♛Advice to “young naive mortals” before they agree to become one of us… 

*laughs* Well, Louis would simply say, “Don’t.” 

[^X @phantom-evil]

I can’t speak for Daniel’s transition, but from what he told me, what made it into the record that I compiled as the novel Queen of the Damned… he originally wanted the Dark Gift because he fell in love with Louis’ story, and wanted a seat at our table, so to speak. When he met Armand, it became about wanting to be with Armand, made so much more frustrating because of Armand’s struggle to accept Daniel, whether to bring him over.

Then, when that had been overcome, there was Daniel as a fledgling; there are so many physical and emotional changes that happen to a vampire during that time that few of us really experience it as a very “graceful” time. I famously vomited up my own blood and then, in a state of delirium, licked it off the stone floor of a filthy cell full of rotten corpses! Among many other grotesque things that happened in those first nights.* Two exceptions to the awkward fledgling phase: Gabrielle and Claudia, who both bloomed in their own ways, very gracefully, as fledgling vampiresses.

Advice…

One thing is for sure, satisfaction is not guaranteed, ma petite. In every sense of the phrase. 

The process itself is dangerous. It’s called the Dark “Trick” for a reason. Your maker has to kill you first. It’s extremely erotic, but extremely painful. They have to actually forcibly pull your life away entirely – and you’ll fight them through it if you want to survive – and then feed a demon, a kind of cancer, into your body and soul. We still don’t know if it’s contamination or evolution. And it doesn’t always work. 

There are worse things than death.

//ooc: *@gairid​/@vampchronfic​ has such a beautiful and tragic story about another thing Lestat did in those first nights, that you really should read it, We Are Our Own Saviors (Chapters 15-16). #Damn you and your perfect headcanon perfection ;A;

Lestat continues after the jump, cut for length.

♛The other aspect of being a vampire: Killing. Few people seem to realize how customer-service oriented this lifestyle really is. You’ll have to kill people, or practice the Little Drink (most fledglings have difficulty stopping mid-kill). If you are able to master it, you’ll spend even more nightly time pursuing more victims than just the few that would satisfy you if you killed them. Killing means you have to find fewer, but still, victims. Louis refused to choose, feeling unworthy of making that choice. Could you do it? Really? Or, you can not choose. As he later was able to embrace. Could you do that?

Louis’ practice of drinking animal blood as a substitute for human blood for his first few years, I’m convinced that’s one of the reasons he was so weak for so long. And so cranky! For whatever reason, animal blood is just not as satisfying for us as human blood is, and I would speculate that it has something to do with the difference in souls. Not to say animal souls are lesser; Mojo had more soul than so many humans I’ve met. But there is a difference. So the animal solution is the vampire equivalent of eating fast food, and it takes its toll. 

Those are the main concerns, that young naive mortals should consider seriously before they agree to become one of us. There are many more, but these seem to be required for everyone. Should you be offered the choice to take the Dark Gift, your maker would be having these conversations with you, specific to you, and to them, about other considerations.