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thevampirediariesdiary · 6 years

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1.18 Under Control

Who’s ready for some overdue musings about self-mastery? I hope it’s you, because this episode is almost as preachy and heavy-handed as I am.

Stefan is in a self-imposed detox, which seems to involve 1) not going to school, 2) listening to loud music, and 3) exercising. Given what we've seen so far of vampire biology, I think he should also be consuming TONS of caffeine to get his bloodflow moving, and then drinking lots of animal blood to force the people blood out of his system, but hey, what do I know. Damon doesn’t think much of Stefan’s strategy either, but because he says it’s “not natural”: “There’s nothing wrong with partaking in a healthy diet of human blood from a blood bank, you’re not actually killing anyone.” “I have my reasons,” Stefan answers. When Damon prompts him, he only says, “You’re really enjoying this, watching me...struggle.” While gesturing precisely with his gratuitous arms.

Damon rolls his eyes up to the ceiling in mock delight: “Very much so.” “I hate to break it to you, Damon,” Stefan says, “but I actually have it under complete control.” Damon fakes surprise; “You do? Then you should carry on making the rest of us vampires look bad. You have a good day, Stefan.” And he wanders out, conveniently leaving his glass of blood, towards which Stefan inches before Damon swoops back in and grabs it, apologizing profusely and insincerely. He takes a drink, says “mmm” in that irritating way that only a brother can.

Idiots, both of you.

Uncle John is in town! “I don’t really like that guy,” Matt tells Elena. “Who does,” she answers. And at the founders council meeting, Liz tells Damon, “His name is John but I call him jackass.” It’s unclear what all these people (other than Jenna, who’s well within her rights) have against John. He’s definitely a slimeball, but no more so than any other male non-Alaric adult in Mystic Falls.

Alaric pulls Elena aside and shows her Jeremy’s vampire paper, then asks her how she deals with all the secrets. She says it’s not safe for the people she loves to know the truth. “I think Stefan’s a good guy,” says Alaric, “but at the end of the day, he’s still a vampire.” “I know it’s hard to understand, but Stefan’s different,” Elena answers. But it’s exactly this sentiment that will become impossible for her to hold onto - that Stefan is a cuddly vampire, a care bear with fangs. He can be different inasmuch as he’s Stefan - moral and thoughtful and protective - and have Alaric’s point still stand: he’s a good guy, but he is a vampire.

After Stefan tells her that he’s doing a lot better after his couple days letting his body readjust, and that he’s fine, they make out on her bed. Stefan starts to vamp out and flings himself across the room, breaking a lamp and scaring them both. So after he leaves, Elena calls in the big guns: “Oh good, you’re here.” “You ask, I come,” Damon tells her. “I’m easy like that.” She gestures for quiet and nods to where Jeremy is eating in the next room. Damon raises his voice and declaims: “No, Elena, I will not go to your bedroom with you!” Jeremy just rolls his eyes. Given that Anna never told him that the Salvatores are vampires or that Elena is in the know, I really wonder what he thinks is going on in his sister’s life. Any way you look at it, it’s pretty clear things are too complicated for comfort.

Elena does, indeed, bring Damon into her bedroom. “Ahhh, just like I remembered,” Damon says. “Stop messing around,” says Elena, not knowing that he has, in fact, been in there before, watchin’ her sleep and touchin’ her face. He flops onto her bed and starts playing with her teddy bear, using one of its little arms to point at the Stefan-makeout-caused destruction.

“Look, Damon, I’m worried about Stefan,” she confesses. “He says everything’s okay but he’s clearly struggling. How long is it going to take before he’s back to normal?” Damon, to whom Stefan refused to answer just this question only that morning, guesses, “Two days, give or take?” “It’s been a few days,” Elena says. “Give then, I dunno. What’s the big deal?” says Damon, popping off the bed and wandering around. “He’s not himself, Damon,” Elena says. “Well, maybe the problem is he’s spent too long not being himself,” Damon says, then, after fishing a bra out of Elena’s drawer, “Ooooh.” She snatches it away from him, says seriously, “Please don’t make me sorry for asking you.” “It is what it is, Elena,” Damon answers, now stealing a photo from her mirror frame. “The Stefan you know is good behavior Stefan. Reign it in Stefan. Fight against his nature to an annoyingly obsessive level...Stefan. But if you think there’s not another part to this, then you have not been paying attention.” She steps in (unnecessarily?) close, takes her picture back.

“He’s not you,” Elena tells him, turning away, “not even close.” “Well he doesn’t wanna be me,” Damon counters, “that doesn’t mean deep down that he’s not.” He steps into her space like she did his, adds thoughtfully, “mmhmm.” If Elena was looking for someone to keep Stefan on what has previously been the straight and narrow, she’s clearly barked up the wrong tree.

Elena goes for a walk with Jeremy and tells him she’s adopted, then they both lie about vampires.

The founders kick-off party arrives, and Stefan is already half-toasted, having cracked into the Salvatore whiskey. “How you feeling?” Damon asks him, with what actually appears to be genuine albeit veiled concern. “I’m good, I’m fine,” Stefan says. “We are who we are, Stefan,” Damon says, “pretending doesn’t change that.” “Nothing would make you happier than to see me give in, huh, Damon?” Stefan says. Damon answers lightly: “Whatever, it’s inevitable.” They both grin insincerely.

It seems to me that Damon doesn’t exactly want to see his brother fail, but he knows the way of life Stefan is stubbornly pursuing is untenable. And particularly so because Stefan insists on staying in a town full of tomb vampires who hate him, and also has a fragile human girlfriend he needs to protect. As Damon mentioned earlier, they can’t do anything about their current predicament unless Stefan is at full strength.

Stefan finds the bar, and also Elena, who immediately recognizes him as drunk when he greets her with an uncomfortably loud cheek kiss. “You’re totally that drunk high school guy at the party sneaking booze,” Elena teases. “I totally am, yeah,” Stefan admits, then suggests that they enjoy it while it lasts, and asks her to dance. “You hate dancing, I usually have to beg you,” Elena says, somewhat in shock. “No no no,” says Stefan, “you have to beg the sober me. The drunk me there’s no begging necessary.” And he wanders off to compel them some better music. I don’t want to beat the dead horse of this symbolism or anything, but this isn’t a super great sign. He’s happy to dance with Elena while drunk and openly reluctant while sober; this is what we call inhibitions. Some inhibitions are healthy, like not picking fights with strangers, and some are not healthy...like being too stiff to dance with your girlfriend. But if Stefan’s “control” is analogous to his sobriety - and that’s the way the episode sets them up for us - then we’re being told that he has too much control, he’s too inhibited - his control is keeping him from things which he should be able to just enjoy.

Damon and Elena watch Stefan dancing with Kelley Donovan. “Is he gonna be okay?” Elena asks. “Eventually,” Damon says. “...one way or another.”

Everybody mingles. Alaric and Jenna get a drink, Matt and Elena dance, Damon makes Liz laugh by telling her she looks smashing.

Elena agrees to dance with her alcoholic vampire boyfriend, who promptly spins her into a surly man who insults her. (Honestly, I think the guy is just embarrassed that no one will dance with him; he’s clearly alone on the dance floor.) Stefan defends Elena’s honor by physically manhandling the guy and then compelling him to apologize - twice. Again: if this is Stefan without inhibitions, I don’t like what’s going on in that boy’s head. You strip away the outer layers of control, and what do you find underneath? More control - but this time, the impulse to control others. And since Elena was never actually in danger, and appeared perfectly willing to let the verbal slight go, this looks like it’s more about Stefan’s possessiveness than it is about genuinely protecting her.

And just like before, Elena takes her worry about Stefan straight to Damon: “Have you noticed what you’re brother’s been up to?” “Nope,” says Damon, “been too preoccupied with yours.” He proceeds to do a pretty funny impression of Jeremy, who’s been asking questions about Vicki’s death and burial which Damon doesn’t want answered, seeing as he’s the one who buried her. But Elena says not to compel him - “I won’t do that to him again; I’ll handle it.” “Okay,” says Damon, plucking a red rose from the arrangement on the bar and smelling it. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He hands her the rose, they make eye contact.

What. The. Heck. Are. You. Doing?? Elena????

Tyler and Kelley...make friends. Euurgh. John tells Damon he knows he was the one who let all the tomb vampires out - and he shouldn’t even know there was a tomb. Damon snaps his neck and throws him off the balcony. Elena tracks down Jeremy and tries to comfort him about Vicki, but her terrible lying skills finally bite her in the behind and he gets suspicious that she knows something. Matt finds his best friend making out with his mom (euuuurghhhhhhh) and they fight, so Stefan finds himself at a party with a lot of bleeding people and has to make a hasty exit, but not before he gets Kelley’s blood on his hand.

John walks back in to the party, perfectly alive, and makes a speech about protecting Mystic Falls. Damon sidles up to Alaric and points out John’s ring - and the likely connection to Isobel means that suddenly, these two are on the same team again. They follow John outside, and John mostly just...shows off about how much he knows. For instance, he was the one who sent Isobel to Damon, not Katherine. And he’s not happy that Isobel gave his ring to “another guy”. (This means that Alaric and John have both slept with Isobel and also with Jenna. This is weird, and I don’t like it. Jenna, stay away from Damon!!)

Jeremy gets back to the house early, and reads Elena’s diary.

Stefan, who licked Kelley’s blood off his fingers, got into another altercation with surly dance-floor guy, and then vamped himself away from the party when he heard Elena, pops into Elena’s bedroom and finally admits that he’s not okay. But he’s only telling her because he promised not to keep things from her; “I don’t want you to see me like this, I don’t want you to know that this side of me exists.” This is basically a verbal admission of everything I’ve been saying makes me uncomfortable about the season 1 Stefan/Elena relationship - this side of him does exist, and he knows that, but he would rather Elena doesn’t. Like the priest said at my sister’s wedding five days ago, your instincts may tell you to hide broken parts of yourself from the person you love, but you gotta give it all. That’s the only way love can be real. Elena tries to comfort him, he squirms away and says he’s afraid of what he could do to her. She stares at him, and then says, “I’m not.” She steps forward, takes his face in her hands, repeats, “Stefan, I’m not.” She kisses him. He breaks down. “I love you so much,” he says. “I love you too,” she says, but, at last, she looks like she understands what the stakes are.

I’m of two minds about this interaction. On the one hand, like last episode, it feels very Twilight, and so that puts me on edge. All of us who were a part of that original Problematic Ship Discourse will remember that this kind of relationship - where a person tells his partner that he’s dangerous so that the partner has to insist that she’s strong enough to love him anyway, that she’s not afraid - is pretty textbook abusive. It sets up the dynamic so that the partner’s role is precisely to love in-spite-of-x, which then makes it difficult for her to draw the line anywhere, to define any “x” which she’s not willing to put up with. I’ve lived through this to a small extent, and can confirm that it is a lot of pressure and that it Sucks, and so there is a real danger in over-romanticizing this kind of dynamic.

And yet, on the other hand, unlike in Twilight where the Cullen family’s animal-blood-only diet is presented straightforwardly as the only moral choice, TVD will eventually come pretty firmly down on the side of vampires fittingly drinking human blood as part of their nature. So the thing Stefan is struggling with here isn’t, within the show’s own framework, an uncomplicated temptation to do evil. He’s been presented with an opportunity to actually walk the thin line, to learn how to interact with basic vampire goods in a proportionate way, rather than his previous strategy of Puritanical wholesale rejection. So his struggle here, with which Elena offers to help him, is actually bringing him closer to an integrated way of being. Looked at this way, Elena’s statement that she’s not afraid could be read as saying that she finally sees this part of him that he’s so disgusted by, but she sees a possibility that he could be whole and still lovable. I’ll have to see where it goes from here.

Damon does some cinematic brooding.

He hypothesizes that this time the need is too strong because it’s been so many years since Stefan last drank, and goes to bed, leaving his glass of blood on the side table. Stefan, who didn’t speak a word in the whole interaction, but was non-verbally begging for some kind of help from his big brother, drinks.

Music Moments: Katy Perry’s “Use Your Love” plays while Stefan spins Elena and gets into a fight. And Paramore’s “Brick By Boring Brick” plays during Elena and Damon’s conversation at the bar with the rose.

Eyebrow Watch: his reaction to Liz saying she had her doubts about him at first

previous episode // next episode (part 1)

#rewatch #1.18 #under control #tvd

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valeriemperez · 6 years

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Hi ,could you please gif nafessa in the Clexa Con panel? The part where she talks about not giving a damn about the haters

Here you go!

hi have you been watching lee sang yeob on running man?? 😊😊

No, but now I have to! Thank youuu.

Hey tati, just out of curiosity what’s your favourite season of flash so far?

Tough! I feel like it would need to be broken up into parts A and B, because every season tends to be uneven. So from favorite to least (so far):

1A (keep all its perfection)3B (throw away 3.18-3.20)4A (throw away 4.06)2B (throw away 2.10, 2.18 & 2.19)1B (throw away 1.10, 1.12 & 1.18)3A (throw away 3.02 & 3.05)4B (only keep 4.15 & 4.16 thus far)2A (only keep 2.05 & 2.06)

Do you think TF will have so much low brow humor in the next season? It really isn’t my cup of tea & in fact I think it takes away from the show.

I think if Ralph leaves, that humor will go with him. But I can’t be sure, because we have to assume the new writers will stay.

Oh that’s right! I forgot that they work ridiculous hours. (I know they have some down time but it’s still long days and nights so I can see why they would need drivers. Not sure if the networks can cut down the schedules to more saner shoot lengths.

I think shorter schedules would mean more filming days/weeks, which is why they don’t do it.

I’m sorry but I don’t get how anyone could be jealous in the slightest of EBR/SA’s forced pics. It screams cringe!!! One thing that would be nice is GG doing cons…but that’s it lol.

LOL, to each their own, right? I love that Grant and Candice do with their characters, and that’s all I need.

One more dp question. I don’t like her or her character but I mean idk lol. Wouldn’t anyone try to get a better role for their character/job? I guess my point is if I were an actress and I knew being the love interest of a certain character would be better for me I’d probably advocate and talk about it a lot too until I realized it wasn’t happening lol. Ofc I wouldn’t do it to an actress of color. supporting your Costar should happen but in season 1 I would definitely have tried.Same anon. Not saying that what dp did is okay. I guess I just think that a lot of us would do it too. Maybe not for as long as dp did and not as snakey and definitely not to an actress of color like Candice. She should’ve stopped whatever she was doing after season 1 and actually support cp but I don’t blame her for trying even though I don’t like her. Because I could definitely see myself doing it to a white actress if I were in dps shoes lol

I get what you’re saying, but it also is a situation I have rarely come across. Usually an actor or actress hypes their own ship, and Danielle had one with Ronnie that she mostly ignored. It’s rare that something that started off as non-existent becomes the OTP, rather it’s the B-couple (which Caitlin/Ronnie would have been) that gets popular and pushes both those actors to the forefront. Such as CB overtaking DS on Gossip Girl, Seth/Summer overtaking Marissa/Ryan on The OC, or even Magnus/Alec overtaking Clary/Jace on Shadowhunters. When only one half of the alpha couple switches, either it was planned all along (SE vs DE in TVD) or it came about because of producer passion and not actor pushing (like how EBR didn’t have to do anything for OF to replace OL).

And like you said, you wouldn’t do it to an actress of color because you’re aware that the deck is already stacked against her. Danielle either wasn’t aware or used the inequality to try and gain an advantage.

Not to be skeptical, but that AJK interview happened after people started to question if DP ever actually auditioned for the show. He just sneaked it into that interview. She’s never talked about her experience, esp. since they changed the role for her. It’s odd that I have heard GG, CP, and CV recount their audition experiences, but not DP. We know that JLM and TC were approached, but I am still skeptical that DP ever auditioned. I hope she did. Same with SV.

I will not begrudge you that belief, lol.

#the flash for ts #anonymous #tatiana's thoughts #more asks under the cut #long post for ts #sbask #gossip

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