Supernaturally Delicious and Nutritious

aka: Supernaturally Nutritious And Delicious

"He was irresistible, actually. He was like catnip to enormous, murderous reptiles. One whiff of him drove them into a frenzy, drawing their attention completely. People tended to be quite impressed by this knack. Or, at least, impressed that Skip had survived as long as he had while possessing it."

— The Narrator of I Hate Dragons, by Brandon Sanderson

A subtrope of Weirdness Magnet and Horror Hunger; it turns out that someone is literally delicious. Either their blood is, or their Life Energy is far more appealing than most people. Vampires be lining up the block, demons give the boutique two clawed thumbs up, and The Heartless are going to come out of the woodwork. Needless to say, this is going to complicate someone's life considerably. It can also be a danger to everyone else if this acts as a Rare Candy and powers the monster up.

Occasionally, it's the very act of having powers to combat these forces that attracts them, because the local monstrous predators think that power-havers are mighty tasty. If this person doesn't have any powers to speak of, anyone who has them as their Protectorate had better be prepared for a lot of protecting.

A variant of this is simply that supernatural beings find it literally pleasant to be around. They're not so much wanting to eat them as... er... "eat" them. Or at least bask in the scent or energies and make their life complicated. Often it's a little of column A and a little of column B.

Do not confuse with Magically Delicious, which is about commercial advertisements.

Compare Evil Tastes Good. It may be inverted by Too Spicy for Yog-Sothoth. Also compare with Cannibalism Superpower, To Serve Man, Spiked Blood, and Super-Persistent Predator. The prey in question might try to convince their hunter that You Won't Like How I Taste, or if that fails, hope the monster will Regret Eating Me. In some cases this may lead to God-Eating. It can also overlap with Picky People Eater.

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• ×××HOLiC: Watanuki's subconscious angst made him especially tasty to spirits, causing more angst, in some sort of demonically delicious loop.
• Suzu of Ayakashi Triangle is a spirit medium, someone born with a huge amount of Life Energy that some ayakashi want to take by eating her. However, most ayakashi drawn to Suzu mean no harm, and are often loyal to her. In a more benign note, this also make her hand-made food taste amazing to ayakashi.
• Berserk: The Brand of Sacrifice makes its bearer closer to the supernatural than normal, and is placed on people sacrificed to the Godhand so that the bearer of a Behelit can become a demon. In the unlikely event that a branded person escapes this fate, spirits will be drawn to them every night and try to eat them. As a side effect the bearer can sense the presence of spirits and ignores anti-Muggle wards.
• Helpless heroine Misao from Black Bird (2006): “If a demon drinks her blood, he is granted a long life. If he eats her flesh, he gains eternal youth. And if he makes her his bride, his clan will prosper...” So she's constantly at risk from demons who want a bite. Or a marriage contract. Or both.
• Ciel of Black Butler. The events that shaped his life have left his soul in such a state that it is considered the most suculent thing on Earth to demons. Much of Sebastian's loyalty to Ciel comes from the promise of feasting on Ciel's soul when the time comes.
• In Bleach, the more powerful you are, the more tasty you are to Hollows. This is more of a concern for people who have just enough power to perceive them, but not actually fight them.
• Aisa Himegami from A Certain Magical Index at least smells delicious to vampires...however, they are destroyed by actually trying to drink her blood.
• In Dark Gathering, Ai carries the brand of a god which marks her as his future sacrificial bride. The brand constantly leaks the god's energy which ghosts find irresistible. The only reason she's alive is that the brand also protects her from hostile gods by forcing them to attack anyone nearby.
• In Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, some people have "marechi" blood, which makes them supernaturally appealing to demons and grants them ten times the power than if they ate a normal person. Shinazugawa Sanemi, one of the elite hashira, has exceptionally strong marechi, and takes advantage of this by cutting himself in combat and letting the smell of his blood distract the demon he's fighting.
• Hayate the Combat Butler: Hayate has delicious supernatural blood. It's part of the His Life Sucks package. In fact, his blood when he's half-dying is one of the most mystically infused substances in the world; and can completely power up Isumi or her great-grandmother. The latter has no problem with snacking on him, while the former tends to abstain, but once when Nagi was in danger, she tasted just a little and that gave her enough power to both break a Power Limiter curse that was on her and use her magic powers to teleport Hayate onto a spaceship in freaking Outer Space.
• Hell Teacher Nube ended up with a Red Right Hand because his latent spiritual powers caused him to be a target for demons (who wanted to eat him) and ghosts (who wanted help from someone who could interact with them).
• Flea-demon Myoga from Inuyasha once mentioned that Inu-Yasha's father's blood was "especially delicious", and that Inu-Yasha had inherited that from him. Different from the other examples in that Myoga is a demon, but not a villain; in fact, he is quite loyal to Inu-Yasha. The fact that Myoga is only slightly larger than a mundane flea may have something to do with it, of course — as it is, he drains harmlessly small amounts of blood from his "victims", who are annoyed more than anything else.
• Kouta from Kanokon is the supernatural Chick Magnet version. He smells particularly pleasing to spirits... but rather than putting his life in jeopardy, it results in him acquiring an Unwanted Harem consisting of a powerful fox-spirit, and a slightly-less-powerful wolf-spirit. (As well as drawing 'attention' from a number of other, more-or-less superpowered spirits.) Of course, their warring for his attention DOES occasionally put him in a bad place...
• In Karin, all vampires have humans with particular qualities that they find especially tasty. Karin's father loves arrogant people, her mother favors the blood of liars, her brother goes for stressed people, and Karin herself is attracted to despair. When Karin's little sister awakens, she is drawn to the blood of lonely people.
• The Karasumori site of Kekkaishi has a Cherry tree that blooms out of season, said to excite the feelings of all around. This makes it a powerful Ayakashi magnet.
• Kubera: Unlike other sura, the Chaos Clan instinctively attack strong prey while they are weakened. Taraka claims that this is the real reason Yuta is interested in Leez; he subconsciously understands she's going to be an unspeakably powerful Future Badass, and wants to eat her NOW, before she gets strong.
• In Mnemosyne, the longer an immortal lives and the more painful memories she has, the tastier her time spore is to Eipos.
• Ginko of Mushishi is constantly attracting mushi which threaten to devour him if he stays in a particular place for too long. It's outright stated in the show that, eventually, they will catch up with him and eat him alive.
• Musuko ga Kawaikute Shikataganai Mazoku no Hahaoya: The human Chiharu is to eight year-old vampire Lizette. For her part, Lizette has demonstrated incredible willpower and has not drank Chiharu's blood... just adored the scent from afar. She has much more trouble than normal in one chapter, when she runs out of the blood she's normally supplied with and needs every ounce of that incredible willpower not to attack Chiharu. She resolves afterward to never run out of blood like that again.
• The man-eating youkai of Natsume's Book of Friends often comment on how delicious Natsume smells because of the strength of his power.
• Evangeline in Negima! Magister Negi Magi indicates at first that Negi's blood, being the son of the Mage who imprisoned her, would grant her the power to escape her bonds. She started off apparently as the homicidal version of this trope, but after her Defeat Means Friendship, started training him with Black Magic. Her price for the training is some regular Kiss of the Vampire, and she's getting away with it.
• Tsukune from Rosario + Vampire, due to being a human in a school for monsters, almost all of which would love the chance to eat a human. Moka frequently says his blood is "very sweet".
• In Tokyo Ghoul, Kaneki is apparently incredibly delicious as a result of his hybrid nature. This results in Picky People Eater Tsukiyama becoming absolutely obsessed with him, considering him the ultimate culinary experience. Just the scent of his blood has members of the Gourmet Club moaning in excitement, and eager to sample this rare and delicious meat. Another example is the ghoul investigator Suzuya, who is noted by Kaneki and some other no-name ghouls to smell absolutely delicious — it's because he used to work as a "scrapper" for a ghoul restaurant since he was a little boy, killing dozens of people for their meat before he was finally rescued and reintegrated into humanity.
• From Tsukuyomi: Moon Phase we have Kouhei: He is the so-called "Vampire's Lover". What this means is his blood, besides being literally delicious for vampires, has the power to undo the psychic oaths of obedience they have towards their masters. That's how Hazuki was able to leave the castle prison she was in at the beginning, and how Elfriede is able to deceive and betray Count Kinkel, her master.
• The Virus in Venus Versus Virus especially wanted to eat people who could sense them, such as the Main Characters. This put a lot of stress on the new girl; which would shift her into her Anti-Virus Superpowered Evil Side; who would usually easily trounce this. But then she would find her partner "smells absolutely irresistible" and try to ...taste her until her normal personality kicked back in. It is not played for laughs.
• in Wild Arms Twilight Venom, Mirabelle (a Crimson Noble) gets a small taste of Sheyenne's blood and flips out, wanting some more.

Comic Books

• Darklings from The Darkness give this reason for following Jackie.
• Point-One-Percenter sparks in Transformers: More than Meets the Eye are so-called because of their rarity—just .1% of the Cybertronian forged population (which is itself fairly small) are Point One Percenters, possessed of powerful and special green Sparks compared to the usual pale blue ones. Apparently the sheer brightness of their Sparks make them appealing to things that feed on Sparks, such as Sparkeaters.

Fan Works

• In Ghosts of the Past, sequel of Child of the Storm, it is heavily implied that Super-Soldier blood is particularly attractive to vampires. Specifically, it can make the likes of Dracula, who's been after it for some time, into a Day Walking Vampire. And no one but Steve, or one of his descendants, will do...
• No Competition has Harry being this as a result of Voldemort's killing curse and his mother's spell. It gives him a powerful dark aura that is like catnip to dark creatures, to the point where some of the most powerful dark beings in the world have congregated to be in his presence from the high they get off of his aura. This does not make him evil at all, however. It just attracts these dark beings who want to enjoy the curious mix of his innocence and dark aura. This makes wizards on the light side fear him, but aggravates Voldemort to no end, as he can't seem to recruit the very beings that are congregating around his enemy.
• Superwomen of Eva: Treacherous Web: As a result of killing Gendo Ikari and eating ADAM, Ritsuko Akagi/Spider-Woman ends up with the very bad side-effect that every time she transforms into her superpower alter-ego, any Angels in the vicinity end up attracted to her and will stop at nothing to absorb her into them.
• In Survival of the Fallen, an X-Men (films)/True Blood/POTC/Van Helsing and whatever else crossover, Logan's (Wolverine) blood tastes very strong to Vampires and heals them at an absolutely ridiculous rate. This is because he is among other things one of the nephilim and the son of Gabriel Van Helsing, i.e. the Archangel Gabriel.
• ​In Tales of the Canterlot Deportation Agency, pony blood suppresses Frenzy in Kindred. The problem is that not only are ponies sentient, but the (recently discovered and closely held) Tremere ritual requires three human sacrifices to get to Equestria and a pony sacrifice to get back.
• In the Supernatural/Twilight crossover The Wedding Crashers, Leah takes Sam and Dean to Renesmee and Jacob's wedding, where about eighty percent of the guests are vampires. A lot of them then go out of their way to tell Dean that he smells really, really good, including the ones who don't eat humans. Castiel theorises that this is due to Dean being Michael's True Vessel, the "most unique and powerful vessel on the planet". Dean's not exactly thrilled.
  • The vampires also target Sam for this reason; in addition, one of them claims that he has the potential to become one of the most powerful vampires ever seen. Like Dean, Sam isn't exactly thrilled...especially when their choice of words to describe him brings up bad memories.

Literature

• In Amelia Atwater-Rhodes' vampire novels, witches' blood is especially delicious.
• Anita Blake: Blood from people who have supernatural abilities is especially desirable to vampires, although drinking too much of it in a short period can affect them like alcohol. This is revealed when Jean-Claude refuses an offer of blood from a man with Fae ancestry because he had just drunk from both Anita and from a werewolf and anymore would have made him too intoxicated for a meeting he was about to have.
• I Hate Dragons: Skip has the supernatural power of smelling so delicious to dragons that they go crazy with the desire to eat him.
• Journey to the West: Xuanzang is this because his virgin flesh is supposed to grant immortality to demons as it is the flesh of a holy man. This is a Trope Codifier in regard to Eastern literatures.
• Peter Pan: While no supernatural reason is given for it, Captain Hook is apparently pretty tasty. After Peter chops his hand off, it's tossed into the mouth of a nearby crocodile who finds it so delicious it now follows Hook wherever he goes, licking his lips for the rest of him.
• The Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries: Faeries are practically Scooby Snacks to vampires, to the point they act like dogs in a butcher shop when in the presence of one. (Sookie herself is less than pleased when she finds out her own fairy heritage is the reason she's so attractive to supernaturals.) It doesn't seem to work the same way for her relatives, though.
• Stardust: The fallen star, Yvaine, is endangered thanks to her heart being the key to longevity and magical powers, and attracting the attention of the Lilim. Whether heart-of-star is particularly tasty is clarified in neither film nor book.
• The Twilight Saga: Bella evidently smells particularly appealing to vampires, and her love interest in particular. This is a bit of a problem, because Vampire Bites Suck in this series and said love interest is very serious about being a Vegetarian Vampire as a result. It really does suck to be Edward Cullen, doesn't it?

Live-Action TV

• Angel:
  • Marcus Hamilton makes the mistake of telling Angel that great power flows through his veins while making a Badass Boast. Angel promptly decides to see if he's being literal.
    Angel: Wow! You really are full of it.
  • Also, otters' blood is delicious. Virgin blood also has a unique taste, as one vampire requests it specifically.
    Spike: Oh, God, it's bloody ambrosia! Is this otter?
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Slayer blood is often implied to be better tasting to vampires than normal humans, as well as being both empowering and an aphrodisiac. It was Slayer blood that allowed The Master to break his seal at the end of the first season. In season three, Slayer blood was the only cure for a poisoned Angel. It's most likely the infusion of demonic energy that slayer powers come from.
  • Glory, a God in Human Form, needs to drain the sanity of others to maintain hers. After inflicting this on Tara, Glory is noticeably giddy and mentions how great "that witch's mind" tasted.
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency,:Dirk is noted by the emotional vampire-like "Three" to have energy that tastes really, really good.
• Ghost Whisperer: Melinda is usually chased by ghosts in need of help (whether they want it or not), but there is the occasional guy who collects souls to gain power, and they tend to target her. Her occultist teacher friend told her that "If a dark spirit collects the soul of a light spirit, it's like a hundred points!"
• My Babysitter's a Vampire: Ethan has a rare blood type that vampires consider a delicacy.
• Supernatural':
  • Season 7 had the year's Big Bad's followers creating food additives that would make any human eating them become tastier, bulkier, more complacent and lethal to any anthropophagous beasties other than his own kind.
  • Dean seems to make every vampire he interacts with, even the ones who stick to animals, get a little ...hungry. It's been stated several times by angels and demons alike that he's the 'perfect vessel' probably due to him being the human host of Archangel Michael.
• The Strain (TV series): In the final season, after they have taken over, the Stigoi set up a facility to breed humans with type B blood, which they find particularly tasty.
• True Blood: Fairy blood is unusually tasty for vampires, as well as allowing them to walk in the sun for limited periods.

Myth and Religion

• The basis for what makes vampires so scary is drinking blood by biting into a human's neck with sharp fangs, or at least it is nowadays. In most vampiric lore from the 20th century, human blood is treated as absolutely delicious to vampires. How delicious depends on the work, as well as the attitude a vampire has towards the act itself. A good vampire might try to resist drinking human blood, treating it as a Horror Hunger. An evil vampire will liken chasing and feeding on a human as playing with their food.

Tabletop Games

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • In an April Fools Dragon magazine article about Flaws for Commoners (an NPC character class), this is one of them. Any carnivorous monster will attack the character to the exclusion of everyone else, even if they wouldn't have otherwise attacked the party at all.
  • All dragon types have something that they consider to be the most delicious thing ever. For red dragons, this happens to be humans. Green dragons have a similar fondness for elves.
• Exalted has the Abyssal Exalted who, as creatures of death, have difficulties recovering Essence while outside of the Underworld. One way around this is to pop fangs and drain the Essence out of people in the form of blood. Needless to say, enlightened Essence users (such as other Exalted) yield much more return than plain old mortals.
• Pathfinder has the Ghoran, a plant species that was originally created by druids as a food source but has since been uplifted and become a race of Plant People. One of their racial traits is called "Delicious" — because they were originally meant to be food, anything (regardless of its usual diet) that grabs them with a bite gets bonuses to hold on because they just taste that good.
• The World of Darkness:
  • In Vampire: The Masquerade and Vampire: The Requiem it's stated that other vampire blood is tastier to vampires than even human blood. But it's a Forbidden Fruit with its own dangers.
  • Old World of Darkness:
    • In Changeling: The Dreaming, changelings especially enjoy artistic people. This comes in both "Wants to be around them" and "Wants to Mind Rape them" forms. And changelings taste especially good to vampires, as well as providing a drug high.
    • Hunter: The Reckoning has a rule about mortals with more powerful blood than usual. The obvious disadvantage isn't worth the points you get.
  • New World of Darkness:
    • In Vampire: The Requiem, werewolf blood is especially nutritious to vampires, effectively delivering twice as much juice as human blood... but a) it stirs up the Beast and b) you have to deal with a werewolf to get it.
    • The New World of Darkness has Merits and Minor Templates (think almost, but not quite, supernatural) for mortals that are essentially Weirdness Magnets. Any merit that allows the mortal to see ghosts or spirits usually has the downside that, even if they aren't immediately drawn to you, both such creatures will notice being noticed and at the least pester you and at worst try to possess you.
    • Mortals with the "Residual Spirit Energy" Merit have spirit Essence in their blood. In theory, this is a powerful negotiating tool with Spirits, who subsist on Essence. In practice, most Spirits are more interested in a quick meal than in protecting the renewable resource, so they're Blessed with Suck.
    • Werewolf: The Forsaken allows the Uratha to regain Essence by eating the flesh of humans, wolves, or werewolves. However, as all three are extremely akin to them, that counts as cannibalism, meaning they need to make a Harmony check.
    • Promethean: The Created: Pandorans (essentially misborn and mutant Prometheans) require Pyros to survive, which they can only get by eating the Pyros-rich flesh of Prometheans.
    • Princess: The Hopeful: The body of a dead Princess is stated to be extremely delicious and nourishing to creatures of Darkness.
    • Leviathan: The Tempest: has Atolls, otherwise normal humans whose presence suppresses a Leviathan's divine and bestial natures. The respite from being constantly torn between these two Warring Natures is quite literally addictive, so much so that many Leviathans will do just about anything (including things like kidnapping and starting wars) to stay in the company of an Atoll once they find one.
• Warhammer: Dragon blood is so filling that any vampire that manages to drink a dragon dry will never feel their thirst again. Naturally, the fact that this requires them to drain a dragon rather complicates things, to the point that only two vampires in history, the legendary warrior Abhorash the Great and the necromancer Zacharias, ever managed this feat. This led to Abhorash's bloodline, the Blood Dragons, becoming a Proud Warrior Race in order to be powerful enough to emulate him. Many Blood Dragons trying to work their way up to dragons have found that other monsters can also satiate them for an extended period of time, with one famously being able to slake his thirst for a century with each giant he consumes.

Video Games

• Final Fantasy XIV: The voidsent Orcus sets his sights on devouring the Warrior of Light's "bounteous" soul for being as "blinding as the sun, pure as the snow", which is "[as] delectable as a boar slathered in grease" to a creature like him.
• League of Legends: Because of his layers of immense trauma and guilt, Yasuo is a magnet for the supernatural. Demons, who in Runeterra feed on negative emotions, are naturally drawn to him, and Ahri, who is drawn to strong emotions for feeding, tries to keep her distance from him so she doesn't accidentally kill him.
• Shin Megami Tensei: As a rule of thumb, be very distrustful of anyone handling any variant of this. There are many such elixirs, all with one thing in common: the basic recipe involves either sacrificing bits of your mind and soul, or ripping them out from someone.
• Stellaris: If your species embraces both the genetic engineering ascension path and the consumption of other sapient species as food, then you can do this to species that you enslave by giving them the "Delicious" trait, meaning that they produce extra food when they are used as livestock.
• Touhou Project: Hermits act as free level-ups for youkai that eat them, at least according to Perfect Memento in Strict Sense.

Visual Novels

• Akai Ito: The main character comes from an ancient lineage of these people. Since the other characters are Lesbian Vampires in one way or another, this trait of hers really drives the story.
• Ookami Kakushi: Certain humans, called Temptations, emit a nigh-irresistible scent that drives the Kamibito into a feral lust-crazed frenzy. Main character Hiroshi turns out to be a Temptation with a particularly potent scent, which causes no end of trouble for his Kamibito classmates.

Webcomics

• Grrl Power: Succubi regularly mention that tantric energy from super-powered humans is delicious, almost to the point of being irresistible. And a vampire almost goes nuts just knowing a member of the exigil species is in town.
• unTouchable: Modern vampires have learned to discreetly feed off humans' energy simply by touching them. Protagonist Sia finds her new neighbor Jiho has the most scrumptious energy she has ever tasted, but he Hates Being Touched.
• Transfusions: The main character, Dylan, seems to be an example of this, with blood that tastes better and lasts longer for the vampire Joa.
• Zebra Girl: Zandra, who the body of a demon but a human soul, is able to get vampires on her side because drinking her blood allows Vampires to actually sleep during the day, which is a big deal for them because vampires in this setting become powerless ghost-like beings during the day. Sam Sprinkles, who is a cartoon rabbit person from another dimension, has blood that causes vampires to become overwhelmed with sexual arousal.

Web Original

• SCP Foundation: There are a few SCPs that have the effect of making the flesh of certain humans irresistibly delicious to other humans. One of them is a chocolate-like substance that make any human that eats it smell so good that other people will be compelled to try to eat them. Another is a phenomenon that makes people want to literally Eat the Rich, which has affected Jeff Bezos is starting to spread to other rich people.
• Whateley Universe: Josie Gillman was turned into a girl to protect her from a family curse which grants some males of the Gillman line savant Level abilities in non-Euclidian geometry and "exceptional tastiness" to a Cosmic Horror, inevitably leading them to dabble in things humankind was not meant to know, fall through the cracks in our reality, and wander the dark interstices underlying the universe until they arrive at their inevitable, hideous doom. In short, male Gillmans are the Eldritch Abomination equivalent of delivery pizza.

Western Animation

• All-Star Superman: Clark Kent's enormous power allows the villain Parasite to absorb enough ambient energy to escape his cell. Clark spends the next several minutes being chased through the prison, while having to keep Lex Luthor from realizing that he is really Superman and find a way to defeat Parasite.
• Crashbox: The Eddie Bull segment is an edutainment sketch series to teach about animals, with the same framing device for each episode; The titular Eddie works at a zoo, and is considered so delicious that every episode a new animal manages to swallow him, up to and including herbivores and animals much smaller than himself. He describes the animal to the viewer to help him figure out which did it this time.
• The Dragon Prince: Glow toads are considered the best-tasting thing in the ocean to most aquatic creatures. Even giant sea serpents will go out of their way to eat a tiny glow toad because of how good they are. This is why the party's glow toad is named "Bait".
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: "Molt Down" reveals that young dragons becomes this during their molt, as Spike finds out the hard way. The smell they excrete, while repugnant to most other creatures, attract giant predators such as hydras, tatzlwurms or rocs. Thus Spike nearly gets eaten by a very persistent giant bird in the Everfree Forest.

---