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

proper related face claims

okay, so if you're here, you're either curious as to what i'm going to write about in this piece of the guidebook,

or you're unfortunately here to write a sibling story

alright, a pretty basic mistake is to choose wrong face claims for TVD universe characters

the most common is probably Tyler Lockwood, and since a lot fics are about a sister he has, then, let's just get into it,

okay, so Michael Trevino, the actor playing Tyler, is from Mexican descent, his mother was born there and his father was born to two Mexicans in the US, so you can't just put Sophie Turner, Lucy Hale, Lily Collins, or Cara Delevingne to play his sister, not to mention they look nothing like him anyway. Also no to Shelley Hennig, just because she has a lot of wolf/coyote scenes from Teen Wolf doesn't mean you can make her Tyler's sister,

(also, please don't go for those adopted siblings stories just so that your face claim will be Holland Roden because not only are those super old, but they're also a cop-out on actually looking for a Latina face claim)

Okay, I want to also address the fact that since Tyler and his mom are portrayed as white then why shouldn't his sister be? You could pick any white blonde girl with blue eyes and can say she looks just like her mom. Sure, you can do that. But should you? There are so many face claims that are white in this world, so many that I can count the number of good diverse fics on one hand while the white basic face claim stories can jumble up on my book shelves. If you want to give Tyler a sibling, why can't they be portrayed by someone Latinx or Hispanic? There are so little of them and barely any representation in the first place, so hey this is your chance at it. And it doesn't matter if you don't know anything about Latinos or Hispanic people because lucky for you, Tyler Lockwood doesn't say anything in Spanish or do anything or celebrate anything related to the actors culture, so all you have to do is pick a Latinx or Hispanic face claim, which will be brought to you below:

but can i also point out that in my particular case i went and changed Carol Lockwood's face claim with Salma Hayek as a way to properly represent Michael Trevino's background even if it was something small like an actress change. I like my change, there's no need to replace Mason since he was related paternally and the last name stays the same. Other than that, I do have this small headcanon in the back of my mind where when she married Richard Lockwood and moved to the small town in Virginia, she was expected to become this all-American perfect house wife that in turn she also abandoned her culture and roots and so Tyler never grew up learning about it either, I'm not saying Richard didn't want to have his wife's background be a portrayed more openly but that's exactly what I'm saying.

here are a few face claims that can pull off either the teen look or early twenties, so they can work as either a younger, older, or twin for Tyler ( i intentionally left out some actresses that have been overused for face claims) (but yes, Selena Gomez would be a good face claim for a Lockwood)