But, it was Joseph Morgan’s idea to have Klaus die at the end of the season. He seems to be done with Klaus and not interested in coming back to work on Legacies or make KC endgame.
Kind of find it a selfish entitlement for any Stans to sign a petition of an actor or actress makes it clear they are done with a certain character or aren’t interested in coming back for a certain show. Selfish and entitled to sign a petition to force an actor/actress to come back for the sake of a fictional ship, if they make it clear they’re no longer interested.
As for how some KC Stans dismiss Klonnie fans. They seem to have a similar sense of entitlement that the DE fandom had towards Bamon fans. KC fans against Klonnie fans believe that people should only be allowed to ship and want Klaus with Caroline and no one else. Especially not a black woman.
They really can’t say anything though. Klaroline went seasons without interacting or having scenes together and KC Stans still wanted them together and felt entitled to having them as endgame just because of one quickie in the woods.
Hypocrites for calling Klonnie fans delusional for their believe that Klaus is in love with Caroline. Yet, when Klaus was about Cami and Caroline about Stefan, it didn’t stop them from wanting or shipping KC. Despite the two of them going years without interacting in scenes together.
Klonnie could have been built up into something if Plec didn’t resent the thought of Bonnie having a leading male character or die being getting a desirable/popular male character over Elena/Caroline.
But, when you look at how some of them attack and insult/bully Persia simply because they are bitter over Joseph being married to her and bitter because he isn’t checking for Candice King. And how they throw a tamper tantrum because Joseph dare posts content with his wife on his social media accounts.
Then I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that they attack some for preferring Klaus with a black woman over a white woman. Since they attack a black woman in real life due to Joseph being married to one, because they thirst for Jodice and in return want Joseph to thirst for a white actress over his wife.
You know I realized the reason why I really don’t like Klaroline us not really due to the pairing itself. I have no moral qualms with the abuse of it because it’s literally impossible with any TVD ship and I really don’t like the idea of quantifying abuse. If I hate one ship due to abuse I have to hate them all including my favorite ship, Bonkai, because abuse is abuse, plain and simple it’s terrible in every form and saying one is worse than the other does nothing more than trivialize serious matters because it wasn’t as bad. It’s unfortunate that certain things have to be overlooked, but I do feel that it works better in Kai and Klaus’ case due to their roles as antagonists however I still don’t consider them excuses.
The reason I don’t like Klaroline is because I now can’t help but think about the role they play in the oppression of Tyler and Bonnie. I used to like Klaroline, hell I even used to like Delena (but that got ruined for a whole slew of other reasons that didn’t even require deeper thought) because I used to be a very casual viewer of TVD, it wasn’t really a show I took that seriously so I pretty much took what ever the spoon fed me until season 5 when as a casual viewer I couldn’t even stomach it and had to stop watching. To this day I still haven’t seen the entirety of that season. But back to my point, now I really don’t like Klaroline because I can’t separate the reason why it’s there to begin with and the characters it screwed over with it’s existence.
I actually don’t have a ship. I like Hayley with Klaus but I wouldn’t call myself a shipper. Unlike some people, I don’t watch shows for ships but the story and to watch the characters I love develop. The reason why Klaroline is the worse kind of fan service to me has nothing to do with the ship itself but with how it is being portrayed. The fact that Caroline has no other purpose here but to interact with Klaus. She has no development here and her presence in Klaus’ life affects nothing. The best example of this is that they spent that entire trip together but the moment shit gets real Elijah just breaks her neck to keep her out of the way becasue she has nothing to contribute. And Klaus doesn’t even flinch. During his fight with Elijah Caroline is lying there with her neck broken and he doesn’t seem to care because he has more important things to worry about. Because Caroline served her one and only purpose and now she’s just discarded. They are doing this to satisfy the people who obsess over this ship regardless of logic. People who never watched TVD have no idea who Caroline is but apparently the writers could care less about that. They could care less about bringing their true relationship to light and instead they just have them briefly talk about how much Caroline doesn’t regret knowing him. Where is the angst that made them so popular in the first place? You can service the fans and do a good job and include the rest of the viewers at the same time. Their relationship is an after thought and I think that both characters deserve a lot more than just last minute scenes thrown together just so they could say they’d wrapped up their story. It’s as if Julie Plec thought “ok, this is our last season so we better do something with Klaroline and get that shit out of the way.” Like I said before, if I were a Klaroline shipper I would be offended that they think that I would settle for just about anything. Fanservice is not always a bad thing but this is just lazy.
^^^^^ yuuup. the foundation was already in place for Klaus to AT LEAST pursue vengeance against Bonnie. KC had no foundation. We literally never saw it happen, never saw the moment Klaus started to fancy her, never saw why and how he decided she was his salvation or what have you. And that’s my biggest bone of contention with the ship, it literally came out of nowhere! There’s no history no reason no logic that’s consistent with either character lmao
Essentially it did come about to prevent Klonnie because it does come at a time that’s way to convenient and as you mentioned of thin air and when you look at message boards from around that time people did notice. Not everyone was as enamored with KC chemistry to not notice how random has fuck KC was. One of my favorite things pointed out is, Kennett, the ship that kinda overshadows Klonnie in terms of the controversy around it because of Plec’s comment on Twitter, pretty much expressing her usual hatred toward people shipping Bonnie with anyone, but in this case, a crack ship while she has absolutely no leg to stand on because she created KC out of thin air. The double standard alone just points out how racist KC is, and it’s not the individual characters, it’s the writing, why they exist in a manner that just screams white supremacy not only in terms of Bonnie, but Tyler as well. But I’m just repeating myself I’ve already written pretty extensively on the subject and why I can’t ship it.
so teen vogue put out an article detailing why k*laro*line is emotionally abusive and unhealthy and….i’m conflicted! y’all know (some of you in more detail and at greater length than others lol) how i feel about this ship, and my thoughts not only about why it exists in the first place but why it continues to. nothing in that article about k*laus and c*aroline’s history is incorrect. it was absolutely a dynamic founded on a deep imbalance of power that the writers tried to gloss over with some pretty words, fake-deep sentiments and a ballgown while leaning heavily on the chemistry between the two actors and the predictable audience reaction to two attractive cis-het white characters sharing romantic tension. i don’t dispute any of that. but this line kinda rankles with me
“It could be argued that this is fantasy so what does it matter or why is it being taken so seriously, but it’s a perfect opportunity to educate whilst no one is at any real risk.”
okay but why, instead of idk, good writing or character development, are we focusing on “education”? this is my problem with 99% of critiques about the plecverse: they all rely on morality and virtue signaling to determine what’s “good” vs “bad”, and in the end we’re all left without a real analysis because hey, every ship in that verse is problematic right, so why bother trying to hold anyone accountable?
it’s not the responsibility of women’s genre shows to “educate” young girls about healthy relationships. i know people disagree hotly about this one, but i’m actually in the minority of people who believe that what young girls need – what they deserve – is good writing, complex storytelling and nuanced narratives that ask important questions about agency, desire and power without spoon-feeding them easy answers. they deserve the space and the ability and the context for critical thought. and neither the plecverse nor the critiques of it allow any room for that.
ofc k*laroline is an unhealthy, sexist dynamic (in canon) that robs c*aroline of agency and k*laus of depth. but it’s not that way because of violence and power, it’s that way because the writers lack the skill to produce scenarios where women retain agency and men have complex emotions, and so they leave the violence and power completely unaddressed…except when it’s convenient to position c*aroline as the embodiment of morality to k*laus’ apparent lack of a conscience (*snooze*). this is bad, shallow, unimaginative, lazy, trite writing, and teen girls – yes, k*laroline fans too – deserve better.
the writers have had literal years to write kc in a way that gives c*aroline agency, in a way that acknowledges the complexity of k*laus being an ancient monster. they’ve had years to think about how to engage the issues of power and control and violence embedded in the ship. some of the best gothic romances out there are ones that allow their female characters to explore their inner darkness, that question the limits of male authority, that challenge conventional ideas about female sexuality. kc isn’t my cup of tea, but i can think of a dozen ways, just off the top of my head, that they could’ve been written in a more human and complex way. there would’ve still been people who hated them and called it “abuse”, but you can’t account for everyone’s subjective tastes and responses. what you can and should always account for is the humanity of your own characters.
the subject of racism in the plecverse is another matter altogether, and one that requires its own post, but i will say this: every time a bonnie fan has tried to hold plec accountable for the character’s story arc the response has been to say that bonnie – the sole black woman on the show – is too moral and pure and good to want an angsty romance with a bad boy vampire. ofc this is flagrant racist hypocrisy, but arguing against this leaves us bereft of moral ground of our own. i can’t speak for everyone, but as a bonnie fan i can say personally that i wouldn’t want to have seen bonnie written in terrible, no-agency-having romantic scenarios where her subjectivity is constantly violated and her desires compromised (that is, anymore than she already was). what i did want for bonnie – and why i continue to write fanfic about her – are the same things i want for all shows and characters: honest, creative, complex writing that moves confidently towards a foreshadowed vision rather than taking endless detours based on “fan reaction”. bonnie, and all the other black characters on the plecverse, deserve good writing. and having them constantly subjugated to the will of the white characters, having their pain and their desires constantly subsumed in favor of the white protagonists, isn’t only racist, it’s bad writing. even if bonnie wasn’t black, if marcel wasn’t black, if vincent wasn’t black, having characters whose relative position in the narrative REEKS of bad, weak, short-sighted writing (and, in the plecverse, that’s precisely why they are black. so the writers don’t have to really develop their white mains and can instead rely on audience sympathy for white over black characters regardless of the former’s crimes against the latter. and i mean, these are shows set in the American South.) is lazy and shallow.
but to return to my original point: what i want is for us to shift the conversation from “educating” poor little naive teen girls, to challenging them to think critically, to giving them real choices and a diversity of characters and stories to choose from. what i want, instead of evacuating genre romance of any speck of power and violence and danger, is to demand that writers like plec with huge audiences – that any writer, really – engage these themes head on, with honesty, with creativity, with respect, with knowledge, and with vision.
i’ll end with another line from the article, one that did resonate with me:
“Abusive love can feel intoxicating and all-encompassing, like a fantasy, it can seem almost impossible to leave. Knowledge is awareness and choice.”
bad writing is like abusive love: it can feel intoxicating one minute, like all your wishes are being fulfilled, and then the next instant you’re crashing down from that high at the mercy of whatever gimmicky “twist” the writers have in store. it keeps you at the mercy of these same writers, because like abusive partners they convince you that only they can give you what you seek, only they can tell you what is and isn’t real, only they can make your fantasies come true. good writing, like healthy relationships, doesn’t handhold you through stories. good writing doesn’t make flimsy excuses for violence, rather it confronts and engages it. good writing doesn’t strip a character – any character – of their agency. good writing doesn’t rely on the subjugation and suppression of certain characters’ narratives in favor of others in order to move the story forward. good writing is honest, it’s self-reflective, it makes you question things, makes you think, makes you want to fashion your own answers to questions it poses. good writing won’t always make you happy, but it will make you aware, it will make you creative, it will challenge you, and it will always respect your intelligence and your agency as readers and viewers.
demand better. you deserve better. we all deserve better.
I’ve detailed why I’m not into Klaroline with this post and it’s for the exact reasons as you, why it exists, and not their dynamic. As you pointed out the violence in the ship isn’t what makes it abusive and that’s a) because of context–he’s the villain, he’s going to do villainous things, and B) due to his status as the villain and hers as essentially a supporting character there is a complete power imbalance–Caroline never had that much power to begin with so pairing her with someone with all the power at that point is too much of an offset in balance (which is why pairing him or really anyone with Bonnie was always better because she had the power and will to deefned herself). Which I guess is the appeal–he’s a monster, but he decides to be delicate with her, except when he’s not and at’s honestly where they lose me.
It almost sounds hypocritical when my favorite ship is Bonkai because they have that similar streak of violence under the context of them being villains, but here’s where it differs for me and why Bonkai is better to me. Their redemption arcs. Klaus’ redemption arc in TVD is quite reliant on Caroline, not Damon levels, but it reaches up there, and even when the writers are trying to convince me that he’s just a misunderstood soul he still does villainous things to Caroline. It’s too inconsistent which is a symptom of bad writing. With Bonkai his redemption arc isn’t reliant on Bonnie and during the time the writers are trying to convince me he’s a better person he isn’t hurting Bonnie or anyone for that matter until 6×22 which we all honestly chalk up to OOC and a retcon due to, again, bad writing, but either way his redemption arc is consistent and not reliant on a female character to soften him up.
We all know Klaus really wasn’t supposed to make it past season 2 maybe season 3, he was a character set to die, but he was a popular character which is why they went with the redemption arc to begin with because they couldn’t justify having an antagonist on that long and still be an antagonist. Which I get to a degree, but there were a lot better ways of keeping him than Klaroline that kinda just ruined what made those characters unique. Caroline becomes a Klaus distraction, and Klaus just becomes, I don’t even know if whipped is the right word because it’s not consistent, and all because of one of the most random moments on television. The writers got really lucky that Joe and Candice have chemistry otherwise a lot more people would have noticed how random that scene truly was.
Anyways my point being, Klaus’ continuance on the show was sparked by fan reaction which was both good and bad. Good because at this point it wasn’t completely catered to fans, there was still some imagination to how they wrote keeping him in the show. It was bad because this is where the show started on that slippery road that eventually became Delena, Klaroline, and even Benzo (which as a Bonnie ship expired a lot more quickly than the others) where all the focus goes on these ship in hopes that the it would reflect in the ratings, but it didn’t because weirdly fans do not like being pandered to.
i can’t speak for everyone, but as a bonnie fan i can say personally that i wouldn’t want to have seen bonnie written in terrible, no-agency-having romantic scenarios where her subjectivity is constantly violated and her desires compromised (that is, anymore than she already was).
That was always the catch 22 of shipping Bonnie with anyone and wanting to see it on screen. You definitely wanted to see it develop but at the cost of it being written by Plec who managed to mess up the ships she was invested in, so we all could only imagine how she would mess our ship when she wasn’t in in the slightest.
bad writing is like abusive love: it can feel intoxicating one minute, like all your wishes are being fulfilled, and then the next instant you’re crashing down from that high at the mercy of whatever gimmicky “twist” the writers have in store. it keeps you at the mercy of these same writers, because like abusive partners they convince you that only they can give you what you seek, only they can tell you what is and isn’t real, only they can make your fantasies come true. good writing, like healthy relationships, doesn’t handhold you through stories. good writing doesn’t make flimsy excuses for violence, rather it confronts and engages it. good writing doesn’t strip a character – any character – of their agency. good writing doesn’t rely on the subjugation and suppression of certain characters’ narratives in favor of others in order to move the story forward. good writing is honest, it’s self-reflective, it makes you question things, makes you think, makes you want to fashion your own answers to questions it poses. good writing won’t always make you happy, but it will make you aware, it will make you creative, it will challenge you, and it will always respect your intelligence and your agency as readers and viewers.
demand better. you deserve better. we all deserve better.
I agree with this completely. The most disheartening thing about TVD was it’s potential. Potential that was wasted and squandered but we always came back hoping they’d realized it. Season 6 being that for me after I’d completely given up on the show midway through season 5. Season 6 gave me hope, and though I probably should have known better because everything that worked in season 6 was gone by the end of it, I
was
still optimistic about season 7. It wasn’t until season 8 when I started just hate watching it to finish what I started because I’d invested too much time in it not to. But TVD did teach me one thing–if it’s not working give up. A TV show’s job is to entertain me, once it ceases to do that it’s no longer doing it’s job meaning it’s time to give up–there is no point in sticking with a show through thick and thin if it’s not doing the bare minimum to entertain me.
You know I realized the reason why I really don’t like Klaroline us not really due to the pairing itself. I have no moral qualms with the abuse of it because it’s literally impossible with any TVD ship and I really don’t like the idea of quantifying abuse. If I hate one ship due to abuse I have to hate them all including my favorite ship, Bonkai, because abuse is abuse, plain and simple it’s terrible in every form and saying one is worse than the other does nothing more than trivialize serious matters because it wasn’t as bad. It’s unfortunate that certain things have to be overlooked, but I do feel that it works better in Kai and Klaus’ case due to their roles as antagonists however I still don’t consider them excuses.
The reason I don’t like Klaroline is because I now can’t help but think about the role they play in the oppression of Tyler and Bonnie. I used to like Klaroline, hell I even used to like Delena (but that got ruined for a whole slew of other reasons that didn’t even require deeper thought) because I used to be a very casual viewer of TVD, it wasn’t really a show I took that seriously so I pretty much took what ever the spoon fed me until season 5 when as a casual viewer I couldn’t even stomach it and had to stop watching. To this day I still haven’t seen the entirety of that season. But back to my point, now I really don’t like Klaroline because I can’t separate the reason why it’s there to begin with and the characters it screwed over with it’s existence.
I’m so lukewarm about most non-Bonnie ships, I don’t really think about why I don’t care for any of the other ones. But I think you probably encapsulated why I’m neutral towards KC.
The Tyler thing makes me so sad, he changed so much and became so complex only to be discarded and his final death was so 😒 And I can’t even think about Bonnie’s treatment w/o getting mad and I’ve acknowledged before that great literary criticism could be academically written about it.
This was a great meta
Well when the show is intent on not giving your favorite character a romance storyline you kinda have to look at the other romances because that’s all there is. However when it comes to TVD there isn’t a single relationship I’m passionate about that doesnt involve Bonnie so I feel that’s pretty telling on how bad the others are to begin with, and how much better the show would have been if they had explored just one Bonnie ship (and I don’t count Jeremy or Enzo because they aren’t explored there just there with little to no build up and little to no chemistry).
But its weird I’ve never really disliked a ship that had nothing wrong with it fundamentally like I do Klaroline because there really isn’t that much wrong with, it just represents everything wrong with the show and it’s low regard it holds POC’s. It literally kills two birds with one stone and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Plec wouldn’t have risked her other characters the way she did Tyler with pairing Klaus with Caroline, even if so they certainly wouldn’t have been made irrelevant the way Tyler.
Think about the previous triangle with Matt, Caroline, and Tyler. For one, it was a he’ll of a lot more mutual due Caroline not actively being in a relationship (she’d broken up with Matt). Two, Tyler isn’t the reason they break up. And 3, after it ends Matt goes on to have several independent storylines towards his development that aren’t off screen. Matt’s irrelevance is cause by him being irrelevant, and yet still made more important than Tyler. Like I pointed out in another post, Matt maybe missing from a lot of episodes, but we aren’t missing key things about him as they all happen on screen, a luxury Bonnie nor Tyler are given.
Anyways my long tangent point is that had the actor been white, because Tyler for all intents and purposes is white, that none of that would have happened. Their value wouldn’t have only been connected to someone else, it would have been independent and been utilized in the show.
(Sidenote: do you ever find it weird that they really didn’t explore werewolf lore while Tyler was on the show. They brought in Hayley and shipped her off to another show to explore the origins instead using a main character from the show who probably has a rich history as well.)
You know I realized the reason why I really don’t like Klaroline us not really due to the pairing itself. I have no moral qualms with the abuse of it because it’s literally impossible with any TVD ship and I really don’t like the idea of quantifying abuse. If I hate one ship due to abuse I have to hate them all including my favorite ship, Bonkai, because abuse is abuse, plain and simple it’s terrible in every form and saying one is worse than the other does nothing more than trivialize serious matters because it wasn’t as bad. It’s unfortunate that certain things have to be overlooked, but I do feel that it works better in Kai and Klaus’ case due to their roles as antagonists however I still don’t consider them excuses.
The reason I don’t like Klaroline is because I now can’t help but think about the role they play in the oppression of Tyler and Bonnie. I used to like Klaroline, hell I even used to like Delena (but that got ruined for a whole slew of other reasons that didn’t even require deeper thought) because I used to be a very casual viewer of TVD, it wasn’t really a show I took that seriously so I pretty much took what ever the spoon fed me until season 5 when as a casual viewer I couldn’t even stomach it and had to stop watching. To this day I still haven’t seen the entirety of that season. But back to my point, now I really don’t like Klaroline because I can’t separate the reason why it’s there to begin with and the characters it screwed over with it’s existence.
We all know how it oppressed Tyler, it’s literally the reason he’s shoved off screen in seasons 3 and 4. It’s not a coincidence that everytime Tyler had to go off Caroline’s scenes with Klaus increased and it got even worse when he didn’t even have to be away for that to happen, his screen time just gets cut in favor of them. And then there’s how Klaus treated him, now I wouldn’t have much of problem with it as Klaus is/was the antagonist if it wasn’t trivialized by the entire show and then just used as way to shove him off screen.
One of the things that comes to mind is
the Klaroline sex scene which I was not a fan of the because a) it literally came off as a scene in a porn with the flimsy reason behind it, and b) the betrayal of Tyler and how it played in the further diminution his character. I wouldn’t call it cheating, but sleeping with the guy who enslaved your childhood friend, killed his pack and his mother is just trivializing what he went through, but considering the standards Delena set for the show it’s not surprising. But think about the scene when she finally tells him, he gets punched in the face by Stefan and ends up the “bad guy” in the situation for simply getting angry. He wasn’t even going to hurt anyone, there’s a reason why he told Caroline to leave, but it’s not like it mattered because Caroline still ends up being “innocent” in the whole thing. It sickens me the fandom’s reaction to this and pretty much his entire story line with Klaus. Look at some of these comments.
He’s even villainized when it comes to Hayley, a character who got 12 people killed for information she could have gotten if she just hired a PI, but that doesn’t matter because she perfect.
People actively ignore his character development in order for Klaus, Caroline, and even Hayley to seem better. And what makes it worse is that they actively ignore the things those characters have done as well because if they didn’t they’d have to realize that Tyler was a much better person than all if them. They literally protect white people at all costs and needed to the POC to be the bad guy in order to do so.
But, again, none of that’s really news since that’s how this fandom works in general. You have to ignore the bad things they do and make excuses instead of owning up to them.
Do I think Tyler is perfect? No, but he’s literally the only character to actually redeem himself. You never see him pull the same shit that he did in season 1. He made it his goal to change and not be so angry all the time and actually succeeded, and on his own. Caroline had her part, but his attitude change didn’t rely on her, he made the effort himself which is something sorely missing from redemption arcs on this show.
And then after he ends his relationship with Caroline, something the show pretty much had been incrementally doing to make room for KC, his character ends up off in the limbo where characters the writers no longer care about are held. It’s as though if he isn’t connected to Caroline or Klaus, his character has no value which is one of the biggest injustices on the show, but not surprising because if you’re a POC who’s not serving someone your time on the show expires real quick unless they can find a way to put you back in your place.
Then there’s it’s role in further oppressing Bonnie which I feel is lesser known because a) there are a lot more pressing issues when it comes to Bonnie which most of us are very aware of, b) KC became huge in the fandom (or more so loud) to the point that it kind of buries the initial reactions of the audience at the time, and c) Kennett takes the spotlight with the controversy that surrounded it due to Plec’s racist tweet about how Kennett when she was asked about why Bonnie was being paired with her stepbrother.
Now this didn’t really come to my attention until after I read The Problematic Treatment of People of Color on The Vampire Diaries, which if you haven’t read it I suggest you do because it’s a really great resource when describing how Bonnie’s treatment is problematic. It could use a bit of an update to include seasons 7 and 8, but that wouldn’t change much because not a damn thing changed in those seasons other than they got more sneaky about her treatment as opposed the overt nature in the previous seasons. Anyway this excerpt pretty much the seed that made me further inspect KC.
My first thought when reading that is that “this makes so much sense” because when you look at the first KC scene on Caroline’s birthday and put it in context with the entire episode, it comes completely out of thin air. You get so caught up in the chemistry between the actors and the sweetness of it that you don’t think about how random it is, but that’s also partially due to that fact that around this time things had gotten pretty random and convoluted. However if they didn’t have chemistry I probably would have had the same exact reaction to them as I did Benzo when Enzo saves Bonnie from the armory: “sweet, but random.” And then I thought about all KC’s scenes in general and a lot of them are forced, in that they had to make up unnecessary reasons for them to be in scenes together. They literally had to bend the plot of the show in order to put them together. That’s what made me realize that the ship is all chemistry, but no real substance. They were put together because Bonnie couldn’t have a love interest that would threaten the other white girls’ status in the hierarchy of character’s value on the show. Bonnie always needed to be lower than Elena and Caroline. She needed to be the ugly friend, and the show put a lot of time and effort making sure that was the status quo, so far that the actively stifled their show in order to do so.
Think about season 3, who makes more sense as his love interest? Bonnie who he had several direct story lines, or Caroline who he’s only connected with through Tyler? Now I’m not saying there’s nothing there between them but in the interest of better ties and how the plot conform to a ship there’s a hell of lot less work needed for Klonnie to makes sense than KC and IMHO would have been a more interesting route and if you look at some of the comments back when this season first aired that was something some people noticed.
Not only that but both Kat and Joseph actively shipped it to the point of talking to the writers and it was promptly shut down which isn’t surprising because, well it’s Bonnie, we all know the racial bias when it comes to her. Apparently they even cut some scenes that were supposed to be with them in the witch house that would have actively driven the ship and again been a better story line due to the Bennett’s direct involvement with the Mikaelson’s that season (direct involvement that ends up pushed to the side in favor of Elena and Caroline i.e the Mikaelson Ball).
And what makes it worse is that that wasn’t even the original story line for that season. Kevin Williamson before he let go of control talked about a Stefan/Klaus/Bonnie story line for that season, but I’m guessing that got scrapped along with the scenes they were supposed to have. And trust me I would have been way more willing to watch that than more old S/E/D shit and definitely more than Klaus/Caroline/Tyler shit which like I said they actively stifled their show in order to exclude Bonnie.
Now none of this is really a new phenomenon when it comes to Bonnie and ships especially at this juncture. This technically starts in season 1 when again they pair a potential love interest for Bonnie with Caroline. I’ve talked about it before on how random it is that Damon goes after Caroline with his main goal in the beginning of the season and how counter-intuitive it was. He should have been pursuing Bonnie at the very least and at the most keeping his promise if he wanted to get the tomb open. There’s a reason why that ends up a convenient favor Elena has to ask Bonnie and its because that whatever diabolical plan he had wasn’t planned well. Damon just did random shit for no reason. The only thing that made any sense is his story line with Vicki and that’s saying a lot since he kills her simply because he was bored. Anyways in the book that the loosely base he show on, the first person Damon kisses and uses as an in to to the MFG is Bonnie, but that gets scrapped in favor of Caroline and the disgusting story line that will forever mar the show.
Then there’s Tyler who they scrapped a story line between him and Bonnie in favor of Caroline. They didn’t want to rip off Buffy (but had no problem doing it with Liv in S6). Now that one doesn’t grate me as much since Caroline/Tyler is a pairing in the book but if they’re going to go out of their way to include the book romance for supporting characters that should have applied to Bonnie a well. In fact when it comes to things from the book that they use in the show it seems Bonnie is the only exception to the rule because they even go so far as to include Meredith/Alaric, a character who was previously scrapped from the show.
However I guess what I’m getting at, is that though this isn’t new and continues well after season 3, KC was just my limit with it. The ship was conceived out of thin air with the specific and more blatant purpose of not pairing Bonnie with a desirable character to further oppress her. The blatantness of it actually grates me more than when Plec did this with Bamon because while I hate Delena with a burning passion it didn’t come out of thin air. Delena is a pairing that’s briefly explored in the books and if you go by the original author’s endgame is something that’s supposed to end, but the show never took that queue, but either way they had a lot more cause denying them than they did Klonnie and I can’t really separate that from KC.
I see two characters who have chemistry and nothing else because it was already a Hail Mary putting them together to begin with that only worked out because of that chemistry. If they didn’t they would have gone over as well as Bonenzo did which was a ship made to placate threatened Delena fans, the only difference here is that it threatened Plec’s vision of Bonnie and where she stands in the hierarchy of female characters.
So I’ve been on this kick of watching really bad movies, so I thought, why not try to watch some klaroline scenes? It’d been so long, and girls are still so obsessed with it, that I wanted to check it out again and see if there was an appeal there that had gone unnoticed by me. After all, it couldn’t be as bad as I remember. I was right; It was worse.
The dialogue is downright godawful. I’ve never seen a romance spell out what it is as much as klaroline. Klaus’ character is verbally pitching the idea to us at every turn, literally listing off the reasons Caroline fits the role, “you’re beautiful, you’re strong, you’re full of light” And how exactly does he know any of this? Was this during the imaginary time he spent falling in love with her that the writers didn’t bother to show for…reasons? But I’ll get to that later. The writers, when it came to klaroline, didn’t believe in subtly one bit. “So you’ve never felt the attraction that comes when someone whose capable of doing terrible things for some reason cares only about you.” Holy shit, captain obvious is writing this story! Instead of showing us this angle, the writers take the lazy way out and have Klaus tell the audience that this is what the story is, because even the writers realize they’re failing. How bad can this get?
Worse apparently.
Let’s look at all the iconic romantic scenes they have. There’s him giving her his blood–after he bit her. There’s him saving her life–after he stabbed her and bit her on the neck and watched her slowly die. There’s that cringe inducing speech about the hummingbird that only shippers thought wasn’t hilarious. Oh and there’s their sex scene which was a quick hump against a tree that lacked any kind of romance. And here’s a glaring fact that’s always bothered me: Klaroline literally has no beginning. To this day I’m sure the writers have no idea when Klaus spontaneously fell for Caroline. Most love stories have a beginning and an end, and Klaroline only has an ending.
I don’t even need to get into how gross and abusive the relationship is because the story speaks for itself, so I’ll get into the overall structure. The progression of the relationship was terrible. Nothing about it felt natural. One episode they’re screaming at each other (big shock), and then the next episode it’s like it never happened. Like the writers literally couldn’t remember where they had left off and were too lazy to go back and watch. And boy were their scenes ever repetitive. Flirt, rejection, fight, roll credits annnnd reuse. Every scene is Klaus rambling about himself and not giving a shit about what Caroline is into.
But let’s get to probably the worst part of this story: the character assassination. Caroline and Klaus were my favorite characters before their first big scene. You would think finding out your fave male and fave female were getting together would be awesome, but no, no, no. In order for Klaroline to happen, their characters had to be stripped of everything that made them worth watching. Caroline, who had finally come into her own and turned into a brave, strong woman, was now shrieking in every episode and obsessing over the men in her life (and her awesome relationship with Stefan vanished), and let’s not forget the prom dress scenario. What happened to a wounded Care telling Stefan, “I’m not girly little Caroline anymore.” And then there’s Klaus…dear God, Klaus. Remember the villain who showed up at the end of season 2, who had followers, who had Katherine running for hundreds of years? Wasn’t that fun? Instead let’s have him talk about hummingbirds, paint ponies and snowflakes, follow around a seventeen year old girl like a lost puppy dog, get outwitted by newbie vamps, and come across like a generally pathetic stalker who shows love by shoving a lamp in your gut. Now doesn’t that sound like a great character! I will say, these characters have made a recovery, but them being on separate shows had to happen in order to achieve this. Not a coincidence.
In short: Klaroline is insulting to my brain as a human being, adult, woman, and a writer. It’s the kind of storyline you expect a teenage girl to be writing in her notepad that never sees the light of day. I’m just sincerely relieved to know it’s dead.
They’ve always had chemistry, but that’s it otherwise they make no sense. Plec literally lucked out on that because otherwise none of the scenes they had together would have worked as well as they did. That first scene on her birthday was beautiful, but random and their sex scene proved that chemistry can only take you so far because that was one of the most cringiest scenes of the show — it read literally like a porn scene with the same amount of emotion.
julie plec is really calling herself a feminist for breaking up haylijah after trump won for what he did without control over his actions and while i understand that,
1. why did it take donald trump winning for julie to realise “hey i should stop romanticising abuse and glorifying misogyny” after 8+3 seasons of that shit
2. she wrote the tvd ending well after the election result and it still featured damon salvatore, a rapist who has abused every character on the show especially the female characters, get called “the better man” and live a full and happy life with everything he ever wanted, find peace and have the only on screen endgames (delena and defan)… while her female characters (other than elena) were miserable in the end and male characters who were respectful and kind were dead
3. in the finale she still baited klaroline, the most abusive relationship on her shows, where the guy tried to kill her/assaulted her/almost had sex with her without her consent MULTIPLE TIMES. and this ship unlike delena or haylijah was never reciprocated and was just an unstable 1000 year old man stalking an uninterested teen. and hours after the finale she tweeted “caroline will find an inappropriate way to pay klaus back for his generosity” (for money she never asked for), a tweet so disgusting that the actor who plays klaus himself said it sounded like she was calling caroline a hooker. and she baited klaroline twice in the same interview she called herself a woke feminist for ~doing better for women now that trump won~ (receipts below)
4. “but your conscience can’t advocate for that kind of violence”
klaroline:
julie now:
delena:
julie now:
you can keep your convenient white feminism julie, we all know you’re a bigot and more than happy to run the most socially irresponsible shows with the most twisted messages to young girls just for fanservice and views. you didn’t give a fuck about women then and you sure as hell don’t now.
POC of TVD 