#also: making Lucy already evil distances ourselves from the horror of whar happens to her

[maybeamiles]

Ya know, I tend to see a lot of reactions that paint Lucy's Vampirism as a punishment for something, or something inherent to her nature.

But isn't it more terrifying if it's not?

Lucy isn't portrayed as an evil character. She's a woman in a nontraditional situation, but I think we're supposed to see her through the eyes of Jack Seward and Van Helsing. Her biggest "flaw" is loving too much, and even then she isn't punished for it.

And still Dracula comes for her. Never are Dracula's attacks tied to her love for the suitors, in fact it's that love which saves her over and over again. It's not fair that she dies, and the moment when we realize that the Vampirism took over Lucy's dying body and she almost bit Arthur is one of the most TERRIFYING moments in the story. Because that's NOT Lucy, she even says so in her dying moments.

And now she's alive again. But it's not her. Lucy would never attack people. She would never want to hurt people. Her body is being driven by a hunger that can never be filled. And maybe it remembers being something called Lucy Westenra. Maybe it remembers Van Helsing and Arthur. But it doesn't love them anymore. That love died the same day Lucy did, and now there is only hunger.

Cause really, what's more terrifying? A bad person having their badness revealed to all, or a good person whose memory is corrupted by a monster inhabiting their flesh?