She Makes Him A Better Person

I hate this narrative when it comes to Damon with both Delena and Bamon.

With Delena it’s just flat out not true. He’s a better person for the duration until Elena feels better about herself and even then not really. She doesn’t “accept” him for who he is, she just ignores it until she can’t, they fight, have sex, and then do it all over again. Lather, rinse, repeat. I used to think that Delena was just badly written and that if handled better they would actually be a good ship, but then season 6 happened and I saw Bamon and Bonkai, and realized that Delena was never going to be good in any sense. And further, I realized they were always that bad and had essentially been doing that lather, rinse, repeat shit the entire time. My mild like for them pre-S5 turned to hate and never recovered because there was nothing to recover, Delena just doesn’t work. It was something that should have been explored, but needed to be temporary. They were ship worthy just not OTP.

Back to the point, Elena doesn’t make him a better person, she never had that much power over him, and even further it’s not her responsibility to make him better. Not only did the show push the narrative that she made him better, they made it her responsibility. They tried to have this self-aware moment:

but it proves to be completely useless in that same moment with this:

She’s not responsible for defending him especially when it’s something he genuinely did wrong that she disagreed with. They’re toxic, and absolutely nothing is done to prove that wrong. They’re not even a “dark” ship which could turn this dynamic into something interesting, something worthy of our time, but they aren’t, they simply ignoring all their problems which isn’t dark, just exhausting to watch. One of the biggest issues about them is that Damon never changes, but moreso, neither does Elena, she simply becomes more dismissive (something not new from her) and it’s supposed to mean she’s embracing her dark side and they’re in delirious, destructive love/lust together. Steroline, of all ships, pulled that off better, and I despised that story line, but they still got that “dark” thing down better than Delena ever did.

On to Bamon, while Damon is a hell of lot better person with her than he is with Elena she does NOT make him a better person. She doesn’t make him do anything because she too doesn’t have that amount of influence, no one does. Damon does what Damon wants. What Bonnie does DO, which is why Bamon is miles ahead of Delena (something not hard I might add), is INSPIRE him to be better. Back in 6x09 when he tells Elena why he’s doing all this he says “It’s what Bonnie’d do” not what she’d want, but what she’d do. When Elena is brought into his narrative it’s always what she’d want him to do and unsurprisingly it doesn’t work because what she wants isn’t what Damon wants and Damon only does what Damon wants.

As I said, he only does what he wants, and because Bonnie’s inspiring him to better he’s doing what he wants and that’s why it has a more lasting effect than anything he’s done in the name of Elena. He’s not worse with her because she’s too lenient, her leniency should have nothing to do with his actions, it’s because she just simply doesn’t bring that out in him, she doesn’t make him want to be a better person, he just wants to get in her pants, that’s all she inspires out of him and unsurprisingly when he gets it his effort in “being a better person” disappears. For the rest of S6 and on when he does something for Bonnie doing what she’d do is essentially his mantra which is honestly the only consistent thing from then on out. He, like always, reverts this character development often, but when he’s back on the “redemptive” kick it’s about doing what Bonnie would do, not want, do, so it comes off as a lot more genuine because it is more genuine, the most genuine he gets.

If Damon was going to be a be a better person he needed to want to be a better person because it’s a process he needed to go through completely on his own. I didn’t ship Bamon until season 6, why? Because I was a casual viewer who watched it mindlessly and took whatever they gave me, and in season 6 they gave me Bamon and I realized everything that was missing from Delena. I was already dissatisfied with them and like I said earlier I thought better writing would make them better, but watching Bamon made me realize they were never going to work, but also watching Bonkai because they achieved what they were trying to with Delena.

As I mentioned before Delena is not a dark ship. It likes to pretend to be one but it’s not for the reasons I stated above, but Bonkai is everything Delena wished they were and more.

For one: the chemistry, it’s the most raw visceral chemistry I’ve ever seen and actually the best chemistry I’ve seen in anything ever. One look and you’re like “please have sex”. They’re magnetic.

Two: In what little screen time they had you could see the internal struggle Bonnie had not to just throw all her morals out the window and jump him. Again something missing from Delena, she doesn’t have internal moral dilemma’s about being with Damon, she has a dilemma with how others see her, how she’s going to explain things. She never really objects to anything Damon does because she finds him repulsive, she objects to what kind of person that makes her seem like to others. Her struggle about Damon is mostly superficial.

Bonnie has no such issues, everything she objects to is because it’s truly something she finds repulsive. It why she’s so out of character when she tells Damon “you’re different because you feel remorse”. She doesn’t care about remorse, she cares if you’re going you hurt someone else. That’s why she made the fuss about Caroline back in season 2. Which is why I’m not that hard on her for releasing Damon and refusing Kai. She knew he wasn’t going to hurt someone else, Kai flat out told her was.

Back to that internal struggle, it’s probably just because of the actors chemistry but when you watch how Kat played her scenes with him, especially while getting siphoned you can’t help but interpret it as sexual.

You can tell Bonnie wants him and was giving him from the start but she still had to be cautious.

Three: The pain they put each other through is reciprocal. She impales him with a pick axe, he shoots her with a crossbow. She stabs him in the neck with a pen, he chokes her in the car. He leaves her in prison world, she leaves him in a prison world. They’re matched but even better they’re both active participants in the fight. It’s not just he hurts her and then waits for her to forgive him until he does it again and they just break up, fuck, and get back together on an endless loop. They’re both matching each other with pain inflicted. They’re dark because there isn’t a power imbalance (and if there is I honestly think Bonnie would be the one to have more power). If they’re screwing it’s not because she’s complying with him and ignoring the things she’s done, it’s because she wants to. It’s what Plec wanted Delena to be in season 4, but could never achieve because there was no way to…thats not their dynamic.

Lastly: He does not rely on her for redemption, in fact she’s not even apart of it. It’s something he tries to achieve by himself for selfish reasons (wanting the feeling of guilt to go away), but if you’re trying to be a better person it’s a process best when done for yourself. He wants Bonnie’s forgiveness, needs it even, but it’s not dependent on it. One of the ways they undercut probably the best redemption arcs since Tyler in season 2 (let’s be honest he’s the only character who actually redeemed himself) is not only in 6x21-22 with the whole “red wedding” (god TVD could use some originality), but this one line. “I guess this is all your fault”. Should he be angry with Bonnie? Yes, but that doesn’t equate kill your entire family and put a sleeping beauty spell on Elena. That not only retconned his redemption arc, but also changed it into the generic shit that they’d been doing for years with putting the responsibility of his redemption on her. We suffered through Klaus and Damon temper tantrums and when there was finally someone who’s going to take responsibility for their actions we have it all taken away with another fucking temper tantrum.

Seriously though, Bonkai was the dark ship the show needed and we Bonnie fans deserved. And it too taught me more about how fundamentally Delena didn’t work, and how much better a ship is when it’s not basing the redemption of a male character on someone who’s supposed to be their partner, not keeper.

Statements like “she makes him a better person” while is supposed to sound romantic does nothing but exempt male characters from all responsibility and just put it on her–someone who’s responsibility it never was to begin with. She can be a good influence but it still needs to all come from him or else no one is getting anywhere. Delena is proof of that, Bamon in its current canon form is proof of it, because he’s still not a better person. They just shift responsibility from Elena to Bonnie. And Bonkai, well that was never their dynamic and the show still found a way to force that narrative on them–you have no idea how many annoying Kai stans there are because if this.

Conclusion of this extra long post: It’s not her job to make him a better person, that’s something he should be doing on his own. If she is “making” him a better person then he’s not actually a better person because you can’t make someone be anything, the change has to come from within. She can inspire him to be a better person but that’s it, the change has to be from him.