WTF, True Blood: Why does Bill ask Sookie’s faery godmother, Claudine, what she is when Sophie-Ann has already told him?
Part One in my series, "What the Fuck, True Blood?" in which I ask no one in particular unanswered questions I have about the HBO original series, True Blood
Allegedly Vampire Bill didn’t understand his intense attraction to Sookie. Allegedly he didn’t know what she was and was trying hard to find out. So in the midst of season 3, when Vampire Bill is suddenly spirited to the faery realm of the graveyard after almost draining all of Sookie’s blood in the back of Alcide’s cargo truck, he takes the opportunity to ask her faery godmother, Claudine.
Now I have a lot of issues with the whole faery timeline, actually. In season 3, Sookie goes to the faery realm. This is where she first meets her faery godmother, Claudine. Later in the season, she returns and finds out that Queen Mab, the famously mad queen of the fae is spiriting away any half fae she can find and forcing them to live forever in Faery by eating “the Light Fruit”. This is Mab’s way of trying to keep the fae from going extinct at the hands of the vampires, whose lust for the Light has already brought the fae to the brink of extinction. Mab wants to protect and hide them but she does so under false pretense.
Sookie senses that something is amiss and advises the half fae who helped save her life in season 2, Barry, not to eat it. Unfortunately, it’s too late and this causes the fae to become defensive. Inevitably a battle ensues. Claude, Claudine’s brother and a member of the fae family that watches over the Stackhouses, gets Sookie back to the mortal realm before the portal between worlds is sealed off. This makes Sookie hate the fae, but TBH, it’s more likely just because she is obsessed with vampires and especially Vampire Bill and she doesn’t like that anyone is trying to tell her what’s good for her. Because she’s an idiot.
There’s no real reason for Sookie to hate the fae or Mab. Sure, she’s tricking people into staying in Faery – this is a common fae trope in the ancient Celtic lore – but there’s no reason given as to why wanting them to stay in Faery for their safety is so bad. It actually makes sense that now that the vampires are out of the closet, she would want to save them from potentially being massacred (which is what happens later).
Now that I think of it, my story, Blood (book one of the Kingdom Chronicles YA fantasy series I wrote in high school) has the main character, Angel, spirited away by a manipulative she-fae but she spends a great deal of time in Faylinn and learns the deep history of why she was spirited away, why the queen is evil, and what is at stake. None of that happens in the faery storyline of True Blood and this loose end remains as such.
I understand that Sookie is mad that her grandfather disappeared and that nobody knew what happened to him, so when it turned out that he had been f*cking around in Faery for 20 years unbeknownst to anyone, that could be pretty upsetting. But the way that Sookie automatically distrusts and even hates her own people, so much so that she doesn’t even bat an eye when Eric accidentally kills Claudine (who has saved her life on many occasions) seems over the top.
Sookie is petulant and hates the idea of anybody taking away her free will and access to choice. This is reasonable but the degree in which it shows up in Sookie is dangerous and destructive. Yes, it is annoying to the other characters and causes a lot of problems for herself and others (like how both Alcide and Bill die because of her reckless decision to lure out the H-Vamps in season 7). In fact, Sookie’s insanity is incredibly dangerous for all the fae and this is clear when Bill is spirited away — completely unintentionally— to the fae realm when he almost drains Sookie. She even leaves Warlow there (which shouldn’t be possible since all access to Faery should have been shut down at this point). While, yes, she is insane with vampire blood, this obsession with doing what she wants is very clearly of grave, lethal detriment to not only the people around her but entire races already endangered. Where I could empathize with her in the first and second seasons, as the show progresses, her idiotic decisions and bullheaded stubbornness (no Maenad pun intended) become so obnoxious, selfish, and flagrant that she appears delusional and dissociated from reality to such an extent that it makes me hate her.
Now back to my original point – Vampire Bill claims to not understand why Sookie is so intoxicating. So much so that he even asks Claudine (who is stupid enough to tell him). Later on, as retaliation for burying him alive, Eric tells Sookie that Bill was originally sent to Bon Temps to procure her for Sophie-Anne and that he purposely allowed her to be nearly beaten to death the night that they met so that he would be able to feed her his blood and make her his. We find out in later seasons that Sophie-Anne knew about Sookie from wayward Stackhouse cousin, Hadley and suspected that Sookie was fae. He was sent there to investigate and bring her to Sophie-Anne to be bred but allegedly fell in love with her and could not carry out his mission.
Bill’s proximity to Sophie-Anne becomes clearer and clearer over the course of seasons. We then learn that his only purpose for working for her was to sabotage the vampire kingdoms from within on behalf of the Vampire Authority. But Bill had every intention of taking Sookie to Sophie-Anne.
I have to tell you now that I hate Bill. I think he’s a stupid ass piece of sh*t. He has no scruples and is a fake chivalrous traitor. Pam was right about him – he’s always looking for an excuse to feel bad about himself. And it disgusts me. I’m looking for any excuse to be like, “f*ck you, Bill” and it’s really not hard. But Sophie-Anne is still alive when Bill asks Claudine what Sookie is, and I genuinely do not believe that after everything he had seen from Sookie, everything he knew about her, that he could not already confirm for himself that she was fae. I just can’t.
I think this plot point is poorly written. He says that Sookie deserves to know what she is, but we learn his entire mission to return to his home of Bon Temps was to find out what she is. I just feel like this is sloppily resolved. You can argue that he just needed to be fully certain, which is valid. But I don’t care – I just think it’s stupid.
Whether or not you agree, I have nine more insights to share about qualms, questions, and quandaries regarding True Blood (not just as someone who is a fantasy writer or has studied film and media but as a fantasy fanatic and sort-of fan of the show). More soon!