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 is truly bamboozled, Victoria embraces that she is a vampire girlie, and they both dig into the context of Joseph Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, edited with commentary by the absolute legend Carmen Maria Machado.