I saw in one of your previous posts that in the Xeno AU you mentioned that handling a vampire’s wings in different places could bring about different responses and I was wondering if you could go into more detail on this, like the different responses and how to evoke each of them. Awesome blog btw

Admin Mawile: (ノ*゜▽゜*) I think it may have been Skitty who did that explanation?? Idk, I’m giving some more background on the wings anyway!

-So, the wings come out of the vampire’s back, from the same area as the shoulder blade. Like vampires themselves, they don’t quite follow human laws of physics, and can materialize and materialize at will (although it sometimes happens unconsciously), even through clothes. They’re very, very delicate, with slender, fragile bones, thin skin, and amazingly soft fur the same color as the vampire’s hair. The wings are a vestigial feature, left over from when vampires were a lot less human, and they may or may not have something to do with vampire’s magic, as well. They’re extremely sensitive, especially to touch and pain; light yanking or pinching can hurt more than being punched.

Vampire society demonizes any kind of weakness, and most of them would rather just forget that anything so fragile is even a part of them. The wings are hardly ever brought up, and really only used as a creative way of causing pain. There’s a small area under the wing arm, close to the base where it merges back into skin that’s even more sensitive then the rest of the wing, most likely because unless the wing is spread open, it’s completely protected by the folds of the wing. On vampires that have had more social, non-neglectful childhoods, that spot is drastically more sensitive than the rest of the wing. This is supposedly the norm, what’s meant to happen. On the ones that have been mostly isolated or neglected, the overall sensitivity is greater, with less of a contrast between the majority of the wing and that spot. This is said to be the result of a certain kind of severe mistreatment, more of a forced adaption than anything that occurs normally.

The wings are also integral in the functioning of certain instincts, like the much hated attachment instinct. Like the wings themselves, the reflexes that they cause are hated by vampire society, and ignored entirely save for by those particularly cruel vampires who use them to torture their own kind. Unfortunately, this has really only made their idea of the problem worse. Most wings are now extra sensitive from disuse, slowly evolving into even greater weaknesses thanks to being deprived of any change to adapt to pain or contact. Through the generations, wings are getting even more fragile, even weaker, even more meant for only the very instincts they’ve been trying to forget about.

what all does “training” a pet entail?

Admin Mawile: (>ω<○) Nothing good…

-Training is basically a process of, starting from infancy, destroying any idea that the pet could ever be anything but. Systematically obliterating self preservation, individuality, free will, and any form of self esteem to create a creature that thinks it can only be a pet to someone.They’re supposed to perfectly defer to a human’s will, and never go against or cause harm to what are programmed to be their betters. Exact training methods vary from breeder to breeder, but the general principles of physical and mental pain, isolation, and dependency on humans stay the same. Beatings, solitary confinement, separation of any bonds but to an owner, de-fanging (and other processes designed to render a sentient creature helpless and dependent), restricted food, if not outright starvation, and regular “obedience training” are all common, but many trainers come up with even more cruel and inhumane ways of making harmless pets out of formerly dangerous creatures.

For the pet Au: do vampires still drink human blood, and if so, how are they fed? Do people by blood-bags, is there a blood substitute, or do people let their ‘pets’ bite them?

Admin Mawile: (~০౪০)ﾉ Ohoho, I have a headcanon for that~

-So first, a brief explanations of vampire eating habits. As we’ve seen in canon, they can consume both blood and regular food, and express hunger at a lack of either. Also considering Shuu’s North Pole trip, it would be safe to assume that if they can starve to death, it wouldn’t be easy. My idea is that it’s more or less impossible for a vampire to starve to death. A lack of blood makes them weak, achy and miserable, and both that and a lack of “regular” food can make it feel like they’re dying of hunger, but neither can kill them.

-Since they won’t die either way, most vampires owners don’t care if their pets go hungry or not. They feed them enough to keep them functional past the pain and exhaustion, and rarely any more. Blood isn’t easy to come by, not to mention annoying to keep and serve, and no one wants to waste much people food on a pet, so more often than not, they just go hungry. Vampires have to be fed something to remain functional (not dead, just too tired and drained to move), and blood can be bought at stores for exotic pet supplies, but not many owners go out of their way to keep their vampire well fed.

-Finally, there’s a fairly common practice among vampire owners of having their pets de-fanged. Most commonly done on individuals with a history of violent behavior or acting out, de-fanging is said to be extra insurance that the vampire will never pose a threat. Similar to de-clawing a cat, it removes the main way they can do damage, with the added bonus of (supposedly) making the vampire more submissive and even tempered. The practice started out, and mostly still continues, as being used on adult or adolescent vampires that were otherwise difficult to handle, but currently, some breeders even default to it at infancy. Unfortunately, it renders the vampire incapable of feeding the normal way, and forces them to lap up or drink blood the same way a human would have to with any liquid. Some have argued that it does serious harm to the vampire’s mental state, as well.