I think Jeremy as the father of Bonnie’s children is the best option for canon in Legacies they made him guest star with barely any mentions of Bonnie.

Jeremy was the worst boyfriend Bonnie had. She was practically his parent with how often she had to look after his wellbeing. Bonnie shouldn't have to mother the father of her children. Jeremy didn't even do anything to make up for the emotional abuse of cheating-season5. That's why Bonnie still carries the weight of his infidelity around even when they get back together. Tbh, a big reason why I’m anti-Beremy outside of cheating is that it is mainly about Elena not necessarily Bonnie and Jeremy. A lot their moments are Elena-centered discussions. Bonnie deserves far better and so does the Bennett line.

JP mentioning how Bonnie’s permanent death was supposed to be for s5 on Twitter. How she said Kat “begged” for her job mixed with the discrediting and ignoring the Bennett’s in TO/LGCs. Bonnie was never going to get anything after 2017. She couldn’t wait to be free of Bonnie. She hoped Kat would give up and quit the way Trevino did.

LGCS writers bluntly said Bonnie wasn’t an important character for their musical but we all know what that double entendre meant. Bonnie’s not important at all once Elena/Caroline got their happy endings and families. We don’t even have the luxury of seeing Bonnie at peace in the finale scene or reconnecting with her family after all those years. The only time we see multiple Bennett’s at once is when they’re saving the day.

Bonnie barely gets mentioned at all. Bonnie not ending up with Jeremy is truly a miracle considering how much JP hated Bonnie stans and Bonnie herself. There’s ZERO respect to Bonnie given how much Bennett blood the Salvatore Boarding School has and the ascendant in order to send children into prison worlds. Plecverse didn’t even respect the POC characters they had on LGCs. Bonnie wouldn’t have been the exception.

Thank you for the ask! 💜💜💜

Why don’t you think that Kevin Williamson gets the same criticism for the problematic aspects on the show as Julie Plec and Caroline Dries?

I was on Reddit and I saw a post that said the Kevin deserves the same treatment and he is also to blame for the racism and the Bonnie treatment and for the “Pro-Confederacy” but all the blame is always placed on Julie and Caroline?

I went through your posts and you tag “Anti Julie Plec” and “Anti Caroline Dries” but not “Anti Kevin Williamson.”

Why do you think that Kevin Williamson is not blamed for the problematic and even for the “Damon” of it all?

The person who posted that said it’s because Kevin Williamson can write a story whereas Julie and Caroline cannot.

I don't think it's that people don't hold him accountable, I think it's that JP and Caroline are simply named more. I agree that KW should be called out more by name especially considering what he did on Tell Me A Story

In terms of my tags, I started this blog near the end of season 6, which contextualizes a lot of my posts and frustrations in those posts because JP and Caroline Dries had been running the show for about three and a half seasons by this point and they were the ones who had the quotes and the interviews and the tweets about how they viewed Bonnie and about how Bonnie functioned in TVD or how they viewed Black women in general

DRIES:  We’re going to see Bonnie continue to try to adjust to life in the prison world.  She tried to have Christmas, and it just made things worse for her.  She’s going to have a birthday in the prison world, which is going to be worse.  She’s really going to hit rock bottom before she pulls herself up by the bootstraps and says, “You know what? Let me get out of here!”  She will finally find her way back, and it will come at the perfect time for our friends, who are in need of a friend rejuvenation and beautiful reunion.  So, she comes back and is emotionally scarred from it.

“"Bonnie will continue to be a loyal friend to Damon and a very supportive person for him to lean on as he goes through the drama of the second half of the season,“ she explained. “But their relationship will also face its own obstacles down the road. Bonnie and Stefan are grounding forces in Damon’s life. So for him to put his relationship with Bonnie at stake would have really, really bad consequences for Damon, for sure.”

“She’s been empowered by her best friend Elena to kind of follow her… to become this stronger woman that she’s become, but also take on the role of being Damon’s moral compass,” Dries says. “With Elena sidelined, Bonnie’s worried: ‘Is Damon going to go off his rocker? Do I need to keep an eye on him?’ Then there’s Damon, who’s obviously grieving the loss of the love of his life, and the big question is, ‘Is he going to become the monster that we saw in Season 1, the real villain of the show?’”

Like Damon, Bonnie is now doing what she wants. “And so, she’ll kind of get involved in Alaric’s storyline a little bit,” Dries says. “But as she’s working with Alaric and helping him through the grief of losing Jo, Bonnie starts to get herself embroiled in a little bit of a love story. And so, that’s been very fun to watch unfold.”

so they took up most of my ire in relation to Bonnie's treatment (it should also be noted and I've said this before, if I say Julie/JP or Caroline, I mean JP and co. or Caroline Dries and co., which is meant to encapsulate the entire writers room because one person did accuse me of blaming everything on JP or Caroline when they themselves didn't write a specific episode and I had to be like I refer to their names as an encapsulation of the writers/show/EPs in general). If I tagged KW it was usually in relation to a Stelena post and KW was SE's biggest champion, which was why I didn't put anti KW in the tag (I'm not saying I haven't tagged KW in Bonnie posts or posts that talk about the antiblack treatment of the show but I know I specifically tag KW for SE posts) and some of that still carries over.

Plus, Bonnie's treatment was always terrible but in the seasons KW was actively involved, her treatment was better -- not good but better -- which isn't to let him off the hook but I think in relation to what she goes through from season 4 onwards combined with the tweets and the posts and things like Julie explaining that Kat begged her not to kill Bonnie off, JP and Caroline are the names that automatically come to mind for people.

The Ultimate Padded-or-rather-Completely-Fabricated Resume

Tennessee congressman Andrew Ogles’s résumé is too good to be true

Analysis by Glenn Kessler

“That is the state of politics in America today. They want power and control so badly that they are willing to say and do anything to get there. If you don’t have the integrity to just be you and run on what you’ve done, then I don’t want you in Congress. And so that’s how I present myself to you.”— Rep. Andrew Ogles (R-Tenn.), speaking to supporters while running for election, July 23

Ogles, a newly elected member of Congress, has been the subject of news reports by a Nashville television station for having exaggerated his background. When Ogles was one of the holdouts to approving Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House speaker, he claimed he was “an economist” — a claim he has made several times — along with other embellishments. But NewsChannel 5 in Nashville found that he had taken only one course in economics, at a community college, and received a C. 

Ogles first entered college in 1990 and did not get a degree until 2007.

Now 

The Fact Checker has uncovered more evidence of résumé inflation by Ogles — this time about his business career — that sheds light on a politician who said in his recent congressional campaign that you shouldn’t be in Congress “if you don’t have the integrity to just be you and run on what you’ve done.”Our reporting shows that Ogles’s résumé enhancement is not a recent development. In a 2009 résumé submitted for a job, he claimed numerous roles with businesses and on boards of organizations that were exaggerated or could not be corroborated. A consulting firm he claimed to run from 2003 to 2010 cannot be found in Tennessee corporate records. 

Indeed, during his various bids for public office in this period, local newspapers described him as a restaurateur, not a business consultant.Ogles now tends to skip over this period of his past. His LinkedIn page lists job history starting only in 2011, when he was about 40. In a January C-SPAN interview, when asked what he did before he came to Congress, Ogles said: “I was an entrepreneur young in my career. Fast-forwarding to my midlife crisis, I was in law enforcement and international sex crimes.”

As NewsChannel 5 documented, Ogles was sworn in as a volunteer reserve deputy with the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office in July 2009 but lost that position two years later for not meeting minimum standards, making no progress in field training and failing to attend required meetings. The “international sex crimes” referred to a part-time position as chief operating officer of an anti-trafficking group, Abolition International, that paid a total of $4,000 in 2011, according to the tax filing of the organization.

We sent a long list of questions to Ogles’s communications director and then to his staff director but did not get a response.

In response to the NewsChannel5 coverage, his staff had said that he had condensed his résumé on the campaign trail and that the reporting was fueled by political bias. In a statement, Ogles acknowledged he had wrongly claimed to have earned a college degree in international relations.

Now let’s look at his entrepreneurial claims, using a 2009 résumé originally posted by NewsChannel5 that covers the period now not listed on Ogles’s LinkedIn bio. (Ogles has not disputed that this is his résumé.)

Consulting business

Ogles lists impressive achievements as an executive at E. Net Media & Consulting of Nashville from 2003 to 2010. (The résumé says he was an executive vice president, but his 2015 LinkedIn profile described him as president and owner.) The résumé states that at E. Net Media he represented “a variety of clients ranging from small start ups to Fortune 500 companies.” We could not corroborate his assertions.

No corporate record exists for E. Net in Tennessee state records, although Ogles has set up other corporate entities, public records show. Tennessee corporate records show two companies with similar names were formed by other people before 2003, but neither was associated with Ogles.Ogles claimed that while with E. Net Media, he:“Developed recruiting and training program to reduce attrition for Merrill Lynch, saving up to $15 million annually.”“Evaluated management structure of Merrill Lynch and recommended reducing regional districts from 19 to 12, with projected savings of up to $30 million annually.”

Neither of these statements can be verified. Bill Halldin, a spokesman for Bank of America, which acquired Merrill in 2008, said that Ogles for less than a year worked as a financial adviser for individual investors — a stockbroker — in a Merrill Nashville office from November 2002 to September 2003. (Ogles had lost his first race for Congress in 2002.) Halldin declined to comment on whether Ogles would have performed consulting work for Merrill.As a stockbroker, Ogles would have needed to acquire Series 7 and Series 66 licenses, which are required by law. On his résumé, Ogles listed having those licenses, but he does not mention having been a stockbroker at Merrill. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners has an online record of Ogles holding an “insurance producer” license for one year, from March 25, 2003, to March 24, 2004. Kevin Walters, the communications director for the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, said the one-year license was for selling life and accident/health insurance.

The résumé also claims Ogles “secured [a] $10 million tax incentive, for film industry positioned VR Limited, to negotiate $35 to $50 million development package in Tennessee.” But no such deal can be found in a search of Tennessee news clips, let alone a company called VR Limited in the film industry. Bob Raines, the executive director of the Tennessee Entertainment Commission, has been with TEC since 2002 and said he was unfamiliar with any such deal.

Other claims on the résumé, such as guiding a $15 million Korean venture fund, are too vague to verify. Not a word about E. Net appeared in Tennessee newspapers, despite the significant deals that Ogles has claimed the company made.The Tennessean reported in 2009 that Ogles had started a company with a partner called “Clipazine.com,” described as an online portal for coupons for local restaurants. That business is not mentioned on the résumé. An online mention of Clipazine from 2009 leads to a dead domain name, and Ogles’s partner does not list it on his LinkedIn page. Archived webpages exist only up to 2011.

Investment firm

Ogles’s 2009 résumé says he was vice president of another Nashville company, called Franklin Investment & Holding, from June 1995 to January 2002. The résumé says that the company had “varied investments in retail, restaurant, real estate, hotel, and apartment properties” and that Ogles “increased portfolio share” by 25 percent and achieved continued growth of 18 to 25 percent a year.But Tennessee corporate records show the firm, formed with Ogles’s brother Justin and a third partner, was in existence only for a fraction of that time. It was created in August 2001 and then dissolved a year later.

Ogles did create a company called Ogles Enterprises Inc. in 1996. This was a short-lived travel agency that was part of Travel Professionals International. The company and Ogles were sued by a landlord in 1997, and the company was cited by a travel arbiter for having “failed to pay for dishonored sales drafts worth $7,123.” It was dissolved by the state the same year.

With his father-in-law co-signing a loan, Ogles bought a doughnut shop in 1997. Then, in 2001, he expanded it to serve three meals a day, with his brother Justin as full partner, according to a June 10, 2001, Tennessean article.In 2002, before being dissolved, Franklin Investment received a business license to operate the Mason Jar Café in nearby Brentwood, Tenn. In April 2003, during Ogles’s first, unsuccessful run for Congress, the Ogles brothers’ Daylight Donuts was put up for sale, with owner financing offered. That same year, the state issued a tax lien on the business.The LinkedIn page for Justin Ogles lists him as owner/operator of Daylight Donuts and Café from June 1998 to February 2010. Reached by phone to explain his brother’s role in the company, Justin Ogles demurred. “I’m not in politics or anything,” he said. “It’s best you take it up with my brother.”

Directorships

The 2009 résumé also says Ogles served on the boards of directors of the YMCA of Franklin from 2005 to 2006, Nurses for Newborns in Tennessee from 2002 to 2007, the City of Franklin from 2004 to 2008, and something called “DDCA” in Franklin from 2006 to the present.The YMCA in Franklin is a branch — not a distinct legal entity — of the Young Men’s Christian Association of Nashville & Middle Tennessee. The Association’s IRS filings for 2005 and 2006 do not show Ogles as a member of its policy/governing board. “Rep. Ogles wasn’t ever a member of that board,” said Jessica P. Fain, the chief strategy officer of YMCA of Middle Tennessee. She said it’s possible he was on a non-policy advisory committee, with no fiduciary or policy authority, at the local branch. Fain checked with the most tenured Franklin staff member, who arrived in 2007, and confirmed that Ogles was not a volunteer board member at that time.The city of Franklin has no “board of directors.” The city is governed by a board consisting of an elected mayor and eight elected aldermen (four from city wards and four at-large). Ogles never served in any elective position, and he does not appear on any of the various city advisory committees where citizens serve alongside aldermen, according to archived lists from 2004 to 2008.Ogles claimed to have served from 2002 to 2007 on the board of Nurses for Newborns — an organization based in Missouri that has a second office in Nashville — but according to IRS filings, Ogles has never served on the board of directors. Matt Robertson, the executive director of the Tennessee office, said Ogles was a member of a nonvoting advisory board for the local office from July 1, 2005, to June 30, 2006.As for DDCA, which stands for Dallas Downs Community Association, in Franklin. 

Ogles’s mother, Beverly, had helped Ogles and his wife buy a house there in 2002; the home was known for its Christmas lighting display. Archived webpages show Ogles was briefly president (and in charge of the pool) toward the end of 2008, but in 2009 his name disappears from the list of board members.

The Pinocchio Test

Ogles’s résumé suggests that he was a savvy business consultant and investor with a number of board memberships. But even as he was supposedly saving Merrill Lynch millions of dollars through his consulting work, he was also briefly a stockbroker there and co-owned a doughnut shop. [He also exaggerates or invents his service on various boards.]

He earns Four Pinocchios.

* * * *

Why we can’t have nice things. 

Because criminals, con men, frauds, hucksters, liars, those who have never really accomplished anything or learned anything can get themselves elected to Congress.  These people are unbelievable. Only in Congress to enrich themselves and run further cons to further enrich themselves.

The Dark Knight Trilogy

The Freemasonic Shutdown of Anti-Stalk Technology (The Internet, Cop Interdiction):

Batman Begins: Ivan Tomasic is cleared by Dave Charlebois, and given Homeland Security tags, as a Russian agent. Fear gas is developed, a substitute to Zyprexa, however permanent. Brian Monaghan is dosed. Matthew Lennox, is presumed dead, by Andrew Brooks. The invasion of the MUSH occurs, by George Soros's agents, Jeffrey Lange, for the Obama regime. David Charlebois's work is submitted, to Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Nietzsche's company.

The Dark Knight: Kevin Weeks, "Alex Fleming", is called out of retirement, to fight prosecutor Andrew Brooks. Allison Haimes, North Korean Law academy, Ba'ath Trial specialist, is tapped by Jeffrey Lange, for the 4chan project. Dave Charlebois, is dropped out of college, for financial fraud, a fence deal to the United States Air Force, of Russian Intelligence marijuana. Kevin Weeks, engages Andrew Brooks, through Whitey Bulger, and Allison Haimes, has her face scarred. Kevin Weeks, sets up Sandy Hook, which Dave Charlebois claims credit for under Mossad tag, after catching Eric Frein, through Brian Monaghan. The mastermind, Alex Jones, is caught, but Jenna Williamson, flees in absentia, haviing provided Adam Lanza's assault training, out of the Braziian US Army DEA dispatch, Pracinas. Jeffrey Lange, now a PhD in cop sciences, prints "Gotham", to redeem David Masouz, relative of Nancy Mace, Charlie Day, Jim Bowie, David Bowie, Andre Olnesti, Gary Kasparov, Mrs. Kasprak, and Nathaniel Bedford Forrest; Aisha of Mecca.

The Dark Knight Rises: Brian Monaghan, written as "Mister Zsasz", with the aid of David Charlebois, arranges the trade of Tom Brady to the Buccaneers, disrupting Fox Cable Footage. Trump, threatens the country, through Michael Fargnoli's marketing software, through Will Morgan. Jessica Bailey, propositions Dave, to make comics, through his father. Dave attends SNHU, outing the marketing software fraud, outing Mike Fargnoli and Jeffrey Lange and Donald Trump, as guilty; riots ensue, in the capital. Jessica "Baiiley"', real name, Jessica of Windsor, swears to her protector, David "Berkowitz" Falco, Dave Charlebois, and he outs his activity. INTERPOL, is redeemed.

So, if you aren't one of the named, the survivors; is the internet dangerous?

Have you done something illegal, the internet is saving you from?

Is it us, or you, Batman fans?

hello! I found your blog from your gg blog, and I was hoping it would be ok if I could ask why delena is one of your least favourite ships? you said you stopped watching after season 3 and they do not get together until post season 3, so I was curious about why you dislike them a lot if you haven't really seen them as a couple? I ship datherine and steroline so I never cared about the love triangle so i'd love to pick your brain if that's okay :)

hi! i’m so sorry for the late response! here’s a long-as-ever response to make up for it. hopefully you’ll still see this!

so just gonna say off that bat that after all of these years the tvd ship wars are still too intense for my liking hahaha and i genuinely have no interest in fighting (and sometimes even just debating) about ships, especially ones that i’ve had my mind made up about for over a decade, so while i like to share my thoughts, i typically prefer to just sort of... shush about certain ships, delena included. i have a lot of mutuals and friends who love delena and i’m more than happy to just quietly coexist lol. i have no desire to post loads of anti delena content beyond this post.

and fair warning, it’s been several years since i’ve watched tvd (i’m thinking of rewatching soon but idk) so some plot details have been forgotten and as you know, literally ALL of my opinions of these characters and ships are based solely on s1-3. idk much about what happened between them all later on and idk what kind of characters they developed into. so if anyone reading is ever thinking “but what about this scene in season 5″ just know that i did not and will not see it lol.

i guess to me it felt like his love for her was selfish, like so much of that relationship was built on damon trying to one-up his brother and “get the girl” this time, and the rest of it was built on lust. a lot of their scenes felt shallow to me. i didn’t get what they actually liked about each other or related to each other about. even ignoring the terrible things he did to her family and friends, i felt that there was a lot about elena that stefan understood and damon didn’t, and i felt that stefan respected her and her priorities and needs much more.

most of all, i just found stelena more compelling and i thought that they were very much the story that the show was telling before plec started doing her Thing. it was an oddly human story between a human and a non-human. two dead people coming back to life, i think is how kevin williamson put it. i still think that that love, in all its different forms, was the centre of the show. it was human love, not some intense, transcendent, godly love (which can absolutely be fun in tv ships! but only when it suits BOTH characters involved). and elena as i knew her in s1-3 wanted to be human. i did feel like while she definitely did love damon before she was a vampire (i know some stelena fans think that she never should have fallen in love with him given what he did to caroline, jeremy, etc., and i agree to some extent but her falling for him is not in and of itself a huge source of frustration for me), she would always have chosen stefan as a human, which was the life she always truly wanted. she was SO clear about that. maybe damon did fit her life better when she was a vampire,i wouldn’t know, but it just feels moot to me when that’s... not what she wanted to begin with. (but i mean, ideally, frankly, both stefan and damon would just get out of her life and let her be normal lol).

i stopped watching because i just kind of had no interest in the direction the show was taking elena in through that relationship. it felt so contradictory to all that i thought about her as a character, like i would be sitting through several seasons of “this is what elena loves and wants!” when i just didn’t believe that. and i just kind of sensed from the second they put delena together that they would now be The Ship and i didn’t care to see it lol. i felt my problems with them as a ship were all quite central to their dynamic and would never be developed out of them, y’know what i mean? i’m sure they changed and developed in certain ways throughout the rest of the show, but i just can’t imagine that there’s anything that would make me like them more at all. i think more people should just quit shows when they start hating the writing; we’d all have much fewer ship-related headaches!

fwiw, i do think i’d ship steroline if i ever continued the show, because i love both characters and loved their friendship so, so much, and i actually always wonder if i’d even actively ship post-s3 stefan with post-s3 elena. but never delena. and always s1-3 stelena.

"Let us stroll down memory lane... Shall we?"

I had to turn off my CD copy of the song "Me And My Shadow" to sit down and write these words, today.

On a Sunday in July of 2018, the New York Post published an Op/Ed piece whose headline immediately interested me. The headline said, in no uncertain terms, that the writer would focus on the year 1968.

The writer, Kevin D. Williamson, was new to me, but I felt that I had to read the piece, as 1968 was the year that I graduated high school and it was a year that many people in the public eye have spoken about and written about, ever since then.

Even at that time, people in the public eye were talking about what was going on -- in the country and around the world.

If you go to the New York Post website, you -- you who are reading my words -- will find that the Op/Ed piece's headline reads as follows: '1968 marked Americans' retreat from civic life.'

Everyone, here, at Tumblr, seems to have an opinion about what's going on, now, in the year 2023, and the question that I ask myself is whether anyone, today, tries to think about what happened in 1968. If few people are interested about that year, then I wonder if anyone learned one or more lessons from the changes that took place in politics and in the society in general.

I'm being logical. If few people, today, are interested in reading an Op/Ed piece written about the year 1968, does that mean that they already know about what happened and understand what happened?

Is this a guess on my part? I'm suggesting that there's little interest in the past and a great deal of interest in the present and in the future -- so much interest that the present and the future are combined into one subject.

So... my writing, here, becomes a soliloquy. I need to think about and respond to what Mr. Williamson says in his Op/Ed piece...

Mr. Williams contends that for this society -- the U.S. -- to function, from one generation to the next, then, from each successive generation, there has to be an adequate per centage of young adults who make the effort to be active citizens, and when that per centage decreases from generation to generation, then the society starts to fall apart.

This Op/Ed piece should be part of a larger work that presents a thorough description and analysis of what Mr. Williamson means by the term 'active citizenship.'

I read the Op/Ed piece easily ten times that first week in July and I've kept it since then. What interested me the most was his passing description of the way that too mny Americans -- starting with baby boomers in 1968 -- have disconnected from society.

I witnessed and participated in that: disconnecting from society. That did happen. I'm thinking of my peers.

It's far easier to follow multiple rock groups and do drugs than to -- say -- work on the election campaign of a political candidate, or, for that matter, to think about how not voting in an election is not a good idea.

In my case, the two rock groups I followed were my brother's. And from time to time, I smoked marijuana.

The thought of working on an election campaign was something I would not consider, since I was convinced that neither the Republicans or Democrats wanted to end the war in Southeast Asia.

The first Presidential election that I remember voting in was in November of 1976. Jimmy Carter won, Gerald Ford lost. I have voted in every Presidential election since then, to date.

At the very end of the Op/Ed piece, Mr. Williamson quotes an expression that I occasionally heard in the late 1960s and into the 1970s: "Turn on, tune in, drop out."

Occasionally, I did hear those words spoken. Those words were spoken by people who were criticizing baby boomers in the anti-war movement. I heard the words spoken in episodes of prime time network television series. And, once or twice, I heard someone who identified themself as a member of the anti-war movement say the words on a radio station that I listened to at the time, WBAI-FM. They were criticizing the people who were criticizing the baby boomers.

Looking back to that time, on an unconscious level, those words could serve as a justification for drug use. There was a song from that era (late 1960s -eaarly 1970s) with the lyrics "Turn on, tune in, turn your eyes around." And enjoying the feeling of being high on marijuana was a perfect way to ignore any responsibility -- such as being part of a society that the smoker did not want to be part of.

So... Mr. Williamson's analysis is based in reality. I recommend the Op/Ed piece to anyone, here, at Tumblr.

-- Drew Simels

"If He Hollers, Let Him Go!" (1968) is a crime drama written and directed by Charles Martin, which Martin based on Chester Himes' 1945 novel under the same title. The film stars Raymond St. Jacques, Dana Wynter, Kevin McCarthy, and Barbara McNair.

Anti-bigotry films were gaining popularity in the 1960s. Movies like "In the Heat of the Night," "Black Like Me," and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" are examples of anti-bigotry movies. The films were supposed to shed harsh truths about racism that Hollywood struggled to address. "If He Hollers, Let Him Go" was an extension of those films, and Raymond St. Jacques leads the way as an escaped prisoner wrongly convicted of rape and murder of a way woman. During his escape, he encounters a white man (Kevin McCarthy), who initially seems to want to help him, but knowing he is an escaped prisoner, manipulates to murder his wife (Dana Wynter). From here, the movie goes through a series of flashbacks of events that lead to conviction and his present escape to find the truth and clear his name from his encounter with McCarthy.

St. Jacques does an excellent job representing a new type of black character that would soon lead to the famed blaxploitation era. He was a no-nonsense black man that wouldn't soft-shoe for anyone. These were foundational traits you saw in "Shaft "(Richard Roundtree), "The Hammer" (Fred Williamson), and "Slaughter" (Jim Brown).

Directors: Charles Martin Writers: Chester Himes, Charles Martin

Starring Raymond St. Jacques, Kevin McCarthy, Barbara McNair, Dana Wynter, John Russell, Ann Prentiss, Royal Dano, Steve Sandor, Susan Seaforth Hayes, James Craig, Arthur O'Connell, Don Newsome, James McEachin

Storyline James Lake (Raymond St. Jacques, Cotton Comes to Harlem) is an escaped black convict imprisoned for a murder he didn't commit. While on the run, he runs into Leslie Whitlock (Kevin McCarthy). Whitlock manipulates James to kill his wife, Ellen (Dana Wynter), but James escapes, and Whitlock stages a robbery scene to put James into more trouble. Now James must prove his innocence to avoid returning to jail, clear his name from Whitlock's mess, and find his old lover Lily (Barbara McNair).

Available on Blu-ray.

The gig is up

The gig is up

Last week, Kevin Williamson, an anti-Trump conservative, blasted the GOP for only running against Democrats. As he said, “I have not heard a case for Republicans worth repeating in years—only a case against Democrats.” Then he added, “Democrats, for their part, are in essentially the same rhetorical position.” He concludes his piece on a positive note, saying, “At some point, that gambit will…

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Thoughts on bonkai

And julie plec hatred of them ?

I love Bonkai. I completely understand where skeptics come from when they ask why Bonnie fans would ship her with someone who hurt her so terribly - but, as I’ve said before, that’s what the entire show + nearly all of its ships are about. Bonnie has the most realistic reactions to the terrible things the other characters do, and that’s why Bonkai to me is so much more earned as a relationship (regardless of whether it’s ultimately reciprocated or not) than Delena or even Klaroline, for example. I’ll ship Bonnie with just about anyone who’s an actual character (and Enzo is not, but I digress) who has not cheated on her, but my main two Bonnie ships are Kai and Damon - merely because they’re the only two people who’ve canonically prioritized her first and foremost (as late as it was on both ends, and as twisted as it is for Kai). I will say, from what we got in canon, Bonkai could not have a healthy dynamic nor could Bonnie reciprocate fully until some major time and groveling had passed. Bonnie is not Elena (and not to bash Elena, she’s literally a traumatized kid), but a few well-chosen words and lustful moments will not make up for what Kai did to her and other innocents. The most compelling Bonkai stories are those in which Bonnie is drawn to Kai despite herself, and her fear of this attraction and what it means about herself means she resists it until she can’t - and then she uses that to blackmail Kai into being a good citizen despite his murderous tendencies. Because Kai can at the very least play nice when Bonnie’s approval is on the line - we saw that before he was imprisoned in the second prison world. And I’m convinced canonically that Kai is in love with Bonnie as it is possible for him to be - from seeking her out repeatedly to reminiscing over Bonnie in Legacies.

JP hates them because she hates Bonnie. That’s all. All those writers hate Bonnie, even Kevin Williamson, because how else do you write a show glorifying the Confederacy and conveniently forgetting the Black woman when it comes time to play dress up or receive a love triangle but remember her to have her die the most or be the only character to get explicitly cheated on? Bonnie’s storylines are no accident, and once the outcry was too much, they shoved her with the empty vessel of a character that is Enzo via flashback (and then killing him and sending her around the world, starting with Africa) rather than giving us any sort of genuine emotional investment for the character who’s suffered the most. I won’t argue this point - losing the people you love is terrible but not the same as sacrificing yourself repeatedly because you believe your only worth is as the help. I think they allowed Kai to fixate on Bonnie (they would never admit that he has any sort of genuine connections or feelings for her, at most remorse and at worst just a lust for the power she represents) because they couldn’t continue beating that dead horse for Elena (Damon, Stefan, Elijah, Matt, etc.) or Caroline (Klaus, Tyler, Stefan, etc.) while sidelining Bonnie and they noticed fans most loved the storylines where a compelling villain falls for one of the heroines. Kai does not necessarily have the same utilitarian impact Klaus does in calculating villainous damage, but he’s significantly more twisted and his crimes more horrific, at least in the way he’s presented. So we get him fixating on Bonnie - but he’s not allowed to be a legitimate love interest - because JP and co. genuinely do not believe that someone as interesting as Kai could fall for Bonnie, especially when Elena (“sorry I’m nervous, you’re so pretty” what the fuck was that) or Caroline (lest we forget, she was Enzo’s second choice after Lily and before Bonnie) exists. In fact, I’m sure JP only found Kai’s thing for Bonnie believable because she’s the only woman he’d seen in twenty years. I don’t know who we have to think for Kai’s clear adoration for Bonnie regardless of how many women he’s surrounded by (probably just Chris Wood himself), but the entire show running team would never allow them to be canon simply because they hate Bonnie. And yes, it’s racist.

Ain't I a Woman

So I made a post recently about Vicki Donovan and added a bit about the misogyny within in TVD and the fandom. I touched briefly on the Bonnie of it all, but as I said that's a different discussion, so here it is.

I'd add Bonnie, but this fandom is more racist than it is misogynistic so they don't even think to put her against Elena or the other girls due to her being black, no Bonnie gets her own special category as the strong black woman which they use to exclude her from being considered a woman at all, but we don't have time to get into all that.

Now that made me think of Sojourner Truth's infamous "Ain't I A Woman" speech basically about the same concept of not being seen as a woman or feminine because she was black and being excluded from the rights gained in the woman's suffrage movement.

Now TVD, many a moment goes old school racism to the point I gotta wonder who approved any of it, so it doesn't surprise me that this particular facet applies to Bonnie.

She gets love interests that are considered less desirable in the series let alone in comparison to her white counterparts (granted I don't find either Stefan or Damon a catch but you can't deny their allure especially over Jeremy and Enzo). When she does have any kind of love interest they are either using her, they die (repeatedly), and just don't go that hard for her (Enzo and his severely disinterested face in every intimate scene). Or in Jeremy's case when they do go hard he didn't have any power to help her, and he cheated on her multiple times.

You compare that to both Caroline and Elena's love interests you can see where Bonnie stands. She's an after thought while both Caroline and Elena are their LI reasons for living. While I do find these traits often annoying and bad story telling, it still offers insight into how the narrative sees Bonnie. It sees her as not even worth the effort. She's not in "the same league" as the white girls because she's not really even considered a woman.

You especially see that in the way they express her sexuality. It's been often observed by Bonnie fans that the show makes her essentially asexual. She literally has only two sex scenes one she stays mostly clothed for and it's after the fact and the other happens right after she as the anchor has someone painfully pass through her. And worse, to me at least, that was apparently when she lost her virginity. Now it would be one thing if Bonnie was portrayed as modest and if this fact had came to light before that episode, but it doesn't.

The show itself in terms of sex, while not sex positive (note how promiscuity in female characters is punished), treats it as nothing. Most teenage shows make a big deal out of virginity except for TVD which essentially skips over it completely in the first episodes where Caroline takes Damon home like she's in her 20s and has her own apartment and not 17 living with her mom. So the fact that Bonnie's sexuality is barely mentioned, and when it does it's a decided choice that she's less sexual that every other character tells me the viewer that it's another place where she's excluded, but worse she's once again an after thought in how she expresses her sexuality.

This injustice often fuels fanfic writers to write a Bonnie harem, but I think what should be noted is that the problem isn't that she never has sex, it's that it's never shown or talked about in either direction whether she's more modest or "slutty". It's a big part of the show and especially when it comes to the female characters and how they're treated, but this is one of those places Bonnie isn't judged. Usually I would jump for joy that finally she's not being judged for every little thing she does, but instead it notes what's off.

She's not being thought of as a woman which is why she's not being judged on her sex life or lack of (that catch 22 of being a woman). In fact, in my time on reddit she was more often commended for not having many love interests. Kat even stated it in an interview. To them it was subversive instead of peculiar that only the black character was portrayed this way.

Then there's the "let's make up an excuse to wear formal wear" episodes most of which she wasn't even present for and when she was she was in something way less formal than the others.

Miss Mystic Falls, an event both Caroline and Elena competed in and I believe both won at some point, but Bonnie isn't even considered in being a contestant. Is this due to her own preferences? We don't know because it's once again area she's not even thought of.

Founders Day parade where everyone is in participation but Bonnie on the sidelines taking pictures. There are tons of racist reason why she shouldn't be in that parade nor want to be, but again they're not brought up, so she's just off on the sidelines excluded completely.

Mikaelson Ball, an event that honestly was just a Klaroline set up, but even if so, Matt got an invite, along with every other member of the MFG except Bonnie (and Tyler), the most relevant character to that plotline. And once again, no explanation given for why she's missing.

Hell, even the cheer squad, in the pilot it's established all three girls are on the team, Elena quits, Caroline stays on, and they don't even bother explaining what Bonnie does. Its assumed she quit since she's never seen again but in season 7 during her dream sequence she's in her season 4 hair and the uniform from that year.

She's constantly excluded from events that would put her in direct competition with both Elena and Caroline and there's always no explanation given. The audience is supposed to accept it as natural and if by the amount of arguments I've been in where the arguing tagline is "she's just a supporting character" tells me it worked. No one thinks to question why other supporting characters are there but she isn't because the narrative has created a pattern where it's "just natural" for her not to he there, I can't completely blame the racism on the fandom. Sure, they heads in the sand, but they can react to the source material.

Now I know what some of you are thinking. "She went to the dances, got to dress up with everyone, and even won prom queen." School sanctioned events, the only ones she was allowed to participate in. She won prom queen, but honestly this fact plays even more into my point because neither Caroline or Elena were in the running, just Rebekah. It was an easy bone for the show runner to throw because it played right into her ranking system of the girls and white supremacy continued to reign supreme right down to shafting Tyler with Klaus.

The big point I'm making with this giant post is not that she's excluded from things, but how she's excluded. It's a narrator choice rather than character choice meaning the framing is very deliberate by the people in control of the story. And what that narrative tells me is they don't view Bonnie as a woman, they barely view her as a human being.

In fact, if the amount of pain they put her through is anything to go by with the attitude from all other characters that she can handle it, they don't see her as human. They see her as property, and had they hired a red headed white girl I guarantee you Bonnie would not have been viewed that way by the writers. Effort would have been put in her characterization, instead of make her a prop for white characters.

I never understood the hype for Klaus Mikaelson. Well, that's not true. I know he's a white boy with a ~tragic past~ so he was bound to be adored. But he wasn't even fascinating, is my thing? Even before writers started doing a shit ton of retconning. He was plain awful + his toxic dynamic with his family wasn't even a compelling "family's are messy" but just him being atrocious but narrative justifying or excusing it + painting him as redeemed without working for any of it

The problem with Klaus Mikaelson was the same problem that befell Damon Salvatore - Julie Plec.

Well... one of the problems, anyway.

They fucked up with Klaus almost the moment they brought him in. They (Plec and Williamson) butchered Smith's story and instead of giving us these ancient primordial vampires, we're given these petulant aryan children who are constantly throwing temper tantrums when they're not giving a monologue about how superior they are.

Klaus had the potential to be a great villain! - probably one of the best in this genre, but they never actually let him be a villain. He would do all of these horrible, terrible things, but then we'd cut away to his teary eyes or listen o him tell a story about his youth and you're suddenly supposed to feel sorry get him instead of the people he hurt or killed.

Plec and Williamson fucked it up the moment they had Elijah open his mouth and give the sob-story about their family and blah blah blah (something that was completely retconned by the time of THE ORIGINALS) and it just got worse and worse from then on. This was a character that the Katherine Pierce was terrified of, and it turned out to he a blond twink with a British accent with daddy issues? That's like them giving me Cody Fern as the Antichrist on AHS.

To compound the mistake they made, they kept him on as a main character from the next season onward. You can't have a villain be a villain and continue to linger around season after season, because it defeats the purpose of the narrative. Why can't your heroes beat and vanquish the villain? Simple, you give him a sob story and make him an anti-hero instead. It just got steadily worse over the years, especially since they jumped to their own show where this twisted, highly dysfunctional, borderline incestuous relationship of the Mikaelson family became their only defining characteristic. Every time I heard them say "Always and Forever" I died a little more on the inside.

(I know this was supposed to be about Klaus, but when you talk about one Mikaelson, you talk about them all)

Everything about THE ORIGINALS (both the characters and the show) just made me angrier and angrier, to the point where I was actively yelling at the screen. From the way they treated and talked to Marcel, to what they did to Davina to how Klaus "dealt with" Hayley. When we finally got to the "romance" between Freya and Keelin, I rage quit. I just, I couldn't do it anymore.

It didn't matter what this family did, or who they did it to, they were always painted as "in the right", as the Heroes, and it was disgusting. And it was always that way, from the way that it was "Marcel's fault" because he wouldn't just hand the city back over to Klaus after being abandoned a century earlier. How it was "Tyler's fault" when Klaus decided to murder his pack and then his mother because they wanted to be free of him. How Davina "deserved to die" the way she did as penance for how mean she was to Klaus. How Hayley "deserved her punishment" for trying to take away his (not their) child from him. The list goes on and on.

It was this way on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES as well, first and primarily with Damon, but then with Kai once he was introduced. There was nothing that these characters could have done that their fans wouldn't have supported them 104% for.

The real kicker is how the fans and show itself treated similar characters. Katherine Pierce was probably the most vilified character on either show, and it all came down to the simple thing of her choosing to live rather than let Klaus murder her so that he could feel more like a man. She hadn't done anything that Klaus or Damon or Kai or Kol or whomever hadn't done, but for some reason, she's evil incarnate while they all get a free pass. I think that's why I loved her so much. Aside from Kai, Katherine was the only character who was unapologetically a villain. She was a stone-cold bitch and she never apologized for that, never pulled out a sob story as to how she was just a victim the whole time.

Not only was Gina Torres wasted on this show but did she really need to die like that? Having her heart ripped out slowly? Gotta love the TVD writers and their misogynoir 

This is my exact reaction when stelena broke up in season 4 of TVD

As someone who has read an abundance of bonnie fics, it truly saddens me to think of how purposeful the underdevelopment and awful-writing was when it came to bonnie. The potential was clear and electric, just waiting to be utilised and touched upon— yet, they couldn't even give her a fucking wall socket. Fanfic authors wipe the floor with jp, cd & kw's dreadful mashup of words they dare to call "writing". The fact that these racist incompetent assholes still have careers is infuriating yet unsurprising.

I wish I could explain in coherent words my disdain for KC. Like I get all ranty when I think about it. And now that we know Kevin did change the ending of tvd last minute, this failed attempt at improving ratings so Julie can get future projects makes me wanna barf