Imagine living for centuries and still not having any money saved up.

That absolutely would be me as a vampire.

I'm an amateur writer. One of the worldbuilding things I wanted to explore for my fantasy/steampunk word was the fact that the life of vampires who originate from commoner class must really suck, pun very much intended. You'd end up as a "high functioning" undead who gets even the few rights you previously had stripped from you. Fertile ground for social commentary.

So in this setting there's an autonomous vampire state that's essentially communist. In other nations, vampires are, if not persecuted outright, at least constantly struggling for recognition, and are exploited as night shift workers in the emerging industry.

I wish I could find the urban fantasy story that inspired me to explore this. It was also based on the "hey, not all vampires live glorious lifestyles" premise. I think this was in some Humble Bundle.

I'm in the middle of reading Dracula for the first time right now and while the count part makes it seem normal for Dracula to be living in the castle, the castle is absolutely a vampire stronghold that has been in the dracula family for centuries because they are vampires.

Like I'm sure the count thing is a good excuse but it's implied that they've been around and probably in the castle since before "counts" were a thing.

So I don't get a castle? I thought it'd be my chance to get on the property ladder now I'm all Nosferatu living in a sewer eating rats like all the other millennials.

Vampires don't live in castles either

If I had a nickle for every time I offended a vampire in the workplace...

On the other hand, if you're immortal and you can't manage to build a fair bit of wealth, what are you even doing with your time?

Before John Polidori—Lord Byron's doctor—wrote The Vampyre (incidentally, it began at the same retreat where Mary Shelly conceived of Frankenstein), the idea of vampires as nobles who can pass among humans basically didn't exist. They were more akin to zombies or werewolves, prior to that. Polidori's Lord Ruthven was a British nobleman based in no small part on Lord Byron. Then a few decades later you get Carmilla, another upper class vampire, this time female. And then just a couple of decades after that, on the cusp of the 20th century, Bram Stoker writes Dracula, the first time we get a vampire who is not just noble but royal, and we get the full furnishings we associate with vampires today. The foreign accent, the castle, the wine (though interestingly, the wine Dracula serves is actually a white wine, not the blood-red we usually think of).

Also fun note: this Saturday marks the start date of Dracula. Over in [email protected] I'm planning a read-through in real-time, if anyone wants to join me.

Everyone knows that vampires live in a detached single family home on Staten Island.