True Blood is a marvelously sexy HBO program that despite pushing a lot of envelopes still seems to fall into the same tired routine of making Female characters that display both Dominance and sexuality, evil (or at the very least unstable.) Up until now, maybe, hopefully, I’ll explain.
The premise of HBO’s True Blood is that Vampires and other supernatural beings have always existed in secret, and just recently revealed themselves to humanity now that it is possible to manufacture artificial human blood (The eponymous True Blood) and so feeding on humans in no longer needed for survival. This revelation sparks the vampire rights movement which often parallels the gay rights movement and associated struggles.
The show centers on the adventures of telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who despite being outspoken, strong willed, and generally a textbook example of a “strong female character” melts into the socially acceptable feminine role during love scenes.
Why is it that most of the female characters that have several built men fighting over them are consistently the most annoying people ever?
My interest in the show as potential fantasy fodder comes from the way their vampires work. True Blood Vamps have super speed and strength, and the ability to glamour people into doing what they want, and consuming their blood (possibly only when directly from the source) creates a connection with them, so they can sense the human, and how they’re feeling, this also creates or intensifies sexual attraction towards the Vampire, including sexy dreams.
When a Vampire creates another vampire, (by sharing their own blood with a human, and then draining the human’s blood, and spending some period of time buried in the ground) The first Vampire is the seconds “Maker” and the created vampire is physically incapable of disobeying a command fro their maker.
Unfortunately for me, all those sexy dominate worthy traits are directed at women for the first four seasons. We do get to see a female maker, but she’s evil, psychotic and a self pitying mess.
But that may be changing, with Pam turning Tara, this season we get finally get to see a female maker taking care of her progeny, particularly episode four, the interaction was enough to give me goosebumps. That, and watching Deborah Ann Woll’s character gush about having sex while feeding off a human, is why I’m posting this.
There are other reasons to like the show of course, they have plenty of eye-candy for any viewer. Vampirism in the shows has some parallels to kinkyness, sex with vampires is treated by people much the same, it’s perverted, and naughty, and exciting and dangerous, it’s high adrenaline and usually quite rough. Plus, the added bonus of biting.
