Web Animation / The Vampair

She calls me...^note Pictured: Duke (left), and Missi (right)

The Vampair is a Web Animation series made by Daria Cohen, beginning life as her final year film at Skenkar School of Design and Engineering. Centering around a young woman named Missi and a vampire lord known only as The Duke of Vaults, each episode explores their relationship and their backstories in the form of dark cabaret and electroswing music videos. The series can be viewed on her YouTube channel here.

The first season consists of seven (and a half) episodes, which aired from 2016 to 2021. While looking for an interesting place to sit down and read, college student Missi enters a seemingly abandoned mansion only to find herself in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse with the house's vampiric lord. After defeating him, Missi becomes corrupted by the power of his magical cane, turning into a vampire herself and being unwilling to give up her new powers. From then on, the two have an antagonistic back-and-forth, as Missi and the Duke try to best one another.

The second season, currently in progress, covers the Duke's backstory: from the death of his mother as a child to him eventually becoming the powerful vampire he is in the present day.

On November 4th, 2020, Daria released a Multiple Animators Project featuring Duke set to the tune of Voltaire's classic song "When You're Evil" as a celebratory milestone for reaching 666K subscribers on YouTube, though this video is non-canon to the rest of the series.

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Tropes that appear in these shorts:

• Action Survivor: Missi in the first video.
• All There in the Manual: A lot of information about the characters has come from online comments and live streams.
• Always Night: With the exception of the light of dawn killing Duke at the end of the first episode, and some flash backs of his life when he was still a human, every scene in the series takes place at night.
• Artifact of Doom: The Duke’s Staff is a Magic Staff that grants its wielder a variety of magical powers, including conjuring flame, bringing inanimate objects to life, restraining people, conjuring clothes, and firing blasts. It also seems to be cursed, turning its owner into a vampire as it did to Missi.
• Aside Glance: Duke gives one to the audience in almost every episode, be it one of confidence or utter bafflement towards whatever is happening. In general, he's the only one who appears to be aware of the fourth wall.
• Attempted Rape: Subverted. While the Duke definitely toys with her, he never actually makes a sexual advance until after Missi begins her seduction ploy. Word of God later confirmed that Duke really thought Missi was completely willing.
• Awful Wedded Life: Missi and Duke are effectively stuck together like a married couple as of "Stuck With You". Missi could leave anytime she wants, but her hatred of Duke and her refusal to give the staff back means she's trapped with him.
• Ballroom Blitz: "The Showdown," full stop. Goes from a mildly seductive black tie masochism tango into a full-blown fight scene, with the two trading blows and drawing blood.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Possibly. Missi originally snuck into Duke's mansion to read Twilight. If she was secretly fantasizing about being pursued by a vampire, The Duke of Vaults was probably not what she had in mind.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Duke and Missi seem to develop this dynamic as time goes on, with the two playing increasingly elaborate mind games and trying to one-up the other. It's most pronounced in "The Showdown," where the two swing dance seductively while trying to get the drop on the other, and their seductive cat-and-mouse game eventually escalates into open violence. The season one finale has the two living together and seemingly starting a budding romance by the end of the episode.
• Bisexual Vampire: According to Word of God, this is a general vampire trait but we have yet to see any evidence of it in the series. The Duke is canonically pansexual, given the fact that he did it with a zombie.
  • In the MAP "When You're Evil," the Duke gleefully ends up on the bottom of the devil and pokes his ass. Several drawings depict Missi crushing on Dukette (Duke with the infamous Super Crown meme).
• Black-and-Grey Morality: The conflict that's kicked off as of "The Resurrection" is between the Obviously Evil Duke and the now-vampire Missi, aka Missi Spiderwebs, who is equally evil. However, Missi was originally just a normal girl who happened to wander into the mansion and was subjected to a game of cat and mouse with an immortal vampire, only managing to kill him through a fortunate case of Cue the Sun. Had Duke left her alone, she never would've obtained his cane.
• Blade Run: In "The Showdown", Duke swings an ax at Missi in an overhand strike, which ends with the ax planted in the ground and Missi standing on top of it before backflip-kicking him in the face.
• Bring It: During their dance in "The Showdown", Duke beckons Missi with a finger. Later, during their fight, Missi beckons Duke with a finger while grinning, and he charges at her in a rage.
• Brought Down to Badass: While the Duke is easily curb stomped by Missi without his staff, he is no wimp without it. After all, he was able to conquer the Underworld without its use. Word of God even confirms that without his staff he is still a vampire and thus has powers of his own.
• Building of Adventure: In season 1, the isolated vampire castle which serves as the main setting of the series and the habitat of both protagonists. With the exception of "Land of the Dead" (which mostly takes place in the Greek Underworld), every scene takes place within the castle's room or (in exterior scenes) at a short distance from its door and windows. Due to the two vampire's spells, some of the rooms and stairs have changed appearance (and Missi redecorated the dungeon) but it is always the same building.
  • Dropped in season 2, because it is focused on Duke's backstory, including before he moves on the castle. Also, a few non-canonical videos doesn't use the castle as the main set.
• Bullying a Dragon: According to Word of God, even with the cane, Missi Spiderwebs still isn't as powerful as Duke. She just caught him off guard. Seemingly retconned as of "The Showdown," where Duke gets a slight drop on Missi but their battle still ends in a stalemate.
• Butt-Monkey: Duke is forced into this role in "The Resurrection" after being brought back from the dead. Absolutely nothing goes right for him.
• The Cameo: Voltaire's songs are already used for the majority of the animations, but "The Resurrection" and other episodes depict the musician as being the Duke's father.
• Casting a Shadow: Seemingly one of the powers of the staff. Duke uses some kind of shadow form to chase Missi in "The Night", while Missi uses it to throw Duke through several doors in "The Resurrection".
• Chekhov's Gun: The key holding Duke's cape together is what lets him back into his castle after Missi throws him out.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Missi hits Duke with a major prolonged one in "The Resurrection" by virtue of the song choice.
  • Then there’s Chapter 3.5 which uses the word bitch three times in twenty seconds.
• Color-Coded Characters: Duke is associated with red and Missi with purple.
• The Corruption: Duke's cane is confirmed by Word of God to infect anyone who wields it with both immense power and an overwhelming desire to do evil. Chapter 4 shows us just how much it’s messing with Missi’s mind.
• Crossover: Duke’s sire, Artimis originates from Missmi's Threnody series, which is significantly less comedic and more tragic in tone. Duke/Missi's Cane also shows up in that series, but it originated in this one first.
• Crossover Cameo: In "When You're Evil", there's a Freeze-Frame Bonus of the Duke hosting a dinner-party at the 2:02 mark. Several characters from other shows attend: Angel Dust and Alastor from Hazbin Hotel, and Airad, Nim, Alister, and Brier from Threnody.
• Cue the Rain: When Duke is thrown out of the castle he formerly owned, it immediately starts raining. Possibly due to Missi Spiderwebs' use of magic.
• Cutting Back to Reality: "The Silent" briefly cuts away from Missi's perspective a couple of times, revealing that something that was just previously shown was all in her head. One is after a chandelier falls, narrowly missing her; the camera switches to the ceiling, showing that the chandelier is still there. Another is just as she's swinging at a portrait of Duke; just before her blow connects, the portrait is shown again, and it's not one of Duke, but of some other guy.
• Cycle of Revenge: Duke and Missi just cannot stop trying to get back at each other for what the other just did to them, with their cat-and-mouse masochism tango finally escalating into open fighting in "The Showdown." The regretful looks on their faces at the end of "The Showdown" and especially "Speed Draw: After the Showdown" says it all.
  • Basically Played Up To Eleven in the season one finale, with Duke and Missi now being stuck together in the castle and seemingly trying to call a ceasefire of sorts. By the end though, they escalate from taunting and arguing with each other over their various actions to outright trying to murder each other with methods ranging from a knife, to a bottle, to fire...
• Date Rape Averted: Missi was able to kill the Duke before he made it to third base.
• Death Glare: Vampire Missi gives several extremely potent ones in "The Resurrection," helped by her piercing red eyes.
• Depraved Bisexual: Word of Gay claims that the Duke is attracted to both sexes, but in different ways.
  Daria: Women are for fucking, men are for sucking.
  • It also claims that Missi was originally straight, only to become bisexual after becoming a vampire, implying that it is a side-effect of the staff, though we've yet to see any evidence of this in the series itself.
• Determinator: Even before being corrupted, Missi gives this variant of a Death Glare when she hatches a plan to kill the Duke.
• Distracted by the Sexy: Missi manages to outsmart Duke in "The Night" by pretending to fall for his advances, distracting him long enough to bait him into a trap.
• The Door Slams You: Missi does this to The Duke at the end of "The Ressurection."
• Expy: The Duke is obviously a play on Count Dracula and possibly Ferrara in My Last Duchess.
• Eye Scream: At the end of "The Showdown," Missi is clutching a bleeding eye. The Season 1 finale reveals he gouged it out, requiring her to wear a patch hidden behind her hair.
• Evil Is Not a Toy: In "The Silent," Missi learns this the hard way as the staff drives her into unbearable insanity. She discards it in horror, is visibly shaken as she returns to herself, and somberly begins to leave the mansion. Then she sees Duke and ignores the epiphany.
• Fangs Are Evil: Before being corrupted by Duke's staff, Missi is a normal woman. After? She sports a nice set of chompers. Duke Zigzags this, as while he's clearly amoral, he seems more mischievous than malicious.
• Flipping the Bird: Missi does this subtly while tapping the piano keys in the third video by way of doing so exclusively with her middle finger.
• Filler Episode: "Zombie Prostitute" to an extent, as it doesn't directly advance Duke and Missi's game of cat-and-mouse.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: There are so many little details in these videos. It helps to rewatch the animation at a slower speed. In the first thirty seconds alone of "The Night," Missi is reading Twilight, with real text from the book, and Duke is changing in front of a mirror despite not having a reflection.
• Freudian Excuse: Missi suggests during her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Duke that the reason behind his evil is a subconscious desire to emulate his father.
• Fur Against Fang: Vampires and werewolves are at war, as seen in "A Good Song Never Dies", where Artemis leads vampires in an attack on a bunch of werewolves. When the werewolves realize the vampires are stalking them, they immediately transform and go on the attack.
• The Glasses Gotta Go: In the first video, Missi wears Nerd Glasses when reading her book. After meeting her, Duke's first actions are to destroy her book, make her glasses magically disappear, and give her a make-over to match his ideas about femininity. Since then, the vampire transformation and power-upgrade of Missi have apparently fixed her eyesight, and she no longer needs glasses to read. In the teaser episode "Oweee", Missi casually reads another book while Duke stares at her from a glass window. She has no problem reading without her glasses and glances towards Duke; watching him from a distance. The bookworm is now a badass but remains a bookworm.
  • When Missi breaks free of the staff's control during "The Silent," she puts her glasses back on alongside retrieving her bookbag and tying her hair back up. Moments later, when her lingering bitterness at the sight of Duke prompts her to relapse by reclaiming the staff, she flings them back aside. But not before a couple quick shots pass between her taking the staff and relinquishing the glasses, giving us the opportunity to see what vampire Missi looks like with her former self's eyewear, bag, and hairdo.
• Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Duke changes Missi to his liking in their first encounter by giving her purple hair and purple clothes. After Missi becomes a vampire, the change sticks.
• Hartman Hips: Downplayed, but in "The Silent," Missi is briefly seen in a silky nightie that hugs her figure and it's evident that she has some junk in her trunk. Not downplayed in "The Showdown," where a whole shot is dedicated to a view of Missi's midsection as she cocks a hand on her side and shakes her hips beckoningly to the rhythm of the music.
• Hell of a Time: "Land of the Dead." Full stop.
• Honey Trap: How Missi ultimately overcomes Duke in the first video. During their one-sided dance, she spots light peering through a curtain in the hallway they're in and proceeds to play along with his dancing, even giving sultry facial expressions to lure him over to the curtain, and let his guard down. Once she has an opportunity to grab it, she yanks the curtain rope down, and causes light to flood the hallway, and then knocks Duke into it with his cane, frying the elder vampire.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Missi's full height may be 5’7” but her head barely reaches Duke's waist. (Amusingly, Missi still weighs more than Duke does.)
• Humiliation Conga: Duke is subjected to one by Missi in "The Resurrection." He's first taunted with the fact that his cane is now in the hands of his former victim and is given either a Groin Attack or an Ass Shove when he tries to take it back. He's then kicked down a pit where Missi proceeds to show off just how much control over the cane's power she now has, taunting him all the while, and when he tries to leave she creates a giant shadow construct that plows him through several doors, throwing him down a flight of stairs to the entrance where she personally kicks him out of his own mansion and taunts him one last time before slamming the door in his face and knocking him on his ass. To add insult to injury, it immediately starts raining right after (which may or may not also be Missi's doing).
• Ignored Epiphany: Near the end of "The Silent," Missi learns the hard way that Evil Is Not a Toy as the staff drives her into insanity... then she sees Duke outside and disregards it.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Missi implies this to be the case with Duke in "Resurrection". She's only a vampire when she holds his staff, which she only grabbed in self-defense when Duke almost ate and raped her, and she's clearly still furious with how Duke tormented her in "The Night". A lot of her antics over the course of Season 1 amount to lashing out at the vampire who sucked her into his undead world, and this escalates into a brawl that ends with Missi lopping off one of Duke's thumbs and Duke gouging out one of Missi's eyes. After this, they call a truce.
• Ink-Suit Actor: Duke's appearance was based on Aurelio Voltaire (specifically him circa the album BOO HOO), among other sources.
• Ironic Echo: Missi mirrors a lot of Duke's moves from "The Night" when she's screwing with him in "The Resurrection."
• Know When to Fold 'Em: In "The Resurrection," when The Duke sees how well Missi has acclimated to the demonic cane and all its power, he realizes he probably won't get anywhere antagonizing her further, and decides to leave. Unfortunately for him, Missi won't let him get off that easy.
• Masculine Lines, Feminine Curves: Duke is drawn with a lot of long lines while Missi is drawn with a lot of round shapes to show the contrast between them.
• The Masochism Tango: Duke and Missi, whose increasingly elaborate games of cat-and-mouse alternate between seductive and destructive behavior. It's especially pronounced on Missi's end, since she can discard the cane and go home any time, but stays so she can keep getting back at The Duke. "The Showdown" is almost a literal case, as the two actually do swing dance while trying to mess with and one-up the other. The creator even did some 2021 Valentine's Day Speed Sketches of Duke and Missi to the trope-naming song!
• Mickey Mousing: Duke does this a lot when he's singing. His Noodle People anatomy only furthers this, as he's often bouncing around and slinking across the screen in rhythm to the songs. Missi bounces and sways to the rhythm too when it's her turn. One has to wonder if that's a side-effect of the cane's power...
• Milking the Giant Cow:
  • Justified. Duke is a vampire and seemingly a man of nobility as a result. He's prone to making these sorts of gestures when speaking, as shown in some of the animation tests Daria has done, and when he's singing, he performs.
  • Missi doesn't skip a beat getting in on the action post-vampirization. Most notable is the pose she strikes when she and Duke break away from each other in the trailer for "The Showdown," even accompanied by a flare of her eyes for sheer emphasis.
• Minimalist Cast: The original short features only Duke and Missi, with no other characters. The second short features mostly Duke, with silent cameos from various creatures of the Greek Underworld, and Missi appearing on her own in a short Post-Credits Scene. The third film is back to featuring Duke and Missi, with the only other characters being magically-animated gargoyles. Other than the two protagonists, and Missi’s new cat Minose, the series so far has no other recurring characters; the fifth episode features a zombie prostitute by the name of Genevieve, an entire skeleton orchestra, and Missi's sister. Missi's sister and the Underworld crew reappear in brief cameos as of "Stuck With You", Genevieve cameos in "CHUPANDO!", and season two significantly expands the cast. "Raised by Bats" includes the vampires that turned Duke, and various people around the until-then-unseen town, while other videos show Duke as a child, as well as his father. "A Good Song Never Dies" introduces a whole coven of vampires who recruit Duke after he's newly-turned.
• Ms. Fanservice: Downplayed. Missi ends up getting a brothel dress within a minute of her experience with Duke, and sports it from then on. And boy does she sport it well! Invoked in "The Showdown," where she goes so far as to flash a Panty Shot at one point.
• My God, What Have I Done?: In "The Showdown," after Duke and Missi's cat-and-mouse tango escalates into open fighting, ending with Duke losing a thumb and Missi losing an eye, they both look horrified and embarrassed by what they've done, as they stand panting and bleeding on the dance floor. "Stuck with You" has them call a ceasefire and try living together as a result.
• Mysterious Past:
  • While Duke is the elder of the two vampires, there is little to no mention of his past in Season 1, other than a mention of his father who looks like and may very well be Aurelio Voltaire. How he acquired the mystical staff and the mansion is not explained. Averted in Season 2, where multiple entire videos are dedicated to explaining his backstory.
  • Even less has been explained about Missi's past and why she started out by seeking refuge in an abandoned mansion at nighttime. She was carrying a schoolbag, which hints that she may have been a schoolgirl (supported by an ID card her sister had stating her to be 17), but nothing else is known about her background, other than a prior interest in vampires, given the book she had with her. Then again, she presumably thought the mansion was abandoned, and what fan of horror literature would be able to resist the urge to read a vampire novel in a seemingly abandoned gothic castle?
• Mythology Gag:
  • Duke wears Voltaire's signature key pendant, which Voltaire doesn't even take off in the shower. There are also a few more visual references to Voltaire, like pictures of him appearing in the background, and the design of his unicorn pendant appearing on the walls of Duke's castle in "The Night" (for example, at 2:17).
  • At 2:02 in the "When You're Evil" MAP, animator Dashikibi fills Duke's dinner table with various references. Voltaire's portrait is on the back wall and his "zombie prostitute" is at the table. Angel Dust and Alastor from Hazbin Hotel are also at the table (Cohen is one of the animators of the pilot). There are also several characters from Threnody.
• Noodle People: Duke is exceedingly tall, and his lankiness shows as a result. A lot of his Mickey Mousing involves him bouncing his shoulders and swaying his body in place.
• Oh, Crap!: In "The Showdown," when The Duke accidentally rips open part of Missi's dress (exposing her bra), he looks instantly shocked and horrified, especially since she just becomes even more enraged.
• Our Vampires Are Different: Getting possessed by dark magic can turn you into one. However, this doesn’t turn Missi into a full vampire since casting the cane away turned her back to normal. There’s also the fact that sunlight won’t kill her, but it does hurt like hell for her. In addition, she doesn’t need to sleep in a coffin and seems to still have her reflection, unlike Duke. The latter defies this trope, as season 2 episode 2 reveals he was a human turned into a vampire after being bitten by another vampire, the classical way.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: After being toyed with and made a victim in "The Night", Missi enacts vengeance against the Duke in "Chapter 3: Resurrection/ A.K.A: Fuck You", where she goes to the trouble of returning him from death, him only to beat him around with his own Magic Staff all over the place before evicting him out into the rain from his own castle.
• People Puppets: Duke puts Missi on marionette strings when they first meet. She breaks free.
• Pointy Ears: Both Duke and Missi have prominent (and rather long) pointy ears in their vampire forms.
• Pride Before a Fall: Duke was so confident that the girl he'd been terrorizing and toying with would of course be into him, that it didn't occur to him that she might beckon him over by some curtains for some other reason.
• Purple Is Powerful: Missi's power upgrade from human to powerful vampire and magic user is combined with a change of hair color from brown to purple, along with a change of clothes from jeans and a sweater to a purple dress with long, fishnet sleeves.
• Purple Is the New Black: Missi’s whole color scheme as a vampire.
• Questionable Consent: While Word of God says Duke thought Missi was willing in "The Night," nevertheless she was a helpless mortal girl he kept tormenting and wouldn't allow to escape no matter how many times she tried. When she suddenly turned seductive, it's questionable how much consent she could give since (from her perspective) her actual life depended on getting on his good side. Then again, he is an evil vampire who likely doesn't think about these things.
• Raging Stiffie: Duke unexpectedly gets one offscreen when being seduced by Genevieve in "Zombie Prostitute." He's rather embarrassed by it, but she doesn't seem to mind.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The entirety of “The Resurrection” is Missi giving a musical one to Duke, before proceeding to throw him out of his own house.
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Duke’s color scheme.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Duke has glowing red eyes. Missi gains them too after being corrupted. Even the cane has them.
• Sanity Slippage: "The Silent" reveals that Missi is going through a severe case of this. In the aftermath of reveling in her powers, her peace is intruded upon when she slowly realizes she's being stalked by apparitions of Duke and a hitherto-unseen collective of small, buglike monsters that make surreptitious attempts on her life. Viewers paying close attention may notice some key inconsistencies in these events; a chandelier that the bugs try to drop on her appears unharmed in a subsequent shot, and when Missi strikes at a painting of Duke with the staff, it's changed to a miscellaneous portrait by the time the blow lands. Eventually, Missi is almost eaten from the inside out by the bugs, and when she throws the staff away in panic, she turns human again, the twisted black-and-white imagery instantly returns to normal, and all the bugs disappear. However, after seeing Duke outside, she angrily rushes back and reclaims the staff, turning into a vampire again.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • In "The Resurrection," after it finally sinks in for Duke how well Missi has acclimated to his cane's powers, he decides he's had enough and promptly slinks from the room. Unfortunately for him, Missi has no intention of letting him go that easily.
  • Season 2 reveals that the Duke pulled this earlier with his life with Artemis and the vampire clan who turned him after seeing their battle with a pack of werewolves, realizing that their war with the werewolves wasn't so different from his own father's crusade against vampires, and he wanted no part of it. The vampires are not pleased to see him leave.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Implied by Word of God in the 5th anniversary Q&A. When asked what would happen if the cane were burnt or destroyed, Daria Cohen said it'd be a whole other can of worms and you should hope it never happens, hinting that there is something far worse inside the cane that should not be allowed to escape.
• Shared Universe: Word of God states that Threnody is in the same universe as this series.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Missi, while not homely in her ordinary clothes, looks extremely plain. When Duke transforms her clothes into a brothel dress, decks her out with makeup, and changes her hair to purple, however, she looks like a completely different person even before she becomes a vampire and embraces the look fully.
• Ship Tease: Daria has been wholeheartedly encouraging the Duke X Missi shippers. When flat out asked if Missi likes Duke, her response as of Chapter 3 was “Not at the moment, no.”
• Shout-Out: Voltaire gets a lot of love, as four of his songs are used for the shorts, and even when the third short bucked the trend by using a song by a different artist, he still appears as a painting of himself!
• Slasher Smile: When first corrupted by the cane, Missi sports one of these. The smile makes a return in The Stinger of "Land of the Dead" when Missi comes upon a spellbook on resurrections. In "The Resurrection" itself, she downgrades them to smug smiles, representing her adaptation to the cane's power. And that impression of Missi gaining a handle on things is roundly subverted in "The Silent," where the return of the Slasher Smile underscores what an unstable mental state her embracing of vindictive revenge and the dark powers that facilitate it has left her in.
  • Duke finally gets his turn in "The Showdown," where one spreads across his face when he has his back turned to Missi and he finally gets the opening he needs to poison her drink.
• Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: Despite both vampires being malicious and rather sadistic, their actions so far are not particularly monstrous. They briefly drink glasses of red liquid (probably blood), but they seem content with spending each night in the castle to which they have both laid claim on. They have twice faced each other in a struggle for dominance, but they have not so far threatened or victimized anyone else. They are not eager to recruit more vampires, and (given their track records so far) may see any other vampire only as a rival to their power. They both behave like Smug Supers and make it a point to bask in the act of demonstrating their superiority to their chosen rival/opponent, but don't seem to care about anyone or anything else in their world, and don't cause trouble to others. Neither of them looks human anymore, but they remain attractive-looking humanoids.
• Smug Smiler:
  • When Vampire Missi isn't throwing a Death Glare or Slasher Smile your way, she is invariably doing this (save for in "The Silent").
  • Likewise for Duke in the first two episodes. Special shoutout to the moment in "The Night" where he pauses in his singing to simply lean forward on his cane and stare down at his petrified prey before she finds it in her to break into a run, keeping this look on his face all the while.
  • "The Showdown" is all about this trope, for both parties.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The ending of "The Showdown." The soundtrack remains an upbeat swing number as Missi and The Duke start savagely attacking each other. The cheerful music fades as they stand there panting and bleeding, looking embarrassed and regretful at what they've done.
• Spell My Name with a "The": Duke's full name is The Duke of Vaults, and many fans refer to him as "The Duke."
• Stealth Pun: At the end of "The Showdown," it looks like Duke slashed out one of Missi's eyes, and she one of his thumbs. As they stand there panting and bleeding, they both look remorseful for how they let their tempers escalate their feud that far. Missi's eye especially might remind the viewer of the saying, 'an eye for an eye, everyone's blind."
• Stroke the Beard: The Duke strokes his goatee at the end of "Oweee" as he formulates a plan.
• Stupid Evil: The Duke was very easily fooled by Missi, reacting in shock when the girl switches from frightened and resistant to being into his advances and getting seduced instantly, but not suspecting a thing.
• This Is Gonna Suck: Duke's reaction as Missi's demonic shadow is gearing up near the end of "The Resurrection." He stares in horror and then frantically tries to open the door before being shoved through several walls and out into the lawn.
• Through the Eyes of Madness: "The Silent" shows Missi's unraveling grasp on reality from her perspective. A couple of things are shown to be hallucinations via Cutting Back to Reality, while other things are ambiguous as to how much they're actually occurring versus being in her head.
• Tempting Fate: Duke singing about how much power he has in the underworld and how no one can take it from him. Missi Spiderwebs rises to the challenge.
• Too Dumb to Live:
  • Missi in "The Night." An in-universe explanation for her choosing an abandoned mansion to read her book in has not yet been given, though one can reasonably deduce that she just thought it would be a cool place to read a vampire novel.
  • The Duke is a more literal example, as his lack of suspicion that a girl he's been tormenting and who's been trying flee in terror from him suddenly decides to seduce him and lure him over by the curtains, which gets him fried.
• A Tragedy of Impulsiveness: Arguably, the whole series.
  • In "The Night," Duke just couldn't resist tormenting Missi, nor giving in to her advances near the end of the video, leading to his demise.
  • In "Resurrection," Missi just couldn't resist resurrecting Duke, just to give a The Reason You Suck Song and kick him out of his own house.
  • In "The Silent," Missi is ready to discard the demonic staff and return to her normal life, only to see Duke standing outside, give a look of rage, and rashly decide to reclaim the staff and resume tormenting him.
  • In "The Showdown," their masocism tango eventually escalates into a full-blown Ballroom Blitz, with the two looking regretful afterwards that they let their tempers get the better of them.
• Undeathly Pallor: Duke and Missi both have chalk-white skin in their vampire forms. Though "Raised by Bats" seems to indicate Duke even as a child looked white as a sheet.
• Villainous Face Hold: At one point in "The Night", while forcing Missi to dance with him, Duke tips up her chin with a finger.
• Wardrobe Wound: In "The Showdown", Duke tears away part of Missi's dress with a swing of his ax and she becomes extra enraged, her eyes glowing.
• Weakened by the Light: In classic vampiric fashion, Missi kills Duke at the end of the first short by pulling open the curtains in the hallway, thus causing all the sunlight to shine in and burning him to ash. Apparently, she was then stuck in that shadowed corner for the rest of the day.
• Who's Laughing Now?: In "The Resurrection," Missi has learned how to effectively use Duke's staff, and uses it to assume control of his mansion, even resurrecting the guy just to deny him the joys of living in the underworld.
• Would Hit a Girl: The Duke. Most pronounced in "The Showdown," where he gives as good as he gets as his Masochism Tango with Missi escalates. He strikes her, kicks her, and attacks her with a battle axe. Though she also gets way more hits in during said fight.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Missi snuck into a seemingly abandoned Gothic castle for some atmospheric reading with Twilight. Little did she know, the castle was already occupied by a Classical Movie Vampire, who is not friendly or romantic.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Seconds after killing Duke, Missi acquires his vampire powers, his magical staff (and all associated powers that aren't inherent to being a vampire), a similarly malicious personality, and implicitly the ownership of the vampire castle.

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