Vampirocene

by Merritt K.

When viral pop star Janie Mack "comes out" as a vampire, most people think it's just a play for attention. But when she launches a new movement to stop climate change, people start listening — including charismatic leftist podcaster Ari Rosenbaum, who abruptly quits his popular show to start working for Janie full-time. With his comfortable lifestyle suddenly disrupted, Ari's producer sets out to try and bring him back. But in the process, he's forced to figure out just what it is that he really wants for himself and the world — and what he'd be willing to sacrifice to get it.

106 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 17, 2025

Reviews

[Olivia · Rating 4 out of 5]

God I can’t wait for woke 2


I’ll do a full review of this on my YT because I have lots of thoughts to sort out but you should check this out in the meantime

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smart, casually Online, ultimately about how optimism may not save us from climate change, but cynicism definitely won't.

[Emmy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've followed Merritt's writing since our bleary youths on Tumblr. Her first work I recall seeing was Consensual Torture Simulator, a digital choose-your-own adventure game which invited the player to assume the dominant role in a BDSM encounter. Merritt's recent work, mostly shared through her blog otherstrangeness.com, often picks up this theme of violence and desire. Vampirocene uses the language of sex and violence to consider class conflict in contemporary America.

The vampires in this are capable of mind control, and the parallels to BDSM here are pretty explicit. The protagonist carries out a spectacular act of political violence which, it turns out, was actually overdetermined by his domination by the vampire. He isn't capable of agentic action. On the other hand, his love interest Kate is, despite her submissive sexual desire to be dominated. She makes decisions, values her self, and throws the protagonist out when he disrespects her for her sexual being. It's a reversal of our expectations for the 'subby tgirl' stock character, and one I appreciated seeing.

The crises of capitalism are a result of its impersonal domination of the proletariat as a class, which is bound by the capital-relation to sell itself to the whole of the bourgeoisie. Marx notes that this is a departure from feudalism, in which the mode of production is dependent on forms of personal domination by individual aristocrats. The vampires, dommes par excellence, seem at first to roll back the clock and through sheer interpersonal power reimpose personal domination as the decisive factor in determining class relations. If a woman bites you hard enough on the neck, maybe the world will all just fall into place after all. This idea is explored by Asimov also, in his Foundation series, in which the character of the Mule upends the Marxian assumptions on which the Foundation's timeline was premised. Here, Merritt makes explicit the obvious D/s theme inherent in this premise. Her writing on bondage has kept my attention for the last decade, and I enjoyed this now as much as I did all those years ago.

[Elizabeth The Wicked · Rating 4 out of 5]

Even the supernatural can't defeat the sink hole of human stupidity that drags us back to capitalism.

Are we seeing a hyperbolic indictment of humanity through its worst representation, the cis het man? Or is this a depressingly accurate depiction? A tragedy in a few acts that is just our lived reality.

Points for succinctness. We get to the point and get out of town before any more plot needs to be unrolled. we end on a note that maybe hope is possible but the underlying message is one of defeat.

depressing but accurate. I'm glad I read it anyway

[Matt Bickerton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Breezed through it in two sessions. Very insightful about how a response to something like vampires suddenly emerging into the public eye would likely go, but also a very personal story. Love a protagonist who's not as good a person as he thinks he is or seems to want to be, but is still at least a little sympathetic. Moves at a brisk pace, but maybe just a touch too brisk. I would happily read more stories set in this world.

[Gracchus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished “Vampirocene” by Merritt K.
The vampires are fed up with how humankind destroys the Earth and take the issues into their own hands. They want to fix the climate and abolish poverty. A little left-wing Podcaster is against that, because they are vampires after all.
This novella deserves to be called a “Novelle.” It is written very smartly, and it is educational. The novella is so entertaining and thrilling that I was fast through. It is worth it!

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was great because it was the first horror I've read that feels like it only could have been written in 2025. It allows its New York podcaster protagonist to be rather weak and adrift, which works well for horror. He's often trying to silence his background sense of crisis and collapse, and he encounters vampires dealing with a crisis of their own. The novella tells a fairly "small" story within that world, and it feel like about the right length for that story.