If you’re like me, you’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in quarantine obsessing over one thing:

How did a Vampire end up living on Sesame Street?

Are you laughing? Well you’ve played right into the hands of those Snowflakes over at PBS. They don’t want you asking questions

Questions like:

What does The Count eat? His “counting” is obviously a smoke screen but for what? How is he out during the day? If vampires aren’t born but made, who. Made. The Count? Is there ANOTHER Vampire on Sesame St? WHO is the Vampirus Primus (a Latin term I just made up)

I needed to go deeper. But I didn’t want to do any research. I was at an impasse.

Luckily, I WAS a teen who went to theatre camp & shopped at @HotTopic & watched Interview with the Vampire every weekend & I can say that without shame bc no one is ever getting laid again anyway.

Before we dive in, I want to address A picture a couple of well-meaning friends sent me, as if it doesn’t provide more questions than answers. For the sake of my argument & bc I don’t care, I hereby declare this picture and “backstory” non-canonical.

To uncover the grisly details about The Count, we first need determine the type of Vampire he is. The way I see it, there are four sects of Vampires:

-Scary Draculas
-Sexy Anne Riceies
-Silly Sparklies

and of course

-Joseph Gilgun on @PreacherAMC (RIP Preacher)

Scary Draculas: your classic archetype. Lots of velvet & capes & goblets & looking like a prune in spooky castle. Scary Draculas kill to eat. They make other vampires by biting. But sunlight kills Scary Draculas & Sesame Street is known for its Sunny Days: we can rule this out.

Sexy Anne Riceies = Vampires who you think fuck but don’t (v appealing to 14 yr old girls.)They’re from France & Italy & Louisiana & the back of my 8th grade English notebook. Also Puppet Sex is exclusive to Ave Q. But Sexy Anne Riceies also burn in the sun. We can rule this out

This is Joseph Gilgun from #preacher & also my dreams about him. But The Count has no visible tattoos & as much as he likes counting things, far as I know, he’s never counted hits of crack while nihilistically screaming into the Abyss. The Count is not #josephgilgun

That leaves us with Silly Sparklies: nothing scary about them. They don’t have sex before marriage. They are heteronormative. The sun makes their skin pretty. They go to high school. What do High Schoolers study? Math. And what is math?

COUNTING.

The science points to The Count being a Silly Sparkly: pretty purple skin, day walker, has homework, not a sexual threat. And if Silly Sparklies are harmless, then Sesame Street is safe. Right?

WRONG.

Because my friends, Sesame Street has one confirmed Vampire. But what does it have dozens of?

That’s right.

MONSTERS.

And we all know that Dracula, who we can safely classify as a Scary Dracula, hangs out with monsters. Here he is pictured with his friend who is a monster named Frankenstein, created by an anonymous Mad Scientist.

It doesn’t add up! A Vampire, who we’ve never seen feed, hanging out in broad daylight, chilling w/monsters? What are the rules? DOES HE COUNT MERELY TO FIND ORDER IN THE CHAOS??

Then, like in that movie bout Russell Crowe’s Beautiful Mind (Les Miz) I watched the equation unfold

Eat a dick, Dracula. Nibble on Deez Nuts, Nosferatu.

We don’t need to trace the Count’s roots back to the OG Vampire: the OG Vampire has been in front of us the whole time.

The Vampire Primus IS The Count.

Too strong to be felled by the sun, reigning over a kingdom of monstrous demons (at least one has a notorious appetite) the Count doesn’t fit an archetype: he MADE the archetype

Have you ever heard him count w/o laughing? He’s laughing AT us. He knows he’s hiding in plain sight

But no longer.

I’m on to you, The Count. I don’t know your weakness, not yet, but it’s 2020: I’ve got 7 seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on @hulu & nothing but time

Best learn how to count backwards your days are numbered, ah ah ah.

Brought to you by the letter D for Doomed