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I’m my best around you. All of you… but especially you.

Hey Shannen! Always happy to share my (kind of incoherent) thoughts! Okay, so to explain how/why I can ship Delena despite Damon’s actions, I have to go into my general thoughts on human/vampire relationships in fiction. 

The thing is, any human/vampire relationship in fiction will have the human in the relationship overlook and/or forgive violent and upsetting actions on the vampire’s part. Dating vampire is always going to come with some problematic territory because of the nature of the creatures. For example, on BtVS, Buffy has to forgive Angel for his actions as Angelus, which included torturing Giles, trying to kill her friends and succeeding in murdering Jenny Calendar. In the webseries Carmilla Laura Hollis has to forgive Carmilla Karnstein for her actions before she became a force of good, which included aiding in the kidnapping of Laura’s roommate and threatening to murder Laura’s friends, including trading one of Laura’s friends lives for Laura’s. 

So, for me, when it comes to shipping human/vampire relationships, it comes down to what the vampire does directly to the individual. This is why I can ship Angel and Buffy but not Buffy and Spike. Angel - even as Angelus - never does anything to Buffy that truly victimizes or traumatizes her and when they are in a relationship, she has agency and autonomy, whereas with Spike she is abused and manipulated and loses her agency and is thrown under the bus for his redemption. While both vampires have threatened her loved ones and enacted violent acts and tried to end the world, it’s their direct actions towards Buffy which affect my view and feeling about the ship.

So this also applies to Damon and Elena. While Damon has hurt and killed people Elena loves (we’ll come back to this in a moment) he hasn’t actually victimized her directly. Elena has agency with Damon, he doesn’t compel her or coerce her in order to meet his own needs or desires, he doesn’t use the Sire Bond to compel her and she makes her own decisions and choices within the relationship. The one instance where Damon does actually take away her agency is when he feeds her his blood in order to bring her back as a vampire and in this instance it’s easy for me to forgive him because a) he was trying to save her life and b) he instantly regretted his actions and recognized that he had majorly crossed a line and that Elena wouldn’t forgive him and Elena treats him with the anger and contempt which he has earned.

I don’t ship Elena and Damon as a healthy, to-the-end-of-the-world OTP. I don’t even properly ship them, I more just enjoy their dynamic. Theirs is an intense, passionate, at times toxic and unhealthy and deeply soul-connecting love and I just find it really seductive to watch a ship which is so very unhealthy but also obsessive and reckless and deep and involves so much love and desire that they’re barely functional without one another. It’s really fascinating and on some level very endearing that TVD allows Delena to thrive and grow even despite all their dysfunction. It’s allowing us that unrealistic teen fantasy of falling in love so hard and so deep with another person that they become a part of you and you literally can’t live without them. Unhealthy? Absolutely. But that doesn’t make it any less appealing.

So, let’s talk about the two instances which I assume are the ones you find unforgivable (please correct me if I’m wrong) - Caroline’s abuse at Damon’s hands and the incident where he snaps Jeremy’s neck after Katherine rejects him.

I recently wrote a piece about how I believe that Caroline Forbes has the right to hate Damon Salvatore for the rest of her life. And the best thing about TVD with regards to this, is that the show allows this. Caroline was Damon’s victim and the show allows her to not only confront him about the way he victimized her, it allows her to continuously voice her negative feelings towards him and gives her an outlet to channel her trauma into. She is never expected to forgive or even tolerate Damon, even when he’s dating Elena. Caroline always voices her disapproval of Damon and constantly tells Elena that Damon is a horrible person and the narrative doesn’t condemn her for this.

Elena dating someone who victimized her close friend is a little sketchy but a) as I’ve pointed out, the actual victim in this instance is allowed to express her trauma, rage and hatred and is not expected to like, tolerate or forgive her abuser and b) almost everyone on the show has dated/been involved with someone who has grievously harmed someone they care about. Stefan sleeps with Rebekah and Katherine, even though they have both harmed and tried to kill Elena, Caroline sleeps with Klaus even though he murdered Tyler’s mother, Bonnie ends up dating Enzo even though he’s harmed and tried to kill Stefan and Damon, Damon sleeps with Rose even though she kidnapped Elena etc. etc. So long as the victim themselves is given agency and the option to not forgive the person in question, I think - within this Universe - falling for someone who has committed atrocities against loved ones is acceptable and kind of the norm.

Now, Jeremy is a slightly different case because if it weren’t for the Gilbert Ring, I don’t think Elena could have ended up with Damon. Damon got ridiculously lucky with that. I’ve written before why I don’t think this action was about Elena but rather about Katherine and how it also tied into Damon and Jeremy’s conversation about not wanting to feel and how I believe that Damon thought that Jeremy was suicidal. However, if Jeremy hadn’t been brought back to life by that ring, there would have been zero chance for Elena and Damon.

But Jeremy did come back. And that made all the difference because, while Elena was rightly furious with Damon for trying to kill her brother, Jeremy didn’t die permanently at Damon’s hands. He was restored, came back to life and Elena and Damon were (after a long time and with both characters changing) able to reconcile. 

Again, as with Caroline, Jeremy forgives Damon on his own terms. He decides to seek Damon out and reconcile with him, he decides to forge a relationship with Damon and chooses to trust him and view him as a Big Brother type. In fact, Jeremy forgives Damon long before Elena does and not because Damon begs for forgiveness or asks Jeremy to be a part of his life - Jeremy makes this decision of his own volition and in his own time. Again, the actual victim in the scenario is given agency and choice, and therefore I can reconcile with Damon’s actions and with him and Elena being in a relationship down the track.

leyton in every episode: 5x06 - don’t dream it’s over