In this S1 special of It Was an Animal Attack, Sandile and Fadzai present the inaugural Animal Attack Awards! A celebration of the conclusion of the podcast's first season, and a joyous farewell to The Vampire Diaries, marking its many memorable characters and moments.

Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of conversion therapy, familial abandonment, gratuitous violence, homophobia, murder, racism, religious fanaticism, sexual assault, and slavery.

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E-mail: animalattackpod@gmail.com

Refs and Links: IWAA S1

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Spin-off! Your hosts talk Storm in X-Men: Evolution and various other adaptations of the X-Men comics, The Little Mermaid and its surprising metaphors, and some early to mid-2000s vampire-related Disney movies. Also: a Tyra Banks throwback, more X-Men comics (the Krakoa era!), and the silliness of "gingercide".

Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of fetishisation, internalised bigotry, misogynoir, and racism.

Questions, queries, or just to say hi!

E-mail: animalattackpod@gmail.com

Refs and Links: IWAA S1

All our online stuff!

Podcast: It Was an Animal Attack

Twitter: @animattackpod

Instagram: @animalattackpod

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(00:00:05) - Ororo Munroe / Storm in X-Men: Evolution

(00:11:34) - The Little Mermaid: Fairytale, Movie, Metaphor

(00:14:14) - Disney vampire movies and shows

(00:16:28) - Iris West, DC female reporter girlfriends, and so-called "gingercide"

(00:18:06) - An iconic panel from the X-Men comic, Bishop: War College

(00:20:10) - Once Upon a Time and the currency of hope

(00:21:10) - An America's Next Top Model throwback moment

(00:22:10) - Characters dying mid-sentence / mid-thought

(00:23:21) - Dark romance book tiktok memes

Hell-raiser! Fadzai and Sandile close out the season finale with a fiery bang alongside Bonnie Bennett!

One of the main characters of The Vampire Diaries, Bonnie is the best friend of lead character, Elena Gilbert, and a budding witch with ties leading back to Salem and the founding of Mystic Falls. As she discovers more about her powers, and the existence of vampires and the greater supernatural lurking in her town and out in the world, Bonnie is at first hesitant to get involved, given the historical fate of witches in and beyond her family. By the end of the first season, though, she reaches a point of certainty that she wishes to be the town's protector from vampires and the harm they cause to its innocent people.

Beyond this point, however, Bonnie finds herself constantly having to compromise her principles given her friends' association with vampires - and some of her friends becoming vampires. From a narrative standpoint, this is largely a result of Bonnie's relegation as a character in the story, with focus placed on her usefulness as a witch in solving supernatural problems for the group. With several deaths, depowerings, and damn-near farcical tragedies under her belt, Bonnie's time in the show is mired by trauma and neglect - especially as the one black main character - and she is in retrospect someone in the show, and in the genre, who deserved so much better.

(This episode focuses on Bonnie in seasons 7 and 8.)

Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of addiction, defeated mental state, familial abandonment, familial neglect, grooming, gratuitous violence, mental coercion and manipulation, physical abuse, racism, sexual abuse, assault and related victim blaming, slavery, and suicide and suicidal ideation.

Audio Note: This episode was updated with 14 minutes of audio that were initially missing on release (currently 00:44:56 to 00:59:03).

Questions, queries, or just to say hi!

E-mail: animalattackpod@gmail.com

Refs and Links: IWAA S1

All our online stuff!

Podcast: It Was an Animal Attack

Twitter: @animattackpod

Instagram: @animalattackpod

Tiktok: @animalattackpod

YouTube: @animalattackpod