Behold: the culmination of four months of work. Believe it or not, I'm not sick of vampires yet, so let me know why your favorite vampire or vampire-ish character is!

I have a friend with roots in Romanian Translyvania.
She told me that in all 300 years of her life, she has never met a vampire.

- Who's your favorite vampire?
- Um, the one on Sesame Street
- He doesn't count
- I assure you, he does.

Her vampire makeup is insanely good!

In the novel, Dracula, despite movie lines to the contrary, never said, " I do not drink... wine." What he said was, "I have dined already, and I do not sup."

I'm a medical laboratory scientist & remember reading the original Dracula. I knew intellectually that they didn't know about blood types when it was written, but it was still so weird and wrong to me that they just kept giving Lucy blood transfusions from anybody that was available without any sort of cross-match testing.

I was one of the editors on the "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" comic book! Very cool to know people are still watching the movie. Now check out the comics! 🤘

"The histories of vampires and people are not so different, really. How many of us can honestly see our own reflection?"

Lynda Barry

Without Lestat there would never have been an Edward

What We Do in the Shadows was such a pleasant surprise, and the nods to Vampire movies of the past was very entertaining. The sandwich analogy to virgins always gets me rolling.

"Daybreakers" is such a underrated vampire film if you're looking for even more vampire films to watch.

Tolkien meets Elvira! Well done.

Thank god we can see her reflection in her bookshelf, I was worried for a while, she did the whole vampire getup too well

Goth Jess is best Jess.

"There's a cowboy in Dracula!" is always something that I feel we don't talk enough about. Like, "vampire-hunting cowboy" sounds like something that's juvenile or high-concept, but a cowboy fighting Dracula (And the cowboy being the one to deal a mortal blow!) was like, ground zero for the genre. It's sort of funny how much vampires are considered "old world" and bringing it to America is seen as a major reinvention or "Not your grandpa's vampires" like "Interview With a Vampire" or "Twilight", but so much of it has drawn from American folklore. Lucy was supposedly based on Rhode Islander Mercy Brown. Rhode Island! The home of Peter Griffin accents and Dunkin' Donuts marking every mile was an intergral contributor to vampire lore!

On the subject of Lucy, I think the recurring idea that the narrative is kind of having Lucy "punished" for being a potential floozy or would be-polyamorist (Note: I don't know if that's what you're saying and I am certain it's not a sentiment you agree with!) is something of a very modern interpetation that resulted from 1) The Coppola movie, (Which had Sadie Frost being very forward in a "shocking for Victorian times" way) and 2) That dating culture has changed a lot since then. People didn't really have "boyfriends" or "girlfriends" the way we did now, until you were engaged it was fair game, and one of the few concessions to women was that they could entertain all offers (With the understanding there was no body count) up until the words "I do". When Lucy says she wishes she could marry them all, it's meant to be taken as the all-loving innocence of a Disney Princess. That all three men stay devoted to her and each other, even after marriage, even after death--it's not meant to be a kinky polycule, it's meant to be a testament to both Lucy's and the men's virtue. I suppose you could say that in the "old vs new" theme of the book is just as Dracula's death means the end of superstitions and tyrannical overlords, the death of Lucy means the death of royalty and the last stand of courtly love and knightly virtue, as it gives way to the sensible but genuine middle class coupling of Jonathan and Mina. To tie it in to the overall bread and butter of the channel, it's sort of like how to the destruction of the One Ring also put a nail in the coffin of the dominion of the Elves.

My English grandmother's take on vampires, "There's only one kind of vampire -- the nonexistent kind, but the thought of them is good for tourism in Highgate and Whitby." My Romanian grandmother's views on vampires, "In a village near where I lived, people kept stakes of ash or iron sharp." My favourite vampire is the Dearg-Due - the female vampire of Irish lore. It's possible that Bram Stoker gleaned some inspiration from that preternatural being. Nuapte buna ("goodnight" in Romanian). 🐺🦇⚰

Last time I was this early, Dracula was still Vlad Dracul!

I have to say, the body of potentially Vlad Tepes disappearing on the way to a museum... awfully suspicious...

I just finished THE WHOLE VIDEO in one sitting and wow... what a ride! You started at the very, very, earliest beginnings and took us - gleefully - on the twisted journey of the vampire up to modern day. I'm blown away not only by the intricacies and detail of the research you did, but also it feels like you put something of yourself into this, making it feel so much more personal.
I do feel that this video can be deemed essential viewing for anyone interested in vampires and your script could very well be the start of a text book.
What I took away from your video is that, yeah, on the surface, vampires can be used as horror movie monsters that can shock and thrill, but more so than not, they're used as tools to explore the human condition.
Bravo Jess, bravo!!! 💐💐💐
At this point in your journey, this can be truly considered your magnum opus.

Striga comes from strix, which was an owl monster that drank the blood from unattended babies. Owls in taxonomy are called Strigiformes.

The first letter in Țepeș is pronounced like tzatziki.

A little sad you didn't talk about Count von Count from Sesame Street because, not only is he based on the Béla Lugosi portrayal of Dracula, but also in some of the stories from Romanian folklore (and probably other folklore), vampires (in Romanian there are strigoi, vârcolac and pricolici, all of which have some vampiric traits), at least the strigoi, has arithmomania, so villagers would put sand or grains at the entrance to the cemetery so the vampire would spend all night counting them and by the time it was done counting it would be morning and it would have to go back into its grave.