mission is accomplished, I suppose. It had better be worth the cost.

Anyway, that's all. 'E-mail' me if you still possess any desire to help with the research. Otherwise, you'll hear from me when you hear from me.

1. Your enthraller may make an appearance too, if they insist, but they will have myself and only myself to interact with.

Comments

cakegirl
aw im sorry ur feelin bad 🙁 im sure youll be ok tho! also lmk if u need any help hehe

DEUS_VULT_420
tHE DAEOMN hath REVAELD Thine FACE!!! Your time APPROACHES, the Unveiling, the Revolation of SPIRIT PURG;ES OF THE VOID OF soul!!!!!!!

Octopussy46
Dude bro buddy could you drop this bit for like five seconds

DEUS_VULT_420
hte BIT is no such thing… it is a matter of LIFT and DEATTH

ThisThrallObeys
I think DV420 is too delusional, sadly… it took a lot to get through to me back in the day, too!

ch
So it sounds like you’re kinda going through it hard right now, but idk, I feel like you’re getting a little dramatic? I dunno, I’ve seen way worse. You’ve probably seen way worse. Does the shame actually help keep a handle on anything in the end?

📝Dr. Luma
I appreciate the concern. Nothing truly helps. It’s all a bunch of hedged bets and hopes as the core of one’s personality plays traitor. Consider that anything you’ve seen was borne at one point or another from some reasonable excuse. This shame is obviously not ideal, but I struggle to find an alternative.

ch
I think I get you. Just… don’t bite off more than you can chew, I guess. Or drink, or whatever.

SmallManForYou
Something obvious you’re Forgetting, stoica

CrinchoJinjo
Wow. WOW. You have such a way with words, and I can’t imagine how hard it must be to be like you. If only everyone was so determined, right? Maybe if we all just IGNORED all the weird little SEX FREAKS in the world then everything would finally start to heal!

seeker_of_knowledge
Just when I thought you couldn’t get any more gormless. We get it, you’re ashamed and you’re sorry and you’re throwing a big bloody pity party. I’m not sure who’s more pathetic, you for posting this or your followers for listening.

Circled Faerie
You waste the gift of your fury on this one, stranger. True beauty will only touch your soul once you learn to concede such foci 😌

goobleplex
dude u are such a H8r

Dr. Linda Ashford
I hope you are well, Luma.

NessNinten
It was an intense and fun read as ever! You have such weird prose, haha

BloodyMary
U know it’ll stop being so hard if u stop torturing yourself right?

📝Dr. Luma
That’s precisely what scares me.