(no subject)
TIME TO ESSAY ON ERIC. This includes spoilers for 3x10, though I decided last night he’s coming from 3x9 until the finale.
One of the things about Eric is that he is incredibly contradictory at times. The modes of his thinking aren’t always easy to follow, because he doesn’t grand stage. When he comes up with a decision, he comes up with it, and he carries it through and you’re left wondering what he’s doing. I think the only person he lets in on his plans is Pam, and even then, he doesn’t let her know 90 percent of what he’s doing unless he wants her involved or if it’s harmless fun.
As it is, the hilarity behind my apping Eric is mostly the fact that I was trying to get Jennifer to do it all season, and instead, I ended up sitting and trying to work out the psychology behind his actions to … get her to understand him and app him, since I wanted to app Godric. The problem with doing that is that I ended up getting really into his character, but I wasn’t going to app-I honestly had another app planned, and it was done and everything-until I got hit with an idea on the way home from work. Well, and I guessed some canon at the beginning of the season on a limb regarding his development, and it turned out to be true. … Which, yeah. Hard to do with how all over the place Eric happens to be.
But Eric is a pretty contradictory character, so I want to talk about the different facets of who he is.
Eric and Being a Vampire
The most important part of Eric is to understand how he was made into a vampire and what that means. He was chosen, and it wasn’t random. For Godric, Eric, and eventually, Pam, the choice appears to be incredibly important. Godric went out of his way to kill everyone around Eric before he went and took him for himself, to make him into his progeny, and said he would follow him. It was very obvious that the decision was a big one for Godric, and as a result, Eric became his loyal follower. Eric himself was a warrior; he fought and brought death to others, and Godric presented himself as death incarnate.
We don’t know much of Eric’s history with Godric. What we do know is that in WWII, Godric was still lecturing Eric on how to be a vampire and that vampires would turn off their emotions. This was after Eric had already made Pam into a vampire.
When we first meet Eric in the present series, he clearly doesn’t think much of humans. Pam’s way of thinking and behaving is pretty indicative of how Eric thinks vampires should act, as the maker (in his eyes) influences the progeny quite a bit. He doesn’t think they need to deal with emotions, sentiments, or anything else, and he presents himself as someone who is powerful and looking for a good time. His area is under his jurisdiction and he does what needs to be done, and most of all, he’s a survival. Godric taught him that being a vampire is all about surviving, and none of the self-sacrificing notions that Godric himself eventually takes on. They’re meant to live, because they are experiencing an existence beyond death.
The interesting thing about Eric is that he’s very careful. He takes care of what’s his and he ensures that it’s all in one piece. He doesn’t pretend to have a care toward most things, but this shifts for Pam, Godric, and eventually, as we’ve seen in the last episode, Sookie. Very little fascinates him after a thousand years, and Askars once said in an interview that Eric doesn’t bother to beat around the bush. Unless that will help him. He’ll lie when he needs to, to protect his own and his place, and his life-though his life is a little expendable if it comes to the three (now two) individuals he cares for.
But he’s pretty unapologetic when it comes to being a vampire. We rarely, if ever, see him using the glamour on anyone, and he mostly does it to cover up tracks or do what’s necessary. He’s blunt and doesn’t bother wasting his time with certain things, unless he really wants it. I’ll go into that in a second.
Eric, as a vampire, is someone who, in the eyes of others, lives pretty clearly as a vampire. He is what he is because of Godric, because we know that what he is now is not the person he was as a human. Godric tells Sookie that who Eric is can be blamed on him, and Sookie says that Eric is just … Eric. While I do believe certain aspects of Eric’s interpretation of how vampires should act and behave is based distinctly off his own interpretation of matters, we know that as late as WWII he still needed to be scolded on how to behave. That’s a pretty important thing to pay attention to.
Eric and His Humanity
All that said, Eric is, I’d argue, the most human vampire on the show-even past Bill himself. This is because while Bill is connected to his Southern ideals of honor, Eric has carried a vendetta his entire life against werewolves and their leader, the King of Alabama, for over a thousand years. This vendetta has made it impossible for Eric to shed his human attachments and he’s continued in such a way that he’s a human pretending to be a vampire who occasionally does human things for no explained reason. His way of acting and behaving may seem cold, but he does it with a certain calculated consideration. And this consideration is human.
There’s a difference between Eric and Pam, at least initially. Pam doesn’t seem to hold any connection to her past, while Eric holds on to it-and even the farm he once had. He doesn’t let go of who he once was, even if that seems unusual. He wants to kill the man who killed his family, and he’ll do anything to make it happen, even die in the process. His connection to this revenge is incredibly fatalistic, and the only time he’s ever been this self-sacrificing before was when it came to Godric’s life. He’s only ever done things for the people he cares about, and this is the only thing that’s more important than that: his family, and the memory of having watched all of them killed. Because of that, Eric is incredibly human.
Vampires are said to be calculated individuals, but this is contradicted by the fact within Eric in how he’s willing to die and not care about survival, how he’s drawn to Sookie even if he can’t help it, and how he’s mostly unwilling to use her in his plans to bring down Russell Edgington. Even when the circumstances regarding Sookie’s heritage are presented to him, he doesn’t immediately see the possibilities within it, though we see in earlier episodes of season three that Eric is more than willing to develop a plan on the spot to work to his advantage. It doesn’t matter what happens to Sookie, it appears, except we see him do things like send Hadley to protect her-and without a good reason. He just wants her to keep safe.
It’s possibly the most selfless thing he does, aside from gearing up to take revenge for his family (which, by its inherent nature, is pretty selfish).
So many parts of Eric are human. His loyalty to Godric to his desiring Pam’s loyalty for him, and enjoying her existence. He’s more impulsive and out of control than Sookie, at times, and it’s what makes him unpredictable and dangerous, but also predictable at the same time; once what’s important to him is figured out, it’s very easy to use it against him. That’s what the Magister was able to do with Pam, and I wouldn’t doubt that someone would be able to use Sookie against him in the same way.
Beyond the loyalty, it’s very obvious that Eric feels strongly about a lot of things, and values and ways of carrying these values tend to follow his every step. Of course, with his impulses, it’s not always easy to follow this, but he’s someone who likes to hit where it hurts and do what he wants. He’s not exactly capable of sitting down and saying why he does everything or even completely outline his plans; on the contrary, I’d say that Eric doesn’t know what his plans are half the time. Especially if they involve Sookie. He acts on instinct there, possibly more than Bill does, who tends to impose his own beliefs upon her.
I will go as far as to say that Eric is probably in love with Sookie right now. It’s blinded him to a lot of things, and it’s made it very difficult for him to act-and I’m going to say that Pam has noticed, as we’ve seen in the most recent episode. It makes him fatalistic because he doesn’t even grasp on to the first plan he could have to take down Russell Edgington. It makes him weak.
His connections to people are what make him human, which is interesting, because he seems so confused about Bill’s attachment to Sookie in the first season. But he’s the one who touts loyalty between a maker and their progeny; he’s the one who holds these connections in his life; he’s the one who acts impulsive.
The Most Recent Episode and Eric Being a Dick
ALL OF THIS SAID, Eric can seem like he falls into the “misunderstood” range of things, but don’t forget that he tortures Lafayette and doesn’t feel any guilt for it, he makes things difficult for Ginger and has probably ruined her life, and … the list goes on. Eric really does see most people as fodder and doesn’t care about them. He doesn’t necessarily see people as pawns; people aren’t on a chessboard for him to move them around. That implies a certain amount of planning on his part, and he tends to behave as coldly and sadistic as possible. He’s angry, vicious, and cruel; Pam is the same way, and it’s why he likes her. He has a dark sense of humor and he finds most life to be hilarious.
Most of all, he’s a troll.
Do not misunderstand: Eric is a complete jackass. His way of approaching things is with a sharp edge, and he makes it as painful as possible at times for the hell of it. He doesn’t mind torturing someone and getting his haircut in the next five minutes. Life doesn’t hold that much worth to him, unless he’s decided that life is worth his attention. Nine out of ten times, he will put himself first, and he doesn’t care about the consequences, so long as those consequences don’t come and bite him in the ass. The show has recently had Eric acting despite the consequences, and this is because it was about things that meant more than his own life. In fact, these things defined his life and way of being.
Regardless, Eric was willing to be fatalistic and, I believe, was hoping for Pam to not care. He clearly wanted Pam to be cold-hearted and to take everything from him like it didn’t matter. Some part of him never wanted her involved because he never wanted her to care. On one hand, he says it’s due to her lack of sentiment, but honestly? I think it’s because he didn’t want her to care. For him to hold on to some attachment so strongly for a thousand years, I imagine he knew that Pam would see the importance in it and be concerned in some way, and wouldn’t want him to die. He sees taking revenge as more important than his long life, and he sees it as a chapter to close his life out on-after he has Sookie and after everything with Pam is secure. He wants it to be cut and dry.
However, Pam, much to his chagrin, makes it clear that it isn’t that way, and she’s the only one who’s willing to stir some sense in him because she cares for him and loves him. It’s what brings him to locking Sookie up. Previews show that he’s going to use her to walk in daylight, and I think he realizes that if she has more vampire blood, the fey blood within her might be affected, so he wants to be sure that it’s pure (at least, that is my best estimate) and that’s why he doesn’t want her to be healed by Bill. This is rejecting the fatalist part of himself in order to live, because he sees it as a means of being able to go after Russell without having the limitations of being two-thousand years younger than him. I think that he refuses to believe that he’ll die without killing Russell, but he realizes the consequences of his actions and he’s … a little afraid. That’s why he does everything, and honestly, he’ll do anything to ensure that Russell dies.
I think, even with the fairy blood, he’ll probably still think he’s going to die, but I believe he’ll see it as the way to bring Russell with him.
Now, is any of this the proper way of doing anything? No, because Eric doesn’t function on human-or even vampire-logic. If he did, he wouldn’t be so impulsive and there would be a distinct lack of emotion behind his actions, and he probably would be better at understanding how he feels in all of this. But he’s really bad with his emotions and expressing and even understanding how he feels, so he acts on them instead of saying them. Whereas Bill is more in touch with his feelings, and you can follow a pretty logical process there.
But Eric is fucked up in a number of ways, and it’s likely in part due to the revenge, what happened in his human life, and how he’s always been very bad at being a vampire. A vampire starts a new life when they’re turned, supposedly; Eric never truly has. He’s been living out the same life all along, and in many ways, that’s just made him as fucked up as he is. He’s crazy, impulsive, and out of control. Of course, to most, he’s just a condescending manipulative douchebag who’s above many people. He finds things to be funny and he’s a troll; that’s just a facet of who he is, though.
One of the things about Eric is that he is incredibly contradictory at times. The modes of his thinking aren’t always easy to follow, because he doesn’t grand stage. When he comes up with a decision, he comes up with it, and he carries it through and you’re left wondering what he’s doing. I think the only person he lets in on his plans is Pam, and even then, he doesn’t let her know 90 percent of what he’s doing unless he wants her involved or if it’s harmless fun.
As it is, the hilarity behind my apping Eric is mostly the fact that I was trying to get Jennifer to do it all season, and instead, I ended up sitting and trying to work out the psychology behind his actions to … get her to understand him and app him, since I wanted to app Godric. The problem with doing that is that I ended up getting really into his character, but I wasn’t going to app-I honestly had another app planned, and it was done and everything-until I got hit with an idea on the way home from work. Well, and I guessed some canon at the beginning of the season on a limb regarding his development, and it turned out to be true. … Which, yeah. Hard to do with how all over the place Eric happens to be.
But Eric is a pretty contradictory character, so I want to talk about the different facets of who he is.
Eric and Being a Vampire
The most important part of Eric is to understand how he was made into a vampire and what that means. He was chosen, and it wasn’t random. For Godric, Eric, and eventually, Pam, the choice appears to be incredibly important. Godric went out of his way to kill everyone around Eric before he went and took him for himself, to make him into his progeny, and said he would follow him. It was very obvious that the decision was a big one for Godric, and as a result, Eric became his loyal follower. Eric himself was a warrior; he fought and brought death to others, and Godric presented himself as death incarnate.
We don’t know much of Eric’s history with Godric. What we do know is that in WWII, Godric was still lecturing Eric on how to be a vampire and that vampires would turn off their emotions. This was after Eric had already made Pam into a vampire.
When we first meet Eric in the present series, he clearly doesn’t think much of humans. Pam’s way of thinking and behaving is pretty indicative of how Eric thinks vampires should act, as the maker (in his eyes) influences the progeny quite a bit. He doesn’t think they need to deal with emotions, sentiments, or anything else, and he presents himself as someone who is powerful and looking for a good time. His area is under his jurisdiction and he does what needs to be done, and most of all, he’s a survival. Godric taught him that being a vampire is all about surviving, and none of the self-sacrificing notions that Godric himself eventually takes on. They’re meant to live, because they are experiencing an existence beyond death.
The interesting thing about Eric is that he’s very careful. He takes care of what’s his and he ensures that it’s all in one piece. He doesn’t pretend to have a care toward most things, but this shifts for Pam, Godric, and eventually, as we’ve seen in the last episode, Sookie. Very little fascinates him after a thousand years, and Askars once said in an interview that Eric doesn’t bother to beat around the bush. Unless that will help him. He’ll lie when he needs to, to protect his own and his place, and his life-though his life is a little expendable if it comes to the three (now two) individuals he cares for.
But he’s pretty unapologetic when it comes to being a vampire. We rarely, if ever, see him using the glamour on anyone, and he mostly does it to cover up tracks or do what’s necessary. He’s blunt and doesn’t bother wasting his time with certain things, unless he really wants it. I’ll go into that in a second.
Eric, as a vampire, is someone who, in the eyes of others, lives pretty clearly as a vampire. He is what he is because of Godric, because we know that what he is now is not the person he was as a human. Godric tells Sookie that who Eric is can be blamed on him, and Sookie says that Eric is just … Eric. While I do believe certain aspects of Eric’s interpretation of how vampires should act and behave is based distinctly off his own interpretation of matters, we know that as late as WWII he still needed to be scolded on how to behave. That’s a pretty important thing to pay attention to.
Eric and His Humanity
All that said, Eric is, I’d argue, the most human vampire on the show-even past Bill himself. This is because while Bill is connected to his Southern ideals of honor, Eric has carried a vendetta his entire life against werewolves and their leader, the King of Alabama, for over a thousand years. This vendetta has made it impossible for Eric to shed his human attachments and he’s continued in such a way that he’s a human pretending to be a vampire who occasionally does human things for no explained reason. His way of acting and behaving may seem cold, but he does it with a certain calculated consideration. And this consideration is human.
There’s a difference between Eric and Pam, at least initially. Pam doesn’t seem to hold any connection to her past, while Eric holds on to it-and even the farm he once had. He doesn’t let go of who he once was, even if that seems unusual. He wants to kill the man who killed his family, and he’ll do anything to make it happen, even die in the process. His connection to this revenge is incredibly fatalistic, and the only time he’s ever been this self-sacrificing before was when it came to Godric’s life. He’s only ever done things for the people he cares about, and this is the only thing that’s more important than that: his family, and the memory of having watched all of them killed. Because of that, Eric is incredibly human.
Vampires are said to be calculated individuals, but this is contradicted by the fact within Eric in how he’s willing to die and not care about survival, how he’s drawn to Sookie even if he can’t help it, and how he’s mostly unwilling to use her in his plans to bring down Russell Edgington. Even when the circumstances regarding Sookie’s heritage are presented to him, he doesn’t immediately see the possibilities within it, though we see in earlier episodes of season three that Eric is more than willing to develop a plan on the spot to work to his advantage. It doesn’t matter what happens to Sookie, it appears, except we see him do things like send Hadley to protect her-and without a good reason. He just wants her to keep safe.
It’s possibly the most selfless thing he does, aside from gearing up to take revenge for his family (which, by its inherent nature, is pretty selfish).
So many parts of Eric are human. His loyalty to Godric to his desiring Pam’s loyalty for him, and enjoying her existence. He’s more impulsive and out of control than Sookie, at times, and it’s what makes him unpredictable and dangerous, but also predictable at the same time; once what’s important to him is figured out, it’s very easy to use it against him. That’s what the Magister was able to do with Pam, and I wouldn’t doubt that someone would be able to use Sookie against him in the same way.
Beyond the loyalty, it’s very obvious that Eric feels strongly about a lot of things, and values and ways of carrying these values tend to follow his every step. Of course, with his impulses, it’s not always easy to follow this, but he’s someone who likes to hit where it hurts and do what he wants. He’s not exactly capable of sitting down and saying why he does everything or even completely outline his plans; on the contrary, I’d say that Eric doesn’t know what his plans are half the time. Especially if they involve Sookie. He acts on instinct there, possibly more than Bill does, who tends to impose his own beliefs upon her.
I will go as far as to say that Eric is probably in love with Sookie right now. It’s blinded him to a lot of things, and it’s made it very difficult for him to act-and I’m going to say that Pam has noticed, as we’ve seen in the most recent episode. It makes him fatalistic because he doesn’t even grasp on to the first plan he could have to take down Russell Edgington. It makes him weak.
His connections to people are what make him human, which is interesting, because he seems so confused about Bill’s attachment to Sookie in the first season. But he’s the one who touts loyalty between a maker and their progeny; he’s the one who holds these connections in his life; he’s the one who acts impulsive.
The Most Recent Episode and Eric Being a Dick
ALL OF THIS SAID, Eric can seem like he falls into the “misunderstood” range of things, but don’t forget that he tortures Lafayette and doesn’t feel any guilt for it, he makes things difficult for Ginger and has probably ruined her life, and … the list goes on. Eric really does see most people as fodder and doesn’t care about them. He doesn’t necessarily see people as pawns; people aren’t on a chessboard for him to move them around. That implies a certain amount of planning on his part, and he tends to behave as coldly and sadistic as possible. He’s angry, vicious, and cruel; Pam is the same way, and it’s why he likes her. He has a dark sense of humor and he finds most life to be hilarious.
Most of all, he’s a troll.
Do not misunderstand: Eric is a complete jackass. His way of approaching things is with a sharp edge, and he makes it as painful as possible at times for the hell of it. He doesn’t mind torturing someone and getting his haircut in the next five minutes. Life doesn’t hold that much worth to him, unless he’s decided that life is worth his attention. Nine out of ten times, he will put himself first, and he doesn’t care about the consequences, so long as those consequences don’t come and bite him in the ass. The show has recently had Eric acting despite the consequences, and this is because it was about things that meant more than his own life. In fact, these things defined his life and way of being.
Regardless, Eric was willing to be fatalistic and, I believe, was hoping for Pam to not care. He clearly wanted Pam to be cold-hearted and to take everything from him like it didn’t matter. Some part of him never wanted her involved because he never wanted her to care. On one hand, he says it’s due to her lack of sentiment, but honestly? I think it’s because he didn’t want her to care. For him to hold on to some attachment so strongly for a thousand years, I imagine he knew that Pam would see the importance in it and be concerned in some way, and wouldn’t want him to die. He sees taking revenge as more important than his long life, and he sees it as a chapter to close his life out on-after he has Sookie and after everything with Pam is secure. He wants it to be cut and dry.
However, Pam, much to his chagrin, makes it clear that it isn’t that way, and she’s the only one who’s willing to stir some sense in him because she cares for him and loves him. It’s what brings him to locking Sookie up. Previews show that he’s going to use her to walk in daylight, and I think he realizes that if she has more vampire blood, the fey blood within her might be affected, so he wants to be sure that it’s pure (at least, that is my best estimate) and that’s why he doesn’t want her to be healed by Bill. This is rejecting the fatalist part of himself in order to live, because he sees it as a means of being able to go after Russell without having the limitations of being two-thousand years younger than him. I think that he refuses to believe that he’ll die without killing Russell, but he realizes the consequences of his actions and he’s … a little afraid. That’s why he does everything, and honestly, he’ll do anything to ensure that Russell dies.
I think, even with the fairy blood, he’ll probably still think he’s going to die, but I believe he’ll see it as the way to bring Russell with him.
Now, is any of this the proper way of doing anything? No, because Eric doesn’t function on human-or even vampire-logic. If he did, he wouldn’t be so impulsive and there would be a distinct lack of emotion behind his actions, and he probably would be better at understanding how he feels in all of this. But he’s really bad with his emotions and expressing and even understanding how he feels, so he acts on them instead of saying them. Whereas Bill is more in touch with his feelings, and you can follow a pretty logical process there.
But Eric is fucked up in a number of ways, and it’s likely in part due to the revenge, what happened in his human life, and how he’s always been very bad at being a vampire. A vampire starts a new life when they’re turned, supposedly; Eric never truly has. He’s been living out the same life all along, and in many ways, that’s just made him as fucked up as he is. He’s crazy, impulsive, and out of control. Of course, to most, he’s just a condescending manipulative douchebag who’s above many people. He finds things to be funny and he’s a troll; that’s just a facet of who he is, though.