Very Emerson, the way you reveal your soul.

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Stefan Salvatore is a vampire.

It’s not a part of his life that he likes to emphasize, nor does he like to spread around. In fact, when he’s not binging on blood, he tries his best to be a normal guy. Despite the fact that he’s one hundred sixty-one, he goes to high school, or college to be among people, to make friends, start a life. When you die at seventeen, a life isn’t really something you get to have, and Stefan’s been chasing it ever since. When Stefan is on the wagon, so to speak, he only drinks animal blood, which leaves him substantially weaker than other vampires, but it also keeps him from killing people. When he’s on the wagon, the Stefan Salvatore that people meet is sweet, affectionate, and friendly—in fact, he’s probably about as close to human as a vampire can get. He is well read, eloquent, and polite, and has very few enemies based on who he is as a person.

Unfortunately for Stefan, however, he’s not very good at staying on the wagon, and technically, he shouldn’t be. Drinking human blood is in a vampire’s nature, and the fact that Stefan spends so much time fighting that part of his nature instead of learning how to balance it, he falls into these binge cycles, starting with when he was first turned into a vampire and repeating several times over the course of his life. It hasn’t really been shown what events in his life have triggered these binges, but it seems clear that it’s most likely due to some kind of overwhelming negative emotion. According to TVD lore, when a person becomes a vampire, their emotions are heightened—happiness becomes ecstasy, sadness becomes despair. Younger vampires have the ability to turn these emotions off, and often times it’s because they can’t handle the onslaught of emotions on such an intense level. In theory, his first experience with the darker side of his personality came shortly after he was turned. It wasn’t until he met a vampire named Lexi, who taught him control and how not to overindulge himself on blood that he learned how to manage his emotions and gain some sense of normalcy. It’s possible that when this normalcy is threatened, and he tips towards the side of despair, that’s when he turns his feelings off and succumbs to his desire for blood, but it’s also possible that it could be something as simple as needing to drink human blood to heal himself after a fight, and never stopped, slowly succumbing to the darker side of his personality.

Stefan at his worst is the kind of vampire who drowns himself in blood to the point where he blacks out and doesn’t remember what he’s done. He is amoral, without any kind of regard for humanity as a whole—in fact, you could even say that he despises it. He’s the kind of killer who likes the hunt. He plays games with his victims, compelling them into doing things they wouldn’t normally do. He feeds on them with reckless abandon, sometimes so violently that he tears their bodies apart, and he keeps a list of the victims that he feeds on in order to relive the kills at a later date—and that list can get to be a long one, depending on how long he goes on these binges. These situations usually ended with Lexi, Stefan’s best friend and also a vampire, locking him down and detoxing him from human blood until she forces him to feel again. It’s something that Stefan is forever grateful for—even if he curses her for it during the process.

As far as relationships go, the one constant person that’s been in his life, for better or for worse, is Damon. The Salvatore brothers were incredibly close prior to Katherine coming into their lives, and even after Katherine Stefan needs his brother in his life. After he turns, he somewhat nudges Damon into turning as well, and while Damon promises to make him miserable for it, and they eventually come to hate each other, there’s still a bond there. As much as they wish they could, one can’t exist without the other, and even at their lowest, they still keep each other going. With this canon point for Stefan, Damon is a giant pain in his ass, but Stefan also knows that he created this, and blames himself for the monster that he thinks Damon’s become. Under all of that, buried way, way down, there’s love, and there’s gratitude that his big brother is there, but there’s also guilt for making Damon be this way, even if odds are that Damon wouldn’t have left him alone either.

Two of the other most important people in his life are two sides of the same coin and also have the same face: Elena Gilbert and Katherine Pierce. Katherine is the vampire who turned him, a woman who used compulsion to keep him from fighting the fact that she was a vampire, from rushing his acceptance of what she is. This only led Stefan to believe that she compelled all of it, including his love for her, and it’s caused him to hold a lot of anger towards her for a long time, especially believing that she’s dead. Katherine has just recently been thrust back into his life, due to his relationship with Elena, and in the process of threatening his girlfriend, and making his brother go unhinged when Damon was doing better than he was previously, Katherine also dropped the bomb that she never compelled Stefan’s love. He isn’t entirely sure that he believes it, as Katherine has been known to lie, and shortly after that, she stabbed him when he rejected her, but it does leave a lot of questions as to what Katherine did or didn’t take from him, all those years ago.

Elena, on the other hand, is the girl that Stefan believes could save him. He saved her life after her parents car went off Wickery Bridge, and after being so startled by her comparison to Katherine, he proceeded to be a very impressive stalker to find out whether or not she was the same person. And when he realized he wasn’t, he proceeded to fall head over heels in love with her. Stefan remained in Mystic Falls in order to build a life with Elena, and while there has been a rocky road, with her dealing with his vampirism as well as handling the tomb vampires and Damon, Stefan would still do anything for Elena and feels that they’re at a strong point in their relationship. He believes that Elena is the opposite of everything that Katherine is – kind, compassionate and loving where Katherine was selfish, manipulative and deceitful – and at this point in time, he doesn’t know the significance of why Elena and Katherine share the same face, but he loves Elena for who she is, and will do whatever it takes to protect her from Katherine, while still respecting her ability to make her own choices and find out whatever she needs to find out about her history. It’s why he trusts her to go with Damon and Alaric to Duke at his current canon point, while staying behind with Caroline to help train her in the ways of vampirism.

Stefan is landing in Asgard on the downward swing of his cycle. He’s coming in early season 2, before he meets the Originals, where he’s still on the animal blood diet, and slowly working on rebuilding his relationship with his brother. He will, however, be open to meeting new people, and exploring a little more, once he gets over the weirdness of not being a vampire anymore. After being one for as long as he has and having to control the urges and deal with the emotions, having them taken away from him will be a weight lifted off his shoulders, but also leave him a bit at a loss. He’ll have the opportunity to define himself outside of being a vampire, which he’s strived to do his entire life but never really succeeded. He also will have new powers to deal with which will be fun and interesting in all kinds of ways.

[Stefan is looking rather … exacerbated. Mostly because off all the things he’s heard in his one hundred sixty four years of existence this … is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. Even more ridiculous than werewolves.

And werewolves were really weird.

But still he needs information. And like any good vampire, he knows how to ask the right questions.]

So. I got the kidnapped to Asgard, here to save the world, all of that. And these wrist-screen things mean we can get in contact with all of Asgard, so hi. Stefan Salvatore. I’m new. I was just … wondering if there was maybe a pamphlet or welcome guide or, even better?

A bar.

I feel like I just … really need a bar right now.

[Essentially, the sarcasm is strong with this one. He’s had a long day.]

Basically, any helpful information that isn’t filtered through “Save the World” propaganda or feel like it was written for a five year-old? I’d really appreciate it. Thanks.

[And with that, his face disappears.]