So in case you didn’t get the memo, Klaroline is over. We’ve had our day in the sun, but now it’s time to either stop talking about the sinking of our Titanic or just pack up and leave. Somehow in the eyes of the writers, within just a few weeks time, KCers have gone from enthusiastic fans to annoyances. Almost everyone involved with Klaroline has been paraded out to inform us that Klaroline is over, and yet we don’t seem to be getting the message. What certain people don’t seem to understand is that KCers aren’t still attached to KC because of nostalgia or an inability to move on. A lot of people keep asking why we can’t just drop it, but most of us, myself included, are asking ourselves why we would. Honestly there are dozens of reasons why Klaroline interests me, but here are just ten of my favorite reasons why I’m still invested in Klaroline, why I think they’re special, and why I think the continuation of their storyline is a necessity to TVD and TO.
1. Because even at their worst, they’re still better than everything else TVD and TO have to offer.
Let’s be honest. We all imagined what Klaroline’s first kiss and Klaroline’s first frickle frackle would be like. I’m sure we all had different scenarios in mind, but I know we all expected fireworks like the 4th of July. What we got was something more akin to taking a Roman candle straight to the face. Despite the fact that the Klarosex was overall a major disappointment, they were still by far the best part of the episode. Their little cat and mouse conversation in 5×11 were the most memorable scenes of the entire season for me, and aside from the introduction of Enzo I think that the KC reunion has been the only redeeming aspect of season 5.
2. Because Klaroline managed to make an unshippable character shippable.
Klaus is probably my favorite character on TV right now, but good god is he hard to ship with anyone. I know everyone has different preferences, but I have a really hard time enjoying any relationships where the power dynamic is really heavily skewed in favor of one character (especially in shows aimed at teenagers and young adults). It’s just something that immediately puts me off. So then, you might ask, how do you ship a character with anyone when he’s a raging narcissist who also happens to literally be the most powerful creature in existence? Well, my dear friends, I’ll be honest, it’s no easy feat to ship Klaus with anyone. Canonically, nothing can ever be equal in power to him. However, what makes Klaroline so special is that Klaus believes that Caroline is his equal. When you’re dealing with a character who is that powerful then all of their relationships are going to be imbalanced by their nature, the belief in equality is the closest you could possibly get to true equality. And when you’re talking about a character who literally thinks he’s superior to everyone you’re going to have a hard time creating another loophole like they did with Caroline without it seeming completely OOC.
3. Because they broaden the horizons of potential narrative.
One of the thing that interests me most when I think about the long-term narrative writing we see on television shows is the way in which writers either open up or close off their narrative avenues. Usually the introduction of any plot point either presents more opportunities for plot exploration or cuts opportunities off at the knees (or, at the very least, forces the writers to create some illogical loophole to get themselves out of it). TVD and TO have a nasty habit of almost always writing storylines that back the overall plot into certain corners. I mean Jesus, the entire premises for both shows, a love triangle and a mystical baby, are enormous plot straitjackets that are difficult to get out of even when they’re just side-plots, not to mention if they’re the anchor of your shows. Klaroline however is the exact opposite. Their relationship is interesting but completely undefined, the writers can credibly take it in any direction they want. This kind of creative freedom is something that every show wants, especially new shows that want to have any kind of lasting presence, and constantly writing yourselves into corners instead of writing yourselves out of them is a risky game to play (which let’s be real, hasn’t been paying off for TO that well thus far).
4. Because the chemistry between Joseph Morgan and Candice Accola could set a house on fire.
Chemistry is a funny thing. It’s one of those things that people either have or they don’t. Luckily the chemistry between JoMo and CA seems to literally ooze out of every pore in their bodies, I can’t even think of two other actors in any TV show today who can bring the level of romantic intensity that they two of them radiate in basically every scene they share (not to mention the chemistry they have for each other when they’re not even sharing a scene, which is noticeable enough to catch the attention of an entire fandom and the occasional mainstream magazine journalist).
5. Because their relationship makes both individual characters more interesting.
To be honest, I’m not naturally much of a shipper. I very rarely get invested in the romantic relationships of fictional characters. For me personally, what lit the Klaroline fire in my brain wasn’t the potential romance between the characters, it was simply the fact that both Klaus and Caroline became more interesting, dimensional, and dynamic characters when they interacted with each other. Every moment they shared, even their corniest hummingbirds and prom dresses interactions, gave the audience a broader, deeper understanding of both of these individuals. And in a show who’s couplings has almost exclusively resulted in the opposite, that’s really something special. Almost every TVD ship that has sailed has resulted in either one or both of the characters in the ship being diminished because of it. Sometimes their characteristics become more muted, sometimes they start behaving OOC, and often times one is reduced to a mere tool to prop up the other. Klaroline in contrast has entirely resulted in Klaus and Caroline becoming better, stronger, and more established both as independent characters and as characters within the same storyline.
6. Because TVD and TO aren’t giving the audience anything better.
I mean, what are the current menu options for Klaus and Caroline? Klaus has two potential love interests that he has already emotionally, psychologically, and physically abused. Genevieve is really the only unoffensive option for Klaus, and while I think they have decent chemistry I don’t see their interactions leading to any significant character or plot development. And what about Caroline? She doesn’t have any romantic interests on her horizon right now (which may ultimately be a blessing), but that leaves her relegated to a glorified prop in whatever “save Elena at all costs” plot the writers come up with each week. This is actually one of the most oft-repeated KCer complaints I’ve seen in my dash, that most people wouldn’t be raising half the ruckus they are now if we were just getting something comparable to what we were getting before. And I feel the exact same way. If I felt like what I was getting out of TVD and TO now was as good as what we got with KC then I wouldn’t have a problem. But the problem is, I don’t.
7. Because it would be OOC for Klaus to move on.
Time and time again Klaus has proven himself to be someone who doesn’t let go of anything easily. He carted his catatonic family around for centuries because he couldn’t let them go. He borderline stalked Stefan, a man who tried to murder Klaus half a dozen times, for his entire tenure in Mystic Falls because they were drinking buddies a century beforehand. There is no logical way on earth Captain Obsessive Fixation would just sleep with Caroline and then disappear out of her life, never to be seen again.
8. Because they’re unpredictable.
One of the things that initially drew me to the idea of Klaroline was that I really had no idea where it was going. I feel like, even with the minor ships in TVD, I can already see the beginning, middle, and end of the storyline between these two characters before their stories even begin. With Klaroline it always felt like the exact opposite. Not only did I not know where these two characters could end up, I couldn’t even predict what would happen in each individual scene. Their relationship was always exciting to me because there was some actual dramatic tension in their exchanges. In the TVD universe which seems riddled by overly predictable plot points and tired tropes, the kind of unpredictability that Klaroline brings to the table is something they desperately need.
9. Because by trying to ditch Klaroline when it makes no sense for the narrative, they’re actually messing up both Klaus and Caroline as characters.
As I already said, Klaus and Caroline became better, more interesting characters the more they interacted with each other. By cutting off that storyline (and not even allowing that storyline to come to any kind of reasonable conclusion) they basically left all of that amazing character development flapping in the wind. Now it’s almost worse than if they had never had that character development at all, because now we as the audience need to re-frame our perceptions of Klaus and Caroline as characters and deal with the fact that we’re either not going to see a lot of the dimension that these characters have or we’re going to see that dimension in a very OOC way. After all, throughout their relationship it was very firmly established in canon that Klaus and Caroline only demonstrate these aspects of their personalities when they’re with each other. The writers very firmly established this when they didn’t have to, and sorry, you don’t get take backs on canon (no matter how desperately you try or how much you insist that consistency is an unreasonable expectation for your audience to have).
10. Because their story isn’t done being told.
I mean, I don’t know how anyone would ever perceive what happened in 5×11 as closure. There’s a saying about narrative storytelling, if you introduce a gun in Act One it needs to go off by Act Five. Well, by deepening Klaus and Caroline’s relationship the writers did not allow the gun to go off. They removed the gun from the equation and replaced it with a cannon. Honestly I could care less what they have to say about closure, these are narrative conventions that people learn in introductory college film courses. I simply don’t believe that a team of professional writers could possibly think that this would constitute closure. That is how you begin a new storyline, not how you end an old one.
Previously published on Tumblr
Written by hellsbellschime
Do you have an opinion about TVD, TO, Klaus, Caroline, Klaroline or the fandom? Send to us here and we might publish it!