(no subject)
NAME: Tiffany
JOURNAL: arcesso
EMAIL: live.infamy [at] gmail.com
AIM: to boldly trek
WIKI NAME: arcesso
CHARACTERS: Claire Bennet
CHARACTER NAME: Damon Salvatore
FANDOM: The Vampire Diaries
CANON: 2.15 after Elijah kicks it for good and Team Salvatore confirms that they can indeed kill an original.
WHAT THEY LOST: The most important thing that Damon has is his love for Elena. It's shaped him as a person, and helped him to step outside of the darkness that he allowed himself to get caught up in for over a century. When Damon loses people he cares about, or when there is nothing around him that he does care about, Damon tends to get incredibly self-destructive, reckless, and frankly dangerous. I'd like for Damon to lose his romantic feelings not only so that he won't have as hard of a time not having Elena in the castle with him, but also so that he can be in that horrible place and slowly work his way out of it as a way of making awesome CR.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER: Damon was born sometime in the 19th century, the eldest son of Giuseppe Salvatore, who never really approved of him, exactly. He returns to Mystic Falls, their hometown, after what appears to be a long absence when he's 25 and a soldier fighting for the confederacy. He and his brother meet Katherine Pierce, a vampire, and her handmaid Emily Bennett, a witch, and immediately begin to fight over Katherine's affections. Katherine is allowed to stay in the Salvatore Boarding House because she spins a story about being an orphan from Atlanta, and she plays them both like a fiddle. After compelling Stefan for some time into allowing her to feed on him, and simply having Damon so intrinsically wrapped around her finger that he allowed it without compulsion, she feeds them both her blood. Damon willingly drinks it, and Katherine doesn't need to compel him at all except to get him to let the Stefan thing go and be less jealous. At his behest, she demonstrates to him how she hunts and she teaches him a lot of things about the extent of a vampire's abilities -- it's because of this and the human blood diet that Damon is stronger and has a broader range of skills than Stefan.
The initial point of conflict between the brothers is undoubtedly the biggest as well, and her name is Katherine Pierce. The woman has Damon wrapped around her little finger in every sense of the word. She never compelled him, yet he allowed her to feed on him while he was a human, willingly drank her blood and learned various vampire tricks and habits. When he finds out that she never loved him, he's crushed beyond belief because his entire existence had been engineered toward finding Katherine and he loses his very purpose to live. The one thing that had motivated him to think that perhaps living forever wouldn't be so bad apparently wanted nothing to do with him. For all of his excessive manipulating skill and intelligence, he's very much powerless against the games that Katherine continuously plays with his mind. All of the love he has for Stefan is dwarfed by his affection for Katherine, which is such an unhealthy obsession that he would cling to any feeble hope that she might return his feelings to any degree. The Damon that Katherine knew in the 19th century is vastly different from the Damon we see in the 21st. He was responsible, cautious, and caring. He felt deeply and took his family and his loved ones very seriously and was able to easily form attachments. To Katherine, Damon was always the reliable, sturdy, unconditionally loving brother who was absolutely head over heels for her and would give his life for her if she so much as asked.
Then, one night, Jonathan Gilbert leads a siege on the vampires of Mystic Falls and locks them all in a church that he burns to the ground. Stefan sells out Katherine and her posse by accidentally telling his father about them, Damon is horrified. Giuseppe doses Stefan with vervain to knock Katherine out and drag her away. The boys both try to save Katherine and get shot for their efforts, but because they had been feeding on her blood, they don't die. Damon is secretly aware that Katherine and her posse hid out in a tomb beneath the church with the help of a binding spell that Emily placed on it. Damon and Stefan wake up from death to realize that they've become vampires, but the transformation won't be complete until they feed on a human. Damon refuses and decides to sit it out and wait for death, but Stefan goes through with it. When he discovers the enhanced senses and powers of a vampire, he encourages Damon to do the same and tempts him with blood. Damon gives in and the two become vampires, though Damon begins to feel an immense loathing towards Stefan and it stems from this point. Despite the fact that at one time, Damon truly did love his brother, and despite the fact that he's learning to do it again -- slowly -- Damon has a deep-seated despise for Stefan. It began in the 19th century when Stefan and Damon were feuding over Katherine's affection, it culminated when Stefan convinced (read: forced, in Damon's mind) Damon to complete the process of turning when Katherine initiated it, and it bred slowly over the next hundred and forty years.
Now, it's taken form in a mounting jealousy that Stefan believes he can play the good guy when really, when he gets his hands on human blood, he's far worse than Damon is because he's out of control, and that he, in his vegan, good guy act, has Elena while Damon has an empty tomb and an ex-girlfriend/maker who could have come found him at any time and never chose to. He sees what a horrible person Stefan can be underneath it all, and hates that just because he does a better job of wrapping it up, Stefan always seems to come out ahead. Worse than that, though, is that he sees Stefan becoming this better person and being accepted with open arms by all of Mystic Falls for his struggles, while Damon attempts the same thing and gets zero recognition for it. Despite being the older brother, he's been given something of a younger sibling complex as the unsung hero since the start of canon. He gets his hands messy, puts his life on the line without hesitation, but Stefan gets the girl, gets the praise, gets the friendship and trust.
Mostly, though, it's long-standing grudge holding over Katherine and their general state of vampirism. Stefan, who had embraced it, is now trying to get away with rejecting it and scorning Damon for embracing it like Stefan had wanted him to. It's ~unfair.~ For all of that hate, though, Damon still has the protective older brother instinct and if anyone but himself tried to fuck with Stefan, it would be their head on a platter. Damon is by no means the oldest vampire of the bunch, but he is easily one of the strongest thanks to Katherine's teaching and a steady diet of human blood, and he has a certain possessiveness over being able to make Stefan's life a living hell. Essentially, he loves his brother for reason alone that he is his brother, but he doesn't love the way he tries to hide what he is and gets accepted for hiding it. He would much rather see Stefan the bad guy and love him for that, or for them both to be accepted as the good guys, but he simply can't approve of this trying to cover it all up and pretend it never happened, and he can't overcome that jealousy in any degree.
At the same time, however, as Damon confesses in 2.08, the way that others accept Stefan for it and the way that Stefan always comes off as the good guy after his heroic deeds and Damon comes off as the bad guy who always does the heroic thing that someone makes things worse, he acknowledges that Stefan is the one who deserves these things. Stefan does a much better job of fighting his angry and violent nature, whereas it always edges its way into Damon's life even when he's playing the good guy. This is particularly frustrating because when they first turn, Stefan begins to indulge himself decadently in the 'vampire' lifestyle, while Damon tries to keep control of himself, only drinking only as he needs to and restraining himself from drawing attention. He tries to coax Stefan back under control but it's no use. Giving up on him, Damon leaves just as a vampire, Lexi, introduces herself to Stefan and takes the reigns.
The only reason Damon doesn't hate the fact that he was turned for the first half of the series is his belief that he'll find Katherine and they'll be together. It's shown in 1.20 that Damon thought he had become an abomination -- he didn't want to turn, he wanted to resist the first feeding and die. It was Stefan who persuaded him to become a monster and Damon was initially horrified that Stefan would even consider doing it. So, as soon as Damon turned, he turned off his feelings so that he wouldn't have to address all of that self-hate. He accepted that he had become a monster. But, after so long, he realized that he didn't want to stop feeling. An eternity without pain would also mean an eternity without anything else, and he determined that the feelings were worth it. Stefan and Damon interact a few times over the course of the next 140 years, but nothing substantial or concrete.
And, over time, Damon begins to change. He goes from being the responsible older brother to being, on the most basic level, cocky, selfsure, dismissive, brilliantly conniving and witty. He's essentially, as Ian Somerhalder put it, "[a] sort of wacky old world combination of Cary Grant and Mick Jagger." He can seem even sociopathic at times, which he explains is a part of being a vampire -- there's a switch you can shut off that just makes you stop feeling. Early in the season, Damon really seems to make use of this switch, acting unequivocally charming in the same breath that he's ripping out throats. He asserts his power and takes what he wants because he wants to be the Damon that Katherine will come back and love. Even later into the season, Damon carries around with him this devil may care attitude that he works incredibly hard to maintain. He acts like he views people as pawns on a chessboard and treats them as such, coming off superior and careless.
But, Damon admits that he stopped turning this "switch" off. That he began to care about people -- that he cares about his brother, about Elena, and even in some strange ways, about Alaric and Bonnie. He cares enough about them to watch their backs, anyway, and to let them watch his, which takes an immeasurable amount of trust for Damon who was incredibly literally stabbed in the back by his father. What he really wants is just acceptance -- from Katherine, from Stefan, from Elena. He wants to be seen as a person again, because he spent so much time trying to shut that part of him out. He wants to be the kind of person that Elena seems to believe he has in him -- or at times seems to believe he has in him, in any case.
Damon hates himself for a lot of reasons. He pretty much lives to exercise his self-hate. In 2.01, he forces himself on Elena and kills Jeremy so that Elena will hate him and call him a monster because that's what he sees himself as. When he hits these pits of despair, that's what he truly believes he is -- beyond saving. A big part of the reason he spends so much time harassing Bonnie is that he likes knowing that someone sees him as a monster still and hates him, even when he's trying to be a better person. He knows he's not a good person, and he knows that in a lot of ways, he's become a product of Katherine's manipulation and turned into something very similar to her because he spent damn near 150 years trying to make himself into something she'd love unconditionally for when he freed her.
He self-destructs after he finds out Katherine was never in the tomb, trying to damage his psyche and himself in every way possible and reverting to what he was in the beginning of the series -- a hot mess of sociopathic issues. He acknowledges how pathetic it is that he was so lost and obsessed when it came to Katherine, and so he sets about showing what a pathetic mess he is by excessive partying and flagrant displays of how apathetic he is and how little he cares, when really all he's doing is showing how severely it's effecting him. He does it again after Katherine rejects him and tells him that she never loved him, and proves that this self-destructive path is merely how he copes with his emotions, proving that he never really turned that sociopath switch in his head off so he didn't have to feel it.
After 1.14, when he learns that Katherine was never entombed, he also develops a kind of bitterness and resentment toward Katherine for all that she put him through, thinking he could find her, pretending she didn't exist so that he'd continue searching, but all he requires is once solid push to convince him that she cares to some extent and he'd be hers all over again. This is also compounded by the fact that, between 1.14 and 1.21, he's grown to care a lot for Elena who, while she may physically resemble Katherine to the highest degree, is nothing like her. Katherine is selfish where Elena is helpful and genuine. She's, essentially, the better model, because she still has all that winning self confidence that attracted Damon to Katherine in the first place. As his love for Elena grows, so shrinks his love for Katherine. As he sees the light in Elena's heart it begins to make the shadows and darkness in Katherine's more obvious. It twists Damon's image of her and makes her almost repulsive in a lot of ways.
However, over the course of the series, he does grow to become this better person. Through the trust and faith that Elena puts in him -- she believes in him, and it helps him believe in himself again too. That's what brings him to believe that he's in love with her, and that's why he kisses "her" on the Gilberts' doorstep. Whereas Katherine turned him into a manipulative bastard who played games with everyone and didn't put any value to anyone, Elena turned him into a human being again. He connected with people in the end of season 1 and the beginning of season 2. He shows that there are certain people -- Stefan, Elena and, surprisingly, Sheriff Forbes -- who he values above everyone else and who, if they're put in harm's way, he'd do anything to protect -- even put himself at risk of death, which he does several times for Elena, particularly in regards to Klaus and Elijah, two originals who want her dead. He does this even though the majority of the population means nothing to him and he'd kill them without a second thought. However, it also means that these people are the ones who are in deep enough to hurt him, and they do. Frequently.
Another important thing to note is probably Damon's admittedly wide spectrum of vague abilities:Standard Vampire Powers:☑ super speed
☑ jumps very high
☑ compelling - a form of mind control and memory erasure
☑ super strength
☑ drinking blood :| and thereby, REQUIRING blood for sustenance
☑ enhanced sight, smell, taste, hearing
☑ kentucky frying in sunlight
☑ a weakness for witches
☑ looking like a freaky monsters with black and red and veiny eyes
☑ sneaking. yes, this is a special ability.
Special Damon Powers:☑ creating and controlling fog.
☑ summoning and controlling crows -- yep. he's a disney princess.
☑ controlling and manipulating the dreams of others.
☑ making panties drop -- no seriously, his levels of charm belong here.
☑ has a ring that allows him to walk around in daylight without becoming kentucky fried damon.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: That manipulative, conniving bitch. Damon's grip tightened on the glass in front of him. He had, once again, found himself slouched over the bar at Mystic Grill and he was beginning to seriously believe that the bartender there saw more of him than the Salvatore Boarding House did. Thankfully, the new bartender seemed to have caught on that when Damon came in alone, he didn't require the bar psychology that was an unspoken requirement of bartenders, apparently. Once the failure of a vampire Anna had roped in had gotten his, Damon had stopped needing to set his jaw and bite down on snide comments while fixing the bartender with an annoyed stare as he tried to pry into Damon's innermost issues. This one seemed content to just ignore him understandingly.
For the time being, it was better that way, because Damon's situation was far beyond any normal bartender's comprehension and it was maddening enough that the last thing he wanted to do was spill his guts about it in some way that involved veiled half-truths as he was prone to giving the citizens of Mystic Falls who didn't know his secret. All of this time and still Katherine knew just how to get under his skin. A chill racked his spine at the thought and he forced it down, canting his head to try and shake the feeling out of his shoulders. His neck cracked and he downed the nearly full glass of scotch in one long drink, slamming it back to the countertop and sitting back in his seat, straightening.
Elena's in danger, she'd pleaded. Only because she'd known Elena was his weak spot. As much as it killed him to even admit he had a weak spot, when it came to dealign with Katherine, he knew he had to be more consciously aware of it than she was so he could counteract the measures she'd take to dig her claws into it. He had to put up the additional defenses, he had to be confident in the fact that he could protect Elena if it came to that. And he had to know that anything in regards to his weak spot was a lie anyway.
But, knowing that he needed to do these things and actually having his brain and his 'heart' process them were two separate things entirely. There was still a part of him -- a large part -- that felt inextricably tied to Katherine. As much as he wanted her dead, he knew what it was fueled by: heartache and deceit. There wasn't a bone in his body that wasn't still at least partially in love with her, and that was why all the relief of having her finally shut away and out of their lives came with the added, painful edge of guilt and heartbreak. Shutting her in there, listening to her screams of pain and fear while he did it, had affected him more than he was willing to admit. It had been downright painful, particularly when he took into consideration just how long he'd spent trying to achieve the exact opposite.
The strangest thing, though, was how easy it was for him to put all of that behind him and focus instead on the fact that as soon as he knew Katherine was gone for good, dealt with and in a place where she could be put out of his mind for the rest of eternity, he realized that the first person he wanted to see was Elena. Somehow, she was the very antithesis of a reminder of Katherine, despite their identical appearances. She was sweet and bright and -- well, on her best days, she was forgiving -- where Katherine was a dark, manipulative and evil bitch that Damon should be glad to be rid of.
He thanked the bartender with a casual nod and a cursory glance and uprooted himself from the barstool, heading for the door with a slight bend in his step. The alcohol didn't just hinder those people-blood cravings of his, which at their worst demanded that he get it straight from the source, but they also put a cap on the messier emotions, like pain and angst. The night air wasn't even cold with the warmth of the alcohol running through his veins, and when he set his mind to it and drew in all the mental facilities he could to focus on where he was going, the assistance of vampiric speed made the miles to Elena's house a short, brisk walk from the Grill.
After the looks he'd been getting from Jenna since the porch incident, he knew the front door wasn't the way to go. Instead, he chose to jump up onto the lip of Elena's bedroom window sill and let himself in that way. The room was empty -- lights out, untouched. A glance outside made him realize he could have gathered as much from the fact that her car wasn't in the driveway.
Probably with Stefan, he deduced, taking a few steps across the room to her vanity. It was the default assumption, of course, and given how the masquerade had gone for the both of them, it wasn't exactly something he could begrudge either for. As much as he'd like to. Stefan was the one who she'd chosen, it wasn't some secret, yet still every time it occurred to him that they were together it was like a fresh knife to his chest. His fingertips brushed over the various beauty products scattered on the vanity -- brushes, combs, makeup applicators, a hair straightener. A glance up and he saw a picture of her and Stefan tucked between the wood and the mirrored surface itself. His gut twisted and he drew his hand back, tucking it into his pockets so he could keep himself from touching anything else.
He didn't belong here. Her room was full of the bright colors and soft shades of Elena Gilbert, of the reminders that she wasn't his and she wasn't going to be. Of the fact that his brother was the one who had strived for over a century to get to a place where he deserved this. And Damon simply didn't. Hell, he didn't even deserve this selfish, stolen moment without her but surrounded by what represented her in so many ways. If Stefan knew this was where he'd come, he'd be giving himself a justifiable coronary -- or whatever the vampire equivalent was. And that was precisely why Stefan deserved her and Damon didn't. Damon was selfish; he took things for himself, he was poison and he'd only drag her down with him. Stefan was the one who'd give selflessly to protect her.
Damon wasn't going to get between that. It was better, he decided, that she wasn't here to know he'd come by.
FIRST-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: I'm going to go ahead and spare you all the Alice in Wonderland slash Wizard of Oz slash whatever other outdated "classic" movie references you people have a habit of throwing out upon spontaneous arrival. In fact? I'll do you one better. See, unlike some people -- I'm looking at you, earnest and idiotic new arrivals -- I actually know how to read.
Blah blah, Paradisa, blah blah, losses, magic castle, time stopped in my own world. How am I doing so far?
Thought so. So, let's jump right to the point, where you tell me if there's a map of this place and where on it the bar is. If I'm stuck listening to all of this whining all the time, I'm going to need a valued customer card.
INTENT: My current plans for Damon begin and end with him being a badass and eating hot chicks.
JOURNAL: arcesso
EMAIL: live.infamy [at] gmail.com
AIM: to boldly trek
WIKI NAME: arcesso
CHARACTERS: Claire Bennet
CHARACTER NAME: Damon Salvatore
FANDOM: The Vampire Diaries
CANON: 2.15 after Elijah kicks it for good and Team Salvatore confirms that they can indeed kill an original.
WHAT THEY LOST: The most important thing that Damon has is his love for Elena. It's shaped him as a person, and helped him to step outside of the darkness that he allowed himself to get caught up in for over a century. When Damon loses people he cares about, or when there is nothing around him that he does care about, Damon tends to get incredibly self-destructive, reckless, and frankly dangerous. I'd like for Damon to lose his romantic feelings not only so that he won't have as hard of a time not having Elena in the castle with him, but also so that he can be in that horrible place and slowly work his way out of it as a way of making awesome CR.
ABOUT THE CHARACTER: Damon was born sometime in the 19th century, the eldest son of Giuseppe Salvatore, who never really approved of him, exactly. He returns to Mystic Falls, their hometown, after what appears to be a long absence when he's 25 and a soldier fighting for the confederacy. He and his brother meet Katherine Pierce, a vampire, and her handmaid Emily Bennett, a witch, and immediately begin to fight over Katherine's affections. Katherine is allowed to stay in the Salvatore Boarding House because she spins a story about being an orphan from Atlanta, and she plays them both like a fiddle. After compelling Stefan for some time into allowing her to feed on him, and simply having Damon so intrinsically wrapped around her finger that he allowed it without compulsion, she feeds them both her blood. Damon willingly drinks it, and Katherine doesn't need to compel him at all except to get him to let the Stefan thing go and be less jealous. At his behest, she demonstrates to him how she hunts and she teaches him a lot of things about the extent of a vampire's abilities -- it's because of this and the human blood diet that Damon is stronger and has a broader range of skills than Stefan.
The initial point of conflict between the brothers is undoubtedly the biggest as well, and her name is Katherine Pierce. The woman has Damon wrapped around her little finger in every sense of the word. She never compelled him, yet he allowed her to feed on him while he was a human, willingly drank her blood and learned various vampire tricks and habits. When he finds out that she never loved him, he's crushed beyond belief because his entire existence had been engineered toward finding Katherine and he loses his very purpose to live. The one thing that had motivated him to think that perhaps living forever wouldn't be so bad apparently wanted nothing to do with him. For all of his excessive manipulating skill and intelligence, he's very much powerless against the games that Katherine continuously plays with his mind. All of the love he has for Stefan is dwarfed by his affection for Katherine, which is such an unhealthy obsession that he would cling to any feeble hope that she might return his feelings to any degree. The Damon that Katherine knew in the 19th century is vastly different from the Damon we see in the 21st. He was responsible, cautious, and caring. He felt deeply and took his family and his loved ones very seriously and was able to easily form attachments. To Katherine, Damon was always the reliable, sturdy, unconditionally loving brother who was absolutely head over heels for her and would give his life for her if she so much as asked.
Then, one night, Jonathan Gilbert leads a siege on the vampires of Mystic Falls and locks them all in a church that he burns to the ground. Stefan sells out Katherine and her posse by accidentally telling his father about them, Damon is horrified. Giuseppe doses Stefan with vervain to knock Katherine out and drag her away. The boys both try to save Katherine and get shot for their efforts, but because they had been feeding on her blood, they don't die. Damon is secretly aware that Katherine and her posse hid out in a tomb beneath the church with the help of a binding spell that Emily placed on it. Damon and Stefan wake up from death to realize that they've become vampires, but the transformation won't be complete until they feed on a human. Damon refuses and decides to sit it out and wait for death, but Stefan goes through with it. When he discovers the enhanced senses and powers of a vampire, he encourages Damon to do the same and tempts him with blood. Damon gives in and the two become vampires, though Damon begins to feel an immense loathing towards Stefan and it stems from this point. Despite the fact that at one time, Damon truly did love his brother, and despite the fact that he's learning to do it again -- slowly -- Damon has a deep-seated despise for Stefan. It began in the 19th century when Stefan and Damon were feuding over Katherine's affection, it culminated when Stefan convinced (read: forced, in Damon's mind) Damon to complete the process of turning when Katherine initiated it, and it bred slowly over the next hundred and forty years.
Now, it's taken form in a mounting jealousy that Stefan believes he can play the good guy when really, when he gets his hands on human blood, he's far worse than Damon is because he's out of control, and that he, in his vegan, good guy act, has Elena while Damon has an empty tomb and an ex-girlfriend/maker who could have come found him at any time and never chose to. He sees what a horrible person Stefan can be underneath it all, and hates that just because he does a better job of wrapping it up, Stefan always seems to come out ahead. Worse than that, though, is that he sees Stefan becoming this better person and being accepted with open arms by all of Mystic Falls for his struggles, while Damon attempts the same thing and gets zero recognition for it. Despite being the older brother, he's been given something of a younger sibling complex as the unsung hero since the start of canon. He gets his hands messy, puts his life on the line without hesitation, but Stefan gets the girl, gets the praise, gets the friendship and trust.
Mostly, though, it's long-standing grudge holding over Katherine and their general state of vampirism. Stefan, who had embraced it, is now trying to get away with rejecting it and scorning Damon for embracing it like Stefan had wanted him to. It's ~unfair.~ For all of that hate, though, Damon still has the protective older brother instinct and if anyone but himself tried to fuck with Stefan, it would be their head on a platter. Damon is by no means the oldest vampire of the bunch, but he is easily one of the strongest thanks to Katherine's teaching and a steady diet of human blood, and he has a certain possessiveness over being able to make Stefan's life a living hell. Essentially, he loves his brother for reason alone that he is his brother, but he doesn't love the way he tries to hide what he is and gets accepted for hiding it. He would much rather see Stefan the bad guy and love him for that, or for them both to be accepted as the good guys, but he simply can't approve of this trying to cover it all up and pretend it never happened, and he can't overcome that jealousy in any degree.
At the same time, however, as Damon confesses in 2.08, the way that others accept Stefan for it and the way that Stefan always comes off as the good guy after his heroic deeds and Damon comes off as the bad guy who always does the heroic thing that someone makes things worse, he acknowledges that Stefan is the one who deserves these things. Stefan does a much better job of fighting his angry and violent nature, whereas it always edges its way into Damon's life even when he's playing the good guy. This is particularly frustrating because when they first turn, Stefan begins to indulge himself decadently in the 'vampire' lifestyle, while Damon tries to keep control of himself, only drinking only as he needs to and restraining himself from drawing attention. He tries to coax Stefan back under control but it's no use. Giving up on him, Damon leaves just as a vampire, Lexi, introduces herself to Stefan and takes the reigns.
The only reason Damon doesn't hate the fact that he was turned for the first half of the series is his belief that he'll find Katherine and they'll be together. It's shown in 1.20 that Damon thought he had become an abomination -- he didn't want to turn, he wanted to resist the first feeding and die. It was Stefan who persuaded him to become a monster and Damon was initially horrified that Stefan would even consider doing it. So, as soon as Damon turned, he turned off his feelings so that he wouldn't have to address all of that self-hate. He accepted that he had become a monster. But, after so long, he realized that he didn't want to stop feeling. An eternity without pain would also mean an eternity without anything else, and he determined that the feelings were worth it. Stefan and Damon interact a few times over the course of the next 140 years, but nothing substantial or concrete.
And, over time, Damon begins to change. He goes from being the responsible older brother to being, on the most basic level, cocky, selfsure, dismissive, brilliantly conniving and witty. He's essentially, as Ian Somerhalder put it, "[a] sort of wacky old world combination of Cary Grant and Mick Jagger." He can seem even sociopathic at times, which he explains is a part of being a vampire -- there's a switch you can shut off that just makes you stop feeling. Early in the season, Damon really seems to make use of this switch, acting unequivocally charming in the same breath that he's ripping out throats. He asserts his power and takes what he wants because he wants to be the Damon that Katherine will come back and love. Even later into the season, Damon carries around with him this devil may care attitude that he works incredibly hard to maintain. He acts like he views people as pawns on a chessboard and treats them as such, coming off superior and careless.
But, Damon admits that he stopped turning this "switch" off. That he began to care about people -- that he cares about his brother, about Elena, and even in some strange ways, about Alaric and Bonnie. He cares enough about them to watch their backs, anyway, and to let them watch his, which takes an immeasurable amount of trust for Damon who was incredibly literally stabbed in the back by his father. What he really wants is just acceptance -- from Katherine, from Stefan, from Elena. He wants to be seen as a person again, because he spent so much time trying to shut that part of him out. He wants to be the kind of person that Elena seems to believe he has in him -- or at times seems to believe he has in him, in any case.
Damon hates himself for a lot of reasons. He pretty much lives to exercise his self-hate. In 2.01, he forces himself on Elena and kills Jeremy so that Elena will hate him and call him a monster because that's what he sees himself as. When he hits these pits of despair, that's what he truly believes he is -- beyond saving. A big part of the reason he spends so much time harassing Bonnie is that he likes knowing that someone sees him as a monster still and hates him, even when he's trying to be a better person. He knows he's not a good person, and he knows that in a lot of ways, he's become a product of Katherine's manipulation and turned into something very similar to her because he spent damn near 150 years trying to make himself into something she'd love unconditionally for when he freed her.
He self-destructs after he finds out Katherine was never in the tomb, trying to damage his psyche and himself in every way possible and reverting to what he was in the beginning of the series -- a hot mess of sociopathic issues. He acknowledges how pathetic it is that he was so lost and obsessed when it came to Katherine, and so he sets about showing what a pathetic mess he is by excessive partying and flagrant displays of how apathetic he is and how little he cares, when really all he's doing is showing how severely it's effecting him. He does it again after Katherine rejects him and tells him that she never loved him, and proves that this self-destructive path is merely how he copes with his emotions, proving that he never really turned that sociopath switch in his head off so he didn't have to feel it.
After 1.14, when he learns that Katherine was never entombed, he also develops a kind of bitterness and resentment toward Katherine for all that she put him through, thinking he could find her, pretending she didn't exist so that he'd continue searching, but all he requires is once solid push to convince him that she cares to some extent and he'd be hers all over again. This is also compounded by the fact that, between 1.14 and 1.21, he's grown to care a lot for Elena who, while she may physically resemble Katherine to the highest degree, is nothing like her. Katherine is selfish where Elena is helpful and genuine. She's, essentially, the better model, because she still has all that winning self confidence that attracted Damon to Katherine in the first place. As his love for Elena grows, so shrinks his love for Katherine. As he sees the light in Elena's heart it begins to make the shadows and darkness in Katherine's more obvious. It twists Damon's image of her and makes her almost repulsive in a lot of ways.
However, over the course of the series, he does grow to become this better person. Through the trust and faith that Elena puts in him -- she believes in him, and it helps him believe in himself again too. That's what brings him to believe that he's in love with her, and that's why he kisses "her" on the Gilberts' doorstep. Whereas Katherine turned him into a manipulative bastard who played games with everyone and didn't put any value to anyone, Elena turned him into a human being again. He connected with people in the end of season 1 and the beginning of season 2. He shows that there are certain people -- Stefan, Elena and, surprisingly, Sheriff Forbes -- who he values above everyone else and who, if they're put in harm's way, he'd do anything to protect -- even put himself at risk of death, which he does several times for Elena, particularly in regards to Klaus and Elijah, two originals who want her dead. He does this even though the majority of the population means nothing to him and he'd kill them without a second thought. However, it also means that these people are the ones who are in deep enough to hurt him, and they do. Frequently.
Another important thing to note is probably Damon's admittedly wide spectrum of vague abilities:Standard Vampire Powers:☑ super speed
☑ jumps very high
☑ compelling - a form of mind control and memory erasure
☑ super strength
☑ drinking blood :| and thereby, REQUIRING blood for sustenance
☑ enhanced sight, smell, taste, hearing
☑ kentucky frying in sunlight
☑ a weakness for witches
☑ looking like a freaky monsters with black and red and veiny eyes
☑ sneaking. yes, this is a special ability.
Special Damon Powers:☑ creating and controlling fog.
☑ summoning and controlling crows -- yep. he's a disney princess.
☑ controlling and manipulating the dreams of others.
☑ making panties drop -- no seriously, his levels of charm belong here.
☑ has a ring that allows him to walk around in daylight without becoming kentucky fried damon.
THIRD-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: That manipulative, conniving bitch. Damon's grip tightened on the glass in front of him. He had, once again, found himself slouched over the bar at Mystic Grill and he was beginning to seriously believe that the bartender there saw more of him than the Salvatore Boarding House did. Thankfully, the new bartender seemed to have caught on that when Damon came in alone, he didn't require the bar psychology that was an unspoken requirement of bartenders, apparently. Once the failure of a vampire Anna had roped in had gotten his, Damon had stopped needing to set his jaw and bite down on snide comments while fixing the bartender with an annoyed stare as he tried to pry into Damon's innermost issues. This one seemed content to just ignore him understandingly.
For the time being, it was better that way, because Damon's situation was far beyond any normal bartender's comprehension and it was maddening enough that the last thing he wanted to do was spill his guts about it in some way that involved veiled half-truths as he was prone to giving the citizens of Mystic Falls who didn't know his secret. All of this time and still Katherine knew just how to get under his skin. A chill racked his spine at the thought and he forced it down, canting his head to try and shake the feeling out of his shoulders. His neck cracked and he downed the nearly full glass of scotch in one long drink, slamming it back to the countertop and sitting back in his seat, straightening.
Elena's in danger, she'd pleaded. Only because she'd known Elena was his weak spot. As much as it killed him to even admit he had a weak spot, when it came to dealign with Katherine, he knew he had to be more consciously aware of it than she was so he could counteract the measures she'd take to dig her claws into it. He had to put up the additional defenses, he had to be confident in the fact that he could protect Elena if it came to that. And he had to know that anything in regards to his weak spot was a lie anyway.
But, knowing that he needed to do these things and actually having his brain and his 'heart' process them were two separate things entirely. There was still a part of him -- a large part -- that felt inextricably tied to Katherine. As much as he wanted her dead, he knew what it was fueled by: heartache and deceit. There wasn't a bone in his body that wasn't still at least partially in love with her, and that was why all the relief of having her finally shut away and out of their lives came with the added, painful edge of guilt and heartbreak. Shutting her in there, listening to her screams of pain and fear while he did it, had affected him more than he was willing to admit. It had been downright painful, particularly when he took into consideration just how long he'd spent trying to achieve the exact opposite.
The strangest thing, though, was how easy it was for him to put all of that behind him and focus instead on the fact that as soon as he knew Katherine was gone for good, dealt with and in a place where she could be put out of his mind for the rest of eternity, he realized that the first person he wanted to see was Elena. Somehow, she was the very antithesis of a reminder of Katherine, despite their identical appearances. She was sweet and bright and -- well, on her best days, she was forgiving -- where Katherine was a dark, manipulative and evil bitch that Damon should be glad to be rid of.
He thanked the bartender with a casual nod and a cursory glance and uprooted himself from the barstool, heading for the door with a slight bend in his step. The alcohol didn't just hinder those people-blood cravings of his, which at their worst demanded that he get it straight from the source, but they also put a cap on the messier emotions, like pain and angst. The night air wasn't even cold with the warmth of the alcohol running through his veins, and when he set his mind to it and drew in all the mental facilities he could to focus on where he was going, the assistance of vampiric speed made the miles to Elena's house a short, brisk walk from the Grill.
After the looks he'd been getting from Jenna since the porch incident, he knew the front door wasn't the way to go. Instead, he chose to jump up onto the lip of Elena's bedroom window sill and let himself in that way. The room was empty -- lights out, untouched. A glance outside made him realize he could have gathered as much from the fact that her car wasn't in the driveway.
Probably with Stefan, he deduced, taking a few steps across the room to her vanity. It was the default assumption, of course, and given how the masquerade had gone for the both of them, it wasn't exactly something he could begrudge either for. As much as he'd like to. Stefan was the one who she'd chosen, it wasn't some secret, yet still every time it occurred to him that they were together it was like a fresh knife to his chest. His fingertips brushed over the various beauty products scattered on the vanity -- brushes, combs, makeup applicators, a hair straightener. A glance up and he saw a picture of her and Stefan tucked between the wood and the mirrored surface itself. His gut twisted and he drew his hand back, tucking it into his pockets so he could keep himself from touching anything else.
He didn't belong here. Her room was full of the bright colors and soft shades of Elena Gilbert, of the reminders that she wasn't his and she wasn't going to be. Of the fact that his brother was the one who had strived for over a century to get to a place where he deserved this. And Damon simply didn't. Hell, he didn't even deserve this selfish, stolen moment without her but surrounded by what represented her in so many ways. If Stefan knew this was where he'd come, he'd be giving himself a justifiable coronary -- or whatever the vampire equivalent was. And that was precisely why Stefan deserved her and Damon didn't. Damon was selfish; he took things for himself, he was poison and he'd only drag her down with him. Stefan was the one who'd give selflessly to protect her.
Damon wasn't going to get between that. It was better, he decided, that she wasn't here to know he'd come by.
FIRST-PERSON WRITING SAMPLE: I'm going to go ahead and spare you all the Alice in Wonderland slash Wizard of Oz slash whatever other outdated "classic" movie references you people have a habit of throwing out upon spontaneous arrival. In fact? I'll do you one better. See, unlike some people -- I'm looking at you, earnest and idiotic new arrivals -- I actually know how to read.
Blah blah, Paradisa, blah blah, losses, magic castle, time stopped in my own world. How am I doing so far?
Thought so. So, let's jump right to the point, where you tell me if there's a map of this place and where on it the bar is. If I'm stuck listening to all of this whining all the time, I'm going to need a valued customer card.
INTENT: My current plans for Damon begin and end with him being a badass and eating hot chicks.