In your opinion what was Elena's most defining moment as a human in regard to her agency and what was the most defining moment as a vampire?
send me questions about elena( always accepting !! )
❛but he did this to me, stefan, which means he doesn’t really know what love is. and to be honest, i’m not sure if i do. i’m seventeen years old. how am i supposed to know about any of this yet? i know that i love you, stefan. i know that. but my future? our lives together? those were things i was supposed to deal with as they came along. i was supposed to grow up, decide if i want to have kids, start a family. i was supposed to have a lifetime of those choices, and now? that’s all gone. ❜
❛ i don’t want to be a vampire, stefan. i never wanted to be one.❜
imo, elena’s most defining moment as a human in regard to her agency is probably when it becomes startlingly clear to her that she’s lost it. what’s so heartbreaking about this speech is that elena isn’t asking for much. she knows better than that. most people want fame, or riches, a life filled with success, the love of a century — and all elena wants is a choice.
she wants to be able to choose to be a vampire, to choose if she wants to have kids, to start a family. she’s supposed to have a lifetime of those choices. and she’s faced with the possibility of losing that. and when you think about it? the words that she’s saying? those words are brave. she’s looking at her boyfriend, who she loves, so much, and telling him that she doesn’t know if she knows what love is, that as much as she loves him, she can’t say it back when he tells her that if it was his choice, he’d be with her forever.
elena values herself and her agency. she values her personhood, and she won’t sacrifice it, even for the boy she loves. that’s a lot of honesty for one conversation, and she’s saying it and feeling it and it matters.
she’s here in the moment and she’s telling him these things knowing she’s got forever to be held accountable for them and she knows that love takes any number of forms ( it’s not an either or. just because she does not want to be a vampire and will not sacrifice everything she wants because she loves him doesn’t mean she doesn’t love him. )
she does not want to be with him forever and she does not want to live forever and the beauty of this moment is that that’s okay. this girl is allowed to say that she loves her boyfriend and that it is not meant to be forever. it’s okay.
it’s in this moment that elena completely eradicates the stereotypical role of a human girl in a vampire romance ; she C R U S H E S every single stereotype repeated over and over in vampire fiction because she’s a person and she matters. she’s not the girl the boy ends up happily ever after with, or the girl that changes the boy and gives him peace in violence.
she’s the girl the story is written about. elena is not a prop. she’s not here for your fave to love or to love your fave. she’s a girl who says, i don’t want to be frozen in time and no doesn’t mean never and i will love myself as best i can before i love you.
in a show that strips agency from women left and right, specifically in its later seasons, it’s so rare to see a woman allowed the space and time she needs, and have the narrative recognize that women are not frozen in time, and should not be limited to a certain stereotype or idea or concept.
❛ the first rule to being a vampire is realizing how awesome you are. ❜
fandom jumped all over this line like a dog with a bone, talking about how elena was ooc because three seasons ago she said she never wanted to be a vampire yadayadayada or how she talked about how miserable she was after her agency was stripped from her and she was forced into a life she didn’t want ( and subsequently alienated from her friends ) etc etc and the truth is for me, i couldn’t help but fall in love with this line, and more importantly, what it means.
it doesn’t negate what’s proven to be true: elena never wanted to be a vampire. it’s true. this is not the life she wanted, or the life she envisioned for herself. she didn’t want to have her agency robbed from her, she didn’t want to live for forever, she didn’t want to be frozen in time, she didn’t want to be turned into the creature that her parents hunted. elena didn’t want to be a vampire for a million different reasons. but here’s the kicker: ELENA IS A VAMPIRE NOW. and she’s been through absolute hell. she’s killed and dealt with the guilt and the ramifications of that, she’s grieved the death of her little brother, she’s flipped her switch and learned from it, she’s been vamp-shamed left and right. she’s come face to face with the knowledge that the people who love her, more often than not, love her for who they perceive her to be rather than who she actually is. yes, she’s been through absolute hell. AND SHE’S SURVIVED. and she’s learned so much about herself, and about vampirism, about what it means. most importantly, she learned that she still has choices. and for me, i think so much of what elena grieved coming into vampirism is the idea that she would be deprived of the choices she planned to be making her entire life, the idea that she would now be frozen in time, never changing, never growing, always staying still.elena knows now that she has plenty of choices to make. she’s not frozen. she’s not unmoving. she’s living and breathing and she feels alive, more than she has since her parents died. she’s finally in a place where she genuinely wants to live, where getting out of bed isn’t as hard anymore --- and she’s still growing and changing and evolving and will be for the rest of eternity, however long that lasts. this is such an important moment for her because she’s looking at this newly turned vampire who’s looking back up at her scared and sad and SHE HAS THE POWER TO MAKE THIS BETTER FOR HIM. she can help him. she can help him get through this and remind him that he still can grow and change and that it could be everything for him like it was everything for her. elena’s been abused and silenced and pulled apart at the seams and in this moment she feels so HOPEFUL because everything she previously thought about vampirism has been turned on its head. yes, she still has growing pains, and grievances that she may never get over, and yes, this is not the life that she’d planned for herself, but she can still move forward, and she still gets to choose, and that means the world to her. she’s seeing both sides of this: vampires can hurt, but they can also heal. vampires can kill, but they can also protect. and she can do and be anything that she fucking wants.
loyalwclf replied to your post:do you ever just want to delete all the icons...
man i did that on clarke and then didn’t have the inspiration to start again. so…many….regrets.
i hadn’t really done /a lot/ of icons for anyone besides diana, so it’s not really going to hurt me. they’re in the recycle bin if i want them back, but i just deleted every picture on this computer ( i didn’t have anything personal ) besides the psd for the current theme. i just can’t decide on an icon style. i’m so tempted to just use a bit of a brightness/contrast change & then leave them be, tbh.
“I’m all about the wheels, Derek, but unless you’re going to let me drive the mom van, I don’t want to be seen in it. How much further until we get there?”
Tenth question. Is your character street-smart, book-smart, intelligent, intellectual, slow-witted?
As much as she HARDLY looks as such, she is an INTELLECTUAL character, also may be considered BOOK-SMART. The Circle is said to offer one of the most complete EDUCATIONS in all of Ferelden, and Dasidora has taken EVERY opportunity she has to make this WORTHWHILE. She is an extremely CURIOUS individual and that added to the INSTRUCTION required by the Chantry and how much a mage is EXPECTED to have studied to mainly avoid demonic TEMPTATIONS, it has drawn her to develop a nearly INSATIABLE hunger for knowledge, regardless of its nature (Either FORMAL or COMMON).
It is common to catch her STUDYING, reading or TAKING NOTES. She will discuss a great many subjects with CLOSE FRIENDS as often as possible (It was particularly PLEASANT to travel with Wynne because of the latter’s FORMAL grasp of and EXPERIENCE with magic, her all time greatest INTEREST). Dasidora, in fact, becomes some sort of MAGE SCHOLAR at some point.
Twenty-ninth question. What is your character’s weaknesses? Hubris? Pride? Controlling?
The GREATEST one I can think of ——— is the fact that she can make BIASED DECISIONS. Dasidora can be incredibly PARTIAL when it comes to LOVED ONES (Not just ANYONE). She is hardly willing to deny them and sometimes that can be DESTRUCTIVE in ways she cannot control. She will do ANYTHING to keep someone she loves around, if it’s possible to do so. So, for her, PERSONAL MATTERS, relationships and the INTIMACY she builds with someone can be of great harm, because of her attitude towards it. (In her canon, she SOLELY agrees to execute LOGHAIN because of ALISTAIR’S threat. She did not agree to it. She REGRETTED it. But she let him execute Loghain out of FEAR of seeing him leave. It brought extreme AGONY over her, she resented Alistair and HERSELF later).
Character solidifying questions.10, 29 | Still accepting.
loyalwclf replied to your post:loyalwclf replied to your post:when will my other...
LAURA HALE IS SO IMPORTANT. I DON’T CARE WHERE YOU HAVE HER. WE SHOULD DO THINGS. literally my hale love know no bounds but esp derek and laura and just. i need to lay down.
laura hale is important 2kAlways. laura & derek hale thinking they were the only survivors ( save catatonic peter ) for years. laura hale being snarky as a teen, thinking she was ready to lead but when the moment came she was a horrible alpha because she was just too young & not as well trained as she thought she was. laura hale leaving derek behind because she heard rumors about the fire & who caused it & she didn’t want to bring him back to beacon hills because it wasn’t safe.
loyalwclf replied to your post:when will my other muses return from war? *longing...
*cough laura hale?? COUGH*
yaaas, laura hale is my queen. she’s the teen wolf character i’ve had the longest. she’s at dirtcoveredpaws right now but i’m thinking of moving her back here because she doesn’t have a lot going on over there so it’d keep her from getting neglected because i’m too lazy to sign in. :|
