Once a vampire, always a vampire

You walk in the room before you go out and you see Alaric and your crush Damon

Alaric: “hey (Y/N), where are you going” You: “I’m going out with some friends” Damon: “do we know them? are there any guys?” Alaric: “oh come on Damon, just because you like her doesn’t mean you have to be so protective”

You don’t know what to say, so you ignore what Alaric said, you think he’s joking anyway

You: *blushes* “no there aren’t any boys, but I’m gonna go now, before i’m to late.”

And you walk out of the room

OK so lately I’ve been getting a lot of anons in my inbox referencing how Damon/DE stans keep saying that Stefan is a liar and a manipulator and the “bad brother” and this seems to be something that Stefan/SE fans are really offended by because I keep getting asks about it so I’ve decided to write this post so if people want my opinion on the subject they can read this :)

And my opinion is simple.

Stefan is a dimensional character, or well he used to be, which means that he has negative qualities as well as positive ones. What makes Stefan interesting (or what did) is that his negative attributes are intensely dark almost demonic qualities, which is why he’s a ripper:

But his negative qualities are as intense as they are because he’s a fundamentally good person, he has a good soul, which means that vampirism will be an eternal source of conflict for him:

That doesn’t mean that he didn’t do terrible things, because he did. He committed heinous acts:

And he doesn’t deny any of this. No, he didn’t tell Elena every single heinous thing he did in all of the years that he’s been alive but when confronted with it he isn’t defensive or secretive, he doesn’t try to justify what he did, he’s open and tells her without prejudice what she wants to know:

And Elena sees for herself from 1x17 to 1x19 what blood does to Stefan; she sees that darkness in him:

She also sees how tormented he is because of it and he tells her about this conflict because he’s trying his best to be open about the part of himself that he hates the most because he’s trying to grow:

So what I take from when Damon/DE stans say that Stefan is a liar is that they want Stefan to talk about his past all the time. No. Stefan doesn’t flaunt his past transgressions but he doesn’t hide from them either. Being an open book isn’t just saying everything, it’s telling the truth when asked and that’s what Stefan does with his past.

Another reason why I think Damon/DE stans say that Stefan is a liar is because every time the show does a flashback to Stefan and Damon’s past, the flashbacks almost always victimize Damon and they almost always show another transgression that Stefan has done. But those transgressions add to Stefan’s decision to walk the straight and narrow, they shed more light on his current hero hair and that’s the thing about Stefan that Damon/DE stans just don’t seem to grasp.

Stefan strives to do better with each transgression, with each passing year. He strives to be better. He strives to make the right choices. He strives to be the best version of himself and he does it openly and unabashedly, honestly, earnestly. And that is the difference between him and Damon.

That is the philosophy that Stefan lives by. He’s lived on both sides of the fence, he knows how seductive darkness can be and he knows how easily it can envelop you and he also knows the difficulties and the hurts of getting yourself out of it:

His darkness terrifies him:

It disgusts him:

It terrorizes him:

So he doesn’t just give into it to make all of the emotions stop he’s done that, he knows that that doesn’t work, he strives all the harder to keep himself in check and he tries to help as many people as he can so they don’t have to go through what he went through:

He saves people:

and comforts people:

and plays mediator:

Because that’s just who Stefan is as a person. It’s not for brownie points or to get “ahead” of Damon, it’s just Stefan.

Bonnie and Damon + kitchen! 

and a bonus…