The Vampire Diaries/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Actor Shipping - Ian Somerhalder and Nina Dobrev. Even the media is shipping it.
    • It was confirmed in September 2011 that they had been in fact dating each other and in love for over a year.
  • Adaptation Displacement - At least on Wikipedia; looking up The Vampire Diaries over there will bring up the TV show, with a link for the book series at the top of the page.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation - Damon. Is he really that evil or just a victim of love?
    • Considering that Damon is a serial rapist and serial killer, this is Draco in Leather Pants all the way.
      • Most male-and for that matter female-vampires are like this given their disregard for human life. Isobel Saltzman is an obvious example.
    • Some of the episodes have also hinted at Blue and Orange Morality for Damon; this theory has been adopted by some of the fandom.
  • And There Was Much Rejoicing: The gang has a party after Klaus is defeated
  • Angst? What Angst? - Jeremy, after Vicki dies. Justified, since Elena asked Damon to make it so he wouldn't worry about her. However, at this point Jeremy stops angsting about any number of things, stops doing drugs, and becomes a good student. Elena confronts Damon about it. Damon just says he "took away his suffering."
  • Ass Pull - The Sun and Moon Curse turning out to not exist and the actual curse being a curse on Klaus, to keep his werewolf side suppressed.
  • Badass Decay - Noticeably averted with Damon. If anything, the softer side he occasionally exhibits in Season 2 makes him even more badass.
  • Base Breaker - The Originals. Many fans have been calling for them to get their own spin off, but it's divided between people who like them and want to see a whole show based around them and people who think TVD has become too much about them and want them off their show. And people who just hate and/or like them, and people who like individual Originals.
    • Season 3 in general.
  • Complete Monster: Klaus will gleefully torture or kill anyone if it benefits his plans or amuses him, and he doesn't even care if his own brother dies. Kol may qualify as well, given his spiteful, sadistic, and smug attitude, but we don't yet know enough about him to be certain.
    • Esther is revealed to be one in "The Murder of One" (without even being in the episode, mind you) when it is revealed that killing an Original kills their bloodline. Not only does she want to kill her own children, but she's ready to cause the genocide of all vampires. That's not even mentioning how, in "Dangerous Liasions", she played the loving mother while plotting to use Elena's blood to bind them all in death -- let alone how, while still on the Other Side, she used Vicki in an attempt to murder Elena. She gets even worse in "Heart of Darkness" when she takes advantage of Rebekah's soft spot for her to steal control of her body and plot with Alaric's Ax Crazy alter-ego to cause the aforementioned genocide while Rebekah has no chance to defend herself.
      • Also noted, to turn her children into vampires, Esther killed Tatia, a girl that Elijah and Klaus were in love with.
    • Brady, the werewolf who kidnapped and tortured Caroline seemed like nothing more than a vampire-hating monster.
  • Creator's Pet - Klaus, who's the main source of conflict for nearly every character in every situation in season 3.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome - Vicki and Damon dancing around and trashing Stefan's room to "Enjoy The Silence"? Awesome. Especially when you notice how it seems to be sang from Damon's POV.
    • Within Temptation's "All I Need" during the Damon & Elena dance scene in "Miss Mystic Falls".
    • "Bloodstream" by Stateless in the season one finale, when Damon kisses Elena. Except it's Katherine.
    • "I Was Wrong" by Sleeperstar in 2x08 when Damon tells Elena that he loves her, and then makes her forget.
  • Designated Villain - YMMV, but, to this troper at least, Katherine. Yes, she has done many (MANY) evil things,but she has not killed nearly as many people as Damon, or Stefan. Also, lets take a look at all the reasons they kill people:

Damon: Angsty, Petrova-Doppelganger-Vagina related reasons Stefan: Addiction to blood (slightly better than Damon, but still....) Klaus: Pretty much to not be alone ( the reason why he's alone is because he kills/daggers pretty much anyone whom upsets him) ,etc; But Katherine kills in order to keep herself alive. In my opinion, that makes her much more sympathetic.

  • Draco in Leather Pants - Damon, obviously. Also, Elijah. Possibly Katherine, although to a lesser extent.
    • Don't forget Klaus who is probably the most evil vampire on the whole show.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse - Many of them.
    • Anna - though it didn't save her from Uncle John
      • It did however, bring her back in the third season, and led to her receiving a less depressing end to her story this time, finally reunited with her mother.
    • Alaric - just about the only non-useless adult. So popular, he has become a regular.
    • Caroline - has always been one due to her Deadpan Snarker nature and endearing ditziness, but her popularity really skyrocketed when she was turned, making her possibly the most competent good female on the show.
    • Elijah - Mysterious Badass Noble Demon Original vampire, with an ability to punch another vampire's head off without so much as breaking a sweat.
      • There are fan calls for Elijah, Klaus, Kol, and Rebekah to get their own spin-off
  • Evil Is Cool - Damon, in his early days...
  • Evil Is Sexy - ... and Damon again.
    • Katherine. An especially good example since she's played by the same actress as Elena--but she's still much, much sexier.
    • Elijah. And how.
    • Klaus. Just ask Stefan.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple - Damon and Elena. By a lot. If you go by fanfiction.net results alone, it's a ratio of about 9.5 to 1.
    • Stefan and Katherine (although this is mainly the Damon/Elena shippers wanting to get Stefan out of the way)
      • Stefan is extremely hot when he's with Katherine and Katherine is really cute when she interacts with Stefan.
    • Stefan and Caroline to a lesser extent, although there's a healthy fandom for their platonic friendship.
    • And now Tyler/Caroline is becoming more and more popular, compared to Matt/Caroline.
    • And now Klaus/Caroline is becoming more popular than Tyler/Caroline.
  • Fixer Sue: Reviews have accused Bonnie of being a Deus Ex Machina to fix things when the writers write themselves into a corner.
    • Averts a lot of Sue characteristics though. Sometimes it seems like the writers actively dislike the character, keeping her development and actual story lines to a minimum while keeping her as a plot device. Nearly all of her scenes now involve casting a spell.
  • Foe Yay - Kind of a given, being rivals, that Stefan and Damon would have some.
    • Damon and Elena have a lot of it as well.
      • Cranked up to 11 in "Miss Mystic Falls", and then even higher as of "Smells Like Team Spirit" (and season three in general). "Way to a vampire's heart" indeed
    • Tyler and Jeremy. Why else would they randomly fight all the time, even after Vicki's out of the picture?
    • Damon has Foe Yay with pretty much everyone in sight.
    • Katherine also has Foe Yay with everyone, particularly Damon and Stefan.
    • Klaus and Caroline may count (albeit completely one-sided)
  • Fridge Horror: Every single werewolf has killed someone. At best, they have crippling guilt about the person they killed. At worst, they're cold blooded murderers.
  • Fridge Logic: Stefan's explanation of why Elena looks like Katherine. Apparently, he was only surprised by them having different last names, which could be easily accounted for by a female descendant of Katherine marrying a Gilbert, and not by the fact that people don't tend to look like their 150-years-ago ancestor's identical twin.
      • For the record Katherine is over 518 years old being turned in 1492. Before she was turned Katherine had an illegitimate daughter. It is highly likely that Elena is the decendant of that daughter so Katherine is Elena's perhaps 22 times great grandmother (assuming each generation is 21 years going back over 500 years).
    • Which was recently Lampshaded, in a way that smacks of a Chekhov's Gun.
  • Growing the Beard - "Lost Girls". The mythology starts to truly be developed, Elena starts to grow a backbone, Vicki's turned, and we find out Mystic Falls isn't much better than Sunnydale.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Matt tells Caroline that their relationship isn't going to work when they start it in "Unpleasantville". It doesn't.
    • In "Lost Girls" Damon comments on how Vicki doesn't want to die. She dies in the next episode
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: Damon and Caroline talking about how someone becomes a vampire in episode 4 may just make people rewatching it laugh.
  • Ho Yay - Not as much as most other shows, but there is some.
    • Damon and Alaric and their bromance.
    • Tyler and Jeremy were pretty popular in season one.
    • Damon and Elijah. So much Foe Yay it hurts.
    • Klaus and Stefan. So incredibly much.
  • Iron Woobie:Elena, Caroline, Rebekah
  • I Knew It! - Show of hands: how many of you called Stefan having killed his father? Yeah, thought so...
    • Also in "The Departed" who guessed the only way to kill Alaric would be to kill Elena and turn her into a vampire.
  • Jerkass Woobie - Poor Damon may be lacking in morals, but he's had a really terrible time of it over the past century and a half (a lot of which he blames on Stefan, with some justification). He's also constantly treated with mistrust and hatred by most of the other characters, particularly Elena, Katherine, Bonnie, and even his own brother. He does definitely fit the "jerkass" part of this trope, but it's increasingly clear that it's a vicious cycle: other characters insist Damon needs to make amends, Damon tries to make amends, Damon's amends are ignored or belittled, Damon lashes out in a way that is fatal or at least hurtful to someone, other characters insist Damon needs to make amends...
    • Katherine is also straying dangerously close to this territory, especially with the way she pleaded for Damon to let her out when he sealed her inside the tomb with every intention of letting her starve.
    • Tyler is becoming this. Keep in mind only Caroline and Tyler know exactly what a first transformation is like from the DVD recording Mason left of his first transformation. Other than them and other werewolves, no one else has a clue about the bones painfully reforming, the internal organs rearranging, the teeth growing, etc.
    • Rebekah. It's painfully clear by now that her Alpha Bitch personality is a big cover for her deep fear of being left alone and unloved, given how much her family keeps stabbing each other in the back -- and now that her own mother has possessed her body and teamed up with Dark Alaric to massacre the Originals (and thus kill every vampire alive), God only knows if she'll make it out in one piece.
      • Not mention when she does get her body back, she has to clean after a dance that she organized but didn't get to attend because of her mother. Who didn't want to give her a hug after that?
  • Large Ham - Damon Salvatore is what happens when you combine the Tropes of Vampires Are Sex Gods, Sociopathic Hero, Aloof Big Brother, Cain and Abel and Jerkass Woobie. He is delightfully hammy when he needs to be.
    • Ian Somerhalder said in an interview that he thinks he has the best lines on TV.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Caroline. In-Universe she has had relationships with Damon, Matt, Tyler and is the subject of affection of Klaus. In Fanfiction, she has been paired with Stefan, Jeremy, (whose actor she dated in real life), Elena, Katherine, Rebekah, Kol, even complete Crack Pairing s like Alaric, Mason, Jenna, and Vicki
    • Elena and Katherine at least In-Universe. It doesn't hurt that Nina Dobrev has chemistry with everyone.
  • Love to Hate: Klaus
  • Magnificent Bastard - Damon.
    • He learned everything he knew from Katherine Pierce/Katerina Petrova, who naturally is even better at the game and has enough back-up plans to fill out every letter in the alphabet.
    • Elijah and, as far as we know, Klaus.
  • Memetic Sex God - did someone say Damon Salvatore?
    • Well the fact that he has chemistry with everybody helps.
  • Mind Game Ship- Katherine tries to have one with Stefan.
  • Moral Event Horizon - Damon, so much. Is it possible to cross the Moral Event Horizon multiple times? Let's see - he framed and killed his brother's best friend. He snapped Jeremy's neck. He also seems to be a prime violator of rape being okay if it's sci fi.
  • Nightmare Fuel -
    • In season 3's opener, Damon and Alaric are out searching for Stefan, who has disappeared with Klaus. They go to one house and find two young women sitting on the couch, covered in blood. Damon calmly identifies it as Stefan's work, saying "He feeds so hard he blacks out and rips the bodies apart, then feels remorse afterwards and puts them back together." When Alaric asks him what he means, Damon pushes one of the corpses with his foot, and her head promptly falls off.
    • The tomb full of mummified vampires. It's terrifying.
  • No Yay - Katherine and Caroline, hopefully in a case of Accidental Innuendo in early Season 2.

Katherine: (in Caroline's bedroom) We're going to have so much fun together.
Cue a shot of a horrified-looking Caroline.

    • Nope there's a fandom for them.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome - Damon giving blood to Caroline to heal her in 02x01. Especially awesome as this time last year he was compulsing her and taking blood from her.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name - plenty, due to the large amounts of Ship Tease on the show. Some of the most common ones include:
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Arguably the entire series after it grew its beard and avoided falling into same traps as Twilight.
  • Ron the Death Eater -
    • In the TV show, Stefan, who is in a mutually loving, trusting and respectful relationship with Elena, is often vilified in favour of his murdering rapist brother, Damon. He gets it in the book fandom too, but Damon isn't nearly as bad in the books so it's not quite as mind-boggling. Stefan was even listed as having a Moral Event Horizon for threatening an extremely unpleasant and fan-hated character and telling him to get out of town. It comes off as a rather harsh judgment considering that when the Femme Fatale cut off the same character's fingers, taunted him and then stabbed him it was considered a Kick the Son of a Bitch instead.
      • To be fair on the murdering rapist part,Stefan has in the past and is now doing things that are much more despicable than anything Damon has ever done.
    • Elena gets it herself in both the book and TV fandom. In the book she's antagonized by fans for being a sometimes selfish but also brave, driven and compassionate young woman, in favour of her less self-assured friend. Despite her being a compassionate, considerate and downright selfless young woman in the TV show, she's been seen this way as well. Right down to 'in favour of her less self-assured friend.' Her big mistake, asking to have her brother's memory of his girlfriend's murder (after she attempted to eat his sister) erased to protect him in the aftermath of Elena's own assault by and witnessed death of said girlfriend is treated as unadulterated evil and 'pure selfishness.'
  • The Scrappy - Bonnie is one for a big segment of the fandom, due to her very judgmental nature and questionable methods, although she has some fans as well.
    • In Season 2, Matt walks the line of being one, due to his bad treatment of Caroline, which the show always seems to gloss over by presenting him as a desireable boyfriend, and not having a personal arc or any interesting or meaningful interactions with other characters.
  • Ship Mates - The Damon/Elena shippers frequently ship Matt/Caroline and Stefan/Bonnie. This not only keeps Matt and Stefan away from Elena, but also shoots down any possibilities of Damon hooking up with Caroline again or showing any interest in Bonnie, despite the hints for that pairing in the books. Though the Heartwarming Moments between Stefan and Caroline since she became a vampire have led to an increase in the popularity of that pairing; Katherine and Stefan has also grown in popularity.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat - The main shipping war is Stefan/Elena vs. Damon/Elena vs. Damon/Bonnie, but there's also quite a bit of conflict between the Damon/Elena shippers and the Damon/Caroline fans. The Jeremy/Bonnie ship has a contingent as well as a Luca/Bonnie one.
    • Now Katherine's back, expect to see Katherine/Stefan vs. Katherine/Damon added to the mix.
    • There has been an increase in Damon/Caroline since she's been turned and so is now more than capeable of sticking up for herself.
    • Don't forget Damon/Rose and Caroline/Tyler.....
  • Suetiful All Along - Elena. Although they tried to tone down her perfection for the TV Show, she still has three very attractive men head-over-heels in love with her, and things always seem to go her way (as Caroline comments on in 'Miss Mystic Falls').
    • YMMV(of course) but I think it can safely be said that Matt isn't really as in to Elena as he was at the beginning of the show, and really it's rarely brought up.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Jeremy as a vampire would have been awesome in so many ways, including making him less whiny and more than just Elena's Annoying Younger Sibling. Oh, well. At least we got Caroline.
  • Tear Jerker: Damon manipulating Rose's dream before he kills her.
    • Jenna's funeral too.
  • Wangst - Stefan gets some in the first episode, as does Elena, though she just lost her parents.
  • The Woobie: Caroline. Caroline. Caroline. Right after Katherine makes her a vampire in Brave New World.
    • Which isn't to say she didn't get a head start on this one. Her dad abandoned her, she and her mother don't get along, she is constantly finding it difficult to fit in with her friends and is constantly overshadowed by Elena, she is abused and discarded by Damon and her boyfriend neglects her. Really, getting turned was probably the best thing for her.
    • Matt as well. His mother and sister are immature wrecks who don't care how much They mess up his life, he is still pining after the girl he loves and he is left with far more responsibility than anyone his age should have to deal with. He and Caroline are starting to sound like a better fit now. He also doesn't have health insurance.
    • The biggest Woobie might just be Jeremy. Lets count the ways Life has utterly screwed him, shall We? He loses his parents, he is in love with a girl who strings him along and is ashamed to be with him, he gets picked on by teachers, his girlfriend is later murdered and he is mindwiped into forgetting. When things start looking up, he finds out about his past and how the people closest to him deceived him. Just before his next girlfriend is murdered by his uncle and revealed to have been using him. And that's just in the first season.
  • What the Hell, Hero??: Though the show doesn't exactly deal in good and evil so much as many shades of grey, the protagonists killing Finn, who had never killed anyone in his life and hadn't even really lived a life being a trapped in a coffin for 900 years and on the surface seemed to have better morality than Stefan, Damon and Caroline combined, seems rather horrible, even if it was to kill Klaus. It's especially egregious when you consider that Rebekah tried to do something similar a few episodes earlier, planning to kill Matt to just hurt Elena's feelings, and she was made out to be villainous for it. The difference is she didn't even go through with it. Rebekah is hardly a standard of morality, but since she's made out to be an antagonist, it's hard not to see the protagonists killing Finn as being villainous itself.
  • Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Damon and Katherine could both qualify, but none are worse than Rebekah; she was mentioned to actually have cried herself to sleep on a nightly basis for a thousand years.
    • Alaric's alter ego sprouted from him constantly dying, so he probably qualifies
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