• Wolf Link 🐺@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Depends on the setting. It’s been a while since I last watched Interview with the Vampire but IIRC there was a scene where Lestat unknowingly drank from a very recently deceased person and it made him sick and weak immediatly, even tho that person was still “warm”. I guess the vampires in that setting wouldn’t be able to drink anything like lab-grown or even donated blood without severe issues. No heartbeat = not safe.

    The vampires in The Witcher however don’t need blood to survive - to them it is more like a drug, something that they want to drink and get crazy when they have it, but if they don’t get it, they’re still perfectly fine. For those it would likely be okay to drink whatever synthetic blood science can create, since it is only for a temporary high anyway.

    IRL lore about vampires differs greatly world wide, so answers will be different depending on who you ask. Personally I’d say yes, since I never understood why the victim has to be alive - as long as the blood has all the nutrients the vampire needs, and it hasn’t gone bad in some way, it should be fine.

    • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Personally I’d say yes, since I never understood why the victim has to be alive - as long as the blood has all the nutrients the vampire needs, and it hasn’t gone bad in some way, it should be fine.

      That works for more sciency vampires, but most settings that include vampires have explicit magic. When you add magic, you can basically apply whatever rules you want for why vampires drink blood. If they’re really feeding on the victim’s life force or soul or whatever then the synthetic stuff wouldn’t cut it, and the blood itself may not even matter.