This post is based on wild speculation. I agree that what I'm writing about is not the only possible explanation; it's guesswork, and I only hope it's logical
( Read more... )
I really wish they had explored slavery more, but I'm not surprised the network chickened out. Once upon a time I read some things about the civil war written by a Southerner in 1900, and it was just mindblowing... The way those people thought? I wouldn't know how to depict that in fiction. 90% of the audience would never believe that a mindset like that is possible.
Emily must've been quite a puzzle for Damon. I could easily believe that he genuinely liked her, but he was also used to seeing the slaves as eternal children that needed to be taken care of. From what we see about Emily, she was NOTHING like that, and Damon is a perceptive boy; he must've noticed.
Thank you for reading, and I'm glad my obnoxious linking didn't scare you off! I really try not to do it, ever; I assume that my masterpost is right there, as a sticky post, so if anyone's interested, they can get to any post they want. But in this case, our discussion naturally drifted very close to what I wrote here, and I simply failed at summarizing three pages of meta in one paragraph in a comment.
ETA: And of course if you ever want to bounce off ideas, I am ready :).
The more I think about it, the more I think the opening scene should be between him and Emily. I could create my fondest wish, and write this fic, and now I'm starting to get really excited about it....
I won't commit until after the finale. Sign ups are until May 17th, so that gives me time to think about it more. I'm definitely leaning more towards it than not, but if the show crushes me, it might kill the muse. You never know.
I feel you :(. TVD Bigbang is about to open, and once it does, I'll probably spend a week dancing around it... I REALLY want to write, especially since I've never written anything that long before. But what if the finale makes me not want to see this show ever again?
But today I made up a theory that proves that Elena will certainly either go for Damon, or tell both of them to leave her alone. I have no idea if it makes any sense, but it makes me feel better, so I'm sticking to it ;).
Are you sharing this theory, or is it for your amusement only?
What is the name of the TVD bigbang comm? I might have belonged to it once, but I don't think I do now. I need to rejoin for the duration so I know what's going on!
I'm still brainstorming the theory ;). The general gist is that if the writers want to set up a S/E finale, they need to follow a certain convention they've already started: the convention of Epic Love That Conquers All. It's a very stereotypical convention, I'd even call it a cliche, so it has certain rules that are practically set in stone. The writers don't work just with S/E; they also have Damon in the mix, the triangle is the premise of the show, so whatever happens, Damon has to be narratively compatible with S/E storyline.
So if we have a heroine choosing between two men, and the narrative is to unironically tell the cliche story of Epic Love (and that's how S/E was framed in 3x20), the unchosen man has to be the villain. There is no way around it. Damon has to be objectively unacceptable, end of story. So setting up a S/E finale would require re-establishing the Good Brother vs Bad Brother dichotomy... and it's not happening? 3x19-3x20 consequently frame Damon as a fairly decent guy (or at least as decent as Damon gets). For a S/E finale, Damon would have to be written as the Carnal Temptation to Stefan's Mr Right. 3x19 would've ended with Elena telling someone that she just wants to jump Damon's bones (or, you know, with Elena just jumping Damon's bones); instead, we got Rose's Shipper Manifesto that was all about how Damon makes Elena grow as a person. In 3x20, we would've gotten Damon following his original plan and snapping Alaric's neck just to be on the safe side (preferably right in front of screaming and crying Elena); instead, he's shown at his most vulnerable, sincerely mourning his friend.
So S/E as it stands alone looks like we're going to get an Epic Love That Conquers All finale, but Damon as he is now can't be fitted into this kind of narrative. He isn't framed as the third party in the Epic Love That Conquers All story. So either the writers lost their minds and wrote a finale that makes no fucking sense (which... not impossible after everything that was wrong with 3x20), or S/E right now is just a smokescreen that builds some artificial angst for the finale.
This all seems feasible to me. At this point, I really can't believe we're going to have to endure (or that they honestly think D/E fans will put up with it, being the bigger faction in the fandom) S/E again at this point. Maybe down the line, after Damon and Elena have broken up for some reason she would revisit it, but at this point it feels completely false. HOWEVER, I won't be any happier with a I-love-Damon confession that is somehow thwarted. If we get some audience-knows-but-Damon-doesn't business I'm just as likely to throw my towel in the ring and call it a day if the last two episodes are as badly done as 3x20.
On that Negative Nellie note, I will say that I have to remember how much I've loved this show, and the development of D/E and I should be able to hold on to the positive that far outweighs the negative, and so reading your thoughts here helps with that. Despite Julie Plec's weird ideas about EPIC LOVE, I have to believe she doesn't intend to ruin her female protagonist entirely. *hope, hope, hope*
Well, I can't tell anything smart about D/E ;). Their story is unpredictable for me, but in a good way; I can guess, but I can't analyze they way I analyzed S/E within the triangle. Their story makes sense. But I kind of hope the show doesn't go for a big "I Love You So Much" finale? Because, seriously, where do they go from here? How would Damon and Elena work in s4 if s3 ended like that? They can't get two seasons of happy sappy love like S/E did, because telling the same story with a different brother would make no sense at all. D/E is different, it has to be different. D/E is about the dark, the liminal, the adult, the scary. I mean, would you keep shipping it if in s4 it turned into s2 S/E? I wouldn't. We can't simply replace one Epic Love story with another.
So I wouldn't expect a confession, and I wouldn't expect any happily-ever-after scenery. We're in the middle of the show, and Damon is firmly established as a metaphor of adulthood, so making him The Boyfriend could actually harm his narrative. There might be some acknowledgement, the way Elena acknowledged Damon in 3x19 by staring at him openly. I would expect something in the lines of "We have an understanding" rather than "I love you". I'm kind of hoping for it? I'm hoping for them to forge a unique kind of relationship, not a love story like twenty other love stories. Damon challenges her. Damon makes her question things. If she reacts to it by wanting to have a traditional romantic relationship with him, then what was the point of Damon?
And Damon, on the other hand, had his Epic Love story with Katherine, and it ruined him. Then he tried to make Elena The Good Woman Whose Love Would Save Him... and in 1x22 the narrative told him he's being ridiculous. Damon is over Epic Love. He's grown out of it. He wants Elena, but he wants the Elena who is a pleasure to challenge, the Elena who challenges him, the Elena who thinks outside the box, the Elena who dares to show him the ugliest parts of her. A traditional romantic relationship would be such a disappointment! Damon wants it to be real, and if it is to be real, it can't be conventional. I think he would be deeply unhappy if Elena started treating him the way she treated Stefan.
Ugh, I apologize for the word vomit. I'm still upset after 3x20, and anxious about the finale, and I deal by sharing random D/E thoughts with people, whether they want it or not :(. I'm not even arguing with you (since what I've written has little to do with your comment), I'm just babbling to soothe myself. Meh, I should probably just set up a discussion post instead of suddenly attacking you with word vomits.
I'm not talking about some traditional romance, I'm talking about your standard contrivance where the two people who love each other and want to be together can't for some DUMB reason. With Damon and Elena, I'd even be in love with the plot line of them wanting each other, them knowing they want each other, and then they choose not to be together for some reason that ~torments them. I'd love angsty stuff like that. But I'd also like to see them in the functioning relationship they were in from 3x06-3x11 or so WITH SEX. That would be fine with me too.
I get what you're saying about everything about them being non-traditional--but my point is if Damon and Elena were together in a stable relationship ala Stefan and Elena in S2 it would never look or feel like that relationship, because it's DAMON AND ELENA.
As for Damon being over epic love--really? I think the only thing that will really cure him of that is actual death. I mean, his dying words to Elena were that he would still make all the same awful mistakes of blaming his brother for his loving Katherine as long as it would still lead him to her. ROMANTIC MUCH? The romantic-est. He can't help it, he was born that way.
It's funny that I can have faith that the writers won't ruin Damon and Elena, IF THEY WILL JUST GIVE US DAMON AND ELENA. I don't know why, but I just feel that way.
[word vomits make me think, so I'm okay with it. ;-)]
Oh yes, I could totally see the friendship they had in 3x08-3x09 (I'm making it more narrow, because I'm too much in love with All The Teamwork there to not single it out), but with sex ;). I'm sorry if I sounded too harsh - I am aware that you weren't referring to Damon and Elena having some teenage puppy love. I just had a need to natter about D/E, because it helps me convince myself that the finale won't be a total fuck-up. I'm glad you don't mind ;).
I think the only thing that will really cure him of that is actual death.
And yet he manages to mock Stefan all the time (suggesting a gardenia? seriously, Damon? ;) ), snark "how romantic" when he has a chance, and when Elena practically jumps his bones in 3x19, he doesn't assume she did it out of love, and he doesn't mind. I mean, when Katherine came to him in 2x01, he stopped a very promising foreplay to ask if she loved him, and he actually said "fireworks and rocket's red glare", but when Elena openly ogles his bare chest in 3x19, he says "I don't want to live up to anyone's expectations", and then just makes out with her, no questions asked. I see change here. Damon has romantic delusions in his head, but he learned the hard way that they're only fun if they stay there. Which is why I said he is disappointed by romance. With Elena, he would have moments here and there, just enough to indulge himself, but I don't think he wants Elena to love him the way he wanted Katherine to love him.
It's funny that I can have faith that the writers won't ruin Damon and Elena, IF THEY WILL JUST GIVE US DAMON AND ELENA. I don't know why, but I just feel that way.
That might be because right now, Damon is about the only character that still makes sense...
I honestly think Damon's mocking of Stefan is a self-mocking kind of thing. I mean, we have him saying "how romantic" about Elena letting Stefan drink her blood in 2x08, and then in 3x18, his fantasy is that she feeds him her blood to save his life. He's not going blindly into anything anymore, 'tis true, but that doesn't mean he doesn't still want it with his whole heart. Damon's a lover, and he loves with everything he is; to me it's a no brainer that he wants that in return, but he is pragmatic enough that he'd be happy if she just wanted him back.
I just want him to finally be loved as much as he loves. /Damon stan 4 life.
I really wish they had explored slavery more, but I'm not surprised the network chickened out. Once upon a time I read some things about the civil war written by a Southerner in 1900, and it was just mindblowing... The way those people thought? I wouldn't know how to depict that in fiction. 90% of the audience would never believe that a mindset like that is possible.
Emily must've been quite a puzzle for Damon. I could easily believe that he genuinely liked her, but he was also used to seeing the slaves as eternal children that needed to be taken care of. From what we see about Emily, she was NOTHING like that, and Damon is a perceptive boy; he must've noticed.
Thank you for reading, and I'm glad my obnoxious linking didn't scare you off! I really try not to do it, ever; I assume that my masterpost is right there, as a sticky post, so if anyone's interested, they can get to any post they want. But in this case, our discussion naturally drifted very close to what I wrote here, and I simply failed at summarizing three pages of meta in one paragraph in a comment.
ETA: And of course if you ever want to bounce off ideas, I am ready :).
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But today I made up a theory that proves that Elena will certainly either go for Damon, or tell both of them to leave her alone. I have no idea if it makes any sense, but it makes me feel better, so I'm sticking to it ;).
Reply
What is the name of the TVD bigbang comm? I might have belonged to it once, but I don't think I do now. I need to rejoin for the duration so I know what's going on!
Reply
I'm still brainstorming the theory ;). The general gist is that if the writers want to set up a S/E finale, they need to follow a certain convention they've already started: the convention of Epic Love That Conquers All. It's a very stereotypical convention, I'd even call it a cliche, so it has certain rules that are practically set in stone. The writers don't work just with S/E; they also have Damon in the mix, the triangle is the premise of the show, so whatever happens, Damon has to be narratively compatible with S/E storyline.
So if we have a heroine choosing between two men, and the narrative is to unironically tell the cliche story of Epic Love (and that's how S/E was framed in 3x20), the unchosen man has to be the villain. There is no way around it. Damon has to be objectively unacceptable, end of story. So setting up a S/E finale would require re-establishing the Good Brother vs Bad Brother dichotomy... and it's not happening? 3x19-3x20 consequently frame Damon as a fairly decent guy (or at least as decent as Damon gets). For a S/E finale, Damon would have to be written as the Carnal Temptation to Stefan's Mr Right. 3x19 would've ended with Elena telling someone that she just wants to jump Damon's bones (or, you know, with Elena just jumping Damon's bones); instead, we got Rose's Shipper Manifesto that was all about how Damon makes Elena grow as a person. In 3x20, we would've gotten Damon following his original plan and snapping Alaric's neck just to be on the safe side (preferably right in front of screaming and crying Elena); instead, he's shown at his most vulnerable, sincerely mourning his friend.
So S/E as it stands alone looks like we're going to get an Epic Love That Conquers All finale, but Damon as he is now can't be fitted into this kind of narrative. He isn't framed as the third party in the Epic Love That Conquers All story. So either the writers lost their minds and wrote a finale that makes no fucking sense (which... not impossible after everything that was wrong with 3x20), or S/E right now is just a smokescreen that builds some artificial angst for the finale.
Damn. Wordiness. AGAIN!
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On that Negative Nellie note, I will say that I have to remember how much I've loved this show, and the development of D/E and I should be able to hold on to the positive that far outweighs the negative, and so reading your thoughts here helps with that. Despite Julie Plec's weird ideas about EPIC LOVE, I have to believe she doesn't intend to ruin her female protagonist entirely. *hope, hope, hope*
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So I wouldn't expect a confession, and I wouldn't expect any happily-ever-after scenery. We're in the middle of the show, and Damon is firmly established as a metaphor of adulthood, so making him The Boyfriend could actually harm his narrative. There might be some acknowledgement, the way Elena acknowledged Damon in 3x19 by staring at him openly. I would expect something in the lines of "We have an understanding" rather than "I love you". I'm kind of hoping for it? I'm hoping for them to forge a unique kind of relationship, not a love story like twenty other love stories. Damon challenges her. Damon makes her question things. If she reacts to it by wanting to have a traditional romantic relationship with him, then what was the point of Damon?
And Damon, on the other hand, had his Epic Love story with Katherine, and it ruined him. Then he tried to make Elena The Good Woman Whose Love Would Save Him... and in 1x22 the narrative told him he's being ridiculous. Damon is over Epic Love. He's grown out of it. He wants Elena, but he wants the Elena who is a pleasure to challenge, the Elena who challenges him, the Elena who thinks outside the box, the Elena who dares to show him the ugliest parts of her. A traditional romantic relationship would be such a disappointment! Damon wants it to be real, and if it is to be real, it can't be conventional. I think he would be deeply unhappy if Elena started treating him the way she treated Stefan.
Ugh, I apologize for the word vomit. I'm still upset after 3x20, and anxious about the finale, and I deal by sharing random D/E thoughts with people, whether they want it or not :(. I'm not even arguing with you (since what I've written has little to do with your comment), I'm just babbling to soothe myself. Meh, I should probably just set up a discussion post instead of suddenly attacking you with word vomits.
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I get what you're saying about everything about them being non-traditional--but my point is if Damon and Elena were together in a stable relationship ala Stefan and Elena in S2 it would never look or feel like that relationship, because it's DAMON AND ELENA.
As for Damon being over epic love--really? I think the only thing that will really cure him of that is actual death. I mean, his dying words to Elena were that he would still make all the same awful mistakes of blaming his brother for his loving Katherine as long as it would still lead him to her. ROMANTIC MUCH? The romantic-est. He can't help it, he was born that way.
It's funny that I can have faith that the writers won't ruin Damon and Elena, IF THEY WILL JUST GIVE US DAMON AND ELENA. I don't know why, but I just feel that way.
[word vomits make me think, so I'm okay with it. ;-)]
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I think the only thing that will really cure him of that is actual death.
And yet he manages to mock Stefan all the time (suggesting a gardenia? seriously, Damon? ;) ), snark "how romantic" when he has a chance, and when Elena practically jumps his bones in 3x19, he doesn't assume she did it out of love, and he doesn't mind. I mean, when Katherine came to him in 2x01, he stopped a very promising foreplay to ask if she loved him, and he actually said "fireworks and rocket's red glare", but when Elena openly ogles his bare chest in 3x19, he says "I don't want to live up to anyone's expectations", and then just makes out with her, no questions asked. I see change here. Damon has romantic delusions in his head, but he learned the hard way that they're only fun if they stay there. Which is why I said he is disappointed by romance. With Elena, he would have moments here and there, just enough to indulge himself, but I don't think he wants Elena to love him the way he wanted Katherine to love him.
It's funny that I can have faith that the writers won't ruin Damon and Elena, IF THEY WILL JUST GIVE US DAMON AND ELENA. I don't know why, but I just feel that way.
That might be because right now, Damon is about the only character that still makes sense...
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I just want him to finally be loved as much as he loves. /Damon stan 4 life.
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