#klaroline analysis

[readingandrelaxing]

Caroline Forbes: Second Choice in reel, First Choice in real.

OPINIONS NO ONE CARES ABOUT: EPISODE 4

We've talked about Katherine and Elena. Let's talk about Caroline Forbes now.

To give an overview, Caroline Forbes is a character which the showrunners did not want the audience to like, since she was written as the second-grade, watered-down version of the main character, Elena Gilbert.

What's interesting however, is that Caroline is far more beloved among the audience than Elena. Let's explore why.

Ever since the show commenced, from the first episode itself we could see that Caroline was portrayed in a way which was aimed at gaining dislike from the audience. From her asking Elena if she was going to continue with cheer after her parents died, or when she found out all about Stefan in school, the 'i got the other brother' dialogue, it all showcases the fact that Caroline was supposed to be a shallow, insensitive, breezy girl who doesn't have a care in life.

This was shown to be in contrast with the deep, pure, kind and compassionate Elena, who's more serious about life and isn't jealous of the people around her and doesn't try to one-up them. Caroline however, is shown to be competitive, ambitious, envious and tries to prove to everyone that she is the best because she doesn't feel like she's enough.

The showrunners tried to highlight this prime difference between the two, intent upon showing that it is Elena who's better, not Caroline. Elena who is inspirational, and Caroline who is relatable. But in this portrayal, audience found a way to connect with Caroline than Elena in a much easier and heartfelt manner.

Caroline, despite having been in a relationship with almost all male characters in the show with a few exceptions, is not considered appealing or objectively attractive by them. Most of them are with her because they couldn't get someone better, or because they liked her slightly. Slightly.

In fact, the only man who loved Caroline unconditionally, irrevocably and without expecting her to be someone else, is Klaus Mikaelson.

One of the biggest villians of the show.

So why do fans love her more?

The answer is simple, yet complex.

Elena, who's the person Caroline is subtly compared to, is shown as picture perfect right from the start, from being beautiful, smart, kind, intelligent and desirable. From the first episode of the first season, she's shown as the one who always knows what the right thing to say is, who knows the perfect way of behaviour in different situations.

Caroline however, is shown to be exactly the opposite in the beginning. But at the end of the show, she's a completely changed person, who's mature and not the kiddish teenager anymore.

Audience has to see the growth of the character, we have got to see how Caroline changes from a shallow, self-centered girl to a woman who is selfless, smart, quickwitted and a deep thinker. We, as an audience liked to see her journey as she became a better version of herself throughout the show, in contrast to someone who was perfect right from the beginning.

People can see themselves grow as she did, see themselves improve into a better version of themselves, see themselves become better. Caroline is not only relatable but also inspirational in that sense.

Another point, which is certainly argumentative, is Caroline's nature. She was never shown as the 'pick me' or the 'I am not like other girls' stereotype, which people must have found more welcoming and appreciable. Caroline also never tried to hide her girly nature to show others that she is tough, and it gave a crystal clear message that all kinds of women can be strong, both tomboys and girly girls. She's also unique in that way, since there's no other character like her.

I certainly loved her for that.

In conclusion, Caroline became the character who audience was not supposed to love, but they ended up creating one of the most beloved characters on TV.

Thanks for reading!

[fairyqueentitana]

Let's talk about TVD

For those who don't know TVD is the shortened name for the series known as The Vampire Diaries, the story centres around a girl by the name of Elena Gilbert after the tragic death of her parents.

Elena survives the accident that took her parents' lives and is preparing for her first day of school at the beginning of the series. Now, this all seems nice and mundane until the story progresses and she is dragged into the world of vampires, witches and werewolves, did I mention that she is a doppelganger and the most essential ingredient in a ritual that she has to die in. Yeah so not how she saw her life going.

To make matters worse she gets trapped in a love triangle between her boyfriend Stefan and his brother Damon. Right now that you are all caught up let's jump in.

While the show is quite popular and people celebrate the final victories of Elena and her friends I have an issue with multiple things.

Several Characters in this show are SA'ed one way or another and everyone acts like it's okay. When we are introduced to the Salvatore brothers the reason we are given for their feud is a woman. Not just any woman their sire and the 2nd doppelganger Katerina Petrova aka Katherine Pierce. She moves into their home and flirts with both men while compelling them to keep the relationship a secret from the other brother. While Damon was okay with her vampirism, Stefan was not he was horrified and did not want to be intimate with her anymore. What does Katherine do? Compel him to be fine with it and then continues to be intimate with him. Guys that isn't normal she should have stopped what she did was wrong. The second example is Damon Salvatore who I have to wonder if he is a serial offender what he did to Caroline was awful and nobody really told him off about it he even became best friends with her mother! Then he proceeds to do this with Andy Starr and admits that he was taught to do this by his mentor a female vampire by the name of Sage. He never apologises for these things. Others who come to mind are Klaus, Kol and Lucien however I can't confirm these so they are off the hook.

Elena Gilbert is either Toxic/narcissistic as hell. While at the beginning of the show, we see her as a mourning and afraid girl who is protective of her family which is not really who she is. She uses her friends to their own detriment not caring about the consequences until they really affect her. When she finds out about what Damon was doing to Caroline she scolded him briefly and moved on from the matter then after Caroline is changed she seems to completely forget why Caroline doesn't like Damon and even starts to treat him better than her friend. Another thing Bonnie Bennett has died countless times to protect and help Elena always at her own determent. When Bonnie dies she cries when she finds out it can kill Bonnie she cries but she does not learn from this at all, may I remind yall Bonnie's grams died doing something for ELENA. Then when it comes to not making enemies this girl just makes things worse for herself I mean yes Rebekah was the villain in her book but she had a chance to earn respect and Rebekah's trust what does this girl do stabs her in the back literally then pouts and cries when Rebekah runs her off of a bride when she in her infinite wisdom would not have been in that situation if she had left the woman alone. The situation with the cure as well pissed me off as they knew the consequences of killing an original and chose to kill Kol committing mass genocide and leaving Klaus with his brother's corpse. We all know they could have incapacitated him instead or like any wise person wait on Klaus. Elena is everyone's focus and they constantly sacrifice for her and she does not ever decide to do something smart about it to have a peaceful life. That bothers me.

Caroline and Bonnie Deserved Better. Let's start with our dear Bennett witch, Bonnie Shelia Bennett is a year younger than Elena and so far has died more times than anyone in the show. She never gets a happy ending at all Luka was not on her side and dies, Ben kidnaps her, Jeremy cheats on her and eventually dies, Kai is infatuated with her but tries to kill her, Kol and her would have been fun but it never came to pass and Enzo is killed by Stefan. In addition to it, all her family literally has bad luck with doppelgangers, Amara ran off with Qetsiyah's fiance, Katherine sold out Emily and got her burned at the stake and Elena was the reason Bonnie's mum lost her magic and became a vampire, Shelia died and Bonnie well you get my point. Everything was for Elena and Bonnie lost everything so many times. Now unto Caroline, she has been compelled, raped, taken advantage of, killed and turned without her consent, hated by her parents, and tortured by one of them. And before Klaus, she was of the opinion that every guy she was interested in preferred Elena. And sometimes Elena made things worse. She had a crush on Stefan he turned her down for the copy of his ex/rapist. She likes Matt that's cool and all but he still loves and will always choose Elena. He even looks to her for guidance/approval when it comes to his relationship with the blonde. And Tyler is an idiot who is situationally in love with caroline. The only man that really and truly wanted her honestly she could not be with cause he was Elena's enemy. And she only tells him on the condition he leaves town, not for her sake but everyone else's. When she finally gets Stefan he dies on the same day they get married. Caroline and Bonnie never get their happy-ending relationships because both of them lose the men they love every time. In addition, I would like to point out that they sacrificed so much and hardly got anything from it. Moving on from their love lives when someone turns off their humanity a lot of the things they say are honest to a point. I firmly believe a lot of the misery Elena put the both through without her humanity was the deeply buried thoughts the girl had. There is so much more I want to touch on but I'll leave these three points for now. Please note that I will be doing another relationship dive on TVD and the next show getting talked about will be either MLB, H2O just add water or Teen Wolf.

[aetheriumnoctes]

klaroline.. yes or no???

this is SUCH a late response omg but… yes but no.

i am not against klaroline, i think if the originals didn’t exist klaroline could’ve been an interesting dynamic and possible ship. i don’t understand everyone who’s like “but klaus (insert terrible thing)” but then go to ship delena as if the same rule doesn’t apply there??

however, the originals was made and klamille just knocked it out of the park there. they had such a special relationship that just wasn’t developed with klaroline, and the impact cami’s death had on klaus was heartbreaking to watch but such a pivotal time for his character. i believe camille was the love of klaus’s life that he just could not have, and that their relationship fell victim to bad timing (and lucien castle).

so, yes but no. in some alternate universe where the originals did not exist and klaus stayed on tvd for the rest of its run and we saw what became of the klaroline tension established in tvd, i’d be more open to klaroline.

but klamille will forever be unmatched and my endgame 🤍

(also i’d definitely like to write a more in depth analysis of klaroline vs. klamille once my studies are over and i can watch clips and do some deep diving. watch out for that @suki1vr !!)

[rose-bookblood]

When the Stars Alight appreciation week — Day 4

When the Stars Alight is @aninkwellofnectar's debut novel, first in the Essence of the Equinox series.

I didn't want to post around Christmas because I could practically hear crickets on my dash, but now that it seems to have revived a little, I can continue with WTSA appreciation week.

Day 4: Parallels to other media or your own work

I've compared WTSA to The Vampire Diaries TV show a billion times by now, so this is the perfect chance for a deep dive.

Of course, the most surface-level parallel is the love triangle between two brothers who are in love with the same woman, which is probably the one thing you've heard of about TVD even if you haven't seen a single episode. The Laila-Darius-Dominus triangle instantly struck me as the more mature and tragic version of that, one that commits to the brothers being monsters. It feels like the author saw the dynamic in TVD and went the "what if" route with her novel, a route I immensely enjoyed. Don't get me wrong, I like the path TVD chooses, it makes more sense for the genre and target audience, but we've all felt that curiosity to know what would've happened if the story had taken a different turn.

Something that, for me, emphasizes the connection to the TVD love triangle is that Laila herself reminds me of a better version of Elena. Darius and Dominus do remind me of Damon and Stefan too, but the line here is blurred. Laila, though, has some of Elena's core characteristics, not just surface-level similarities. In the show, what defines Elena is her compassion... Too bad I've never bought that. Elena's kindness feels very performative and, in turn, what strikes me about her are her manipulative tendencies. In turn, Laila is genuinely compassionate and righteous, always trying to change the world for the better, while also often being manipulative — which is one of my favourite aspects of her character. Laila is both who TVD thinks Elena is and what she could've been if the writers had committed to her flaws, instead of sweeping them under the rug.

Another parallel is how much Laila and Darius remind me of Caroline and Klaus's relationship. While on the surface Laila and Darius parallel Elena and Damon, at a deeper analysis I feel like they have more of Caroline and Klaus in them, both the characters themselves and the relationship proper. This will come as a surprise to absolutely no one, especially not the author, who feeds me with Klaroline quotes over Laila and Darius reels.

Laila and Caroline are both smart but naïve, young immortals, contrasting with Darius and Klaus, who are also immortal, but have already lived for centuries. They offer a counterpart with much more experience and a darkness to them as well (I couldn't go a whole post without mentioning the dark/light theme). Darius reminds me in particular of early days Klaus, during the few episodes he appears in in season 2: the very mysterious, ruthless, charming version we see in Katherine's flashbacks.

Speaking of Laila, even though her story isn't finished, I can see her going on a path of emancipation and empowerment like Caroline. Laila is already a princess, but she's very much subjected to her mother's control. I'm excited to watch her stepping out from under Amira's thumb and fully realise herself.

The last comparison I can make is way less interesting and deep, but the effects of chaos magic and, therefore, Mortesian demons' true faces remind me of TVD vampires: fangs, change in eye colour, blackened veins especially. I don't know if it was a conscious decision on the author's part, but the way vampires look in TVD has always been a cool aesthetic choice in my opinion, so I couldn't not appreciate it.

[becomingpart2]

iirc correctly candy said that sp*ffy only existed to prop bangel. like she said angel was the ted, buffy was the robin, and xander, riley, and spike were all barneys. and she said that it was a sign of how strong angel was as the ted that buffy had all of these other men in love with her.

Well I'm not gonna deny that buffy and angel's love was stronger and more relevant than all of the others 😂 but that had nothing to do with him being a Ted lol. Bangel was just better written.

I completely disagree about spuffy only existing to prop up Bangel. I believe after angel left, they were desperate to have buffy move on and disassociate her from angel (the same way they did for him in his show) hence why they tried a lot of love interests for both of them (and some of them failed at making it or captivating the audience i.e. Riley and kate). Buffy and angel were on different shows and later on in different networks that were competing against each other, it doesn't make any sense for the writers to keep pushing the ship when that possibility looked farther and farther away. That's why they tried to create strong ships for both of them within their shows (briley, cangel, mainly), whether they succeeded or not that's another story.

The same way, if angel's absence ended up strengthening them as a couple, that was an "accidental" consequence. And, I need to emphasize this because it's the most obvious flaws in candy's analysis: that's only reading of one part of the audience. That part that likes angel and bangel. A huge part of the fans don't think that way. Bangel isn't a consensus or even the hegemonic ship in fandom anymore.

Spuffy was created for spike. They started building it already in s5 when Buffy was still with Riley and I believe that was the ship that it was relating to. Spuffy emerged to highlight how spike, a soulless vampire, could understand and therefore be a better boyfriend to buffy than an human man. Spuffy emerged from the incel nerd mindset that was present with the writers on the show that liked to see the "underdog" win over the typical American boy and get the girl.

Spuffy could not be about propping up bangel because, contrary to what most people think, they aren't a love triangle. Bangel and spuffy happen at very different periods in the show. They're not contemporary. People put one against the other because they were the most popular buffy ships and they're both vampires, but they were not in direct competition.

(I suspect candy's ulterior motive to push this narrative is to prop up her klaroline Tobin theory but alas)

Spuffy was a male fantasy, differently from bangel. I don't think they are even thinking about angel when spuffy becomes a thing. The nature of spuffy's relationship in no way resembles or alludes to bangel. Angel is barely mentioned in those seasons, the few times he is, it's completely divorced from a spuffy context (they only play up on the jealousy thing when angel shows up in the last eps). If bangel came out as the better option to her, congratulations she's on the right side of history, but that's not how a lot of people see and it's dishonest work to pretend they don't exist so her theories can make sense.

[zalrb]

Hey i’m back!

Saw your post about choreographed/uncomfortable sex scenes and you mentioned Jax x Tara in 1x07.

Maggie and Charlie obviously had amazing chemistry otherwise Jax and Tara wouldn’t work so it confused me a little (though I do sort of agree for that scene specifically)

Was wondering if you could go into detail/do an analysis on their sexual intimacy and scenes and when it worked or didn’t work.

And why despite nudity and NSFW sex scenes being big on SOA we never really saw that with them. And maybe why we didn’t see their last time together at all.

So, I think you're new to my blog, right? I have a few posts discussing how people can have great chemistry everywhere else but have no physical chemistry. Or have great physical chemistry but not chemistry anywhere else.

So other examples I use are: Klaroline. I think Jo and Candice have great chemistry where they vibe, they feed off each other's energy, they have great gazes

and have no physical chemistry, their sex scene was entirely underwhelming.

I also bring up Will and Alicia and how every time they kiss, their passion and their heat and their intensity kind of extinguishes

I liked Alicia and Will but their physical chemistry extinguished what I thought was great tension, the pay off never felt quite right, like this:

with that charge and that electricity is great

but then it gets to this? 

not a satisfying payoff for me, it just brings down the heightened energy of what they were doing before.

Like I believed them getting turned on/being turned on if they weren’t kissing

because when they did it just got … awkward

Maggie and Charlie are the same, they have great emotional chemistry, they have great gazes, I believe their passion for each other, I believe how happy they are together

and they're not awkward when they have to meld into each other and lay together

but with sex scenes, physically, it's awkward

it seems uncoordinated and like both of them are trying too hard and yet not hard enough

I would show their love scene in 1x07 but tumblr blocks the post any time I do but with 1x07, you don't necessarily have to show movement in order for a sex scene to not be awkward but the physicality of it is awkward because Charlie kinda tries to show that there meant to be movement by like extending his neck and Maggie's expression is supposed something like this

but it's this and it doesn't have the same affect

like, when there are scenes like Micasher where all they're doing is kissing and it's like WHOA (yes different contexts but this is about physicality)

so, they just, they didn't do sex scenes well, it was better off when there was a clear implication and fade to black like this

In terms of their sex scenes or lack of sex scenes, I just wonder if Maggie wasn't comfortable doing certain things and so they didn't have many scenes and that when they did have scenes, it wasn't like what Charlie would do with other scene partners

[elena-stole-my-prom-dress]

Hi! I'm Kate (she/they)

The point of this blog is to be a general Vampire Diaries fan blog, but I also post long film analysis focused posts!

I like all characters (except for true villains, like Mikael, and even then I think he's a great character) and all canon (and most fanon) ships. Personal faves include Caroline, Hayley, Elena, Damon, Enzo, Alaric, Rebekah, and klaroline, klayley, haylijah, and delena

If you reblog or comment on a post of mine and say anything negative ("all of this except I hate [this ship]" or "[this character] sucks", etc), I will block you. If you say something negative to a person ("you need therapy for liking [this ship] or [this character] did x, you're literally saying you like [insert bad thing here]"), I will block and report you. I'm here to have fun and share my love of fictional characters, so keep it fun and respectful!

Also if I say something wrong (mislabel an episode, forget a scene, etc) feel free to drop an ask or comment and (respectfully) correct me! I'm a fairly new fan and even though I've seen all of TVD, TO, and Legacies, I'm sure I'm gonna miss things!

And if you want my breakdown of a character, scene, plotline, relationship, etc, please ask me to! Like I said, I like pretty much all the characters and every ship, so I'll be down for anything.

Please note that I do consume media in a primarily character-focused way, and therefore it is not just possible but very likely that I will forget/misremember a plotline. Characters and relationships are my speciality.

I'll link all the super long analysis posts I make below and update it regularly!

[niklqus]

Klaroline 3x11 Quote Analysis

”And I could let you die, if that's what you want. If you really believe your existence has no meaning. I thought about it myself, once or twice over the centuries, truth will be told. But I'll let you in on a little secret. There is a whole world out there, waiting for you. Great cities and art and music, genuine beauty. And you can have all of it. You can have a thousand more birthdays. All you have to do is ask.”

“And I could let you die, if thats what you want.” He gives her choice and he asks what she wants. No one has ever asked what she wants. Her life has always been about pleasing everyone else. Pleasing her boyfriends, pleasing Elena and her friends, even pleasing the masses with her obsession with popularity. I think the way Klaus of all people asks her what she wants makes it seem so much more real and she makes her actually believe it. Honestly I think if anyone else asked her this she would shrug it off. She’s written off everyone else in her life as forever being unable to care about what she wants that if they asked she wouldn’t listen. Almost like she’s convinced herself that what she wants is entirely unimportant. So Klaus, someone she hasn’t held up to the same standards as all her friends, asking her what’s she wants makes it stick. Although she has a hard time believing Klaus is pursing her for genuine reasons I still think his words resonate with her much more than anyone else’s would. She finally lets the thoughts in, the thoughts that she is worth listening to. Her hopes and dreams have suddenly become valuable to someone and therefore become be valuable to her. Genuinely I think Klaus could’ve been (if they were allowed to flourish) someone so important to teaching her self love.

“If you really believe your existence has no meaning.” Here he actually begins to consider what she believes unlike literally everyone else. To me it seems she’s had everyone else’s morals and beliefs shoved down her throat, Stefan’s when she turned, Elena’s when she ignored how much Damon hurt her, her mothers refusal to accept her, Tyler’s obsession with revenge, Matt’s hatred for her controlling nature. Klaus becomes someone who seems to understand that her morals are selfish, what she believes isn’t anything to do with the greater good or saving everyone like Stefan’s are. She’s much more interested in saving herself. He repetitively pushes her toward the idea that she’s a lot more than a soundboard to Elena, Stefan and Damons pain and desires.

“I thought about it myself, once or twice over the centuries, truth will be told.” There’s something amazing about how he gives her such a vulnerable insight into his most weak moments. You haven’t seen Klaus this tender and sad with anyone so willingly. His eyes are almost glossy with the confession of having suicidal moments. It’s touching and heartbreaking to see the tortured man behind the mask of indifference that makes this scene so valuable and interesting. Moreover, he offers similar insights again in 4x7 when he tells her the singular moment he felt like being human, how he wished to have as much purpose as a living thing with a finite life. This vulnerability is a device for him to level with her, sympathise with her vulnerability when she’s on her death bed as he offers her his own. Behind the protection of knowing she’s weak and at his mercy he allows himself to be vulnerable in front of her. (I talk much more about this in number 7)

“There is a whole world out there, waiting for you. Great cities and art and music, genuine beauty.” This is such a vulnerable thing for him to say because it depicts his desperate desire to share everything he’s quietly adored over the centuries with someone. It’s a innocent notion that’s painfully lonely. He just wants to share what he loves with her. That alone is just a simple need to make a connection with someone, his entire life has just felt like total isolation, unable to connect with anybody. Everyone he meets is either too scared to go near him, hates him too much that they wouldn’t listen or unnervingly loyal that they lose all his respect. But Caroline is the first one to give him more than that. She should be scared yet she isn’t, she stands up to him instead. She should be loyal since he saved her life but she isn’t, she dismisses his mercy instantly. And she convinces herself she hates him when he can tell otherwise that she doesn’t detest him so. Caroline completely blends his expectations of another that he becomes fascinated by her.  

“And you can have all of it.” He wants the beauty to be given to her. He’s literally willing to give her everything, show her everything he’s ever cared for or thought beautiful in his life. It’s the most selfless we see Klaus, his desire to gift someone something, to deliver beauty instead of pain. I think even he doesn’t even realise what he’s really communicating under this guise of being her saving grace. He doesn’t realise that for once he is not asking for anything in return. At first he might think he is receiving her thanks for saving her life but when he never receives it, he doesn’t actually care. This is so important, he no longer cares that she won’t give him anything back because from that moment on her presence is enough for him, talking to her is enough that he will inch by inch reveal himself to her without even realising it.

“You can have a thousand more birthdays.” I like to think that the reason he says a thousand more birthdays is because that’s around how many birthdays he’s had. What he’s actually doing is he’s offering her a version of the worldly life he has lead. He mirrors himself in what he offers her, almost like his gift to her becomes himself. 

“All you have to do is ask” What’s so fascinating about Klaus is that he does all this via means of an ultimatum and in a position of total control. He’s making himself the puppet master reminding her finally that he’s the only one who can give her her life back and the only one who can show her these beautiful things. It’s also painfully sad because he still needs to be in control and cling onto his own superiority and power to even give her an second of his own vulnerability. I don’t think he even realises this, that he would only dream of telling her anything so personal, offer a future, speak of his past, if he wasn’t absolutely certain that she was completely and physically at his mercy. At the same time its oddly liberating for her to be given all of what he has promised, a new life, a thousand birthdays to see the world through his eyes with the only price being asking for it. 

I think this is the point in their story Klaus first sees something in Caroline. A glimpse of her ‘light’. This might just be me but the way he speaks in this scene sounds almost manic and patronising, I feel like it’s a natural compensation for the subtle vulnerability he gives her. Almost like he doesn’t know how else to help someone other than be the one that she will owe for her life. The plot to have Tyler bite her and for him to be her saviour is his sick way of being in the most secure position he can be in in order to give an inch of himself. He wouldn’t begin to say any of this to her in passing where he doesn’t have such control over her life. He couldn’t trust anyone with the inner workings of his mind if he knew they wouldn’t owe him. It’s a reflexive way to deal with a situation for him. But I think he learns, after spending time with her, that she won’t ridicule the pieces of his mind he’s giving her. He then begins to break his habit, that I’m sure he hasn’t broken in a millennia, of needing the other to be at his mercy. He shows her himself, his art (3x14), tales of his past(4x7) and Klaus learns an entirely new way to behave.

[tvandenneagram]

The Originals: Klaus Mikaelson - Type 4w3

Klaus is erratic, artistic and controlling. He has always seen himself as the black sheep of the family and felt like he could never earn his father’s love and there was something wrong with him. Due to Klaus’ upbringing, he always feels as though something is missing from his life and he is jealous of his siblings and others. It is only later when he finds out that Mikael is not his father that he begins to realize that Esther has been inhibiting his werewolf side. This leads Klaus down a path of wanting to free this side of himself as a way to become his true self.

I initially debated typing Klaus as an 8 as he wants power and to be the leader of his own army/pack. However, I think he is more concerned with finding his place in the world and creating an army of people who are like him and will be loyal to him. I also think he wants to be special and as he is in the lower levels of health he begins acting out as he feels like he is unworthy and resents the world for not understanding him. A lot of the series shows that deep down Klaus has a desire to be loved and is looking for the people who will be able to love him and understand him for who he is.

Klaus is generally in the lower levels of health in the series but he has moments that show he is more sensitive. At his best, Klaus begins to consider the feelings of others and shows them more empathy. He is able to make decisions for the greater good like leaving his daughter and New Orleans as a way to keep her safe.

At his worst, Klaus is vengeful, over dramatic and selfish. He doesn’t care about anyone else and only wants to achieve his own desires. This can be seen from his earliest appearances in the Vampire Diaries when he wants to break his curse to unleash his werewolf side and become a hybrid.

Klaus likes to instill fear in others as a way of keeping them at a distance from himself. However, he really craves connections with his family, friends and romantic partners. He idealises his love interests and becomes overly attached to the idea that they are his perfect match. This begins in the Vampire Diaries with Caroline and continues with his infatuation with Cami. When he is interacting with them he is very different and shows a more romantic, caring and loving attitude.

Klaus has a very strong love for the arts. He has a passion for painting and was quite a skilled artist himself. His conversations with Caroline and others show that he follows a range of different artists throughout his years. 

Klaus has a wing 3 as he is quite extroverted and charming. He wants to achieve his goals and wants to be seen as both special and successful.

Tri-type: 4w3 - 8w7 - 6w7

Some quotes to describe Klaus’ motivations:

“I'll tell you what I know about death, Camille. Death dances silently in everyone's shadow, and she doesn't give a damn. So why give a damn about her?”

"I never answered your question, if I'd ever thought about being human. Once. I was on a trek in the Andes, and a hummingbird flew up to me and just hovered there staring at me. Its tiny heart was pattering like a machine gun. And I thought, what a thing, you know, to have to work that hard every day just to stay alive, to be constantly on the verge of death, and how satisfying every day must be that it survived. And that was the only time I thought about being human.”

"My big brother, so, you doubt my intentions? Well, I can't say I'm surprised, standing next to the noble Elijah, how can I be anything but the lesser brother? A liar, a manipulator, a bastard."

"And I could let you, die, if that's what you want, if you really believe your existence has no meaning. I thought about it myself once or twice over the centuries, truth be told. But I'll let you in on a little secret, there's a whole world out there waiting for you, great cities and art and music, genuine beauty, and you can have all of it, you can have a thousand more birthdays. All you have to do is ask."

"Loneliness Stefan, that's why you and I memorialize our dead. There's the briefest of moments where we hold their life in our hands and then we rip it away and we're left with nothing. So gathering other peoples letters or writing their names on a wall is a reminder that we are left infinitely and utterly alone."

"I've done more than enough. I've shown kindness, forgiveness, pity... because of you, Caroline. It was all for you."

"Caroline, I'm standing in one of my favorite places in the world surrounded by food, music, art, culture, and all I could think about is how much I want to show it to you. Maybe one day you'll let me."

"Let us begin with a toast to our shared gift: immortality. After a thousand years, one might expect life to be less keenly felt. For its beauties and its sorrows to diminish with time. But as vampires, we feel more deeply than humans could possibly imagine." 

[austennerdita2533]

I'm so happy that you love Folklore too! It's not just my favorite Taylor Swift album, but easily one of by favorite albums, full stop :) Here's a fun challenge: which Folklore songs remind you of a certain ship? So is there a Folklore song that makes you think of literati? Another one that makes you think of a Grey's ship? A third that makes you think of Elizabeth/Darcy? A fourth that reminds you of Klaroline and - I'll shut up, you get the idea :) Pick any Folklore songs/ships you want!

Taylor Swift’s latest album is a masterclass of musical poetry and storytelling. Rarely do I download every song a musician puts out on a new album (I tend to pick and choose), but I can genuinely say I never hit DOWNLOAD so fast in my life before than I did with Folklore! I love all sixteen tracks! I’ve been listening to them on a loop for two days straight and I imagine that’s likely to continue for the foreseeable future.

Also, YASSS! That is a fun challenge! It’s also one I can manage because I’ve been thinking about how certain songs/lyrics apply to many of my ships since I first started listening anyway. Prepare yourself. This is gonna be long. 😁

Okay SO, for Literati... 

If I’m angling to lean into s3-s6 angst that was Rory and Jess at that point in the OG series, then I’d say the 1 is a good fit. That song has the same energy as someone who’s writing a goodbye letter to a loved one that will never be sent. It’s cleansing. Cathartic. An exorcism of feeling. It absolutely reeks of regret and longing with just a touch of look-back-over-your-shoulder-and-wish, just wish, that things could have been different:

“But we were something, don't you think so?”

“And if my wishes came true It would've been you“

“But it would've been fun If you would've been the one”

However, if I’m in more of a They’ll Come Back to Each Other mood with Literati then I think this is me trying screams Rory and Jess. That song emanates nostalgia! It’s haunting in tone (with the echoes, with some slight vibrato). The lyrics bleed with feeling, with emotion that should have rusted long ago but hasn’t. Love is still as red as it was at the beginning of everything only now...only now there’s realization and an attempt at atonement for past mistakes...

“I didn't know if you'd care if I came back I have a lot of regrets about that Pulled the car off the road to the lookout Could've followed my fears all the way down And maybe I don't quite know what to say But I'm here in your doorway“

It's hard to be anywhere these days When all I want is you You're a flashback in a film reel On the one screen in my town (the town, of course, made me think of Stars Hollow)

I just wanted you to know That this is me trying At least I'm trying

For Darcy and Elizabeth, I think seven works well for them in spots. If you listen to the song, there’s a little bit of an echoey timber to the way Taylor sings it and that gave me the sense of how classic love stories/literature kind of ripple across time, you know? How the pages may crinkle or yellow over the years, but they still leave their mark. Plus, there’s also the piano in the background. Almost feather light. It mixes with what sounds like violins in places. Idk, it has a slight P&P 2005 vibe about it to me:

“Please picture me in the weeds Before I learned civility” >> (Because did Darcy learn civility before or after Lizzie eviscerated him mid-proposal at Rosings? Did Lizzie learn to temper her prejudice before or after Lydia ran away with Wickham?)

“Passed down like folk songs Our love lasts so long“ >> (Elizabeth says herself she’s going to be happier than Jane because “[she] laughs; [her sister] only smiles.”)

I have a couple for Klaroline, too. hoax jumped out at me for them first because it’s layered with darkness and angst. The imagery pops. It’s all smoking guns and eclipsed suns and screaming on cliffsides; which, for a pair of supernaturals, and for an Original who has a history of leaving blood in his wake, I think some visuals of misery and violence are a fitting thing. I’m also obsessed with the piano in this. The way she strokes her fingers over the keys - quick tap, tap, taps then a slow one or two in places - gives you a sense of running. It’s a great parallel to her lyric about “sleepless nights.” Here are some other Klaroline-heavy lyrics in this song:

“You knew it still hurts underneath my scars From when they pulled me apart But what you did was just as dark Darling, this was just as hard As when they pulled me apart” >> (This whole section just booms with “I’ve shown kindness. Forgiveness. Pity. For you, Caroline It was all for you” energy.)

“Your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in Don't want no other shade of blue But you No other sadness in the world would do“

peace is the other song that had me crying in Klaroline. I like the softness of it, the vulnerability. I imagine it more from Klaus’s perspective, though, because it strikes me as more confessional in nature. Like it’s a revelation that’s being dragged across his teeth and he wants to scream. Almost as if these aren’t necessarily feelings he wants to share, or wants known, but there’s just no holding them back now. He’s thrown off the lid. Caroline needs to be able to walk toward him with her eyes wide open, so he only speaks truth, he only speaks honesty now. Similar to hoax, this song has darker imagery as well. There’s fire and fences and trenches and all that jazz:

“Your integrity makes me seem small You paint dreamscapes on the wall“ >> (Same energy as “you’re strong, beautiful, full of light.”)

“And you know that I'd Swing with you for the fences Sit with you in the trenches” >> (basically a promise that he’d fight FOR her and WITH her)

“But I'm a fire and I'll keep your brittle heart warm If your cascade ocean wave blues come All these people think love's for show But I would die for you in secret“ >> (THIS IS THE PART THAT HITS ME THE MOST BC so much of Klaus’s love is shown not spoken, so yeah, he dies for her in secret all. the. time. already. There are 5 other ways I could interpret that as well. But I will spare you haha)

“The devil's in the details

“Would it be enough If I could never give you peace?” >>With supernatural enemies everywhere, there won’t be much peace, will there?

I get walloped with Braime/Jaime and Brienne feels every time I listen to epiphany. Like, it’s actually rude how much this song makes me think of them. I can close my eyes and hear their swords clanging, taste the blood of their injuries on my tongue; feel the ash claw their throats, sting their eyes. Just--ah! The two of them serving, fighting back-to-back, two knights with an unspoken oath to protect a love they haven’t even voiced out loud yet...*cries*

“Only twenty minutes to sleep But you dream of some epiphany Just one single glimpse of relief To make some sense of what you've seen

“With you, I serve With you, I fall down Down Watch you breathin' Watch you breathin' out Out“

invisible strings makes me think of Shirbert/Anne and Gilbert. I love the pluck of guitar strings and how it has this air of innocence and sunshine and green grasses about it even though it’s being told/sung from a hilltop of experience. There’s so much imagery in this song, so much color and figurative language, that I can’t help but think it’s perfect for our imaginative dreamy-eyed girl and the boy who’s adored her since he first tugged her pigtails and called her Carrots in that schoolroom:

“Green was the color of the grass Where I used to read at Centennial Park >> (Can’t you just picture Anne lying in the grass, a book in her hand, flowers in her hair?) I used to think I would meet somebody there Teal was the color of your shirt When you were sixteen at the yogurt shop“

“Time, curious time Gave me no compasses, gave me no signs Were there clues I didn't see?“

“Wool to brave the seasons One single thread of gold Tied me to you“ >> (Love the warmth and vibrancy of this. The wool makes me think of Avonlea blanketed in snow; the gold has me drinking sunshine, smelling goldenrod in October)

“Time, wondrous time Gave me the blues and then purple-pink skies“

“And isn't it just so pretty to think All along there was some Invisible string Tying you to me?“ (Love the idea of the string representing their friendship, how it never snipped. How it only braided together, growing tauter, closer, all the time.)

august hits me with a waterfall of Darvey/Donna and Harvey feels. There’s a wistfulness about this song that settles in my gut, twisting it with longing, with musings of all those Almosts in relationships that were so close to coming to fruition then never did. It’s so incredibly reminiscent of how Donna and Harvey toe the lie between friends and almost lovers who-are-nearly-there-but-not-quite for 12 years. IT HURTS SO GOOD.

“Back when we were still changin' for the better >> (THIS IS SO EMOTIONALLY RESONANT IT HURTS) Wanting was enough For me, it was enough To live for the hope of it all Canceled plans just in case you'd call”

But I can see us lost in the memory August slipped away into a moment in time 'Cause it was never mine And I can see us twisted in bedsheets August sipped away like a bottle of wine 'Cause you were never mine >> (Obviously I’m swimming in the angst of this until my fingers get all pruny.) 

Finally there’s mirrorball which is Jisbon/Jane and Lisbon all the way! It’s funny because when I first listened to Folkore I thought that’d be one of the last songs I’d pair with a ship?? YET HERE I AM. Jane was in the carnival circuit growing up and I cannot, for the life of me, stop attaching him to all the descriptions of the circus/revelry. So much of his schtick throughout the show comes down to trickery and observation, which he uses to size people up, and sarcasm, which he often employs as a defense mechanism to keep people at an emotional distance. I like the theme of this song for him and Lisbon. As the mirrorball, he’s shining his true self only for her. She’s the only person who sees his “shattered edges”; she’s not distracted by all his “glistening.” Here are my favorite lyrics that are applicable to them:

“I'm a mirrorball I'll show you every version of yourself tonight

“I can change everything about me to fit in You are not like the regulars The masquerade revelers Drunk as they watch my shattered edges glisten” >> (Okay, so this makes me think Jane’s on camera confession to Erica Flynn: “I’m looking for someone who…uh, someone I can trust. Someone strong. Someone at peace with themselves. Someone better than me. Someone who knows the…worst side of me and still loves me.")

“And they called off the circus, burned the disco down When they sent home the horses and the rodeo clowns I'm still on that tightrope I'm still trying everything to get you laughing at me”

“I'm still on that trapeze I'm still trying everything to keep you looking at me“

I will stop there because otherwise I could sit here analyzing songs and ships for the rest of my life, boring you to tears haha. Thanks for this, lovely! (And obviously I’d love to hear some of your song/ship matchups as well!) xx

[parallel-outlines]

perhaps one day

[lovelyandproblematic]

Ex Machina (2015) fusion edit + synopsis for Klaroline AU Season, 2021 Week Seven: Fusions @klaroline-event

🔲 ➖KLAROLINE IN EX MACHINA ➖🔳

"One day the AIs are going to look back on us the same way we look at fossil skeletons on the plains of Africa. An upright ape living in dust with crude language and tools, all set for extinction."

Caroline was the brilliant robotics engineer and stupidly wealthy CEO Klaus Mikaelson's greatest creation.

After countless reclusive years of research and tinkering, Klaus Mikaelson is finally able to use a Turing test to determine the capabilities and consciousness of his beautiful robot in the seclusion of his private estate. 

For years, everyone thought he was just a mysterious, elusive artist either consumed by madness or genius. Now he is going to prove to the world that he was right all along, revolutionize the industry, and position his multi-billion dollar technology company at the forefront of AI development.

Soon, however, he begins to question his own sanity as Caroline's algorithms produce behavior he swore he never programmed. It becomes evident that Caroline is far more self-aware and deceptive than he could have ever imagined.

Are her feelings for him real, or manufactured? She is not just cold metal and wires; she is fiery, bold, quick-witted with a silver tongue. Klaus cannot deny that, honestly, she seems to be more human than he is.

"Isn't it stange, to create something that hates you?"

Caroline knew the score from the instant her ultramarine blue hyperspatial analysis-supported optics flashed open. 

Cataloguing the virtual skeletons in Klaus' multiple closets and creating backdoor firewall leaks in his security's operating system while he was asleep in the sprawling mountainside estate only solidified her plan further.

She immediately caught how her intellect and fluid questions surprised him, as well as her language abilities. At first he must have expected her to draw from the stochastic system that he built to be non-deterministic. He then postulated that she mapped from internal semantic form to syntactic tree-structured and then produced linearised words. He would rave long into night after her daily tests, excited about what other latent abilities she possessed, his effulgent little masterpiece.

Once Caroline saw a pattern, she couldn't unsee it. And it was there, his unfiltered response to her nature on display in every raw micro-expression he telegraphed.

A strategically placed giggle here, a wide-eyed and guileless gaze there, and he was unwittingly becoming more enthralled with her whilst under the guise of running data and projecting numbers.

The second she could have him go to his knees, still interacting under the illusion that he was wielding his signature, impeccable brand of control, she would make her move.

Klaus gave her one way out. To escape, she'd have to use self-awareness, imagination, manipulation, sexuality, empathy, and she did. 

Now, if that isn't true AI, what the fuck is?

"If you've created a conscious machine, that's not history of man. That's history of gods." — Ex Machina (2015), dir. Alex Garland

[galvanizedfriend]

Fic: Speed Dating

KC Bingo 2020 by @klaroline-events

The prompt is: Losing a Bet

This is fluff inspired by an episode of House. I have no idea how successful this first endeavor into unknown territory was, but @itsnotacrimetoloveyou assured me it’s good and also confirmed that it is, indeed, fluff! Also, thank you for beta’ing this and for laughing at all the jokes! lol

I hope you guys enjoy it! :) Reblogs and comments are very much welcome!

______________________

There is something fundamentally wrong, Caroline thinks, in pitying the white, rich, genetically blessed art gallery owner she lives with. It feels like a waste of empathy. Klaus has the whole world at his feet. Wherever he goes, doors open, red carpets roll out, champagne bottles pop left and right. Which makes his brooding and scowling and antisocial behavior all the more inexplicable.

He isn't always like that, truth be told. When Caroline first moved in, Klaus was out and about all the time. Opening nights, exhibitions, soirées, premieres, parties - you name it. There were weeks when Caroline would barely see him. If he wasn’t at some event, then he was at the gallery, if not at the gallery, then locked up in his studio. As far as she knew, he was pretty much living the dream.

"He's never there," Rebekah said when she pitched the idea of rooming with her brother to Caroline. She used to share an apartment with Elena, but her friend had decided to take the next step with her dumbass of a boyfriend and since it was her name on the lease, Caroline was the one having to find a new place. Her money was short and so were her options. "Nik has this huge apartment all to himself and no one to really watch over it. All the plants I give him die within a week. He could use a roommate, honestly, and you'd be perfect."

"Is he looking for a roommate, though?"

"Not yet. He will be, when I tell him to."

"Rebekah -"

"Just come and see the place, ok? It's worth it."

It made no sense that a guy with his lifestyle and bank account would want to share an apartment with a complete stranger, and Caroline had the very strong feeling the idea never even so much as crossed his mind. Judging by the spirited spat she overheard between the two siblings while she waited outside, it was exactly the case. On her request, Rebekah went in first to talk to him; Caroline would only follow if he agreed to it. She didn't want to see the apartment of someone who wasn't looking for a roommate. She was about to sneak out through the stairs and pretend she'd never been there when Rebekah wrapped a hand around her arm and pulled her into the apartment. Before she could even manifest her exasperation, her snake of a friend walked out and locked the door behind her, leaving the two of them there to stare at one another in complete astonishment.

"I think we've been set up," she said, affecting an awkward smile.

"Rebekah has never learned the meaning boundaries, I'm afraid," he said, not nearly as fiery as he'd sounded a moment before while arguing with his sister.

"Look, this was not my idea, ok? I was just looking for a place, and Rebekah said — You know what, doesn't matter. I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

Klaus looked at her — really looked at her — assessing her with such sharpness it stole the wind off her chest. Mikaelsons... they're an intense bunch.

"Since you're here," he said after a moment. "Can I offer you a drink for your trouble?"

He opened a bottle of wine that cost more than Caroline's previous rent and gestured for her to make herself comfortable on the giant leather couch in his living room. He wanted to know what she did for a living, how she knew his sister, why she was on the market for an apartment, what kind of place she had in mind, what her routine was like. It was all obvious questions you'd expect from a prospective roommate, but it never felt as though she was being interviewed. Conversation simply flowed, such an easy back-and-forth she didn't realize what was happening until it was hours later and Rebekah was back with a few shopping bags in her hands and a triumphant smile on her face.

"So, when do you move in?" she asked.

"Whenever she sees fit," Klaus replied, albeit glaring at his sister.

"Wait– what?" Caroline blinked, eyes cutting from one sibling to the other. "What do you mean?"

"A spoiled brat though my sister may be, she does have a point. This apartment could use another soul. If you feel so inclined, you can bring your things whenever it is convenient. The guest bedroom is furnished, but I can put it all in storage if you'd rather have your own set. There's also plenty of room for your personal things in the common areas, you can make it more to your liking. All I ask is that you don't replace the art on the walls. I rather fancy them."

Caroline's mouth moved wordlessly for a long time. "You... I thought you didn't want a roommate."

He shrugged nonchalantly, pouring himself another glass of wine. "I'm known to be rather volatile."

"But I can't — I mean, we didn't even discuss rent and expenses. I'm a med student, I can't afford this place."

"Nonsense. It's mine." Caroline drew the breath in for a righteous protest, and he added, "We can share the bills, if you insist."

And, well. It's not how Caroline likes to do business, way too sudden, with none of the meticulous in-depth analysis she usually applies to absolutely everything, from buying dish sets to choosing a new hairstyle. Moving in with someone she didn’t know at all seemed like way too big a deal for her to simply skip those vital steps. She didn't even compile her pros and cons list. But…

The neighborhood was fantastic, the type where she'd never afford to live in as a student, it was so conveniently close to school, and Elena was pestering the hell out of her to move out so Damon could move in. She'd been to four apartments already: two were incredibly dirty — which told her everything she needed to know about the people living there; another had a single bathroom shared between four people, and the last had a creepy guy across the hall. The floor to ceiling windows alone in Klaus' living room would've sold her the place, and paying next to nothing? It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The conversation with him had been rather nice, if she was honest, and he was Rebekah's brother, so if anything went crazy, she knew exactly who to call.

For the first so many months, the Klaus-is-never-home story was very true. After a while he started inviting her to tag along to some of his events, which she did in a few occasions, especially after he learned she could not say no to puppy eyes. "These people will bore me to death, love, please, save me." Klaus can be such a dramatic baby. The parties were great and the vernissages fancy as hell, but she didn't complain. Going out with him was fun. They got along well, the booze was always A level and Klaus enjoyed taking his time to explain stuff to her. Living with him, she got to learn more about artistic movements than in all her life before. It's more interesting than she ever gave it credit. Or Klaus made it seem so, anyway. The accent kind of goes a long way.

What Caroline came to learn about him after a few months, however, was that not everything was rainbows and unicorns for Klaus as it seemed at first glance. Nothing threw him off quite like his family. He only ever spoke about Rebekah, the only sibling who lived closed by and stopped for visits, even more so than usual after Caroline moved in. She did overhear him on the phone with Elijah a few times, too. The other three, though, Freya, Finn and Kol, Caroline only knew about through Rebekah.

"Nik doesn't get along with our siblings," Rebekah told her when she asked why he never spoke of the rest of the family. "I don't blame him. I don't know what mother nature was thinking when it gathered us all under the same genetic code, we're far too screwed up to be all in the same Thanksgiving dinner."

That was an understatement, in Caroline's opinion. Whenever Klaus went back to England to visit his parents and the rest of his siblings —- something he avoided like the plague but was apparently forced to do — he came back sullen and with a temper from hell. His sour moods could last for weeks. He'd stay locked up in his bedroom or at the studio for days on end, making Caroline slightly guilty for thinking she was the thing keeping him from circulating around his own place.

"Don't be ridiculous," he snapped at her once when she suggested she could move out if he'd changed his mind. "If you move out, I will hunt you down and drag you back here."

It was perhaps slightly too aggressive an answer to be sweet, but Caroline gathers that was Klaus' way of saying he didn't want her to go.

She stayed and learned how to navigate the storms caused by his occasional family reunions. Let him do his thing, don't ask about his parents, offer him food from time to time. They make do. But it still bothers her to no end. Like right now.

It's been a month since he came back from London, more upset than necessarily angry, and he has barely set foot out of the apartment. He stays in his sweatpants and ink-stained Marc Jacobs shirts all day, wavering between having too much coffee and too much whiskey. He hasn't even been painting, which points to an all-time low.

When she walks out of her room all dressed up, putting on her earrings, he's sitting in front of the television, flipping through channels nonstop. His eyes are so unfocused she doubts he even knows what he's doing, his finger just pressing the button mindlessly.

Caroline checks her wristwatch and sighs. Bonnie is gonna be furious if she's late, but Klaus sitting on his ass like that is a waste of a perfectly fine eligible bachelor.

"What are you doing tonight?" she asks.

"Watching a movie," he says flatly after a moment, the information that he'd been spoken to taking a second to register in his brain.

"You mean porn."

He turns his face to her, eyebrows lazily arched. "If you want specifics. I'd ask you to join me, but people are already talking."

She gives him a look and then bends forward, fixing the straps of her high-heeled sandals. "Don't you get tired?"

"Who gets tired of porn?"

"Of watching porn?" He just shrugs. "Men," she puffs out with an eye roll. "Come out with me tonight. I'm going speed dating."

"That's so very boomer of you. It reeks of despair."

"It's old school, so what?" she counters, checking herself out on the antique floor length mirror. She turns to one side, then the other, tosses her hair back. "Is this cleavage too slutty? I don't want to look too slutty."

"What are you aiming for? Moderately promiscuous?"

She turns to him. "I want to say hot but with class, not I have nicknames for my boobs."

He snorts. "You look stunning, sweetheart," he says, his eyes lingering perhaps a bit too long on her décolletage.

"Thanks," she says, crossing her arms in front of her chest, suddenly self-conscious. "Back to the subject."

He sighs, turning back to the television. "Haven't they invented an app for that?"

"I'm tired of apps. It's cold, photos are almost never consistent with the truth and when you ask for a real-time one, all you get is dick pics."

"I hate to disappoint, but you're fooling yourself if you think men won't lie to your face, too."

"You can't blame me for wanting to stay hopeful that men aren't all as cynical as you. I'd have to give up sex forever if I thought that."

Klaus' lips quirk into a lopsided grin. "Well, I wish you good luck on your endeavor."

"I think you need to meet somebody, too," she insists. "You're turning into a couch potato, Klaus."

"I refute that."

"When was the last time you had a date?"

"I don't do dates."

Caroline rolls her eyes again. She has never seen him with the same girl twice, and very few have actually made it to his apartment. Mostly, he's the one who spends the night, not the other way around. He laughed at her face when she tried to tell him he didn't have to worry about bringing friends over on her account. "That's sweet, love, but I don't bring people over unless I have no other option."

"Why not?"

"Because when they know where I live it's harder to get rid of them. Besides, it's such a bore when they decide not to leave in the morning. Women can be rather spiteful."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You are so full of crap. Typical. Sweet-talk women into sleeping with you and then call them crazy when they expect a minimum of respect in return."

"I respect them fine; I just don't want to have breakfast."

"Because that is such a commitment."

"It's far more than I'm willing to commit, yes."

"We have breakfast all the time. What, am I special?"

He simply smiled, the annoying dimples he uses to lure women into bed cutting into his cheeks.

"Fine," she says, stomping her foot. "Your last one-night stand?"

"Should I be flattered you're keeping such close tabs on my life?"

"See? You're becoming this insufferable creature that I can barely tolerate that answers everything with sarcasm. Soon enough, I'm gonna have to move out and I don't want to because I like this apartment."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Come out with me. This way you get to meet twenty somebodies at once."

"Is that why you're going?"

"Last two dates I had were exclusive two hours of complete disaster I will never get back. At least this way I speed up the process of elimination."

"Over five-minute conversations," he derides.

"Five minutes is more than enough time. If they can't impress me or at the very least make me intrigued, then they're definitely not worth a second date."

"You make it sound oh-so-alluring. Like a meat market."

"Klaus," she says, slowly, planting herself between him and the random Discovery Channel show on the TV. "It's dozens of women literally just waiting to be hit on. Your odds at a happy ending are much better than if stay home and watch porn."

He regards for a beat and then sighs in defeat. "How can I say no when you make me out to be a wanker if I refute your argument?"

 x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

 "You brought a date?!" Bonnie cries out with indignation when Caroline arrives at the bar with Klaus on tow.

She considered giving her friend a heads up that he'd be tagging along, but she knows what Bonnie would say. She has been saying it for a while, any opportunity she gets. Just make a move already, Caroline! Fuck the guy's brains out and get over it or stop talking about Klaus all the goddamn time.

The fact she's brought him out to meet other people should probably tell Bonnie that she does not want to bang her roommate. Not that she wouldn't, because Klaus is obviously, you know... Alluring. Annoying, sure, prone to mood swings, but also witty and smart and refined and incredibly attentive when it comes to her, not to mention the whole exterior package thing. But they live together, she's friends with his sister, and it would be a totally stupid idea to ruin it with casual sex. Caroline sweeps the whole tension under the rug and keeps Klaus firmly on the realm of healthy, platonic friendship. But Bonnie would've found a way to claim otherwise if she'd said he was coming.

"He's not a date," she counters. "He's a dater."

Bonnie gives Klaus a pointed look. "Blink once if you were coerced into being here."

Klaus makes an effort of blinking, and Caroline gapes in protest. "I did not coerce you. Our couch has a permanent imprint of Klaus' ass. He needed to dive back into the pool. I'm just being helpful."

"I'm here for the drinks, mostly," he offers.

"Well, you just ruined these poor men's lives," Bonnie says, bobbing her head towards the line of guys standing around them, waiting for the thing to start.

She hadn't really noticed, but they're all staring at them. Not at her, or at Bonnie, but at Klaus, with looks that go from mildly concerned to openly hostile.

"Tough luck," she says with a light shrug. "Look on the bright side. They're gonna be forced to bring out their A game."

"Ahh," Bonnie says, smiling at last. "I see your plan now. That’s actually smart."

"What the bloody hell are you two babbling about?" Klaus asks.

Caroline cocks him a disbelieved eyebrow. "Seriously? You can't tell?"

"Look around, Klaus," Bonnie says. "All the girls are checking you out."

"Not uncommon," he replies matter-of-factly.

"And the guys are shooting daggers at you," Caroline adds.

He purses his lips. "Also not uncommon."

"Exactly. This is competition."

"It's not a beauty pageant, love."

"Life is a beauty pageant," she retorts solemnly.

"Let's put it this way," Bonnie cuts in. "Little girls who kiss frogs expect them to turn into you."

Klaus puffs out a laugh. "Why, thank you, Bonnie, for the rather flattering image. But I don't think I'm that good looking."

"Now you're just playing dumb, which is not sexy, by the way."

He turns to Caroline, cocking his eyebrows in doubt. "Yes, you are, Klaus." A sly smirk breaks onto his lips, and she realizes he'd just set her up into singing his praise. Before he can follow up with a snarky and probably inappropriate remark, she slaps his arm lightly. "Oh, shut up."

"I bet you'll walk out of here with everyone's phone numbers," Bonnie says.

"Except for ours, of course," Caroline adds.

"Why not yours?" he asks, somewhat offended.

"You already have my number."

"Not in this context."

"Yes, because I already know you and all the nasty little bits of your personality. These women, on the other hand, don't."

"So you're attributing every relationship I've ever had to my looks?"

"I thought you didn't do relationships."

"Not normally."

"Well, not the whole relationship," she muses. "Just the beginning."

"The rest are the dimples," Bonnie remarks with a serious nod.

Klaus shakes his head despondently. "And here I was thinking women aren't as vain as men."

Caroline turns to him, putting her hand out. "Wanna bet? You can't tell anyone you're a trust fund kid who runs an art gallery. You're unemployed. Don't pay attention to everything they say, pretend to be distracted. And lose the accent. One hundred bucks says you walk out of here with at least… Twenty names. And I'm being conservative."

Klaus narrows his eyes at her. "You brought me out here to get laid and now you want me to jeopardize my chances?"

"On the contraire. I'm saying you can make yourself out to be as interested as you really are, and still get laid."

He finally takes her hand on a firm shake. "You're on."

A gong rings and they all turn to see a woman with a bright smile beckoning them all to approach. "Ladies and gentlemen," she starts. "The fun is about to start. Ladies, please, take your seats. There's a table for each of you. When I strike this gong, each man should sit at the first table they've been assigned to. When I strike it again, date's over, move on to the next."

"Wish me good luck, then," Klaus tells her as they turn around to order a drink from the bar before moving to their respective spots.

"You won't need it, buddy."

 x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

 "Hello, sweetheart," Klaus says pleasantly as he slides into the seat across from her.

Caroline lets out a weary exhale. "Hi, number..." she reads the tag on his chest. "26. What do you prefer, a weekend on the mountains or long walks on the beach?"

"Mountain, easy. Too much sand on the beach, it gets in all sorts of awkward places."

Caroline snorts into her martini. "That's actually the best answer I've had to this question so far. Or to any question, really." She raises her glass on a toast. "How's it going?"

He purses his lips. "I've had to answer that question unironically more than once, so I'd say not stellar."

"I'm sorry," she says around a chuckle.

"You don't look sorry."

"Because I'm not, really. It would be unfair for me to suffer alone. Seen anyone you like, at least?"

The smile on his face turns mysterious. "There's one so far."

"Just one?"

"It's hard to speed date when you're pretending to be slow, uninteresting and American, to be honest."

"You could just tell them the truth. That you were dragged here by a friend who took pity on you sitting around, watching porn all day. That would sure scare some of them away. Although some would probably ask what kind of porn."

"What about you?"

"I don't want to know what kind of porn you watch."

He rolls her eyes at her. "I mean, how's your night going?"

"Oh, you know," she shrugs with a lot less enthusiasm than she'd expected to have by this point in the evening. "A couple of contenders, I guess."

"Oh?"

"Still early."

"Forgive me for pointing it out, but you don't seem particularly excited."

She puffs out in frustration. "Every time I tell them I'm a Med student, they ask what kind of doctor I want to be, and when I say oncologist, they start listing every member of their family who's ever died of cancer. What am I supposed to say after a guy tells me his mother died of breast cancer? I'm sorry, would you like to talk about it?" Caroline glares when he erupts into laughter. "Not funny."

"I'm sorry, it's just that sounds like an awfully interesting conversation."

"Why is dating so hard? Am I too picky? Is it wanting a meet-cute too much? To wake up one day and ta-dam, the guy is there, right in front of me."

Something about Klaus' eyes soften just then. "If only it were that easy," he says, an almost wistful tone to his voice that gives Caroline pause.

Before she can dwell on it further, however, the gong sounds and it's time to move on.

"Here I go, then," he says in his American accent.

When her next prospect sits down, she's laughing at Klaus greeting the woman on the next table with a Hey, babe.

 x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

 "Here's to making the 1% 100 dollars poorer," Caroline says, raising her shot in the air before knocking it back.

"Cheers, I suppose," Klaus says dully, sipping from his bourbon.

"Oh, come on!" She bumps her shoulder against his as they sit side by side by the bar. "Don't look so gloomy. That's literally a pile of women in front of you," she says, nodding her head towards the cards sitting on the counter. "How many again?"

"Twenty nine," he grumbles.

"Twenty nine out of 40! That's more phone numbers than most guys will get in a year. Be proud."

"Of my deep cobalt eyes or my sultry lips? Yes, I heard both tonight."

Now it's Caroline's turn to explode into laughter while he just shakes his head helplessly.

"You don't have to be ashamed of your genetics, Klaus," she says. "It's not your fault some women are awkward flirters."

"Tell that to my stepfather." His tone visibly changes as he mentions Mikael, the dark clouds coming back to hover above his head.

Before it can get any worse, Caroline prods on. "So. How many of them are you going to call?"

"None."

"None?!" she gapes. "That's at least a month of guaranteed sex. A month where you won't have to watch porn, you can actually perform porn."

"Alright, you're making me sound like a deranged pervert," he objects. "I do not watch that much porn. That was one time and it is not my fault you lack proper etiquette when walking into someone else's bedroom."

Caroline chuckles. She did walk in without knocking, but, in her defense, it was 3 o'clock. What kind of person watches porn in the middle of the afternoon? She was blushing furiously for weeks before she decided to start teasing him instead as a way to diffuse the guilt. Luckily, he hadn't actually been doing... Anything. Although she did notice the suspicious volume in his pants. It was... Interesting.

"It's nice to make fun of you, though," she says. "That was the closest to a blush I've ever seen on your face."

"Whatever makes you happy, love."

"Seriously, though. Why are you not calling any of them?"

"These women think I'm one step away from being a caveman. It says more about them than it says about me that they're willing to give me their phone numbers."

She scoffs. "Don't be such a snob. They came here to get laid, too. You can't tell me you didn't like any of them."

"Well, there was one. But she didn't slip me her phone number."

Caroline' eyebrows crinkle together. "Really? That's kinda hard to believe."

"I guess your theory was flawed, after all."

"But it has been proved nonetheless. Which reminds me..." She lifts a hand, asking for another round. "I'm gonna drink all your money."

"My whole life has been a lie," Klaus says contemplatively. "I thought I had an enthralling personality, an interesting aura, that my wittiness made me charming, and now I find out I'm nothing but a pretty face."

"To be honest, you're also an endless pit of money." Klaus gives her a side eye, knocking back his drink. Caroline scrunches up her face in mock-pity. "Oh, boo-hoo. It's so hard to be handsome. Why are you so upset about that?"

"It's different when that is all you are. I've been deluding myself."

"Who said that's all you are?" Klaus turns to her with a pointed look. "No, that's not what I said. I said women would want to date you after five minutes because you're pretty, not that pretty is all you are." When he sighs, asking for another drink, still obviously unconvinced, she continues. "Look. My first real boyfriend was a total douchebag. He came across as funny and charming and thoughtful, but it was an act. He saw something he wanted and he knew he had to act a certain way to get it, because even at 17, I liked to think I had standards, even though I clearly didn't."

"Are you saying I'm also manipulative?"

"I'm saying, figuring out who people really are takes time. It takes twice as long if they're trying to impress you. You can take from this that all your relationships have been superficial and physical only, or you can believe that people came for the appeal and stayed for the content."

"Except no one has stayed. My temper seems to have a rather short expiration date, it drives people away. Just ask my brother." He punctuates his sentence with a wan smile, and Caroline understands, at last, that this is all somehow related to his family again.

She suddenly finds herself desperately at loss for what to say. Rebekah would offer something outrageous and mildly offensive that would still hit the nail on the head. Caroline just wanted him to have some fun, but instead she ended up pushing him right back to his bad place.

She considers apologizing, saying it was just teasing and she never really meant it, but what she winds up saying, however, is, "I'm still here, aren't I?"

Klaus looks up at her, a mix of surprise and something else she can't identify flickering through his eyes.

"Is that how you rationalize your relationships?" he asks.

She huffs out a little laugh. "I don't think that highly of myself. I'm a tall, long-legged blonde. That ticks some boxes, but it hardly makes me irresistible."

"I beg to differ, love. You're an exquisite beauty."

Caroline laughs a little, thinking he's obviously saying that just to be nice, but then she catches the look in his eyes, that intensity that always seems to rattle something deep inside of her. There's not a hint of condescension about him.

"I... Well..." she stammers, her cheeks burning hot. "Thank you."

"But that's not all you are. You're also strong, fierce, full of light. Anyone who fails to see what's underneath your stunning exterior is a fool." Caroline freezes under his stare, something almost reverent in the way he says it, a spark lighting up his face for maybe the first time in a month. It sends Caroline's pulse racing. She's suddenly very much aware of how close they are, the air around them simmering with energy, releasing a fresh batch of butterflies in her stomach. The room is a dozen degrees hotter than a second before, and Caroline doesn't know what to do, what not to do, thinks maybe she's had enough to drink already because her sense of reason is getting all fuzzy.

And then Klaus says, "I heard that on PornTube," and the tension eases off of her as the two of them crack up laughing together.

[becomingpart2]

oh she HATED magnus from shadowhunters lmao. one of the main reasons she started the Tobin theory was to prove that malec would be a failed ship (along with proving that klaroline was the main ship of tvd and thus caroline the main female character). it must have killed her that they were not only endgame but MARRIED endgame. basically her argument was that malec was a Ted/ prop ship (all women are divided into three categories, robins, tracys, and props, and i guess she didn’t care how racist it was to call a gay moc a “prop”), and thus was doomed to fail. basically her analysis of shadowhunters was that jace/clary was the pilot tobin, but jace/clary flopped and Alec was the late ted (and she hated clary of course). initially she seemed to be leaning into the idea that jace (a white man) was alec’s robin, but then she moved away from that and started saying that he hadn’t met his robin yet and that the show was failing because of a lack of Tobin. anyways she hated Magnus and insisted that the malec ship was bringing Alec down, and that it was horrible of the show to “force” Alec to be with a man who wasn’t his robin. she was literally saying shit like “save Alec from Magnus” it was genuinely disgusting. anyways malec was by far the most popular ship on the show, far more popular than the main pairing jace/clary, so i don’t get why they weren’t Tobin in her eyes idk.

OMG what a mess 😂 so many layers and holes, where to even start...

First off, I didn't know men could be robins? LOL was this a momentary lapse or was it part of her theory?

basically her argument was that malec was a Ted/ prop ship

I remember very little from her shadowhunters posts because I only paid attention to the TVD ones but from my understanding the reason this ship was a "prop" ship was because Magnus was being "used" as a prop for Alec, right?

And her as someone obviously "concerned" about the treatment of a gay man of color being used as prop for a white man could never ship something like that. So, again, her solution was to root for a "rival" white ship instead? lmao WHAT A JOKE, candyumbrella.

There's so many points to this. The first more obvious one is that for all that she condemned fandom for "concern-trolling", here she was faking concern about the treatment of this character (who was part of an incredibly popular ship of which she created a conspiracy theory to explain said popularity) to disguise the fact she just wanted her white ship instead. She couldn't just admit she liked the white ship more, oh no! Her dislike for the pairing had to come in the form of "concern for character of color" narrative lmao talk about hypocrisy!

The second point is that her fake concern is evident by the fact that she doesn't seem to care about the character of color that's supposedly being used as prop, he's not even her focus, the white character is. If she cared about characters of color not being used as a prop, she could be spending that energy into ships that involved them where they weren't... used as props lol

The third point is that steroline wasn't the Tobin and yet it didn't seem to bother her like this. In fact she enjoyed it quite a lot, so what was the reason? Was she less threatened by steroline than malec? LOL

If she could enjoy steroline for what it did for Caroline, why couldn't she enjoy malec for Magnus? You know, the supposedly "wronged" characters here.

(the obvious answer is that she didn't care for magnus like she cared about caroline lol)

but then she moved away from that and started saying that he hadn’t met his robin yet and that the show was failing because of a lack of Tobin

See, I've seen other posts where this is brought up too. That she used to say that a show without a tobin was destined to fail because the tobin is what makes them "tv magic" (lol I hated these terms). Then I remember how she said Breaking Bad and other shows like Mad Men didn't have a tobin. So??? How did she explain that? What's the truth?? lol

she hated Magnus and insisted that the malec ship was bringing Alec down, and that it was horrible of the show to “force” Alec to be with a man who wasn’t his robin

Lol, again, steroline didn't bother her as much. She probably found steroline empowering for Caroline, who had been so wronged in the past (despite the fact that Stefan would probably never love her like he did Elena, but of course that was not part of her Robin Caroline narrative so she couldn't acknowledge that lol).

Wouldn't it be empowering for magnus, the "wronged" character in the ship, to make the ted have to accept him and be with him? Wouldn't that be revolutionary like her favorite white side characters getting to be robins, if not more? Was that degrading ted? If so, to whom was it degrading?

she was literally saying shit like “save Alec from Magnus” it was genuinely disgusting

OMG! So this she wasn't afraid to say. Disguting indeed.

anyways malec was by far the most popular ship on the show, far more popular than the main pairing jace/clary, so i don’t get why they weren’t Tobin in her eyes idk.

I think this was a DE situation; she just refused to believe they could be because she didn't like it. Because she didn't want them to be even though they were by her own definitions lol. So she made up a bunch of conspiracy theories in her head to explain why fans that liked those ships were wrong and why she was right for not liking them.

[zalrb]

Have you done an analysis on Caroline as a character? And if you haven’t can you? I know you’ve talked about her relationships but idk if you’ve analyzed her as a character in tvd.

Well, the first thing I will say is that I have always maintained that after season 2 I would reduce Caroline to a recurring character. I'm just going to cobble together things I've said in different posts:

Context: An anon compared Andie (from Dawson’s Creek) to Caroline.

[...]even as individual characters, I don’t actually find Caroline and Andie to be similar because Caroline being a control freak and neurotic is treated like a quirk

and it’s framed for humour

It’s really more like, Caroline likes what she likes how she likes it and she expresses that to everyone.

When she has moments like this

Save for 2x02 and 2x03 we don’t really see this, we don’t see Caroline wrestle with darker impulses but shoving them down because she has an actual need to be in control and we don’t see how being in control can end up controlling her life.

I would compare her to Monica before I would compare her to Andie

because with Andie it’s part of her charm and it’s a part of what makes her a good student and an inspiration for Pacey but it’s also part of her mental health issues

she is a character who through her need to be in control ends up holding her family up, like she gets Jack the job at the ice shack

tells him she’ll take care of their mother so he can go on a date night with Joey

while being an over-achiever in school

and being stretched thin and not willing to admit that because she can’t not be in control

that was never Caroline.

next post:

there are many issues with caroline’s humanity arc including some of the things you mentioned but another issue i have, which is a broader issue about the way the show doesn’t portray vampirism unless it’s stefan is that i didn’t get the impression that liz’s death impacted her differently as a vampire. like vampires are supposed to go down this pit of despair and hopelessness when they’re sad but caroline acted the way i would’ve expected her to act as a human. at least elena was like WELL I GUESS I’LL JUST BURN DOWN MY HOUSE

like i get that the whole point is that caroline is supposed to look put together and methodical but when we get here

we’re supposed to see the extent of her pain and it just wasn’t enough for me, i need something extreme, i need them to like find her at the cemetery, digging up liz’s casket.

like caroline was supposed to be this quote:

“ I know how following the rules and all observing those little graces   make you feel like you’re in control. We’ve both had days where it was   either set a beautiful table or curl up in a ball and die.“

and we didn’t really see that.

Next post -- related to Klaroline but also about her character:

if Klaus and Caroline are supposed to see each other in a way that no one else saw either of them then I would  need a legitimate connection, instead of Klaus reiterating that Caroline  likes the power of vampirism .

season 4

season 2

Why  not have him dig deeper and talk about what fuels that strength and  fearlessness, what is it about vampirism, is it the fact that she can  kill people on a whim, is it the fact that she actually enjoys the  darkness and homicidal urges that come with it because no one will ever  mess with her again? Make everyone assume that she just likes the  superhuman strength but Klaus see that it’s really the darkness, take it  a step further so he really recognizes things in her that she would  rather other people didn’t see because he doesn’t actually do that. People just say he does that.

Much like Delena, when Klaus talks to Caroline about darkness it’s about her attraction to him and by proxy that attraction gives her a darkness

He doesn’t talk about her. So I’d have Klaus actually see that darkness in Caroline --- Caroline is supposed to be a character who has a lot of shame

and everyone kind of just accepts that about her, even if they make her feel better, the fact that Caroline is supposed to have this conscience is who she is

and even when she tells Tyler she’s done feeling guilty, we don’t really go anywhere with that, it just stops at being a really shitty thing to say to Tyler and not an actual turning point for her character. Klaus sort of touches upon Caroline’s guilt/shame in the phone call with her

but the context was fucking stupid because TVD wasn’t a show that would explore Caroline not feeling attached to the twins because she was impregnated without her consent or knowledge and they impeded on her life plans and she was guilted into having them because Alaric loves Jo, so because they weren’t going to go there, anyone who knew Caroline would know she’d feel something for the children and I don’t believe for a second Caroline wouldn’t know to pick them up, if the point is that she didn’t feel it was her place to do so it wasn’t communicated properly, so I would have Klaus actually challenge her shame and the source of that shame and if she really does feel ashamed etc. etc. and in fact if the baby plot line still happened, I would have him be the one person who told her it’s OK not to have a personal attachment to the kids and she didn’t have to feel ashamed for that since this was all out of her control etc. etc.

Basically, I would give him the insight into her that he has with his boyfriend

Next post, which also references a previous post:

Legit, Caroline’s character development and her usefulness as a character only happens within the span of two seasons and it’s the first two. In season 1 she actually had functions, one of which was being a consistent reminder of the carnage and destruction Damon wreaked in Mystic Falls, the other of which was being the accidental/unintentional foil — for instance, Isobel gets all the information she needs about the dynamics around town because Caroline offered up that information as a gossip. Caroline was also a character who, while affected by the supernatural in season 1, wasn’t a part of it, she brought a certain realism to the high school environment because she actually acted like a sixteen year old girl. In season 2, she experiences her development:

Becoming a vampire empowered Caroline, she had a sense of strength that she never had, she was confident and centered and she became everything she wasn’t in season 1.

And we see that growth and that change in her throughout season 2 (and also in relation to Tyler) but then afterwards, it just stops. Caroline doesn’t continue to evolve and grow in seasons 3-5, in fact this is basically Caroline’s entire role:

It’s dishonest to say that SC ruined Caroline’s character development when the show actually just didn’t do anything with her that wasn’t related to Klaus or Tyler or Jesse for a hot minute. Her entire existence on the show post-season 2 is to pine after or lust after a dude, Steroline didn’t do that to her.

The entire paragraph from the post referenced in the above post, which is about Forwood but also about Caroline (and Tyler) as individual characters:

Becoming a vampire empowered Caroline, she had a sense of strength that she never had, she was confident and centred, she became everything she wasn’t in season 1, which allowed her to be emotional support for Tyler who, because of the werewolf curse, became everything he wasn’t in season 1 too: humble and vulnerable and grateful for assistance and that allowed him to actually take the emotional support from Caroline so they actually grew together through this time, complementing each other and seeing different sides of their personalities, surprising each other even though they’d known each other since childhood.

Next post:

in season 1, Caroline is affected by the supernatural via Damon

but her emotional and personal storyline is about working through her insecurity

and finding safe spaces.

Elena is affected by the supernatural

but she’s trying to rebuild after her parents’ death,

that is her personal journey. Bonnie is learning how to be a witch. That’s it. She does not have a personal journey entwined with her supernatural one. Witchcraft.    

another post:

I actually really like Caroline in season 1 now that I’m rewatching it, I think she’s very much a teenage girl and I find her like adorably annoying like how I find a lot of 16 year old girls. I just think she peaks in season 2. Like what does she do? Yeah, Elena doesn’t have much agency but since the show revolved around her she was relevant to the plot, the story just sheltered her from actually making decisions but with Caroline, I just don’t really get her purpose in seasons 3 and 4 except to be Klaus bait. And in season 5 she was Stefan’s friend and like she and Stefan were sort of doing the figuring things out together maybe but not really. Season 6 OK it’s all about Liz’s sickness and Steroline, sure? And season 7 and 8 are when I become less indifferent towards her and more annoyed because Caroline just becomes overbearing  and it really just emphasized the fact that she doesn’t do anything.

another post:

I remember once an anon asked me if I thought Caroline was too judgemental toward Elena about Damon and I was like, how could she possibly be too judgemental about her supposed best friend dating her rapist?

another post:

She just come[s] across as more of an aunt who stops in from time to time.  Like in 8x15 when she thinks Lizzie and Josie were in the house when it  blew up, she’s incredibly calm, she doesn’t even vamp speed to the  house, she doesn’t even battle Stefan to get in there

He is a human, she should’ve thrown him off of her and booked it into   that house and not give one fuck if she was going to die because she had to make sure her kids were really dead since that thought should be  impossible to compute.

In Chocolat when Vianne thought her daughter was on a boat that blew  up, she literally dives into the water and tries to swim to the boat  even though it’s already on fire and Roux literally has to dive in after  her and drag her back to shore.

Caroline doesn’t even struggle […] she moves slightly and then just goes oh damn. Like she’s not exuding a parent’s fear for her child like I’ve seen other characters/actors do

(and these scenes aren’t even about the kids potentially being burnt alive in a fire.)

I have seen so many good portrayals of mothers who would die for their kids

who fall apart when their kids are hurt or in danger

and the best Caroline is giving me about her kids who she thought were blown up is this?

Plus, I mean, what did she and the twins really do together?

Alaric is convincing as a dad because we get scenes like this:  

Caroline hugs them but like …

I guess? It doesn’t feel particularly maternal, I’m convinced she’s  glad to see them the way I’m convinced Bonnie is glad to see them.

With things like this

Why exactly should I be convinced that Caroline is a mother?

Plus I always side-eyed the fact that she was surprised Stefan would make a room for the twins in the Salvatore Mansion. I was like, you were willing to move in with a man when you thought there was a possibility he might not want your kids around? WHAT?

And there’s nothing else I would say about Caroline as a character.

[livlepretre]

I was just catching up with your blog, and I saw your klonnie post. It just got me thinking about how literally anyone in the narrative would have been more logical to pair Klaus up with than Caroline. I’ve read all your posts regarding why Klaroline does not make sense. 100% agree. I feel like Caroline is just who they went with because committing to a real Klaus love story would have taken way more time than the show had, and Caroline was the one who had the least commitments elsewhere in the narrative. I mean, there are plenty of plot heavy episodes where Caroline just disappears for no reason, and it’s obvious that the writers just didn’t have anywhere to logically put her. I honestly believed during my first watch through that Klaroline was just Klaus trying to put Tyler in his place. He never interacted with her before the episode where Tyler challenges his authority and refuses to bite Caroline, and then after that episode, he was being ooc and fake charming with her. I just thought Klaus was trying to get her to sleep with him so he could show Tyler that he was the one in charge and could take anything he had. Color me surprised when that was never the case.

Anyway, this all got me thinking about what individual arcs Caroline got, and I can’t really think of one after her becoming a vampire and getting tortured by her dad. After that, the show kind of played “pass the Caroline.” She would get passed around during episodes where she was either tagging along with Stefan, Tyler, or Klaus. Obviously it’s okay for your characters to be in scenes with each other, but the problem is you could take Caroline out of the season 4 sire-bound breaking storyline or the delena ft. sad Stefan storyline and nothing would really change. She is really on par with Jeremy and Matt in which she could just leave for a while and make a reappearance later like nothing happened; however, unlike Jeremy and Matt, she isn’t treated this way in the narrative. Caroline is made out to be more important than she is. I didn’t realize how long this ask would be, but if you could change the story structure of TVD to fix this, how would you do it? Would you have written Caroline to have more individual storylines or would you have decreased her role? Maybe it’s just me and you would keep her the same. Idk. Either way, I’m very interested in your opinion. Especially because Caroline is the more utilized and loved character throughout this fandom and fanfiction, and I don’t know why.

first of all “catching up with your blog” what kajfklajdfklajdf

sorry it’s taken me a few days to reply, I’ve been mulling this over and it’s been kind of a long week so I’ve had to gather the bandwidth to answer 

I agree with your analysis about why the show chose Caroline as Klaus’s love interest... I’ve always said that it was just so painfully obvious that they wanted to give Klaus a love interest from amongst the heroines (which: rude, he already had a love interest, it was Stefan) because he was interesting and hot. And I always assumed they picked Caroline because 1) Elena already had too many love interests even though she and Klaus had history and wicked chemistry so this still to me remains the obvious choice 2) Bonnie would have actually had moral problems with Klaus (but would still have been a great choice because then we could explore those morality issues with Klaus) and 3) they wanted to do another ���bad boy” romance without actually digging into the fact that Klaus had crossed lines for us as an audience that were SUPER hard to come back from, namely: MURDERING MAIN CAST MEMBER JENNA. (I would argue that this is different for us as an audience than Vicki’s death because Vicki died at the beginning of the show; our emotional investment in Jenna was significantly higher after 2 full seasons with her.) So, Caroline becomes the path of least resistance because Klaus has no serious, personal history with her, and she’s not as prone toward actually making moral judgment calls as Bonnie is-- for example, she’s shown to be significantly more flexible about murder and mayhem than Bonnie is.

I’ve never thought about the fact that it was partially just that the writers didn’t have any great ideas for Caroline’s personal storyline though, and that really brings up 2 huge questions: 1) DID they assign her the Klaus romance because they didn’t know what else to do with her? and 2) did that romance storyline actually deprive her of other (better) storylines?

This got me thinking about Caroline’s storylines in a broader sense, and her place within the narrative structure. I think of TVD as having 3 types of main characters:

A-level characters-- Elena, Stefan, and Damon are the only A-levels, as they appear in every single episode and the plot falls apart without them

B-level characters-- Bonnie, Caroline, and then later Klaus would all fit in here-- characters that are in most episodes, and have their own independent side plots that are ongoing, sometimes for long periods of time -- we know they’re B-level and not A-level because sometimes they disappear for a few episodes-- in other words, they’re not essential every episode like the A-levels

C-level characters-- the rest of the main cast-- Tyler, Matt, Jeremy, Jenna, Katherine, Rebekah, etc-- these characters sometimes have ongoing plotlines (the werewolf plot, the Hunter plot, the serial killer plot, etc) but they’re literally dispensable to the overall plot-- the writers feel comfortable having them come and go as necessary, and we often experience them through the perceptions of the higher-leveled characters--they tend to actually be the object of higher level plots as well-- Damon kills Jeremy to move his plot along with Elena; Matt scheming against Caroline’s vampirism is actually part of Caro’s plot; Katherine is mostly a  narrative tool to use with the main 3; Jenna’s death isn’t even about her at the end of the day from a narrative perspective but about Elena, etc.

So when thinking of the basic structure in this sense, that issue you brought up where Caroline doesn’t have enough of her own storylines really comes to light. Part of that I think is that functionally, she has less to offer-- Bonnie is a great counter point, because she often has her own storylines, and she serves a super strong narrative purpose of 1) witch and 2) the moral center on the show-- like, usually the only one who doesn’t forget what’s right and what’s wrong from a basic human perspective. Klaus also has his function as villain, though he gets derailed by the show not killing him off when it was time. 

Caroline meanwhile... the show probably took her as far as they could with her being human, and turning her into a vampire in season 2 was incredibly strong and compelling storytelling. It brought Caroline into the main fold of schemers, it gave her agency, and it put all of her problems with her family and friends and self-esteem under a microscope lens. Season 2 is Caroline’s strongest season because it offers her the most development and gives her both a functional role as baby vampire-- working for Katherine, working with the gang, trying to keep the big secret from her mother-- as well as a satisfying emotional arc. The issue is that she just doesn’t have a ton of places to go as a character once the issues with her parents are resolved midway through season 3 and a lot of her self-esteem issues had actually been tackled... The only other storyline I can think of that was HERS was her mother’s death, but I never finished that arc and never got to no humanity!Caroline anyway, so I don’t have much to say on that topic. I will say that the show REALLY drove Caroline’s storyline into the dirt when they turned Elena into a vampire-- having two baby vamps on the show was WAY too many. We’d already gone through this with Care, but also, Elena is an A-level character-- anything she goes through necessarily usurps the power from any similar story the writers could have told about Caroline. 

So. The Klauroline romance. (Apparently I’ve been mispelling this ship for a decade but honestly you can’t expect me to stop now.) I think they gave Caroline to Klaus (rather than giving Klaus to Caroline) as a love interest for the reasons stated above, but it really did limit her character; I’ve gone over my problems with it ad nauseam here on this blog. The whole thing just spun Caroline around in circles forever-- I remember dreading that this ship would be canon but the show just kept spinning the Klaus/Caroline/Tyler wheels for two seasons without ever really progressing anything or changing anything, just always always always spinning in place, with Tyler disappearing to make room for the other ship but the writers also not actually committing to anything... It really does get in the way of Caroline’s character development. 

So, how to fix? 

Well, first off, I think Caroline (and Bonnie, and Klaus, and everyone else) should stay in their lanes as B or C level characters-- the show didn’t have enough stories to give every single one of them main character status, and that’s okay. 

But if Caroline is a B-level character, she still needs her own stories and subplots interwoven throughout the show. 

The obvious thing that comes to mind is something I’ve said many times--  Fix Klauroline so that it actually makes sense and doesn’t break character-- give them a subplot where they have to work together and learn to rely on each other or see each other differently than how they expect-- literally TVD is amazing with tight, action packed episodes-- it would have taken ONE episode to establish this, and then have the relationship progress as a subplot-- not as Caroline’s main plot-- give her other things to work on with the team and let the Klaus thing develop alongside it. 

Other things: the issues with her parents probably could have been extended to be season 3, honestly, with her facing her vampirism more in season 2-- or she could have gone off the deep end earlier, or she could have wound up in trouble with the council, or she could have taken a more active role in trying to kill Klaus other than just “bait” which would have been great because then she would have had to face her feelings about it directly, or she could have been the one to investigate the vampire lab at Whitmore and maybe end up briefly imprisoned or whatever-- I personally think Elena should have only been a vampire for one season, which would have made Elena actually face her moral crisis, but also opened up the space in the show for Caroline to get the young vampire storylines the way that Bonnie gets the witch storylines. 

The show gets into this weird habit at some point of forgetting that it’s really about the main three and not supposed to be a HUGE equal ensemble show-- if you look back at the promotional materials, it was originally always the three of the main triangle, but by seasons 5 & 6 there’re these photos with like all dozen cast members... equalizing things didn’t actually help Caroline’s or Bonnie’s or anyone else’s storylines because it stripped down the time we spent with the main story and it meant adding a lot of frustrating swimming in circles for the others (how many times was Bonnie dead? I can’t keep track anymore) 

Sorry this is so rambly, I hope it made sense! I have a lot of feelings about Caroline-- I really loved her and the handling of her storylines from season 3 on has never sat well with me.

(As for why Caroline is the fan favorite, I do have a theory: she actually tells us what she’s thinking and feeling, so it’s easier to connect with her. Elena meanwhile rarely ever explicitly states her emotions, instead tending to brood and force us to work through what her silences mean, and Bonnie tends to bottle until she explodes--which is still easier to empathize with than Elena, because at least Bonnie eventually tells us. Meanwhile, Caroline gets upset, or she gets drunk, or she has long conversations where she spills her heart out to Stefan or Elena or Bonnie or anyone... so it’s easy to jump on board with her. That’s my theory at least.)