Welcome to Revamp, where we have that amnesia that makes you think you’re centuries in the future and the CW has put you in charge of a reboot. You know, that one.
This week, we're talking all about the family we love to hate. We're talking faves, least faves, and what does Finn even do again?
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CONTENT WARNING: Brief discussion of child death.
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The transcript for our eighth episode, here in full. Mwah!
We're pretty mean about the US on this show, so this week, we're switching it up: what if The Vampire Diaries was set in Brazil or Australia? Let's talk sausage sizzles, harvest festivals, college vs uni, shared colonial histories, and more!
FLO: Hey, Ingrid! How you doing?
INGRID: I'm doing good! How are you, Flo?
FLO: I'm pretty good! I'm pretty good. So, what are we doing this week, Ingrid?
INGRID: Okay, so this is our eighth episode, and I think that would be interesting, since neither of us are from the United States—I’m from Brazil, Flo is from Australia—and I think it would be interesting for us to talk about how The Vampire Diaries would change if it were set in our respective countries. So let's, I guess, think about cultural differences and just things that might be might be interesting. So a big change that we have already discussed is that the characters would be in college and not in high school. What does college look like in Australia?
FLO: Well, there are some differences—I mean, first of all, it's uni, it's, like, university here, we don't call it college. And also the length of a bachelor degree is completely different, so here, our degrees—if you're working full-time, most of the time a bachelor degree will be about three years, whereas in the US, it's four. And from what I understand, the main source of that difference is just that in the US they have all the, like, general courses in the first year. It seems like some people even end up having to do—this is my nightmare, my worst nightmare—to have to do maths and shit like that for an English major? Like, it doesn't really make sense to me. And also that kind of like give that allows people in the US to be an undecided major. We don't have that; we have to, like, pick from the start, which I guess in the context of The Vampire Diaries, throws a wrench in our Matt Donovan plans, where we're trying to have him kind of see-sawing between between different thoughts about what he wants to do. Because you really do have to say—you enroll in the specific bachelor and then even pick a major under the umbrella of that bachelor here. So how do—are bachelor degrees three or four years in Brazil?
INGRID: It's interesting that you said that, because bachelor degrees are four years in Brazil. Usually, we also have to pick like right from the start. We don't really have like this thing of majors and minors, we just pick the bachelor course right from the start, so it's interesting that we have to do it for four years even though we don't have like that period of time where we can, I guess, be undecided.
FLO: Yeah, yeah. This may just be specific to your degree, but from what I remember, you had to do a big research project to complete your bachelor, whereas we don't have to do that here, we don't have to do—you can choose sometimes to do units that are basically just a big—like, that's like a pseudo-thesis, but you don't have to, so maybe that's the difference is that in your final year in Brazil you're expected to do like a big research project, but whereas here in Australia, they're like, “Nah, you're good, just go. We've had enough of you.”
INGRID: Yeah, the research project would be the equivalent of a thesis, I guess an undergraduate equivalent of a thesis.
FLO: So that is every bachelor, they have to do like an undergrad thesis in Brazil?
INGRID: Yes, that is everyone. So I have a background in education and teaching English as a foreign language, and it kind of encompasses, like, literature, linguistics, and a bunch of things. It's a complicated course that doesn't really have a direct translation in English.
FLO: Yeah.
INGRID: But we do have to submit a paper at the end, so that's interesting. Oh my god, you get to you stay for three years and you don't have to do the final paper work! That's great.
FLO: Yeah, we didn't have to do that. So does that mean that for TVD Brazil, they're going to have to do these undergrad theses?
INGRID: Yes, I think that would be, like, a big—that would be so interesting because it's usually a very stressful time, so, basically finals week …
FLO: Only a year or something?
INGRID: Lasting about six months. Not a year, unless, like …
FLO: So it's a semester.
INGRID: Yeah, basically a semester. So the stress of finals week throughout the entire—
FLO: I’m shuddering! I’m so sorry that happened to you, Ingrid. I’m so sorry that happened to you. That's so unfair. Do you feel like it helped you professionally in any way to have to do that?
INGRID: It didn't help me in most professional senses because it's expected of everyone, but I think that I did get a lot of practice writing because you do it with an advisor so there's someone there to give you feedback, and that's really good. But honestly, it wasn't that bad of an experience for me. The subject matter was interesting, it was a pretty good experience to have to do the paper, and you also have to present it, so that's another one. Like, you have to do, like—
FLO: Oh, wow.
INGRID: A 30-minute presentation on it. So yeah! But it wasn't that bad honestly, I think. Maybe I repressed the memory.
FLO: You repressed the trauma. I think that there is something to be said for the fact that even a massive amount of work that's high pressure, and it's a lot to do, if it's in a field that you're passionate about and that you're already thinking about, and especially if you're at the end of your degree and ready to step into working in that field professionally, it's different. The kind of commitment and what it asks of you is different to, for example, being in high school and trying to think about the amount of work that university will be and stressing out about that. It's just different when you're in it and you've actually been able to choose something that is important to you.
FLO: So, in the context of The Vampire Diaries, which we're forgetting to talk about because we're just, like, interested in each other's lives, I think that it's interesting that in TVD Brazil they would have to, you know, seek out advisors and really commit to this long-term project and have very specific things that they want to look into. I think that that provides an opportunity for, you know, Bonnie as the history major, like, what's she trying to figure out about the town or about its history and that sort of thing. And I think just in my mind, it asks a different kind of commitment from everybody that that could be potentially interesting.
INGRID: It would be interesting to see what their what their final year paper would be, what subject matter they would focus on. It's also interesting to think about, if Ric survives, he would be, like, an advisor to one of these—
FLO: Yeah.
INGRID: —one of these students, so that would be interesting.
FLO: Bonnie's advisor or some shit.
INGRID: And we kind of decided that Damon would be somehow involved as a teacher, like, a theatre, drama—
FLO: Oh my god.
INGRID: So he would be an advisor and supervisor. That would be amazing, honestly.
FLO: Yeah, not even anybody in the main cast, he would necessarily advise.
INGRID: Wouldn't pick him!
FLO: But, like, he would have students.
INGRID: Exactly. He'd have to juggle that, yeah.
FLO: Holy shit, oh my god, that would be so funny. Like, we obviously need a very good, compelling reason for why he has to show up and do all that shit because it's gonna make me pretty sad if he bails on all these people who are trying to get an education, you know? It's like, I want consistency from Damon, I want a situation that really fucks him up and forces him to like sit his ass in a chair and do shit.
INGRID: Give feedback, to like, grade papers and stuff, yeah.
FLO: Yeah, I’m imagining Damon going through his emails.
INGRID: There's a lot of a lot of exchanging emails. You send the word document, the most recent additions, and then they send it back with a ton of comments for you to change everything. And it's just that back and forth for six months. Question: do you have to pay tuition at uni in Australia?
FLO: Oh! Yes, good point. We have something for, I believe, citizens and permanent residents, I think, can put all of their, like, 100% of their uni fees on something called—I think it's currently called a HECS-Help debt, or sometimes there are different acronyms. And so all of your, I think the limit is 100 000, that you have, that you can put on that, and you do still owe that to the government technically, but you don't have to start paying it back until you personally are earning over a certain threshold where that would be a reasonable expectation for you to pay it. How is it in Brazil?
INGRID: The main difference, I think, and the most interesting difference, is the fact that we have public universities here where tuition is free. So these are the most, like, prestigious universities because it's really hard to get in, and that's another point—in the final years of high school, there's a big study culture. You have to cram—not cram, but you have to spend a lot of time studying, people do courses to take the entrance exam and stuff, so it's definitely prestigious in the sense that it's very exclusive, but not exclusive monetarily. So, access to universities became more common among the poor because of, like, affirmative action policies and private universities with student loan programs that are, I think, similar to the ones that you mentioned in Australia, where the government—
FLO: Yeah.
INGRID: —pays for it and then you get to pay for it after, and it's a lot more reasonable than in the United States. So Matt and Vicki, if they wanted to, would definitely be able to go to college.
FLO: It's interesting to me that the free option is extremely coveted and difficult to get into and merit-based, but difficult to access. Because I guess that mimics US scholarships at uni, at colleges and stuff like that, but also the … for a whole institution to be either free or reasonably priced, the equivalent is, like, a city college in the US, which is considered ... the way that that's treated is often as lesser than the expensive ivy league option. So it's just interesting that policy differences and differences in the university structure changes the way that cultures speak about different things, because can you imagine like a free university in the US and how it would be discussed? I mean, I guess if it's structured the same as what you're talking about, it would still be considered quite prestigious, but the way that we think about free education a lot of the time in Australia and in the US, like about 100% free or the more reasonable option …
INGRID: It really is the exact opposite of the culture in the United States, where you have city colleges that aren't really … I guess the general opinion of them is very low, but the ivy league is very prestigious. Whereas here, private universities sort of have a bad rap? Like, there are very few of them that aren't predatory and basically de vry, like, you know, that—
FLO: Yeah.
INGRID: Basically all of them are like that, so there's very few where you say you went to a private college, a private university, you'll be taken seriously, I guess, by the job market. But that's interesting, yeah. It's a double-edged sword because it is very exclusive, so, for a long time, people of color, black Brazilians specifically, and poor people didn't really have access to public universities, even though it was free, because they just couldn't get in. It was so competitive that people really had to dedicate years of study, specifically to pass the placement tests in order to get in, and when you, I don't know, work a part-time job, you don't really have that ability to dedicate so much time.
FLO: Or your parents didn't go, you can't turn to them and ask them for advice on how to handle a study load—
INGRID: Yeah.
FLO: —what the answer to something is. Like, I think a lot of those of us who had parents who did go to on to do higher education don't really think about the fact that so much of what enables us, what enabled us in the beginning especially, was being able to turn to them and ask them. like it was just the simple fact of hey how does this work I’m really freaked out about it I don't really understand what's happening and somebody who's like yeah that's okay like sit down we'll talk about it it just makes a huge difference so
INGRID: Thankfully, that has changed, like, there are more people from different backgrounds getting into university because of the government policies that were implemented in the 2000s mainly, so that changed for the better. It's starting to change for the worse right now, but hopefully, 2022 …
FLO: Yep, let's go, let's get to it. It's actually the year 3000, so we can say confidently that in 2022, everything turned around, and everything was fine, and nothing bad ever happened again.
INGRID: Yes, Lula got re-elected, and everything was okay.
FLO: Everything was fine. So, what else were you thinking about [in terms of] major changes for TVD Brazil?
INGRID: Uh, let's think a little bit about location just in general. How would being set in Australia make it different from being set in the United States, and in Virginia specifically? Have you thought of a specific part of Australia that you think TVD could be set in?
FLO: I think that what's interesting about TVD being set in Virginia is that … because I have never been to Virginia, so I’m—when I’m trying to think about what I understand about Virginia versus, like, in how to parallel that with Australia, obviously there's going to be crossed wires and things that aren't quite direct. But my impression of Mystic Falls is that it is a small town in a considerably rural area, that it's got quite deep class divisions that a lot of those kinds of small towns tend to have, and so I would imagine that anywhere in Australia, really, that's rural could have this kind of dynamic. But I just—just weather-wise, just heat-wise in Virginia, the equivalent is probably near the top of Australia, because obviously, what's northernmost in Australia is hotter than what's the southernmost because of where the equator is and stuff like that. So I was thinking that the equivalent would probably be somewhere in North Queensland, in which case Mystic Falls would no longer be called—it would be called Mystic Falls on all the signs, but because of the way Australians shorten everything, it would probably be called “Mysto”, because—
INGRID: “Mysto”. Oh, I love that.
FLO: No rural Australian is going to say “Mystic Falls”. They're going to say “Mysto”. So that's like, my big change.
INGRID: I love that so much, that's great. Mysto. That's fantastic.
FLO: “Up to Mysto.” That's kind of how—so, far north Queensland is … probably encapsulates a lot of Australian stereotypes that may not apply to a lot of people who live in more built up areas. Like, I’ve lived in cities and in considerably rural areas, and I also have family members from north Queensland, and that's probably where the accents that—the really thick Australian accents that you hear come from far north Queensland. Like, when you think about Crocodile Dundee versus Cate Blanchett, that's what we're sort of talking about in terms of um accent shifts.
INGRID: Oh, interesting.
FLO: They would all be the kind of, like, southerner, US southern equivalent in Australia, essentially, is what I’m getting at. But it's quite difficult to translate because obviously there are several major differences. But how about you? Do you have any specific location in mind?
INGRID: I think I had the same problem in trying to translate the, I don't know, southern American Virginia feel to Brazil, because I don't think we have much of an equivalent. Because, like, rural areas here are a bit different from the way they seem to be in the United States and on the show, where either it's very poor and very isolated, or it's a place where there's a lot of agribusiness, and so a lot of people are—a lot of rich people, because they own the land and they own, like, vast swathes of property where they can raise cattle or plant like soy or something like that. So it's either one of those two extremes, and Mystic Falls doesn't really fit into either of those. It's just like, I don't know, I never really thought of it as too rural. It seemed to—I don't know, it seemed … it's a small town, but I didn't really think of it as rural because you don't really see like, I don't know, people don't talk about farmland and things like that, which is what I imagine when I think of a rural setting. I don't know.
FLO: There's usually, like, I guess, leak? A town doesn't just stop and then become an empty field. There's usually outskirts and points where the town becomes gradually less and less built up as you kind of move into larger properties and then into like farmland. There's usually that kind of thing, but I felt like Mystic Falls was supposed to be quite small town, isolated, but also, for the story, it always had exactly what they needed it to have. Like, it always … if they needed to get something, they could always get it. I feel like the narrative wasn't necessarily fixed in place except for the points about the confederacy and Mystic Falls being in Virginia and those kinds of historical contexts.
INGRID: Yeah. Is there any, I guess, equivalent historical context in Australia? Or something that you think would supplant the context of the confederacy and of the civil war if Mystic Falls were in Australia?
FLO: Australia has not had a civil war in the same way that the US has because we are still part of the Commonwealth at this point. So we haven't even tried to gain independence, we haven't had violence—
INGRID: My condolences.
FLO: [laughs] We haven't had a civil war, like, between specific groups within the country at any point because we are all kind of, like … the colonized group—the colonizer group is quite homogenous, and most of the aggression and any large-scale conflict has been between typically white British settlers and Indigenous Australians. So there are places that have these deep conflicts in their history, but it's actually, for some of them, they're much more recent than the civil war. Because it's good to remember that Australia is much—as far as Australia the colony, as a concept—is much younger than the United States. And so a lot of our ugliest battles and that kind of thing are a fair bit more recent. There are several places … Like, I just, this is an interesting point because this reaches a point where I’m probably not going to, like, sit here and theorize about how The Vampire Diaries would work with colonization in Australia, because it's deeply ugly, it's very fresh, and I already find the way that The Vampire Diaries uses slavery and the civil war to be distasteful. So it's quite difficult to imagine supplanting that. But Australia doesn't necessarily have the same history with a civil war or with the kinds of slavery that was fought over, that was the central issue of the Civil War. We did have some slavery, but we were not participants in the Transatlantic slave trade, so we didn't have that kind of conflict. But yeah, it's difficult to imagine what it would look like. I think that, handled as insensitively as The Vampire Diaries, it would probably just be a town somewhere in Australia, and random references to—random and occasional references, for drama, to pretty horrific things that happened to Indigenous Australians. There are locations in Australia where there were large-scale massacres. There's just, like, just the same—the country is spotted with the same kinds of ugliness that you'll find in most colonized countries, or any country with a civil war in its history, or any kind of attempted genocide like there has been here. So yeah, it's pretty depressing and difficult to fit into a Vampire Diaries podcast. So I just don't think that it's, uh, pitch fuel necessarily, but it's good to point out the similarities between the us and Australia, because we are so critical of the US on this podcast.
INGRID: Yeah, it's important to be critical, but honestly, neither our countries have any room to talk because for … I found a similar situation with Brazil, because our process of abolishing slavery was a bit different, it was later, and we had, I think, the biggest population of African slaves in the Americas, so—
FLO: Really? I didn't know that.
INGRID: Yeah, so it was more of a political transition rather than an actual civil war fighting for that. And we don't … I guess that it's interesting because so much of Mystic Falls and The Vampire Diaries is centered in its history and the connection that the characters have to the past of Mystic Falls, because so many of them, because they're vampires, were present at the time, and it's hard to find an equivalent in Brazil because there are very few cities where I would say, like, I can't think of any city that would have a founder's day parade or something, because we—I don't know if we would care enough, or if that would be … I don't know of any town that has as much pride in its history as Mystic Falls seemed to, and we didn't really, we didn't have a civil war in the same way as well as the United States, but we have, like, a very localized conflict in the around the same time, the 1890s, which if, uh, Mystic Falls were to be set in that space, I think that you could draw some parallels, but like … I don't know if I would feel comfortable doing that.
FLO: So I guess that we are really arriving at probably the most depressing point of the podcast, which is that the usage of specifically racialized hatred … it's so—it feels so awful to try and consider how to utilize that in a narrative sense, because it's already, it's already a battleground. Here in Australia, we call it culture wars, I don't know if that exists, uh, that term exists in many other places, but this war between how we interpret our past culture, and so we have this culture war already about the narrative of what happened, and so it's so hard to like it's pretty fucked up to sit here and think about how you would build a story around this. Because there are definitely many stories to be told that would be super interesting and fascinating, but I just don't … I could do all the research all the time, and I do not personally, sitting here, feel equipped to decide what that would look like, feel like I’m knowledgeable enough about what that would look like, and when you use that as your central conflict, you'd want to understand it, right? You'd want to be coming from a position of knowledge. So it's just … I don't understand how they did this. I don't understand how they sat in a writer's room and discussed how the Civil War would work in their vampire TV show. I don't get it.
INGRID: I think that even in a vampire TV show, I don't know, if you could lean more in the horror aspect I think it might have even worked, but they don't even have, like, Black characters to, I guess, be protagonists of this part of history that was so like fundamental to the Black experience in the United States, to the African-American experience, so it's just from the perspective of the white confederates, specifically, like, the confederates, but just the white people involved in the conflict in general. So yeah, how did they do that? Why?
FLO: We could sit here and talk about it for a very long time and still have the same conclusion.
INGRID: I can't find a better transition, so …
FLO: Okay, so, are there any major festivals or anything that would be a part of TVD Brazil?
INGRID: So, like I said, we don't really have Founders’ Day parades. We have a lot of holidays, but they're usually because of Catholic saints, or we have independence day and things like that.
FLO: Congratulations.
INGRID: Yes, thank you. I’m so sorry that you guys don't have that. You're still part of the Commonwealth. I’ve never stopped to consider that. My deepest condolences. But we do have two events that, depending on the region of Brazil it would be set in, one of them would be more prominent than the other, but we have carnaval, obviously, which is the one that everybody knows that is a big thing in the southeast of Brazil, and a little bit in the northeast in the state of Bahia, not so much in the other places, but we do have, like, besides the samba schools in Rio and São Paulo, we have, like, street parties where people just kind of dress up in costumes, lots of glitter, and just to go out on the street, have parades, listen to music, drink, so I think that could be interesting.
FLO: Sounds awesome.
INGRID: Yes, it is, it's pretty fun, it's pretty nice. The other big festival that is more of a part of north-eastern Brazilian culture is São João, which means, like, St. John, St. John festival, which is a harvest festival related to the corn harvest specifically. So I think that would fit a bit more to the context of Mystic Falls and the, I don't know, I don't know why, but yeah. There's also this harvest festival where people have parties and eat food that is made of corn and just drink and have fun, so those are the two main ones. There's also, like, Parintins, which is something from the north of Brazil, but I don't know enough about it to talk about it because it's something that's more related to the Indigenous populations of Brazil. So, uh, I honestly don't know enough about it to talk about it, but those are the two, and I imagine Caroline having to organize like a carnaval street party or a social party. I think that would be very fun.
FLO: I just want to mention that on The Originals, they do have something, I don't know if they call it a harvest festival or just a harvest ritual, but the witch community will basically assign four teenage girls, usually, they will confer this power on them and then sacrifice them all on an altar by slitting their throats, and that's what they call the harvest ritual. And then they come back to life, so that's the—there's a harvest ritual, but I don't believe that there is any kind of festival. But The Originals is, like, it has a festival every few episodes, and I just think it's—it cements it, it feels like it happens in the place that it happens more than TVD. I don't know how to explain that; it just it feels like it's very … I mean, I’ve never been to New Orleans, and I imagine that there's lots of things about The Originals that is just not accurate, like the fact that all the main characters are white and all the black characters are side characters, but it's, yeah, it's just—the amount of festivals is, like, pretty wild. Here in Australia, I don't think we have—we don't really have anything that you would go out on the street to celebrate, necessarily, other than pride. There's nothing that I’m aware of that people would flock the streets in order to do or necessarily have a big block party for. Sometimes, you would go over to somebody's house to celebrate Australia Day specifically, but Australia Day is quite contentious, and it essentially celebrates the first arrival of what we call the First Fleet, and so there's a lot of debate around whether or not we should be changing that date to—because if we're celebrating all of Australia, including Indigenous Australians, we should not be celebrating the day that colonization started. There's a lot of other different milestones that we could zero in on to be more cohesive and more respectful of what colonization meant for them. And probably something that we—that's a little bit lighter that we do have a lot and that's not fixed to a day is we have a lot of sausage sizzles, which is what we call—
INGRID: Sausage sizzles?
FLO: Yeah, it's what we call—you cook some sausages, and you just have them on bread, and sometimes you will have them—often you'll have them with onion, it's, like, fried up onions, and, you know, any sauce that you want. We don't do a lot of mustard, but you'll always find ketchup, which we call tomato sauce, and barbecue sauce.
INGRID: Okay, I find it fascinating that you have a whole event surrounding, like, hot dogs. That's incredible, that's pretty cool.
FLO: So TVD Australia would be very into sausage sizzles, and it's funny to imagine Caroline trying to arrange one because it feels not glamorous enough for her somehow? But she would be like—I love that we're just, like, every time there's some kind of festival or something, we want to see Caroline organize it. We want to see that montage.
INGRID: Yes, I want to see Caroline in that context. Yeah, I don't think the corn harvest festival would be glamorous either. I think she would make it glamorous, though. Like, yeah, people eat a lot of corn, there are a lot of like traditional dishes using corn, and people wear a lot of plaid and gingham—
FLO: Oh, that's cute.
INGRID: We—I don't really know why, so I think that she would be very, like, adamant about people wearing costumes and wearing gingham and straw hats and things like that. So it's a whole thing, yeah. Not as cool as sausage sizzles, I don't think, because I don't really like corn, so it's not one of my favorite holidays, but yeah, it's a thing, there's a lot of fire, too—oh, that, that’s interesting.
FLO: Oh, yikes.
INGRID: Because we—this is something that isn't so common anymore because of health reasons, the smoke would be very detrimental to anyone's lung health, but typically you would set bonfires in front of your house or at a party, at an event. You would have like a bonfire, and people would jump over it. Just imagining the vampires in that situation. A lot of wood, wood could be formed into stakes. In that party, I think that would be an interesting context to, like, kill someone.
FLO: Terrifying for a vampire for obvious reasons. In Australia, we don't have a real big fire culture with, like, starting and celebrating fires because they tend not to be … well, this is true of Brazil as well, with the burning in the Amazon, but we tend not to. And basically all of summer, you're just not allowed to set a fire on purpose, and if you do you're in so much trouble, like—
INGRID: Right, yeah, yeah. It's weird, now that you mention it, that we have this part of our culture where there are, like, forest fires commonly here, and it's really bad, so yeah, it's interesting. Never thought of that. It's not so common anymore.
FLO: Yeah. Was there anything else you wanted to chat about on festivals?
INGRID: I don't think so. Just … maybe one thing that is very common here, in places where we don't have beaches. Because, like, Brazil is not all beaches, it's a big country, even though people think—
FLO: That's devastating! My vision of Brazil is shattered.
INGRID: Devastating, I know, but what a lot of people will do is to, like, bathe in rivers or in reservoirs of water that are supposed to have, like—to keep fresh water so people can drink. Because in the northeast of Brazil, droughts are very common, not so common now, but yeah, they're pretty common. But people will kind of have, like, beach parties around these reservoirs, and it's kind of, like, it's a big part of small-town north-eastern Brazil culture that I think would be an interesting translation, I guess. So if you can imagine those, I don't know, any party where the kids are just drinking and having fun and—
FLO: Like watering holes that they've done a few times.
INGRID: Yeah, basically like that. I think that’s it! That's all I’ve got.
FLO: But that's—well, that's a lot. I think it's interesting to think about what twenties, early twenty-somethings would be up to in 2009. Where they're partying and where they're, you know, hanging out and stuff like that. And I think that there's a lot of parallels. Kind of tangentially related to festivals, I guess, and also to, like, sausage sizzles, obviously, is food. I think that a lot of Australian food is quite similar to US food, although I have people who've gone to the US and have said that there's even sugar in the milk, which is not the case here. But food here is, in general, we do sausage sizzles, and we do, like, mostly food that you would find in America.
INGRID: Here in Brazil, we … I can't really think of any food that would be interesting to put on the show. I guess it's just because I’m immersed in this culture, so I don't really think of anything, like, specifically that would be different or worth mentioning. Besides all the corn, I guess. Yeah, we have regional fried foods that are pretty good depending on where you are, so if it were set in the northeast, we could have, like, in Bahia, they have what's called acaracé, which is, like, fried, it's made from beans that are mashed and fried, and you can put shrimp or whatever you want in it. But usually people put shrimp or seafood. And apparently it's really good! I’ve never tried it, and it's apparently really spicy, but I honestly can't think of any food …
FLO: Yeah, it's hard to take an outsider perspective. Something that I came across as I was I—this thing didn't have, it didn't have this, no, it didn't have anywhere to go. Like, I don't know if it's location-specific, and it's not, like, it's definitely not food, but there's—in Australia, and in particular in anywhere rural where you're walking through lots of trees and stuff like that, we have this concept called—this is something that we tell tourists, and it's not true, and I’m gonna be drawn and quartered in the town square for saying this in public on a podcast and ruining the game—but we tell tourists that we have something called drop bears, which are essentially evil koalas that drop out of trees and, like, eat your face off.
INGRID: [laughs] I love it.
FLO: Yeah, so on TVD Australia, every single character would be very much in on this idea of drop bears. And we do sometimes try and tell children in Australia that they're real. And part of what I thought was interesting about them is … because, when I was told about them once at school when I was younger, it was in the context of also discussing a similar creature in Indigenous Australian beliefs. An interesting creature that is kind of vampiric actually, so I just wanted to bring this up. It's, like, a red frog-like creature—hang on, I’m actually gonna look it up to find the legit name. Because I know that this is real, because it was—unless it’s just something that Indigenous Australians tell us white Australians, like—
INGRID: It's their drop bears. Uh, when you said that, I was, I immediately thought, like, let's make it real on the show, and the koalas are vampires.
FLO: Yes!
INGRID: Instead of bats.
FLO: Why can't animals become vampires? I don't think it's fair that it's just humans. Like, animals should be able to be vampiric. You should be able to turn your dog and make him live forever. So the name of these creatures, according to Wikipedia, is the Yara-ma-yha-who—I believe that's how it's pronounced, but there isn't, like, a pronunciation guide here. So apparently they are—they resemble a little red frog-like man with a very big head, a large mouth with no teeth and suckers on the ends of their hands and feet. And so they drop out of fig trees and they, like, attack you and suck your blood through the little suckers on their hands and feet, which I just think is so cool.
INGRID: That's amazing, yeah, that's amazing. Do we—trying to think if we have one, an equivalent figure in Brazilian folklore, I guess, but I’m kind of drawing a blank.
FLO: Do you guys have a lot of the same vampiric myths? Like, does that tend to exist in Brazilian media and that kind of thing in the same sense that it does in a lot of US and British and Australian media?
INGRID: Yes, because I think that most of our exposure to vampires comes from that media. We don't necessarily have a figure that is vampiric in the same way that many cultures do as far as—I don’t know, there could be some sort of vampiric figure in, like, Indigenous beliefs or things like that, but most of what we think of as vampires come from like European folklore and the American adoption and adaptation of that. So yeah, nothing I can think of in particular.
FLO: Yeah, I think it's interesting because, like, I often hear this idea that every culture has a version of the vampire and that sort of thing, and I guess I feel like the word “vampire” brings so much baggage with it that that can't possibly be true, and that it's really more that every culture plays around with this idea of consuming the body or the blood in the body, and every culture plays around with the idea of death and undeath, and then because those are two of these core principles in the European idea of vampires, we then say every culture has a version of the vampire. But I just—I struggle with that a bit because like feels like a Joseph Campbell kind of observation about other cultures and their stories and mythology and—not mythology, but belief systems and stuff like that.
INGRID: I googled this, I looked it up, and apparently there's a figure that's not from Indigenous beliefs. It's more like an urban legend where it's a vampire that wears all leather, because here in Brazil, and in the northeast in particular, there is apparently a figure that is a vampire, and wears like all black leather, and it's called Encourado, which is—which basically means, like, “he who wears leather”, like, “the guy wearing leather”, I guess.
FLO: Damon Salvatore.
INGRID: Damon Salvatore! But it's interesting because in the northeast of Brazil, uh, we had a very strong presence of cangaceiros, which were a group of outlaws, very much in the social banditry sense, where they were—I guess I wouldn't say, like, political revolutionaries, but there is that sense of going against the status quo, not just from a perspective of trying to make money, but also to change the situation socially. So he basically dresses like that, only all black, because the cangaceiros would wear, like, all leather, and it's … That's—that's interesting. Okay, uh, is this a real thing? I’m going to look this up, because I don't see many sources on this.
FLO: Yeah, that's interesting, and I do think that if TVD Brazil was set in the same area, that Damon Salvatore would probably fall within this archetype.
INGRID: He’s the origin of the urban legend!
FLO: Yes! Oh, that's so funny.
INGRID: I love it so much. I’m going to look this up, and if there's nothing about this, I will create it. I’m going to make a dnd character out of this. This is amazing, actually. I’m learning so much about my own culture.
FLO: At what point in this Vampire Diaries podcast do we turn this into TVnD, which is when we're just rolling these characters and figuring things out in a, in a very deep—
INRGID: I think it should be right now. I think it should have been episode one. I should have done this—
FLO: We should have had the pun ready to go, locked and loaded.
INGRID: TVnD. Yeah, oh, that would have been fantastic.
FLO: The Vampires and Dragons.
INGRID: Vampires and Dragons. There's a whole, like, adventure module, I guess, in the DnD universe, that's published by wizards of the coast, which is the company that owns Dungeons and Dragons, called The Curse of Strahn. So there is uh, DnD vampires, and it's very interesting, but yeah.
FLO: Sounds wild.
INGRID: Another tangent. I’m sorry, it's the brain rot.
FLO: A tangent for another day. Do we need to do a Dungeons and Dragons dedicated episode?
INGRID: I would, but uh—
FLO: Are you scared to unleash that kind of power in yourself?
INGRID: Yes, yeah, I’m scared of what would happen.
FLO: So I think that's all of our major stuff covered, I believe …
INGRID: The point that I want to end on is that, uh, in Brazil, we do have a very strong union presence for most trades and most professional—
FLO: Congratulations, I’m very happy for you guys.
INGRID: So I would say—I would say that the employees of the Mystic Grill would have a very strong union, and that the union would be, like, a fundamental part of the town instead of the town council. It would be the Mystic Grill Union.
FLO: Yes, excellent! I love that. Thanks for hanging out with me today, Ingrid!
INGRID: Thank you so much, Flo! It was a great time, as always.
A 2022 TV review podcast with a twist: we have that amnesia that makes you think you're centuries in the future and the CW has put you in charge of a reboot. You know, that one.
We're pretty mean about the US on this show, so this week, we're switching it up: what if The Vampire Diaries was set in Brazil or Australia? Let's talk sausage sizzles, harvest festivals, college vs uni, shared colonial histories, and more!
Content warnings: Discussions of colonisation in the US/Brazil/Australia, the racism involved in that process, and the Civil War.
Have a thought? Shoot us an email at [email protected] or submit an anonymous ask to our blog at revamp-podcast.tumblr.com.
A 2021 TV review podcast with a twist: we have that amnesia that makes you think you're centuries in the future and the CW has put you in charge of a reboot. You know, that one.
This week, we've rewatched all TVD Christmas episodes, and we definitely know everything that's going on, plot-wise. Tangents include Why Kai Parker Sucks, Why Matt's Dad Sucks, and we get meta with a new pitch for our next podcast.
Have a thought? Shoot us an email at [email protected] or submit an anonymous ask to us here!
This week, we've rewatched all TVD Christmas episodes, and we definitely know everything that's going on, plot-wise. Tangents include Why Kai Parker Sucks, Why Matt's Dad Sucks, and we get meta with a new pitch for our next podcast.
Content warnings: Brief mentions of suicidal ideation and domestic violence.
FLO: Hey, Ingrid. Thanks for joining me. How are you doing today?
INGRID: I’m doing great. Happy to be here. How are you doing?
FLO: I’m pretty good! I’m excited for our seventh writers room meeting that we've decided to transform into a Christmas-ish episode. So that's going to be a nice vibe.
INGRID: Of course. It's certainly topical, I guess. So let's … let's get right into it.
FLO: So I have re-watched some Christmas episodes from the original show in the past week, and I believe you have as well, so I was wondering if maybe we would just start off with talking about what that experience is like, because we've been—very ironically for a writer's room based on The Vampire Diaries—we've been very opposed to re-watching this show so far.
INGRID: Yes.
FLO: What was it like for you to go back and re-watch a bunch of random episodes from throughout the seasons?
INGRID: Oh my god, so, for this show, for, like, our writer's room, I watched the—re-watched the first season, and these episodes, these four Christmas episodes, and it was a bit difficult to try to remember what was going on? Because the way that The Vampire Diaries constantly raises the stakes, every season they introduce new concepts that I, uh, it's difficult for me to remember. So, like, by the last half of the—the second half of the show where you get things like sirens and Travelers and Heretics and all of these things that I had to remember what they were, and like a magic sword and things like that, so that was a bit hard.
FLO: Yeah, I think—what I have written down is that the pace of plot development … I think when you're watching it, it's very compelling because everything feels like the most important thing that's ever happened. I assume that some people, when they first watched it, got tired after a while, but I didn't personally, and so coming back to watch it and being a little bit lost until I remember and pieced together what happened at certain points was really … it was kind of funny to have, I don't know, a semi-outsider perspective on what it's like, because I’m sure that I probably got people to watch The Vampire Diaries way back when by, like, plonking them in the middle of where I was up to, so this was a nice, like, payback on myself.
INGRID: Putting yourself in their shoes.
FLO: Like, “What the fuck is happening?” I completely forgot, for example, that there was ever a spell on Mystic Falls and that they couldn't do magic in there. Like, I even think that we've discussed this at some point in the show, the driving of a vampire over the line—
INGRID: The anti-magic border.
FLO: Or something like that, but I had forgotten that it would be on the show on the show. So it was like, I was really lost when Kai started absorbing something, I was really confused in that one. But yeah, I think that we might just do a general overview and thoughts summary of each of the four episodes. So there's one in season four, they skipped season five, and then they did six, seven, eight, which is interesting. I think—does season one to three all happen in the same year?
INGRID: I don't know, we should probably check, but that is interesting that they didn't have a Christmas episode for the first three seasons, but then they did for most of the seasons after.
FLO: yeah I had a I had a look at like I compared what um episode in the season each of the Christmas episodes came at and because I think because I think that The Vampire Diaries premiered at around the same time every year, which means it makes sense that the Christmas episodes are around the same. So it's, like, one of them I think is the seventh episode, and two of them are the ninth, and one of them's the tenth. So it's, like, obviously became—after they hit season four, they skipped season five, but for six, seven, and eight, it became like the thing that they did every year and that they planned ahead of time. Which is wild, because I would be so anxious as the—as the writer in the room trying to decide what happens in the Christmas episode, because what if something happens and it doesn't air at the right time anymore? I mean, I guess you just don't have control over it at that point, but—
INGRID: Yeah, that must have been a bit nerve-wracking, I guess, but I don't know many things that could have happened that would have thrown off the show so much.
FLO: Like a pandemic or something.
INGRID: Yeah, like—yeah, but we weren’t thinking about that, that was—oh, good times.
FLO: Moment of silence for every planned series ending that was fucked up by COVID and how much the writers’ room would have just spun out on all of those shows. Not sure how to fix it. Okay, so, the first one … I did not emotionally prepare myself for the fact that Mikaelsons would be a part of my life this week. So, fourth the season, in episode four the season in—[stumbling over her words because she can’t speak] … The episode in season four was a bit of a shock. So, the summary, just to catch everybody up on what's happening in this particular episode, is "As a winter wonderland themed party fills the streets of Mystic Falls, Stefan and Caroline find themselves at odds with Tyler over his plans for Klaus and his hybrids. When Caroline proposes a solution to their problem, Hayley finds a dramatic way to make it clear that she is not on board. Later, Klaus makes a discovery that leads to chaos and violence. Meanwhile, Elena and Damon retreat to the Gilbert lake house to help Jeremy conquer some dangerous inner demons with the help of Bonnie and Professor Shane"—ugh [laughs]—"who reveals a piece of ancient history that leaves them all speechless.” So, how did you feel as you kind of processed the amount of story in that episode, Ingrid?
INGRID: So, yeah, first of all, I think that the theme of winter wonderland wasn't as prevalent as it should have been. I don't know, it felt like … there was a party, and Klaus painted a snowflake …
FLO: [laughs]
INGRID: … but there wasn't more to it than that. There wasn't, like, decoration and costumes.
FLO: And he insisted that it wasn't a snowflake. Like, he was trying to say it's abstract—
INGRID: Oh, it's postmodern. So, that was my that my first issue with that episode. But yeah, there was a lot. I had to remember who Professor Shane was, I had to remember the thing about, like, activating Jeremy's hunter gene or whatever. Which … we've already talked about how much I hate the idea that Jeremy being a hunter is innate, it's hereditary, whatever.
FLO: He just needs to kill Elena.
INGIRD: Yes, exactly. So I was reminded of that, and it made me mad. What else happened in that episode?
FLO: Sirebond stuff.
INGRID: Yes, sirebond stuff! I … I had forgotten that it happened relatively early in the show, that, uh, Elena became a vampire and was sired to Damon so like from my memory it happened a bit later. So Elena didn't spend much time as a human on the show, which is just interesting. Other than that, nothing really jumped out to me except the fact that, uh, was it in this episode? I think it was in this episode, where the Christmas songs only played when klaus was killing someone.
FLO: Yeah, I noticed that too! [laughs]
INGRID: So he killed the hybrids to the tune of ‘Oh, Holy Night’ and then he killed Tyler's mom to the tune of another song—
FLO: Yeah, ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas’. And it was, like, a really moody cover of it, too. It was very atmospheric. I think it's really funny that their first ever Christmas episode, they only—I mean, I guess I’m not going to sit here and rewatch it or work through the scenes or anything to double-check this because, what am I, a professional? But I expect that they had some kind of sleigh bells sound effect, kind of, like, random music maybe playing if anybody was at the winter wonderland party or something like that. But in terms of, um, I believe that would be referred to as—I’m just pulling in the one unit of TB and media, like, screen media studies that I did at uni—I think that's, like, diegetic sound, is what that's called? Like, it comes from the actual—what's actually happening.
INGRID: Right.
FLO: So dialogue and music that's playing there where they are, whereas non-diegetic sound, like, the actual songs that they've put over the footage to be atmospheric and stuff like that …
INGRID: Yeah, all the other scenes had, like, normal Vampires Diaries-centric, like, alternative, slow, moody music, but specifically when Klaus was killing people, it was Christmas songs. Very interesting and very funny.
FLO: That is really funny. I—I really was not prepared to watch him. I guess I just I should have known ahead of time that I was watching The Vampire Diaries and I would be, obviously, seeing characters from that show. But to, like, watch him and Hayley in the same episode is really really funny coming from somebody who's watched The Originals probably more than I’ve watched The Vampire Diaries. Like, we are getting so close to the conception of the witch antichrist. They're, like, you could just see the paths about to collide, and it's just really funny that the the result of that is still around fucking stuff up to this day on network television, and is currently—their daughter is currently killing swathes of people to epic soundtracks as well, so …
INGRID: Good for her.
FLO: Yep, good for her! Girl boss. Yeah, I felt—I just felt really kind of floored by the amount of stuff that happened in the episode. I guess because my most recent experiences with The Vampire Diaries have just been us talking about it, and in that case it's obviously a very slow, everything comes very slowly because nothing's happening at all, we're just talking about it. We're just sitting here hanging out, but it's just so hectic. Unbelievable.
INGRID: Yeah, definitely. It would be really hard to follow if someone were just dropped into the show, or even started to pick it up at the beginning of a season, because they introduced so many concepts, and those concepts sometimes reappear and characters reappear and stuff like that. So yeah, how did people watch the show when it aired?
FLO: I think it's—it's weird because I … maybe part of the problem is that Legacies, that I watch currently, stuff still happens, probably even at a similar pace, but because it's monster of the week format for the most part, the episodes really are, you know, complete unto themselves. There isn't necessarily … there's still cliffhangers and classic Vampire Diaries hijinks, but it's—it all doesn't shift as quickly. Because, you know, people are enemies and then they’re friends and then enemies and then friends on The Vampire Diaries. Like, we do make fun of the continuity errors a lot, but props to the original writing room for managing to keep track of all that shit because I’m sitting there watching it without the full context of watching up to it recently and it's wild. Did you have anything else you wanted to chat about in terms of the season four episode?
INGRID: No, I think for the season four episode, that was about it.
FLO: Okay, so we skipped season five because Christmas didn't happen that year. In season six, the episode is called Christmas Through Your Eyes. this one was so upsetting, it was so upsetting for me. Okay, the summary on the wiki is: "With the holidays approaching, Bonnie attempts to replicate her favorite traditions while reminiscing about happier times with her friends. Not able to return home to Mystic Falls for her favorite time of the year, Caroline is surprised when Sheriff Forbes brings the holidays to her at Whitmore College. Meanwhile, after discovering that Jo has gone missing, Alaric turns to Damon and Elena for help in trying to find her while Liv and Luke find themselves at odds when Tyler approaches them with a risky plan. Elsewhere, Jeremy helps Matt carry out a plan to take down Enzo, but grows concerned when Matt takes things too far. Lastly, Stefan is forced to break some devastating news to Caroline." How did you do with this episode, Ingrid?
INGRID: Oh, wow. Yeah, this one was kind of emotional for me because, for personal reasons, a lot of it hit home.
FLO: Yeah.
INGRID: But it was really sad to see Bonnie all by herself and recreating the Christmas traditions and having the flashbacks to the time where they were all together for Christmas, and yeah … I think this one felt the most, like, Christmas-y, I guess? Christmas was a major part of it, like, the emotional weight of Christmas with all the characters. Because we had Caroline and her mom and Bonnie by herself and Elena missing Bonnie and things like that. So that was—that was interesting. And the whole situation with Sheriff Forbes was … yeah, it was pretty rough.
FLO: It was pretty rough. I did notice that, um, I suspect this comes in part from the fact that, thematically, Christmas episodes focus on families, and in The Vampire Diaries, I feel like the mothers have more of a presence than the fathers often, like, in general. But I noticed that all three of the first Christmas episodes includes like some kind of mother in peril. Like, Carol in season four, and there's Liz Forbes in season six, and then there's, in season seven—well, we'll get to that, obviously, but in season seven, Lily Salvatore has just died. Which is not the same, because she was she was quite awful as a human being, but it's just, like, they just did it several times, and it was like pretty upsetting all the times, and very obvious, I guess, watching it all back.
INGRID: I didn't notice the thing about the mothers, but yeah, in all three episodes, someone's mom is in some distress. That's really weird now that you say it.
FLO: Yeah do they … like, I just assume it's just a coincidence. It comes from the fact that Christmas is family-focused and if they want to make it diff—like, make it a hard thing, cause a problem, make it emotionally resonant, they put a family member in peril. But it's just … it's always mothers. Yeah, it was also—I was also not prepared to see Kai, like …
INGRID: Yeah.
FLO: At all. What—how do you feel about Kai, Ingrid? I don't actually think we've ever discussed Kai at length.
INGRID: I don't like him.
FLO: As a person, as a villain?
INGRID: As a person and as a villain. I don't think he's compelling. I just think that he's very—I don't know, he's more irritating than compelling. He's threatening, which is … but, like, if you compare it to any of the Original vampires, he doesn't have that same presence, that same gravitas. So when it came to him, watching that season, I just kind of waited for it to be over. I wasn't excited, or I didn't feel … I don't know, what's the word I’m looking for? I didn't feel compelled to …
FLO: Haha, compel!
INGRID: Yeah, feel compelled to follow his trajectory on the show the way that I did with, like, the Original vampires.
FLO: Yeah, I feel like, with Kai, because they had—they had a gap of a season long between when the Originals departed on episode 420 and when Kai kind of appeared in the beginning of season six. I feel like kai was very much an attempt at getting back, tapping back into that moment, that kind of atmosphere from Klaus. Like, he's a little pseudo-Klaus, which is potentially not 100% fair to his character, but I do also feel like he fully encapsulates everything that I hate about the way The Vampire Diaries writes mental illness and empathy and humanity. Basically, Kai is just like the prime example of what I loathe about that. So yeah, I’m not a fan.
INGRID: Yeah, they do, uh, keep repeating that he's like a psychopath, a sociopath, and I guess that’s the reason why he's like that, is because he lacks the ability to empathize. And that's a horrible—it's something that is repeated in many and many TV shows and a lot of media, but it's still so egregious, and in this one specifically, in Kai. And unlike the Original vampires, he doesn't really have any redeeming qualities or any interesting aspects of his character to sort of offset that. So we're just left with, like, the worst parts of klaus, and none of the charming parts. So I think—
FLO: Yeah.
INGRID: —it was a failed attempt on their part.
FLO: Yeah, exactly. And I—even after the Merge that he does with Luke, he takes on—we just, we're just shit-talking Kai now, we're like, this isn't Christmas anymore. Well, this is how I want to spend my Christmas , shit-talking Kai. He … after the merge with Luke, he gets emotions. Like, that's how they—that's how that's written, he becomes emotional because he killed Luke in the Merge, and that is so … there's so much to unpack there, but let's just throw away the whole suitcase. Like, that’s fucked up. Also, seeing luke was like, “Oh, another gay I forgot that they buried.” That was just … there were just so many of them. And then we got to see Nora and Mary Louise in the season after this one.
FLO (cont.): So what I found was cool about this one, what I did like about it, was Damon vs Ric. Because I think that I win no Matter who wins in that situation, because one of them has lost. And, uh, Bonnie's isolation … I feel like it wasn't fully about her. Everybody is sad about it, but she was kind of, like, a montage interspersed throughout, and I feel like there is something—something to be said for the fact that she is so isolated from everyone because she sacrificed herself for Damon, and it just … really, so much of this episode kind of pulled in things that I dislike about the show but also did it in a way that I was very emotional about. So I’m sitting there like, did they maybe do a good job when they did this? Because I’m very invested and upset. But yeah, it's just a weird kind of mess of stuff to process.
INGRID: Yeah, if their goal was to make us emotional and upset, I think they succeeded, but I think that you're right that we didn't really get to see much of like Bonnie's thought process and her being isolated and being alone. We just saw people missing her and people being sad that she was gone, and she found a way to cope with that, but it was just like, very, very short bits throughout the episode, whereas everyone else had to like … could give whole speeches about how much they missed her, and, “Oh, my god, Bonnie, we love her so much.” And yet the show doesn't seem to love her as much because it just doesn't dedicate enough time for her.
FLO: We need a new modified Bechdel Test, which is ‘How many times does Bonnie get to just talk about herself and not anybody else?’ Because it's not very often. I think that I believe—and I may be wrong—but I’m pretty sure that this … in the episode or episodes following this one are the ones where Bonnie ends up pretty much suicidal in the prison world and tries to kill herself, and then Jeremy visits her somehow, like, astral projection or something like that? And somehow gives her hope. I don't know that she actually talks to—is able to talk to anyone or knows that they've been there. I don't know, it was kind of weird, but they somehow helped her out, and then she and then she got out and into the other prison or something like that. So I think that they were going for building up to that point, but it was still like … I don't know that this is about Bonnie when I’m watching this.
FLO (cont.): So, season seven’s Christmas episode—
INGRID: No, wait, I have one more thing to mention about this one!
FLO: Please, please.
INGRID: It’s because … I can't for the life of me remember why Enzo and Matt were mad at Stefan, but they were mad at Stefan in this in this season. I remember that very, very vividly. And it was—this was … the episode that I had the most memory of, because I remember re-watching it a lot because I just think that Enzo and Matt are just so funny when they interact. So there's, in a previous episode, there's a scene where they have lunch together, and they're both threatening each other, but they're also eating a meal together, and I think that's the most … So that was the high point of this episode for me.
FLO: Yeah, I do think Enzo is one of the high points of the later seasons, because he has a strong personality, he has a cemented history with Damon. he brings an interesting dimension to our understanding of Damon, and then he has these really interesting interactions with other characters like Matt and Bonnie and stuff like that. It's interesting, and I enjoy him as a character. I’m trying to remember the answer to your question or your confusion, but I’m pretty sure that the situation where Matt kills his fiancee and thinks it was Stefan's fault doesn't happen until season seven, because that's when there's flash forwards and flashbacks—
INGRID: Yeah, that hasn't happened yet.
FLO: So why is Matt—why is Matt mad at Stefan?
INGRID: I think it's just him being mad at vampires in general, and that kind of, uh, he focused on Stefan, I think, because Stefan has this air that he's a good person, and he tries to convey that, and with, I know with Enzo, he felt a little bit of that because he thought that Stefan was hypocritical. But I don't get why he would be mad at Stefan and not at Damon.
FLO: I think in season six, Matt, at the beginning, Matt had joined that neighborhood watch group …
INGRID: Yes, with Tripp.
FLO: And then I think something happened with them, because I think Tripp is dead by this point in the season.
INGRID: Yeah, maybe something related to that. But it's Enzo that kills Tripp, but I think it might be because of Stefan? I don't remember it, but it's …
FLO: Yeah, it was just so complicated all the time. Also, Stefan's girlfriend Ivy was involved in some way because I think she was killed by Tripp driving her over the town line the way that Matt tried to kill Enzo. So maybe that had something to do with it. But it's just nice to stop in every Christmas episode and see why Matt is mad at Damon now and stuff like that, so it was weird for this one to have it be Stefan. Okay, so, for season seven, the Christmas episode is called ‘Cold as Ice’, and the summary on the wiki is: "With the holidays in full swing, a search for Julian leads Damon and Stefan to a small town outside of Mystic Falls. While managing a holiday toy drive at Whitmore College, Bonnie seeks help from Nora, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship. Elsewhere, Caroline does her best to navigate her new life as a pregnant vampire while Alaric grows concerned that the pregnancy is affecting her more than she's letting on. Finally, after finding himself at odds with Damon, Stefan is forced to take matters into his own hands, setting off a tragic chain of events that leaves their lives changed forever." So, pretty intense!
INGRID: That friendship between Nora and Bonnie, like, they said that as if that was going to be something—the summary—as if that was something that was going to build up over several episodes, but that starts and ends …
FLO: Yes. [laughs]
INGRID: … in that episode. It lasts for so little time. But what did you think of this episode?
FLO: My main note that I have is the bar full of dead Santas, because I thought that was—
INGRID: That was—that's my main note, too.
FLO: [laughs]
INGRID: I thought that was, like, that was peak Christmas. I don't know why, but just—a bar full of dead Santas was …
FLO: Yeah, that was so funny. I think that I struggled to stay focused because Julian was not interesting to me as a villain. Like, I think that there was something to be said, as they delved into the concept of domestic violence, of toxic relationships and of Julian's treatment of Lily, of his treatment of Valerie and the whole dysfunctional siphon heretic family, but I didn't find Julian very compelling because he, again, was, to me, another pseudo-Klaus. Like, we're still going for this grandiose, uh, like, a grandstanding kind of villain who mouths off all these one-liners, and that kind of thing … it wasn't very compelling to me, so it was hard for me to get into the episode because it didn't feel very Christmas-y, which I guess is because they still have to do plot. Like, they can't just do Christmas. And that's a bit of a spoiler for my final pitch here in this episode, but, uh, how did you feel about this episode?
INGRID: Yeah, I didn't really care about what was happening with Julian besides the scene with the dead Santas. One thing that kind of stood out to me was, like, Nora and Bonnie did have a conversation about, uh, Nora was talking about Mary Louise, and it was very sweet how she said, “It feels good to have someone who doesn't need you but who loves you and wants your company regardless.” And all that was kind of juxtaposed with people calling Bonnie asking her for advice with—
FLO: Yeah!
INGRID: Was it in this episode or in the …?
FLO: Yes, that was this one. It felt very self-aware of the show.
INGRID: Like, yeah, but I’m, like, why would you mention that? Why would you, I don't know, why would you put your own shortcomings on the spotlight like that? That was—that was pretty weird to me.
FLO: I think that … I believe season seven ends, like, it ends up being [that] Bonnie is the big bad, essentially. She is the hunter that's driven to hunt down vampires and is trying to put them all in the soul stone and stuff like that. And so I guess I kind of wonder if maybe it's about … going down that road, is that, like, causing friction between the friends as a contributing factor to this idea that she's going to be the kind of main villain. Obviously, they'd help her, and they still care about her, and they bring her back from that. But that she's going to become villainous in some way, and from what I recall, Enzo was really the only one that was on her side for that process. But I can't really speak to that because I haven't re-watched it, but I think that it's interesting that this idea that she … it's like a character telling her that she doesn't, but that it's nice to have somebody just love you not because they need you is coming up in the context of the season where Bonnie and Bonnie goes dark side, essentially. So that's kind of—that's kind of funny. Did you have anything else on the season seven side of things?
INGRID: Let me think—no, I don't think so. I think for that episode, that's it.
FLO: Okay, so I guess we now have the very final Christmas episode they ever did on this series. The summary on the wiki reads: "Faced with the fallout from his interaction with Cade, Stefan is determined to have one thing go right: Christmas Eve with Caroline. However, when Damon and Sybil crash their Christmas Eve dinner, which had been joined by Alaric, Matt, and Peter, things quickly take a dark and twisted turn. Meanwhile, in a series of flashbacks to Stefan's past, Cade's attempt to entice him with his mysterious agenda leave Stefan faced with an unimaginable decision. Bonnie and Enzo also appear.”
INGRID: [laughs] They just also appear.
FLO: [laughs] Yeah, they also appear.
INGRID: They're there, too.
FLO: Yeah, they are—they are there. How did you feel about this particular episode, Ingrid?
INGRID: I felt that this one was sufficiently Christmas-y because there was a lot of focus in this Christmas dinner that Caroline was planning—and that Stefan didn't really get to be a part of. But it was fun to see Caroline obsess over something over like a party, an event, festivities. So that was pretty interesting, the way it was sort of subverted and Damon turned it into, like, “I’m going to choose one of you to murder” was interesting. I actually kind of liked it. I had forgotten about Matt's dad, he's—
FLO: Yeah, me too.
INGRID: So it's the—I don't know if it's the first time, but it's not the first time, but it's one of the few times where someone's father has a significant-ish part of their storyline. So it's the dad that's in peril here, not the mom so …
FLO: Yeah, I think that the episode worked for me because it had several things that it was anticipating. As a viewer, you know that several things are going to happen: Stefan is preparing to leave Caroline and Damon's going to kill someone and it builds that anticipation in a really interesting way. I think that sometimes The Vampire Diaries, and just shows in general that have as many twists as it does, they can start to feel arbitrary, but when you know—when there's a sense of inevitability about something, that brings back the tension in a more interesting way. And this was, to me, this was the most Christmas-y one, and it's probably the one that's most similar to what my final pitch is for a Christmas episode because it was—I like people being trapped in a space together, I like people being stuck in an awkward or difficult situation. And I think Christmas does that.
INGRID: [laughs]
FLO: Christmas is—Christmas does that. So I felt like this one was … it was the most. And I liked that it opened with the flashback to Monterey, and those kids thought Stefan the ripper was Santa. That's terrible.
INGRID: That was—that was pretty awful. It was funny, though. I shouldn't have laughed, but I did.
FLO: Also, you may not have noticed this, but the amount of—in the, like, montage of Stefan dressing up the house—the amount of lights he puts on that tree is definitely a fire hazard. It's so bad; it's mostly lights. You can barely see the tree.
INGRID: My favorite part of the episode was Damon stabbing Stefan with the star from the tree, the wooden star. I thought that was a nice touch.
FLO: That was so good.
INGRID: Yeah, I don't even know why, but it was just, like, ah, Christmas and murder. It's perfect.
FLO: Yeah. I liked Bonnie and Enzo's gift exchange where he gave her a trip to Paris and she gave him T-shirts. And she felt bad about it, and he's like, “Whatever, it's fine.” That's so cute.
INGRID: Pretty cute.
FLO: They were—they were so good. I don't know why he had to die. It just makes me angry all over again. I can't get into it; I can't talk about it.
INGRID: At least not today.
FLO: Yeah, at least not today. How do we feel, by the way, about Matt's dad? How do we feel about him as a character and what he achieved in the final season?
INGRID: I think it was an attempt to give Matt a storyline and give him a bit more depth that I think could have been handled in a better or a different way. I don't think it would have been necessary to bring back his dad, so I’m glad that he was—no, am I glad? I don't know. I’m—I’m feeling a bit ambivalent towards him, towards that whole thing. How do you feel?
FLO: I think that I, in general, am not of the camp that abusive or neglectful parents can just show up when you're an adult and mend fences. Obviously different people have different metrics for how that—what they would accept, and how they would engage with a parent like that as an adult, but the fact that so much happens to Matt and his dad isn't there for any of that, he's not there when his, uh, when his fiancee dies, he's not there when Vicki dies, he's not there when Matt graduates, and then, of course, isn't there for all of the things in between that happened that are supernatural in nature and terrifying and traumatizing for Matt [but] that aren't big life events … But it's just, yeah, it bothers me that all of a sudden we are supposed to care about this guy. Like, no. Fuck you.
INGRID: Yeah, maybe if it had been Kelly, it would have been better, because at least she was … part of—she was there when Vicki died, and I guess because the fact that she was neglectful stems from, mostly, from her like alcohol abuse and things like that, to see her try to remedy that would have been better than to just throw this guy who abandoned them all for no real reason, so …
FLO: Yeah, well she does—I think she does come back in the final season, and I think at that point she's been killed by Cade and is under his control in some way, I believe. It's been quite a while since I watched it, but I felt that her return was quite different to the way that Matt's dad was allowed to return. And maybe that was from a, like, kind of “clean slate” approach. Like, we never saw Matt's dad acting abusively or neglectfully, he just wasn't there—which is acting neglectfully—but yeah, her return wasn't … I mean, and then we also see Vicki again. We do get the family reunion in this season, but I—it's really not … yeah, I don't know. It just pissed me off seeing so much of Matt's dad.
INGRID: Yeah.
FLO: Did you have anything else written down—on that bummer note, did you have anything else written down for this one?
INGRID: Uh, no, that's all I got. What I wrote down for this episode was the star. That’s all I wrote.
FLO: What matters to us is the dead Santas in the bar and the star stabbing things. Okay, so did you have anything that you feel that a Christmas episode should have? Like, what it should represent and how it should act in the overall show?
INGRID: I think that there should have been more of a focus on getting everybody together to spend Christmas. Like, Caroline and Elena do mention this, like, “We've never spent a Christmas apart,” and then Bonnie is gone, so I think that it would have been interesting to keep that as if it were like a really important Christmas tradition between this group of friends to always spend Christmas together, and every episode is just them trying to … I don't know, maneuver around the events in their life to have this moment together, this Christmas moment together. So, like, I don't know, I just wanted the Christmas dinner, but every episode and with all of them, not like just a Caroline-Stefan thing. I wanted it to be more.
FLO: Yeah, what I have written down for my pitch is I want Christmas episodes to be a bottle episode. So where they're essentially trapped somewhere in something, like a bottle episode in the sense that it's sometimes something that shows just do to save money, because you just do it on the same set, with all the same people, but they're just stuck in one place and they can't leave. It's, like, I guess your idea of the choice involved, if “we have to get together, we choose to do this every year, you have to show up, you have to do this”, like, you try to get everyone together, is super compelling and interesting. And I've essentially gone in the opposite direction, which is that they're kind of trapped in a sense—not trapped in a supernatural sense, but there's something socially awkward that means they all have to be together, like if there's a Christmas wedding or a Christmas baby or somebody's sick or something like that, and they are all, like, they have to be there together even though a lot of them, uh—because, at any given point in the show, they aren't all getting along. Somebody's got some massive grudge against somebody else—
INGRID: Yeah.
FLO: So they're all kind of stuck together, and maybe there's a B Plot where they think that there's something supernatural happening but then it turns out that there isn't, and they still have to just do Christmas even though they didn't want to.
INGRID: Yeah, that's interesting. I think that … I guess we could do both, where, in the seasons where they get along a bit more, it's to maintain the Christmas tradition, but then the seasons where they don't, we just force them together, and then by the end, I guess that could be, like, this is going to get sappy in Christmas miracle-type situation, but start to get along again by the end of it, or at least have a truce within that moment because they're stuck together for some reason. Yeah, I don't know, I think it would be—it would be nice.
FLO: I think it's tough. It would be tough to try and theorize a Christmas episode for a show like this, like, in the real world, in a real writer's room, it would be very, very tough to do that because I think that you would have the plot that you already have going kind of up in the air, so you have to kind of keep that progressing because you don't want the audience to feel like everything's on pause. Even though I think that it's fun and funny when everything's on pause and when that's even, like, frustrating for the characters, like, “Don't you know what we have going on? Do you know what we have to be dealing with right now?” “I know, but make this garland.”
INGRID: Yes, I love filler episodes.
FLO: Yeah, filler episodes are excellent. So that's something that I would want, kind of like a meta filler episode where they of force themselves, um, they kind of have an awareness that, “No, we have to fill in this time in a very specific way. We can't just keep fucking around with our supernatural drama.” So that's my pitch: forced joy.
INGRID: Forced joy. My pitch just is kind of forced joy, but they're the ones forcing the joy. Like, “Well, no, we have to be happy. We have to be together even though everything's going to shit.”
FLO: Yeah, this sense that they're traveling from one Christmas to another Like, “Terrible things are going to happen before next Christmas, so you need to come here for this Christmas.” That's, uh, it's very depressing, but I don't know how to do a Christmas themed anything that isn't depressing in this world because so many people have lost so much of their families. Like, it's … it would be so hard.
INGRID: Yeah, I don't think it's possible, honestly.
FLO: Yeah. You know what would be hard? Is a show about Christmas that occasionally has a vampire episode.
INGRID: I don't think that would be hard, I think—I don't think that would be hard.
FLO: You don't think that would be hard?
INGRID: No, I don't think so. I mean, we can take Santa and all of the lore surrounding Christmas and just add vampires, and it would be—I think it would work. Yeah, I think that could be our next podcast.
FLO: Yeah, so it's, like, the show is all about Christmas, and very rarely, once a season, there's a vampire episode.
INGRID: There’s a vampire, yeah.
FLO: Okay! Well, on that note, I think we're probably done with that incredible—with that incredible idea, I think. Is there anything else you wanted to add?
INGRID: Uh, no, I’m good. I think that we've kind of shifted in a different direction that I would love to pursue, but maybe not tonight.
FLO: Okay! Sounds good. So, thank you so much for hanging out and talking Christmas nonsense with me, Ingrid.
INGRID: You’re welcome, and thank you. I’m always glad for the opportunity to talk about nonsense, and in particular, Christmas nonsense. So thank you so much, Flo, and happy holidays to everyone listening.
Hello, you two! I was wondering if there was any reason you chose Spotify over other platforms you could have posted your podcast on? I'm certainly not complaining (I've enjoyed listening to your rambles), but I have been curious.
Hey!
We upload through a podcast aggregator that generates an RSS feed link, and that link is what Spotify needs to hook the podcast up on the platform. We didn't necessarily choose Spotify over anything else, since the podcast is in other places via Acast, but we made sure it was on Spotify since so many people use it. :)
All we have to do is upload the episode to Acast, and it goes everywhere else! (Except YouTube. Haven't figured out how to automate that one yet, lmao.)
Our website is still down, so the podcast transcripts will continue to be up here! Thanks all so much for your patience, and here's Episode 06!
This week, we're doing something a little different: a quiz. Or two. Or three. How well do you know CW programming? We work through a diabolical, CW-based quiz that's not designed to stress Ingrid out, but unfortunately might have that side effect.
Content warnings: This is a much lighter one! Mentions of bullying, microwaving fairies, and tickle fetishes, but none of the other hard stuff. If you want more info, feel free to ask!
FLO: Hello, hello, Ingrid. Welcome to our … is this is this number six? I think number six writers’ room!
INGRID: Yes, it is number six.
FLO: Yes, excellent. Lovely to see you, slash hear you.
INGRID: You too, Flo. It is lovely to hear you slash see you. I'm so excited for today!
FLO: Yes, I’m excited as well because I have, like, I think 16 questions in front of me. Our topic for today is spin-offs, and I decided to kind of … because I'm the only one that's seen the spin-offs, I decided to kind of, uh, put you through your paces in terms of what you know about Legacies in particular. So I have a bunch of multiple-choice questions, but I also thought maybe, first of all, we would get your opinion about the spin-offs maybe I don't know justify the fact that you aren't watching them
INGRID: Oh, okay!
FLO: This is a trial, you're on trial. How do you feel about—
INGRID: I feel a bit I feel like, ah, put on the spot right now, all of a sudden. The questions haven't even started!
FLO: Well, this is question number one: why not? [laughs]
INGRID: I guess the main reason is that I don't really watch TV. Uh, my friends will always recommend things to me and say, “Here is this thing that has everything that you love and that I know you'll like because I know you.” And I'll say, “Cool,” and never watch it. So I don't—don't feel bad, it's not just The Originals and Legacies. It's television in general.
FLO: Yes, do you—do you find it hard to … because I know you really like The Terror and stuff like that—do you find it hard to commit to TV shows that are so drawn out, there's so much content to get through, versus getting into a limited series that's basically just a long movie?
INGRID: Uh, yes, I do think that's a part of it, because I will always watch the first season of shows, and I like it, but then when I have to watch the second season, I'll watch maybe the first episode or the second episode and stop, and then by the time I try to pick it up again, they're already, like, three or four seasons in. So I'm like, I'm not gonna do all of that.
FLO: Yeah.
INGRID: And so I just re-watched The Terror again. That's the main thing that I do. But this is, like, peak hypocrisy for me, because I watch people play dungeons and dragons for four hours at a time over hundreds of episodes. So, I don't know, I can't explain it, but yeah.
FLO: I think that, uh, I kind of feel similarly. I think that if I maybe hadn't kept up with The Originals and with Legacies, I wouldn't want to start them, in retrospect. Which is quite interesting when we consider this perspective on binge-watching TV in that people are—everybody wants to binge-watch things, you drop the whole season at once, everybody wants to go through the whole thing. And clearly, people do still enjoy that to an extent, but I don't really remember the last time I watched more than two episodes of something in a day, and even then, it's really rare for me to watch something at all because I'm more likely to read a book, so … I do think it's interesting that we've kind of pivoted away, some of us have pivoted away from, uh, that kind of interest.
FLO (cont.): But since it is part of the universe and since it is expanding all the time in terms of lore, in terms of characters, I thought maybe I would put you through your paces and see if the things that I've told you about Legacies … because I report back every time I watch an episode. I report like a kid coming home from school or telling their parents.
INGRID: Everything I know about Legacies comes from you, so.
FLO: I thought I might test your knowledge! So, our round one is just a basic multiple choice round. I will name three things that happened—no, three things that may have happened on Legacies, but only one is true, and you have to guess which one. Okay, are you ready?
INGRID: Okay.
FLO: So, question one: A is ‘A gremlin sets fire to the school's junior prom.’ B is ‘Josie's dead biological mother rises from the dead and buries her alive.’ And C is ‘MG’—who's uh, a young teen vampire—'MG believes he's accidentally killed the tooth fairy.’ Which one happened on Legacies?
INGRID: I do remember there being a gremlin. It was the pink thing that you painted, so I’m gonna say the gremlin.
FLO: I appreciate that you remember that, because that gremlin—painting that gremlin did actually break my tablet pen. I do attribute that to painting the gremlin, it was a very it was a dark time for me, so I appreciate you remembering that. So it's actually not the gremlin. There was a gremlin episode, but the gremlin didn't—
INGRID: He didn't set fire to the school. Oh my god, it was a trick question.
FLO: Yes, it was B, ‘Josie's dead biological mother rises from the dead and buries her alive.’ And that was in actually the sixth episode of the first season, so, right out the gate, it was pretty eviscerating emotionally. So that was when—
INGRID: Okay!
FLO: Jo came back. Jo was in an episode, and she appears in her wedding dress even though I assumed she wasn't buried in her wedding dress, but she appears in it. It's all bloody from when Kai …
INGRID: Why did she bury her daughter alive?
FLO: Well, she was under control of a necromancer, so it wasn’t really her, and she was really happy to see the twins, and it was all emotional and stuff like that. But the necromancer was able to control her intermittently, so she ended up asking them … It kind of ends with Lizzie and Josie siphoning the magic out of her. She just disappears into dust. It's very emotional!
INGRID: It makes sense.
FLO: Okay! Question two. Option A is ‘A high school musical ends in a vampire massacre on stage.’ Option B is ‘A class ends in disaster when one student spikes someone else's water bottle with a potion that makes them stick to the ceiling.’ And Option C is ‘A student grows potent marijuana that is said to give vampires the munchies.’ Which one of these happened on Legacies?
INGRID: I do remember there being a musical, but I'm afraid it's another trick question.
FLO: Yeah, red herrings. Because I know what I've told you!
INGRID: The massacre may not have happened, but the musical did. Would the CW put marijuana in, uh, their show, where the the users are all teenagers? Would they do that?
FLO: Well, they had part in The Vampire Diaries and Elena smokes it with Jeremy, and Jeremy's a teenager, so I'm just pointing that out.
INGRID: True, true. But that was—but that was, like, Jeremy's whole thing was he was he's not supposed to do that. But okay, let me think. So it's the vampire munchies, it's the school musical massacre … What was the other option? The second one was, uh, the ceiling?
FLO: Yes, spiking somebody's water bottle, and they stick to the ceiling.
INGRID: Okay, so only one of these things happened.
FLO: Yes, only one. That we that we saw on the show. I'm sure plenty of hijinks happened behind the scenes.
INGRID: I'm going to say that the musical ended in a massacre. I might be falling for another trick question, but …
FLO: Yeah, yeah, you are again. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have written these in a way that would intentionally trip you up, because that's not very kind for your podcast co-host—
INGRID: No, it wasn't kind. It wasn't very nice of you …
FLO: [laughs] It was C, ‘A student grows potent marijuana that is said to give vampires the munchies.’ And that's in the pilot.
INGRID: Oh, my god. Okay. Right away.
FLO: Yeah, they ask, there's like one conversation they talk about where the kids smoke pot in one of the towers, and then near the end, one of the vampire students has smoked some and is talking about how hungry he gets when he smokes marijuana, and then one of the witches offers to have him feed on her, so …
INGRID: Okay, we're off to a great start.
FLO: Yep! So, question number three in this section. Option A is ‘Lizzie travels to a—’ This is, sorry, this one is so hard. I intentionally made it really hard. Option A is ‘Lizzie travels to an alternate universe in which she was never born.’ Option B is ‘Lizzie travels to an alternate universe in which she murdered Josie.’ And C is ‘Lizzie travels to an alternate universe in which she murdered Hope.’ So never born, murdered Josie, or murdered Hope?
INGRID: I think I remember you telling me about her never being born, so I'm going to say that one.
FLO: I'm so sorry, I'm tripping you up so badly. She went to a world where Hope was never born and what happened
INGRID: Right, yes!
FLO: What happened as a result of that is that supernatural creatures are being hunted and everybody knows about them because Klaus essentially went crazy without Hope to keep him in check and to be good for. And that's also the only universe in which Klaus and Caroline are married, is the one where Hope was never born. Which is super funny to do to a fandom that's very rabid about that relationship, and to say that you basically admit that your main character is the reason they're not together. Okay, so it was B, ‘Lizzie travels to an alternate universe in which she murdered Josie,’ because—
INGRID: Okay!
FLO: —she killed Josie in order to not be killed during the merge in that alternate universe, yeah.
INGRID: I'm gonna be honest, I struggle to keep up the difference between Josie, Lizzie, and Hope.
FLO: Yeah.
INGRID: So that's what tripped me up. I knew somebody there was something involving somebody not being born but, yeah, okay.
FLO: Yeah, so Lizzie is the blonde one that's like Carol—
INGRID: I don't know! No, no, that's not gonna help. It's not gonna help.
FLO: Probably doesn't help because when we talk about Legacies and I use their names, you aren't necessarily picturing who they are in your head. So it doesn't help me to tell you now if you haven't had that knowledge the whole time. It's not like you can suddenly access your memories differently. Okay, so the last one in this section … I have 100% absolutely told you that this happened, and I have absolutely not told you that the other two things happened.
INGRID: Okay.
FLO: Okay, so, option number one is ‘Kaleb receives a sports car from Santa Claus.’ Option number two—
INGRID: Who's Kaleb?
FLO: Kaleb is also a teenage vampire. Option number two is ‘Lizzie receives an enchanted bracelet from Santa Claus.’ And option number three is ‘Santa Claus turns out to be a vampire.’
INGRID: I remember Santa Claus. I remember there was a fight—he fights somebody.
FLO: Yeah
INGRID: Okay, I'm going to say sports car.
FLO: Yes, correct!
INGRID: Yay! Oh, thank god, I got one. Awesome.
FLO: It's the red sports car, and I believe it's implied to be his sleigh.
INGRID: Yes, that's what I—yes, I remember that. I remember this, okay.
FLO: Kaleb then just has this sports car that he drives around. In, like, slow motion gets out of it.
INGRID: And what does Santa do? How does he deliver presents if he doesn't have this? Maybe he's … does he have another one?
FLO: Maybe he's decided not to. Maybe he has a Tesla sleigh now, but also maybe he's decided not to do presents anymore because he went to the Salvatore school, [and] he was like, ‘Kids actually don't deserve gifts anymore, I've had enough.’
INGRID: It makes sense.
FLO: All right, okay. So, round two is … I would say this one is less based on what I have or haven't told you, because I don't think that I can trip you up with this one in the same way because it's about whether you think something happened on Supernatural or whether you think it happened on Legacies.
INGRID: Okay.
FLO: Which is a vibes-based thing, so what would they put on supernatural and—because you also, from what I understand, have not seen Supernatural, or have not seen very much of it.
INGRID: Nope. Uh, everything I know about Supernatural is what I see on Tumblr, so.
FLO: Consumed through gifsets.
INGRID: Yeah, another—yet another media that I have consumed secondhand and know very little about.
FLO: Our first question this round is, ‘There is an episode in which the events happen in a world that is vastly different from the real timeline, and this turns out to be because someone wished to live in a world in which the Titanic never sank all because they loathe Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On.’ Do you think that was Supernatural, or do you think that was Legacies?
INGRID: I'm gonna say Supernatural because I don't think that teenagers, like Gen Z kids, would have a very strong opinion about Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On. So …
FLO: You are correct!
INGRID: Yeah! Who hated supernatural? No, not who hated that. Who hated Celine—
FLO: The character is the angel Balthazar, and he's actually played by Sebastian Roche, who is also known as Mikael on The Vampire Diaries. And also on The Originals, he's there as well.
FLO: Okay, question two. This is a bit hard because I do think that this is ridiculous enough that it could be either of them. ‘Two teenagers have sex for the first time, and one dissolves immediately after.’ Was that Supernatural, or was that Legacies?
INGRID: There are more … statistically, there are more teenagers in Legacies than Supernatural, but Supernatural has also been around for, like, it had been around for 15 seasons, so it could have been one of those, like, monster of the week things where that's the little subplot of the episode. So I honestly can't decide, but since I went with Supernatural for the last one, I'm gonna go with Legacies for this one.
FLO: You're correct!
INGRID: Yeah, okay!
FLO: It was actually—this actually ties into what we talked about in our previous episode in terms of weaponizing blood, because from what I understand, the reason that this happened is that one character is the son of Malivore, which is created by a witch, a vampire, and a werewolf, it's like a spell that involves all of them, and then the other character is the tribrid, who is a vampire, witch, and werewolf, and so them having sex with each other means he dissolves into mud. Like, that's what they did on the show, so …
INGRID: That makes sense.
FLO: Does it?
INGRID: Yeah, sure.
FLO: Okay, so, our next question—so, ‘Both of these shows include an episode that is released mostly in black and white—so it has some parts that aren't, but most of it is; like, the main plot is—and they heavily featured tropes associated with old Hollywood films. Of these two episodes, so one’s Supernatural, one's Legacies, which of them included Dracula?
INGRID: I'm going to say Supernatural because I think there's like a thing in The Vampire Diaries or Legacies that talks about Dracula in another context, but I don't remember him ever being present in the show, so I'm gonna say Supernatural.
FLO: You are correct! It was season four episode five, monster movie. I think that when they mentioned Dracula on Legacies I believe that might be a book report that MG—
INGRID: Yeah, yes, it's like a history lesson, something like that.
FLO: Yeah, and he talks about issues with consent in Dracula.
INGRID: Yes, that's what I was thinking of, because you told me that, you told me that, I know that one, yeah.
FLO: Yes, I told you that because I think I was mad that they're having this conversation now but they weren't they somehow didn't give a shit about it in The Vampire Diaries and are still glorifying the characters that didn't have any interest in gaining people's consent. It's nice that it's in Legacies, and it could possibly have been put there by somebody who was not at all involved in the early seasons of The Vampire Diaries because it has been a decade.
FLO (cont.): So our next question is, ‘Both shows feature an episode with cupid. In one, cupid is just a cupid, and is responsible for helping people fall in love. In the other, cupid is actually a creature called—and I believe it's pronounced erote [said eh-roh-tay]?—which are the gods of passionate longing and unrequited love who are said to be poisoned by the devil's ivy. Which one is which? Do you think that supernatural or legacies is the one with the—in one of them, the cupid is quite benign, it's just a cupid that helps people fall in love, and the other one is a monster. So which show do you think would go in which direction?
INGRID: I think supernatural would have cupid as a monster, yeah, they got the devil shit. I don't know, I mean, if there's mentions of the devil in Legacies, but yeah.
FLO: Yes, actually, it was legacies that went monster.
INGRID: Oh, damn it!
FLO: Yeah, they, like, cut off his wings, and he escapes and regrows them. It's pretty gross. On supernatural, the cupid—I believe the one that they mentioned …
INGRID: Yeah, he's just some guy.
FLO: Yeah, he's just some guy, and he makes people fall in love randomly, which is … has some interesting things to think about in terms of consent. If somebody can just magically make you fall in love with somebody else, how much choice do we have? But I mean, that's a question in Supernatural generally is how much free will do we have. But I believe the cupid that they meet makes the Winchesters’ parents fall in love, like, made that happen way back when in order for the Winchesters to exist. Okay, next one is super short: ‘A character finds an ice cream parlor in a hell dimension.’ Which show do you think would do that?
INGRID: Is this another trick question … because I remember that being a thing in The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina—no, it's an ice cream truck, never mind. I don't know, it's …
FLO: It's one of them: Legacies or Supernatural.
INGRID: I don't know; this one's a tough one.
FLO: It is. I acknowledge that the game is rigged against you 100%.
INGRID: Yes, it is!
FLO: But this is just how we've decided to talk about it without me having to talk the entire time. [laughs]
INGRID: I am going to say Legacies.
FLO: You are correct!
INGRID: Yay, my logic was ‘teenagers like ice cream,’ so yes!
FLO: Whereas if it was the Winchesters, they'd find a bar.
INGRID: Yes, exactly.
FLO: Yes, and this was after Landon dissolves—because sex is worth being punished for by the narrative—after he dissolves, he's in hell. He's, like, in Malivore. Malivore is considered both a person and a hell dimension, and in there, he finds an ice cream parlor that has the Necromancer in it being forced to serve people endlessly for all eternity because that's, like, hell for the necromancer. Which, I agree that, like, customer service is hell, so yes. Okay, our next question is, ‘The characters investigate a possible evil Santa who is killing people. Instead, they find two pagan gods posing as a sweet suburban couple.’ Was that Supernatural or Legacies?
INGRID: I'm gonna say Supernatural because the Santa thing did not involve a pagan couple as far as I know, in Legacies, because you didn't tell me anything about that. So I'm gonna see …
FLO: I would have mentioned a pagan couple if it existed. Yes, you are correct!
INGRID: Yeah!
FLO: Okay, okay, so our final question in this category is: ‘There is an episode called Live Free or Twihard in which the monster is a vampire preying on fans of Twilight.’ Was that Supernatural or was that Legacies?
INGRID: I think it's going to be Supernatural because I just think it'd be too … I don't know. I don't think legacies would mention Twilight in that vein now, in the 2020s. I think that's like more of a 2010s thing, so I'm going to say supernatural.
FLO: Yes, you're correct. And I would say that your reasoning is very sound because I don't—I'd probably be surprised if Legacies mentioned Twilight in any major way.
INGRID: I know! That'd be, like, they'd be so, so late.
FLO: I don't think that Gen Z cares about Twilight, and also, these characters are not even Gen Z because it's … this is in the future, because they had to flash forward by so much to get everybody's kids aged up to like 16, 17. So it would be kind of weird. So, good job! I'm pretty sure I didn't—I did not count, oh my god, if we're doing a quiz, we should be keeping count of who got something correct and who didn't, but I don't know! We'll go back to … you got more correct than incorrect in that, I believe.
INGRID: In this round, yes, in this round.
FLO: In this round, okay. I'm basically just kind of spiralling and using this episode as an excuse to point out the fact that the CW consistently has shows that could all have the same plotlines as each other. It's—I'm not saying that it's not original, because obviously there are characters involved that are different from one another and they also hit different audiences sometimes, but … in that vein, round three: Did it happen on Supernatural, Legacies, or Riverdale?
INGRID: Great, next, next level. Okay.
FLO: Okay, this should not be as difficult necessarily, because I personally haven't seen Riverdale, so all that—
INGRID: I did! I've seen the first season.
FLO: Have you seen the first season? Oh, yeah, good job, so this might be … Yeah! I googled weird shit that happens on Riverdale and then I double-checked—I fact-checked on YouTube, so I've completely eviscerated my YouTube algorithm looking up all those different Riverdale scenes. So I'm now going to be recommended more and more and more Riverdale as we go on.
INGRID: I watched a deep dive video essay on Riverdale. Really, I only watched the first season, but I did watch that video essay, so I think—I think I'm good.
FLO: Yes, okay! You're probably more experienced than me when it comes to Riverdale.
INGRID: Famous last words.
FLO: So, number one: ‘A cult turns out to be a front for an organ harvesting scheme.’ Legacies—
INGRID: Riverdale, yes, that was 100% Riverdale. I remember that from the video essay. Insane, and that's not the only cult on the show.
FLO: Really? I've heard—I think there's a cult in the current season as well. Like, they're trying to … I keep seeing like gifsets of Archie, like they're trying to sacrifice Archie just because he's a guy. They're like into some real weird, bio essentialist shit where the women need to be protected from sacrifices because they can have babies. So, question number two: ‘The ghost of a main character's childhood bully haunts his high school.’ Was that Supernatural, Legacies, or Riverdale?
INGRID: Interesting.
FLO: So it's like a main-main character.
INGRID: Main-main character … okay, the ghost of their childhood bully. I don't know, because I'm thinking Legacies, there wouldn't be so much death surrounding them when they were children. So, like, their childhood bully wouldn't have died. But I don't know, I don't … I'm going to say Supernatural, I'm going to say it.
FLO: You're correct!
INGRID: Really? Sweet!
FLO: Yes, it was Sam's childhood bully, and it's … so it's, like, even though they never went to the same school consistently, it's just this one school, his bully, so they come back to fight monsters because weird stuff is happening at this school they used to go to. And then, uh, it turns out to be his bully from when he was in—or maybe it's a kid bullying … his bully is definitely killed, and he's the ghost that’s involved. And that's the origin of all of the images and gifs of Jensen Ackles in super short red booty shorts teaching gym class.
INGRID: Oh, the basketball shorts. Yeah, yeah, I remember that.
FLO: Because he poses as a coach. Cultural icon!
INGRID: Makes sense.
FLO: Okay, question number three: ‘In the process of their investigation, two characters speak with an elderly woman who reveals to them that she has an alien preserved in a barrel of maple syrup.’ Would that be Legacies, Supernatural, or Riverdale?
INGRID: I'm going to say Legacies because I don't remember that in the Riverdale video essay. And it could be Supernatural very easily, but I'm going to say Legacies just to mix things up.
FLO: Okay, that was actually Riverdale! A couple months ago in one of their episodes … from what I understand, the aliens turned out not to be aliens. But it was thought for a long time that they did actually have aliens in Riverdale now, because this elderly woman—I believe it's Cheryl's grandma—told them that she had an alien and showed them the skull and everything. So, the next question—
INGRID: Keeps getting weirder, okay.
FLO: Yep! So, this is our second last, and I've saved my favorite one for last, so this is our second last. ‘An investigation into aliens reveals that the actual culprit is fairies.’ Did that happen on Legacies, Supernatural, or Riverdale?
INGRID: I'm gonna say Legacies. I think I remember something about fairies and Legacies, of you telling me, so …
FLO: Actually, that happened in Supernatural. And in that episode, there is a scene in which a fairy gets microwaved!
INGRID: Oh, no, that's awful …
FLO: And I would assume that the fairy is not like an ant, like, that ants apparently can dodge the radiation enough in a microwave to survive
INGRID: But then the fairy—oh god.
FLO: Unfortunately. On Legacies, they do have a fairy in their class. For some reason, they thought that a guy called Wade was a witch that was just really bad, and then it turned out he can only manifest his powers when everyone believes in him!
INGRID: Oh!
FLO: Which is great! Okay, okay, this final one might be a little bit obvious, but I just really wanted to talk about it. So, I'll try and get through this … I was—when I found this, I was crying for a really long time. This is: ‘For, cash a character starts making videos to cater to people's tickle fetishes and posting them online. [laughs] The price—the price is 5,000 United States Dollars per video.’ Would that have happened on Supernatural, Legacies …?
INGRID: Okay, um, I really don't want to say Legacies or Riverdale because I don't want teenagers being involved with anybody's fetishes. But I'm … I—I don't think it's Supernatural. Okay, it's either … I'm gonna, I'm gonna, like, eliminate supernatural—is it either Riverdale or Legacies?
FLO: Because I made the first questions so hard, I will confirm that it's either Riverdale or Legacies.
INGRID: Okay, good. So now how do we how do we find the right one? I'm tempted to just attribute the most absurd thing to Riverdale, and this one seems like it really tops all the others. This one's a bit a bit out there. I don't know, I think you would have mentioned this. Yeah, you would have mentioned—I think you would have showed up in the chat like, ‘Look at what the CW just did!’ It's like—
FLO: With a link to a YouTube video, like …
INGRID: Exactly! I think you would have done that, so I am going to say it's Riverdale.
FLO: You are correct!
INGRID: Yes! Vindication.
FLO: I love that the fetish videos are … I agree, I love that they're wilder than the organ-harvesting cult, the bully ghost, the maple syrup alien preservation process—
INGRID: Yeah, it's like, it's a little bit next level for me. This one's a bit …
FLO: Yeah, well, good job! I think you won.
INGRID: Yeah! What would be the criteria for me? When I get half right …?
FLO: Yeah, potentially. I would just say that you won because A. I made the questions a bit harder than I should have, and B. I forgot to count, which means that I lose, which by proxy means that you win!
INGRID: Yeah, okay.
FLO: So, excellent! Do you feel compelled to immediately leave and watch any of these television programs, Ingrid?
INGRID: I don't.
FLO: Has it made you feel a little bit more certain that you don't want to?
INGRID: It's made me want to open up the wiki for each of these shows, just spend some time there, but yeah, that's—that's as far as I can say.
FLO: Excellent! I think that tickle fetish video is not really an advert, like, an ad that hits everybody where they need to be. Excellent, so, thank you for entertaining my wild and ridiculous idea!
INGRID: Thank you for teaching me. I feel like I've learned so much and aged so much. I'm tired, I have a bit of a headache, but I feel like I've come out of this experience a stronger person, so thank you.
FLO: Okay, no worries! I'm always here for character development. [laughs] Thanks for hanging out, Ingrid.
INGRID: Thank you so much, Flo! It was great to see and/or hear from you.
A 2021 TV review podcast with a twist: we have that amnesia that makes you think you're centuries in the future and the CW has put you in charge of a reboot. You know, that one.
This week, we're doing something a little different: a quiz. Or two. Or three. How well do you know CW programming? We work through a diabolical, CW-based quiz that's not designed to stress Ingrid out, but unfortunately might have that side effect.
Content warnings: This is a much lighter one! Mentions of bullying, microwaving fairies, and tickle fetishes, but none of the other hard stuff. If you want more info, feel free to ask!
Have a thought? Shoot us an email at [email protected] or submit an anonymous ask to us here!
Hi, everyone! Our website hosting service is having a meltdown currently. To avoid postponing Episode 5, we're making the transcript for episode 5 accessible here on our Tumblr rather than our website as we usually would.
Once Dreamhost's servers decide to show up for work, the transcript and show notes will be up there as usual. For now, enjoy!
Content warnings: Discussions of racism and brief mentions of sexual assault.
FLO: Okay! How are you doing this week, Ingrid.
INGRID: I'm doing pretty good, Flo. A couple of stressful situations, but right now things are more stable, so I'm doing good.
FLO: It's good to hear, that's good to hear.
INGRID: How are you?
FLO: I'm pretty good. I'm kind of watching the sky darken a little bit out the window. So yeah, another episode where we open talking about the weather and freaking out about what it's going to do to us! But I think maybe the rain will just provide some interesting ambiance, right?
INGRID: Yeah, it'll sound good. Like ASMR, yes.
FLO: Yeah, or some some gothic vibes. Okay, so this is our fifth writer's room meeting, I believe, and we are going through some feedback. Uh, I'll say ‘some feedback’ because we have one listener who has been kind enough to send us an email that is quite extensive and has, uh, categories and subcategories and, like, dot point hierarchy. Like, there's one level of dot points, and there's sub dot points, and there's headings. So I think we'll probably go through that. Shout out to Jace! Very much appreciate that, thank you.
INGRID: Yeah, you will forever be known as our first listener and … I don't know, our first caller? I don't know if we can use that word, because we're technically not …
FLO: Our first bonus colleague
INGRID: Bonus colleague.
FLO: We'll workshop what we call it. Contributor?
INGRID: Yes, thank you very much for your contribution, Jace.
FLO: Okay! So I'll just read out the kind of intro to their email. They write, ‘Hello, hello’—that's a hello for each of us, I think—'Hello, hello. I really like y’alls podcast and your ideas, especially the bisexification of Caroline Forbes our lord and savior, and I have been made aware of the fact that I can ramble about some of my own odd ideas, so I have decided to inundate you with my thoughts. You might have discussed some of these/something similar, but I love hearing you all hash out your thoughts. I hope you enjoy. I will do my best to break this up by category for your sakes.’ And I would say, Jace, that you did break it up by category for our sakes.
INGRID: And we're very grateful, yeah.
FLO: Okay, so our first category here is powers, which is cool because I think we kind of opened with a bit of lore talk as well. So, uh, their first point is ‘There was a lot of cool lore for the doppelgangers but it could have been cooler. I think that elena is often stripped of choice in her narrative, and that is tied into the fact that her doppelganger blood is useful to everyone else but her. I think there are several directions to take this idea in.’ And then they have listed some points below that. Do you have and, like, first minute thoughts about this idea—that I think is really interesting and something that we haven't discussed yet—this idea that her blood is useful to everyone that isn't her. Do you have any thoughts about that, Ingrid?
INGRID: Uh, yeah. I thought it was, like, really, really galaxy-brained. I don't know why they didn't explore it more on the show because, I don't know, uh, blood isn't as significant on the show as you would think. There's the idea that vampire blood can heal you, but besides that … I don't know, they don't do a lot of fun things with it. And I really like the idea that the doppelganger blood can, like, amplify powers or can be, like, attractive to vampires particularly and can be, uh, I don't know, that she can use that to her advantage in some way. I think that's a really cool thing to explore.
FLO: Yeah, I think it also plays into the statement about her agency and what she is and isn't able to do, so I think that's cool. Okay, their first point is: ‘Elena is a cunning character. This trait is often repressed in her narrative, but it is present. What if this was taken further? What if she actively investigated the uses of her blood and began using it as a bargaining tool? This would make parallels to Katherine more pointed. Not only do they look alike, they also share what is perceived as a negative trait: being manipulative in one way or the other. This would also give Katherine more characterization as Elena's morals becoming more grey and her view more jaded would give us insight into the trials that Katherine would have had to face to push her into being the person she is in the present day.’ I think that's cool.
INGRID: Definitely. The idea of, I don't know, she witnesses this process happening to her as she slowly becomes more jaded and more cynical, and I guess that adds another layer of conflict within her that she's going to try to avoid that. But, uh, inevitably that becomes difficult, like, with all the circumstances in her life, but because she has that point of reference in Katherine she's going to try so hard to not become that. I think that's really cool.
FLO: I think it also kind of throws a spanner in the works of Elena growing to a point where she appreciates her own life and wants to protect herself and wants to survive because Katherine really is very much focused on that. She's in that place already, and that's almost fundamental to her villainy, I suppose. So I guess it's interesting to see what that looks like for Elena to grow into that, uh, into that frame of mind.
INGRID: Give it some symmetry.
FLO: I love some narrative symmetry. Uh, okay, speaking of symmetry and doppelgangers, the second point is: ‘Doppelgangers remember past lives. I think …’ This is their suggestion, that they would remember their past lives. ‘It could be extremely vivid or it could be something more like Avatar with their Avatar state and having to contact specific past lives. I think—’ When I say ‘I’, this is them speaking now. ‘I think if it was also made a trend that these lives were often cut short because of their magic blood, that would be super interesting. I like to think that the longest lived past life was a pirate that lived to be about 34 years old (pirate because lesbian pirates past life let's go girls). [laughs] Thanks, Jace. ‘I think if the doppelgangers shared looks, sometimes personality traits, and this magical connection and nothing else—in brackets sexuality, gender, career interests—that would also make this concept even cooler. The idea that each doppelganger is their own person would emphasize the concept of choice in Elena's character arc.’ What do we think about that?
INGRID: Oh, that's interesting. Usually when there's, uh, any sort of mention of past lives in any narrative, the idea of memory is super present. So the person would have memories of their past life, and that informs their current personality. So, I don't know … I'm reminded of—I don't know if this is … it's related, but I'm reminded of Penny Dreadful in the beginning where, um, Proteus, when he is revived by Dr Frankenstein, he has … he starts to have memories of working on a ship, of being a fisherman, and that wasn't explored fully because of plot reasons. But that's usually the direction that it goes. But it sort of perpetuates this idea that, um, it's the same person with just, like, slight variations over the course of history, and I do like the idea of it uh being completely different people. Yeah, I do—I love that actually, and the idea of a pirate is pretty cool, too.
FLO: Yeah, it is definitely. I think that … it's interesting to me that the only character who has, to my knowledge or to my memory, the only character who's really had this kind of collapse of self into experiencing memories and experiences from somebody else is Bonnie with Emily. It's interesting to me that that's a point where we would make that parallel really explicit in terms of Bonnie's dreams and her nightmares about Emily's experiences and then being possessed by Emily, but we don't go that route with the actual doppelgangers? Like I'm just … yeah that's a little bit, that's a little bit strange to think. So I think it could be cool to do that, and it obviously means that there's a lot of space open for different versions of the doppelgangers, because it's just Stefan and Elena from what I understand, just them being doppelgangers of Silas and—
INGRID: Katherine.
FLO: The lady that he—the lady that he was into, yeah.
INGRID: The the the the before, the before thing, yes, yes, uh, that one.
FLO: And just being doppelgangers of the original ones. So that could always come forward, and it would be funny to kind of imagine what sorts of … like, is it really only the case this time that one of the doppelgangers chooses someone else romantically? Is that really … this, like, modern thread with Stefan, Elena, and Damon the only time that's happened? It would be interesting to kind of dig into when maybe the Stefan doppelganger would make that decision, or when they would not be romantically involved at all but still have a close bond. It would be cool to dig back into that.
FLO (cont.): So, uh, the final point under this like Doppelganger lore category, is: ‘Odd idea and not very good but I enjoy contemplating it from time to time.’ Excellent intro. ‘Elena literally weaponizes her blood. If her blood is an amplifier, why not use it? This line of thought varies from vamps drinking her blood becoming stronger, so she lets Stefan/Damon drink her blood during fights, to letting Bonnie use her as a way to make her spell stronger. Using her blood in her own weapons to literally poisoning herself and flinging her blood at people because her blood amplifies magical properties and things. For example, Elena drinks vervain, which makes her blood toxic to vamps, but it's Elena, so it's double toxic.’ Thoughts?
INGRID: I love that, yeah, I love that so much. It gives Elena a lot more to do. Elena becoming a more active participant even in combat which is so cool. I love the idea of Elena, like, creating weapons and thinking about how she can incorporate her blood and becoming a vampire supernatural hunter but with this added level of using blood and using blood magic perhaps, or something like that. I just think that it's so cool, like it's—ugh, unparalleled. Like, their mind is huge.
FLO: Thanks, Jace! I think that I—I am very interested in this idea, and have … not this, uh, sort of in combat sort of weaponization, but I have dug into this a little in my own personal work. This idea that the people you think of as being the prey in this supernatural predator-prey relationship can inherently, through the act of being fed on, become a weapon. So I think it's quite interesting to escalate it to the point of her weaponizing it both in terms of the narrative and also in fights. Just using her blood as a weapon. It also means that like she's basically … she doesn't have enhanced—in the period of time where she has no enhanced strength and she has no speed and she has no compulsion, she still has this specific power that doesn't allow her to harm humans, but it allows her to harm this very specific category of supernatural, which is really interesting. And also, what would happen when she becomes a vampire? How would that—how would that work? Like, what if it's worse and really bad for her and her body kind of rejects it based on her blood already?
INGRID: That's interesting, yeah. Or, I don't know, uh, The Vampire Diaries does like to sort of play around with supernatural creatures and then creating like the hybrids and the tribrids and things like that. So maybe Elena could become another category of supernatural.
FLO: The Brids.
INGRID: Yeah, the Brids.
FLO: Yeah, speaking of tribrids, I do want to point out, uh, that blood is weaponized by Hope Mikaelson in Legacies. But I think it's interesting to take this from an angle of Elena being essentially non-supernatural in practice except in this one specific circumstance, because Hope's usage of her blood … it's also an example of her blood being toxic to just on—it's just one guy, it's just to Malivore. And she does make a blood knife, which is very, very sick. And I think that it would be cool if Elena paralleled that, um, we could set up a parallel in advance, that would be really interesting. But with Hope, it's kind of caught up in all of this badassery that exists already in her and that we expect as a viewership because of her parents and because of where she came from, because we kind of watched her grow up. Whereas in Elena, it's so interesting to make that pivot even very suddenly into her realizing that she actually has this, uh, this advantage over people.
INGRID: And it would be cool for Elena to be the catalyst. Like, the first person to develop this, I don't know, fighting style, this strategy, I guess, and then Hope later on would be inspired by that and take Elena's story into account. I think that'd be cool.
FLO: That would be cool. Klaus would be so pissed off.
INGRID: [laughs] Yes, that's what I want!
FLO: Okay, so the final point … so that was all the doppelganger lore that they suggested, but there's a one final point under the powers heading. I really appreciate the hierarchy, Jace. I'll just reiterate that. I love a good, structured breakdown of things. So the final point under powers is: ‘Pushing the envelope on what a vampire is. Vampire Diaries follows a rather common description of vampiric powers, but I like exploring things beyond that. What We Do in the Shadows has really inspired my thoughts on this. What if how a vampire felt when they died affected the type of vampire they would become? What if some vampires were more tangible than others? This line of thought usually leads to me perceiving Damon as something of a dream demon—he feeds off of fear anger hate rather than blood. I really just like exploring how having different feeding needs would change the dynamics of all the characters. How Damon meets Elena for the first/second time could completely change. Maybe he comes to her in a dream as a scribbled dark figure that encourages her fears of Stefan or her paranoia in general in a misguided attempt to protect her from the supernaturals around her but also because he wants to mess with Stefan's life and having his girlfriend be afraid of him is the perfect way to do that.’ So, thoughts, Ingrid?
INGRID: Oh, so many thoughts, because we did talk a little bit more about expanding the vampire lore within The Vampire Diaries and pulling a bit more from like the classic vampire literature, but this reminded me of something, and I'm going to take this opportunity to talk about my favorite thing, which is tabletop role playing game. It reminded me it reminded me of a TTRPG called Vampire the Masquerade wherein vampires are divided into families and they have powers and skills and abilities that are related to their family, so that's related to their bloodline, related to their lineage. So you have things like shape-shifting into animals, changing their appearance, in other words, like, becoming a different person in that sense; psychic powers like telepathy, appearing in dreams, manipulating people's emotions, i think that's really cool; like, manipulating shadows and fog; divination; um, straight up blood magic … beyond just the basic, super strength, speed-enhanced senses and things like that. So I do like the idea of there being different categories of vampires in that sense. Jace’s idea is really cool, where it's based on the way that they died. It could also be based on their lineage, like, based on—
FLO: Which Mikaelson they’re from.
INGRIED Yeah, exactly, which bloodline they're from. But I think that might be a little bit too limiting.
FLO: Yeah, potentially, but it could be tied up in how each of the Mikaelsons died, potentially. If we took that a little differently, and then they're … because they really are the genesis of this species, and so the the point at which—I mean, we can do whatever we want, and we could just say that, you know, things evolve over time and you kind of split up into sections and subsections of bloodlines and acquire specific abilities. I think they do that with the werewolves eventually. But it could be the case that we twist the kind of Mikaelson origin story a little bit, and because, in that moment, the spell, it's the first time that spell has been done to our knowledge. It's the first time that people have been killed and brought back to life in this way specifically, and there really was, like, they didn't know what would happen, they didn't know that they would then have to feed on blood, they didn't know all these different things. So I think that it would be, uh, kind of reasonable to expect maybe some slight differences between the bloodlines and that sort of thing, which could be interesting. Do you think we'll eventually do a villains only episode and then talk about the Mikaelsons for 75% of it?
INGRID: I would love that actually, because I would, um, I would like to think a little bit more about which Mikaelson would sort of develop which subset of vampire powers based on the way that they died or based on their personality. So I would actually love that to think a little bit more about that and to also read up on the Vampire the Masquerade wiki, which is super useful, just like The Vampire Diaries wiki. So shout out to all of the wiki contributors out there. You're great, you're making this podcast—
FLO: I don't think we would have attempted it if we had to rely on our own knowledge. Or, god forbid, rewatch everything.
INGRID: Oh, god, no.
FLO: Maybe we can have Kol fly, but he still believes the earth is flat.
INGRID: Yeah, definitely. That's good. Like, weird out of context because …
FLO: Yeah, this is a deep cut because it requires people to be spying on our conversations outside of here where we've decided that Kol Mikaelson definitely is a flat earther. Okay! So, back to Jace's email. They have a heading called ‘Different dynamics’, and under that they have written, ‘Elena is the weakest character in the main cast hands down. I don't mean in terms of power, but in terms of characterization. I think if Bonnie and Caroline were the main characters and Elena was the side character that constantly caused conflict, it could be really cool. Caroline is a perfectionist, and having her as the main would allow us to explore her struggles to keep herself and the lives of everyone around her as perfect as possible. She's also one of the morally strongest characters, so seeing things from her point of view would provide natural and not just frustrating conflict with the other characters, particularly the Salvatore. Bonnie as the main character would give us so much. Exploring how the loss of her grandma affected her, delving into the lore of this world. Bonnie is kind, although her characterization tends to be just self-sacrifice, but she's also steadfast. Watching her want to give compassion but have to choose violence to protect herself and everyone else would be amazing. I think that Caroline and Bonnie are just so much more fascinating, and having connections lead back to them rather than be tied up in Elena 24-7 would allow the world more room to thrive.’ Thoughts, Ingrid?
INGRID: I do like the idea of Elena, Bonnie, and Caroline sort of being equal protagonists in this. I think that replacing Elena with either Bonnie or Caroline would sort of change the show completely, I guess because we would either have to incorporate either Bonnie and Caroline into the love triangle, which I guess is the main conflict of the show, and build their character around that, or completely sidestep that love triangle and abandon it. But then it's not really The Vampire Diaries, it's just, like, another thing that has a vampires. So I prefer the idea where the three of them are protagonists in their own way so the focus is not just on Elena, but at the same time I think that Elena is definitely the weakest character out of the three. But a character that i think is worth paying a little bit more attention to and developing because, I don't know, I like her as a character, I guess.
FLO: Yeah, I think I do agree. I think that if we did remove the love triangle … I mean, it's a conversation of—where I believe that you and I would probably still enjoy a piece of media that didn't have a love triangle. In fact, we might prefer that. But at what point are we talking about completely shifting the genre and the, I guess, basis for this story out of this idea that … at least for me, it would be that, well, I've grown out of that love triangle situation. This is not directly related to what Jace said at all, but just me kind of picturing what it would look like to pivot away from the love triangle, and maybe feeling reluctant to do that because I think that would be prioritizing my own wants and needs. Which, I mean, what is a podcast except prioritizing your own wants and needs … ?
INGRID: Of course.
FLO: To completely twist away from what it was supposed to be and what was compelling about it originally … I would be worried about doing that. If we stepped away from Elena totally. But I agree with Jace's reasoning here, and also the potential that Bonnie and Caroline have. And I think that Jace's suggestion about Elena weaponizing her blood kind of solves this issue in a major way.
INGRID: Definitely.
FLO: Because, I mean, it would be relevant to Elena and Caroline if Elena could weaponize her blood against vampires. It would be relevant to Elena and Bonnie's relationship if Elena suddenly becomes the solution to a lot of different things in the way that perhaps Bonnie has been in the past. And it kind of rounds out that dynamic, I believe.
INGRID: Definitely. I guess Elena using her blood as a tool for Bonnie's spells was an interesting point that Jace brought up that I think would be very cool, because at least it doesn't put so much of the responsibility on Bonnie to fix everything. It's … I don't know, I don't want to say kind of nerfs Bonnie a little bit, but it gives Bonnie a little bit more of a weakness that is complemented by other characters. So the responsibility doesn't fall entirely on her shoulders, and we don't repeat the mistake of having Bonnie be the person who fixes everybody's plot lines. So I really like that idea.
FLO: Yeah, it means that Elena can be the solution to Bonnie's problems.
INGRID: In certain circumstances, yeah. Not all of them, but some of them, yeah, sure.
FLO: Also, like, Bonnie's blood is still being used in Legacieseven though Bonnie isn't there. They somehow have a stockpile of her blood that they use every time they want to make a prison world. So it's interesting to me to maybe twist that around and use Elena, because it's like … every time it comes up, I just feel like we are hopping on and on about Bonnie's usefulness to solve other people's problems even though she's not even there to have a storyline anymore.
INGRID: Yeah, uh-huh. Like, literally just there for the blood that they could use as a tool and not as a character.
FLO. Yeah, and they could easily twist … either bring a Bonnet witch—a Bonnet … [laughs] Sorry, either bring a Bennett witch who somehow just has nothing to do with Bonnie we didn't know that they existed before now and use their blood because they're actually in the story and could be brought into the story for that reason and then have a character arc, or we could just decide that something has changed, provide, like, a basic reason for it, and then stop deciding that Bonnie’s blood is needed for them. But anyway, that's beside our point today. So the next section that Jace has written out for us is titled ‘Different Locales/Ages’, and they have written: ‘If we have to keep Elena as the MC, we have to at least age them up as you guys have already mentioned. College age is good, but I like to think of watching the show from the middle. After Caroline has become a vampire, after Bonnie has started learning about herself, after they graduate college and get jobs. Elena is mentioned as loving writing, but that isn't ever really made an actual part of her character in any way that affects the dang narrative. In this idea, Caroline is still a vamp, Bonnie is a witch, and Elena is a doppelganger. The difference is that Elena starts writing books—children's books, but some adult ones that talk about life as a supernatural creature and how to deal with it. I think it could be interesting to play around with the conflicts this sort of narrative would create where these three women are trying to help supernaturals despite the fact that this is a group that is underground.’ Thoughts, Ingrid?’ Sorry, I just command you every time every time I've been just reading out—
INGRID: It's, like, it's a Pavlovian response at this point.
FLO. Yeah, I have my hands open. I'm waiting for you to drop some thoughts in them.
INGRID: I think it kind of veers away from our initial idea that this is this show this revamp is kind of building on our nostalgia for that time, but since at the time it was set in high school we decided it would be better to set it in college so we could still have some aspects of nostalgia, like the classroom setting, all the sort of conflicts that arise from that. But with the characters more mature, and so we don't have to feel weird about all of the …
FLO: Yep.
INGRID: … all of the stuff that is in every CW show involving teenagers. So, I don't know, making them adults already in the working world kind of veers away from that. And I guess it would be cool to have a supernatural story where they're just like just working class going like doing their nine-to-five grown-up things like that, but college … I don't know, I'm attached to the college idea. What do you think?
FLO: I think that I like the idea of the structure of a show starting with them all in the same place and not really able to leave, and then you can kind of splinter them off after that. Which is why shows with kind of, like, that start in an institution, so either they're all on the same superhero team or they're all in the same school or they're all working the same jobs at the same place, and then you can kind of, if you want to for drama, kind of introduce some friction and throw them together so that they bounce apart for a while. I think that there's a lot of usefulness in that kind of structure, and I do think that it's part of the strength of The Vampire Diaries is crossing that threshold into adults and that kind of viewer anxiety about what that will look like. I wonder if we start in college and … I think Bonnie has already started, I think we decided that Bonnie already knows she's a witch, is that right?
INGRID: Yeah.
FLO: Yes, and maybe Elena doesn't know that she's a doppelganger, and i'm wondering if Caroline becoming a vampire could be moved up, or potentially she is a vampire and she doesn't tell them for a while ight be an interesting take to like kind of meet Caroline in the middle. That might be fun to play around with. Even, I mean, Stefan and Damon would be able to tell that she was one, so it would be hard to keep that totally secret. If we did, we would have to have that happen when Elena maybe doesn't know that Stefan and Damon are vampires either, which is the first few episodes and that's it. So that might be a little bit too soon. But we can kind of play around with that over time. I think this idea of them trying to help supernaturals despite the group being underground is really interesting, and Elena writing books for children about how to cope as a supernatural creature is really touching, I think. And if we did end up at the place where the school exists, The Salvatore Boarding School exists for, like, Elena, that would be like a distribution point for that.
INGRID: Yeah.
FLO: So even if Elena wasn't in Legacies, in this iteration of Legacies, I'd imagine there's …
INGRID: Could have her books there as a little easter egg, I guess.
FLO: Yeah, her books are there. Because … you're going to rage about this, but, uh, there is actually one book in The Salvatore School that was written by somebody there, and it was written by Alaric Saltzman. And guess what it's called?
INGRID: What is it called?
FLO: It's called ‘Klaus: The Great Evil’. You know, at the school that his daughter goes to, there's a book in the library called Klaus: The Great Evil.
INGRID: The great evil? The great evil.
FLO: That all the students read and then know about, and that's what Alaric Saltzman decided to do with his time.
INGRID: It's like an obligatory part of their curriculum. Like it's required reading for everyone to learn about—
FLO: This one student's family and how damaged her family is.
INGRID: Excellent, yeah. I like the idea of … it kind of reminded me of Anne Rice's novels, where the interview of the vampire is a novel that actually exists in universe where people in general don't really believe that it happened, but it's like, it's there, it's open. So all the vampires who are in the know get to read it and sort of laugh about it, so …
FLO: It is interesting. Like, if you had kids and you suddenly came upon in, like, a secondhand bookstore, this little children's book about, you know, ‘I have two moms and they're both vampires’, you would just—you would read that and think it's cute. You'd think that it's … the point that it's making is that, like, you would think that the vampirism is also kind of a vehicle for trying to help kids to—not that because kids really need a lot of help—but to try and make sure that kids are exposed to and assisted in understanding gay relationships and having two mothers.
INGRID: Yeah, yeah. So it's a metaphor for something else.
FLO: Yeah, like, this is how we're teaching our kids acceptance. That would be … that would be really funny. Yeah, so I do think that would work, and it's cool to end up there, even if Elena doesn't spend all her time doing that, even if she's still a doctor or something like that. It puts her writing ability into practice, so I like that a lot. Thanks, Jace. So, Iace's other point about different locales-slash-ages is ‘Bonnie as the leader of a coven. Still in mystic falls but anything centering around bonnie is aces.’ So, like, in that location, Bonnie is kind of the leader of the witch community. Ingrid, thoughts?
INGRID: I like the idea of Bonnie eventually becoming the leader of a coven, so she starts out in college, she's still figuring out her powers, she knows that she's a witch but she's … I think we talked a little bit about her going like outside of Mystic Falls to other towns, other cities across the country and sort of gathering information from different covens and bringing that back to Mystic Falls, so I like the idea of her powers growing and then her knowledge growing as well and becoming a, uh, a leader of a coven in that sense.
FLO: I agree. I think that it's interesting for Bonnie to have a place of power in the Mystic Falls community. Ultimately it would be … I mean, it would be cool to think about her potential love interest and whether or not they would also be a witch and what kind of role they might play in that community as well, and like some kind of power couple arrangement would be excellent. Because I think, or at least I argued for, but I think we decided that they would ideally have a very strong personality because that would kind of … and be kind of entrenched in the story as well, not just a side character that is occasionally appearing to hold Bonnie's hand, so that could be cool. I think it's nice to end up there, and it cements her in Mystic Falls. I feel like Bonnie’s ending … obviously, we think that a lot about Bonnie's story was a cop-out, but I feel like her traveling the world is a reason first of all to not have her present in the town while they still have other characters who are in the town in ongoing spin-offs, and also, like, this idea that she loses someone she loves and then leaves behind all the people that know her and that's freedom? I mean, I don't really see why so many people get happiness fixed in place. Like, Matt is the mayor, and Elena and Damon have stayed in Mystic Falls to raise their family, and so many people get joy out of being near other people and being fixed in place. So it is interesting to me that … I think Jeremy, also is just … he's a hunter, but he kind of helps out at the Salvatore school as well, like, people have ties to place but Bonnie doesn't. It’s weird to me.
INGRID: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say, like, it just confirms the idea that Bonnie has no real emotional connection to Mystic Falls besides the fact that she grew up there, like, for plot reasons, because the plot is set in mystic falls and they need her there to advance the story. But she has no real reason to still be there, and that's why at the end, like, oh, she's going to travel the world, I guess.
FLO: But they'll still have her blood, so she doesn't have to …
INGRID: Yeah, they'll still have her blood, yeah. But it would have been better to … not to trap her there, but at least to create a community around her, I guess, for her to, yes, insert herself as part of that community in a more significant way.
FLO: Yes, exactly. And I would like to also point out that, uh—because you haven't seen all of The Originals or any of Legacies—I believe on The Originals they have a plotline with … they basically announced that werewolves all come from a spell that was cast in a specific Native American tribe.
INGRID: You told me about!
FLO: That, yeah, they essentially do a Twilight even though this was probably the one point where they were edging out Twilight in terms of issues with their content was not having racist depictions of Native Americans, oversimplified versions and stories that involve Native American lore and spirituality that has twisted it to do whatever they want while also not having main characters who are Native American. But they have a character called Inadu, who is the … I think … I believe she was, in ancient times, so powerful that her tribe killed her because … but they also are the ones who made her powerful? Like, it's very convoluted, and she is split into pieces, and then when her bones come together she can then reform and kind of bring her body back and also possess people and stuff like that. And so they have her as this power, and she's also referred to as the hollow. She's in season four, and she's a huge … she's the big bad, and then they split her power up into four and put her into four people, and then in the fifth season when they bring that power together again, she's not there. So they have her power present, and she's gone. To me, I mean, obviously there's a huge difference between the role that Bonnie is playing and the role that Inadu is playing, but they're both kind of … through what they are, manifesting conflict and issues, and then at some point they're just not there anymore. But we still have part of them, we still have their spirit, but they're not there. We still have Inadu’s spirit, but she's not there, we have Bonnie's blood, but Bonnie isn't there. So, for me …
INGRID: Yeah, which is …
FLO: If I had a penny for every time a woman of color was off with barely any explanation but her power or blood was still there, I'd have two pennies. Which is not a lot of money, but it's weird that happened twice.
INGRID: Exactly, and I guess this is a conversation that we could have about, like, the commodification of women of color and women of colors’ bodies, but I think that would be a little too deep for—for example—
FLO: A Vampire Diaries podcast.
INGRID: Yeah, for a Vampire Diaries podcast, and also for a Vampire Diaries podcast run by two white women. So, that is a conversation to be had.
FLO: God, yes, definitely. Okay, so the next point on this is the final heading in Jace’s email, which is ‘Fixing Weak Characterization’. So the first point under this heading is: ‘Letting the characters, especially the women, have interest outside of their constant struggle to survive and self-sacrifice. Let Elena like her writing/poetry. Let Caroline tutor and read to kids. Let Bonnie just blow shit up. Why should she not be a pyromaniac when she can essentially set fire to things with her mind? I think having the romances sidelined a bit would allow the focus to rest on the trio of girls slash women and thus allow them to grow.’ What do you think, Ingrid?
INGRID: I like the idea of bonnie blowing shit up. I think that's what she should do. But yes, if we sideline the romance a little bit, because the show focused a lot on that, if we focus a bit more on the relationship between Elena, Bonnie and, Caroline, I think that would be a lot better.
FLO: Agreed. I think we're just constantly circling back to this point of the three of them as tentpoles, as central characters. I wonder if there's a special term for when you have three protagonists. I'm gonna google it. What is it called when you have three protagonists … [typing sounds]
INGRID: Are we already on an ensemble situation here, or is it still too few?
FLO: Okay, are you ready?
INGRID. Yeah.
FLO: It's very obvious, and we should have known. It's called tritagonists.
INGRID: Tritagonists, and it's … okay, all right, yeah, makes sense. Tri … yeah, tribrids, tritagonists. Yeah.
FLO: But the, uh, two, having two main characters is deuteragonists.
INGRID: Which does not sound as, uh, cool. Well, it sounds cooler, but it's a lot harder to say.
FLO. Yes. Uh, okay. So the second point under this heading is: ‘The show often shows Elena making a decision—in parentheses the right one, even—and then being undermined by Damon and then Stefan and Elena having to struggle to fix it. I think it would be team building and great characterization to have them all gang up on Damon for a good old slam dunking. Just Caroline and Bonnie and Elena smacking him around between them like a beach ball and Stefan cheering them on in the background. I think that would be good.’ And then in brackets, ‘I think Damon is potentially cool but can't get past the whole rapist thing myself …’ Jace, I don't know why you wrote a key smash here in the email that I'm reading out, um [tries and fails to imitate keysmash with mouth, but it’s frankly untranscribable] ‘… though stefan isn't much better.’ Oh, yes, okay, very controversial take that Stefan isn't better than Damon. Ingrid, what do you think about that?
INGRID: Oh, um, okay, yeah. I'm still uh trying to get over the key smash part.
FLO: [laughs]
INGRID: But yes, I do think that Damon should be smacked around a little bit. I don't know if they mean literally physically beating him up, but I like the idea.
FLO: I think that they make a really good point that a lot of Elena's decisions are undermined by people who are like older and more knowledgeable than her, which I guess could potentially be shifted a lot by this idea that she has this ability that nobody else does and that she might understand in a way that nobody else does and then, uh, kind of utilize that for her own purposes, would be interesting. But yes, I do agree that Damon needs some slam dunking in both senses of the word, although I would want to make sure that we don't kind of veer into like slapstick territory where everybody is like, just beating him up for comedic purposes exclusively and it may not fit with an emotional arc or something.
INGRID: All right, I will concede that that is probably the best idea, even though I think it would be great. It'd be really funny.
FLO: Yes, I think that Caroline deserves at least a good swing, but maybe not Elena if they're ending up together okay. So the final point under the fixing week characterization heading is: ‘If Elena is the lead slash being doppelganger is the focus, I think giving her some distinctive quirks and Katherine some different ones as well would really highlight them as their own people despite their differences.’ What do you think about those quirks, Ingrid?
INGRID: That is a good question. That's something that … I think it's been the most difficult part for me making this this podcast and being in this writer's room with you, is thinking of ways to make Elena unique and distinguish her from the other characters and make her make her lovable, I guess. So I'm actually more interested in hearing any ideas that you have, because sometimes I usually, like, draw blank when it comes to this.
FLO: Yeah, it's hard for me because I tend to not develop characters by themselves. I tend to have a specific dynamic that I want and then I develop those characters in a way that will create that dynamic, so I'm pursuing a specific conflict or even a specific resolution, and so I have to invent the conflict. And in order to invent the conflict, I have to invent the kinds of characters that would create it—so, like, reverse engineer from like a specific moment between two people. So I think that it's not necessarily … I mean, in terms of quirks, I'm very bad at quirks because they tend not to feed directly into that that process, they tend to not feed directly into the narrative. But they're, you know, important things for characters to have, but it doesn't occur to me. I also, when I'm writing, I don't describe characters because I don't remember descriptions that characters are given in books, so I just don't write them. So just … I'm very bad at anything that's not to do with that point that I have imagined is happening, is coming, and trying to get there. So for making Elena unique, I guess my approach is to just figure out who we need her to have conflict with and then create issues with that. And as far as quirks, like, I would probably just google ‘character quirks’ and then pick some from whatever list is on a Pinterest graphic, like [laughs]
INGRID: Okay!
FLO: That's my—that's my incredible character building blocks approach.
INGRID: Oh, um, one possible cheat that we could have was just like to open up—this is me delving into the realm of tabletop RPGs, but you can sort of roll the dice and decide what your character is, flaws, yeah, your character's flaws and personality traits. So I think that we could do that for Elena.
FLO: Do you want to roll for personality right now?
INGRID: Well that's—roll for personality, okay!
FLO: I'm not very, like, I watch the programs, I watch the dungeons and the dragons programs, but I'm not very across character building. I have built one DnD character, and his name is Bard Simpson, but he's not a bard. And that's it.
INGRID: I love him.
FLO: He tries to sell these crystals that his mother told him are very important, but it's basically a multi-level marketing scheme. That’s it.
INGRID: I love him, I love him. I don't know if this is a tangent that is too, uh, tangential for us to leave in.
FLO: We can always cut it.
INGRID: Yeah, okay, we can always cut it. Just, like, talking about DnD.
FLO: Welcome to our Dungeons and Dragons podcast. This is a—it's a trojan horse, we're actually, we've done the first four episodes on The Vampire Diaries and this is our pivot.
INGRID: Yeah, dungeons and dragons hiding inside. Okay, so I could roll for personality for Elena, but we could also—
FLO: Maybe she should be really funny. Is that a quirk? Is that …
INGRID: She could be a bard.
FLO: She could be a bard? But, like, not in the musical sense. In the … with her writing ability, like …
INGRID: Yeah, that is a thing.
FLO: She does slam poetry.
INGRID: There is a class of—a subclass of bards that it's just, like, eloquence and speech and things like that. So I think that that'd be better, yes, that'd be a lot better if …
FLO: She's very good at words no matter what. And maybe Katherine in comparison, Katherine's really sarcastic and stuff like that, but Elena can kind of outsmart her in conversation and twist her words around. So that makes the manipulation between the two of them a little bit more dynamic because they can fuck with each other.
INGRID: I like that.
FLO: Elena wins. In a war of words, Elena wins.
INGRID: Yeah, yeah. We move on, we can move on.
FLO: Okay, so that was our last point. Jace closed out the email saying, ‘Right, I think that's all I'm putting in this email.’ I like the foreboding nature of this. This email …
INGRID: There will be another one!
FLO: Well, I hope so, because this is excellent content and we really appreciate it Jace. And I'm sure that there will be even more keysmashes in the in the follow-up emails, if there are any. And they go on to say, ‘I rambled a lot and I don't know if any of this is what y’all're looking for—' Sorry, it's hard. I don't have an American accent, y'all is very hard, especially when it's, like, a multi-contraction. It's like ‘y'all are’. It just sounds like I'm making fun of you, Jace.
INGRID: Y'all're.
FLO: ‘… what you all are looking for but I hope it was. Looking forward to your next episode.’ Thanks, Jace. So are we! Because it's hard to find time to record. But yes, we really appreciate that, and anybody else listening is also welcome to contact us at [email protected].
INGRID: You could also drop us an ask on our Tumblr, revamp-podcast.tumblr.com.
FLO: And those can be 100% anonymous, which is cool.
INGRID: Yeah! So I guess that's it for today, Flo. Thank you so much for your time, and thank you so much, Jace, for your wonderful ideas and contributions.
FLO: Yes, thank you, Jace. And thank you to you, Ingrid. It's been nice hanging out!
A 2021 TV review podcast with a twist: we have that amnesia that makes you think you're centuries in the future and the CW has put you in charge of a reboot. You know, that one.
This week, we're delving into some pitches from our first contributor like the egalitarian podcast we are. Talking points include blood magic, genre, and who is the main character, anyway?
Have a thought? Shoot us an email at [email protected] or submit an anonymous ask here to our Tumblr!
Content warnings: Discussions of racism and brief mentions of sexual assault.
Welcome to Revamp, where we have that amnesia that makes you think you’re centuries in the future and the CW has put you in charge of a reboot of The Vampire Diaries. You know, that one.
This week, we're talking lads: Jeremy, Matt, and Tyler. Talking points include life changes, potent teen angst, why you can hunt vampires without being a cop, and a bold new werewolf lore proposition with some terrifying (or hilarious) implications.
And we learn who knows their alphabet better! (It's Ingrid.)
Content warnings for this episode include discussions of racism, sexual assault, and suicide attempts in the text, as well as brief discussions of homophobia and transphobia.
Visit the link in our about for each episode's show notes, transcripts, and ways to contact us and give your pitch!
Welcome to Revamp, where we have that amnesia that makes you think you’re centuries in the future and the CW has put you in charge of a reboot. You know, that one.
This week’s pitches include: moral ambiguity, love interests, and a little bit of projection.
Find a transcript, content warnings, and ways to deliver your own pitches via the show notes!
~DISCLAIMER: For obvious reasons, we're not claiming we actually own the rights to The Vampire Diaries.~
The year is 3021. There are no new ideas. There hasn't been a Marvel film in two generations, but even that's not enough to save the integrity of a dying media industry. The last journalist at Entertainment Weekly hits publish on their first article in six months: "The CW announced The Vampire Diaries reboot". Here are the tapes.
Last week’s pitches include: more trauma, agency, and theatre kid revenge plots. And we weren’t being mean about Ian Somerhalder’s face. It’s just that eye thing… Also available on YouTube!
CONTENT WARNING: Brief discussions of sexual assault.
editing the episode 2 transcript & enjoying the nice digression for a quick ian somerhalder face chat
(image description under the cut)
[id: a screen shot of some black text on a white background. it reads: FLO: Yeah, it's the hair. I mean, Damon has hair, too, but it's kind of just there. It's not the starring role, is it? I think it's … the eye thing is his starring feature, he does it like 10 times an episode, the, like, eye-widening ...
INGRID: My goodness, like, the eyebrows and the big bulging eyes. I'm like, dude, calm down, it's ...
FLO: Somebody just tugged on a string that they have attached to Ian Somerhalder, that's what that face is.
INGRID: Why does this turn into like, uh, like listing all of Ian Somerhalder’s flaws? /end id]
The year is 3021. There are no new ideas. There hasn't been a Marvel film in two generations, but even that's not enough to save the integrity of a dying media industry. The last journalist at Entertainment Weekly hits publish on their first article in six months: "The CW announced The Vampire Diaries reboot". Here are the tapes.
Want to revisit your favorite late 2000s/early 2010s vampire teen drama? Hold a grudge about some of the creative decisions in the show after all these years? Still think Bonnie deserved better? Then check out the first episode of our TV review podcast with a twist: we have that amnesia that makes you think you're centuries in the future and the CW has put you in charge of a reboot. You know, that one. Come join us as we dive deep into all of the things we love and hate about the show. Also available on YouTube!
The year is 3021. There are no new ideas. There hasn't been a Marvel film in two generations, but even that's not enough to save the integrity of a dying media industry. The last journalist at Entertainment Weekly hits publish on their first article in six months: "The CW announced The Vampire Diaries reboot". Here are the tapes.
Want to revisit your favorite late 2000s/early 2010s vampire teen drama? Hold a grudge about some of the creative decisions in the show after all these years? Still think Bonnie deserved better? Then check out the first episode of our TV review podcast with a twist: we have that amnesia that makes you think you're centuries in the future and the CW has put you in charge of a reboot. You know, that one. Come join us as we dive deep into all of the things we love and hate about the show. Also available on Spotify!
