TVD 3x14: Dangerous Liaisons, Or the Episode Recap That Turned into a Giant D/E Meta Thing
I made the huge mistake of getting caught up in all the spoiler hubbub before this ep aired, all of which was touting what a shipper clusterfuck it would be, and how anyone with, ahem, D/E sympathies were gonna experience what amounted to an emotional neck-snapping. I sat at my desk, reading article after article and working myself into a tizzy of
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Okay. Comment time.
Longterm Pining + Emotional Angst + Inappropriate Boundaries + The Shattered Fantasies of Seriously Unstable Men - Things General Society Finds Romantic = Me Shipping It
Amen.
DAMON SALVATORE (the character) WAS FLAWLESS THIS EPISODE AND ANYONE WHO THINKS OTHERWISE CAN GO JUMP OFF A BALCONY TBH. (I've been saying this everywhere, jsyk.)
One of the final nails in my fandom obsession with TVD was my discovery of all the seriously genius meta that abounded on LJ
oh, be quiet.
Because Damon and Elena? Two of the stubbornest, most obstinate Fixers you will ever find on the planet. In short: When they care, they fix things for you. And they don't really give a crap what you think about it.
*tear* UGHHHHH YES. TWO FIXERS WHO CANNOT FIX EACH OTHER. BEAUTIFUL MONSTROSITY LBH.
Say what you will about the morality of stripping Jeremy of his choice, but you won't ( ... )
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One of the fascinating things to think about is the divide between how cute people find Damon's protectiveness over Stefan and ALaric, and yet how, except for the fangirliest fringes of D/E fandom, how creepy it becomes when he applies his same strategies to Elena… there's the fact that no one puts up a fight more than the show's only other Big Fixer: Elena.
HOW ARE YOU REAL. HOW ARE YOU SAYING EVERYTHING I HAVE NEVER KNOWN HOW TO ARTICULATE. And you know what? I'd say that Elena's putting up such a fight is it. The show is actually highlighting the issue. It really is. Like. One of my persistent frustrations with some parts of this fandom is how it bafflingly characterises D/E as a failure of feminism. I literally don't comprehend this. D/E is not a feminist relationship; it's a story that examines gender roles. You can easily wax poetic about how Stefan ~letting Elena make her own decisions is "progressive", but the writers actually go a step further with D/E - they P R O B L E M A T I S E the problematic (lol, no duh) ( ... )
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Can we talk about the glorious dysfunction of a pairing where one half orchestrates the breaking of another's neck and then
when the other wakes up, he remembers to PICK UP HIS RELUCTANT LADYFRIEND'S SHAWL before attempting to force her from the party?
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YESSSSSSS. Although I don't feel like it was entirely conscious or deliberate manipulation on his part, and so it makes me feel sad that the first time he's genuinely said that to someone, in the present tense, in HOW MANY YEARS MUST IT HAVE BEEN? and he gets the absolute worst response. . . I need a bag to cry into now. No one look at me.
Seriously, I saw some people arguing that Damon wasn't really being that self-destructive at the end there, and I can agree in a technical sense, but on a ~psychological level? He is, absolutely. Like, he chose Rebekah at least in part because it's a betrayal of Elena.Oh yeah, no one will convince me that he didn't choose Rebekah because it was the most symbolic tearing apart of their little unnamed relationship that he could find. Have been reading all the post-episode Plec interviews where she says that they wanted his reaction to be in character but also a moment of growth, because he ( ... )
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HOW ARE YOU REAL. HOW ARE YOU SAYING EVERYTHING I HAVE NEVER KNOWN HOW TO ARTICULATE. And you know what? I'd say that Elena's putting up such a fight is it. The show is actually highlighting the issue. It really is. Like. One of my persistent frustrations with some parts of this fandom is how it bafflingly characterises D/E as a failure of feminism. I literally don't comprehend this. D/E is not a feminist relationship; it's a story that examines gender roles. You can easily wax poetic about how Stefan ~letting Elena make her own decisions is "progressive", but the writers actually go a step further with D/E - they P R O B L E M A T I S E the problematic (lol, no duh) aspects of that ship, in a way that they have consistently failed to do properly with S/E (because they don't want to alienate viewers? who knows.) Could you elaborate? I think I know what you mean, and if you mean what I think you mean, then I generally agree. But I don't think we ever talked about gender role in D/E (only about ( ... )
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what Elena does when Damon gets feminine: Haha, we saw this with the love declaration. Damon was open about his ~feelings for once, in this INSTINCTIVE way, in the way that Elena has actually been trying to encourage from him (feminine). And then Elena - who has been embracing the masculine role of controlling every aspect of the plan (men's work) - tells him it's a problem. Damon is officially occupying the role of the Hysterical Woman whose ~emotions affect his judgment. GENDER FUCKERY AT ITS GREATEST.
how Damon expects Elena to perform femininity: I think Damon assumed that his love declaration would win the argument because as a female, Elena should be persuaded by force of emotion? Plus there's that history of her overtly encouraging him to confront his feelings and let her in. In S1-2, the two of them did actually have a more traditional gender dynamic, with Damon as masculine (controlling his emotions) and Elena as feminine (nurturing his emotions). Of course, this was never a ( ... )
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I am almost ashamed to say this, but I have this new dream where you read my book and write a giant meta post about it. ::hides::
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And lol, we all knew Damon was the woman in this relationship. ;)
Bwaha, did we ever doubt it? Seriously, I do understand people's surprise/disappointment at Elena degrading Damon's feelings in the context of their history (of her encouraging him to confront them), but I think I was always counting on Damon/Elena to mirror Damon/Katherine eventually? I think that was always meant to be the tragedy.
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*tear*
In the immortal words of BSG, "All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again."
lol, such a useful phrase. And yeah, ofc, Damon/Elena are indeed different in some significant ways. So I'm basically just wondering which direction the story will go now.
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It seems like Elena has always been choosing the emotions Damon is supposed to nurture. She never told him it was ok to love her. It was ok to be guilty, it was ok to love OTHER PEOPLE. She was out of it. A Master Puppeter.
In S1-2, the two of them did actually have a more traditional gender dynamicI generally agree, but I also finally managed to get together all the things we've been talking about re: the strange case of 2x03. An interesting thing happens there: Damon plays a very traditional, very masculine role of a White Knight when he literally throws himself in front of Vanessa and takes an arrow for Elena (a wooden arrow => a few inches and he'd be dead). And five seconds later he just rejects it totally, tells Elena it doesn't mean a thing, and then calls her out on her attempts to wield some emotional power over him. All the time, he is operating on an emotional level, trying to get back to Elena's good graces through emotions, but also getting on her nerves in an emotional way ( ... )
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