Look I’m not denying Damon is a sexual predator, but narratively it makes absolutely no sense. Rapist don’t make sense but stories do. Him being a rapist makes no sense because it served no purpose to the plot or the character motives the writers established. And because his behavior is never framed correctly doesn’t even serve as an allusion to sexual assault–it’s just there and it’s random. Meaning it’s gratuitous.
Him not being able to compel Bonnie doesn’t really even factor in because that’s not his only form of manipulation. As I said in the “Damon has always been Random” post he had an in with Bonnie through Emily that due to the fact that they did nothing with it is also random.
You can explain it with the logic of real life but it doesn’t apply because the logic of real life aren’t applied in the series. In its current form just contributes to rape culture due to the way it’s ignored and framed as though it’s alright–that’s pretty much the only way it applies to real life logic.
We can discern certain things about his personality due what we see the same way we discern certain things about but Bonnie but the fact of the fact of the matter neither of these characters are well developed. Bonnie due to the lack of development and what is shown, Damon due to inconsistency.
Also they kept making him worse and worse and kept trying to frame it as “redemption” but the fact of the matter is what we see is the only characterization we have to go. Like trying to say Elena is compassionate doesn’t really work due to her never really showing these traits. So yes he is those things, but he’s also a bunch of others that you can’t make heads or tails of so the only consistent thing is abuser and rapist.
POC of TVD 