I sat back in the quiet of the parlor and lit a cigarette. I was reading some of the journals that had been written by Markingham, the half brother of the Magister, both now in their final death. I thought of the secret world which had operated unknown to us for centuries and still operated though they now lived among us.
The very sociopathic coming out of backward thinking Vampires with the on camera murder perpetrated by Russell Edgington had put our Vampires in a dangerous position. Their friendly face was compromised and I wondered seriously if they would be able to get it back. I rubbed my eyes and exhaled the smoke form the sweet turkish tobacco Eric kept the parlor stocked with and I thought about our own Vampires and what we know, which is a lot and what we don't know which is likely vast.
This void in our knowledge was the thing that made us angry and fearful and confused about the things we saw and the things we read and the things we believed about what was right and wrong. We shouldn't really judge them with the same yard stick as we do other humans. Their motives are different and their thought processes are cloudy and their allegiances are foggy. They have operated in a secret society for so long they know no other way. They are stealthy and cunning and manipulative because that is the way Vampires have been and still are for centuries.
I picked up the newspaper Eric had left behind. I wondered sometimes if he did it on purpose so we would either fall for the propaganda or perhaps he was saying "This is the reality my friends and lovers, this is our true face." I read the headlines of the USATonight Vampire version of USAToday. The headline was about Russell and his shenanigans and the official reaction of the AVL and the Vampire community. They were ranging from outrage to support and it scared me. Warning taken Eric.
But then I thought about them, this new minority. Were they really any different form any other cultural or ethnic minority group. No one wants to show their "white trash side" and I am sure that applies to the Vampires. Bill Compton tells Sookie lies because he does not want her to know the extent of the Vampire world without all the make up and Sunday go to meeting clothes because he knows that the Vampire World is ruthless and mean and it uses humans and other supernaturals to their own advantage. The Vampires see humans as food and assets to be had and won and used and thrown away. And this was the primary reason for Bill to return to Bon Temps, to acquire Sookie because she was one thing or another or both at the same time, a useful snack and plaything and tool for a spoiled petulant queen he owed fealty to and to charge the queen with any such crime, even as petty as lying to a Vampire's lover would be a death sentence. And the fact that he loves her does not negate the fact that what will be known will be a very painful betrayal indeed. The fact that certain truths were to be told reinforces the notion that honesty is sometimes the only policy and ignorance is never bliss.
Then I thought of the twisty double dealings among Vampires themselves, the politicking and the castle intrigues that sucked our Viking into an oscar, or at least an emmy winning performance as a devoted toady who would do whatever he had to do to get what he wanted and that was revenge. Everyone became a pawn: Talbot, Bill, Sookie...yes, Sookie. Eric used her to distract the king, to drive a wedge between Talbot and Russell because he would want to collect her as a part of his cortege. And perhaps his own, because he did call in Bill's maker to control him so he would not interfere with Sookie and Eric could be that much closer to "assetting" her himself. The fact Eric would really not allow anything to happen to her does not negate the fact Sookie was on her own and had to design her own escape and Bill's.
The weres were no different and their social existence is still a secret to the outside non-supernatural world and in the Connection's version of the world just as fraught with nuances and secrets and pledges of duty and honor which surpass the social code of human society. Sookie gets sucked in on more than one occasion to put her very special skills to work and she always gets clobbered in the end. Run Sookie, run far away, where there are no supernaturals, no Vampires, no werewolves, no shifters.
But it is getting harder and harder for them to live a separate shadow world apart and independent of the human world. They are out in the open. But how do you break the habits of a thousand years or more? Or just a couple of centuries? How do they trust that which was for them food and sexual objects to exploit? How do they avoid making emotional ties to humans and when they do, how they balance being Vampire with being a friend or lover or colleague, for they are all that on some level. And how do they trust? How do they declare independence from the old system of separate but edible and fuckable and become...human...without betraying what they are? I know that when Native Americans gave up and became assimilated into white society they were called Apples, red on the outside but white in the inside...you know the other titles for other races who bend to the notion that one race has a supremacy over another. None are pretty.
And can you ever really assimilate? I think Nan Flanagan proves that. She tells Eric that she lives solely on Tru:Blood but she doesn't. Hypocrisy at its most elegant and basic. She is still a Vampire, going against her own PR. How can we ask the same from Bill or Eric or Alcide or any of them? We can't not really. So we accept them. We accept the fates written for them in the stars, on the printed page, on the screen, and what happens in our own parlor.
What is left is what we feel for each other because we share in this world and we have adventures a plenty but really, as Bill said, "We are not of the same clay," and as Eric said, "You are cute but tasty, like cows," or like Pam said, "Vampires first," and expect only what they can give us, and they can only give us what is given them. We can love them, trust them with our own motives and we can have our adventures with them, but we have to keep in mind, what happens behind the closed doors and pulled curtains in a Vampire's house is private world and perhaps one where we are not supposed to comfortably fit.
I lit another cigarette and sat up and stretched. But really, what fun would it be if we did?
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