one who is most obsessed with blood: the substance itself and the various repercussions of its consumption. Unlike his more ruthless “evil” brother, Damon, who has no problem sipping a human, Stefan consumes only animals rather than take human blood—at least not until he was driven back to it in an emergency, with Elena offering her own blood to save his life. He is constantly fighting himself to exercise a measure of control over his relentless hunger. And trying to control the impossible—his nature—nearly paralyzes him, makes him rigid and weak, because all of his energy is channeled into the struggle. But while he is weaker and more vulnerable, he is also necessarily in a position to be more careful, more introspective.
Blood is both a symptom and the cause of Stefan’s deepest obsessive discomfort. He is fixated on blood in general and the guilt that comes with its use. But it was not until the episode “Blood Brothers” (1-20), when he revealed his 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 90
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role in Damon’s transformation into a vampire, that we realized what Stefan’s true obsession is: his feeling that he is responsible for Damon’s existence and choices. Blood as metaphor—in the form of brotherly bonds—is also his deepest secret guilt.
Family
Blood is also a genetic bond; it is what ties us to our ancestral pasts. And it connects vampires literally to the various people living in history—people vampires have had for lunch.
(Think about it: blood is both nourishment and living history. Kind of like how remembering that special meal you had years ago on vacation helps you recall the vacation itself.
When Stefan—who had abstained from humans for years, possibly decades—tasted Elena’s blood for the first time, it could be said that he was for the first time experiencing the modern age, the here and now, and simultaneously letting go of a large portion of the past in the form of Katherine. Damon, on the other hand, has had a far longer unbroken “chain” of consuming human blood, and is thus more connected to the past via an endless succession of flavor “souvenirs.”) An obsession with blood is, in a sense, another way of saying obsession with family. The Salvatore brothers are obsessed with each other: Stefan with “saving” the brother he feels responsible for turning into a monster (never mind Damon’s own responsibility), and Damon with punishing Stefan for a host of betrayals—for Stefan’s role in Damon’s 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 91
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change into a vampire, perhaps, but also for the part Stefan played in Katherine being caught and, we suspect, for receiving a share of Katherine’s attention in the first place.
Stefan and Damon are also consumed with the burden of regret for “failing” Katherine (their new family), coupled with the guilt of disobeying their human father’s direct orders by fraternizing with Katherine and her “devil kind,”
and in the process severing their natural familial bond.
Their father cut them off as soon as he understood the full extent of their involvement with the town vampires and then violently rejected his younger son as demon spawn when Stefan, recently turned into a vampire, came to him, seeking nothing more than acceptance. With no other family left, and their new surrogate “family” in the form of Katherine gone (imprisoned in the tomb, they assumed), the brothers had only each other.
The next hundred years become a painful ritual of holding each other at bay, blaming each other (and themselves), and avoidance, following each other from one place to another, until inevitably they ended up back at Mystic Falls, driven by the mysterious call of roots and family. In the present day, Stefan and Damon are deeply and profoundly bound by their common obsessions—not only with each other and Katherine, but with the town, the land, and all it represents. It seems that no matter how many times they part company or betray each other, they always find themselves in the same place, back where they began, with each other.
Anna and Pearl were similarly connected. It was the bond of family that drove Anna to return to Mystic Falls, despite 6882 Visitor's Guide to Mystic Falls[FIN].indd 92
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