All things fictional vampire: vampire books, tv, movies, original fiction or art, fanfic or fanart, recs, reviews, chat
Vampires and Generational Stasis
I think that, if one is made a vampire at a relatively young age - they are gonna, at some point or another, experience generational stasis. It's probably a bit less noticeable with vampires who are turned as adults rather than vampires who are turned as children, but it would likely still come into effect. At some point, they're gonna feel as if they can no longer quite relate either to mortals who are the same physical age as them or to mortals who are the same chronological age as them.
What are your thoughts on this?




I feel like it wouldn't be that long before an immortal can't relate to mortals of their chronological age, no matter how old they appear. Your issues and concerns as a mortal of 60, 50, even 40 are going to be really different from the concerns of immortals who have been around the same number of years.
And I think the bigger issue is how mortals react to the vampire's apparent age, not anything inherent to the vampire. Thinking about Hellsing here: Seras Victoria was turned when she was 19, but IMO 40-year-old humans who were born in the same year would have an easy time treating her as a peer. She'll have the confidence and self-possession of an adult, plus she'll make all the right cultural references.
In contrast, Helena from the same series was turned when she was closer to 10. Mortal 40-year-olds wouldn't be able to think of her like a peer with a really good moisturizing routine, no matter how mature she was. She might still feel able to relate to them; they would just be too creeped out to return it properly.
Good points. And, of course, let's not even get into the squickier aspects of it. I think being sexually attracted to anyone who even looks like a minor, no matter what their actual age is, is very creepy. That doesn't apply to just immortals, either. Some actual humans who are above eighteen (or whatever the age-of-consent is in your area) can still look like minors. At the same time, it's also creepy for for anyone who is chronologically above the AoC to do the nasty with those underage - no matter what their apparent age.
In general, though, I think being turned as an adult versus being turned as a child can make a huge difference.
I hadn't even thought about the sexual aspect -- I prefer vampires where they experience bloodlust as a replacement for sexual desire, not an add-on.
Hopefully, even in a universe where turned-as-adults vampires still have human-like sex drives, a turned-as-a-child vampire would get to keep a child's disinterest in sex.
But, listen...IRL adults shouldn't be excluded from having full and fulfilling sex lives because of how they look. Ages of consent are a useful guideline, but there isn't a switch that gets flipped on your 18th birthday that makes you no longer look like a 17-year-old minor. And a baby-faced 25-year-old is still a 25-year-old, with all the sexual agency that implies.
Same thing would apply to fictional 250-year-olds.
If you're in a universe with full-fledged vampire societies, they would probably have a whole set of social conventions to deal with this. I mean, at some point nobody looks their age, and that has repercussions that go way beyond who thinks who's hot.
If a turned-at-60 vampire and a turned-at-20 vampire walk into a room, you can't just assume based on their faces that the first one has seniority. So what kind of cultural cues would they use instead? You know the 800-year-old turned-at-20 vampires would come up with ways to signal their superiority, both over the 20-year-old turned-at-20 crowd and the 200-year-old turned-at-60 crowd.
Those are some good questions. I have two vampire universes, actually. The main one resembles much like our world, and 99% of mundane mortals are unaware of the existence of vampires and such.
The other one is a lunarpunk (solarpunk+gothic [fantasy]) society - and, at some point after 1960, the general public is made aware of the existence of vampires. Because one of the major ethos of solarpunk is "embracing diversity" - lunarpunk would take it one step further, and entire communities would be built accommodating to the needs of vampires and such. Communities with vampire-majority populations would be filled with plentiful tall trees. And, yeah, it would force the mundane mortal population to rethink social mores and such.
Even in the real world people who go just on looks sometimes get kicked in the behind for making assumptions - I bet that x100 when dealing with immortals :) A lot of fiction I've read tends to get over it by having vampire have a sense of each other and being able to tell that way. It would be really interesting to see an exploration of a different system though.
Thank you for the explanation of lunarpunk :). I think one of the strengths of the vampire genre is how well it works in so many different kinds of settings.
Those are some very good points. When you deal with ageless immortals (or long-lived people) it does magnify some of the age issues we deal with in real life up to 100x. If this is a setting where everyone knows about the existence of vampires, then mortals would be forced to rethink some of their mores and such.
On a side note, I can vampires can still be religious - but that they might be forced to rethink some of their views on the afterlife.