The Evolution of Vampires in Pop Culture 

Filmed this on the day The Batman came out + on the 100th anniversary of Nosferatu. Baller. Also, I made the pearl necklace but you can find similar on Etsy! It was inspired mainly by Hell’s Belle Designs and Christian Dior!

People hating “pretty” vampires never made any sense to me tbh. If anything pretty vampires are MORE scary because it shows us how society values aesthetics as a marker of goodness. So when the pretty thing is revealed as dangerous it feels more unsettling and true to nature.

one thing i really adore about this channel that i think is overlooked is all the effort put into the visuals - the makeup, outfits, background all coordinating with the topic in the video is such a fun detail :D

I wish POC mythology stories where told a lot more often then the European ones. I'm obsessed with West African Folklore. It's sad that in Western media we mostly see Eurocentric stories surround monsters and other mythical creatures.

the bat ears... the bloody pearls... the flawless research, editing and (lack of) thesis... impeccable! remarkable! showstopping! and THAT is why you're the only channel that matters

Girl don't even get me started on the racism in these Vampire movies and tv shows. In Twilight and Vampire Diaries, all of the POC characters are left to suffer and sacrifice themselves for the sake of the main white character. Or their written as villains of the story while Pale main white character is seen as innocent. Stephanie Meyer writing of the Quileute Tribes and casting decision on Laurent is racist. The vampire Jasper is a former Confederate solider!!!! In the movie he is seen as hero by Bella. Vampire Diaries is guilty of the treatment of Bonnie and Damon being a former Confederate Soldier as well.

hey as a Romanian i really appreciate this. a lot of people oversimplify and make a mockery out of our folklore and culture

I think we all forget how much racism and colourism plays out regarding the adoration of the white supernatural characters - when we talk about the supernatural, the brutality of such a lifestyle is emphasised to an extreme in the media when POCs are in the picture. Case in point, Vodoo - an actual frickin religion is basically shit on by every CW teen supernatural drama went they run out of plots, but hey! Crystals, sexy vampires, gotta love them!

Can we take a moment to appreciate how aesthetically pleasing this video is! The roses, the fake blood, literally everything is so pretty !!

"No hobbies except for oppression, reading and writing " girl, as an amateur Victorianist, when I tell you I screamed! 😂

I really want to see an anticapitalist vampire story. When I played Vampire the Masquerade I played an anarchist Anarch vampire and while that setting isn't particularly accurate to my political beliefs there is sooooo much territory to explore re dismantling class structure and the "superiority" of people with vampirism.

If anyone ever makes fun of you for this content you can tell them I took an entire semester-long college course about vampires and their history and literature and this video was more informative! My professor was creepy levels of interested in the details of how Vlad the Impaler tortured people and told us NOTHING about the scientific explanations for vampire panics. You continue to be an absolute delight to watch! The costumes! The rigorous research! The gleeful fandom discussions! Big fan.

I haven't watched yet but can I just say I really appreciate how much effort you put into dressing along with your videos. I love the goth vampire look.

Yes! Vampires are very fun. Although the title of the essay amuses me, I think all fangs are in fact phallic - that's what makes female vampires so inherently lesbian, such a threat to patriarchy, etc. If you're going Full Freud (which arguably you shouldn't do but also he's great at describing cishet men) the acquisition of a phallic, penetrating tool and source of power by a woman is like, as scary as it gets. Also why there's such a dedicated subset of trans vampire fans - a woman whose body possesses one of the defining symbols of patriarchy marking her as disgusting and evil? She just like me fr.

I love learning about how different cultures all have some version of the same kind of mythological creature (Wurdulak, mermaid, trickster animal spirit, etc)

Being a lady who loves ladies I heard about Carmilla and was planning on reading it so you posting this video was crazy good timing! Love the vid girl! You always pull out all the stops and make your videos absolutely fabulous!

I find the modern vampire best a metaphore for toxic and abusive relationships, whether it be familial or romantic. I especially relate to the aspect of loving someone who struggles with a desire that often comes before everything and everyone else, having a family member who is an addict. That's why I think it's so easily popular. Most people have at some point in their lives loved someone who doesn't treat them right and maybe even hurts them while also feeling a responsibility for that person's struggles. It's a topic not often directly addressed in media or shown with much empathy. And vampire stories do this well.

I one hundred percent blame Bela Lugosi for the sexy vampire trope. When that movie came out in 1931 he got so many letters from women!! What an amazing video and topic thank you so much for making it, I always look forward to your content!

I'm surprised you didn't mention Blade, Underworld, Van Helsing, or the Originals. These are some great vampire movies/shows. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen also had a vampire (THE Mina Harker from Brom Stoker's Dracula) bu she had a thing with Dorian Grey which was weird.

I love this since I was like super young I love vampires in the media whether it be stories movies TV shows love it I think my obsession first came about with vampire Knight which I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing but anime and manga have always gotten me sucked in so I really do miss when the vampire was popular in main stream media

Vlad the impaler was a guerilla fighter fighting a giant turkish army. He used fear as a strategy against overwhelming odds. People nowadays like to skip that part and make it sound like he did it for fun. Also he was a christian and hat support from Vatican, which is funny considering how vampires are considered anti-church

as an romanian the thing that is most similar to a vampir is called “ vărcolac” which is a pale long eared, canine teethed blood sucking, humalike creature

Romanian here, just want to note that Vlad is a war hero and the invading Ottoman Empire at the time was only deterred because of his efforts to scare them off because Romania did not have the ability to fight them (he used tonnes of impaled soldiers heads from earlier battles, it was an absolute last resort), however the Ottomans had made up a lot of stories (I guess history really does only remember the winner’s narrative) and he’s been depicted awfully ever since. The stories I believe did heavily inspire the ‘lore’ of the modern western vampire.

i dont get some ppls insistance that vampires can only be light skinned because they need to be pale, I always saw the pale look of vampires as a way to make them look corpse-like, or bloodless even, and just overall sickly and off-looking. its not about having light skin but about looking dead, you can very much achieve that look with darker skin without making it pale like you would lighter skin.

Shanaya- States all the horrifying and gruesome ways Ye old hoomans handled corpses allegedly infected with vampirism Also Shanaya-This is a family channel..I don’t wanna elaborate on the details of those cases

Yasss I'm here for the attention to detail, both aesthetically and content wise! Keep on keeping on sis!!

Loved this video. You make learning new things fun and way more entertaining than it usually is. Also in Guyana (South America) we call the old ladies who suck young blood Ole Higues. The lore around them is similar to those around the rest of the Caribbean. They are a big piece of our culture and even have poems and plays written about them.

Ahhh this is interesting! The vampire story that I still think about a lot is True Blood because i first watched it in the first lockdown back in 2020. I read somewhere that the vampirism and how they were treated by society in that show was a metaphor for queerness. It gets pretty obvious at some point also when there is a whole church that makes it their mission to kill all vamps. Some parts of this show were actually so good but unfortunately other parts of it were dogshit.

When you talked about the racializing with people who now would be considered white, I thought about how I learned when we went to new orleans that they would keep track of people's lineage and even if they looked completely white; if they had black heritage they were considered black.

also a lot of vampire related folklore/characteristics are very much rooted in antisemitic stereotypes and were used to perpetuate a lot of the myths about jews in eastern europe (i.e. drinking the blood of christians, large noses, heavy accents, hurt by a cross, compared to the devil, etc)

This video was so informative! The creature at 10:05 is called a "manananggal" (lmao try saying that 5 times fast) in the Philippines, although I don't know what it's called in Malaysia and Indonesia. Another fun fact about it is sprinkling salt/garlic on its lower half will defeat the manananggal because it stops the creature from getting back to its body. The manananggal needs to get back to its body before sunrise or else it will burn, like typical vampires do.

From what I've heard, the story of Dracula was largely complete before Stoker heard about Vlad. All he got from him was the name.

I hope you cover more horror tropes. The research and vibes were outstanding. The work you put into these videos is incredible.

Sheridan Le Fanu would probably have an actual heart attack if someone showed him the Twilight Saga 😂

This is going to seem silly...but thank you so much for pointing out the Chupacabra is from Puerto Rico! Anytimes we see it attributed to Mexico is like...no, it's from here, and its part of long tradition of monsters, both blood drinking and not, in Puerto Rico. Absolutely love your videos and you always do such amazing work and like just wanted to thank you for this one XD. Amazing work!

Have you watched verilybitchie's videos about bisexual dracula and lesbian vampire movies? I think that could add some interesting things on to your perspective, since you talk about dracula being a foreigner but I think you do it differently than the other person's video Great video! Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us!

I loved this! I recently started watching buffy the vampire slayer and i just want to bring up the weirdly large age gaps between (more often than not) human girls and then super old vampire guys. Am i the only one that finds it creepy? i just always feel like it's a sly attempt to romanticise and normalise pedophilia and predatory behaviour with a nice lovely layer of fiction and folklore. i was a huge twilight fan at 14, then moved on to vampire diaries and the originals, now that i'm almost 18 and have revisited my young love for vampires, buffy's age gap with angel really makes me feel icky (the fact that he was in his mid-late 20's when he was sired also just- c'mon they didn't even try to make it any better) and thinking about all the other age gaps in the other shows (when the girl isn't even a legal adult yet, if the characters were of an adult age i don't think i'd disapprove so much) is also kinda gross but it's hard to see it when these old vampire guys are depicted as so desirable and attractive. not to mention the way they treat the girls, the stalking and emotional manipulation, but i should stop here for now.

I also love to see the history of vampires within the LGBT+ community (in your typical queercoded villain style), especially concerning "The Vampyre" and "Dracula".

I love this video for your comprehensive history of vampire lore, fact and media, connecting blood fetishism to the Goth subculture and exposing the political symbols in vampire mythos. I'm a Goth, myself, who grew up with Dracula, Buffy, Twilight and True Blood. You exposed political angles in vampirism I never knew about, such as racism, capitalism, etc.

the blood on the pearl necklace? incredible showstopping spectacular never been done before

I adore your makeup, you really go all out with your costumes in every video, girl! 😍❣️

Literally the funniest part of The Vampyre is that John Polidori was Lord Byron's personal doctor and travelling companion (the first draft was written at the same get-together in 1816 that produced Frankenstein). This man spent 99% of his time with Byron and then wrote a novel about a seductive, charismatic man who preys upon the innocent and lures them in using his super sexy charm, and the hapless, totally-not-gay-I-promise-look-he-even-has-a-girlfriend young man who is among those who become inexplicably taken with this guy, finding him beautiful and repulsive at the same time. Like... something you want to share with the class, John?

I wanted to be a folklorist when I was 15 or so. Read everything I could get my hands on when it came to vampire folklore. Was obsessed with vampire literature. But thats like... forever ago now. Had honestly kinda forgotten how much I loved this stuff, and how much joy it brought me. So thanks for the reminder! So excited about the next videos

The first vampire story I learned about was Carmilla, a novella by Sheridan le Fanu was written in 1872 so 26 years before Dracula. I am excited to hear about one from much earlier.

4 words: Only Lovers Left Alive. My favourite romance movie of all time, the blueprint of an ideal relationship and the perfect take on vampires and their immortality.

ok can we all agree that Aubrey is literally in love with ruthven

not the lime cheese salad again 💀 thought i was over it... but i'm glad our icon is back!! 😤 excited to learn about all the vampire lore

Btw, Ask A Mortician has a great video on the New England vampire panic if you guys wanna know more

I really love how much effort is put into all these videos - Ik this has been mentioned already - but it’s just so amazing to me how much effort is put into the research, costume, set design etc etc! It’s so cool! :)

Speaking of vampire panic in the contemporary era, a close friend of my family was apparently brutally murdered for being suspected of being a vampire. My mom still has a painting he made, and it has become a familial keepsake.

I'd heard dozens of queer interpretations on Dracula, and some about it being about the "foreign danger", but never the racial interpretation. That was super interesting! Thank you for the video and your inaights

Hey, Friendly Neighborhood Serb here! When I first read Dracula I was really struck by how violently anti-Slavic it is. John Harper describes the peasants around Dracula's castle as practically subhuman. Unfortunately this tracks with how modern Northwestern Europeans (i.e. England, Germany) see people from the Balkan Peninsula today - backwards (Not Protestant), poor, and untrustworthy. This doesn't translate neatly to North America, where Balkan people (Greek American, Serbian American, etc) are seen as white and benefit from the general anti-blackness of White Supremacy. I really loved this video, and can't wait to see the rest!

THANK YOU for mentioning The Vampyre by Polidori! It's honestly a riot, love that book 😂

I Iove, love, LOVE your videos and I’m so glad you made this video!! I recently did a project on Nosforatu and I ALSO found the difference between early vampires to the almost cartoonish depictions today really interesting! Have a great day queen 👸👸👸

Currently writing a comic series about a family of vampires inspired by Encanto. They all live in a mansion in a valley full of monsters and humans alike and basically run the place.

something minor i really appreciate when watching your videos is your soft tone. as someone who has auditory sensitivity i’m so grateful that i get to enjoy your videos without worrying about the volume . thank you!

I always found the allure of vampires really fascinating, I remember sneaking and watching blade when I was waayyy to young to watch it plus interview with a vampire and I just found vampires to be alluring and cool, they are definitely my favorite amongst the mythical creatures, I even remember wanting to get like some of those fake teeth that you put on your canines specifically to look like a vampire, I love vampires lol

I've only watched a couple of your videos so far but I can already tell that they are aesthetically pleasing, properly researched, well edited, and well written. Plus you're hilarious, relatable, and have a really nice voice. Everything about this channel is exactly what I want out of TRvid.

Im not sure if this was mentioned but have you watched Castlevania on Netflix?? I loved the story of Dracula told and his complex character along with all the other characters.

omg just a couple of days ago i was literally reading dracula and thinking to myself how much a vampires in literature have changed over the course of time?? and then this video drops?? bestie I love you ❤

Hello! I am a real vampire of the Psychic kind, who is involved in the "real vampire" circles. I wanted to say this is probably the best video I've seen going over this topic, I really appreciate both the care and genuine interest you have on the topic, with seemingly no judging views on the commmunity ( a lot either depict it as "look at these crazies lmao!! ), or just other... distasteful ways. This was really fun to watch. ❤️ edit: also if you have any questions, i'm pretty active in the communities and have a pretty wide knowledge of it all, i don't mind answering anything !! ^_^

Twilight is hated less because of the depiction of vampires, and more for the relationship between Edward and Bella. Honestly, glitter is tolerable, but NOT what those two had

On the Vlad the Impaler stuff, just wanted to add a perspective of how it’s taught in Romanian schools, from my memory (therefore likely innacurate since I haven’t been in school for amost 10 years). His time, like most of our history, was one of a lot of unrest, especially due to foreign invasions, which have happened so many times I’ve lost count. He is seen as a pretty evil guy, but usually in response to deadly circumstances (i.e. the Ottoman soldiers who we’re trying to conquer the area, not just strolling by). Even so, he seemed to go beyond what other rullers of the time did, and I can vividly remmember being about 15 when my teacher described the impaling process, while we were looking at him horrified. It’s a pretty popular story since it sounds so ridiculous and horrifying to us now. He was a pretty successful leader and was able to protect the region against foreign invasions (I think? for the most part at least? who knows, we got invaded so much it’s ridiculous). This supposedly led to some foreign factions (I think I remmember particularly the Hungarians and Ottomans, the main opposition at the time) exagerating his cruelty and methods to provide more reasoning as to why he should be stopped. Since all the legends and stories, his castle has been made to seem spookier than a medieval castle already is (given it’s not the kind with gold and riches, more like stone and gloom). Torture mechanisms from all over Europe have been taken there (or were a few years ago when I visited) to make the experience scarier for visitors, since it’s a big source of tourism, national and international. I would say in my opinion he is viewed as extremely cruel but ultimately triying to protect the people from foreign invaders that the people were already trying to run from, while in the context of a time when human rights were pretty scarse, especially for common folk. Nonetheless, the blatant devil (Dracul = The Devil) nickname for him and his dad, using a very common word for devil, does say a lot about how they must’ve treated their community. There’s probably a lot more lore around this and I cannot promise everything I said here is accurate to my history lesson or the actual facts (given that the education system is very biased), but this is just the perspective of someone who grew up relatively close to his region and has been hearing about his legacy pretty much my whole life. Hope that was somewhat interesting :)

I adored this vid! I would have liked to see some love for Bela Lugosi, considering he really shaped the modern image of the vampire.

I rewatched Twilight and New Moon this week... bestie, are we psychically linked? probably. get out of my head :)

I love your videos, you have such a calm energy and it's easy to just slip into a concentrated state while doing almost anything

I find 'What we do in the shadows' series the most interesting about vampire themed movies. It's a well done mockery of the films taking the subject 'seriously'.

Brilliant, enjoyed this all esp the part about the asanbosam and other folk law creatures. I’ve never seen Twilight as I was a bit too old for it and I’m incredibly squeamish so my Goth phase was more a nip than a full bite. I do love that vampire atheistic though. Red and black, fangs and all, you look flipping gorgeous in. Not sure what on your neck, like blood globules? But I love it 🧛🏽‍♀️🤩

tbh this topic gives me so so much anxiety but ily and you always explain things so in depth! thank you for sharing ♥️

I'm sure I will love this video, I love vampire content (check out maven of the eventide's youtube channel if you love vampire videos). I also really appreciate your commitment to costumes and the red lighting looks great!

Hey! Loved this video so much and looking forward to the rest of the series, but also, don’t rush yourself or stress about it please!

Fun fact! I'm sure someone has already mentioned but technically the original Dracula novel did contribute to the "sexy vampire" trope, not through Dracula, but through the Wives, the trio of women vampires who try to drain Jonathan when he falls asleep in a study type room before being stopped by dracula! You mentioned some of the other female vampires at the time who do a similar thing, though like you said the ones where they're the focus also have them targeting other woman, but it is kinda cool how you can trace it from the Wives and other early female vampires to the gradual/eventual shift to all vampires in the given media being portrayed as good looking!

as a vampire enthusiast, this video makes me so happy!!

You don't know how happy I am to see that you posted this. As someone who studies the gothic and has some knowledge of Dracula this is amazing!!! 🥰🥰🥰

Really appreciated this deep dive into vampire history. I learned a lot.

I am obsessed with your content it’s so enriching and you are so full of personality and are just easy to listen to. My new fav channel

As a long time viewer, I might have to say this is my favorite video of yours. I was dying laughing and you can tell how much love went into this project

The whole not being able to be black and a vampire is so strange to me I feel like the people who say this have never seen queen of the damned I feel like anne rice movies/books pioneered the modern day vampire and yet everyone forgets about Queen Akasha like how is that possible especially when she was played by Aaliyah???

i love ur videos and ur jewelry is so sick!! thank u for going into such detail i've had a vampire special interest for so long and I still didn't know so much about vampire lore and literature

12:50 "OH NO, VAMPIRES" "GET A BRICK" "WHAT?!?!" lol Loved your outfits in the video. Aristocratic and Hot Topic Vampire you can do both. I'd like this video more than once if I could. Just this one.

right now im pushing myself to write a vampire series [ because i truly love the genre ] and because i want to see more vampires who are of color & also im writing them with more of a scarier nature because that’s really what vampires should be, this immortal being who drinks the blood of humans and slowly looses their morality.

So much goes into these videos and I love it. The whole vibe is so soothing and comforting 😊♥️

i loooooove any vampire analysis. did my undergrad dissertation on the potential of vampires to subvert gender dynamics, but loved hearing different articles and views about a similar topic!

im SO EXCITED to see this twilight series.... the fits and drama are going to be off the charts

First off, your outfit and makeup are amazing as always. Also, glad I'm not the only one strangely attracted to Carlisle lol. This might be a stretch, but the unnatural beauty of vampires in modern media reminds me of the pressure consumer culture puts on everyone to buy products to become beautiful, and that natural beauty isn't enough. Today's infatuation with vampires might represent how late-stage capitalism is no longer just an outside threat, but instead worms its way into our consciousnesses and has a more intimate relationship with workers and consumers. This is all just complete guesswork inspired by your wonderful video and by having to sit through twilight for the third time because my friends like it, take it or leave it.

loved this subject!!🖤🖤🖤 it’s just missing Carmilla, it was written even before Dracula

This was too good, Shan!!! You really put your back into this video (as always), thank you so much

I'm so here for this series, you don't understand how pumped I am for this video and the next ones!

i love this channel sm, the visuals according to theme, editing, research and how u word everything is so ugh(/pos) lovely vid as always omg

11:24 i feel like with vampirism the blood drains from your face like with a usual corpse, thereby removing your undertone of color, not melanin. Meaning you’d stay as dark as you were but your skin would have a different, more blue-grey undertone instead of what you had before. If that makes sense.

This was a lot of fun to watch and I'm excited about the next one. 💖

Shanespeare is the full package and we should ALL be GRATEFUL to even witness this literary gifted QUEEN !!! #simpinghardnoshame

The Extra Credits series on Vlad The Impaler was very good. Dracula was basically a techno-thriller, viewing the old mythos of the Vampire with the then-cutting edge contemporary scientific perspectives of, erm, degeneration theory and scientific racism (Van Helsing quotes and references this stuff in the text) and fights it with the then-cutting edge contemporary scientific technology, i.e., erm, the phonograph, shorthand, telegraphy and blood transfusion. Something else about Dracula that you fail to mention, you have to remember Stoker's perspective as a member of the Anglo-Irish ascendency, a descendant of the protestant english speaking ruling class in Ireland. The early chapters of the young metropolitan male in the rural; hinterland amongst a bunch of weird, superstitious non-english speaking peasants was probably based on his own travels outside of The Pale into the rest of Ireland.

this is so interesting, especially the parts linking vampire fear/interest with different real world economic trends 😮 looking forward to the next vampire vid!!

I'm 60 seconds in and I've never been more excited to stumble across a video series. Looking forward to following this adventure!

Give Varney the Vampire a go, too, if you want a brick sized read lol! It was clearly a heavy influence for Stoker's Dracula and has a ton of the same storyline stuff to it. And it was from the 1840s I believe? Btw. Love the look and all the fangtastic (*huehuehuehue*) research.

Simply stunning is all I can say. I loooove the way you structure your videos and your attention to detail is so amazing

I never skip any of your ads because you and contrapoints are the only people on TRvid who can make me laugh out loud

This is brilliant. I'm listening to it again! Thanks for referring me to 'The Black Vampyre.' I have found where I can read it online.

i’m so excited for the twilight, fanfics and 50 shades video omg alizee is one of my favorite youtubers and she makes videos reading all of them