People often shit themselves when they die… Do vampires when they get turned from alive to undead?? This is important lore to consider

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    2 hours ago

    Well, like others have said, Anne Rice specifically describes the process, which includes purging the digestive and excretory tracts entirely. Vomiting, urinating, and defecating.

    Most authors don’t cover that stuff at all because it’s not really what most readers want. They want the stuff that’s fantastic, not gritty. Or, that’s what authors assume their readers want. Since Anne Rice’s success, vampires tend to be written less as horror, and I’d argue that the majority of vampire fiction is now in the paranormal romance category. Chances are that they’re right in that assumption.

    Take what it is likely the most successful paranormal romance series, the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. She does a little of the gritty with it, but avoids the “nasty” parts. I would say that pretty much every fan of the series from before the show (true blood, for anyone not aware of the books and show) wouldn’t have been a fan if she’d written in any scenes with even the humans pooping “on screen”. Some of the fans from after the show might not have been bothered.

    But, that kind of vampire story isn’t really a vampire story. They’re romance stories truth vampire characters. And, usually, they’re written with female protagonists for a cis-hetero adult woman audience in mind. Even when written with a vampire protagonist, it’s almost always going to be a female vampire, or if it’s a male vampire, they’ll be into men. I’m sure there’s exceptions, but that’s what the genre was built on.

    If you get into urban fantasy, you’ll find grittier vampire stories and characters, but even there, you only find passing mentions of human digestive products because most people don’t want to read about something they experience regularly.

    Now! Having written fantasy and urban fantasy books myself, as well as having done world building for my home brew ttrpg, I have addressed this in passing.

    There’s multiple types of vampires between my various settings. But the most common one is formed by a magic based symbiotic virus. That kind of vampire doesn’t excrete anything during their rebirth because the virus is going to reshape the organs involved, and converts what would normally be waste into usable materials and/or energy.

    Those vampires only urinate is defecate when they eat normal food. This is not something they do often because the virus rewires their brain and sensory organs in a way that vegetables are unpleasant, and cooked meat is as well. Even raw meat doesn’t smell like food to them, though when they choose or have to eat things other than blood, raw meat is the only thing that tastes like food to them. It just tastes very weak and unsatisfying. They’ll still be hungry if they shovel down as much meat as their reformed stomachs can hold.

    But, when they do eat normal food, they excrete it eventually. The symbiote after transforming the body no longer inhabits the digestive tract, and it has killed off the gut biome. So, what comes out is what went in; chewed up food. The only time that changes is when there are living microbes on the food. The symbiote will attack those to kill them off, and that does result in some of the food being broken down as well, but it isn’t digested, it’s more that the cells in the food are damaged and leaking.

    In other words, you don’t want to be around vampire poop in my universe lol.

    You also don’t want to be around a vampire that needs to poop they get grumpy because you only are the remnants of their intestines now moving, they’re uncomfortable. There’s also the reaction of the symbiote when it needs to cleanse any food. It sends signals across the body that there’s something unwanted present, so the vampire feels slightly angry, and possibly nervous.

    The only things a vampire can take in and use would be liquids, but except for plain water, and made up beverages created by the vampires, the process is the same. Water will get absorbed, and whatever is left over gets pooped out rather than being absorbed and filtered out into urine. The beverages they’ve made themselves, like blood wine, are grown specifically to make sure the symbiote will treat the non water components like blood. Which, there’s this whole thing about fields of grapes being grown in symbiote rich soil, etc that makes that possible, but I doubt anyone cares lol.

    Back to the lore related to digestion. The point of all that is that I’m a tad strange regarding imaginary creatures. When, why, and how they poop is, to me, essential lore. Same with reproduction. So every fictional species/race in my stuff, I’ve thought it out for them. I’ve even got answers for creatures I didn’t build myself (and I say build because stuff like vampires can’t be claimed as a creation, but you can put them together. It’s like fictional legos).

  • Qubbe@programming.dev
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    6 hours ago

    Since vampires no longer digest food it would seem that evacuating their bowels would be a practical event during their conversion. I agree this lore should be reflected upon more.

  • sheepishly@fedia.io
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    4 hours ago

    I often wonder if vampires have to piss a lot given they’re basically on an all-liquid diet

  • cowfodder@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    According to Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, yes. The body finishes dying and evacuates everything shortly after being turned.

  • fubo@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    Nope. The brown of shit is dead blood cells filtered out by the liver. Those are a potent source of Death energy, and so are drawn up into the new vampire’s body as part of the conversion process. What’s left in the new vampire’s colon is a nearly odorless, dusty gray substance — emptied of both Life and Death energy — that is typically farted out during the vampire’s first few feedings.

  • Marthirial@lemmy.world
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    5 hours ago

    So what you all are saying is that the next event after becoming immortal with incredible powers, is to go take a really messy shower?