TVD Meets Honest & True Time

This is TVD week! To celebrate the season 3 release on Tuesday, every post this week will concern vampires and The Vampire Diaries tv series. Be wary of some spoilers, although I will avoid anything uber important from season 3.

Today I wanted to talk about my favorite character from The Vampire Diaries, Caroline Forbes. Not only because she’s awesome (although she is totally BAMF in her own way) but because as I grew to like Caroline in the series and figured out why I liked her, I realized some more stuff about myself.

My friend Jenn (who is rewatching season 1 already, which I probably won’t do until next week due to my reawakened Starcraft II addiction) was texting me this evening, and mentioned Caroline because she had forgotten some key plot points from the beginning of the series. I thought this fit in with this post fantastically, because the thing with Caroline is, there’s a huge difference between her at the beginning of the series and her at the end of season 3.

As I’ve mentioned already, when first watching TVD I hated Caroline. She is incredibly shallow. She constantly says the wrong thing. Heck, the first time we see her, she acts like a complete idiot. Elena is recovering from her parents dying tragically a few months ago. Elena is back to school, trying to act normal, and up walks Caroline! Caroline means well, asking how she's doing and whatnot, but then she turns to Bonnie and asks about Elena while she's not there. I mean it's funny, but not the best thing to help your friend recover either.

Then later in the episode she becomes incredibly jealous of Stefan being more interested in Elena than her. She ends up drunk and whining “why not me??” I was immediately turned off. In fact, when Damon ends up using her as a little blood bank/sex buddy/spy combo I almost felt like she deserved it.

As season 1 continued though I actually started to feel sorry for Caroline. Especially when Damon calls her shallow. She has a little mental break realizing yes, she is in fact shallow. In her own words, “I’m worse than shallow, I’m a kiddie pool.” She perseveres though, because she starts to realize her good qualities. She’s a good friend. She cares about other people. She works hard to make sure everyone else is having a good time.

This was when I finally started to appreciate Caroline. This was also the beginning of her adorable romance with Matt, which seriously was ridiculously adorable. 

Caroline does become stronger and more confident as the series progresses. But I realized that what initially turned me off about her are actually all the things I hate in myself. I’m a bit insecure. I CONSTANTLY say the most retarded things ever, and then later obsess over it for hours. I too ask, why not me? Not so much about boys, but why did my brother get all the good genes? Why is my mother the best cook ever? Why can my daddy make everyone like him? Why not me? Why can’t I?

See, totally me.

I started to realize this when I recognized that the traits I LIKED in Caroline were also ones I prided myself on. Her deep caring, her (mainly) optimistic attitude, her psychotic habit to plan everything.

Honest and true time: even though I would never think of myself this way (not a cheerleader, not quite as obsessive thankfully), out of all the female characters in TVD I’m totally a Caroline. A Caroline Forbes lite if you will. Half the crazy, half the blond, same refreshing taste.

But I also think that Caroline is the most relatable of the main female characters. Bonnie? We’ve already talked about that one. A little too stuck on her own morals to relate to. Elena? Just a bit too selfless to be relatable. But dear Caroline deals with her insecurities. She improves on her faults. At the end of the day, she’s just seems real. Even when she becomes a vampire!