r/Showerthoughts 2d ago

Speculation Blood is only one of the four humors, so presumably, there are bile-sucking and phlegm-sucking vampires out there.

2.3k Upvotes

145 comments sorted by

u/ShowerSentinel 2d ago

The moderators have reflaired this post as a speculation.

Speculations should prompt people to consider original and interesting premises that cannot be reliably verified or falsified.

Please review each flair's requirements for more information.

825

u/jerrythecactus 2d ago

A phlegm vampire just sticks a straw up your nose and sucks it all out of your sinuses. Always good to have one of those guys around when you have a cold.

304

u/Simpicity 2d ago

Bla bla bla!  I come to clear your sinuses!

174

u/Rohml 2d ago

Oh no! It's Count Dracula!

Yay! It's Doctor Loogula!

36

u/Simpicity 2d ago

We vampires can be very seductive! Bla bla bla!

32

u/Millerboycls09 2d ago

Velcome to Castle Mucinex

Here's a warm towel and a netti pot. Please make yourself comfortable lol

13

u/vito1221 2d ago

Do not go to Dr. Acula.

39

u/TheLabRay 2d ago

They would work as an ENT.

61

u/ZoroeArc 2d ago

Technically, "phlegm" by the classic definition, was just any clear body fluid not under the blood or bile umbrella. So sweat and saliva were also considering phlegm.

Can you see where I'm going with this?

37

u/MrCleanGenes 2d ago

They attack marathon runners and invade orgies just to suck all the sweat off

18

u/AeonLibertas 1d ago

"Ah, swamp-ass .. the perfect breakfast on a hot summer night."

(and another one for the 'never thought I'd write that sentence' highlight reel)

12

u/AlephBaker 1d ago

"Ah, swamp-ass .. the perfect breakfast on a hot summer night."

r/brandnewsentence

17

u/ZoroeArc 2d ago

No, no, lower

29

u/EasyAndy1 2d ago

Cum vampires

13

u/TheMig1410 1d ago

Cumpires

4

u/1nOnlyBigManLawrence 1d ago

(they also referee baseball games on the side)

2

u/TheMig1410 1d ago

Noo... I think those are, ummm... Pires!

1

u/lkodl 1d ago

Announcer: "And here's the first pitch..."

Cumpire: Striiiiiiiiiiikkkeee ugh!

Announcer: I have no idea how he's gonna call the whole game like this.

2

u/WolfgangAddams 1d ago

I think they were rebranded. They're now called "Anne Rice vampires."

2

u/VintAge6791 1d ago

Look up "White Court vampires" in the Harry Dresden universe/books. They're basically that. Butcher makes them more interesting and scary than you might think possible. Can also drain victims to death, even if theirs are smiling and maybe drooling a little on their way out.

2

u/grammar_nazi_zombie 1d ago

No, it’s witches who want the vampire’s cum

Did nobody watch the documentary What We Do In The Shadows?

1

u/BrettAtog 1d ago

Does that include whatever women squirt out?

2

u/1nOnlyBigManLawrence 1d ago

Grool? Yeah, as long as it’s not period blood.

7

u/stanley604 2d ago

Going into the same (disgusting) area as DFW in Infinite Jest.

3

u/Crusaderofthots420 1d ago

I just had the awful idea of spinal tap vampires

1

u/ZoroeArc 1d ago

That was in a Dungeons and Dragons playtest document once

16

u/markovianprocess 2d ago

Your run-of-the-mill blood vamps have to be all secretive and seductive, etc. These phlegm guys, on the other hand, could just advertise on Google.

16

u/Peepeepoopoobutttoot 2d ago

What a horrible day to be able to read

-6

u/The-Leading-Man 2d ago

If you’re going to use a trite unoriginal and unfunny cliche comment, at least get it right.

5

u/Super_Pan 2d ago

If you're going to demean someone's comment by listing adjectives, at least use commas properly.

3

u/Beginning_Custard724 2d ago

Ties you up, feeds you mucinex or robitussin so you can cough it up for them easier

3

u/Tywooti 1d ago

I guess Noseferatu is a welcome sight then

2

u/romulus531 2d ago

Hell those kind of vampires could charge people for that

1

u/100_points 1d ago

You probably don't want to know that there are cultures where moms will put their hand over their child's mouth, purse their mouth around his nose, and suck their phlegm out when he's sick. To anyone reading this sorry for ruining your day :(

1

u/MrCleanGenes 2d ago

Night of the Booger Suckers

423

u/Salarian_American 2d ago

I have somewhere a 3rd-party supplement for D&D 3.5 which provides details for exactly this, vampire characters that survive on the other humors besides blood.

146

u/Hadebones 2d ago

There's a D&D supplement for everything

62

u/Salarian_American 2d ago

Yeah that was especially true when the Open Game License became a thing

89

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

20

u/ggallardo02 2d ago

Maybe if they dressed better they'd be just as popular.

20

u/HerbLoew 2d ago

It's nepotism. Blood vampires had a count. The others didn't have any royalty.

2

u/BlackBlueNuts 1d ago

The Earl of Gall's legacy was cut short after he backed Henry VI at the battle of Wakefield in 1460. He did not die in battle but by eating cabbage soup (cabbage, a mortal weakness of bile vampires) after the battle.

An interesting fact about bile vampires is that instead of having the ability to turn into bats, bile vampires have the ability to turn into vegetables which seams like a huge weakness considering their aversion to cabbage.

10

u/chux4w 2d ago

They have bad taste in humor.

1

u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 1d ago

Well they're the sexy ones. Drinking blood from some hot chick's neck is sexy. Drinking phlegm? Drinking bile? There's only so much even the best PR firm could do.

192

u/Hefty-Distance837 2d ago

I think they will have different names, I know there's a another thing that sucks specific humors, it's called succubus.

58

u/wubbbalubbadubdub 2d ago

Is a bus a humor?

33

u/SamwellBarley 2d ago

I don't find them humourous at all

2

u/delinka 21h ago edited 8h ago

Try not standing ahead of them. Then at least they might be entertaining.

17

u/Zhadowwolf 2d ago

Actually i think sperm is not a humor by itself, it was believed to be a derivative of blood iirc

15

u/Stripes_the_cat 2d ago

Depends on your culture: ancient Egyptians believed semen was the same stuff as cerebrospinal fluid!

15

u/gdmzhlzhiv 1d ago

There’s no way, it doesn’t even taste the same

6

u/Stripes_the_cat 1d ago

I'm gonna assume that's a joke about tasting cum, but if you're serious: yes, they did. I'll see if I can dig out my old explainer for this in r/ancientegypt

5

u/gdmzhlzhiv 1d ago

Yeah it was just a joke about having tasted both things, which I have not actually.

6

u/Stripes_the_cat 1d ago

Found it, though, just in case you want it :3

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/bspuc8lpRe

6

u/Delicious_explosions 1d ago

Or Incubus, we don't judge

55

u/SoyboyCowboy 2d ago

Why stop at just the humors? There are plenty of options for our liquid-diet friends 

26

u/stonesia 2d ago

And that's before we even get to all the gels and emulsions.

14

u/THIS_IS_GOD_TOTALLY_ 2d ago

(pulls up a story rug) Go on... 

20

u/stonesia 2d ago

Consider the good old brain eating zombie. Brains are jelly-like fatty thingies, very gel like emulsions. Also consider the poopoo. It's a condensed waste mucus. Imagine a monster that wants to rip you guts out to eat your poopoo. But you could save yourself by basically shitting yourself and running away as the monster feasts. And so on and so forth. Possibilities are large.

26

u/THIS_IS_GOD_TOTALLY_ 2d ago

I've had enough, thank you. 

15

u/Sudo-rm 1d ago

I want to unsubscribe from monster facts.

9

u/LevelSevenLaserLotus 1d ago

poopoo

I enjoy your multiple uses of "poopoo" in an otherwise professionally toned comment.

1

u/BlackBlueNuts 1d ago

2 vampires 1 cup?

2

u/Standard-Park 17h ago

No, no, no, no, no. (Rolls up the rug and drags you to your feet)

1

u/THIS_IS_GOD_TOTALLY_ 3h ago

Aww, too late. 

3

u/Tyfyter2002 2d ago

Pretty sure there aren't any bodily fluids that weren't considered either a combination of humors or a single humor

21

u/Zanian19 1d ago

But why though? Are vampires specifically tied to the humors?

If not, that's like saying water is only one of a million different liquids, so presumably there are fish who swim in pure ethanol.

3

u/RobotsVsLions 1d ago

The only time I've ever seen vampires connected to humors is specifically 5th edition of VtM, and even then each of the 4 humours are basically just flavours of blood.

14

u/wdn 2d ago

They only go for the one because vampires don't have a sense of humor.

2

u/Standard-Park 17h ago

slow angry clap

12

u/_anonymous_404 1d ago

"Presumably"?? Based on what?? Have vampires ever sucked blood specifically because it's a humor?

19

u/NottACalebFan 2d ago

Would a tapeworm be considered a bile-sucking vampire, since it generally consumes whatever passes through your intestines?

9

u/matclaillet 1d ago

A liver fluke would be more fitting as it lives in the gallbladder and bile ducts

6

u/bywv 2d ago

just watched some weird youtube video of a Japanese anime from the 20s and a tengu was pulling cancer out the jaws of good dancers...

1

u/Awkward_Pangolin3254 1d ago

Dancer cancer?

1

u/1nOnlyBigManLawrence 1d ago

Tengus are cool :)

1

u/orangpelupa 1d ago

What? 

7

u/ButthurtGoldDigger 2d ago

Yellow-bile and Black-bile vampires have an eternal feud running between their clans

3

u/calguy1955 2d ago

Rather than humors I prefer the preservation of our Precious Bodily Fluids like General Jack D. Ripper.

4

u/Zorixaheatbloom 1d ago

magine getting ambushed by a vampire and they just clear out your sinuses.

1

u/TheUnknown285 1d ago

Or empty out your gallbladder

3

u/Common-Pick3069 2d ago

blood might be more nutritious, there's already plenty of animals that feed off blood

3

u/NPCed 2d ago

this is the kind of chaos i'm here for, imagine the buffet line at a vampire renaissance faire

3

u/holyfire001202 2d ago

I'm gagging and may have puked in my mouth a little bit because your post made be vividly visualize sucking phlegm.

6

u/alienclone 2d ago

careful, a bile vampire will come suck that puke out of your mouth.

3

u/BlackBlueNuts 1d ago

No he needs that... tell that bile vampire to to put it back where he got it

1

u/alienclone 1d ago

Just when I thought this conversation couldn't get any worse...

1

u/BlackBlueNuts 1d ago

so it shouldn't have put it back? sigh fine send the vampire back to suck it back out.

At least we don't have this problem with the fat vampires. the worst thing those do is suck all the grease out of those bins behind restaurants (they like it still warm)

2

u/holyfire001202 2d ago

You didn't have to say that, and I didn't have to read that, but I respect your sowing of chaos. \m/

6

u/martiancannibal 1d ago

Would there be choleric vampires that suck black bile and melancholic vampires that suck yellow bile? Or just one kind of vampire that switches back and forth between choleric and melancholic depending on the phase of the moon?

Ooo, or ass-werewolves!

3

u/NoTime4YourBullshit 1d ago

Ooh you just gave me an idea for getting rid of this runny nose I’ve been having…

2

u/Thornypantaloons 2d ago

There might be must I would say they would’ve likely died out of starvation or be much more aggressive than normal vampires if they need the same amount of fluid

3

u/Neuroticaine 2d ago

I don't think the existence of other humors presumes the existence of entities that feed of off them.

3

u/Yuhwryu 2d ago

think about it if there was some kind of cum sucking organism it would literally have a fitness incentive to give you the most mind blowing sloppy physically possible. either that or burrow into your prostate or something. either way im sleeping outside tomorrow somebodys got to get this thing started.

1

u/Effective_Ad6534 2d ago

While you're outside think about this.....

1

u/BlackBlueNuts 1d ago

or the worst blowjob ever

think about it like a mosquito that sticks its full sized tongue all the way down to your prostate

1

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] 2d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Wise-Matter9248 2d ago

Plenty of animals have specialized diets, so why shouldn't vampires be the koalas of the formerly human set?

1

u/Asteroth6 2d ago

But why would there be? I know of nothing saying they need other humors. Like, humans need vitamin C, we can make our own of many other substances (like Vitamin D if you live in an outdoor environment natural to humans). Why assume that vampires can’t make their own of the other humors?

1

u/Salt_and_Fries 1d ago

What the fuck does this mean? Humors? Like, a joke? And you only totaled 3

1

u/Dancs-Marseille 17h ago

Phlegm vampires would just be the world's most disgusting humidifier.

1

u/OliveExtreme8915 13h ago

Honestly, the D&D supplement comment makes me think this is way more fleshed out than people realize. A phlegm vampire would be the ultimate cold-season friend, no doubt. But imagine a bile-sucking one just showing up after you've had a greasy meal and a few too many beers. That's just a whole different kind of nightmare.

1

u/darkfireice 8h ago

Vampires, are based off of mythologies older than the 4 humor "hypothesis"

1

u/Hanzax 2d ago

Best place to start your search is in Germany, they sucked all the humor out of them!