Episode 274: Vampire March Madness! (with Queer Movie Podcast)
/If you’ve ever debated over drinks who the best vampire is, this is the episode for you! We’re joined by the hosts of the Queer Movie Podcast, Rowan Ellis and Jazza John, to decided, once and for all, who the most vampirey vampire is!
Content Warning: This episode contains conversations about or mentions of death, illness, sex, fascism, depression, The Civil War, and homophobia.
Guests
Rowan Ellis and Jazza John are the hosts of Queer Movie Podcast. Join them as they take a look at the queer film canon, one genre at a time. From rom-coms to slashers, contemporary arthouse cinema to comedy classics - Queer Movie Podcast is a celebration of all things queer on the silver screen!
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Transcript
AMANDA: Welcome to Spirits podcast, a boozy dive into mythology, legends, and folklore. Every week we pour a drink and learn about a new story from around the world. I'm Amanda.
JULIA: And I'm Julia.
AMANDA: And this episode 274. It's Vampire March Madness, people, with Jazza John and Rowan Ellis.
JAZZA: Whoo. Yes. Great. I'm Jazza.
ROWAN: I'm Rowan.
JAZZA: Sorry. I'm always very bad at introducing ourselves, sorry about it. We do have a podcast and we know how to do this professionally. We promise.
JULIA: That's true. That's true. And I edit it. But no, I'm so glad you guys are on the show, naturally, because we're doing a March Madness thing I called two Brits to be on the show 'cuz you guys know all about basketball, right?
ROWAN: Yeah, obviously.
JAZZA: Is that what this is about?
JULIA: No, idea?
JAZZA: Okay, cool.
JULIA: March Madness is basically the, like, college basketball bracket that happens every March.
AMANDA: But more to the point, y'all run a very queer movie podcast. It's just called the Queer Movie Podcast. The very was not part of the title. And I mean, who better to talk to about vampires we love in mythology, ideally gay? It's you two. It's great.
JAZZA: Queers and Vampires go very well together.
JULIA: That's true.
ROWAN: Every vampire is queer, a confirmed.
JULIA: Yeah, no, I think everyone on this list pretty much is queer, probably, to some extent, I hope.
ROWAN: Yeah. Even if, even if it's not uh, you know, explicitly stated in the text, it's still true.
JULIA: Yeah. Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah. It's, I mean, what's, what's queer than, like, not bending to the conventional rules of mortality? Am I right?
ROWAN: Mhmm.
JULIA: That's true.
JAZZA: Precisely. I mean, me and Rowan, we don't age so...
ROWAN: Yeah. What is queerer than being a sexy little freak? Which is, essentially what vampires are.
JULIA: Uh-hmm, uh-hmm. Sexy little freaks, been alive so long, so many partners. And yeah, I am really excited. So, what we're doing today for our listeners, is we have a bracket of 16 vampires from pop culture, the world we live in. And we are going to pit them against each other. And we are going to see who is the best vampire in pop culture.
JAZZA: Excellent.
AMANDA: Tada!
ROWAN: Wohoo!
JULIA: Awesome.
AMANDA: Love it,
ROWAN: We'll work on the same tune for that segment. Yeah.
JULIA: It'll be fine. Yeah, a little bit of like lightning strike maybe. And--
ROWAN: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: --then, like, organ music, it'll be fine. So, what we are going to do is basically, I have determined our bracket already. And I'm going to provide you guys with a little bit of context and background for each of the vampires or groups of vampires that we're going to be talking about, and then also the kind of powers and background of those specific vampires. And then from there, we're going to determine who is best vampire. So, if you haven't heard of the vampire that I'm talking about, if you have any questions regarding, like, vampire lore, or vampire powers from the specific universe that we're talking about, feel free to ask questions because I did research.
ROWAN: Julia, I will be requesting you to give them a hotness score out of 10
JULIA: Okay.
ROWAN: Because I think that that's a key component to the vampire lore.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: And I would like to include it in my judging process.
JULIA: Okay.
JAZZA: Uh-hmm. And just to be very clear, I already know, not to do any spoilers for the rest of the episode, but I already know who my favorite vampire is. And it's mainly based on hotness score.
JULIA: I did go into just asking you both what your favorite vampire was from pop-culture and you both had the same answer.
ROWAN: Okay.
AMANDA: Oh, really?
JULIA: But we'll be getting to that actually, very shortly because it is one of our first bracket. But to start with, we're going to pit Damon and Stefan Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries against Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
AMANDA: Excellent.
JAZZA: Well, I've only watched one of these [3:34], so I know where I'm going. But also, Spike was my closet key, so--
JULIA: Uh-hmm, uh-hmm.
JAZZA: --I'm going to be biased already. I'm sorry.
JULIA: Excellent. That's fine. That's totally okay. To give some context since you guys haven't seen The Vampire Diaries, these two are protagonists but sometimes antagonist. It's one of those kind of, like, dueling. Oh, who she with currently. Okay, well, now the other ones evil.
AMANDA: Hot. It's hot.
JULIA: Yeah, it's hot. It's CW, so it's hot. I've never seen the show either. I know it was pretty big. It had a couple of spin off series. It went for, like, six or eight seasons or something like that. And the show is based off novels of the same name. Classically, these two are brothers who are in a love triangle with the main character of the series, whose name is Elena Gilbert, but also her vampire doppelganger named Katherine Pierce. Classic.
JAZZA: Excellent. Makes total sense. Can you have a vampire narrative without some kind of a love triangle with a doppelganger? No, is the answer.
AMANDA: No.
JULIA: Is it a love triangle though? If the doppelganger is involved, does that now become a square?
JAZZA: It's a love square.
JULIA: Uh-hmm, Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: As long as distinct to that, before you finish the phrase vampire doppelganger, I genuinely, in my head thought you were gonna say her vampire diary. Oh, that's what the title is about. Interesting. How original.
JULIA: So, in the Vampire Diaries universe, vampires, and this is from the wiki for that universe. Vampires are magically reanimated human corpses which are inhabited by the spirits of the deceased person and who closely resembled the living human they were before their transformation. Vampires feed and survive on the blood of the living typically on that of humans, and they can also transform other humans into more of their kind by sharing their own blood with them. Vampires are one of many known supernatural species that were created by witches, albeit, through the creation of their progenitors, the original vampires.
AMANDA: I feel like witches don't want more company. Like, think of everything we know about witches, and most of the time, they want to be left the fuck alone.
JULIA: Uh-hmm, uh-hmm. Yeah, no. Why do witches want vampires? That's a real question. I haven't seen the series, so you don't have an answer.
AMANDA: Unless they just want, like, some, some hot, you know, pieces of tail that won't die on them. I mean, in which case, fair.
JAZZA: Is it potentially, are they creating vampires to make sure that they scare off all of the inevitable peasants that want to get involved in the witches kind of like business?
ROWAN: They're still undead body guards.
JAZZA: 100% I'm down for that. I want undead body guards.
AMANDA: I'm down for that.
JULIA: So, the growth of the vampire race led to several attempts to end them before they grew too powerful. They began hunting vampires in, like, but if they were created, oh, because they're, these are the original vampires that they're destroying--
AMANDA: Always like a vampire sandwich is like vampires and those witches and vampires, of course.
JAZZA: Tasty.
AMANDA: Makes total [6:17]
JULIA: Naturally naturally makes a lot of sense.
AMANDA: I have a question here, which is how are we determining the best? Like what are the criteria that we're going for?
JULIA: So I feel like the criteria here should be one hotness. I feel like that should be a fluctuating like determiner there. I'm thinking like, most interesting background, most interesting powers and like most interesting character development, I guess, is a good way to describe it? Like, it seems like for me, these two Damon and Stefan are very much like they're just hot, and kind of interesting. And love interests. One was kind of evil, and then the other one turned evil. It's like a whole thing. But like, do we truly feel that they are a great incorporation of who or what vampires are?
JAZZA: I have seen them on Tumblr. Yes, if you remember that. Yeah. They definitely floated around the queer beautiful men tumblers that I may or may not have been obsessed with in the early 2010s.
JULIA: Yes, one of them is very, like, swarthy, dark, tall and handsome. And then the other ones like a little bit more like pretty boy, I suppose. Hey, you
JAZZA: know what? It's very Angel and Spike, do not think in terms of aesthetics.
ROWAN: Something for everyone. Exactly. Yeah. I just want to quickly point out that the description of what vampires are that you read off was the most disgusting way of explaining vampires. And like, technically, I guess they are the dead corpses of people whose reanimated Spirit lives within them. But I'm like, it's kind of just weird that they put the body in the spirit as two separate things are weirdly inhabiting the same space,
JAZZA: Rowan, don't kink shame people into that stuff, you know?
ROWAN: How in which case, yes, sorry Jazza, I retract everything I just said about the animated corpse.
JULIA: Well, actually, that's a really interesting point. I specifically chose a lot of these wikis because they define what a vampire is. And a lot of them are buck wild descriptions. You're like, yeah, that is what a vampire is in this universe, I guess. But it's weird when you just lay it out like that. So let's go on to spike because the Buffy universe does have an interesting definition of vampire as well. For people who don't know who spike is from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He is a sometimes villain, sometimes antihero, sometimes romantic interest. He is played by James Marston who has who isn't British who isn't British.
AMANDA: She isn't anybody like me, or needs to know that he is not great.
JULIA: Let's check in with our Brits here. How good is his accent? Good.
JAZZA: I think it's pretty good. To be completely honest. Yeah. Like in terms of Americans doing British accents in general difference who are listening. Don't do that. You don't sound like you in the Harry Potter universe. No matter how much you've practiced it. I'll be completely honest. But yeah, his is pretty good. I didn't know he was American until I read it on the internet.
ROWAN: Yeah, thumbs up for me as well.
AMANDA: There you go, pretty high compliment.
JULIA: So James Marsters actually described spike as quote, Spike was supposed to be dirty and evil punk rock and then dead and has was kind of brought in as the foil to the character of angel who we'll talk a little bit about later, and he is considered one of the breakout characters of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So Buffy describes vampires as vampire was a species of soulless undead demons that could only exist on Earth by leaving their own dimension and possessing human corpses. Thus, they were considered hybrids and generally looked down upon by other quote unquote pure demon species, though undead, they required mammalian blood to maintain their health.
JAZZA: I love that they've specified mammalian blood like you can't go around. I don't know sucking the blood or the snakes like [9:55]
AMANDA: [9:55] like, chicken blood.
JULIA: I don't know. You can't do birds either. That's a good point. Amanda. Thank you. Yeah. or fish, or fish.
JAZZA: My My favorite thing about spike apart from obviously them ABS is the fact that he got his name spike from the fact that before he turned was turned into a vampire by Drusilla. He used to be a poet and his poetry was apparently so bad that reading it was like pulling a spike for your brain. It's not to do with the way that he killed people. Apparently, his poetry was bad. And I hardcore as a teenager in the 2000s trying to find my voice and may have penned some really bad poetry I really identified with that.
JULIA: I feel that
AMANDA:
as we learned spikes backstory, I really thought of like, what if Keats was really bad and also instead of like dying, you know, of like various consumptive illnesses at 25 became a vampire and then got very into punk. And it's, it's just, it's delightful.
ROWAN:
So I used to watch Buffy when I was a teenager, but when I was watching it, it would just sort of pop up on TV. So I never really watched like from start to finish. Same with charms like those kind of shows. So when I finally got the DVD box that I genuinely didn't realize that spike doesn't turn up until season two, I was watching the whole of season one like, where's my guy? Like was this dude doing it? Where's spike fully didn't realize that he has the most badass entrance in in season two. Yeah, just absent before that, because he just has such an impact. He has such a presence in the show. He has such interesting storylines. And it's just a bit of a breath of fresh air I think to a lot of those interactions when you have a character who's very chaotic, I guess in some ways, it's kind of nice, be I'm big, big spike fan along with jazza, I think.
JAZZA: They wanted to kill him off. So he was meant to be a foil who then they were going to actually like defeat it was meant to kind of like represent all of the bad stuff that teenagers get tempted with like sex, drugs, rock and roll all of that stuff. But he was such a breakout star. The fanbase loved him so much that they had to continue writing him into the series, and then lasts to the very last episode where spoiler he has the best death of all of it, but then gets resurrected later in the comics.
ROWAN: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: It’s fine, it’s fine.
JAZZA: I'm not. I'm not a Buffy comics fan like the Canon ends at the end of season seven. For me, I'm just putting that out there. For anybody who is like, if you like the comics, you do but it's not my fight.
AMANDA: What I like most about spike is that unlike angel, the character that he is there to sort of provide relief against like an alluring, but ultimately not as good for you kind of romantic partner is that angel sort of hates his nature from the beginning. And there's a whole soul thing like the cosmology of it, I don't think is necessarily crucial to what I love about spike, which is that he likes being a vampire. He likes what he is, like he like accepts his flaws. He accepts the limitations of his life and also love the good parts. It's like, yeah, it's fucking awesome like this, this is great. But over the course of his character journey, and I think this is partially because he was designed to be someone that's quite kind of two dimensional and not around for a long time, they kind of had to find ways to make him more and to give him a journey and to give him change. And as he does that, he doesn't sort of disavow all the things he liked before all the parts of him that are not crucial to where he wants to go. He kind of finds reasons to add to his life or to like, make accommodations for other things and people that he finds important, and I think that's really lovely and compelling.
JAZZA: And a lot of it comes from genuinely falling in love with Buffy without the necessity of having a soul Angel bestowed upon you like he falls in love with her without any of that bullshit kind of like Deus Ex Max, rubbish that angel has to deal with. Yeah. Do you remember the Buffy bot? He had a Buffy robot that he may or may not have used as a sex doll?
AMANDA: Yep. Yep, though, checks out.
JAZZA: Yeah. Uhm–
ROWAN: But I felt that just adds to his unhinged vampire vibe.
AMANDA: Yeah. Yeah.
JULIA: Is a vampire better when they're more unhinged? That's the real question.
ROWAN: Truly. Yes.
AMANDA: Like, that's why you have sex with a vampire. Right? Like, that's why you're hanging out with vampires in a world where people can do that. Like it's sexy. It's it's like a little bit dirty. It's certainly taboo. It's dangerous. And Spike is a great version of that, while still having the character journey of how could somebody totally different to this world and totally, you know, having nothing, no reason to care about people to like them to love them. Like he's compelled to do it against his own sort of nature. And that's always such a sort of compelling character thing to witness.
ROWAN: I'm also very interested in the trope of like, the evil slash grumpy type character who actually has quite a soft spot for the nicer more innocent characters. Yeah, his relationship with Joyce in his relationship with Dawn, I think a really interesting yeah, I'm very sweet in a really strange and weird way. I will say the description that you gave of the law of vampires. Julia is another one of those ones where you're like, sure that again, the demons came and possess the dead people blah, blah, blah. But ultimately, because it's still in that law passed on by vampire bites, like you immediately become a vampire. Surely that's just the initial vampires who came over to this world and that most of them are just people who have been turned who essentially just immediately become.
JAZZA: There is an episode and I'm going to describe this really badly because I don't remember any of the character names or the or the, the actors but there is a guy who has a terminal illness and so he wants to be turned into a vampire so that he won't end up having to live with that digital illness and live forever and Buffy explains to him Oh, but it's not actually going to be you like when you're a vampire that won't be used so it is clarified in that very one specific episode that is probably RAM season five or six or something like that.
ROWAN: Now that feels right interesting.
JULIA: I'm gonna assume at this point spike is moving on to the next round. But yes, please I'm sure we're gonna have to hotly debate more of his stuff later on. So if you save your spike thoughts for the next round this is now the spike podcast apparently I should have known going into this.
ROWAN:
Instead of it being this March Madness brackets. It's just like what if we threw spike into a pit and then we just one by one took every other vampire and saw how they weren't enough to compete.
JULIA: Maybe we should around Robin?
AMANDA: I do have another vampire universe that I think gets at the heart of what a vampire is. So I will be our lone vote against spike if it comes to it. But Julie, I'm really curious to hear about the other vampires that you've chosen for the round.
JULIA: Of course, so our next one is actually also going to be a pretty tight one, which is Lestat versus Dracula. Hmm. Okay, so Lestat Dylan CT is the vampire and antihero from Anne Rice's series of novels First appearing in Interview with a Vampire which was published in 1976. And he was also played by Tom Cruise in the movie adaptation in 1994. I don't have a definition for a vampire in this one but I do have a basically like summary of LIS stats abilities as a vampire as a vampire lists stats abilities include telepathy mind reading superhuman physical attributes and rapid healing after receiving blood from several ancient vampires Lestat strength increases dramatically and allows him to fly perform feats of telekinesis and Pyro Kinesis and survive exposure to the sun after Lestat ate the brain of MC Harry Potter. I don't know he was infused with the spirit of a male and became the host of the sacred core, effectively making him the most powerful vampire on the planet.
JAZZA: The only interaction I've had with Lester has been the 1994 movie where--
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
JAZZA: --he's played by Tom Cruise, they do not go into that deep of law. So I appreciate knowing that that is the full journey of the character and that apparently, he eats brains.
JULIA: Yeah, apparently he eats some good brains.
JAZZA: Some good brains.
JULIA: Some good brains. And Rice has written a lot of books and also is famously very anti fanfiction and has threatened to sue people who write fanfiction on her thing. We're not fans have that. But she's also passed. So I like don't have strong feelings either way. So--
JAZZA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: --just putting that out there before people are like, Oh, you guys are pro and rights or something like that.
ROWAN: I don't really care.
JAZZA: She can sue you now? Certainly.
JULIA: Yeah, can sue me.
JAZZA: The main thing I remember about Lestat is the vampire code that he breaks by creating Kirsten Dunst.
JULIA: Right.
ROWAN: Hmmm.
JULIA: Child vampire.
JAZZA: Yeah, child vampire. So in Interview with a Vampire, it tells the story of, I don't know that they with the character. It's just cursed. It's just child Kirsten Dunst.
ROWAN: Yeah. In reality, like that was the thing that happened in the canon of reality.
JAZZA: Yeah, exactly. She was a plague-ridden child in like the Southern United States. And the state decides to turn this. I think she's like canonically, 8 or 10 or something like that. And then she stays that age forever, which is horrific. And also goes against the vampire code and why he's a naughty naughty boy.
JULIA: Yeah, one of my other favorite Lestat things is that other vampires have nicknamed him The Brat Prince. Which is rea- a real crossed in my mind.
AMANDA: Oh, that's very good.
JAZZA: Is that before or after Tom Cruise plated?
JULIA: I think that's from the novels, but still very good. Also, famously, was part of a rock band called The Vampire Lestat, which he formed with a group of humans in the 1980s. Incredible.
AMANDA: Tom Cruise?
JULIA: No, the character Lestat.
AMANDA: Ohh. damn! How I wish Tom Cruise get on that.
JULIA: I was gonna say I think we're going to move on now to our main man, or or big squeeze.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: And that is Dracula.
AMANDA: Tell us all about him. This is the prototypical guy, right?
JULIA: This is the Dracula.
AMANDA: This is the dude.
JULIA: So Count Dracula is the titular character from Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. Some aspects of the character are believed to be inspired by Prince Vlad the Impaler who is also known as Dracula, as well as Sir Henry Irving who is an actor who Bram Stoker served as a personal assistant for at one point in his life. You know that job had to have been bad, right?
JAZZA: Huh-hmm, huh-hmm.
AMANDA: Oh yeah.
JULIA: Count Dracula's famously an undead centuries old vampire and a Transylvania nobleman who claims to have descended from Attila the Hun. And here is the quote about basically just his whole vibe which is, "Unlike the vampires of Eastern European folklore, which are portrayed as repulsive corpse like creatures. Dracula is handsome and charismatic with a veneer of aristocratic charm. From the book they say, he was in life, a most wonderful man, soldier, statesman, an alchemist. Which ladder was the highest development of scientific knowledge of his time. He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare and a heart that knew no fear or no remorse. There was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not to say."
AMANDA: So this is the vampire's Renaissance scholar. This is where this comes from.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah. This is the like, I've had so much time here on the earth. I've learned everything that I could possibly learn.
JAZZA: Is he hot though?
ROWAN: Absolutely not. He is absolutely not hot. I have very strong feelings about this,
JAZZA: Rowan, makes a good point. Continue.
JULIA: Tell me.
ROWAN: Basically, so I find Dracula really interesting because people are way, way, way more familiar with the adaptations of Dracula than they are with the original novel. In the original novel, he could not be more gross sounding. He's just like an old man. It's funny because his appearance changes like every time he's described in the novel, he looks different.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: But he always looks gross. So he just has, like, at one point, he has like no hair, except for this very long white mustache.
JULIA: No, thank you.
ROWAN: There's like another point at which it's just they really go into the fact that he has hair on the palm of his hands. He's just this like weird old man, basically. It's also really funny because the entire plot of the novel is just a he's decided to move. And so, even though we think about him, like haunting this castle, the entire book is just him going to Whitby and then going to London, like that's his whole life during the books. And so yeah, I would say if you're looking for the hotness go Jazza, absolutely zero. That man's got nothing to give you.
JULIA: I think that there is like a fundamental difference between what we consider hot now and like what Bram Stoker considered hot in 1897.
JAZZA: And by that do you mean like landed gentry?
JULIA: Yes, exactly.
JAZZA: Sure. Okay.
ROWAN: Yeah. landed gentry with hairy palms. Very into very Bram's very into him.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Because I would argue that Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter is is pretty hot--
JULIA: Yes.
AMANDA: --right? He's like a physically interesting and alluring person. Jazza looks really judgmental of you right now. And I'm gonna have to have you take a step back Jazza.
JULIA: Oh, yeah, no Jazza, I'm sorry, you're wrong. But Amanda's right.
JAZZA: You have the floor. You have the floor.
AMANDA: I think that there is a version of this. That is alluring, like I think this is the template on which the the Cullens are sort of models, right? Where it's like you're so rich. You're so old, you'd houses all over Europe, you speak a million languages, like you know all the things you own all this art, etc, etc. Discovery of Witches has the same kind of vampire when they're literally like titled gentry, but instead, this sounds like mansplain or with poor hygiene, which I'm not super into.
JAZZA: I did have a thought when Julia was describing the fact that Dracula describes himself as being a descendant of Attila the Hun.
JULIA: Yes.
JAZZA: That sounds like the kind of shit that the boys that are in the alt right are spouting at the moment.
ROWAN: Uhmm.
JULIA: Yeah.
JAZZA: Like very, Oh, yeah, my ancestors were the first to come over on the Mayflower blah, blah, blah, all of that BS.
JULIA: Yeah.
JAZZA: That's an immediate eek for me controversial, I know.
JULIA: That's fair. I am going to list you off his powers because I think it's interesting and also like both very similar but very different from a lot of the vampire lore that we've talked about so far. So Dracula's powers were believed to have been gained through dealings with the devil.
AMANDA: Hmm.
JULIA: He has superhuman strength does not cast a shadow or have a reflection in mirrors. He is immune to conventional means of attack and can defy gravity to a certain extent. Has powerful hypnotic, telepathic and illusionary abilities. Can command animals such as rats, owls, bats, foxes, wolves and moths question mark? Can manipulate the weather and within his range is able to direct the elements, such as storms, fog and mist. You can also transform into various forms such as a bat, a wolf, a fog or mist.
JAZZA: You're making him sound like an Xman, I'll be honest.
JULIA: I mean, he kind of is.
AMANDA: Guys this is like the annoying OP person in your D&D party. It's like--
JAZZA: Oh my God.
ROWAN: I'm not wrong.
AMANDA: Ah, actually, my my character can talk to rats and also, and also just storms. And I I also know magic and like, Uhm, no, you he doesn't hit me because I take over his mind.
JAZZA: Oh my God, it's the level 20 Rogue Druid.
AMANDA: That's really what I'm picking up from what Julia is putting down.
JULIA: I am curious, then. How are we feeling between Lestat and Dracula? Because I feel like there is something to be said about Dracula being very much the progenitor for a lot of the vampires that are on this list. He's not the progenitor for all of them because there are a few that predate him. But he is very much like, like you were saying, Rowan like our idea of what a vampire is now.
JAZZA: I think I'm falling into the ballpark of Lestat and I wasn't expecting this. Because I don't really like him. He's an interesting character, but I wouldn't want to have a pint with him if you know what I mean.
ROWAN: Okay.
JAZZA: He has the problem of not being able to kind of like, like, he's, he's getting so old that he's really struggling to connect with modern society.
JULIA: Uhm.
JAZZA: But also, it's just a very naughty boy. And part of me really, really likes the fact that he's a very naughty boy. Whereas I feel like it'll just like be Dracula's just a bit, hoity toity for me. He's Posh with a capital P.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Uhm.
JAZZA: And we should eat the rich
JULIA: Dracula is not here in the '80s forming boybands
ROWAN: You need to eat the rich before the rich [24:45] is essentially what Jazza is saying.
AMANDA: Yeah, no, I totally agree. You like a vampire kind of working within a system. And Dracula feels like geographically, socially, wealth wise, financially, I guess removed from kind of any consequences. And I'm I;m not into the self-mythologizing of sort of white supremacy via like a colonial heroes of the past. No, thank you.
JULIA: Interesting, not how I thought this was gonna go. So just loose debt witness around?
ROWAN: I think so. I'm going to agree.
JULIA: Wow!
ROWAN: It's kind of like how I feel about Carol not to bring in the queer movies.
AMANDA: You must.
ROWAN: Carol, to me is very tedious. But also I have to acknowledge that it was the originator of all of the tedious tropes that it is made up of. Like it was the OG back in the '50s.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: And I kind of feel like the same about Dracula, you can't really at least in the original explore the interesting implications of living forever of being a vampire of being out of time when you are the original. And I think that the start is a little bit more interesting in the way that he allows us to explore those things, which I think makes for the most interesting part of vampire narratives.
JULIA: Interesting.
AMANDA: Totally, should be in the bracket doesn't need to advance I think.
JULIA: Hey, welcome to the refill. There's nachos over there, and we're gonna start watching the game soon. The game this time is vampires.
AMANDA: Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
JULIA: I am here to give you all of the updates and fun new stuff that's happening with Spirits and also you know, tell you about some cool products and services. But first, I wanted to thank our newest patrons, Brittany, Bailey, Hey Bailey, Hey Lady, Collin, and Amanda. And they join the ranks of our incredible Supporting-producer level patrons who are Uhleeseeuh, Anne, Froody Chick, Hannah, Jack Marie, Jane, Jaybaybay, Jessica Kinser, Jessica Stewart, Kneazlekins, Little vomitspiders running around, Megan Moon, Phil Fresh, Captain Jonathan MAL-uh-kye Cosmos, Scott, and Zazi. They already are digging into the nachos, but though they'll save you some. And of course our Legend level patrons who are actually the ones who brought the nachos and they got them from that really, really good Mexican place down the street. Audra, Bex, Clara, Iron Havoc, Morgan, Mother of Vikings, Sarah, Taylor, & Bea Me Up Scotty. And if you would like to join our party to get some recipe cards, to have a great time here at Spirits, you can go to patreon.com/spirits. We have recipe cards, we have bonus urban legends episodes every month, and a lot, lot more. So join us again at patreon.com/spiritspodcast. Now we're not here for book club. But I do love sharing book and movie and TV show recommendations with you guys. And this week, I want to recommend Activation Degradation by Marina J. Lostetter and if you guys like robots with feelings and complex mysteries that slowly unravel in front of you, this is a great sci-fi book for you. And if you like any of the books that we recommend here on Spirits, you can go to spiritspodcast.com/books to see a full list of all the books that we recommend on the show. So check that out. And while you're checking things out, I would also recommend you check out NEXT STOP, which is Multitude audio sitcom if you're like me, and sitcoms bring you a lot of joy. Definitely check out NEXT STOP. It's all about that kind of turbulent time in your mid to late 20s where everyone is changing around you and you're worried that you're not going to catch up. There are 10 episodes, it follows three roommates trials through work relationships, friendships, and more. And if you grew up watching classic sitcoms, there's nothing more comforting. It was written by our dear friend Eric Silver. It was directed by our friend Brandon and it was executive produced by Amanda and hey, I did the casting and assistant directing. So check that out. You can find it by searching Next Stop in your podcast app or go to nextstopshow.com Now I don't know conspirators how you get your day started. Some of us like to eat a big breakfast some of us like a cup of coffee. Some of us like to go for a morning walk. Personally, I've been starting my day extremely well rested thanks to my ultra cozy Brooklinen bedding, the buttery sauce as we like to call them here. 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And promo code "spirits" for $20 off your purchase today. Brooklinen, the curators of comfort. If comforts a museum Brooklinen is curated it. Now this is the part in the episode listeners where I asked you have you been taking care of yourself lately? Are you taking nice long showers or baths in the evening? Do you go on a nice walk during the day to get yourself out? Do you take some midday naps? Well, I want you to start pairing your self care ritual with Calm and take your wellness to the next level. Calm is the number one mental wellness app and it gives you the tools you need to improve the way you feel. It can help you reduce stress and anxiety through guided meditations, you can improve your focus with curated music tracks and you know how much we love Calms imaginative sleep stories. I feel like some nights I just can't fall asleep without Calm sleep stories. 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BetterHelp is online therapy that offers video phone and even live chat sessions with your therapist. So you don't have to see anyone on camera if you don't want to. It's much more affordable than in person therapy and you can be matched with a therapist in under 48 hours. So give it a try and see why over 2 million people have used BetterHelp online therapy. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and Spirits listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/spirits. That's b-e-t-t-e-r-h-e-l-p.com/spirits. And now let's get back to the show. So our next competition here is Edward column from the Twilight series and Blade.
ROWAN: And I know who's winning the fight.
AMANDA: Good matchup.
JULIA: I mean we could say, Edward Cullen for those of you who, who don't know about Twilight is one of the protagonists and main love interest in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series. Quote, "Like all vampires in the Twilight series, Edward is described as impossibly beautiful--
AMANDA: Impossibly Julia--
JULIA: Impossibly!
AMANDA: --beautiful.
JULIA: On top of his vampire abilities like superhuman stamina, senses, agility and healing factor, he's also telepathic. In the Twilight series, vampires who had unique abilities in life have the abilities that are intensely heightened after being transformed into a vampire. For example, a person who is sensitive to other people's moods might develop the vampire ability to influence emotion or read thoughts. And as the Wiki describes it quote, "Vampires are a pseudo species of crystallized immortal beings who must feed on the blood of humans or animals to survive."
JAZZA: I didn't know that they didn't just sparkle. I didn't know that they were also actually crystals.
JULIA: Apparently.
JAZZA: Great love that.
JULIA: Maybe that's why he's all cold all the time.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Not just because he's dead but also because I made a crystals.
AMANDA: Hiis skin, Julia, it's like marble.
JAZZA: I haven't read the books forgive me for my--
ROWAN: How could you?
JULIA: How, how dare?
JAZZA: I you know I've survived this long without it may--
JULIA: Impressive.
JAZZA: --be able to continue, thank you so much. I have however, watch the movies, correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember him being an absolute fuck boy and being just a really equally uninteresting, but also manipulative little, little bastard, really.
JULIA: Yeah.
JAZZA: Am I miss remembering please refresh my memory?
JULIA: I don't know if I would call him a fuck boy. He's just like very into his own depression.
JAZZA: Ahh.
JULIA: Does that make sense?
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JAZZA: Yeah, no 100%
JULIA: Yeah.
ROWAN: He's just very, you know, tortured.
JULIA: Yeah.
ROWAN: He's just, he's just trying to resist being an old man who goes after this 17-year old girl badly badly resist it very badly. In the end, fully gives her his crystal dick, uhm sorry. So--
AMANDA: Several times too.
ROWAN: I know. Breaks up bed on the honeymoon.
JULIA: He seems like the kind of person who is like, I am incapable of being happy and therefore everyone around me needs to suffer.
JAZZA: Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: Yeah.
AMANDA: Definitely.
ROWAN: And he climbed into that random teenage girls window to like, watch her sleep. Sure at times.
JAZZA: Oh, yeah, that was creepy, that's creepy dude.
ROWAN: I don't know if Blade ever done that. I kind of feel like he, I don't know if that's part of the Wiki law that Julia's put before us today.
AMANDA: I think Wesley Snipes wouldn't do that to us.
JULIA: So Blade has not as far as I'm aware. For those of you who don't know, Blade is a Marvel comic book character who has devoted his life to ridding the world of vampires. And while originally was a human vampire hunter was retroactively established as a Dampier or a child born of a mortal and a vampire. In the 1998 adaptation, he's played by Wesley Snipes, and is able to successfully act as a vampire slayer because he has vampire strengths, but none of their weaknesses
AMANDA: Incredible.
JULIA: Pretty OP.
JAZZA: I haven't read any of the [36:39].
JULIA: Uhm.
JAZZA: I'm aware of like Blade lore broadly, but I've only watched Blade: Trinity.
JULIA: Okay.
JAZZA: Because I think it was, I was just able to go and watch it at the cinema when it came out in like the early 2000s.
JULIA: Sure, sure.
JAZZA: The main thing that I remember from that is just the thumping soundtrack. And I now assume that Blade has his air pods and is listening to kind of like really heavy deep house and kind of like death metal that was on the Blade: Trinity soundtrack.
JULIA: Uh-hmm, uh-hmm.
ROWAN: This is tricky though, Jazza, because it is well-known that the first Twilight movie also has a slapping banger--
JAZZA: Really?
ROWAN: --of a soundtrack.
JULIA: Yeah,
ROWAN: So--
AMANDA: A really good soundtrack.
ROWAN: It's maybe not as as cut and dry as you think in the music department.
JULIA: Uh-hmm, uh-hmm.
JAZZA: Because he's able to be in the, in the sunlight, right? What other--
JULIA: Yeah.
JAZZA: --stuff does he not have as a weakness?
JULIA: Basically, he is immune to vampire hypnosis. He is immune to the bites of typical vampires. He also has a superhuman strength, stamina, agility, heightened senses, rapid healing factor. He also like is unaffected by daylight and basically just as basically other traditional vampire weaknesses.
ROWAN: Okay, in this case, I'm going to say something potentially controversial, but I think the only winner from this bracket we can choose is Edward Cullen.
JULIA: Hmm.
ROWAN: Because Blade isn't a vampire.
JULIA: Yeah.
JAZZA: Oh, you made--
AMANDA: Yeah.
JAZZA: --a really good point.
ROWAN: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: I think he's really interesting. I'm going to go watch this movie. I'm going to go look up some of these comics. I think this is an interesting character, but I totally agree. I think in a bracket of vampire slayers we would have a lot to talk about.
JULIA: Ooh, maybe that's our next one.
AMANDA: Maybe then nothing burger of Edward Cullen has to proceed.
JAZZA: Oh, I hate that.
ROWAN: I hate it. But it's you know, we are a font of truth and justice here today, Jazza.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JAZZA: Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: So it must be.
AMANDA: Excellent.
JULIA: So we're moving on to our next bracket. This is Count von Count from Sesame Street.
ROWAN: Uh-hmm. An icon.
AMANDA: Nice.
JULIA: Again, Selene from the Underworld series.
ROWAN: Oh no!
AMANDA: Oh, wow!
ROWAN: Don't do this to me Julia.
JULIA: All right, so real quick Count von Count better known as The Count is a quote, "Mysterious but friendly vampire from the children's TV series, Sesame Street and is inspired by Bela Lugosi's Count Dracula. He first appeared in 1972. And his main role since its inception is teaching counting skills to children because, quote, 'they call me The Count because I love to count things.' He lives in an old cobweb infested castle. He shares it with many bats, a wolf named Yuba, and a cat named Fatatita and he is Romanian because he has stated on the show that he spent his childhood in the Carpathian Mountains. He has the ability of hypnotic power in early sketches and also does not show a reflection in the mirror. However, unlike traditional vampires, he's not harmed by sunlight and seems to rather enjoy it.
JAZZA: Do we know if he drinks blood?
JULIA: That's an excellent question that I don't think they ever answer in the Muppet universe.
JAZZA: Hey, you know what, I understand why in a show for preteen VOD children, for children--
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
JAZZA: --an actual children. But yeah, like what does he eat?
JULIA: When I searched blood on his Wiki page, nothing comes up.
ROWAN: I choose to believe that he eats like alphabet soup, but only he will only eat them with numbers.
JULIA: Yeah.
ROWAN: No letters.
JAZZA: Right.
JULIA: So number soup.
ROWAN: Number soup
JULIA: cute very quickly. Who he's up against is Selene, the main protagonist of the Underworld universe,
ROWAN: My wife, yes.
JULIA: She was born sometime in 1383 became the first Vampire Corvinus Strain Hybrid, which allows vampires and lycans to have the same properties merged into one body. She is played by Kate Beckinsale in the Underworld movie series. It's loosely based on the Marvel Comics of the same name. She believes that her family was killed by basically werewolves. Dedicated her life to hunting them as a quote unquote, "death dealer", which is part of the Vampires fighting elite. And her vampire powers include superhuman agility, healing, strength, speed and senses. And she can also absorb and read other immortal blood memories from drinking their blood.
ROWAN: And she's very hot.
JULIA: She's very hot. So how are we feeling? I know, these are two very different types of vampire here.
ROWAN: I adore Selene so much, I love the Underworld movies. I think they were, I guess, kind of almost similar to your Blade thing, Jazza, they were a series that I could watch. I would like just gotten to that age of being able to watch the 18-rated movies and think they were so cool. And there's loads of like twists and turns and lore and hot people. And the very much like the vampires, that quintessential image in the Underworld series of like this super hot, rich people who just party and have sex all the time. It's great. And it also has the vampire versus werewolf law trope.
JULIA: It does.
ROWAN: Which I genuinely have no idea where that comes from, because I feel like it's in a lot of media. But I really enjoy that. It's like a little, a little bit of extra fun law to add into the vampire tale.
AMANDA: I almost don't even want to view The Count as a vampire. I think he's like a stuffed animal. I love this inclusion and this lens. But I know he feels so pure.
JULIA: Yeah. I feel like I can also feel like because he is such a like dated reference. Like a lot of children don't know who Bela Lugosi is.
ROWAN: I was would have really loved if you'd have come on here and been like so I've checked the Sesame Street Wikipedia. And it turns out that he is in fact, the reanimated corpse of a mob, which was sewn together by the ancient--
AMANDA: Yeah.
ROWAN: --ones of just would have been great, but now I think he is in fact just--
JULIA: Unfortunately, yes, that that is true.
JAZZA: I think that he's lost, but I just have to go one vampire but *The Count laugh*. I just had to do it one time. Excellent.
JULIA: Well, Selene moves on to the next round. Our next one up I know is a personal favorite of YouTube. It's Carmilla--
JAZZA: Oh, yeah.
JULIA: --versus Eric Northman from the True Blood franchise.
AMANDA: Ohhh.
JAZZA: No nothing about True Blood.
AMANDA: Okay, I know a lot about True Blood.
JULIA: Amanda's a True Blood fans, so--
AMANDA: I I I was, my dad and I at least watched a, watched it as it was on.
JULIA: So for our listeners, Carmilla is the female vampire from Sheridan Le Fanu 1872 Gothic novella of the same name. So predating Bram Stoker's Dracula.
JAZZA: But apparently didn't inspire Dracula. Apparently that coincidentally--
ROWAN: Allegedly.
JULIA: Yeah, that's what they say the character is the prototypical example of the lesbian vampire and the novel notably never acknowledges homosexuality as a distinctly antagonistic trait, which is rare for that time period. In the story, a young woman named Laura is preyed upon by said vampire, Carmilla, you guys have a lot of interest and research into Carmilla, will you tell us a little bit more about her?
JAZZA: Yeah, we did, the vampire lovers, which is one of the many retellings of the left her new novel. It was like late '60s, early '70s kind of vibe of the Hammer Productions Movies. So it's like lots of kind of like naughty stuff that wasn't necessarily seen as family friendly at the time.
ROWAN: Uhm.
JAZZA: It's got Ingrid Pitt as Carmilla, who is a queen, and like, step on me mommy, she's fantastic. I don't know I love, I think, Cam- Carmilla and the fact that she really cement the sapphic and queer nature of kind of like vampires as a storytelling device is just so interesting, and really cool and important. And the fact that she predates Dracula, I think is also like really, really cool in the fact that she kind of had a resurgence in the 2010s with like, this web series.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
JAZZA: That was very, like Loligo 15 vibes, if you remember, early, early YouTube.
AMANDA: Uh-hmm.
JAZZA: It's like I'm in a dorm room doing a video blog. Oh, was this a vampire trying to drink that kind of vibes. Actually, this is the question, which Carmilla are we are we putting up here? Because there's many iterations.
JULIA: Right. So I would say that we're talking about the original novel, but because she has other iterations, I will give her the same like Dracula claws is what I'll call it, where it's like we're talking about every version of this.
ROWAN: So one of the, I think the, like most interesting thing about Carmilla is that it's very much in contrast to the Dracula idea of vampires and sexuality and sex and power and things going together. Because in Dracula he has these women who fought over him but he is like an asshole to them. Like he really is not nice. He like shout to them. He has like this real temper, whereas Carmilla and Laura are very much like seen as equals, in a lot of ways. Even though, you know, one of them is a mythological being. So they encounter each other in real life and they realize that they have seen each other in a childhood dream like they've dreamt of each other when they were kids.
AMANDA: There's nothing gay there. There's nothing gay there.
ROWAN: Just yeah, [45:25] so gay. And so it's a really interesting story of like, these two women at a time when women had no power, no agency being together, and then all of the male characters are kind of idiot. And although, you know, Carmilla is defeated at the end everything like Laura never gets over her death. It's kind of implied by the end of the novella. So it's very interesting because even though it is like an old, an old, like even predating Dracula, kind of OG vampire, I kind of feel like it's doing enough outside of the traditional ideas if I'm prison to still feel like it's interesting to me.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: In contrast to my thoughts on like, Dracula himself.
JULIA: Hell yeah, that's absolutely fair. We're gonna move on to the competition there, which is Eric Northman from True Blood. He is one of the major characters and a vampire from the TV series. He is played by Alexander Skarsgard, who is insanely hot, just a very, very hot man. I also picked him because the other romantic interest is Bill and he's a Confederate soldier and also not as hot so I was like, No, Bill, only you!
AMANDA: No, no Bill.
JULIA: Eric was a Viking Prince that was transformed in 936 AD and on top of the typical vampire strength and speed. He also has the ability to fly and he can also later gain the ability to day walk. And here's the description of vampires from True Blood. "Vampires are a supernatural species of sentient reanimated corpses that drink blood to survive and maintain their powers. They were originally humans or other living beings converted into a vampire by a maker. Being technically deceased, their primary characteristics include lack of heartbeat, body heat, brainwaves, electrical impulses need to breathe and other bodily functions. They are often referred to as immortal, but is frequently pointed out that all vampires meet the true death eventually, through one means or another."
ROWAN: So it's like, no, no brains only vibes kind of situation.
JULIA: They're all in Bose. I just have no brain. No thoughts in him. Amazing.
ROWAN: No thoughts and vibes.
AMANDA: They sure can fuck though.
JULIA: That is definitely the like, key element of the series. I feel like is man those vampires can fuck, huh?
AMANDA: Yeah. I think the show is fun. But the vampirism is really kind of like they could be in a trade union. They could be aristocracy, like it's just kind of like another layer to kind of play out interpersonal drama, which is fun. But I think from a vampire point of view, and if for no other reason than to encourage people to listen to Queer Movie Podcast, episode five, Lesbian Vampire Horror. We got to go with the girls.
JULIA: Yes, we have to go with Carmilla.
JAZZA: Thank you so much. Appreciate the plug.
ROWAN: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
JULIA: Obviously. Our next competition is between Graf Orlock or Count Orlok and Angel from the Buffy series.
AMANDA: Angel loses already, Julia, I can tell you that much.
JAZZA: Yeah, I know. I hate I I I actively hate Angel wanted more Buffy in my life at one point and was like, Okay, I'll try the spinoff series that he unfairly got.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JAZZA: And it is just bad, I think. Spike is in it, like for a short period of time, but that doesn't make it very much better.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JAZZA: Yeah. No, boring, boring boy.
AMANDA: The very courageous and lovely Charisma Carpenter makes that series fairly compelling. But and that's the only thing I like about it.
JAZZA: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: But then she like becomes an angel and disappears from the series. So it's not good. Just for people who haven't watched Buffy, I'm gonna give a description of Angel and then we'll move on to the winner of this round, which is clearly so angel is one of the love interest and main characters in Buffy the Vampire Slayer got his own spin off series as we talked about, played by David Boreanaz, who is like an attractive man in my opinion, his story arc is complicated by the fact that he's a vampire that is cursed with remorse and a human soul. Something the other vampires in the Buffy series basically lack. And the curse is broken when he experiences a moment of pure happiness. Which we won't talk about why he experiences that moment of pure happiness.
AMANDA: Uh-huh.
JULIA: And this leads to his appearance of his soul his alter ego, which is the sadistic and jealous and then eventually his souls return and he struggles with redemption arcs and all that. But more interestingly, is Count Orlok, Count Orlok like you might recognize from the film Nosferatu, which was released in 1922. It is based off of Bram Stoker's Count Dracula where he doesn't have any of the aristocratic like charm or seduction. He is very much true to historic folklore accounts of vampires. Which is basically he's a walking corpse. He is referred to as the bird of death, which I love. He feasts on the blood of--
AMANDA: Bla bla.
JULIA: --kaka, kaka! And he is notably the first vampire immediate to be destroyed by sunlight rather than simply disgusted or repulsed by it. He was created, which I think is fucking hilarious, mainly because the screenwriters who were making the film at the time were unable to get the rights to Bram Stoker's Dracula. And so they changed all the character names and change the title to Nosferatu.
JAZZA: Oh my God, it's the Watchmen of the vampire universe.
JULIA: Truly, truly he is.
AMANDA: Oh, wow.
ROWAN: Incredible.
JULIA: I'm gonna say the Count Orlok. it goes on, is that fair?
JAZZA: 100% yeah.
ROWAN: That's fair all too. Yeah, he has some really great like, I don't know whether they're nails or claws--
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: --but it's very like--
JAZZA: It's like I thought it was elongated finger--
JULIA: Yes, spindly little fingers.
JAZZA: Like--
ROWAN: Yeah, I wasn't sure. But they kind of end in points.
JAZZA: Yeah.
ROWAN: And and I really, really would love a Nosferatu like ASMR typing and to like send me to sleep, I'd really enjoy that. If I could just, you know, make a request on his only fans. [50:39] be, be really into it.
JULIA: It's like weirdly sexy like in that kind of way. But--
ROWAN: That little sexy little birdman.
JULIA: That sexy Bernadeth co- cookoff. All right, we're moving on to our seventh bracket, which is What We Do in the Shadows, the TV series because I like the TV series. But the film sorry, they're both great, but I just spent more time with the characters from the TV series. So I think they're fantastic.
JAZZA: Understood. You're wrong but understood.
JULIA: That's fine. They're Nadya, Laszlo, and Nandor. They are three quote unquote "traditional vampires" living together in Staten Island in the TV series. I said traditional because they also live with the vampire Colin Robinson, who's an energy vampire. And the three vampire's range in age the oldest being Nandor the relentless who is a bloodthirsty leader of a fictional kingdom in what is now Southern Iran. Nadya is a Greek Romani vampire who is married to the English nobleman vampire Laszlo who she turned into a vampire.
JAZZA: Sorry, I I had forgotten about the energy vampire.
JULIA: Oh yup, Colin Robinson.
AMANDA: Oh, yeah. He's so good.
JAZZA: Really amazing. If anybody who doesn't know, he basically sucks the energy out of the room.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
JAZZA: And he's just presented as like a boring man--
JULIA: Amazing.
JAZZA: [51:48] in the office that nobody wants to talk to. It's such a fantastic concept.
JULIA: Yes, it's, it's great. Against What We Do in the Shadows are our trio there. I have a kind of like dark horse or wildcard for this group, which is Mercy Brown. Does anyone know who Mercy Brown is?
AMANDA: No.
JAZZA: Uhm.
JULIA: So Mercy Brown was actually a woman who was from Exeter, Rhode Island at the end of the 19th century. And there was an incident where many members of her family like suffered a series of tuberculosis infections. And the people of the town believed that the illness was caused by one of the dead family members being a vampire. And because local folklore at the time stated that multiple deaths in one family was caused by undead activity, they family gave permission to exhume some of the bodies. And two of the bodies basically like, Oh, those are normal decomposed bodies, that's fine. But corpse of their daughter, Mercy Brown, showed no decomposition, still had blood in her heart when the autopsy was done. And as such they removed her heart and her liver, which they then burned. And then they gave the ashes to the remaining like sick family members to drink because that was the quote unquote, "cure" to vampire-ism.
JAZZA: So hold on, this, this is a real thing?
JULIA: Yeah, this is a real thing. This is my wild card by like, hey, check out this real thing.
ROWAN: So like looking out the Wikipedia page for this, possibly the wildest thing about this is that this happened in 1892.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: Like that's so recent, Julia, what the hell?!
JULIA: But it's actually theorized that it's possible that like Bram Stoker saw a article in the newspaper about this and it acted as some inspiration for Dracula. It also inspired stuff like H.P. Lovecraft's The Shunned House. And a lot of scholars believe that the preserved nature of the body was likely due to her body like being stored in an above ground crypt in the middle of winter. So it acts as a freezer to preserve the body.
JAZZA: Hmmm.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yeah.
ROWAN: That's so interesting.
JAZZA: So wait, they're basing her vampirism on the fact that her body didn't decompose?
JULIA: Yes.
JAZZA: And nothing else?
JULIA: And the like idea that her like family members were all sick, which local folklore stated was like, ohh, there's some undead activity happening.
ROWAN: Uh-uhm.
AMANDA: Totally.
JAZZA: Got it! Hey, not gonna lie, Julia. This is cool.
AMANDA: Yeah, this--
ROWAN: Uhmm.
AMANDA: --is cool.
JAZZA: I'm so happy I know this now.
AMANDA: Yeah.
JAZZA: I don't know if it can beat my love for--
AMANDA: That's fine.
ROWAN: What we do in the shadows.
JAZZA: Yeah, our shadowy friends.
ROWAN: I will say nothing says supportive community. Like assuming that someone who has had multiple family members die must in fact be dead. Like, like an evil undead corpse has been reanimated.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
ROWAN: Like I really love how everyone's coming together in these communities to support each other at times of hardship and grief. With that in mind, I think I also have to go for the What We Do in the Shadows.
JULIA: That's fair, that's fair. I'll take it.
ROWAN: The vampires who are a delight in every way. Awesome.
JULIA: And finally for our last bracket before we like zoom through our decision making is Eli from Let the Right One In and Marceline the Vampire Queen from Adventure Time.
AMANDA: Fabulous!
JULIA: This is a tough one. So Eli, if you haven't seen Let the Right One In, there was a bad American adaptation. But there was also like a great Scandinavian original, highly recommended. It's one of my favorite vampire movies of all time. This is a centuries old child vampire, who is immune to cold and snow and like is often shown barefoot, they have a very youthful appearance and so they have to take on a servant that can protect them during the daytime and provide them with fresh blood, which is a point of contention in film. And in the story, Eli meets a boy named Oscar who they become friends with and eventually Oscar is taken on as a lover/progeny. It's very fun. It's a great movie. But I don't think it's gonna compete, at least with this crowd with Marceline The Vampire Queen who is one of the main characters in the TV series Adventure Time, she is a playful, fun loving 1000 year old Vampire Queen. Unlike traditional vampire, she does not need to drink blood to survive, but rather consumes the color red.
AMANDA: So sweet. It's so cute.
ROWAN: So cute.
JAZZA: I've never watched Adventure Time.
JULIA: Really?
JAZZA: It's me, a bad millennial.
JULIA: Yeah, well, she's queer. So like, that's a A+ on our book, personally.
ROWAN: Now actually confirmed not just something that everyone knew have been technically stated yet.
JULIA: Uh-hmm, uh-hmm. She, she plays base but also the her base is a battleaxe. It's great. She's she's having a great time.
JAZZA: I've seen the images. I've been to conventions.
JULIA: Yeah. Yeah, of course. So how we feel in between Eli and Marceline?
JAZZA: Eli sounds gre- creepy.
JULIA: Uh-hmm.
JAZZA: And is a child therefore can't be hot.
JULIA: Yeah, that's true.
ROWAN: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: That is true.
AMANDA: True.
JAZZA: So automatic disqualification.
ROWAN: Okay, so sorry, Eli. Apologies, but no.
AMANDA: Apologies.
JULIA: So moving on with Marceline.
ROWAN: Yep, definitely.
JULIA: Okay, so now is the point where we are going to discuss the merits of each of these brackets very quickly and decide, hey, who's going forward?
AMANDA: Julia, I have a suggestion, which is if vampire-ism is all about not having a human body or having a demon or other kind of spirit takeover your human form. Should really really lean into our like flesh and guts and like go with our gut on these? Like, what if you gave us the matchup and then count it down? And all three of us had to say our winner and just majority rules.
ROWAN: Uh-hmm.
JULIA: Hell yeah! Let's do it.
AMANDA: Okay. Oh, God.
JULIA: Number one, Spike versus Lestat. 3 2 1...
ALL: Spike.
JULIA: Okay. Great Spike's moving on. All right, next one is Edward Cullen versus Selene. 3 2 1...
ALL: Selene.
JULIA: Selene. All right, look at that. Carmilla versus Count Orlok ,3 2 1...
ALL: Carmilla.
JULIA: Okay, Carmilla.
JAZZA: Uh-hmm.
AMANDA: Guys, I'm feeling the love here. I love this.
ROWAN: Well, that we haven't disagreed properly, yeah, then that's--
AMANDA: That's true.
ROWAN: --blood starts to come.
JAZZA: Yeah, you'll have to listen to the Queer Movie Podcast to hear me and Rowan disagree.
JULIA: Yeah.
AMANDA: Yes.
JULIA: How about the, What We Do in the Shadows trio versus Marceline the Vampire Queen? 3 2 1...
ALL: What We Do in the Shadows.
JULIA: Okay.
JAZZA: That was a tough one.
AMANDA: Good job, guys. Good job.
JULIA: All right, so that brings us into our semi finals, which is Spike versus Selene. 3 2 1...
ROWAN: Selene?
JAZZA: Spike.
AMANDA: Selene. Ooh, Selene beat Spike? I think I'm I'm on the fence. I'm on the fence.
JULIA: Let's discuss this one because I'm curious now.
JAZZA: Go what- no, no, you're you're the ones who have broken my heart.
ROWAN: Defend yourselves wenches.
JAZZA: Yeah.
ROWAN: Okay, so I, this was really tough, but I just think that Selene has a lot of the interesting things that Spike does in terms of conflicted loyalty, in terms of battling with the idea of like vampirism. But like to a heightened degree she has the forbidden love thing. She has like all of these elements that I also like with Spike. I will say the thing that Spike has over Selene is more of the humor side of things. Because obviously--
JULIA: Uhm.
ROWAN: --Bobby has a lot more comedy to it. But I think having said at the beginning and really committed myself to the vampires should be hot thing. As a lesbian I feel like I had to side with Selene on this one.
JULIA: That's fair.
AMANDA: Yeah, I also want to see women advance in this bracket to the, to the largest extent possible. So that is on my mind but at the same time as much as I love Spike, the reason why I find him so compelling as a character are kind of like they go beyond like they they go into phantom. They go beyond like my thoughts about him and and fanfic, and like people's interpretations of him and the role of the character and how it's been kind of reclaimed and adapted in fandom outside of the source material. And it feels like there is just a lot more kind of in the text about Selene and the world she inhabits. I'm most familiar with it, but it's one that I really wanted to learn about. Versus Spike. I'm like, I can show you a couple seeds and some gifts and like a couple fanfic and like you'll you'll get the gist and like, you know, you can kind of take the love from there. I don't know if that makes sense. But that's what I'm thinking.
JULIA: No, it does.
ROWAN: Also he made love to a robot.
JULIA: Yeah, that did happen.
JAZZA: That is a plus.
AMANDA: Okay.
ROWAN: If more vampires made love to robots, it would be a better world.
JAZZA: 100% like he goes out a hero. Like he has the most honorable death of anybody in that whole show. Okay, I I concede defeat.
ROWAN: Okay, sorry. Jazza.
JAZZA: However, I can't go against my boy like he was so, I love him.
JULIA: That's fair. All right, so our other semi final is Carmilla versus the What We Do in the Shadows trio. 3 2 1...
ALL: Carmilla.
JULIA: Yeah. All right, cool. So that means that our final is Selene versus Carmilla. Oh. yeah!
AMANDA: Incredible!
JULIA: I'll do a 3 2 1 countdown and then we can discuss, Okay?
ROWAN: Okay.
AMANDA: Okay.
JULIA: 3 2 1...
ALL: Carmilla
JULIA: All right. All right. So it looks like Carmilla is our winner.
AMANDA: Well done guys.
JAZZA: Well done. Yeah, yeah yeah.
JULIA: I think that Carmilla is a really interesting winner for this bracket. And like I was saying is like is prototypical for a lot of things that we see vampires as now. So I think it was a really solid choice. I'm glad we got there especially shocked me that Dracula didn't even make it out the first round, but I I thought it was going to be a tight one.
JAZZA: As soon as Rowan started saying hair on palms of hands, I was out.
JULIA: Yeah, yeah.
JAZZA: We specified hotness
AMANDA: What an unplanned but perfect reason to go subscribe now to Queer Movie Podcast.
ROWAN: Exactly.
JAZZA: Yes!
AMANDA: You can hear so much more about this movie and about Jazza and Rowan takes on it and a lot of my love for this character. I think comes from getting introduced to her through you all so I love this.
JAZZA: Oh, thank you--
ROWAN: Yey!
JAZZA: --very much. You get to hear Rowan complain that I can't watch actually scary movies.
ROWAN: That's true. Yeah, truly wild to me that Jazza has managed to make it all the way through this podcast recording. I've never seen Jazza watch a scary movie. But imagine it would be like one of those Scooby-Doo style like ohhhhhh, and like, like running from the room. But like he starts running and doesn't move for a while like--
AMANDA: Yup.
ROWAN: --I that's--
AMANDA: Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah!
ROWAN: --would have happened if we'd have watched any clips of vampires today.
JAZZA: This isn't intended to be a plug for my for my gaming streams. But occasionally I do stream and like and Halloween I always stream something scary. Everyone has a [1:02:10] laughing at me in the comments. Because I am a big baby. And one day we'll do a live in person Queer Movie Club viewing and I'll let you pick an action scary movie.
ROWAN: Oh my gosh!
AMANDA: Yeah.
ROWAN: Officially on the record.
JULIA: Can I come? That would be great.
AMANDA: Can I come? I love that.
JAZZA: Yes, of course you can. Open invitation.
JULIA: Yes, please. So that's a great time to ask you guys where can people find Queer Movie Podcast and you both on the internet?
JAZZA: Queer Movie Podcast is the best SEO podcast on the face of the internet.
AMANDA: It is.
JAZZA: It just put those three words into, into your favorite search engine and we will appear. You can find us individually as well because we have our own personalities. I'm Jazza John on all social media platforms.
ROWAN: I'm HeyRowanEllis on most social media, I'm just Rowan Ellis on YouTube. There is one other person with Rowan Ellis a channel name but he is, I think a bodybuilder. So it's very obvious which one is which.
JAZZA: A wrestler.
ROWAN: Oh, hell yeah, dog. So yeah, it's pretty obvious. And both of us essentially talk about gay movies, both on the podcast and just elsewhere in our lives.
JULIA: Excellent. Well, thank you guys so much. This was so much fun. I'm hoping we can do some more of this in the future. Maybe when we do vampire slayer as you guys can come join us again.
ROWAN: Yes, please.
JAZZA: 100%
JULIA: And remember listeners whether you are as handsome as Dracula? Or as hot as Selene. Stay creepy.
AMANDA: Stay cool.
AMANDA: Spirits was created by Amanda McLoughlin, Julia Schifini and Eric Schneider with music by Kevin MacLeod and visual design by Alison Wakeman.
JULIA: Keep up with all things creepy and cool by following us @SpiritsPodcast on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Tumblr. We also have all of our episode transcripts, guest appearances and merch on our website, as well as a form to send us in your urban legends and your advice from folklore questions at spiritspodcast.com.
AMANDA: Join our member community on Patreon, patreon.com/spiritspodcast, for all kinds of behind the scenes goodies. Just $1 gets you access to audio extras with so much more, like recipe cards with alcoholic and non-alcoholic for every single episode, directors commentaries, real physical gifts, and more.
JULIA: We are a founding member of Multitude and independent podcast collective and production studio. If you like Spirits you will love the other shows that live on our website at multitude.productions.
AMANDA: Above all else, if you liked what you heard today, please text one friend about us. That's the very best way to help keep us growing.
JULIA: Thanks for listening to Spirits. We'll see you next week. Bye!
Transcriptionist: Vernon Bryann Casil
Editor: Krizia Marrie Casil