Sunday Favorites: Damon Salvatore

“It's not wrong to hustle hustlers. It's like killing murderers, a public service.

I've only done books for this Sunday Favorites thing so I thought it was time to transition to some of my favorite characters! 

I've decided to start with my 7-year fictional boyfriend, Damon Salvatore.

Whether it’s on screen or on pages, Damon Salvatore is one of my all-time favorite fictional characters. The thing that sets Damon apart from all my other book boyfriends is that he is different on the show and in the book and yet I still love him in both. 

Damon is such a complex character, he starts out as the bad guy that no one trusts and people just want to get rid of him, and he transforms into everyone's favorite bad boy who isn’t so bad. He has a tragic backstory that we don’t get to see right away but once we do we finally understand him.

In the books, Damon is very suave, incredibly manipulative, and very dark. I also pictured book Damon differently than from the show. Damon is said to be Italian so I had this whole tall dark and handsome image of him going on in my head. Very sophisticated and despite the fact that he was evil, still very classy. He always seems to be very much in control of himself and situations. 

“Damon, leather and silk and fine chiseled features. Mercurial and devastating.” 

Damon on the show is a whole other story. Damon is the snark master man whore who sleeps with half the characters on the show. He’s dark and damaged and I would say he’s tall dark and handsome, but there is definitely a difference between how L. J. Smith wrote him and how Ian Somerhalder played him. Damon seems to be a bit of a mess in the show. He gets drunk and does irrational things that make people hate him.

“I've been in love. It's painful, pointless and overrated.”

Love him or hate him, you have to admit, Damon Salvatore is a dynamic character. He changes and does things that surprise us. An I personally love him very much for it. What I love most about Damon is that even though he has a tragic backstory and has some pretty shitty things done to him, he tries to get past it. He doesn't mope around, maybe he got vices, but it's better than moping. 

After writing this I now have to go and rewatch the entire tv series.

How do you feel about Damon? Love him or hate him?

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Top 10 Twins in Books

I myself am not a twin, but I've always thought having a twin would be pretty cool. If you're identical, you could pretend to be each other, if you got along, you have a built in best friend, you guys have never been without each other, so you have someone to lean on all the time. All in all I think it would be pretty cool. I was just thinking about the topic of twins when I decided to do a top 10 on it because we do see a lot of twins in literature.

10. Sheldon and Dash from the Broken Love Series

These two are brother and sister who always have the others back. They're best friends and love to bicker and they somehow make everything brighter when they are together even if their separate lives can get a bit dark. What makes everything worth while is the fact that you know they will defend each other to the death if they need to.

9. Harper and Cole from Why I Loathe Sterling Lane

While this book is mostly a romance with mystery elements, it's overall a story about a girl who is trying to look out for her twin brother and keep him out of trouble while he is doing his best to keep his troubles a secret from her.

8. Sawyer and Sebastian from the Royals Series

We don't get to see a ton of these characters, but they are really important to our protagonists and hopefully they will one day have their own books. There isn't too much I can say about their closeness without getting into spoilers, but know that they wouldn't be the same without each other.

7. Dean and Lesley from Hopeless

Dean is one of the main characters in Hopeless and while we don't get a lot on his relationship with Les in Hopeless we do delve a lot more into that in Losing Hope. Dean and Lesley are the epitome of functional siblings. At times they would disagree but they would always wanted the best for each other.

6. Cather and Wren from Fangirl

One of the biggest struggles that Cath faces in Fangirl is the fact that her sister is starting to branch off and make other friends. Up until that point they were pretty much inseparable and I feel like they really figured out where they were with each other in the book. They found a balance between what they both wanted from their relationship.

5. Ty and Livy from Lord of Shadows

These two had plans to be Parabatai, that's how serious their bond as siblings went. These two are two parts of a whole, they're just better together.

4. Cersei and Jaime Lannister from A Song of Ice and Fire

We may not always like these two, but you have to admit they are pretty iconic.

3. The Shining

Probably the most iconic twins of all time, even Cersei and Jaime can't touch them. If you don't know what I'm talking about then do you even pop culture?

2. Jude and Noah from I'll Give You The Sun

You should have seen this coming. My favorite stand alone of all time, it's about the relationship between these twins and how it has changed throughout the years. Honestly, that's all I can say other than read it. It's a game changer.

1. Fred and George Weasley from Harry Potter

If this came as a surprise to you than this must be your first time reading one of my blog posts. Welcome, I'm Jessie and I love Harry Potter. Fred and George were the older brothers I always wanted. They are fun an mischievous and out to cause chaos. Harry Potter wouldn't be the same without them adding some elements of lightheartedness.

Who are some book twins that you guys think are worthy of the list?


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Rant: Mary Sue

At first these rants were like a stress reliever because I like to not yell at people in real life, but it's actually gotten to the point where it is a bit exhausting being so angry. But I persist because I'm not  a quitter. Also, it starts discussions and those are good, for the most part.

Let's get into it, so this week I will be talking about why I hate the Mary Sue character trope. If you are new to this reading and writing thing and don't know what a Mary Sue is, then I shall explain. A Mary Sue is a flawless female protagonist. They never do anything wrong and have no problematic character traits.

These characters are "relatable" while not actually being relatable at all. There is all this justification that you can get behind, because most of us would like to be able to believe that we are always in the right and that we're perfect. This is never the case in real life, we all have problematic traits or do things that are wrong.

These characters are usually what the author wishes they were. Basically they want to create the perfect character because they have some undeniable desire to be perfect. Now, maybe some authors don't actually mean to reflect any of this into their characters, maybe they are really problematic themselves and they want to create a character who has none of those issues, maybe they have gotten into the habit of writing characters who are perfect and don't even realize that they're doing it. Either way, I would suggest working on that.

The very idea of a Mary Sue is pushing girls to believe that they have to be perfect to amount to anything in life, they have to be the prettiest girl to get the guy, they have to have perfect grades and perfect social life but most of the time they don't realize how "perfect" they are which makes them seem like they deserve all this good stuff more than anyone else. The real kicker being that they have no flaws which makes people envy the shit out of them and sad that they can't be as perfect as those characters. I just don't think the idea of a Mary Sue is healthy.

Also, when reading about a "perfect" character, it starts to get annoying because despite how "relatable" they are, they stop being relatable after a certain point because they don't have flaws like the rest of us do. Maybe the characters even critic some of these flaws that us human beings do have in their quest to prove how perfect they are.

Anyway, thoughts on the Mary Sue?

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