If you're a broke vampire, just say that

Imagine living for centuries and still not having any money saved up.
That absolutely would be me as a vampire.
- Bob, I’ve been asking for a raise for 175 years now, this is not cool.
- I would be the reason the abandoned looking house in town is believed to be haunted. I would sustain myself on curious children and authority figures searching for said children.

If I had a nickle for every time I offended a vampire in the workplace...
- At least they're happy to give up the desk by the window.
- One nickel ... Two nickel ....
  
  Ah hah hah
- You would have two nickel. Which isn't a lot, but since vampire doesn't exists so i want my nickel back
  
  I'm offended that this is how you remind me
- I wouldn't worry. Colin Robinson seems to have a pretty thick skin.
  
  You know, a lot of people say that about me, but if anything I have very thin skin. Other vampires say that I have thick skin because I can go out in daylight and so it's okay for them to joke about me because my skin is so thick, but my skin isn't thick at all. You can't just put a vampire in a thick suit of skin and the sun won't burn him, that's not how skin works I don't think. I think light goes through skin, that's why we can still see some light when we close our eyes. Have you ever done that? Have you ever closed your eyes, but you could still kind of see light through your eye lids? I like to do it sometimes. I close my eyes and pretend the lightbulb in my room is the sun shining on all of us. Me and all of my vampire friends. So warm. Do you want to try that? Do you want to close your eyes with me? I can see the light right through my eyelids, so that must mean that the skin on my eyelids is actually pretty thin, right? Can you see how thin my eyelids are?

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?
- "You had a balance of 93 cents. At an average of 2 1/4% interest over a period of 1,000 years, that comes to...$4.3 billion."
  
  Even Fry could manage this shit backwards….
  Kinda like if trump just shut his mouth and sat in his dad’s wealth he’d be rich yet here we are…
- They just ned to sell their crypto.

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 !vampires@lemmy.zip I'm planning a read-through in real-time, if anyone wants to join me.
- There’s also “Dracula Daily” which starts at the same time and is a great way to micro-dose the novel.
  https://draculadaily.com/
  
  That's what inspired me!
  I decided to do that, and then when someone started the vampires community I thought…why not see if anyone wants to chat about it with me.
- A count is just a title, nothing to do with royal blood. Anyone nobleman could be made a count, earl, baron, duke, etc. Right?
  
  Yeh that's right. But if we go off the idea that Dracula is meant to be Vlad III (which, I'll admit, is actually something Stoker tacked on right before publication), well…he was royal.

Everyone knows that vampires live in a detached single family home on Staten Island.
- Buying that castle is probably cheaper than heating it
  
  Sorry to burst some peoples dreams.
  The castle in the photo needs restoration, which is hugely expensive compared to restoring a house.
  I don’t know about Romania, but in other European countries historic buildings are required to be maintained by the owner and it is restricted what they can do.
  In Spain if the castle/palace is considered as a good of cultural interest, the restrictions are even higher. You cannot do activities that can damage it, like converting it into an hotel or restaurant. Also required to allow the public to visit it for free, at least four days each month.
- Where's Gizmo when you need him?
  
  Mopping out Laszlo's masturbatorium.

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 dunno. I feel if you live long enough you'd eventually become wealthy. If not you're just incompetent
  
  Especially if you regularly murder people.
  
  I’m 1000 years old but I still don’t have my shit together
- at least constantly struggling for recognition, and are exploited as night shift workers in the emerging industry.
  This reminds me a bit of Reg Shoe, leading dead rights activist in Ankh-Morpork.
  Of course the Discworld is more funny, less grimdark, compared to your ideas.
  
  Or the vampire in Feet of Clay who gets jobs in a pencil factory, as a sunglasses tester, making holy water, etc.
- Sounds like "Anno Dracula" by Kim Newman.
  Dracula managed to kill Van Helsing and then married Queen Victoria. AS Prince Consort he's brought the undead to the Empire. There are vampire trollops who live no better than their 'warm' sisters, and great Lords.
  Fun book, and first of a series.
- When you're immortal, compound interest really does become miraculous.
- I too have some similar concept, but for a Metal Gear (the 2D ones) clone in an Urban Fantasy setting, with the vampires primarily being a stand-in for autistic people, and the vampire myth being adjusted accordingly, with the whole "virality" thing mostly relegated to genetics, but present as a commonly held myth, alongside with power-scaling adjustments (especially due to the protagonist being a vampire), with also its own myth that make the common people afraid of them...
- If you want to future-proof your social commentary, the tech broligarch version of non-geographic nations that overlay existing nations are called Decentralized Autonomous Organizations.
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_autonomous_organization
  https://www.lpoandlaw.com/post/the-future-of-legal-daos-why-the-marshall-islands-dao-llc-is-a-game-changer
  So even if you wanted to merge this into a magic/etheric style framework, it would be easy. Offshore DAO registered far far away meant to be egalitarian representation with a maguffin talisman that a big bad wants to get from vamps to consolidate power and upend the non-exploitative organic system.

What was that post I kept seeing about vampires? If you've been living for centuries and you're still broke just walk into the sunlight.
- To be fair, the number of times entire villages, towns, cities, and even kingdoms were completely wiped off the map... I could see a vampire being forced to start over. A lot.
  They can expect vampire hunters in their castle, but nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
  
  I'm just imagining an ancient as shit vampire from Gobekli Tepe bitching about some long forgotten warlord who destroyed his horse meat business, and that he would've beaten Indo-Europeans to the taming of the horse of that hadn't happened.

Here again, cropped for convenience.

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.
- Its also probably fairly easy to become an aristocrat if you are immortal. You start as a mercenary to earn money, then you win a decisive battle for your lord and he gives you a noble title and lands.

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.

What is the vampire opinion on the current state of tariffs, and global warming, and do they agree with evangelicals?
- At this point in time the vampire community refuse to make any political statement. Meanwhile they find global warming rather concerning, what with the sun being stronger now. Evangelical blood is highly prized within the community.
  
  We are gonna get a statement next from the werewolves community and the swamp things Coalition after a word from our sponsor, Count chocula.

Vampires don't live in castles either