Devil's Advocate: Damon/Elena vs. Stefan/Elena
[This originally started as a response to this post over at tvdbloodstream and then grew monstrous and had to be given its own place. I always just have a lot of ~feelings.]
Okay, I’m beginning to realize I’ve been rather harsh on the TVD writers; these past few months of the hiatus have made me realize, they’re actually aware of what they’re doing, who woulda thunk it?
First things first, it's no secret I ship Delena really hard, and I’ve always had a bit of an issue with Stefan/Elena because of what I’ve been calling the ‘Epic Love Theory’ which just doesn’t work for me, AT ALL. However, turns out that what the writers were portraying wasn’t so much ‘epic love’ as much as ‘The Domino Effect’. Basically, the whole point of the Stefan/Elena build-up was to come to stage where the fall-out is that much greater because of how strong the projection of True Love had been. The Stefan/Elena relationship was deliberately constructed in such a way so as to make the contrast and things to follow even more stark. Therefore, my own theories of Stefan/Elena have been completely invalidated in my opinion and for that I could not be more grateful, because I’m seriously beginning to like them.
If I were to judge the brothers as ‘boyfriends’ on a real-life basis (which is a moot point because well, NOT REAL LIFE), I can understand why Stefan. Even more importantly, why Stefan for Elena. And most importantly why Stefan for Elena at this particular stage in her life. And why the show manages to always get around Damon/Elena somehow.
In my opinion, Damon is much more terrifying at times because his actions are so hard to judge. Stefan has a very definite Achilles’ Heel, human blood. Damon, on the other hand, has several trigger points that you won’t discover till you’ve pushed them and suffered the consequences. It’s true that Stefan has lied about a lot of things, and seems to have a chronic inability to tell the truth till he’s metaphorically caught, but it's not hard to see why- he's ashamed of his past to a severe degree, to the extent that he gave up blood-drinking entirely because he's so horrified by it. And since he’s spend a majority of his undead life trying to be ‘human’ instead of the monster he knows that he is or can be, it’d be extremely hard to tell the girl that he ‘loves’ (in inverted commas because srsly show, they fell in love in like two seconds, please) what he is. And the line of argument that Damon told Elena the truth unlike Stefan is definitely valid, but again, it’s not hard to see why. Damon told the Elena the whole truth because (at least at that time, during the Bloodlines stage) he simply didn't care enough to bother lying.
But because of that, the basic premise remains that the Damon/Elena dynamic is established on trust ("Can I trust you?" "I'm trusting you"), while the Stefan/Elena dynamic is established on respect. In the you’re-seventeen-and-I’m-a-hundred-and-something-but-I’m-going-to-trust-your-decisions-because-I-love-you. Which is why both the relationships are so amazing in their own way.
Elena, after her parents' death, needs the kind of stability that Stefan provides and Damon does not. She's in a world where everything she's known, everything she's ever believed in has shifted, and she needs some sort of grounding, some constant in her life. And Damon is definitely anything but constant. Consider the 'snapping Jeremy's neck' from Elena's POV- she has no idea that Katherine earlier rejected Damon in practically the same way that she later does (“it’s always been Stefan” “it’s always going to be Stefan”). All she knows is that she told Damon that she didn't (and couldn't) love him, and he went batshit crazy and snapped her brother's neck, for no visible provocation. (Of course whether those rejections were 'provocation enough' either is an entirely different, much more tiring debate).
Another distinct factor is that the Damon/Elena scenes that would stand out in our memory are mostly never made available to Damon and Elena themselves. Starting with Damon’s confrontation with Isobel and simultaneous rejection of Katherine; it’s in complete isolation and makes Isobel realize that Damon’s in love with Elena, but she herself remains completely unaware. Similarly, Damon basically laying his heart at Elena’s feet in Founder’s Day and his utter sincerity and tenderness (GUH, THAT SCENE) is completely undermined by the fact that it wasn’t Elena at all. Again, think of it from Elena’s POV- all she knows is that Damon ‘kissed’ Katherine thinking it was her, she can hardly be faulted for thinking that it was probably some sort of crude attempt to get in her pants or get back at Stefan or something, instead of the beautiful, heartbreaking scene that it actually was (I’M BIASED, OKAY. SUE ME. I LOVE THE HELL OUT OF THAT SCENE). Again, in Rose, Damon is utterly sincere, and borderline unselfish (borderline because I personally believe that had Elena remembered that scene and still not reacted, it might really have pushed Damon over the edge, so he pre-empted that along with making things easier on her and leaving himself the hope of maybe), but he compels her to forget it. The point of the long rant is that Elena doesn’t know half the things about Damon that the audience does. So, while it can get more than a little frustrating to watch, her choices and decisions are completely in tandem with the internal logic of the show; considering the show as a separate entity governed by its own sequences of cause-and-effect. Elena chooses Stefan because she doesn’t have much ground on which to choose Damon, she’s seen most of his bad side and practically nothing of his other, softer, human side.
However, as the show develops further, it's also not hard to see why the Damon/Elena relationship can become possible- because the whole moral groundwork changes. It basically is a battle between 'us' and 'them', and all the collateral damages in the way, life of people you don’t particularly care about can't be given the same importance as it once was. Simply put, after being witness to all the bloodshed, the war, the deaths, it's not hard to see the characters becoming more thick-skinned; after all if Elena accepts Ripper!Stefan, it would have to be on that logic, because she's not the girl she used to be. And if she can accept Stefan after what it seems he’s going to do, she can definitely accept Damon for all he’d done.
On the topic of boyfriend-Stefan, Stefan in the last moments of S2 was a little too passive for my taste. I found that extended hand-leaving and allowing Elena to go with Klaus thing more than a little ridiculous. In the sense, that I can get it as being the smart option, and that rarely happens in a teen show where Drama Rules All (that's the thumb rule trufax) but I didn't emotionally connect too much with it (or maybe that's just me?) However, I can't help but respect the fact that Stefan allows Elena has the agency to function according to her own will, and mostly doesn't infringe on that. Because it'd be so easy to impose his will on her (and this is where most teen shows fail). After all, he could've been the one to force-feed her blood/or just said that he couldn't live without her and tell her that he wanted her to drink his blood, but he doesn't. And he doesn’t for a very specific reason, not because (as Damon argues) that he doesn’t “have the balls for it”, but that he knows that it’s not what she wants, and he actually cares about what she wants. And while that's ambiguous, because it can be debated whether or not, being seventeen and headstrong, she’s making the right decision (she’s not, btw imho) but the fact that she HAS the decision to make is awesome. That is a good boyfriend trait. I think it'd be much harder for Stefan to see that he can prevent her probable death through his blood, and NOT to do something that'd be so easy because Elena doesn’t want it. In a way, that’s beautiful.
And his "that's not heroic, that's tragic" remark- god, sometimes it kills me how absolutely ~self aware this show is.
Also, regardless of my Damon/Elena shipping-tendencies, I don't once doubt that Elena loves Stefan completely. (Just as I don't doubt she's very attracted to Damon as much as she'd like not to be)
Lastly, it's important to remember that 'Stefan as a perfect boyfriend' is a fandom construct. The show ran away with it only in so far as that needed shock-value for ripper!Stefan. And also, whether wrong or right, it's canon that Elena 'chose' Stefan even after finding out all that he had lied-by-omission about; her parents' death, her ancestors' murders, Katherine, etc. If Stefan can be blamed for the lying, so should Elena be for not even making it seem like it mattered that he lied. And on the other angle, instead of her love 'saving' him, Damon loses control each time Elena tries to reach out to him. The overarching trope of this show remains redemption; the idea that nobody is past forgiveness as long as they're willing to acknowledge, willing to change. Stefan is the good guy because what he did doesn't matter as long as it's not what he's doing now, Damon's character-arc is dependent on his willingness to change, even as he messes up, the realization that "it matters" that "people die around [him]". It isn't possible to appreciate Damon's attempt at being the better man without realizing how hard it must've been for Stefan to do the same. And it isn't possible to forgive Stefan's past without accepting that Damon is as worthy of the same forgiveness. The idea that everyone, no matter who they are, deserves multiple chances. And sometimes that comes at heavy costs. The show rarely categorizes actions as 'right' or 'wrong', some things simply are, and the audience has complete jurisdiction to react, to agree, to disagree, to love, to hate, to forgive. Basically, Damon, Elena, Stefan are all flawed (sometimes tragically so) as people, but imho that helps make them awesome characters.
/end
Also randomly:
Click to view[Can we please talk about how surprisingly hot Richard Lockwood is in his two second sequence? And Alaric turning up the heat in four words. And then DamonandElena giving me reason to ship them ~forever]