#vlad ironclad

[tf2fansderogatory]

Medic has to trick soldier to take his calcium/iron supplements via a slice of American cheddar or ham, but considering how many sandwiches heavy makes(and the fact that Spy and Scout enjoy mid-night snacks), sometimes they run out.

Because of this, on several occasions, Soldier has burst from the medical lobby, having ripped off his clothes, screaming and running away on all fours like a wild animal, chased by the (way faster) medic, who tackles soldier, restrains him (with some help from Heavy/Demo) and has to force the supplements down his throat.

imagine being sniper visiting the base occasionally during one of these. all he wants is a snack. or a coffee.

and suddenly out of nowhere he sees soldier barreling down the hall and fucking YELLING with medic, heavy AND demo chasing him down. medic is shouting something in german about pills.

because he has never been on base during one of these times (too busy doing whatever he does in his camper van) he looks to whoever else in the room for an explanation that never comes because everyone (else) knows that this is an at least once a month occurrence.

(this applies to miss pauling btw except she would actually follow them to see what in the god forsaken fuck is going on)

[hailsatanacab]

@the-witchhunter - this is incredibly disturbing, i love it. fair warning, i took it more in the direction of that oglaf comic (nsfw) where Vlad fully doesn't realise that this is a love shrine, this is a completely normal thing that you do for your arch enemy!

———

“Daniel! I can explain!”

“Oh… my… God...”

“Daniel, really, it’s not what it looks like!”

“Really?” Danny breathes, shocked and honestly kind of fighting down the urge to vomit. The thermos slips from his fingers and clatters to the ground, the sound echoing far too loudly in the enclosed space. “Because it looks like you have a shrine dedicated to my dad in your closet.”

“No, that’s not—it’s more complicated than that, Daniel. You wouldn’t understand.”

“I don’t think I want to understand.”

“Your father is a ridiculous man, Daniel. I hate his stupid face so much. Look at him!”

Vlad turns back to the actual shrine, with actual candles and actual flowers and actual photos of his dad with… Holy crap, did Vlad cut out Mom in each of the photos? What the fuck? 

Wait… Look, Danny tries not to look too closely at the weird things Vlad has hidden around his mansion dedicated to his mom, but he’s fairly sure that the pictures of her he’s cut out (in heart shapes—yeah, Danny’s definitely going to barf) are the ones Vlad’s put in his other weirdo closet shrine that Danny also wishes he’d never seen.

“Why don’t you just have one shrine? Why have—no, you know what, I don’t want to know. I think I’m just gonna leave.”

Yeah, that sounds like the best option. Danny takes a cautious step back, very ready to get back home, bleach his eyeballs and maybe never look at his mom and dad ever again. Or, at least, not until he has successfully blocked this from his mind forever.

He only gets one foot out the door when Vlad lashes out and grabs him. The day just keeps getting better and better, really, doesn’t it? Even as he twists and turns, he can’t get out of Vlad’s ironclad grip and he’s pulled even farther into the closet. 

Panic rises in his throat as Vlad shuts the door—what the fuck is happening? He doesn’t want to be dragged into Vlad’s creepy shrine to his dad, what the fuck? What the fuck!

“I loathe your father, Daniel, I hate him with the very core of my being. Look at him!” 

There’s no goddamn way in hell Danny is looking at any of the pictures, no thank you. He squeezes his eyes shut and wishes he were somewhere, anywhere else, when Vlad jerks his arm forward so he comes nose-to-nose with the largest framed portrait of his dad in the very centre of the table, smiling with his doctorate and a very unfortunate 80s mullet. Dear God, no.

“I hate his smug face! I hate his stupid fashion sense, you have no idea how much I detest that orange jumpsuit of his, how much I want to claw it off him and tear it to shreds! If I have to listen to him say another boneheaded, idiotic, ridiculous thing, I will—I’ll rip his throat out with my teeth! You don't know how long I spend here looking at him, imaging all the ways I'll have him grovelling at my feet. One day, Daniel, I'll have him one day...”

———

The sun was going down when Danny finally managed to escape and find solace in Sam and Tucker. He's not going home. Not yet.

“Danny, are you okay? We were so worried, we couldn’t get hold of you for hours! Where were you?”

“Sam, Tuck… Vlad, he…”

“Holy shit, Danny, you’re shaking, are you alright? What happened, what did he do?”

“I think… I think he wants to fuck my dad.”

[azulaang-chakras]

Halloween Couples Costumes Ideas

Sukka: Gomez and Morticia Adams

A little obvious, but it works for them. Suki gets to express her rarely seen goth side, and Sokka gets an excuse to kiss up and down his wife’s arm in public.

Maiko: Buttercup and Westley

I like to think Zuko would enjoy fantasy and romance stories, but when he suggests the costume idea to Mai, she agrees on one condition: she gets to dress up as Westley and he goes as Buttercup. It makes for an unforgettable Halloween party.

Katoph: Caitlyn and Vi

What’s the difference between “sugar queen” and cupcake”? Nothing. Not a single thing. This idea is perfect and I won’t hear any arguments to the contrary.

Azulaang: Dracula and Lisa

Does Azula admire Aang’s ironclad commitment to his moral code? Absolutely. Would she expect him to slaughter the world if the world took her away from him? No, but it would be nice to be so appreciated. (and if you’re a fan of short queen Azula, Aang stepping into the shoes of Vlad “8 Feet” Dracula and kissing his smol genius wife is gold)

[cannondisabledcharacters]

Today’s disabled character of the day is Christine Royce from the Fallout series, who has facial trauma, brain damage, dyslexia, and claustrophobia. She was also mute and has a articulation disorder

Requested by @vlad-ironclad​

[Image Description: 3D model of a bald women with a silver bomb collar. She is wearing a black bullet proof vest and leather armor underneath. She has scars running around her jaw, forehead, neck, and top of her head. Lastly she has brown eyes.]

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

The Soldier Parable.

Is that the game where the guy fucks the bucket did Soldier fuck the bucket

[lieutenant-columbro]

If Columbo was assigned to a case in Revachol, I fully believe that he would collapse due to how difficult and uncooperative almost everyone in the town is.

NAURRRRR THEY CAN'T BULLY MY BOY 😭😭😭

[yourfaveisvoidpunk]

Skynet from Fallout 2!

queued!

[probablyfunrpgideas]

Play a ridiculously small Spellcaster — small enough to fit in another player’s pocket. That is all.

Thanks @vlad-ironclad ! This is a cool idea... do you play as a little mouse who happens to be a sorcerer? Or maybe a druid, victim of some wild magic incident that made them permanently tiny.

[incorrect-ikevamp-quotes]

Comte’s 4th Birthday Story Event: Before the Clock Strikes Midnight

REEEEEEEE Ik it was a long time ago but life has been a [redacted], so I figured better late than never HAHA

So without further ado, anybody who’s curious feel free to click for more--I’ll put it under a cut for spoilers as per usual~

So in this story it’s the usual, a few days before his birthday, and they’re discussing a bump in the road. Essentially, it appears a friend of Comte’s is going to be celebrating a wedding, and as such he’s going into the suburbs/affluent part of the region to be able to attend. It’s only a few hours away from the mansion, but he will be gone for a few days with the arrangements made for his stay. 

While this wouldn’t typically be an issue, MC has some things to take care of and opts out of attending with him (preparing for his bday probably LMAO) and Comte is immediately big sad. My favorite dramatic fool is already pouting, though he fully accepts and respects her decision. Besides which, he fully intends to be back in time to celebrate his birthday as well. He notes that he’s always admired how driven and independent she is, and has no intention of getting in the way of that. He’s just going to miss her, is all.

He says as much, figuring there’s no point in hiding it: “I really wanted to bring you with me to attend…but I suppose it simply can’t be helped” … “That’s not it…I guess I’m just wondering if you’ll miss me as much as I’ll miss you while I’m away.” 

And MC’s just like “Aw, it’s okay it’ll only be a few days.” While Comte’s response is a very mature, high-pitched whining sound at a frequency only King (Theo’s dog) and Theo himself can hear. When MC tries to reassure him once more, his Hamlet impression continues: “Even the prospect of a few days away from you feels unbearable.” 

Naturally, as any man do that loves his wife, he draws her close and proceeds to bang the living daylights out of her. I would offer details, but I have no deets to give beyond: [Well MC, it appears I won’t be letting you get much sleep tonight.] 

Brief intermission for the vague sounds of fangirl cardiac arrest. 

The scene opens again to him doing his walk of shame (the slut) down the walkway and into the carriage that will take him to his friend’s house. His thoughts carry the regret of burdening her with his desire, though MC is pretty much on cloud nine and unable to stop thinking about the heady night they shared in a good way. Bruh and the sly look when he figures out why she looks like that--I’m boutta call the police, he is going to make women and men alike act up. 

MC scrambles to cool his already returning desire by insisting he will be late if he indulges any further, and he laughs and agrees easily–albeit with the slightest hint of reluctance. My favorite part in this exchange is that he kisses her forehead, adding that it’s because she’s the most adorable person in the world to him (a moment of silence for our uwus). 

Fast forward to Comte trying to get home after the festivities are over. Problem is, it’s been raining like a mOTHERBLEEPER, and as such carriages have no safe way to traverse the roads at the moment. He waited out the first day as patiently as possible, but after the second–and no sign of stopping–his Leeroy Jenkins instincts kick in. He notes to the coachman that he’s aware he’s asking a lot, but they fully intend to take the long way which invites the least risk–and the rain is ebbing, even if the progress is slow. 

It’s interesting because there’s another echo of his main story in this moment. He essentially showcases a desperation to return before the day ends, though without context it’ll probably seem a little strange, so I’ll do my best to explain. Basically, in his main story, MC notes that she doesn’t really care how different they are. Different time, different species, different experiences, so on and so forth. She hammers home that what matters is that the present is something that they actively share. It’s theirs. And no amount of divisions he desperately tries to draw will change that fundamental reality. 

And it’s a little moving to see how deeply he takes it to heart? I think it’s one of those wonderful phenomena, personally–the way a person can influence how you think and act with their sentiments. Sometimes someone says precisely what it is we need to hear, and it changes us–while it can be for the worse, it can also be for the better. He notes that he spent so many birthdays; among the people serving his house when he was little, raising hell with his friends in his younger days, so on and so forth. Not unlike Leonardo, he says that after so many “special” days the faces become a blur, the festivities lose their luster. It’s just another day, at this point. 

Note, one interesting thing here that stands out to me is that I feel like this is a reflection of both of their larger struggles. Where Comte can’t stand the relentless flow of time rendering him the only constant (and something of a ghost, never fully present), Leonardo can’t bear birthdays because it means remembering people who still mean the world to him, but are long gone. People he can never see again, never laugh with again, never share his life with again. And I think that’s a very profound pain, an anguish that just keeps on settling its weight. (Oh, Sisyphus…)

Comte’s is similar, but different. He actively works to keep his distance-- unlike Leonardo, he approaches immortality in the pragmatic way. He knows getting close will hurt, so he opts out of that–keeps a step behind, an easy smile on his face. Betrays only fragments to anyone, always has his guard up. But the downside of being so guarded means you eventually feel hollowed out and alone; nobody truly knows or understands you. There is a distinct loneliness in that approach, where memories only become reminders of how nothing ever improves and how bereft you are of warmth. 

Leonardo, at least, gets to have the joy of being known from time to time. But loss and estrangement from those people means double the pain in the long run, because he loved them fully. Comte chooses to live in the cold to protect himself, but ends up in a kind of catch-22; the cost of forgoing loss means a constant deadening of his own feelings. It means living in a kind of fog, where there is a distinct discomfort in the silent obscurity of your own heart. 

There’s something I’ve come to believe in my short course of living, so I guess I still need time to determine how true it is. But…I feel like, when people live this way, where who they are is a lie or it’s at the very least carefully concealed, we in part start to become that lie. I think it’s fascinating because Comte seems to have so much personality to him. He’s dramatic, he’s thoughtful, he has a sense of mischief about him, he has strong ideals, and he has an even more ironclad moral grounding. And yet, when he talks about himself, he always uses descriptions that hinge on emptiness. Like he’s worth so little, worth nothing. And that’s what I mean–he’s been trying so hard to glide on the surface that he has come to believe he really is equivalent to something that ephemeral. Like there’s nothing more inside him, or if there is, that it will never be worthy of much. I think it really speaks to the ways behavior impacts the psyche, even though the opposite tends to be considered the only possible cause and effect relationship. 

He’s so determined to live for and in the future while he’s in the present, that he forgets to enjoy himself and really live. And while that approach is certainly understandable, I do think he loses parts of himself along the way. Only to be rediscovered and placed back into his hands by MC: [Today–this moment–our now, I don’t want to miss it for anything.] And that's not even touching on how quick she is to make them a we; she's not letting him keep that distance. It’s not “you have the ability to share this day with me” it’s “we’re here and in this together.”

I feel like what I love about this is that it’s not only about how sweet he is on MC, but also about how much he’s truly living again for the first time. His defenses are slowly inching their way down, he’s letting himself hope and want things and look forward to things again. The thing about being a responsible person is that–while responsibility is all well and good–sometimes you become so mired in doing the right thing and planning the most optimal outcomes that you just aren’t thinking of yourself anymore. That is, if you ever were to begin with. He went from the careful cultivation of a life as an aristocrat, to a life that spoke of more freedom and fun beyond those iron wrought gates, before he returned to the structure of what he knew. Freedom speaks to him I’m sure–we all need it in some measure to survive. But I do think a good portion of that was unfulfilling for him after a point. It was only feeding the void that was beginning to form inside him. He was instinctively retreating into himself to avoid pain, and in doing that the only result was feeling like a coward and a fake. He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t able to be himself, and nothing was fulfilling–every single day just another forward march. 

I think it comes as no surprise he took up Vlad’s initial invitation so willingly. 

But then I digress, back to the story. There’s another timeskip and it finds him racing down the hall of the mansion. He’s hoping to make it in time but knows he’s racing against the clock, and fully expects MC to be asleep by this point in the night. Midway along his path he thinks he spots MC and falters in his step, blinking. He decides to hang back, watching the figure enter his room with a great deal of curiosity and resists every urge to burst in after her. He hears MC speak into his pillow, her voice muffled but clearly despondent: “I miss you, Comte. I hope you get back home soon…” 

Comte pretty much dies right there. I literally have no better explanation for it. He freezes, his heart sputters and stops. He’s just completely taken aback. 

And then, naturally, he goes about feral with desire as is his modus operandi: “Oho, I heard something incredibly cute just now. Were you also having a hard time spending so long apart?”

MC: “…!”

[Startled, she turns around and her eyes widen and widen.]

MC: “Comte, how...”

Comte: “Took a detour in areas with less rain.”

MC: “?? Wouldn’t that still be hard in weather like this?”

Comte: “I told the coachman I wanted to see you as soon as possible. Even if it was only for a second, I wanted to spend today with you…”

[Everything I was thinking while in the carriage spills out of me long before I can help it. I am reminded again of just how utterly irreplaceable an existence MC is in my life.]

Comte: “Even so, it seems interesting that I would find you in my bed”

MC: “...! A--Ah, I’m so sorry for entering without permission!”

[I quickly grab hold of her before she can scramble out of my bed, coaxing her to sink back into the sheets.]

In between a lot of intense making out and [redacted], the larger overtone is that her reciprocated ardor just destroys him inside:

MC: “It was...because I couldn’t stop thinking about you, about wanting to see you…”

Comte: “!”

[You know just how to drive me mad with desire.]

Comte: “I’m the same...the first thing I did was look for you. Even though it was only a few days, your voice, your body, everything...I missed you”

[Because today, our ‘now’--I never want to lose a single moment with you as long as you’re by my side...]

Comte: “I’m so happy to be able to be with you, right here and right now.”

It gets funny too because Comte is trying to take it slow, but when she tells him “Happy birthday” and goes on to say she was so glad to greet the day he was brought into the world by his side, he just loses all control LMFAO. It ends with them getting more heated and [redacted], to the point where he doesn’t even hear the clock strike midnight. 

And if him being the cutest and sexiest romantic wasn’t obvious enough, he spends the next morning just sighing blissfully with her in his arms:

[The next morning, when I wake up, MC is still fast asleep. I mean, given she only fell asleep a few hours ago. I’m still reveling in the afterglow of a sweet night filled with her cries, the way she looked at me and held me. MC...]

[I relax to the sound of her breathing steady with sleep, stroking gently at her hair as I hug her from behind.]

Comte: “I’ve had countless birthdays. In an endless life, I was convinced it was just a day that would come and go every time.”

Comte: “It was only after meeting you that I could understand there was no such thing as an overlapping or identical moment. I don’t want to miss a single second by your side...that’s what I think now.”

[I admit the truth of my heart, brushing a kiss against her cheek. Over and over and over again, showering her in my affection--]

But dun dun dun!!! MC was awake the whole time, so when she fidgets a little at how ticklish his kisses are, he 👁

[Oh, I see. Well then, two can play at that game...]

Comte: “Your punishment is to stay in my arms just as we are...how’s that?”

He gets his mischievous (and hilarious) revenge for being revealed (HORNY TIME), though it’s so suffused with love it’s hard to call it revenge hahaha. She reminds him to go easy on her because they have his birthday party to attend later, and he agrees~

Honestly after such killer hurt/comfort spice fluff, I can only tremble at the thought of what his 5th year bday story will be

It’s either going to be Some Angst^TM or even more killer fluff, and either way that means my days are numbered

[readinganawfullot]

what am I?

Yo! Just a got an idea of what if Danny got more and more powerful as the show went on? Became something that wasn’t human and wasn’t a ghost. Didn’t even qualify as a halfa. So what does he do? Goes to Walker’s prison. After all if he can contain the most dangerous things, surely he could too? Just how far is Danny willing to go to test what he is?  

Walker wasn’t a ghost that was seeked out. ...Well he wasn’t a ghost that those who were sane sought out. It was reasonable. Running one of the most notorious prisons in the ghost zones and with ironclad rules to match. The place was as pleasant as it sounded and the same went for the one who ran it. There were still ghosts who were there before Periah’s rule for ancient sake! But, that isn’t the point. Walker wasn’t a ghost that was sought out and he knew this. 

So, the question is. Why did Phantom? 

Standing or, better looming, in front of Walker’s desk with sunken eyes and a line line as he waited. For what though? Walker wasn’t stupid and wouldn’t be mistaken for such. Leaning forward he rested his hands on his desk. This, this was one of the criminals he wanted to get for a long time. For the amount of rules that Phantom broke, the boy more than deserved it. To pay and own up to the multiple crimes. But, Phantom wasn’t easy to catch. 

Defeating countless enemies and bounty hunters or those who simply wanted the rights to say I beat Phantom! He made it look easy and with his power (that seemed to be growing with every passing encounter from the whispers of those who he locked up) it wasn’t surprising. So for Phantom to be ‘caught’ from straying into his territory in the ghost zone by accident was as if the boy was trying to mock Walker if anything. 

And he would’ve thought that. If not from the hollowed version of the oh so powerful Phantom that stood before him. 

“Why are you here boy?” He demanded, lips curling as he drawled out the question. He wasn’t in the mood to play games. Walker was a busy warden after all. “This isn’t a place to taunt me.” Phantom was a newly formed ghost. Young but not stupid. He had to know the power Walker had in the prison. 

Phantom tilted his head to look up at Walker, hair falling in his face. A crooked smile and a dying spark in his eyes, “What do you mean? You caught me or are you getting old?” His eyes were dark, waiting for something. Some sort of reaction or for Walker to do something. But, what was it? 

Walker couldn’t find what Phantom was trying to make him do. Or react. As mentioned before, “I don’t do games boy,” he growled out. Toxic green eyes narrowed at the boy, his hands curling into fist. “And I think some time in solitary should give you time to think about that.” And he waited. For a reaction (wasn’t Phantom protecting that town? There should be some resistance, some outcry. Walker’s solitary was much longer than human terms anyway). There was none. Just that same crooked smile. But nothing else. 

Scoffing, Walker gestured to the guards. “Cuff him and put him in confinement. I’m done wasting time.” He didn’t have time to waste. He may be dead, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have a schedule to keep. 

There was a shuffle. The two guards stationed by the door gave each other a glance. Of course they’d follow what Walker said, they weren’t stupid. But… This was Phantom. Sure he didn’t attack unless provoked and didn’t make it hard to find folks like the Fentons did. But did cuffing him stand the same as provoking? Taking an uneasy step forward, Phantom finally looked up and the room’s temperature dropped another ten degrees. 

“What are you doing?” Walker barked out, returning his papers. “Get him out of here. I’ve got things to look over.” 

It wasn’t until Phantom was cuffed and collared did he start to move. Tugging at the cuffs, as if to see if they would work, a spark and a shock gave way to a reaction. Curiously, Phantom didn’t seem to notice it. Or feel it. Furrowing his eyebrows, he looked at the cuffs in concentration before tugging again. Not once using his powers. A spark and dying hiss gave away made Walker look up. 

clunk

The cuffs fell off and Phantom's shoulders dropped with them. The damaged and slightly singed pieces of metal began to burn the carpet. Phantom’s eyes were wide and he was pale. Eyes locked onto the cuffs. Soon enough he began to laugh. Each chuckle getting higher and higher pitch. 

Shit. Wasn’t there rumors that he had a sonic scream? 

“GET DOWN!” Walker roared, the two guards doing so just as the laughter echoed around and destroyed the office. Phantom might as well have been crying with how it sounded. By the time he got up, his ears were ringing and everything hurt. 

“So they were right…” Phantom whispered as he bent down to look at the cuffs. Supposedly they were strong enough to hold any ghost. But what was he? If not a ghost? Vlad had called him a halfa. But Phantom did things that not even Vlad could do. 

Phantom wiped his eyes roughly, ice began to creep on the walls. A low crackling sound began to echo in the room. “I’m not even this…” 

Walker began to finally get up, glaring at the menace who dared to desecrate his office. He wanted to fight back. But when Phantom looked up at him. Eyes glowing bright green, brimming with tears, and that same damn smile. He couldn’t move. 

A flicker and Phantom did what phantoms did best. Vanish. Leaving only a whisper as he slowly  seemingly slipped into nowhere. 

“I’m not even this anymore, am I?” 

[tf2fansderogatory]

We need more of Spy acting like a stereotypical dad, despite not really qualifying as one. If you play disco anywhere in the base, that sad man will do a weird little boogie like no one’s watching.

HGJDKSK he probably prays that no one is watching bc hed never live it down if anyone found out

[lesbitsch-archive]

In this pack you’ll find #53 medium quality (the movie was extremely low quality [like seriously, REALLY bad] so i did my best), medium sized gifs of VLADIMIR KULICH as his role of Tiberius in Ironclad for my one and only fellow cowboy @jcrahmormonts! This brings Vlad’s gif total to #101. Vladimir is Germanic and was about 55 years old in this role.

You may not: turn into icons without permission first, steal or claim as your own, add into gif hunts. You may: use them for character graphics, sidebars, etc (as long as you’re not claiming as your own).

Warnings include: blood, swords/axes, violence/sword fighting

Please donate to my paypal selinaaakyle@gmail.com if you can/would like to, and you can find the gifs HERE or download HERE.

[junkilikey]

I'm sad because he's bad

I wish I was mad but he's all I had

He was supposed to be my comrade

Like Vlad his hatred was ironclad

[atundratoadstool]

A Brief Account of Why Vampires Are Romanian (or Rather A Not-At-All Brief Account of How They Actually Aren’t)

So, in the 1720s-30s, some villagers in Vojvodina (which is now a part of  Serbia but was then a part of the Hapsburg Empire’s Kingdom of Hungary) had what they perceived to be some vampire-related problems and some Austrian military doctors came by and documented their decisions to solve these vampire-related problems by digging up dead bodies and attempting to violently de-vampirize them via beheadings and stakings and other sundry forms of mutilation. Some of this documentation came to be published in newspapers and periodicals across the rest of Europe, and suddenly the rest of Europe was all like “Whoa! Vampires are a thing!” and they found said vampires terribly interesting and promptly wrote political satire about the parasitic upper classes metaphorically sucking the blood of their underlings. As one does.

Eventually, in 1746, a French priest named Augustin Calmet wrote a big treatise on demons and ghosts and all manner of other spooky stuff, in which he included a lengthy discussion of vampires. He called it Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants of Hungary, Moravia, et al., which you will probably observe as not containing any reference to Vojvodina or Serbia at all. Like pretty much everyone else writing about these events, Calmet just categorized the experiences of the Serbian villagers as being a thing that happened in Hungary because technically they did happen in what was Hungary at the time even if they didn’t involve any Hungarian folk beliefs.

And so for the next century and a half, vampires were Hungarian. While Lord Ruthven (”The Vampyre,” 1819) is something of a fluke, given that he’s just Lord Byron if he were an immortal hemophage, a very sizable chunk of the vampires that you actually see throughout the nineteenth century’s literary vampire tradition are debauched Hungarian nobles. You might not recognize names like Alinska (La Vampire ou la Vierge de Hongrie, 1825), Marfa Sergeyevna (“The Vampire,” 1841), Marian Gregoryi (La Vampire, 1875), or Count Vardalek ("The True Story of a Vampire,” 1894), but they are all Hungarian vampires, and they probably all irritated the actual Hungarians of the day who tried very hard to explain that -no- they didn’t actually have any vampire myths (apparently Arnold Ipolyi was cheesed off about this as early as 1854).

Now, while you might not have read any of those obscure vampire texts I rattled off, you probably do recognize names like “Carmilla” and “Dracula.” But wait, what’s that you say? Dracula!? Isn’t Dracula supposed to be Romanian? Isn’t he Vlad the Impaler, vovoide of Wallachia (AKA old school Romania)? Doesn’t he live in Transylvania, which is in Romania?

Well, here’s where things get interesting.1 First off, back in 1897, when Dracula was published, Transylvania was -you guessed it- in the Hungarian part of Austria-Hungary, and like Vojvodina, people just tended to round Transylvania up to being “some part of Hungary” even if the vast majority of people living there were Romanian. Romania existed, but at the time Dracula was published, it had only been an independent state for fifteen years and Transylvania most decidedly was not in it. Bram Stoker, who never went to Transylvania in the first place and did most of his research via really condescending/racist travelogues, constructed the fictional Transylvania within Dracula by copy-pasting in bits and pieces of books that were not only about Transylvania, but about Hungary and the area near the Carpathians in general, nabbing whatever he could find that sounded cool so long as it was nebulously in the region he was describing.

And one cool thing he found? From one book, titled An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, we know that he took notes about a historical Wallachian voivode whose name was given as “Dracula.” This book doesn’t, however, mention much else; it certainly doesn’t mention any of those completely metal stories about a guy impaling people or nailing turbans to emissaries’ heads; it doesn’t even use the words “Vlad” or “Impale” anywhere near this Dracula’s name; and the whole story of this Dracula (and his father, also a Dracula) takes up all of three pages. Don’t believe me? Go check. Right here. Through the miracle of GoogleBooks, you can experience the entirety of Bram Stoker’s known sources on Vlad III in the next minute or so.

So yeah... there’s not much there. It is seriously not outside the realm of possibility that Dracula is called “Dracula” because Bram thought it was a pretty cool name that he erroneously thought to mean “devil.” As for the tiny snippet of historical context that got shoved into the book (that part where the Count mentions somebody who “crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground" and had an “unworthy brother”) this definitely does refer to the itsy bitsy, super small blurb on Vlad III that’s in Wilkinson, but it’s not in any way clear that Dracula is actually meant to be identified with this personage. I could go into more as to why this is so murky, but it’s something that has already been hashed out in sort of awkwardly excruciating detail here by Hans de Roos.2 The short version is that there’s a historical “Dracula” mentioned in the text who clearly isn’t Vlad, who doesn’t seem to have a real world equivalent, and who makes an awful lot of sense to read as being the Count.

In any event, we have a bunch of stuff that points to the Count being yet another Hungarian or Hungarian-coded evil vampire nobleman, and some of this stuff isn’t all that subtle... like Dracula literally telling Jonathan Harker that he is a member of a Hungarian ethnic group. The Count also makes a point of mentioning his use of Hungarian linguistic conventions and, if you look in the novel’s original typescript, you can see that the woman with the stolen child was supposed to have referred to her persecutor as “Hungarian” rather than “monster” at one point in the drafting process. Even with all this rather blatant evidence that Stoker was working within the "Hungary=vampires” paradigm, however, Drac’s Hungarianess still isn’t 100% neat and tidy. It can’t be. Stoker’s culturally insensitive collage of whatever spiffy-sounding factoids he could find about an ethnically diverse region with incredibly complex, intertwining Romanian and Hungarian histories just does not result in a well wrought Hungarian character, and we’re left with a confused hodgepodge of Romanian and Hungarian elements. The thing is, though, that said hodgepodge just so happened to become the most famous vampire of all time.

So what happens post-Dracula? Once the stage play and film take off, people start to take elements introduced in Dracula, even ones that didn’t have any precursors in literature or folklore, and decide that these are 100% ironclad things that real vampires™ do. Suddenly vampires all lack reflections; they cringe at crosses; they need to be invited into your home; and they all suddenly live in Transylvania. Also, TWO WORLD WARS HAPPEN, and at the end of them, Transylvania is actually in Romania, and as Dracula increasingly becomes a topic that nerds and academics and academic nerds like to nerd out about, some people examine the sad little dribblings of history Stoker dropped in the text and get the impression that maybe Dracula is supposed to be Vlad III.3 This was a pretty understandable thing to do, given that most people in those days didn’t have access to all the neato primary sources relating to Dracula that I mentioned somewhere above in describing how dinky the Vlad III evidence actually is.4 It makes sense to seize onto tantalizing historical hints within the text and assume that they might be a part of something grander, and eventually Harry Ludham’s completely bibliography- and source-free biography of Stoker lent the claim some additional credence by giving it out as a completely source-free fact. 

What really got things going, however, was Raymond McNally and Radu Florescu’s 1972 In Search of Dracula, which really really really really tried to sell the Dracula is Vlad III angle and succeeded tremendously, all while describing the authors’ investigation into Vlad as it played out in their own visits to historical sites in Romania. The book, in addition to telling everyone very firmly and enthusiastically that Vlad III was totally Dracula, went to the trouble of explaining that its readers could and should totally go to Romania and see all sorts of rad Dracula things there, all while giving some cringey advice on how not to alert the locals as to the fact that they were weird vampire novel enthusiasts who wanted to gawk at historical sites’ relating to one of the country’s cultural heroes because some Irishman ostensibly wrote a book about him biting people. While I’ve come to regard as unnecessarily mean-spirited some of the later scholarship pointing out how crap McNally and Florescu’s scholarship was, their scholarship really hasn’t held up well, and by the time other scholars started noticing, the notion that Dracula=Vlad and Romania=vampires had become pretty firmly entrenched. By the late 90s, there were several books, movies, and even very legitimate and influential scholarly articles working from the premise that Stoker had had Vlad III in mind as the Count and wanted him to be a uniquely Romanian character, and owing to Bram’s strange, patchwork fiction of Transylvania, there were -in fact- a lot of Romanian elements within the text to support this idea. Vampires, which used to be Hungarian before Dracula, and who are even Hungarian in Dracula, eventually became Romanian because Dracula became such a landmark vampire text that people began to take Stoker’s weird blend of cultural elements as evidence of both Dracula’s and vampires’ Romanianess.

So even if all that has since been debunked on paper, this nevertheless sort of brings us to where we are now. Obviously, there's a lot of changes in the depiction, perception, and reception of vampires that have occurred in the past twenty years, but we're still at this weird place where most westerners generally think of vampires as belonging to a country that doesn't actually have a folkloric vampire tradition... and the reason that we think that is directly related to the fact that for the better part of two centuries most westerners thought that they belonged to another country that doesn't actually have a folkloric vampire tradition.5 It’s honestly all pretty zany, and while I sort of thought that I’d have a wise, profound, or otherwise satisfying end to this stupid long ramble about how weird vampires' shifting geographic location is, I don’t really... other than -as always- nobody should really be a tool about vampires. This is not only because one shouldn’t be a tool in general but because there’s a non-zero chance that whatever deep-held truths you hold regarding them have been wrong since before you were born, and it is not impossible that you will live to see the day when somebody totally insists that a supernatural entity you’ve never heard of just lives in your place now and your fave historical figure always was one.

1. Or where they get interesting if you haven’t heard me give this spiel before. It’s that time of year, kids. | 2. Hans is a really nice/chill guy even if I don’t agree with all of his analyses in that document. You might recognize him as the individual who recently brought us the majestic pinnacle of high weirdness that is the recent translation of Powers of Darkness. | 3. Interestingly enough, it might be that the first person to do much with this was Dracula’s first Turkish adapter, who re-imagined Dracula in 1928 as a story about a marauding occidental foreigner from the West coming to get the decent, upstanding citizens of Istanbul... but that’s another story. | 4. They also didn’t have GoogleBooks and thinking of that reality makes me very very sad. :( | 5. Romanian folklore has strigoi, which sometimes are dead and sometimes drink blood, but are really more akin to evil ghost-wizards than vampires from what I’ve heard. Hungarian folklore has the lidérc, which also goes blood-drinking sometimes, but is apparently sort of more like a succubus that is also a chicken... I think. I do know that pretty much every article I've read (Florescu excepted) and account I've heard from Romanians and Hungarians on the topic of what people typically conceive of as vampires has been roughly "No, we don't actually have those. Plz stop." I'm of neither Romanian, Hungarian, nor Slavic extraction, however, so I'm more than willing to be corrected.

[aprofessionalwithoutstandards]

Scout is really into the Fallout series because it makes him feel like a badass, and other shooters kinda bore him like been there done that. Anyway one time he called Spy Benny on accident and Demo spit out his morning scrumpy.

I've never played Fallout lemme look smth up rq

[yourfaveisvoidpunk]

MOTHMAN from cryptid folklore please

queued!