Through close readings of a selection of The Vampire Diaries fan fictions, this chapter examines the treatment of issues related to ethics, as depicted in human/vampire relationships. The salient themes and topics: agency, intimacy, and consent are discussed in relation to The Vampire Diaries canon, vampire lore, literary tropes and techniques, and philosophy with a focus on what is altered and what is re-used. Fanfics depicting new pairings can shift the relationship patterns and ethics through even rather small changes. Conversely, fanfic stories that take a rather big step away from canon representations of romance and sexuality can still use long-lived tropes of romantic fiction which readers of today may find ethically problematic. Since human/vampire relationships are the main interest in this chapter, the selected fanfics build on events and characters from the first two seasons of The Vampire Diaries, the CW show. From the third season onwards, an increasing number of The Vampire Diaries characters turn out to be superhuman in some way.
From a contextualization of fanfiction as a text form and the choice of fanfics to analyse, this chapter moves on to discuss relationships and ethics in The Vampire Diaries, before addressing a selection of fan fictions in which human-vampires relationships bring to the fore questions of agency, intimacy, consent, and free will, issues which all have bearing on the world outside of vampire romance and fan fiction.