Julia makes her case of why the creature in Grady Hendrix’s The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires is NOT really a vampire, and Victoria makes a counterargument that it is actually the MOST vampire. They are both generally infuriated with everyone in this novel except Mrs. Green.

Julia and Victoria read a pandemic book called The Memory of Animals by Claire Fuller where the octopus is not the focus of the story, but is at the heart of the book’s major themes of captivity and embodiment. Victoria makes the ill-advised choice to revisit some of her early-pandemic journals.

Julia and Victoria get very hungry talking about the trope-flipping, contemporary vampire novel Woman, Eating by Claire Kohda.

Julia and Victoria discuss Sea Change by Gina Chung and how authors use the octopus to contemplate loneliness and change. They discover that life really is about the friends we made along the way in this first book of The Vampire & the Octopus series.

Victoria teaches Julia all about the origins, tropes, and metaphors of vampire lore. They discuss the origins of vampire stories in Slavic folklore, the Great Vampire Epidemic of the 18th century, the blood-sucking breakup novel Lord Byron’s “travel companion” wrote about him, and lament the loss of a key source for Victoria’s vampire-as-justice analysis that she lost when she closed all her tabs.

Julia takes Victoria on a deep dive of octopus stories throughout time and space in this first episode of The Vampire & the Octopus series. We tackle questions like “Are octopus stories a form of colonizer horror?” and “What’s with all the octopus books coming out recently?” and “Why did the 19th century French think the octopus was the physical embodiment of hell?”

Julia discusses disability, comedy, creativity, and treating people like people with Steven Verdile, the founder of the disability satire publication The Squeaky Wheel.