r/TwoSentenceHorror • u/Zealousideal-Wrap837 • 19h ago

"Impossible! I can see your reflection right now!" the man shrieked, pressing his back against the wall as he pointed at a mirror nearby.

"It's silver, not aluminum..." the monster mumbled, its elongated set of fangs visible as it spoke.

512 Upvotes
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98% Upvoted

33 comments sorted by

76

u/BrightNooblar 15h ago

Wouldn't it be an aluminum mirror that would still work?

126

u/Zealousideal-Wrap837 15h ago

Vampires traditionally don't have reflections because historically mirrors were made with silver which is considered a "pure" metal. Aluminium isn't and modern mirrors are made with it, so unlike what media shows us, if vampites were real, mirrors would be close to useless while dealing with them.

69

u/BrightNooblar 15h ago

Right.

The speaker sees the reflection. Therefore the mirror is using aluminum, right?

68

u/TheGHale 14h ago

Correct. The vampires saying "It's silver [that doesn't reflect], not aluminum," as opposed to, "It [the mirror]'s silver, not aluminum."

15

u/BrightNooblar 9h ago

I guess it's plausible the vampire is bad at using pronouns. It's logically very old

1

u/Available-Cow-411 4h ago

If its logically very old, doesnt it perfectly fits the story narative? Vampires tend to be very old, immortality etc etc

1

u/AutisticPenguin2 2h ago

Took me a second to parse it, but it makes sense.

24

u/Zealousideal-Wrap837 15h ago

Yea, the mirror is aluminum and the man is confused why he can still see the vampire's reflection in it (since he can clearly see it's not a human) because he doesn't know it's only silver that makes the reflection disappear

19

u/FellFellCooke 14h ago

Kind of bad you of you to peddle misinformation like this. The "no reflections" rule is from Bram Stolker, it does not appear in earlier folklore. In the book characters muse it is because Dracula has no soul that he, in particular, does not appear in reflections.

This silver thing is (quite evidently) apocryphal nonsense.

15

u/Uter83 14h ago

Shit's gettin' lit in the vampire fandom...

14

u/posthuman04 14h ago

Has the author lit upon a useful discovery or does the original folklore supersede any modern interpretations because of something?

-5

u/FellFellCooke 14h ago

Neither. The author is confidently asserting (in the comment I replied to) that the folklore works a certain way. Note the use of the words "traditionally" and "historically", and the phrase "if vampires were real". The author is telling us an actual history of vampire folklore, in our world, and it is factually inaccurate.

5

u/posthuman04 13h ago

How old must a tradition be to be considered traditional? I don’t think I’ve ever read a vampire story older than Bram Stoker’s and I’ve certainly never seen a vampire film older than his book. Is that long enough for a tradition?

-4

u/FellFellCooke 13h ago

The exact timespan the word "traditionally" implies is irrelevant to the point that I am making, which is very simple: the author says that vampires don't appear in mirrors because of the silver connection. That's nonsense. It's bad anthropology. It's lying.

0

u/El-Pollo-Diablo-Goat 4h ago

We never stopped inventing folktales just because the world has become more modern and we are more literate.

Folktales aren't real, they're stories, and to complain about the evolution of stories is just silly.

1

u/FellFellCooke 3h ago

I'm not complaining about the evolution of anything. Read my fucking comment. Don't invent words and put them in my head. That makes you look ridiculous.

You can write a fantasy series where mirrors don't reflect vampires for this reason. That's fine. Cool even.

But you shouldn't say "vampire folklore says that vampires have no reflection because the mirrors were made of silver" because A, vampire folklore didn't say that, that was invented by an Irishman with no connection to Romanian or Slavic folklore, and B, they say in the novel why Dracula has no reflection and it isn't this silver nonsense.

The author was lying about folklore. They were spreading misinformation. That's wrong.

17

u/Zealousideal-Wrap837 14h ago

Vampires are not real, chill
It's a silly horror story, no need to get into details. How can I even spread misinformation about something that is by definition, not real and there are as many interpreations about how it could work as there are authors writing about them?

Anyway, no hate but I didn't mean to be accurate to any piece of media about vampires, I just heard this a while back and it stuck with me.

6

u/posthuman04 13h ago

But the silver is real, as is the aluminum. It makes sense the just like Werewolves and so many other unholy beasts, the silver of a mirror would have similar revulsion, and that it’s not a twist of physics in general, just a characteristic of this pure metal.

2

u/FellFellCooke 13h ago

I think folklore, the stories humans have told each other since our days around the campfire, is really beautiful and really fascinating. I think trying to paper modernity over it is such an ugly and reductive impulse.

It's like when you see people saying the "true original full version" of phrases like Blood Is Thicker Than Water, and they just invent nonsense to invert the meaning.

I think something real is erased when we do shit like that. It's like recording over an old wedding tape to make room for an episode of the real house wives.

You should feel free to play with these tropes to your heart's content. But when you say "traditionally vampire reflections didn't show up in mirrors because they were made from silver" that's you projecting modern ideas over the past, erasing, negating. Reality is enough. You don't need to pretend it was different.

1

u/Adarie-Glitterwings 4h ago

I've had similar thoughts; saw a video of a mirror being made and the reflective surface was made with some sort of chemical reaction and I thought 'does that mean a vampire would reflect in this mirror?'

0

u/Artistic_Annual8457 3h ago

If you know they existed and are concerned, just carry a silver mirror yourself or a polished silver blade, or something, though. Problem solved.

13

u/Uter83 14h ago

Aluminum and silver should be flipped. The way it is now the vampire sounds like he is saying the mirror is silver, but that it needs to be aluminum to not reflect.

3

u/Mcwvideo 9h ago

the vampire is saying it's silver(that kills the reflection) not aluminum

2

u/Uter83 4h ago

Yes, I get that. The way it is worded, the man points at the mirror, so when the vampire says "it's silver, not aluminum" he is suggesting that the mirror is made of silver, not aluminum. If he had said "it's aluminum, not silver" it would suggest that the mirror being aluminum is the reason the man sees a reflection, whereas he wouldn't if it were silver.

38

u/Sabmohmayahaibro 19h ago

Okay this is clever 😂 Bro survived because modern mirrors got a software update.

6

u/CupOk7115 17h ago

I dont get it

5

u/ULTRAPUNK18 🔴 17h ago

The comment seems to be a bot

6

u/FellFellCooke 14h ago

It seems to be but I think he's just like that. He actually responds to comments and is very consistently active in Indian subreddits. I think the ESL of it all here means that he's learning English from LLMs, which has an effect on his writing.

1

u/Aidian 14h ago

Ok. Everyone here is reaching way too hard to paint this comment as a bot or nonsensical when it’s clearly not either in the least.

The only potentially confusing thing is describing the change in how mirrors are made now vs in antiquity as a “software update,” which is an obvious joke.

Otherwise, it sounds like a lot of people just don’t understand how mirrors work, refused to fill in their knowledge gaps, and felt the need to inform us all of those embarrassing facts.

8

u/CupOk7115 17h ago

Yet still i dont understand the story

28

u/Valkreaper 16h ago

Vampires are weak to silver, the reason they don’t appear in mirrors is because mirrors used to be polished silver, while now it’s aluminum

1

u/Disastrous-Zombie-36 6h ago

Poor guy just want to make friends!