Reading The Vampire Diaries As A Metaphor For Entitlement

Watching an episode of supernatural drama The Vampire Diaries, it suddenly occurred to me: while bloodsuckers are often discussed as representations of sexuality, aggression, and passion, in a modern setting they’re also a prime metaphor for entitlement.

To clarify, I enjoy this show. Some seasons are (a lot) better than others, but overall the drama offers moments of great visual storytelling. But this idea really got its hooks in, as if I’d put on glasses showing another interpretation, and now I can’t unsee the view.

Instead of Googling to find out if others had noticed, I decided not to tangle my perspective, and follow the seed of thought, however it blooms.

The vamp crew that we the audience run with, tend to lean toward the hypocritical: our leads have killed sooo many people, but nearly always receive a chance at redemption. On the other hand, people/creatures who kill our loved ones generally deserve to die—fatalities matter more if we’re emotionally engaged. Likewise, our town matters more 'cause it’s OUR town.

When your entitled boyfriend has a wall listing his murder victims
but you understand this was from like a really bad time for him.

For the first few years after a vampire turns, an epic lust for blood inspires acts of predatory violence. But our precious flowers aren’t really responsible because they haven’t learnt “control” yet—a bit like when teens go to college, the date rape scene peaks, and sexual responsibility becomes a dirty term.

Thing is, the deeper you delve, the more obvious it becomes we’re identifying with the vamps, accepting them as relevant, important, and viewing their foes as “Other”.

Our vamps live longer, are strong, beautiful/handsome, and control the minds of “lesser” beings i.e. humans. Here it's via a super power, not cold hard cash and propaganda, but you get the gist.

The enemies are usually other vampires or creatures, and more powerful, thereby openly perceiving themselves as more entitled—meaning they recklessly kill humans while our vamps at least feel bad about it (most of the time).

Yes, this is how super-entitled baddies live.
Complete with accents.

The point is these aliens/foreigners are too entitled and therefore evil, what with thinking they’re better than “us”. And not only do they threaten our crew, but they often threaten the humans in OUR town, and by God if anyone is killing those people it’s gonna be us (wait, what?). So mostly we’re at war, but with good reason. Sort of.

Possibly worth mentioning: The baddies are generally motivated by revenge, i.e. one of our vamps having hurt their loved ones. Or they need something from a member of our crew to change their circumstances. Is it just me or do these motivations sound familiar?

Violence at our town event? IT'S ON.

Remember when one of the humans in our clique joined another supes movement, the werewolves? Although this was revealed to be hereditary, so maybe he shouldn’t be blamed. Poor guy got confused, and turned on our vamps for acting entitled (btw his loyalties are still messed up so he's pretty much out of the crew).

Next up is our token human Matt, who is weak both physically, not being immortal and super-strong, and emotionally, what with the constant annoying empathy. As the boy next door he has no mystery or power from the get go.

Give it up already Matt, humans aren't end game.

Matt’s complaining annoys us, the audience, as much as the vamps, especially the way he gets “judgy” about the constant killing of innocents. Get on board the Entitlement train, buddy! In recent times he’s strayed from the path, giving in to a dislike of vampires. (Tough life being better than others; haters gonna hate.)

For those wondering, there were heaps more humans but they died, caught in the line of fire. Our vampires are always in the middle of a drama—usually because they’re being persecuted, mostly from not being understood or not being given a pass for their crimes.

One of these is the moral compass, the other an entitled vampire.
Go on, take a guess.

Side note: At this point if we created a flow chart of corpses left by our leads over seven years it would be epic, but hey they were mostly accidents and it’s not like a lot were people important to the vampires slash audience. If you can’t name them, they only count as half points.

See, that’s the whole premise of the show: our entitled are trying to be good peeps, even if lots of the time they’re not. Hating on the entitled is wrong. They deserve a chance to redeem themselves, and suggesting they be imprisoned for capricious murder sprees, well, that’s just crazy talk. They feel bad, okay? They’re not heartless monsters. They’re SPECIAL.