• Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    45
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    24 hours ago

    Would this work? I think the light stops at the mirror because it’s silver.

    Normally

    1. Light hits the vampire.
    2. It bounces off their body.
    3. It hits the mirror
    4. It reflects from the mirror into your eyes.

    Silver mirror

    1. Light hits the vampire.
    2. It bounces off their body (now unholy light)
    3. It hits the mirror and gets absorbed
    4. Light doesn’t make it to your eyes

    So, technically, there really should be a vampire-shaped hole in the mirror where the vampire was.

    • Fargeol@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      4 hours ago

      I always thought it was a quantum effect: light is passing through the vampire and bouncing on it at the same time and it’s only when you observe its predicted path that you’ll project it in a defined state.

      But, from your point of view, light “knew” from the beginning that it had to pass through the vampire or bounce on it.

      • Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        4 hours ago

        I don’t think the light “knew” from the beginning. The light started in a state of superposition, right? Both unholy and holy. Once it hits the vampire, only the unholy light is reflected, acting like a sort of filter similar to a polarizing lens.

    • thefartographer@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      38
      ·
      23 hours ago

      Not enough research to support this claim.

      Studies seem to show that onlookers see a reflection of everyone and everything BUT the vampire without any vampire-shaped losses of light showing up on the objects behind the vampire; as evidenced in Brooks’s 1995 documentary. Also important to note is that the vampire’s shadow is also missing from the mirror’s reflection, but it’s visible when viewing the vampire directly.

      From the same documentary, we learn that vampires do have shadows, but it raises doubts as to if the vampire casts a shadow of their own; this could instead be evidence that a vampire’s shadow is an entirely sentient entity somehow tied to the vampire’s corporeal form.

      Based on this, I believe that we’d need more research into the existence and form of a vampire’s shadow and the possibility that the silver of a mirror wholly negates or even rejects unholy light. Before making such baseless and reckless claims, you consider how your own xenophobic and, frankly, teraphobic or demonophobic biases are likely hurting members of the inmortua community.

    • Troy@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      27
      ·
      24 hours ago

      The idea that light has a binary property of holy versus unholy is pretty funny. You could probably exploit this to do computing.

      • Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        15
        ·
        edit-2
        24 hours ago

        You have added The Unholy Spectroscope to your inventory.

        The concept of unholy light seems to imply vampires can be detected through unholy spectroscopy.

    • deranger@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      edit-2
      23 hours ago

      If I’m standing next to a vampire and give them the shirt off my back, does my shirt turn invisible in the mirror when they put it on?

      If a vampire gives me their shirt, at what point does it become visible in the mirror?

      What if the vampire is wearing a rope- can they spool out a hundred feet of mirror-invisible rope as long as some is on their body?

      I feel there’s a ton of applications for vampires- optics use mirrors a lot, can they wear a vehicle/tank/ship/etc and make it invisible to optics that utilize mirrors?

      • Sibshops@lemmy.myserv.one
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        edit-2
        23 hours ago

        Well, if we treat incoming light as a quantum superposition:

        |light⟩ = α|holy⟩ + β|unholy⟩

        …and assume that vampires reflect only unholy light and absorb holy light, then anything directly part of the vampire’s “system” filters light this way.

        So I guess the question becomes, “How does the filtering happen?” Is it by physical surface, or is there some kind of quantum holiness field that absorbs holy light nearby?

        • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          19 hours ago

          So if sunlight hurts vampires, but moonlight doesn’t (but moonlight is reflected sunlight) then does that mean the moon absorbs all holy light, and only reflects unholy light? Sunlight, we must assume, is composed of a random mix of all wavelengths and divinities of light. Therefore, can a vampire’s reflection be seen if the vampire is illuminated by moonlight? Only if using a non-silver mirror? What about office fluorescent light, the most evil light of all?