The Queerest Vampire You might maybe well presumably presumably even be pleased Never Heard Of

Vampires have always been queer Dracula the king of homoerotic monsters was written by a closeted gay man who idolized Walt Whitman and was friends with Oscar Wilde to read it at the time Dracula represented a terrifying other mysterious creature whose sexuality threatened to topple the entirety of the British Empire.

But Dracula wasn't the first gay vampire no that Accolade goes to carmilla and her lesbian love interest Laura bisexual vampires are you say yes havelastat from Interview with a Vampire queer vampires are everywhere and they've been queer for much longer than they've been straight of course that didn't stop people trying.

To make them straight and Japan is no exception for many years we were stuck with hetero titles like Vampire Knight vampire princess and bloodland but then Miz vampire who lives in my neighborhood came along answering the age-old question what if we were both girls and we kissed in your dakimakura coffin Miss Vampire who lives.

In my neighborhood is about a vampire named Sophie and the hopelessly gay schoolgirl who lives with her when I first watched the series in 2018 I didn't expect anything more than gay subtext you know a bit of flooding intense Declarations of friendship maybe even some lewd hand holding what I actually got was a 12 episode.

Manifesto on why being normal sucks my vampires are the gayest mythical creatures to ever exist every moment of every episode felt like it was Taylor Made to celebrate being different being queer it fascinated me so much so that years later I was still thinking about it so let me take you on a journey into the world of cute vampires doing cute.

Things on explore middle vampire is saying how it says it and why I think this unassuming Moab anime deserves to be part of the queer vampire Pantheon thank you Miss Vampire begins as all anime should with two lesbians frolicking in a forest.

You have the protagonist a monarchery and her love interest Sophie Twilight this is the first time we see Sophie and the way she introduces herself sets a tone for the entire series she says being a mythical creature so if he sees herself as normal she lives a normal.

Life in a relatively normal house in a normal neighborhood with normal Neighbors when she invites our Korean and shows her around we learn that Sophie doesn't drink blood from live humans instead she ordered blood on Amazon buying multiple blood types to vary the flavor whenever she's hungry she pours refrigerated blood into a.

Teacup or a mug and heat up in the microwave she's completely accustomed to Modern Life she's also an otaku the first suggestion that she's in otaku comes and we see her in episode 1 loudly proclaiming that she'll leave the house in the middle of the day to go to a book signing event for a light novel she'd.

Been reading this despite the fact that sunlight will turn her to Ash later we see her sleeping with a body pillow going to Akihabara and of course who can forget her figurine collection the contrast the anime is presenting is that we expect a vampire to be predatory and charismatic but Sophie is the opposite an otaku who lives alone out of.

Convenience it's a key aspect of the anime's humor but it's also the backbone of the more heartfelt storyline about Sophie overcoming social anxiety classic vampires like Dracula live alone to avoid being discovered by Society they keep their harems of victims with them inside their dark abodes going out only to hunt their Hermits by necessity.

Sophie the modern vampire is a Hermit by choice she has a fully loaded kitchen and a fancy laptop and all the light novels that money can buy and for her that's enough even blood drinking something she has to do to stay alive is done in isolation avoiding humans means that no one gets hurt yes but for Sophie it also means she doesn't have to engage.

In any social interaction buying blood from Amazon is as much a mental health decision as it is a moral one as far as Sophie is concerned the more she can avoid the world the more comfortable she is that is until she meets akari akari brings feelings to the surface that Sophie never even knew she had let me set the scene for you on the one side.

We have akari a doll fanatic who is wowed by Sophie's gorgeous looks on the other we have Sophie a lonely otaku who isn't sure what to do with all this new attention loves spending time with Sophie because she's down bad and has a special interest in being gay so she begins visiting Sophie or often but the.

Attention starts to wear Sophie down so when akari innocently asks if vampires are more powerful than humans Sophie decides to try and scare akari away to get some of her solitary time back she lifts a road roller because of course she does and akari runs away as intended we then get a montage showing Sophie's empty house set to sad piano.

Music Sophie reflects of course our credit comes back at that very moment with a bunch of Josh he's never been able to open herself because that's how lesbians do it so what's happening here well I could he met Sophie saw her vampiric way of life.

And thought I want me some of that but Sophie has spent literally hundreds of years avoiding this exact scenario so she fell back on the Old State of play and to protect her personal space allowed herself to reenact The Stereotype of vampires as Eldritch Predators she wasn't ready to let herself be herself in front of someone.

Who wasn't a vampire she wasn't ready to give up the stability of her pretend normal life but akari isn't afraid of Sophie she doesn't see Sophie's vampirism as a negative trait and that's why when she's done gushing about Sophie's Incredible strength she looks Sophie in the eye and asks.

Foreign asking if she can visit again she's really asking if she can be part of Sophie's life she's asking if she can intertwine her life with Sophie's as changing both lives for the better this my friends is what we call a queer invitation now for many if not most.

This will be the first time you've heard the phrase queer invitation thrown around as an academic term I first came across it in Benjamin Bateman's essay Beyond interpolation Foster connection and the queer invitation which was published in 20th century literature in 2011. Beethoven hoped their concept would reawaken queer Theory to its.

Original project of not simply making the world safe for queerness but also remaking the world in the image of the queer sounds good to me so what is a queer invitation then well a queer invitation at its simplest is an invitation to atypical Behavior it's an invitation to be otherwise to act in a way which is real and genuine and often.

Deviant in other words it's about deciding your identity for yourself rather than being stuck with the one the world has given you this idea of being stuck with an identity is something Louis Alpha circled into session I went for about five different drafts trying to explain this clearly and what I settled on is.

This okay so normally we think of an identity as something that comes from within us maybe we decided maybe it arises naturally all by itself but it's uniquely ours our friend Louis here represented by suggests that there's another agent at Play.

Society there are a couple of ways to Imagine This the first one is to think about a language let's pick English as it's the language I'm speaking in this video Let's also imagine that I only speak English if I were to spend the remaining 50 minutes or so of this video complaining about how awful English is I.

Would have no choice but to do so in English to put it another way no matter how much I hate English as long as English is the only language I know I have no choice but to use its words English decides what I can say and it decides that without any input from me the words I use to describe myself are words made up by the people around me.

Words whose meanings were decided before I was even born you see what I'm saying perhaps this next example will help this is the example Althea himself used imagine you walk past a police officer the officer shouts hey you and you turn around in response you probably turn around instinctively without even thinking about it or maybe you do think.

About it and make a conscious choice to acknowledge the officer either way you recognize the police officer's call as being addressed to you when you do that the policeman's identity as an upholder of the law and your identity as someone who has to obey the policeman's Authority a reinforced simultaneously you become what Alphas air would call a.

Subject but let's say you don't turn around let's say you ignore the officer and keep walking as a form of protest does that mean you aren't a subject sadly no because like in my first example with English the truth is we're all subjects who were subjects from the beginning because no matter how we respond to the.

Police officer as long as the officer is an officer in our minds we're operating within the language that Society has laid out for us the very concept of the place is itself ideological the police are a system that we as a society have constructed they represent a system of power and its systems of power that create the.

Ideological language we speak Alpha sir called this always already being a subject we're born into it essentially just like with your native language or languages it's the first thing we experience and it defines the parameters of how we think behave and even feel that's what interpolation is it's the way in which authority tells.

You who you should be and even worse the way it tells you who you can be Bateman's concept of queer invitations is a way to escape this ideological prison the way it does this is by creating a method for people to address each other without forcing either person to subject themselves to an identity or ideology.

They didn't choose you invite someone to be different if interpolation tells you who you are from the outside then queer invitations are the world of possibilities inherent in every person queer invitations are an option you can refuse a suggestion that needs your consent to be fulfilled everything about a queer invitation is opposed to the.

Top-down structure of interpolation there is no certainty or guarantee you could be this or you could be that it's your choice and it's the choice that gives it so much power by giving someone the option to shed the dead weight of their societal obligations you Empower them to find the queer potential within themselves queer invitations exist in.

Opposition to fixed ideas of who people can and should be by their nature they're always a little ambiguous tinged with a danger of the unknown and it's that danger that akari represents when she asks Sophie if she can keep visiting her house Sophie can choose to remain alone and safe if she wants to but she doesn't she chooses change he chooses.

Akari there's a detail I haven't mentioned yet up to this point Sophie calls I got a human rather than addressing her by name it's another way in which Sophie maintains her distance as the other she's a vampire not human not in the same class of people as akhari she doesn't see herself as less than but her.

Choice to live alone has to be understood in the context of her being both alataku and a vampire shares in every respect an outsider and a loner but akari is a queer force of nature so she immediately breaks down the human vampire barrier between them telling Sophie not to call her human but her name instead.

So Sophie takes a leap she accepts Aquarius queer invitation and lets herself be more than an outsider she lets akari into her world and even more than that lets herself be a part of akari's world in a way this is a conclusion of the queer invitation that happened in the first scene of the.

Anime I didn't Linger on it so you might have missed it that's right the first thing Sophie does after introducing herself to akari is invite akadi to take her hand then when they leave the forest she invites akari into her home without hesitation the first scene in the first episode begins with a queer invitation and it.

Doesn't stop there the next day akari tells her classmates how she's going every day to visit her new friend who she met in the woods so of course her friend Sakia suggests before episode 1 even ends we're in the space of a few days akure meets with friends then moves in with a Vampire and no one bats an eyelid except her.

Childhood friend natsuki Hinata but we'll get to her in a second first I want to dive a little deeper into the mind of our favorite U-Haul lesbian akari influence on Sophie but what is it that makes akuri such a queer Powerhouse well if Sophie is the surprisingly normal vampire then akari is a surprisingly.

Abnormal human she is obsessed with dolls to the point that she's Infamous for it at school she immediately forms an intense attachment to Sophie for her doll-like appearance and thinks nothing of moving in with her right away even though she's a vampire throughout the series achary makes an.

Active effort to acclimatize herself to Sophie's way of living even spraying ketchup on her food so they look like blood all in an effort to make Sophie feel more included akari is completely unafraid or perhaps simply uninterested in what other people think of her things that are strange or terrifying such as horror movies have no effect on.

Her and she's always loudly and proudly declaring her love for Sophie the anime considers akiri to be so strange that a lot of the humor is built upon the idea that akari who should be unthreatening is far more terrifying than Sophie who is a literal monster from ancient myth let's unpack this a bit because at first glance akadi looks a lot like a classic.

Predatory lesbian think Kuroko from a certain scientific railgun I'm sure the anime does present I could use desire as predatory it often contrasts akari's predatory hunger with Sophie's mild man of demeanor as a kind of role reversal joke but a key difference between her and kurokor is that akari always obtains consent from Sophie before showering her.

With affection I mean yeah she will attempt to glom onto Sophie wherever possible but when Sophie says no akari stops in the context of an otherwise heterosexual show a character like akari would feel like fan service at best and a homophobic stereotype but worst but Ms vampire isn't heterosexual in the slightest and so akuri's extreme desire.

For Sophie instead exists as a kind of inverse reflection of her childhood friend Hinata who is pathologically incapable of expressing her true feelings Hinata is a closeted lesbian who doesn't realize she's gay the Anime plays on this intentionally drawing our attention.

To how ignorant Hinata is of her love for akari in episode 2 for example during what his Hinata's first real introduction as a character Hinata asks akari if they can visit her new friend Hinata suspects the friend May in fact be a boy which she codes to mean a love interest a part of her wants to be sure but another part of her is terrified at.

What that will mean for her feelings if she turns out to be correct Hinata's internal conflict over her sexuality it's just one part of her overall difficulty with being honest she frequently feels unable to be herself and this evolves over the course of the series with episode 2 being the beginning of her journey in episode 2.

After a phone call with Sophie akari and Hinata go to rent some movies together Hinata would rather watch something light-hearted but feels unable to show weakness in front of akari Hinata reflects that she always ends up acting tough for no reason this sort of machoism is the Yuri echo of heteronormative relationship Dynamics.

Where the boyfriend needs to be tough and unafraid in order to protect his girlfriend in many ways this is emblematic of Hinata's position in the anime she is the one most attached to normative ways of being in another anime she'd function as the straight man to the more chaotic cast members but in Ms vampire Hinata is.

Usually the old one out when she visits Sophie's Mansion she's scared out of her mind at spooky Aura while akari remains calm and when she meets Sophie for the first time she flip-flops between speaking to her like a child and speaking to her respectfully as if she were an elder or a superior akari simply speaks in casual dialect and Sophie asks.

For the same from Hinata this is just one example of how the abnormal becomes the normal in Sophie's Mansion behaviors that make sense in the outside world are inverted which means that Hinata is frequently jump scared perplexed and just all-round confused by the Antics from the other two girls this is part of her journey towards honest.

Self-expression through exposure to the queer environment of Sophie's Mansion Hinata begins to realize that the things she considered normal may not be as valid as she once thought them to be it takes all 12 episodes to finally help her out of her shell 12 episodes and one very very gay vampire belly whose DND alignment is chaotic gay.

Arrives in episode 4 like a homosexual tornado foreign things have been coasting along pretty smoothly our cutting and Sophie have a comfortable life in their big game mansion and not his air as well and all in all they're having a cozy and gay.

Time not rocking the boat just quietly enjoying being different Ellie doesn't do queerness quietly she calls Sophie her lover as soon as she arrives talks Non-Stop about her love of beautiful women and before episode 4 has even reached his halfway point she's drunks of his blood and tried to drink akharis she's flirtatious to her fault and.

Whenever she flirts this music plays candidate for the shirai Kuroko of the Year reward she is even closer to Latrobe than akarias living in a near-constant state of gay arousal gay rousel I honestly feel sorry for characters like Kuroko for all the memes the truth is Kuroko.

Never gets to be lesbian in a healthy or consensual way she's forever the creepy lewd stalker where is her romantic happiness when can she be happy and gay and peace as far as railgun or index is concerned she can't the opening of episode 4 of Ms vampire would have you think that Ellie is the same.

But she isn't Ellie's strange behavior is explained in the show as being a symptom of her 100-year sleep she took a nap 100 years ago and simply didn't wake up because the present day she represents uninhibited vampire culture where vampires drink freely of the blood of humans hunting them in the night she acts on her instincts without.

Hesitation raiding Sophie's refrigerator whenever she's hungry or wants a bath did I mention that she's based on Elizabeth Bathory in every respect she is the opposite of Hinata she is completely unafraid of who she is and what she wants and although the show has her mellow out a bit over the course of the series she never loses.

That spark she is always proudly and openly a woman who loves other women both in the obvious sense of being thirsty for female intimacy but also in the sense of romantic attachment it's clear she loves Sophie deeply she says as much to Sophie's face of course but we're also told that Ellie and Sophie had been each other's Undead companions.

For hundreds of years we don't hear of any other vampires ever visited and certainly none that Sophie did when Ellie talks about her affection for Sophie Sophie doesn't cut her off or complain she sits there silently blushing because she knows Ellie means it and because maybe she feels the same way too.

Some people may see Ellie is just a thousand-year-old lolly with a few extra steps but in my opinion the thing that keeps her from slipping into that true it's the same thing that protects her from kuroko's fate Mr vampire does not Pander to the male gaze she isn't part of a harem of consumable women although I'm sure she'd like to have such a harem.

Herself she doesn't exist simply to be seen by us and slaughtered conveniently into a useful pigeonhole her Bohemian attitude is a character trait deliberately designed to contrast with Sophie's quiet lifestyle a similar difference can be seen between vampires in horror novels and vampires and romance novels in horror novels vampires.

As Predators either recreate or reflect power dynamics of female subjugation like in Dracula women become trophies of conquest or victims to Spur the emotions of men in romance novels however power does not involve a rigid chain of command or competition instead it focuses on cooperation and endurance vampire romance is a genre primarily.

Written by a woman for women which is probably why it got such ridicule that is pink Miss Vampire is no exception amator the author of the manga is a woman in my opinion you can feel that this area was written by a woman but we don't have to rely on violence we can see from the show's visual language that it isn't designed to titillate men Ellie.

Is the only character to appear nude outside of a single and honestly surprisingly tasteful Onsen episode the camera frames the characters in ways that make sense for each scene it doesn't have an obsessive focus on the exciting parts of the human body unlike something like strike witches where nearly every shot features.

Someone's butt Ellie is sexual not sexualized we the audience only get a taste of what her lifestyle must have been like when she can live more freely because her way of life isn't there to be titillating it's there to show us what queer Freedom looks like and that's our main cast we have the unassuming nerdy girl the unassuming not.

So nerdy girl and the two holy avatars of homosexuality so what happens when you smush them all together in one house to answer that question we first need to talk about a little something called normality take a moment to ask yourself what does normal mean no really.

How would you define it see when thinking about what normal means we can actually come up with a whole string of definitions normal can mean a statistical average yes but it could also mean a standard as in meeting a standard normal can mean something boring and it can mean a positive stable State and sometimes it can mean both at.

Once a normal life is a good life in most people's eyes it's tempting to think that we've always had this concept of normal but the truth is the word normal didn't even appear in the Oxford English Dictionary until 1848 just 30 years after its first appearance imprint in 1818. back then it was used in a scientific sense to mean a totally.

Accomplished organ an organ whose anatomical qualities have become so well defined so steadily maintained that it had become fixed and unvariable across multiple species of animal of course this is quite different to what it means today even after 1848 even into the 20th century and beyond the specific definition and usage of normal.

Has been in a constant state of flux different definitions have been offered by different groups of people over the years and academics and politicians alike argue to this day as what normal really means the definition of normal is neither pure nor simple and maybe that's why it captures our imaginations worming its way into our language and culture.

Until it means everything and nothing all at once my idea of normal is probably very different to your idea of normal and yet both our lives are defined by where we stand on this imaginary spectrum of normality Ms vampire has a lot to say about that let's return to Sophie Technically she's.

A vampire but realistically she's an otaku who happens to drink blood it's what makes her relatable and that's important Sophie's meant to speak to the viewers of the anime she's like you it says um weeaboo who stays up late this is also I expect why she's such a loner before she meets akari the author is.

Drawing Us in showing us a portrait of ourselves in an isakai series perhaps the protagonist would never need to move beyond their attacker identity they desire to avoid people or their obsession with games or anime would be rewarded as is like in No Game No Life For example but Miss Vampire doesn't rest on its Laurels Sophie is relatable.

Because the anime wants us to recognize how much her life needs to change it's how we get from episode 1 with the lonely house Montage Music to episode 11 where Sophie reflects on having so many wonderful friends and how all this would have been unimaginable before I mentioned isekai as an example of a genre that encourages its viewers to.

Double down on their attackerism the opposite of that of course would be a story about Sophie giving up her nocturnal shot in life to be a normal functional member of society like everyone else considered in this light choosing to lock yourself away with your manga collection is actually a deviant decision.

It's as much a rejection of capitalist work ethics as it is a rejection of social connection what I'm saying is Sophie's coding as an otaku is both symbolic of her queer resistance to Society of normalizing pressure and symbolic of her social anxiety the very thing preventing her from having meaningful relationships with others Ms.

Vampire threatened the needle on this perfectly and it does so through queer invitations iCarly invites Sophie to expand her social sphere and Sophie accepts in turn akari accepts her completely everything that happens happens due to this Dynamic of invitation and acceptance when I say that the girls are each other's foils.

That's what I mean they show each other new more genuine ways of living in this world and there is no better example of this than the relationship between Hinata and Ellie Hinata and Ellie first meet in episode 5. the episode opens with Ellie raiding Sophie's refrigerator she's still hungry after clearing Sophie's blood bottles.

Out so she attempts to go hunting however Sophie stops her saying that times have changed this is part of a running gag about Ellie being stuck in the past we'll come back to that later with hunting off the table Sophie offers the older blood online for Ellie however Ali complains it is just not the same and that she usually picks girls to feed.

On by their hair color or personality when Sophie asked Ellie what blood type she prefers Ellie replies the important thing is a face it's about the most transparent metaphor for Suffolk attraction that I've ever seen then Hinata arrives Ellie immediately thinks of her as food but even so the introductions seem to go well until.

Hinata gushes about how cute and small Ellie is just like with Sophie Hinata speaks to Ellie like adults speak to children and says you could be our little sister however unlike Sophie Ellie is furious and we're treated to an anime classic a flat-chested girl angrily groping another girl's boobs normally this sort of scene is played as.

Spicy humor or semi-pornographic fan service but Miss Vampire Dodges both of those bullets the groping is cartoonishly ridiculous and very little attention is paid to the physicality of what's going on we're not meant to be paying attention to the fact that Hinata's boobs are in Ellie's hands but the show wants us to notice is how this.

Situation is making the girls feel we see their faces hear their voices raised in Emotion we're witnessing an argument not something sexy akari and Sophie tried to calm them down and afterwards console them but it doesn't work neither girl is willing to recognize how much they hurt each other and Hinata ashamed and in tears runs off.

The humor has already died we're meant to recognize this as what it is a moment of sadness something to be taken seriously the reason everything blew up is because both girls were reminded of the anxiety their bodies bring them each girl forced a label on the other based on their appearance alone Ellie was reduced to being a child.

And Hernando was reduced to being just a pair of large breasts something she was bullied for in middle school we learned these details as Ellie Sophie and akari wander through the town looking for Hinata they find her at the same moment her foot finds a coffee can that's when Ellie swims in to save the day as they float in the air and he reassures hinato.

That large breasts are nothing to be ashamed of and hinaka compliments Ellie calling her an excellent older sister despite her height this is a queer moment because the girls are celebrating their unique traits in spite of society's expectations normative standards for the human body that girls should look a certain way a certain age.

Or that certain features such as breasts are inherently lascivious are not chosen by individuals themselves these standards are a type of institutional violence that removes agency from people by labeling them from above the interpolation I spoke about earlier that's why the argument happened not just from the misunderstanding but from.

Being identified with the oppressive labels Society forced upon them the antidote according to Ms vampire is to literally fly Beyond those limiting standards and see people for who they know themselves to be this is only the first time inuta and Ellie help each other the show is full of small moments where they recognize each other's.

Identity and not just them either all four main characters have moments like these in a way the entire anime is built around understanding each other's differences and accepting them what's interesting to me is that so much of this character growth happens in Sophie's house yeah foreign.

Who drinks blood well we can go one step further Sophie is really a sanitized version of a shot in or hikigomori now hikiko Mori is a specifically Japanese identity the phrase shut in can approximate what a Japanese person thinks when they hear hiki komori but it can never be a replacement for the cultural context the original term.

Sprung up in the phrase shut in implies someone who refuses to leave their room or their house and that's true that's a trait of hickey tomori but the term has evolved to mean specifically a chattan who is also a massive nerd whatever the reality of Japanese chattis may be the popular image of hikikomori as nerdy Lonas is the one that prevailed and as.

Such hikikomori characters are abundant in anime they aren't realistic but they exist in these worlds as a reference to the shattinotaku they're inspired by they are a direct communication with a specific kind of anime fan Sophie is one character she leaves her house at night of course but she is easily over stimulated in the daytime and is quite.

Happy to live in her dark house alone of course her loneliness isn't really that comfortable but as I said before the whole concept of her as a lataku is to help us understand the emotional Journey she goes on a journey will cover in more detail in a moment for now all you need to know is that Sophie is a reference to hikigo Molly and as a hickey commodity.

The house she hides in is almost as important as her personality is the house is an extension of a person in a way it's the life she's choosing to surround herself with it's what she's chosen over the outside world this adds even more context to akari's queer invitation akari's entry into Sophie's house isn't just about someone visiting.

It's about totally transforming the life Sophie has built for herself akari takes the stale environment of the house and enlivens it that Hinata joins in then Ellie till the house is constantly bustling with activity all of the queerest moments happen in or around the house and of course that's because it's a slice of Life anime and the house.

Happens to be the setting but even for a slice of Life anime a lot of time is spent inside Sophie's house even the anime itself highlights the transformation of the house over time in episode 11 for example Sophie clears out her storage room to make space for new things up till now the room has functioned as a Dumping Ground for.

Things she's collected over her long life all of her past is in there locked away in darkness at the beginning of the episode It's So overloaded with old junk that a mountain of boxes collapse on Sophie as she opens the door by the end it's nearly empty safe for her and her friends she literally cleared out her lonely past to.

Make way for the future in another episode she cooks food with garlic and filling a house with a smell vampires hate all to make her friends happy and they reciprocate this sacrifice this is not about Sophie assimilating into normal human culture the house is a Melting Pot of cultural exchanges where everyone leaves change for the better.

You could call this anime Sophie in the big gay house and it'll still be an accurate title now I know what you're thinking this anime seems pretty gay and you're right but what if I told you it gets even gayer pie is layered with queer subtext but inside that subtext sandwich is the.

Tasty condiment we all know and love queer metaphors Miss Vampire has plenty of them and I'm not just talking about Ellie although yes I am absolutely talking about Emmy there are plenty of subtle metaphors in the anime but for this video I want to address only the most obvious ones starting with the conversation the girls have in Akihabara.

The conversation happens in episode 8 as the girls sit in a maid Cafe Ellie explains how she used to drink chocolate milk to hide her identity the entire conversation has this sense of relief or humorous Nostalgia laughing about a distant past where life was hard.

All the queer people will know the feeling well I remember a conversation I had once with a trans woman who said she used to carry a card saying she was a heterosexual crossdresser it wasn't official but she said it meant that if ever the police pulled her over she had an explanation she could offer that might dissuade them from actually.

Arresting her she laughed about it at the time though I can only imagine the fear she felt back in the day that's the energy I get from this conversation they just drop it into the episode like it's nothing and I guess in a way it is nothing at this point we've had seven and a half episodes of queer Shenanigans anyone who's going to see the queer.

Theming will already know what's up and anyone has missed it will continue to miss it like I do them first later one of the maids tells a customer that she's forever 17. even as a joke the parallels are clear vampires are an analog for oppressed minorities this is a total reversal from.

Their usual role as representing the debauchery of the upper classes vampires in myth are eccentric pale loners who live in castles surrounded by wealth they're detestable because they represent excess Ms vampire doesn't avoid the associations with wealth Sophie lives in a mansion and Ellie has a stack of gold bars but it undermines.

The old associations of moral excess Sophie is eccentric because she's an otaku an Ellie who is the closest the anime gets to a classic aristocratic vampire uses her unrestrained sexuality to Cooks the other girls out of their shells every failing of the classic vampire is reinvented into something transformative that's how Miss Vampire.

Queers the mythology vampires are not a moral contagion just a different way of being they're people deserving of love and respect as we'll see in a moment most people are completely accepting of vampires in this anime but not everyone is yes as if they're living in the closet conversation wasn't enough this universe.

Has the vampire hunters and we get to meet one in episode 9. the vampire hunter in question appears halfway through the episode the first thing we see is her eyeing up the house then she collapses from hunger and is hurried Inside by Sophie akari and Hirata once inside she casually mentions that she's a vampire hunter and that.

She's come to Vanquish a vampire she heard lives in the area the girls tried to throw her off the scent culminating in Sophie inviting the hunter to stay over for the night as the conversation winds on the hunter explains that her reason for hunting vampires is that her great degrade the great great grandfather got turned into a vampire in.

His old age which he's resented ever since slowly but surely everything goes to and he arrives declares a hunter to be boyish and yummy looking then insists that no no she didn't mean it in a hungry fear blood way she meant it in a sexual way there's food there's fun and before you know it akari is whisking the hunter off to her room for some last.

Minute damage control it's all very fun and silly so silly that you don't don't even think about the queerphobia metaphor but there are two moments I want to draw attention to they occur side by side after Hinata and Ellie have left the first comes as the humans wind down for the night Sophie is in her room about to watch some anime when the.

Hunter stops by to ask where the bathroom is she can't help but noticed a huge coffin Sophie panics and falls back on her otaku identity the identity that allows her to pass as normal in human society foreign I just want to comment on the translation here your world is a.

Translation of the line Mania no sekai Mania in this case means otakuism or extreme obsession with something like a die-hard fan what makes this so interesting is that Sophie really is singularly obsessed with anime culture she collects figurines of course and as far as light novels are concerned show happily by multiple copies of a book.

Just to get different store bonuses she's dedicated to her interests but none of that is why she has that coffin it's a white lie told to make her seem more normal than she is she almost Blends in by accident the true complexity of her identity can't be revealed to the hunter in the way it is to Hinata or akari I think this is.

Something a lot of us can relate to before I came out as a trans woman it was easy to play off my interesting cute anime girls as just me being a relatively normal straight guy I see this same pattern here with Sophie she's in otaku but she's also around Empire and it's only among her queer friends that she can be both her true self after.

This conversation we cut straight to the next morning the hunter thanks Sophie and equity for their kindness then turns to leave as she turns a small charm Falls from her bag so if he picks it up and goes to hand it back to her but as she does so her hand begins to turn to Ash the hunter notices Sophie has been outed.

By her vampiric physiology however the hunter doesn't hold this against her instead she says the hunter had expected something monstrous and predatory but the reality of Sophie's queerness that actually she's a person like everyone else wins the Vampire Hunter over there are two ways to look at this moment on the one.

Hand you could argue that it's about looking past stereotypes the hunter realizes that vampires are more normal than she expected and takes her leave with a change of heart on the other hand the hunter only sees Sophie as good people because she didn't do anything especially vampiric how would the hunter have reacted if had to spend a.

Whole day with Ellie I'm not certain should have come to the same conclusion Ellie is effectively the camp gay man of vampires she's a gold bar dropping blood-bathing part-time nudist who flirts with every woman she sees she is the Hunter's worst stereotypical Nightmare and proud of it she is everything Sophie has disavowed and.

That's why the hunter is convinced by Sophie and not Ellie it's Sophie's proximity to human normality that wins today but I don't want to be unfair to Sophie in her own way Sophie refuses to assimilate we learn in episode 1 that she openly tells her neighbor that she only drinks blood she has no fear about showing her.

Superhuman strength for everyone to see and she jokes to akari on one occasion that should still turn up to a book signing if her head turned Ash she's not trying to hide that she's a vampire not like she used to in the past she just happens to be the most socially acceptable version of a vampire there is it's not the only time Vampire Hunters.

Come up either the concept is hinted at throughout the series there are many times Sophie and Ellie mention the need to conceal their identities but it's disgust explicitly for a second time in episode 11 two episodes after the arrival and departure of the Vampire Hunter who visited Sophie episode 11 starts innocently enough as I.

Mentioned earlier it's about Sophie clearing out an old cluttered room she enlists the help of akari and Hinata not Ellie and as a girl sift through Sophie's mountain of manga akari finds a box containing two pink ribbons because she is hopelessly gay she immediately fantasizes about how cute Sophie must have looked with them on which is when.

Sophie tells her the story of why she kept them they're actually a gift from Ellie received over 100 years ago she knew right away that they weren't her style and decided to return them when she next saw Ellie so she waited the days became weeks the weeks became months became years and Sophie became worried her and Ellie had never been out.

Of contact for so long before after 50 years Sophie decided that Ellie must have been killed by a Vampire Slayer and she made a promise to cherish the ribbons in her memory even if there weren't a style she'd normally wear I cried when I watched this episode it's only a brief moment lasting just over 30 seconds but those 30 seconds stuck with.

Me long after I finished the series it made me wonder what kind of world these girls lived in in the past what Horrors did they have to endure just to be themselves the significance of Sophie keeping the ribbons in the cluttered room isn't obvious at first it's only as the room is cleared out that we see it for what it is a library specifically.

It's a library of every single thing Sophie has ever found to be important books signed by long dead authors mementos of special occasions the room is less a library of books and more a library of Sophie's memories she tells akari that she Associates specific moments with specific objects such that each object is like a vessel.

For the memory that's what makes Sophie's decision to keep the ribbons in the library even more meaningful she considered them so important that she put them in the place where she keeps her most Cherished Memories finally Ellie's comments earlier in the series about her love for Sophie start to make sense for her it's only been the blink.

Of an eye whereas for Sophie it's been a hundred years the two girls clearly had a deep connection back then you could read them as queer platonic or you could read it as a sign of a romantic connection but both readings would be supported by what's shown on screen I think that's why the flashback hit me.

So hard even knowing that Ellie is alive and well just the thought of a hunter taking that connection away from them left me in tears the flashback is the only moment in the anime where the consequences of people's hatred of Empires is shown on screen even the Vampire Hunter is sanitized we know that Sophie and Ellie did have to hide in the.

Past but that's the past nowadays they can be open and free the anime presents us with a post-discrimination world where queer experiences can exist as part of the normal fabric of everyday life of course it's not quite that simple but before we get to that there's a big gay elephant in the room that we have to address or more specifically two.

Of them akari has three friends Hinata sakuya and you we've met Hinata but up to this point we've avoided discussing the other two now finally it's time sakoya and you are in fact the only canonically gay characters in the anime right Curry openly.

Loves Sophie Hinata is heavily implied to be in love with akari and Ellie is the Eldritch version of a lesbian but sakuria and you are the only ones who are dating in the final volume of the manga they go so far as to come out to the other girls none of whom are surprised to hear the news so who are these two then and why are they the only.

Ones paired up in a traditional relationship saklia the shorter of the two girls is an occult otaku obsessed with all things strange and spooky she loves ghost stories and monsters and is the one who introduces akari to the rumor that leads to her bumping into Sophie in the forest she's also the one who suggests that akarish should move in.

With Sophie sakiya is an agent of queerness at all points in time and she is madly in love with you we learn less about you than we do sakuria but shokupai is that quiet boyish archetype that lesbians sometimes fall into think yui from Yuri Yuri she's not into the occult in the same way saklia is but she adores Sakia just as much as Sakia.

Adores her and so she supports her in her interests neither girl is surprised when akari introduces her new friend as a vampire this scene happens in episode 3. Sophie is forced to go to akari's school to deliver a Bento Box that were left behind at her house because of her anti-sunlight outfit the students in class think she's an assassin.

they soon calm down when they launches one of akari's friends apparently akuri's friends have a reputation for being strange this is a not so subtle reminder that akari's friends are as Queer As she is which in turn implies that their total acceptance of Sophie is also unusual and.

Queer as I said earlier Sakia is heavily into the occult she's also an s Yes you heard me right she enjoys scaring people with her ghost stories and when she manages to scare Sophie as they wander a dimly lit hole she says how glad she is that she could scare a vampire she promises to tell Sophie many more disturbing stories but you.

Mercifully steps in and stops her before she can carry out her nefarious plan sucky is love for creepy things comes up again when Sophie tells him how she was dragged off to watch the beheading of Marie Antoinette she doesn't have fond memories of that moment but saklia is entranced you doesn't bat an eyelid at this she.

Comments simply that Sophie's Japanese is really good considering she only moved to the country recently truly a match made in heaven I hope it's clear from this how the anime frames sakuria as being strange you gets less Limelight but she's strange by association and both of them fall into the same categories akari in other words humans.

Who are Stranger than this one particular vampire like akari their strangeness is always contrasted with how mundane Sophie is this doesn't serve to other them though if anything you and Sakia are the most well-adjusted couple in the entire anime they support each other and care for each other in every moment they're on screen Adam's Family.

Style perhaps that's why they're the only couple in what we would recognize as a romantic relationship they are two very strange humans in love with each other and so they express their love in a strange but ultimately human way who's to say that Sophie doesn't love akari as deeply as akari loves her the anime makes it pretty clear that vampire.

Culture and human culture are very different but just because it's different doesn't mean it's less valid I don't think the success of sakuria and Yu's relationship exists in contrast to the others I think it is part of the show's overall message that you do not have to be normal to be loved and even more than that that you don't need to.

Love normally to love honestly Ms vampire is a case study in how being your weird awkward genuine self is the only way to find meaningful connections with other people the friends are the final piece in that puzzle but we're getting ahead of ourselves after all there's one more episode we have to consider the last episode episode 12.

Episode 12 opens with akari being gay about Sophie's short hair it's short because the sun hit it and turned it to Ash iconi goes to school and comes home as usual but when she goes to prepare dinner for the two of them she notices that Sophie is totally out of blood and worse the service she normally uses is down it doesn't give a Reason by the way.

It just says it's taking a break and that you're gonna have to wait a while naturally akuri has a totally normal response to this as if she never said it at all Ellie comments that there must be some weirdos who would like to have their blood sucked by a vampire once to which akari replies.

sadly the vampires don't listen to her please and leave the house in search of blood from some other source the scene shifts to Sophie and Ellie wandering the streets and were treated to some gay cameos such as this one of Kuroko and misaka from a certain scientific railgun damn right the animators know what's.

Good they find a blood bank but of course it's not like an actual bank and so they return home defeated starving and ravenous in more ways than one Ellie decides to suck Sophie's blood but the thing about vampire blood is that it doesn't contain any life force the thing vampires need to survive cue the morning after akri asks Sophie how she's doing.

The answer not very well the hunger kept dropped all night Ellie's even worse the longer she waits the less you can endure she starts seriously considering feeding off of akari music see on it by the way those subtitles are a literal translation that's exactly what she says even Sophie can't help it but she.

Doesn't give in she wraps the scarf around accurate's neck like a mother hiding her daughter's ankles they make it through another day but things are getting desperate when actually over here sakuria saying she felt like she was going to starve to death during class she decides enough is enough she asks Sophie to drink her blood once.

Again saying that even if it tastes bad it must be better than nothing it's a touching moment but Sophie still refuses as does Ellie I could use heartbroken she hides in a corner and on the brink of Tears says foreign the anime presents this moment as a sign of how much Sophie and Ellie care about.

Akare but is it that simple well no on the One Hand by abstaining from feeding off of akari Sophie and Elia are showing luckily that she is more than just a meal ticket to them equally though it implies that blood sucking is an unwholesome activity something that you shouldn't do with humans you're close with how should we read this then given.

That vampires need to drink blood in order to survive to answer that question we need to go back to the beginning remember how I mentioned that Sophie avoids drinking blood because it means social interaction we can actually take that a step further see blood sucking in horror stories is about contagion violence and violation of bodily.

Autonomy it's a pretty nasty thing but in romance novels it takes on a totally different purpose as Helen Bailey writes the function of the blood exchange between the lovers is one of the central differences between the traditional vampire seen as a predator and the romance novel vampire as lover and eternal mate in these types of Stories.

The taking of blood or the blood exchange between protagonists becomes the very elements that enhance consolidate and secure the couple's romantic relationship in other words drinking your partner's blood is the ultimate intimate act an Unholy Union an anti-marriage marriage is a good way to describe it because it comes with.

Connotations of undying partnership there is one other annotation though biting is symbolic of love in romance novels but it is also symbolic of carnal desire of something raw and animalistic sexuality has been a staple of vampire fiction ever since Dracula and nearly every vampire story has to contend with it either by leaning into the sensuality.

Of the blood exchange or by writing vampires who would never dream of biting a human being Sophie is the latter she shies away from the intimacy of biting both on a romantic and physical level we can see this when Sophie tells akari to look away as Ellie bites her we can see it in the difference between Sophie and Ellie's attitudes to biting as well Ali.

Thrives on frequent casual encounters with beautiful young women where Sophie has sworn off biting entirely for Sophie but I think isn't something you do with just anyone it's a step further you could even read Sophie's disdain for biting as her being a sex repulsed asexual she would never bite thakuri because to her it doesn't symbolize.

Intimacy only something gross and unnecessary Sophie shows her love from cooking meals and spending quiet time together in contrast physical affection is much more important for akari anakari would love nothing more than to be bitten seen this way Sophie's refusal to bite acrity becomes a difference in Love Languages another perspective is to.

Compare her to Hinata Hinata is unequivocally presented as a closeted queer woman the opposite of akari in a similar way Sophie is the opposite of Ellie Sophie's description of bioding is dangerous would in this scenario be symbolic of her own internalized homophobia Aquarius her foil just as Ellie is hinatus I'd like to return to.

The asexuality comparison though because I think it's the most compelling way of reading this character trait I mentioned that even Sophie was tempted to bite akari well in the Manga she wasn't in the Manga she hides I got his neck from Ellie not from herself this version of Sophie would never bite a human maybe she never did maybe she fell off of.

Animals or frequented hospitals avoiding the biting process entirely the anime gives us no information either way Sophie's past is a mystery Elliot is Frank about her love of biting but Sophie genuinely finds it Unthinkable she prefers refrigerated bottles to a warm neck throughout the whole series Soviet makes excuses for why she won't.

Bite akure but it's only in episode 12 that she tells her the truth she cannot and will not bite her because she would never buy anyone especially not a Friend Sophie is thus a reversal of the Dracula archetype Dracula inflicts queerness like a contagion reproducing in an unnatural way subverting the right and proper modes of heterosexual procreation.

Between a Christian man and a woman in contrast Sophie is queer because she refuses to engage with sexuality at all disrupting the very idea of procreation she has no interest in consuming her species and no intention of pretending to be a part of a normal family the one person she invites to live with her is another queer woman who she absolutely.

Refuses to buy it her asexuality is a middle finger both to human and vampire Traditions alike God Save the Queen foreign feels so much better all along she thought there was something wrong with her but now she knows that Sophie just.

Doesn't do things that way the story wraps up with them all eating together while akuri happily fantasizes about being bitten but there is one final scene an unassuming moment of filler right at the end it's classic filler about 10 minutes of callbacks to previous episodes culminating in the ultimate callback as Sophie and akary.

Visit the forest where it all started akari gets lost for a moment and then when Sophie finds her she chooses to repeat the word she spoke the first time they met the music is achingly sentimental truly beautiful and romantic akari's reply is also romantic her expression and delivery filled with the love she developed during her time.

Living with Sophie they're reenactment at this moment is a reenactment of the original queer invitation the invitation extended by Sophie to akari an invitation to dive into the unknown it feels like a wedding an interpretation bolstered by Equity thinking this is where my new life with Sophie began the ending visuals changed.

To match the normal sequence is replaced by clips of Sophie and akari being affectionate with each other this eventually transitions into a montage of the best moments from the show but that doesn't detract from the weight of those first few Clips they occur so soon after I put his line after that music and the Romantic reframing of their first.

Meetings everything about it screams queer love I see it as confirmation that the writing team understood what the anime was saying the subtext of akari and Sophie's queer Union is transformed into text we don't need them to face a screen and kiss to understand that their relationship goes beyond a heteronormative girl girl friendship is.

A trampton scene queer Euphoria at its finest so what does it all mean Miss Vampire is a very clear anime from start to finish it presents us with stories of transformation and self-realization all four of the girls change through the anime's 12 episodes but it's Sophie who is most emblematic of the anime's themes.

One Solona and an outcast forced to hide her identity by the end she's surrounded by a girlfriend in her queer mansion Sophie isn't normal or well she is normal she's a normal otaku which makes her strange and both human and vampire Society she exists in a no man's land where everything she does is strange to.

Someone that unique position stuck between two worlds it's why she's such a fascinating take on the vampire myth her refusal to drink blood directly from humans could have been used in service of heterosexual ideas of Purity but instead it only makes her that much queerer she resists the normativity of humans and vampires alike carving her.

Own way in the world Sophie cannot be understood piece by piece she is not just an otaku or just a vampire she is not normal or abnormal she is somehow both at once everything about Ms vampire is a direct rebuttal of stable fixed identity according is no different she invites and is invited by Sophie into this half and half world.

The pair are the ultimate expression of the queer invitation as through knowing and yes loving each other they both become able to express their full queer selves No Label could ever fit the girls of Sophie's mansion made a fire categorization and that's the point Ms vampire encourages us to give up the safety of our normal life and step.

Forward into the uncertain it's inviting us to be something more I suppose the only question is do you accept if you've enjoyed this video essay consider subscribing to our channel so you can be notified about our next video which assumingly stick to our plan will be about Doki Doki literature Club the.

Script for this video was written by myself and the art was drawn by freebie honey with coloring by butter Roe on that last piece both freebie honey and butter row regularly take commissions and if you're interested in commissioning them for their art you can find their Twitter link below thank you very much for watching and I hope you.

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