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lydamorehouse Convergence is this weekend. As most of you know from a previous post, I am not attending this year, alas. Several of my friends are, however, and one of them posted a lovely series of icebreakers on FB that kind of got me all fired up.
The question I spent some serious time pondering was this one:
What's it about? What is the power that stops a vampire from entering? Is there something magical about property owning (clearly this is not it, otherwise vampires would be stopped at the property line and that is sometimes, in rural areas, far from the door.) Also the modern capitalist society would be as difficult for vampires to negotiate as a fairy allergic to iron in a big city. I can only just imagine the scene, right?
Vampire: *walking only on public sidewalks or in the middle of streets.*
Werewolf friend: "Yo, Vlad, do you want to take an uber to the party with me?"
Vampire: *silently cursing, staring at the phone* "Do you think my downloading the app counts as an invitation? Oh f*ck it, I'll take the g-d damn metro. It's PUBLIC."
Fairy friend: "I just want to throw up on everything. Look at this, a tin can on the street! Why? Why is metal everywhere??? I can't go in a building.... I'm going to the park."
But, so, clearly it's not just some kind of capitalist magic of OWNING things or literally a vampire could go nowhere. Most times, too, vampires are actually property owners themselves, having that spooky castle and otherwise being a member of "the peerage." You know Lord So-and-So.
I went to Google to see what the general consensus is about what's stopping a vampire from entering without an invite. Probably the most convincing thing I found was the people who suggested that it really depends on the metaphorical content of your vampire. If your vampire is fully metaphorical, the reason they need an invite to enter is because YOU are culpable in your own SIN. You have to "open your heart" to darkness or otherwise actively turn away from goodness/God/what-have-you. If this is the case, of course, your invitation doesn't even have to be verbal, you just have to have a moment of weakness and the vampire can enter your life. (This then also explains why religious symbols/the Christian cross work to turn away vampires, because the symbols are... well, SYMBOLS and therefor are metaphors that represent goodness/God/what-have-you and/or your return to that belief/faith, etc.)
Another speculation posited that thresholds have an inherent magic. I mean, this also immediately resonated with me on a number of levels. I think you would be hard pressed to find a human culture that does not believe that doorways are magical. Doors and doorways (speaking of metaphors) are very obvious symbols of transitions like birth and death, etc. And, so the act of opening the door or crossing a threshold carries with it all this WEIGHT. In fact, I was just watching Mononoke yesterday (a Japanese horror anime) and there's a really fascinating series of images in the first episode where the "camera" stops just as the medicine seller crosses the threshold of each room, as if testing his ability to do this very thing: CROSS A THRESHOLD.
For me, anyway, the idea that a threshold, ANY DOORWAY, is magical is easy to understand. The vampire is a creature between the world of the living and the dead and so, of course, pausing at this symbol of a hard transition from one state to another gives them pause. The vampire, not being one state or the other, hits this entryway to a state of being in which they do not belong, and must pause/stop to ask for permission.
Interestingly, another one of the answers I stumbled across suggested that (like with the idea of sin) it's kind of the power of "home" that keeps the vampire at bay/needing an invite. So, the stronger your familial bond, the stronger the threshold barrier. Conversely, of course, this means that if your family is dysfunctional, you're more susceptible to invasion by Dark Forces, such as the vampire.
Armed with all this speculation, I would say that, yes, once you are occupying a hotel room, you automatically imbue it with your personal magic. The threshold activates with your mere presence, if you will. Under the logic that the stronger the family, the stronger the threshold, then things become more up in the air. Why are you at the hotel? Are you running from someone? Or are you there to enjoy a favorite convention? If it's the first, you're kind of screwed. I'm not sure a vampire needs much of an invitation if you are already "weakened" by the danger you're already in. You're in an unfamiliar place and, presumably, are already on wobbly ground in terms of an innate ability to claim a temporary space as "home base." In the second scenario, the vampire can attend the con (presumably a paid membership is tantamount to an "invite,") but not go into your personal hotel room unless invited by you or your roommates/family members.
Anyway, I was on one of the various Quora types places and there were two funny things I found. One was, of course, some nutter claiming to be a vampire who answered in the first person, and second was the number of people with questions like, "Can a vampire enter my out buildings without permission? Like, could they get into my free standing garage?"
It was also interesting the extent to which people were divided on the whole metaphor issue. People who wanted to think about vampires as real, non-metaphorical creatures where like, "Nope, thresholds won't stop a vampire! Ha!" Which, I mean, a case could be made, right? This is where you'd have to decide your magical system. If vampire are real (and not giant metaphors for sex or sin) AND you want them to have to be stopped at your door, then what is actually stopping the vampire?
Personally, I kind of like the idea of the magic of home. Partly because it can be cultivated, right? I sort of hate the idea that if your family sucks, you can be more easily invaded because that feels like victim blaming. Not everyone is a willing participant in family dysfunction, in fact, most children can't help but be part of it. So, it's not fair that they'd end up vampire victims in that scenario. But, if "home" is a personal magic, then your made family spaces are safe. Even if it's just "the place I feel at home." So, like you could write the story based on the weak family bond problem and the vampire is taking out the whole family and our hero/ine runs to the library and the vampire is stopped cold because this person feels like the library is gool, safe, HOME. Or the backyard tree house. Or their best friend's house. Or Fandom. I love the idea of a vampire creeping closer and closer and then, "BOOM! You fire up your Discord server and then the vampire is stopped cold, because the people on the screen are your FAMILY and just having them on the screen behind you is more powerful than a thousand suns. S/he/they hisses and turns away, unable to enter fandom space.
The question I spent some serious time pondering was this one:
- Can vampires come into a hotel room without an invitation as long as it's before the guest checks in? Do they have to leave as soon as the guest arrives?
What's it about? What is the power that stops a vampire from entering? Is there something magical about property owning (clearly this is not it, otherwise vampires would be stopped at the property line and that is sometimes, in rural areas, far from the door.) Also the modern capitalist society would be as difficult for vampires to negotiate as a fairy allergic to iron in a big city. I can only just imagine the scene, right?
Vampire: *walking only on public sidewalks or in the middle of streets.*
Werewolf friend: "Yo, Vlad, do you want to take an uber to the party with me?"
Vampire: *silently cursing, staring at the phone* "Do you think my downloading the app counts as an invitation? Oh f*ck it, I'll take the g-d damn metro. It's PUBLIC."
Fairy friend: "I just want to throw up on everything. Look at this, a tin can on the street! Why? Why is metal everywhere??? I can't go in a building.... I'm going to the park."
But, so, clearly it's not just some kind of capitalist magic of OWNING things or literally a vampire could go nowhere. Most times, too, vampires are actually property owners themselves, having that spooky castle and otherwise being a member of "the peerage." You know Lord So-and-So.
I went to Google to see what the general consensus is about what's stopping a vampire from entering without an invite. Probably the most convincing thing I found was the people who suggested that it really depends on the metaphorical content of your vampire. If your vampire is fully metaphorical, the reason they need an invite to enter is because YOU are culpable in your own SIN. You have to "open your heart" to darkness or otherwise actively turn away from goodness/God/what-have-you. If this is the case, of course, your invitation doesn't even have to be verbal, you just have to have a moment of weakness and the vampire can enter your life. (This then also explains why religious symbols/the Christian cross work to turn away vampires, because the symbols are... well, SYMBOLS and therefor are metaphors that represent goodness/God/what-have-you and/or your return to that belief/faith, etc.)
Another speculation posited that thresholds have an inherent magic. I mean, this also immediately resonated with me on a number of levels. I think you would be hard pressed to find a human culture that does not believe that doorways are magical. Doors and doorways (speaking of metaphors) are very obvious symbols of transitions like birth and death, etc. And, so the act of opening the door or crossing a threshold carries with it all this WEIGHT. In fact, I was just watching Mononoke yesterday (a Japanese horror anime) and there's a really fascinating series of images in the first episode where the "camera" stops just as the medicine seller crosses the threshold of each room, as if testing his ability to do this very thing: CROSS A THRESHOLD.
For me, anyway, the idea that a threshold, ANY DOORWAY, is magical is easy to understand. The vampire is a creature between the world of the living and the dead and so, of course, pausing at this symbol of a hard transition from one state to another gives them pause. The vampire, not being one state or the other, hits this entryway to a state of being in which they do not belong, and must pause/stop to ask for permission.
Interestingly, another one of the answers I stumbled across suggested that (like with the idea of sin) it's kind of the power of "home" that keeps the vampire at bay/needing an invite. So, the stronger your familial bond, the stronger the threshold barrier. Conversely, of course, this means that if your family is dysfunctional, you're more susceptible to invasion by Dark Forces, such as the vampire.
Armed with all this speculation, I would say that, yes, once you are occupying a hotel room, you automatically imbue it with your personal magic. The threshold activates with your mere presence, if you will. Under the logic that the stronger the family, the stronger the threshold, then things become more up in the air. Why are you at the hotel? Are you running from someone? Or are you there to enjoy a favorite convention? If it's the first, you're kind of screwed. I'm not sure a vampire needs much of an invitation if you are already "weakened" by the danger you're already in. You're in an unfamiliar place and, presumably, are already on wobbly ground in terms of an innate ability to claim a temporary space as "home base." In the second scenario, the vampire can attend the con (presumably a paid membership is tantamount to an "invite,") but not go into your personal hotel room unless invited by you or your roommates/family members.
Anyway, I was on one of the various Quora types places and there were two funny things I found. One was, of course, some nutter claiming to be a vampire who answered in the first person, and second was the number of people with questions like, "Can a vampire enter my out buildings without permission? Like, could they get into my free standing garage?"
It was also interesting the extent to which people were divided on the whole metaphor issue. People who wanted to think about vampires as real, non-metaphorical creatures where like, "Nope, thresholds won't stop a vampire! Ha!" Which, I mean, a case could be made, right? This is where you'd have to decide your magical system. If vampire are real (and not giant metaphors for sex or sin) AND you want them to have to be stopped at your door, then what is actually stopping the vampire?
Personally, I kind of like the idea of the magic of home. Partly because it can be cultivated, right? I sort of hate the idea that if your family sucks, you can be more easily invaded because that feels like victim blaming. Not everyone is a willing participant in family dysfunction, in fact, most children can't help but be part of it. So, it's not fair that they'd end up vampire victims in that scenario. But, if "home" is a personal magic, then your made family spaces are safe. Even if it's just "the place I feel at home." So, like you could write the story based on the weak family bond problem and the vampire is taking out the whole family and our hero/ine runs to the library and the vampire is stopped cold because this person feels like the library is gool, safe, HOME. Or the backyard tree house. Or their best friend's house. Or Fandom. I love the idea of a vampire creeping closer and closer and then, "BOOM! You fire up your Discord server and then the vampire is stopped cold, because the people on the screen are your FAMILY and just having them on the screen behind you is more powerful than a thousand suns. S/he/they hisses and turns away, unable to enter fandom space.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-04 03:06 pm (UTC)In Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" the rule had to do with the vampire's house. If he invited you in, then you would be a guest and by the laws of hospitality he would not be allowed to attack you. So that's why Dracula was always saying, "Enter freely and of your own will," so technically he wasn't issuing an invitation. Dracula didn't need an invitation to invade poor Lucy's house and feed on her; he just flapped up to the window and slithered inside. Maybe if she had actually invited him in he would have been bound by the laws of hospitality NOT to attack her.
Anyway, Victorian vampires were apparently sticklers for rules but happy to exploit any loophole they could think of. Modern vampires apparently have their own sets of rules.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-04 03:19 pm (UTC)Bram Stoker did not invent the vampire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire They existed in folklore of a lot of cultures before he popularized his version of the story. He wasn't even the first to write about vampires, not by far. He would have been familiar with Camilla and Lord Byron's poems, etc. Not to mention the fact that THOSE people were drawing on folklore.
In some of those folklore traditions, vampires could, in fact, be stopped at doorways. Scattering rice would make some of them stop and have to count each grain. They came to houses, because (again depending on tradition, but the European ones we often think of) they were often attempting to return to their own families after death... kind of more like a zombie.
I have done a LOT of research into vampires, actually. I highly recommend a book by Clive Leatherdale called Dracula: The Novel and the Legend: https://www.amazon.com/Dracula-Legend-Stokers-Gothic-Masterpiece/dp/187428704X which I read before I wrote my first vampire novel.
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Date: 2021-08-04 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-04 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-04 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-04 06:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-04 09:29 pm (UTC)(My favourite vampire explanation will always be the one in Blindsight. It wasn't the religious element of crosses that was at issue, it was the geometry.)
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Date: 2021-08-05 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-05 01:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-06 05:29 am (UTC)One of my book groups read that, and at least one person complained that the book got some fantasy into their science fiction. So there's that, too.
(Me, I love mixing of genres.)
Also, a further vampire data point from a recent novel, Elatsoe(2020) by Darcie Little Badger: Our hero banishes a vampire from their home -- and then explains, as an indigenous person, that that includes their tribal lands (on which they are standing, of course). THe vampire suddenly goes very far away. It is very satisfying, both for our hero and for me, at least.
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Date: 2021-08-06 12:34 pm (UTC)AHHAHA I have seen many complaints about this book, and that one is the least valid.
I adored Elatsoe even though it had some glaring flaws—the stunning moments like that made up for its problems.
(Me, I love mixing of genres.)
Same. Obligatory whining that my book series is in part unmarketable because it mixes the wrong genres.
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Date: 2021-08-05 12:10 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2021-08-05 01:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-05 12:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-05 01:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-29 11:35 am (UTC)Since Eric had rather exploitative intentions toward Sookie at this point, this was a pretty alarming development, in addition to being an asshole move on general principle. Fortunately for Sookie, in the next episode Eric sustained a serious head injury (I forget how exactly) and developed such total amnesia that he couldn't even remember his own name. Apparently as a side effect of this, and/or of the resulting ignorance and helplessness, his personality became much more vulnerable and grateful for any help received. Since Sookie was the one who first found him after he got injured and took him home to take care of him (against her own best interests, as far as she knew at the time), this resulted in Eric becoming a lot more altruistically devoted to her for pretty much the rest of the series, even after he eventually regained his memories.
I'm not sure exactly how this went down in the original "Southern Vampire" novels "True Blood" was based on. Eric definitely did wind up losing his memory due to a head injury in the books, with similar results. But I don't recall whether this was preceded by his circumventing the invitation rule by buying Sookie's house out from under her, or whether this was one of the showrunner's many alterations to the original material.