over her years as a vampire. The only death that she needs to be punished for is that of another vampire.
And then, reading and commenting on both Jasper and Claudia’s stories, we’ve got Damon, who would almost without a doubt prefer that nobody try to punish him for any of the deaths he’s brought about, be they human or vampire casualties. Damon’s moral compass—and he does have one, with true north pointing squarely at his own best interests—
isn’t that of either Anne Rice’s or Stephenie Meyer’s stories.
Killing a human isn’t worse than killing a vampire, and killing a vampire isn’t worse than killing a human. Living or undead, if someone’s demise serves Damon’s purposes, or makes his life easier, then that’s all that’s important.
He feels no allegiance to other vampires—as was made plain when he killed Stefan’s friend Lexi in order to trick the vampire hunters in Mystic Falls into thinking that he was one of them. But neither does he have a compassion for humankind that drives him to battle his vampire nature—
and if anyone tries to suggest that he does, he’ll commit murder right in front of them just to prove the point.
This refusal to swear allegiance to either species is not something that only came to be present in Damon after his death, either, which is arguably an important thing to keep in mind when considering what passes for ethics in the world 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 135
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of Damon Salvatore. Flashbacks set before his death showed him helping Katherine hunt people, up to and including kissing her when her mouth was slick with gore after feeding.
If he was willing to be a human who helped vampires hunt humans, it’s not really very surprising that he’s happy to be a vampire who helps humans hunt vampires.
Aside from self-preservation, the closest thing to a personal motive that Damon expressed prior to launching his Damon-the-Vampire-Hunter game was his reaction to discovering that Stefan was shot with wooden bullets. If anybody’s going to be killing Stefan, Damon declared, then it’s going to be him. In the world of The Vampire Diaries, love and hate are much stronger influences on a person’s actions than good and evil. Much later, when Damon was firmly entrenched within the vampire-hunting community, he assured Stefan that he still hated everybody—“I just love that they love me.”
Damon’s sketchy motives aren’t really all that much murkier or more convoluted than those of the other vampire hunters in Mystic Falls. His “uncle” Zach grew vervain, the herb that counteracts vampire powers, and supplied it to the other hunters in town, despite knowing that Damon would kill him if Damon knew.
But that doesn’t mean that Zach’s loyalty was ultimately to humanity and to the hunters: he also concealed Damon and Stefan’s true nature from his supposed allies, even when it was clear that Damon had no interest in being a “vegetarian”
vampire while in town. Zach was no purer or more divinely driven in his actions as a hunter than Damon himself.
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What drives much of the drama in The Vampire Diaries is the concept of protecting those whom one considers to be family, and of enacting revenge against those who’ve done you harm. Historically, vampire hunters could be assumed to be acting out of piety and faith, defending the world from creatures born from evil. But the battle of good versus evil is, at best, a secondary consideration for all the sides of the fight in the Vampire Diaries; personal alliances and enemies are of far greater importance. With the show’s human vampire hunters, as with Damon, objective concepts of good and evil are trumped by subjective ideas of love and hate, both of which can act as driving forces. The modern-day Johnathan Gilbert’s vampire hunter activities were driven by hatred, while Alaric Saltzman’s protective instincts are central to his character and choices—he is a schoolteacher as well as a vampire hunter. And yet John was also acting from attachment to Isobel and a desire to protect Elena; Alaric became a vampire hunter because he wanted revenge for his wife’s death.