"For the soul of every sort of flesh is its blood by the soul in it. Consequently I said to the sons of Israel: 'You must not eat the blood of any sort of flesh, because the soul of every sort of flesh is its blood. Anyone eating it will be cut off.'"
Blood. Animals have it, humans have it, even aliens have it. There's just something about the red liquid that flows through our veins that makes it seem important. Probably something to do with that whole..."keeping us alive" thing it does so well. As such, in fiction, it tends to have one or more of these properties.
- Blood is binding — Any Magically Binding Contracts made in blood must be honored, on pain of death, even if the contract was only written in blood because you Couldn't Find a Pen. If you make a Blood Oath, and swear that "if you break your word, may the earth drink your blood!", and break your word anyway, you may find yourself six feet under.
- Blood is symbolic — Blood may be used as a stand-in, or weaker form of souls, life force, what have you. Alternatively, other things may be used to symbolize it. The latter applies to things like an android's oil being sprayed out like it's High-Pressure Blood.
- For examples of the latter, see Alien Blood or Symbolic Blood.
- Blood is magical — Any spells that require blood as a reagent will probably be either extremely powerful, Black Magic, or both. Since blood is basically Life Energy, anything using it will work similarly to things Cast From HP, or it may be used to create life. The blood of especially powerful or arcane creatures may compel others, grant immortality, or even become gems.
- Most importantly, Blood is disturbing — There's just something about blood leaving the body that generally freaks people out, either from fear or disgust. For obvious reasons, it's directly associated with pain, injury and death. Horror and Slasher stories rely on this. A further division of this, often connected to A, B, or AB, are messages written in blood, which are used primarily to scare the bejeezus out of people, but may also have magical, symbolic, or binding properties. This is sometimes combined with Room Full of Crazy for the extra creepy. Properly used, blood can turn fear into Primal Fear - as per the shower scene in Psycho: the sight of Janet Leigh's hand trailing slowly down the shower curtain - scary. The blood (actually just chocolate syrup) smearing under her fingers - PSYCHO! Many movies overdo this, resulting in mere Squick - Silent Hill pours on the tension until your heart threatens to explode from your chest - scary. Then Pyramid Head shows up and tears the skin from a woman in a single tug - not that scary, just your basic Gorn.
Now, remember: Type AB Blood Power draws off of all the others, and all of them draw from Type O. Just be aware of the donor; may contain Bloody Hilarity. Has nothing to do with The Power of Cheese.
Examples:
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Type B
Anime and Manga
- In Fullmetal Alchemist, Ed and Al use drops of their blood to stand in for "information of the soul" when trying to bring back their mother from the dead using alchemy.
- Philosopher's Stones also comes in various forms. Solid, liquid, they're all blood red.
- The ultimate use of her power to unite humanity into a single being, Charlotte B. Lord of Unlimited Fafnir can use massive amounts of her own blood to control other people over a wide area, with the controlled adding their blood to the equation in a positive feedback loop that could involve the entirety of humanity.
- In an extension to the Vampire: The Masquerade example above, the Kuei-Jin, the Asian equivalent to Vampires, live on life-force. The weaker ones drink blood simply because that's the easiest way to get at somebody's life-force. The stronger ones can straight-up eat your soul.
- Notably, western vampires have a derangement called Sanguinary Animism that makes them think they do the same thing as the Kuei-Jin. Sufferers hear the voices of people they've drunk from in their heads, and believe that if they ever drink a mortal to death they also consume their soul. This essentially causes the vampire to suffer from Split Personality (and not the fun kind) when they drink blood.
- When it comes to Thaumaturgists, the basic in-universe mechanics of the art requires both Paths and Rituals to have some way to "target" the subject of the power. With most Paths, it's as easy as being near enough to see the target. With rituals - which could take minutes, hours, or even days of preparation - there's got to be something on hand to establish what - or more importantly who - the magi is going after. And there's nothing that ensures a target lock like having a sample of the victim's blood. Except maybe knowing the victims True Name, but that's difficult to learn.
- Warhammer 40,000: One of the main tenets of the Khornate religion (BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!) is that their god demands blood, no matter whose, as long as it's obtained through combat.
- One of the Liminal Exalted castes is blood. Given that the Liminals are basically reanimated corpses, this is quite fitting.John Morke: Aspects of Blood are born of creators driven by “possessive” passion—lust, greed, and ambition. Blood represents the heat of passion and the wonder of emotion. Blood is a carrier as well as a fulcrum; it can be a river of plagues or a font of virginal purity with which to attract and bind the foulest of horrors and bid them whip. Blood Aspects are sanguine, passionate, outgoing creatures.Blood Aspect magic, for example, may allow a Liminal to easily track a man for hundreds of miles with only a sample of bodily fluids to work from, but it also allows confident navigation of the dark waterways and torrential courses of the Underworld, as well as influence over the desires and addictions of others.
- In the Sword of Shadows series, blood is sacred to the Sull, who bleed themselves as a form of offering to their gods. Obviously, most Sull become very skilled at letting blood with minimum pain and without hitting anything important.
- The jousei manga It's Not Like That, Darling uses a more passive form of this trope. The main character gets a blood transfusion after an accident in the backstory. Later, the donor dies in another, unrelated accident and our heroine finds herself having the strangest thoughts... A tolerably good romantic comedy, as such things go.
Type O
Anime and Manga
- In Death Note, Villain Protagonist Light Yagami kills people by writing their names in pages of a supernatural notebook. For emergencies, he keeps a needle and scrap of Death Note paper in a secret compartment in his watch, which means that even in tense situations where he's under surveillance, he can murder people by discreetly writing their names in his own blood.
- Spider-Man villain Carnage has an alien symbiote mixed into his bloodstream that allows him to shape his blood and use it as a weapon. This is sometimes played for a more horrific effect, particularly in Warren Ellis and Kyle Hotz's Body Horror laden graphic novel "Mindbomb"Carnage: My blood wants to kill you!
- In Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian story "Shadows In Zamboula" Baal-pteor offers Human Sacrifice with a Neck Snap, to save blood for the god.
- This is why Vampires in Shadowrun attack people and drink their blood — Shadowrun vampires actually drain Essence to survive, but Essence Drain only works when the victim and predator are connected on a deep, emotional level. It just so happens that for most vampires, the easiest emotion to connect with your victim is "fear", and drinking someone's blood while they're watching helps tremendously.
Web Comics
- In Hanna Is Not a Boy's Name, Hanna's blood is apparently particularly disgusting, at least according to a vampire. He attributes this to his use of magic (before quickly changing the subject).Hanna: It must be because I use magic, it taints my blood, but ANYWAYS.
