this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2024
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Vampire: The masquerade
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I liked the Dresden Files approach to this, it is having faith in something that repels vampires, not the things people have faith in. So the main character repels vampires with a pentagram necklace and his faith in magic.
Same thing in Vampire The Masquerade, True Faith is just total and absolutely certain belief in something.
In one lorebook, a vampire was reportedly sent running when a panicked businessman brandishing his credit card, believing utterly that the power of money would protect him. He was right.
Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption. Your hero, a holy order knight, is turned even though he brandishes the holy cross. Vampire only comments "You have no faith".
So, in theory, could an incredibly narcissistic person be immune to vampires because of their faith in themselves? Maybe an extreme charlatan type character? As long as they too believed in themselves.
Jesus had faith in himself, and he was immune to vampires. And the religion he taught was all about having faith in yourself too. He told his apostles that their own faith could move mountains just like his.
Christians don't need a cross in order to repel vampires. That's just a crutch. A placebo. Anyone who has faith in themself as Jesus taught can do it.
...thus, often in videos or games priests simply pray to repel evil. They brandish their faith, not "lower case t"'s
Blindsight/Echopraxia by Peter Watts had a good "science" based version. Vampires are an obligate carnivore/cannibal hominid that went extinct (after giving humans their "uncanny valley" fear btw as a survival trait to detect them) and had a heriditary fear of right angles due to a quirk in their visual cortex.
The idea being "right angles don't occur in nature" and such. The problem with that idea is that they do, but still a decent series with some interesting ideas.
Hold on, Blindsight has a sequel? This could be fun...
Seconded. I read those on a recommendation, not usually my genre. I enjoyed them more than I thought I would, aside from the trope of humans “creating” something dangerous that they thought they could control and of course failing.
I liked the castlevania one about how it's just a shape that confuses their vision for some reason.
Which was a crazy lore addition considering hell and Satan are totally real in that world.
Can handwave it away by saying that Christians chose the cross because it hurt supernatural things.
I Am Legend had the reverse, where it was entirely psychological on the vampire's part. Neville tests crosses and crucifixes on some vamps and discovers they don't repel his Jewish neighbor, but a Star of David does.
That makes sense to me, if you’re aiming for a “secular” explanation of vampirism. The true faith explanation still requires some source of supernatural power to affect the vampire from outside, while an amped-up placebo effect is sufficient to explain Matheson’s vamps. I always loved I am Legend for taking the idea so seriously!
I remember before the Anita Blake series fell off the rails, the star of David not working on vampires because it was a racial symbol, not a religious one.
That just brought back a memory of some comedy film where a character is confronted by a vampire and whips out his necklace, the vampire cringes in fear but then sees it's a Star of David. I want to say a Mel Brooks movie.
https://youtu.be/G9lH7afNKoc
This is what I came to post if you didn’t.
I fucking love this.
cough Doctor Who. Curse of Fenric. Loosely 'it creates a psychic barrier they can't penetrate' that actively causes pain.
does faith in science count? faith that distant stars exist? faith that the set of whole numbers is infinite? faith that the sun will rise tomorrow? faith that my wife loves me?
My favorite explanation: "it confuses the shit out of their brains"
Isn't it the same in Hellboy?
I don't think the movie addresses it and I've not read any of the comics, but I should.
I think it's in the Blood and Iron movie where a priest has lost his faith and is killed by vampires.