Pen of the Gryphon

Blood...

Blood in literature seems to be an incredibly intamate medium. It is the innermost liquid that is acutally socially acceptible. Tears is another well-beloved and over-romanticised fluid, but it isn't quite as special. Blood only appears in injury, pain and sacrifice. Tears can be of joy: blood never comes without a price.

Blood is most vital to survival and has nothing to do with emotions on the whole, except for when your face goes red when you blush. Stomach acids, urine and saliva are all important too, but if you were to write a story in which the hero emerges from battle covered in urine or vomit, or drooling profusely, how many people are going to want to hear anything more about him. (never mind it might be more realistic for someone to have emptied their bladder in a moment of fright...) But bring him out dripping with blood, whether or not it is his and suddenly women and readers are falling all over him and ruining their clothing on this fabulous blood...

Blood takes many different forms... Black blood of rot, foul blood of illness, clear blood of laceration... The crimson river of life flowing through its bed of veins and spewing out in a bright fountain at the cut of a sword. (As a lovely teacher of mine says "laughter is a letter away from slaughter...")

People, especially fantasy folks, seem to love this specticale of gore. (Myself included... Give me a good clean cut running with blood and I am all over them... Crushing injuries, not so much... Brains... not so much. Blood...) I once wrote a scene in which this character had been lacerated and bathed in blood that never seemed to stop flowing. I loved writing the blood as it flowed between the fingers of those who were trying to staunch the flow. To me, it was romantic having this character bleeding her lifeblood aay until it ran out from under the palm of my hero's hands...

The funny thing about this scene was that humans don't even have that much blood. A few quarts is all and even losing something like a fourth of that is enough to kill without a supply of new blood. (I don't know the exact numbers, I'm not a doctor and I can't find my blood notes I wrote for that story...)  But there my character was, bleeding buckets and she ends up recovering in something like a week. (You can see that this was one of my earlier works...)

Blood, I think, is so popular because it does involve pain and death. A hero who sheds blood to save the world is giving some of himself for others. Jesus is so unique in this respect, that God would come down to earth to shed his own blood to save the souls of the equivalence of dung heaps from damnation... (I am a Catholic...)

But yeah, blood=interest more than disgust in my experience. Of course, there are those who are squeamish when it comes to real blood. Its because when you see it before, its like watching someone's essense leaking out before you. Blood is so intamate and private that people shy away from it (even if they aren't thinking about it consciously).

I'm thinking about doing a part II to this, since it sort of interests me, probably involving vampires and other such blood-related literature subjects and so on, but I'm not sure yet...

Farewell and 'ware the shadows where no man treads,

~GryphonFledglingOfSilverWings