The Phenomenon known as...

Yes...we're bringing THIS up. Instead of doing a segment on Buffy, we've decided to hold off on it for awhile and switch things up by giving you the phenomenon known as the Twilight Saga.

Most of you (unless you've been living under a rock) have heard of this series, and I'm going to take a guess and say that either you've read the books, watched the movies, or you're completely Anti-Twilight and refuse to involve yourself in either. Well, what we're going to do for this is involve all of you. I myself happen to be a Twilight fan, Random is sort of in the middle, and Buffyrules has completely gone to the dark side-she's our Anti-Twilight and refers to those "Twi-Hards" as "Pysch-Wards."

Now, I am certainly not a "Twi-Hard" and neither is Random. I was introduced to the Twilight world right before the first movie came out when one of my roommates, our very own Buffyrules before she turned, thought it would be a great idea to go see the movie when it came out. Before I'd met Buffyrules, vampires used to terrify me; but once she introduced me to Buffy; I was hooked! I agreed to watch the movie, but opted to read the books before seeing it so that I could be on the same page as Buffyrules and my other roommates. By the time Twilight came out in theaters, I had finished the entire series, and I was a fan.

Years have gone by and I still enjoy reading the series, but I can see now why certain people may not enjoy the books as others do.

For the next few weeks, us ladies of Random Fangdom will be bringing you everything we know, love (and hate) about the Twilight series. There aren't going to be any biases, we've all read the series so we're not just judging the book by it's cover, so buckle your seat belts and enjoy the ride! Everyone is welcome: Twilighters, Twi-Hards (just don't go crazy on us), the Anti-Twilights, and even those people who are still trying to decide which side to be on.

We welcome you all!
                                                                                            ~ scarc91989

Vampire Mythology: Blood

"Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonorable peace..." (Dracula, Ch. 3)

Nothing has so defined the vampire race than that which they take from humans to give them life: blood.



Since ancient times, humans have seen the connection between blood and life. Hunters observed the relationship between the spilling of blood and the subsequent loss of consciousness, the ceasing of breath, and eventual death of the animals they sought. Blood was identified with life, and scholars through the ages have produced endless speculations about that connection.

Some believed that by drinking the blood of a victim the conqueror absorbed the additional strength of the conquered (sounds pretty vampirey to me). By drinking the blood of animals, one took on their qualities. As late as the seventeenth century, the women of the Yorkshire area of England were reported to believe that by drinking the blood of their enemies, they could increase their fertility (creepy!).

Among blood's more noticeable qualities was its red color as it flowed out of the body, and as a result redness came to be seen as an essential characteristic of blood, the vehicle of its power. Red objects were often endowed with the same potency as blood. In particular red wine was identified with blood, and in ancient Greece, for example, red wine was drunk by the devotees of the god Dionysus in a symbolic ritual drinking of his blood.

In Dracula, when Lucy Westenra is hovering near death, Van Helsing suggests a blood transfusion, something that was very new at the time due to Dracula being written just as modern medicine was emerging. The idea of using a transfusion to counter the vampire introduced a new concern into the developing myth of the vampire through the twentieth century, especially as the supernatural elements of the myth were being discarded. If vampirism was not a supernatural state, and rather was caused ultimately by a moral or theological flaw of the original vampires, then possibly the blood thirst was the symptom of a diseased condition! Caused by a germ or a chemical disorder of the blood, either of which might be passed by the vampires bite (sounds a little like I Am Legend, doesn't it?).

In the mid 1960's there was a brief medical speculation that vampirism was the result of misdiagnosed porphyria, a disease that caused victims to be sensitive to sunlight and which could be cured or helped.

Anemia is a disease of the blood that was initially associated with vampirism. Anemia is caused by a reduction of either red blood cells or hemoglobin relative to the other ingredients in the blood. The symptoms include a pale complexion, fatigue, and in its more extreme instances, fainting spells. All are symptoms usually associated with a vampire attack. In Dracula, during the early stages of Lucy Westenra's illness, Dr. John Seward hypothesized that possibly she was suffering from anemia. He later concluded that she was not suffering from the loss of red blood cells, but from the loss of whole blood. Dr. Van Helsing agreed with his friend, "I have made careful examination, but there is not functional cause. With you I agree that there has been much blood lost; it has been, but is not. But the conditions of her are in no way anemic" (ch 9). While Stoker dismissed any association of anemia and vampirism, over the succeeding decades, attempts to posit anemia as the underlying explanation of vampirism occasionally occurred.

The traditional beliefs that surrounded blood, the medical exploration of its properties, and the analogies it harbored, facilitated the adaptability of the vampire myth to a seemingly endless number of situations. Scientific considerations of the vital function played by blood in the human body have, if anything given it an even more mystical place in human life and promoted its revitalization in this modern era.


I own none of the above. It belongs to those who have spent their lives researching vampires and have put this information together for us to learn from
-Buffyrules01