Even undead immortals need to read theory, it seems smh
🧛♀️ 
Game is Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines btw. Great game if very early 2000s (in ways both good and very, very bad)
I mean, the faction is named the Anarch’s…
In the pen-and-paper rpg they were some horrific mish-mash of leftist anarchist and american libertarian borderline sovereign citizen ideology (yeah I don’t know how that works either, and the Anarch’s were kinda underdeveloped in the original source material), but recently they’ve been trying to retcon things to make them explicitly socialist because modern White Wolf is a bunch of ageing Nordic punks who grew up to become SocDems and they’ve realized that their target audience doesn’t want to play as the quasi-fascist Camarilla (or the even worse Sabbat) in this day and age so…
Lol I love that game but that part always irks me
It makes more sense when one considers that vampires are ontologically parasitic and aristocratic regardless of what they may have believed when they were alive, because of both their material interests being that they are super special treat lads whose treats are the literal lifeblood of others and the fact that they’re literally animated by a sort of demon that’s both demanding that they feed and kill and also subtly trying to twist them around to the point that they believe that’s what they want to do anyways.
So she’s basically a first world sucdem wanting equity and fair treatment for vampires at the expense of humanity.
That’s a good analysis. I’ve always taken it more of a metatextual way to be some lib writers misguided characterization of communism creeping in from their ideology, especially given…. Other things in the game, and that’s what’s always annoyed me about it personally.
least vampiric nordic succ be like:
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Lives without any sun
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Pale skin
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Imperious, high-and-mighty demeanor
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Ancestors sacked churches and wore the pelts of wolves as trophies
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Prefers solitary, quiet life
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feasts on the blood of the Global South
(Also, fun fact, Denmark is considered one of the happiest countries in the world while its old colony, Greenland has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. What a coincidence.)
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It makes more sense when one considers that vampires are ontologically parasitic and aristocratic regardless of what they may have believed when they were alive, because of both their material interests being that they are super special treat lads whose treats are the literal lifeblood of others and the fact that they’re literally animated by a sort of demon that’s both demanding that they feed and kill and also subtly trying to twist them around to the point that they believe that’s what they want to do anyways.
While that’s true, I think that’s part of the beauty of trying to play a high humanity character committed to helping both Kindred and Kine alike on any level. There’s an inherent futility in it, especially as both kindred society as a whole and the beast within will gnaw at your scruples as you try to survive, and it will only get worse by the century if not decade or even year. On a broader social level, if you thought human society was mercilessly resistant against attempts to revolutionize it, the Elder Vampires will go above and beyond to crush any rowdy upstarts. And at the end of the day, you’ll be a parasite at best, no matter how much you try to offset that.
But that doesn’t matter. You are still fundamentally the same person as before the day you began your unlife, just trapped in your own reanimated corpse. You won’t give into such excuses and will fight to the bitter end, even if its a fight you will most likely lose.
Or so my Bolshevik Brujah (a Latvian Red Rifleman who got turned in the civil war) tries to tell himself as he trudges through the bleak days, both for the kindred rabble and the human workers of the world.
Yeah, don’t get me wrong: “vampires are by a core conceit of the setting doomed to slowly lose themselves and become twisted mockeries of anything they once were” doesn’t mean they can’t be narratively interesting or hold out for a long time, it’s just the deck is stacked against them.
I always figured vampires would inherently move in socialist directions out of the pursuit of long-term sustainability and stability.
The whole “let’s sack the castle and stake the local undead since he’s the cause of all the malaise” trope seems like typical blame-the-other scapegoating you see in an economic crisis. Nobody’s suggesting it’s the guy who dammed and rerouted the local river to run his mill for commercial gain that’s causing your crops to wither, or the landowner demanding an ever larger cut of the harvest-- it’s clearly nosferatu magic.
I remember getting into an interesting conversation with a friend about True Blood in how any vampire/human who genuinely wants to make the world suitable for coexistence would recognize capitalism and class society as major obstacles to it. Especially when you factor in just how much having immortal consumers/producers who can accumulate a literal treasure hoard of wealth over their unlife would fuck with the current system.
Now if only True Blood actually put that level of thought into the world-building…
I’m going to the last place not corrupted by capitalism:
Damnit, here too?
Not surprised, tbh. White Wolf games are made for and primarily enjoyed by teen edgelords. It’s not the sort of place I’d go for a deep understanding of politics.
