A Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls - By Red Page 0,7

the one that actually echoed the relationship in Twilight more than any other relationship on the show, with Anna as Edward, much older and drawn to vulnerability and innocence, and Jeremy as fascinated and reckless as Bella. Jeremy is the one who wants to be a vampire, while Elena says she doesn’t; Jeremy is the one who immediately invited the vampire in and tempted her with his blood, while Elena’s first reaction on learning the truth about Stefan was to tell him she couldn’t be with him. The Vampire Diaries took a classic character, the damsel with a near death wish, and made her a boy, and we see how different Elena is by comparison.

Stefan, much younger and weaker, caught a stake that was shot at him. Pearl was killed by one. Anna was dragged off to a house to die, with Jeremy putting forth an amazingly poor effort at protecting her—he yelled at the men dragging her off, and that was all. Damon was in the same house, but naturally he lived.

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• W o m e n W h o L o v e V a m p i r e s W h o E a t W o m e n •

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“Yes, Ms. Rees Brennan,” you may be saying at this point.

“The main characters of a show are unlikely to get killed off.

Are you . . . new to television?”

I waited until the season one finale to write a large portion of this essay because I knew that depending on whether Anna survived or not, the essay would have a very different tone.

Anna did not survive. On one hand, this was not exactly a surprise. The Vampire Diaries is notorious for killing off its characters—the only ones we can be sure are safe are Stefan, Damon, and Elena—and I do find the uncertainty and excite-ment of this appealing. But I also feel the show is the poorer for losing the last lady vampire we have seen so far who is not aligned on the side of evil. We are left with Katherine and Isobel, both of whom are very interesting and well-rounded characters who obviously have complex inner lives and softer sides—Isobel cares about Alaric and regrets becoming a vampire, and Katherine told Stefan she loved him and may have meant it. They are nevertheless positioned as the antagonists, and they both treat humans significantly worse than any of the sympathetic vampire characters do. They are both entirely removed from humanity. Apparently Isobel still loves Alaric, but there is no suggestion they can be together: apparently it’s okay for a human girl to have a vampire boyfriend, but not for a vampire girl to keep a human boy. If a vampire girl tries for a human boy—see Jeremy “Catnip for the Undead Lady” Gilbert—she will die for it.

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• A V i s i t o r ’ s G u i d e t o M y s t i c F a l l s •

back. On this show, there is a whole other method. Elena’s uncle Johnathan Gilbert and Alaric Saltzman, the vampire-slaying history teacher, were both killed, and both came back to life because they had magic rings. The point of these magic rings is to protect against death, a little bit the way sunscreen protects against sunburn. Please pass the Factor Immortality.

Only nobody is going to be passing the Factor Immortality to me: the two characters who are not vampires but came back from the dead are both men.

After seeing a lot of vampire ladies killed and knowing the two vampire brothers will survive, seeing two more dudes get to survive death is a little much. This is part of the reason I was so pleased to see John Gilbert appear to meet a sticky end in his own kitchen in the finale!

Speaking of death and The Vampire Diaries finale, in it Caroline, Matt, and Tyler were involved in a car accident.

Caroline was seriously injured and spent the summer in sur-gery, with no promises she would be all right come season two. The guys in the car were okay, because the guys on this show are more likely to live, more likely to be