The headband is overkill.

Well, we’ve moved from sexy man to slightly less sexy man: now let’s talk about the woman who captured their hearts. It’s Sookie’s turn for analysis!

Just a reminder: this blog post is about the Stookie Stackhouse of the HBO series True Blood, not Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries.

What do we know about Sookie? She was raised by her grandmother after her parents died in a flash flood, and her grandmother dies in a brutal attack. Her gross uncle abused her when she was a child. She’s telepathic, so the fact that she’s sane at all, hearing the thoughts of all the weird Southerners around her (haha, don’t kill me please), is a miracle. She also has fairy blood, giving her the “fairy zap” power, as I have dubbed it, and blood that allows vampires to walk in daylight.

That’s a fair bit of baggage right there.

We do see Sookie grow over the course of the series—she eventually becomes strong enough to say no to her lying boyfriend, to defend herself and those she loves, and to own her power rather than just reacting. Her character arc is the growth of a spine, transforming from a sassy girl who trusts blindly into a sassy woman who stands up for what she loves.

Fairy ZAP!

But since this is Freudian Friday and not just, you know, Friday, we have to talk about the sex.

When we meet Sookie, she’s ‘just’ a telepathic waitress. But in comes Vampire Bill, whose mind she can’t read, and everything changes. She saves him from an attack that then turns on her, and he saves her in return… and if we’ve learned anything from urban fantasy, mutual rescue is a recipe for true love.

So Sookie and Bill love each other for awhile, but eventually his lies and secrets stack up against him. She eventually breaks it off, spends some time in Faerie, and returns to fall in love with an amnesiac-Eric.

She’s also unbelievably greedy, wanting to keep both gorgeous vampires for herself. Yowza!

This is not healthy relationship behavior.

Sookie’s clear pattern is to fall for a big tough guy who then finds himself in a vulnerable position, needing her like she might normally need him. She never agrees to date Alcide, a big tough man who doesn’t have issues or need/crave her the same way the vampires do. The fact that she allows her vampire-boyfriends to feed on her shows that she gets off on her man’s physical need of her.

That’s, uh, a little weird.

We could call it some sort of weird mother-complex, say she wants to nurse the man she loves, but I don’t really think that’s it. Sookie was so vulnerable in her child, falling prey to a child molester and often thought mad or even feared because of her gifts. The ability to give back and care for someone might make her feel stronger.

We could also say that Sookie’s always trying to care for the people around her—her brother, her best friend, her boss. She does try to mother the people she loves. Perhaps she really does have a maternal complex, a weird reaction to never really having a mother. And her love of two men might also show her desire to keep those she loves close, to make sure she never loses anyone else.

What do you think, readers? Is Sookie an big pansy who lets men walk all over? Is she a tough Southern gal who wants to keep all the men to herself? What do you love and hate about our spunky fairy girl?

Greedy, greedy, greedy.