It’s funny while I will agree that TO is better in terms if quality compared to TVD, it definitely isn’t in the racism department. That was thrown out the window the moment they decided to set the show in NO, one of the few cities in the US that has a majority black population, and 90% of the main cast is white. Like that had to be a conscious decision just like setting TVD in 1864 (it’s the 1500s Italy in the books), Civil War era in the south no less, and completely ignored slavery even going so far as to call Emily Katherine’s handmaiden. Those weren’t happy accidents caused by ignorance, that’s just having a whitewashed view on the world and trying to hide it with “diversity” (and by that I mean the casting a few characters of color and calling it a day without even thinking about how they’re being represented).
And, oh dear lord, the white savior plot with Klaus and Marcel, one of the most poorly thought out storylines of the show, especially when the Mikaelsons started expecting gratitude for granting him a basic human right.
While I wasn’t a fan of how Marcel ran the city, essentially a dictatorship especially when it came to witches and oh, the werewolves–I always likened werewolves to the Native Americans of the show, but TO went as far as to actually banish them to reservations–but I was always more on his side because the issue I’ve always had with Klaus is his entitlement. Marcel worked hard to get what he had and Klaus feelings of entitlement to that because he “saved” him was just peak Plec–like how can she claim to still be this ignorant.
And don’t get me started on Hayley. Weirdly, I would have been alright if the baby was actually Tyler’s–at least then I know he’d get some focus because the writers don’t care about him unless he’s with a white girl. But overall I would have been more interested in exploring the Lockwood, characters we’re actually familiar with, instead of Hayley, rando girl number 3 there just to cause trouble for Tyler. Much like the Bennetts there’s a lot missing from their origin and will continue to be missing because his entire family line was wiped out.
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 feel like Plec is anti witch and werewolf cuz she makes them suffer the most out of the supernatural beings…
I don’t think she hates witches and werewolves just POC’s. They were pretty much the only supernatural creatures with any kind of “diversity” and it’s no accident that they suffer the most. It’s also no accident that on the POC’s out of those two categories actually suffer and are only used as on it devices.
It’s just one of the many ways Plec demonstrates her racism.
You know what I realized tonight? This is a big ass house. I live in a freakin’ mansion. My parents are dead, the girl that I love slept with my nemesis, and I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. Which, get this, lasts forever. But I got a big ass house. Why don’t we get out of it for a while? You know, just go somewhere, be anywhere but here. Klaus put me through hell in New Orleans, man. He crushed me and just when I thought it was over, that he couldn’t destroy anything else, or do anything worse…
Klaus put me through hell in New Orleans, man.
What drives me insane about this line is that it’s too specific and doesn’t quite ring true because while it’s been forever since I watched TO I semi remember that episode and I mostly remember the episode fizzling into nothing on both ends (but that could be my faulty memory).
The line that needed to be there was, Klaus put me through hell, period. Because he did. The show has a way of framing Tyler’s revenge as a petty endeavor and almost completely ignores the amount of pain Klaus inflicted on him in seasons 3 and 4. His pain doesn’t get ignores to the proportions Bonnie’s does, she never gets a speech like this until season 6 and it’s directed at the wrong person kind how this speech ignores a good chunk of what actually broke him.
Anyway, it’s things like this that translate into how the fandom views him because as toxic as this fandom can be the content of the show accounts for a good chunk of it. A casual viewer can only interpret what his given as it is presented, it takes deeper thought to truly see how fucked up the show is.
Because of how he is framed the audience interprets him in a bad light that often has to demonize him to make Klaus, Caroline and even Hayley. Reference the first half of this post.
There’s also the clear misunderstanding of his character like the person in this post
Because he’s a character not seen outside of Caroline because the writers don’t write for him unless he’s with her they don’t realize that his lack of screen time is the reason for this. He has a lot of development off screen and while I can easily see why he wouldn’t care about the other hybrids since he was sired to Klaus, his loyalty was to Klaus and Caroline and didn’t quite understand how much of a slave he and the rest of the hybrids were until after he bites Caroline.
Not the point, but Tyler’s pain is largely ignored by the fandom and the show and this scene is a blaring example of it. It’s a touching scene, but still doesn’t quite capture everything it should have.
I’m so sick of people saying that Forwood should have been endgame and that Steroline isn’t endgame material. You want to know why Caroline didn’t end up with Tyler? Because he walked out on her. Multiple times. She gave him so many chances and he always hurt her in the end. I’m not saying they had a bad relationship or that I didn’t ship them. But I AM saying that Tyler chose revenge over her. You wanna know who has always been there for her? Stefan. When she was at her lowest, he was there to comfort and protect her. Even when he left her, he came back and fought for her. He never judged her for sleeping with Klaus. He understood her and stood by her. Stefan Salvatore is the love of Caroline Forbes’ life and nothing can change that.
Now, does that mean I don’t want her to end up with Klaus? No. If Klaus makes her happy, I’m 100% for it because the love of her life is already dead. He’s gone and he would want her to find happiness again, even if it’s with someone else. Both Klaus and Caroline have lost their soulmates in my opinion, since both Cami and Stefan are dead. If they have to live an eternity without the loves of their lives, they might as well be together.
Imagine this:
You become this arrogant prick with daddy issues’ slave and they cite their daddy issues as their right to enslave you. They now have complete control over what you can and can not do. You then break away from this slavery and realize that there are other slaves who’s lives are being just like yours was so you help free them which is a long grueling process that involves complete trust so naturally they become you friends, family even.
Meanwhile you have a girlfriend who you love and trust who has been there for you through the hardest times and was there when you were going through this grueling process. She’s not just your girlfriend, she’s family. So you tell her everything expecting her of all people to understand. But she doesn’t, in fact she thinks that her friends are more important than yours and that you should think the same so that when she breaks your trust by telling her friend about what your doing and gets your friend killed she doesn’t understand why you’re upset.
But you let it go because you have more important thing to think about like your other friends who you’ve freed from slavery, but you’re still apprehensive about what you can and cannot tell her, so you trust the wrong person. When you do finally trust your girlfriend enough you enlist her to help you but unfortunately this wrong person you trusted ruins everything. This person then tells your ex-slave-owner that you freed all his slaves and he then kills each and every one of them, and for good measure kills your mother. He then banishes you from your own home for even daring to take his property away and you have no choice but to comply.
Then when ex-slave-owner decides not to be petty for a day he says you can come back and though this is good new you realize you’re back where you started as his slave because you can only be where he says you can be, you no longer have control over your life so you leave again to get control back and vengeance for all taking everything away from you. You break up with your girlfriend because it’s unfair to make her wait for you while you do more important stuff and it’s not like she can come with you–she isn’t living under someone else’s rule so she doesn’t feel the need to go with you.
Anyway, fuck Tyler for leaving, it’s not like he had any valid reason–his life should only revolve around Caroline and he should be under Klaus’ thumb. And fuck him for judging her for sleeping with the guy who enslaved him, killed his pack and his mother. It’s not like she was his friend or anything, so it’s not like any of that should matter to her. He’s out of sight so he’s out of her mind. How can he not understand that? What an asshole. Caroline is is a sexually vibrant woman and that’s exactly what he’s judging her for. Go Caroline, fuck Tyler for not getting that. *In case you didn’t understand, that was sarcasm.*
On a more real note I don’t actually think Forwood should be endgame but for none of the reasons you cited. Your entire anti argument relies on demonizing Tyler in order to make Caroline seem innocent and none of the actual fundamental issues with them. Is Tyler innocent? No, but in the examples you brought up yes, because you’re comparing his revenge to her missing her boyfriend and then sleeping with his arc nemesis because she got lonely. They aren’t comparable experiences in the slightest.
The reason Forwood shouldn’t have gotten back together is because of 4×06, the moment Caroline stops understanding Tyler. From there on their relationship deteriorates for that exact reason and then the nail in the coffin–her sleeping with Klaus. Not only does she no longer understand Tyler but she doesn’t respect him, and you can’t rebuild a relationship from there especially if it lacks respect. Also added with her lack of emotion when he died whatever was once there was definitely lost by that point.
As for Steroline I’m actually pretty neutral on that. While I do believe that they functioned better as friends I do believe that there was potential to be a good romance had Plec not tried to insta-love a friends to lovers romance and dropped the whole “epic love” thing because it never worked in creating an actual epic love story. There was nothing epic about any of the romances on the show because it all relied on being told they were epic rather than actually being epic. However, feelings aside, again, you’re bringing up two things that aren’t comparable.
For one, Klaus didn’t treat Stefan the way that he treated Tyler, Stefan wasnt his slave, Klaus didn’t kill his mother, Klaus didn’t take everything away from him, so Stefan doesn’t have to “get over himself” not to judge her. In fact when you compare Stefan’s summer with Klaus to Tyler’s time sired to him, not only was Stefan treated with more respect and consideration, he had a lot more agency. Stefan had the ability to refuse and he used it strategically and got away without punishment; Tyler did not. Tyler had to do it whether he refused or not–he had absolutely no control of his actions. Comparing those two experiences and then reducing them down to Caroline is actually a diservice to both characters and their traumatic experiences, but worse because you’ve taken the context completely out of it which makes sense if you’re trying to frame one character as an angel and the other as the devil incarnate.
Secondly, Tyler doesn’t even judge her, he gets understandably mad at her for violating his trust and tells her to get away from him. However he does eventually forgive her because they were on some pretty amicable terms when he died. He attended her baby shower for Gods sake so lets not act like that’s something he held over her head for the rest of his life, nor that she had nothing to be forgiven for because let’s get one thing clear, he didn’t care that she had sex with someone else. You didn’t see him get mad or jealous about Jessie. He got mad because after having Klaus take everything away from him and her witnessing it she slept with Klaus. He’s not judging her for having sex nor does he even bring up the word slut or whore or anything derogatory in his anger. But sure, he judged and slut shamed her 😒. It’s not like he has a right to his own feelings, that’s a courtesy only Caroline should be given because she has done no wrong, it was all Tyler’s fault.
Thirdly, not only was Stefan there when she was at her lowest, so was Tyler, she’s had many low moments and will continue to have many more as it’s a part of life and she has a long one ahead of her, and many different people are going to be there to comfort her, so that’s not really even a point in either corner since it’s not a unique factor. She has never actually been a character who has been alone. Her “only being a love interest” has never been a character flaw in her because she was never a character who only existed within her love interests. It’s actually the opposite, her love interests tend to be the props the ones that only exist within the context of her.
Take Tyler for example he is a character the writers only ever ared about within the context of her. If his storyline didn’t coincide with hers he was either gone from the show or tacked on to storyline that could have functioned without him. Me and @leianaberrie once discussed it in this post, that he wouldn’t have gotten a developed storyline if he wasn’t Caroline’s boyfriend and it’s true as evidenced by what his character is reduced to seasons 5-8. In a technical sense he has more to offer the plot as the sole werewolf than Caroline, a run of the mill vampire on a show filled with vampires, but she gets most of the focus and actually almost gets the same amount of focus as the main trio but yet has less to offer. And Matt, not more relevant than Caroline but it worth noting that the only time people were really all that invested in him was when he was dating Caroline because they wanted to see more of Caroline’s vulnerable side which was first showcased with him.
Anyway, my point is that Caroline has never really been alone, she’s always had someone there for her whether it be Stefan, Tyler, Matt, her mom, Bonnie, and even sometimes Elena, so saying he was there for her when Tyler wasn’t, well so were all these people who were there for her when Stefan wasn’t. Again comparing one to the other without context (although in this case neither have context) is proving to be a logical fallicy.
Lastly, take this out of the Tyler tag, no one there wants to see it. It would be better suited in the anti-tyler tag, you’ll find the responses a lot more positive there.
OH MY GOD!!! I was watching the Originals and when Tyler kidnaps Hayley she calls him a backstabbing piece of shit!!!!!!!
backstabbing piece of shit.
BACKSTABBING piece of shit !!!!
BACKSTABBING !!!!!
ARE YOU KIDDING ME, HAYLEY?
It still gets me everytime that sacrificial murder seemed easier to her than hiring a P.I. And it gets me even more how the fandom protects her and ignores the fact that she got 12 hybrids killed simply because she got pregnant, but even more so at the expense of Tyler. Do they not remember that she got his pack and mom killed? Because trust me that’s not something that a convoluted magic baby plot can just absolve. However it’s telling how much people can minimalize what he went through and how people need to minimalize it just to make her seem innocent.
But none of that’s new because they do the same thing to him with Caroline. You have no idea how many times I’ve read “he was horrible to Caroline”. How exactly? He was honest, loyal, and faithful to her right to the very end, her not so much.
Not even a mention of him. How sad, considering Tyler left with him at the end of S6. I guess they couldn’t come up with a good enough excuse as to why he couldn’t be there. Might as well forget all about him all together. It’s just lazy ass writing.
Yeah, Tyler came back for her funeral in s5, and she couldn’t go because of Enzo?? She grew up with Tyler and yet Enzo is more important? The writers, and JP, are idiots. They donn’t know who to navigate around their ships, and write their characters interacting outside their pairings. Everything comes back to a ship. Delena. Steroline. Bonenzo. Friendships be damned.
I’m so tired of all this. After all that Tyler has been through, just to die and not even get the grief that he deserved from people he risked his life for. I’m so sad.
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.)
Lol with TVD/Plecverse I always wanna be that meme where it’s like “just say you hate n*ggers and go” bc that is essentially what it conveys without saying as much and it makes me morbidly angry that one of my all time fave ships came from such racist filth.
Honestly, if you switched Michael and Zach’s roles, I really don’t think Tyler would have been sidelined like that. And the only reason Matt was sidelined is bc TVD sucks at portraying nuance; like the way they showed Matt being angry and railing against the supernatural and struggling with juggling his love for his friends with his obvious dislike of what they are falls flat bc the show is so bad at following through, staying consistent, and delivering consequences. Matt should have NEVER forgiven Damon for Vicki, his sister was turned, killed, and essentially buried in ditch and most ppl in his place would be fucking over the guilty party every chance they got. I certainly would if what happened to Vicki happened to my sister. Even if I had to work with said guilty party for whatever reason, I would’ve turned on them first chance I got and THAT is how Matt/Damon should have been done.
But if Zach played Tyler? How much werewolf mythos would we have gotten on TVD? Would Forwood (which was a pretty decent Caro-ship in and of itself) have been so disrespected to prop Kl*roline? And like from what I can tell, wolves on TO essentially have Native American history and seeing that explored/sympathized with from Tyler’s privileged perspective and how much he changed from a douche to a decent person would have been gorgeous. How much more would the witch story lines be explored if we had an actress who looked like book!Bonnie? Would we have had B*mon or Bonkai like…?
So much of why TVD ended up sucking is bc it never really did world-building right. And a lot of that happened bc you’re totally right, they tossed out the POC characters for the white characters and the white ships, and it made the show so bland. Storylines were limited bc all the focus was on vamps and then in later seasons when they tried to branch out with the monsters, it was obvious they weren’t trying. So not only was it not ethnically diverse, it wasn’t freaking plot diverse enough to stay interesting.
Yes to all of this. Tyler was screwed over in a big way. The one thing that Tyler haters hold over him, and “hate” him for is the one thing that I totally agree with. When Caro gave that ultimatum of “his revenge or us” and he chose to go after Klaus, I stood up an applauded. Why?
Cause how could you live your life knowing that it’s in someone else’s hands? Yeah, it was so nice of Klaus to lift his banishment from Mystic Falls and “let” Tyler stay in his hometown😒 Knowing that at any time that could change depending on Klaus’s mood. That’s no way to live a life. That’s not freedom.
And the fact that the writers (Plec) couldn’t/wouldn’t have the character of Tyler express that, OR have the people there understand it just shows that they really don’t know how to write from a marginalized persons POV. So of course it seems like he just took off randomly, or he was so “focused on his revenge”. They made it seem like it was only about Klaus liking Caro and nothing else. Klaus killed Tyler’s last living parent, out of spite. No getting around that (Even if they were broken up) Yeah she was free to do whatever she wanted, but come on. You can’t honestly expect me to believe that if the situation were reversed , people would side with Tyler? No , they wouldn’t.
And that’s not even getting into the indignity of having him be murdered, and no one does a damn thing about it. Just another casualty.
When Caro gave that ultimatum of “his revenge or us” and he chose to go after Klaus, I stood up an applauded.
I did as well and it always baffles me when people try to compare Klaus giving up on his “revenge” to Tyler not letting go. Neither of those experiences are even in the same league. Tyler was enslaved and forced to do things he didn’t want to. When he finally gets free he’s not content at leaving it at that but helps the other hybrids (slaves) break free. Klaus kills all of them and his mother FOR DOING THE RIGHT THING and then is still enslaved in the end. Klaus only lost his free slaves AKA property because that’s what they were to him. How someone compares one of those to the other is beyond 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.
POC of TVD 