TVD - Graduation
First order of business: if I put up a friending meme for people who are excited about The Originals, is it just going to be me kissing my own ass?
Before I go into the episode, I would like to make a non-spoilery for-everyone shamelessly-recruity observation about why TVD (and now with The Originals, the whole TVD-'verse) works: it wholly embraces its core principle of WHY THE FUCK NOT?! Lest this sound backhanded, I mean it as the highest of praise. Some stories involve foregone conclusions, which come with the benefit of clear direction and literary convention, but at the cost of interesting opportunities and characterization/story twists that spring up organically. Because television fandom, much more so than what little I know of more conventional literary criticism, puts an unwarranted premium on stories hitting some objective markers of doing it "right," this kind of storyline seems heavily privileged. (Then, of course, we turn around and piss about character agency as if we didn't insist on having their actions predetermined from the moment of their own genesis.) TVD is different, in-universe and from a plotting perspective. It is an anarchic universe, where there is no supernatural - or for that matter earthly - controlling authority. In-universe, shit happens because shit happens, and the characters adapt. From a creative perspective, it's a fast-moving storyline that continuously adapts, and shit happens because WHY THE FUCK NOT?! This is just as valid a stylistic approach to storytelling as the more deterministic method, and the sheer cracky glee with which the show executes and ups the ante is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Kat and Elena
DOPPELGANGER DRAMA IS MY FAVORITE THING. Katherine defines Elena as her shadow self. She doesn't see herself as the bad guy. And she'd still be immortal if she had just killed Elena instead of stopping to gloat, and Elena missed the opportunity to ride out that adrenaline and kill Kat.
I'm glad none of the three leads were cured! Elena and Damon were the obvious choices, and things for Stefan are about a thousand times more interesting this way. But this plays with the doppelganger/shadow self dichotomy: as Elena comes close to forcing herself to embrace her vampire self, she shoves that humanity into her other half.
Though, and this is key and also speaks to Elena's retention of her image: she never actually admits out loud that she didn't want the cure, even though she clearly didn't. I mean, at first it made sense to try to give it to Damon because of the werewolf bite. Fine. But then she pushed it hard on Stefan - hard enough that I think she tipped her hand a little, but not quite admitting to her motivations - and then she carries it around until she has a pretext for forcing it on someone else. Hey, self-defense, what COULD she have done?!
Also can we talk about how Damon is about to be the special snowflake at the center of everything, which is what he HATES because he actually is in love with love and pining and nursing his own wounds? Because to me, it's always been Katherine. Even up until now, with his "what princess wants, princess gets, DON'T BE SIRED PLS PLS PLS" attitude, he still can't jump on board with Elena's plan to kill Katherine. For Damon, it was always the aspirational future, the potential, with Elena, and the history with Katherine. But now he has both of those things with both of them. And for the first time ever, Katherine needs Damon. Nobody else is selfish enough and crazy enough to turn her. But Damon, well. Kiss me, or kill me, and he made his choice on that a long time ago.
Anyway, my hope for Katherine was that she would neither die nor recognize the error of her ways, which means that I've gotten more than what I wanted! Katherine is in fact less dead than she was before, and now she has every incentive in the world to be more self-protective and conniving. My hope for Elena was that she would embrace her vampirism and find some footing and consistency in her sense of self, and she very much has.
Klaus
Klaus gets to go home now, so Tyler can too. Tyler doesn't have to kill him the way he had to kill Mikael. I don't think Klaus will ever break the cycle for himself. He and his brother and sister are monsters. But this is the first indication we've ever gotten that the werepuppy doesn't have to be. Klaus has forever, he could keep Tyler on a string, and he chooses no. It's not the biggest gesture - of course he can always change his mind, of course he's still getting the chance to look magnanimous in front of Caroline, as if Tyler's life were hers to give. (But that's how dynasties work.) It's hardly an application for sainthood, but it is a step.
Bonnie and Jeremy
I am not arguing that there is not seriously troubling context in regard to the show's treatment of characters of color. There is, and Bonnie's death is worrisome. I'm not arguing against that.
However. Can we finally stake this ridiculous notion that THE WRITURRRZ JUST DIDN'T CAAAAAARE about Bonnie's and/or Jeremy's characterization and arcs this season? Bonnie's eventual insistence on thrusting survival upon Jeremy at the cost of her own life was the inexorable conclusion of both of their arcs throughout the season.
Bonnie has defined herself by her ability to DO, and to make The Hard Choices and do The Right Thing, which has pushed her not only to accept the possibility of her own eventual death ("it never ends well for people like me") but in some ways to embrace it, and find some agency in going out on her own terms. Shane and Silas threatened that when they tried to use her for their own ends. But it's not like she can walk away from the power struggle that is her world, so she keeps raising the stakes and setting some goal for herself past what they said they wanted her to do, just to prove to herself that she could still choose to do something, without feeling like she'd given up and couldn't do it. And she pins all that on Jeremy, because Jeremy HAS to live, because saving Jeremy's life back at the end of S2 was where she lost her balance with her witch-identity. And so Jeremy's survival becomes priceless to her in terms of everything she does from there on out, because otherwise she'll second-guess herself about something in the past and she can't afford to do that. Should she live in a world that tells her to value anyone - particularly some white guy - above herself? Of course not, but she does, and this is a completely understandable reaction to that.
Jeremy's arc this season has been all about the way his increased conventional strength comes at the cost of his psychological autonomy. This is a tradeoff Jeremy himself would never choose to make, but it's thrust on him, and every step he's taken in his attempts to mitigate the damage have ended up with him being in it deeper. Bonnie deciding for Jeremy that he's going to LIVE goddammit, whatever the cost, whether he likes it or not, is such a crisp display of the dynamic of his arc throughout S4 that I can't believe I didn't see it coming.
Bonnie's new ghosthood is a particularly interesting role reversal given Bonnie's positioning as Jeremy's anchor to reality earlier this season. She flips that on him and drafts him into being her anchor into reality.
Again, I'm not saying LIKE THIS OR YOU ARE PEESEE AND STUPID. It's perfectly valid to say that the contextual race issues of the show are simply too distressing to pay much attention to anything other than the undeniably troubling end result, and it's perfectly valid just to find the story uninteresting or unappealing. But it is a technically sound story, which was carefully set up in the season premiere and has foundations reaching back to the first season, to the point where I'm not sure it could have happened without great and conscientious care.
STEFAN-SILAS THE BEST THING
Silas-as-Stefan is cracked-out and hilarious and is an amazing goddamn idea. So many snaps for Stefan-Silas (Steflas? YES.) I CANNOT WAIT.
It gives all of us more quality time with PW as Silas. He has an amazing range as an actor, and TVD won't let that go to waste. Knowing when and how to collaborate with actors is a SKILL. And, IMO, the ability to introduce big plots on the fly is also a skill? The author is daggered but if they weren't I would hazard a guess that the thought process was "wow, we have an actor that can sell the fuck out of villainy, and we have X mythological elements, Y character traits, and Z pragmatic constraints, how do we make it work?" I would be SHOCKED if this had been considered from before the Ripper arc. But it's like how anyone can plan a good meal, but a good cook can make do with whatever's around.
It's also great in that it adds to the mythology itself. Are the Salvatores the same "species" of doppelganger as the Petrovas? Of are they a little different? Silas can clearly shape-shift, so maybe he takes the form of the person most emotionally suited for him to mold himself against. OFC, Stefan has doppelganger skills - maybe there's been a reason he's the one who could play the chess game with Elena like no one else - but he's, you know, a he, and it'll be fascinating to see how that changes things.
It is PERFECT for Stefan's arc. Elena needed to end up in a place of accepting and supporting her own darkness, and so this time around it was going to be Damon. So Stefan needs an arc next season - preferably one that doesn't make him look even worse than the last two descents which could still suffer a little more problematization. But THIS. Locked under the sea, by his shadow self, when all this time he's thought he was the Good Self burying the Ripper! And oh man, I wish I could take credit for this idea, but there's such an interesting potential exploration of Stefan's hunger that goes above and beyond vamp bloodlust.
Stefan keeps getting involved by leaping in, to get away from his bad side. His last big moment last season was to dive underwater and save Matt. What is Stefan, now that he's without a woman to mold himself against? Even Lexi leaves him. He's done enough that he's not fighting the same fight with Damon over Elena. But he ends up surprised by his REAL dark self. In the end he's the one who's trapped. But he's set himself up as the rescuer, and so there's nobody looking for him.
Maybe it had to be Stefan, who after all has spent the last couple of hundred years in a holding pattern, avoiding embracing his vamp self, avoiding his brother, avoiding standing up for himself and insisting on a better treatment of his condition than torture. Silas is the Big Bad - adulthood - and so of course Stefan's the first one who's got to pay the piper.
I'm cutting myself OFF from this post, in the hopes that I'll do a real S4 reaction post after letting it all marinate, but looking back at my reactions to the season premiere, JFC, I'm going to go soak in how awesome this season has been from the first moment.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/298193.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.
Before I go into the episode, I would like to make a non-spoilery for-everyone shamelessly-recruity observation about why TVD (and now with The Originals, the whole TVD-'verse) works: it wholly embraces its core principle of WHY THE FUCK NOT?! Lest this sound backhanded, I mean it as the highest of praise. Some stories involve foregone conclusions, which come with the benefit of clear direction and literary convention, but at the cost of interesting opportunities and characterization/story twists that spring up organically. Because television fandom, much more so than what little I know of more conventional literary criticism, puts an unwarranted premium on stories hitting some objective markers of doing it "right," this kind of storyline seems heavily privileged. (Then, of course, we turn around and piss about character agency as if we didn't insist on having their actions predetermined from the moment of their own genesis.) TVD is different, in-universe and from a plotting perspective. It is an anarchic universe, where there is no supernatural - or for that matter earthly - controlling authority. In-universe, shit happens because shit happens, and the characters adapt. From a creative perspective, it's a fast-moving storyline that continuously adapts, and shit happens because WHY THE FUCK NOT?! This is just as valid a stylistic approach to storytelling as the more deterministic method, and the sheer cracky glee with which the show executes and ups the ante is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Kat and Elena
DOPPELGANGER DRAMA IS MY FAVORITE THING. Katherine defines Elena as her shadow self. She doesn't see herself as the bad guy. And she'd still be immortal if she had just killed Elena instead of stopping to gloat, and Elena missed the opportunity to ride out that adrenaline and kill Kat.
I'm glad none of the three leads were cured! Elena and Damon were the obvious choices, and things for Stefan are about a thousand times more interesting this way. But this plays with the doppelganger/shadow self dichotomy: as Elena comes close to forcing herself to embrace her vampire self, she shoves that humanity into her other half.
Though, and this is key and also speaks to Elena's retention of her image: she never actually admits out loud that she didn't want the cure, even though she clearly didn't. I mean, at first it made sense to try to give it to Damon because of the werewolf bite. Fine. But then she pushed it hard on Stefan - hard enough that I think she tipped her hand a little, but not quite admitting to her motivations - and then she carries it around until she has a pretext for forcing it on someone else. Hey, self-defense, what COULD she have done?!
Also can we talk about how Damon is about to be the special snowflake at the center of everything, which is what he HATES because he actually is in love with love and pining and nursing his own wounds? Because to me, it's always been Katherine. Even up until now, with his "what princess wants, princess gets, DON'T BE SIRED PLS PLS PLS" attitude, he still can't jump on board with Elena's plan to kill Katherine. For Damon, it was always the aspirational future, the potential, with Elena, and the history with Katherine. But now he has both of those things with both of them. And for the first time ever, Katherine needs Damon. Nobody else is selfish enough and crazy enough to turn her. But Damon, well. Kiss me, or kill me, and he made his choice on that a long time ago.
Anyway, my hope for Katherine was that she would neither die nor recognize the error of her ways, which means that I've gotten more than what I wanted! Katherine is in fact less dead than she was before, and now she has every incentive in the world to be more self-protective and conniving. My hope for Elena was that she would embrace her vampirism and find some footing and consistency in her sense of self, and she very much has.
Klaus
Klaus gets to go home now, so Tyler can too. Tyler doesn't have to kill him the way he had to kill Mikael. I don't think Klaus will ever break the cycle for himself. He and his brother and sister are monsters. But this is the first indication we've ever gotten that the werepuppy doesn't have to be. Klaus has forever, he could keep Tyler on a string, and he chooses no. It's not the biggest gesture - of course he can always change his mind, of course he's still getting the chance to look magnanimous in front of Caroline, as if Tyler's life were hers to give. (But that's how dynasties work.) It's hardly an application for sainthood, but it is a step.
Bonnie and Jeremy
I am not arguing that there is not seriously troubling context in regard to the show's treatment of characters of color. There is, and Bonnie's death is worrisome. I'm not arguing against that.
However. Can we finally stake this ridiculous notion that THE WRITURRRZ JUST DIDN'T CAAAAAARE about Bonnie's and/or Jeremy's characterization and arcs this season? Bonnie's eventual insistence on thrusting survival upon Jeremy at the cost of her own life was the inexorable conclusion of both of their arcs throughout the season.
Bonnie has defined herself by her ability to DO, and to make The Hard Choices and do The Right Thing, which has pushed her not only to accept the possibility of her own eventual death ("it never ends well for people like me") but in some ways to embrace it, and find some agency in going out on her own terms. Shane and Silas threatened that when they tried to use her for their own ends. But it's not like she can walk away from the power struggle that is her world, so she keeps raising the stakes and setting some goal for herself past what they said they wanted her to do, just to prove to herself that she could still choose to do something, without feeling like she'd given up and couldn't do it. And she pins all that on Jeremy, because Jeremy HAS to live, because saving Jeremy's life back at the end of S2 was where she lost her balance with her witch-identity. And so Jeremy's survival becomes priceless to her in terms of everything she does from there on out, because otherwise she'll second-guess herself about something in the past and she can't afford to do that. Should she live in a world that tells her to value anyone - particularly some white guy - above herself? Of course not, but she does, and this is a completely understandable reaction to that.
Jeremy's arc this season has been all about the way his increased conventional strength comes at the cost of his psychological autonomy. This is a tradeoff Jeremy himself would never choose to make, but it's thrust on him, and every step he's taken in his attempts to mitigate the damage have ended up with him being in it deeper. Bonnie deciding for Jeremy that he's going to LIVE goddammit, whatever the cost, whether he likes it or not, is such a crisp display of the dynamic of his arc throughout S4 that I can't believe I didn't see it coming.
Bonnie's new ghosthood is a particularly interesting role reversal given Bonnie's positioning as Jeremy's anchor to reality earlier this season. She flips that on him and drafts him into being her anchor into reality.
Again, I'm not saying LIKE THIS OR YOU ARE PEESEE AND STUPID. It's perfectly valid to say that the contextual race issues of the show are simply too distressing to pay much attention to anything other than the undeniably troubling end result, and it's perfectly valid just to find the story uninteresting or unappealing. But it is a technically sound story, which was carefully set up in the season premiere and has foundations reaching back to the first season, to the point where I'm not sure it could have happened without great and conscientious care.
STEFAN-SILAS THE BEST THING
Silas-as-Stefan is cracked-out and hilarious and is an amazing goddamn idea. So many snaps for Stefan-Silas (Steflas? YES.) I CANNOT WAIT.
It gives all of us more quality time with PW as Silas. He has an amazing range as an actor, and TVD won't let that go to waste. Knowing when and how to collaborate with actors is a SKILL. And, IMO, the ability to introduce big plots on the fly is also a skill? The author is daggered but if they weren't I would hazard a guess that the thought process was "wow, we have an actor that can sell the fuck out of villainy, and we have X mythological elements, Y character traits, and Z pragmatic constraints, how do we make it work?" I would be SHOCKED if this had been considered from before the Ripper arc. But it's like how anyone can plan a good meal, but a good cook can make do with whatever's around.
It's also great in that it adds to the mythology itself. Are the Salvatores the same "species" of doppelganger as the Petrovas? Of are they a little different? Silas can clearly shape-shift, so maybe he takes the form of the person most emotionally suited for him to mold himself against. OFC, Stefan has doppelganger skills - maybe there's been a reason he's the one who could play the chess game with Elena like no one else - but he's, you know, a he, and it'll be fascinating to see how that changes things.
It is PERFECT for Stefan's arc. Elena needed to end up in a place of accepting and supporting her own darkness, and so this time around it was going to be Damon. So Stefan needs an arc next season - preferably one that doesn't make him look even worse than the last two descents which could still suffer a little more problematization. But THIS. Locked under the sea, by his shadow self, when all this time he's thought he was the Good Self burying the Ripper! And oh man, I wish I could take credit for this idea, but there's such an interesting potential exploration of Stefan's hunger that goes above and beyond vamp bloodlust.
Stefan keeps getting involved by leaping in, to get away from his bad side. His last big moment last season was to dive underwater and save Matt. What is Stefan, now that he's without a woman to mold himself against? Even Lexi leaves him. He's done enough that he's not fighting the same fight with Damon over Elena. But he ends up surprised by his REAL dark self. In the end he's the one who's trapped. But he's set himself up as the rescuer, and so there's nobody looking for him.
Maybe it had to be Stefan, who after all has spent the last couple of hundred years in a holding pattern, avoiding embracing his vamp self, avoiding his brother, avoiding standing up for himself and insisting on a better treatment of his condition than torture. Silas is the Big Bad - adulthood - and so of course Stefan's the first one who's got to pay the piper.
I'm cutting myself OFF from this post, in the hopes that I'll do a real S4 reaction post after letting it all marinate, but looking back at my reactions to the season premiere, JFC, I'm going to go soak in how awesome this season has been from the first moment.
This entry was originally posted at http://pocochina.dreamwidth.org/298193.html. Leave a comment here, or there using OpenID.