#woke dog

[mkoookm]

[pepperoni-soda]

Choose your fighter

[tybeewo]

what was that about dude

something more lighthearted :]>

[kassachusettes]

[errorryx]

the main issue with the vampire coven as family is that it only stays happy and fluffy if you ignore vast swaths of what's gone down between these people. shelby is eager to put in the work to do this, and pyro certainly tries to do the same, but is less successful. it's difficult to stick to a found family reading from pyro's increasingly fearful and paranoid perspective, but if you watch shelby's point of view, she does a lot of the work for you. shelby constantly downplays every awful thing that happens so that you, the viewer, can easily slot these characters into their happy family roles right alongside her.

if you want your vampire found family story, you'll have to sand down the edges of both pyro and shelby's inductions into the "family." both incidents were violent, both were blatantly non-consensual, and pyro even played a part in the second one by re-enacting the very thing he'd undergone and repressed from his memory just days earlier.

you'll have to ignore that the foundation of this family structure is the result of a begrudging agreement of cooperation between scott and owen. you'll have to ignore pyro becoming complicit in the circumstances of shelby's turning, and the unfortunate implications of shelby's gradual complacence with the vampire status quo. you'll have to downplay the constant doubt and anxiety that pyro and shelby express to each other whenever the elder vampires aren't around.

but if you free yourself from the limitation of the family model being a good thing for everyone involved, then almost everything you've been ignoring starts to slide back into place. because there's nothing "found" about this family, is there? scott and owen are the only two that can be said to have found each other, and that's a very reluctant partnership. in the family structure, it's a loveless marriage. meanwhile, neither pyro nor shelby "found" the vampire coven, they were forced into it. scott, and owen to a lesser extent, made the decisions for them.

the found family may be a nice fantasy, but the idea of a forced family is a much more realistic interpretation of canon. you can tell the story of shelby making the best of it, of owen growing to resent it, of pyro feeling helpless to escape it, of scott orchestrating the entire thing to reap the benefits of it. if the vampires are a family, then they have an obligation to each other. they have a hierarchy that feels more real, more inescapable. they can build up the walls of their castle, isolate themselves from the rest of oakhurst, promote the idea that they can only trust eachother. hell, they can even still cuddle and laugh and braid eachother's hair if they want! just as long as nobody steps out of line and everyone plays their part, nothing bad will ever happen!

and when they inevitably do step out of line, that's where the force comes in. real families aren't all sunshine and rainbows, and the vampire forced family, built on the foundations of scott's centuries-old routine of subjugation, could never have been an exception to that rule.

[orlandrake]

Sitting on the floor. In front of the hearth. Playing with the cat. THEY. ARE. MARRIED.

[mr-owen-burnett]

dead meme. dead fandom

[undead-knick-knack]