I should have continued making posts here, but I’ve been more in an information-collecting stage–and the holidays have intervened.

I’m doing a lot of research and information-gathering for the articles which will be the next major additions to the website content. These have been planned for a very long time and I’m finally getting to them.

I’ve been reading other websites and message boards, as well, catching up on discussion topics and opinions and reviews after my long period of time being less connected to the OVC and its doings. There hasn’t been a dramatic change in the basic outlook of self-identified vampires since the 2000 psi-vamp/sanguin schism. But there are two very noticeable changes since then: the explosion of the “Otherkin” communities, which in 2000 was barely getting started, and the much greater overlap with the VC and Pagan/Wiccan/Witchcraft/Magickal topics, which in 2000 was far less evident. Both of these may be related directly to the ascendency of the psi-vamp identification in the VC as a whole. Whatever is behind it, it’s now more common for messageboards to include forums for these categories than not.

I posed a question on the Smoke & Mirrors messageboard, asking anyone who had let a vampire-themed website lapse in the past, why they didn’t keep up their website. No one replied, suggesting that people who let websites lapse also stop participating in the community (not that the whole world is on Smoke & Mirrors, but Sanguinarius is moving her forums to a new server and they’re currently on hold). I remain curious about all the vanished websites, though. Where did they go, and why? Even among the sites still running, a significant minority of them have obviously not been updated or changed for years.

Anyone who hasn’t filled out the Atlanta Vampire Association’s VEWRS and AVEWRS surveys, should do that: they need to be done by December 31st.