Vampires don't die by sunlight

[fidu21]

So, i finally got to read Bram Stoker's Dracula. and i was surprised by how the original story varies from the popular media.

First, vampires don't die by sunlight. it doesn't even harm them, it only frobbids them from using their powers (being really fast, strong, walking on walls, turning into a bat, causing fog, and other cool shiet)

Also, you don't kill a vampire by a wooden stake at their heart. it can be any kind of object, even a knife. though, you must cut their head off first, otherwise it doesn't work

It begs the question, who came up with all that if Bram Stoker made it different?

[KainTheVampire]

Legends

[Vylash]

of course not, they sparkle in sunlight

[Jecka]

of course not, they sparkle in sunlight

I was just thinking that

[Kleene Onigiri]

Well, guess people took that idea and modified it for their own story.

Dwarfs and elves variate too in stories. Like it's said female dwarfs look like male dwarfs. And in another story they look just like normal females, just shorter.

[ProfParanoia]

>implying Bram Stoker's Dracula was first vampire
Son, do you even Jure Grando? (heck the Romantic Vampire was outlined in "The Vampyre" by John Polidori)

Also, the stake theme came from a practice of nailing corpses to the ground so they couldn't rise again.

[Akonyl]

Also, the stake theme came from a practice of nailing corpses to the ground so they couldn't rise again.

imagine how much it would suck to come back to life but then realize you couldn't get up because you were staked to the ground.

[mangaluva]

A lot of traditional vampire myths are branches of general undead and zombie myths. They were a corpse that rose and sucked on blood. Pretty much all traditional mythological evil has to hide from sunlight and can only function at night. Bram Stoker's Dracula can go around in sunlight, but that's his own interpretation. His was the template for a lot of modern vampires, however; the idea that vampires can be beautiful, sexual, seductive beings rather than rotting corpses or terrifying monsters.

[Callid]

It begs the question, who came up with all that if Bram Stoker made it different?

That was a movie in the 1920s or so, called Nosferatu, IIRC. I think all these other issues (garlic, what-have-you) also origin there.

[ProfParanoia]

It begs the question, who came up with all that if Bram Stoker made it different?

That was a movie in the 1920s or so, called Nosferatu, IIRC. I think all these other issues (garlic, what-have-you) also origin there.

Except for the scene of Nosferatu on the boat.

[Kleene Onigiri]

I think the garlic is a silly thing. Anyone with a nose would flee from you when you stink of garlic D:
So you can't beat Voldemort with garlic :x

[mangaluva]

Most old vampire myths feature something with a strong smell as a repellent. Things with powerful scents were generally hung over bodies to mask the smell of decaying flesh and myths would attach to them as repelling evil spirits of different sorts.

[Jd-]

I missed a Dracula topic by four days. How remiss I am!

Dracula's powers are substantially hindered in daylight, but not to some extent that he is unable to function, that's true. The magnified aversion to sunlight did come from Nosferatu and slowly reoccurred over the years until it became the standard. Adding to what manga said, the truth is that, really, in a film setting, Dracula (and other monsters) typically need a sort of weakness that is easy to comprehend. That's pretty much why it was adopted so many times over the years and was eventually incorporated into the character full stop in the pantheon of pop culture. If people know "he cannot be out in sunlight", the audience knows that night is a time to fear and can use daytime scenes for exposition. That's not the full explanation, but it was a natural and organic motivator down through the years.

The Count is also already averse to garlic in the novel (though in states of particular power and rage, he's able to overcome it without much trouble). Religious symbols such as crucifixes and other religious rites are also already used in the novel to repel him. Dracula is, after all, a fairly evident story of discerning evil from a Christian perspective. All told, though, his abilities far exceed his weaknesses. There's no doubt that, in the novel, Dracula is a considerable force (whose chief weakness is really just being away from home).

I'll post in here more later, hopefully!

[mangaluva]

In old bloodsucker myths, vampires, like pretty much all other creatures of the night, are repelled by symbols of whatever the local religion is. Dracula was written by a Christian author in a predominantly Christian culture, so naturally it's Christian paraphernalia such as crucifixes and holy water that hurts him.

My Drama Society just finished our run of Dracula and my friend's boyfriend kept complaining about the scene where Jonathan encounters the Brides: "They all bit him! A LOT! Why isn't he a vampire?!" completely ignoring the later scene where Van Helsing asks if he drank any of the Brides' blood and then explains that it's that which turns people into vampires. It is a popular and rather common misconception that a single bite turns someone into a vampire; in Bram Stoker's novel, drinking the vampire's blood is necessary, and in older bloodsucker myths vampires often can't change humans into vampires at all; in some cases, humans killed by the bloodsucker become a sort of zombie under their thrall, but to become an actual bloodsucker you have to die in a very specific way (it varies from myth to myth in different countries).

(Can you tell how much I'm enjoying getting to geek out over old myths and horror stories? )