LogFAQs > #934737235

Zeus posted...

Sunlight didn't hurt vampires?

No. Dracula (the book) explicitly mentions Dracula (the character) outside during the day. So does Carmilla. It was never really a major thing before Nosferatu introduced the idea. At most, in some interpretations sunlight would weaken their unholy powers a bit, but they'd still be more or less fine. And in others they were almost entirely unaffected by sunlight other than just being tired because they were awake all night.

The general implication is that vampires CAN go out in the day, just as nocturnal animals can go out in the day. They just prefer to hunt at night because it's easier to stalk your prey when your prey is sleeping (and were people aren't going to see who you are). So they spend most of the day sleeping, because they spend most of the night active. But they can go out in the day if they need to.

Keep in mind, it would have been almost entirely impossible for anyone to pass as a normal human if they couldn't interact during the day for most of human history. Prior to the advent of electricity/electric lighting, almost every service and social activity only took place during the day. Someone who only went out at night would be an almost immediate suspect for pretty much everything (which would suck for anyone who had a legitimate sunlight sensitivity).



Zeus posted...

wtf, the superstition involving vampires counting -- which you yourself acknowledge -- directly contradicts this claim. When somebody left mustard seeds out (I *think* it was mustard seeds), it was to keep the vampire counting until the morning sun could get them.

That wasn't why. The point was to keep the vampire counting so you could run the fuck away. The idea was, by the time the vampire finished counting, you'd be gone and it wouldn't be able to follow you. It goes hand-in-hand with the running water thing - it wasn't a method for killing the vampire, it was a method for running away from the vampire (ie, find a river, creek, stream, etc and cross it as quickly as possible).

It's part of why the standard "let's kill vampires" method was to stake them, cut their head off, and stick garlic in their mouth (and possibly throwing in holy water or holy ground for good measure). Otherwise, all you'd really need to do is break a hole in their house or drag them out into the sun and they'd burst into flames.



Zeus posted...

And while the Wolfman may have popularized silver as a werewolf weapon, it *already* existed in folklore to some extent and it was broadly a solution for supernatural beings so it was almost certainly seen as a historic solution as well.

Yes - silver was a weapon you could use against vampires. And demons. NOT werewolves.

Silver was mostly a weapon that could be used against unholy/demonic things - and werewolves were never actually considered to be supernatural in that sense. Like I mentioned, they were usually considered to be humans using black magic, or under the influence of magic, and silver was rarely used as an anti-magic substance (if anything, silver was often pro-magic for a lot of ritualists). They have more in common with witches than they do vampires - and silver doesn't hurt witches, either.

It wasn't really until The Wolf Man radically changed the concept of what a werewolf WAS that silver would have made sense as a weakness anyway. And it was the first source to explicitly establish that it was. Which basically influenced nearly every other story that followed (again, in the same way that nearly every single zombie story any of us have ever heard can trace its roots directly back to Night of the Living Dead).

Believe me, I spent waaay too long playing White Wolf games. I've done a fuckton of research on this sort of stuff.



wolfy42 posted...

Silver poisoning was a weapon against werewolves almost from the start.

Nope.

It was never a thing in actual mythology. It wasn't even a thing in fiction until about 100 years ago, give or take. It's a very new addition to the concept.
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