True Blood Divergence

In response to meloukhia's brilliant summation of the current vampire trope, I'm motivated to post a little defence of True Blood.
Before I get carried away, let me layout Mel's groundwork. Mel has provided one of the best summaries of the current vampire trope that I have read:

Essentially, Mel notes that the current vamp story contains the following:

• A socially isolated young woman (broken home, dead parents, adopted, etc). Further, our heroine is usually adolescent.
  
• Enter devilishly good looking, but ultimately noble and of impeccable manners "Ancient Vamp," who is maddenly attracted to our heroine.
• They fall in love, which results in numerous complications.
• The vamp deflowers our heroine and in doing so, is "initiated into a magical (and sexual) world by the Power of the Vampire Penis.

Although not completely across the board, I would like to add the following:

• Through her interaction with the vamp, our heroinse gains skillz that while increasing her ability to not be helpless against her foes, render her reliant and connected to the vamp. Think Anita Blake and the vampire marks, Bella and her creepily passive vamp talent.
  
• Our heroine is not only isolated by circumstance, but appears to have very few social connections at all. Anita Blake has hardly any real friends - Ronnie turns up every few books, briefly - nearly dies and buggers off. Bella has friends as fillers - usually only there when Edward is not.

Although I'm sure there are more standard characteristics to this tale, I note the two above for my nefarious objective; True Blood's Sookie Stackhouse provides a reasonable divergence from the standard. In doing so, Sookie, gasp, becomes a rounded character.
Sookie's Mad Skillz -Spoiler Warning
Unlike some of her compatriots*, Sookie's skillz are entirely her own. Sookie's ability to read minds and shoot crazy lightning energy stuff is, as it turns out in the novels, based on her fairy bloodline. Her skills are not enhanced by Bill, nor do they originate from him.

Sookie's Social Skillz
Although Ms Stackhouse is isolated from the folk of Bon Temp due to her mad skillz, Sookie manages to have friends and family. Unlike Bella, who doesn't really relate to anyone who isn't a freak, or Anita, who only really seems to relate to freaky dick and scorns everyone else with her rather antagonist and harsh personality, Sookie can, omg, relate to people.

Although I admit that Sookie is not a feminists dream. She does present a vamp story heroine who is not adolescent who actually has agency within the story. Indeed, through Sookie not being a passive filler, (Bella), the storyline of True Blood is able to diverge from the Sookie/Bill love story, enabling the series to be about...Sookie!



*Note: I realise that this deviation is shared by Buffy.