Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2

D-503 Apr 21, 2019 @ 8:19pm
Fat Vampires--do they exist?
This sounds like trolling gibberish, but I'm deadly serious here. I have never seen a corpulent vampire. Not in VtM source material, and not really anywhere else.

My question to the audience: do they exist in any settings I'm unaware of?

And secondly, as pertains to VtM, how does the vampiric body process body fat? If you're embraced while obese, can you get rid of the fat somehow? Surely not by exercise, since regular metabolic functions have ceased. Can you just scrub it out through your blood, like an internal liposuction procedure? Conversely, let's pretend you were embraced while skinny, but wanted your undead body to look like a Kardashian; since you can't gain fat through eating anymore, would fat injections work on the vampiric body? Or is this entering Vicissitude territory?

Is there any lore, anywhere, that covers these issues? Or are we just led to assume that vampires are rarely/never fat?
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Wolfways Apr 21, 2019 @ 8:32pm 
Well the woman next to the piano in the trailer isn't exactly skinny. Still sexy though ;)

I'd think that you stay the way you were when embraced, excluding vicissitude, but I'm sure someone more versed in VTM lore will have a better answer.
Chameon Apr 21, 2019 @ 8:42pm 
Originally posted by Jock McSteed:
This sounds like trolling gibberish, but I'm deadly serious here. I have never seen a corpulent vampire. Not in VtM source material, and not really anywhere else.

My question to the audience: do they exist in any settings I'm unaware of?

Is there any lore, anywhere, that covers these issues? Or are we just led to assume that vampires are rarely/never fat?

So. VTM lore. You 100% stay the way you were when you were embraced. This means if you have a blood clot in your brain making you entirely paralyzed? You are a quadriplegic vampire. Yes. It is possible to be a vampire who is entirely incapable of moving who has not been staked. It's a special hell you can subject the crippled to, depending on what story teller you're dealing with. For the record, that's one -hell- of a jackass move, which would likely cost you rather a lot of humanity.

This means that corpulent vampires do in fact exist, however, it's worth noting that kindred tend to sire based on what's considered beautiful by them. Rome tended to view fat as beautiful, meaning, if you wanted morbidly obese vampires, you want ancient vampires, old enough to have existed back before Caesar. There are other cultures that have viewed fat as beautiful, and people have had their varying interests throughout history, so, yes, fat vampires do exist.

Now let's talk about how fat functions in regards to a vampire. All the downsides of having fat? They're still there. All the upsides, the resource maintenance, the ability to live through not eating for a while, the possibility of gaining muscles under the fat by simply remaining active in spite of your weight? All those options are missing in action. So a fat vampire tends to have all the weaknesses of a fat person, with none of the benefits, which makes them -generally- less impressive vampires.

Now as for in lore, Vampires tend to be meant to be something of a set of sex objects in recent pop culture, partially due to the fact that they're meant to be seductive sinners with a tendency of acting somewhat intimately to get the one thing they need and desire above all else. As such, corpulent vampires are SOMEWHAT rare due simply to that popularity. That said, they do appear in realist portrayals (Either as entities who were favored servants of the vampire, or simply due to a high enough intellect / interest gained to be -worth- promoting to the role), as well as for parodies.
D-503 Apr 21, 2019 @ 8:52pm 
Originally posted by Chameon:

So. VTM lore. You 100% stay the way you were when you were embraced. This means if you have a blood clot in your brain making you entirely paralyzed? You are a quadriplegic vampire. Yes. It is possible to be a vampire who is entirely incapable of moving who has not been staked. It's a special hell you can subject the crippled to, depending on what story teller you're dealing with. For the record, that's one -hell- of a jackass move, which would likely cost you rather a lot of humanity.

[post cut for ease of quotation]

Excellent answers, thank you. I didn't know about the paralysis part.

I do agree about the sex object bias making fat vampires rarer, as well.
orangecrush Apr 21, 2019 @ 8:57pm 
Only one I can think of is the one from blade(1998)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbEEeoo1QkA
D-503 Apr 21, 2019 @ 8:59pm 
Originally posted by Wolfways:
Well the woman next to the piano in the trailer isn't exactly skinny. Still sexy though ;)

Right, but the sexiness part still kind of detracts from the more realistic... dare I say... the higher probability of a recently embraced vampire looking more like... the people you see on a Cops rerun.

The woman next to the piano was more... glam-fat.
D-503 Apr 21, 2019 @ 9:14pm 
Originally posted by Leslie Cottonbutt:
Only one I can think of is the one from blade(1998)

I knew I forgot something. I saw that in the theaters when it first came out, but haven't watched it since.
Chameon Apr 22, 2019 @ 12:54am 
Before I forget, strictly speaking, you could use ghoulification to -cure- a paralyzed individual, or to make an old man younger, as I recall. Vampirification locks you in as what you were when you first were embraced, however becoming a ghoul, instead, tries to bring you back to when you were at your absolute best physically, as well as removing deviations that would weaken you (Other then being a ghoul). That having been said, this isn't something that would be very 'normal', it's rather hard to pull off well and, let's be honest with ourselves here, more likely to blow up in the vampires face then other options.

Additionally, before I forget, the Macellarius in Vampire: Requiem (A less popular continuation of Vampire the Masquerade) had blood powers that were based on being flesh eaters. They didn't actually....digest it though. It just became stored. As such, they were very much fat vampires, with a note that after just three days of being embraced, they would gain over a hundred pounds, up to 150, and that as the years went by, they would put on more and more pounds, to impossible levels. The Discipline in question is "Gustus"
Sammy Apr 22, 2019 @ 7:15am 
Originally posted by Chameon:
Originally posted by Jock McSteed:
This sounds like trolling gibberish, but I'm deadly serious here. I have never seen a corpulent vampire. Not in VtM source material, and not really anywhere else.

My question to the audience: do they exist in any settings I'm unaware of?

Is there any lore, anywhere, that covers these issues? Or are we just led to assume that vampires are rarely/never fat?

So. VTM lore. You 100% stay the way you were when you were embraced. This means if you have a blood clot in your brain making you entirely paralyzed? You are a quadriplegic vampire. Yes. It is possible to be a vampire who is entirely incapable of moving who has not been staked. It's a special hell you can subject the crippled to, depending on what story teller you're dealing with. For the record, that's one -hell- of a jackass move, which would likely cost you rather a lot of humanity.
I don't pretend to be an expert on VTM lore, but the wiki says that when someone becomes a vampire, all their internal organs (apart from the heart) wither away and their insides are just blood and bones, wouldn't that mean that fat withers away too? If not I assume "vampire lyposuction" exists too considering how wealthy many vamps are.
Last edited by Sammy; Apr 23, 2019 @ 6:38am
Aldaris Apr 22, 2019 @ 7:39am 
Originally posted by Jock McSteed:
Originally posted by Wolfways:
Well the woman next to the piano in the trailer isn't exactly skinny. Still sexy though ;)
The woman next to the piano was more... glam-fat.
She isn't even fat at all though.
Starcomet1 Apr 22, 2019 @ 8:40am 
They do! Etrius, one of the original Tremere council of seven, was fairly fat or at least had a pot belly based on his picture.
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Etrius
Wolfways Apr 22, 2019 @ 9:54am 
Originally posted by Starcomet1:
They do! Etrius, one of the original Tremere council of seven, was fairly fat or at least had a pot belly based on his picture.
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Etrius
Could just be a bad pic. The description at the bottom says he was "of average weight".
opqrrr3 Apr 22, 2019 @ 11:02am 
You can become a vampire in Sim4 and that game lets you create fat characters xD.

As StartComet1 says. The vampire Etrius is fat. That vampire looks like a role player of the 90s.
Chameon Apr 22, 2019 @ 11:28am 
Originally posted by Sammy:
Originally posted by Chameon:

So. VTM lore. You 100% stay the way you were when you were embraced. This means if you have a blood clot in your brain making you entirely paralyzed? You are a quadriplegic vampire. Yes. It is possible to be a vampire who is entirely incapable of moving who has not been staked. It's a special hell you can subject the crippled to, depending on what story teller you're dealing with. For the record, that's one -hell- of a jackass move, which would likely cost you rather a lot of humanity.
I don't pretend to be an expert on VTM lore, but the wiki says that when someone becomes a vampire, all their internal organs wither away and their insides are just blood and bones, wouldn't that mean that fat withers away too? If not I assume "vampire lyposuction" exists too considering how wealthy many vamps are.

The issue is, you get lyposuction, absolutely. You then immediately start regenerating to the same shape and appearance you had just prior to getting lyposuction. This is something that's supernatural and highly varied in what precisely it considers not okay. You're right though, the internal organs don't exist, it's just that the problems that were experienced in those organs continue to exist.

The reason for this issue being canon are fairly divided in precise reason. VTM is a setting designed to be LARPed in. If you have severe asthma, or you can't get out of a wheelchair and walk around, or you need to walk with a cane, they don't want to make a setting that disavows all that. This is also true of fat people, they can't say there are no 'fat vampires' and be in a comfortable place given they want people to be able to play their game. Now, if it was just for RPing? Sure, say whatever you want, although the more variation you allow in character design without necessarily enforcing it, the happier people will generally be.
Originally posted by Chameon:
Originally posted by Sammy:
I don't pretend to be an expert on VTM lore, but the wiki says that when someone becomes a vampire, all their internal organs wither away and their insides are just blood and bones, wouldn't that mean that fat withers away too? If not I assume "vampire lyposuction" exists too considering how wealthy many vamps are.

The issue is, you get lyposuction, absolutely. You then immediately start regenerating to the same shape and appearance you had just prior to getting lyposuction. This is something that's supernatural and highly varied in what precisely it considers not okay. You're right though, the internal organs don't exist, it's just that the problems that were experienced in those organs continue to exist.

The reason for this issue being canon are fairly divided in precise reason. VTM is a setting designed to be LARPed in. If you have severe asthma, or you can't get out of a wheelchair and walk around, or you need to walk with a cane, they don't want to make a setting that disavows all that. This is also true of fat people, they can't say there are no 'fat vampires' and be in a comfortable place given they want people to be able to play their game. Now, if it was just for RPing? Sure, say whatever you want, although the more variation you allow in character design without necessarily enforcing it, the happier people will generally be.
No immediately. You'll keep the changes in your appearance until you go to sleep and wake up next evening.

My friend had a character, who sported a beard and long hair before he was Embraced. Each evening he shaved his head and face clean xD
Malkav0 Apr 22, 2019 @ 12:02pm 
Originally posted by FlyingTorpedoWhale:
No immediately. You'll keep the changes in your appearance until you go to sleep and wake up next evening.

My friend had a character, who sported a beard and long hair before he was Embraced. Each evening he shaved his head and face clean xD

It looks like another task for Vissicitude Nightly Service™, a family tzimisce business with prices beyond competition !
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Date Posted: Apr 21, 2019 @ 8:19pm
Posts: 80