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.