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Throughout the series it is implied that vampires cannot enter a house without being explicitly invited in. The question is how explicit should the invitation be?

In one of the episodes Elena goes to meet Isabelle's school friend who tries to check if Elena is a vampire by not explicitly inviting her but instead saying... 'Kitchen's this way' along with a 'come in' gesture she makes by hand. Isn't the gesture a kind of invitation?

What happens if the invitation is made in following manner...

  1. If a mute person gestures a 'come in' to a vampire by hand without speaking
  2. If the vampire is far away but you call him/her by phone and invite in a few hours before he reaches your door... can he enter directly in that case?
  3. If you metaphorically invite the vampire... or ask a rhetorical question such as 'Do you really need to be invited inside now?'
Invisible Trihedron
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Gaurav
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  • Yes, the gesture is a kind of invitation. But certainly not the explicit kind. In order to be explicit, a gesture would need to literally be sign language, rather than body language. As for invitation via rhetorical question, it is by definition implicit. Not explicit. – Misha R Nov 19 '16 at 08:39

2 Answers2

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Through out the show its very specific that an actual verbal invitation is needed to enter the house. I believe in a later season we even have a human who is tongueless aka mute. We also have 0 examples of invitations over phone, or letter; it has to be verbal, and within hearing range. We know this because there are cases where the human invites the vampire in from, say, the kitchen, while not having line of sight to the door.

AncientSwordRage
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Himarm
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  1. Conveniently leaving the door open is not enough (1x01). But if the owner drags a vampire into their house, this is a valid invitation (6x08); if a guest drags a non-invited vampire into a house, the vampire will be expelled (2x19).

  2. Invitations by phone are valid (6x08). In one instance, flyers did not work (5x01), but the flyers were not delivered by someone with invitation rights (5x06). Guests don't have invitation rights, while a child of the owner does (6x08).

  3. Trudie believed that she could keep vampires out with the right wording, but she could be wrong, since she didn't try it on a vampire.

Metanetwork
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