[Das Outsider]

You need to get out more.

I try, but they keep sucking me back in. Do you take everything you read about cartoon vampires this seriously?

Of course the myths are morality tales.

The myths are part morality tale, part Eastern European superstition. Oddly, you seem to have passed over my "Count Chocula" reference which, perhaps, might have given you a key to the context.

But the rulers who inspired them actually did plant forests of human beings on top of stakes and lay entire provinces waste, out of little more than their own love of cruelty. Calling that a taste for human blood is perfectly accurate poetry.

You neglected to mention Stoker's reinvention of Dracula. The modern vampire has undergone a lot of changes since Vlad the Impaler, and the whole notion is silly. You've taken a jest between two posters far too seriously!

[JasonC]

lol.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, the same horrible things that led to the original poetic tales go on and are their proper context.

P.S. Shakespeare is made up, too! Film at 11!