With True Blood's Season 3 and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse both headed our way this month we here at IGN felt the need to set the record straight once and for all: TRUE BLOOD KICKS TWILGHT'S ASS!

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It's true. True Blood wins. Easily. On almost every single conceivable level. It's hardly even a fair fight. It's like watching a bed-ridden asthmatic try to knock down a sequoia. By huffing and puffing. True Blood is a salaciously sinister and fiendishly fun series featuring insane characters filled with life and color. Twilight is a sniffly-nosed, dew-covered mope-fest filled with silence and shame. Yes, because of the "vampire factor", these two creative products share fans as there will always be fans of vampires no matter what movie they're in or what show they're on. Like everything else that exists in pop-culture there are apologists. But Twilight is listless and dreary. And it's not that we don't fully appreciate the forests and gravel roads of the Pacific Northwest as a backdrop, but Twilight wallows too much in the picturesque serenity of its locale and loses all sense of danger. It never effectively conveys the "horror" that lies behind the small town facade. It essentially targets eight year-olds (under the guise of a teen romance) by effectively de-evolving the entire genre.Knives out! We know Twilight fans will take major umbrage with this feature but we also know they'll probably have to look up what the word "umbrage" means so we'll try to stay a couple steps ahead of them. True Blood has its fair share of detractors, sure; mostly because of its ham-fisted tonality, bawdy content and subtext about tolerance and equality (hey, some people object to those things!). And while it has a very respectable rabid fan base based of the Charlane Harris novels and the HBO series, its fandom is nowhere near the insane levels of worldwide obsession that accompany the Twilight series. And while we surely respect everyone's opinion regarding things that they watch or read that make their miserable lives on this planet a smidge more tolerable, we ask that you respect our opinion as we point out all the reasons why True Blood had chunks of Twilight in its stool!

Vlad The Impaler

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Vampires have always been the sexiest mythological creatures (sorry Flesh-Shredding Dryads!) so it makes sense that people might want to see these guys actually have sex with people. Who wants to sit around for two hours and watch people yearn? Who really wants to explore the depths of an ultimately unfulfilling relationship? Yes, there is merit to tackling the themes of lovelorn longing, but we'd rather leave that topic to more adept authors than Stephenie Meyer. In True Blood, everyone has sex! They bone 24/7! And they don't try to hide the fact that the thing that initially draws each of them to one another is raw sexual attraction. Sure, they grow to know each other later and, hell, they might even learn to tolerate each other's contrived southern eccentricities, but first things first! Sex. And lot's of it. Hell, Sookie and Bill spent almost an entire episode under the sheets. I think she had to get up at some point to go get some Gatorade or a turkey sandwich or something, but for the most part it was just them screwing in a Dallas Hotel room.Bella and Edward spend all their free time exchanging meaningless niceties under porcelain pretences. Sulky stares and sullen smirks. And of course Bella's dad is cool with her dating a vampire! He knows that dude is never going to even touch her boob! It's pretty much just like letting her date a gay guy. Actually, no. It's safer. See, dads don't care about their little girls running around with monsters if that monster is an ineffectual, uncharismatic neutered lump. Yes, Edward and Bella do wind up having sex eventually. After they get married. And just once. Enough to get her pregnant. We all know Twilight is an anorexically-veiled "abstinence until marriage/sex only for babies" parable, but does it also have to be so boring?In True Blood, vampires represent sex. And rightfully so. Sex with vamps is established as being exponentially better and their blood can be used as supernatural Viagra. The ritual draining of a sex partner's blood (not for killing) is depicted as an erotic act that heightens pleasure for both parties.So then…point for True Blood. An erotic, insatiable sweltering point.

A Grave New World

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In Twilight, it's business as usual for vamps. Hiding out. Wracked by shame and guilt. Some like to wreak havoc and spill the blood of the innocent. Some like to soak up self-pity like a sponge and drink deer protein shakes. They're in hiding, and the unfortunate victims of the bad vampires usually get written off by the police as being mauled by some sort of wild animal. The underworld vampire hierarchy decrees that vampires must remain hidden. And sparkly. Booooring.True Blood's world is vibrant and fresh. Vampires live among humans. They've come "out of the coffin." They have jobs. They have magazines. Talk shows. Bars. Townships. But it's still a fairly new scenario so there still are rampant prejudices on both sides of the vampire/human relations. Whereas Twilight is an allegory for not giving in to your "dirty, filthy urges," True Blood tackles racism, segregation, religion and a flurry of other socially relevant topics that helps the series stand out as a true game-changer in the vampire genre.The vampires on True Blood have Kings and Queens, Sheriffs and Magistrates and a whole infrastructure of nefarious law and order. And since vampires are now blending into society one of the most fascinating elements of the show is watching how the two justice systems collide! Plus, in a straight world vs. world battle, the world that has vamps, werewolves and shifters, pagan demons, witches, fairies and other assorted boogey-creatures wins by a supernatural landslide.Morally relevant subtext prevails! Point for True Blood.

ReVamp/Remodel

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The vampires of Twilight sparkle and shimmer in the sun, turning them into beautiful pieces of unthreatening art. Yes, this is something that's easy to take a pot-shot at and it's been sort of the "go-to" fanboy tirade circling the Twi-series for the past few years. But despite the fact that this element of the Meyer stories has been mocked ad nauseam, it never ceases to be utterly ridiculous and facepalm-worthy. Never. Twilight fans, your argument has never been more invalid.True Blood vampires are able to make progressive leaps and bounds genre-wise while still adhering to the basic established vampire rules concerning sunlight. And they're horny. And complex. And feral. And peaceful. And able to think like creatures of the modern-era. Let's compare the two scenes – the meet/cute scenes – in both Twilight and True Blood; when Edward sees Bella for the first time and when Bill sees Sookie for the first time. When Edward sees Bella, his eyes awkwardly widen, his nostrils flair and he gets an uncontrollable vamp-boner (see: Edward smelling her "specialness") and has to excuse himself from science class like a dandy who just pooped his pantaloons. When Bill sees Sookie, there's a sultry sexual brooding that happens, letting us know that Bill wants to "f the s" out of Sookie and he's not ashamed to show it in his eyes.It's eventually explained in the books True Blood is based on (and will be covered in Season 3 of the series) why vampires go "ga-ga" for Sookie, but they never explain why Bella is conveniently Edward's "plain Jane" heroine. She just is. It's just more of that "you special just by being introspective and boring" crap that fuels Twilight's bonfire.Vampires are vampires are vampires. Point for True Blood.

For more reasons why True Blood kicks Twilight's ass (including werewolves), head over to page 2…