i still hate everybody. i just love that they love me.
I do think I’m missing how, exactly, Stefan betrayed Damon? It looked as if Guiseppe figured out Katherine on his own, without Stefan’s knowledge. So really, Stefan is being self-aggrandizing and self-centered with his I BETRAYED DAMON! schtick. I do like him better than I have in these last couple of episodes after he bites Elena, though. He knows they had to do what they had to do, he recognizes it for what it was (I don’t even want to say “doesn’t excuse” because that implies wrongness on some level, which I don’t think there was, it was a risk they had to take) without being a huge drama queen about it, he slipped up, and he fought to pull it together. And: I don’t want you to know that this side of me exists…I’m afraid of what I could do to you. He wants control over himself and his self-presentation - the thing anyone with a compulsion or addiction can’t have. He's so honest with Elena (and himself) and I find that a lot more appealing. But, Damon knows just how to torment him.
I’m guessing this is just convenient go-with-it worldbulding, but for the purposes of this storyline I really like the way the show blurs the line between psychology and physiology. It seems the vampire contagion, whatever it is, substitutes normal human drives for some other, slightly different biological makeup, but with the original personality intact, to be changed by the different targets of appetites and the experience of eternal life but along the lines of existing proclivities. So, controlling, manipulative Stefan started out suggestible and earnest, thus vulnerable to manipulation. The almost-entirely-nihilist (though not quite as nihilist as he thinks) Damon started out hopeful and principled (and therefore even more vulnerable to manipulation, since he could convince himself he was on top of it all), if still a bit snarky and sour. Stefan wasn’t kidding when he said trust didn’t come naturally to Damon, but what he didn’t say (or maybe didn’t know) was that Damon wanted so badly to be able to trust that he would fling himself into stupid, willfully unsubstantiated faith just to be able to tell himself it was possible.
Their reactions to their turning are telling. Stefan decides he must have been under her spell, it wasn’t real, it’s so far from what he wanted. And it goes back to the question of manipulation - does it matter if she hypnotized him, given the power dynamics there? But to have control over what he is now, he has to wall off any uncertainty about potential complicity. He finds meaning in trying to move past his compulsion; he wants Damon to be unequivocally awful just as badly as Damon himself does, because then he's better, somehow, but he can't quite give up on his brother either. Damon, by contrast, is as ruthlessly blunt as he is because he wants Katherine to have been real, because that was his meaning.
He’s so awful, but I still know exactly what he’s feeling when he loses the idea of saving Katherine. “Nothing is important. Anymore.” Thus implying that meaning was an option, that he knew just how lost he was before the discovery about Katherine and is even more lost after. He’s trying to convince himself he’s already obliterated. EVERYBODY hates me. I HAVE no good side. And he sets out to make it as true as he can, but he can’t quite make himself nothing any more than he can make himself something. So he makes it about Katherine, and he bounces right back to wanting her back and clinging to that tiny sliver of hope he can get her. Not even hope, maybe, just something resembling purpose. And it’s really about acting out, about fucking showing someone, as much as it is an internal conflict. “The only one I can count on is me! But you [Elena] had me fooled.” Yeah, I’m the worst, but you’re down here with me. It’s mean and selfish, but that’s what he is and he has no illusions about that.
I love that he’s not invulnerable, either, even though he’s all swaggery and shit. He gets thrown, he gets beat up by Pearl, he doesn’t know as much as John even when he is putting his mind to the task at hand. Becoming the slightly-less-dysfunctional-screwup in the house when Stefan fell off the wagon didn’t make him competent or good, so much as it gave him something to do, both in terms of keeping an eye on their security in the town and in terms of trying to enable Stefan’s addiction.
I’m holding out hope for the Elena love but not feeling it yet. I’M GONNA SHOOT UP AND THEN RUN IN THE HOUSE FULL OF VAMPIRES, LOOKING EXACTLY LIKE SOMEONE THEY HATE, BECAUSE I CAN DO SO MUCH MORE THAN THE SUPERDUDE. THIS IS IN NO WAY THE WORST PLAN EVER. Also, what exactly was the “so much” she did to protect Jeremy? Have him lobotomized by a psychopath and then give him a bracelet? Not really one to fuck things up by overthinking, is she.
I may need to abandon ship on Damon/Katherine for Damon/Alaric. Flawless. They end up being the best partnership of all the - and I use this term very loosely - alliances between the cast, because they know not to trust each other. It’s entirely about aligning interests for them, which lets them have something they can lean on. Damon can’t have that with Stefan and Elena because he gets all that confused with the way he knows he shouldn’t trust them, thinks he doesn’t trust them, and yet wants to all the same. Damon the self-serving psychopath is actually more reliable than Damon the deeply closeted romantic, because his disappointed expectations don't get in the way.
For his part, Alaric hates Damon, deservedly, but Damon is the closest thing he has to some kind of attachment in the town or maybe even at all and so their interactions become important to his development. He does give Damon a little too much credit - you were supposed to compel her to let you in! - but it’s about the goal, so he lets it go, with maybe a hair too much ease for comfort. He's mostly indestructible and yet in some places already destroyed like Damon. Human physiologically, and so with a different set of drives, but warped by heartbreak and altered mortality in a similar way.
I really liked this series of episodes because of the unapologetic soapiness, but also because it raises the stakes and builds the drama by the (one would think simple) trick of letting events have consequences. Jeremy is fucked up by Elena’s decision to have Damon wipe him; Stefan struggles but can’t stave off the binging forever; Vicki’s family gets some closure even if it’s brutal.
I’m guessing this is just convenient go-with-it worldbulding, but for the purposes of this storyline I really like the way the show blurs the line between psychology and physiology. It seems the vampire contagion, whatever it is, substitutes normal human drives for some other, slightly different biological makeup, but with the original personality intact, to be changed by the different targets of appetites and the experience of eternal life but along the lines of existing proclivities. So, controlling, manipulative Stefan started out suggestible and earnest, thus vulnerable to manipulation. The almost-entirely-nihilist (though not quite as nihilist as he thinks) Damon started out hopeful and principled (and therefore even more vulnerable to manipulation, since he could convince himself he was on top of it all), if still a bit snarky and sour. Stefan wasn’t kidding when he said trust didn’t come naturally to Damon, but what he didn’t say (or maybe didn’t know) was that Damon wanted so badly to be able to trust that he would fling himself into stupid, willfully unsubstantiated faith just to be able to tell himself it was possible.
Their reactions to their turning are telling. Stefan decides he must have been under her spell, it wasn’t real, it’s so far from what he wanted. And it goes back to the question of manipulation - does it matter if she hypnotized him, given the power dynamics there? But to have control over what he is now, he has to wall off any uncertainty about potential complicity. He finds meaning in trying to move past his compulsion; he wants Damon to be unequivocally awful just as badly as Damon himself does, because then he's better, somehow, but he can't quite give up on his brother either. Damon, by contrast, is as ruthlessly blunt as he is because he wants Katherine to have been real, because that was his meaning.
He’s so awful, but I still know exactly what he’s feeling when he loses the idea of saving Katherine. “Nothing is important. Anymore.” Thus implying that meaning was an option, that he knew just how lost he was before the discovery about Katherine and is even more lost after. He’s trying to convince himself he’s already obliterated. EVERYBODY hates me. I HAVE no good side. And he sets out to make it as true as he can, but he can’t quite make himself nothing any more than he can make himself something. So he makes it about Katherine, and he bounces right back to wanting her back and clinging to that tiny sliver of hope he can get her. Not even hope, maybe, just something resembling purpose. And it’s really about acting out, about fucking showing someone, as much as it is an internal conflict. “The only one I can count on is me! But you [Elena] had me fooled.” Yeah, I’m the worst, but you’re down here with me. It’s mean and selfish, but that’s what he is and he has no illusions about that.
I love that he’s not invulnerable, either, even though he’s all swaggery and shit. He gets thrown, he gets beat up by Pearl, he doesn’t know as much as John even when he is putting his mind to the task at hand. Becoming the slightly-less-dysfunctional-screwup in the house when Stefan fell off the wagon didn’t make him competent or good, so much as it gave him something to do, both in terms of keeping an eye on their security in the town and in terms of trying to enable Stefan’s addiction.
I’m holding out hope for the Elena love but not feeling it yet. I’M GONNA SHOOT UP AND THEN RUN IN THE HOUSE FULL OF VAMPIRES, LOOKING EXACTLY LIKE SOMEONE THEY HATE, BECAUSE I CAN DO SO MUCH MORE THAN THE SUPERDUDE. THIS IS IN NO WAY THE WORST PLAN EVER. Also, what exactly was the “so much” she did to protect Jeremy? Have him lobotomized by a psychopath and then give him a bracelet? Not really one to fuck things up by overthinking, is she.
I may need to abandon ship on Damon/Katherine for Damon/Alaric. Flawless. They end up being the best partnership of all the - and I use this term very loosely - alliances between the cast, because they know not to trust each other. It’s entirely about aligning interests for them, which lets them have something they can lean on. Damon can’t have that with Stefan and Elena because he gets all that confused with the way he knows he shouldn’t trust them, thinks he doesn’t trust them, and yet wants to all the same. Damon the self-serving psychopath is actually more reliable than Damon the deeply closeted romantic, because his disappointed expectations don't get in the way.
For his part, Alaric hates Damon, deservedly, but Damon is the closest thing he has to some kind of attachment in the town or maybe even at all and so their interactions become important to his development. He does give Damon a little too much credit - you were supposed to compel her to let you in! - but it’s about the goal, so he lets it go, with maybe a hair too much ease for comfort. He's mostly indestructible and yet in some places already destroyed like Damon. Human physiologically, and so with a different set of drives, but warped by heartbreak and altered mortality in a similar way.
I really liked this series of episodes because of the unapologetic soapiness, but also because it raises the stakes and builds the drama by the (one would think simple) trick of letting events have consequences. Jeremy is fucked up by Elena’s decision to have Damon wipe him; Stefan struggles but can’t stave off the binging forever; Vicki’s family gets some closure even if it’s brutal.