Vampires existed long before the church. They just have a brain disorder that gives them a seizure when they see straight right angles. Right angles don’t really exist in nature. Humans found out this and started making crosses. Humans created the church to maintain this knowledge during the vampires long hibernation periods of around 1000 years. (Credit to author Peter Watts “Blindside”)
I loved Blindsight (the name of the book is not Blindside) but that was one of the most ridiculous paragraphs I’ve ever read.
The natural world is filled with right angles. Many rocks erode into perfect right angles because of their cleave points. Saplings grow at right angles to the ground. Branches of older trees are sometimes at perfect right angles to the trunk.
Anyone who has gone on a hike sees right angles everywhere. Vampires couldn’t walk a kilometer without a seizure from naturally occuring right angles.
Brutalist architecture should be super effective against vampires.
Also IKEA furniture.
Bismuth would like a word.
came here to say that, also salt crystals
Nah, vampires only hibernated a generation or two. Just long enough for prey populations to grow back to sustainable levels, and just long enough forget them and begin to scoff at grandma’s crazy campfire tales.
Peter Watts - Blindsight
And yes, it’s hard science fiction. With a vampire ship captain. Seriously.
Many versions free on the author’s site. Give the prologue a spin.
Is this some JoJo lore or some shit?
Great book. Sequel is good too.
This why I like the origin of vampires being Judas’ failed suicide attempt. Explains the silver allergy, too.
Please elaborate
I forget which movie it’s from, but they said the first vampire was Judas. He tried to hang himself after he betrayed Jesus but just before he died the branch broke at sunset and he became a vampire.
Explains the blood - since he can’t have communion - and the silver - because he sold Jesus out for silver talents (money) - and the hatred of lower-case t, and the aversion to sunlight.
And the branch is the stake that kills them!?
Yep!
Don’t know where the garlic comes in, though
JC served garlic bread at the last supper. It’s the only way.
And this is my body, with little Caesars garlic butter sauce
Papa John’s or GTFO
He just hated it
Reminds him of the Romans?
He’s just a food snob
Ooh, I like this
Dracula 2000 I wanna say was the movie.
Or like in Vampire the Masquerade how Cain was the original vampire
There was a vampire movie, I forget what it’s called, but part of the lore was that vampires were only affected by religious symbols from their original society. So showing a cross to a Muslim vampire wouldn’t work.
Benny in the 1999 Mummy movie carried a hodgepodge of religious symbols with him, for apparently similar reasons. It sort of worked.
The earliest concept (there may be earlier ones of course) that I remember is from the book I am Legend (1954) IIRC.
A nice read and quite refreshing when comparing with the film.
The scenes where the dog tries to bury itself to hide from the vampires were gut wrenching to me.
Hey, just so you know – you should edit your comment and strip the ?si= and everything after it from your link, it’s a Youtube tracker that has now attached your Youtube ID to your Fediverse ID.
https://youtu.be/L6HkiZOWkaM or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6HkiZOWkaM work fine without it.
Or just https://www.yewtu.be/watch?v=L6HkiZOWkaM (or your other invidious instance of choice)
Great catch, thank you.
Much appreciated. I’ve been using YouTube since 09 and never had to deal with this stuff for a long time.
Like in dance of the vampires musical
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YP3m9OjEf2Q&t=3m5s
In the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, they can be held back by any symbol of power that the wielder has faith in and the stronger the faith, the stronger the symbol. For example, Harry, the main character and a wizard, uses a pentagram instead of a cross because he has faith in his magic.
I’ve always thought that was pretty cool and it means that theoretically a devout Pastafarian could use the symbol of the Flying Spaghetti Monster to protect themselves from vampires.
A pastafarian holding back vampires is exactly the kind of thing that would happen in the Dresden files.
Perhaps, though the Flying Spaghetti Monster is more of a rhetorical device than something people tend to sincerely believe.
It’s hard enough in vampire fiction to find true believers in conventional religion.
A pastafarian would just get garlic
No. The Pastafarian would already be protected due to copious amounts of ingested garlic while enjoying the holy daily portion of ramen.
That’s not an uncommon take. In Vampire: The Masquerade, the idea of “true faith” is the same.
Before 2020 or so, I had a lot of faith in humanity. Does that mean I could just touch vampires to death, or would I need to like throw a child at them?
deleted by creator
In the Neutronium Alchemist (or one of the books in the Nights Dawn series) a vampire basically says “I was Muslim but that cross only works if you believe it works”
E.g. it’s the fundamental belief of the person wielding it that has the “psychic” effect on the ghost/vampire/remnant.
Edit: apparently it was a ghost who was Sunni and it’s the belief of the ghost that does it. E.g. why the crucifix had no effect on him but a crescent, for example, may have.
Sorry to fact-check a pretty good shitpost, but I don’t think lowercase t existed until later
The letter T looked like a cross for about 1750 years before Jesus
Curse those tricksy Phoenicians, I only researched Latin and Greek vampires
Okay, S and Q I kinda get, but what the heck happened with R?
These came from a sort of “this sounds like” alphabet. Like if you wanted to write D but drew a picture of a dog, because that starts with a D sound. Or when someone on the phone says “A as in Adam.”
So the word for dude with a tiny hat started with an R sound, just like the word for the A sounded like an A sound.
My immersion is shattered
I’m starting to think this Andrew Nadeau isn’t a doctor of vampirology at all!
I’m going to send you so much garlic
I have the theory that vampires hating garlic is a rumour spread by vampires themselves because they really love garlic. Getting the humans to season themselves is a genius move.
hissing sound
“You are a fool, Jacinto, all of my ancestors were Jews!”
That scene was one of the most hilarious scenes I have ever seen.
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
Andrew Nadeau, @TheAndrewNadeau
Imagine you were a vampire nowhere near the Middle East and don’t know who Jesus is but the day after he dies you gotta figure out why lower case t’s started hurting.
Lore meme I’m guessing that’ll be a religion check?
