Cyberdiscourse is rich in imperial metaphors figuring the early days of cyberspace as the frontier or Wild West.

Darkfic creates a sense of realism stretching beyond the canons, lingering on the physical effects of traumatic events, and reading characters' reactions from the perspective of human psychology.

The trainings of Landmark, Block Training and UP Hans Schuster und Partner thus display strong similarities with the self-improvement seminars of Scientology, which are incidentally called 'auditing sessions', a term taken from the business world.

Nowhere is Rice's revision of these gender politics more evident than in the scenes surrounding the vampirization of Claudia, the orphan child.