p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"A/N: Thank you so much for reading this story and making it through to the end./p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"I just wanted to say that I've read the reviews and I hope this ending has answered all the questions, and I wanna say thank you to commenters who got what I was trying to do, that's incredibly validating (btw, shout out to guest reviewer Tambourine, wish you had an account so I could send you a direct thank you.)/p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"I just wanted to clarify I never meant to portray Bonnie badly, but I also don't think loving character means ignoring what's wrong with their characterisation. I initially wrote this because I wanted to explore the consequences and implications of a character like Bonnie and a character like Damon getting together in the circumstances that stood when I published the first chapter. I just don't think that getting together with Damon would erase all her previous behaviors, and as it was revealed in the last chapter, it was a coping and self preservation class="Apple-converted-space" /span/p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"On the matter of Bonnie seeing herself as a place holder for Elena, as bad as it sounds it wasn't so much a reflection of her thinking she's not as good as Elena that it didn't really make sense and she would have to rethink their relationship in a way she wasn't equipped to deal with when they got together. I mean, when I published the first chapter, everyone was incredulous that Damon would cheat. Because he's quite loyal. And I wanted to explore in a believable way how he would go from being in love with one person to another person, and to me at least it made sense that everyone around would just assume he would be incapable of truly moving one from Elena. I mean, he stayed fixated on Katherine and then went on to her doppelgänger…/p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"And Bonnie wasn't fine with the cheating she thought happened, she was disappointed, she was just not surprised because she kind of braced herself for it. But she expected respect and forewarning and space, not what happened. And the thing is, whether it's a bad thing or not, canon Bonnie clearly has issues with putting herself as central to even her own life. I sympathize with her because I have bouts of extreme low self esteem and when they manifest, it's not that I just go around talking down on myself, but instead I start to limit myself and not let myself want things, because I'm afraid of the disappointment of not getting what I want, or even worse, getting it and not being deserving of class="Apple-converted-space" /span/p
p class="p2"I guess that's me projecting my own shit onto Bonnie so mea culpa but idk, I feel like canon pretty much supports that she has some self worth issues. What I loved about the Bamon friendship was that I finally saw someone on the show really be all in on caring about saving Bonnie and it finally made me see it for the ship. And I felt like Bonnie definitely showed more of her feelings and vulnerabilities after becoming friends with him so I was really her for that too./p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"So…yeah…hope I wrapped things up in a way that had all of this come through. Thank you again so much for reading this. I adore Bonnie, she's one of my favourite characters ever and I'm happy to see others feel passionately about her as I do./p
p class="p2"A/N: Thank you so much for reading this story and making it through to the end./p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"I just wanted to say that I've read the reviews and I hope this ending has answered all the questions, and I wanna say thank you to commenters who got what I was trying to do, that's incredibly validating (btw, shout out to guest reviewer Tambourine, wish you had an account so I could send you a direct thank you.)/p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"I just wanted to clarify I never meant to portray Bonnie badly, but I also don't think loving character means ignoring what's wrong with their characterisation. I initially wrote this because I wanted to explore the consequences and implications of a character like Bonnie and a character like Damon getting together in the circumstances that stood when I published the first chapter. I just don't think that getting together with Damon would erase all her previous behaviors, and as it was revealed in the last chapter, it was a coping and self preservation class="Apple-converted-space" /span/p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"On the matter of Bonnie seeing herself as a place holder for Elena, as bad as it sounds it wasn't so much a reflection of her thinking she's not as good as Elena that it didn't really make sense and she would have to rethink their relationship in a way she wasn't equipped to deal with when they got together. I mean, when I published the first chapter, everyone was incredulous that Damon would cheat. Because he's quite loyal. And I wanted to explore in a believable way how he would go from being in love with one person to another person, and to me at least it made sense that everyone around would just assume he would be incapable of truly moving one from Elena. I mean, he stayed fixated on Katherine and then went on to her doppelgänger…/p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"And Bonnie wasn't fine with the cheating she thought happened, she was disappointed, she was just not surprised because she kind of braced herself for it. But she expected respect and forewarning and space, not what happened. And the thing is, whether it's a bad thing or not, canon Bonnie clearly has issues with putting herself as central to even her own life. I sympathize with her because I have bouts of extreme low self esteem and when they manifest, it's not that I just go around talking down on myself, but instead I start to limit myself and not let myself want things, because I'm afraid of the disappointment of not getting what I want, or even worse, getting it and not being deserving of class="Apple-converted-space" /span/p
p class="p2"I guess that's me projecting my own shit onto Bonnie so mea culpa but idk, I feel like canon pretty much supports that she has some self worth issues. What I loved about the Bamon friendship was that I finally saw someone on the show really be all in on caring about saving Bonnie and it finally made me see it for the ship. And I felt like Bonnie definitely showed more of her feelings and vulnerabilities after becoming friends with him so I was really her for that too./p
p class="p1" /p
p class="p2"So…yeah…hope I wrapped things up in a way that had all of this come through. Thank you again so much for reading this. I adore Bonnie, she's one of my favourite characters ever and I'm happy to see others feel passionately about her as I do./p