How NOT to write a Vampire Diaries Fanfiction (including TO & Legacies)

legacies, we could've had it all

so, i recently watched the new legacies episode where (spoiler alert) the rest of the surviving Mikaelsons all come back to help Hope turn her humanity back on

this was a pretty fun episode (and i did write my reactions down to post later on the sister book of this guide)

but right now i wanted to talk about how the episode truly failed with its main task.

and no, the main task isn't getting Hope to turn on her humanity, it was how she turned it back on

for the past couple of episodes, Hope has had moments were she hallucinates a version of herself that has her humanity on. that side is constantly telling her what she should've done, and that it's time to feel again. Hope ignores and denies her, obviously, up to the point where her powers are extremely out of control and dangerous.

now, during the episode, her family keeps triggering emotions and feelings so that she can finally push past it and her humanity can slide back in.

she keeps seeing that hallucination up until the end during the episode's climax where they're both inside her mind as 'Good' Hope points out that she can finally "kick her ass"

while it's always fun to see Hope fight someone, this scene was truly a disappointment for me

it ends with 'Good' Hope fighting against the 'Bad' Hope, metaphorically killing her and then taking her body back. Only for 'Bad' Hope to be the hallucination now, "never really being gone"

the sad thing is, this is a literal copy-paste from season 2's Dark Josie era.

if you've read most of my stuff on here then you already know my stance on dividing a character's good and bad sides, there shouldn't be a divide at all. Do you think Klaus had a bad side and a good side? Or was he a genuinely complex character who had anger issues (and a lot more issues) but that didn't restrict him from being a good person or having good actions. to have a good and well-written character, you have to stop considering them to be two different people (unless we're legit talking about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). Rebekah didn't have two sides to herself, Freya didn't, neither did Elijah. Elijah hid things from himself subconsciously and that was a much more interesting and complex storyline about him lying to himself about how many horrors he committed in the name of family.

this is how i would've had the climax go down:

There is no 'Good' Hope or 'Bad' Hope.

Instead, we get conscious Hope, the one who chose to turn off her humanity.

And the hallucination she keeps seeing isn't her 'Good' side, but rather a manifestation of her humanity. Her humanity is literally appearing to her, trying to make her way inside this poor, sad, hurting, and damaged girl. A girl who's afraid to love again, to feel anything again because of how badly it hurts.

So, she rejects it instead. Hope denies it, she even tries to attack it. But her humanity avoids the hits and the throws, it won't hurt her back but it also won't allow her to destroy it.

Hope desperately tries to fight back, but there's nothing to fight. There is no fight. Her humanity didn't come here to exchange blows, it came to rekindle. It understood that Hope needed time to survive, but that time has passed and people are hurting because of her.

Hope still tries everything in her power to get away, she screams her head off that she won't accept it. She goes on a long rant about the people she's hurt, about people that will never forgive her, about how she'll never forgive herself for what she's done. She's on her knees crying by now, she almost looks like a child again, sobbing and hoping that her parents will come pick her up and hold her in their arms and tell her it'll be all right. But there's no one. No one's coming to hold her, no one's coming to tell her it'll be okay.

Her humanity gets on its knees as well, sits in front of her, and takes her hands. It tells her that she isn't alone. "I don't want to," she chokes on her own sobs as she shakes her head, "I don't want to feel again. I can't." Her humanity just keeps holding her, hugging her now, and not letting go. "I can't do it, I can't, I'm sorry but I can't." Even if her humanity is a part of her own subconscious, it comforts her when no one else is there.

"I know it's scary. And I know it's going to hurt. But if you don't, you won't feel the good things again. Love, happiness, peace. The good far outweighs the bad."

Hope breathes out again, her cries becoming louder as she finally returns the hug to her humanity. With that embrace, it finally fades into her, almost like a ghost passing through. The second that Hope hugged it back, she accepted her humanity once more. She finally turned her humanity back on.

writing that really reminded me of the season 1 episode of legacies where it's miss mystic falls, and the entire episode has had Hope hold back her emotions or let out her frustrations with her powers. and in the end, Lizzie hugs her and tells her to let it out the other way, the way she should have done all along. she cries her eyes out and it's okay.

when Hope turned off her humanity switch, it was a clear representation of her denial. she's lost a great love, she was the one to kill him in fact, and that hurt on a monumental level that she just didn't want to feel again. it's part of her grief.

just like Elena did when Jeremy died, or Caroline did when her mother passed. turning off your emotions is a clear part of denial, to suppress any and all emotions so you can keep going. it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's part of the process when it comes to grief. it's actually necessary to feel it sometimes because once you do you go through the other stages until hopefully, you get to acceptance.

having Hope physically fight, having her address turning her emotions on through violence is not just disappointing, it's just wrong. the fact that they 'divided' Good and Bad Hope up is part of that, it's just constantly driving a wedge for a person's inner being.

there shouldn't have been a fight, there should have been a conversation.

what do you think should have happened?

i would like to give a special thanks to my best friend melly who despite not knowing a thing about legacies, lets me rant about it and listened to my version of events for this episode for a good ten minutes (and then another five later on)

and the amazing kaci for contributing her time and helping me with some writers block, she is to thank for Hope's humanities' kind words to our dear Hope

i hope you enjoyed reading this and i will be back soon for more