lexsang

[lexsang]

hii, i'm trying to find a community (i live in phoenix) and hopefully find a human donor. i've somewhat recently awakened and i don't know anyone like me. i'm vegetarian and something important to me is consent which is why i'm not comfortable getting animal blood. any tips on finding a donor?

I lived in Phoenix a few years ago and there actually is an established community there. Facebook (sadly) seems to be the place to go to find established communities. i think it was called the Vampire Court of Arizona? They threw a small vampire ball that was fun, but I have to share that I personally didn't find what I was looking with them, and ended up moving East anyways. They assigned me a mentor despite having awakened many years before and having all of my vamp stuff sorted by then, which I don't necessarily see as a fully bad thing, but there was nearly no communication and it ended up being a dead end where I basically didn't have a community despite technically joining one. That doesn't mean you won't have better luck, and I'm sure if I had stayed in the area for longer, I would have been able to use further events to meet more people. As far as finding a donor, it's complicated, but there are options. My absolute first suggestion is to look to people who are already close to you. If there are people you have told about your vampirism that you would be comfortable having as a donor, ask, politely of course. And obviously donor consent is king, but setting up the conversation in a way that they know that they can call it off at any moment helps keep potential donors comfortable. The dynamic can be confusing for people who haven't experienced it before, and some unhealthily minded people automatically assume that the vamp basically owns the donor in a bdsm-esque manner. That can be negotiated if it vibes with both parties, but it absolutely isn't the default. If that isn't an option, starting with finding a community, especially since you're in a major metropolitan area, is a good place to start. Ask around and you're likely to find leads since people already understand vampirism in the group. Sadly, our favourite vamp/donor directory is no longer running, so we have to be creative, and when I first got into the community, but was too young to use it, a lot of people swore by FetLife. If you don't know what it is, it's basically bdsm facebook, and can be a resource for finding people who are more likely to understand a vamp/donor relationship in a contractually negotiated context, which is a good thing. I know a lot of people get frustrated about having to deal with blood fetishists when all they want is to deal with the cravings, but don't assume that everyone you meet is going to be one-note like that. And if you enjoy that kind of scene, it works. Plus, people are going to be more used to getting their blood tests done, so you can easily ask for paperwork.

[lexsang]

tips for avoiding the sun. i try to be as nocturnal as possible but need to be available daytime hours occasionally for admin. summers have been especially challenging lately. sun and heat make any activity crippling

Personally, I love getting outside in the spring, but it knocks me out. I do a lot of hikes, and try to pick wooded paths with shade. If you don't have the ability to curate where you get to spend time outside, and can't pick particularly shaded places, I lean into romanticizing time that I have to or choose to spend in the sun. A nice cold drink goes a long way, and know what kinds of clothes you need to wear to be as comfortable as you can be. I personally enjoy some heart shaped sunglasses, and had a nice iced matcha recently. This morning was the farmer's market, and even though the sun had completely knocked me out by the end of it, I had a great time. Depending on what the context is it changes things, but I think the best we can do is become aware of our limits and needs, find out what we can do to stay as comfortable as possible depending on what those limits and needs are, and know that finding small ways to enjoy and appreciate the bright weather makes it a little more tolerable to be out there. I hope that helps :)

[lexsang]

Wow they don't make summertime Trader Joeses for vampires. What an overwhelming snack run for my blood cravings. Sometimes I go a bit too long without feeding, but I think I got the message this time :P

[lexsang]

Prey drive is such a unique experience that I just want to talk about my experience with it for a second, I think a lot of people see it as scary or disturbing when in reality it is a part of my experience it is my instincts, when I see deer, or see prey animals, it is my instinct to want to hunt, to want to tear flesh and bone and as gruesome as that might sound it’s part of being an animal, I feel no malice with these feelings at all, just animalistic urges and instincts. It does make me feel a bit guilty, especially because some prey animals are some of my favorite animals, but it is not something that I can control really, I can’t choose which thoughts and feelings and emotions play, I can only react to them. To me prey drive is morally neutral, I experience it, and that’s that. There are things I use to help, like chewing on a deer antler to satisfy the bone gnawing craving, but In reality if you look at me I’m probably thinking about it, but I just live my life regardless. I have to control hunger when I’m at the butcher shop, I live in a wooded area and there are a lot of deer and my first thought when I see them is the hunt and subsequent feast after, but there is no coldness with these thoughts, they just are.

[lexsang]

Crazy how the years keep passing by, and with each year, I'm inching closer to having been awakened as a sanguinarian vamp for over half of my entire life. That's gonna be an interesting milestone to hit :P

[lexsang]

Ooh exciting! I love to see people engaging with community, and luckily enough, this is a topic I've been really interested in for a while now. I haven't been able to cook with blood too much yet, since it's pretty difficult to get a hold of where I live (I think that laws were recently changed to make it even harder to access). I've made some simple blood hot chocolate a few times, as well as a much nicer blood hot chocolate. However, it's not exactly the season for that. Blood can be used as a substitute for eggs, so I've also made a strange unleavened blood bread, which turned out alright. I'm a menace in the kitchen and generally just let whatever idea I have at the time take me wherever it'll go, meaning that I usually wing it. I mostly use recipes as inspiration, so I don't have any recipes I can vouch for. But I do have some resources and ideas!

This is a super interesting resource from people who actually know what they're doing. They tested a bunch of the properties of blood in cooking and included a few recipes. Plus, they have the ratios you need if you want to substitute eggs for blood in other recipes you already enjoy making.

And of course one of the authors from The Red Cellar is living the life I want to be living, having enough resources of the scarlet variety on hand to try and record plenty of recipes for you to try!

Finally, because I lived in East Africa for a few years when I was younger, you could always try it the way that the Maasai tribe drink blood, mixed with milk. Though the milk they use is fresh, so it's most likely fattier than what we get in the store. I think The Red Cellar may have posted a recipe for a similar idea, but I can't remember.

Enjoy, and don't forget to share what you end up making!

Got a gathering coming up with a few friends soon here, and want to get some dishes and snacks together for them to help with recovery. Any ideas/recommendations? (Bonus points if you have a site/cookbook/whatever)

Have two of these containers in the freezer right now. Frozen isn't ideal buuuuut I'm on my butchers calling list for next time lol

(Obligatory @lexsang tag for being a huge oracle 💜 )

[lexsang]

[lexsang]

blood & milk. 

[lexsang]

shoutout to vampires who aren't goth/alternative or have lighter styles. i look like a barbie but ill eat you for lunch lol. also shoutout to goth vampires too y'all have so much swag <3

[lexsang]

SICK of the stereotype that all vampires are wise dark academia goths. SOME OF US are silly fun bimbos. we exist.

[lexsang]

Hi! I was reading your opinion if father Sebastiaan and Sabretooth and you mentioned finally seeing sanguinarianism as a blessing. As someone who struggles a lot with seeing if as anything but a handicap and feeling frustrated, I'd love to hear more about how you managed to see the positive in all this.

This is a fantastic question. I'll try to cover it as completely as I can, but I do want to stress that my experience, like all of ours, is unique. Just a warning before I jump in, I am talking about my awakening in a decent bit of detail, so please ensure you are in a good place before reading. It might not be a bad Idea to have your favourite blood substitute on hand before giving this all a read.

I may have told a vague story of my awakening a number of times, but I think it's pretty relevant to this topic, so I'll start with that. Surprisingly, I don't think I have actually heard many in-depth awakening stories from other vamps, so I don't know if many of the details of mine are different from the norm. I do know that the general feeling of absolute isolation is fairly common though. When I first awakened, it was like a dam burst. Suddenly, and without any inciting moment, I had a vague interest in blood, and the curiosity in drinking it. But it only remained a small thought for a couple of days, and quickly exploded into full body cravings that left my mind unable to think about anything else. It was violent, disruptive, and absolutely life altering. I, unlike some lucky members of the community, had no previous knowledge of the vampire community, or that anyone else could possibly be have the kinds of experiences I was thrust into having.

I assume that having that knowledge would have changed the course of my awakening, but if I'm being honest with myself, I don't know that it would have changed a thing. Suddenly, I was an isolated individual, unlike anyone else, constantly wading through seas of people (I was in school, and then university at the time), and overwhelmed by vivid, violent thoughts. Like I mentioned, I like to think that having the knowledge that all I needed was to feed on a little bit of blood would have changed the depth of my awakening. However, my body, sending every signal it could in the effort to convince me to feed, pushed further and further, until the cravings pushed past just blood, and into meat as well. I mention all of this to help convey that I was wholly consumed by my cravings. For every second of every day for two or three years, this was my internal experience. What I have failed to mention, however, is how I felt about that experience.

I didn't push away from it or create tension between myself and those feelings and impulses. Of course I did maintain control (albeit somewhat loose control sometimes), but rather than being fearful of myself, I quickly accepted it as a part of myself. I have to be direct. I loved the feeling that the cravings sustained in my body. And that is the main thing that I think makes my experience so different from the experiences of many other sanguinarian vampires. I enjoyed the experience of vampirism from the beginning, I just closed my eyes and fell backwards into the sensations and the experience, with a smile on my face.

That being said, it did complicate parts of my life. I was in a pretty negative relationship throughout much of my awakening, and she, being the only person I had told about my cravings, was kind enough to fairly consistently remind me that she saw me as a monster, despite the fact that I was clear that these experiences were happening at me, and not from me (suffice to say, don't keep people in your life who are incapable of accepting you). It was also difficult to manage family at the time. Because of that relationship, I started going through some rough times, and the addition of unsated cravings complicated my ability to ask for help. My family became very worried about me, but there was only so much I could say. So I certainly won't say that vampirism is a completely enjoyable experience without it's difficulties, not to mention the very real pain that can come from cravings.

I do think there is a decent amount to be learned from my experience. That the experience of vampirism, though I harp on the fact that vampirism expresses itself uniquely in every individual, varies most extremely based on the perspective of the person experiencing it. And luckily, perspectives can be changed! You, at present, view your vampiric experience from the perspective that it is a handicap, but I can't imagine that that one perspective has been the entirety of the experience. The way I see it, my vampirism allows me to look at life as if I'm looking through a stained glass window, one that no one else will ever get the chance to see. Yes, there may be other vampires (which is also a good thing, we get to connect with others over something that makes us all unique and alike), but no one else will ever experience it in the same way you do.

I think it's also very important to take time with the cravings. By pushing against them, many vampires add tension to their experiences, and make it harder to deal with. Use substitutes if you need to, or feed if you have the opportunity to, and disconnect from the experiences of others. Just sit in your own body and let the cravings be there with you almost like meditating with your vampirism. When you are present with them like this, without judgement, how does it really feel to sit in that vampiric experience? When there isn't something pressing that the cravings are distracting you from, how does that experience manifest?

And of course, feeding is probably the big one. Yes, we gradually get to a point where we don't feel healthy. The level and timeframe of that varies from vamp to vamp, but it is a fact that that aspect of vampirism is a handicap. But through that difficulty, we get to experience feeding, something that 99.999% of people will never be able to understand. People say that you can't truly experience the good in life if you haven't experienced the bad. I won't necessarily agree or disagree with that, but I will say that that is a great way to relate to the experience of feeding. The instant dissolution of whatever doubts that might have been swimming around in my mind, along with the sudden removal of negative symptoms is a blessing. And in my experience, that is just where feeding starts. It obviously shouldn't be seen as a drug to be used for regular recreation, but the feeling of feeding, if you see it as more than just filling a need, like taking a prescription, is really something else.

This has definitely been much longer than I had originally intended, and I'm too lazy to look back through it to see if I messed up any spelling or anything, and I solemnly apologize for the number of times I used the word 'experience'... but I couldn't think of any other word, and it's too late to crack open the thesaurus. I hope this helped, and if you have any more questions or are looking for any clarification, please feel free to ask. I'm more than happy to help where I can :)

[lexsang]

Adriatic Sea by Mauro Roberto Scalabroni

[lexsang]

"Trans Rights, We're Not Asking"

[lexsang]

Blood Hot Chocolate

Made using a gift of beef blood from a kind friend. It turned out nicely, but was a little heavy on the chocolate this time. I'll probably go heavier on the blood and lighter on the chocolate in the future, making the chocolate the flavour that sits behind the blood. All in all, very good, and my first time making anything with or drinking animal blood. I have a little left over, so I'll have to try another experiment today, though something less sweet this time. It's my hope to post more blood food adventures in the future, and if any of them are particularly good I can add recipes.

[lexsang]

© Veronika Tsoi

[lexsang]

Any ice cream flavour that includes cookie dough. And when I get the chance to feed in volume, I'll have to try something along the lines of a blood snow cone :P snow cones used to be a staple of my childhood during the summer, and I'd love to try the vamp version.

@thronoai, @sanguine-inkwell, @regret-breathing ? (no pressure tho)

I want to do a little experiment, reblog this. Do whatever you want with it WITHIN REASON YOU FOOLS make it a tag game, say something stupid, etc. Call it a social experiment, I want to see what becomes of this post.

[lexsang]