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?
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.
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.
Like in dance of the vampires musical
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YP3m9OjEf2Q&t=3m5s
The earliest concept (there may be earlier ones of course) that I remember is from the book I am Legend (1954) IIRC.
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)
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.
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.
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.