So. I will obviously need to send Julie Plec my Christmas list because she is determined to give me everything I ever asked for.

Yes. The most important thing is that Elena chose Stefan.

And the Internet's all "Oh Elena made the safe choice." No. No she didn't.

I kind of wonder if we're getting safe confused with fun. It's true. Stefan doesn't often drop smart ass remarks into conversation. And I'll admit - Stefan's a little more predictable. For example, it's very reliable the way he does not deal with things that upset him by eating them. But we just spent the better part of a season demonstrating how Not Safe Stefan can be while Damon tried heartily to control his nastier instincts.

But Stefan is the safe one?

So let's talk about safety for a minute.

At one point, Damon snarks about the "eternal difference" between him and Stefan.

Yes. Stefan lets Elena make her own decisions even when it puts her in danger. Damon would tie her up, gag her and drop her down a well. Why? To keep her safe.

Oh! The irony of Damon standing on the roadside, telling Flashback!Elena that what she wants is a "little bit of danger."

First of all, Damon doesn't know what Flashback!Elena wants. He just met her fifteen seconds ago. That whole spiel is nothing but his assumptions of what he thinks Katherine wants plus a little of that idiotic pick-up line that Sage turned him onto. And it has been conclusively demonstrated that Damon never actually knew what either Katherine or Sage wanted.

Flashback!Damon? Is full of it.

Second, Damon really is stuck in the nineteenth century. He's a doomed romantic, marching off to war Ashley Wilkes style and returning unable get a grip on how things have changed. (Seriously though I wish they'd address Damon and the war because I suspect there is all sorts of story that could be drawn out if they had the guts to go there.)

Think about it.

Damon hovers protectively over Katherine, worried about what the Founders would do if they found out about her. (Dude. She kills people.) He tries neatly wiping her bloody mouth clean before he kisses her. (Dude. She kills people.) He gets himself shot and dies saving her from a situation where she was never in any real danger. (Dude? Oh never mind.)

Damon was convinced - convinced! poor boy - that Katherine the five hundred year old vampire needed him. I think the real betrayal of finding out that Katherine wasn't in the tomb is that Damon didn't get to ride to the rescue. He had it all planned out and she ruined the moment by not being tied to the railroad tracks where he left her.

Damon wants a place for everything and everything in it's place.

I once commented that Damon didn't seem the type to have decorative soaps in his bathroom, but I take it back. He's a bit of a neat freak, isn't he? This is a guy who will tell Vicki not to bleed on the sofa and puts a rug down before he rips Mason's heart out.

When Damon complains to Stefan about the bodies on the stairs, it's not a strange reversal of their roles. Damon has always been that way. It irritates him when things are out of place. I will bet you anything the best way to upset Damon is to go into the library and rearrange his books.

Contrast Damon's painfully clean bedroom with Stefan's crowded nest of a space. I would also bet you that they have one of those agreements where Stefan's room can be as messy as he likes as long as it doesn't get out into the rest of the house.

So where is Elena's place in Damon's mind? Is it out in world, taking risks and facing the consequences? Or is it at home, reliably available and telling him what he expects to hear?

Damon's going to offer Elena a dangerous life? Hardly. He's going to wrap her in quilts and tuck her away somewhere safe - for her own good of course. He hovers over Elena, invades her space, roots through her belongings and interrupts her conversations. Damon treats Elena like a child.

Stefan treats Elena like an adult.

Stefan is going to listen to what Elena has to say. He quietly gives her a moment to admit that she doesn't want to be vampire. He backs her up when she decides that she needs to accept Esther's invitation. He trusts her decision when Elijah proposes his plan.

Stefan saves Matt even though he knows the risks to Elena. Not because he thinks that Elena will hate him if he saves her and lets Matt die. She'd be alive to hate you, Damon would argue. Because Damon misses the point almost every time.

Stefan gives Elena the agency to decide what is important to her.

Stefan knows how hard it has been for Elena to watch person after person die around her. He saw her at her lowest trying to recover from her parents' deaths. When Elena indicates to him that she wants him to save Matt first, she's saying all that - that she cannot go through another loss.

Survival isn't life. Just walking around isn't life. That is the whole pathos of the vampire tale.

And survivor's guilt is the foundation of Elena's character. It's where we started with her in the very first scene of the very first episode. That horribly clunky voice-over explaining how she's going to get through the day, smiling at the right places and giving the right answers to concerned questions.

That's the point at which Stefan walked back into her life. Since then, Stefan and everyone else have been risking their lives for Elena. Who is to say that she can't make the same choice? That she can't decide what her life is worth to her?

Damon - who sucks at considering other people - would save Elena because she's on his list. She has value not because of who she is as an individual but because of what she represents to Damon. He can't face the thought of living without her. He's not strong enough to let go. Therefore Elena is going to live whether she wants to or not.

(Stefan, she says, makes her want to live.)

If all Stefan were paying attention to were his own needs, he'd save Elena, too. But he's not making this about himself. Stefan knows that Elena is more than just what she means to him. She's also what she means to herself and she means it when she won't sacrifice Matt's life for her own. Elena is saying something in that moment.

Stefan hears her. Damon never has.

Elena didn't make the safe choice. The safe choice would be to let Damon whisk her away and baby her and make all her decisions for her.

Elena made the right choice. She chose the guy who was going to let her grow up.

(okay technically she also chose to die and become a vampire but we'll get to that in another essay)