Sound Bite

Hello my lovelies!! Weren't expecting me now, were you? Surprise!! It's Random! I'm here to introduce a new thing to our Fangdom: Sound Bites. Every once in awhile we will be posting music that we find to be very vampirey or very dark in a sense. We might also post some bands that we just like in general, but for the most part it'll be musicians that we feel perfectly suit the vampire genre.

I will be starting off this new column with a band that I quite enjoy (although Buffyrules would like to argue that the band hardly exists anymore). That band is Evanescence.

How many of us can forget "Bring Me to Life," "My Immortal," "Haunted"? Those songs practically scream vampire. Fallen was Evanescence's gold mine-or should I say-platinum mine. There isn't a single bad song on that CD, you can listen to it from start to finish and never get tired of it. I should know, I've done it many times.

2003 was a good year for them; if only Ben Moody hadn't left!! After Fallen came the Open Door, a bit more melodic than Fallen. It's interesting when you first hear it. I personally like "Weight of the World," "Lithium," and "Lose Control." The only issue I have with this CD is once you listen through the entire thing...you get bored with the songs very easily. It's like the symphonies are just too much and over power the rock edge that Evanescence was famous for. It's a lovely CD if you want to fall asleep and have crazy nightmares, but for me it was just okay.

After that the band fell apart. Amy Lee is the only member of Evanescence left, all of the originals have gone on to do better things, making me wonder what Evanescence will sound like now. The band was originally supposed to release their next album this year, but by the sounds of it, it's being pushed back quite a bit.

I still have faith in Evanescence. I still think they are a great band and Amy Lee's voice is unmatched by any other singer I have come across. Truly a superb singer.

Another CD of Evanescence's that you should try to get your hands on is Origin. It's the Pre-Fallen CD and has some pretty crazy sounding tracks."Whisper" and "Imaginary" have a different sound from what you hear on the Fallen CD, and all the others are just very dark and very reminiscent of the old Evanescence. It makes me miss Ben Moody when I hear some of the tracks. "Eternal" is Buffyrules' personal favorite. Seven minutes and twenty two seconds of pure instrumental bliss. How can anyone not love the track? I'm especially fond of the section where the song just sounds like a thunderstorm raging. If you'd like to get ahold of these tracks or the entire CD you can download it off the internet at evanescencereference. Amy Lee and Ben Moody actually stated in an interview that they wanted fans to just download the CD, so don't feel like you're doing something wrong by doing it.

I'm really excited about what's coming up for our Fangdom. Sorry for the various delays, but we do have lives and it gets in the way sometimes. Please forgive us and keep on reading our blog. We truly appreciate those of you who do.

Affiliates: MyVampFiction.com

We at Random Fangdom our pleased to announce our first ever affiliate: My Vamp Fiction.

MyVampFiction is an open community that encourages fun, intelligent discussion about all things Vampire and Vampire-related. Their goal is to not only provide a one-stop shop for fans to discuss books, music, movies & television series within the Vampire fiction genre (and to some extent, the Paranormal fiction genre as well), but also to inspire creativity through fan fiction, music & art.

So if you're looking for fanfiction just on the Vampire genre and anything Vampire related, we suggest you take a pop over to MyVampFiction. They have some great things going on and even some writing contests you can join.

Just click on the link down below, or in the column on the right side of your screen that says Affiliates.

http://myvampfiction.com/

Into every generation, there is a Chosen One...

By Buffyrules01

Hello all! We're going to start doing something a little different here at the Fangdom. Every month, us at the Random Fangdom will go over a form of entertainment that has our beloved vampires starring in it. This month, Buffy was picked at random for the start of our new column, and I don't think we could've picked a better show to start with (yes, I'm being biased)! So of course, I was asked to introduce you all to this wonderful TV show. Who better to talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer than me? I don't go by Buffyrules01 for the heck of it.

Moving on...so as you probably have noticed, the month of July is already half over. What are you going to do about that, you ask? Easy, we're going to go into August. For a little over a month and half we will be going over everything we can about Buffy to let those of you who have never seen the show fall in love with it, and to let those who have, reminisce with us.

Buffy first came out in March of 1997, five years after the awful movie of the same name came out. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Movie is a far cry from the successful show, and rightfully so considering Joss Whedon actually walked out in the middle of production when the movie people refused to go with his vision. It just goes to show you that when Joss Whedon is involved, you should listen to what he says; the man is a genius.

The concept of Buffy came to Whedon after he saw that in every horror movie there's always a little blonde girl who goes down a dark alley and gets killed. He wanted to flip the idea and make it so that yes the little blonde girl goes down the dark alley, but she beats the crap out of the thing that's chasing her. That's how Buffy Summers was born.

Years after the bomb that was the movie, Whedon was approached and asked to make his version of Buffy into a TV show. Whedon explained that "They said, 'Do you want to do a show?' And I thought, 'High school as a horror movie.' And so the metaphor became the central concept behind Buffy, and that's how I sold it."

The supernatural elements in the series stood as metaphors for personal anxieties associated with adolescences and young adulthood. Such as the girl who is ignored and feels like she's invisible to others in school. In the Buffyverse, that girl really would become invisible, go insane, and try to kill everyone who ignored her. Or that teacher that every body fantasizes about, in Buffy she'd probably turn out to be a creature and try to kill off all the boys who liked her.

For those of you who have been living under a rock and have no idea what Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about, I'll give you a quick synopsis of the show.

Buffy Summers is a sixteen year old girl who is sent to the fictional town of Sunnydale, California after getting kicked out of her old school in LA for burning down the Gym. The reason for the burn down was because there were vampires in the gym and Buffy is a Vampire Slayer (hence the name of the show). A Vampire Slayer is one girl in all the world, a Chosen One, she alone will stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. So technically Buffy isn't just a vampire slayer, she kills all evil things, but vampires are her specialty.

Each Slayer has what is called a Watcher, a Watcher looks after and trains the Slayer so that she can fight all of the evils in the world until she passes and another one is called.

How did a Slayer come to be, you ask? A bunch of monks took the essence of a pure-demon and put the essence into the body of a girl; the first Slayer. This mystical force gave the Slayer her supernatural abilites such as strength, speed, and superhuman senses.

There are seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and each season is basically a year in the life of Buffy. The first season is shorter than the others, and is Buffy's second semester of her sophomore high school year. The second season is her junior year, the third season is her senior, and so on and so forth through college and whatnot.

What I love so much about this show is that it has every genre you can think of for a series. It's a comedy, a drama, a romance, mystery, thriller-whatever you can think of all rolled into one! The dialogue written for the characters is absolute genius, and we at the Fangdom will go over some of our favorite quotes from the show as we go along. We'll also do some character explorations/spotlights so that you will all get to know and love the characters as much as we do.

If you haven't seen the show yet, I highly suggest you go watch it. The first season is on Hulu, and you can buy two seasons in a pack for about twenty bucks!!! A great deal considering I bought all mine individually back when they were all about forty dollars, dang it.

Vampire Mythology: Crucifixes

I'm back with some more tasty Vampire Mythology for you all to drain and devour. Today we will be talking about crosses/crucifixes and how they came about in Vampire Lore.

Crazily enough, the emergence of the crucifix came directly from Bram Stoker's Dracula, combining some popular ideas about the magical use of sacred objects by Roman Catholics and the medieval tradition that identified vampirism with Satanism. In addition, a significant amount of Roman Catholic piety focused around the crucifix, and among church members it could easily take on not just sacred, but magical, qualities. It was not just a symbol of the sacred, but the bearer of the sacred.

If the the vampire was of the realm of Satan, it would withdraw from a crucifix. For Stoker, the presence of the crucifix caused the vampire to lose its supernatural strength . Thus, with Dracula, in the case of Harker, Dracula lost his fury; Lucy could not escape her tomb; and when the men burst into Mina's bedroom, the weakened Dracula, faced with overwhelming odds, departed quickly.

While the crucifix was a standard item in the vampire hunter's kit, it was not omnipresent in vampire books and movies. The relation to the holy was among the first elements of the tradition to be challenged as the vampire myth developed. Writers who were not Roman Catholic or even Christian found no meaning in the crucifix and the eucharistic elements, and simply dropped them from consideration. For instance, Anne Rice chose to acknowledge the sacred world but essentially deny its power, specifically mentioning the immunity of her vampires to holy objects.

The challenge to the effectiveness of the crucifix in vampire novels symbolizes a larger challenge to the role of the supernatural in modern life. While the lessening of the role of the supernatural in the novels of Rice has its supporters, the crucifix remains a popular protective object for fictional characters. Consideration of their reaction to sacred objects likely will continue to be a conscious element in the development of new vampire characters in the future.

We know today with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the a cross can protect people from vampires. If a cross so much as touches a vampires skin, it burns them. A perfect example of this would be when Buffy kisses Angel in the first season at the end of the episode "Angel." The cross she wears around her neck burns into his neck, forming a perfect crucifix in his skin. I know with the more recent vampire craze, a lot of those fictional vampires don't shy away from the cross; it has no effect on them. So does this mean that they are less evil than those vampires who are effected by the cross?

Who knows. All we know is, it's up to the writer to decide the effects of the cross.

Review with a Vampire Slayer

Eclipse. Yes, that is what ScarC and I were sent out to do last week. Random ordered us to go see it, and write a review (ScarC saw it three times-my goodness)

Now, before you Twi-Haters start clicking the "X" at the top of your screen, just stop and listen to me for a second. As many of you know (or have guessed by my name) I am a Buffy fan, a Buffy loyalist, whatever you want to call it. I'm sure some of you reading this are too, so don't feel like I've betrayed you in some way because I have not. I loved vampires before Buffy, after Buffy, I used to draw vampires in elementary school for crying out loud. The reason why I say I'm a Buffy loyalist is because Buffy was the first form of media I ever saw that had my beloved vampires in it. Sure they were being slayed by a petite blonde, but I loved the characters, I loved the vamps, and I loved the show.

It wasn't long after Buffy season 7 had ended, that I came across Twilight while perusing a bookstore (which I later worked at for a year). Back then, there were less than a dozen copies of Twilight on the shelves. New Moon didn't exist yet, Twilight hadn't exploded into the crazy thing it is now, and TwiHards were few and far between. I read the book, I liked the book, and I admit I was excited when I found out there was going to be a sequel to it. So, I guess you could say I'm an original fan, but that's all I am. I'm not obsessed with it, I don't have Rob posters plastered on my wall. I just enjoy the story and the characters. I've only read through each book twice and that's it.

Why am I going through all of this in a movie review? Because I want you to understand where I am coming from, and because I want you all to know that my review for Eclipse is genuine. It's not biased in anyway. It's pure and honest truth.

So as you all now know, I was asked to go see Eclipse and write a review. Now I have to be honest, I can't stand the first movie of the series: Twilight. I had such high hopes for it, I even saw it twice in theaters just to see if the second time around would be any better...it was worse. No offense to people who love Kristen Stewart, but she just could not act in that movie! All the twitching and eye blinking (seriously if you don't believe me, look it up on youtube.). I thought the special effects were bad, the directing, the music, it just wasn't good! And I was taking a film class in college during this time, so I knew what I was talking about. The only thing I liked about that movie was the baseball scene (you can't go wrong with a MUSE song in the background), and the Cullen Family. The Twilight movie actually awakened my love for Jasper. I was intrigued by him in the books and LOVED his relationship with Alice, but it wasn't until I saw him in Twilight that I started to get all twitterpated.

With New Moon things got a little better. I had lower expectations for that movie because New Moon is my least favorite book in the series and I already experienced Twilight, so I was ready for anything. New Moon was definitely a step up from Twilight. With a new director, and more money to spend on special effects, the movie just felt better. The only issues I had were the cheesy scenes here and there (Alice's vision? I mean, come on), Kristen's acting (no surprise there), and the make up for Edward (in the words of a friend who saw it with me, "I'm trying to check out Edward, but all I can see is his lips") a little too much red on the lips there.

This brings us all to June 6th, the day I saw Eclipse (not at midnight, I saw it during the day). The movie opened with Bella and Edward sitting in their meadow, Bella is reading something for English while Edward is distracting her; asking her if she will marry him, to which she still replies with a "no". One thing I do in every Twilight movie is stare at Kristen Stewart's eyes, waiting for the extreme blinking and twitching to occur. It didn't happen at all in this movie. That was when I realized Eclipse was going to be different from all the others.

Eclipse is actually my favorite book in the series, but regardless, I went to the theater on my guard. I didn't want to have high expectations for it like I did with Twilight, only to be greatly disappointed, so I went in with a neutral air about me. Seeing Kristen Stewart's lack of blinking and twitching gave me hope; could this movie possibly be what Twilight should've been? It was. One should call Eclipse the Redeemer of the Twilight Movies. I was almost on the edge of my seat when the Cullen's starting chasing after Victoria through the woods. I knew they wouldn't catch her, but it was amazing to watch all the same.

The only issue I had with Eclipse was the lack of emotion from Kristen Stewart. Sure her blinking had stopped, but she was still bleah in the rest of the acting department. Her deep voice drives me nuts. Honestly, with Rob and Taylor constantly glaring at each other and wanting to fight each other, you could hardly tell she was there. Other than that though, I couldn't find anything wrong with this movie. Compared to the two before it, it was phenomenal. It was funny, it was intense, it was romantic. If I could see it again I would. Mostly because of one individual in particular:

Jasper

HO-LY-DANG! If I hadn't given my heart to Angel(us) long ago, I think Jasper might've taken it during the movie. When he took Emmett down (the strongest of the Cullen's) my heart was all a flutter. There's nothing I love more than watching a vampire beat the crap out of another vampire just on shear skill. Angel does the exact same thing and it's one of the many reasons for why I love him so much.

BEST SCENE EVER: Other than the tent scene and Jacob getting punched in the face (which were both hilarious), I have to say watching Alice and Jasper fight each other. It was the scene I was waiting for and it didn't disappoint at all. I so love their relationship, the fact that the only person who can take down Jasper is his wife, to me, is the sweetest thing ever. Behind every great man is a great woman, and Alice is definitely that.

A close second would have to be the fight scene. I never pictured the newborn vamps' faces breaking like porcelain when they were punched. Amazing visual, Jasper was a beast, need I say more?

I'm glad Eclipse didn't turn out as awful as I had thought, but the Twilight movies still need a lot of work. I mean, when you look at the Twilight movies and then you look at Harry Potter and how the kids who played Harry, Hermione, and Ron started out acting...they were still better than these twenty-somethings running around.

I'm trying to be optimistic about the movies, really. It's just sad that it had to take three movies in order for the saga to at least be decent on screen. I don't think it's the director's fault either, it's got to be the screenwriter.

Anyway, if you want my score on the Twilight Saga movies this is how they go in my opinion:

Twilight: D
New Moon: C
Eclipse: B+

Oh and JASPER JASPER JASPER

Eclipse Review

Hey everyone! This is Scarc91989 reporting from the confines of her bedroom... must love laptops.

Anyways, I'm here to give you (my lovely readers) my quick review of the movie Eclipse. Simply put... I've seen it three time and plan to go see it again, that should say something. All-in-all though my overall rating for Twilight Saga: Eclipse is an A- or a B+. The reasoning is below. Warning... this might contain spoilers, you have been warned.

There are several reasons why I'm not giving it a solid A and those reasons are: I think they could have done a better job making Edward and the other vamps sparkle, Jasper's uniform could have been more realistic, and they could have made one of the scenes with Kristen Stewart (Bella) not look like a little kid.

There were moments in the movie when Edward and other vamps did not sparkle in the sunlight. One moment being in the last scene in the meadow when Bella and Edward are discussing the wedding plans. Jasper's uniform is supposed to have a yellow sash instead of a red sash and there are minor errors made to the pants and collar. (My brother, Daniel, who I dragged to the movie with me, pointed out these errors. He is a Civil War buff.) And, as for Kristen Stewart looking like a little kid - I think she looks twelve and I blame it on the costume and wig she is wearing. (The picture on the right is the only picture that I can get that shows what I'm talking about... it's not the best example, the best example is when she's using her blood to "mark" the tree while leaving a path for the newborns - at least when the camera backs away and shows her leaving the tree. No copyright infringement intended, all rights belong to their rightful owners in regard to this picture.)

My favorite parts, or scenes you should say, of the movie are: the fight scenes, the tent scene, when Bella punches Jacob and the subsequent exchange with Edward/Jacob & Charlie, "the talk" scene, and the wolves - in general. All those scenes I believe were done exceptionally well by both the actors/actresses involved and the CGI crew.

Now... I must leave you my lovely readers. My personal thought... go watch the movie. If you love it, sweet! If you hate it, at least you can say you watched it. And if you are in the middle, once again... at least you can say you watched it. For the guys, as my brother, Daniel, said 'It's good except for the romantic crap.'

- Scarc91989