#granted i didnt even get into stuff like castlevania or legacy of cain

[worrywrite]

Apparently my vampire media journey was normal? I mean... I *am* a product of very controlled mass media marketing and for-profit media/storytelling.

Let's see... Sesame Street's The Count, I feel like that's everyone first vampire character. Then there was that Disney channel movie... What was it. All I remember is vampire cows. And that one villain from the Buzz Lightyear animated series (okay, so weird stuff does stick to my brain and I have a weird range of media I absorbed as a child... And I absorbed a significant amount of media). I don't think there was a vampire in Halloween Town, but around the time that became a thing I started getting really into Halloween (I was probably six or seven) and I do recall there being vampire characters in the Scary Godmother animated movies and that reinforced it. Around the same time I happened across Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which I acknowledge I was far too young for) and I was... Entranced with vampires. Parents didn't like that, didn't really catch much Buffy because of it. But my interest in the occult in general got *piqued* and from there on out, it was witches and vampires and werewolves and demons and djinni (burned through the original Bartimaeus books before 6th grade). So when I hit puberty proper... Okay, yeah, I was into monsters which explains why I was functionally asexual until I was 17; because monsters aren't real and are therefore inaccessible characters of desire.

ANYWAY.

By the time I was 11, my mother had started reading the Twilight books. And because she is incapable of not talking about everything she's obsessed with to literally everyone she talks to, she talked about the books to me a lot. Because I liked books. And this backfired for her. A lot. Because she liked the intensity of it and lack of general swearing (this woman is a hyper-conservative Christian, which also explains the oversharing interests things because proselytizing). It backfired because I went "oh, my parents are okay with this now" and I went deep into vampire/werewolf lore on the internet (not exactly fiction or media proper, but I became part of my early social media interactions with message boards and forums and RPGs and such).

I also saw Underworld, Van Helsing, and Hellboy around that time (13-14). Those movies are all over the place, but yeah. You know what, I'll throw The Matrix in there too. I'm gonna call this my leather and spandex phase of vampire experiences. Good times. This led to the writing of my first vampire and werewolf novels (two different novels, both hot garbage). And then I saw the twilight movie (which I liked because of the soundtrack and general attractiveness of all the actors portraying vampires) and read the books and got really into Supernatural which I regret because it didn't have enough vampires and werewolves to be honest. And then the Vampire Diaries on CW happened. And then Teen Wolf.

And then I kind of burned out on most media, went to college, learned and played d&d, and now I'm back on my vampire bs. I run a 5e campaign where my players have a vampire frienemy who they accidentally unleashed on the setting; she is one of my favorite NPCs to portray. And now I am getting into Discworld and the vampires there are refreshingly silly.

Anyway, I feel like this is pretty normal? Maybe not. I went all in on pretty much everything occult (partially because of my own experiences which I haven't really talked about) when I was young. It never scared me; probably because I was taught from a young age that the only things I had to be afraid of were the devil and minorities--because, again, hyper-conservative household. I find this very funny now because now I know that that is basically what spurred the creation of these mythical sexy creatures that I love so much.