• sunsofold@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    The trick is, it depends. All vampires are bound by obsessive compulsive behaviours, but the particular form that obsessive behaviour takes depends on a number of factors. The most prominent are age and culture of origin.

    More recently embraced American vampires tend to become absorbed in the minutiae of the contractual, legalistic formulation of things, so if they have an aversion to entering without permission, it is more based upon an obsession with the sanctity of individualized private property. This leads to the trait of rarely making a direct entry into a home for predatory purposes but rather a focus on convincing the victim it is in their best interest to give willingly their vital fluids and life force. Many victims of such vampires are not even fully aware of what they have had taken.

    Older vampires from a more European context take a more hierarchical approach to property. If your home is in their territory, you are their subject and, as such, no permission is needed to enter what is effectively their house, perhaps literally if they are your landlord.

    Other contexts, such as that of the Middle East of antiquity, produce vampires who hold sacred the unwritten yet iron clad laws of hospitality. They would never dream of entering unannounced, or taking more than a token sip from one who invites them willingly into their home, but equally would feel no compunction over slaughtering one who turned them away. To these, a welcome mat is an amusement, not an invitation, and only the most desperate leach would stoop to taking a whimsical decoration as written law.

    But then again, vampires are an imaginary metaphorical construct for describing the greedy people of a society, so really the answer is no.

    • moopet@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      So a neck tattoo that says, “My body is a temple. Vampires not welcome in the sanctity of this temple” would do the trick?