Lesbian Vampire

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"I'm so evil! And skanky! And I think I'm kinda gay."

She's got the raven-black hair, the tight leather bodice, the pale skin, and the fangs. The one thing this sexy vampiress doesn't have is a lust for hot male blood. No, only the blood of an innocent young woman will do. And lucky for her, the nightclubs are full of easily-swayed bi-curious beauties.

However, she'd better be careful to make sure that her next victim doesn't have a handsome young boyfriend or older guardian ready to leap in and save the day, or she might end up in an urn...

The Lesbian Vampire is an old, old trope, stretching back to the 19th century novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, which heavily inspired Bram Stoker's rather more famous Dracula. However, it didn't return into popular consciousness until the 1970s, when Hammer Horror made numerous films in which voluptuous countesses nibbled nubile young women. Since then, the trope has pretty much become the default setting for most female vampires, adding an extra layer of titillation to an already heavily sexualised mythological creature.

This blatant sexualisation sometimes leads to a variation—the Bisexual Vampire (often of the Depraved Bisexual sort). In this case, the sexy vampire will happily take both men and women to bed, but her primary target for the duration of the story will usually be female.

A variation on the Lesbian Vampire, particularly in pornography and films aimed at the young male demographic, is the female victim who is seduced and converted by a male vampire and—either during the process of her seduction or after being transformed—begins to find women sexually attractive. This is sometimes explained as the vampire warping her mind so that she can become one of his harem, but usually, it is assumed that as soon as a woman joins the ranks of the undead, she immediately starts playing for both teams—such is the power of this trope.

This can lead to some controversial sexual politics; while the idea that lesbianism or bisexuality is the result of a corruptive and malign influence, representative of moral decay, was standard back in the olden days, today, it tends to be challenged. And if a female victim is transformed by a female vampire, it carries the implication that homosexuals are predatory and waiting to ensnare and 'convert' hapless heterosexuals.

On the other hand, this neatly provides a convenient fantasy outlet. If you're going to be seduced by sexy minions of the night, no one will blame you for enjoying it, right?

And, in yet another interpretation of modern media, lesbianism sometimes seems to come as part of the Take a Level In Badass package for young women.

In the works of some authors, such as Anne Rice, the Gender Flip version of this trope (i.e. male vampires attracted to other males) does exist; typically, they (like standard-issue female 'lesbian' vampires) are bisexual rather than exclusively same-sex attracted. If one were to use Fridge Logic, vampires don't reproduce through sex (except for when they do), and most half-vampyrs are usually bad news for them. So gender preference is just cosmetic anyway.

Lesbian Vampire is a Sub-Trope of Discount Lesbians. See also: Horny Devils and Hemo-Erotic.

Examples of Lesbian Vampire include:

Anime and Manga

  • Lady Bat of Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch, a member of a Quirky Miniboss Squad that themes itself around different sorts of Fetish Fuel, takes this image and wears it proudly—even when it turns out she's actually a he. (Was s/he intruding on the Black Beauty Sisters' territory?)
  • Reiri Kamura from Monster Princess is one of these, building up a reputation among the girls of the school and calling them her "little lambs". And, despite having a good amount of interaction with Hiro, there is next to no ship teasing with them, most of that happening between Reiri and Riza.
  • In the first Hellsing anime, a character named Bubbancy (actually a corruption of a Baobhan sith) tricks the entire Hellsing organization, save Seras and Alucard, into thinking that she is Integra's sister. She attempts to drink Integra's blood and licks her chest after unbottoning her shirt.
    • Possibly Zorin Blitz as well. She looks like your stereotypical Butch Lesbian, Pip calls her a dyke, and she does seem to take a lot of interest in Seras.
  • Vampire Princess Miyu has some homoerotic tension between the girlish vampire Miyu and the shamaness Himeko, who attempts to fight against her.
  • Yurika in Touka Gettan, whose first act in the last episode she appears in is having her way with one of the minor female characters. She also falls under Catgirl and Sinister Scythe.
  • Trinity Blood has Shahrazad al-Rahman a Friendly Neighborhood Vampire who is very fond of the heroine, Esther Blanchett.
  • Bubblegum Crisis OAV episode 5, "Moonlight Rambler", has overtones of this.
  • In the one-shot manga Nightmare Syndrome by Natsuneko, a Lesbian Vampire falls in love with the female Vampire Hunter who is after her head. It ends happily.
  • Invoked in Kore wa Zombie Desu ka? because, to suck someone else's blood with the victim suffering as little pain as possible, if not none at all, requires the Kiss of the Vampire, and, in their culture, kiss equals marriage. Seraphim apparently knows her culture's marriage laws, as the only one she's ever seen kissing onscreen is Haruna.
  • Kokoa Shuzen of Rosario + Vampire. Implied to be one since she gets Nosebleeds from female Fanservice and has yet to show interest in anyone other than Inner-Moka.
    • Akuha Shuzen. Her feelings towards Moka (initially towards Inner Moka, and almost instantly fell for Outer Moka) easily border on romantic.

Comic Books

"Come to me child. Yield to my dark embrace, and you will never be weak - never need fear - again."

    • Claremont addressed it even more openly in the Misty Knight & Colleen Wing story "Safe Streets", in which Angie Freeman, a childhood friend of Misty's gone vamp, drinks Misty's blood, establishes a psychic bond with her, stuffs her into a little black dress, and prepares to make her a vampire so that "we'll be together, you and I...forever!" At one point, they have this exchange:

Angie: I had a wonderful time with you last night!
Misty: Oh. Angie, I...I'm not...like that. I mean...
Angie: I know. But you will be.

  • Screamqueen from Scare Tactics in The DCU. Although she had a growing Will They or Won't They? romance with her fellow band member Fang (a male werewolf), she fed exclusively on female victims, and it was implied that this was highly pleasurable for the women involved.
  • Blackout, the vampire (sort of) from the early Ghost Rider comics, had very intense Ho Yay with his boss, Deathwatch. It didn't help that Deathwatch fed on pain to the point where he practically got off on it, and Blackout was the only person who he could mind-meld with and experience the pain he caused vicariously without giving the other person a tremendous headache.
  • Purgatori, the lesbian vampire demon originally created by Brian Pulido as an antagonist for his main Stripperiffic heroine, Lady Death. She may actually be a Depraved Bisexual, having once been Satan's concubine, but all of the (semi-)consensual relationships we've seen have had her with women.
  • Risa del Toro in the Vertigo series Bite Club is a bisexual female vampire.
    • The sequel, Vampire Crimes Unit, also features a lesbian sex scene in the opening pages of the first issue.

Fan Works

  • Femslash fics in fantasy fandoms with vampires often involve this, e. g. the whole lot of Alice/Rosalie/Bella/Leah shipping in the Twilight fandom. Usually, they're just harmless "good" vampires who just happen to be lesbians, not monsters that only lust for female blood.
    • Subverted with Maggie in Luminosity. Rather than seducing and turning impressionable teenage girls, Maggie is searching for her soul mate.

Film

  • Became a Dead Horse Trope (or possibly an Undead Horse Trope) through overuse in 1970s Hammer Horror films, most famously, the Ingrid Pitt vehicle The Vampire Lovers. Pitt's character fell in love with a man in the sequel, Lust for a Vampire.
    • Well, it wasn't really Pitt's character anymore.
    • Twins Of Evil features a female vampire biting a female victim on the breast.
  • The three brides of Dracula are sometimes portrayed as being lovers, although, in the original book, they were purely fixated on Jonathan Harker.
  • A bisexual female vampire played by the beautiful Femme Fatale Catherine Deneuve was the subject of The Hunger.
  • Another example is the 1972 Spanish film The Blood-Spattered Bride.
  • Vampyros Lesbos, a film with pretensions at artistry. Relatively tame, it is still considered a cult classic and is well known for its music track. The movie's director, Jesús "Jess" Franco, is widely known (in the right circles) for his horror/sexploitation films.
    • Franco later took the trope much further in Les Avaleuses/Female Vampire/Erotikill, which can still be considered an "art film" despite occasionally crossing the line into pornography. Jean Rollin was also extremely fond of this trope in the 1970s.
  • Pretty much all the vampires in Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter, a movie that is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. The twist is that the vampires deliberately went after lesbians because they needed the blood and skin of virgins (specifically women who'd never been with a man) and lesbians gave them more to work with than pre-teen girls.
  • Direct-to-video movie The Sisterhood features a lesbian vampire sorority.
  • Rise: Blood Hunter opens with a use of this trope and employs it repeatedly thereafter.
  • The medium-core porn movie K-Sex goes one step further with a plot <ahem> revolving around alien lesbian vampires.
  • Inverted in The Fearless Vampire Killers/Tanz der Vampire, in which Count Orlock's son, Herbert, is Flamboyant Gay and attempts to seduce Alfred.
  • Unsubtly, Lesbian Vampire Killers, which is about the killers of lesbian vampires, and not lesbians who kill vampires or lesbian vampires who kill people. Then again, with a name like that, you can bet it's a Camp movie.
  • Bordello of Blood features a scene with Lilith, the female vampire boss, standing above the bound heroine, discussing how she was about to take her for a "test drive". She escapes. Then, after you think the story's over, the heroine does get turned into a vampire - the vampire didn't bite her on the neck, but on the inner thigh instead.
  • The 1932 German film Vampyr, loosely based on Carmilla and another Le Fanu story, features possibly the least attractive lesbian vampire ever: an old woman who lives in a coffin and preys on a teenager. Quite a bit of the film is Mind Screw hallucination.
  • The 1936 film Draculas Daughter, which is a sequel to the very famous 1931 Dracula movie, features much lesbian subtext from the eponymous character. One of its tag lines is even "Save the women of London from Dracula's Daughter!".
  • The Deliberately Monochrome movie Nadja (1994) has a scene where a female vampire slides her hand into the panties of a woman who's having her period and licks off the result.
  • Embrace of the Vampire, "starring" Alyssa Milano, has a lesbian vampire scene.
  • Countess Bathory in the sadly overlooked Daughters Of Darkness.
    • Elizabeth Kane (an alias for Erzsébeth Báthory, aka Countess Bathory) in another sadly overlooked movie, Eternal.
  • Vampires VS. Zombies, a terrible movie from a terrible production company that should have been called Lesbian Having Wet Dreams.
  • Seduction Cinema Productions have produced a series of erotic lesbian films, starting with The Vampire's Seduction (1997) and following through with numerous titles including The Erotic Rites of Countess Dracula (2001).
  • In Van Helsing, the Brides of Dracula display some notable lesbian tendencies, especially Brides Verona and Aleera.
  • Razor Blade Smile (1998), which presents itself partly as a series of homages to and clichés from other vampire films, includes an erotic lesbian vampire scene.
  • The 2007 film Mil Mascaras vs the Aztec Mummy includes a scene involving identical-twin teenage vampire girls, who express their attraction to each other as part of an attempt to lure Mil Mascaras into a three-way encounter that is actually a trap.
  • Lady Sylvia Marsh in Lair of the White Worm likes both genders, but seems to take more pleasure in her female victims.
  • Vampyres has an example of the bisexual variety: a lesbian couple who hunt together, and sometimes bring home male prey.
  • Abel Ferrara's The Addiction, which features Philosophy-major vampires who spend a lot of time talking about Sartre, has a protagonist who will sometimes pick up other women. In this case, she doesn't deliver on anything sexual, and only uses it as a pretense for targeting a victim.
  • The German film We Are The Night appears to have plenty of this, according to the trailer.

Jokes

  • "What did one lesbian vampire say to the other?" "See you next month."
  • There once was a vampire named Mabel Whose period was notoriously stable So on every full moon She'd get out a spoon And drink herself under the table

Literature

  • As mentioned previously, the novella Carmilla was about a female vampire who preyed on young women by biting their breasts as they slept. It was published in 1872, making this trope Older Than Radio.
  • Inverted in Interview With The Vampire, in which a man is seduced and transformed by a male vampire.
    • In fact, Lestat claims that, before the twentieth century, he was exclusively attracted to men, since he didn't consider women to be very interesting.
  • Tina in the Betsy the Vampire Queen books by Mary Janice Davidson is technically bisexual and, as such, has emotional sway over both men and women (but not over gay men). However, she prefers women, which causes Betsy a bit of trouble early on.
  • There are several in the Anita Blake series, though, of course, they're usually evil, depraved, and want to rape Anita, so that the author can work out her "Ewwwwwwww...but hm" feelings about bisexuality.
  • Gender-flipped in The Wheel of Time, where the vampire-like Draghkar are all of male appearance and implied to be asexual.
  • Many Discworld fans are of the opinion that there's more to Maladicta's camaraderie with Polly Perks than Terry Pratchett is letting on. This may be because she's a vampiress and a Sweet Polly Oliver.
  • Ivy Tamwood from The Hollows novels is a rare heroic version. She still has a penchant for dressing in tight black leather.
    • Her on and off again ex Skimmer is a more typical example of this trope, especially after her multiple Villainous Breakdowns.
      • Especially if you consider that Ivy is, in fact, bisexual.
  • Another inversion, the male bisexual vampire, is present in Henry Fitzroy of the Blood Books universe. As well as Vicki Nelson, he also often feeds off of gay street kid and (former) male prostitute Tony, who eventually gets his own spin-off series. This element appears to be missing from the TV series.
  • Christabel: this is considered one way of interpreting Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem with the lamia-like Geraldine.
  • In Carmilla rewrite The Moth Diaries, the antagonist, Ernessa, is either one of these or a lesbian of the common or garden variety. Either way, she and her 'victim', Lucy, are surprised in bed by the diarist, also in love with Lucy.
  • The Dresden Files. According to Thomas Raith in the novella Backup, most of the White Court vampires of the House of Raith aren't particular worried about what gender they feed on. Since Raiths feed off of lust, especially lust generated through sex with their prey, this essentially means that most of the Raiths (including his sister Lara, who feeds on a woman in Backup) are practicing bisexuals.
    • Red Court vamp Bianca also seemed to favor feeding off of women, and went kind of nuts after accidentally draining her favorite snack/lover to death.
  • Inverted example: the eponymous character in The Vampire Tapestry usually selects male victims and sometimes has sex with them as well. He insists that this is solely for purposes of secrecy, as closeted gay men tend to conceal their trysts with care; he'd rather not engage in the sex part at all, but does so if it's necessary to hold a potential victim's interest long enough to reach a good body-dump site. Whether or not he's in denial is unclear, but the female psychiatrist to whom he unloads initially assumes that his tales of vampirism are a metaphor for gay self-loathing.
  • Pam Keesey edited two anthologies of lesbian vampire stories, Daughters of Darkness (1993) and Dark Angels
  • Young adult vampire novelist Amelia Atwater-Rhodes has stated that many of the vampires in her canon are bisexual, having grown tired over the centuries of being romantically involved with a single gender.
  • Edgar Allen Poe in Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter tells Abraham Lincoln about a pair Eastern European vampire noblewomen who liked to kidnap local girls.
  • Chia Black Dragon is a vampire and a lesbian. She just doesn't get a lot of opportunities to practice.
  • Hex Hall's Jenna is both lesbian and a vampire, but doesn't quite fit the trope. However, she was seduced into becoming a vampiress by a beautiful young woman named Amanda, who does. It ended... poorly, leaving Jenna to regret her choice to become a vampire.

Live-Action TV

  • In the Charmed episode "Bite Me", Paige temporarily becomes a member of a lesbian vampire coven (which includes a gay male vampire).
  • On Smallville, Lana Lang reluctantly joined a sorority of lesbian vampires in "Thirst".
  • Buffy the Vampire Slayer actually had vampires of all genders and tastes, but when Willow faced her vampire Evil Twin in "Dopplegängland", the latter hit on her. She later reported, speaking of the twin in alarm, "I'm so evil and... skanky. And I think I'm kind of gay." (actually, bisexual would have been more accurate). In later seasons, Willow actually did get a girlfriend or two, one of which eventually led to a Freak-Out, so this was really good Foreshadowing.
    • It's worth noting that Vamp Willow appears to be bisexual; she is clearly having evil vampire sex with Vampire Xander in "The Wish", but only hits on (in her own way) females in "Doppelgangland".
    • Actually, in Buffy, it seems to be implied that all vampires are, to some extent, bisexual, probably due to the whole vampirism thing historically being a big damn metaphor for sexual predation. There's especially a sire-offspring thing - note Darla and Drusilla in season 2 of Angel. And then there's Spike's "Angel and me have never been intimate. Except that one--" bit. And Harmony, who rejects the idea of a threesome unless it's boy-boy-girl...or Charlize Theron.
    • That said, the degree of Bi-ness amongst vampires seems to be at least somewhat dependent on the person pre-vampire:

Buffy: Willow, just remember, a vampire's personality has nothing to do with the person it was.
Angel: Well, actually-- Buffy glares at him --that's a good point.

  • Bianca in the TV adaptation of The Dresden Files. Well, OK, Bisexual Vampire.
    • It's arguably that there was Subtext in the books as well - she's very close to her female assistant, and when Harry is inadvertantly responsible for Bianca killing her, she decides to rob Harry of his girlfriend as payback.
  • Farscape had a very, very well disguised example of this trope. The word "vampire" is never even said. The Wolaxian arachnid enters the ship to get one of the girls...I mean, their personality traits. The homoerotic part is very short, though.
  • Blade the TV series. The heroine is engaged in blatant Les Yay soon after she's turned into a vampire, despite not showing any previous inclination towards girls.
  • Xena: Warrior Princess's usual Les Yay turned up the volume in an episode titled "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun", which featured Gabrielle dancing with some fanged female followers of Bacchus at a Bronze Age disco, one of whom bites her before she leaves, becoming a bacchae herself, then biting Xena later in the episode, which appears to be very enjoyable for both women. Xena then kills Bacchus and they revert to being human again.
  • The Doctor Who fandom is quick to point out that Camilla (the name's a giveaway) in State of Decay seems very interested in Romana.
  • Queen Sophie-Anne of True Blood. Technically, she's bisexual, but she hasn't enjoyed sex with men since the Eisenhower administration.
    • Let us not forget Eric's right-hand woman, Pam, who also seems to prefer the ladies, usually.
      • In a miniepisode involving casting for a dancing position at Fangtasia, Eric practically has to force Pam to leave before "enjoying the show" with a hot Russian dancer. Before she leaves, however, she mentions that she'd like a more private audience with the girl. She gets it in the series propper.
    • It seems that in True Blood, all the vampire girls, the oldest ones, more specifically, are bi, but show much more interest in other women than men.
  • In season 3 of The L Word, Alice Pieszecki dates a sanguinarian named Uta Refson, a vampirologist who is part of the vampire goth subculture.
  • In Forever Knight, Janette showed some interest in a young prostitute, planning, at one point, on making her a vampire.
  • Hinted at in Power Rangers Mystic Force. Not with the main vampire, Necrolai, but, at one point, said main vampire temporarily turns pink ranger Vida into a fellow vampire, and Vida was about as obviously a butch lesbian as you can get on American children's programming.

Music

  • U.K. goth band Scary Bitches made a song called "Lesbian Vampires from Outer Space".

Tabletop Games

Theatre

  • Taken to the hilt in the Charles Busch play Vampire Lesbians Of Sodom.

Video Games

  • In Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, male vampires are mostly only able to seduce women to feed on, while female vampires can seduce both women and men.
    • Then there is also the matter of Velvet Velour, who, apparently, has no trouble professing her love for the protagonist even if the latter is female. Also, there is Jeanette, whose famous sex scene doesn't...change any regardless of the PC's gender. Lastly, there is Heather the Ghoul, who doesn't mind whether you are male or female in her affection for you, but then, as a ghoul, she will always have Single-Target Sexuality.
  • In SaGa Frontier, Asellus is turned into one of the Mystics, a race which is basically a shade of vampire. Her sire, Orlouge, is a Horny Devil par excellence, and later, Asellus ends up in a relationship with one of his "princesses". Unusually, Asellus is the protagonist of her short.
    • There's a possible alternate take to this, considering that Asellus became a half-Mystic by receiving Orlouge's blood after he carelessly killed her, it's possible that she has inherited his power as the Charm Lord as well. In fact, it's quite likely, since her "Mystic" ending has her become the new Charm Lord after she offs him. All of the Mystics react strongly to her - Ildon following after her in defiance of his lord, Zozma getting involved with her dilemma at all (though he may have been looking for an excuse to take a shot at Orlouge), Rei becoming willing to return to Facinaturu and face Orlouge, and White Rose expressing love for her and sacrificing herself to save her from the Labyrinth. The Charm Lords seem to induce a forced love or lust in other Mystics, probably of either gender. Asellus herself appears to be immune to Orlouge's Charm, either due to her human half, her sharing of his power, or probably both.
    • Gina is just as enthralled, and she's human.
  • Apparently, Carmilla succeeded in the Castlevania universe, as Laura is her servant in a couple of them.
    • Also, Carmilla is a Catgirl—for reasons obvious to anyone who has even passing familiarity with the original story—and Laura is what appears to be a bunnygirl, for no obvious reason except Fetish Fuel.
  • While they are actually oni, the supernatural girls of Akai Ito and Aoi Shiro invoke this image, due to them drawing power from drinking the blood of the main heroines.
  • An Asari sex vampire called an Ardat-Yakshi appears in Mass Effect 2; the only specific victim we see of hers happens to be an impressionable girl, but she's been killing for at least four hundred years.

Web Comics

  • Lori from Vampire Cheerleaders is shown to be one on this strip
    • She's more likely a case of Bi the Way, as she had no issues having sex with Leonard at the climax of the last chapter.
  • In Clan of the Cats, "Snowfall and Rose Petals", Chelsea is seduced by a child-killing Lesbian Vampire, leaving her Driven to Suicide. She also turns a minor male character, who becomes a sort-of Friendly Neighborhood Vampire.
  • In the current Eerie Cuties arc, vampire Layla drinks the blood of her female friend Brooke, who seems to enjoy it in an almost sexual way. In return, Layla helps Brooke practice her kissing, leading the entire school to believe they're a lesbian couple. Whether either of them actually is a lesbian remains to be seen.
    • Brooke is figuring out that she's Bi the Way. Layla is still up for debate.
    • In addition, Maria, Layla's mom, went through a certain...phase...with Chloe's (another friend of Layla and Nina's) mom.

Maria: Ohhh, the things she would do to me...! They made me quiver!
Chloe/Layla/Brooke: (Look Squicked out)
Nina: (Looks confused)
Brooke: (Covers Nina's ears)

  • Topaz Gem from Monsterful, though she's a Zombpyre (Zombie/Vampire), she looks more like a vampire. She's possibly in love with her best friend, Samantha, and though it has not been 100% confirmed, there are so many subliminal messages that it's just impossible to ignore.
  • The new arc of I Was Kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space features a whole hospital full of lesbian vampires in Naughty Nurse Outfits!
  • Kanaya from Homestuck. It's glaringly obvious. The lesbian part, at least.

Web Original

  • At the Super-Hero School Whateley Academy in the webfiction Whateley Universe, there's a girl who's really a mostly demonic creature. She uses the Genre Savvy codename Carmilla. She has fangs and pale skin and a nearly irresistible lust aura. She's not technically a vampire, although her core paradigm may be what all vampires in history were based on, since she's actually one of the Great Old Ones: she's directly related to both Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu. She's mostly lesbian, and has turned a couple straight women, along with picking up a couple superpowered lesbians and even two hermaphrodites. (She's flexible.)
  • Draculaura in Monster High. Maybe. She is, after all, Dracula's Daughter, and has a name that partially includes the name of the enthralled victim in Carmilla. Somebody on the writing staff has to be Getting Crap Past the Radar.
  • Viciously deconstructed in this Onion article.
  • Vamp You relies on this trope. So, so much.

Real Life

  • Erzsébeth Báthory, the "Blood Countess", is a disturbing real-life example, if all (or even some) of the legends surrounding her are to be believed. She is said to have had "trysts" with her lesbian aunt, but there are so many myths and legends about her activities that this is just another one on the pile.
  • Tracey Avril Wigginton and her lover(s) killed a man and drank his (and each other's) blood.
  • To her amusement, Rachel Maddow was accused of being one.