Why become a vampire? Why feel sympathy?

Kim’s post has inspired me to briefly explore the different viewpoints towards humans becoming vampires. There seem to be too standpoints: "I don't want to be a vampire because I want the human experience of choices and growing old and changing and dying" and "I want to be a vampire so that I can have a higher consciousness, live forever, be with my vampire lover." It seems that throughout literature humans who want to (perhaps irrationally) become vampires tend to downplay the whole drinking blood concept. From a completely scientific, cold, objective point of view, this technically wouldn’t be a problem, if a vampire chose to drink animal blood, like Angel, or dated a phlebotomist and thus has a supplier (from a “The Vampire Diaries” episode). But from a more romanticized perspective, blood is life, as Spike tells us around the end of season 5, “It keeps you going, makes you warm, makes you hard, makes you other than dead.” Thus, requiring blood to live requires taking life from others. It’s a tricky line to balance on; for example, does a vampire who drinks human blood without killing or maiming count as evil? Yes? Tell Bill that, from True Blood. He’ll cry his nasty bloody tears, and indirectly beg not to be perceived as evil. So what is it about modern humans that makes us want to complicate the idea of an inherently evil incubus/succubus? I guess it’s curiosity, always asking What if?

So when do we feel sympathy towards a vampire/demon/creature of darkness? Is it being made vampire against one’s will? What if that vampire turns around and embraces evil, though? Then, I suppose, I wouldn’t feel much sympathy for THAT creature, but I definitely would at the time of the new vampire feeling regret and emotional pain at his/her life being taken away. Angel evokes sympathy, Lucy as well, Mina has a small breakdown when she realizes that Lucy’s fate may soon be her own. Dracula? Not even a shred of sympathy, essentially because he so fully embraces his nature, feels no remorse for the lives he destroys, and continues to wreak havoc on innocents. This makes him repugnant in our eyes. But then there’s Ford and Ampata, humans sentenced to an unfair, unpleasant death, simply trying to take back what was rightfully theirs – the right to life. Not evil, not good. As Buffy says, it’s so hard to distinguish between who to love, who to hate, and who to trust. But, it provides excellent discussion material.