It was ugly and it was scary and the cost was high, maybe too high, but I can't help thinking back to the very beginning of the season and how we've sort of watched her maneuver her way here: She came back pissed at Bill, ignored his change in station, allowed New Eric to get the better of her, realized she had feelings for them both, gave Alcide hell about Debbie but still kept him around and then wouldn't date him, and the whole time everybody -- Pam, who started the season as an outspoken enemy of monogamy -- kept telling her that she wasn't safe, that she was too delicious, that she needed to belong to somebody and to be owned and that loneliness is death.

I feel like we've talked every season about how that metaphor plays, but what intrigues me about it now is, okay, all other things being equal -- if Tara were out of the picture and Sookie had just killed Debbie on her own, let's start there -- then you are looking at a particular story, which is that when you choose to deviate from the norm, when you go it alone, or queer, or however you're going to do it, even just unmarried, that decision cuts both ways. Yes, you get to be free and true to yourself, but also, you have opted out of the game and can't expect validation from the game.

As Jessica's learning, you can either be a sex warrior gender revolutionary or a socially validated Good Girl, but you can't have both. And you can't flip back and forth between Sexy Faery You and Nice Christian You, not forever. You have to become something that is both. It is a trade-off. A wonderful, powerful, scary-as-hell trade-off.

And I think for whatever reason, at this time in our culture, we've fallen into a lazy lull of somehow feeling owed something, in this way. That instead of acknowledging that living by our own lights and being true to ourselves might have a cost, we manage to either conform or do it half-assed and then whine about it later. "All I did was act like a slut and then you called me a slut" is not a well-formed sentence or valid complaint. "All I did was act like a slut, a word with zero meaning or power over me" is a well-formed sentence, and allows at least for the possibility that life is an unfair place for grownups and crybabies alike.

As I said, it gets twisted by the fact that Tara died in the middle of it, but if you follow just the thread of Mine, His, Hers, it's a pretty complicated idea. "Why can't you both be Mine" is a meaningless question, because "Mine" isn't just about feelings -- it's about facts, and death, and danger. But to rebel against this idea that "You have to be His or you won't be at all," that can't possibly be a bad thing either, right?