I never got that either Exit.  I wasn't made about him getting betrothed.  Apis did it.  Telling Sookie is one thing but actions outside his control are a whole other story.  Maybe I can pay CH to stop writing.

The first few books were a good read. Things went downhill when she allowed Bill to glamour her into allowing him to continue his undead life and appear to be a hero.

anna said:

The first few books were a good read. Things went downhill when she allowed Bill to glamour her into allowing him to continue his undead life and appear to be a hero.

LOL.

It irritates the fuck out of me when people say they are certain CH can't be influenced on her story, or that she had this all planned from the get-go, because she ADMITTED that she was talked out of killing off Bill (in D&G) at the last minute by her 'editor'. If she's capable of altering that, she's capable of altering any part of her main storyline. And it also means that none of the Bill-related bullshit from the past two books is any part of some larger/deeper meaning for Sookie's storyline (somebody once said that her nonreaction to Bill in the cubby meant that she was healthy and better, recovered from the rape because she no longer sees Bill as a threat, which just made my brain melt a little). Because none of it was supposed to happen, because Bill should have been dead.

And I was just thinking about the Franklin Mott/Mickey/Tara storyline, and how it was suggested that Tara bore some responsibility for what happened to her. And I don't mean just what Eric said to her, but Sookie's internal narration was trying very hard to convince the reader that Tara's greed and sluttishness were responsible for her plight, she should have known better than to get involved with men like that. Because Franklin was her sugar daddy, she allowed herself to be turned into a possession, so her getting raped by Mickey was kinda her fault a little. Sookie even thought "[Tara] may have repulsed his advances that night, but she hadn't done it instantly and decisively…[Mickey'd] given plenty of advanced warnings of his intentions." This is also the book where Sookie later on wishes Bill could stay with her that night, because he was so gentle the night before when he visited her in the hospital and made her feel cherished…although the night before that he brought another woman into Merlotte's to rub in Sookie's face, and the night before that he nearly broke both her arms because he saw her kissing Sam, but he's a gentle fellow, really…she also calls the trunk rape a 'near rape' although there was nothing near about it and asks Bill to cuddle with her…in retrospect, I don't know how I got through the rest of the series after this book. I think at the time, I was chalking up Sookie's attitude as some fucked-up way of dealing with what happened to her (she spazzed out on Alcide early in the book when he tried to get her to talk about it), that she was projecting onto Tara her own feelings of guilt and responsibility for her rape (which Bill certainly contributed to making her feel this way), and that might have been CH intent, but with what happened in the later books, it now just looks like a pattern of an author with a really fucked-up attitude about rape. Her heroine has warm, fuzzy feelings about her rapist.

Please excuse me, I have to smash the keyboard repeatedly into my face.

SHE WROTE A SCENE LIKE THAT. Sookie told Bill to dial it back, he said no, they continued fucking. What, does that not count because Sookie was willingly engaging in sexual relations before she told him to chill?

2007? So that was five books ago,  so around-about All Together Dead?

I'm not so sure its greed/money that caused her to produce shit like NCTF, so much as the people around her and her website. Greed/money might be responsible for the general slide in quality, but NCTF wasn't the result of poor quality control or laziness. That was some special fuckery right there.

Sounds a lot like greed to me, with unfortunate implications, because she now seems rather confused about the kind of message she's giving out. Would she really want a daughter of hers  to cavort naked with a person who "forcibly seduced" or raped her?

I guess I could understand the greed cause in that respect (I was thinking more along the lines of 'How is there money in mocking rape?'), but even still, she could have kept the Llamas around without totally debasing her heroine. The scene could have been so much Less Bad if Sookie had just not been naked. But as it stands, it came off as spiteful. Sometimes I think she really hates Sookie, and truly thinks she's dumb and self-centered.

But I do think the herd of Llamas that surrounds and aids her has to be an influence (she had a freaking Llama write a book for her, for fuck's sake). If all she's hearing is "BILL BILL BILL BILL", that could very well be skewing her perception. Although if I wrote about a surfacely charming but obviously douchey, controlling, violent rapist, and then a bunch of my fans were all like "OMG, I love him! He's so romantic! Please have him get back together with his victim!" I would be all "Later, Bitches", but that's just me.

@Jerron

You're right about Mr. C. lying.  On the plane to Rhodes, Sookie is counting coffins 

PB pg. 106- Mr. C. to Sookie "You were wondering where the fifth sheriff was." 

Sookie – "Yes, but you were maybe a thought or two behind."

Mr. C.  - "I'm not telepathic like you, my dear.

So if he lied about that, what else has he lied about?

Do you think it might have something to do with that Cluvial D'or thing and how it works or how many times it works, or someone is alive that was thought dead?  I thought CH said that someone is alive who was thought dead.

There's a joke about lawyers in there somewhere I'm sure, but I don't want to offend. 

@ BG

There was a TV show called Dead Lawyers

This is a one-hour series with a deliciously judicious concept: sleazy unscrupulous lawyers, in order to redeem themselves, come back from the dead to defend everyone they screwed when they were alive — and it's all pro bono! When hotshot defense attorney Jimmy Quinn is run over by a bus, he finds himself in his own version of hell: a law firm on earth composed of other dead lawyers, all trying to right miscarriages of justice in order to redeem themselves.