the vampire diaries fanfic writing tips

✧ stefan salvatore as a love interest

stefan salvatore as a love interest.

stefan might be the ideal love interest to write to be honest. he's pretty easy. a pretty stereotypical character. hero with a dark past. there's a lot of characters like him so i think there's a lot to pull from. not to mention he has been in love with someone throughout the whole show and more or less he treats his love interests very similar, at least in my opinion.

first we'll begin with human stefan. human stefan seemed like a pretty typical love interest. he clearly loved the people he was with and would do anything for them. he seemed pretty romantic too. i don't remember if he said this in a flashback or if it was later on in the show when he was talking about when he was human, but i'm pretty sure he did want to have children and get married. he was putting himself in a dangerous situation by being with katherine.

but i know it's a little complicated with katherine because she compelled him not to be afraid of her. but i think it does still show stefan as a love interest. stefan as a love interest if he was dating a vampire when he was human and was allowed to feel fear would be another thing. but since we haven't seen that, i'm not sure how to write that.

moving on. i think when stefan's in love, he's very much in love. he's loving, he's sweet, he's caring.

as a vampire, much later when he's with elena, he's still the same way, but i think he's a little bit more protective because now the dynamic is different. before katherine was the vampire and he was human, now it's different. and he's protective over elena, he's very devoted to her, and he would risk his life for her, and give it up.

but not just for her. but for her happiness too. he was willing to sacrifice himself in season 2 so that elena would have her family (or so jenna would live, but i don't think stefan would sacrifice himself for jenna if it weren't for elena. that's just my opinion though).

he also respected what she wanted. like in season 3, he saves matt over elena because that's what she wanted.

elena says it herself in season 5. she said that stefan was the perfect boyfriend and valued her wants even if he didn't agree with it.

however, his protectiveness did sometimes cross over into controlling. for example, in season 2 when he learns about elena's deal with elijah, he does get angry with her over it and thinks that because he lived longer, it's okay if he sacrifices his life, but she can't. they were all pretty controlling over elena in season two though. at one point they locked her in her house, i can't remember if stefan had anything to do with that.

he's still a little romantic. top of the ferris wheel, bringing flowers, etc. but he wasn't overly romantic and it wasn't all the time. he seemed to know when to be romantic and when not. he wasn't overly romantic in public, he would hold elena's hand, have an arm wrapped around her etc and a quick kiss but that was pretty much it.

i think he's good at comforting people and trying to help them, however, this can almost be to a fault. because sometimes he becomes so focused on that.

for example, when elena was a vampire, he did try very hard to get the cure for her knowing she didn't want to be human, however, it came off like he wanted it more than her. he was so focused on helping her be human that he didn't really help her adapt to being a vampire. except for trying to help her feed. because he was so focused on who elena was in the past and not in the present.

i think he's pretty loyal to the person that he's with and does love them with everything he has.

i think the most difficult thing to do to be honest is making it believable that stefan loves your oc more than elena. i know i've seen a lot of people say they struggled to ship stefan and caroline because they thought stefan didn't love her as much as he loved elena and that she was his second choice who he'd leave if elena wanted to be with him.

rebekah said he was lying when stefan said that he could one day love someone like he loved elena and katherine said he'd never look at her like he looked at elena. even caroline called them soulmates while damon said that if stefan really loved caroline he wouldn't have to ask himself because he didn't with elena.

so i think that would be the more difficult part to writing stefan as a love interest.

but overall i think he's a pretty decent boyfriend. i don't think there's anything overly complicated about him. he's a pretty standard love interest to be honest.