Category: Octarine Valur

OCTARINE VALUR. For months and months on end, you meet your donor for regular feedings and you get used to feeling completely well and healthy and energetic and you tend to take it for granted. For the lucky ones, feeding can even become something of an inconvenience – you want me to do that again? Now? You even start noticing a little doubt creep into your mind, in the midst of your bliss and contentment, despite what you know from past experiences. Do you really need it? You wonder. Is it just your imagination? And then one week, for a variety of possible reasons, your donor isn’t available. The unthinkable happens – you miss a feed.

OCTARINE VALUR. Over the past month the Vampyre Academy, a South African group attached to the South African Vampyre Aliance (SAVA), posted two polls and one short survey. The results of these are now in, and are the subject of this article. The relevant items which will be discussed are the “How Do You Feel About The SA Vampyre Community?” poll, the SA Vampyre Community Religious Affiliation poll, and the SAVA SA VC Perception Survey, respectively. In this analysis of the three surveys, we will look at their meaning and significance to the SA Vampyre Community.

OCTARINE VALUR. Since the Vampyre Community came out of the shadows around the world in the late 1980’s, it has encountered hostility and resistance. It has been demonized and attacked by hostile outsiders in the Shinai world, and waves of propaganda have been thrown against it by those who either do not understand, or do not want to understand – or who DO understand, but act against us out of hatred or religious fundamentalist ignorance and zealotry. All this results in very muddy water and for people looking at the murk while trying to understand what is in the pool, it can be very confusing indeed. This article will provide a basic explanation of our local community in South Africa and a brief to-the-point explanation of what real Vampyres are. Hopefully our readers will find understanding what we are a little easier.

OCTARINE VALUR. Having heard so many sangs, especially young sangs asking about blood sources, where to find donors, and particularly about substitutes, I decided to address that in this article. Many newly awakened sanguines realize with something of a shock that while our psychic siblings can feed practically anywhere and virtually off any source of energy, sanguines are much more limited in our options. When the hunger strikes, what are we to do?

OCTARINE VALUR. How many Vampyres get to find love with another Vampyre? In other places where there is a healthy scene and where we can mix more freely and openly, I’m sure it does happen – but what about in South Africa? By this, I mean to ask: how often do we get to form real life intimate relationships with someone else like us? Recently I was fortunate enough to spend a week on vacation with another sanguine, who I’d already known for more than a year. We had become close friends over that time, and come to consider her as a dear friend, a beloved vampyric sibling – my blood sister, or lalae.

OCTARINE VALUR. It’s not widely known, but there is a Christian anti-Vampyre movement. It’s not co-ordinated or organized for the moment, and it’s basically just some small fringe groups and individuals around the world who happen to be doing similar things at more or less the same time. It’s not even a new thing. For years they have written books and blogs, hosted presentations at churches and schools and presented mis-information seminars to law enforcement officers. There are propaganda videos and DVD’s and some end up on YouTube play-lists to be used to try and discredit or demonize our community. Why? What is their interest in the VC? As with many persecutions and moves to incite fear or hatred of diversity by spreading mis-information, the motive for this can be traced back to religion. Recently, a religious cult-group in the USA posted a lengthy video on YouTube arguing that a pastor of a group it had an ongoing feud with, is “a Vampyre”, employing exhaustive argument using circumstantial evidence such as tastes in music on the part of the pastor in question in order to discredit him.

OCTARINE VALUR. VC members were horrified last week by the news of the Iraqi massacres in which Islamist terror-militia abducted teenagers from schools and from the streets and brutally killed them. Pictures of several victims were circulated on the web over the weekend. An estimated 117 teenagers were reportedly marked for death specifically because they dressed in Western-inspired styles, wore non-traditional haircuts, or were identified as being gay. For some time before the massacres, Iraqi religious leaders and even the Ministry of the Interior are supposed to have released official documents, accusing those who identify as “Emo” of “sedition”, “witchcraft” and “satanism”. Of particular interest to our community however, is the specific accusation levelled against the victims, of being “vampires”. Were they really?

OCTARINE VALUR. I had an argument a while back with some chap in the community who claimed that he was physically immortal, that all “true” Vampyres were – and that a “sure sign” of this immortality was the fact that he had never suffered any broken bones. That warranted a double-take. When did that happen – and why didn’t I get the memo? I had mental images of Damon Salvatore from Vampire Diaries and Jessica from True Blood, and then drooled slightly. Then I shook my head to come back to reality – for that is exactly what he was talking about – fantasy and fiction. And yet, he was speaking – with authority – as though it were fact!