What do you think of Elena Gilbert?
(In typical me fashion, this got stupidly winded n slightly off topic so TLDR; Elena is my baby even if I do wanna smack her sometimes skdnwkdn)
This is an hard question tbh bc short answer? I think she’s a good character. Complex and not as one dimensional as literally everyone makes her out to be. Especially in s1. and i think folks are unfair to her just ‘cause the writers failed her TERRIBLY and ruined her character completely by the time s4 hit. I firmly believe that the Elena that people ended up hating is s4-s8 Elena, not s1-s3 Elena. They shoved her down our throats without any thought and completely stumped her development/any redeeming thing abt her as soon as delena became a thing. She was so cool in s1! She was LITERALLY a depressed hot girl who could stand up to a 200 year old vampire but then they slowly took that hardness away from her to show that she’s ‘healing’ and ‘definitely not Katherine’ n she literally just...regressed and turned submissive in her relationship with Damon and pretty much every other relationship she had. Like I’ve said before, the Salvatore brothers came into her life when she was 17, she knew nothing BUT them and how they (and the rest of them eventually) treated her. They raised her to an IMPOSSIBLE standard and got irritated whenever she didn’t just sit and look pretty. Y’all mad because she made everything about herself even though Stefan, Damon, and the rest of them did the same thing? Constantly? she did not start that shit out of nowhere lol.
It’s irritating ‘cause she was literally just like a less vindictive Katherine, and honestly, there’s nothing wrong with that. The same traits that people villainize Elena for are the same traits people will call Katherine a ‘queen’ for. And tbh out of the two i definitely prefer Elena. But basically, as a protagonist, Elena was good until she wasn’t tbh. s1-s3, she was a level-headed, sweet girl and you can tell she genuinely cared for/wanted to fight for the people around her. (And yes I’m saying that as a Bonnie stan but bonlena is whole nother story for a whole nother day.) but in s4-s8 it eventually didn’t take long for j*lie & co. to ruin yet another female character for a relationship. all her good qualities and that selflessness they speak so highly of left as soon as she got with that man child but I’m honestly not holding it against her because Damon and his lil brother ruined and groomed Elena.
