Thirsty for a Fresh Take on All Things True Blood?

WELCOME! Thirsty for a fresh take on all things True Blood? Pull up a virtual barstool at the Pierced Pomegranate Tavern where sisters Rachel and Rebecca are serving up juicy feminist analysis with a twist and opening a vein of thoughtful sociocultural dialogue on HBO's hit series.

Like the epic literary salons of eras past - theaters for conversation and debate which were, incidentally, started and run by women; where the spirited debate about the issues of the day ran as copiously as the actual spirits did - but updated for the digital age, the Pierced Pomegranate Tavern is a fun forum for exploring questions ripe for discourse about the human condition & today's most crucial social issues through the medium of True Blood.

Your salonnières are not peddling liquor per se, but they are offering up new and alternative ideas informed by such diverse influences as pop culture, art, music, cultural history, Goddess studies, transformative theory, literature and poetry, and archaeomythology, filtered through the sieve of their own lived experiences as feminist women of a particular age, background, and culture.

This is a space where you - patrons and passersby alike - can view and engage with these perspectives through the lens of True Blood and contribute your own thoughts. So, no matter if you're a Truebie or a more casual viewer of True Blood, or your drink of choice is a pomegranate martini - one of Rachel's favorite cocktails to drink and Rebecca's to mix - an herbal tea, a frothy double mocha latte, or a can of Fresca (wink, wink) you're invited to join the conversation on the show's complexities in a way that can spark transformation.

Hopefully you'll find something to sink your teeth...err...straw, into! PLEASE ENJOY RESPONSIBLY ;-)

YOU'VE BEEN SERVED (A WARNING)...

The Pierced Pomegranate Tavern is dedicated to exploring social issues and more through the lens of True Blood. As such, you may encounter:

*SPOILERS
*TRIGGERS
related to the often provocative and adult themes presented by the show

If you choose to enter and participate in this virtual salon, please be prepared to do so in a thoughtful, respectful, and mature fashion with the above in mind. Click here to check out our comment policy. Thanks!

Disclaimer

No copyright infringement is intended, all rights to True Blood belong to HBO, credit is ascribed to sites where images appearing here were originally found.

User's Guide

The purpose of this page is to entreat you to step out of the role of detached reader and into the role of invested partner in the endeavor of knowledge co-construction that we hope will unfold here through the medium of True Blood.


ORDER A DRINK - A QUICK AND FUN WAY TO "CHECK IN"


Drinking played a big role in the original salons, and although we obviously can't actually serve liquor - or any beverages for that matter - at this virtual tavern, the idea of sidling up to the bar and ordering a drink is a fun and useful concept for us to work with in terms of adding to the salon feel of this forum and helping us to connect with and get to know each other better.


Satan in a Sunday hat (Lafayette's words for Eggs, not ours) sidling up to Tara at Merlotte's 

If you think about it, your choice of beverage can say a lot about your state of mind...a hot, steaming mug of tea to wrap your fingers around when you've got the sniffles and need comforting, a glass of chocolate milk with a swizzle straw when you feel like kidding around, or a tall, sweating tumbler filled to the brim with ice-cold lemonade when you've had a hell of a day and need to cool off - both literally and figuratively....or, a bottle of Tru Blood O neg when you're mainstreaming and not in the mood to feed on humans!

"Mainstreaming" at Fangtasia

So when you're making a comment, try starting out by "ordering a drink" to give us a quick check on where you're coming from as you express your views and ideas.

Here's an example of how to use a drink order as a metaphorical check-in:


...I'll start with a mug of echinacea herbal tea and an orange juice chaser - flu season is upon us and I've been feeling so run down lately I can't take any chances. So anyway, last night on True Blood...
We're going to give starting out our posts this way a try - and we encourage you to give this way of starting out your comments a shot (pun very much intended) too!





Biker Sookie doin' shots at Lou Pines

ALL PAGES ON THIS BLOG ARE INTERACTIVE
So please join in, only with your input of ideas can we build community

You can comment on all posts appearing on OUR HOMEPAGE, plus any of our stand-alone pages, including this one, and:
  • The FORUM'S SCOPE page which draws manageable boundaries for the discussions taking place in this forum and keeping its focus clear by setting parameters for the conversations that will emerge here
  • The FEMINIST LENS page which offers a primer on our version of feminism and a discussion of how it can shapes our discourse
  • The VALUES & RULES page outlining the rules for commenting which flow from our feminist values that can be used as guidelines for ensuring a comfortable and generative community for all - a safe, respectful, egalitarian, & FUN interactive forum that sticks to our purpose to discuss the human condition and social issues and critique our larger culture and society through the medium of True Blood where dissent and differences of opinion are OK but hate speech, verbal attacks, silencing tactics, trafficking in "isms" and the like aren't.
  • The KEY CONCEPTS page which puts forth the core ideas that constitute the basis of what we're trying to do here and give us the theoretical tools we need to do it
  • The VOICE & FORMAT page that orients visitors to the diverse layers of voices making up this form that, when poured together, form a cohesive whole - including ours, True Blood's, hopefully, YOURS, as well as the images, snatches of poetryquotes, video clips, snippets of music & song lyrics, and more that can be brought in when ordinary prose just won't suffice
These stand-alone pages are like the infrastructure for this blog; they are the foundation upon which its built and the scaffolding that holds it up. It's a good idea to check them out before you jump into the main content on our homepage.

WONDERING WHAT WE'RE SERVING UP AND WHERE TO FIND IT?

Your salonnières aren't the kind of girls who would leave you hanging without a guide for navigating the ins and outs of this virtual tavern. This is a content-dense blog with lots of material to explore so we've included a DRINK MENU (TABLE OF CONTENTS); it's a feature that appears in the upper left hand portion of each and every page just below the WELCOME STATEMENT so it will always be handy and accessible if you're not sure exactly what's here or where it is.

If you're itching to know what drove us to launch this tavern in the first place, we'd suggest that you check out our first three posts. They're hyperlinked in the table of contents but we've also linked them here since we don't want them to get buried because we think that if readers have a grounding in what moved us to start this blog, it will enhance their experience of it:

http://piercedpomegranate.blogspot.com/2010/08/inspiration.html

http://piercedpomegranate.blogspot.com/2010/09/embodies-response-to-true-blood-not-yet.html



* please note, there are many hyperlinks embedded throughout this blog which, when clicked on, will bring you to other Pierced Pomegranate Tavern locales or to destinations out there on the web - so keep that in mind as you hover your cursor over text and images...we wouldn't want you to miss something that could potentially enrich your experience here!

We hope this user's guide will help you get the most out of your visits to the Pierced Pomegranate Tavern!

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