Atlanta Vampire Alliance [AVA]

[siege]

Has anyone seen this web site? I stumbled upon it tonight, and at first thought "cool!" But then after reading the long list of offensive definitions for the word vampire (which were supposedly taken from dictionaries and encyclopedias, but I was too tired to actually verify them), I was totally turned off by the site. I've resolved to explore it more when I'm not feeling quite so rotten and therefore unenthused. But before I go through the trouble of registering and all, I thought I would ask y'all's opinion: Is it a legit, helpful site--or just a bunch of hype?

[RevDevon]

after reviewing as much as i was able to access ....reading a few profiles of the higher rated members (staff) .... seems to be quite directed toward RPGers rather then real as several references to being able to be turned,sired , and such ..... along with the number of members and their advancement system ...myself would not reccomend .... any other questions feel free to contact me am available on yahoo and msn usually invisable or away
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RevDevon
Sanguinox, Admin/Founder VNN, Founder/Elder
AVA, Associate Sanguin Society, Founder/Elder
UCV ,Dracorian 4th Chair House of Ma’at , Senior Honor Elder
Pranism Society, Elder/Admin Ordained Minister, U.L.C./Orderae Occultis/S.H.

[Merticus]

That "rave" site isn't worth the time and effort that was put into creating it...
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- Merticus

[siege]

Thanks for your responses. I forgot I even posted that here. I agree that the site is bunk. I never even bothered to go back to it. My search for donors continues....

[Eclecta]

Well I never actually even went to the site.. I guess now I know it isn't worth my time.
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"Love is the law, love under will."

[cathmael]

So is it weird to see your society from a parodical or mimicral standpoint on such sites?

[siege]

Weird? No. Typical? Yes. I think sites like Rave are a lot more plentiful than real vampire sites. With all the role playing games, hollywood-inspired sites, and the like, I think sites like AVA are out-numbered.

[zero]

Sites like this are very typical - trying to be a blanket resource for a subject that could fill several encyclopedias. That's the basic conceptual error: the three definitions of "vampire" given, which look like they were lifted from a high-school level American English dictionary, don't do a thing to make the general statements that follow any more accurate.

For example, how does defining a vampire as a bloodsucking ghost (folklore) or an extortionist (cultural metaphor) , or a species of bat (zoology) help us understand why in the next few paragraphs we hear that vampires are former witches, that they are alike, but different, that different fictions about vampires now are eleveated to the rank of (we assume) co-existing or contemporaneous "races," and, best of all, that vampires are somehow simultaneously Greek (125 AD), Russian (1047 AD) and Asian (who-the-heck-knows AD) in origin?


I wouldn't even bother to pick it apart, save for two reasons. One, it's so typical of a failed folklore or literature information site that it ought to be in textbooks. And two, it's also typical of the kind of source material that winds up being cited in everything from academic journals to high schoolers' end-of-term reports.

All the online and print resources do this to one extent or another, and there's a simple reason. The phenomenology of the modern vampire community, the criticism of vampire literature, the history of vampire folklore and the anthropological comparison of Eastern European folklore to the traditional belief in superficially similar monsters in other regions are all completely separate topics, all needing their own gigantor website.