#wtf happened with damon and stefan

[hyperactivewhore]

Can't let gang know the ending of TVD physically and emotionally destroyed me

[midlandslady]

Writers and audience impact

I hate hate hate when the writers/ producers/ directors wait for the audience's reaction to see if they should push a pairing in or not.

Like wtf? By the time they get our reaction, we have already been fed a story. And some of us will have loved it and others hated it but it was the story they created. Changing the pairing later based on the fandoms is so f* stupid.

I have stopped watching countless of tv shows because of this.

Examples: Vampire diaries. I really liked it at that time of my life. And I liked Stefan and Elena. They were a bit too lovey-dovey and boring? Yes, but I liked them. The story was about them. The books too. But because Damon was more handsome and sexier and had, according to the audience, better chemistry with Elena, they decided to give what the audience preferred, going against the original book.

The 100 is an odd example. Everyone loved Bellamy and Clarke, they are also the romantic pairing in the book. But the tv show created such a deep profound connection between them that was better than the book. It was an enemies-to-lovers trope developed to perfection. But what did they do? They destroyed it in what seems to be a clear defiance of what the public loved and the book. It made no sense at all. I stopped watching when I realized it was going in that direction and decided to wait for the finale. And I'm so glad I did. Horrible thing. I hate even the memory of having loved it.

Another example. Never have I ever. Yes, Paxton was the hot boy that we should begin to hate at some point in a very cliché fashion. And Ben is the rival that will become a friend and then a lover. All good. But then they developed Paxton and Paxton was ten thousand times better than Ben. And by the end of season 1 and particularly season 2, I was sure Team Paxton had won. But I was wrong. There comes the shift. For 2 seasons I loved Devi and Paxton but then all that development and fairytale-like ending is put into the garbage and I am supposed to pretend it never happened because now the main pairing is Ben and Devi. I did not watch season 3 and season 4. To me, it ended in season 2 and what an amazing ending it was.

So yes, I was afraid that House of the Dragon would be the same. They created a story between Daemon and Rhaenyra in season 2 that was special and magical in a very hauntingly gothic fashion. It was perfection, the chemistry, the between-the-lines feelings, the desire, the attraction, the frustration. My god, we could feel it all. And every episode was so exciting because of that. People loved it, not everyone, but most people loved it. People were in love with Daemyra and with Daemon and with Matt Smith. There were hundreds of videos on youtube, pages on the internet talking about it, it was everywhere. It couldn't have been more successful. But the writers somehow, despite creating such a beautiful thing, were surprised that the public loved it so much. So they came out saying: you're seeing it wrong. Daemon is mean, evil, selfish and cruel and you need to see that. So they create a season 2 to make us hate daemon, to make us fall out of love with Daemyra. Yet they were fearful of pushing it too far so they still gave us a happy ending to keep us satisfied. But are they waiting to see if we have given up on Daemyra and would be more open to other pairings that they wish to introduce? I want to believe they won't do it, but do I trust it 100%? Of course not. Similarly, they are giving contrary information about Helaemond to see how we react and if they can push it or move away from it in season 3. I also think they didn't make Rhaena claim sheepstealer to see how fans would react to the potential elimination of Nettles. And I hate that they do it! Just be consistent, for god's sake! Write the damn story as you did before knowing how the public would react but be consistent with what you started.

[upper-echelon-h3arts]

*MFG group chat*

Caroline: I'm bringing the pot roast.

Damon: Hooray, potroast....

Alaric: potroast yum

Kai: Period.

Elena: Yay! I'll make the deviled eggs.

Damon: Again?!

Kai: Sksksksk

Caroline: I was going to bring deviled eggs Elena!

Stefan: Please don't.

Alaric: Somebody needs a hug...

Kai: MOOD

Elena: BUT I ALREADY BOILED THE EGGS!

Bonnie: Everybody quit yelling!!!

Damon: Kai if you don't shut the hell up

Kai: Hey Siri text Bonnie what are you wearing

Kai: I mean-

Kai: Auto correct

Caroline: OMG when did this happen??!

Elena: Congratulations! I'm so happy for you!!

Damon: Bon Bon fr

Bonnie: shut up

Caroline: what did I do?

Bonnie: not you

Bonnie: red dress coming over latee

Bonnie: fck

Bonnie: stupid auto correct

*Bonnie has left the chat

Caroline: where did she go??

Alaric: this is unacceptable

Damon: No sh*t

Elena: hey be nice

Stefan: shut up

Kai: BURN

Damon: 😂🤣🤣🤣

Caroline: ..well it is kind of funny

Elena: really Care you're one to talk

Caroline: I was talking about Bonnie wtf...

*Jeremy logged into the chat

Jeremy: hey guys what did I miss?

*Alaric has left the chat

*Caroline has left the chat

*Elena has left the chat

*Stefan has left the chat

Damon: Bon Bon is screwing Kai

Jeremy: huh?

Kai: I'M SCREWING YOUR EX

[aka-efirg]

ok bit a background and context for something i'm gonna post later (probably... eventually... if i manage to finish it) but in the meanwhile

time-travel idea from an au which has been living non-stop in my head for the last weeks. in this au (no details, just ideas floating around), instead of damon and elena dating, there is this weird dating?not dating? denzo which is hella confusing to everyone because they're close always touching and being in each other space but!!!? we just saw damon making out with a random girl and enzo being cool??? about it so they're not dating then? right?!? (i just love the idea of undefined relationship between damon and enzo, just them being bestfriends and maybe they have sex maybe not) (somewhere in the other side alaric is groaning and despairing because "of course they're not just bestfriends!! damon and i weren't like that!! i mean yeah damon doesn't know what personal space is when drunk and is all over you whether you want it or not but we weren't like t h a t" but nobody can hear him (except maybe jeremy who chooses to ignore alaric because? he doesn't want to know or more importantly he doesn't want to think about what damon and enzo do in their free time thank you very much!))

okay i didn't plan on going that much into denzo (seriously the bestfriends ambiguous as hell thing l o v e. i t!)

but what is important to know is the things with hell happened (different from canon, notably no katherine as queen of hell) it's all cade and they failed to stop him so hellfire starts spreading and everyone is killed one by one. important thing to know now is last scene of this au is bonnie who just got killed with caroline arriving to see damon on the ground with bonnie in his arms (enzo and stefan already dead) and then she gets killed by cade. cade is about to kill damon with hellfire but before he gets burned he finds himself in front of emily who tells him he'll have a chance to start over because with cade winning, there is no balance anymore. with nothing left to lose damon accepts and emily sends him back to the past

so damon is thrown back during season 2, where everyone hates him and doesn't trust him at all, his last memories being caroline (with whom he developed an okay relationship) and bonnie (bestfriend and one of his favorite people) dying. he feels very disconnected (everyone is so young, only caroline is a vampire and even then she's a very baby vampire and bonnie hates him, his brother distrusts him) and there is a change in his behavior so obvious everyone notices and is very suspicious of it and it's too much for him. and then he remembers enzo is still a prisoner to augustine so damon leaves because he can't leave enzo to be tortured when he knows he's alive

bottom line, things happen with damon having memories from the previous timeline and with enzo present who is very disturbed by his friend because?!? fifty years alone and the man who abandoned him and left him to die suddenly comes back to free him, killing everyone on his way (he's still a bit convived this is a very elaborated hallucination) and then tells him he killed the woman he loved and he is acting so strange wtf? he's the one who was prisoner and alone and tortured for decades?? why damon looks worse than him?!

[frost-queen]

Obsessed Elijah Mikaelson x human Salvatore reader plssss j would love to see a fic were the reader was damons and stefans niece thats a human and they love and care for her even if they are vampires just like elena the reader is their soft spot and one day during the whole Elijah Fiasco the reader was there on accident and for some reason they were drawn to eachother especially elijah he wanted her and wanted to corrupt her for some reason that pleased him since damon and stefan kept pissing him off he wanted to take the reader. The reader as she is is a stubborn girl just like her uncles and always banters at elijah and makes a witty remark but little did the reader know Elijah was getting obsessed with her as he secretly watched her throughout the day stefan and damon wanted Elijah away as they still didny trust him because of Klaus one day the reader gets into an argument with her uncles and storms off as she was further away from the salvatore residence she sees Elijah and she alwaus felt reassured by him she liked him as much as she didbt want to admit the reader asks elijah if she can stay with him for the night and she does the reader shared a bed with elijah and the reader for a few months have been doing this and he gets even more obsessed the reader finds out and teases him about it and he couldnt take it anymore as he slammed his lips onto hers the moment was interrupted by the salvatore, elena, and the other mikaelsons being like “wtf???” But klaus cheeky as ever teases Elijah

Obessed Elijah gosh thank God he his gorgeous 😄😄😄 it's been a while since I wrote for tvd or the originals so any specific scene's that happened in the series are a blur, but I will do my best ✌️

[kmze]

Just wanted to let you know that after our discussion on s7,I looked up on YouTube and found this one interview that had Plec,King,Neil and Melinda talking about the season.And I laughed because what they said and what happened was so so different.This proves, yet again, that what writers say in interviews are either lies or they mostly make up sh** to bait and switch.I mean we already knew julie wasn't involved in that season but she straight-up made up a scene where Caroline wasn't ready to leave Stefan behind when Stefan's life was in danger.And Neil said they knew going from s6 that the long arc of s7 would be about Damon-Bonnie and Stefan-Caroline.I don't remember Bamon and Bonnie getting importance at all except the first few episodes and the last few episodes although most of that was happening in Enzo's presence.The only two things that remained constant were Plec blaming Candice for getting pregnant and Dries for the flash forwards.Unbelievable!

Oh Anon I had no idea they did hour long podcasts for each season a few years ago until this! I've seen snippets of the clips on Twitter but I didn't realize it was a whole series. So I watched it and I actually felt like it validated my theory that Dries was behind so much of the S7 fuckery. There's a part where Julie says she can't do "math" storylines and that Dries whole pitch about the FF involved that so that's why she stepped away from the plotting of that. Makes sense Dries would use that to be like "oh don't worry I got this whole plan it's gonna be great" and Julie believed her until she started seeing the finished episodes (while they aired apparently *sigh*) and was like WTF. I feel like Neil and Melinda were talking about what they thought the season was going to be about with continuing the arc but then Dries derailed that.

I mean Neil's episodes had good Bonnie and Bamon in them (7x04 then later 7x21) so it makes sense he'd say that even if overall it wasn't a lot. That's because Dries hates Bonnie and I remember her being so rude to Kat at SDCC before that season aired when Kat was talking about how fans liked Bamon. Julie hates it too but at she'll at least give importance to their friendship, Dries does everything in her power to exclude it. Julie also said how Stefan and Caroline's storyline changed once Candice told them she was pregnant. I thought there was going to be way more Lily/Caroline/Stefan in S7 especially in regards to vampirism/ripper-dom but instead Valerie got inserted there. I remember how in 7x01 Valerie has straight light brown hair and then it becomes curlier and blonder as the season progresses and I know that was intentional.

I think the lazy development of Bonnie and Enzo falls on her too! I know a lot of people like them but I just find them so basic, I never like ships with so little build-up like that. They also talked about how they had to connect the FF with the current episode and I feel like that caused BS too like Stefan burning the car and needing to say in the present "do whatever you want but do not touch my car" was a jab at SC because Lily was holding Caroline captive.

Edited to add: OMG there was a lot sorry, I don't know what Julie was talking about with the motel scene and Candice seemed to confuse it with the scene in 7x12(I think?) when Matt saved her in news studio but, Neil was the only one who knew what he was talking about there. He summed up the 7x21 scene as at first how Stefan didn't respect Caroline's choice (TO DIE FFS) by being caveman-y but then they talked it out and why he did it. But that scene has wayyyy more nuance to it in the overall character of Stefan that can't be explained in a podcast setting like that.

[kiss-my-freckle]

Dean would never give up on Sam the way Stefan gave up on Damon in season 6. That's a fact. Dean would've walked into the 1994 prison world like... wtf kind of purgatory is this, Sam?

Still, TVD should've had a Castiel. That's why I'm like... you mean to tell me Elena is half angel in the books? Seriously, though. How you gonna have a devil, but not an angel. How you gonna have Cade, but not give someone like Sybil a pair of wings.

Everything should have an opposite. Just look at how the writers write. Elena shifts from her birthday to her death, from glass half empty to completely empty, from lighting lanterns to torching her house, from one cell to another. Silas proves my point. Damon should've been home in 3x22. Suck it up, Stef... find out where you went wrong. Make out with Katherine/Elena in that motel, find out what happened between Damon and Elena in Denver.

[gold-wolf-soldier13]

So I’m watching Friendly Space Ninja’s video on the Originals cause I never watched it but my mom and sister swear by it and in the last hour he mentions that he thinking literally anybody could play Elena Gilbert, that it didn’t have to be Nina Dobrev and I 100% agree!! but not for most of the reasons most fans would.

So I started reading the original Vampire Diaries books back in like, the late 2000’s/early 2010’s so look I think I’ve got skin in the game here even if it’s been a minutes since I read them and I have never watch past the pilot episode of the tv show honestly because of Nina Dobrev

Like no hate to her she gets enough of it honestly but when people started talking about The Vampire Diaries as a tv series, she was the last person I would have picked simply because, well honestly she wasn’t fucking blonde.

And like I get it, “Gold that’s so shallow wtf” but Eleana Gilbert is a Very Special Character to me and I could have gotten over Elena not being Blonde™️ if they didn’t, seconds later introduce Jeremy and Not Aunt Judith I literally don’t remember her name on the show whoops and that shit took me out.

Aunt Judith and Margaret while never heavily involved in Elena’s supernatural struggles were a very integral part of her character, like fuckin spoilers for a book over 20 years old but keeping Margaret safe is one of Elena’s first interactions with Damon!!! he threatens her baby sister and she gives into him, letting him drink her blood against her will to keep him from doing anything to Margaret.

Elena is a bitch, she is kinda selfish and shallow- she’s a teenager!! she’s kinda supposed to be! She’s Queen Bee of Robert E. Lee High School and she didn’t get there by being fucking nice but she was never actively malicious- just a teenage girl who was used to getting everything she wanted because people just liked her and the showrunners for the tv show were fucking cowards

Because the tv show came out after Twilight even though the source material was written well before, TVD had to be like Twilight and that meant there was a love triangle and over the top dramatics because that’s just what the genre was at the time. Now I’m not saying that the book series didn’t have a love triangle but it just felt different in the book cause you knew from jump that it was always going to be Elena/Stefan, there was no way in hell that she was gonna end up with Damon and everyone knew that.

Which is what made the beginning of book 3 (I think I can’t remember, I owned the omnibus versions and I’m at work rn and can’t fact check myself) so shocking and actually made me ship Elena and Damon for a while. Elena had just died, run off the bridge that had killed her parents something the tv show actually gets right but she survives cause she and Damon had shared blood very recently and when she wakes up as a vampire, she has no memory of anyone besides Damon and for that brief moment Elena was honestly That Bitch™️ until she got her memories back and stopped being a bit of a menace

But even after that she handled her transformation really maturely from what I remember and from what I know of the show, that doesn’t happen and it’s a huge disservice to Elena as a character and Nina Dobrev as an actress because she was handicapped from the beginning by the showrunners!!

The writers purposefully chose to make Elena this timid, wallflower, whiney, “girl-next-door” type of character then didn’t understand why no one liked her as the main character and gave all of Elena’s best traits and story beats to Caroline. They kneecapped Elena from the start, designed her into a corner then floundered when their choices came back to bite them.

Elena Gilbert is the driving force behind the plot of The Vampire Diaries, and it’s such a shame the people in charge didn’t understand that because the show could have been so much better if they’d just embraced the material they had instead of trying to be Twilight and making her another version of Bella Swan.

[katherineholmes]

2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 18, 19!

2. a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

Well, I don't see Elijah ever agreeing to bottom. He has those soft dom vibes going on, the casual condescension, the mocking, just general Elijah fuckery as Feral said recently. He has control issues, not as bad as Klaus, but he wants to control every piece on the board, he wants to be the one to solve the problems, he was put into the role of protector/caretaker a long time ago, and he both wants and needs it. So I can't see him bottoming, the only time it might happen is if Elena is topping from the bottom (which is pretty much how their dynamic is anyway.)

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

I've already answered that here.

5. worst discord server and why

Uhhh, there was a dark fic server that I was a part of for a while, where the mod just went crazy. He wouldn't enable emoticons or sending media in channels and we had to ask him every single time. And then he got into a fight with another member on the server, and started mocking anyone who tried to explain her point in the argument.

It was weird, when I pointed out that his behaviour was childish and unacceptable, he said 'lol', so I left, and we all made our own server.

6. which ship fans are the most annoying?

Nian - I still see edits of those two, and how they should be together. It was so toxic when s6 of TVD was filming and airing, honestly just terrible. A makeup artist came forward and said Nina was pushed into a corner by Ian, death threats were sent to Nikki Reed, YT edits were made, an entire section of fans wished Ian would leave Nikki to be with Nina. All three of them were pitted against each other in every permutation and combination, it got so bad that Ian Somerhalder has openly discussed his dislike for the section of fans who harassed his wife to that extent, and I don't blame him.

9. worst part of canon

I've already mentioned the sire bond in a different ask, so it's going to be the Travellers because wtf was that. Even now, I don't understand what their motive was. I mean what is it with the TVD writers and their inability to write romance? Want Delena together - sire bond, want Stelena together - mystical doppelgänger soulmates.

I'm also not a fan of the fact that they made Stefan a doppelgänger, they had extremely compelling doppelgängers in the form of Katherine and Elena and yet, instead of showing them bond or work together we get them fighting over a guy, I mean, why? Just why?

18. it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

Tyler/Jeremy - Those two had chemistry, they hated each other, they fought each other, but Jeremy is extremely sympathetic towards Tyler when he learns that his dad is abusive. I will die on this hill, but Jeremy should've been the one to help Tyler through his werewolf transition.

It should've been Jeremy doodling nonsense to keep Tyler's spirits up, it should've been Jeremy in the cellar, helping Tyler during the first full moon, it should've been Tyler getting Damon to back off from Jeremy, it should've been Jeremy, Tyler and Elena bonding on movie nights. The chemistry between Tyler and Jeremy is fire, they are tortured artists, grieving, their lives upended by the supernatural even though they aren't directly related to it. I need more Tyler and Jeremy (and I'm going to write it into one of my fics too).

19. you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

Lucien Castle. I was always a bit indifferent towards him, until he killed my girl Cami, then I hated him. But even on rewatch, knowing what he's done, I'm still a bit intrigued about him. I've recently been analysing his character a bit for a fic, and I can't help but like him. He's a little like Klaus, but he's so compelling just as he is, which is a shame, because all he wants to be is like Klaus.

I still believe he had a lot of potential, even more than what they had showed. He's the true beginning of the downfall of the Mikaelsons, and he's creepy af, not to mention what he did to Cami. But truly, he works for hundreds of years just to take the Mikaelsons down, and actually succeeds, even Klaus is running scared of him. Even if he died, the damage was done.

[directioner5life]

are human partners like dogs to vampires ? you love them, but they die cause their life is longer than yours and then get a new one…

[zalrb]

why is enzo irrelevant according to you?

from another post of mine that i wrote when season 7 was on air:

The way he’s written reminds me of university students who lost their way, like oh I thought I’d be good at psychology but I don’t like it let’s try sociology let’s try English let’s try math — that is like Enzo and his stupid storylines: let me be Damon’s bff oh that didn’t work let me try to find Maggie oh that didn’t pan out let me be have a thing for Caroline oh wait she’s involved in another romantic storyline let me be obsessed with destroying Stefan’s life oh that didn’t make any sense, let me get involved with Sarah oh that was a waste of time, let me fall in love with Lily oh wait she belongs to the Salvatore brothers, let me be obsessed with finding family now, LIKE PICK A FUCKING MAJOR ENZO. JFC. (and this is a current insertion: obviously characters have different storylines my issue with Enzo was that it felt like the writers were just throwing things at him to see what stuck and nothing stuck, nothing had narrative or emotional impact or weight, no follow through that led to an arc that influenced the show and the characters or Enzo for that matter in any real way)What would’ve made more sense is if Enzo was a partner in crime of Damon’s back in the day and he came to Mystic Falls to raise hell and saw that Elena had neutered Damon and was like, dude what the fuck? Remember when we used to be freaking beasts? Let’s run this town! And Damon goes through a crisis of identity or whatever. That would’ve been cool. But no.

a calmer reiteration

Anonymous asked:

I thought Enzo had potential when first brought on. He could've been a thorn in Damon's side because Damon left him. They quickly did away with that story because evry1 has to luuuvv Damon. They could've delved deeper into how his experience shaped him but nope there was no meat to his story. Then his horrible sl last season, y in the world would he be after Stefan? That's the kind of sense jp/cd have though NO SENSE non sense. From MM interview I think jp felt bad about how she screwed up his character, he also had another offer but they wanted him to stay and he did all for s6 mess. So knowing this jp probably thought putting Enzo with Bonnie would make up for it, trying to give him more of a relevant sl. I feel like she’s doing this with MD character Ric. She knows he’s irrelevant so she incorporated him into a lead’s sl. Enzo should’ve died in s5 and Ric should’ve stayed dead. If there were more competent ppl running tvd then they could’ve wrote a sl for both that made sense.

Ehh, I never cared for Enzo tbh and never thought he was relevant especially since I was angry that TVD introduced yet another character and was doing nothing with Matt and Tyler and Jeremy in season 5 or in season 6 and in season 6 they added Liv and Luke too, which is a TVD problem, they keep adding characters instead of flushing out the ones they already have so I always resented Enzo. If there HAD to be an Enzo, though, I would give him an entirely different storyline and instead of being the poor guy that Damon left to burn and years of torture blah blah blah (which was a storyline that served to make Damon more sympathetic instead of giving history on Enzo as a character) I would make Enzo an old partner in crime from Damon’s past and have him come back and be like, “Dude wtf happened to you? You’re whipped. I don’t even recognize you anymore, the Damon Salvatore I knew was a fucking BEAST” and would basically have Damon assess what his life has become, who he’s become, how he doesn’t feel like himself and get him to start all kinds of shit in MF but instead he was just a physical symbol of Damon’s guilt and conscience and blah blah fucking blah. And then in season 6, like him being OBSESSED with destroying Stefan was just, WHY, WHY ARE YOU HERE? this makes NO sense. he was just around doing shit that no one cared about. And yes, you’re right they incorporated him into a central sl this season to make him more relevant which is why they paired him with Bonnie even though that makes absolutely no sense and it’s a rush job. Alaric should’ve stayed dead in season 3 and done it. But Julie likes Matt so she brought him back. The only character Julie was adamant on killing was Bonnie in season 5 and Kat had to lay out all the reasons why Bonnie should return in season 6.

Like he'd been on the show for three seasons and I still don't really know who he's supposed to be as a character or what the point of him was other than to eventually become a consolation prize for Bonnie fans.

[movedtovervainbrokemyheart]

@@@@@

@foretoldchaos literally made me fall in love with Zemo and like I literally didn't think that was a thing that would ever happen. lmao. I mean I loved him in FATWS. But I remember prior to meeting the mun I was like, I am never shipping with a Zemo, ever. Next thing I know I'm in love with Zemo and Aria's dynamic and I have a ship with Zemo. Listen the universe loves irony. Larry needs to die tho. Our stucky will slowly kill me as well. I'm feeling like it may do me in one of these days. I'm fine with it. It's a good way to go. I love to read the writing even if it's not with me, tbh. Just such a good time. Also Steve? Chef's kiss. Love him. Love him so much. Bucky and Violet both said so.

@fatedtragedie listen we talk almost every day now? And I swear our rps make me either so happy or so sad. Sometimes it’s a rollercoaster. The discord stuff is usually lighter than our tumblr threads which is so funny to me like wtf is that? But, our ships are so so good and I’d probably write anyone for you ever if you asked. You’re so sweet and chill and I know I can talk to you about whatever and you aren’t gonna jump down my throat or make me feel bad which for me is lmao kind of impossible at times. The writing is so great too and I swear that Stony thread gives me so many feelings. Not to mention Violet and Tony reuniting after endgame. I want to cry but not really bc If I actually cry it means downward spiral. So just pretend I cried. You’re one of my favorite people ever.

@twxcesaved I’ve always loved the Raimi! movies but a lot of people just don’t and for a long time I felt kind of weird about admitting they were my favorites. But then I came across your blog and it was like....is it cool? am I cool? I love it sm. I love this entire blog and all the rps on both my blogs and the mun is so so nice. Honestly, last night I got random pats, you know who loves random pats?? ME??

@ofdamages is awesome and I love our Damon and Stefan brother vibes. I do want to do more there. But the ooc chat is also a vibe. It’s easy and chill and sometimes we can just look at the lunacy of things and laugh about it. I appreciate that with my oc’s you want to make sure you get things right when you do little lists and things about them or headcanons. It’s like such a little nice thing you do. I also love to hear about your day tbh. So just all around rad. I love the writing too. I’ve written most with like Damon I think? But we will change that soon I promise.

@pantslessoptimism i’ll never spell your url right as long as I live. honestly, i’m going to resign myself to the fact that it’s not happening LMAO. what is happening? you. you are a cool cat. I love Sophie so much and I am glad that I have Spencer and some others here to appreciate her because AC and Ric are fucking trash. AC especially. When is someone going to make him go extinct like the dinosaurs. Actually, let’s exchange AC for the dinosaurs, who works in HR? I can set it up. Seriously though, she’s so fun and cool and I think it’s a lot of fun to chat ooc about stuff even if it’s mostly just me apologizing for AC because he’s such a bad person. Spencer will make up for it I promise. You are really nice and I’m glad to know you and write with you. 

[forbesromanoff]

My blog is slowly becoming a hate on TVD writers acc. Damn.

Well. Then lemme just say it:

Damon. Salvatore. Annoys. ME (I’m speaking from Season 1 to Season 3 for this)

First, Damon falling in love with Elena was so sudden? It just sorta happened? I don’t really get it, because he constantly complained about how annoying she was and stuff and then he suddenly would bend over backwards to do anything for her? Also, he deflects his responsibility so much. The way he treats Stefan and talks about Stefan disgusts me, ESPECIALLY when Stefan is being compelled by Klaus and has his humanity off because of Klaus. Maybe the way to go about this isn’t to belittle him and make sarcastic comics 24/7? Maybe you stop taking it out on Stefan/blaming Stefan for being compelled by Klaus and having his humanity turned off by Klaus, when Stefan did it to save YOUR life. TWICE. Maybe be mad at Klaus for this?

Also REALLY? Stealing your brother’s girlfriend and not caring about it hurting him, ADDING ON to EVERYTHING Stefan has done for you and Elena? THIS is how you repay him? Get with his gf while he’s off with Klaus? WOW. Damon’s like “why are you mad I love Elena it’s your fault blah blah blah” like WTF? THIS IS YOUR BROTHER’S FUCKING GIRLFRIEND AND YOU DO THIS TO HIM? I DONT CARE THAT YOU HAVE FEELINGS FOR ELENA. DONT DO THIS TO HIM. The worst part is that Stefan keeps caring about Elena and Damon and keeps saving them, when he doesn’t turn on his humanity because he doesn’t want to feel the pain that Damon and Elena have caused them. THEYRE NOT EVEN OWNING UP TO IT OR REGRETTING HURTING STEFAN.

Damon is NOT the better man. Stefan suffered SO MUCH for his ass and what has he done to repay him so far? Treat him like SHIT. This is your BROTHER who’s tried to hard. And Damon makes fun of him for not wanting to be a ripper knowing what he went through. This is not okay.

[galvanizedfriend]

ENZOOOO 🥺

-your shadow self

HELLO, MY SHADOW SELF ✨🤜🤛 Love to see you here! ❤️

First impression

- I wasn't that interested on Enzo when he first shows up as Damon's buddie? I don't know, it probably had to do with that whole Augustine plot, which i hated. So boring. And then that whole thing about him being in love with Mama Salvatore was just blergh. So not a great first impression tbh, I thought he was just there to fill the British accent quota left by the originals.

Impression now

- Still not a favorite tbh. 🤣 I think Enzo peaked for a while there when he started going rogue and had that hate to buddies thing with Caroline, which was probably my favorite Enzo part. But then he joins Damon with the sirens and all that crap, blargh. I didn't really watch much of the show around that time tbh, I was bored by everything and Enzo was just one of those things.

Favorite moment

- The whole Carenzo phase was the part where I really liked Enzo. He was his most charming and charismatic in those days, and I really loved him with Caroline. Was SO ready to board the SS Carenzo, but alas. :(

Idea for a story

- Involving Enzo lol That's tough. I don't usually include him in fics. I'm trying to think if I have him in any of my wips, but i'm not sure... I think the most I've used him was as Caroline's BFF in The Sound of Starbucks™.

Unpopular opinion

- Hated Bonenzo. It came out of nowhere and they had no chemistry. It was literally one day 'TA-DAM, THEY LOVE EACH OTHER!' All of their development and proximity happened through flashbacks. But I was still angry when they killed him at the end because wtf? They needed me to hate Stefan MORE at that point? Can't Bonnie catch a break and just be happy for once? Jesus.

Favorite relationship

- ✨Caroline✨

Favorite headcanon

- Enzo and Caroline ending up in Nola during that roadtrip of theirs. Can you imagine what Klaus would be like when he met Caroline's new *friend*? LOL And Enzo obviously about him from Damon, he would be all 'So that's your type, huh?' Oh man, that would've been awesome. SIGH.

Thanks for the ask, friend! ✨ Hope you have a great week!

[livlepretre]

I started watching TVD while season 5 was airing, and I loved it. I was so excited when I caught up, but quickly started losing interest. As a person who despises pregnancy plot lines that should be impossible and make no logical sense in canon, The Originals was always a lost cause for me. I also hated the oocness of the characters. I begrudgingly made my way through season 6 of TVD and honestly couldn’t make it through the first few episodes of season 7. At that point in time, I didn’t like the conflicts, how the show kept breaking its on mythology rules, and how most characters were acting out of character. I think it’s a total shame because I absolutely adore this universe and the characters attached to it. Canon divergent fics like yours allow me to enjoy what could have been. So, did you watch TVD all the way through? Did you watch The Originals? If not, what was the straw that broke the camel’s back and what plot lines and character arcs would you have liked to see on the show/shows? How would you have preferred the show to end? Finally, what kind of thoughts do you have when you hear crazy stuff that happened (ex. Caroline having Ric’s kids and him being in unrequited love with her or Legacies having their characters fight gargoyles, dragons, etc.. throughout Mystic Falls while Damon and Elena’s kids are still in town raising their own kids) Cuz sometimes I read things and I’m like WTF? Who thought this made sense?

Okay, wow, I love that you asked me these questions, because as it turns out I have been bugging my RL friends with my tormented TVD takes for years now. I’m going to put everything under a cut though because this answer promises to be very long. 

Edit: This got sort of stupid long. Read at your own risk haha. 

So, I think to answer this, I have to address the things I love so much about TVD and why I’m still thinking about it/writing fic for it years and years after it lost me. I’m going to take this chronologically because there’s a lot to unpack. 

What I loved

My introduction to TVD was over the summer before season 2 aired; I remember seeing the promotional materials on the CW before I left for college the fall before, and writing it off (which: fair of me, those season 1 promotions were abysmal). But luckily my sister, God bless her, understood me better than I understood myself and made me sit down and marathon the first season with her. I made fun of it pretty hard until the episode where Vicki got turned, and then an episode later got staked, which shut me up and got me paying attention. At some point over the course of the season that show went from haha laugh at it to holding my throat and there are sooo many good reasons for this. I remained hyperfixated throughout seasons 2-4, which I would religiously watch just as soon as I could pirate them. 

The thing about TVD was that it was, for several years, a master class in narrative structure. What I mean by this is that it did two things very very very well: 

1) one thing always led organically to the next -- the thing that actual kicks off the plot in TVD is Damon coming to town to open the tomb. From that point on, he opens the tomb, which leads to the tomb vamps escaping, which leads to Katherine taking notice, so she comes to Mystic Falls, which leads to others discovering Elena, which leads to Elijah, which leads to Klaus, and the other Originals. Very neatly done, and a wonderful, fast way of constantly shifting the action in believable and organic ways 

2) they had this thing where they would announce something cataclysmic, like opening the tomb or sacrificing the main character, or even dropping the veil in season 4/again (?) in season 5, and in most shows, the whole point would be to avert those things-- but TVD has this way of announcing the doom and then forcing us through it. 

There were other things-- stakes were high (ha! pun!) -- Vicki could get staked midway through season 1, Jenna could get killed in the sacrifice, and they could sweep the rug out from under you by having the whole premise of what you THOUGHT you understood about the show turn out to be untrue-- the first big instant of this was the certainty that Katherine was actually in the tomb and if the tomb was opened that Damon would save her-- finding out she was never in there at all was mind-boggling. Another really excellent moment I recall was 2x09-- so, the thing is, one of the biggest mysteries in the show up until that point was “Why does Elena look exactly like Katherine?” We knew/suspected she was a descendent, and the term doppelganger was bandied about, but it felt really shocking to have it LITERALLY be used in the mythology (to see your doppelganger is a sign of certain death, which it IS how CREEPY!) and then in 2x09, everything gets turned on its head AGAIN when we discover “it’s not that Elena looks like Katherine, it’s that Elena and Katherine look like someone else”-- the idea that KATHERINE is a doppelganger was earth shattering. This show. 

Also the way that the show played with audience expectations? Like, in 1x04, the audience expectation would be for Elena to be angry at Stefan and not trust him after Damon (or was it Caroline? It’s been years since I’ve watched) says some stuff intended to set her against Stefan. But instead she figures it out fast and comes back to slap Damon and apologize to Stefan. It was an early sign that the show would jump over the expected hurdles. One of the brilliant things it does too is play with the horror genre. The characters (in the early seasons) were some of the smartest on tv because they were genre savvy, and they thought like a real person would and not like a character so often-- I remember being amazed by how often they jumped over the obvious pitfalls and came to sound conclusions. 2x12 The Descent sticks out to me-- Elena versus the mad dying vampire. Also the entire daggering sequence in 2x16 is God tier, as well as Elena’s bargain with Elijah in 2x11. Hmm and also the way the show would even play with expectations based on the fact that it’s a show? The fact that Katherine and Mason were working together is still one of the greatest plot twists of all time in my opinion, not because of how left field it is or wild or anything, but because it should have been totally obvious but our expectations of season premiers made it totally camouflaged! Like, yes, Mason and Katherine DO show up at the exact same time... in 2x01, which is a season premier, so we as an audience know and expect that new characters will be introduced in that episode. The fact that the show knew that and played us for fools will always go down as a favorite moment for me. 

Well. Needless to say there are countless other amazing things. The darkness of the show and its commitment to exploring vampirism as a curse, and oddly a very human one, was mesmerizing. Damon breaking Jeremy’s neck. “I miss being human. I miss it more than anything in the world.” Elena slow moral decay. The shock and horror when Caroline is turned. The relationships between the brothers. The way that the gang can’t ever sit easy with each other-- that Bonnie sees how Damon and Stefan are a poison, how everyone lies to Tyler and it hurts him so he hurts them-- Katherine’s doomed history? Tragic. Beautiful. Amazing. 

I remember the fandom was a very different space in those early seasons too. The show was just so dreamy and frightening and dark. It was like a very bad dream you couldn’t wake up from and maybe also didn’t want to. The fics were kind of gloomy and frightening and people were much more willing to explore the monstrous side of the show. 

So. The issues that I had. 

The very first thing I remember feeling a twinge of unease about was when they put Katherine in the tomb in 2x07 only to take her out again in 2x09. I remember her getting sealed up in that tomb in 2x07 was HORRIFYING but also??? Brilliant? Justice? Amazing? It was taking out a villain when and how they said they were going to do it and I loved it. I didn’t quite like how she kept being an active role in the story, no matter how much I adore Katherine as a character, because it destroyed the impact of her in that tomb at all. If it were me, I would have put her in that tomb and saved her as a character, only to take her out like seasons down the road when the audience may have mostly forgotten about her and she could have been a secret ace. 

There were other ultimately minor things in season 2-- the sun and moon curse being a fake, for example-- which at the time ruffled me a bit but I was willing to just brush it off because, well, season 2 of The Vampire Diaries is unspeakably good. 

I went into season 3 with the same level of hyperfixation as I had in season 2 (read: immense). And those first 6 episodes were pretty damn near perfect, with 3x05 being like the horrible culmination of everything I, already a klaulena shipper, could ever want. 

My first sign that things were going in a weird direction was 3x07, Ghost World. I remember that episode feeling... weaker. Like, what was the point of Lexi having Elena torture Stefan? That didn’t seem to do anything at all. The Other Side stuff is something I pretty much disliked at the time but at this point I’m so used to it that I accept it as a kind of limbo space mostly for vampires (and also witches? but hopefully more pleasant and less of a wasteland of eternal wandering for witches than it is for vampires). 

3x08 Ordinary People was an abomination and I still hate it and everything built on it. So, at the end of season 2, Elijah says his family comes from Eastern Europe. A nice, normal answer that makes sense. It also dovetailed really well with Slavic vampire folklore, so there was a great tie in that felt right with the meta-awareness of the show (it was for a while very much so a vampire show about vampire shows, and the diaries were part of that meta level writing). The idea that they were VIKINGS in VIRGINIA in this random WEREWOLF SETTLEMENT gives me such a migraine that I don’t think I can go into it here. I hate it with an unflinching fury. I think I used the “Mikaelson” name once or twice in FE and I hate myself for that more than anything else I’ve ever done in my writing. It makes no sense and betrays the writers as not even having a very vague idea of history and it is like fingers on a chalkboard for me. My fingers, feeling all of that horrible chalky friction. ELIJAH THERE WERE NO WILD HORSES IN AMERICA A THOUSAND YEARS AGO. WHY ARE YOUR NAMES HALF VIKING AND HALF HEBREW EXCEPT FOR THE RANDOM GERMAN NAMES. WHY WHY WHY. 

Deep breath. 

The other thing I really hated in that episode was Rebekah’s “it’s a protection spell of course.” 

Honestly I think that was the actual sword plunging into TVD’s heart and the show just slowly bled out from there and I was so shocked and betrayed by that that it just took me years of trying to stop the hemorrhaging before I finally accepted that it was a mortal wound. 

You have to understand that I continued to watch seasons 3 and 4 the way an abandoned dog will wait for its owner to return. I just couldn’t help myself. It had been my favorite favorite show (and sort of still is?)

Well. Why did I hate this protection spell thing so much. TVD had made it very clear in the early seasons of the show that becoming a vampire was BAD. It was a fate worse than death. The whole angst of season 1 relies on us feeling the TRAGEDY when Giuseppe murders his sons and they become vampires. Because vampires in TVD aren’t inhuman, per se; they’re still the same person, they still have their souls, their consciences, their moralities... they’re just also saddled with this insatiable burning thirst for human blood that drives them to commit the very worst deeds, that drives them down these dark paths of horror and soul-scouring guilt as they repeatedly succumb, over and over and over and over again, to their worst impulses, until they finally stop caring and become monsters in truth. Until they forget about the simple warmth of a human connection, of good things like love and friendship and family. TVD made it clear that to be a vampire was to be in hell. It’s why Damon promises Stefan an eternity of misery. It’s why the group responds with HORROR when Caroline is turned in 2x02. It’s why Damon’s confession in 2x12 rips at our hearts, and why the stakes are so high when we wonder whether Elena will be a vampire at the end of season 2. The show is very clear that it’s not actually becoming a vampire that makes us monsters, but the actions we take once we become vampires that make us monsters... but that those actions are also nearly inevitable and precipitous once the transition occurs. It’s really tragic. 

I remember the summer before season 3 aired the fan spaces were all abuzz with speculation about “what could Klaus have done that was so bad that not only was the vampire curse inflicted on him, but also on his entire family?” (that was the prevailing theory for how he could be the “first” Original vampire-- he was the one who had actually done whatever the thing was that had precipitated what was OBVIOUSLY a vengeance curse.)

Ordinary People was like LOL! NOPE! Joke’s on you for thinking we were going to actually discuss self-destructive behavior and the human psyche through the metaphorical lens of vampirism ;) 

There were definitely other things in season 3 that bugged-- the serial killer thing was hard to follow (and I tend to criticize anything that’s hard to follow for any viewer watching week to week, while also paying close attention... because that means it’s probably not well enough explained), the white oak stake bridge was LOL fine, it did lead to some epic stakings by our boy Matt tag-teaming with Elena and Stefan, and I did enjoy the idea that the whole bloodline dies... anyway, I digress. 

The flashbacks started being a problem in season 3. In season 1 & season 2, the flashbacks basically all told a continuous B storyline. In season 1, of course, we have 1864, in that gorgeous blue cast. We get a little additional information of that in season 2, and it’s amazing. But then in season 2, the B story is 1492, in that golden cast, also amazing. 

After that the flashbacks that start in season 3 are pretty random. We don’t have stories being told in the past throughout the season, but instead, random one-offs in random colors telling random stories. Not bad, per se, but definitely less affecting and much less cohesive and meaningful. 

Here’s the big big big issue with season 3: Klaus. 

The whole point of the season was to kill Klaus. It was explicitly stated. 

Every other season, once the motivation was stated, the show went through with it: open the tomb, stake the tomb vamps, take down Katherine, find a way to save Elena during the sacrifice, etc. 

Now, as everyone knows, I love and adore Klaus. But I also sort of hate him because I think the writers loved him too much and they wrecked the show a bit with him. They wanted to create drama with a “kill Klaus!” arc but there was never that much tension in it because I was certain from 3x12 onward that they never would. (well, I was stunned when he got staked at the end of season 3 and I just sort of whispered, “good” to my empty dorm room at the time-- but that was short-lived). It really really really took the wind out of the show’s sails when they didn’t stake him by season’s end, so the MOST major thing I would have done would have been to kill him off somehow at the end of season 3. 

If they didn’t kill him off, they should have devised a way to make peace/have Team Mystic Falls need him and him need them much earlier and much more concretely than they ever did. With the way things played out in actuality, our protagonists failed to do the one thing protagonists MUST do: take defining action. All of their actions in season 3 are completely for nothing, and that makes the whole thing fall apart. 

This also brings me around to something that will surprise absolutely no one: I have a lot of problems with the way that klaus x caroline was handled. I think it COULD have been done convincingly, but the writers were lazy/were very clearly just trying to get Klaus a ship because the actor is hot, and so they gave us the horse drawing, and the prom dress, and the ball gown, and frankly, a list of villain decay moments that I just... don’t know what to do with. And the ship pretty much ruined Caroline’s character because the whole point of her was that she was so much deeper and kinder than anyone gave her credit for, even than she gave herself credit for, but the ship was like LOL! NOPE! (I have a lot more on this written elsewhere in my blog) Also my boy Tyler got cut out of a HUGE amount of this show to make room for this ship, which was lousy. 

My last thought about season 3 is that this is when the characters-- especially Damon-- started to really decay. Rewatching early seasons of the show is WILD because Damon is WEIRD. He is so other and off-putting-- beautiful, but very very strange-- it’s in the way smolderholder held himself, the way he spoke, all the little things that sent little alarm bells ringing. He was delightfully inhuman. 

I vividly remember the stupid chipmunk argument in... 3x16? somewhere around there-- with Stefan in some back alley in Mystic Falls and I was just??? That was the moment I realized that all of those things about Damon’s acting that had appealed to me had vanished. I think the writers were trying to make him more likable/humanize him so he could be the main love interest, but it was very frustrating to me. 

Moving on to season 4. I was actually into the sire bond because it was difficult and problematic and felt to me like a chance to explore more complex issues through the “vampire” metaphor the way the show had done in earlier seasons. (I know this storyline is pretty much hated, but my stance is: if you don’t want dark, problematic, uncomfortable, and toxic storylines, don’t watch vampire genre tv shows. That simple!) 

I don’t mind the idea of the “cure” and I don’t even mind the Hunter thing/that Jeremy could be a Hunter (although I found the coincidence dumb). 

ACTUALLY what I would have liked VERY MUCH would be for Elena to go through most of her season 4 storyline-- becoming a vampire, having Jeremy die and her turning off her emotions, then going on her evil vampire rampage and actually killing and hurting innocents, only THEN for her to have the cure forced on her after like a year of being a vampire. The defining arc of Elena’s character in the early seasons is her moral decay-- Katherine is the warning of what Elena will inevitably become if she continues down the path she’s on-- so it would be fascinating to see her go DOWN that path, very far, and then to have her become human again-- and have her actually have to deal with the horrors she committed. (I have a bit of a theory that vampires have one foot over the veil into the realm of death, and maybe this, if anything, makes it easier for them to forget their humanity/become truly monstrous, but that becoming human again would slam all of that into the front and center again)-- it would be a way for Elena to actually have to confront her story arc-- what path is she going to go down? Is she going to continue her slide into callousness and monstrosity? Or can she turn it around? Must she give up the Salvatores to do that? 

I don’t really mind the season 4 Silas content. Will say that once again the inclusion of any of the Originals in season 4 is pretty useless which is frustrating to me, and their place in the TVD narrative in general is an annoying dead-end. 

However, I do think that Silas introduces a big shift in TVD: their need for a yearly big bad. As I mentioned above, TVD was always “one thing leading to another” -- starting with Silas, they started introducing yearly Big Bads (Silas, the Travelers, Kai) that were arbitrary and frustrating and were the thing that most broke me out of my suspension of in-universe belief. The idea that the show would need a big bad was a fundamental misunderstanding of the narrative structure of the first 3 seasons by the writers in those later seasons. 

You asked what the straw that broke the camel’s back was and I can tell you, it was this: 

I laughed myself sick and that was the last time that TVD was appointment television for me. I call this the Party City Greek costume. 

I did eventually marathon season 5 well after it was over, and even though a lot all of the ways the show retconned itself drove me insane, it was overall fun just to watch for the drama and the pace. 

My biggest problems with season 5... 

This was around the time that Bonnie was dead then alive then dead then alive... I can’t actually keep track any more at this point what’s up with our girl 

Stelena pretty much disappeared. 

I actually think one of the bigger problems in the show was that the show was stronger when it was mostly about Damon, Stefan, and Elena, and at some point they gave more equal screen time to other characters which ended up meaning that I spent a lot of screen time with characters I just didn’t care about (ENZO) 

UGH THE DOPPELGANGER STUFF

So, if you’ve read my fics, you know I spend a huge amount of time parsing the mechanics of the doppelganger, how the magic around it might work, what the implications are, etc. 

I CAN’T STAND what happened to the doppelganger stuff in season 5! UGH. HOW DOES TOM WHAT’S HIS FACE EXIST? DID STEFAN HAVE A BABY WHEN HE WAS 15?!? Seriously!!! HOW!!!! Because it’s real clear in canon that only DIRECT line descendants create doppelgangers! 

ALSO. The Amara thing. Just stop it. 

This actually leads to a pretty major issue: TVD had a bad habit of establishing really exquisite doomed histories and then wrecking them with too much information later. 

The story of Tatia Petrova is a masterpiece in doomed, tragic, romantic mythology. Teenage girl falls in love with two brothers and so their parents decide to use her as the blood sacrifice for their creepy curse “protection spell” and so they murder her-- you get the image of how terrified she must have been, dragged out of her home in the middle of the night, trapped, maybe dying slowly, how she dies for loving too much, for being just a little too wild, a little too trusting-- and how that curse echoes down the ages. The idea that that act of savagery somehow created the doppelganger line. The Amara thing (as well as the Originals revelation that Elijah killed Tatia) gut the impact of that TVD myth-- which was a strong one in the imaginations of the viewers. 

And the idea that vampire doppelganger blood is useful for anything??? I can’t. The WHOLE POINT of season 2 is that Katherine turns herself into a vampire to avoid the sacrifice! We are explicitly told-- you can’t be two things at once, if you become a vampire, you negate your identity as a witch or a doppelganger or whatever-- literally the WHOLE PLOT of season 2 centers on how useless Elena’s blood would be if she were turned! And now Stefan is in on this? NOPE. I’m out. 

Anyway, another myth that got wrecked in season 5 was the Katerina Petrova myth. Part of her tragedy is that she never even gets to hold her baby. Is the idea that her baby grows up and has a normal life and Katerina never even gets to find out anything about her. That she completely loses this one thing that might have humanized her. And then of course the great tragedy in England that ultimately destroys her. I really hated meeting Katherine’s daughter, because it reversed the pathos of Katherine’s past and rendered it emotionally inert. And also Nadia sucked. 

The Travelers were fun enough but also they made no sense (DOPPELGANGER VAMPIRE BLOOD) but most especially I hated the idea that Katherine was a Traveler just WHY 

I got... partway through season 6, although, I couldn’t tell you where exactly I stopped watching for no particular reason. 

I remember really enjoying Tyler x Liv and the way that they made Tyler human again, and brought Alaric back, etc at the end of season 5-- it felt like such a fresh reboot to everything and it’s one of the things that TVD does really well. 

That Thanksgiving episode sticks out to me as a train wreck though because I realized that the central conflict had absolutely nothing to do with any of the characters I actually cared about, and was instead about the twins... whom I liked, but not really any more than I liked the Martins in season 2, you know? 

Also vampire blood being unable to cure cancer sounds arbitrary to me. 

As for how I would have preferred the show to end? 

Hmm. Well. I think it should have ended sooner-- this “the show is really about these two brothers” is just incorrect. The show was about the two brothers and Elena. It was about that triangulated relationship. I think that even if Elena ended up with one or the other at any given point in the show, the other third point in that triangle should have stuck around-- I’ve always disliked Stefan slinking off in season 5 because it tears apart the foundation of the show. 

I have no idea how it should have ended. I guess? the ending? was okay? I’ve never actually seen it. 

On to the Originals... so, the magical pregnancy didn’t really bug me because there are plenty of fandoms where vampires can procreate/I guess if Klaus is part werewolf, he has a foot closer back to the mortal coil, and vampire bodies in TVD have heartbeats, are warm, digest food, etc, so it was like, fine, sure. 

I would say I watched... some of season 1? and I watched most of season 2? I watched whatever I needed to watch for fic research basically, and have a very confused sense of what happened on that show. I’m always skeptical of anything set in New Orleans though because no one ever seems to leave the French Quarter which is so preposterous because the Quarter is probably smaller than Mystic Falls. But anyway. The tribrid thing has never made sense, but I just sort of rolled with what I’ve heard about the Originals? I really love Marcel and think he was actually the protagonist of the show, whereas Klaus was definitely the antagonist. (I just can’t bring myself to side with Klaus on pretty much anything...) 

Okay I think this ties up all of your questions/most of my thoughts except for maybe... what I find absurd. 

To answer that: every time I learn something new I am stunned and my jaw drops in a literal guffaw. For example, today reading your ask was the first time that I found out that Ric was unrequited in love with Caroline (although, former student carrying her former teacher’s children also makes me uncomfortable). As far as I know from seasons 7-8, Damon sleeps with someone named Crystal, Caroline somehow magically carries Alaric’s children with their dead witch mom (and apparently Alaric is in love with Caroline while that happens?), Matt might be a cop, Damon and Stefan fight the literal devil and Katherine is their queen, Bonnie and Enzo??, Caroline and Stefan get married, what’s a Jeremy Gilbert, maybe Damon sets Elena’s fake coffin on fire?, Damon kills Tyler (WHICH IS UNACCEPTABLE), there are witches who are vampires called Heretics, and also there are Sirens and maybe Mama Salvatore is one. The end. Every time I learn something new it’s the most amazing thing I have ever heard and I can’t imagine how it could be so, but I accept it. 

Am I missing anything? 

Legacies is so beyond my comprehension that I just have to roll with everything I hear. God Bless Matt Davis for leading that cast. 

[kiss-my-freckle]

Stefan fans will jump through hoops trying to blame Damon for the choices Stefan makes. Just ran into one that's trying to claim Damon forced Stefan to flip his humanity switch in season 8. This is despite the fact that Stefan was the one who offered to flip his switch, and did so willingly. I have to wonder wtf happened to the sanity of Stelena shippers.