RIP again Beau, whom through shitty and racist writing was made mute by having his throat slit, had little screentime, was treated like a servant, was given racial stereotypes, killed and put through his own personal hell, came back ravenous in a white man’s body and had his heart ripped out even when he begged to live, and Bonnie, the only other POC on the show, tried to help him.
Anyways, I hate that Bonnie always has to get fucked over by the racist ass writers. I mean honestly her first most meaningful relationship (outside of her first puppy love with Jeremy, which I miss </3) because thrown under the bus because Bonnie doesn’t deserve Damon. Then when she had this intense, but (scary) chemistry with Kai, that got thrown out the window cause Bonnie doesn’t deserve Kai. Then when Enzo became the love of her life and he gets his heart ripped out. I’m heated cause Bonnie Bennett has put so much on the line, she should be just as happy as her friends so I think this is some straight up BS. Plec, honestly, you really need to work on your writing for POC characters because this shit is so fucking ridiculous.
this is like asking me to pick between my children but at least u acknowledge that
10. that time in S1 when she was sort of nervous to go flirt with the guy at the bar and she said “cuz i’m a chicken” but then went and talked to him because my she’s a brave little button (ofc that guy turned out to be some supernatural douchebag who wasn’t actually interested in her because julie hates black women, but anyway)
9. levitating feathers on elena’s bed OFC.
8. when she saved matt donovan from drowning in S3 without using her magic
7. that time she was like “aww what’s wrong?” to damon in S2 ep 1 because she’d just given him a brain aneurysm
6. when she was all “oops” after putting all her magic in a teddy bear in the prison world and kai lost his goddamn mind
5. during S2 when she met lucy and she felt so relieved and happy because she’d found family (aaand then she never saw her again because julie hates back women, but anyway)
4. that cute moment in S4 where she was crowned prom queen and she was holding her lil crown and smiling and then she went backstage to put it down. that whole moment was so soft and pure. (and then badly written evil!elena barged in because julie hates black women, but anyway)
3. it’s a tie between bonnie stabbing kai in the neck and coming outta the woods dressed in black and almost turning klaus to play dough
2. when she was on the verge of committing suicide but still fought for her life and survived the prison world on her own.
1. i mean that last scene with all the bennett ancestors where she’s standing against literal hell fire is amaaazing but. bonnie bennett in an adorable cheerleader uniform stabbing unworthy men (7×21) is also peak gay culture. anyway I CANT CHOOSE NUMBER 1. it’s every scene ever.
Number 10 just reminds me of how many times a hot older guy she was interested in acted interested in her just to use her. Ben, Luca (I don’t know if he was actually older but definitely more knowledgeable), Shane, and then it just turned to everyone.
But it was still a great moment that I still to today get disappointed about it not going anywhere, because honestly they could have done more with Ben and her than they did. 😢
There’s definitely something there, though I don’t know if it’s resentment towards Kat or towards us, her fans. Because in this fandom, Bonnie fans/shippers have always been that kid who points out that the empress has no clothes, while everyone else is busy kissing her feet because she fanservices them better. We’ve been the thorn in her side from the beginning, all the articles and essays and social media activity constantly holding her feet to the fire regarding the show’s neglect and mistreatment of Bonnie.
And I think that’s different from the typical “YOU RUINED MY SHIP I HATE YOU JULIE” criticism she receives. It’s far more difficult to just shrug off, especially for someone who actually is ignorant despite considering herself to be an enlightened liberal woman, and must at least sometimes get the sense that she may not be doing the best she can. (This is my perhaps-too-kind interpretation of Plec as a white feminist, based on the persona she projects. The alternative is that she knows exactly how shitty Bonnie’s treatment is, because it’s intentional or at the very least not her priority. I wouldn’t discount that option entirely, though I do think the former is more likely.)
I know I’ve been on my Kai Parker deserved better rant already, but this is more focused just on Bonnie x Kai, and how people seem to forget that Bonnie killed Kai first. As I bring it up, I already know many people won’t like hearing this, but she’s not perfect, and imo that was her worst move. Yes, he was not at the point of his development arc so he probably would’ve interfered with his family on his own terms, but when Bonnie realized he was no use, she impaled and killed him, thinking he’d be dead forever, which was drastic at the time considering they were happy to all go home as friends and move on, but NO. If they had left peacefully it would’ve essentially avoided the whole biggest conflict of the season, and Kai wouldn’t have gone after Bonnie again. I know people all like to blame him for everything, but he hadn’t tried any of that shit until after she tried to literally murder him. Yeah, he’d spiked Damon’s bourbon and not so nicely proved his power, but he could’ve had them dead at any second and he chose not to do that. That’s why, when Kai went to hurt her later, I sort of thought ‘well fair enough considering to him it was that or get killed by her again.’ Also with nobody calling out that she locked post merge Kai up alone again when she knows he’d rather die, not to teach him a lesson and come back or anything, to make him suffer forever when not a single person could forgive Kai, who at this point meant no harm and was an actual stray pup, even though everyone forgave damon, klaus, and enzo for the far worse things they did. I’m not saying what he did to her was okay, because it wasn’t, but he is the one who tried bringing her back from the pw and helped save her with his magic which got her out, which nobody conveniently mentioned to her, she didn’t even give him a chance before she made up her mind about him, and you’re telling me not one person gave a shit when she left him bleeding out and alone?! I know Kai made the joke about Elena forgiving Damon but not him, but as usual, HE WASN’T WRONG, and she was ‘so selfless and kind,’ yet she only forgave everyone except Kai, who didn’t even need her love to not be a killing machine unlike Damon, mhmm? Honestly, by the end of that season I was just like, you know what bitch, fuck this, ya’ll should’ve seen that wedding massacre coming you lot of selfish assholes, good for Kai for teaching you a lesson, even though Kai’s empathy and emotion vanishing with no explanation was another plot hole. But all of this, everything that came after, was started by Bonnie, and that’s a fact. I say this as someone who feels like Bonkai was such wasted potential and poor + illogical writing that was done to prevent any chance of them happening, even though it could’ve been a damn good relationship if merge Kai got even one chance to show his growth before Plague threw him out. Kai in the finale says, “so I guess this is kind of all your fault,” and you know what, if you trace that back to everyone neglecting him, her stabbing him and really thinking that hot piece of ass wouldn’t get revenge, and then way at the start of their story when she chose to kill him, it kind of is.
Actually, the writing is far more to blame here than Bonnie. Don’t get me wrong, the way she was written (in season 6 especially) is to not only hurt Kai, but also namely herself in almost every possible way and this is merely due to TVD’s longstanding racist and sexist portrayal of Bonnie Bennett.
This becomes increasingly clear as the season progressed and there were many areas in the plot where her actions and Kai’s made very little sense, if any, and were just done so then either Bonnie is hurt/isolated or Kai is killed off/isolated or both. People don’t seem to realize how much bias a writer can skew into the narrative and how that can affect the audience views on the show even if it contradicts something obvious in canon (this is notoriously true in the TVD fandom where canon is so often ignored even by the own writers).
Your frustration is misplaced – Kai was mostly killed off because Plec and Co. wouldn’t want another character overshadowing the Salvatores and both his and Bonnie’s characters were further regressed because Bonnie is always confined to be the magical negro who only saves her friends and who THEY deem are also worthy – we should be mad about the illogical writing that tried to justify Bonnie’s almost irrational hate for Kai than be mad at her when even her character was fucked up again for NO reason. They did this on purpose to hinder both of their characters and their trajectory together, because of course, these two couldn’t develop together, along with Kai’s coven, family, and whatever more stories that can be told with having more witches, nah, that’s too boring. /sarcasm
Kai actually started things by siphoning Bonnie (who the fuck cares about what he did to Damon LOL) and while his abusive coven and family contributed to how sociopathic he got, it’s too much to act like he couldn’t help himself to kill just because of his situation. TBH, everything after 1907 was so OOC, even after being left to a cold, dreary past filled with heretics who later fed/attacked him, it still seemed random as hell. Even if he ‘snapped’, Kai was acting like his old pre-merge self not like a deranged/distraught post-merge him who I imagine to be suffering from his still relatively new emotions and his old self surfacing, not whatever the fuck we actually saw. Like…his actions make no sense – coming after Delena, killing himself to be a vampire, killing his sister, if he did snap, they didn’t really show it.
Does anyone act like Bonnie is perfect? Hell, the show takes any chance it gets to shit on her constantly. It’s almost like she has no real autonomy unless when she has to save herself and the rest of the assholes. Think about it – every time she killed or stabbed or tried to trap Kai, it was only done to hurt her. FFS, in the beginning when she finally got her magic back (thanks to Kai LOL), she’s the strongest of the three in the prison world. But apparently she’s weak with Kai? Kai is formidable, but he was still a magicless siphon, there’s no reason to think he could really kill her even if he didn’t have a crush on her. Or when Bonnie rather stay in the prison world with him instead of both leaving (and Damon of all people is let out) – this is not a good character portrayal because Bonnie isn’t normally a short-sighted or irrational person….just only when it hurts her. Anyone who’s at least half paying attention can see Kai would only help Bonnie’s storylines and that’s why they were both taken out (Kai killed while Bonnie kicked down again).
when you wake up in the morning and your first thought is ‘what would’ve been kai’s fate/life if damon hadn’t done what he did in 6.22 ? would he have found a way to redeem himself with bonnie ? would’ve bonkai happened or maybe he would’ve fallen for one of the heretics ? would he have become an ally to the gang at some point ?’
i still think liv and jo should’ve been turned into vampires. i am still upset with damon for so many reasons, one of which being how selfish he was – his best friend was there crying out for help and damon couldn’t spare a few vamp seconds to help jo ? really ? season 7 would’ve been so epic if kai was there … if liv had stayed but … no 😢😦
I think more about if Kai had been in character in 6×22 Damon never would have been in a position to kill Kai because as mad as I am that they killed off Kai I will never be mad at Damon for choosing Bonnie. I’ll be mad at Damon for a looooot of things but never for choosing Bonnie without a second thought.
But back to Kai in 6×22. Like I said he’s not in character and not just because the writers threw the whole empathy plot out because he’s even out of character for his sociopathic self. I mean seriously, you’re telling me the guy who dreamed about nothing but becoming the Gemini coven leader and destroying them for 18 years would just give that up. He got the destroying his coven part but giving up Gemini leader to become a heretic? That’s quite a downgrade and he knows it. That’s not something sociopathic Kai would do. Kai always wins and what he did at the wedding, no one wins, not even him.
Then there’s who his revenge plot targets. Everyone but Bonnie. Sure she’s becomes a victim of the things he does, but her role in his revenge plot is mostly as an afterthought, collateral damage. He even says “I guess this is all your fault”. I guess? He makes it very clear who he’s disappointed with when he’s left in the 1903 PW. He stares at Bonnie, calls out for her, she is the one he feels betrayed by, so when he plots his revenge logically she would be his main target. Not Damon, not Jo and her twins, and definitely not his coven who should have been miles away from his mind because his issue wasn’t them not giving him a chance it was Bonnie not giving him one. I would get it if he did all that a little bit if he did all that to put all their deaths on Bonnie’s conscience, but he makes it very clear that it’s not with I guess because as shown she’s an afterthought in his plans, the pawn, a piece he moves around for the bigger picture which isn’t her, it’s Damon of all people? Reminds me how in 8×13, when they wasted Kai by pairing him with Damon, and Damon tried to get Kai to help him with Elena so that he could be redeemed with him. Why would Kai care about anything having to do with Damon? He’s never cared about him before. Kai’s interest lied soley with Bonnie and his family. Damon was always the true afterthought when it came to Kai just someone he had to endure when he got in the way. So targeting Damon for revenge makes little to no sense (it even made no sense in 6×11 but I let it slide for the information we learn about him and of course him mentioning Bonnie when there’s no reason to but that he wanted to).
The biggest issue is the throwing out of the empathy plot. When we first see him, the real him, after they leave him in the PW with all the bite marks my first thought was, well my poor baby what have they done to you, but my second thought was that he would come back psychologically scarred and pissed at Bonnie and we get neither. With empathy he has the emotional capacity to truly be affected by what the heretics did to him to the point that he should have had some real PTSD, and been deranged during the finale but we don’t get that. Murdering Jo, her twins, and his entire family was extreme but not deranged by his standards. In fact he kills them for the exact same reasons he killed his siblings 18 years before, to make a point. Did I expect him to come back changed? Yes. Did I expect him to come back with his character completely regressed? No, a new layer should have been added, everything that built his character shouldn’t have been just taken away. And that’s the real issue, Plec & Dries didn’t know the character, they spent most if the season on other characters and left him to other writers to the point that when he came back in the finale the wrote him essentially like Enzo—the character that does whatever the script says and not what’s consistent with his character. In one fall swoop the ruined an entire season’s worth of development and all because they didn’t care about his character they just wanted him out of the way so Damon could take his place back in the spotlight that Kai had taken away.
To sum up because I’ve rambled too much, 6×22 was a mess for Kai’s character all around and I’m more made at that and the writers for doing that than I am at the fact that Damon killed Kai because the real Kai would have never been in such a position had Plec known how to do her job and the character.
They would have just brought in another black girl to fill the role. Julie Plec: “This is Bonnie’s long lost cousin, Kisha Bennett. She’ll be our new magickal negro.”
Ideas are really cheap, two writers can have the same idea and execute it completely differently and neither is considered plagiarism or infringement.
However I would give them a break because as much as they like to talk about “all that build up” there really isn’t much there at all. The most significant symbol in their relationship is a necklace Stefan gave to Elena. Their “real” first meeting is taken from LJ Smith’s, I believe fanfiction at the time After Hours in a scene between Bonnie and Damon. And as proven by seasons 4, 5, and 6 they don’t function AT ALL. They’re stealing ideas from other ships because they have to. They’re the most delusional shippers because they have to be, the ship doesn’t give them anything to work with. Plus given the source material and the original writer DE as we know it, you can’t expect much better from the fans — they only know what they’ve been taught.
All that aside, they really should come up with their own ideas or finally learn to cut their losses and jump ship because as I pointed out there is nothing there to work with.
Problem with JP and her idea’s of love and romance, is how she writes for women to be co dependent on a man and thinking that it’s the only way that she can sell these “epic” romances or show that this women are in love with their love interest or loves them a lot.
With Elena and having her take drugs to see Damon, when Damon “died” or admitting that she put Elena into a coma, because she couldn’t see Elena letting Damon go. Elena loving Damon, but being able to let him go and to leave town and live her life, seemed out of the question for JP. So she just put Elena in a coma, to wait in a box for Damon instead.
Now doing it to Bonnie with Enzo and having Bonnie act like she can’t live life or go on without Enzo to the point that she wants to die.
JP can’t have the balance of showing these women be sad in losing the men that they love or mourn losing the men that they love and showing them having a difficult time with losing the ones that they care about and at the same time showing them making an attempt to live life and go on with other parts of their life or trying to find happiness within themselves and other parts of their life. And having enough self confidence and self worth on their own to make a strong attempt to live life.
There is no balance. She write Elena/Bonnie to go all into depression mode without these men. They are all about these men and nothing and no one else in their lives. These men are all that they can focus on. And JP writes them as not being able to function properly or live life without these men. Like their life is not worth living without these men and that’s a bad message to sell.
Because a woman’s while happiness and worth should never be put into one man, no matter how much she loves him, there should still be self worth and value in herself. Not acting like her life is worthless without a man.
Some may overlook this because all they want is their ship, no matter how the writers gives it to them. And some may find the “can’t live without him” thing romantic. But, as a Bonnie fan, I wouldn’t want her to put all of her self value into a man, not even for Damon.
My hopes for Bamon is that she would love Damon, but still keep her self worth and self value attached.
JP doesn’t know how to write a balanced woman that can love a man, but still can have self worth in herself without him.
POC of TVD 