I am not saying that I think even for a second that Eric is anything like Franklin Mott. Here’s Willa Burrell, a girl in a white nightgown, kidnapped, with her mouth taped shut. Thank you, Tara.Īnd Tara’s perspective is enhanced by the terrible personal experience, of course. Tara: “It’s for savage things like that humans hate us!” That, instead of being a sometimes subtle, sometimes direct critique of the rape culture, it was, after all, just another propagation of it. For a while there I sat and pondered just that, and the implications that the show I thought I was watching wasn’t, in fact, what I perceived at all. And grabbing her crotch? That’s assault right there.Īnd what troubled me also was the possibility that the writers didn’t think it was terrible, that they even might have thought it was “sexy.” You know, just Eric being his seductive self … blergh. Because the terror of sexual violence is sexual violence. Rape? Don’t think so – but that doesn’t make what transpired any more okay. What was the point of the that rapey, gross scene with Willa? To show that Eric is snapping? If he came there to simply kill her in order to stick it to Burrell, it would still not be the smartest idea Eric ever had – there is nothing worse than to leave your enemy with nothing left to lose, and, surely, Eric, with his centuries of experience, knows that! – but at least it wouldn’t have felt so disturbing, unnecessary, and out of character.Īnd yes, it was a threat, and I don’t believe he would have actually raped her. They’re Bill’s MO, I don’t buy them in Bill’s case, and I sure as hell am not going to buy them in Eric’s. I’ve heard and read all the suppositions: He’s off his game, for the first time he doesn’t know what to do, he is distraught, he is just being a vampire … How about no? Justifications are just that: justifications.

For five years we have seen Eric demonstrate again and again that, while he could be savage and he could be ruthless, the one thing he was not was someone who’d use sexual violence. Scene?! For five years the show has made subtle but pointed distinctions between Eric and Bill. On the one hand, there was so much great in it. You're no good, you're no good, you're no goodīaby, you're no good (I'm gonna say it again)

Bill compton rape