that they do everything else.
This isn’t the Clockwork Orange-style philosophical dilemma that Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s Spike posed when his brain was surgically implanted with a chip that only allowed him to hurt evil creatures rather than the humans he previously liked to snack on. In the case of Spike, the question 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 132
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was whether goodness still “counts” when the person in question has no choice about it.
Damon’s got free will in spades, and the decisions he chooses to make show him to be a breed apart from both the heroes and villains of vampire stories past: he chooses to be bad, or to be good, as it suits him at a given moment. He’s not playing for Team Dark Side or Light, he’s just playing for Team Damon.
In the original Vampire Diaries book series—in which, as a human, Damon is an Italian nobleman in the Renaissance—
he chooses to find a new calling as a vampire among the con-dottieri, the parties of mercenary soldiers who would fight for whomever could pay for them. Few backstories could make it plainer that this is a character for whom loyalty to others is a complication best abandoned, in case it starts interfering with his greater loyalty to himself. In the television show, Damon’s human past has become that of a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War, but his dedication to self-interest above allegiance remains: he is a deserter.
The obvious reason behind Damon being a soldier for the Confederacy is that The Vampire Diaries takes place in Virginia. But within the history of vampires who kill other vampires, it ties Damon to another modern figure of the type:
Jasper Whitlock of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series.
The Twilight novels exist within the universe of the Vampire Diaries TV show, though they’re not mentioned by name.
Damon, after reading Caroline’s copy of one of the books, reacted scathingly toward them and lamented that the days of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles had passed. But even if it 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 133
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was for reasons of dismissal, bringing up the Twilight novels on the show invited audiences familiar with both to draw comparisons between them.
Caroline wanted to know why Damon doesn’t sparkle in daylight, as the Twilight vampires do. He replied that it’s because he lives in the real world, where daylight makes vampires burn. But Damon, provided he has his lapis lazuli ring on, doesn’t burn in daylight. No matter how Damon might protest, the fact is that he has just as much in common with the Twilight vampires as he does with older, more traditional versions of vampire mythology.
Twilight’s Jasper, like Damon, was a Confederate soldier during the American Civil War. After Jasper was turned into a vampire by Maria—who sounds like a dead ringer for Damon’s Katherine: “a tiny brunette with a soft and musical voice”—they proceeded to cut a bloody swathe through the vampire population of South America, killing any vampire they didn’t see a potential use for.
By the time readers of the Twilight novels meet Jasper in the modern day, he’s gone “vegetarian,” killing only animals to slake his blood thirst. But even though he’s sworn not to kill people anymore, Jasper is still more than willing to train his friends and family in how to kill other vampires. Killing vampires, within the mythology of Twilight, is not nearly so terrible as killing people.
Compare that to Interview with the Vampire, which is the first book in the Vampire Chronicles series that Damon misses so much. In Interview, the vampire Claudia is put to death by a coven of French vampires for what they see as the 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 134
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greatest crime possible: she tried to kill her own kind, in attempting to destroy the vampire who created her. The moral code of these vampires is the exact opposite of Jasper’s: they couldn’t care less how many thousands of humans Claudia has killed