Recently read “marry our sorrows”, which was an such amazing fic, absolutely loved it. And well, I was wondering if you could perhaps give a more detailed explanation of the vampire biology? The little bits I read were cool enough and kept me intrigued and really invested on it.
I really loved the wordbuilding btw 🙏🙏
the vampire biology in marry our sorrows is a little bit chaotic i won't lie. obviously the basics of their existence boil down to them needing blood to survive, but then there's a whole lot of differences even between like. born and turned vampires that makes all of this very fun to mess with.
for starters (and as it was mentioned in passing during the fic) vampires are all born with vaguely feminine anatomy. i say vaguely because the differences they might have are pretty much only hormonal and it doesn't really affect the way they're perceived by other vampires? it's pretty much just a fact that if you are born a vampire then you are a woman no matter what (which makes zanka, rudo and goka all trans in this au, yippee).
they're pretty much immortal unless killed, except for turned vampires being able to starve. their aging is also different because of this. born vampires age semi-normally during their childhood (which is until they're 26, when their last fangs grow in) and then it slows significantly until they reach around 70 in appearance. most born vampires just end up looking permanently old. meanwhile turned vampires stop aging at time of turning, because they die for it.
also! about the teeth! they take 10 years to fully fall and grow in. for the first 16 years of life vampires are dependent on either their makers or parents to actually hunt for them, because their teeth are too blunt to easily cut through skin.
about the feeding, they need around a litre of blood once a week to function/survive. drinking more than that is seen as a sign of weakness, so it's very much looked down upon (feeling hungry for all that is also a bad sign, hence why zanka spends the whole time ashamed of it). born vampires go blind + dehydrated without blood so. there's that. basically once they have no food the blood they have starts concentrating around the eyes and causes bleeding in front of the pupil, so they lose the ability to see. turned vampires just die lol.
the blood they drink is important too!! they can't get sick by common means, but they can get sick if they drink diseased blood and that can be pretty permanent. for example if someone has a disease that causes frequent nosebleeds and a vampire drinks them, they'll end up having nosebleeds pretty often too.
they're biologically inclined to bloodshed. the blood they drink functions a bit like a magnetic thing for more blood, so the more they drink the more they crave, because it'll all be in them and calling for more of itself.
speaking of blood, their eyes are important to do with that. in a vampire red eyes tend to mean hunger, because of the bleeding that happens when they go without food. of course there's the whole deal with turned vampires having the eye colour of their makers too, more on that here!!
their allergy to brass is inspired by the whole crosses and religious symbols part of the myth. altar crosses often had brass in them back then, so i figured it'd do a better job at keeping them away than silver.
vampires are also biologically drawn to care for those perceived as their young. that includes turned vampires whose makers aren't present OR born vampires that are younger than. in the fic this happens with zanka feeling for rudo and ta feeling for zanka, but there is a bit of it between zanka and jabber too. especially since vampiric rebirth includes reawakening the brain, it restarts some of the natural infant reflexes from infancy lol. basically the feeding/grasping reflexes are present for the first few days of vampirism after turning.
SOME born vampires have extra abilities. they can learn, mostly. they're also the only ones who can turn others into vampires. zanka does know that he can turn people, he just refuses to because it's the principle of it that being able to turn means being a born vampire, and being a born vampire means being a woman. he's taking magical paths to dysphoria.
it gets vaguely mentioned during chapter 5 that vampires crave visual stimuli. it's because they're used to having lower visual capacity when it comes to colour (because they're beings of the night and there's less light to see colour with at night). essentially canvas town is a haven because even at night the place is full of colour and vampires don't see it often. their other senses are pretty well developed, but scent is the best of them.
okay i do not know what else to add at the moment so. if you have any questions please do ask!! i love answering them it just takes me a sec lol, and if there's anything specific you wanna know about i can and will go overboard answering it 🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️
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