Energetic Flow in Improv, or How to “Manipulate” Your Friends Ethically

Two months ago I wrote an introductory article detailing my thoughts on energetic flow in conversation, how psychic vampyres can feed through it, and how anyone can use these very basic techniques to their advantage. This piece will be a continuation of that article (in fact, I plan to write a few more progressing along this little niche of mine). It may not be necessary for you to read that article before diving into this one, though if you are an absolute beginner when it comes to reading the flow of energy in conversation I would recommend checking it out. You can find Part I of this series here: https://www.projectvampyre.org/post/practical-psychic-vampyrism-for-the-uninitiated-and-newlyawakened-improvisation-and-active-listeni Now that that’s out of the way, I think it’s probably time I addressed the title. First and foremost, I intended this as a way to grab your attention (did it work?), but it is also a bit of a joke on my part. Sometimes the magic of what we can do as Psis feels like a form of manipulation in a very real sense. When you engage with energy in the ways I and others have outlined, it becomes possible to get a very strong intuition of how those around you are feeling, what they might want to say, and how they might end up there. With this information, it becomes possible to facilitate that energetic flow. This can be deeply toxic in ways that I hope are obvious. When a vampyre is operating with moment-to-moment information on the energetic state of a person, and they benefit from some motion or change in that state, forcing a change is a very serious ethical concern. Some within our community speak to the idea that unawakened psychic vampyres might closely resemble the pop-psychology idea that shares the same name. I think this exact phenomenon is how and why that takes place. Whether conscious or not, the vampyre is sensitive to those subtle tells in others, and responds to the sudden change in energetic flow. The easiest way to achieve that is to be a nuisance, to act in such a way that demands the attention of those nearest you–completely overriding whatever energetic state they found themselves in previously. I have struggled with the idea that I am capable of feeling and directing this flow for precisely these reasons. It feels like something that is wholly bad. Manipulative. Even as I understood I was using some of these skills throughout my everyday life, I felt certain that it must have made my relationships hollow, or false, and that any positive sentiments people held for me were something I had fabricated through deceptive means. This was, to put it lightly, a massive overcorrection on my part. These tools are not inherently good or evil. They are just tools. The context and manner in which you employ them is what determines their moral value. Many of us talk about the experience of being the “therapist friend.” This is an example of a positive use of these skills. Often when I meet with people, I can feel that they are troubled. I can feel that they have something they want to share, or that they would be willing to share, and I can sense how this flow of energy would assist them. If you have done this, you know how natural it tends to feel. It often happens without a thought. You’re gossipping with friends about their acquaintances. You’re listening to a coworker’s grievances about your boss, or your BFFs little gripes with their partner. It might not even feel like a thing you are actively doing (and at times this may be the case, as I have heard for myself and others that psychic vampyres have this calming presence about us). In any case, it’s a skill that you can hone and employ with intent in order to maximize its utility. Say your friend has something bothering them. You know it. You feel it. It’s something they’ve kept entirely stagnant within them and it is very clearly impacting them negatively (often this would be called a blockage, typically in an energetic center or major site of traffic in the body). However, this subject, whatever it is, has caused this blockage precisely because it is something they have tried not to process for one reason or another. What do you do? What is even ethical in this scenario? It would be easy to paint these situations with a broad brush–this is energy work, at least tangential to psychic vampyrism, and therefore anything short of a protracted conversation about ethics and expectations involving a reading of the Donor Bill of Rights is wrong. But we are not aiming to pull from others in this case. Energy is freed in the process of conversation, but that is not the primary focus. The focus is in trying to assist a friend, and therefore every action we take must be in service of that. In my experience, a cautious approach is best. “You seem a little off, is everything okay?” and, if they seem hesitant, often followed with, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.” This is an invitation. You are signaling that it is alright for this person to share things with you that they might not have considered previously. With the right subtle effects, it is also setting a place for whatever is stagnant within them to flow if they so choose. But the second piece of that prompt is also important. You remind them that they are the one with control in this conversation. This pattern–nudging when something bothersome is noticed and leaving the decision entirely to them–can and should be repeated throughout the conversation whenever it feels appropriate. You want to assist them, and for that to happen they must always feel that they are the one with final say on what is or isn’t said. If ever there is an indication that they are no longer comfortable sharing, whether it be an obvious “no” or a continued hesitance following the invitation, this must be respected. The particulars of the conversation can follow the same strategies I outlined in the first part of this series. Affirmation of what they have said, and a continuation. The taking, refining, and passing around of energy between conversational partners. Often this continuation is agreement. “Oh, that is so unfair, I can’t believe they said that. And nobody did anything?” But it can take other forms. Say you disagree with their assessment of things. It would be wrong to lie simply to appease them (and, most likely, if you are engaging with this give and take of energy in conversation they will have some sense of the lie anyhow), but you also want to be careful with how you phrase your perspective. “Yeah, I do get what you mean. Personally, I don’t know, I wonder if maybe they misheard what you said or something? It does seem a little out of character for them. But I also wasn’t there.” In times where it’s clear someone still has more to say, a non-verbal response or a short acknowledgement of what they’ve said may be best. As stated in the previous blog post, the particulars of this kind of energy cycling can only be determined on a case-by-case basis, and the only person who can make that assessment in the moment is you. However, you may consider the key points here as a sort of guide. As the Vampyre Confidant, always choose a course of action that aims to assist your partner in conversation, and consider tailoring your contributions to the discussion in the framework of affirmation and continuation. But I hear you. The title of this article was flashy, and exciting, and being a therapist for your close friends (useful as it may be) doesn’t quite hit the mark. This is why we must now pivot wildly and talk about the wonderful world of Dungeons & Dragons. This will come as no surprise to those of you who know me (particularly the people who frequent the Project V Discord, which, if you aren’t on there you should definitely consider joining), but I most often feed through the collaborative group setting of running tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs). This is an environment where you have a predetermined group with a defined set of expectations and goals whose focus is on telling a story for entertainment. It’s a place where emotions routinely run high and the troubles of the week are cast aside. As you can imagine, the potential for ambient feeding among such a group is quite high. Even attending an event or participating as a player puts a bit of gas in the tank. Though for me, I find running the game to be the most helpful and fulfilling role to fill. Plus, it’s also just plain fun. In this setting, broadly speaking, people have sat down hoping for you to make them feel things. They want to picture the world you lay out for them. They want to see characters come to life within your eyes. They want to experience trials, heartbreak, and horrors unknown, only to inevitably triumph over them in the end (or fail valiantly in the attempt). In short, they have strapped themselves in and given you the keys to their imagination. A Psi in this situation has a much broader range of options at their disposal. All of those things that would otherwise be unthinkable–lying, eliciting fear or discomfort, pulling at the heartstrings of a person, and playing into their more sympathetic tendencies to provoke a desired reaction–are all perfectly acceptable approaches when they’re done in service of theater. Often I have drawn out the delivery of a line to raise the tension within a scene, or punctuated a particularly horrific description of something with a swift motion of my body and delighted at the result in my players. And because this is all happening within the safety of a game, they too are delighted and drawn further into the fantasy of it all. This is improv. This is everything I’ve outlined up until now distilled into its most straightforward form. It is affirmation and continuation strung together only by the world you as the storyteller have concocted within your mind, and the things your players add onto it. When done right, it can be an incredible (and consistent) source of energy. The ambient energy your group gives off throughout a 2-3 hour game session is immense. If you’ve never tried your hand at performance as a method of feeding, I highly recommend it. There are a few particular pieces of advice I would give beforehand, however. For one, as always, aim for affirmation and continuation within the scene. This is fairly obvious in the context of a conversation. A player converses with a character in the world, and you have a back and forth with them as that character. But it exists between scenes as well, and between sessions. Players who offhandedly mention they believe a conspiracy may be afoot in the city will be delighted when they uncover that conspiracy–whether or not it “actually” existed in the world prior to their mentioning it. Their hopes, interests, theories, and fears can all be noted and woven into the narrative. Sometimes this is as simple as a recurring joke that gets parroted by a non-player character. Other times it can constitute entire storylines within the world. The second piece of key advice I would add is that you always act within the terms of the social contract. Everyone at your table is there to have fun. They may or may not know that there is a vampiric component to your work (given this type of feeding is largely passive in nature), but they don’t have to know it by that name in order to feel it. Thus, clear terms of engagement should be laid out. Here’s a few tools I have picked up from experience:

• Session 0: A time where all players get together prior to playing the game. Here you communicate your hopes and expectations for the game, as well as any limits you have within play. Before playing, everyone at the table should have a clear idea of what is expected of them, what sort of content might appear in the game, and how they can best ensure they have a good time

• Lines & Veils: A list of things (yes, actually construct a list and make it always readily available for all players) that the people at the table have contributed to in order to communicate their boundaries. Lines are things that players do not want to appear at all. Veils describe content that can appear, but should be limited or abstract, and not narrated in detail. Sometimes they are fairly universal–most people do not want to sit through scenes of intense violence against children. Other times they are more specific, like a phobia or trauma experienced by one of the players. No matter what people put on this list, it must always be respected.

• X-Cards: A simple panic-button for players in a game. If something comes up that makes them uncomfortable, they say “X” and cross their hands to make the letter. The scene stops and the players at the table discuss how to go about things in a way that will allow everyone to continue the game comfortably.

• Stoplights: A simple colour-grading system (red/yellow/green) that can be used to indicate a level of comfort with the scene. The benefit of this system is that it allows for more nuance in communicating someone’s discomfort. If you need things to stop immediately, you say Red. If you want to indicate that you’re becoming uncomfortable with a scene, but you don’t need it to stop necessarily, you say Yellow. Green is rarely used in my experience, though I have asked the table if “everyone’s Green” on occasion when the story swerved into a particularly intense direction that I had not broached previously.

• Sticking Points: A post-game discussion in which everyone at the table has an opportunity to highlight things that stood out to them. This is almost always used to point out things a player enjoyed, but it also gives everyone an opportunity to discuss things that didn’t work or that might have made them uncomfortable. Sometimes people won’t want to say anything negative publicly, so it’s always good to remind them that they can reach out if they have anything more they wish to discuss.
  

Both of the things I’ve discussed in this article are mundane situations in which energy work can play a key role. Both of them, even in cases where vampyrism is not said by name, work best when they’re approached in service of the person you are engaging with, and when there are clear boundaries in place and consent is being honoured. There’s magic in the mundane. There’s power in words. You, the reader, may share many of the experiences I have written about here but not ascribe them to Psychic Vampyrism in the slightest. Or perhaps you are a Psi like me, but you haven’t applied the learning to these areas yet. In either case I hope you have found something applicable in your own life here, and that you can learn to value what you bring to the table. What we do in our work is powerful, and it must be wielded with care, but it can be beautiful and enriching to the lives of others. We don’t need to view ourselves as these dangerous and wild creatures that ought to be shunned. We don’t have to approach all of our day-to-day relationships like even a smidge of glamour will taint everything around us. We’re people, just like anyone else, and when we learn to work our magic with care, the world can be just a little bit brighter. I’ll close this article with an example from my own life that I am particularly excited to see bear fruit. In my Sunday D&D game which has been going on for a little over a year now, there’s a character the party’s known since session one. He was never meant to be anything more than a fun little travelling merchant, but through my players’ interactions, as well as their interest and theorycrafting about him, he took a more prominent role. Eventually they learned he is a Devil and, by their own volition, made a faustian deal with the man under the assumption that they understood his motives. I was delighted when they did this, because the exact nature of the deal they made was like this perfect little storytelling seed for me to plant. For whatever reason, despite their hangups about this character and their knowledge that it would probably come back to bite them in the ass, they agreed that they would find someone whose soul he could claim, provided he helped them free a member of the party from a similar situation. And who, might you ask, did they offer up in this bargain? Why, only the leader of the guard for the capital city, who also was doubling as the interim leader after they deposed the monarchy! They are just about to return to this city after weeks of travel in which the Devil’s end of the bargain was upheld. When they get there, they’re going to find the man they knew not to trust living it up as the Emperor and head of one of the largest militaries in the country. And I cannot wait. Well over a year of them playing in this world is all coming together for this development in just a couple of days at the time of writing (and by the time this article goes live, it will already have happened). Now, obviously, this character did not achieve this through honest means. He won people over with charm, twisted his words to his advantage even when he was compelled to speak the truth, and slowly built up his assets in such a way that it rarely attracted attention. He played it smart. What will hopefully make it work, however, is that the players knew he could not be trusted. They could feel the lust for power in him and they knew he was being deceitful in at least some of what he said, because I wanted them to know those things. When they made the deal they did, they did it with full knowledge of what ammunition they were giving me. Manipulation, betrayal, defeat, these are all things that I hope they feel when we play on Sunday, but if I have done my job right it will all be within the realm of theater. I did everything I could, both in and out of the game, to inform them in their decisions and foreshadow these developments in the story. I am on their side. The Devil is the one that betrayed them, which of course, was always going to happen. Even then, this is not a punishment. I wouldn’t throw this at them as a one and done, now and forever, “you guys messed up and now this jerk is super powerful–the end!” type of thing. No, it’s a complication. A wrench being thrown in the whole setup. Now a man you knew you couldn’t trust is more powerful than ever. What are you going to do about that? Affirmation and continuation, as always. The magic in theater is that the emotions, while potent and real in the moment, are safe. The heartbreak we experience feels real, but it rarely sticks with us the same way. This magic lets us experience these troubles as a means of processing the very real weight we carry with us in our day to day lives. When we feel heartbreak, betrayal, or anger within well-executed theater, it’s an opportunity to let go of some of those same feelings that are stagnant within us. Mercutio is the villain they can point at and stick all of their real-life stress and struggle onto. He’s larger than life; a literal sneering Devil. No matter what they choose to do about him, I can’t wait for that to all play out, and I’ll be cheering them on the whole way. Yeah, I wrote it so the man stabbed them in the back. But I did so knowing it would make their eventual triumph against him all the more satisfying.

Addendum: On the Health and Wellbeing of the Vampire Confidant This article has spoken at length about ethics and the safety of those surrounding the psychic vampyre. These things are greatly important, and it’s reasonable that we as a community stress them so often in our spaces. However, it is possible to overextend yourself in service of others–something that I know I have suffered from in the past. To play with energy in the ways I’ve outlined necessarily involves a heavy amount of energetic investment from the vampyre. Under most circumstances this is perfectly fine. We gravitate towards people who, by our own estimation, have what we need or what appeals to us, and thus our interactions are typically positive. Sometimes a close friend or a lover might be under additional stress that causes an interaction to be a net deficit of energy for the vampyre, but that’s alright. After all, we do these things because we care about others; they’re not merely a means to an end. The occasional drain to our reserves is a small price to pay for the peace of mind in assisting a loved one, and besides, it’s rare for these scenarios to happen with such frequency and such intensity that there exists no other means to recover from a bad experience. These are the thoughts that have, in the past, led me (and others I’m aware of) to ignoring the telltale signs of a toxic relationship. Even the most euphoric vampyres among us (re: Luna Niluv’s incredible article on the subject, see recommended reading below) can still suffer from the fear of being dangerous or predatory to those we love. But viewing yourself in that respect, as the predator, the danger, the one who serves to gain from others and contributes very little in return, can easily leave a person with the mindset that their feelings do not matter (or at the very least, that they do not matter as much as those they’re engaged with). There’s a reason that modern iterations of the Donor Bill of Rights speak to the needs of the vampyre. It’s easy to neglect yourself when you think mainly of others. It’s easy to brush aside the fact that you’re being taken advantage of when you see yourself as the danger. We–not as vampyres but as people–are capable of great and terrible things. Sometimes even those striving for kindness can hurt the people they love. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. For a very long time I’ve only applied that thinking to myself, and used it as a reason to endlessly scrutinize and question every little thing I do. But it applies equally to the people I care for. The partner who you’re always there for can take advantage of that kindness and neglect the fact that they need professional help, feeling they’ll always have you. In doing so, they drain more and more from you, slowly until the weight turns to resentment and sours the relationship. The friend who knows they can tell you anything may neglect to choose their words in ways that don’t accidentally harm you, not out of malice but instead from fleeting passion. It doesn’t hurt until suddenly it does, and the vampyre confidant finds the little attacks weighing on them long after they’re said. The coworkers who know you’re safe to complain to about their troubles keep piling it on at a time when you’re already stressed, and suddenly the job feels like a prison. This problem can extend to the Vampyre Bard as well. Entertainment is an industry for a reason. It’s work, and it can be as much a drain as it can be an incredible boon if a healthy energetic environment isn’t maintained. The Vampyre has as much a right to their limits being respected at the table or to their contributions in the story being cared for by those they’re seeking to entertain. You’re putting a notable amount of time and effort into cultivating the environment that everyone benefits from, and your contributions to that should not be thankless even if you’re benefitting in some energetic capacity. Because no matter what your circumstances, you are not just a Vampyre Confidant or a Vampyre Bard. You are a person. You’re a person with needs and fears and limits, and you have a right to express those things and for them to be taken seriously by the people you love. Be kind to others. Do what you can for those you care about, and be thankful for how that brightens your life. But always be kind to yourself as well, and understand that you have worth. You are not a monster, or an inherent danger. You’re a person, and you have as much a right for your limits to be respected as anyone else does. FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING/VIEWING: The Myth of the Apex Predator by Obscurus: https://www.projectvampyre.org/post/the-myth-of-the-apex-predator Harnessing the Phylactery: Tools for the Psychic Vampyre by Ozymandias: https://www.projectvampyre.org/post/harnessing-the-phylactery-tools-for-the-psychic-vampyre-b y-ozymandias Dysphoric and Euphoric Vampyres: The True Factions of the Psy/Sang War by Luna Niluv: https://www.projectvampyre.org/post/dysphoric-and-euphoric-vampyres-the-true-factions-of-thepsy-sang-war-by-luna-niluv The Donor Bill of Rights: https://www.neworleansvampireassociation.org/donor-bill-of-rights.html DnD Really Is Therapy by SciShow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvVmg2Xp-cA Do THIS before starting you D&D campaign by Ginny Di: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm_TS9pge7o TTRPG Safety Toolkit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/114jRmhzBpdqkAlhmveis0nmW73qkAZCj Finally, if you are interested in pursuing TTRPGs as a method of energy feeding through performance, I highly recommend Ginny Di, Mystic Arts, and BobWorldBuilder for advice on constructing entertaining (and thoughtful) games.