Now you are getting into untangibles.  I have no problem calling and individual evil.  There are individuals who are evil to the core.  However a whole culture cant be evil because it is made of individuals.  I don't particulary like anyone who drinks blood or likes to be depressed all the time.  Besides the fact that as Capitolist pointed out these people will be getting all sorts of sh!ty dieses.  Blaming the problem on pop culture or school is wrong though.  I do agree that schools are run by socalist and that pop culture is stupid though.

Where to start...

First off, vampirism and the related fringe offshoots are for the most part harmless. They are generally an immature, poorly thought-out response from a social misfit to wanting to belong to something, because our society and our parents fail to teach kids about their own inherent self-worth and about individualism. Kids feel a need to belong to something special, even the outcasts.


Add the Ann Rice books. My wife loves these, BTW, I never could get into them. The whole homosexuality issue is a common theme in much female-written fantasy and SF, and has more to do with underlying feminist and anti-male bias on the part of the authors, which they typically act out by emasculating their male protagonists through bi- or homosexuality. Popular fiction gives the kids source material for their fantasy world, where they can become smarter than the nerds, physically more powerful than the jocks, and more socially powerful than the "in" crowd through the mythical properties of the vampire. Plus they get to wear a lot of black, and what says more about how much contempt you hold for everyone else than dressing like a full-time dungeon employee?

For the most part, they are harmless.

As far as the "gang" element goes, I have been to numerous gang investigator conferences (and middle America does have a need for Gang Intel folks, but that is another post), and Statanism is invariably one of the breakout topics (I usually go to the raid planning or firearms courses, but I've gotten stuck with occult stuff before). Gang units tend to pick up occult issues because no one else in local law enforcement knows about this stuff, or wants to deal with it. For the most part, this stuff is absolutely harmless and does not broach the level of "criminal predicate" where law enforcement has to be involved at all. Many suspect "occult" incidents turn out to be something else entirely, like a series of local pet mutilations we had a while back. After lots of loud outcry and negative press, and hundreds of man-hours spent (many of which involved NVG and AR equipped officers prowling the woods with orders to shoot the first coyote they found and declare victory), officers captured the culprit-an escape leopard (someone's illegal pet), complete with some undigested pet collars in his gut (don't worry, the leopard is doing fine at a wildlife refuge).

There have been numerous documented cases of occult murders and other violent acts, but for the most part this stuff is pretty rare. The folks who make their money off this are just making money. Ever read a REAL interview with Marilyn Manson? That guy is pretty dang smart, and I don't believe for a second that he actually believes in most of the stuff he puts out in his media material; he is just making money.

As far as condemning any religion, we have a First Amendment in this country, and religions that do not advocate criminal acts have every right to exist, no matter how screwy they are to the rest of us. That being said, when they cross the line, lock 'em up. I knew a "coven" of Wiccans in the Army who got a lot of time at Leavenworth, and I got some pretty big laughs out of that one because they were all incompetent morons who would have been fragged if we ever went to a real shooting war.

Guys Fearandloathing is RIGHT.

Freedom is a dangerous thing and must be carefully regulated and given ONLY to those trusted individuals who will do exactly as others "think" they should.

FAL ascribing to them actions such as "RPGs make kids suck blood and kill people" is the same liberal BS that the anti-gunners say of us "Playing Quake makes people want to go out and kill others."

bWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHahahhahahahahaa...

Thanks, SteyrAUG, I needed that...

[;)]

the_reject

looks liek soda and goldfish to me...

our snacks used to be soda and chips'n'dip. Lipton onion soup and sourcream for the dip.

ever play battletech?  my friends and i build a 3D 5x8 board out of insulating fome used on outside of houses under teh vinyl. that blue foam stuff. make mountains ect. so it was easy to tell if you could hit someone, range was a factor but now we had a 3D board and could use real visiual cues. also had some fake trees from when i was a wee tike with the slotcar racers. used them with the board. that made if more fun. cuz we could acctuly leave the downed mechs hulk on the board and not have to remebmer it was there. plus it was more variable than the paper sheets FASA sent, we could move and resize our mountain buy adding/removing layers of foam. plus trees were movable. we then allowed moving in any of the 360 degrees.

I agree with natez 100%.  I bet the coven members being incompetent caused more problems with the way pagans are viewed.  Probably more than anything in the news too.

to summon hank one must mention gunshow and
read from the menu of back yard burgers.
this works for beau beaux also. lol
just kidding guys [:D]

Battletech kicks ass.

We used to spend hours on the weekends (at a boarding school, we could really go anywhere) playing that.

Granted we couldn't afford 3d sets. Many times the Madcat varient I used was represented by an eraser with a Smiley face drawn on it.

Man, there was one time we spent all of Friday and Saturday setting up a 40 or so mech battle, infantry, the whole 9 yards, and it was all over in about 30 minutes 'cause one guy forgot to CASE his ammo.


heh, and I remember right after Columbine getting dirty looks and insults because I wore a trenchcoat.

Granted, my trenchcoat was brown, and I'd owned it for 3 years, but hey, people are dumb.

I always feel like killing after a few hours of quake. I drive to work in the morning and imagine using the rocket launcher from quake one on the people who won't move out of the fast lane when they're going slow.

Is there a vampiress next door?
[url]http://www.blackey.com/vampire.htm[/url]
[img]http://www.blackey.com/image/vamp/nextdoor/Frkgirl4t.jpg[/img]

Battletech.. you command a 40' hulking metal beast armed with weapons of destruction. long/medium/short range missles, laser weapins, gauss weapons, ect. fun fun fun!

hell i imagine the old blue hair lady's buick exploding when the suicide squirrle gets killed by her.

Personal freedoms, goofy clothes and weird sexual practices aside...

I think this is an important enough situation that we should ALL obtain additional firearms and ammo. To be on the safe side I just got 4 more .223 battlepacks and I'm gonna start obtaining garlic cloves.

Ever hear of Catholocism?

Ok, so let me get this straight...

People STILL play D&D???

Peopel HERE play D&D???

I suppose that next your gonna tell me that some of you even dress like Star Trek characters and learned how to speak Klingon?

Hmmmkay...

KRISH KROSH...LOL.

Anyone ever see Trekkies?

Remember the juror who wore her "commanders" uniform on jury duty?

Those people scare me more than goth/vampire people.

I am somewhat puzzled about what drives and sustains the UK's Dark subcultures.

Here in the US though, it is a direct outgrowth of Fundamentalist Christianity.

I have never met a Goth/Pagan/Satanist/Vampire wannabe who was a child of humanist/atheist parents. To treat this as anything more than a game or a fantasy, one has to beleve that there are things outside of nature. That supernatural beings can and do walk the earth.

Everyone I met at university who was into this enough to be involved in violence or bizzare sex was a victim of physical and/or sexual abuse by their parents or by ministers/clergymen(though I only ever met one person in the latter catagory-just to be fair). These kids focused on Christianity as their enemy because their abusers used public shows of pieity, devotion and religious activism to cover their secret immoral behavior at home.

This is then reenforced when many of these same religious groups turn around and react to the apperance of Dark images as if they have real power and are really a threat. Its especally reinforced in situations where a young person tried to seek help for an abusive situation and was not beleved, ignored, or worse-but has no trouble getting attention when they start drawing pentagrams on everything...

Now again, the disclaimer: Most kids who play around with this kind of dark anti-Christian imagery are not abused-and eventually they give it up in a few years after the shock value has worn off and they find that its no better suited for dealing with the real world than their parents religious practices were. But the ones who actually start to LIVE according to their image of a dark cult and especally those who start to do physical damage to themselves or others almost invariably have childhood trauma-trauma that has in some way become associated in their minds with the practice of the Christian faith.

Only sometimes.

You'd think that with how rich the church is we could buy some better tasting wine.

Just a heads up for ya. When you drink the communion wine swallow it as quickly as you can. You don't want the nasty taste of a mouthful of blood if the miracle of transubstantiation takes place before you can swallow.

First of all, for fearandloathing:
[:K]

Yeah, I have many fond memories of D&D back in the day.  As I grew into my mid-teens I changed gears though, and really got into Aftermath and Dark Conspiracy.  They were both excellent games.  If they are still around, any of you guys who still game should check them out.

[img]http://www.clippis.de/Vamp/vamp4.gif[/img]