Envy

In total sloth fashion, the sloth story will have to wait. I bring you instead:


ENVY

Envy is the desire for someone else’s traits, situation, material possessions. But sometimes it gets even worse, because sometimes envy doesn't just involve wanting things you don't have, but also wishing that someone else didn't have those things. This is closely related to "schadenfreude" or taking joy in the misfortune of others.

Punishment in Hell: put in freezing water (what?)

Color associated with envy: Green

Gotta say, guilty over here where this is concerned. It's perhaps the hardest one to work away from for me. I want all kinds of things I can't or don't have. A lot of those things I can clearly do without, like for instance a perfectly slimming, no snaps or flaps, baby soft and supple black leather jacket.

When I was working in Fullerton and living in Corona, I would have to drive the 91 freeway to and from work at rush hours in my jeep with no air conditioning. I used to remember being stuck in the same spot for 20 minutes at a time, moving at a crawl, watching people in sporty little VW hatchbacks drive past me in the toll lane (which they could afford to pay for), with the wind blowing at them despite the fact that their tinted shiny windows were rolled up tight. The wind was glorious, beautiful, icy air conditioning, and I hated them for having it when I was sticking to the back of my seat in the middle of traffic in July. Anger, it turns out, does not really cool you down at all.

I want the money that Paris Hilton is totally squandering by being lame and I want her to have to work in a factory for a year. Preferably the same factory that made whatever crap she sells with her brand attached. That's a shitty thing to want, because clearly the poor girl would never survive such a thing. And is so entitled and superior she isn't even equipped to learn the lesson.

I want to weigh 120 lbs and wake up with perfectly clear skin and then go eat something delicious that never goes to my thighs. Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of things about my life, and am lucky by far when you measure me up to the rest of the world's 32 year old women, but, well, the green-eyed monster is here with me. To deny it would be to pretend I'm not human, because everyone feels envy at some point. Even vampires.

Vampires of fiction are super envious! They usually want some of the aspects of their former human life back. A lot of them seem to secretly (or in the case of Edward Cullen, Bill Compton, Angel, not so secretly) regret being turned. They envy the ability to witness sunrises big time. Though movies and television have allowed them to see a version of sunlight, they still want the real thing. They seemingly make for great romancers, but not for long, unless you want to become one too. Soon after dating one, well, some issues are gonna come up, like having a normal life where people go outside during the daytime, making babies, having a dinner with garlic in it once in a while, getting older. So even though vampires seem to be super sexy, they do fear they can't give their heroines (or heroes) what they need to be truly happy (which in books is usually "a family"). Many vampire stories are about vampires wanting something they don't have, whether it's their humanity, someone else's girl/guy, or the power of other vampires.


By far the saddest element of this story is one that involves vampire children. Little kids who get turned are a freaky tale, but Anne Rice's Claudia tugged at my heart strings. Poor girl would get old inside, but always be a little girl outside. Never able to grow up and be a woman. Never be seen as a woman by the men in her life.

Envy for power, that's a biggie in vampire fiction. Even though they've had generations of intellectual history to use at the ready, they are really REALLY behind when it comes to democratic concepts, diplomacy, essential human rights. They all seem to operate in a very feudal, medieval-y mindset. The Victorian ones are all about nobility and European accents. I guess this is all because the writers figure they are too old to incorporate a new ideological system of power into their world view. I guess there's some merit to that idea, since it historically takes a whole generation of people with backwards social/political values to die off so that progress can be made politically. If those old dogs in power never die, well, you got yourself a pretty stunted system. But come on, these ladies and gents have centuries to work out ideas and have an outsider stance from which to view them in action. Are you telling me that after a thousand years or more, their biggest problems are going to be about getting "promoted" or fighting over various forms of tasty food/human companions?
A great deal of vampire fiction shows us what we envy, however. We wish we didn't have to age, since aging in this culture is associated with weakness and declining in social and economic value. We envy superior strength in a culture where strength is not as important as ancestry, economic class, and social skills. We envy the heightened hearing, smell, taste, and sight that vampires are often given because we sedentary humans no longer really need to use our bodies senses in ways that help for hunting and preventing danger. And because though we pretend we are civilized, we all know deep down that civilization is a lie, and we're probably closer to the animal kingdom now as we've ever been.

I pretty much envy their ability to glamour or put people in their thrall. Oh, and the whole young forever thing.