it's beyond evil, and yet somehow worthy of humor
This show evokes the feelings of adolescence far better than Buffy or Gilmore Girls or…okay, I’m out of teen programming I have ever cared about, GOD, it was bad enough to live through. I’m so far indifferent to Elena herself. I don’t dislike her per se, but I haven’t gotten a whole lot of reasons to actively like her, either. I like Bonnie and Caroline, and I found Lexi fun and Vicki quite sympathetic. SCORING HIGH on the likable ladies test, show, ty and here’s your fucking cookie.
Families, in all their sometimes-functional-sometimes-not importance to the characters; those rushes of real change all tied up in the fake bullshit drama, the death of the parents representing the death of the illusion that your parents could ever protect you from the thing that went bump in the night. I am less wild about the idea of history as only mattering when it is somehow tied into direct biological lineage. It would be one thing with just Bonnie and Emily, or just the Salvatore brothers being brothers, or Elena’s adoption being some mystic cover-up or other rather than the emotional experience it would be anyway, or or or, but as a whole, not my favorite. Not least because it leads to unfortunate situations like all the WOC being witches.
I like the Vicki story, and how seamlessly her partying lifestyle becomes vampness. It seems she handles it…not too badly, all things considered. She stays herself, she still cares about the people she cares about, she doesn’t want to hurt anyone but she still acts out of self-preservation. And the idea of transitioning generally. They don’t - Vicki and Logan, at least - want not to be vampires, but they don’t quite hate it, either. They resent having had it done to them - because we all resent not having had whatever choice, even if we’re okay with how it works out. And there’s a lot of JUST SAY NO-ing - rather than maybe ripping off a blood bank a little to get Vicki through that vulnerable patch might have saved her while giving everyone a chance to talk her off the eating-people thing, though I guess that’s dependent on just what being a vampire is on this show.
I was skeptical that the mind control idea would work for me, but it’s actually quite a bit more than just a reason the town can maintain the masquerade, as we see when Damon wipes Jeremy. It’s about adolescence, how the people that control the information you get at that stage of your life do decide who you are, how your mind works. And they can do it out of love, even, mixed with their own convenience, as Elena does with Jeremy. She doesn’t want him to suffer; she also can’t figure out how to deal with the repercussions of his suffering about Vicki. But. I took away the suffering. I changed him entirely.
And you don’t know when they’re using it. You’re so stupid. And shallow. And useless. Is he trying to get her to believe it? Or making her believe it? Or making it true? You can’t ever know, but at that age especially.
The vampires don’t even need to use the mind control to benefit from it. “I need to talk to someone, and the only person I can talk to is you.” And that’s meant to be sweet, and maybe Stefan’s intentions are as pure as the yellow snow, but that gives him an immense amount of power over her, and even his choosing not to use it is an exercise of that power. There is an implicit threat in benevolence; protectiveness is always in some measure about control. And I think - I think - this is some subversive-answer-to-Twilight shit, where the show KNOWS just how much power that is. Elena, from all appearances, is even more disempowered than whatever her name is from the twilight books, because her mind-blocking power is innate. Elena’s can be taken away from her at any moment, and she and Stefan know this. As does Damon: “I could very easily make you...agreeable.”
Of course there is always the outside possibility that I will wake up in six months and decide I love him with the fire of a thousand suns, but I doubt that is going to happen with Stefan, who is, at the moment, THE WORST. So far all he’s done is try to control women by condescension, moralizing, and projection. AND WE ALL KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE THAT SHIT. And yeah, Stefan does bother me more than Damon. Because my odds of running into a thrill-killing psychopath are fairly low, and I maybe am not as distressed as I should be generally about physical danger, but I am very aware how vulnerable I am to it’s-just-because-I-care manipulation. He’s less awful around that Bonnie, though, she’s a good influence on everyone.
Mostly, though - and you all knew how this was gonna be - DAMON. None of this matters to me. He’s out for himself except not really because oh, he’s such a liar, Stefan matters to him ever so much; there’s some tiny pebble of meaning rattling around him and making him realize just how empty the rest of him is. I do not, even in these first few episodes, wonder why they are still together after all these years, or why they have not staked each other (though it bothers me less from Damon, obviously, because he’s not stalking around angsting about the dude he could put a stop to and doesn’t). That’s why Damon sticks with Stefan, and is the worst of his trickstery Damon self around his brother, because you always hurt the one you love, but you don’t want to kill them, either. His quest to bring back Katherine, to retrace his steps to wherever he dropped his purpose and meaning, ugh, breaking my heart.
He’s absolutely not getting made into a fluffy little bunny vampire, either; whenever he gets the smallest bit of development, he goes out there and kills someone for fun. HE’S BAD, BADDIE BAD BAD, but you have to get into his head and give him a chance anyway.
Also, he is in fact writing crackfic in dialogue, which as we all know is the way to my heart. WE COULD GO OUT FOR THE AMAZING RACE. Dear Santa: I don't want a pony any more. I want this.
Um, so, things that may have been explained in the first five episodes which I skipped as per f-list advice, have I missed the explanations for: why Stefan is vegan or whatever shit? or what relation Elena is to Katherine, besides looking like her? Katherine’s human self through time-travel Grams magic or some shit? Is she mind-wiped Katherine and that’s why she gets brain-protection nobody else does? why the hell are Stefan and Damon still going by their old names in their old town?
Families, in all their sometimes-functional-sometimes-not importance to the characters; those rushes of real change all tied up in the fake bullshit drama, the death of the parents representing the death of the illusion that your parents could ever protect you from the thing that went bump in the night. I am less wild about the idea of history as only mattering when it is somehow tied into direct biological lineage. It would be one thing with just Bonnie and Emily, or just the Salvatore brothers being brothers, or Elena’s adoption being some mystic cover-up or other rather than the emotional experience it would be anyway, or or or, but as a whole, not my favorite. Not least because it leads to unfortunate situations like all the WOC being witches.
I like the Vicki story, and how seamlessly her partying lifestyle becomes vampness. It seems she handles it…not too badly, all things considered. She stays herself, she still cares about the people she cares about, she doesn’t want to hurt anyone but she still acts out of self-preservation. And the idea of transitioning generally. They don’t - Vicki and Logan, at least - want not to be vampires, but they don’t quite hate it, either. They resent having had it done to them - because we all resent not having had whatever choice, even if we’re okay with how it works out. And there’s a lot of JUST SAY NO-ing - rather than maybe ripping off a blood bank a little to get Vicki through that vulnerable patch might have saved her while giving everyone a chance to talk her off the eating-people thing, though I guess that’s dependent on just what being a vampire is on this show.
I was skeptical that the mind control idea would work for me, but it’s actually quite a bit more than just a reason the town can maintain the masquerade, as we see when Damon wipes Jeremy. It’s about adolescence, how the people that control the information you get at that stage of your life do decide who you are, how your mind works. And they can do it out of love, even, mixed with their own convenience, as Elena does with Jeremy. She doesn’t want him to suffer; she also can’t figure out how to deal with the repercussions of his suffering about Vicki. But. I took away the suffering. I changed him entirely.
And you don’t know when they’re using it. You’re so stupid. And shallow. And useless. Is he trying to get her to believe it? Or making her believe it? Or making it true? You can’t ever know, but at that age especially.
The vampires don’t even need to use the mind control to benefit from it. “I need to talk to someone, and the only person I can talk to is you.” And that’s meant to be sweet, and maybe Stefan’s intentions are as pure as the yellow snow, but that gives him an immense amount of power over her, and even his choosing not to use it is an exercise of that power. There is an implicit threat in benevolence; protectiveness is always in some measure about control. And I think - I think - this is some subversive-answer-to-Twilight shit, where the show KNOWS just how much power that is. Elena, from all appearances, is even more disempowered than whatever her name is from the twilight books, because her mind-blocking power is innate. Elena’s can be taken away from her at any moment, and she and Stefan know this. As does Damon: “I could very easily make you...agreeable.”
Of course there is always the outside possibility that I will wake up in six months and decide I love him with the fire of a thousand suns, but I doubt that is going to happen with Stefan, who is, at the moment, THE WORST. So far all he’s done is try to control women by condescension, moralizing, and projection. AND WE ALL KNOW HOW MUCH I LOVE THAT SHIT. And yeah, Stefan does bother me more than Damon. Because my odds of running into a thrill-killing psychopath are fairly low, and I maybe am not as distressed as I should be generally about physical danger, but I am very aware how vulnerable I am to it’s-just-because-I-care manipulation. He’s less awful around that Bonnie, though, she’s a good influence on everyone.
Mostly, though - and you all knew how this was gonna be - DAMON. None of this matters to me. He’s out for himself except not really because oh, he’s such a liar, Stefan matters to him ever so much; there’s some tiny pebble of meaning rattling around him and making him realize just how empty the rest of him is. I do not, even in these first few episodes, wonder why they are still together after all these years, or why they have not staked each other (though it bothers me less from Damon, obviously, because he’s not stalking around angsting about the dude he could put a stop to and doesn’t). That’s why Damon sticks with Stefan, and is the worst of his trickstery Damon self around his brother, because you always hurt the one you love, but you don’t want to kill them, either. His quest to bring back Katherine, to retrace his steps to wherever he dropped his purpose and meaning, ugh, breaking my heart.
He’s absolutely not getting made into a fluffy little bunny vampire, either; whenever he gets the smallest bit of development, he goes out there and kills someone for fun. HE’S BAD, BADDIE BAD BAD, but you have to get into his head and give him a chance anyway.
Also, he is in fact writing crackfic in dialogue, which as we all know is the way to my heart. WE COULD GO OUT FOR THE AMAZING RACE. Dear Santa: I don't want a pony any more. I want this.
Um, so, things that may have been explained in the first five episodes which I skipped as per f-list advice, have I missed the explanations for: why Stefan is vegan or whatever shit? or what relation Elena is to Katherine, besides looking like her? Katherine’s human self through time-travel Grams magic or some shit? Is she mind-wiped Katherine and that’s why she gets brain-protection nobody else does? why the hell are Stefan and Damon still going by their old names in their old town?