FREE-FOR-ALL META COMMENT-A-THON
Old news: lj is dead. Everyone is crazy busy, or they have other reasons not to be here. No one has time to read those huge meta posts we used to write once upon a time. But maybe we can all find ten minutes to do this:
FREE-FOR-ALL META COMMENT-A-THON!
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FREE-FOR-ALL META COMMENT-A-THON!
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(1) I wrote, a long while back early in S3, a post about how the werewolf gene is a fantastic metaphor for the cycle of abuse, and I'm really impressed with the show for how well that still stands up two seasons later. And for all their differences in temperament - and there are a lot - all those issues still apply to both of them. I'd actually argue they're a really interesting study in nature/nurture: if they'd had their respective formative years in situations that weren't abusive, OR if they'd grown up in such circumstances but not shared the werewolf "gene," there's very little they'd share. But they did, and that's enough to pit them in this shadow-self relationship.
(2) Siblings. TVD does sibling relationships perfectly, but it is really good at showing family as a double-edged sword. Because for all both of them got such shitty treatment from at least their fathers, Tyler didn't have the formative experience Klaus seems to have had of being singled out for abuse. You know? Mikael is the worst to all of them, but he hones in on Klaus. It's Klaus he attacks in the Ordinary People flashback, he allies with other vampires (including Rebekah) in order to kill Klaus in Homecoming. Klaus has something of a support base in his siblings, and that's important. But he also doesn't have the "my dad is like that" explanation available to him in the way Tyler does, and so on top of the damage they both have to live with, Klaus has an added dimension of "it's about me AS ME" that Tyler doesn't.
And we've also watched that poison his relationship with his siblings. Because THEY never reject him on the basis of what he is; after the whole truth comes out in S3 Elijah still makes reference to "our father" to Klaus (ie, Elijah makes it clear that genes are not what makes them a family). But, based on his very real experience with his parents, he assumes that they will, and so he acts out and gives them reason to reject him, which they occasionally do, which he then takes as justification for his initial assumption and it all snowballs from there.
And I think that's a part of why Tyler is better at forming relationships with his peers. Part of it's certainly in having grown up with a stable community outside of his family where he has a reasonable amount of clout, first at school and then with the wolf packs, whereas Mikael had ofc uprooted his family into a war zone where they were at odds with everyone except each other. But it's also that he doesn't have this whole package of issues about rejection.
All of which is closely tied to the paternity/identity issue for the two of them. For Tyler the werewolf gene is about how he is a Lockwood, which if nothing else gives him Mason, who is pretty key for him. For Klaus the werewolf gene is about how in some ways he is not Mikael's son, how he does not fit with even the people who are most important to him.
(3) The biggest thing that makes me wonder how different they are is just that Klaus has a thousand years on Tyler, you know? Given centuries of hunger and temptation and isolation, including a few decades of the Hunter's Curse, I don't know that Tyler would come off any better. (Klaus is THE WORST and all, but IMO he is simultaneously the single most sinned-against character in the 'verse. That level of disempowerment and fear the main cast has been through, Klaus has been through it too, but for A THOUSAND YEARS. Which, fandom is gonna do what it's gonna do, but I think the story has handled that in a really smart and balanced way thus far.)
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