Polyamorous Vulpine

And then there's the fact of what he wanted to do to her, and she was spared from only by Bonnie's timely intervention; an act of complete bodily violation for his own personal gratification that she would never be able to recover from. Elena could not have gone back from the damage he wanted to deal to her, the way he wanted to hurt her so as to extend her physical availability to him. She could come to terms with it, she could make the best out of it, she could try to adapt, but she would never be able to undo what he wanted to do to her: to literally physically and wholly - bodily and mentally - remould her violently and forcibly against her will into what he wanted.

She is not a person to him, and she never has been. And his abuse is not, and never will be, love.

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Damon/Elena is unquestionably misogynistic. There is no way to deny with any kind of integrity or validity that creating a romantic storyline between a woman and a man who has violated her, tortured her, abused her, repeatedly sexually attacked her, denigrated and abused and manipulated her verbally and emotionally and never suffered real consequences for it, never even been forced to admit that what he did was wrong in any meaningful way, never changed his behaviour, instead shamed and abused and beat her into a slow progression of protecting herself less and less and believing in her own right to live unmolested less and less, because each time her self-defense it was less successful - he murdered her brother in front of her, taunting her with it, because he didn't get to rape her - and no one was there to support her -

Creating that romantic storyline, and without allowing her any kind of trauma recovery or inner reflection to be suddenly - after two seasons of steadfastly defending her right to make choices about who she became involved with, and her right to not want a man who wanted her - all about the 'feelings' for her rapist that the rapist himself and everyone around her have been knowledgeably informing her she possesses for what, a trauma-fraught year now? About her 'obvious' sexual desire for him, because everyone but the woman whose body it is gets to be the arbiter of what happens to a female body.

This. Is. Misogyny.

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It is simply staggeringly offensive on so many levels that the narrative supports Damon - that we are supposed to feel sympathetic - when he says ‘I love you’ to Elena. He abuses her.

Abuse. Is. Not. Love.

It’s disgusting and shameful that we have to remind full goddamn grown adults of this fact. It’s disgusting that when a woman tells a man no and he forces himself on her anyway, continuing a pattern of abusive and controlling behaviour, when she later reminds him that she isn’t grateful for his violations and manipulations, he throws a violent temper tantrum - that is narratively supported as a good thing because it saved somebody’s life - and she is made to feel ashamed for it.

She is made to feel ashamed for telling her attempted rapist she doesn’t want him.

This show, ladies and gentleman! This show.

I honestly think that rather than ‘this guy is treating her like shit and she’s finding ways around it’ we’re supposed to view Damon’s controlling abusive behaviours towards Elena and her rebellion as a morally or emotionally conflicted situation rather than a victim circumventing a rapist’s control. And that, in case anyone needed to be updated, is a huge damn problem.

Also Matt Donovan continues to treat ladies like shit. I'd give him a pass for it this evening if it wasn't a reminder of the way he treats all women he doesn't think he's gonna get something out of. (Or Caroline, his devoted emotionally fragile abused girlfriend, whom he knew that he would get something out of no matter how badly he treated her.)

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I'm...honestly really disappointed that they chose not to include this? We all know my feelings on Damon, but even broadly speaking in terms of functional and well-rounded narratives, sacrificing the character growth and relationships between secondary characters while continuing to feature them prominently as plot points and catalysts for action in favour of a storyline flawed on a deeply technical level - in a closed, static loop of behaviour requiring inconsistent and contradictory behaviour from other characters and a basic lack of depth in the writing itself - is problematic. Holy run on sentence, Batman. (See the writing for Andie: a deeply sympathetic character whose torture and rape we witness repeatedly onscreen who is given no conclusion. This is bad writing - as though an episode on a cop show featured a case where a woman had been kidnapped, raped and tortured and we saw this onscreen, but at the end of the episode the cops turned around and walked away with no conclusion whatsoever. It's bad writing. It's deeply unsatisfactory, and the fact that many audience members accept the show's prioritization of her rapist and torturer over his innocent victim says a handful of deeply disturbing things.)

My displeasure expressed, I do like the rapport established here; they're clearly on very familiar terms now, talking in quiet confessions like friends, their body language comfortable and barriers down. There's a lot of trust here and I also enjoy their easy physicality; the gentle way he catches her waist, his whole body orienting towards her as he reassures her as well as he can, is pure shipper bait. The person I got this video from at first thought he seized her wrist; he doesn't, and I am glad of it. There's some peremptory and - presumptuous? I'm not sure how to describe it, but I don't like the physical dynamics involved in seizing a girl by her wrist to stop her. I'd say that this conversation, his reflexively intimate choice of his hands on her hips - which doesn't trouble her - and his quiet intensity in trying to ease her emotions speaks a lot for not only how highly he thinks of her, but his respect for her, which is something I've never seen evidence of in Matt Donovan in any of his interactions with women. (Other than, arguably, Vicki.)


( cut for embedded video of multiple deleted scenes and brief commentary )

Also, every time Stefan talks about being a teenager I cry a single crystalline tear at the casting department.

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