Polyamorous Vulpine

WE JUST SPENT THE LAST THREE EPISODES ESTABLISHING THAT ( vampire diaries spoilers )

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Any time anyone seriously says that if Elena and Damon and Stefan became a threesome their problems would be solved and mean it

it makes it really, really obvious that Damon is not a problem to you because his abuse of Elena has no real relevance or importance to you

and you may be willing to pay lip service to acknowledging what he's done to her

but that's where it ends

because oh

my

actual

god

that statement is staggeringly misogynistic

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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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YES, VAMPIRE CHARACTERS ARE MORALLY CULPABLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS

Beautiful meta on TVD vampires and neatly debunking the ridiculous fandom apologism.

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Guys, 'I can't shake him' is not romantic when her efforts to shake him include screaming, running, physically fighting and finally, when she's broken down and he's hurt her enough and threatened her enough, begging. And 'snuck up on me' includes rape, torture, emotional abuse, throwing her around and beating her.

Like, Elena is literally saying 'I tried to get away from this rapist and he wouldn't let me!' and Matt, Abusive Boyfriend Extraordinaire, says 'that's love!' and we are literally supposed to take this seriously, sincerely and at face value. We are supposed to find this moment - this moment of a teenage girl having been physically and emotionally abused with absolutely no support from virtually anyone who cares about her, constantly told that her feelings are irrelevant, "stupid", that her not wanting to have sex with him is a "lie" and "fooling herself" finally essentially giving up, resigning herself and saying "I can't escape, I'm trapped, all my efforts to protect myself from my abuser are futile" - touching and emotionally revelatory.

I remember reading someone talking about how they want to explore "what makes Elena want Damon" and how Elena/Damon is so sex-positive, because you can want someone physically - because she's "obviously" attracted to him, as is evidenced by the tears and the sobbing and the 'no, no, please, no!' - and not, like, want to be in a relationship or anything and it was so chokingly, nauseatingly misogynistic my mouth hung open. We know she doesn't want him. She's said so again and again and again: (rape. is. not. sex. positive. EVER.) the only evidence contradicting that is her rapist telling her she wants it and she's fooling herself. And then later on a resigned, victimized Elena, having been proved time and time again in canon that when he hurts her and she fights back or tries to get him away from her it is not only fruitless but she is brutalized and tortured and treated like she's hysterical for it, basically trotting out the most classic victim-blaming rape culture lines there are - it felt good, she didn't get away, she provoked him.

Like, to try and pretend it's Elena-positive or somehow a feminist angle when it requires you to completely erase Elena from the equation as a person and ignore and trivialize her protests and her hurt, to literally pretend her voice and her decisions are nonexistent or irrelevant? To try and pretend it's actually interest in Elena? That's just an incredibly special calibre of fandom misogyny.

It's beyond foul that she's not allowed emotional repercussions, she's not allowed to heal, she's not allowed to feel something that's inconvenient to Damon, that the man who sexually attacked her multiple times, beats her up and profoundly violated and abused her planting one on her is treating like a romcom moment, complete with the background chorus of friends chirping, "tell me more, tell me more!" It's made all the more chilling that Nina continues to play Elena as very uncomfortable with the abuse and the emotional pressures that refuse to acknowledge or to allow her to react to or treat her abuse like what it is. It's narratively irresponsible on a grand scale.

God, this show.

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