Crows

I haven’t because I don’t think there are really any jealous Klefan moments, it’s more a possessiveness and Klaus’ desire for Stefan to truly love him so in that regard I think Klaus is more like Katherine

Honest question, how many times do I have to breakdown how and why Damon didn’t atone for what he did before I stop getting these asks? I’ve broken it down in great detail probably at least 6 times, so what’s going to happen is that I’m going to copy and paste what I can find of those breakdowns, I don’t care if it’s repetitive because I get this ask too many times, and either you come back and explain what exactly about those breakdowns is false and we’ll have a dialogue or I’m just going to delete any further asks about why Damon didn’t atone/develop. Cool.

Anonymous: how come when you say damon doesn’t have character development it’s bc ‘he was bad then did something to redeem it but then repeated the same mistakes so doesn’t have development’  but stefan does exactly the same thing - in s1 he has the blood issues, then he tries to fix it but then in the later seasons he basically just ends up repeating the same mistakes. Kind of just seems like you’re biased 

Kind of just seems like you don’t really take context into consideration and this is my issue because it’s not simply that Stefan just makes the same mistakes he is forced into situations that require him to sacrifice his best self for other people. 

In season 1, Damon comes to town and he turns Vicki

because he’s sad about Katherine

and he kills Lexi on Stefan’s birthday because he wanted to get the council off their backs:

even though the only reason why the council was alerted to their presence at all is because he comes into town killing people and then in season 4 it’s revealed that he killed Lexi also because looking at her made him feel guilty about what he did to her in the past

He also abuses, rapes and emotionally manipulates Caroline for his own goals and attempts to kill her when he’s “done” with her:

And tries to kill Bonnie:

How does he redeem himself for these things? How does kidnapping Elena and not compelling her despite kidnapping her equal redemption? How does him stepping in for Stefan during the Miss Mystic dance redeem him from the carnage he caused?

In season 2, Katherine comes back and says she always loved Stefan so he goes to Elena’s house and tries to force himself on her and when she says it’s always going to be Stefan

he kills Jeremy.

That seems like exactly what he did in season 1 when Katherine made him sad and he turned Vicki because of it. How did he grow from that moment?

(Present insert: And Damon “apologizing” to Elena for this actually starts off with him lying about seeing the ring for the entire episode and then finally admitting that he didn’t see the ring and then getting mad at Elena when she says that he lost her forever despite the fact that the episode before he literally killed her brother. Oh yes, some great apology. He also doesn’t really do anything to make it up to Jeremy, he tells him to get over it and then is like, hey let’s torture Mason together and enact more violence on other people!).

Season 2 he also uses Andie as a distraction from “loving” Elena, he compels her and uses her to his will

that seems like what he did with Caroline in season 1, how exactly did he grow from that moment?

He also tries to kill Caroline when he think she’s inconvenient to him

kind of like how he tried to kill her in season 1 the minute she became inconvenient to him,

how did he grow from that moment? Is he redeemed because Elena stepped in front of him and he won’t kill Elena? How? He doesn’t think trying to kill Caroline is wrong,he just won’t kill Elena that’s not redemption.

When his emotions get too much for him because Elena hugs him, he kills a random stranger because he’s going through some shit

that kind of feels like when he saw Lexi and he killed her to get rid of his guilt. Where is the redemption in that?

Whereas in season 1 Stefan was taken hostage because Damon created a mess that he got in the middle of and when he was about to die, even in that moment he tells Elena to run. And then she tells him to drink her blood, this isn’t his choice, this isn’t his mistake, this is something he was encouraged to do in an impossible situation

And then when he gets so out of control, he has a moment of weakness in which he decides to commit suicide but Elena tells him to fight:

So that’s what he does in season 2. Katherine comes to town and she tells him she built up her tolerance to vervain by drinking a little bit everyday and Stefan and Elena decide that he should do that with blood too, Stefan decides to become a better, stronger, more adept vampire

that is learning from what happened the season before, not repeating past behaviour

Not to mention in season 2, he saved Caroline and trained her to be a better vampire:

Saved Jeremy:

Tried to save Jenna:

Not trying to score points, not trying to play the hero but because it’s the right thing, Stefan’s very existence is redemptive.

And then what happens in the finale? Damon gets bitten by a werewolf and Stefan sacrifices everything that makes him happy to make sure his brother will live

he is again put in an impossible situation, another life and death situation but instead of his life, it’s worse [to him] but his brother’s so he does the selfless thing and become a ripper so his brother can survive

that is not repeating a mistake.

Then you have season 3 where Stefan is consistently combating his worst nature because he’s fighting against the impossible situation he’s in, whether that’s calling Elena:

Or saving Damon:

Or fighting compulsion:

He’s fighting to retain the person he wants to be for himself, for Elena and for the betterment of everyone around him (so they don’t die) because Stefan does not want to be a bad person

And he fights not to be.

His humanity was ripped away from him:

That is not repeating a mistake.

Not to mention that within season 3, when Stefan crosses a line

he immediately works at making it better:

And it should be noted that this does not just stay at Elena. He and Damon were responsible for Abby becoming a vampire and what Damon does is try to justify it:

What Stefan does is convince Klaus not to kill Jamie and then thanks Bonnie for her help:

He is actively trying to make up for the destruction he caused, not justifying himself, not asking her to get over it, he’s atoning, that is redemption.

Whereas Damon is just being Damon. Every time he finds out that Stefan saved his life, his response is to make a move on Elena like in 3x02 when Stefan saved him from a hybrid

or in 3x10 when he found out he stopped him from killing Klaus to save his life:

Or even 3x08 after Stefan saved him from Mikael:

After trying to kill Caroline twice, after abusing her and raping her, he tries to kill her dad:

Elena hurts his feelings in 3x14:

And his response is to lash out:

There are no extenuating circumstances like with Stefan, there is no other reason for Damon to act this way other than the fact that Damon just doesn’t grow the fuck up and what, Damon re-gifted the necklace to Elena so he’s redeemed now? Mmm, no, I don’t think so.

Then you have season 4. I mean you can really sum up how Stefan is a more developed and evolved person than Damon with these two gifs

This time around, Elena is the one with Damon and Stefan is in need of distraction but instead of compelling himself a newsreporter, a high school girl or a sorority he just has consenting sex with Rebekah

When Elena and him break up and he finds out she’s with Damon, he wants to drown himself in bloodlust but what he does instead is workout

That is development and the eternal difference between Stefan and Damon. Stefan is a ripper, he’s addicted to blood, antis don’t seem to realize that addictions are life-long that’s why there are NA and AA meetings etc. because it’s a constant battle and Stefan is choosing to battle it here, there is no circumstance pushing him to be a ripper or to turn off his humanity so he doesn’t do it.

Meanwhile, sure, Damon doesn’t sleep with Elena when he finds out she’s Sired but people seem to forget that in 4x02 he manipulates a half-starved, frantic, desperate, newbie Elena into feeding from him. She doesn’t know what it means and he doesn’t tell her, he just tells her that it’s kind of personal, she doesn’t know it’s sexual, she doesn’t know the implications of what that is but he chooses his words carefully to extort pleasure from her. It’s not compulsion but it may as well be.

And then Damon applies his methodology onto Elena:

With disastrous results:

And he’s not even the one who cleans up the mess afterward:

I bring that up because how has Damon developed from the impulsive guy who makes awful decisions by this point, just because he doesn’t go around killing people at random (in this season) doesn’t mean that he grew because he does the same shit in different ways like this, he still manages to ruin SO many people’s lives just by being himself and he doesn’t learn!

Season 5. I mean do I REALLY need to go through season 5?

WHERE IS THE DEVELOPMENT? How is this not exactly the same as Damon going on a bender and killing people because of Katherine in season 2 and then Elena in season 3? How does he atone for this? Does he apologize to Jeremy for kidnapping him and ordering Enzo to suffocate him? Does he do something for Aaron’s family, the family that he was systematically killing for generations by the way? How does he atone for this? By fessing up to Elena that she in fact isn’t a murderer?

Meanwhile Stefan is confronting his abuser, a woman who has consistently caused him pain and ruined his life, and shows her an amazing amount of compassion and empathy

Instead of, you know, torturing her like Damon did.

He backslides when he has no memory and attacks Jesse, this is true, and I would’ve preferred if he made it up to Jesse but that’s actually an isolated incident because he never freely chooses to drink from a human before or after that. Even when he gets out of the trunk in 5x03 and he’s nearly dead and could’ve lost control, he feeds from a waitress and tells her to run:

Once again, development.

Not to mention that he had the choice to turn off his humanity to make it through the pain of dying but he chooses to hold onto himself, he won’t take the easy way out:

Season 6.

OK so what happened in season 6 for Stefan to turn off his humanity?

Caroline coerced him into turning it off by compelling Elena’s ex to torture and then kill his niece. That is not making the same mistake! It’s another impossible situation in which he has to sacrifice his better self for someone else’s life and once he turns on his humanity, he doesn’t go around killing people because he chooses not to, he doesn’t gorge on blood because he works not to.

Damon on the other hand is not killing people randomly this time around, no, he is lying to Elena about the cure, which keeps in line with how he manipulated her in season 4 and lied to her about Stefan in season 5:

He attacks Bonnie when she tries to put herself first because it doesn’t align with his interests:

Intentionally triggers her because same thing:

which keeps in line with:

Are we supposed to believe he developed because he now sees Bonnie as a friend? He still treats her like shit. He’s still lying to Elena because of his insecurities, nothing about Damon has actually really developed, nothing about Damon has actually been redeemed.

Season 7.

Same Bamon shit:

Same Delena shit. Oh no, I think I killed Elena so obviously I’m going to go on a killing spree!

While you know, Stefan gets angry

Then kills Julian because he deems him responsible for everything and then helps Damon despite, you know, being angry with him which only leads to him sacrificing for Damon again

And then I breakdown season 8 here: http://zalrb.tumblr.com/post/158510598480/did-damon-have-character-development-now-with-the

So let’s go to that above link shall we:

Anonymous: ‘did damon have character development now with the finale?’ I hope this anon was asking because they haven’t seen the finale. Just because the show tells us he has development doesn’t mean he did. Just because they want to say he feels bad about what he’s done and had that one episode in his head doesn’t make up for all the crap he’s done and he’s still never apologized about what he did to Caroline but yeah Stefan’s the one who needed to sacrifice everything. ??                   

Damon never has to be active in his own redemption, which is why he’s never truly redeemed. The show wants him “feeling bad” about what he’s done to be enough, the show wants him willing to sacrifice to be an indication of development without actually doing any of the groundwork that 1) makes that willingness a logical conclusion 2) show that he’s actually become “the better man.” It’s insultingly lazy.

Stefan is and has always been the true redemption story of the show because Stefan always has to pay a price for his actions and work towards atonement. In this season alone, Stefan has more of a redemptive arc than Damon has had in eight because Stefan starts the season with one mindset:

which within the season, the show aims to contradict:

and even within that contradiction Stefan is forced to do evil in order to protect the innocent:

which inherently makes him heroic but despite that, despite the circumstances and context of his behaviour, he’s confronted with his actions without any sympathy and feels profound guilt:

and instead of sitting in a room feeling guilty or going into a catatonic state or whining about how he feels bad for what he’s done, he goes out to save one of his victims:

He tries to give Dorian a sense of peace or justice by handing him his freedom:

and next to the psychological and emotional anguish and turmoil Stefan is put through, he also experiences physical consequences, he is stabbed and shot by both of his victims:

and then, foolhardy or not, Stefan tries to kill Cade because the evil all started with him and when it turns out the evil all started with Katherine, Stefan sacrifices himself to make sure that she dies and that MF won’t be in danger of her again 

Furthermore, the fact that Stefan is literally dead because he sacrificed everything but emphasizes to Elena that Damon’s willingness to make the sacrifice makes him the “better man” proves that Stefan is the better man because he isn’t centering his own sacrifice or asking for any pity, he is exceptionally gracious.

Not to mention the sense of protectiveness Stefan has toward Bonnie after what happened with Enzo:

This alone is more than Damon has ever done in the entire series and it’s never “well Stefan said this” or “Stefan was going to do that” it’s Stefan did xyz. Redemption is active it isn’t passive self-reflexiveness that leads to self-pity and moping so Damon’s capacity to feel sorry for himself for being a homicidal dick is not an indication of redemptive development.

Anonymous: Stefan continues to judge and degrade Damon in season 7, despite the fact that almost everything Damon did was to clean up the mess that was a hell of a lot of Stefan’s own damn fault, as well as Enzo’s fault, and Alaric’s fault.  And there’s also the espeically disturbing thing that while with Klaus, many of Stefans victims looked like Elena.          

everything Damon did was to clean up the mess that was a hell of a lot of Stefan’s own damn fault

You got the brothers mixed up, hun.

Everything that happens in MF is Damon’s fault from the jump and everyone else (most especially Stefan) gets blamed for it and Stefan has to clean up Damon’s mess.

Damon starts off TVD killing two people, which actually alerts the council to the fact that vampires are back in Mystic Falls in the first place. He turns Vicki because he’s bored and doesn’t take any responsibility for her, leaving Stefan with the responsibility of looking after her. He threatens and kills people to get into the tomb to find Katherine, which unleashes tomb vampires into the town and kills Grams. And then he doesn’t tell Stefan that they escaped because he thought he could handle them on his own which leads to an attack on their house with absolutely no plan to combat them. Hell, even when Alaric comes to town to kill Damon because he turned Isobel, Stefan has to have a chat with him about letting that revenge plot go.

In season 2, Damon tries to kill Mason (when Mason had been leaving everyone tf alone) and that causes Mason to alert Sheriff Forbes to the fact that he and Stefan are vampires and they nearly die so Caroline has to clean up that mess thereby outting herself to her mom in a very unfashionable way. He then actually kills Mason and gloats to Katherine about it which causes Katherine to compel Jenna to stab herself and Stefan comes up with a plan to capture Katherine.  And killing Mason brings in Jules and when he tries to kill her, she tries to kill him and ends up killing Rose instead. And killing Mason is what turns Tyler against Caroline and leads to Caroline being tortured in a fucking cage. Not to mention during the carnival, Damon compels a worker to fight Tyler and then LEAVES so Stefan is the one who has to make sure that no one actually dies.  And then of course Damon gets bitten by a werewolf and to fix that Stefan gives himself over to Klaus so Damon can get the cure. Stefan wouldn’t even be with Klaus in season 3 if it weren’t for Damon.

In season 4, all of the carnage that Elena causes is because of Damon. He told her to kill Connor so she had to, he told her to turn off her humanity so she had to so her killing the waitress, trying to kill Caroline and Bonnie is all because she was forced to listen to Damon when he told her to turn off her humanity. And once again it fucks up everyone’s lives.

and he can’t even get her to calm down when she turns her humanity back on, he once again created a situation that he couldn’t handle and Stefan stepped in

In season 5 Damon thinks Elena broke up with him and his response is to kill Aaron and go off the deep-end so Stefan takes on the responsibility of keeping him in check

And he and Katherine have to save Jeremy from being suffocated by Enzo on Damon’s go-ahead

And because he was so hell-bent on finding Wes, he and Enzo are ambushed by travellers and injected with venom which leads to Stefan sacrificing himself again to get a cure for him and eventually Elena

In season 7, Stefan and Caroline try to wipe out the heretics and when that didn’t work they made a truce with them and Damon comes back cocky and is all “fuck this truce” and kills Malcolm which is what causes Lily to kidnap Elena in the first place

Which actually started yet another war between them and the heretics when Stefan had already orchestrated a fragile peace and Stefan finds himself sacrificing for Damon AGAIN

and then when Damon tries to do something on his own, even knowing that Elena isn’t in the vault, even knowing that a siren can create delusions, even with  Bonnie on the phone with him, this dumbass gets got

And then season 8 is all about Stefan cleaning up Damon’s mess!

while Damon drags him into the dirt again

Damon was ACTUALLY right here:

And this:

And there’s also the espeically disturbing thing that while with Klaus, many of Stefans victims looked like Elena.

which again wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for Damon anyway? I mean where though

You really want to go down the road of which Salvatore brother did disturbing things to women?

Hey let me break into your house and stroke your face as you sleep like a creeper

Hey let me force myself on you and then kill your brother when you say no

Hey let me not tell you what blood-sharing really means and manipulate you into giving me sexual pleasure

Hey let me threaten you and sexualize it at the same time

Hey let me use you as a distraction and who gives a shit about pain!

Hey, let me show up naked and disregard boundaries and make things really awkward for you

Hey, rape!

It’s OK, you tried.

So again, can you explain to me how Damon atoned for all of this? How the fact that his punishment in season 8 is going catatonic while everyone around him forgives him shows atonement? Because to me, it shows a lack of development since it’s centered around his hurt feelings and not him actively doing something to atone for what he did. In season 7 instead of not being the guy who lashes out and kills people, he takes the easy road and just puts himself in a casket for a few years. Damon doesn’t change his behaviour on a day-to-day basis to show any sort of redemption or development, what happens is the show is like Damon feels bad about this thing he did, *gasp* look how far he’s come as a character!

The fact that he chooses himself when Cade asks whether or not to choose Stefan or Elena to go to hell doesn’t mean anything because a) he doesn’t have to follow through, he’s saved in the nick of time so he doesn’t actually have to atone b) because he doesn’t actively atone at all before that moment, it isn’t growth it’s pandering. Same thing with him willing to die with Katherine in the finale. He doesn’t have to do it. He doesn’t actually have to do anything and he didn’t do any sort of penance beforehand.           

Yes, it was assault. The fact that he knew it was wrong and told Elena not to tell Stefan that she had fed from him because it was personal. Yet he still did it without Elena’s informed knowledge, even though he knew she was with Stefan. He assaulted her and, once again, violated that boundary, as usual.

Yes, he did it many times. Besides the example you gave, he also gave Elena a sexual dream and terrified her in Season 1. Then, in Season 3, there’s the scene where Elena wakes up screaming because Damon is lying next to her in bed. He was repeatedly crossing boundaries with her like a sexual predator.

Context time! Elena asks Stefan if he knew her ancestors when they’re talking about a vampire who is in the process of trying to kill her. At that moment, Stefan is focused on keeping Elena safe, that’s what that scene is about --- he hands her the compass --- that’s where his mindset is at: Keep Elena Safe From The Random Crazy Vampire Stalking Her.

It’s kind of like when Elena and Stefan have a conversation about him being a vampire, he doesn’t tell her that her ancestors had a huge part in killing him and Damon and a bunch of vampires in the past because that’s not what the conversation was about, it was about giving Elena an introduction to the fact that vampires exist at all and that MF was a town with a history dealing with vampires

in the scene that you’re referring to, he expands on that a little because the context allows for it since it helps Elena

Not to mention that in 1x13 and 1x14 when they’re going through all of the Gilbert stuff trying to figure out where the grimoire is buried, it’s not like Stefan tried to censor anything or shield Elena from anything that she may find out

In 2x15 when they find Jonathan’s journal and she’s essentially like, so care to contradict anything Johnathan Gilbert has written down, that could’ve been an opportunity for Stefan to defend himself but he doesn’t

and in fact he proceeds to tell her more about the time he was a monster and worse than Damon

elena figures that out here self jsut almost all the other big things about his past .

In 1x20, Stefan straight up told Elena that he killed his father and that’s how he became a vampire, I don’t know why people act like that isn’t some heavy shit

And this also refers to context because in 1x06, he lets Elena know that Vicki needs to feed in order to transition or she’ll die and says she has a choice to make, to which Elena says:

But it’s not the right time to get into that choice because other things are happening at that moment but he does eventually tell her about the choice he made, which was in 1x20.

He tells her his part in how he and Damon were killed 

In 1x05, when he’s talking to her about Katherine, he tells her that he did things that he wasn’t proud of and Elena leaves it at that, she doesn’t prompt him to continue or expand or explain but he let’s her know that he has a spotty past

same thing with 1x07 when he’s talking to Vicki, he doesn’t get into specifics but he makes it clear he doesn’t have a clean past

same thing with this

Not to mention that Stefan always includes himself in the danger of vampires

and he let’s her see a darker side of him

He never hides all of the aspects that make him him.

So there are a few things that need to be considered here 1) there is always a time and place for things to be said, Stefan always expands on something that he’s hinted at before, he doesn’t hide, he doesn’t lie, he just doesn’t do a huge exposition dump (which is what you guys want) because that isn’t how people reveal information and because of 2) from a writing perspective, the writers have been hinting at Stefan’s darkness throughout the first half of the first season and then they deliver on what they’ve hinted at in the second half. They go THIS is the danger of being with a vampire, THIS is what Stefan has been referring to for the past 17 episodes, can Elena actually handle this or not? Same thing with season 2, we see a bit more of Stefan’s past, we see a bit more of why Stefan walks the straight and narrow, boom! Season 3, we’re going to show this in real time. It is also a writing technique.

I know this is probably an unpopular opinion, especially in a fandom where Matt is one of the least popular characters but I've always felt like his life gets treated as if it's worth less than Elena's when it came to the car crash situation at the end of season 3 and start of season 4 both in the show and by all of the fandom.

First, the accident itself is Rebekah's fault she deliberately stood in the road intending to kill Elena to take out Alaric. I've seen people blame Matt because he and Jeremy drugged her tea and tokd her to make a decision which brother to choose already and he was in the truck or because he swerved, but what exactly was he supposed to do? He thought there was a person standing in the middle of the road he didn't see Rebekah face until after he swerves and the headlight show her face any normal human being would instinctively try not to hit them he didn't know it was Rebekah until after they had already swerved.

Like I just said before I've also seen people argue that Elena only ended up on the bridge because of Matt and Jeremy but tat ignores the fact that Rebekah had already decided Elena was going to die. The crash happened because Rebekah caused it, not because Matt existed the part that has always bothered me most though is how Matt himself gets treated afterward.

Delusional People constantly praise Damon for saying he would've saved Elena instead of Matt because he would've "given her what she needed, not what she wanted." I've never understood why that's supposed to be romantic it's toxic and controlling I mean Elena was awake, she made a conscious choice and she wanted Stefan to save Matt.

Whether you agree with her decision or not, it was still her decision Matt wasn't some random stranger Elena had known him almost her entire life. They grew up together, dated, and remained close friends afterward Stefan and Damon had only been in her life for about a year why should either of them get to decide that Matt's life mattered less simply because they loved Elena?

I also think people sometimes let the fact that we're watching a TV show influence how they judge the situation as viewers, we naturally care more about Elena because she's the protagonist or for most fans the brothers getting what they want but the characters don't know they're in a TV show. To Elena, Matt isn't "the expendable human side character." he's one of the oldest and most important people in her life after Jeremy from her perspective she wasn't choosing between the main character and a random guy she was choosing to save one of her closest friends.

This isn't about whether Elena deserved to live of course she did it's about the idea that Matt somehow deserved to die because Elena was more important to the Salvatore brothers that's not how Elena saw it.

Another thing people overlook is that Matt never asked for any of this he wasn't begging Stefan to save him instead of Elena, he wasn't choosing his life over hers, he was unconscious and drowning too and Elena made that choice on her own because that's who she is. Even in 4x1, Damon tries to kill Matt twice out of anger over Elena's "death" the focus of those scenes is always Damon's grief while the fact that Matt's life is literally being threatened barely matters its just reinforces the idea that his life is expendable.

Then, in the following episodes Matt is drowning in survivor's guilt he doesn't act like he won he blames himself for Elena's "death'' to the point that he offers to let her feed on him, saying it's the least he can do which he nearly gets drained because of it. While the scene mostly exists to push Elena's struggle with blood control.

Also want to be fair to Stefan because I actually like him and ship Stelena I think he absolutely did the right thing by honoring Elena's choice and saving Matt and respecting her agency is completely in character for him but the only part I dislike, is when he tells Matt that he gets to live with the guilt of Elena dying for him every day I get that supposed to be some sorta way to not pity yourself and I understand Stefan was grieving that Elena was a vampire something she didn't want , and grief makes people say unfair things.

In response to your recent anon. Other toxic villain ships will continue to get praised while Bonkai has this vitriol around it especially with new aged TVD watchers. Bonkai unfortunately got screwed over in ways that other ships didn’t.

It wasn’t a full blown crackship like Kennett, Klonnie, Tonnie etc because there was canon feelings involved. But Bonnie and Kai also didn’t get ballroom dances and sexy hookups like Stebekah, Mabekah, Klaroline etc Even Bamon (despite being a horribly written abusive friendship) got a few dance scenes etc.

And that’s the thing, all these ships that I mentioned above are not any less toxic or abusive than Bonkai. But because the show packaged it in a way where characters like Damon are not held accountable for anything, it appears to most viewers who are just watching and not analyzing that Bonkai is the “worstest thing ever!” Since Kai stabbing Bonnie didn’t result in a dying Bonnie telling Kai “you’re in love with me. And anyone capable of love is capable of being saved” Bonnie and Kai are looked at the most abusive ship. Which is hilariously ironic, considering the fact that in reality his stabbing her not resulting in a scene like that actually makes them the ship least romanticizing abuse. As oppose to KC where Klaus stabs Caroline and bites her. Tyler begs Klaus to heal her. And she eventually spews that nonsense to Klaus as she’s dying.

Or what about Bamon. Where Damon does absolutely nothing to earn trust, forgiveness and redemption. He continues to berate Bonnie, violently shove her against walls, forces her to interact with Kai, and not care at all about Bonnie. But all that gets overlooked because Bonnie spoon feeds the audience lines like “I know you Damon” even though her “best friend”’literally just shoved her into a wall for putting herself first for once. And my personal favorite “You made pancakes. That means you feel guilty about murdering that pregnant woman. that makes you better than Kai”. Like girl what?

I don’t think i need to even talk about how disgusting DE is. Damon legit sexually assaults her in 2x01 then kills her brother afterwards. And it’s framed so that we’re supposed to feel sorry for Damon cause his heart is sad. And then even his horrible relationship with Andie where he’s literally on the verge of tears in the bathtub talking about his Elena problems and feeding on Andie. That relationship was also framed in a way where we’re supposed to pity Damon as a sad broken heart boy. And not as the creepy violent male he is. The things Damon did to Caroline Andie Elena and Bonnie are not even a result of his vampirism. Those are just straight up abusive male violent traits. Like Tyler being an angry asshole was a direct result of his werewolf gene. Stefan going through his ripper shit is because of his vampirism. Kai snapping at his abusive coven/family is because of his sociopathy. But Damon compelling women and taking away their free will as he continues to do sexual things with them is not a supernatural thing. It’s just typical male violence.

But all that fucked up shit doesn’t matter. Because the narrative of the show is packaged to protect Damon and romanticize Klaus. The dialogue and illogical response from other characters is to make the audience sympathize with Damon or romanticize KC. This did not happen with Kai/Bonkai.

Even though Bonnie was the anchor and felt the deaths of everyone. Even though she saw her father killed. Even though her “bestfriend” Damon killed her mom, and continues to berate her and never once apologizes. The show completely ignores that. And claims Kai was the first and only awful thing to happen to her. Because it protects the other characters. And in addition to that, Kai and Bonnie never kissed, danced, hooked up, or had any unearned dialogue between them like other villain ships did. And most people watching won’t pick up on the B.S. and will continue to ship manufactured and romanticized abuse like KC, DE, BD. But act horrified at Bonkai. It’s frustrating. But I know why it’s the case. And that’s exactly what JP wanted.

I wish I could put this entire meta on a T-shirt and sell it:

Since Kai stabbing Bonnie didn’t result in a dying Bonnie telling Kai “you’re in love with me. And anyone capable of love is capable of being saved” Bonnie and Kai are looked at the most abusive ship. Which is hilariously ironic, considering the fact that in reality his stabbing her not resulting in a scene like that actually makes them the ship least romanticizing abuse. As oppose to KC where Klaus stabs Caroline and bites her. Tyler begs Klaus to heal her. And she eventually spews that nonsense to Klaus as she’s dying.

I think it's a combination of everything you said : "the narrative of the show is packaged to protect Damon and romanticize Klaus. The dialogue and illogical response from other characters is to make the audience sympathize with Damon or romanticize KC." And it's also because most people conflate an abusive relationship with an antagonistic relationship.