#but lucy is the opposite of liberated and acting with agency as a vampire

[spider-xan]

I just posted a re-writing with notes of Van Helsing's long speech about why he needs to wait for Arthur before staking Lucy if anyone needs it, but as there's also confusion about his explanation of how vampire!Lucy works, I'm going to try and do a simplified version of that part of the entry too.

This is the original version in the text:

Here, there is one thing which is different from all recorded; here is some dual life that is not as the common. She was bitten by the vampire when she was in a trance, sleep-walking—oh, you start; you do not know that, friend John, but you shall know it all later—and in trance could he best come to take more blood. In trance she died, and in trance she is Un-Dead, too. So it is that she differ from all other. Usually when the Un-Dead sleep at home"—as he spoke he made a comprehensive sweep of his arm to designate what to a vampire was "home"—"their face show what they are, but this so sweet that was when she not Un-Dead she go back to the nothings of the common dead. There is no malign there, see, and so it make hard that I must kill her in her sleep.

And this is my attempt at a simplified paraphrasing, with a few notes for context:

What's going on with Lucy the vampire is unusual for vampires, based on my research. She was bitten while she was in a sleep-walking trance, and her being in this trance was the easiest way for Dracula to feed on her. Since she died and was bitten while in a trance while alive, her undead vampire form also behaves as if she was sleep-walking in a trance, which is different from other vampires. Usually, when vampires are asleep in their tombs, the looks on their faces show their true, evil nature as vampires. (Note: Remember Jonathan's reaction to seeing Dracula in his coffin?) But Lucy was so sweet in life that when she is undead-sleeping in her coffin and not running around as a vampire, she looks as normal and harmless as a regular dead person. She looks so kind and sweet instead of evil when she's just lying in her coffin that it makes it very difficult to kill her while she's just resting.

The short version is that Van Helsing finds it difficult to do violence against Lucy's vampire body while she is resting peacefully in her tomb during the day bc she looks just like her sweet and kind self while she was alive and sleeping, just as a corpse now, so it feels less like destroying an undead monster and more like harming and desecrating the real Lucy from before she was turned, and whom he still cares about. And Lucy the vampire also operates as if she is still sleep-walking in a trance, compared to how the usual vampire moves and acts with purpose and agency, like Dracula himself.

At this point, it's also very important to note and remember Lucy's lack of agency as a vampire, in contrast to how her last moment of agency while alive and herself was to tell Van Helsing not only to protect Arthur, but to, quote, 'Give me peace', and what that means in the context of what she has become and may do if she continues to wander the earth as a vampire, along with her soul being unable to enter heaven right now.