#!cannibalism

So, victorians ate mummies (like the kind from Egypt) because it was believed that it was medicinal. Viewing dead bodies as having medicinal properties was a belief dating back to the middle ages, but practiced rather infrequently. However, at the height of the victorian obsession for Egypt (called Egyptomania), along with using mummies to produce an oil paint of the shade mummy brown, they were also eaten as medicine. Something a little less morbid, one guy allegedly found out how his tube of mummy brown paint was produced, and held a little funeral for it. The only reason these practices ended is because they literally ran out of mummies.

(This might become a daily thing, I have way too much to say and not enough people to say it to :( )

YEAH WE TALKED A LOT ABOUT THIS IN MY ANTHRO CLASSES SINCE I WAS ON THE ARCHAEOLOGY TRACK IT'S FUCKING WILD

The BritishTM will never cease to frighten me, also funfact there is a rare parasitic disease that is only so rare BECAUSE YOU CAN ONLY GET IT FROM EATING DEAD BODIES and also British Museums return the stolen artifacts to their home countries they're not yours to display, and I don't care if you're “preserving them” for future generations THOSE WERE NEVER YOURS TO DECIDE THAT RETURN THEM YOU CUNTS

And that goes for American historical museums with Native artifacts, GIVE THEM BACK some of those you straight up just took from Natives' yards and graves you asses

so…

turns out eating people is something you get desensitized to over time.  it’s also something that becomes a lot more tempting when you have access to your whole range of charms and need essence to use them. essence that you can only get from consuming the breath, blood, or flesh of an individual (and in case anyone thinks ‘breath doesn’t sound that bad,’ it’s basically suffocating someone with a kiss.  there’s no nice way to collect essence from someone).

so beauty… doesn’t feel great about it.  but he doesn’t feel bad or grossed out by it in the way that he did in his early days as an abyssal.  he’s trying to limit the collateral damage by mostly doing a carrion-eater thing, but he still needs blood that’s from a corpse less than one minute dead.  and that means lurking in sector 3 and profiting personally from things like muggings and gang violence.  i’m sure sometimes it’s a case of an NPC trying to roll him over and him defending himself lethally, too.

that’s totally cool right?  yeah...

on the other hand, being well-fed does wonders for his emotional stability. what would it be like if he dragged himself out through starvation?  would he snap some day and just chow down on the nearest person?  that would be worse, wouldn’t it?  he can’t ask his friends for their blood - half of them don’t even know he needs it and he’s afraid of what they’ll think, and he knows how much an abyssal’s bite hurts.

It is generally advisable to avoid going down an alleyway in Sector 03. However, the corollary to this is that it might not always be your choice.  But no matter what circumstances behind one being in an alley in Sector 03, things weren’t going to end well.

The case in point: two men, one gun, a fight over money.  It ended with a series of gunshots.  And, if fate had been smiling on the murderer, it would have stayed ended there. But even with his ears still ringing, he felt the presence of someone behind him.

The criminal in question took off.  His clip was too small and his nerves too frayed from his recent killing to stick around.

Beauty didn’t watch the man flee.  His only concern was on the corpse, which he grabbed and hoisted up, pressing it against the wall.  There was no pulse against his thumb where he gripped the body around the neck.

He had less than a minute to act, but his breath was shaking regardless.  He had to let go of his conscious mind and let the iron smell of blood overwhelm him or he would be sick.

He was almost sick anyway when he bit into the shoulder of the body.