the vampire diaries fanfic writing tips

✧ good vs bad characters

i am including this because i think that out of all fandoms, i notice that the tvd fandom seems to struggle the most with this.

good and bad in the show is a LOT different from good and bad in real life.

by our standards, absolutely no vampire in the show is a good person. i'm struggling to find a character that would be considered good at all by our standards.

and there is a difference between someone who is bad and someone who has done bad things.

i notice a lot of fans struggle with understanding that.

people also struggle to understand the weight of their actions vs someone else's.

for example. the absolute wildest take i've ever seen that SO MANY people have. is that elena is just as bad as characters like klaus and katherine because she fell in love with two brothers.

falling in love with two people is by no means as bad as killing and torturing people but okay (it's also weird because elena did worse things than that which they could use to make that argument like deciding to kill kol which killed thousands of vampires but no how dare she fall in love! and even then klaus and katherine still did way more bad things than that).

anyways.

there is a difference between good and bad in the show than how we see it here. by our standards, everyone is absolutely horrible. by their standards, not so much.

and an easy way to understand this is look at the motivations. look at the intent.

for example, here are the characters that are supposed to be good: elena, stefan (with humanity), caroline, bonnie, tyler, and matt.

characters that are supposed to be bad: mikaelsons, kai, katherine, damon depending on the season.

the difference between the good and the bad characters isn't that the good characters never do bad things or that the bad characters never do good things.

but the good characters don't do bad things for the purpose of being bad or being cruel. the good characters are not cruel and that's a very important distinction when you're writing heroes vs villains in tvd because no one is exactly perfect.

for example, klaus killed people because they coughed and annoyed him. kol killed people when he didn't like how they performed in plays. katherine killed someone at the ball to make a point and threaten stefan.

they kill innocent people for no reason.

on the other hand, when we look at the "good" characters.

caroline got a whole bunch of witches killed, but she didn't kill them because she wanted to be cruel, she was trying to save her friend. bonnie and stefan wanted to kill katherine. but that wasn't because they just wanted to kill her for the fun of it. she turned caroline, tried to hurt bonnie, wanted elena gone etc.

our rules don't exist in their world. they don't apply. they aren't relevant.

they aren't human.

they are vampires/witches/werewolves.

they live by their own supernatural rules.

and in a lot of situations it's kill or be killed.

that's it. no other option.

characters are also not just one thing. it's difficult to place them into a box labeled "good" and say okay, everything they do has to be good and accurate. people don't work like that. people are flawed. and being flawed doesn't make a character a bad person.

caroline for example has a lot of flaws. she's nosey and hypocritical, but that doesn't mean she's a "bad person" you might not like who she is as a person, you may find her annoying or difficult, however, she isn't a terrible person. she's just flawed like everyone else.

i read so many fanfics where the oc is a mikaelson let's say and they'll say something to the Salvatore's like "you call my family bad but you all tried to kill us so we're really not the villains."

now of course a character can think like this. some people do, but the problem becomes that the author really believes this and tries to paint everyone else as bad and the mikaelsons as perfect.

because let's review the facts:

the mystic falls characters wanted the mikaelsons dead, yes, but let's remember this.

their first meeting with elijah was after elena was kidnapped and she was to be given to elijah.

klaus wanted to use elena in a sacrifice and did.

elijah betrayed them when they made a deal to kill klaus and as a result of the sacrifice jenna was killed and so was elena. indirectly, john was killed.

klaus then dragged stefan around for the whole summer. klaus then came back and turned tyler to threaten bonnie into figuring out the spell, hurt elena, made stefan turn off his humanity.

i don't think i need to go into further detail. that's enough.

the only thing i will say is it was a little weird they went after finn first when he didn't do a single thing to them instead of going after klaus, rebekah, or elijah (i think kol left town at that point).

the mikaelsons are clearly the villains in tvd.

the mystic falls crew did not wake up one day and decide they wanted to kill them. the mikaelsons messed with them every chance they got and killed:

- tyler's mom

- elena

- jenna

- jules

- tyler (turned)

- and almost killed caroline, stefan, damon, jeremey, and matt.

while i understand there were moments when the mystic falls crew did take some unnecessary action, please do not diminish what they went through in your fanfic and try to make the mikaelsons the good guys whose actions were valid and fair 100% of the time. it is an incredibly false narrative that will not make your story accurate at all.

the "bad" characters are cruel. they usually act unprovoked and will use anyone and everyone to get what they want for the most part with a few exceptions.

the "good" characters usually don't act unless provoked/threatened and usually do think about other people and try to leave innocents out of it.

there's a reason why katherine killed that one girl at the party to pressure stefan into giving her what she wanted. she knew he cared about innocent life. she didn't.