Mystic Falls isn’t as much filled with witches, werewolves, and vampires as it is with sisters, brothers, daughters and dads. Damon and Stefan Salvatore (played by Ian Somerhalder and Paul Wesley, respectively) might love and fight over doppelganger gal pal Elena (Nina Dobrev), but more often you find how much their love for each other requires unspeakable sacrifices—even to the point of almost losing one’s soul.
The most touching story for me revolves around Caroline Forbes (played by Candice Accola) and her father Bill (Jack Coleman, of Heroes fame). He divorced Caroline’s mom after coming out that he was gay. You would think he might be a bit more understanding when his daughter is turned into a vampire, but instead he tells her in the tenderest of voices, “You're a vampire, sweetheart. I don't think you'll ever be okay again.” You have to wonder how many kids have heard or felt that sentiment from their parents when they opened up about who they really were—the devastation to be told in the tone of love that you are forever damned to be on the outside. It might be easy for us to hate Bill, but it’s really difficult to hate your father, and so we journey with Caroline as she processes his rejection, tries to forgive him for his torturing of her (to control the vampire self), and ultimately protects him when other vampires try to kill him. Yet her love in turn begins to soften Bill so that, when has the choice to escape death and live on as a vampire, he rejects the right to feed saying, “my strength is all in my beliefs” but he also tells Caroline that he is very proud of who she has become. It is a bittersweet farewell, but one that perhaps is more true to life about how we navigate our betrayals and unspoken longings.
Despite the fact that The Vampire Diaries is grounded firmly in fantasy, there are many moments when I am thrown into the realm of the fantastic, into being caught between the unreality of vampires and the very real rhetoric of damnation, forgiveness, and begging for redemption that shuts down my post-modern, cynical little noggin and pierces my heart. That’s the real gift the fantastic gives us—it dares to find our buried, broken stories and bring them into a narrative of healing.