re: your tags on that vampire post, what was your dissertation on? it sound so cool!
‘From Gloom to Glitter: an analysis of whether the representation of the vampire has shifted from being negative to positive between Dracula and Twilight.’
Basically just, Part One: this is how the literary figure of the vampire is presented in Dracula.
Part Two: “wait when you actually consider the vampires on their own merit and shove aside any ‘ew it’s a YA romance that girls like’ factors, the vampires in Twilight are GENUINELY TERRIFYING and VERY MUCH the predecessors of their 19th century counterparts, by and large being far more effective AND dangerous than the ones they evolved from, this just doesn’t come across very well because the text is from the POV of a sympathetic party (ie, Bella) and deals with arguably the most gentle examples of the species (the Cullens)”.
The poppy seeds thing didn’t really come into it, that was a lot of early reading I did when I was still working on the question. I still don’t fully understand where the garlic myth comes from, despite having had it explained to me multiple times that garlic has medicinal properties that may or may not include counteracting venom? Please don’t try and explain it to me. I’m happy not knowing.