I’m sure you’ve read all the manuals before. You’ve read Machiavelli, A Book of Five Rings, The Art of War,. You’ve studied hard. More than that, you know you’re good. You can play with the best, and win. However, if you would rise to the heights of vampire politics, a word to the wise: real life vampire politics is special. It has its own rules. It is also far more vicious than anything you have probably ever encountered before. If you used to live action role play in the Camarilla, that was nothing compared to what you are about to get involved in…because players in role playing games usually do not take the evening’s entertainment home with them. Identity politics in the queer scene is likewise negligible, because queerness is for the most part an accepted variation, one that people in the civilized world acknowledge as real even when they do not accept it morally. Identity politics among a people who are often dismissed as unreal and deluded by the masses - ah, this is a ground ripe for vice. The ground has yet to be defined. The sands are always shifting. Therefore, an opportunist can do well, though the risks are great.
Here are some tips I have devised for the person who would enjoy a healthy public life among vampires in the scene. It is based upon my observations, as well as upon mistakes that I have made.
First: determine which faction is the strongest, and side with it. Vampire identity politics is full of factions. Again, this is due to the unfixed nature of the scene - until the vampire lifestyle is socially acceptable, it will not be completely codified or mainstreamed, so new factions can rise and fall overnight. Some will be stronger than others. Never pick the losing faction. People might sympathize with a lost cause, but they will not follow it.
*
Second: determine who is a truly powerful leader, and who will not survive. This rule of thumb is related to the former point. Nobody starts out as a leader and survives. Leaders rise out of pre-existing factions. They make friends with the right people and get their support; then and only then do they get enough renown to claim status. A strong leader is a vampire among vampires, feeding from the fame and glory of his or her superiors, cannibalizing it or using it to advantage, rising through the ranks until power is achieved. Leaders who pop up overnight will disappear overnight. They are not worthy of respect. They are targets.
*
Third: It is vitally important that you be a skilled diplomat. Be very careful, at first, not to insult anybody - you don’t know for certain whether the person you insult will be one of the winners or one of the losers on this playing field, and insulting a winner can have terrible repercussions later. In fact, it is best that you flatter and praise while you sit back and observe the scene. This will not only buy you time, it may also ingratiate yourself with powerful people, whose power you can take later. You must be the perfect courtier: polite, well read, adroit, sympathetic, amusing, poised, attractive, flirtatious, gregarious, trustworthy, open, intelligent, helpful, above moral decay. Let no one see how hard you work to preserve your facade; it must seem natural. You must be the ultimate method actor, believing with all your heart and soul in the part you play. Later, when it is time to make your move, your base will be strong enough that no one will believe ill of you unless you commit a gaffe so terrible that only an idiot would be caught doing it - and you are not an idiot, or so you hope.
*
Fourth: Get followers. You cannot be a leader if you do not have followers. Your courtly diplomacy will gain you friends and renown, and this will help. Other ways to attract followers - and you will need to use at least one of them, if not more - include being a religious leader or guru, being a leader in the fetish community, throwing community events, owning a night club, becoming a well known published writer, getting interviewed by the right vampirologists, owning a successful underground zine, owning a successful website (i.e. one that generates thousands of hits per month), owning a list, and providing products and services to lifestylers.
Becoming a religious leader is one of the fastest tracks to getting many followers in the vampire scene, and thus, power. It is a human tendency to seek something transcendent; it is also a human tendency to be selfish and to want to be better than anyone else. A good religious leader can pander to both of these weaknesses simultaneously by delivering a message that says, “You are a stronger and better than those around you, and by following this path, you will eventually be a god.” Since many people would rather follow than lead, while still giving lip service to individuality, they find following a religious leader who preaches an iconoclastic message to provide the best of all possible worlds. Be sure your message is eclectic, taking the most attractive and yet easy to follow doctrines from other world religions. Egyptian, Hindu, Taoist, Wiccan, Satanic, Druid, and yes, even Roman Catholic doctrines are the best sources of inspiration. Vampires like Egyptian stuff because of Anne Rice, the religions of the Far East are excellent for delivering mysticism which you can warp, the modern occult movement is of profound interest to most vampires, and the church has excellent structures which have integrated themselves into the unconscious minds of most Westerners…and many people in the vampire community are in rebellion against their Christian roots, which means they have not fully resolved the conflict and outgrown their faiths, so aping the forms while changing the message will provide a comforting orthopraxy.If your message is attractive enough, and you have enough charisma, you will get many followers, often young or desperate. Do not abuse your followers, but exploit them when you can. Their belief and trust is something you can feed on in more ways than one.
It is not essential to be kinky, but it certainly helps. More than half of the people in the vampire community are into BDSM. A large number of leaders are dominants, although some are prominent submissives. The vampire image is linked to dominance and submission in pop culture. Vampirism is to many an erotic fetish. This too should be exploited. it helps if you are beautiful, but this is not necessary - one advantage to being kinky is that your fetish value will provide you with its own attractive allure.
Holding community events can be profoundly expensive, but it can make you famous. Make sure the events are of the right sort. They must appeal to the members of the vampire community without attracting too many punters. I recommend holding fetish conventions, costume balls, live action role playing venues (which, while not geared to the lifestyle community, nevertheless provide a huge base of recruitment, and also give you a mundane facade - “Oh, I’m just a harmless role player, this is just a game, really”) and goth conventions with concerts. Fan conventions are dodgy - the vampire fan is often not remotely interested in real life vampirism, and is often too individualistic and crotchety to follow anyone. A final caveat: if your event bombs, so will you. Make sure you have the resources to throw a successful event. Not all resources are financial.
Owning a night club can likewise be expensive - taxes are vicious, and the overhead cost is staggering - but members of the underground community need venues in which to meet each other, and there are not enough venues. Normal people can walk down to the corner bar or pub or Starbucks or any number of places. This is not true for vampires. If you can afford it, and if you know of a good site for your nightclub, consider setting something up.
Writing is very hard to do successfully, but if you do make it big, you will gain many fans. There are people who are actually convinced that Anne Rice is a vampire. There are people who are convinced that her biographer, Katherine Ramsland, is a vampire, because she is close to Anne Rice (and because she interviewed vampires). I suggest writing as a hobby, while concentrating on other methods of gaining followers. If you are any good at it you will attract a small circle, and that’s better than nothing at all.
It is very important to be interviewed by vampirologists and mentioned in books about vampires. If you get profiled via such methods, you are assured of being sent fan mail from lonely vampires who feel they have no one else to talk to, but they saw your name and wondered if there might be other people out there like them. These are, of course, potential followers. Furthermore, the support of well known vampirologists (such as Martin Riccardo) will give you an aura of respectability.
Owning a magazine is another way to connect to the underground, but the magazine must be good, and it must be successful. Zines spring up overnight and dissolve just as quickly. They’re like mushrooms in a forest. Compared to owning a night club or throwing fetish balls, owning a zine is cheap, but it still involves money, and most never make a profit. The market is also glutted. Be careful.
The internet is a haven for the weird - and setting up a list or a website is free. This is good news for the person who has the time to invest in cultivating lots of hits to a website and/or lots of followers to an e-list. Again, the lists are so common as to be like mushrooms in a forest, so you will need to work hard at getting lots of subscribers. Once you have over two hundred subscribers, the list will for the most part run itself, provide even a tenth of your subscribers are semi-active. To be really famous you need to have at least three hundred subscribers on your list (unless you have other claims to fame), and the list needs to have a good reputation. The website is very important, too, because websites generate interest in lists, and vice versa. The vampire community has its own section of the world wide web, and the strands are linked - but some strands are on the outside and some are near the center, where they will catch more flies, if you see what I mean. Be sure you have absolutely stunning graphics which say, “I am a professional designer, not some hack who got a free site.” Have a dedicated address and host name, for heaven’s sake - even if you use a free server, don’t let people know this. (If you generate enough web hits, you’ll need your own ISP and server anyway) Provide the sort of information that people want to read. Make it just dark enough to say, “I am a vampire.” Add some mystical bells and whistles for the seekers of ultimate truth, add some eroticism for the fetishist. Link to the right people. Publicize well.
Finally, providing fangs, costumes, tarot cards, jewelry, etc can be quite lucrative, and if you are very good you can acquire a good reputation this way, but there are many vendors out there. If you choose to be a vendor, I suggest you start off with a powerful patron who can hawk your wares for you. Be sure, of course, that your patron is on winning team. Remember: the loser is hopelessly tarred, and so are his followers unless they recant at just the right moment.
*
Fifth: image is everything. It is important that you be appropriately Gothic, but not so Gothic that you turn off the vampires who have been disenfranchised from the Gothic scene. What is most important is that you appear strong. Never, ever show weakness. Remember that you are swimming in an ocean, and there are always bigger fish than you. They are just as hungry as you are. Sometimes protective camouflage is enough to scare them off. Weakness only attracts those who would feed on you. If you are hurt emotionally, never show it. If your reputation is damaged, act as though you have nothing to hide. If you are outraged, choose your battles wisely. If you don’t know who in the scene is important and who is on the way out, keep silent until you get a clue. Never show hurt, anxiety, or flaws. Never. Ever.
*
Sixth: corollary to appearing strong is using the vampire image to your advantage. Most people want their vampires to resemble legend, at least a little. Preferably a pleasant legend rather than one of the yucky ones (even though the yucky ones are probably closer to the truth, on a metaphorical level). Read your Anne Rice, your Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, your Laurell K. Hamilton. Watch Forever Knight, Dark Shadows, and contemporary vampire movies. Familiarize yourself with White Wolf. Remember: the talented make fond reference, geniuses steal and get away with it. You can’t make open, literal claims to supernatural status or undeath or immortality, because those are too easy to criticize, but you can make plenty of subtle veiled references. Hinting that you have a connection to famous “vampires” in history (Dracula, the Comte de St Germain, Elizabeth Bathory, Lord Byron, the Marquis de Sade) is one possibility. So is hinting that you *might* be a fairy, a succubus or incubus, an angel (fallen or otherwise; remember, vampires are “dark angels,” and now that mainstream religion in the West has been shot to hell, people are obsessed with angels as a replacement for God) or an alien, or possessed by the spirit of any of the above. If you are really creative, try to combine more than one element. Don’t ever get caught making open claims that can be easily disproven. Master the subtle veiled reference, innuendo, and image.
Be more than what you are. Be it with all the power of your imagination, so that you eventually believe that you really are what you claim to be. Nobody wants to follow somebody who is ordinary. Throughout history, the nobility has been accorded some sort of divine status, and this is because people want to have gods living among them. They want to believe. Their hunger for a divine contact might drain you, but their belief will feed you three times what is drained from you. It’s a wise investment, so long as you never fall from the pedestal you create for yourself.
*
Seventh: you must have some connection to both psi feeding and blood drinking. Few people truly believe, deep down inside on the visceral unconscious level, that vampires have nothing to do with blood. Blood is unsafe, due to disease, but it does prove that you are a real vampire who actually needs the stuff to stay healthy and preserve the “mystical powers.” If you do not openly drink blood, do make reference to it somehow. Treat “pranic energy” as if it really were blood; describe it in bloody terms. Or identify yourself with a bloodthirsty god or goddess: the Morrigan, Kali, Shiva, Baal, Set, an Aztec god if you want to get ethnic. Or say that you don’t necessarily drink blood while awake, but you go wandering astrally and wake up with blood on your lips; or people around you tend to get frequent nosebleeds; or you can draw blood out of people with your fingers, similar to the “psychic surgeons” of Mexico and the Philippines…Be creative. Likewise, while everybody knows that real vampires don’t have fangs, fangs have so permeated pop culture that this really ought to be exploited somehow. Get some fake fangs and wear them; or talk about having astral fangs. (If you have sensitive followers, they may actually see these manifest. Never underestimate the power of willing suspension of disbelief. If you can make your eyes glow or show other signs of an “inner Beast,” so much the better.)
*
Eighth: You are never wrong. Being wrong is a weakness. So be careful to make promises that fulfill themselves, if you make promises; make predictions that are based on foregone conclusions; never let yourself be caught doing wrong, because this will cast shadow on your image and you must be above all criticism from meaningful parties (the criticism of has-been’s and parvenus and other wanna-be’s, on the other hand, is irrelevant, and may actually enhance your image, so don’t worry about that).
Speak with authority. A little arrogance can sometimes be an asset, but don’t overdo it - too much will alienate too many people.
*
Ninth: for the most part, Christianity is a flaw. There are far too many people in the vampire community who have suffered at the hands of fundamentalists or who associate the faith of their parents with the pangs of growing up for Christianity to seem reasonable. Very occasionally, a Christian vampire will gain respect, but more often, a Christian vampire will attract pity and scorn and attack. Besides, Christianity is to most members of the occult community boring, and lacking in magic, and most members of the vampire community are into the occult. If you have a religion, it needs to be something obviously magical. Meanwhile, poking fun at fundies and railing about the excesses of the church is always safe. Point out the hypocrisies of Christians whenever you can, while letting the hypocrisies of members of acceptable religions slide.
*
Tenth: splinter factions never win. If there is a schism, side with the original group. Denounce the leader of the faction that has broken off; you don’t want to be seen giving support to the losing side. A schism is always a sign of weakness from within. See it as a way of cutting off dead wood. What actually gets cut off is a group of malcontents, most of whom are lacking in clout, because a person who has what she or he wants has a full belly and is content. The vampire with the lean and hungry look is the vampire who cannot feed. Schism leaders are by nature and definition hungry. Do not take sides with them, do not lend them your support, and do not become one, because to become one is public death. Even if in your heart you want to support the splinter faction, don’t. The phrase, “May the best man win,” is wrongheaded and naive. Strength requires a certain amount of ruthlessness. You might be tempted to pander to these malcontents, because they make easy followers to mislead, and certainly if you can get them to your side and seduce them back to the mainstream, it’s a feather in your cap, but ultimately such followers will be a liability to you because if they continue to be malcontent grumblers, people will see you as a malcontent, and nobody who is worth anything in the scene will want to have anything to do with you. to remain significant, you must control the mainstream, not the minority, within the vampire community.
*
Never trust anyone. Do not even trust the people you think you can control, because accidents and surprises always happen. Be on your guard. Even though not many people in the scene want to be leaders, most consider themselves to have personal loyalty to someone, and they will happily betray you if the person they believe in more than you will benefit from it. Friendship is likewise evanescent and temporary. For all the talk of “kindred,” “soul bonds,” etc, these so-called vampiric family ties and past life remembrances and shared affections burn away like grass in a wildfire when the politics goes the wrong way and one party or the other decides to get selfish.
To conclude: in the vampire scene, a wise leader is not just a prince, but a courtier, a magician, a vizier, and a superstar. There may be leaders who differ from this pattern, who are honest and loyal and who think with their hearts as well as their heads. They may even gain some popularity. However, they will either be cut down, or will be used by other leaders who know their incredible worth. If you would rise to the top, it is best to remember that you are truly a predator as well as a parasite.