#eternalworksinprogress

I’m getting to these so late, but thank you! These are excellent opinions and I support them. :) (I love Matt, oh boy.)

1. The most well-told of Caroline’s romances, as they exist in canon, is her and Matt. Every other relationship she’s in I can’t fully buy or be invested in as much as I would like to be because of the writing. Again- this is in canon. In terms of chemistry and characterization and possibility- I think all of them work in different ways. I’m a Caroline multi-shipper I guess? I still love my vision of what Stefan and Caroline could have been. Klaus as the Love of Caroline’s Life makes SENSE. She and Tyler are very sweet and innocent at first and it feels real! I even think that she and Enzo could have worked! Caroline COULD WORK WITH SO MANY PEOPLE so it’s kind of sad that she doesn’t, canonically, really work with anyone.

2. I really, really hate how the show uses Caroline as a mouthpiece in the endless ship baiting of season 4 and, especially, season 5. It’s jarring and obvious and often pretty out of character. She deserved better. (So did Elena.)

3. I don’t see anything romantic about Damon and Bonnie. It’s not that I don’t get why people ship it because the friendship is beautiful, the love is real, and the chemistry is good (#thathug). It’s just- to me none of that translates to a romantic relationship. At all. They’re too alike in some ways and not enough alike in others. Also I just don’t ever think they’re in love. I don’t see it and I don’t think the characters see it either. 

4. The show, especially in later seasons, is so wildly inconsistent about characterization that everyone is free to pick and choose what they consider canon. Everyone, at some point or another, does something RIDICULOUS and DUMB and we should all be free to say “that was a dumb decision and I don’t consider it canon”. I’m on season 7 now and it is one giant L O L. 

5. This is my big one. I don’t think Stefan ever fully got over Katherine and so I don’t think that he was ever really in love with Elena. The show disagrees with me on both these points (and many other people as well, I suspect) and because the show disagrees with me I don’t have textual evidence on my side in that the show frequently (and imo heavy-handedly) contradicts me. But in a deeper sense the show does support me through characterization and actions, if not in words, and I still think I’m right. Some day I will write a thesis on it. I think he comes to care for Elena deeply and even to love her- it’s not that I think he’s lying when he says that he loves her- but I think it’s the friendship that blooms underneath the romance that’s real, not the romance itself. 

ok YAY but also I have to preface this with: I have seen almost the first 4 seasons of TVD, and am spoilered to varying degrees for the remaining seasons, but there’s so much I don’t know about Klaroline and probably a lot I don’t still know about Delena! So that said…

I love contrasting Klaus and Damon because…Klaus isn’t anything like Damon. Damon and Elijah have MUCH more in common, in my view, in that they both love deeply, centrally, and life-changingly–and that they are actually inherently noble? It’s more obvious with Elijah, but Damon really does live by a lot of rules and codes and all that. He pretends that he doesn’t, everyone else believes that he doesn’t, but he sees himself as being much more controlled by outside parameters (second chances, deserving vs. not-deserving, loyalty, etc.) than, say…Stefan. Because yes, I think Klaus and Stefan have much more in common. I am NOT saying they are not capable of deep and abiding love, but their own destinies and potential destines are much more central to who they are. By nature, Stefan is all about Stefan and Klaus is all about Klaus. The reason I frequently have an easier time with Klaus is that the show let him inhabit the role of villain, which made a lot of sense, whereas they forced Stefan into the hero box too quickly and without too much attention to certain consistency problems that created. (Now, I know that Stefan is 1) often heroic, 2) very capable of heroism, and never more so than when he is truly sacrificing his own self-interest, and 3) helps and cares about a LOT of people). But my point is that Damon and Elijah are the romantics and Klaus and Stefan are the power-mongers. Klaus and Stefan are ambitious. They are also ambitious in love!

Yet of course, narratively, Klaus and Damon are given to us as “the dark side” or the “bad boy,” and so there are important similarities. When everyone believes you are bad, and when you in fact HAVE done many bad things, it’s easy to be, as 1x02 Damon says, “a fatalist.” And this, in the context of Delena and Klaroline, is where (so far) I’ve seen the most Klaus and Damon parallels. They’re both prone to being like “I’m not good enough so I’m not even going to try.” And then we have two very strong women on the other sides of those dynamics being like, OH YOU ABSOLUTELY ARE GOING TO TRY, and then (to some differing degrees, because Klaus =/= Damon), they do try, because they’re whipped™.

SO what I love about Delena is how gentle and sweet it is. Yes, Damon is the bad boy and it’s very full of UST and rebellious thrills in its inception, but also…Damon loves Elena like a hurricane, it’s all in, all the time, he can’t quit her, and he increasingly stops even trying to pretend that he ever could. He is in love with Elena and EVERYONE KNOWS IT. And everyone–whether they choose to believe it or not–can see how it is changing him. Damon is CHANGED by Elena constantly. And what is also great is that he is changed back. He reclaims his older-brother responsibility, his compassion, his wisdom, even his patience. He has many foibles but the truth is, Katherine was right when she ribs him about being “sweet” and “innocent.” He really has a very good, simple heart under all the veneer that pain and lust and blood-letting and loss have brought about. He is capable of absolutely PROFOUND love and he…isn’t good at hiding it? The sass is transparent, my darling boy!

Now the difference of Klaus is…long, long ago, he was almost in a feral place. He was softer and more innocent, yes, but he was an outcast in his own family and was sort of unformed, prior to immortality. And he’s been an immortal monster for so, so long, that when Caroline changes him, she doesn’t change him back. She changes him in a forward-looking kind of way. Caroline brings things out of Klaus that NOBODY KNEW existed, including Klaus himself! This makes Klaroline more volatile than Delena, but equally as haunting. Everyone knows that Klaus has a Thing for Caroline, but Klaus is in NO WAY predictable. He will still, probably, screw everyone over while saving Caroline! He does not like to be toyed with, and he is too old to let the fact that he sometimes wears his heart on his sleeve be used against him. He will always fight back! He will not be civilized! 

But (and I know the show doesn’t always handle this ship well, and doesn’t always resolve things, so I’m just going with my HEART and my SENSE OF LOGIC) he is still unable to shake Caroline. Power is much more an aspect of Klaroline than it is of Delena, because Klaus holds onto his power like NOTHING ELSE. And Caroline herself is more visibly acquainted with power than some of the other characters (like Elena, who takes her Power of Being Loved for granted, or Stefan, who can be…kind of entitled, or even Damon, who often views himself as only having brute-force power). Caroline is aware of her power because she had to BUILD IT OUT OF NOTHING, both as a human and a vampire. In school and life and romance and vampirism, she has always had to FIGHT for what she has. And I think that’s what makes her different from the rest of the Mystic Falls pack, and what attracts Klaus to her. Whereas Elena and Damon are connected by the wellsprings of love of which they are capable, Klaus and Caroline are connected by the fact that they are holding on to everything are as if each fiber that makes them is equally precious. 

aaaww this is so sweet of you to tell me this!! Thank you so much, it means a lot bcz I never really know if people still want Delena gifs, so really thank you. And I’m about to publish a brand new one :D

JUST FINISHED SEASON 4! We’ll use those. 

Delena

1. The 2x22 scene in bed. I just…it’s especially beautiful because she still thinks she’s in love with Stefan, but her heart is pouring over for Damon and everything he’s done for her. He in turn is asking nothing except a little compassion at the end, but they end up having the most gorgeous and meaningful heart-to-heart.

2. The 4x23 YELLING SPEECH to each other ending with Elena saying she’s in love with him and Damon’s face changing as he realizes that everything he’s every longed for in life has come to pass! AND THEN THE KISS! THis is so peak romance and also I just watched it so I’m still SHAKING

3. “I’m sorry. You lost her too.” In that moment, in 1x03, or whatever, EVERYTHING changes. Elena validates Damon’s suffering over Katherine, while also showing how much she ISN’T Katherine. His face shows how transformative this is.

4. In 2x08 Rose when they save Elena and she’s coming down the stairs and Damon thinks she’s smiling at him but she’s NOT it’s at Stefan but his FACE GETS ME EVERY TIME and the point is, she thanks him over Stefan’s shoulder and he mouths, you’re welcom and the WHOLE THING. THE WHOLE THING IS SO ACHINGLY BEAUTIFUL.

5. There are so many many good scenes it’s hard to choose–honestly the kiss in 3x19 deserves a place here because it, paired with “Never Let Me Go” really sweeps the whole world away and leaves me with just the two of them. 

Klaroline

1. Klaus saving Caroline at graduation, and then telling her that he’ll be her last love. This is everything I want for them.

2. When he saves her life for her birthday, and tells her that she should see the world. It’s a very Reylo-interrogation-room kind of dynamic shift.

3. When he gets her the prom dress! CAN YOU BELIEVE

4. Caroline telling Klaus he’s perfect when she’s in a frenzy of annoyance at the Miss Mystic Falls pageant, followed by Klaus reading her essay about why she should be Miss Mystic Falls and just being a giddy teasing BOY GAHHH

AH yes. ALL CAPS for when I determined something revalatory. 

Gryffindor: Elena, Bonnie, Tyler

Slytherin: Katherine, Klaus, STEFAN, Caroline

Ravenclaw: Elijah, Alaric

Hufflepuff: Damon (someone did this once and I can’t unsee it), Matt, REBEKAH

1) I thought Bonnie and Jeremy were super cute together. So many people bemoan how “boring” they were, but I liked them as a couple.

2) I like and relate to Elena as a character. Also, there’s a part of me that will always crackship the compassionate!Elena with the moral!Elijah. (I think Nina and Daniel’s chemistry is largely to blame for this. Especially considering Kalijah is my #2 OTP for the show lol)

3) Aside from Kai, the only other thing I liked about s6 was Bonnie and Damon’s burgeoning friendship. Hell, I wouldn’t even have been opposed to them possibly going romantic at some point, either, because with the right kind of writing and development I think it could have worked.

4) I never liked Rebekah’s “I want to be human” storyline. (I don’t think this is all that unpopular, though, is it? haha)

Kai is such a great character! He has so much personality and I love that he’s so enigmatic. He is one of the few good things to come out of the last couple of seasons, imo.