It would depend on the setting, I’d think.
In an SF setting, then maybe: it could be the chemical qualities of blood that they need.
In a fantasy setting, then probably not: what they need is life taken from another. Blood is simply the material component of that life force.
Kind of bridging the Sci Fi an Fantasy angles, someone could probably come up with an interesting mechanic about how the blood is grown in a lab
Could be that just straight-up blood cultures grown in a vat don’t have the necessary life force, but growing some genetically engineered organism that is just a living blood factory, basically a meat bag of bone marrow, circulatory system, and just enough of a nervous system to keep things going checks enough boxes for it to work.
Sort of tangential to lab-grown blood, but maybe there’s a little industry preying on the families of brain-dead patients who insist on keeping them on life support and convincing them to move their loved ones mortal vessels into a blood farm when the medical bills start piling up too high. Or desperate women taking dangerous drugs and getting pregnant in hopes of having an anencephalic baby that they can sell to the vampires to make ends meet.
Maybe there was a plague that causes widespread birth defects and millions of babies are being born without any higher brain functions. The church is having an absolute conniption over this, they won’t condone aborting them or taking them off of life support, but the only way many can afford to keep these human-shape meat puppets alive is by giving them over to the vampire blood farms, and they’re certainly not about to condone anything having to do with those demon-spawn bloodsuckers either.
These are horrible ideas but very intriguing. Thank you for them.
The movie Lifeforce enters the chat.
Granted it’s barely SF, the vampires are barely (see what I did there?) vampires, and it’s objectively not a very good movie. But vampires from space sucked the life from people, and it totally rocked.
As a Californian, I was trying to figure out why San Franciscan vampires were able to drink lab blood.
Now what if you mixed a small amount of body grown blood with lab grown
Be careful with that reasoning. If vampires only drink blood for the life force connected to it, it’s only a short jump to cum vampires.
They’re called succubi
Since vampires don’t exist, you can make up any rules you like.
A vampire wrote this
Stanley nickels?
But if vampires don’t exist, would they even follow any rules that don’t exist either? 👀
Isn’t that the whole premise for the show True Blood?
Yes, and Morbius (though in Morbius the sybthetic blood loses effectiveness after a while.)
True Blood!
Exactly, watch the True Blood documentary about how they were able to create synthetic blood for vampires, it also has a very cool soundtrack. It’s not as tasty as the real thing but at least you don’t need to murder people for their blood anymore.
can they drink it?
why yes. I can drink blood too. Not that I would.
does it sustain them?
I would say… yes… depends on freshness. Nothing better than fresh (and warm) from a neck.
would they enjoy it?
call 1-800-ASKVAMPIRE for a trial! toll-free!
In the world of darkness setting, most vampires cannot eat anything other than blood. Drinking coffee would be like drinking liquid ash. Often causing the vampire to puke.
If the synthetic blood is not real blood, it would be like that for them, hence they would physically struggle to drink it.
The question is: can lab grown blood be converted to vitae by a vampire body?
Depends on the story you’re trying to tell
That would depend on why they drink blood. Personally, I don’t think the blood itself can sustain anyone, as in, a pure diet of blood isn’t gonna provide you the nutrients and whatever to enable them to survive.
If that’s the case, then it might be something inherent to living creatures that give them sustenance, like maybe a bit of your “life force” is taken away or something. If this is true, then lab grown blood wouldn’t help them, as there’s no life force being created. It’s just a bunch of protein and shit.
Somewhat off topic but have you ever thought that people fetishizing vampires haven’t realized that they have a colder body temperature which would be uncomfortable intimately?
Maybe they have a temperature play kink?
Hmm yeah that didn’t cross my mind
Yeah, but it tastes off, like… there’s a very strong taste of chemicals and plastic in modern humans that is sort of covered up by the vague flavour of what the person tends to eat, but it’s just not covered in lab-grown stuff.
It’s still a hell of a lot better than starving or eating a junkie. Quick side note: meth does not work the same on vampires as on humans. Don’t know whether it’s because of the blood mixed with it or some sort of biological difference, but it tends to make a mess.
Should be, i guess, if the composition of lab grown blood is the same as human.
They did in True Blood. Not really into the supernatural but god damn True Blood was a quality show. Dark af.
Yes, that’s how we survive in modern day. That’s why flogging went way down.
According to Blade yes but it kinda sucks
