Vampire, Dragon and Mermaid Short Dramas: Werewolves Outnumber Vampires Ten to One, and Dragons Are Rising Fast
Across 20,332 uploads on ten official channels, werewolf words appear in 1,042 titles, vampires in 108, dragons in 113 and mermaids in 10. Dragons tripled their share in the second half of 2026.
If you want a vampire, dragon or mermaid short drama, the numbers say how hard each will be to find. Werewolves are everywhere. Vampires and dragons are a niche. Mermaids barely exist, even though people search for them.
We counted creature words in the titles of 20,332 uploads on ten official YouTube channels of the short drama apps, and in the names of 1,885 series in the ReelShort, NetShort and ShortMax catalogues. Channel data was read between 7 and 15 October 2026.
How common each creature is
| Creature | Upload titles | Share of uploads | Series names in the catalogues |
|---|---|---|---|
| Werewolf (alpha, luna, wolf, lycan) | 1,042 | 5.1% | 77 |
| Gods and goddesses | 209 | 1.0% | 39 |
| Dragon | 113 | 0.6% | 26 |
| Vampire | 108 | 0.5% | 15 |
| Demon | 74 | 0.4% | 12 |
| Ghost or spirit | 53 | 0.3% | 6 |
| Elf or fairy | 46 | 0.2% | 5 |
| Zombie | 28 | 0.1% | 12 |
| Mermaid | 10 | 0.05% | 3 |
| Genie | 8 | 0.04% | 2 |
Werewolf stories outnumber vampire stories about ten to one. The werewolf romance, with its alphas, lunas and fated mates, is one of the format’s staple genres. Vampires, a staple of paranormal romance in books and on television, are a small corner here. We look at the werewolf template itself in the werewolf trope.
Dragons are rising
The mix is not fixed. Here is each creature’s share of uploads by period:
| Period | Werewolf | Dragon | Vampire | Gods |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 and earlier | 8.6% | 0.2% | 0.4% | 0.6% |
| Jan to Jun 2025 | 3.6% | 0.5% | 0.6% | 0.3% |
| Jul to Dec 2025 | 3.7% | 0.2% | 0.4% | 0.5% |
| Jan to Jun 2026 | 4.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 1.4% |
| Jul to mid-Oct 2026 | 4.7% | 1.8% | 0.8% | 3.0% |
Two changes stand out:
- Dragons more than tripled their share in the second half of 2026, from at most 0.5% in every earlier period to 1.8%.
- Gods and goddesses are climbing too, to 3.0% of uploads.
Werewolves, meanwhile, are well below their peak. They were 8.6% of uploads in 2024 and earlier, and have held at 4 to 5% since.
Where each creature lives
Different apps lean on different creatures:
- Dragons: StardustTV (27 uploads), ReelShort (26) and GoodShort’s Moments channel (24).
- Vampires: ReelShort (34), GoodShort’s Moments channel (19) and FlexTV (18).
- Werewolves: ReelShort (262), ShortMax’s multilingual channel (227) and DramaBox (141).
In the catalogues, NetShort carries the most of most creatures: 39 of the 77 werewolf series, 11 of the 15 vampire series and 17 of the 26 dragon series.
Fantasy creatures also run through the LGBTQ lists some apps keep; on MoboReels’ BL list, wolf kings, vampires and elven princes are common. We counted those in gay, lesbian and BL short dramas.
The rare ones people still want
Mermaids are the clearest gap between demand and supply. People search for mermaid short dramas about as often as for vampire ones, yet only 10 of 20,332 uploads and 3 of 1,885 catalogue series mention a mermaid.
Genies are rare too, just 8 uploads, but those uploads do remarkably well: a median of 282,635 views, against 14,863 for the typical upload. Six of the eight are from ReelShort and appear to promote one series, Djinn Under Contract, so that figure says more about one hit than about genies in general.
Zombies sit at the other end: 28 uploads with a median of only 1,404 views.
How to find them
- Search the app, not YouTube, for a creature word. An app’s own search can turn up series whose YouTube titles never use the word.
- For dragons, try StardustTV, ReelShort or GoodShort; for vampires, ReelShort, GoodShort or FlexTV.
- For mermaids, expect very little. The handful we found are on NetShort, GoodShort and MoboReels.
What this does and does not show
It shows how often each creature appears in what the apps title and post.
It does not show what each story is about. These are word counts in titles. “Alpha”, “wolf”, “spirit” and “god” are sometimes used without anything supernatural, and a creature can appear in a series whose title never mentions it. Nothing on this page describes what anything costs.
What we measured
Every public upload on ten verified official YouTube channels of short drama apps, 20,332 videos, read through the YouTube Data API between 7 and 15 October 2026, and the 1,885 series names in our ReelShort, NetShort and ShortMax catalogues. A title counts for a creature if it contains one of that creature’s words. Periods are by upload date. View medians use every upload in each group.