How the Past Leads the Future

  It's a new year!! I haven't really made a resolution; I mean I always want to learn from the mistake and the praises I receive in order to help shape who I am and who I will be in the future. It's always the past that helps a person make his/her way to the future and its past (the present). Which brings me to what I want to talk/write about today.
  I'm reading The Vampire Diaries: Stefan's Diaries Vol. 1: Origins by L.J Smith. Since I just started the book today I haven't read much of it but I've read the series already. I've known how Stefan and Elena get through the various obstacles that try to tear their love apart in each and every one of the books. But I was most eager to open this book and begin reading because well the title is pretty self-explanatory; it's about the origins and how Stefan met Katherine, the girl he fell deeply in love with before discovering she was a vampire. This is the book that explains how it all started. It "reveals what really happened between Stefan, Damon (his brother), and Katherine - and how the Vampire Diaries love triangle began," quoting the blurb.
  How it all really began is what I'll find out as I flip each page of the book and let the Salvatore brothers' history sink into my mind. The past, I find, is as valuable or sometimes even more than the present itself. 
  One thing I've always wondered is if Damon is an antagonist or not? There are so many times throughout the series in which he has made it seem like the antagonist because of how he makes Stefan and Elena suffer but then there are times when I just say no, he's not bad because he wouldn't have saved Stefan and Elena's lives on multiple occasions if he truly was an antagonist. My hopes are that with this book, i get to know Damon as the person he was before the eternal brotherhood rivalry broke out between Stefan and him. I hope to get an insight on the fragment of humanity he had within himself before he decided to trap it and let ice freeze it inside of him.
  Considering that this took place in 1864 (it's not based on a true story) I'm keeping in mind that the 1860s are not much like today and that setting has a huge role in how Stefan and Damon have changed
over time... before meeting Elena and breaking out the rivalry that was lying restless inside each of them once more.
  This is the start of it all. The first time Stefan saw Katherine. The first time he knew that he couldn't go a day without seeing her. The day Stefan found out Katherine was a vampire. The day Katherine didn't want to choose between Stefan or Damon so she chose both of them. The day that made Stefan's and Damon's lives last for an eternity. And the rapid growth of a rivalry that was stronger than the love Stefan and Damon had felt for Katherine.