That is not authority! That is abdicating authority!

Hitting The Ground - True Blood 3-7 recap by Jacob | TWoP | p1 :
Lorena's got Sookie up against the wall and she's sucking on her blood. She's all, "You are magically delicious!" Lorena, for at least the third time, asks Sookie what she is, and Sookie thinks about saying "A waitress" like usual right, last epsd to Russell. and in pilot I think, outside Merlottes, to Bill. "I'm a waitress." all sweetness & light (mm wh actually is wh she is), but instead says that what she is today, in Mississippi, is the bitch what's going to kill Lorena.
.. Lorena's ability to understand love, which exceeds every other character's on this show or real life hm?, is called into question, but she is peaceful.
.. Fountains of blood are the next thing that come of Lorena, and then Sookie's there covered in her slithy toves. nice.. jabberwocky.


Tara, of course, assumes that Bill is dead because she doesn't know about how vampires explode when they die. And in fact, this is key: Sookie only knows about that because of Longshadow, and Jason only knows that because of Eddie, and nobody else knows that. Because in this world, it is very important that people not know the infos of vampires, and vampires are the only ones that can give you the infos about vampires, if you see what I'm saying: Don't blame Tara for thinking that bashing someone's head into a paste is sufficient. Ninety-nine out of a hundred, I think you'll agree, it is.

Also, though, every time Tara calls Bill "dead" it's a double-entendre that strikes at the heart of Sookie, who has already stopped thinking of dead things as dead things, or else she would not have sex with the dead things.

And finally, Tara is allowed to hate Bill a very lot. She's like the one person who has the right to hate vampires without seeming like a racist when she does it, because even if she was a racist before Franklin -- and Russell's house, and Talbot's lilies -- she now has more experience of vampires than Sookie, whose empirical evidence would suggest that what vampires mostly want is: To put the moves on you and then do you big favors.

(Also, remember please that Sookie only met Bill Compton something like six weeks ago, and is still very much in the flower of her love -- one thing I really respect about this show is how much it respects us by expecting us to keep up with the incredibly compressed timeline over the past three years, in which only once by my count have we "skipped ahead".)

The wolves are coming!
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p7] Queen Sophie-Anne has been put in a cage, in fact a gigantic wrought-iron (guessing silver is involved) birdcage. It's a beautiful image, and just as weirdly out of place as anything else in vampire-world, but with this show I feel like they buy themselves the ridiculous at a vast overprice: The weirdness shows you -- and this will become increasingly important to remember as the episode continues, right? [p1 recaplet: in the meantime did I mention there was a **magical land of glowing water and fancy people**? This is the greatest show ever made.] -- the stakes. Moving back and forth to dreamworld, vampires as symbolic modes of being, with the only sign we've done so the increasingly bizarre ways things can look.


Now, first rule is don't ever use the word rape unless you're talking about rape.


Vampires are magical creatures who feed on blood, yes. But if they are merely displacing the darkness in themselves with our light, then what is their blood? Life. Life so magical that it causes the dead to *walk*, right, but also so dark that it can show you your soul..

And so whatever words Hadley used in telling Eric what Sookie is , they don't really measure up to the truth. Maryann, though, never once lied, but especially in joy: "It was like Nature Herself was shooting out from your fingertips!"



p12] The guy callously compares Sam-Dog's future in the ring to -- once again in this episode, please do note, because I am sick and tired of hearing about what a crappy show this is when all that does is prove how lazy and dumb you are, but then I say the same thing about Gossip Girl, so clearly I can't be trusted -- the act of rape.
Sam responds by taking human form -- a specifically love-letter-to-us-all naked form, with a chrome dog-collar chain around his neck -- and bopping guy on the head. He crams him into one of the cages, and then opens all the rest of them because Sam is a sweetheart ..
then he pulls a fire-ish alarm ("Actual humans who wouldn't countenance this bullshit are coming!") and everybody scatters and Sam jumps into the ring, yelling at the dog that was just fighting Tommy to go away, and then their little family is alone.

He yells at them forever and ever, comparing them to even the Merlottes in terms of shittiness, and then takes Tommy away. "I can't promise you a perfect life, but I can promise you it'll be better than this one." Valid. They leave; Melinda stops crying and goes cold and yells at Joe Lee about how much she hates him. Then she turns into a magnificent dragon as big as a barn and eats him. Just kidding, fuck both of them.


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Jason assures Lafayette he is not coming to him for vampire blood: "I told you, that shit's behind me! I just need some meth!" (♥.)
p.s. p5-6: Hoyt reminds him of the time a few episodes ago he took down a drug dealer, and Jason waxes: "Reminding me of last week's glory ain't gonna change the fact that this week ain't done shit for me yet!" Words to live by. Well, the "done for me" part y is classic Jason and the worrisome thing about him always, but mostly it's a good idea.(wait what's a good idea, living in the present not the past?)


.. Magical mystery music starts playing when they talk about how Jason does have a blood type, which he knows because he's always fucking up with power tools, but that Sookie has never been sick. And isn't that a coincidence because both she and Boyfriend Jesus show a high level of something called midichlorians. huh nurse Jesus too is what Sookie is? y know this fr the bks?

Sookie: "Oh: fairies!"
Claudine: "Don't say that word yet."

"I think over again my small adventures, my fears, those small ones that seemed so big. For all the vital things I had to get and reach, and yet there is only one great thing, the only thing: To live to see the great day that dawns, and the light that fills the world."
It is beautiful. "That's because that shit is Inuit," Lafayette explains. "And we all is used to lesser religions."

Claudine forgets herself. Begs Sookie to come with them; to let it begin now. To let the great day dawn.
Sookie balks, for several good reasons -- that place sounds like a real bad idea, for starters; everything is not beautiful and some things hurt for a very good reason, and fucking grow up already -- but also and mostly because she doesn't swim.


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p19-p20] So then the Magister offers to arrest Sophie, by "the powers vested in me by the Authority," and Russell makes fun of him about that for a while, which maybe makes sense maybe not.
If you do the viral stuff, videos and stuff -- which I don't, but now have -- you know that the Authority is sort of a High Council that has nothing to do with royalty: Royalty earned it, Authority has been there since the beginning. Like Russell Time or pre-Russell Time. The Kings and Queens earned their role by being totally awesome, and always there's this other thing that is what's selling the PR of vampires. We don't know about it in the same way that Tara didn't know Franklin needed to explode, but it's about to become very important.

Russell goes right on with his V For Vendetta stuff about how the Authority can go ahead and shove themselves up their collective, and meanwhile Eric is tending to Pam.(There's an awesome moment where the Madge interrupts himself to scream at Eric to leave her tied to the table, as he feels his authority draining out of the room.) Anyway, Russell has put the Magister into a pickle, because of all the "blasphemy" going on, and how the three of them (four including Pam) are a Conspiracy at this point, and Madge has responsibilities w/r/t that. I feel him. But also the four of them, the King and Queen and Sheriff and Pam are about the least interested-in-that-idea people you've ever met whose last names are not Stackhouse.

(wait what idea his having responsibilities? well anyway keeps in my mind: "are about the least-interested-in-that-idea people you ever met whose last names..)

So Russell and Sophie -- with a cute little air-kiss -- tell the Magister that, since he's now at the unspoken mercy of the Conspiracy, would he mind terribly putting their marriage on record? Um, he would. But a little bit of nudging from Russell -- and reminding him that see above re: the Authority we don't care.

"And we need to take this world back from the humans, not placate them with billboards and PR campaigns while they destroy it. That is not Authority! That is *abdicating* authority!" Gotta say I agree.

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