AH! The scissors! I noticed that recently and I have a theory but I'm lazy and haven't gotten around to making the necessary screencaps.

 

But there are demons involved, and its all Bill's fault.

I said I had a theory about the scissors, and here it is. It’s complicated, and spans several episodes, and deals a lot with Jewish esoterica, and I’m far too loquacious though I tried to narrow it down to the most pertinent facts and not go off on too many tangents, and there is a whole second part of this theory that deals with Eric, but that’s a whole other sack of crazy that I’ll deal with later.

 

So I had been wondering recently about A Night on the Sun and that…infected flesh wound of an ending. That scene was anything but romantic or even sexy, it was sad and disturbing and so fucking wrong I had to wonder why would Alan Ball do that to Sookie. Even if he didn't want to part her so quickly from Bill, he still could have had them quasi-together without that…THAT.

 

So, as always with True Blood, the question boils down to 'What the fuck?!'

 

Let me tell you about this fella by the name Azazel. And by fella, I mean fallen angel turned demon. Azazel's most notorious moment (aside from being the antagonist in the 1998 movie Fallen, which was actually pretty damn good), can be found in the Qur'an when, in reference to humanity, he asked God "Why should a son of fire fall down before a son of clay?" (sons of fire being angels, sons of clay being mankind). Apparently Azazel just didn't give a shit anymore. God, who hates being questioned, cast him out of heaven, and thus started the great war in heaven. Islamic belief holds that Azazel and Satan are one, though in Christian teachings they are often regarded as two separate entities. In Jewish lore, he is just a powerful, mysterious, desert entity, a malevolent rival of YHWH.

 

Azazel was said to teach men the art of war and making weapons, and women how to make cosmetics and encouraged vanity. Not all about the gender equality, that Azazel, though his name is fun to say. Azazel. Azazel. Zazzy Azazel.

 

Leviticus 16 tells of ritual animal sacrifice on the Jewish Day of Atonement, the Scapegoat ritual. 'Scapegoat' is a common English (mis)translation of Azazel. You can read the whole thing HERE but I'll quote the relevant parts:

"6 And Aaron shall present the bullock of the sin-offering, which is for himself, and make atonement for himself, and for his house.

7 And he shall take the two goats, and set them before the LORD at the door of the tent of meeting.

8 And Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats: one lot for the LORD, and the other lot for Azazel.

9 And Aaron shall present the goat upon which the lot fell for the LORD, and offer him for a sin-offering.

10 But the goat, on which the lot fell for Azazel, shall be set alive before the LORD, to make atonement over him, to send him away for Azazel into the wilderness.

11 And Aaron shall present the bullock of the sin-offering, which is for himself, and shall make atonement for himself, and for his house, and shall kill the bullock of the sin-offering which is for himself.

14 And he shall take of the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it with his finger upon the ark-cover on the east; and before the ark-cover shall he sprinkle of the blood with his finger seven times.

15 Then shall he kill the goat of the sin-offering, that is for the people, and bring his blood within the veil, and do with his blood as he did with the blood of the bullock, and sprinkle it upon the ark-cover, and before the ark-cover.

16 And he shall make atonement for the holy place, because of the uncleannesses of the children of Israel, and because of their transgressions, even all their sins; and so shall he do for the tent of meeting, that dwelleth with them in the midst of their uncleannesses.

18 And he shall go out unto the altar that is before the LORD, and make atonement for it; and shall take of the blood of the bullock, and of the blood of the goat, and put it upon the horns of the altar round about.

19 And he shall sprinkle of the blood upon it with his finger seven times, and cleanse it, and hallow it from the uncleannesses of the children of Israel.

20 And when he hath made an end of atoning for the holy place, and the tent of meeting, and the altar, he shall present the live goat.

21 And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions, even all their sins; and he shall put them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of an appointed man into the wilderness.

22 And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land which is cut off; and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness."

23-34 are more passages about Aaron and the dude who sent Azazel's goat cleansing themselves and changing clothes and burning the bullock and the sin goat, and how this will cleanse the children of Israel of their sins, etc etc etc.

 

Got the basic gist of that? Three horned animals, two killed, one sent off into the wilderness, take a bath, change your shirt, and all your sins are forgiven (do you see where I'm going with this?).

 

Now we need to take a step back, and revisit the scenes where Lorena ‘tortures’ Bill in Russell’s slave quarters. Let’s remember Lorena, with her obsessive love and devotion for Bill, her beloved child, who willingly let herself be killed by the human woman she hated so Bill could be saved. Even Russell doubted her ability to really kill him, Bill was her “favorite obsession”.

(I know y'all are gouging her eyes out right about now, but I don't care. IF I HAD TO SEE IT, YOU ALL HAVE TO SEE IT.)

 

Enter Debbie and Cooter, hungry for a fix, desirous of Bill’s blood. And Lorena, devoted obsessed Lorena, let these two dogs defile and weaken her child by drinking his blood.

 

Or did she? Did allowing Bill to get his blood, his magical, mind-controlling blood, into two malleable henchwolves, in fact, help him? Because it’s been stated ad nauseum that vampire blood drunk straight from the source has a binding effect (how binding is up for debate, but its pretty binding). And if Lorena was devoted enough to allow herself to be staked by Sookie, surely she would be devoted enough to rope two white trash wolves into a scheme to free him.

 

Because let’s face it, it was awfully convenient that the slave quarters were left unguarded, and Lorena was off powdering her nose when Sookie snuck in. And the scene where Lorena lets the wolves eat him can, as so many scenes on TB, be read in the complete opposite manner, that instead of further debasing Bill by turning him into a bag of Capri V, she’s actually helping him escape by giving him two weres controlled by his blood.

 

(And although this is a wild swing in the dark, I have to wonder just why Russell thought he could use Sookie’s blood to revive Talbot before he was ever told she was a fairy. And why did he think fairy blood had the power of resurrection, is that something that’s been done before? Yes, it’s very likely he already knew about fairies and was playing dumb. But, ah, what if he wasn’t? What if it was because he knew of a recently staked vampire who drank Sookie’s blood and some…things happened to the remains that made him consider the possibility that Sookie’s blood had some crazy magical properties? Just sayin’.)

 

So in the aftermath of Hitting the Ground, we have a Bill’s blood infused Debbie ready for battle, a Sookie scared of and rejecting Bill, unable to forgive him for nearly draining her, an Eric that needs getting rid of, and a Russell that knows too much.

 

Here’s Sookie in ANOTS in battle mode:

 

A simple t-shirt, shorts, and sneakers outfit, hair in a ponytail. No jewelry. Sensible and practical for war.

 

And a brief aside, I’ve noticed something odd with Sookie’s eyelashes. Nearly all of the other women in the show have pretty consistent eyelashes, even if they’re pretty exaggerated, but Sookie’s vary from short natural unmascarad lashes, to slightly fuller with a few individual strands of false lashes at the corner, to super crazy exaggerated spikey doll-like lashes. And its not different makeup for when Sookie is supposed to be dolled up vs bumming it, because there are certain occasions where there’s no reason for her to have dolled up lashes, yet she has the super-exaggerated spikey doll-lashes (like when she’s recovering from Bill’s draining, or when she just wakes up), and I don’t think it’s a shoddy job by the make-up department. I’m still not sure the connection/meaning is (I haven’t gone through EVERY single episode looking at Sookie’s lashes), but I have noticed that in particularly Beelshitty scenes or scenes when Sookie will inexplicably champion Bill, she’ll have the doll lashes. But sometimes she has the doll lashes and she’s not taking any of Bill’s shit, like when she slaps him in Evil Is Going On. From what I’ve seen, she’s had the doll lashes throughout season 3, except when Bill is draining her in Alcide’s van and right after she wakes up at the hospital (but by the time she gets home to curl up on the couch with Alcide, she has the doll lashes again).

 

For example, here’s her lashes when she wakes up at the hospital:

 

And here's her lashes when she's home from the hospital arguing with Jason about filing charges against Bill, and right before the ANOTS battle scene:

 

Crazy long doll-lashes. If it were any other show, I would just chalk it up to television's demand that The Leading Lady Must Always Be Pretty At All Times. The only other character I’ve noticed the same phenomenon on is Jessica (well, and Lala, but he’s obviously wearing makeup when he has the glamour lashes on). Who early on was often shown without any false lashes, but lately has always had them on. Remember when she mysteriously found all those cosmetics at Bill’s in 02x03?

And Azazel totally has a MAC pro card. Just sayin’.

 

But back to the main point, let’s look at Debbie’s battle armor, who has probably been involved in a few fights in her day:

 

Hair down, jewelry on, a complicated shirt, unnecessary layers. Lots of stuff for an opponent to grab onto. Not totally practical. And that necklace:

 

Three horns. Three sacrifices in the scapegoat ritual.

 

Now, as much as I like Sookie, I find it rather dubious that she was able to do as well as she did in the battle against a V-crazed werewolf who hated her. Unless the whole point of Debbie being there (even if Debbie wasn’t aware of it) wasn’t to battle with Sookie.

 

Let’s review the events of that night, and the previous 24 hours.

 

The night Sookie arrives home from the hospital, she’s cuddled up on the couch, wrapped in the same blanket from the night Gran died (and Sookie has a shit-ton of afghans and blankets, I’m not sure we’ve even see this blanket since that night). The milkglass candy dish is out. There’s a scrapbook on the table, the one with the weird newspaper clippings (also, there’s butterflies on the bottom of that basket, I never noticed before).

 

The next day, Alcide is lured away by Debbie’s burning down his sister’s hair shop. Sookie has one less defender.

Early in the night, Bill trains Jessica for battle. For some reason, he moves that big mirror to the opposite corner, though its just as much in the way there as it is in its previous position. However now it faces towards Sookie’s house, where Bill will be later.

 

Sookie stands by an open window. This window faces the Compton house. Nothing good ever comes from this window. In her first Bill dream, Sookie looked out this window to see Bill on her lawn like the creepiest garden gnome ever. This was the same window whose screen was cut open the night Gran was murdered. This is the same window Bill gazed out of after Maryann was killed. After Ghost-Jesus finished talking to Lala, he actually headed towards this window to leave. THIS IS A BAD WINDOW.

 

Three sacrifices show up at the Stackhouse house.

 

One offers himself to Bill, and is killed, his blood spattered all over.

Another (Gus) offers himself to Jessica, and is killed.

 

The third, Debbie in her symbolic three-horns, offers herself to Sookie, and they fight. The most compelling evidence that there are Things watching from the mirrors is that when Sookie smashes one of her vanity mirrors on Debbie’s faces, everything goes blurry for a few moments, and the camera shifts slightly, like it’s trying to get a better view.

This isn’t the result of a crappy downloaded copy, I have the DVDs, and it’s right there on the DVDs. At no other time during the Sookie/Debbie fight do things get blurry. Sookie cuts Debbie’s face with a pair of scissors that fell from a bag of yarn that Debbie conveniently knocked over when she kicked down the door. Gran was the only one in the family whom it was known knitted, so why did this bag of yarn suddenly show up in Sookie’s room? Scissors could come from anywhere, there was no need to add a bag of yarn to give the scissors a reason for being there.

 

 

At some point during the fight, Debbie lost the three-horn necklace.

 

Sookie shoots her dollhouse, and shit goes flying. Debbie jumps out the Bad Window. Sookie has driven her out into the wilderness.

 

Then, suddenly, all of Bill’s sins are forgiven, he is cleansed, Sookie welcomes him back into her body.

 

Her hair here is exactly the same, down to the hair elastic, when she told him to GTFO of her hospital room. She whispers, without emotion, “I love you, I love you” and he says “I’m sorry, I’m sorry” over and over.

 

Their fucking echoes the fight that just occurred, with all the choking.

 

Sookie’s eyes remain closed (up until the very last moment before the screen cuts to black), and though Sookie is on top, Bill is actually controlling her movements, pulling her hands where he wants them to be. Later on they bathe themselves and change clothes.

When cleaning up that were, Bill leaves to go get a blanket to wrap him up. He leaves via the dining room, but comes out via the craft room.

 

That means he, unlike Sookie, he has no problem going into the unseen space between her kitchen and her craft room that Sookie herself never uses (except once, in 04x03, when she’s looking for Eric, but normally she’ll go through the dining room and living room to get to the craft room, rather than go through that door to The Room of Raptors). I used to think it was mostly only villains who use that room (Rene, Debbie, and Bill), but I actually think now that its victims of Bill’s manipulation who use that room. Because Gran and Jason-on-V both used that room in season 1, and then Sookie in season 4. I just find the whole thing weird.

 

I think Bill manipulated Debbie into helping him perform (with a degree of success that might have surprised even Bill) a perverted micro-version of the Jewish Azazel/scapegoat ritual, to cleanse himself of his sins in the eyes of Sookie. The three horns, the three sacrifices, the mirror turned towards Sookie’s, the way she just instantly utterly forgave him, it’s all a little too coincidental.

 

But is all this really connected to the scapegoat ritual? Did Bill really arrange a sacrifice to Azazel to cleanse himself of his sins?

 

Often in scenes that are more then they appear, there will be a tell, a lookie, somewhere in the scene. A magnifying glass. A mirror. A rabbit.

 

As the camera pans across the destruction of Sookie’s room, we see first the scissors (which have been moved, they were originally tossed right where Sookie and Bill are fucking), then a blood stain and a bullet, then a dollhouse vanity with a little mirror, that has inexplicably landed perfectly upright, then there it is, directly across from the dollhouse vanity, Debbie’s three horn necklace in the shadow of the horrible fucking.

 

Now onto Tara’s role in these shenanigans.

 

Tara cuts her hair with the scissors still stained with Debbie’s blood.

 

I know that we cannot see blood in the reflection, but that could be because there is only blood on one side of the scissors, and that side is never turned towards the mirror. But why neither Sookie nor Tara ever washed them off is a mystery. Unless neither could see the blood.

 

Hair-cutting has long been a sign of mourning/repentance/humility in many cultures. Whether this was the intent or not, Tara cutting off her hair with the Debbie-bloodstained scissors bound the two together, where they stumble inexorably, helplessly, inevitably towards the same bloody end. Was it the ritual from a year ago finally coming to an end? Was it Bill attempting to once again cleanse himself in the eyes of Sookie? Was it Azazel claiming what was his? Was it just two people bound by accidental magic coming to their shared doom? Was it an echo, a shock wave from the scapegoat ritual? Was it just another case of a repeating pattern? Where either of them even who they said they were, or were either of them autonomous in their decisions, their actions? Whatever it was, I think that it was inevitable from the moment Tara cut her hair in Debbie's ensorcelled blood.

They both show up in season 4 with brand new hair. They both are determined to have a fresh start on their lives (Debbie found Jesus, Tara found gay). The same shotgun, and the same spent shell casing, are in both episodes. The explosion of Sookie’s cabinets behind Tara echo the explosion of Sookie’s dollhouse behind Debbie. Sookie charges, tackles, and overpowers the V-crazed were both nights, and both nights she forgot she has microwave fingers. Even the clothes Debbie, Tara, and Sookie wore in And When I Die echo their clothes from ANOTS. Tara is basically wearing the same thing, an orange tank top gathered at the bust and jeans (but with a jacket over it).

 

Sookie’s uncharacteristic leather jacket hearkens back to Debbie’s. Debbie’s shirt has a tiger on it (she wore tiger stripes when she drank from Bill). And I lost my good copy of And When I Die in a computer crash, and now all the download places have been taken out back and shot so I only have a crappy low-res version that I can’t get good enough detail on, but I remember a lot of shit flying around from the shattered cabinets (or on the floor afterward), including what looked like it might be a chain or necklace (sunny, was it you I had this discussion with?), but I can’t say for certain with my shitty-ass copy.

I got no good way to end this crazy rant but to stop typing. Oh, and to say that during that scapegoat ritual where one goat was led out into the wilderness? It usually got thrown off a cliff at the end.

sunny said:

Gee thanks Exit, I was just about to re-read your [terrific] piece and felt I had a duty to open the boner pic, since you'd clearly made a costly sacrifice to make the thing. I'm going to need some time to recover.

AND I HAD TO WATCH THE CHOKE-SEX SCENE MORE THAN ONCE. THAT IS THE WORST FUCKING THING IN THE WORLD THAT ISN'T AN ACTUAL DISEASE OR BASKET OF DEAD KITTENS.

 

I NEED COMPENSATION FOR MY SUFFERINGS.

@ Exit

I appreciate all your work too, I'm amazed that you know so much about demons.

@sunny- seen and unseen.

Like that Bill boner while Lorena is torturing him. Nightmare.  I'll have to find that pic of E/S in the winter wonderland with a blanket over his GP, just to rid myself of….