“Being Blutpir” by Sonne; 4/14/2021

It occurred to me after reading parts from my past vampirekin and monstrosity writings that I have never written a more straight-forward piece about what it is like for me to be vampirekin and that’s something I want to do (so thus this writing).  Specifically, I refer to my vampire ‘type as a “blutpir” since that’s the ‘species’ name I’ve chosen for it and my original concept of fictional vampires that it aligns with.  They are, in essence, fictional humanoid vampires that have a notable amount of ‘animality’ to them mentally and behaviorally.  There are various renditions of vampires that I connect to in some sense but none I’ve yet come across align as well as my concept of blutpirs that I had been slowly developing starting about a decade prior to consciously realizing I am vampirekin.  Blutpirs are kind of cat-like, mildly shapeshifting humanoids, so it took me awhile longer to figure out my vampire ‘type from the time I came across therianthropy and otherkin as I knew very early on at that time that I have a cat theriotype.  My cat ‘type kind of overlaps and blends with blutpir, so it’s not like I can always draw a distinct line and say more definitively “that is just a cat experience” and “that is just a blutpir/vampire” experience.

I think part of my eventual realization to blutpir is that there were seemingly cat-like experiences and aspects to me that didn’t fit my cat theriotype, or my other three theriotypes, and upon further investigation, I couldn’t manage to attribute just to my monster-heartedness.  Now, I will say, my monster-heartedness does kind of sing through my vampire ‘type, especially since the monsters I connect to the most are animalistic humanoids, including some kinds of vampires.  Honestly, when I get down to it, though, I think my main self-concept is actually that of a blutpir–it is how I see my human(oid) self in my mind’s eye.  Plus it was actually a very rough concept of an original (blutpir) vampire called Sonne from where I came to eventually take on the name for myself and it’s stuck to the point of being about as close to a “true” name for me that I’ve ever had (the “Spiritwind” part always feels more like a last name, an extra specifier to better designate that is is me online).  Sonne was a vampire character that I really looked up to in some sense for her power, charisma, and confidence, and for her being a blutpir.  I never really fleshed out the character much, though I did early on write a poem about/inspired by her.  The vampire connection, plus the connection to the sun (as sonne is the German word for sun), which is a strong point of my spirituality and theism, really allowed the name to become a seemingly permanent self-identifier for me.

I have a certain visual self-concept in my mind of what I look like: black hair (my real hair is dark brown), amber (sometimes greenish) colored eyes, a little darker skinned, and a thinner build than I actually have.  Along with this is mild shapeshifting abilities like shifting claws or claw-like nails, shifting eye color (to an inhuman one, either glowy amber or all black, including the sclera (white) part), and shifting or retractable fangs on the top of my mouth.  Those aspects have been rather constant for a long time in how I internally view myself, even though it’s really taken me until now to realize I’ve probably been seeing myself as a blutpir for all that time.  This also doesn’t mean that I was wrong about my cat ‘type because I still experience aspects of it that I find to be or resonate with specifically a cat rather than a blutpir (including phantom parts, like my pivotal cat ears, fur, feline feet/legs, and having body-oriented thought of my feline body doing things, such as curling up to sleep).  Yet perhaps, I will admit, maybe I developed over time a vampire ‘kintype and blutpir-specific self-concept in part from aspects of my cat therianthropy mixing with my humanness and my monster-heartedness until eventually I ended up with a blutpir ‘kintype and self-concept.

It’s unfortunately been years since I’ve felt more strongly like blutpir and I miss it.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still there, still present within me and I do still experience aspects of it actively, but because of depression, it’s not like I used to (yet I hope that will change over time now that I’m on medications that seem to be significantly helping me emotionally and psychologically).  One of the ways in which I used to strongly experience blutpir was during sex (whatever kind of specific sexual activity).  It got me feeling rather vampirically shifty, which I won’t get into details but it involved a more vampiric mindset, phantom claws and fangs, and a desire to bite and tear my partner (though I never did it beyond what my partner was okay with).  Over time I lost that shiftiness and anhedonia took hold during sexual activity.  I used to feel so free and euphoric during sex, not so much from the sex itself but instead from the vampire and cat shifts I had during it, which after I lost the shifting, I also lost the ability to much at all enjoy sex.  I want to have that back, in part for my own sake and also because I think it would be healthier socially with my partner for me to enjoy having sex again, to actually be able to feel euphoric during it.

Certain movies and TV shows will get me feeling vampire shifty, mainly if there is a vampire or other animalistic humanoid in it.  I’m kind of particular about it though–most vampire media just doesn’t do it for me and often times they are depicted as too human or not humanoid enough, the former often being vampires that seem like mentally and behaviorally just humans that happen to drink blood.  Fangs on vampires is a much preferred thing for me to see and I get disappointed when I see fictional vampires without fangs.  I also prefer to see them with claws or claw-like nails and extra points if they have (shifting) inhuman eye color.  These three physical traits are the physical aspects of vampires I keep coming back to; being so drawn to and resonating with them, time and time again.  They are consistent with that self-concept I have that I mentioned in this earlier.  And when I do watch something that gets me feeling vampire shifty, I sometimes will get a pleasurable but strange rolling, contracting feeling in my abdomen that I only experience when reading or watching certain fictional humanoid creatures, particularly when they are shifting. I’ve wondered if it’s the same as the “butterflies in your stomach” response, but I’ve felt that during anxious times and know it doesn’t feel the same way.

One of my favorite depictions of a vampire in media is Colin Farrell as Jerry Dandrige in the “Fright Night” reboot in 2011.  I don’t really connect to some of the more stereotypical aspects of the vampire like his weaknesses, but what I do strongly connect with are his animalistic behaviors along with his appearance with fangs, claws, and black eyes.  One scene in particular I love is when he can’t get into a house to attack someone because he has to be invited in, and he acts cattish at the door, like an anxious caged cat pacing as it can’t get to the food/prey it wants.  He manages to display some (of course not remotely all) of the behaviors and physical embodiments that I resonate with as a vampire, so I love being able to see that.  I also rather like Henry from the TV show “Blood Ties”, mainly when he’s shifted because of how I connect with him in that state.  In contrast, I’ve seen media that shows a character that looks like a bipedal, anthropomorphized creature/monster, even in a horror sense, or any range of looking like an animalistic humanoid and connect very little if at all with them because *behaviorally* and/or mentally they aren’t animalistic enough–they’re just a human mind in a nonhuman body, which kind of bores me, to be honest.

The list of typically vampire-associated things I don’t relate to is probably long, but I’ll mention some of it.  Foremost is that blutpirs aren’t harmed by sunlight anymore than most humans are–that’s always been kind of an annoyance to me in vampire media, and it’s unfortunately a very common trope.  Secondly, they aren’t undead at all, they are living beings, albeit with some supernatural aspects including longer-lived, reduced signs of aging, mild shapeshifting abilities, and ability to ‘breed’ via supernatural means rather than sexual (essentially blood transfer in a more typical vampire trope kind of way).  They also aren’t adverse to religious symbols nor need to be stabbed through the heart with a wooden stake in order to kill them (or poof into ash when killed).  There are others I can’t think of right now, but that covers at least some of them.

Sometimes I get phantom shifty with claws and/or fangs and I am fond of the feeling.  I can at times feel my fangs gently pressing up against the inside of my lips, which leaves me pursing my lips just a little bit in response to them.  I get, more uncommonly, a strange phantom feeling in my eyes that I’ve come to associate with maybe a shifting feeling to them, like they are (phantomly) turning to an inhuman state.  These phantom parts can combine with other phantom parts of whichever of my theriotypes, usually cat (especially since I have constant phantom cat ears).  I may feel defensive with eyes wide and flared, claws ready, and fangs bared (with me tending to feel only top fangs as a vampire, I think, and more pointed teeth on top and bottom as cat, but again, cat and blutpir are kind of blurred at times).  At those times I will also want to hiss and growl and have ears back and hackles/fur on neck and back bristled.  There’s also a certain ‘cattish’ grin or smirk I have sometimes when feeling vampirey, which I doubt looks nearly on my physical body like how I see it in my mind; and it’s something that the Jerry Dandrige character I mentioned does oh so well.  When I’m feeling myself doing a ‘vampiric grin’ (whether internally or externally), I also mentally feel more confident, charismatic, and predatory, so it’s a mental shift and not just a phantom sensation or body-oriented thought.  Comparatively, I’m usually docile, meek, submissive, and passive, so it honestly feels different but enjoyable to have that kind of shift in mindset (no matter how fleeting it may be, which it always is).  I still feel like myself, to clarify, just a different sort of version of who I really am.  It really captures what I felt Sonne-the-character was like.

I will say that I do have a distaste for the fact that the term “vampirekin” has seemingly become (at least on Tumblr) synonymous with vampirecore, I assume from the ‘kinning-for-fun’ people.  It just reminds me of years ago when the Tumblr vampirekin tag was hardly even used, though even then what bit it was used was mainly not by people identifying as vampires in an otherkin-sense, but I like the *concept* of the tag potentially being used to help vampirekin find other vampirekin.  Honestly, I’ve only come across a few or so people who actually identify as serious vampirekin, though I haven’t talked much with any of them about either of us being such, unfortunately (I guess, really, I’m just more apt to talk about this stuff in my longer writings and sometimes on forum posts for some of the shorter stuff).  I’m thankful for those who have actually made it a point to denote vampirekin as not being the same as ‘energy vampires’ (or whichever term to call them, since there are a few; I mean the psi/sang vampires).  Recently I came across a Discord server which does make that distinction and welcomes a wide variety of people in connection with vampirism of some sort.  However, the description of the group noted that vampirism is about the practice of leeching another being’s life force or vital energy which I feel I can’t relate to in the way I experience my vampire otherkinity, but I do see that it would ultimately fit with my vampire ‘kintype itself with it being, of course, a blood-drinking vampire.

This is something that’s interesting to me in how I experience this otherkinity: my lack of a desire, let alone a strong, nagging urge, to drink blood.  I figure it’s for the same reasons that I don’t experience the desire to eat grass (for horse), or arthropods (for mongoose and erdenvogel), or raw meat (for cat).  Those urges for consuming foods of my ‘type-specific diets just have never been part of me and my experiences, for whatever reason.  So why would it be present in my vampirism when it isn’t present for my four theriotypes?  That makes sense to me, but whomever else may not understand it since I experience *being* (non-physically) a vampire in this life without the cravings for blood (or other life-force substance, yet my vampire ‘type is specifically a blood-drinking one).  In the lore that aligns with my vampire ‘type, it doesn’t survive solely on blood–it eats like any other human–just needs to consume blood periodically to stay healthy and functional and may die without it.

They, from what I’ve come up with in my personal lore of blutpirs, don’t tend to go into (let alone on a frequent basis) strong, deep cravings for it, but that those urges can at times come up if they are starting to basically ‘wither away’ in health and such from going too long without blood, or if they’ve lost a lot of blood and haven’t had it replenished via transfusion yet.  Those scenarios haven’t been applicable to me, especially since I’m living life in a human body that doesn’t need to drink blood to be healthy, functional, or to survive in general.  It’s not that I’m mentally adverse to drinking blood, it’s just that I literally never have a craving for it and see no point in me trying to find a way to get a hold of either another person’s blood (safe donor) or another animal’s blood (like pig’s blood).  Although it’s kind of funny to me that I have always preferred well-done meat and generally dislike the taste of meat that’s any below well done or sometimes below medium doneness (like roast beef for the medium level; steak and ground beef I dislike pink at all).  Most people I know prefer their steaks rare to medium-rare, so I’m the ironically odd one out in that.

So yeah, being a blood-drinking vampire-identified person who doesn’t crave blood at least *sometimes* makes it more difficult for me to relate to other vampirekin along with most other people who have a connection with vampires, are energy vampires, or vampire lifestylists since so much of these vampire things tends to focus on the *need* and *cravings* for blood or life-force that defines vampires.  Though when I really stop to think about it, despite that being definitive of describing or categorizing vampires, maybe even a fictional vampire species doesn’t *have* to be so much about that.  It’s like thinking that a theriotype of a certain animal is heavily defined in being that kind based largely on what that animal’s diet is and that they would be odd if they didn’t, during this current human-body life, experience strong cravings for the theriotype’s food.  Now granted, yes, most animals are not defined by their diets in our vocabulary: we don’t define a horse as a horse because it eats grass/vegetation, for example, but my point is that I don’t experience being a vampire as “a being that feasts on blood to survive”.  I experience vampire as an animalistic humanoid that has various physical aspects and adaptations that came about over time, in part for predatory reasons to gain the sustenance (blood, especially from humans) that it needs from time to time to function and survive.  Being vampire for me is much more about being a nonhuman, animalistic humanoid than it is about “I *must* drink blood”; it’s a much more diverse experience that I shouldn’t think has to boil down to such an oversimplistic concept of what a vampire is or should be.

For comparison purposes, it’s kind of like my domestic cat theriotype and how it is similar to actual domestic cats.  Now, of course, I can’t know what actually goes on in the brains of cats, but things can be inferred from their behaviour.  Domestic cats, like other felines, are evolutionarily built to *kill*, to be predators, mostly ambush predators.  However, when we keep them inside and well fed, they are allowed to experience a life that isn’t mostly about “when will my next meal be” or “I need to hunt now” in order to survive.  Instead, although they are still very food motivated and frequently are preoccupied with getting or wanting to get food (if they aren’t totally free-fed with a constant supply of food available all the time), they express a variety of other behaviors that include other aspects of their lives and selves (like social aspects, grooming, play, etc.).  My experience in being vampire is kind of like that–although I do think often about wanting food, I’m fortunate and thankful to be able to be well-fed and not have to worry about obtaining my next meal for the most part.  My behaviors and my mindset don’t end up involving me needing or feeling I need to obtain blood, especially since I don’t possess the physiology for that need to be present.  Yet I do experience desires for attacking or biting as a vampire, even though those have been reduced for the past few years due to my depression (which I cover in a different writing).

It is thus not a sense of a need for blood that could connect me to other vampirekin and other vampirism-related people, as it is instead a sense of humanoid animality (albeit a very particular kind) that connects me to some concepts of vampires.  And so even as a fictional humanoid vampire I still find more sense of similarity among therians than I do for most people who use the term “vampire” for themselves.  I would like to find more animalistic vampirekin to share thoughts or writings with; to read of their similar and contrasting experiences in being a vampire.  I want to read more thoughts about their vampirism “beyond the blood need” and into the diversity of other experiences they have related to being vampire.  So here I am, trying to share my own pieces of vampirism for others to see and maybe relate to.