Okay, I’ve read the last chapter of TLTBILB like 5x and I’m still dying over the fact that not only is Tyler the most perfect boyfriend in the world. BUT, that he also wrote letters to Hayley about Bonnie. The fact that Bonnie is the only person who doesn’t realize how much Tyler loves her, is killing me softly. & how freaking cute & soft Jeremey is?? Like I hate him in canon, but he’s so cute in this fic. Alright imma go now, I just wanted you to know I’m obsessed with your fics! Your amazing❤️

Hey anon!

Gotta admit that TATBILB is just the most fun for me to write right now of all my fics. I have always had a major soft spot for Tonnie and honestly they were one of my earliest TVD ships when I first started watching the show before Klaus showed up and I became Klonnie obsessed. They just had so much potential to be great and I was salty that after all that BS that JP talked about not wanting to do a Oz/Willow redux (even though she had no issues with stealing literally everything else from BtVS) she put Tyler with a witch in later seasons anyway, one that just so happened to be another one of JP’s blonde self inserts.

Anyway back to the fic, I just love combining the story lines into the TVD-verse and I think it fits the characters so well. I love writing Oblivious!Bonnie and the whole idea of the fake dating trope and the seemingly unrequited love trope. Literally Tyler is the epitome of this gif…

And Bonnie just does not get it! Lol The journey with these two is definitely going to be a fun one and we are going to see Stefan and Vicki add some friction in the upcoming chapters. 

Jeremy….oh sweet Jeremy. I honestly feel like I would have loved him on the show if they wrote him as Elena’s little brother that’s just trying to find his place which they kind of did but then they put him in these random pairings and try to force his relevancy to the plot in all the wrong ways and wrote him so annoying so I was over him fairly quickly.I would have liked Beremy interacting better as just friends because their chemistry was flat for me on the show and their relationship was poorly written and executed and I was hoping for they would go the bisexual route with Jere just for diversity and to be real he even had more chemistry with Tyler than he did with Bonnie. I liked Jyler dynamic and wanted it to turn into something when it first became a thing on the show which is why I have them paired together in Shades of Pink. But the Jyler chem is a convo for another post. 

 Honestly, Bonnie had more chemistry with Tyler onscreen with just shared looks and the whole thing was just a waste because they had a fairly active fanbase for a while even with them not interacting onscreen hardly ever, which should tell you something. The witch/wolf lore also had so many possibilities, especially if Tyler was written as a canon character of color under the right pen as the mythology there is plentiful and especially if Bonnie’ heritage and background was given the story arc it deserved and not mentioned in passing and used a plot device. That’s why I love writing the pairing!

Writing them all human is different though. I like the idea of them being regular teenagers with ordinary problems and with a romcom plot. In spite of them being in high school the first few seasons, we didn’t get to see it a lot on the show, especially with Tyler and Bonnie because they were sidelined, and Bonnie was a plot device. A lot of their normal teenage moments were filtered through their pairings at the time, Beremy and Forwood. While TATBILB is heavy on romance and they do develop a lot as a couple, they are rebuilding a friendship as well, exploring a shared history that I feel like should have been explored with all the original base characters of the show because it would have made all of their moments of danger and heartbreak and their lives being disrupted by the supernatural that much more poignant. 

Bonnie and Tyler are also developing as individuals, particularly Bonnie in this fic. A lot of her wanting to stay in her comfort zone in the fic is fear based, which she doesn’t fully understand. I think its less about being in Elena’s shadow, and more about finally being around people that the are encouraging her to break out of that comfort zone and try new things, hang out with different people, and revealing more of herself to others and she gets that not just from Tyler, but from Jeremy, from Luka, from Caroline, and others as the story goes along. Because Elena may have been her friend but Elena was also her enabler and I feel like in terms of their friendship Bonnie staying in her comfort zone was encouraged by Elena because having her friend by her side all the time was something that was a part of Elena’s comfort zone. Bonnie isn’t just leaving her comfort zone though, its more like she’s expanding it and inviting other people into it and learning more about what she’s capable of and how people really see her. A reviewer put it well when they said that she’s been casting herself as the side character all along and she’s always been the lead and that’s exactly the point and what she’s realizing. 

 I think the girl’s being separated and Elena being off on her own where she’s not someone everyone knows and she’s not the center of attention and she doesn’t have people willing to bend over backwards to do what she wants and with the people she was closest to, like Jeremy and Stefan, getting closer to Bonnie in her absence and Bonnie experiencing so much that Elena won’t know about fully until she sees her again, no matter how many phone calls they make, it’ll be interesting when they finally reunite, which won’t be for a while yet. 

As far as Tyler’s development, I’d like to think that his relationship with Bonnie will allow more people to see who he really is at heart, which is a good person who is very intense and angry at times but goes hard for the people who he loves.The show started to do that with Forwood which is why I liked them at first but they put him in too much of a box and didn’t allow him to interact with enough others and then his development lost its impact and he was sacrificed on the altar of KC and things just went pear shaped from there. 

As far as the fic goes, I think that Tyler is still Tyler but he just allows himself to show certain sides of himself to people he cares about, people he trusts. He showed that side to Bonnie before and he’s able to do that again after so long. He can be a jerk and an asshole but that’s not all he is.  There are people who know this, Matt, Hayley, Caroline and his family but it isn’t widely known and I feel like when people witness the connection with him and Bonnie it’s something that is very evident and something that made Bonnie fall for him in the first place when they were younger. You’ll also get to see where a lot of his anger comes from in the upcoming chapters  and Hayley does reveal more to Bonnie about what Tyler’s letter’s said in later chapters as well. I want to have Tyler be kind of the inverse of the jock stereotype, because he has this image he puts on and this persona he wears that kind of melts off when he’s around Bonnie. Vicki will definitely take notice of this as well and there is going to be a lot of juxtaposition between those relationships and the way he is with each of them and the way that they are with him. Even though this is “fake” he isn’t used to someone as genuine as Bonnie and it makes sense for him to be all in. But Tyler has his own insecurities and Stefan’s presence doesn’t help them at all so we’ll see how it goes. It doesn’t help that while Tyler is familiar with Bonnie in the way she was before, she’s a little harder for him to read now because they haven’t interacted in a while. At times he has fun figuring her out but at other times its frustrating and while Stefan has been in the dog house so to speak, you get to see how easy it is for them to read each other and while its a different dynamic its one that Tyler is threatened by in a lot of ways. 

This answer got really long but I am so glad that you are enjoying the fic!😊 As you can see I love writing it and am super passionate about where its going so I do hope you stay for the ride anon! Thanks for reading! Lots of love your way! 💕

I wake up at 4:36 in the morning and find out that someone followed me probably because of my post about myself not liking the fact that I'm forced to like organic chemistry.

I am so quotable. like a boss.

Thanks for following aistuff.