Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-30958430-20170213194227/@comment-31166511-20170217203559

When I was much younger and still in public school, I realized very early that all the textbooks they gave us had been carefully gone over to make them as inoffensive and DEADLY DULL as possible.

Bored kids did not write letters that might cost somebody his job, but pissed off parents sure do!

I learned to go and find books that covered many of the same subjects but didn't bother with trying to keep touchy people happy.

I learned that History, one of the most boring school subjects ever, was not boring at all! History wasn't about a neat row of events that happened in the proper order, History was mostly about adults acting worse than any kid would ever dare, and mostly getting away with it.

Anthropology and folklore was full of information on my favorite monsters in movies, and the stories were collected from people who totally believed that monsters existed. Completely unlike the monster books especially written for kids that didn't seem to care that they were talking down to me and insulting my intelligence with practically every other word.

The trick to defeat boredom is to find the books that they don't want you reading. A book is a portal to a whole nother world. You can open it and dive in everytime this world gets too boring--which happens a lot.

If you like vampires, I'd suggest looking up a book called "The Vampire: His Kith and Kin" by Montegue Summers. Ol' Monty was a English guy who took vampires very seriously and spent several years using his special access pass at the British Museum to gather information for his book.

This book is extremely thorough in examining the origin of every vampire-related superstition. The chapter on the explanation of the how and why holy water works on the undead was a particular favorite.

Hint: the whole blistering vampire flesh thing was made up by Hollywood for a cool effect; it has no basis in folklore. What holy water is really susposed to do and the difficulties in using it are far more interesting.

Bonus Hint: Holy water poured into a supersoaker looses its effectiveness. Like many items of power, holy water actually requires very specific handling procedures that have been developed over hundreds of years.

There's lots of cool stuff out there to find out, or Gravity Falls writers wouldn't have anything to write stories about.