Vampire Diaries (Spoiler-rific)

[windinthemaples]

Okay, last night's episode ended the seemingly interminable Olympics hiatus.

1. A black vampire. It is about time. I feel like someone finally listened to my complaint that all Vampire Diaries-world vampires are white and that all black people are witches. If Harper turns out to be a witch-vampire or something, I'll have to amend my "someone finally listened!" stance. In the meantime, with his return, I'm really looking forward to learning more about what the heck happened in the 1860s that allowed so many vampires to live in (and later be captured in) one small town. (The creation of those magic walk-in-sunlight rings, perhaps?) Why would Emily have done so much for so many vampires?

2. Alaric's ring. Is that one of those magic vampire rings? Is some sort of immortality the natural effect of a human wearing the vampire-intended bespelled ring? Or something else? And did his chest heal, or did he wake up with a problematic giant hole in his chest?

3. I fucking hate the Bing search engine crap. Never has a product placement seemed more obvious and heavy-handed.

4. So. Let's think this through. Isobel got pregnant as a teenager. She disappeared, arrived in Mystic Falls, gave birth and gave the child (Elena) away. She then, years later, shows up again at Duke where she's feverishly researching Mystic Falls vampires and married to history buff Alaric. Their marriage doesn't look so great and she's keeping suspiciously vampire-like hours. Well, she gets some magic ring, who knows how, for the man as a keeping-him-safe apology or something and then disappears into her new much-anticipated life as a vampire. Interesting how, like Katherine did to Damon, Isobel doesn't mind leaving her husband to agonize for years about her seeming demise. But if she's so cold, why give him the ring at all? Why go to so much trouble, including ordering the killing her high school best friend, so that Elena stops looking for her? Is it even possible that Isobel is acting from some more noble place--finding a way to become a vampire so she can investigate that society and/or have the power to kill a bigger baddie among them? And yet...

5. The Compulsion. Wow. Instead of the, "you will listen to me" parlor tricks, Isobel has seemingly stepped it up to creating disposable human servants. Could human armies of compelled people be next? How terrifying. It seems like, if she treats random humans as being so disposable, that she must be evil-evil-evil. She seemed so bland and scholarly and nice as a human--could vampirism have made her change that much?

6. How the hell are Katherine/Isobel/Elena related? I've always assumed that Isobel had sort of an accidental pregnancy. What if that wasn't the case? What if she got mixed up into some weird vampire politics thing? What if she was fulfilling an obligation to have another living descendant of Katharine created? Damon said that vampires can't reproduce--did Katherine, perhaps with a witch's help, find a way around that? Is Isobel her evil little daughter protogee?

7. Stefan has a lot of secrets. You could have a drinking game revolving around every time he says, "I wanted to tell you but...". He seems to reveal only what he's forced to, a piece at a time, on a need-to-know basis. Elena has to be the one to figure all this out on her own and then confront him with it. How long before she gets fully pissed off?

8. Matt and Caroline seem to be from some other show. Are they the token uninvolved humans? I'm not sure what to think there. Same, too, with Aunt Jenna. At what point will they all be weaved into this supernatural show?

What did you think? What struck you? Are you happy with where the show is going and the pace the writers are taking it there? Let's chat! :D

Comments

[neva-butterfly.livejournal.com]

Really all I want to talk about is how I didn't really need to know how extensive Ian Somerhalder's manscaping is. That was... Just waaaaayyyyy too much.

Yes, Stefan: too many secrets, kind of an asshole

I'm assuming that somehow Isobel was compelled to get pregnant in some kind of vampire eugenics experiment and gave Elena away as an effort to keep her safe. She is still trying to keep her safe from the vampire world, though failing miserably. When she was younger she didn't understand why she was being drawn into this mysterious world, and then began to understand that it was about vampires. From there she either wanted immortal life or was planning some dangerous coup, but somehow wanted to keep Alaric safe? But she is totally ruthless much as Katherine is/was--willing to sacrifice people, love, hearts, perhaps her own child toward her ends.

Other than that I don't know, but I kind of enjoyed it...

Only the pants ruined it for me... I mean, around here I'm used to seeing men with pants belted on or below their crotches, but isn't Damon supposed to be at least marginally classier than that?

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

"Only the pants ruined it for me... I mean, around here I'm used to seeing men with pants belted on or below their crotches, but isn't Damon supposed to be at least marginally classier than that?"

I watched the show with my friend Shaun (radshaun) and we both literally recoiled from the screen and did the looking-through-your-fingers horror movie thing. Somehow, it was more embarassing than if he'd actually been naked :D Also, something about Caroline and Matt's little scene together also made me feel like an old pervert voyeur, watching the kids make out. ewwww.

I really like your theory about Elena being given away as a way to make her anonymous. (Though you'd think she should have gone to a bigger effing town for that.) I wonder if that means her father doesn't know she exists and what he would do with her (Elena) if he did?

[neva-butterfly.livejournal.com]

It was worse than if he was naked because 1) that's just bad taste to wear your pants like that, and 2) if he was naked then you'd assume he'd put on clothing before leaving the house, but in this he was going to wear his pants outside THAT WAY! And again, I say it MANSCAPING. Not that I'm a big fan of body hair, but he's playing a supposedly straight male vampire of the Civil War era, so he was turned when he likely had some body hair, but now he goes and gets a bikini wax every week or so?

[sugarmaplelife.livejournal.com]

Ha! Is that what manscaping is? Oh, that's funny! Well, I think when we talk about Civil War Mystic Falls we're obviously discussing an alternate reality. Katherine, I noticed, didn't have underarm hair so maybe she set the trend and started everyone off on waxing ahead-of-their-time. :D I guess I'm now super-grateful that Ian Somerhalder does wax or shave.

[neva-butterfly.livejournal.com]

Or you could look at it this way, if he didn't remove every single hair from his body they would have been forced to have his pants resting at a decent point closer to his hips, and thus we wouldn't know if he did or didn't extensively wax... Of course I think we already knew he waxed his chest, but that disturbs me less.

[radshaun.livejournal.com]

No product placement beats the Subway placement in CHUCK.