i've seen you answer a few questions about tvd so i thought i might ask, what are your thoughts on the main love triangle? and klaus/stefan?

As a caveat: I did not watch much further than the first few episodes of season 4, in fact I ragequit when one of the writers revealed we wouldn't be seeing Elijah on screen again until 4x20 at which point I thought, "Well I simply won't watch until 4x20 then".

And then 4x20 was a backdoor pilot to the spinoff The Originals and I simply watched that show instead.

All this to say, I was 100% a gung ho Vampire Diaries fan and you can tell by how closely I was following it, sadly the only TVD I know of would be the first three seasons. Same actually goes for The Originals, as I for reasons I don't remember wasn't able to access episodes post-season 3 so I wound up not knowing what happens after Hayley drives off with the entire family hibernating in her truck either.

Another disclaimer: it's been more than ten years since I watched this show and my memory may fail me at times.

With that:

The main love triangle

Having only seen the first three seasons, I think that Damon wishes quite badly he was a different man, and he is unable to take responsibility for his life and relationships being what they are. He would rather blame his failings on Stefan, and, whenever Stefan fails or falls short in some ways, it's immensely validating to Damon because who's the bad brother now?

His love for Katherine is not only about Katherine, but about being chosen by someone over Stefan. Because, as Damon will try to tell himself, just because she was sleeping with both of them and decided to turn them both, doesn't mean she didn't prefer Damon (after all, she had to compell Stefan, while Damon slept with her willingly. Victory for Damon!), and also- look, don't question Damon on this. It's fine and he's a well adjusted man, and once he has rescued his lady love from her tomb she'll tell him how much better he is than Stefan.

Enter Elena, who looks exactly like Katherine, is living in Mystic Falls just the same as Katherine, and who has drawn Stefan's interest.

Damon, eternally pulling Stefan's pigtails and being a goddamn creep, starts creeping on Elena, this does not work. Instead, however, he learns that Katherine faked her entombment, and has in fact been living her best life for the past 150 years. Worse, Damon and Stefan were never more than boytoys to her.

Cut to Elena, who is just as beautiful (in a very literal sense of the term), only she is kind, genuinely loves Stefan, the polar opposite of Katherine in every way.

Damon transfers his emotions from Doppelganger B to Doppelganger C.

Stefan, meanwhile, seems to... fall in with Elena, for lack of a better way to put it. They meet, he is confused about the resemblance to Katherine for long enough to get to know her, by which time he's into it, and Elena sees a very handsome and pleasant man who is easy to fall for.

The trouble with Stefan is I don't really have a grip on his character, he is... there, for three seasons, and he has his character moments and his speeches, I can tell you things about his personality except I can't.

He is one of those people you can know for years but never actually know who, having killed his father and become the Ripper for so many years, seems to be that he is running away from himself. That is the only way I can interpret his strange nothingness, as well as bizarre decisions like coming to live with his nephew Zach and attend high school.

I think Stefan wants to surround himself with people, form relationships with them, and through that find a sense of identity that he can enjoy. Which is where loving Elena comes in, as she is kind, generous, mature, vulnerable, and fun- the type of person you can lose yourself in, and have those simple moments of happiness Florence Welch sings about.

In other words, while my real ship here is Elejah, Stelena trumps Delena any day.

Klaus and Stefan

Klaus is a deeply sad person who is only interested in dating two people, and they are his sister Rebekah and his brother Elijah. At the time he met Stefan Elijah wasn't around, so Stefan became replacement Elijah.

(The proof of the Elijah projection lies in the fact that Klaus was fine with Stefan sleeping with Rebekah. He is historically not fine with outsiders doing this, you have to be family for Klaus to accept these things.)

"Look, Elijah," Klaus would imagine himself saying to Elijah, "I have a new brother now and he is hotter, cooler, and not a total bore like you! Stefan loves me more anyway," and then Elijah would sit and cry and give Klaus so much attention and it would be great.

As for Stefan, I think he just liked partying.

They probably did fuck, but Klaus is too embarrassing for Stefan to ever admit as much.

Do you have a list of your tvd ships anywhere? (I LOVE your klaulena and fte's tylena and stebekah \o/)

OH NO I thought I had responded to this already!!! This is what I get for multi-tasking TOO! MUCH! 

I don’t have a list, but that sounds like a brilliant idea, so how about I make one right here right now? 

Stelena and Delena – I put these together because my feelings on them are so interwoven– I’m unashamedly all about this love triangle– way back when season 1 was airing, I was a huge delena shipper, but then at some point in season 2 I realized that I was ALSO really invested in stelena… and the thing is, even though I really wanted delena to happen… I didn’t want to lose stelena. I was always a little disappointed that the show dropped stelena so hard once delena happened. Like, my feeling on it is I like these ships best when they are in conflict with each other. Not sure I really ship this as an ot3, although I’ve read some truly phenomenal fic for that and there is a lot about Stefan and Damon’s relationship to be parsed out by the potential for them all 3 to find some balance with each other, but I definitely definitely am here for these 2 ships in a really big way. Like, FE wasn’t supposed to be a stelena fic at all, and I only realized once I really got into writing it that it just was. Elena’s love for these two is just so incredibly intrinsic to who she is. 

Klena/Klaulena – (why didn’t we ever settle on a ship name???) If you’re reading this, you probably already know this is my OTP. Maybe my OTP of OTPs, since it’s continued to interest and inspire my writing for like 8 years now. Just. How to even put all of this in a short paragraph. There’s something really fascinating to me about how they both play into each other’s psyches as these larger than life forces– Klaus for Elena is like this descending doom, this inevitability, this force of nature she can’t stop, or even run from, she just has to stand and face it, and the pressure that puts on her is really how she learns who she really is, and what she is really willing to do. I think Elena found out so much of who she is when her soul is scraped down to the very bottom from Klaus’s bearing down on her. She learned she was a force of nature herself. And for Klaus, Elena is this idea he’s been fixating on for a millennium. Because don’t tell me he wasn’t still fixated on her even after he thought there would be no more Petrovas. Because he totally was. And I think she excites but also frightens him– I mean, she’s got the face of his dead beloved, and there’s got to be something faintly unnatural and therefore unnerving about her. But also, there are great themes about fate– that they had this written in the stars kind of destiny, that was dark and terrifying and brutal, that they fulfilled together (I’ve always felt like there would be this subconscious part of Elena that would have yearned to fulfill her part, even though it was totally messed up and she died doing it)– and there is fantastic imagery– fire, water, how much better does it get? – and their chemistry is INSANE. Like, I think I jumped on board this ship a month before Joseph Morgan even stepped on camera, but by the end of the season I’d tossed out everything else I was doing and that was that. UGH and their power dynamics? Wild. You don’t get quality content like this every day, people! I could write a thesis about this ship. 

Rebekah/Stefan – the ship I wish had sailed much more prominently than it ever did. I was really really really into this, and fascinated by the idea that Stefan could have his memories be restored and be in love with someone else, for real, and I was super interested in the drama and just emotional turmoil that would have stirred up. I was always disappointed by the show kind of brushing stebekah under the rug– I really felt like this is the great love story we never got. 

Rebekah/Elena – the ship with all! the! potential! don’t even get me started. I really really really enjoy how they have both the capacity to be incredibly sympathetic to each other, and actually seem to really like each other and get along well… except that ELENA is the one who can’t help but backstab (literally) and Rebekah, who always lashes out in the worst possible way, responds by like… trying to light Elena on fire. It just has always intrigued me that Elena, the human, is the one who behaves more monstrously, when you would expect it to be Rebekah. I just am really super interested in their dynamic, which is both kind of sad and also really hot, and wish (again!) that we’d gotten something here. I have a few Becklena fics that I pray will someday see the light of day. 

Elejah – how could I forget this gem? my original doppelganger x original ship. I think I fell in love with this ship around the time we got that great deal getting brokered in Elena’s bedroom. DEFINITELY by the time she daggered him in The Dinner Party. There was always a sense of menace and top tier creep just simmering below the surface, that appealed to my horror-romance loving heart. 

Katherine/Elena – this one is kind of weird because I don’t quite ship it romantically– more like, I think there is a TON of interesting stuff to unpack about both of the doppelgangers that can be gleaned from shipping them, and a lot of imagery with mirrors and reflections and things getting warped as fuck that I really really really adore. It’s probably feels too narcissistic to me to ship them romantically, since I really think they are the same girl nature-wise with very different upbringings resulting in their apparent personality differences… but like, I do still ship them as an idea, and of course, sexually, with each other. Idk this is almost more like a character study/idea ship than an “I want them to be in love” ship. 

Marcel/Elena – oops I might have invented this but what’s done is done

Tyler/Elena – this was always supposed to be part of FE, but I think I actually convinced myself of this ship while writing FE, like, the more I thought about it the more sure of it I was. Tyler’s always been one of my absolute favorites– swear to God he sometimes feels like my viewer insert because he says the stuff I’m thinking ALL the time– and I have this headcanon that he’s super misunderstood, but someone like Elena, who’s known him her whole life, knows the real Tyler, and sees past all of that– and likewise, Tyler can see through Elena’s smoke mirrors, which are AMPLE. There’s just so much potential for tenderness and sincerity and he saved her at the end of season 3 because of course he did, of course Tyler would jump in like that for her, she’s Elena Gilbert, he’s known her his whole life. 

Almost all of these are Elena-centric, which… is just sort of how I operate. 

I do low-key ship these though: 

Team Forwood– ah, the good old days. I really felt like this ship got shunted for Caroline’s other big ship, but c’est la vie. 

Jeremy/Tyler – two misunderstood boys angsting over line art also the chemistry

Katherine/Damon/Stefan – umm Memory Lane is my favorite episode it is what it is 

Rebekah/Klaus and Klaus/Stefan and Klaus/Rebekah/Stefan – I don’t even headcanon this I’ll straight out tell you that all of these things are canon – have you seen the promo image for season 3? Klaus is clearly the interloper in the established love triangle, whispering in Stefan’s ear/seducing him – I don’t really think these ship configurations can be untangled from each other though, at least not in canon