Technically-Living Vampire

The Technically Living Vampire is a hematophagous creature that looks and acts much like a traditional vampire, but with at least one crucial difference: they are fully alive instead of being undead. These vampires are instead a race of transhuman mutants, a Human Subspecies, individuals with vampire-mimicking abilities, or even a completely different species that was never human to begin with.

This trope is often used when a writer wants to have vampires in their story, but without making them explicitly supernatural in nature. Typically, living vampires lack most of the traditional weaknesses of undead vampires, though they are also usually much easier to kill, as they have the same vulnerabilities as any other mortal (aging, disease, drowning, etc.). However, it's not uncommon for them to be Long-Lived and/or functionally immortal as long as they have access to blood.

Compare: Dhampyrs, who as the born offspring of normal vampires have "vampire-lite" abilities while still being biologically alive; Living Ghost, when someone is ghostlike but not dead; and Technically-Living Zombie, when someone looks and acts much like a zombie without also being an undead revenant. Sometimes, there might even be examples of mutant monsters who feed on both blood and flesh, blurring the lines between vampires and zombies. Contrast with Ridiculously Alive Undead, for when vampire/zombie characters can almost completely pass for being alive when they're actually undead; and Actually Not a Vampire, for when someone—usually a normal human—displays superficially vampiric behaviors or traits, without actually being a true example of whatever a vampire is defined to be.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Chiropterans in Blood+ are mostly humans infected with a "d-base" extracted from the blood of a queen. Chevaliers are humans fed blood from a queen, while the queens are the biological offspring of a queen and a chevalier, born as twins.
• All vampires in Call of the Night are treated as living beings. It is explicitly stated that most of the known weaknesses of vampires, such as garlic, silver bullets, and crosses, are just rumors based on sightings of real vampires that became more fiction than fact over time. That being said, they do not have a pulse like normal humans.
• All vampires in The Case Study of Vanitas are either former humans or descended from them. The renowned alchemist Paracelsus built the Tower of Babel as part of an experiment to rewrite the World Formula, resulting in a disaster known as the Babel Incident. The human formula had been altered and given way to the existence of vampires. Vampires can suppress the urge to drink blood, have no problem with sunlight, and are considered living beings.
• In Devils' Line, the vampires look virtually identical to humans. They are labeled "devils/oni" and the "red-eye" race. They are biologically unchanged from humans, except for having a low body temperature (10 degrees lower than humans), pale-colored skin and heavy eye-bags. They also have enhanced physical abilities (super strength, speed, reflexes and senses) and the ability to heal their injuries. However, when a devil sees human blood or experiences sexual arousal, their body starts to transform; their eyes turn red, their canines and nails grow to long lengths, their blood vessels bulge out and they lose their sense of self to their instinctive need to drink blood. Lastly, devils have short lifespans, living up to an average of only 39 years.
• Vampires in Interviews with Monster Girls are considered a Human Subspecies with some different biological features, such as needing to ingest blood for survival and heightened senses. They are also legally treated as humans and accorded human rights.
• Vampires in Karin are their own species who are more or less human until they start going through puberty, at which point they subsist entirely on human blood. The only traditional weaknesses they show are being incredibly susceptible to sunlight and an aversion to garlic (though that's only because they have an acute sense of smell). They're also capable of interbreeding with humans, but all resulting Dhampyrs are sterile.
• Monster Musume: Vampires are a species of bat-like liminal that are infected with a virus. They have wings instead of hands, are sensitive to bright light, and drink blood because they need to consume liquids with high iron content. However, they're not undead and they have no supernatural abilities. This is explicitly contrasted to actual undead beings who've appeared in the series, like zombies and ghosts.
• Evangeline in Negima! Magister Negi Magi is an interesting case in that she claims to be undead and has very vampire-like qualities, despite lacking a few of the well-known weaknesses such as sunlight. Still, she lives and breathes like any other student in the series, she just happens to be much older than the rest. It's revealed late in the series that Evangeline is the result of a magical experiment about immortality, transforming her into the vampire she is.

Comic Books

• The DCU: Sgt. Vincent Velcro from Creature Commandos and Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E. is a "scientific vampire", a man experimented on to have all the same powers as a vampire, including bat transformation and super-strength, but none of the weaknesses. He can, however, be killed by normal means.
• Morbius: Morbius the Living Vampire has none of the regular vampire weaknesses aside from the hunger for blood itself, and some very light photosensitivity in lieu of a weakness to sunlight, due to having been transformed by science instead of being bitten by an actual undead vampire (which do exist in the Marvel Universe as well). At the time of his debut there were still rules against depicting the undead in comic books, hence the distinction.
• Strontium Dog: Durham Red is an apparently ageless bloodsucker, but her abilities are a side effect of exposure to strontium-90, and she is otherwise perfectly human.
• Vampirella: Thanks to a severe case of Depending on the Writer, Vampirella is either the undead daughter of Lilith or a living Human Alien Vampire variant. Sometimes she's a mix of both. Lampshaded by Red Sonja in a crossover, where she's confused about why she can see Vampirella's breath in the cold air despite being a vampire.

Fan Fiction

• The Eventide Verse: The one-off "Flutterbat" transformation in the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode "Bats!" is reimagined into a disease that transmits from vampire fruit bats to pegasus ponies via bites. These "bat ponies" have bat-like wings, red eyes, fangs, and an intense thirst for fruit juices, but are very much still alive. The transformation can even be treated, though not fully cured, with the right potion. The condition is also hereditary, with foals appearing to be ordinary pegasi at first.
• From Fake Dreams: At one point in the fic, Shirou Emiya is bitten by a True Apostle Ancestor (basically a type of elite vampire), but he never actually dies and his transformation is significantly slowed down by a magic artifact and sheer dumb luck. As a result, he becomes an anomaly among vampires because he now has vampiric traits while still being a living human and is referred to as "the Living Ancestor" which is impossible by normal standards. It should be noted that whether other characters acknowledge him as a true ancestor or not depends on their political agenda; Shirou wants absolutely nothing to do with all this.
• Discussed in the Luminosity short story "Molly", when the human Cadan recognizes Molly as a vampire:
  Cadan: ...are you technically? Dead?
  Molly: I don't feel that way.
  Cadan: No heartbeat. ...Right?
  Molly: Trees are alive.
• Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: Nabiki Tendo eats a Mythic Zoan-type Devil Fruit called the Bat-Bat Fruit, Model Type: Vampire. Whilst this does give her vampire-like powers in the form of a Healing Factor, hemokinesis and turning into a bat-girl, as well as making her really sensitive to sunlight, she's still a living girl and not actually undead.

Films — Animation

• In the Hotel Transylvania series, vampires appear to be a separate species from humans, being born as infants, need to age (like Vlad, though having a much longer life expectancy), and have the ability to procreate with humans.
• Justice League: Gods and Monsters is set in an alternate DC Universe starring radically different counterparts of familiar superheroes, with their version of "Batman" actually being Kirk Langstrom (better known as Man-Bat in the rest of the DC Multiverse). Unlike most incarnations of Langstrom (who are usually were-bat monsters), this one instead became an expy of Marvel's Morbius; a scientist who had accidentally turned himself into a quasi-vampiric mutant in a botched attempt to cure his terminal illness. Langstrom has several of the usual vampire traits, including strong cravings for blood along with superhuman strength, speed, and durability, though sunlight doesn't seem to hurt him.

Films — Live-Action

• In The Addiction, which portrays a vampire's need for blood as a metaphor for drug dependency, Peina is a vampire who claims to have almost conquered his addiction and, as a result, is almost human. He can eat real food, sleep, maintain a job, diet, and defecate — all things other vampires in this world cannot do because they're only driven by their hunger for blood, like a heroin addict in need of their fix.
• Blood Red Sky: Nadja's vampirism is explicitly shown to be a virus rather than a curse. She has some kind of drug that keeps the symptoms at bay, and she's on her way to America for a potential cure at the start of the film. None of this would be possible if she weren't still alive.
• Vampires in The Breed (2001) are supposedly a genetic offshoot of humanity rather than being undead.
• In The Hamiltons, the titular family are all vampires of the Human Subspecies variety. In the film's world, the Hamiltons and any other vampires out there seem completely human; they're born, mature, live, and die similar to humans, with the exception that they need to drink blood to survive. One notable difference is that apparently, for the first few years, vampire children are somewhat feral, craving blood all the time, and capable of killing a grown man to get it — at least if Lenny, the youngest of the Hamilton siblings, is representative of vampire children as a whole and not just a result of his parents dying while he was a baby and then being raised by unprepared siblings.
• The vampire apocalypse novel I Am Legend (see the Literature folder) has been adapted to film three times:
  • In The Last Man on Earth, closest to the original novel, the infection that wipes out humanity turns them into vampire/zombie-like creatures. Most of them are undead, but it later turns out that some of the creatures are this trope and can be reverted to a human state.
  • In The Ωmega Man, the infected are actually photosensitive mutants and fully functional intellectually, albeit kind of crazy from the change.
  • I Am Legend never uses the V-word, or even the word "undead". The infected (referred to simply as "darkseekers") are alive and explicitly said to be by the protagonist, who is trying to find a cure for the plague. Apparently, it started with a Cure for Cancer based on the measles virus, but quickly mutated and became airborne. It is later revealed that one of the antidotes that Neville is experimenting with is actually successful, and the infected test subject is beginning to transform back into a normal human.
• Morbius (2022) involves the titular character, Michael Morbius, curing his rare blood disease by splicing his own DNA with that of bats. It turns him into a monster with incredible power and a thirst for blood. His brother Milo soon follows suit.
• My Best Friend is a Vampire: Jeremy is skeptical that he is a vampire because he is able to walk around in sunlight. Modoc explains that only undead vampires need to avoid sunlight — living vampires like Jeremy and Modoc only find sunlight mildly annoying.
• Ultraviolet (2006) revolves around "hematophages", victims of a blood disease whose symptoms include superhuman strength and agility, blood cravings, and eventual death. The protagonist Violet is an escapee from a concentration camp, on a mission to prevent the government from exterminating the rest of the infected rather than try to cure them, before the disease kills her.
• In Underworld (2003), vampires aren't undead but get their powers from a mutated virus; as a result, they breathe, can die from bullets and stabbing as easily as sunlight, and can have children.
• The Vampire Doll: Yuko Nonomura is a vampire created by hypnosis, which keeps her from dying but twists her into insanity that leaves her begging for death during brief moments of lucidity. She has an Undeathly Pallor except for the wounds that would have killed her, which are constantly bleeding. She's deathly cold, has Supernatural Gold Eyes, drinks from both animals and humans. Releasing the hypnosis kills her within seconds, but it can only be done by the hypnotist willingly releasing her or the hypnotist dying.

Literature

• In Blindsight, vampires are a Human Subspecies that evolved to prey on other humans. However, they went extinct hundreds of thousands of years ago because right angles gave them seizures. The myths about the living dead stemmed from their ability to hibernate for decades at a time while their slow-breeding prey repopulated. While they're assumed to have been capable of breeding normally, the fact that they were recreated in the 21st century by giving retroviral gene therapy to autists and sociopaths suggests that there may have once been a natural virus that could turn ordinary humans, or at least half-vampires, into vampires.
• In Garfield Reeves-Stevens' vampire thriller novel Bloodshift, vampirism is initially presented as the classic supernatural phenomenon, but is discovered to be a virally induced mutation (transmitted by drinking the blood of an infected mutant after having had one's own drained to near-death) that transforms a human being into a superficially identical but radically different organism. The transformed being gains immense strength, speed and durability, enhanced by the vampire's internal organs all fusing into a single "generalized organ" that takes over the function of all the others; this allows any part of it to support any other injured part (the single exception to this organ-fusion is the heart, which is why stake-sized weapons that transfix it are still fatal). The vampire also gains effectively unlimited longevity, though extremely old vampires continue mutating into something eventually unrecognizable as human, and it is implied that very few vampires have the psychological strength of will to live much beyond five centuries. However, the organism also becomes dependent on human blood, fatally vulnerable to ultraviolet light (including sunlight), and capable of self-directed psychosomatic injury (vampires who believe in their own nature as damned undead are harmed by crucifixes because they believe they "should" be). Varies slightly from the trope in that additional, genuinely supernatural abilities seem to be accessible at later stages of vampiric existence (telepathy, precognition etc.), but the vampires themselves are still living organisms.
• In J.M. Dillard's Star Trek novel Bloodthirst, a genetically engineered virus induces severe porphyria, with a craving for blood.
• In Certain Dark Things, each of the ten Vampire Varieties is a Human Subspecies with distinct biology and society. They aren't interfertile and can't transform humans, but no explanation is given for their more supernatural abilities, like Revenants' power to transfer life energy.
• Dark Protectors: In Rebecca Zanetti's books, vampires are simply a different species from humans (along with witches, demons, and shapeshifters). You're either born a vampire or you're not, and there is no process of conversion. They primarily eat regular food, reserving blood for when they need emergency healing or during their mating rituals.
• The Dresden Files:
  • The White Court vampires (or Whampires, as Harry Dresden calls them) are simply humans that have a demonic symbiote called the Hunger in their bodies that grants them immortality and superhuman capabilities. This makes them different from the Black Court or the Red Court ones:
    • Instead of blood, they feed through physical contact on a particular emotion, which is determined by their bloodline — the Raiths feed on lust, the Malvora on fear, the Skavis on despair. However, the feeding process is dangerous, since it can drain the victim's life force and kill them. The people who are the Whampires' regular "meals" become addicted to the experience. Also, if a Whampire is starving, they will inadvertently attract people to them as potential prey. This is especially visible in the case of Thomas Raith, who couldn't get a steady nonmagical job because his female colleagues and clients sexually assaulted him.
    • They don't have the stereotypical vampire weaknesses; their only weakness is the emotion that opposes the one that they feed on and its symbols, which are either love, courage, or hope, depending on the bloodline.
    • They have souls, which means they have free will and can choose to be either good or evil. They can cross a threshold uninvited, but lose access to the Hunger while inside; it is also possible for them to initiate a Soulgaze with a wizard or to become a Faerie Knight.
    • White Court vampires are not turned, they are born. They are human and somewhat free of their Hunger until they feed for the first time. However, if they consume the opposite of the emotion they are supposed to feed on, their Hunger will be destroyed, leaving them completely human.
  • The Red Court also counts (well, up until Changes, in which they become extinct), especially the half-breeds. The first stage of turning is becoming a half-breed, a human with a Horror Hunger for blood. Half-breeds retain their souls and free will like the White Court vampires and Holy Burns Evil doesn't apply to them if they bear no ill will. The true Red Court vampires are a downplayed example; after a half-breed kills someone by feeding on them, they become a fully-fledged Red Court vampire. Their soul leaves the body, while the body is still living and turns into a batlike demon in a human "flesh mask".
• Elcenia: Elcenia's vampires are neither undead nor created from other creatures, but instead a race that reproduces on its own like any other, whose members can naturally shapeshift between bats and pale humanoids, and who feed on blood.
• In Fevre Dream, vampires are a separate humanoid species who, although long-lived, do live and die as normal, and reproduce in the usual way. (The thing about bite victims becoming vampires is explicitly stated to be a baseless superstition.)
• Fledgling features the Ina, who are a separate species living symbiotically with humans. They drink blood, avoid the sun, and live a very long time. They reproduce biologically among themselves; there is no way for humans to become one.
• Heretical Edge: Vampires are actually aliens called Akharu. They did not originally have to drink blood, but they were cursed with a blood plague and now have to drink the blood of others in order to prevent it from paralyzing them. An Akharu can turn a human into another Akharu as long as the human isn't already a Heretic or hybrid of another species, but converted humans will burn in the sunlight.
• The "vampires" from the proto-Zombie Apocalypse novel I Am Legend provide an early example of non-supernatural vampires explained in a sci-fi context. Many of the people infected with vampirism (a bacterial disease) are still alive and completely mortal, while other vampires are actually undead zombie-like creatures, but when they infect a live person, it turns them into a vampire without killing them.
• Immortal Guardians: Vampires are living, breathing humans who've been infected with a virus that causes an extreme allergy to sunlight, manic violence, and a desire for blood, although blood isn't needed for survival. The feeding is what causes the virus to spread from host to host, and requires them to eventually be hunted down and slain.
• The Innkeeper Chronicles: Vampires are a humanoid alien species that have given rise to many of the vampire legends. They have the fangs, though they use them to bite through an opponent's spinal column rather than suck their blood. They also tend to have paler, cooler skin tones than human normal, faster reflexes, and a great deal of muscle mass. They are human enough that if Interspecies Romance ensues, Half-Human Hybrids are very likely to follow. Stranded vampires have, historically, waited for pickup in stasis pods that resemble glass coffins; and they used to bury these pods for extra security. Vampire armor is tough enough that the only hope that pre-technical humans had of getting through to even an incapacitated vampire was a stake — as in a sharpened beam or post — driven with a massive amount of force. Their supposed weakness to holy water comes from instances where the Catholic Church infused the defenses to its treasure chambers with quicklime and other caustic substances.
• Lost Souls (1992): Vampires are a predatory subspecies of humanity that have been living alongside, breeding with, and preying upon humans for eons. In fact, the four main vampires in the book (Zillah, Molochai, Twig, and Nothing) have so much human ancestry that almost all the 'classic' vampire traits have been bred out of them.
• In Peeps, "vampires" are actually people infected with a parasite that makes them violently insane as well as extending their lifespan and increasing their strength. The exceptions are "carriers", who have the benefits of the parasite without the insanity, and mostly hunt the ones who are.
• Ringworld: One of the hominid species on the ringworld that evolved from the Paks are haemovores dubbed "vampires" by explorers from Earth. They produce pheromones that send their prey, other hominids, into a mating frenzy, but are not themselves sapient, with the exception of a couple who fed on a Pak protector and became protectors themselves.
• In The Saga of Darren Shan, vampires just age at a tenth of the normal human rate, half-vampires a fifth. Though Darren was turned, he faked his death so that he could leave without drawing suspicion.
• The Strain: The strigoi are victims of parasitic blood worms that take over their bodies and put them under the Master's will. They're never explicitly referred to as undead, and many traditional vampire characteristics are explained in biological terms. Even the Master's immortality is credited to his ability to Body Surf in parasite form, as opposed to vampiric eternal life. Subverted with the Master and his fellow ancients, as the final book confirms them to be undead pieces of a slain Fallen Angel rather than a human.
• Methuselahs of Trinity Blood have a bacterium that feeds on red blood cells in their bloodstream, which they need a regular supply of. They typically live for 300 years and most are born with the bacteria, which kicks in sometime in their teens or twenties. Despite having supernatural abilities and Weakened by the Light, they consider "vampire" to be a Fantastic Slur.
• The Laundry Files: In the novel The Rhesus Chart, vampires are actually human sorcerers/mathematicians ^note In the Laundry universe, magic is really a branch of applied mathematics, and magic spells are actually equations who get semi-possessed by a higher-dimensional being (aka a demon, aka an Eldritch Abomination) and wind up in a symbiotic relationship. The demon grants them several of the traditional vampire powers and the compulsion to drink fresh human blood. These blood meals are purely for the demon's benefit (it feeds on the brains of the the vampire's victim, killing them through symptoms akin to Mad Cow Disease), and the vampire still requires normal food and water for nutrition.

Live-Action TV

• Batwoman (2019): Nocturna has a thirst for blood and a weakness to sunlight due to a blood disorder, but she isn't a literal vampire and isn't undead.
• Doctor Who: The Haemovores from "The Curse of Fenric" are a species of vampiric humanoids but are themselves not undead. They're mutants that look and behave like vampires, subsisting on blood (or seawater), but are completely alive.
• First Kill presents legacy vampires, which came to be after Lilith was bitten by the serpent in Garden of Eden. These vampires, unlike the undead "made" vampires, are born and grow up, experiencing life similarly to humans, even down to pubescent stages.
• Stargate Atlantis: The Wraith are deathly pale humanoids with fangs who suck the life out of their victims (though they feed on life force through their hands, rather than biting people and drinking blood). The big difference between them and ordinary vampires is that they're living creatures descended from insect-like aliens that absorbed human DNA.
• Star Trek: The Original Series: The alien of the week in "The Man Trap" is a "salt vampire", a living alien with a mouth resembling a leech's which sucks the salt out of the bodies of crew members, killing them in the process.

Tabletop Games

• The Tabletop Role-Playing Game Afterbomb Madness has a playable race of humanoid mutants called the Albinos; they share a lot in common with stereotypical vampires, their albinism means they can't stand sunlight, and they drink human blood for sustenance and to lessen the effects of sunlight.
• Vampires from Blades in the Dark are technically living, since they are the result of a ghost possessing a "hollow", a magically prepared human body that was stripped of the soul it had been born with. Since destroying a soul does not kill the body in this setting, hollows and, by extension, vampires have regular human metabolism, albeit jacked way up in case of the latter.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • The 1st edition Monster Manual II introduced "Pseudo-Undead", a rule precursor of what would be called "templates" in later editions. Those were (living) humanoid creatures with the appearance and physical traits of the most common undead, but with none of their supernatural powers. Pseudo-vampires were cited as the most common and most human-looking examples.
  • The Ravenloft setting has "vampyres", which do not have the usual vampire weaknesses but whose only power is to charm someone they've bitten due to euphoric venom in their saliva. They started in the 2nd edition, in which their stats were pretty much the above Pseudo-Undead "template" applied to vampires.
• Magic: The Gathering: Vampires can either be true undead or undead-like living, depending on which plane of the multiverse one looks at (planes with living vampires include Innistrad and the aforementioned Zendikar). This is a vital distinction in regard to becoming a Planeswalker, as the Spark that grants Planeswalkers their Dimensional Traveler powers can only be developed within a living soul; Sorin Markov of Innistrad is able to become a vampire Planeswalker because Innistradi vampires are not truly undead, not like vampires on many other planes.
• Shadowrun: Vampires are humans who've been infected and mutated by "Strain I" of the Human Meta-Human Vampire Virus, while elves infected by the same variant become Banshees, and a different subvariant turns humans into Nosferatu. The exact effects differ by edition and subtype, but vampires generally become immortal, gain a Healing Factor, and can shrug off lethal toxins with ease, at the cost becoming vulnerable to sunlight and substances like silver or wood, and steady degradation of their Essence that can only be halted by absorbing Essence from other metahumans. They can also no longer keep down normal food, and instead need to feed on metahuman blood. Cosmetic changes such as skin growing pale and developing more distinct fangs are also common. They do still need to breathe (though they simply go into torpor if cut off from air, rather than dying) and have a pulse, though both their breathing and pulse rates are slower than normal.
• Traveller: In Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society #16 Amber Zone adventure "The Day of the Glow", an epidemic of a disease called the "glowing plague" breaks out on the planet Purfyr. The symptoms include sunlight on the victim's skin becoming extremely painful, shrinking gums (which makes the victim's teeth, particularly the canines, seem to lengthen), an intense desire to consume iron-rich organic substances (such as blood), and insanity that can cause the victim to resort to murder and/or cannibalism to obtain blood. Player Characters who participate in the scenario may come to the conclusion that vampires actually exist.
• In Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the Ananasi werespiders drink blood to power their supernatural abilities, and when they do it in their human form, they spout fangs and look like vampires to any uninformed onlooker. They even borrow the "Blood Pool" mechanic from Vampire: The Masquerade, though their similarities to the Kindred end there.

Video Games

• BlazBlue: While not all vampires are the same, with even the known members of the Alucard Clan (Rachel Alucard, Raquel Alucard, and Clavis Alucard) seemly having a different nature even to each other, but they are far from undead. In fact, according to Naoto Kurogane's Hunter's Eye, members of the Alucard Clan have an abnormally high Life Force Number, Raquel's number is well over a million and Clavis is registered as "Immeasurable". Curiously Rachel has no number, for reference if someone is dead or undead, their number is explicitly "0".
• Hunters in Bloodborne are not referred to as vampires, but they tick a lot of the boxes. They are not undead and can be killed by conventional weapons, but gain increased agility, strength, and durability after receiving a transfusion of Yharnam blood, and can also heal instantly by either injecting vials of blood or (via the Rally mechanic) by attacking enemies immediately after taking damage, presumably splashing blood in their wounds.
• In Elephant Games' Fractured Fairy Tale video game Cursed Fables: White as Snow, it's eventually revealed that Snow White is a vampire. She exhibits absolutely no signs of being undead, however; she was found and adopted as a baby and grew up like any child, gradually maturing into a fully grown woman. In fact, until the bloodlust drives her to snap and start killing everyone, her father and stepmother believe her to be a perfectly normal, healthy human being, albeit one with an Undeathly Pallor. (And yes, she was a vampire from birth — it's discovered late in the game that she killed people throughout her childhood by drinking from them, but their deaths were mistaken for illness. This includes her adoptive mother, whom she killed when she discovered the secret.)
• Eternal Champions: Midknight was turned into a living vampire through scientific means. The advantages of this are mixed: he's super-strong, long-lived, has hypnotic powers, and lacks the traditional vampire weaknesses like the sun, garlic, and holy symbols (though he still dislikes them), but the biggest downside is that his body is slowly rotting away unless he consumes human blood, which he finds abhorrent.
• Knights of Grayfang: vampires are simply a subset of humans with a special blessing from the human god. They lack any vampiric weaknesses, they need to eat and sleep, they even can make love and have babies. They only differ from regular humans in that they drink blood for a huge temporary boost and control bats.
• Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty introduces Vamp to the Metal Gear series. Despite his Undeathly Pallor, Scary Teeth and penchant for blood, his backstory is nowhere near supernatural — he's a Romanian war orphan who survived being bombed in a church by feeding off his own family's blood. The other seemingly supernatural abilities he has (his super-strength, agility, and apparent immortality) are eventually Hand Waved in Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots as the abilities of the Nanomachines he received prior to the events of MGS2. Lastly, just to drive the trope home, Snake explains to Raiden that he's called Vamp not because of his vampire-like traits, but for his bisexuality (whether or not he was The Vamp in any of his relationships is never touched upon, ironically).
• Rimworld has Sanguophages, a particular strand of xenohumans that fit many of the classic vampire tropes, including requiring occasional long, multi-day sleeps usually in coffins called 'deathrests', intolerance of heat and sunlight, and of course a thirst for human blood (often extracted in the form of 'Hemogen packs'). However, despite their many abilities, they are alive and human just as much as any other xenohumans, and though difficult can be killed conventionally.
• The Valentine siblings Keith, Joachim and Hilda from the Shadow Hearts series. They are descended from a long line of vampires, can withstand daylight and don't seem to have any aversion to garlic. Keith describes them as simply stronger and more durable than humans.
• Remilia and Flandre Scarlet of Touhou Project are explicitly called vampires, but it's noted that they are more closely related to Oni rather than the undead of any kind. They share many of the same weaknesses with oni, and they're also supernaturally strong much like the oni, but the key difference seems to be that vampires need to drink blood, Cannot Cross Running Water and can't stand in direct sunlight. They also lack several prominent vampire weaknesses, like vulnerability to holy imagery and the need to be invited inside buildings.

Visual Novels

• In Code:Realize, vampires are simply a sub-race of humanity with enhanced physical abilities, with their fangs being their most vampire-like trait. They don't need to suck blood and can walk in daylight.
• The True Ancestors of the Nasuverse, particularly Tsukihime, are very much organic living beings. Vampires who became thus by being bitten by True Ancestors (or by other "second-generation" vampires), however, are regular undead.
• Wicked Lawless Love: Vampires in this setting are not undead, but living, ageless beings. Some are created by turning non-vampires; others, like Cecelia, are born vampires.

Web Animation

• Minilife TV: Vampires such as Snowball are created from mixtures baked in Easy-Bake Coffins and aren't negatively affected by sunlight, though they have very short lifespans, lasting for only a few years.

Webcomics

• The closest thing to a vampire in Aurora (2019) is Upyr, a man who thirsted for blood after being exposed to cave corruption.
• The vampires in Crimson Stars are officially considered to be a more advanced offshoot of humanity. While older, more powerful vampires are rumored to have transcended human limitations altogether, ordinary vampires still require food, water, air, sleep and so on in addition to a steady intake of human blood. They reproduce normally, so most vampires are simply born from vampire parents, but converted vampires also exist, usually human underlings ennobled for their service.
• The vampires in Eerie Cuties are born as such since they can have children just as humans do. Maria Delacroix, in particular, has given birth to and raised 13 children of her own. However, she explained that their aging process begins to slow down during their mid-late teens.
• Vampires in Sam & Fuzzy are living beings, albeit with a very different physiology (their heart and lungs are located inside their craniums, and their bodies contain seventeen appendixes that cover all the other necessities) and a prolonged lifespan. They sleep, eat and drink like humans (though they're mostly nocturnal by nature) and their need for blood appears to be a compulsion rather than a requirement (synthetic blood, which the vampires vastly prefer to drinking from people, is widely available in the Underground either way). Like most supernatural beings in Sam and Fuzzy, they were born from The Tar, a psycho-reactive substance that creates life out of thoughts, beliefs and fantasies. Vampires drink blood, are nocturnal and have some supernatural abilities because vampire stories, who pre-date the actual vampire species by centuries, believe they did, but The Tar cannot create non-living matter and as such they're mostly human otherwise. While Vampires breed true (including with humans) and no longer need Tar to replenish their numbers, any contact with unrefined Tar causes them to dissolve.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: SCP-742 is a mutagenic retrovirus that transforms humans into vampire-like creatures. They bite their prey with paralyzing venom, and instead of feeding on blood, they drain stem cells from their victims' bone marrow, which allows them to become biologically immortal.
• Taerel Setting: The Kin'toni are living beings infected with a virus/prion of sorts that turns them into sun-fearing beings who drink blood. They are able to be killed like living beings — the wiki has kin'toni die of such things such as sickness, blood loss, and one who died of a heart attack. It's spread like a zombie outbreak, though.

Western Animation

• Batman: The Brave and the Bold: In the episode "Shadow of the Bat!", Dala (a minor vampire villain from the Batman comics) is depicted this way; she was turned into a quasi-vampire due to a Freak Lab Accident, which gave her most of the typical vampire traits and powers, to the point that Etrigan notes that she was almost indistinguishable from a true supernatural vampire. She also bites Batman, thus infecting him with vampirism... though the ending reveals that she never actually turned him into a vampire, that was all just a nightmare he suffered due to being injected with hallucinogenic venom from Dala's bite.
• The Vladats in Ben 10: Omniverse are a vampire-like alien race from a planet named Anur Vladias. Ben's transformation of this species is called Whampire.

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