Latest / Like a Virgin / Blood Is Blood
Transcript
- 0:03Speaker 1: One de lo, two de lows, three de lows. Are
- 0:09Speaker 1: you saying dil dos? Yeah? Oh, do you need to
- 0:11Speaker 1: emphasis in the second d? That was me doing a
- 0:13Speaker 1: Transylvanian accent emphasis on t to like many vampires, I'm
- 0:28Speaker 1: feeling a lot of on we because October doesn't last forever. Um,
- 0:34Speaker 1: and this is unfortunately our last spooky episode of Spooky
- 0:39Speaker 1: season groas we've really marathon the and the spook and
- 0:43Speaker 1: the spoop at times the swoop. Um. Yeah, nothing can
- 0:47Speaker 1: last forever except vampires, which are you know what we're
- 0:51Speaker 1: going to be discussing today. I can't wait. I've I've
- 0:55Speaker 1: watched way too many vampire things in the last twelve hours.
- 0:58Speaker 1: I must say, yes. So we're going to get all
- 1:01Speaker 1: into you know, vampires throughout culture, all the different depictions
- 1:06Speaker 1: of them. Um, what's gay about them? Because this is
- 1:09Speaker 1: like a virgin the show where we give yesterday's pop
- 1:12Speaker 1: culture today's takes. I'm most damn you and I'm fran
- 1:15Speaker 1: Toronto Rose. Are we out of the woods yet? Are
- 1:22Speaker 1: we in the clear yet? I was listening to that
- 1:25Speaker 1: on the way here on my little jog to our record.
- 1:27Speaker 1: I am, in a sense out of the woods. Because
- 1:31Speaker 1: after a week long battle with COVID, I have emerged.
- 1:39Speaker 1: I wouldn't say victorious or or unscathed, but I have emerged. Um.
- 1:47Speaker 1: I do want to thank all of the virgins for um,
- 1:51Speaker 1: you know, being okay with us not happing news last week,
- 1:55Speaker 1: because as we said, UM in the show notes, I
- 2:00Speaker 1: was down bad with COVID. After and after after not
- 2:06Speaker 1: having it for the whole of the pandemic two and
- 2:09Speaker 1: a half years, I caught it. I'm pretty sure at
- 2:14Speaker 1: Hades Town, UM, which was horrible by the way, UM,
- 2:18Speaker 1: and I had a really truly disgusting, nasty, awful case
- 2:24Speaker 1: of COVID last week. Yes, and evidently I was also
- 2:29Speaker 1: down bad last week in a very obviously different way. UM.
- 2:33Speaker 1: You know what, we both just retreated into our homes
- 2:36Speaker 1: and selves and did not do anything. I did test
- 2:40Speaker 1: negative today, but I'm still recovering a little bit, especially
- 2:45Speaker 1: my voice. So we might keep it kind of light today. Obviously,
- 2:48Speaker 1: we're mostly going to talk about Midnights UM by Miss
- 2:53Speaker 1: Taylor Allison Swift, and you know, next week we'll we'll
- 2:57Speaker 1: discuss all the things that we have had on whole.
- 3:00Speaker 1: I really want to talk about the new Willow album,
- 3:02Speaker 1: Great British Baking Show. I finally saw Tar Can't God,
- 3:05Speaker 1: but that rose so many different things to talk about.
- 3:08Speaker 1: But today, you know, Midnight's and and just because the
- 3:13Speaker 1: finale literally just happened last night, I do want to
- 3:16Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the end of season one
- 3:19Speaker 1: of The House of the Dragon, because you know, it's
- 3:22Speaker 1: the name on everybody's lips. I've been doing nothing but
- 3:25Speaker 1: reading tweets about it, you know, watching TikTok's about it,
- 3:29Speaker 1: or even read some fan fiction this morning. No, no, no, wait,
- 3:36Speaker 1: what was that? What was the who were the characters
- 3:38Speaker 1: in the fan face? Well, I mostly see the reason
- 3:40Speaker 1: why I wanted to read fan fiction was kind of
- 3:43Speaker 1: i'll say, like a gripe I had with the end
- 3:46Speaker 1: of this episode, which I did still really like. But
- 3:49Speaker 1: the fan fiction I went in search of this morning
- 3:51Speaker 1: was I wanted the aftermath of the big you know,
- 3:54Speaker 1: spoiler alert death at the end of the episode. I
- 3:57Speaker 1: wanted to see like the character is reacting to it.
- 4:01Speaker 1: And I know, I think it's it's much more impactful
- 4:03Speaker 1: to have the episode and the way it does, But
- 4:06Speaker 1: I did go in search of like a you know,
- 4:08Speaker 1: Allison reacting to hearing about louse aras is death and
- 4:13Speaker 1: thinking about her lost love rain Era. But I thought
- 4:16Speaker 1: the finale was really good. That final scene with the
- 4:20Speaker 1: two dragons fighting was actually like really thrilling and scary.
- 4:25Speaker 1: That that shot of luce Aras flying on air ax As,
- 4:30Speaker 1: I think this is dragon and then you see vague
- 4:33Speaker 1: are over them. Oh my god. They've done a really
- 4:37Speaker 1: good job. I think this season of really impressing upon
- 4:42Speaker 1: you the size and scale of these dragons, especially in
- 4:46Speaker 1: relation to each other. And that's going to be the
- 4:49Speaker 1: reality of dragons, the logistics of dragons, the ownership and
- 4:53Speaker 1: usurption of dragons, how dragons are um used in strategy
- 4:58Speaker 1: and and and that's like that's stuff we haven't seen, yes,
- 5:02Speaker 1: and that's going to become so much more important now
- 5:04Speaker 1: that the Dance of the Dragons has officially started. I mean,
- 5:08Speaker 1: this incident of aim and killing Luke is what really
- 5:11Speaker 1: starts the war. And I think that's what this episode
- 5:15Speaker 1: does so well is show that rain Neira, even though
- 5:18Speaker 1: she's had her crown and her throne usurped, really wanted
- 5:22Speaker 1: to follow in her father's footsteps and try to keep
- 5:26Speaker 1: the peace. And she even says, you know, I don't
- 5:28Speaker 1: want to be Queen of the Ashes, and there might
- 5:32Speaker 1: have been a different outcome had what happened not happened. Obviously,
- 5:37Speaker 1: that cliffhanger was like the best part to me, and
- 5:40Speaker 1: but um, I unfortunately didn't like the rest of the episode.
- 5:44Speaker 1: I thought it was hella boring and underwhelming. I appreciated
- 5:49Speaker 1: that it was like restraint and that obviously they're giving
- 5:52Speaker 1: you colossal steaks to set up a bomb ask second season,
- 5:57Speaker 1: but because the last episode was such a barn burn her,
- 6:00Speaker 1: I thought it was a funny choice to end on
- 6:02Speaker 1: something that was primarily plot development until you get to
- 6:06Speaker 1: the dragons. But like I hated the childbirth thing as well.
- 6:09Speaker 1: Like I was just like, what the funk is this?
- 6:11Speaker 1: I was eating pizza, Yeah, well this scene was on
- 6:15Speaker 1: and I I literally couldn't even look at the screen.
- 6:17Speaker 1: I just looked at my pizza for like five minutes,
- 6:20Speaker 1: like it was a long scene. It was, it was,
- 6:24Speaker 1: and it was gratuitous. I mean, I think some of
- 6:26Speaker 1: it was good TV, just like the violence of her
- 6:31Speaker 1: pulling the baby out, and it was so sad, and
- 6:34Speaker 1: it is true to this this is exactly how it happened,
- 6:38Speaker 1: almost exactly how it happens in the book. Um, I
- 6:41Speaker 1: think Season two is going to be a wildly different
- 6:44Speaker 1: show in a lot of ways. And the bloodshed has
- 6:47Speaker 1: only just started. The child murder has truly only just begun.
- 6:52Speaker 1: It's anyone out there knows about blood and cheese. It's
- 6:55Speaker 1: about to get rough up in here. Um one of
- 6:59Speaker 1: the I will say, I think this is a nice
- 7:01Speaker 1: way to transition. One of my favorite parts of the
- 7:03Speaker 1: episode was just, um, Rainy's in the background of every scene,
- 7:07Speaker 1: like not bowing to rain Era and kind of side
- 7:10Speaker 1: eyeing her, which was giving very much um evil Taylor
- 7:14Speaker 1: in the anti hero video. Um, So I do believe
- 7:18Speaker 1: we have reached our main point of discussion, which is
- 7:22Speaker 1: the ten studio album of Miss Taylor Allison Swift Midnights,
- 7:26Speaker 1: which was released on Friday. Although Brand and I both
- 7:30Speaker 1: listened to the leak on Thursday. We did, Yes, we did,
- 7:33Speaker 1: because I do not respect Taylor like that. Um, I
- 7:37Speaker 1: am just when you said the tense to the album,
- 7:39Speaker 1: I just thought about how annoying we all are going
- 7:42Speaker 1: to be when the thirteenth album, So that how annoying
- 7:45Speaker 1: we are going to be? You mean, how annoying she
- 7:47Speaker 1: is going to be No, honey, honey, honey, it's an
- 7:49Speaker 1: exponential correlation. The more annoying she is, the more annoying. No,
- 7:54Speaker 1: she's more annoying than we could ever be. And I
- 7:57Speaker 1: love her, but she is. I'm just saying, on a
- 8:00Speaker 1: scale of our own annoyingness, we're going to be insufferable
- 8:03Speaker 1: or maybe just you. Because I this album, I think
- 8:07Speaker 1: crystallized something that I know about myself, which is that
- 8:10Speaker 1: I am a Taylor Swift fan, but I don't know
- 8:14Speaker 1: if I will ever be a Swift te Watching all
- 8:18Speaker 1: of the music videos, dissecting every single puzzle, all that
- 8:21Speaker 1: all of that stuff, I am with you on that,
- 8:24Speaker 1: and I even said, yes, well, this is more of
- 8:28Speaker 1: a Swifty. I'm more of a Swifty than you. But
- 8:32Speaker 1: for me, it has always been about the music and
- 8:35Speaker 1: very much not about her as a person. Like, yes,
- 8:38Speaker 1: I like the sort of meme of who Taylor is,
- 8:42Speaker 1: but I'm not interested in the conspiracy theories and the
- 8:46Speaker 1: galer stuff, and I'm not really interested in sort of
- 8:49Speaker 1: the aesthetic of Taylor Swift and the like cultural persona
- 8:53Speaker 1: of her. I really love her because of her music,
- 8:57Speaker 1: and that's what has always drawn me in. And I
- 9:01Speaker 1: think where the difference in my love of her as
- 9:04Speaker 1: an artist versus someone like Gaga, where I'm wrapped up
- 9:09Speaker 1: in the whole thing. With Taylor, it's about the music first,
- 9:13Speaker 1: her a little bit after that, and and like, but
- 9:17Speaker 1: not as much as I think it is for a
- 9:20Speaker 1: lot of people, Like my identity is not wrapped up
- 9:23Speaker 1: in being a swifty Yeah, And I think because um
- 9:26Speaker 1: Folklore and Evermore were so much more story driven and
- 9:30Speaker 1: like her kind of quill pen songs where she takes
- 9:34Speaker 1: the focus off of herself just a little bit before
- 9:38Speaker 1: she goes back into like you know, Jake Jillen Hall,
- 9:40Speaker 1: Tom Hittleston stuff or whatever, Calvin Harris conspiracy theories. I
- 9:44Speaker 1: think that's something that I really noticed about this album that,
- 9:47Speaker 1: you know, maybe I don't know if this is a
- 9:49Speaker 1: good thing or a bad thing, but entrenched in what
- 9:51Speaker 1: you and I are talking about right now is that
- 9:53Speaker 1: we got a lot of these taylorisms back, you know,
- 9:56Speaker 1: the way like Taylor will kind of misused words some
- 10:00Speaker 1: times to talk about like spider webs of opacity or whatever,
- 10:03Speaker 1: and else the congressman line. The congressman I was like
- 10:07Speaker 1: you are writing sometimes, Taylor writes songs like she is
- 10:11Speaker 1: a sophomore in high school, and other times she writes
- 10:14Speaker 1: things and I'm like, you are the second coming of
- 10:16Speaker 1: most truly, like I think is how it is, and
- 10:20Speaker 1: I think the album has both of Absolutely, this album
- 10:23Speaker 1: is extremely highbrow and lowbrow at the same time. And
- 10:27Speaker 1: what I found myself thinking the most, and I'll let
- 10:31Speaker 1: me get this out of the way, I like this
- 10:33Speaker 1: album a lot. There are some songs on it that
- 10:35Speaker 1: I think are really amazing. What I thought about this
- 10:38Speaker 1: album the most after listening to it on repeat several times,
- 10:42Speaker 1: I mean many times a day, like since it came out,
- 10:45Speaker 1: is it made it so clear to me that Folklore
- 10:48Speaker 1: and Evermore were outliers in her career. And there's been
- 10:53Speaker 1: a lot of talk about this, and you know that
- 10:55Speaker 1: like inside tea of Taylor's career, but this very clearly
- 11:00Speaker 1: feels like the album that was supposed to come after
- 11:02Speaker 1: Lover And I am so happy that I'm not gonna
- 11:07Speaker 1: say I'm happy COVID happened. I'm happy that Taylor wound
- 11:10Speaker 1: up in the artistic place she was in to create
- 11:14Speaker 1: Folklore and Evermore because they were such a departure from
- 11:17Speaker 1: the music she was making and now she's back making
- 11:21Speaker 1: that music, and I think it's important to talk about
- 11:23Speaker 1: sort of what she said about how this album came
- 11:26Speaker 1: to be, which is that she and Jack anton Off,
- 11:29Speaker 1: her frequent collaborator, were kind of hanging out while both
- 11:32Speaker 1: of their partners were making a movie together and they
- 11:35Speaker 1: were like, let's make an album. And that very much
- 11:38Speaker 1: is the vibe of this album, like, let's make an album.
- 11:41Speaker 1: It's a project, it's a yeah, it's a it's a filler, queen.
- 11:44Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie, and I don't think that's a
- 11:46Speaker 1: really bad thing, you know, when you were as prolific
- 11:48Speaker 1: of a songwriter as Taylor. No. But you know, I
- 11:51Speaker 1: said this on Twitter and it was mostly a joke,
- 11:55Speaker 1: but I actually think it's kind of come around to be,
- 11:57Speaker 1: like my my main understanding of what the aesthetic idea
- 12:03Speaker 1: of this album is and musically what it is, it's
- 12:06Speaker 1: tumblr core, it's reblog core. And what I mean by
- 12:10Speaker 1: that is it's Taylor just repurposing her old ideas I
- 12:15Speaker 1: think to in in many cases to really great effect.
- 12:19Speaker 1: But this album I think is explicitly and intentionally derivative.
- 12:26Speaker 1: It's very it's very lover I kind of think it's
- 12:30Speaker 1: like the love child of and lover doing reputation drag. Interesting. Yeah,
- 12:39Speaker 1: I okay, it's just to tell the versions where I'm
- 12:42Speaker 1: at with all of this, because I think that you
- 12:43Speaker 1: and I are kind of on the same page but
- 12:45Speaker 1: slightly different takeaways. Um, I had that that small, that
- 12:49Speaker 1: small of disapproval um when you said that the because
- 12:53Speaker 1: I agree that this is Taylor reblogging herself to some extent,
- 12:56Speaker 1: and I also agree that it is derivative of exactly
- 12:59Speaker 1: the things you talked about, but I don't know if
- 13:02Speaker 1: it's intentional. Derivative is kind of how I feel about it.
- 13:06Speaker 1: And and I will say for the Virgins again, like,
- 13:10Speaker 1: I actually listen to this album once through, and I
- 13:13Speaker 1: texted Rose that I thought it was bad, and then
- 13:16Speaker 1: I consumed it more and actually and then also you know,
- 13:20Speaker 1: I did consume some sentiment about it, and I listened
- 13:23Speaker 1: to other people's thoughts about it, and I did grow
- 13:25Speaker 1: to like a lot more about what the album is
- 13:27Speaker 1: presenting and trying to say. And I will just advocate
- 13:30Speaker 1: for if there are Swifties listening right now that hey,
- 13:33Speaker 1: my guts and wanted to tear my eyes out or whatever,
- 13:35Speaker 1: please know that, like I hated this album, and I
- 13:38Speaker 1: am now being convinced of it's of its amazing and
- 13:43Speaker 1: deserved place in Taylor's discography. And I like a lot
- 13:48Speaker 1: of those songs now, So if you really really like it,
- 13:50Speaker 1: maybe I convinced I can convince you as to why
- 13:54Speaker 1: I don't think Taylor has contributed anything to her own cannon,
- 13:58Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, here are your ex
- 14:00Speaker 1: a nation now of the tumbler thing. I I that
- 14:02Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense to me because I went
- 14:04Speaker 1: into it being like, oh, Indie sleeves, because that was
- 14:06Speaker 1: something that we had, you know that that had been theorized.
- 14:09Speaker 1: And I only think that there are two songs that
- 14:13Speaker 1: are Indie sleazy, maybe, like I think sweet Nothing is
- 14:17Speaker 1: a little sleazy. I also think that I should Have,
- 14:19Speaker 1: could have, would Have is like a little sleazy. But
- 14:22Speaker 1: I do think mostly that it is lover. I was
- 14:25Speaker 1: surprised by people that said that this was like reputation
- 14:30Speaker 1: when like the realty is like Vigilante Ship sounds like
- 14:35Speaker 1: a reputation song, yes, but the only the only other
- 14:39Speaker 1: stuff that sounds like reputation is like dress for remputation
- 14:43Speaker 1: and maybe delicate, right, Like I actually don't think there's
- 14:47Speaker 1: a ton of reputation on this album. And I did
- 14:51Speaker 1: find myself missing and I felt while I was listening
- 14:57Speaker 1: to this that a lot of the things on this
- 15:00Speaker 1: album felt like B sides. They felt like Lover B sides,
- 15:04Speaker 1: They felt like B sides. Because I went back, I
- 15:08Speaker 1: really listened to nine, which, oh God, what an amazing
- 15:11Speaker 1: autumnal album. Really listened to Lover. Why did God, I'm
- 15:16Speaker 1: dedicated to the criticism. We listen to Lover, and I
- 15:18Speaker 1: still felt like it wasn't really adding to either of
- 15:22Speaker 1: those in a way that would have enhanced it in
- 15:25Speaker 1: any way. And I want to stipulate that that's not
- 15:28Speaker 1: an entirely negative thing. Again, when you're as prolific of
- 15:32Speaker 1: a songwriter as Taylor, she is a machine and an
- 15:36Speaker 1: artist on the songwriting level, and I do think that
- 15:39Speaker 1: her mind to some extent just needs to get some
- 15:42Speaker 1: of these things out of her system. And I respect that.
- 15:45Speaker 1: And you know, it's not a bad thing to make
- 15:48Speaker 1: an album that has down beat, somewhat unmemorable music, like
- 15:53Speaker 1: or whether it's a lot of these songs are things
- 15:55Speaker 1: that are like they're not really gonna stay with. It's
- 15:57Speaker 1: very noble and not the album is capable. There's a
- 16:01Speaker 1: lot of skips on this album. And I get what
- 16:03Speaker 1: you mean about because I don't think there's a single
- 16:08Speaker 1: song on this album that cracks my tailor top ten. Mmmm.
- 16:15Speaker 1: I want to know what your tailor top ten is
- 16:17Speaker 1: um or your top five. But I'm curious what you
- 16:21Speaker 1: felt about. Did you listen to you don't listen to
- 16:23Speaker 1: New Carly Ray? I did. I didn't sort of actively
- 16:26Speaker 1: listen to it. I listened to it in the background
- 16:29Speaker 1: while I was reading I need to give it a
- 16:31Speaker 1: closer listen. I don't have a ton of extensive things
- 16:34Speaker 1: to add on it. I think that they are both
- 16:36Speaker 1: middle of the road pop albums that don't contribute to
- 16:40Speaker 1: the artist's respective cannon. Um. Obviously they shouldn't be compared.
- 16:45Speaker 1: It's a little talk with me to compare them. But
- 16:47Speaker 1: I was anticipating both of them with about the same
- 16:51Speaker 1: amount of excitement. Carly really let me down with Dedicated,
- 16:54Speaker 1: so I wasn't as excited. Taylor has been giving me hits,
- 16:57Speaker 1: so I was actually very excited about Midnights. But I
- 17:00Speaker 1: think I found myself to be more surprised by what
- 17:04Speaker 1: Carly presented in that she brought it some disco, she
- 17:07Speaker 1: brought some weird ship. Obviously, the production quality is not
- 17:11Speaker 1: on the level of what Taylor and Jack are doing. Um,
- 17:15Speaker 1: I think that they make more crystalline Lee perfect joke,
- 17:20Speaker 1: so exhausted. He needs to he needs a break and
- 17:24Speaker 1: honestly I need a break from him. And you know what,
- 17:28Speaker 1: one of the theories that I had heard about Midnights
- 17:33Speaker 1: was that Taylor was finally going to listen to the
- 17:35Speaker 1: criticism and work with female producers. And you know that
- 17:39Speaker 1: that did not happen. Um, I just I think I
- 17:43Speaker 1: think this collaboration as amazing of work as it has produced.
- 17:49Speaker 1: It just this is the this is the point where
- 17:54Speaker 1: it's gotten stale. And that's why that's why Folklore and
- 18:01Speaker 1: Everymore were so good, is because she brought in the
- 18:03Speaker 1: guy from the National and there was a new sonic
- 18:07Speaker 1: perspective that worked with what she'd already been doing, so
- 18:10Speaker 1: it wasn't so disruptive. But now she's just right back
- 18:13Speaker 1: doing what she was doing before. Okay, I know we're
- 18:16Speaker 1: being very negative, So I do want to I do
- 18:18Speaker 1: want to talk about what we liked. I want to
- 18:20Speaker 1: hear what your favorite tracks are. Yeah, um, well, just
- 18:25Speaker 1: really quickly, I want to also say that on on
- 18:28Speaker 1: what you just said that, Um, I when I was
- 18:34Speaker 1: like digesting this album, I was actually looking for things
- 18:37Speaker 1: to like, you know, and I was like, what what
- 18:39Speaker 1: do I like about this album? What am I latching onto?
- 18:41Speaker 1: And the thing the reason I the reasons I didn't
- 18:43Speaker 1: like it are exactly what you're describing. I don't think
- 18:46Speaker 1: that Taylor is giving us anything new. And then I
- 18:50Speaker 1: thought about her song nothing New, and how we as
- 18:54Speaker 1: like consumers of music, create an industry that forces women
- 18:59Speaker 1: to reinvent themselves over and over again, and that reputation
- 19:03Speaker 1: and were actually also sonic reinventions of Taylor Swift to
- 19:09Speaker 1: some extent, and you could even argue that a lot
- 19:11Speaker 1: of Red was as well, or some of Red was
- 19:14Speaker 1: as well. And so I think that by this point,
- 19:17Speaker 1: maybe I wanted her to reinvent herself again, because that's
- 19:22Speaker 1: just kind of how we're cultured to think about and
- 19:25Speaker 1: consume music. And I was trying to peel that back
- 19:28Speaker 1: and check myself on what I expected from her, um,
- 19:31Speaker 1: which is why you know, let's let's talk about the positives.
- 19:34Speaker 1: But the final negative thing that I'll say is that like,
- 19:38Speaker 1: I would have loved for these songs to fuck and
- 19:43Speaker 1: I was really excited. I felt almost like I wanted
- 19:50Speaker 1: this to be her Velvet Rope. Okay, and I that
- 19:54Speaker 1: that sounds really stupid to say, but I actually don't
- 19:57Speaker 1: think it is a far to theorize that Taylor would
- 20:02Speaker 1: be inspired by Velvet Rope. If she's also going to
- 20:04Speaker 1: name check Janet on this album, you know, and I
- 20:07Speaker 1: would have loved to hear her. But she name checked Janet.
- 20:10Speaker 1: It's such a it's such a tailor away, you know.
- 20:13Speaker 1: It's just it's just this throwaway line. Although I mean, okay,
- 20:17Speaker 1: if we're going to talk about we liked Snow on
- 20:19Speaker 1: the Beach. Snow on the Beach is one of my
- 20:22Speaker 1: favorite Okay, so my favorite my favorite tracks on the
- 20:25Speaker 1: album Lavender Hayes, which I think is a great album opener.
- 20:29Speaker 1: Taylor does not always do great first tracks. I really
- 20:33Speaker 1: like Lavender Hayes. Anti Hero is really good. I think
- 20:37Speaker 1: it's like some kind of almost the closest this album
- 20:40Speaker 1: comes to fucking interesting. Snow on the Beach. It's snow
- 20:44Speaker 1: on the Beach. I mean, people have been making the
- 20:46Speaker 1: joke that Lana's versus on the hard drive that got
- 20:49Speaker 1: stolen from her car. Oh, I didn't know that either,
- 20:52Speaker 1: But I don't mind that. No. I wish Laana had
- 20:55Speaker 1: a Verse, But I think anyone saying that you can't
- 20:58Speaker 1: hear her is if that's just stupid. You can you
- 21:01Speaker 1: can hear Laana both like literally in her voice and
- 21:05Speaker 1: also just on the production and writing of the song. Yeah,
- 21:09Speaker 1: I was, I was, really I was let down by
- 21:12Speaker 1: this song, sadly, but I was. I still love it,
- 21:15Speaker 1: but I agree with your tweet that Lana deserved Verse,
- 21:19Speaker 1: and I think for me, it's like an anticipation of
- 21:22Speaker 1: this album. I was really excited about this track because
- 21:26Speaker 1: I think that Laana is perhaps the most mainstream pop
- 21:32Speaker 1: artist to emerge from the indie sleeves era. That's absolutely true. Yeah, okay,
- 21:36Speaker 1: And so I was like, oh, this really is going
- 21:38Speaker 1: to be tumbling cor But I don't really think the
- 21:41Speaker 1: music is at all really that tumbler core, aside from
- 21:43Speaker 1: the kind of video gaming things that are in like
- 21:46Speaker 1: be Jeweled, etcetera. But I still love Still on the Beach.
- 21:48Speaker 1: I love how it sounds. I think in terms of
- 21:50Speaker 1: fucking songs, I actually think that Lavender Hayes is the
- 21:54Speaker 1: fucking song on this album. And I love that it's
- 21:57Speaker 1: like a weed strain, and so I was like, oh
- 21:59Speaker 1: my god, is this bad Taylor? Which you know it's
- 22:01Speaker 1: not there, but does this album she does? When I
- 22:06Speaker 1: think about other songs that fuck you know, Bowen posted
- 22:09Speaker 1: about Dress from Reputation. I thought that was so true.
- 22:12Speaker 1: I think that maybe, like there's a song on Lover
- 22:14Speaker 1: like False God or Cruel Summer. Maybe No, I mean
- 22:17Speaker 1: False God is False God is sexier, but I don't
- 22:20Speaker 1: think it sucks. Yeah, but it doesn't. Fuck, it doesn't
- 22:23Speaker 1: Taylor's music, doesn't it really fuck? Um? I love the
- 22:27Speaker 1: voice distortion on on Midnight Rain, but I didn't latch
- 22:32Speaker 1: onto it too much. Um, but I love the Jeweled.
- 22:35Speaker 1: I think be Jeweled is literally just gorgeous, but a
- 22:41Speaker 1: new but a new version of it, even like kind
- 22:44Speaker 1: of the weird little thing she does at the end.
- 22:47Speaker 1: It's very like the baby voice. Yeah, I love and
- 22:51Speaker 1: I unfortunately love the baby voice on that time I Love,
- 22:54Speaker 1: I Love You're on your Own Kid, really good track
- 22:57Speaker 1: five Labyrinth kills me. I Love Love and then Karma
- 23:03Speaker 1: is So. I did not like Karma when I first
- 23:07Speaker 1: listened to it. And then Justin, our friend Justin convinced
- 23:11Speaker 1: me that it's it's incredible, and I was a fool
- 23:13Speaker 1: to not like it. I I I think, I again,
- 23:17Speaker 1: as someone who is not necessarily a swift T T M.
- 23:21Speaker 1: I don't love a lot of the tailorisms, and karma
- 23:25Speaker 1: has a lot of tailorisms. And because I just I don't,
- 23:28Speaker 1: I don't like cats. Okay, I don't like either, and
- 23:30Speaker 1: so I don't care out of the lyrical stylings of
- 23:34Speaker 1: the song. But the song on the pop level is
- 23:37Speaker 1: an amazing song, and I I think what I appreciated
- 23:40Speaker 1: it about it is like the thematic flipping of karma,
- 23:43Speaker 1: which is actually like truer to a lot of Buddhist
- 23:47Speaker 1: ideologies of karma, because in the kind of generic idea
- 23:50Speaker 1: of karma, we think about how you trip somebody on
- 23:54Speaker 1: the street and you're gonna get foreclosed on or something
- 23:58Speaker 1: you know a month later, like something ads going to
- 24:00Speaker 1: happen to you later if you do something bad. But
- 24:03Speaker 1: like a kind of truer idea of how karma actually
- 24:06Speaker 1: functions is simply put that good actions beget good results
- 24:12Speaker 1: and bad actions beget bad results. It's about energy, it's
- 24:15Speaker 1: about putting things out there and receiving them back into
- 24:19Speaker 1: the world because you're interested in contributing to the collectivism
- 24:23Speaker 1: of like what it means to be a person. And
- 24:26Speaker 1: I love how Taylor took that dichotomy and was like,
- 24:29Speaker 1: all you're putting out into the world is like negativity
- 24:32Speaker 1: and badness. And I have to tell you that like
- 24:33Speaker 1: karma to me is like the things in this world
- 24:35Speaker 1: that are worth living for um And I thought that
- 24:38Speaker 1: was my boyfriend, yes, which I think is is really
- 24:41Speaker 1: kind of beautiful and incredibly dumb but so fucking good.
- 24:48Speaker 1: Exactly exactly the big skips for me on this album.
- 24:52Speaker 1: I mean, while a lot of it is capable, Vigilante
- 24:55Speaker 1: Ship is one of the worst songs Sho's ever written.
- 24:57Speaker 1: It's like, it's like me level. And it's very telling
- 25:02Speaker 1: that she released the song credits. It's the only song
- 25:06Speaker 1: on the album that she wrote entirely by herself. And
- 25:09Speaker 1: I will say no more and then also sweet nothing
- 25:13Speaker 1: is a skip for me. She needs to stop writing
- 25:16Speaker 1: songs with her boyfriend. Oh yeah, I agree, But yeah,
- 25:21Speaker 1: I don't know even if this album felt like a
- 25:24Speaker 1: filler queen to me, if you give Carly a listen,
- 25:27Speaker 1: we should talk about it next week, but like I
- 25:29Speaker 1: felt like we'll definitely talk about it. I felt like
- 25:31Speaker 1: the sexiness that Taylor was vying for with Midnights was
- 25:39Speaker 1: nothing that Carly didn't already do with like warm Blood in,
- 25:43Speaker 1: you know what I mean. Like, and I I feel
- 25:45Speaker 1: like if she's going to do the downbeat album, that
- 25:49Speaker 1: she just does some things that are like actually outside
- 25:53Speaker 1: of all the tropes we already know, right, Like obviously
- 25:56Speaker 1: don't want Taylor to not be herself, but I do
- 25:59Speaker 1: think that she is constantly discovering new things about herself.
- 26:02Speaker 1: And I think that I wanted to pivot and this
- 26:04Speaker 1: wasn't a pivot. Yeah. I think part of it is
- 26:07Speaker 1: that we all, because the rollout of this album was
- 26:11Speaker 1: so opaque and there were no singles or anything, we
- 26:14Speaker 1: all grafted our ideas of what Taylor would do next
- 26:17Speaker 1: onto it, and that set us up for disappointment. Yeah. Wait, actually,
- 26:22Speaker 1: like if she had just dropped this album, I actually
- 26:25Speaker 1: think I would have liked it more. And and I
- 26:28Speaker 1: want to say again, I think the album is good. Yeah,
- 26:31Speaker 1: I like a lot of it, but it's not iconic.
- 26:35Speaker 1: It will not be in my Spotify wrapped. That's what
- 26:38Speaker 1: I'll say. It might be in mind because I will listen.
- 26:42Speaker 1: I will be listening to Karma brnow on the beach.
- 26:47Speaker 1: Would have could have shut a labyrinth over and over
- 26:49Speaker 1: again for the next week. Well you got, you got
- 26:53Speaker 1: a week. But nothing on this will will crack my
- 26:56Speaker 1: tailor top ten. I don't think do you want end
- 27:00Speaker 1: with your tailor top ten because I don't know if
- 27:02Speaker 1: I have a top ten, but I would love to
- 27:05Speaker 1: hear you. I'll do my top ten and this is
- 27:07Speaker 1: subject to change, but in no particular order. My tailor
- 27:10Speaker 1: top ten is Wildest Dreams, mirror Ball, August dancing with
- 27:16Speaker 1: her hands tied, state of Grace, IVY, tolerate it, out
- 27:21Speaker 1: of the woods, getaway car, you belong with me, And
- 27:25Speaker 1: then maybe on a certain day new romantics could edge
- 27:30Speaker 1: out and you belong with me out of the woods. God.
- 27:35Speaker 1: That chorus is so annoying, and it's still one of
- 27:38Speaker 1: her greatest songs ever written like it's incredible and it's
- 27:42Speaker 1: when it's when her working with Jack Antonov was exciting
- 27:46Speaker 1: and fresh and um Jack Jack, some Jack, take a vacation,
- 27:52Speaker 1: please say. And Taylor Swift work with the woman who
- 27:57Speaker 1: isn't Blake Lively, So listen, virgins, Happy Halloween. We here
- 28:20Speaker 1: at like a Virgin Enterprises have discussed vampires before. If
- 28:24Speaker 1: you haven't listened to our episodes on Buffy the Vampire
- 28:27Speaker 1: Slayer with Evan Ruscats and Twilight with Peyton Dix, please
- 28:31Speaker 1: go listen to them now. But I think what we
- 28:33Speaker 1: discussed when we were talking about our Halloween content and
- 28:36Speaker 1: trying to figure out what this episode would be on,
- 28:38Speaker 1: and like realizing we wanted to do vampires is the
- 28:40Speaker 1: vampire media we've covered already, not so much Buffy but Twilight. Really,
- 28:46Speaker 1: the vampires of Twilight are the straightest vampires to ever exist,
- 28:49Speaker 1: not even just straight like watered down, hyper conservative, hyper
- 28:55Speaker 1: patriarchal ideas of what like vampire romance can be. Yes, well,
- 28:59Speaker 1: it was famously written by a Mormon, is written by
- 29:01Speaker 1: a Mormon women who hated other women. And and as
- 29:04Speaker 1: we'll get into in this episode, the thing that I
- 29:07Speaker 1: think exists across almost every other type of vampire media
- 29:11Speaker 1: is that vampires are inherently and I would say essentially queer.
- 29:18Speaker 1: So because of that, we wanted to explore the full
- 29:22Speaker 1: breadth of vampires and culture and really dig into their
- 29:27Speaker 1: queerness and a lot of the other things that they
- 29:29Speaker 1: symbolize some of our favorite vampire media and tropes, some
- 29:33Speaker 1: of maybe our least favorite um and really kind of
- 29:37Speaker 1: sink our fangs and and I'm I'm sure I made
- 29:41Speaker 1: this joke again what we were doing Twilight or Buffy
- 29:43Speaker 1: we're going to sink we might not? Well, this is
- 29:47Speaker 1: interesting because usually I'm the one who doesn't remember. Well,
- 29:51Speaker 1: I mean, look, we are here to bring you the truth,
- 29:55Speaker 1: and the truth is that vampires are canonically, by I
- 29:59Speaker 1: feel queer, queer, canonically queer, but like definitely buying a
- 30:03Speaker 1: lot of the things we're talking about. I mean actually
- 30:05Speaker 1: like in terms of like vampire queerness, just to like
- 30:08Speaker 1: think about it. Top line as we go into the conversation,
- 30:11Speaker 1: like why do you think all vampires are queer in
- 30:14Speaker 1: all of these stories? Like is it because you've lived
- 30:18Speaker 1: for like a hundred years or so, And like if
- 30:20Speaker 1: you live for a hundred years, at a certain point
- 30:23Speaker 1: you're going to be like, what's the point of only
- 30:26Speaker 1: fucking one gender? You know what I mean? Like totally,
- 30:29Speaker 1: I think a lot of it is about immortality and
- 30:33Speaker 1: if we're being very literal about vampire stories. Yes, of course,
- 30:37Speaker 1: if you live forever, you're gonna be sucking and sucking
- 30:39Speaker 1: with everyone, no matter what gender they are. Actually, I
- 30:42Speaker 1: would even go as far to say that like heterosexon
- 30:46Speaker 1: and sucking, fucking and sucking, heterosexuality like doesn't really like
- 30:51Speaker 1: exist even or rather, I don't even believe in heterosexuality.
- 30:55Speaker 1: I feel like heterosexuality is just like an underdeveloped desire,
- 31:00Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's like and sometimes it takes
- 31:02Speaker 1: decades and decades and decades for you to have that
- 31:05Speaker 1: aha moment where you're like, oh my god, wait, Like
- 31:08Speaker 1: liberation means I can suck anything I want, totally. Vampires
- 31:11Speaker 1: are incredibly enlightened. I also think if you're thinking literally
- 31:14Speaker 1: about vampires, then I guess if you are using humans
- 31:18Speaker 1: for sustenance and are kind of, you know, not really
- 31:21Speaker 1: precious about whose blood you're sucking, then that probably also
- 31:25Speaker 1: translates into your desire for their flesh as well, right,
- 31:30Speaker 1: because blood is blood at the end of the day.
- 31:31Speaker 1: Though in a lot of different um vampire franchises, like
- 31:35Speaker 1: True Blood for example, not to hop right into it,
- 31:38Speaker 1: there is like a differentiation between like virgin blood or
- 31:42Speaker 1: like different kinds of people's bloods and how they have
- 31:44Speaker 1: different tastes or appeals or something like that. Can you
- 31:46Speaker 1: break that down well, even in Twilight. The whole way
- 31:50Speaker 1: that Twilight starts is that Bella's blood smells better to
- 31:54Speaker 1: Edward than anyone else's blood has ever smelled, right, and
- 31:57Speaker 1: in part because she's not like other girls, in part
- 32:00Speaker 1: because she's not like other girls, and also in part
- 32:03Speaker 1: because she's a virgin. Don't think virginity it's I mean,
- 32:05Speaker 1: maybe it's like kind of implicit, but it's it's we're
- 32:10Speaker 1: to understand that it would be the same whether she
- 32:13Speaker 1: was a virgin or not. So all that being said,
- 32:15Speaker 1: those are kind of the little reasons why I think
- 32:18Speaker 1: vampires are gay, or buy or queer. I think when
- 32:22Speaker 1: we're talking metaphorically and vampires, I think, of all monsters
- 32:29Speaker 1: that exist, are the most metaphorical. Um. I think vampires
- 32:35Speaker 1: always represent what people of the time that the stories
- 32:40Speaker 1: they're set in are afraid of. So that's why I
- 32:44Speaker 1: think a lot of vampires are queer, because that's something
- 32:47Speaker 1: that society fears, his queerness. Um. And as I think
- 32:52Speaker 1: we have progressed as a society, that's probably why vampires
- 32:56Speaker 1: have gotten more explicitly queer in the media that they
- 32:59Speaker 1: are depicted in. UM. But you know, we'll we'll like
- 33:04Speaker 1: get to that. But I think, um, you know, if
- 33:06Speaker 1: we want to look back at the origins of vampires,
- 33:09Speaker 1: this is very much true because you know, I think
- 33:12Speaker 1: everyone thinks about Dracula as the o g vampire story,
- 33:17Speaker 1: and in many ways it is. It is in that
- 33:21Speaker 1: UM it's taught in like school high school canons, and
- 33:24Speaker 1: like is regarded as it's like translated all like in
- 33:27Speaker 1: every single language. And yeah, it's in literary quote unquote cannon,
- 33:30Speaker 1: which you know must be said is just kind of
- 33:33Speaker 1: like a cis white classes kind of contract. But in truth,
- 33:39Speaker 1: Dracula is actually predated by Carmilla, which was written in
- 33:43Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two by Sheridan uh Lif a new UM.
- 33:47Speaker 1: It's a Gothic novella and it shares a lot of
- 33:50Speaker 1: similarities with Dracula, and that it's you know, a first
- 33:54Speaker 1: person account. Um. It's about a powerful aristocratic figure you're
- 34:00Speaker 1: who praise on people, but in this case the vampires,
- 34:03Speaker 1: a woman whose name is Carmila, who praise on women,
- 34:05Speaker 1: and it is it's a woman who praised on women. Yes,
- 34:08Speaker 1: it is very explicitly sapphic. So you're saying that, like
- 34:12Speaker 1: this prototypical vampire story, one that literally predated what people
- 34:16Speaker 1: think of as the most famous vampire story, was one
- 34:20Speaker 1: that was kind of explicitly gay, explicitly gay. So from
- 34:24Speaker 1: so from the beginning, I never heard this. Yes, so
- 34:27Speaker 1: from the beginning of when we've been telling vampire stories,
- 34:30Speaker 1: they have always been gay. But I think also what
- 34:35Speaker 1: is inextricably linked to Carmila and also to Dracula is
- 34:39Speaker 1: the fact that the villains in both of those stories
- 34:41Speaker 1: are also part of the aristocracy. And so, like I said,
- 34:46Speaker 1: you know, vampires always reflect the things that people are
- 34:49Speaker 1: afraid of at the time, and what people were afraid
- 34:52Speaker 1: of an angry with at the time was the aristocracy.
- 34:56Speaker 1: Who you know, we're like literally feeding off of the
- 35:00Speaker 1: common people when you think about like totalism and serfs,
- 35:03Speaker 1: And that is where the idea of this aristocratic vampire
- 35:07Speaker 1: who lives in a castle and then like sneaks out
- 35:10Speaker 1: at night to prey on the common folk comes from.
- 35:12Speaker 1: Wait wait wait wait wait, So okay, okay. The Gothic
- 35:15Speaker 1: iterations of vampires were like low key commentary about like
- 35:22Speaker 1: classes on basically, so what you're saying is um, what's
- 35:26Speaker 1: his name, Sheridan Lifa new was like the Bernie Sanders
- 35:29Speaker 1: of his time. He was really trying to shed light
- 35:33Speaker 1: on the upper class, maybe not Bernie's. Actually didn't know.
- 35:36Speaker 1: I had no idea that I'm hearing this for the
- 35:38Speaker 1: first time, but I do think it's kind of wacky.
- 35:41Speaker 1: As you pointed out that not just in like Carmela,
- 35:44Speaker 1: but like so many iterations of like vampire stories we
- 35:49Speaker 1: have now, they're always aristocrats. I think vampires are supposed
- 35:53Speaker 1: to be both what we fear and what we want
- 35:55Speaker 1: to be. UM, So, you know, they represent our fears
- 35:59Speaker 1: about the the ruling class who are literally draining as dry,
- 36:03Speaker 1: but also you know, aspirational wealth and aspirational immortality, and
- 36:09Speaker 1: also aspirational freedom to live as you want to to,
- 36:13Speaker 1: you know, be unbound by the restrictions of society, as
- 36:18Speaker 1: Carmela is, as Dracula is, and even as some of
- 36:22Speaker 1: Dracula's victims are, because you know, you think about the
- 36:26Speaker 1: character Lucy and Dracula, who is the woman who he
- 36:30Speaker 1: prays on who becomes a vampire. I mean, especially in
- 36:34Speaker 1: bram Stoker's Dracula, the movie version starring Gary Oldman went
- 36:37Speaker 1: on a writer which I've never seen. It's it's like
- 36:41Speaker 1: one of the most beautiful movies I've ever seen, directed
- 36:43Speaker 1: by Francis Ford Coppla um Lucy when she gets turned
- 36:48Speaker 1: into a vampire, like she throughout the whole like beginning
- 36:52Speaker 1: of the movie has been this like, you know, attractive
- 36:55Speaker 1: and like desirable woman who three suitors proposed to her
- 36:59Speaker 1: on the same day and her like fighting over her hand.
- 37:01Speaker 1: But when she becomes a vampire, like she reaches this
- 37:04Speaker 1: sort of like ecstatic, um, you know, new height of
- 37:08Speaker 1: like her own like beauty and power and um. You
- 37:11Speaker 1: know that's what you know in different vampire media, like
- 37:16Speaker 1: being a vampire or something to either be afraid of
- 37:20Speaker 1: in in cases where vampires are more monstrous, but when
- 37:23Speaker 1: they're more you know, seductive, you want to become a vampire. Yeah,
- 37:29Speaker 1: And I think in the seduction narratives, which you can
- 37:32Speaker 1: find obviously in An Rice's books in Twilight and True Blood,
- 37:37Speaker 1: there's this kind of tension between like vampire and victim
- 37:41Speaker 1: that is sometimes emotional, sometimes romantic, right, And and I
- 37:45Speaker 1: think it's like getting at this this metaphor you're building
- 37:48Speaker 1: on about like forbidden desire, right about how the vampire
- 37:53Speaker 1: is a dangerous love that you know is kind of
- 37:57Speaker 1: not good for you. But at the same time, there
- 37:59Speaker 1: is a liberatory power in becoming a vampire, or at
- 38:04Speaker 1: least having access to what a vampire has access to
- 38:08Speaker 1: in immortality, in like centuries old wisdom, in a lot
- 38:12Speaker 1: of different things that vampire's wield in addition to protection.
- 38:16Speaker 1: If you're on the vampire's good side. Yeah, well, I mean,
- 38:18Speaker 1: you know you speaking of like liberation. That's an interview
- 38:23Speaker 1: with the vampire when Listat is offering Louie the Dark
- 38:27Speaker 1: Gift as they call as Anne Rice calls it, you know,
- 38:30Speaker 1: he talks about setting him free because when when interview
- 38:33Speaker 1: with the Vampire starts, when his when Louie's story starts,
- 38:36Speaker 1: he has lost his wife and child. He you know,
- 38:40Speaker 1: is depressed. He's just like going out and whoring and
- 38:43Speaker 1: like he doesn't want to be alive anymore. And list
- 38:46Speaker 1: Stat offers to liberate him from that life and offer him,
- 38:51Speaker 1: you know, immortality, which is funny because this is a
- 38:53Speaker 1: man who's clearly trying to die and someone just offers
- 38:57Speaker 1: him the most life you can have, but a better
- 39:01Speaker 1: but a better version of it? Right, It is kind
- 39:04Speaker 1: of a trick, or at least I mean, let's get
- 39:05Speaker 1: into interview with a vampire honestly, because what that ends
- 39:08Speaker 1: up becoming is like he immediately Louis immediately regrets it
- 39:11Speaker 1: or regrets it pretty quickly, where he's like, oh, this
- 39:13Speaker 1: is a different kind of misery than I was experiencing before.
- 39:18Speaker 1: And because he also didn't realize that he would have
- 39:20Speaker 1: to kill people to survive, which is stupid. It's like, girl,
- 39:24Speaker 1: did you not read the fine print here like this
- 39:26Speaker 1: that you are a vampire? Now? Um, would you if
- 39:29Speaker 1: you were at your rock bottom you would become a vampire? Right?
- 39:32Speaker 1: I don't think I would need to be at my
- 39:33Speaker 1: rock bottom. But the thing is immortality not appealing to you,
- 39:39Speaker 1: no no, no, no no no no, but want to live forever?
- 39:43Speaker 1: But being a vampire very your tea. Yeah, so okay,
- 39:46Speaker 1: I guess this. Can vampire's commit suicide? Yeah? Sure, there's
- 39:50Speaker 1: vampires commit suicide all the time. It's the whole plot
- 39:53Speaker 1: of New Moon. Yeah. Wait, really another way is that
- 39:57Speaker 1: the second or third one? That's the second Tilight movie? Okay, yeah,
- 39:59Speaker 1: I've never seen one. I have seen thee when when
- 40:01Speaker 1: Edward finds out that Bella he he thinks that Bella
- 40:05Speaker 1: has died. He tries to kill himself and just for
- 40:08Speaker 1: the virgins. In case you forgot, I have seen the
- 40:11Speaker 1: first Twilight movie, but in four different sittings and and
- 40:15Speaker 1: different attempts, different attempts, different excerpts, kind of connected and
- 40:20Speaker 1: stitched together. Have not seen the second one, have seen
- 40:23Speaker 1: the third one, did not see The fourth movie is
- 40:26Speaker 1: their fifth movie. Yes, I have not seen the fifth
- 40:28Speaker 1: movie either. It's okay, you'll you'll get around to it
- 40:32Speaker 1: one day, I'm sure. But okay, what I want to
- 40:35Speaker 1: be a vampire? I guess you could always just kill
- 40:39Speaker 1: your because that's that's the one thing for me is
- 40:42Speaker 1: like immortality zero appealed to me. Being a vampire sounds
- 40:45Speaker 1: kind of hot. And I don't really understand the appeal
- 40:48Speaker 1: of living forever. I actually think that, I mean, and
- 40:53Speaker 1: I'm not saying this is like a you know, sad
- 40:55Speaker 1: tumbler girl. I'm I'm being truly honest, like I'm not
- 40:58Speaker 1: being funny. Like death is very comforting to me. Knowing
- 41:02Speaker 1: that one day all of this will be over is
- 41:05Speaker 1: very comforting to me. The most you thing you could
- 41:07Speaker 1: possibly this um, and at certain times it's more comforting
- 41:13Speaker 1: than maybe it should be. Um. But yeah, the idea
- 41:17Speaker 1: of living forever. I mean, I think that's why vampires
- 41:19Speaker 1: are both appealing and terrifying, because they are you know,
- 41:24Speaker 1: also in vampire media, vampires are either of you know,
- 41:28Speaker 1: very evil characters or very tragic characters. And I think
- 41:32Speaker 1: and Rice particularly gets that duality really well, of them
- 41:38Speaker 1: being these monsters but also these like very tragic heroes.
- 41:44Speaker 1: Wait can we can we also just like have a
- 41:47Speaker 1: quick aside while we're talking about like living forever? What what? Even?
- 41:52Speaker 1: There's so many movies and TV shows and books where
- 41:55Speaker 1: like the central goal is some sort of attempt to
- 42:00Speaker 1: eve immortalent Baltimore wants to live forever. It's like, why
- 42:03Speaker 1: would you want that? Like Tuck everlasting? No, thank you?
- 42:06Speaker 1: I mean a lot of times it's tied up in power.
- 42:08Speaker 1: It's people who are powerful want to keep their power
- 42:11Speaker 1: for the fountain of youth Like no, does not appeal Like, um,
- 42:16Speaker 1: what especially don't understand? Yeah, like people in medieval times,
- 42:19Speaker 1: why would you want to live forever? Where like when
- 42:21Speaker 1: like you're bathing once once a season? Yeah, holy grail,
- 42:25Speaker 1: holy flop. No, actually, but like if you that's actually
- 42:34Speaker 1: if you are trying to live longer, you know, you're
- 42:39Speaker 1: going on your daily jogs or whatever because you like
- 42:41Speaker 1: want to live longer. It's like grow up, grow up,
- 42:45Speaker 1: you want to live on a planet that's dying. That's
- 42:47Speaker 1: the thing that's vampires are going to ostensibly are going
- 42:51Speaker 1: to live until the this world is burned to dust,
- 42:55Speaker 1: and then what are they going to be? Just like
- 42:57Speaker 1: floating in space? Some of you you never read Tuck
- 43:01Speaker 1: ever Lasting in high school, and it shows um that
- 43:03Speaker 1: is like the central like I think lesson of it
- 43:05Speaker 1: is you know him Charlie and I always used to
- 43:07Speaker 1: joke that, like the twink from Talk ever Lasting is
- 43:11Speaker 1: the perfect twink, and so sometimes I would like send
- 43:14Speaker 1: her like a cute boy and be like he's giving talk,
- 43:16Speaker 1: he's giving talk. He is so twinky, and he's Twinkie forever.
- 43:34Speaker 1: The thing to me that appeals in most about being
- 43:38Speaker 1: a vampire would be the version of like vampires where
- 43:42Speaker 1: there is community, because like in Anne Rice is like
- 43:44Speaker 1: vampire stories, vampires are very isolated and like wander or
- 43:49Speaker 1: at least in the interview with a vampire should say
- 43:51Speaker 1: it's like they're kind of wandering earth looking for each other,
- 43:54Speaker 1: very sparse where you know, um in something like True
- 43:57Speaker 1: Blood or Twilight or whatever. They've kind of found their covens,
- 44:01Speaker 1: their communes. But that's also what sets off the whole
- 44:04Speaker 1: plot of interview with the vampires that Lestat doesn't want
- 44:07Speaker 1: to be alone anymore and sees the opportunity for companionship
- 44:11Speaker 1: with Louie, and then when he sees that Louie is
- 44:14Speaker 1: unhappy with their life together, uses Claudia as a way
- 44:18Speaker 1: to bind him even closer to him, and they become
- 44:22Speaker 1: this little family which you know eventually sours um. And
- 44:27Speaker 1: I mean through different and Rice novels there are the
- 44:30Speaker 1: vampireson and Rice universe also do have covens and families
- 44:34Speaker 1: and um, you know there are lovers who stay together
- 44:37Speaker 1: for centuries um. But yes, a lot of and Rice
- 44:41Speaker 1: vampires are loners. And for the virgins that the plot
- 44:45Speaker 1: that rose just outlined, Listat is Tom Cruise, Louie is
- 44:49Speaker 1: Brad pitt Um, and then the girl what's her name again,
- 44:52Speaker 1: Claudia Claudia by a young Kirston done um kind of
- 44:57Speaker 1: doing some of her best work. They are fully like
- 45:02Speaker 1: a like kind of modern family as like gay Dad's scenario,
- 45:07Speaker 1: like they are a chosen family unit period like and
- 45:11Speaker 1: now not biologically related at all. And that is very
- 45:14Speaker 1: explicit in her books and Rice and Rice Never sucked
- 45:18Speaker 1: around was saying that they were lovers. Wait wait in
- 45:23Speaker 1: the I'm sorry, this is this is like actually quintessential
- 45:26Speaker 1: fran and like the like a virgin kind of conversation
- 45:29Speaker 1: I read, I watched the movie, did not really read
- 45:31Speaker 1: the wikipiti page or book. They're gay in the book.
- 45:34Speaker 1: They're gay in the book. Yeah, they're lovers. But this
- 45:37Speaker 1: is the thing. When we say lovers, we're talking about love.
- 45:41Speaker 1: We are not talking about sex. Because canonically, in the
- 45:46Speaker 1: Vampire Chronicles and Rice's universe, vampires don't fuck what so
- 45:52Speaker 1: so her idea of vampiresm is that because their blood
- 45:59Speaker 1: does not flow, they can't get erect and so and
- 46:04Speaker 1: and also you know, she clearly has this very regressive
- 46:08Speaker 1: idea and like regressive and binary idea of sexuality, which
- 46:11Speaker 1: is that the only kind of sexuality exists is one
- 46:15Speaker 1: with an ennetration um. But yes, according to her, vampires
- 46:19Speaker 1: do not have that kind of physical urge to fuck,
- 46:22Speaker 1: and so they you know, they kiss and they like
- 46:26Speaker 1: caress and they're very sensual, but they don't have sex.
- 46:30Speaker 1: They are sexless. Wait, I was kind of turned off
- 46:34Speaker 1: by what you were describing. But now when when you
- 46:37Speaker 1: think about the kind of like, um, the thematic device
- 46:40Speaker 1: that becomes where it's just like when you take sex
- 46:42Speaker 1: out of romanticism, but it's still a romance because it
- 46:45Speaker 1: really is. It's a sensual sensuality and not sexual And
- 46:48Speaker 1: that really shows up in the movie, Like there is
- 46:51Speaker 1: an homootic charge between like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise,
- 46:56Speaker 1: but it's never really explicit. It's only something that you
- 47:00Speaker 1: read into, Like there's a moment where Tom Cruise like
- 47:03Speaker 1: usurped this kind of twink, but like you never see him,
- 47:05Speaker 1: like you know, kiss him or anything like that. Like
- 47:08Speaker 1: it's it's kind of in the scene with them where
- 47:10Speaker 1: they killed the woman and the dogs, the little fop guy. Um. Yes,
- 47:16Speaker 1: but from what I've heard, so there is a new
- 47:18Speaker 1: um interview with the Vampire series coming out. It will
- 47:21Speaker 1: already be out at the time this episode comes out.
- 47:24Speaker 1: It's coming on on AMC. This is part of a
- 47:28Speaker 1: deal that was kind of put into play even before
- 47:32Speaker 1: Anne Rice died to make a new kind of vampire
- 47:36Speaker 1: chronicles like Cinematic Universe, but I think it's mostly happening
- 47:39Speaker 1: on TV and in the show The Vampires. I mean,
- 47:43Speaker 1: I've seen trailers and read a couple of reviews. They
- 47:46Speaker 1: are very explicitly explicitly gay. So you said you watched
- 47:52Speaker 1: Queen of the Damned. I watched, well, I had it
- 47:54Speaker 1: on background when I was writing notes for the show.
- 47:56Speaker 1: But I did like kind of stopped too every time
- 47:58Speaker 1: a Leah was on screen, which was not that much like, yeah,
- 48:02Speaker 1: I would, you know, go over and see her makeup
- 48:04Speaker 1: looked so good. That's not the movie was. That's not
- 48:06Speaker 1: very gay at all. No, and the movie, I mean
- 48:09Speaker 1: I knew that the movie was not um well received
- 48:13Speaker 1: um and also that was oh really, I loved it, Okay.
- 48:18Speaker 1: I went to see it the day it opened alone.
- 48:21Speaker 1: I was not that actively engaged in it, so it
- 48:23Speaker 1: can't be like a fair judge, but it was. I
- 48:25Speaker 1: felt like there it could have been way more thrilling.
- 48:27Speaker 1: But I thought that the rebranding of Liststat as a
- 48:30Speaker 1: rock Star is like so cool. The whole soundtrack for
- 48:33Speaker 1: that movie is amazing, And I think that vampires as
- 48:37Speaker 1: rock Stars or honestly just like any time, um, someone
- 48:41Speaker 1: wants to have a new take on a vampire like that,
- 48:44Speaker 1: I'm just immediately engaged. And I also I guess this
- 48:48Speaker 1: it was tragically like all shot right before lead was
- 48:51Speaker 1: the last thing she did before she died. Yeah, and
- 48:54Speaker 1: they the movie's dedicated. It came out, it came out
- 48:56Speaker 1: after her death. It's it's posthumous. But it's very different
- 49:00Speaker 1: from the book. Um. The book is much goes much
- 49:03Speaker 1: deeper into the lore of how the vampires were created
- 49:09Speaker 1: and how Akasha came to be, which I think is
- 49:12Speaker 1: really interesting. I found out a really fun factor when
- 49:17Speaker 1: I was reading about Queen of the Damn. Apparently, when
- 49:19Speaker 1: they were filming that like kind of concert seen in
- 49:22Speaker 1: Death Valley, they filled like busses with over three thousand
- 49:27Speaker 1: goths and transported them to the Melbourne night clubs. That
- 49:32Speaker 1: is so powerful. Three thousand goths, three thousand goths on
- 49:38Speaker 1: on a bus to death How much eyeliner? That is.
- 49:41Speaker 1: The whole way that Queen of the Damn starts is
- 49:43Speaker 1: that list out is like, well, I'm bored, so I'm
- 49:45Speaker 1: gonna go sleep for a couple of decades, and then
- 49:48Speaker 1: the only thing that wakes him up is he hears
- 49:50Speaker 1: rock and roll and he's like, Okay, I'm gonna be
- 49:52Speaker 1: a rock starter. Here we Go. Yeah, and there's also
- 49:55Speaker 1: Here we Go. Can you imagine God doing a vampire
- 49:59Speaker 1: version of song? Gaga literally has played a vampire. She
- 50:02Speaker 1: was the Countess an American Horror Story Hotel. The Countess
- 50:06Speaker 1: is a vampire. Yeah, did you not watch Hotel? No?
- 50:08Speaker 1: I haven't. I would love to forgot to put that
- 50:11Speaker 1: on the list as a hotel. It's a it's a weird.
- 50:13Speaker 1: Is that the only HS that has like true vampires
- 50:16Speaker 1: in it? Because I don't remember any other vampires. I think, Wow,
- 50:20Speaker 1: I didn't watch Double Feature, which was the most recent season,
- 50:23Speaker 1: but I don't think those were vampire. I don't think
- 50:25Speaker 1: anybody has watched any recent season of American Horror Story
- 50:28Speaker 1: or I have yet to meet one. Okay, so back
- 50:31Speaker 1: to Anne Rice. You know, her vampires I think are
- 50:36Speaker 1: gay but sexless. Which is probably why Anne Rice was
- 50:39Speaker 1: so against fan fiction. Is because all people wanted to
- 50:42Speaker 1: do was make them was make them fuck, and and
- 50:44Speaker 1: Rice was like, no, you can't take my toys and
- 50:46Speaker 1: make them kiss, which is like, it's like, you know,
- 50:48Speaker 1: it's really shitty when creators like that, but said she
- 50:51Speaker 1: used to send out cease and desist letters. That's so bad,
- 50:55Speaker 1: I know. But she did later change her views on
- 50:58Speaker 1: fan fiction and said she was fine with it. She
- 51:00Speaker 1: also did become a born again Christian very late in life,
- 51:03Speaker 1: and so a lot of the later Vampire Chronicles books
- 51:07Speaker 1: are very religious and like have lots of weird God
- 51:10Speaker 1: should in them. Also you find out that maybe vampires
- 51:13Speaker 1: are aliens or like we're descended from aliens. I don't know.
- 51:18Speaker 1: It got weird towards the end. But the virgins can't
- 51:20Speaker 1: see my face, but I'm really scowling now. The idea
- 51:22Speaker 1: of Christian vampires sounds like loser behavior. But you know,
- 51:26Speaker 1: Anne Rice did move vampires in a gayer direction in
- 51:30Speaker 1: the culture. And I think the thing that really was
- 51:33Speaker 1: the final nail in the coffin, Tomato Tomatotato was And
- 51:40Speaker 1: I know we're skipping over Buffy, but we have talked
- 51:42Speaker 1: about Buffy at length. Um, And Buffy was not very
- 51:45Speaker 1: gay besides Willow, and she was only a vampire in
- 51:48Speaker 1: a couple episodes. Um, And I mean it is interesting
- 51:51Speaker 1: that the first time she was gay was when she
- 51:53Speaker 1: was a vampire. But the thing that was the finally
- 51:55Speaker 1: on the coffin, huh, was True Blood, which I think
- 51:58Speaker 1: is kind of the first real mainstream media property in
- 52:06Speaker 1: which vampires were fucking gay like and also very bisexual
- 52:13Speaker 1: and and not in like there were a couple of
- 52:16Speaker 1: gay vampires that every vampire on that show was that
- 52:21Speaker 1: was bisexual like like truly by like tread and true
- 52:23Speaker 1: by and effortlessly by like it was never really or
- 52:27Speaker 1: rather sorry, I've only watched the first three episodes, but
- 52:29Speaker 1: like I, from what I understand, it is not like, um,
- 52:34Speaker 1: there's not a lot of they don't problematize things that
- 52:36Speaker 1: are usually kind of considered like socially wary and like
- 52:40Speaker 1: our our universes. And something that was really interesting to
- 52:43Speaker 1: me was just like how, um, every character in the
- 52:45Speaker 1: show is really hot and an immediate erotic tension between
- 52:51Speaker 1: pretty much every character as soon as they enter any room. Yes,
- 52:54Speaker 1: and that really is doubled down on throughout the series,
- 52:58Speaker 1: which ran for I think eight seasons. Maybe what would
- 53:02Speaker 1: your take be on like the ark of True Blood
- 53:04Speaker 1: in terms of like quality or a fan reception, or
- 53:07Speaker 1: even just your personal experience of watching the show, Because
- 53:09Speaker 1: you're such a kind of a die hard fan. Yeah,
- 53:12Speaker 1: so I would say it really captured the public consciousness
- 53:16Speaker 1: kind of immediately. It was very much that must watch
- 53:19Speaker 1: Sunday night show. Um. It also got some early awards
- 53:24Speaker 1: recognition and a pack when won a Golden Globe for
- 53:26Speaker 1: the first season, which is a bit of an l
- 53:29Speaker 1: I would never expect that because the sex scenes are
- 53:32Speaker 1: really porny, like really good, but it was, um, you know,
- 53:35Speaker 1: it was the kind of cultural phenomenon where there's a
- 53:38Speaker 1: really iconic rolling stone cover of Anna Paquin and Alexander
- 53:42Speaker 1: scars Garden, the actor who played Bill, and they're covered
- 53:45Speaker 1: in blood. So it was like it was that kind
- 53:47Speaker 1: of pop culture phenomenon. In terms of quality, season two
- 53:52Speaker 1: is incredible, Season three is also incredible. Season four it
- 53:56Speaker 1: kind of starts getting weird and then it declines. It
- 53:59Speaker 1: is a decline from there, and then the final season
- 54:03Speaker 1: is awful and truly the serious finale is the worst
- 54:06Speaker 1: serious finale of any TV show I have ever seen,
- 54:10Speaker 1: worsting Game of Thrones. Yeah, wow, that's saying something. Yeah,
- 54:13Speaker 1: we're so I mean, on par with Game of Thrones.
- 54:17Speaker 1: But you know, the first couple of seasons are so good,
- 54:20Speaker 1: and you know, you have someone like Alan Ball, who
- 54:23Speaker 1: did American Beauty. He Um was the creator of six
- 54:27Speaker 1: ft Under and this was I think kind of um
- 54:33Speaker 1: at the time, maybe like a surprising thing for him
- 54:35Speaker 1: to do was adapt these So I don't know if
- 54:38Speaker 1: you know this, but True Blood is based off of
- 54:41Speaker 1: a series of romance novels by Charlene Harris, the Sukie
- 54:46Speaker 1: Stackhouse novels, The Suki Stacks. Now, I cannot believe. When
- 54:51Speaker 1: I watched episode one, was like, what's your name? Sick
- 54:55Speaker 1: stack Has And I'm like, Bill is not hot, No,
- 55:02Speaker 1: he is. He is sexy. He is the sexiest he
- 55:04Speaker 1: will ever be in the entire show, in the pilot
- 55:07Speaker 1: and then never again. Well he does get uglier actually,
- 55:11Speaker 1: but I'm not I'm not saying that he was sexy.
- 55:13Speaker 1: I'm saying he is the sexiest he ever was in
- 55:16Speaker 1: the pilot and then never again. Yeah, he looks like
- 55:19Speaker 1: like an Easter Easter Island like kind of egghead. And
- 55:23Speaker 1: this is also a problem that a lot of vampire
- 55:25Speaker 1: media has to contend with, which is that these shows
- 55:28Speaker 1: going for so long in the actor's age, yet they're
- 55:30Speaker 1: supposed to be playing immortal character. Yeah. I think that's
- 55:35Speaker 1: especially bad with sort of teen vampire stuff. I think
- 55:38Speaker 1: with you know, elderly vampires, you can fudget a little bit,
- 55:43Speaker 1: but it is a bit of a problem. But as
- 55:45Speaker 1: I was saying, you know, this was I think a
- 55:48Speaker 1: surprising thing for for for Alan Ball to do when
- 55:52Speaker 1: it came out, but you know, he talked about it
- 55:55Speaker 1: a lot of the time as and I think it's
- 55:58Speaker 1: very obvious in the show right from the beginning that
- 56:01Speaker 1: the vampires are a direct metaphor for Queerness. I mean
- 56:06Speaker 1: they talk about how the vampires came out of the
- 56:09Speaker 1: coffin and revealed themselves. And I think it's a really
- 56:13Speaker 1: interesting premisephore a show which is not only this you know,
- 56:16Speaker 1: like Southern Gothic romantic melodrama, but also what would the
- 56:20Speaker 1: world be like if all of a sudden we were
- 56:22Speaker 1: living alongside vampires? Right? The humans versus vampires trope I
- 56:27Speaker 1: think is probably most effective in this show than any
- 56:31Speaker 1: other like vampire thing that I have watched, because it's
- 56:36Speaker 1: it's honestly giving a little X men like there is
- 56:38Speaker 1: this totally this new class of people that are societally
- 56:42Speaker 1: ostracized because of you know, their their history and their
- 56:46Speaker 1: kind of like conception of this group of people, and
- 56:49Speaker 1: vampires are like, um, vampires are no more violent than humans.
- 56:53Speaker 1: Didn't you guys start wars? Didn't you guys have slaves?
- 56:55Speaker 1: Like vampires never had slaves, You know what I mean.
- 56:58Speaker 1: It's like, I thought that was so interesting. I was
- 57:00Speaker 1: kind of shook by when did this? When did the
- 57:02Speaker 1: When was the pilot like early odds like it was
- 57:04Speaker 1: UM two thousands seven maybe yeah, And in the first
- 57:08Speaker 1: episode there's a literal, like an almost literal Karen in
- 57:12Speaker 1: the first episode where she's like, can't speak to the
- 57:14Speaker 1: manager and she's kind of accosting Um the black the
- 57:17Speaker 1: black character. I can't remember her name. She's amazing. I'm
- 57:20Speaker 1: I'm very I'm just just watched the show last night, UM,
- 57:23Speaker 1: and Kara does say UM. One thing I like that
- 57:26Speaker 1: she says is in I think the third episode when
- 57:30Speaker 1: she's covering for Jason UM, and she says that she
- 57:34Speaker 1: didn't when she's lying and saying she didn't want anyone
- 57:36Speaker 1: to know because of them being an interracial relationship. And
- 57:39Speaker 1: she even says, like, you know, everyone thinks that now
- 57:42Speaker 1: with vampires that people don't care as much about race,
- 57:45Speaker 1: but they still do. And like, I think that's such
- 57:47Speaker 1: an interesting thing to throw into the mixes, like what
- 57:51Speaker 1: happens to oppression and you know, like the way that
- 57:56Speaker 1: people are marginalized when a new marginalized classes introduced, you know,
- 58:01Speaker 1: like this late into society. Yeah, it was. It was
- 58:04Speaker 1: an amazing like mini monologue. And it was funny because
- 58:07Speaker 1: it's like it was a full lie to like cover
- 58:09Speaker 1: the ass of like her crush essentially. But she was
- 58:12Speaker 1: but she was so smart. She was like she was like,
- 58:14Speaker 1: all y'all are out here like staring at anapaquin or
- 58:17Speaker 1: whatever for like wanting to get with a vampire, but
- 58:19Speaker 1: like people stare at us an interracial couple couple like
- 58:22Speaker 1: every day or whatever. And I was like, damn, Like
- 58:24Speaker 1: that is a metaphor. Yeah, and sometimes on True Leod
- 58:27Speaker 1: the metaphor is very heavy handed, but but it works
- 58:30Speaker 1: and it's i mean, True Blood is so hot. The
- 58:33Speaker 1: sex scenes are so good and it is really all
- 58:37Speaker 1: every character is by. Every character has some kind of
- 58:42Speaker 1: same sex encounter at some point in the show. Something
- 58:46Speaker 1: that is introduced pretty early on I think you'll have
- 58:48Speaker 1: already seen it is that when the vampires give a
- 58:51Speaker 1: human their blood, it means that they start having sexy
- 58:54Speaker 1: dreams about them. Right, Wait, I didn't. Okay, when humans
- 58:57Speaker 1: drinking vampire blood is something that also happens in Rice,
- 59:00Speaker 1: what is this trope? I don't. I didn't actually totally
- 59:02Speaker 1: understand it when I was watching True Blood. Well, it's
- 59:04Speaker 1: something that is used in different ways in different kinds
- 59:08Speaker 1: of vampire stories. So usually the way that someone has
- 59:12Speaker 1: turned into a vampires being fed vampire blood, but a
- 59:15Speaker 1: lot of different vampire media also uses vampire blood as
- 59:20Speaker 1: a way to heal humans. Um. I think True Blood
- 59:25Speaker 1: is the only one at this scale that introduces the
- 59:32Speaker 1: idea of vampire blood is an aphrodisiac and even a drug.
- 59:36Speaker 1: And that gets even further complicated later into the first
- 59:39Speaker 1: season where you see people who are addicted to v UM,
- 59:44Speaker 1: which I think is really fun and interesting that it's
- 59:46Speaker 1: this like psychedelic drug that can also like heal your wounds.
- 59:49Speaker 1: Oh my god. It becomes like an underground kind of
- 59:52Speaker 1: like drug moment um, the kind of U and I
- 59:55Speaker 1: would do v in a second. The if you don't know,
- 59:59Speaker 1: actually the miss of True Blood, I think the premises
- 1:00:01Speaker 1: like brilliant um. Basically UM vampires have like kind of
- 1:00:05Speaker 1: revealed themselves to some extent in society and are asking
- 1:00:09Speaker 1: for the same rights that humans have, and they're asking
- 1:00:11Speaker 1: to like live peacefully and civilly among humans. And obviously
- 1:00:15Speaker 1: there's a huge class of humans, usually humans that are
- 1:00:17Speaker 1: kind of moved by Christianity, that don't want vampires to
- 1:00:21Speaker 1: be a part of their society. And vampires are like, look,
- 1:00:23Speaker 1: there's this new thing called true blood that is synthetically
- 1:00:26Speaker 1: created blood that we can satiate ourselves with so we
- 1:00:30Speaker 1: never have to drink human blood, so y'all are safe,
- 1:00:32Speaker 1: which obviously the pilot is revealing that that's not you know,
- 1:00:35Speaker 1: people still eat humans and whatever. Yeah, there's also a
- 1:00:38Speaker 1: you know, class of vampires who didn't want to come
- 1:00:41Speaker 1: out of the coffin and who still want to exist
- 1:00:44Speaker 1: on the fringes of society so that they can do
- 1:00:47Speaker 1: whatever they want. And that is an ongoing tension throughout
- 1:00:50Speaker 1: the series. Also, every season of the show kind of
- 1:00:53Speaker 1: introduces a new supernatural creature um who becomes kind of
- 1:00:58Speaker 1: a focal point and in racks with the others. But
- 1:01:01Speaker 1: you know, we're obviously mostly concerned about the vampires. But
- 1:01:04Speaker 1: back to what I was saying about the the ingesting
- 1:01:07Speaker 1: vampire blood, is something that happens over and over again,
- 1:01:10Speaker 1: is you know, like a human character will get seriously
- 1:01:14Speaker 1: injured and they have to have some vampire blood and
- 1:01:16Speaker 1: then they start having sex dreams of the vampire. So
- 1:01:19Speaker 1: that happens with Sam and Bill at one point they
- 1:01:23Speaker 1: kind of a sexy scene. It happens with Jason and Eric.
- 1:01:28Speaker 1: Jason has a gay thing. Oh yeah, Jason has a
- 1:01:31Speaker 1: couple of gay things. What Jason. There's a really great
- 1:01:36Speaker 1: gay vampire who's in love with Jason in the second season.
- 1:01:39Speaker 1: It's so funny. Jason's a great character. He's kind of
- 1:01:41Speaker 1: like a He's the Primaria is the himbo. Yeah. Um.
- 1:01:46Speaker 1: And I also, you know, just as you said at
- 1:01:48Speaker 1: the top of the show, like True Blood was one
- 1:01:50Speaker 1: of the first things to be like, vampires fuck, vampires
- 1:01:52Speaker 1: are gay. And I really do feel like, like, because
- 1:01:55Speaker 1: vampires are canonically bisexual, we at like a Virgin podcast,
- 1:01:59Speaker 1: declare that if few are making a vampire narrative of
- 1:02:02Speaker 1: any kind and these vampires are not by it's historically inaccurate. Yes,
- 1:02:07Speaker 1: which is which is why I have such an issue
- 1:02:10Speaker 1: with the Vampire Diaries, which kind of came out around
- 1:02:13Speaker 1: the same time as True blood, but you also like
- 1:02:16Speaker 1: kind of liked it, right. I watched the first couple
- 1:02:18Speaker 1: of seasons. There are I think throughout the entire course
- 1:02:23Speaker 1: of the show, which was on for like you know,
- 1:02:25Speaker 1: it's a c W show, so probably like twenty seasons. Um,
- 1:02:28Speaker 1: there were maybe I've actually have watched. There's a really
- 1:02:31Speaker 1: good Jenny Nicholson video about the entirety of the Vampire Diaries,
- 1:02:34Speaker 1: so watch the on YouTube if you're interested. I think
- 1:02:36Speaker 1: there's like four gay characters throughout the entire show, and
- 1:02:39Speaker 1: none of them are vampires, but all the vampires on
- 1:02:42Speaker 1: that show were very straight and it well, but it's
- 1:02:45Speaker 1: also a very post Twilight show and that it's trying
- 1:02:50Speaker 1: to capture the y a vampire fervor that was happening
- 1:02:55Speaker 1: in the early two thousands, and so because of that,
- 1:02:58Speaker 1: it like it does kind of deal in the same
- 1:03:00Speaker 1: kind of compulsory heterosexuality that Twilight did, but it's also
- 1:03:05Speaker 1: a very I haven't watched the later seasons, but through
- 1:03:08Speaker 1: watching that Johnny Nicholson video, I've seen clips from it
- 1:03:11Speaker 1: and it is a really good example of you cannot
- 1:03:14Speaker 1: do a vampire show for like eight seasons where people
- 1:03:17Speaker 1: are supposed to be playing teenage vampires because by the
- 1:03:20Speaker 1: end they look old like like Airline, they look like Pearl,
- 1:03:28Speaker 1: look like Pearl and X. Something that is not explored
- 1:03:44Speaker 1: a lot is vampire children. It's touched on a little
- 1:03:47Speaker 1: bit in Twilight and obviously an interview with the vampire Um.
- 1:03:50Speaker 1: That's the whole thing with Claudia's that she is a
- 1:03:53Speaker 1: woman whose mind keeps aging, but she's stuck in the
- 1:03:57Speaker 1: body of the child, and that is even Um of
- 1:04:00Speaker 1: Gorrier in the books. In the book, what you find
- 1:04:03Speaker 1: out is that the way that things play out from
- 1:04:07Speaker 1: Louie's point of view, which is that Claudia was just
- 1:04:10Speaker 1: captured by the vampire theater and then put to death,
- 1:04:14Speaker 1: is actually not the whole story. Claudia kind of made
- 1:04:17Speaker 1: a deal with Armand that she would leave Louis if
- 1:04:21Speaker 1: armand could help her get an adult body. Armand played
- 1:04:25Speaker 1: by Antonia Manderaz. So they do things like they cut
- 1:04:28Speaker 1: Claudia's head off and try to put it on the
- 1:04:29Speaker 1: body of an adult vampire and think that the healing
- 1:04:32Speaker 1: will like connect it, but it doesn't work out, and
- 1:04:35Speaker 1: so she they just end up killing her because they're like, well,
- 1:04:37Speaker 1: whatever that flopped. UM but I bring this up because
- 1:04:41Speaker 1: another piece of vampire media that came out around this time,
- 1:04:44Speaker 1: like early early, it's like maybe like around is the
- 1:04:49Speaker 1: Swedish film let the right one in Have you ever
- 1:04:51Speaker 1: seen it? I think you've talked about it before, but
- 1:04:54Speaker 1: I'm not sure we talked about it. To me, it's
- 1:04:55Speaker 1: one of my it's one of my favorite movies. Um.
- 1:04:58Speaker 1: It's about a child vampire who makes friends with this
- 1:05:02Speaker 1: little boy who's like kind of a loser, and she
- 1:05:07Speaker 1: is like maybe intersects. That's something that's more explored in
- 1:05:10Speaker 1: the book than in the film. And she has this
- 1:05:15Speaker 1: man that cares for her because you know, this is
- 1:05:17Speaker 1: another trope in vampire media is that vampires often have
- 1:05:21Speaker 1: a you know, a henchman or someone who's in their
- 1:05:24Speaker 1: thrall who does the things that they can't do in
- 1:05:27Speaker 1: the daytime, Like Renfield in Dracula. Um, she has this
- 1:05:32Speaker 1: like little helper man who's a pedophile who's like obsessed
- 1:05:35Speaker 1: with her, and that's how she's able to get him to,
- 1:05:38Speaker 1: you know, find people for her to feed on because
- 1:05:41Speaker 1: she's too little to do it. She can't like hunt
- 1:05:44Speaker 1: on her own. So this man goes out and kills
- 1:05:47Speaker 1: people for her to feed off of. Oh my gosh. Um, Now,
- 1:05:51Speaker 1: since you're talking about like, um, child vampires, I know
- 1:05:54Speaker 1: you you're not big on adult cartoons. I also used
- 1:05:57Speaker 1: to say I'm not bigger on adult cartoons, but I'm
- 1:05:59Speaker 1: realizing how many adult cartoons I actually really do watch. Um.
- 1:06:02Speaker 1: Adventure Time is one of my favorite adult cartoons, and
- 1:06:06Speaker 1: there's a serious regular character called Marceline Vampire Queen. Have
- 1:06:10Speaker 1: you ever heard of her? Yes, I have watched some
- 1:06:12Speaker 1: Adventure Really it's it's I know it's not for me. Yeah,
- 1:06:15Speaker 1: I know it's not your t um really great world building.
- 1:06:18Speaker 1: But something that I think is like worth remarking with
- 1:06:20Speaker 1: Marcelline specifically, is like, I mean, first of all, yeah,
- 1:06:23Speaker 1: they're like all these characters are young, so their world
- 1:06:25Speaker 1: is like very like childlike an immature and like, um nonsensical,
- 1:06:28Speaker 1: and I kind of like love that. Um. But in
- 1:06:31Speaker 1: this world, Marcelyn sucks the color red out of objects
- 1:06:35Speaker 1: like strawberries or like you know, like clothing or whatever,
- 1:06:39Speaker 1: which I think is cute. And she also instead of
- 1:06:41Speaker 1: turning into a bat, she kind of turns into this
- 1:06:43Speaker 1: like giant, like anthropomorphized like bat monster. And she also
- 1:06:48Speaker 1: is like she plays music, like she plays a guitar
- 1:06:50Speaker 1: in the shape of like a double headed axe. Like
- 1:06:53Speaker 1: it's so cool, and they're like and that for me,
- 1:06:55Speaker 1: Like when I'm exploring any sort of like vampire like
- 1:06:59Speaker 1: franchise at like I want to see you invent something
- 1:07:02Speaker 1: like we all know and that I think a lot
- 1:07:06Speaker 1: of like the things that we've discussed today, do do that?
- 1:07:08Speaker 1: You know what I mean? We do? Do do do
- 1:07:10Speaker 1: do that? Um? We all know the tropes of vampires, right,
- 1:07:14Speaker 1: it's at the top of Interview with a vampire where
- 1:07:16Speaker 1: the interviewer is like, so can I kill you with
- 1:07:19Speaker 1: a steak? So? Do you hate the sunlight? So what
- 1:07:21Speaker 1: about garlics? So what about the coffin thing? You know,
- 1:07:24Speaker 1: it's kind of like confirming or debunking these things we
- 1:07:27Speaker 1: historically know about vampires and Anne Rice setting her world
- 1:07:30Speaker 1: of vampires saying, this is what vampires do, So like
- 1:07:33Speaker 1: I appreciate that, Like when Inventure Time is like, this
- 1:07:35Speaker 1: is what vampires do. It's like their rock stars and
- 1:07:36Speaker 1: they play music, and like I just like we'll always
- 1:07:39Speaker 1: appreciate that. And there's also um, she's like at the
- 1:07:42Speaker 1: when she's introduced, she's like high key, like a landlord,
- 1:07:46Speaker 1: Like she evicts Finn from like his apartment or something
- 1:07:49Speaker 1: like that. It's really funny. And he's really scared of
- 1:07:51Speaker 1: Marceline at first because she's a literal vampire. And when
- 1:07:54Speaker 1: they get into their very first altercation at the end
- 1:07:57Speaker 1: of the episode, they end up like, I having some
- 1:08:00Speaker 1: kind of fun and they get into this fight and
- 1:08:02Speaker 1: and Finn goes like, why didn't you kill me? And
- 1:08:05Speaker 1: she's like, because I'm having fun, you know, And that
- 1:08:08Speaker 1: is kind of what happens in every vampire movie and
- 1:08:12Speaker 1: show ever. It's like, why don't you just kill her?
- 1:08:15Speaker 1: And the vampire is like, because I'm having fun. Because
- 1:08:17Speaker 1: the angst of my immortality, which the anguish of immortality,
- 1:08:21Speaker 1: is in every single vampire story ever, and it's soothed
- 1:08:24Speaker 1: by companionship every time. I think, what every new vampire
- 1:08:29Speaker 1: story has to do is reckon with how does that
- 1:08:32Speaker 1: kind of vampire deal with that? Is it by wanting
- 1:08:36Speaker 1: the companionship of another vampire, by wanting an immortal companion?
- 1:08:40Speaker 1: Is that by wanting, you know, a human plaything all
- 1:08:43Speaker 1: the time. Is it by wanting to just go out
- 1:08:45Speaker 1: and murder people? Is it by wanting to like an
- 1:08:48Speaker 1: Only Lover's Left Alive, which is a great little indie
- 1:08:52Speaker 1: film starring Tildas Winton and Tom Hiddleston. All the vampires
- 1:08:55Speaker 1: want to do is they just want to go see
- 1:08:56Speaker 1: live music all the time, Like that's how they spend
- 1:08:59Speaker 1: their turn. Yeah I heard about that, and um yeah,
- 1:09:03Speaker 1: that's that's. That's what happens when you have a mythical
- 1:09:06Speaker 1: being that exists in this much TV, movies, literature, anything,
- 1:09:10Speaker 1: and have so many tropes associated with them, is you
- 1:09:12Speaker 1: have to find a way to put a new spin
- 1:09:15Speaker 1: on it. And I think what creators do is they
- 1:09:18Speaker 1: either lean really hard into what's come before or completely rejected.
- 1:09:22Speaker 1: So like on one side you have Stephanie Meyer who's like,
- 1:09:24Speaker 1: my vampires sparkle and like they don't have things, or
- 1:09:28Speaker 1: you have something like what we do in The Shadows,
- 1:09:30Speaker 1: which is we're going to lean into every existing vampire
- 1:09:34Speaker 1: trope to use as like a short hand to make
- 1:09:37Speaker 1: this funny. So it's like we're bit we're playing in
- 1:09:41Speaker 1: a sandbox that already exists, and that's the whole fun
- 1:09:45Speaker 1: of and making the tropes like way goofi or more extreme.
- 1:09:48Speaker 1: I guess I haven't seen it one thing I hate
- 1:09:50Speaker 1: in vampire stuff is when the vampires desperately want to
- 1:09:53Speaker 1: become human again, because that's just when does that is
- 1:09:57Speaker 1: that kind of in and it's a thing in blood,
- 1:10:00Speaker 1: it's a thing in Vampire Diaries. It does happen to
- 1:10:03Speaker 1: I think maybe a couple of characters in and right,
- 1:10:06Speaker 1: like they're transformed back to humans somehow. It's a thing.
- 1:10:09Speaker 1: And Buffy, Um, it's a thing in Oh this book.
- 1:10:14Speaker 1: I just read Reluctant Immortals, which is about Lucy from
- 1:10:20Speaker 1: Dracula and Bertha, Rochester's first wife in Jane Eyre, the
- 1:10:25Speaker 1: Madam and in the Attic, and it's about them being
- 1:10:29Speaker 1: immortal beings who have found each other and they lived
- 1:10:32Speaker 1: together in nineteen sixties Los Angeles. I did not know
- 1:10:36Speaker 1: that the woman in the attic was named Bertha. Her
- 1:10:38Speaker 1: name's Bertha. Um, you've never read White sargassoc. That's a Charlotte,
- 1:10:43Speaker 1: that's a Bronte Sisters. No, it was written by a
- 1:10:46Speaker 1: gene Rice, and it's a sort of feminist retelling of
- 1:10:51Speaker 1: Jane Eyre from the point of view of Bertha. Oh
- 1:10:54Speaker 1: my god. And so in this novel it kind of
- 1:10:57Speaker 1: takes some liberties with Jane are obviously, and it's like
- 1:11:01Speaker 1: Rochester like somehow made Bertha immortal, and he and Jane
- 1:11:05Speaker 1: are also immortal. And at some point Bertha like linked
- 1:11:09Speaker 1: up with Lucy who killed Dracula and now keeps his
- 1:11:13Speaker 1: ashes so that he'll never be able to like reconstitute
- 1:11:17Speaker 1: himself and you know, terrorize her again and then just
- 1:11:20Speaker 1: kind of like hating being immortal, and like spoiler alert,
- 1:11:23Speaker 1: the book ends with them aging again. And so why
- 1:11:27Speaker 1: do you hate that troupe? I think it's because vampire
- 1:11:31Speaker 1: media has to show vampires as wanting to be human
- 1:11:37Speaker 1: because humans are watching or reading, or you know, in
- 1:11:42Speaker 1: some way imbibing the story, and so you have deposit
- 1:11:48Speaker 1: that humanity is the ideal um and that to me
- 1:11:53Speaker 1: is boring. I think it would be a vampire Okay,
- 1:11:56Speaker 1: I agree, because that thing that I said earlier about
- 1:11:59Speaker 1: like the anguish of immortality that shows up in all
- 1:12:02Speaker 1: of these titles is like repetitive, or at least I
- 1:12:06Speaker 1: felt that when when I was watching Interview with a
- 1:12:08Speaker 1: Vampire specifically, I was like, Louis is literally just floating
- 1:12:12Speaker 1: through centuries of life hating being a vampire, and nothing
- 1:12:16Speaker 1: is really happening beyond that. I mean, I really liked
- 1:12:20Speaker 1: the movie, just you know, for the record, but I
- 1:12:22Speaker 1: I did also find it kind of repetitive, and I'm
- 1:12:25Speaker 1: curious what's the like nuancing of that, right, Like, I
- 1:12:29Speaker 1: think that when like humanity and immortality clash in all
- 1:12:33Speaker 1: these different narratives, there's almost a missed opportunity for them
- 1:12:37Speaker 1: to have a new conversation around like what it means
- 1:12:40Speaker 1: to live forever or not and what the appeals are
- 1:12:43Speaker 1: are not because yeah, I do feel like it's repetitive,
- 1:12:46Speaker 1: it does bring us full circle back to our question
- 1:12:48Speaker 1: of the top of the episode, which is would you
- 1:12:50Speaker 1: want to live forever? Would you want to be a vampire?
- 1:12:53Speaker 1: The idea of vampire orgies and eternal wisdom are really
- 1:12:58Speaker 1: appealing to me. I think that that is something I
- 1:13:02Speaker 1: could funk with, But not if I was in a
- 1:13:06Speaker 1: kind of societal situation where everyone was hunting me. I
- 1:13:09Speaker 1: think that would cause a lot of anxiety. Would kind
- 1:13:11Speaker 1: of feel like being canceled. It kind of like I
- 1:13:14Speaker 1: would be a full recluse, like scared to leave the
- 1:13:16Speaker 1: house and would delete all my social media. That's why
- 1:13:20Speaker 1: I want to know. I think honestly, I as much
- 1:13:25Speaker 1: as I am attracted to vampires in books and TV
- 1:13:30Speaker 1: and movies. Um, I think they are endlessly fascinating and
- 1:13:34Speaker 1: I love all the new ways that they're explored. I
- 1:13:38Speaker 1: don't think I want to be one because when it
- 1:13:39Speaker 1: comes down to it, I just I don't want to
- 1:13:42Speaker 1: live forever. That is like, honestly the worst thing I
- 1:13:45Speaker 1: can imagine. So you and I should co write a
- 1:13:48Speaker 1: weird al Yankovic kind of like spoof of Queens who
- 1:13:52Speaker 1: wants to Live Forever? And it can be called who
- 1:13:55Speaker 1: Doesn't want to Live Forever? I don't want to live forever?
- 1:13:58Speaker 1: So it's just a song about suicide. Yeah, Okay, so
- 1:14:02Speaker 1: you don't want to be a vampire. But if you
- 1:14:04Speaker 1: were a vampire, which m vampire universe, of all the
- 1:14:08Speaker 1: things we've discussed, would you want to be in? Okay,
- 1:14:12Speaker 1: this is a great question, a question you wrote, I
- 1:14:15Speaker 1: must say, yeah. So honestly, I think there's different pros
- 1:14:20Speaker 1: and cons. Okay, I don't want to be an an
- 1:14:22Speaker 1: Rice vampire because I want to be able to fun,
- 1:14:24Speaker 1: you want to fuck. I don't want to be a
- 1:14:26Speaker 1: buffy vampire because they're you know, demons and they also
- 1:14:30Speaker 1: you know, have an ugly face. They do have ugly face.
- 1:14:33Speaker 1: I don't want to be, you know, like a Dracula vampire,
- 1:14:38Speaker 1: although I guess turning into a bat would be cool.
- 1:14:41Speaker 1: I'm going to say I actually think true blood vampires
- 1:14:45Speaker 1: are kind of the ideal because they are sexy, they fuck,
- 1:14:49Speaker 1: they have superpowers. The downside is like having to sleep
- 1:14:54Speaker 1: in a coffin and not being able to go out
- 1:14:56Speaker 1: in the sun. But like, I wear a ton of
- 1:14:58Speaker 1: SPF every day anyway, try to be in the sun
- 1:15:01Speaker 1: as little as possible, So I think like that kind
- 1:15:03Speaker 1: of works out. Yeah, vampires really, you know, they have
- 1:15:06Speaker 1: an issue with sunlight. But like, girl, just get some
- 1:15:09Speaker 1: supp get some supergroup girl, get some SPF, get some
- 1:15:12Speaker 1: unseen sunscreen. Okay, Um, I think I would also say
- 1:15:16Speaker 1: true blood. My first instinct was to say Adventure Time
- 1:15:19Speaker 1: because I just think the world is so fun and
- 1:15:22Speaker 1: innocent and that the steaks are a lot lower. But
- 1:15:25Speaker 1: I do want to fuck um. And also a lot
- 1:15:28Speaker 1: of adventure Time takes place in space, which you and
- 1:15:30Speaker 1: I on this podcast have no no, we do not.
- 1:15:34Speaker 1: We do not endorse space in the concept space famously
- 1:15:38Speaker 1: very far away. Um, we do not funk with it.
- 1:15:41Speaker 1: So yeah, I would pick true blood. Okay, we're going
- 1:15:43Speaker 1: to be true blood vampires, but I'm not drinking that
- 1:15:45Speaker 1: synthetic ship. I want organic, homegrown, farm to table blood. Yeah.
- 1:15:51Speaker 1: I love the line in the pilot that honestly outlines
- 1:15:54Speaker 1: the tension of probably the whole season, where I think
- 1:15:56Speaker 1: anapaq one is like, well they have true blood now
- 1:15:59Speaker 1: like it's athetic black blah blah blah. And he's like,
- 1:16:01Speaker 1: would you give up a life of eating like fresh
- 1:16:03Speaker 1: food for slim fast? And I was like, yeah, tea,
- 1:16:07Speaker 1: no nobody would. I wouldn't know. I want to live deliciously.
- 1:16:11Speaker 1: I do want to live deliciously, um, just not immortally. No,
- 1:16:15Speaker 1: I do not want to live forever. I don't even
- 1:16:18Speaker 1: want to live the rest of this week. So thank
- 1:16:29Speaker 1: you for listening to all of our Halloween episodes. It's
- 1:16:32Speaker 1: been such a fun month of doing these. I'm obviously
- 1:16:35Speaker 1: very sad that we won't be doing spooky stuff anymore,
- 1:16:38Speaker 1: but I'm sure we'll have some, you know, special surprises
- 1:16:42Speaker 1: and exciting things happening for the holidays. We like a version,
- 1:16:45Speaker 1: also believe in spooky behavior all year long. That is true.
- 1:16:50Speaker 1: You know they say that Pride is three five days
- 1:16:52Speaker 1: a year, but Oooky Spooky is three hundred sixty five
- 1:16:55Speaker 1: days a year. Pride does not three d six or
- 1:16:57Speaker 1: five days a year. Pride is actually zero daisy. But
- 1:17:02Speaker 1: next week we'll be back, um sadly, you know, without
- 1:17:04Speaker 1: a bonus episode. We'll be back to our regularly scheduled
- 1:17:08Speaker 1: programming and let us know what you think about vampires,
- 1:17:12Speaker 1: which vampire you want to fuck the most? Also, like
- 1:17:15Speaker 1: tell us what you thought of our you know, super
- 1:17:17Speaker 1: special Halloween bonus episodes. You can slide into our d
- 1:17:20Speaker 1: M s at Like a Virgin for we really want
- 1:17:23Speaker 1: to hear from you. Also, please leave us a review
- 1:17:26Speaker 1: on Apple podcast or rating on Spotify. It helps us
- 1:17:29Speaker 1: out so much. I am your co host Rose Damn You.
- 1:17:32Speaker 1: You can find me anywhere you want to online at
- 1:17:35Speaker 1: Rose Damn You, and I'm frant Roto. You can find
- 1:17:37Speaker 1: me at Friends, Swish go anywhere you like. You can
- 1:17:40Speaker 1: subscribe to Like a Virgin anywhere you listen to podcasts.
- 1:17:42Speaker 1: Like a Virgin is an I Heart radio production. Our
- 1:17:45Speaker 1: producers Phoebe Unter, with support from Lindsay Hoffman, Julian Weller,
- 1:17:49Speaker 1: j Crane Chich and Nikki etre until next week see later.
- 1:17:54Speaker 1: Virgins uh