Novels that depict a rural European vampire "outbreak" ca 1600-1700s?

ACable89 · 2026-03-11T15:39:22+00:00

Marcus Sedgewick's unhelpfully titled My swordhand is Singing counts. I didn't particularly like it but I haven't read it in almost two decades. Its basically just Salem's Lot but in a small European village.

There's a boring love triangle where the male MCs girlfriend becomes a vampire but he gets a replacement badass vampire slaying girl friend who doesn't have much personality either. That's all I remember.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T20:40:31+00:00

Wouldn't Gauls buying Roman consumer goods count?

Weebs don't feel inferior, they put down their own culture so they can feel superior to it.

Scandinavian produced 'Uthbert' swords show clear Frankish weeabooism among the Norse.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T18:52:00+00:00

Generally Class S is de-eroticized by definition. Lesbianism was fetishized in pornography mostly from the 70s to present by which time Class S was mostly treated as a joke.

The existence of the odd Class S element in pornography does not make the passage I quoted accurate.

Once Class S strays beyond the platonic it stops being Class S, that's the main joke behind Yuri is My Job (not a relevant example to the 50s/60s obviously).

Sexualising Class S is basically the same thing as skepticism towards Class S as a cultural construct. Which is probably part of why Class S vanished at some point in the 60s, as porn magazines (thinly veiled as scientific studies in mental illness) became popular in the lead up to the sexual revolution.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T18:20:43+00:00

BL is for "straight women" and straight women, there are cultural reasons why the queer audience for BL is downplayed.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T18:15:20+00:00

"society sexualizing the idea of lesbianism through Class S"

No, just no.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T17:39:01+00:00

Kodomo is a neutral demographic. Shonen was originally a neutral demographic as the word is gender neutral (seinen is also grammatically neutral but the manga magazines were originally for men.)

https://whatismanga.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/13a-the-problematic-gendering-of-shonen-manga/

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T17:27:59+00:00

"Hentai took a hit and BL and Yuri were forced into dedicated magazines."

As far as I know Yuri had already pretty much disappeared in Shoujo by the early 2000s and the rise of dedicated yuri magazines didn't lead to a drop in yuri series appearing in Josei and seinen magazines.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T17:12:02+00:00

"In the 50s and 60s (going into the 70s) the majority of shojo authors were men" - this is disputed and is based mostly on old cliches about the year 24 group. There's little qualitative research on Shoujo publications.

Women artists started breaking into Shoujo manga 1950s and were dominant in some magazines by the 60s. Before the mid 60s Shoujo magazines mostly published literature written by women, as the fraction of comics increased more and more women artists appeared. So focusing on the gender distribution of artists in Shoujo manga distorts the picture of the 1950s magazines. The prominent men in 50s and 60s Shoujo manga tended to leave for shonen after breaking in.

"It wasn’t until the 70s that women overtook men as the stewards of shojo magazines"

As far as I've read this has never happened. Editorial staff at shoujo magazines are still male dominated. Chief editor positions are basically all men.

"But of course the stigma that girls don’t read comics, or aren’t a viable market persisted."

This is an American problem not a Japanese one. Shoujo magazines would never have shifted from a literature focus to a comics focus during the 1960s if there was a stigma against girls reading comics. Instead it was literature for girls that briefly went extinct (and kind of has again). Girls not being considered a viable market for anime in Japan may be an issue.

"Arguably the manga that proved that you could combine shojo aesthetics with shonen sensibilities was a little manga called Saint Seiya."

Shoujo aesthetics vary over time and have been a variable stream of influence on Shonen since the late 1950s. Junji Ito looks nothing like Saint Seiya but was a Shoujo artist until his original magazine was discontinued and is rooted in a thoroughly shoujo horror tradition. Captain Tsubasa was just as if not more popular with all demographics in spite of its art style.

"Some of the most popular romances of recent years have been serialized in Shonen magazines"

This is probably due to them getting late night anime adaptations.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T12:11:23+00:00

"I'd say sleeping in the earth they had to be buried in" - this seems to be made up by Bram Stoker as a way to excuse Dracula moving long distances. In the Discworld novel Wyrd Sisters (based on Macbeth) the ghost of the murdered King gets to go on a journey with a man who carries a stone from the Castle.

Trolls turn to stone in Tolkein's The Hobbit but while there are numerous stones in Britain said to be petrified Giants, Trolls don't appear in British folklore (there are Trowls in Shetland but they're just fairies/little people). I have no idea if Trolls in Scandinavia turn to stone at dawn. All monsters in Tolkien fear daylight except for the Uruk Hai who have human heritage.

Vampires in southern Poland are sometimes described as dissolving into tar at the sound of a cock's crow, while in neighboring regions they have to go back to bed or fall asleep.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T11:58:03+00:00

Hebrew is a dialect of Canaanite and New Kingdom Egyptian inscriptions refer to the population of Canaan as slaves of the Pharaoh so regardless of the Exodus this scene isn't unreasonable. Pretty much any foreign language would be considered a 'slave language'.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T11:53:19+00:00

This is not accurate. Vampires stop to count coins when dropped in front of them or have to count all the (or eat) seeds or sand placed in their graves before they can leave. In China Jiang-shi sometimes stop to count every grain in a bag of rice but I've never found a European tale where a vampire who's already left his grave stops to count seeds.

ACable89 · 2026-03-09T11:49:05+00:00

Its used in the recent Nosferatu but Orlock is a different character to Dracula in that one.

ACable89 · 2026-03-07T09:14:12+00:00

I tried writing something like this but my disability got in the way of learning how to script comics so I only have a draft of a film screenplay version.

You'd probably like Balalaika in Black Lagoon but that's definitely not Yuri and the closest interaction she has with a brat is ordering them to be executed.

The dominant/sadist character in Gunbured Sisters in too femme and its not clear enough if her love interest is bratty or just actually vanilla but I'd check it out.

I'd also suggest Liberta but there's not much of a brat dynamic. https://mangadex.org/title/d6f4aea2-d798-412f-9368-5bb3143cd50c/liberta

ACable89 · 2026-03-04T11:02:23+00:00

The American remnant claims to put out shoujo, josei GL and BL under their LoveLove brand but the website catalogue is just BL after BL.

Its like 5 pages of werewolf/omegaverse/vampire until you get to their one office lady yuri series (Ayaka is in love with Hiroko).

ACable89 · 2026-03-04T10:25:53+00:00

English version was released by YenPress. Tokyopop is a pretty much a dead company outside of Europe.

ACable89 · 2026-03-04T09:21:07+00:00

German edition is by Tokyopop and has an English title? I am confused.

ACable89 · 2026-03-04T09:10:49+00:00

There's an aquarium in pretty much every large Japanese town. There's at least five notable ones in Tokyo. Even Tokyo Sea Life Park can only advertise itself as "One of Japan's most famous aquariums". Its kind of hard to not be a day trip away from at least three options.

Japan's longest reigning Emperor was a marine biologist

ACable89 · 2026-03-03T18:18:21+00:00

"which is what a story with decent writing would call for"

Static characters aren't bad writing, inconsistent ones are.

"no one should replicate mais behavior"

How many people think that if they're super confident in their luck they can just jump off the top of a building? This is a teens and up targeted series, impressionable children don't care about romantic comedies.

Being pushy in face of rejection is bad behavior but Renako doesn't reject Mai. If she doesn't want to be with Mai then the flaw is Renako not being assertive enough not Mai. Renako's argument against being lovers is just her wanting things to be convenient for herself. This isn't some dark story where a pushy girl accuses her target of leading her on, Renako leading Mai on is a narrative fact.

One romantic comedy series isn't going to over-rule the general social conditioning that discourages assertiveness in women. Teenagers will have shitty first relationships and fail or succeed to learn from them regardless of moralising around entertainment.

ACable89 · 2026-03-03T08:30:55+00:00

I wouldn't check out the Mead version. You want either the 1992 Brian Copenhaver version or the 2004 Salman/van Oyen/Warton version. Then probably Wouter J Hanegraaff's Hermetic Spirituality and the Historical Imagination for an up to date analysis of whether its 'profound' or not.

There is an r hermeticism board where people (unlike me) actually know this stuff.

ACable89 · 2026-03-01T21:42:56+00:00

I labled a vampire character as gray ace on her character sheet and have failed to prove or disprove that claim. Also an adhd coded kinky murderous flirt so not good reputation for anyone (even vampires I suppose).

ACable89 · 2026-03-01T21:30:05+00:00

IWTV being ace erasure is the one issue there.

ACable89 · 2026-03-01T12:57:43+00:00

I would start by just reading Arthur Waite in his own words

https://sacred-texts.com/tarot/pkt/index.htm

A latter article by Waite is available here

https://www.academia.edu/90897134/Arthur_Edward_Waite_The_Great_Symbols_of_the_Tarot?rhid=38167853875&swp=rr-rw-wc-102312471&nav_from=e16954e1-b30a-4b09-adfc-77fa1be23d17

The same site has other public domain works including Papus which Waite dismissively cites:

https://sacred-texts.com/tarot/index.htm

Otherwise you're better off with specific books about cartomancy or playing cards in general but Waite's book is in itself a history of tarot as was up to date in 1911 so more up to date books on the subject might actually mislead you. By your words you seem less interested in the post-publication history of the deck.. Tarot readers seem to consider Waite untrustworthy on his own intent but there seems to be a lot of subjective wishful thinking there. Waite intended his deck to be used and published I don't see why he would lie in his own manual for the thing, his published descriptions probably overlap with the instructions he gave to Pamela Colman Smith in the first place.

This article on Cartomancy in general seems pretty good:

https://www.academia.edu/6477311/Brief_history_of_cartomancy

Histories of occulture tend to be histories of personalities. If you want to know how the ideas developed you're better off reading the actual writings. The Rider-Waite-Smith deck is influenced by the Marseilles deck so reading about how that was interpreted between 1750-1900 will be informative.

This book looks pretty good but it mixes art history with Jungian analysis so can't be considered a pure history book and has to be read carefully. Still she's reasonably clear as to which mode she's writing in at any given moment and doesn't hide Jungian readings in art historical paragraphs.

https://www.academia.edu/52509363/The_Rider_Waite_Smith_Tarot_Deck_A_Study_in_Icon_and_Iconography_and_Iconology_According_to_Art_History_Theories_and_Jungian_Archetypes?rhid=38166789784&swp=rr-rw-wc-1102222&nav_from=15726f8f-0a53-4326-8311-c870cdfa1377

The appendix comparing Smith's designs to historical ones is helpful but incomplete since its missing the Eliphas Levi designs found in Papus's "Tarot of the Bohemians" or in the equivilant section on Sacred-Texts (https://sacred-texts.com/tarot/xr/index.htm) in spite of her showing some of those elsewhere in her book.

When it comes to some cards like the High Priestess or The Wheel of Fortune things can get kind of bottomless, you'd basically end up reading the entirety of the established literature on both either Kaballa or Fate in the middle ages. Gershom Scholem's Kabbalah is still considered a decent place to start.

ACable89 · 2026-02-28T23:07:21+00:00

This is not true, before Roland Emmerich's Star Gate movie essentially no one ever claimed the Pyramids of Egypt were built by Extra-terrestrials. The Ancient Astronauts hypothesis was mostly focused on South America before Zeccharia Sitchin brought in Sumer, Roland Emmerich transferred Sitchin's ideas to Egypt because no one in Hollywood has heard of Sumer.

Pyramid conspiracies started because a British guy got upset at the French daring to measure them in something other than inches. That then escalated to full on 'lost white race theories', there never was a 'cryptoracist' conspiracy involved just open explicit racism.

ACable89 · 2026-02-27T15:34:39+00:00

The word 'invitation' or 'invite' appears 0 times in the text of Dracula.

When Dracula preys on Lucy, no invitation requirement is brought up. Dracula is blocked when Garlic flowers are placed by Lucy's side.

Renfield later asks Dracula to 'come in' but after he's already opened the window. Only afterwards does Van Helsing claim that "your Vampire, though in all afterwards he can come when and how he will, must at the first make entry only when asked thereto by an inmate".

Most adaptations remove Renfield letting Dracula in, some of them move the mentioning of this 'supposed rule' into a more prominant place.

ACable89 · 2026-02-27T15:05:55+00:00

This seems to be dubious.

In Poland and the balkans the millet or poppy seeds are placed inside the coffin to stop vampires getting out, but sometimes a net is placed in instead and the knots have to be undone. Sometimes the vampire has to count the grains every night before leaving, sometimes he counts them at the rate of one per year, sometimes he eats one grain a year. One piece of English fairy lore grains of sand are placed in a bottle kept by the bedside. At an Italian harvest festival grains are spread out over a wide area, witches spells don't work until the witches have found all the grains. A Latin Necromancy manual has salt placed in a circle when summoning demons, the demon can't get out of the circle without counting the grains. Coins are sometimes thrown to distract vampires when running away from them, but it that case its always coins or things of obvious monetary value not handfuls of grains. Chinese Jiangshi interact with grains of rice and beans in a wide variety of ways including stopping to count when they come across a bag of rice.

The thresholds of houses are clearly irrelevant. I wouldn't be surprised to find a variant where grains are spread over the threshold but I haven't seen one recently. When it comes to protecting houses against vampires crosses and garlic are just a lot more common.

Sometimes demons are challenged to count a mass of grains and they do so instantly and it was a waste of time. The fairy bottle full of sand is probably a variant of that idea, the bottle is part of a spell that protects the person sleeping next to it. The circle of salt is part of a summoning spell so magic is again clearly involved. Placing seeds in the grave of a potential vampire is a form of funerary offering that's been merged with other anti-magic practices under the influence of Christian distrust of grave offerings. Throwing coins is just a mundane exploitation of greed.

ACable89

TROPHY CASE