it kills me that kali just never stood a chance both as a person in their world and as a character in the show, like going through all of these pieces together:
as a person within the st universe
she was abducted as a child by brenner to a completely different country, after her mother had also been experimented on
she spent nearly a decade being abused in the lab, including being electrocuted by a cattle prod by a grown adult
the new family she was with before finding her gang couldnt help her the way she needed to be helped
she not only had to lose her found family gang (offscreen), she had to watch them die and then she had to be subjected to experimentation and abuse AGAIN
her blood gets stolen from her to be used for the projects and her blood ended up poisoning the pregnant women in the lab
it got so bad for her to the point where the only ending she saw for herself was suicide and she was up against a grown man who, despite being el’s guardian, couldnt specifically understand el in the way that she did
then when kali did die, the only person left who could understand her and mourn her also died shortly after
as a character for the show
she gets associated as part of the ‘low points’ of s2/the series + negatively as being part of the spin-off allegations around s2
she’ll be one of the first parts to erase if you ask a random person/the ga what they would change about the show
before s5, we get one episode with her and then some. we had the whole series to get to know el, a whole season + a canon play to get to know henry, we had one episode to know her and an ambiguously canon novel that 80% of the people watching the show are not gonna be reading
they set her up so dirty that she’s made to look like a traitor just for the ga to easily want her to die atp forgetting the canon abuse she went through to even understand her character’s reasoning
she’s been utilized in the show and poorly received in such a way that she just isnt mourned like chrissy or benny, who had even less screentime and less interaction with el