Vampire Knight - Blog Posts

VKR- Vampires

At their core, Vampires are like feral cats or even drug addicts: they’re desperate creatures that will do anything to get the blood they live off of because of the inescapable need to drink blood at any cost. It cannot be cured, as it is a species-changing curse/condition. I also don’t like it when there are cures for it.

Vampires that have regular access to blood are composed creatures, and high-society vampires are usually so. However, if thirst kicks in after a while, they’ll do anything for the blood they need. They cannot eat human food, as they’ll vomit it out after a minute. The only solid thing that makes their stomachs feel full is flesh, and they’ll vomit that up, too, after a minute.

The origin of vampires is like VTM (Vampire: the Masquerade): the first murderer (Cain) was cursed by God to only be able to feed off of his own kin. He would live forever with his ailment, but at the cost of being extremely fragile, the sun would peel his skin, and he’d be stuck with an animal’s features to hunt prey (super speed and strength).

The Vampire’s bite is, effectively, The Mark of Cain. So it makes sense that Hunter’s Mark is called The Mark of Abel.

Vampires' abilities are the usual speed, strength, and enhanced agility, but also the ability to manipulate blood since a weakness of vampires is their own blood (like in the Tokyo ghoul, with ghouls being weak to their own Kagune). Few purebloods (or vampires born as vampires with mostly vampires in their line) have special powers, such as illusory abilities like Shizuka and the Hio bloodline.

The basic classes of vampires are:

Class A: purebloods, or vampires born as vampires. That’s literally it. Half of the night class are purebloods.

Class B: Similar to purebloods but with some humans in their line, though the humans are either turned or the human side is overwritten by pure vampire DNA. So a mildly less respected version of Purebloods

Class B (subsection)/"Class C": There are also vampires that were once humans. These guys are the most common to find in your city and prefer to keep to themselves, while the other third are just hedonistic asshats, and one-third are just trying their best to work with humans.

Class E/feral vampire: Feral vampires are like your usual street junkies or feral cats. Desperate creatures who couldn’t find enough blood to live off of and are grateful for whoever will provide, no matter how sketchy. Unfortunately, their humanity is nearly gone, and they have certain periods of relapse where they can’t hold themselves back and will drink from whatever body is near, whether they want it or not. They can be any vampire; they just need to be devoid of blood for so long that they look pretty skinny.

Untouchables, Daywalkers, and Half-Breeds: Dhampirs or half-humans Their blood is considered the most repulsive to taste. The high class sees them as diluted and gross, while most class B’s just don’t really have much of an opinion about them, though ironically, both are a bit jealous of them since their human side allows them to walk in the sun and have little need of blood; in fact, they get sick if they drink too much.

Feral vampires, or "Class/Level E's," also have some cat and dog-like behaviors, such as food aggression and hissing; sometimes, they’ll even eat a tiny bit of flesh for the hell of it, but most vampires can eat flesh before promptly vomiting it, as well, though they don’t because, yknow, that’d just make them straight-up zombies or ghouls. Plus, flesh is unnecessary in the grand scheme of things, and you know, they’ll just vomit it out. (Based on that one scene in The Lost Boys where the vampires straight up eat a dude.)

The vampire's weaknesses are the traditional silver, stakes, religious symbols, the sun, holy water or weapons, and their own blood. Silver is highly corrosive to vampires, and if a vampire holds something silver, it’ll take about a minute before it fully corrodes through their skin to their muscles. If they are shot, their organs will start melting unless it’s removed. Also, some magic spells work against them, though many vampires also use magic, like the Aido family. Vampires get highly nauseous and dizzy around the religious symbols they worship.

Vampires most recognizable features are their pale, corpse-like skin, pointy elf-like ears, and red eyes. They cannot blush because blood has stopped running in their bodies, though they still bleed. Their hearts do not beat.

Once they are bitten, vampires go into a berserk state where they’ll drink from whatever multiple people are near them since they need enough blood to fill their bodies. Suppressed vampires have the worst of it since they need several years' worth of blood.

Vampirism can be suppressed in two ways: the Hunter’s Mark tattoo, a tattoo that goes over the bite that keeps the subject looking human and their thirst in check, though their thirst will come out in random bouts, and if they’re around blood, it’s most likely they’ll lose their control.

The second way is a spell that completely seals off both their vampire side and their memories, but eventually, the subject will go insane from hallucinations and nightmares if the spell isn’t lifted by biting the subject. The spell requires a blood sacrifice that will kill the caster permanently.

Common slurs for vampires used by humans or hunters include:

Bloodsucker

Corpse

Suck-Head (like in Blade)

Parasites (courtesy of Kate)

Demon/Devil (courtesy of Kate)

Tw blood//fake body

Here lies everything

The world I wanted at my feet

+++

Kaname has a shitty…I’d guess this would take place at 2 AM tbh. Either way he’s finally breaking after 923 years of seeing everyone he loves and his family die.

They are in fact pretty minor characters but Yuki’s Parents/One of Kaname’s last descendants (that I drew a while ago) + Rido (The the other one of Kaname’s last descendants and Kaname’s least favorite descendant). Rido’s dead before the series begins, because he’s the vampire that attacks Yuki. So that’s why Shiki sadly doesn’t exist here. Juri was fun to design because I like to draw horrific scarred deformed stuff half the time. Kazuya is literally the most normal man in the series and is kind of reasonably annoyed and afraid of the supernatural interference (Kaname threatening him every minute) but eh what have you.

For Rido I can’t tell whether I yassified or de-yaasified him. One blue eye from the spell that got rid of his deformities. He’s a dude who’s got this very charming, nice and sweet personality (save for hedonistic guy who doesn’t know how satansim works and enjoys blood sacrifices) he’s a fun unhinged kinda guy (“AYYYYYEEEE ITS UNCLE RIDOOOOOOOO”) who’d be Gary Oldman’s Sid Vicious if Sid Vicious was,, actually nice and didn’t abuse women or kill dead animals. “yeah I committed murder multiple times ain’t I cool?” And is crazy because of the inbreeding stuff basically. Dresses like how he thinks Black Sabbath dresses. Bcz he’s a fuckin punk. He’d be great to be around if he wasn’t. Obsessed with getting Alabama ass.

If you can’t tell I have a wholeass light novel outline for these 3 tbh. I have entire light novels planned man. I love being lost in the sauce

Artbreeders i made of Yuki and Emi a long while before i did those edited portraits of the characters. I still like Meisa Kuroki as Yuki but honestly I love the artbreeder a lot more.

Some art of Ichiru from a good while ago cuz I have a lot of art for this series. I think I drew him here cuz I didn’t have enough art for him at the time. Rambling about VKR Ichiru below.

I find it really funny that I turned Ichiru into the main villain of the series since in the OG he was kind of just some ungrateful sick kid with a thing for older women and basically Vergle DMC but less…power (literally)

And then in VKR he’s one of the worst siblings in fiction and probably one of the most evil characters I’ve ever written because the guy is a legit sadistic psychopath not taught right and wrong at the right time which leads to a domino effect of him going “I’m gonna let my parents die so Zero feels sad” to “I’m going to kill my own adoptive father, half a school, help the council nuke the US and Japan, and brainwash my own older adoptive sister just so Zero can be even angrier when he comes back and even before that I’m going to taunt him on BreenCasts, because the only thing that brings me happiness is making my older brother suffer for something that never happened”.

God I love him he’s so awful

Also fun fact the reason I gave Ichiru an eyepatch + diff hair parting in the first place was to differentiate him and Zero’s appearances!

Kaname occasionally calls Zero “coney” because that means “rabbit” in old/middle English. Zero is called a rabbit half the time and a dog the other half but he tolerates rabbit and has no clue what Kaname means so he just lets it happen

There was an attempt at anantomy

Anyway Kaname and Zero’s body types. I didn’t want either to be easily twinkifiable/feminizable/chickifiable, so I tried to set body types that were muscular and different enough to not be considered lithe.

I also got the ✨courage✨ to give them body hair bc realistically they wouldn’t be hairless, they’re men permanently in their 20s in a weird apocalypse and they’re men so.

For Kaname I see him as some kinda stocky fencer-type—though fencers don’t have a specified body type you get it because fencers=weird ominous gracefulness and high society, all that.

Zero in part 1 I’d say is kind of scrawny but then part 2 because he acts feral/like a dog half the time he runs on all fours and thus has very strong arms. But that’s paired with the fact he doesn’t drink much blood not cuz of a sense of honor, but because even when he swears not to wallow in self-pity anymore he’s still self-flagellating.

I also have miraculous ocs I might share eventually :)

IMPROMPTU VALENTINES DAY PLUSH KANAZERO SEMI-MEME POST HAPPY VALENTINES EVERYONE TO I DO HAVE A WIP OF THEM

Sketches of part 2 and part 3 Zero I did in Kleki. I am slowly becoming da master of Kleki until I see some art and I go “THEY DID THAT IN KLEKI?!” oh boy

Random VKR facts both writing-wise and character-wise

Zero is named Zero because his mother originally intended to name him Rei but kept memorizing it as Zero. Eventually, she wrote it down on his birth certificate without hiragana or anything, and it stuck.

Yuki is definitely okay with the fact Kaien basically boxed her in to be nothing but a teacher and taking care of her younger brothers and definitely OK with the fact she realizes she has no ambitions beyond possibly attending college or what job she’d wanted to do yes siree.

In part 2 and the years before part 2, Ichiru keeps wanting to play chess with Kanane but because he’s disgusted by him and because symbolic reasons, Kaname refuses until Ichiru traps him into doing it

Zero's hair in Part 2 is meant to be agrown-out buzzcut because well. He went through some really shit times between part 1 and 2 on account of witnessing Kaien die to Ichiru and being accused of murder and

Emi is a professional hater of Kaname. She has some reasons to dislike him, but in general, she’s just a professional hater

Kaname has dimples because I commissioned an artist to draw him, and they gave him dimples, so he has them.

Kaname is the hardest character to draw for me in the fact he’s based on a real person who’s kinda hard to draw.

I based Zero's look (MAINLY PART 2) off Dante DMC because I heard from tv tropes that DMC may have inspired Vampire Knight. Funny enough VK also helped me get into DMC

Yuki's skin is darker cuz I made her hair black. Then I went "oh if she were tan it'd look nice-oh shes half-Indian now"

I shipped Aido x Yuki the whole time

The Night Class is primarily European and uses Japanese pseudonyms, the same with Kaien

P1 Zero listened to music on Sony MDR7506s, and it’s either because they’re Kaien’s or because he’s a purist hipster. He claims it is the second, but it’s the first.

I have entire ass fan casts for hypothetical movies and OVAs and stuff you don’t know how long I have been writing this

Kaname really likes Zero's hair and how white it is. Seriously, whenever I write post-series them, it’s “Kaname gripping that white hair he'd realized he'd wanted to touch a while.” You get crumbs. CRUMBS

Emi just came out of nowhere. I didn’t even intend to create her. She just came up and you more what that fits her. Originally she was the “shy to badass” archetype but then after I inspired her off Lady (DMC) she slowly became more and more unhinged until I decided I wanted a female character who was just plain crazy and not pitied or sexualized or glorified for it

Kaname's real name (The one he forgor for a few centuries) is Cain I. No relation to actual biblical Cain, it's just his mom didn't want a child but had to have one (1100s royalty), so she named her son after the biblical murderer. Kaname does not care lol

Emi and Zero I’d say are the easiest to draw

Emi has smile lines.

Realistic portraits but I edited the hell out of pictures for tha cast. (This is for the rewritten cast I picture the OG cast much differently)

Zero (Part 1. Used Kento Yamazaki)

Ichiru (Part 1, used Tatsuya Fujiwara. The photo got all pixel-y when I tried to skin paler cuz albino so it’s all weird and smoothed over. Or maybe the uncanniness adds to Ichiru’s whole thing?)

Kaname (Used Gerard Way)(if that wasn’t obvio-)(I feel like how vampires’ red eyes would look realistically like either: the 28 days later rage zombies or like when a camera flash is in your eyes and they get all red)

Yuki (Part 1, used Meisa Kuroki)

Emi (used Tina Tamashiro. I honestly don’t see Emi looking too conventionally attractive but Tamashiro is closest to what I picture. Besides Bjork, but Bjork isn’t Asian. Though I suppose Emi would look good since for Toga I picture Tony Thornburg and for Babette/Emi’s mom it’s Charlize Theron)