From "Uncle John's 'Slightly Irregular' Bathroom Reader"

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[–] 41 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (17 children)

Dracula cannot be killed by sunlight. At least in the Bram Stoker novel. He’s out and about during the day quite a bit. What sunlight does, is keep him from changing shapes. Same for garlic, crucifixes and holy water. He can’t stand them and they weaken him, but nothing in the text says they would be fatal. Silver isn’t even mentioned.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 weeks ago* (14 children)

    The whole sunlight kills vampire concept is broken/ unclear. Moonlight is reflected sunlight, erm.

    Every star is a sun, how must it feel to be pierced by an uncountable - hey, count digit try to count em all - number of tiny suns all the time.

    Sunlight is just photons. What makes sunlight special? Which wavelength? The visible or invisible part? Is it about intensity and exposure time? Could we build an anti-vampire torch? Questions, questions.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    Moonlight is literally hundreds of thousands of times weaker than the sun. It makes perfect sense that a vampire could survive in moonlight but not sunlight

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  • [–] 9 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    Yeah, approaching these things with stringed logic breaks them usually. Same goes for vampire reproduction for example. If they turn the people they feed on, how come the world isn’t filled with vampires by now? There should be exponential growth in the number of vampires. Or Dracula needing to sleep on sacred home soil. Does it have to be from his exact crypt? How does he know the limits? Could he dig 1000 meters down and the soil would still work? How does a new vampire find their home turf, if they don’t have a family with a crypt?

    You can go on endlessly poking holes, but that just takes the fun out of it. A good level of suspense of disbelief is always needed to enjoy those stories.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

    You can go on endlessly poking holes, but that just takes the fun out of it.

    I enjoy poking and scratching at the surface of things. It's fun, too. :)

    A good level of suspense of disbelief is always needed to enjoy those stories

    Agreed. All I need is a good, well played and emotionally touching story. Any movie is just a stage play with patterns like a tension arc, stereotypes and plot devices. Movies are not the reality. But for me there must be some degree of plausibility or scurrility or both. Usually when the movie is boring, emotionally uninvolving or annoying, I start to notice the plot holes and start digging.

    And then there are the experts in their field, having a hard time. Police men, pathologists, IT people, who call the director's bullshit. Movie makers who notice and are distracted by patterns and techniques used in the movie. But other people don't mind.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    I think it's more just a motif that a creature of darkness is weakened by the light. It's more that vampires are creatures of the night that you don't have to fear during the day, and it kind of got attached to the lore (along with all sorts of other stuff)

    One of my favorite takes on the concept was in the recent Dracula tv series, where basically Dracula actually has no weakness to sunlight, but people have been saying it so long he started to believe it himself. It basically became both a phobia and an obsession, but then at the end he's writhing on the ground expecting pain, then just realizes he's fine

    It's interesting because it plays on the concept of losing yourself and self actualization

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

    recent Dracula tv series

    Is it worth watching?

    I think it's more just a motif that a creature of darkness is weakened by the light. It's more that vampires are creatures of the night that you don't have to fear during the day,

    Agreed. Personalized human fear of the dangers lurking in the darkness.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago

    Is it worth watching?

    I'm guessing they're talking about the 2020 miniseries. IMO, yes, it's worth watching though from what I remember as it jumps through eras it wasn't what I expected lol. Haven't watched it since it came out but I recently rewatched Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell so I'm in a bit of a Victorian era vibe and gonna go through this Dracula again.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago

    Yes, I thought it was quite good. It's a faithful retelling of Dracula that is creative and innovative, and also continues the story to the modern day while staying very true to the source material. They added to the myth and lore in a way that is interesting without taking anything away from the original story

    Just a good production of Dracula, solid acting, and rather than "putting their own twist" on the story, their additions extended it in a way that felt natural

    My only complaint is that there's not more of it. It's a mini series, and though the story was as long as it needed to be I was still eager for more

    If you like Dracula, you should definitely check it out

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (2 children)

    Didn’t they build an anti-vampire torch (and grenades) in the Blade movies?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago*

    You are right. Good catch.

    Vampire and photographer Otto von Chriek (lspace) sometimes practices a form of self-annihilation. It's a slightly different way of burning for the job, I guess.

    The inherent problem with being a Vampire Iconographer is that flashes of bright light will cause Otto to shriek in pain, and more often than not reduce him to a pinch of dust on the floor.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 weeks ago

    Those definitely aren't the highest scoring words in Scrabble. They may be the highest scoring using only the seven letters on one tray, but that's only possible on the first play of the game anyway.

    Basically, this is the list of highest scoring first plays in Scrabble, which is very different from the actual list of highest scoring words in Scrabble.

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  • [–] [S] 14 points 2 weeks ago (8 children)

    Feel free to add to the lists. Especially the US wars.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    Was about to say, the last list is outdated.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 weeks ago

    As outdated as Trump's last diaper change.

    As outdated as Epstein's Christmas Card List of Friends

    As outdated as my patience for hope

    &..

    Way more outdated than Eva Tanguay

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    [–] 11 points 2 weeks ago

    Fun fact: The “Uncle John” who compiles these readers is acclaimed sci-fi writer John Scalzi

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  • [–] 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    Which messed-up Scrabble board has two Z's in it so that you can spell 'quizzed' or 'jazzily'? You don't get the points if you use a blank...

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  • [–] 9 points 2 weeks ago (12 children)

    The Banana Boat Song isn't about the bananas.

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    [–] 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    I refuse to believe that all nine of those city names are more common than Springfield.

    Seriously, Centerville?

    Additionally, everyone knows there's three Salems: the witch trial one, the other one, and the cat.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 weeks ago* (1 child)

    Yeah, I was looking at that one. I think they're specifically looking at towns, not cities. I can't find anything that gives a concrete distinction between the two labels. It seems that the rules vary by region, and the designation is kind of arbitrary.

    However, I did find a list of common city names in the US.

    1. Washington
    2. Springfield
    3. Franklin
    4. Greenville
    5. Bristol
    6. Clinton
    7. Fairview
    8. Salem
    9. Madison
    10. Georgetown
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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago

    You can't include Georgetown as no.10.

    The list is explicitly 9 most common town names. Maybe it's due to being at the bottom of the page, but nevertheless, the array can only hold 9 values.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    from the BRI files

    What is it referring?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    I'm moving to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    But does a list of all lists contain itself?

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  • [–] 5 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)
  • [–] 5 points 2 weeks ago

    Canadians claim the telephone too even though Alexander Graham Bell was British when he invented it in Canada.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago

    Nice, I love lists.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago

    That list of murican wars was too easy. It would be more fun if it was a list of wars started in the 21 century. Or against Asian countries. Need some kind of constraint to make it slightly hard.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    The doc told me I was a number 6 triangle =(

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    [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago

    Those are great books for snack reading, and there are a lot of them. My dad and his family would share those as Christmas gifts and I have a few.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

    That's really cool, bite sized but informative

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