Experimenting with blood capsules!

 Hello neh ~

So this weekend I'm spending at mom's place together with Hasakitsuki. Mom and stepdad are currently in Thailand so the house is empty and we thought quickly that it would be awesome to go there and have some cosplay experimenting with no risk of anyone seeing us and getting scared shitless and well, just chill around in a house that is big enough to live in... for a change. So, while there on the Saturday 15th February, aka today, we decided to put on our Hakuouki cosplays and have me –as Okita– trying out something bloody...

Eeyup, I'm gonna use these things. See where this is going?

Blood capsules, yep. They are not mine but Hasakitsuki's but she kindly let me use some. The ones in the plastic round box are powder edition and the ones in the blisters are liquid edition. The powder capsules say on the packaging –in German– that they stain and you can't wash it off clothing and that it might take several tries to get it off your skin. We'll see...

I went outside far enough into the woods in the big yard so that when mom returns she won't immediately see some suspicious alarming red spots in the snow. Good thing we had already the day before walked in the snow and thus made safe "feet holes" to walk in without sinking through the snow all over again; I wouldn't have been all that happy getting at the very least ankle-deep and at best, knee-deep in the snow in cosplay. Okay, so when I got far enough into the woods which was, not that far I just put one capsule in my mouth –the liquid one– and put on my acting cap and let's go!

I must say the taste of this thing is not pleasant but it wasn't really bad either, at least according to me. Then again, who expected fake blood to taste strawberry cheesecake anyway? Not me for sure.
There's not all that much blood in one of these but still sufficient for a few coughs or whatever you want to do with it. Oh, and obviously because I was cosplaying Okita, who has tuberculosis, I was doing the coughing scheme but you can use these for other things as well.

In my case it's not all that hard to act like I'm sick but then again that miiiiiight just be because around this exact time 3 years ago I was hospitalized with a pretty bad case of pneumonia. *shivers* Sure that doing this, especially in February, gives me some rather unpleasant flashbacks of that time but oh well, what won't we do for cosplay and the love of a character?

Okay, so back on track about the liquid capsule. Except for the not-so-good taste it wasn't really hard to use – sure it needs some timing and acting skills if you want to make it look more realistic but it's not bad. Oh, and obviously you have to bite it whenever you want to use the capsule.

When I was done with the liquid one, which didn't take all that long, I decided to try the powder capsule right after. This thing requires that you use your saliva to get it to work because, well, it's blood powder. I didn't have any problem with this but what I did notice pretty instantly was that this thing tastes even stronger than the liquid one, if you ask me. Yep, still definitely not strawberry cheesecake for you...
Oh, and it's not really noticeable on the pictures but the powder one is a few shades darker as well. Actually, the blood ended up looking brighter on photos than IRL anyway, both of them.

I must say that personally I prefer the powder variant, mainly because it's a tad darker and also takes a lot more time to use up. I was actually pretty surprised how many times I could cough and still have a fair amount left in my mouth. To be honest even when I thought I was done I still kept getting more of it and it took quite a lot of spitting to get rid of the red afterwards. The only slightly hard thing with capsules is to not have it show on your face that you have it in your mouth because yeah, if you plan to scare the bejesus out of your friends they'd better not know you are up to something... ;)

I'm sorry about the photo quality but they are taken with my old camera, which is a lot lighter than my SLR to carry, and thus easier to take self-photos with.
Oh well, when I was done coughing blood I hurried back inside because staying around 20 minutes outside in a not-very-warm-at-all cosplay in 0 °C will eventually make you cold. Duh.

This is what the ground looked like when I was done...

Back inside I washed my bloody hand with warm water and yeah, the powder one seems to stain. It's not all that visible on this picture but IRL it's kind of easy to see. It seems to fade nicely after a few more washes though and all in all it's not bad staining at all if you ask me. I was prepared for worse.

Notice the stains.

Soon enough I was back in the cold again but this time for some quick pictures together with le Chizuru, aka Hasakitsuki. I was the one taking the photos and yeah, still with the old camera and it shows in lack of quality. Didn't really get any good photos because it had already gotten too dark but oh well...

Oh, and before I let you go I must tell you about a funny and rather awkward thing that happened. So when I had put on my cosplay I looked out of the living room windows (they're big) and saw a random man walking on the yard. I hurried to go hide in case it was this guy who mom had told to bring in the mail but......... it wasn't. So this unknown man rang the door bell once and I thought "let's pretend there's no one home" but then he rang a second time and some seconds later he was still waiting outside. I decided to go "fuck this shit" and went –in full cosplay– to open the door and guess? It was no other than this one old friend of stepdad who, more of less often, comes and asks if stepdad is home and I tell you, he does this whenever he pleases and yes, it has happened at least once in friggin' midnight! Another critical detail about this guy is that he is drunk 90% of the time and always asking for alcohol if you let him in. Love Finland. But yeah, I opened the door to this guy and told him stepdad is not here and frankly, he's far away in Thailand. I swear he was looking at me with a weirded out face and there was a moment of awkward silence before I just tried to get him to leave already. xD Yeah, awkward.

With that said Valkoinen Samurai is out!