#i have been collecting images for this organically for months and months. but the problem is I haven't really been watching mad men

[idonthaveacontract]

fuck it hot pete campbell

[anticmiscellaney]

I absolutely adore your work! What's your process been like for writing NewOldRare and developing Neil and Louis? Your art and character writing feel so genuine and realistic to me, so I'm really curious how you go about it!

Thank you! I've always been obsessed with character-driven stories and interaction, so I guess this is the result of years of practice and observation, and dismantling stories that do and don't work to see why.

Unfortunately, there isn't a clear way to explain it. It's one of those "you know when you get it right" things, requiring an eye developed over a long time. I will redraw things if I don't feel like I've captured the nuance I wanted to, and a few months later I'll look at it and see where I could have done better. Same with writing. I'm obsessed with pacing and page design, I had a moment of "that's how I think about it too" when Will Eisner described comic panels like music.

The technical approach is I make notes about stories I want to write, then I expand that into outlines, then scripts, then thumbnails, then I draw the comics and colour them and finalise the dialogue. At every stage I'm asking myself if it feels right, if I'm getting across what I want to. That's not to say there aren't surprises and things don't develop organically, but every stage is an attempt to solve as many problems as I can before the next stage. My thumbnails are quite detailed because it makes pencils easier, and I spend a while on them.

I have total aphantasia so I am operating off feeling rather than any mental images. I have no idea how it works and no idea why I pursue this when I'm missing what many visual artists describe as a crucial component. I just do it and I have better things to do (art) than wonder about something I can't change. I don't think it's made me a better or worse artist, though I think it has given me different ways of approaching/developing things. But also, literally everything about you makes your work different to everyone else's work.

You need to care. If your character is into music, listen to that music. If they have an old car that keeps breaking down, read up on common problems for that model. If they work as a film projectionist, watch a training film about using the machine. The characters care about things, have things in their lives that matter, have skills and interests and challenges. If I don't care enough to understand them, why should anyone reading it care, and also why am I writing it if I don't care?

So I do, and in caring I understand them better. This helps me develop characters/story but it also gives me so much more to write/draw. Understanding how things work and how they are done from a physical standpoint makes writing/drawing them easier too. The more you put into your head, the more you can get out later. I'll do way less for a 12 page short than for a 300 page graphic novel, obviously. Pick your battles, a little can go a long way.

They tell artists to collect visual references - solid advice - but you should collect substance too. If you pay attention, you will hear and see things you could never in a million years make up.

I find online socialising difficult, so I go out regularly and talk to people, or just hang around and observe. Chatting with strangers mostly involves listening to them. No one in gay spaces is interested in flirting with me (I'm rather homely and queer men assume I'm straight) but I think an audience is just as appealing sometimes, and maybe even harder to find. You'd be amazed what people will tell you if you're genuinely interested and listening. I once spent forty minutes at a sci-fi con talking to a guy who'd recently gotten into fisting. While I have zero personal desire to partake in that activity (and he had no interest in being fisted by me), I'm engaged, I'm invested, I'm asking questions, spare no detail.

I collect behavior and movement and the ways people interact too. Reading stories on reddit or whatever is one thing, but the words might not be as interesting as the way they're standing, the way their hands move, the way they respond. A guy in a bar once literally humped my leg like a dog because he felt I wasn't paying enough attention to him. I would never think of that as a response to that situation, but he did, and he followed through. Fortunately my friend had just tried to drunkenly sit down and missed the chair, otherwise I would never hear the end of it.

I see the leghumper around sometimes, he's got a boyfriend and avoids making eye contact with me, thank god.

[leslie-allen-spillane]

‘Reflections on a Radical Plot’, Charlotte Salter-Townshend in conversation with Clodagh Emoe

Imma magazine

Reflections on a Radical Plot offers insights into the journey and multifaceted engagements of Crocosmia × woven together with histories, folklore, and symbolism of Crocosmia and the various species of plants which have presented themselves in the plot on IMMA’s front lawn.

Clodagh Emoe creates works that explore how meaning is formed through our connection with each other and the natural world. Her collaborative project, The Plurality of Existence… (2015-2018) with individuals seeking asylum led organically to Crocosmia ×, a participatory project that was also developed and realised with individuals seeking asylum. Crocosmia × was commissioned by ‘…the lives we live” Grangegorman Public Art and supported by IMMA. The artwork Crocosmia × found a natural home in IMMA, as a plot of wildflowers on the lawn of this stately building.

Studies indicate the value of plants both wild and cultivated on human well-being. Increasingly, researchers acknowledge the importance of daily contact with nature. Even the ‘plucky plants’[i] that find their niche in urban environments have manifold positive effects. Growing on walls, in gutters, between cracks in the pavement, and along railway lines, these wild plants provide much needed refuge and food for animals including pollinators, but they also have a positive effect on human well-being.

Plants referenced in the collection of folklore are brought back to our attention in her organic, ghostlike prints of nettle, forget-me-not, primrose, herb Robert, ribwort plantain, nipplewort, prickly sow thistle, common thistle, opium poppy, wild violet, and western willow herb.

Nettles are nutritious and are an example of food as medicine: “Three doses of nettles in the month of April will prevent any disease for the rest of the year”.[9] Nettles are also vital for wildlife, the leaves providing food for the caterpillars of small tortoiseshell, comma, red admiral, and peacock butterfly. The stinging hairs protect the plant from grazers, allowing all sorts of insect life to thrive undisturbed. Nipplewort is a ‘weed’ of cereal crops. It has become less frequent with modern agricultural practices. The flower buds were thought to resemble nipples. Hence, it was believed to help heal sore nipples. This is an example of a theory known as the doctrine of signatures, popular in medieval times. Willowherb is also known as fireweed, because it grew where bombs had struck during the Blitz in London. It is a plant symbolic of upheaval and survival. Dandelions are considered the classic ‘weed’. Originating in Europe and Asia, it is estimated that dandelions have been in cultivation since the Roman times. They are used as remedies for illnesses including liver problems, gastrointestinal distress, fluid retention, and skin ailments. The plant is also a tasty and highly nutritious vegetable. During the seventeenth century, European colonists introduced dandelions to North America. Native American peoples also developed their own uses of the dandelion after it naturalised.

For the purposes of scientific record, botanists and collectors press and preserve plants as herbarium specimens. Bridging across science and art, botanic artists paint plants with great accuracy and detail. Clodagh develops this further, using unique ecological printing process that captures an image of the subject using the very essence of the plants. What appears as a mirror image reveals the trace of natural dye from the front and back of the plant left on each page, a duality presenting the plants’ dimension and depth, like the poetry of the asylum seekers who collaborated in The Plurality of Existence… and Crocosmia ×. This ecological printing process captures the complexity of these plants, revealing that being is a process in constant flux and in dialogue with the environment. At times, plants are potential, lying dormant in the soil. Later, they decay and return to the earth, showing us that death is just a part of the life cycle. “Deep in their roots all flowers keep the light” – Theodore Roethke.[10]

[andrejverity]

A Quantum Leap: A Looming Threat to Our Digital Security

While much of the world is buzzing with excitement about the potential of artificial intelligence, quantum computing is quietly taking big steps. And, while quantum computers offer some truly amazing possibilities, such as solving complex problems and accelerating scientific discovery, it is important to acknowledge the darker side especially in regards to our current digital security infrastructure.

In recent months, there have been growing concerns about the potential impact of quantum computing on our digital world. A prime example is the recent news of Chinese researchers breaking RSA encryption (PDF) using a quantum computer. While experts have cautioned against overstating the significance of this achievement (PDF), it serves as a stark reminder of the looming threat.

This threat is amplified by the concept of "store-now-decrypt-later" attacks. Malicious actors could potentially intercept and store encrypted data today, knowing that future quantum computers could decrypt it. This insidious strategy could compromise sensitive information, such as financial records, intellectual property, and personal data.

Mosca's Theorem: A Ticking Time Bomb

In 2023, I started to re-explore the concern surrounding quantum security with Cameron Vrckovnik. During our collaboration, we came upon Mosca’s theorem created by Dr. Michele Mosca. The theorem helps one easily and quickly assess the urgency of the quantum security threat. This theorem introduces three key variables:

X: The time an organization needs to keep data secure.

Y: The time required to migrate to quantum-resistant encryption.

Z: The estimated time to build a powerful quantum computer.

If X + Y > Z, then the organization's data is already at risk. Even if a quantum computer isn't available today, it could be built before the organization can fully migrate to quantum-resistant encryption.

For example, consider an organization that collects and stores biometric data. If this data needs to be protected for 40 years, and it takes 5 years to migrate to quantum-resistant encryption, and a powerful quantum computer could be built in 30 years, then the organization's data is already vulnerable (40+5 > 30).

A Glimpse into the Future

To gain a better understanding of the industry's response to this threat, I attended QuTech’s Quantum for Business Roundtable at TU Delft in November 2023. It was encouraging to see both private companies and public sector organizations actively working to quantum-proof their systems and data. There were still lots of questions and uncertainty. But, organizations with critical infrastructure had accepted both the possibilities and the related challenges.

Given the urgency of the situation, organizations must take immediate steps to prepare for the quantum era. By assessing vulnerabilities, developing migration plans, and investing in quantum-safe technologies, we can safeguard our digital future.

When I started in the humanitarian sector about 20 years ago, I was told a joke that “humanitarian innovation is just doing what the private sector did 5-10 years ago”. Unfortunately, quantum security is so critical that no industry can afford to simply sit back and wait for others to solve their problems. Rather, we will need to work hand-in-hand with the private industry, standards bodies, and government entities to ensure our digital landscape remains safe.

Andrej

------

Details / Disclaimers:

Google Gemini used to brainstorm and support in drafting

First image generated by Google’s Gemini. Although adjusted, the main prompt was “Would you be able to create me an image to go with the blog post? I am thinking of an image of a panel from a 1950s sci-fi comic where a quantum computer is somehow shown to be cracking open the data being sent to/from a laptop of 2024?”

[onlinepersona-6278198033]

Assignment #5: Generative AI - existential threat?

Proposition: Although AI research and end-user applications have exploded in the past decade, these "narrow AI" are limited to performing a single task. "General AI" is still the stuff of Hollywood movies, with no scientific theory on the horizon. The rapid rise of generative AI, like ChatGPT and Midjourney, have shifted the focus of AI ethics from a long-off potential future threat, to more immediate concerns about existing technologies. Existing generative AI technologies pose existential threats to the fabric that binds modern societies together, therefore we need to rapidly develop policy, regulation, and oversight to ensure these technologies are deployed responsibly and do not cause more harm than good.

The rapid development of “Artificial Intelligence” has caused quite the craze especially recently with the release of ChatGPT-4. Perhaps it is somewhat fair to keep in mind that people’s fear of this development is in a way affected by what we all have seen in science fiction movies. One of the biggest things revealed to me in a Computer Science class lecture is that Artificial Intelligence in its purest form is an area of research, not a product. I think this misunderstanding plays a more significant role than we thought in the topic of people’s behaviour towards products of AI. To speak of what I have witnessed, while some students find absolutely no problem in utilizing a technology that would make their lives significantly easier, some people have cried during a discussion panel talking about AI in fear of its power and scope of capabilities. I think that on its own is enough to show where exactly the attention should focus on: the humans’ reaction and therefore behaviour towards these products.

Of the proposition, I would agree if it instead has “How people are utilizing” at the start of it. A common misconception that a lot of people have, including myself just a few months ago, is that what they think “AI” to be is whatever the Terminator series depicted. In truth, the research today has only just arrived at the birth of narrow AI technologies. This is not to be confused with general AI. Generative AI technologies like ChatGPT and Midjourney are the implementations of narrow AI, meaning they are able to do and learn the things they have been developed and programmed to do. General AI, I imagine, should theoretically be able to learn everything, the way the human brain is able to learn everything. Until the day comes when general AI technologies are developed to exist, I would argue that the biggest thing to worry about in this regard is the human response towards these narrow AI products.

Some people’s mentality and outlook towards the ease that generative AI technologies give them does pose existential threats to the fabric that binds modern societies together. That fabric being the easy connection and exposure that people have with each other online. AI technologies are trained by none-other than data collection. In this specific case, image-generating websites are trained by collecting data of images and prompts related to said images from the public world wide web. An article by James Bridle on The Guardian titled “The stupidity of AI” reveals that organizations like LAION and Common Crawl do exactly just that: data collection. With this in mind, the question is “are we that desperate to generate “art” works knowing that they would be: 1.) Computer-generated; 2.) made out of so many other artworks in which individuals have dedicated blood, sweat, time, and money towards? Like Kevin Roose and Casey Newton discusses in a podcast titled “GPT-4 Is Here, and the Group Chat Bank Run”, the technology is already here and it is not going anywhere. I would argue that we as humans still have full control and therefore responsibilities over our actions, including those taken towards these rapidly developing technologies.

[crossfoxbuns]

Keep a Link Garden!

The Internet is Big

Like, REALLY big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is - or how much this intro has been overused since Hitchhiker's Guide has been a thing.

But it is big. Big enough that if you don't have some kind of system for keeping things you want to remember, there's no way in hell that you can remember it. What is a "thing you want to remember" though?

For me, it's everything from interesting blogs and webcomics, to YouTube favorites, to pin on Pinterest, to random shops I'd love to buy things from if I had money, to cool examples and inspirations - that kind of thing.

Each platform kinda has a way of letting you organize your favorite stuff - but it only works on that platform.

Enter the humble bookmark. Remember those? Before revamping my system I had nearly 1000 of them. YIKES.

But bookmarks are just SO GOOD at being the one thing that always works to save stuff for later. No matter the platform, every piece of content has a unique URL - that's how it has to be. And with unique URLs, bookmarks become the best way to save stuff in one place no matter the platform.

Personally this became a problem for me a couple of months ago. Because of my work and general techie interests, I switch web browsers all the time. I've used 'em all. Most recently I was trying out Arc browser. It's generally quite nice! It took the spotlight/global search sort of approach to literally everything, which tickles my brain in the right ways.

There's still a big problem with Arc though - no way to export stuff very well. (Pro tip: before you commit to a software, make sure you can leave the thing easily!) And because Arc's philosophy doesn't really do bookmarks (I just had a space on the side with hundreds of "pinned tabs"), when I finally found a stupid, roundabout way to get my list of bookmarks out, it was just that - a plain old list. The organization was gone. It was just hundreds and hundreds of links all piled together into a bin with no sorting whatsoever.

So I decided that this was the time to really start organizing this pile of links. It's like the inside of my brain, covered head to toe in random sticky notes, half of which don't make sense anymore. To start things off, I found Raindrop.

Raindrop is a place to put my bookmarks that, first and foremost, isn't married to a particular browser. Whether I'm using Arc, Firefox, Safari, on any device, doesn't matter - I get to my bookmarks the same way.

Another benefit is that Raindrop's app lets me share links and stuff to it using the phone's built-in sharing function, which makes saving the bookmarks way easier!

The icing on the cake? You can upload files to it as well. Images, documents, whatever. This got me thinking. I have a rather large collection of images saved on Pinterest...

By the way, Pinterest also sucks when it comes to exporting things. I had to use a downloaded tool that crawls the account and downloads the resources it finds, which felt gross. But with my stuff out of Pinterest, it meant one less corpo-site I relied on, so I'll take it. Uploading all those pins back into Raindrop was nice and simple. Raindrop even has a "moodboard" view mode, which looks suspiciously like Pinterest's masonry look, but without the ads and tracking scripts.

After adding my old pins to the collection, my bookmark garden is now just shy of 2000 links and images. I've been spending the past couple of weeks going through the giant pile and deleting old ones, sorting the rest into fresh categories, and giving things meaningful tags. That's another thing, I love that Raindrop uses and encourages tagging! Regular browsers take note - when there's a lot of something that someone will want to find again - support tags. Please. Not that I'll be doing that since I have transcended browser bookmarks, but you know.

Lots of stuff yet to sort and tag - about 600 links and 1000 images left to go - but it's coming along. And I'm tagging things as I continue to find links to add to the garden as well. Once that process is done, I'll have that nigh-perfect system - never needing to forget something again. If I want to browse some shops, I won't go to Etsy, I'll go the shops section of my private link garden. Carefully and lovingly curated. :)

Bonus points - if Raindrop gets enshittified, they have a couple of great exporting options, including a good old OPML file that every other bookmark manager can use.

[biglisbonnews]

Can Loktak Lake's Wondrous Floating Islands Bounce Back? Are these geometric doodles of chartreuse against a much deeper green? Or an array of empty frames hung pell-mell on a dark wall? Zoom in on a few of the tiny white rectangles scattered across the image for a sense of scale: You’ll see they’re small homes. You’re looking at an aerial view of some of the famous floating islands of northeast India’s Loktak Lake. The image is also a snapshot of a moment in the story of a wondrous and unique environment that’s undergoing enormous change. Not far from the border with Myanmar, Loktak is one of the largest lakes in South Asia. It covers about 100 square miles—but that was not always the case. Before the construction of a large dam raised the lake’s water levels permanently, Loktak’s dimensions used to change dramatically with the seasons: During the dry months, it shrunk to about half its current size. While that may sound like an inconvenience for the tens of thousands of people who rely on the lake for water, fish, and other resources, the fluctuating levels played a crucial role in preserving an unusual ecosystem. Those eye-catching floating islands, or phumdis, are just the tops of much thicker mats of soil and vegetation. Phumdis can form naturally, but many have been shaped by humans. Fishers and other locals sometimes float lengths of ropes in the water to create a kind of frame where organic material can collect over time, eventually creating a new living island. Thousands of phumdis float on the lake year-round now, which is a problem. Before the dam, when lake levels fell in the dry season, roots on the undersides of the phumdis would come in contact with the lake bed and soak up needed nutrients. Now, without that seasonal sustenance, many of the phumdis have started to break apart. This is just one of the challenges that the dam and other infrastructure projects have brought to the area. In 2017, the Pulitzer Center reported that many native fish species disappeared from the lake after the dam became operational in the 1980s. In response, according to international wetlands monitor Ramsar, the government stocked the lake with non-native species, including voracious silver carp, which further upset the ecosystem. Agricultural runoff, pesticide use, and other human activities have only aggravated the problem. Harvests of locally grown varieties of rice and other food resources, such as the highly nutritious heikak, or water chestnut, have dwindled or disappeared. In the last decade, there’s been a grassroots effort to have the dam decommissioned and the lake’s natural cycle restored, but it would be an unprecedented event—and an unlikely one. Hydroelectricity generated at the dam is the main source of power for the entire state of Manipur, which has a population of more than three million and counting. While the fate of the floating islands and the roughly 100,000 people who depend on the lake is uncertain, Loktak remains, for now, a place of otherworldly wonder. Photographer Aakash Selvan traveled more than 1,000 miles from his home in southern India to photograph the phumdis as part of a larger project to showcase the country’s diverse natural beauty. “My wish is to document 100 different aerial perspectives of India,” says Selvan, whose image, Floating Islands, was recognized as "Highly Commended" in a recent Drone Photo Awards competition. “I spend hours on Google Earth, trying to find subjects," he says, "I struck gold when I found these.” Selvan adds that, at lake level, the phumdis appeared “endless.” And walking or standing on them was also memorable. "It's almost like a trampoline; all of these phumdis are bouncy,” he says. With local communities and scientists alike calling for greater protections for the lake and its unique ecosystem, the phumdis may yet bounce back. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/loktak-lake-phumdi-floating-islands

[aadamantine]

I love will payton

a lot of these images come from the will payton tag hehehe

the details that i remember off the top of my head are a bit murky

The year is 198X. Some late-20's drifter type dude (think the kind of person who hikes around south america) takes a nap in the middle of his hike. Suddenly he is struck by a laser beam containing (in the canon I accept) concentrated star energy collected by a satellite meant to be dispersed among *several* people to give them all superpowers. But this guy doesn't die, no sir. (Although that is a little debatable)

2 months later he wakes up, yeah? "Man, what a nice nap" he thinks. Some stuff happens and he discovers he has the ability to shoot energy, heat stuff up, fly, and shapeshift his face and skin (It's very limited) So he goes back to his sister in Arizona and his sister ofc is like "you said you'd get a payphone and you didn't call for like 3 months where tf were you I thought you died" and Will's like "I have no idea but theres a problem, i got superpowers now" and his sister is like "zayum maybe you should be a superhero like superman and the justice league and stuff" and she makes him like, a costume and helps him practice his powers and he becomes the Arizona Superhero For his disguise he just kinda shapeshifts a bit

apparently he was also in a band once. he goes to vegas with his ol buddy. The org that made the superpower beam is mad at him and tries to kill him several times or steal his powers.

Turns out Will is missing several internal organs: All of them. His body is something else now and he's only breathing and stuff because he thinks he has to. There is a pretty long plotline about him learning how to smell again. He's basically a star.

Super early into his superhero-dom he gets drafted into the Big Event "Invasion" and he's super, like, impostor-syndrome-y and nervous about being near the other superheroes.

Before he went on his soul-searching camping journey, Will was a copywriter, someone who makes "Copy" for advertisements. There's a huge plotline about him helping fight a fire for like, a week and he misses a really important deadline that he promised to his old friend.

He ends up making some superhero friends, esp. Dr. Kitty Faulkner, aka Rampage and also the girl Nightshade.

Eventually he changes his look and costume to a black-and-red look and get killed by eclipso.

He appears in the 90's series but WE DONT TALK ABOUT THAT

And he makes an appearance in Justice League in like 2019?? Ish? Where he ends up in the 2010's from the 80's and I feel like theres so much wasted potential there because he totally could have been like a new captain atom.

I like him because I love bronze age superheroes. I like him because he's from Arizona and you don't really get to see that in DC. I like him because he's a little silly :3

PLEASE talk to me about your favourite comics characters. ramble about them. tell me their entire storyline. tell me the fanon you hate and the canon you hate. tell me everything. i am so hungry for content and too tired to read a lot. please tell me things. especially about scott summers (doesn’t have an easily accessible long running solo for me to read). also all of your niche smaller characters. also all of your big characters i haven’t gotten into because i don’t understand them yet. please infodump to me its my favourite way to learn.

[afeelgoodblog]

Best News of Last Week

Edition #021 - ️‍💉 - Hope you had a great weekend. Let's read some positive news :)

1. With nearly 5 million children getting COVID vaccines, no safety problems have been seen, CDC director says

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky says real-world monitoring finds vaccines are safe for young children.

Crucially, the CDC hasn't identified any concerns with the temporary heart inflammation known as myocarditis, a potential side effect of mRNA vaccines seen in rare circumstances in teenagers and young adults.

2. Spain officially Recognizes Animal Sentience Within Civil Code, Clarifying Animals Are Not “Things”

On April 18, 2021, the Spanish Parliament approved consideration of a bill that would amend the country’s Civil Code to recognize animals are “living beings endowed with sentience” rather than “things,” specifically “moveable property.” This approval is the first step toward updating animals’ legal status in the Spanish Civil Code.

This proposal was officially approved in December 2021 with widespread support.

3. Michael Sheen becomes a 'not-for-profit actor' so he can fund charity work

Hollywood actor Michael Sheen has revealed how he sold his houses and gave the proceeds to charity as he declared himself to be a “not-for-profit” actor.

The Welsh actor and activist, 52, who handed back his OBE in 2020 so he could criticize the monarchy without seeming a “hypocrite”, believed organizing the 2019 Homeless World Cup in Cardiff was a turning point for him.

When funding for the £2million project fell through at the last moment, Sheen sold his own houses to bankroll it.

4. Yale researchers develop mRNA-based lyme disease vaccine

Yale researchers have developed an mRNA vaccine that targets the antigens found in tick saliva in order to alert individuals to tick bites as well as prevent the tick from feeding correctly, thereby reducing its ability to transmit pathogens.

According to Matias dos Santos, when the tick bites an animal, it releases salivary proteins through the open wound. The mRNA vaccines are designed so that the immune system recognizes these proteins, sees them as an antigen and triggers a strong immune response at the site of the bite.

5. Claudette Colvin's juvenile record has been expunged, 66 years after she was arrested for refusing to give her bus seat to a White person

The juvenile court records of Claudette Colvin, a civil rights pioneer who refused in 1955 to give up her seat to a White person on an Alabama bus, have been sealed, destroyed and expunged following a judge's ruling.

Colvin, now 82, was arrested when she was 15 for refusing to give up her seat to a White person on a bus in Montgomery. The incident came nine months before Rosa Parks' far more famous arrest for a similar act of civil disobedience in the Jim Crow era.

6. 'It Saved My Life': Depression Treatment Is Turning Lives Around in Five Days

The remedy was a new type of repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) called "Stanford neuromodulation therapy." By adding imaging technology to the treatment and upping the dose of rTMS, scientists have developed an approach that’s more effective and works more than eight times faster than the current approved treatment.

'This study not only showed some of the best remission rates we've ever seen in depression, but also managed to do that in people who had already failed multiple other treatments. 'Shan Siddiqi, a Harvard psychiatrist

7. Germany: Mole digs out wedding ring thought lost for 25 years

One ring to rule the mole...

____

That's it for this week. Until next week,

You can follow me on twitter . Also, I have a newsletter :)

Subscribe here to receive a collection of wholesome news every week in your inbox :D

[littlepadika]

Calling Home (1) | Frankie Morales x Reader

Summary: You are a receptionist at the VA. Frankie Morales keeps calling. Yearning ensues...

Rating: M -> E in later chapters

Warnings: fem!reader, age gap (legal), praise kink, voice kink, discussion of addiction/PTSD/trauma, no use of y/n, no beta reader, reader is bad at Spanish, Frankie has a sexy voice 😩

Masterlist here

AN: My first fic. Pedro writers have inspired me to finally start writing again 🥺. Concept inspired by the movie RED. I hope you like it ❤️Set after triple frontier.

Chapter One

~~~~~~~~~~~

The first time he called was an ordinary Thursday.

“Veterans Affairs, how can I help you?”

You had been working at the VA office for about two weeks. Fresh out of college you felt lucky to have a job in the first place. You went to school to be a writer but your big idea for 'The Next Great American Novel' had yet to present itself. At least here you had access to the most inspiring stories and interesting people. Men and women who had seen more and done more than you probably would in your entire life. You loved talking to clients on the phone. It was weird but something about only being able to hear people’s voices excited you. You would sometimes write little stories in your head about the people you'd talk to, filling in the details that were unknown.

Your desk accessories reflected your love of books and writing. You had your growing collection of books sitting on your desk sandwiched between baby pink bookends. Next to them was a matching desk organizer filled with your favorite sparkly pens and sticky notes. You had decorated the plain cubicle walls with posters of quotes from your favorite books. You also brought your favorite candle from home. Even though you couldn’t light it you still liked to lift it to your nose once and a while and smell it between chapters. When you weren’t on the phone or scanning documents you would read. You finished To Kill A Mockingbird in your first week on the job and were now halfway through Murder on the Orient Express.

You were starting a new chapter when Frankie Morales called the first time.

You picked up the phone on the second ring already mustering your chipper 'customer service' voice. “Veterans affairs.” You stated your name. “How may I help you?”

“H-Hi. My name is Frankie- uh-Francisco Morales." A deep voice answered you. "I’m calling because I have gotten my benefits check yet. It’s been a month. I was hoping you could tell me if it got sent?”

“Okay Mr. Morales." You flipped on the computer. "Let me check. Can you spell your last name for me?”

“M-o-r-a-l-e-s”

“Okay... let's see.” You clicked on his account. You were momentarily distracted by his picture likely taken when he graduated basic if you had to guess based off the uniform. He looked sweet. Sharp nose and strong jaw balanced by kind eyes and a shy smile. You could imagine how age would continue to soften his expression making him even more handsome. The image was a strange juxtaposition to the voice you were hearing on the phone which was much deeper and rougher. His profile said he was special forces. A pilot. The rest of the information was blacked out. Something you were used to seeing on many people's accounts but even his years of service were redacted. He must have been involved in some dangerous stuff, you thought to yourself. The dates that were not redacted were mostly in Latin America. You clicked over to processing requests. “Looks like the check got sent one week ago.” You informed him.

"I'll look again but I haven't seen anything-" It sounded like he was apologizing when clearly it was not his fault.

"No no. It's probably a mistake on our end." You interrupted. With how shitty and outdated the payroll interface was you wouldn't be surprised if there was a mix up. "I’ll go ahead and let payroll know to send another."

"Great. Thanks." He replied sounding relieved. The roughness in his voice gave way to a smooth baritone.

“No problem. I'm sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused. We'll get it sent right away." You hoped he was not relying on this benefit check for anything important. While you could promise you'd fix the problem, the administration was notoriously slow. When he didn't respond you asked, "Is there anything else I can help you with today, Mr. Morales?”

“Uh-no" The roughness back in place. "Thank you." He paused before adding your name onto his thank you which made you smile. People usually never remembered your name.

“Alright. Have a nice day and thank you for your service.” You chirped before hanging up. The smile he put on your face lingered for a few minutes as you returned to your book.

The next time he called was exactly twelve days later.

“Veterans affairs” you answered, your routine greeting cut short as your eyes were still on your book.

“Hi- I’m calling because uh I still haven’t gotten my benefits check. This is Frankie Morales.”

“Oh Mr. Morales.” You recognized his voice even before he even said his name. You quickly shut your book, pushing your hair out of your face. Had you been thinking about him? No! Okay maybe you stared at his picture for a few minutes longer after he hung up. Yes, it was probably very unprofessional but you couldn't fight the curiosity. You were trying to rationalize the contrasting sharpness and softness of his features with his voice. How it all worked together. How one person's voice could change textures and colors so easily. You wondered what kind of things this man might have seen on the job. Most of the veterans you would help day to day did not have so many redacted missions and deployments. You were in the middle of Narcos season one so you immediately thought of drugs or something equally dangerous. After much pondering, you had come to the conclusion that Frankie Morales was both insanely attractive and insanely courageous. “Still no check, huh?”

“Nope.” He sighed the sound making the phone's shitty speaker crackle as you held it to your ear.

“Let me just check that it was approved...“ you found his profile again and scrolled to the status page. “Hmm... it says it was sent out last Friday after we spoke. That’s so weird...”

“Yeah. Really weird.” He echoed your frustration on the other end.

Typical payroll, you thought to yourself as you rolled your eyes. “I'll get another one sent to you right away. I'll see to it myself.” You tucked the phone under your chin and typed out a short email to Mary in payroll letting her know you'd be stopping by her office to explain the situation. You realized he hadn't hung up yet.

“Sorry for the back and forth.” You said, trying to fill the silence.

“It’s not your fault." The earlier irritation gone. "You’ve been really helpful.” His voice sounded warm and reassuring. Less gruff than it was last you spoke. Instead it was that rich baritone that you caught of glimpse of last time.

You feel your face warm at his compliment. It was this annoying reflex you had. Praise always made you blush no matter what context but it was worse when it came from a (you assume) gorgeous stranger.

“And just to verify that your address is correct- you’re on Maple Lane in Miami, Florida?”

“That’s right.” He confirmed.

“Okay. Sent!” You clicked send on the email, which caused the window to close and reveal Frankie’s profile page again. “I was curious-" You spoke before you really made the decision to speak. You didn’t want to overstep but once again your curiosity got the better of you. Honestly, you were just searching for a way to keep him on the phone. The day had been so boring.

“Your profile says you were stationed in Costa Rica.”

“For a bit.” He replied after a moment. He didn’t sound too defensive but there was definitely some tightness in his answer that made you feel bad for asking. Like you were scratching a wound.

“Did you like it? The country I mean.”

“Are you planning a trip?” He sounds a little amused.

“Yeah- well- kind of. It's more a trip in my head right now. I’d like to go there one day. It looks so beautiful.” You sighed closing your eyes trying to imagine the heat on your skin.

“It is." He agrees. "Really humid though.”

“Mm that sounds nice.” You would kill for some warm weather after such a long winter in DC.

“It was too muggy for me at times." He grumbled. "If you do go, stick to the costal areas where it’s more breezy or else you’ll just be sweating the whole time.”

“I don’t mind a little sweat” you shrugged, still thinking of the awful east coast winter you were currently suffering through. The sexual connotation of what you said hit you hard as soon as you heard the statement in its entirety. You felt your face flush again, though the man on the other end would never know.

“I’m learning Spanish!" You announced loudly trying to move the conversation past your awkwardness.

“Wow. Muy impressivo.”

“Si” you replied but after a moment you admit “I don’t really know what you said.”

Frankie laughed loudly on the other end and you couldn’t help but join in, drawing dirty looks from the elderly lady, Donna, working in the cubicle across from you. You ducked your head behind a stack of papers to avoid her glare.

“Fake it till you make it.” He chuckled.

“Maybe you should help me out.” You took on an indigent but still playful tone. “You sound better than duolingo” Your smile widened when he laughed again. His laugh was what you hoped it would be, by all your assumptions from his picture. It was an unencumbered, unburdened, rich sound with only a hit of roughness from the air behind it.

“Tell me you’re not using that dumb app to learn.” he scoffed, saying your name in an almost scolding tone.

“I’m got my thirty day streak today.” You boasted.

“You’ll be a total tourist if you go by duolingo.”

“But the owl is so cute every time I get something right!” You argued your voice taking on a more childish cadence.

“That’s how they trap you, silly girl.” He teased right back. Usually such a condescending nickname would piss you off but something about the affection behind him using it made you feel very differently. You felt warm like you were proud to be silly as long as it made him laugh.

“Then you saved me just in time, Mr. Morales.” You bit your lip. His scoffing and laughter died down on the other end.

“Frankie” He corrects you.

“Frankie…” You repeated it, smiling at how well the nick name suited the voice over the phone. Honest, sincere, and not pretentious at all. Way better than the pompous guys you know with equally stuffy names like “Edward” and “Christopher.”

“So what do you want to know?” Frankie interrupted your thoughts. “Dime”

You started asking him questions in Spanish to the best of your ability. Granted they weren't particularly probing questions. What is your name? What is your favorite color? What is your favorite animal? What's your favorite book? I am reading Gone Girl. He answered them all with patience and amusement, occasionally interrupting you to correct your pronunciation or explain what a word meant. Every time you’d repeat the word back correctly he would say something like “good” or “there you go” or “you got it”. You hated to admit that his kind words and his praise was doing something to you. You didn't even realize you were clenching your legs together unconsciously, almost in anticipation of his next correction or next answer. His low voice so sweet and encouraging against your ear, more tangible when he was speaking Spanish. You just wanted to hear more of it. Would it be this sweet in other situations? Would it get huskier or rougher? If you closed your eyes it was like he was sitting right next to you. It would be all too easy to slip into that daydream and escape the dull office.

Suddenly out of the corner of your drooping eyes you saw a flashing red light on the phone console meaning another caller was waiting.

“Shoot- i’m sorry, Frankie- I have to take this call.” You shot forward in your chair, legs uncrossing.

“Of-Of course. I should let you get back to work.” He sounded a little sad or so you hoped. You felt bad for interrupting him after you both were having so much fun. You wanted to say he could wait on hold but he killed that idea when he said, "I have work too. Technically I'm five minutes past my lunch break."

Your pout turned to a smile. He was spending his precious lunch break with you? Get a grip! you snapped at yourself.

“You’re welcome to call again if you want.” You threw out the offer in a small voice, scared you would be rejected. You peered over the cubicle wall to see if you were still being glared at. Thankfully Donna was away from her desk. Probably out for a smoke. “It’s really boring here and usually no one calls.”

“Maybe I will.” He replied and you could hear the smile behind those words. You felt your heart clench weirdly in your chest like it didn't know how to process the sudden spike in emotions.

“Bye, Frankie.” You beamed.

“Bye”

This time the smile on your face lasted for hours. Frankie’s laugh echoed around in your head, taunting you, sending your mind to the gutter. His voice went from grit to molasses on a dime. You wanted to be the one to bring out those sounds. You wanted to hear his voice bend and stretch and strain as you fucked him. What the hell is wrong with me? you screamed internally. You had never been so depraved and with a stranger no less! You clearly needed to get laid fast because this much yearning would not end well.

Frankie got the second VA check a few days later and this time he didn’t even feel bad about ripping it in half. He was already reaching for the phone to call you.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Tags: Message to be added 💕 no minors please!

[dollslayer]

Dollslayer’s Masterlist

Welcome! 

Thanks for reading my fics it means the world to me! As a general warning my fics can contain dark themes and are intended for readers 18+ only. Please heed any and all warnings on my fics before you read them. If they upset you do NOT read them! You are responsible for your own media consumption. If you feel that something should be tagged or included in the warnings please tell me and I’ll mend it ASAP. 

The response thus far to my fics has been overwhelming and I am so happy to share them with you. If you like them like & reblog them or drop me a line and we can talk about it! I would love to hear from you!! Cheers!

Bucky Barnes

Hurt Me, Dollface -  Mob!Bucky Barnes x Escort!Reader, Dark!Bucky Barnes x Reader,  Being a working girl close to the inner circles of the country’s most infamous mob bosses, you never expected yourself to end up in a predicament like this. Warnings:  18+, Dubcon, erotic asphyxiation, choking kink, drug mention, mild description of violence (If ya squint), swearing, mentions of organized crime. 

In the Dark -  Bucky Barnes x Vampire!Reader, Lonely and bored in your afterlife, or lack thereof, you take home an unsuspecting stranger, or so you thought. Warnings:  Blood, mild gore, smut, swearing, breeding kink.

The Stand-In - CEO!Bucky Barnes x Reader,  Stood up by your date and stranded in one of the nicest restaurants in town, Bucky Barnes just can't let that stand. Warnings:  slight angst, smut, oral (m & f receiving), deepthroating, unprotected sex (wrap it before you tap it !)

Charity Case - College!Bucky x Reader, You loathe Bucky Barnes and his cocky attitude but you find yourself doing him a favor. Is he really as insufferable as he seems? Warnings: Swearing, alcohol consumption, uhhh kissing, that's it!

Champagne Problems - Bartender!Bucky x Reader, When your ex-boyfriend makes a surprise appearance at your sister's wedding you find help from an unexpected source. Warnings: NO MINORS, Smut, oral sex (f receiving), unprotected sex, swearing, alcohol consumption

Gains - Bucky Barnes x Reader, Bucky Barnes has stolen the last treadmill and with it, the last shred of your patience. Warnings: Smut, swearing, semi-public sex, unprotected sex

Homecoming - Biker!Bucky Barnes x Reader, Finally home after being gone on a run, you give Bucky the welcome he deserves. Warnings: Housewife kink, unprotected sex, swearing, NO MINORS

Steve Rogers

Botanical Interest Masterlist - Soft!Mob!Steve Rogers x Florist!reader, A collection of oneshots featuring our favorite Brooklyn mobster and his sassy but shy florist girlfriend as they navigate their different worlds. Warnings: See individual stories for warnings.

Sweeter Endings - Sugar Daddy!Steve Rogers x reader, Still reeling from the financial realities of losing your mother you turn to a lucrative website for help and get more than you could have bargained for. Warnings: Smut (no minors 18+ only), light D/S dynamics, brief mentions of alcohol consumption, unprotected sex, swearing

Shots or Dare - Steve Rogers x reader, A drinking game goes one step too far. Or does it? Warnings: Alcohol consumption, drunken antics, hangovers, swearing

Fight or Flight - Steve Rogers x reader, Steve comes clean, in the aftermath and shock you turn to the one person who you know you can trust. Warnings: Implied cheating, angst, swearing

Sink or Swim - Steve Rogers x reader, After your long-term boyfriend tells you he's been in love with someone else for months you're both reeling from the fallout. Warnings: implied cheating, angst, swearing, Steve being a shithead

Artistic Intention - Artist!Steve Rogers x reader, Steve's doing well in his life drawing class, but a new muse throws him for a loop in the back supply room. Warnings: p in v smut, unprotected sex, public sex, breeding kink if you squint, swearing

Request: Love triangle with Peggy - Steve Rogers x reader, Steve Rogers x Peggy Carter, Steve Rogers has an image to maintain, but at what cost? Warnings: Angst, secret relationship, love triangle

Part Two - Confrontation time. Same warnings as part one apply.

By Its Cover - Dark!Librarian!Steve Rogers x shy!reader, Your late nights at the university library spark a chain of events. Will they lead to your undoing? To anyone else's? Warnings: DARK themes, NO MINORS, stalking, murder, minor character death, smut, angst, unprotected sex, oral sex, alcohol consumption, swearing

Lumberjack!Steve Drabble - Lumberjack!Steve Rogers x reader, Steve keeps you warm on his day off. Warnings: 18+ ONLY, unprotected sex, cockwarming, somno kinda

______

Sam Wilson

Pull -   A brief interaction in the hallway with Sam leads to a mischievous moment between friends with benefits. Warnings:  Smut, deepthroating, face fucking, hair pulling

______

Thor

Sugar Daddy!Thor Drabble - Bratty and uncaring on your yacht vacation, Thor has had enough. Warnings: Implied smut

______

Ransom Drysdale

Return to Sender - As if the holidays didn't add enough stress to your life, your asshole neighbor seems hellbent to be the cherry on top. Warnings: Smut, 18+ ONLY, oral (f receiving), making out, accidental voyeurism, mentions of alcohol consumption, swearing, Ransom being an asshole

[andypantsx3]

statistically significant | 1 | bakugou/reader

length: 23,490 words | 7 chapters

summary: You’re the scientist who developed a neural net to model the value of assists. Now that your work is feeding into the hero rankings, pro hero Ground Zero has a bone to pick with your results.

tags: romance, enemies to lovers, sexual tension, reader-insert

warnings: aged up characters, eventual smut, m/f threats of violence, problematic behavior

note: I cannot overemphasize that this interpretation of Bakugou is based on season 1 Bakugou, which means he behaves very questionably at the beginning. Please heed the warnings!

Last year

You had been ferreting snacks out of the Hero Awards when he found you.

In retrospect, the whole idea of attending the Hero Awards had been a bad one from the get go. You’d just been so thrilled by the image of it in your head--getting to see all your favorite pros gathered in one place, dressed to the nines, celebrating their rankings, their wins, their saves, their successes. You’d pictured yourself flitting between heroes, collecting autographs and taking selfies, sitting down at a table with big names like Uravity and Froppy, making fast friends over the complimentary champagne.

But then you’d seen what really went into preparing for and attending an event like this, and the shine had quickly rubbed off.

When your boss at the Commission had extended you the invite, she’d told you that you would be representing the organization, and had advised you to contract a makeup artist and find someone willing to dress you. Her tone had strongly implied that this was more of an order than a suggestion. So you’d done it, but nobody had told you exactly how many hours went into getting your makeup tested, getting fitted and refitted for a dress, and fielding questions on cut, colors, fabrics, and fit.

By the time the Awards rolled around, you’d lost upwards of forty excruciating hours of your life to preparations, and had developed some kind of anxiety-induced Pavlovian response to the modiste’s name on your phone screen, where you immediately wanted to leap into the nearest storage closet and hide. And none of this was even counting the five full hours you spent on the day of the awards getting primped and polished within an inch of your life, then stuffed into some ridiculous scrap of fabric that threatened to fall off of you if you so much as breathed wrong.

By the time the stylists and makeup artist had finished with you, you were starved, cranky, and nursing a small migraine from how enthusiastic the hairdresser had been with you. You’d thought, though, that you would finally be able to enjoy yourself now that the worst was over. All there was left was to attend the ceremony, and get to see all your favorite heroes.

And for an hour or two, the Hero Awards had been just as cool as expected. You lingered on the fringes of the red carpet, gawking as pros like Chargebolt and Pinky swanned their way down the walkway, looking even cooler in real life than they looked on TV. Everyone had clearly gone all out, and they looked unbelievably good, either inhumanly beautiful or inhumanly intimidating. You had been utterly transfixed, as evidenced by the inordinate amount of time you spent accidentally staring at Todoroki Shouto as he gave an interview to the side of the walkway, looking absolutely unreal as he leaned over to speak to the reporter.

When you’d finally managed to snap out of your trance, you’d remembered to cut a beeline for the snack table, and had set about stuffing as many snacks into your dress as you could manage. And that’s where the trouble really started.

The invite to the Awards had come with the option for a very fancy multi-course dinner that you could have chosen. Instead, you’d taken one look at the price and laughed yourself sick, before resolving to sneak a bunch of the free snacks into your dress to keep you occupied during the ceremony. The problem was, the scrap of fabric the modiste had insisted was a dress was so obnoxiously flimsy and could only hold so many snacks.

If your dress had been able to hold a reasonable number of snacks, you wouldn’t have needed to sneak back out to the snack table during the presentation, and he would have never had a chance to catch you on your own. But the dress was lacking snack utility, and so you had gone back out for more.

You kept low in the aisle as you crept out of the darkened theater, keeping a hand over your chest so you didn’t spill out of the thin fabric of your dress, and emerged into the reception hall, where you were almost blinded by the harsh light. You stood for a minute, blinking the spots out of your vision, and touched a hand to your eyes, careful not to smear any of your eyeliner.

And that’s when he struck.

Almost as soon as you raised your hand, a rough hand seized your wrist, wrenching your arm down. A heavy arm went around you quickly, trapping both your arms to your sides, and you barely had time to let out a squeak before a calloused hand clapped over your mouth. Your feet left the floor, and then you were being dragged through a side door into the stairwell.

You twisted wildly, kicking out, trying to catch the wall or the railing to push off of and throw your assailant off balance, but he was strong, and clearly well-versed in combat, as he kept you well away from anything you could use to your advantage. He hauled you out into the stairwell, but instead of heading down the stairs, he moved towards the corner. To your surprise, he tossed you unceremoniously against the wall, letting you go.

You caught yourself on the rough stone and whirled around, only to reel back in shock when you caught sight of your assailant.

Bakugou Katsuki, perhaps better known as pro hero Ground Zero, leaned over you, trapping you against the wall with an arm on either side of you. He, like all the other heroes you’d caught sight of today, looked almost unreal in person, but in stark contrast to all the others, his handsome face was twisted up in unmistakeable fury, blood-red eyes bright with violence and white teeth bared in a silent snarl. Even under the thick fabric of his suit, you could see the hard lines of his body were taught with aggression, and it was all you could do to not shrink back against the cold stone of the wall.

“So,” he snarled, leaning in to put his face close to yours, “you’re the fucking statistics nerd.”

You gaped at him, mouth falling open. Your professional title was data scientist, but statistics nerd was a close enough descriptor that you could tell he knew who you were. Your brows went up, wondering why in the world Ground Zero knew you.

“E-excuse me?” you managed. Your brain rapidly kicked into high gear, running through possible reasons why he would know you, what he could possibly want with you.

Bakugou snarled. “What the fuck is your problem with me?”

You stared at him. Problem with him? Other than the fact that he’d just seized you with no warning and dragged you into a stairwell, you had no problem with him. You’d never even met him--what the hell was he talking about?

“Uh, do you maybe have me confused with someone else?” you asked, trying to shift out from under his arm. Maybe there was another data scientist milling around in the crowds that he’d meant to get his hands on instead.

Bakugou’s red eyes narrowed, and he put a hand to your abdomen to press you firmly back to the wall. “Oh no. You’re not getting out of this, you little brat. Fucking fix it.”

You eyed him warily, checking him for signs of a head injury, wandering over his shock of blonde hair and noting the size of his pupils. Maybe Bakugou had been out on assignment just before the Awards, and hadn’t stopped to get his injuries checked out before coming here. A blow to the head would explain why he was behaving so strangely, and asking for weird stuff.

“Fix what?” you asked, frowning when you couldn’t spot the signs of a concussion on him. His gaze seemed all too focused, all too intent. It was nerve-wracking, actually. You’d heard of his reputation for intensity before, but it was one thing to hear it and another entirely to have all that intensity trained on you.

Bakugou bared his teeth and leaned closer. “Your fucking nerd-ass model. Fix it.”

You froze.

Oh.

Oh no.

Oh, this was about the model. You knew his bone to pick with the model.

The entire reason you’d received an invite to the Hero Awards in the first place was because of your work on the model that calculated the hero rankings. The model had existed for years before you had come along, but this year it was different.

You’d been hired a couple months ago by the Public Safety Hero Commission after you’d contacted them with an idea on how to finally calculate the value of field assists. You’d had a rough prototype of a neural network that you’d trained on video of multi-hero operations, tracking the movements of all the heroes on screen, and had developed an algorithm capable of assigning point values to moves that contributed to but did not directly result in a win or a rescue.

The Commission couldn’t get their hands on your work fast enough, and after only a few months refining your neural net, it was hooked into the rankings model, and it had informed not only the choices for Rescue of the Year and Most Valuable Hero this year, but had entirely changed the hero rankings overall.

And Bakugou’s ranking had been very much affected.

Bakugou Katsuki was a hero very unlike the world had ever seen. Anyone could see from his stats alone that he was incredibly driven, supremely powerful, and almost unmatched by any other hero out there. A few years out from UA, he’d already entered the top ten and had been mere breaths away from the top three -- that is, until your model results had been released.

The thing about Bakugou was that he had a higher percentage of fight wins than any hero in recorded history. He came out on top of almost any situation he entered into, and had one of the highest villain capture stats and the highest villain kill stat as compared to any other hero at this point in their career. The problem was, the new model also now took into account assists, as well as applied slightly heavier weights to rescues, and as good as Bakugou was at winning fights, he was almost equally as terrible at helping others.

So when your model had been worked into the Hero Commission’s official ranking calculations, Bakugou had backslid to sit unhappily at rank number eight.

And apparently, he thought this meant you had a personal grudge.

“Okay, I understand you’re upset, but the results are the results,” you said, watching him carefully. “It’s got nothing to do with you personally.”

His expression darkened thunderously, and the hand on your abdomen grew notably hotter, a scent like gunpowder and burnt sugar rising in the stairwell. “Like hell it doesn’t. Fucking fix it.”

Your brow furrowed. How did regular people think models worked? “There’s no ‘fixing it’, Bakugou. That’s just how math works. If you have a problem with how assists and rescues are weighted then you can take it up with the Commission. I just trained the model with their recommendations, and the results are what they are.”

Bakugou apparently registered none of what you were saying. Rough fingers slid to your jaw, tipping your face up to him. “What is it that you wanted, you damn brat? Did you want to see me humiliated? Or maybe you wanted my attention?” His fingers dug into your jaw. “Well now you have it, you fucking harpy, so show me what you wanted with it.”

You gaped at him, unable to help the way your mouth hung open like a fish. Did he think you were blackmailing him? With a fucking statistical model? It was a matter of public record that Bakugou was smart--he was purportedly one of the brightest minds that had ever graced the profession of hero, with strategic skill and combat sense that was utterly unparalleled--so then why the hell was he being so dumb about this? Was he really so self-absorbed that he thought this whole thing was about him?

Your temper flared, rising like the slow heat that was building under his hands. “I know this might be news to you,” you said slowly, “but not everything is about you. The model I trained takes in video as its input, and calculates rankings based on recommended weighting criteria that the Hero Commission gave me themselves. There is no place for me to input my own biases or change the results, so if the output is something that you’re ashamed of, then maybe you should do better.”

Bakugou’s eyes brightened, narrowing on you with an intensity that made you want to curl into the wall. “Say that again, you little fuck.”

You held your ground, ignoring the dangerous way the scent of hot smoke sharpened, leaning forward to bare your own teeth. “Maybe you should do better, you self-centered asshole.”

You were close enough that you could see his pupils dilate with the challenge, like a predator catching sight of its prey. An unsettling grin made its way across his mouth. “I am going to make you wish you’d never even seen a calculator, you smug fucking nerd,” he said, leaning into you.

The scent of gunpowder burned in the back of your throat, and the hands on you flared alarmingly hot, before the door to the hall burst open, and a whirlwind of red and yellow tore into the stairwell.

“Heya Blasty,” a voice chirped, echoing on the stairs, “Found ya.”

The shock of golden yellow resolved itself into the lean figure of Kaminari Denki, aka pro hero Chargebolt. He quickly made his way to Bakugou’s side, seizing an elbow.

“I’m busy, fuckstick. Fuck off,” Bakugou growled.

A large hand reached over Bakugou’s other shoulder to pull him off you, a head of gelled red spikes materializing behind his back, and you blinked up at Kirishima Eijirou, also known as Red Riot.

“Sorry about him,” Kirishima smiled down at you warmly, in direct contrast to the way his fingers dug into Bakugou’s shoulder. His teeth looked incredibly sharp in person, but this fact somehow failed to detract from the warmth of his friendly expression. You blinked, stunned that you were being addressed by Red Riot.

“He’s been a little worked up since the results were released, but he’s harmless,” Kirishima explained, grunting a little as he jerked Bakugou away from you. Bakugou snarled and turned to his friend, a small volley of sparks lighting off of his palm.

“I said fuck off,” he growled.

You let out a choked laugh at the idea of Bakugou Katsuki being called harmless. Just this week he’d perfected a technique where he melted clean through concrete, and you’d seen the replay of him liquifying the side of a skyscraper on the news this morning as you’d been getting your makeup done.

“Harmless, right. Definitely felt that way,” you uttered as Kirishima struggled to get a grip on Bakugou.

“I’ll fucking show you harmless,” Bakugou spat, turning back to you, sparks crackling louder in his palm. Kirishima seized his chance quickly, getting a bulky arm around Bakugou’s chest and lifting him straight off the ground. Bakugou snarled and gripped Kirishima’s forearm, letting off an explosion that would have blown anyone else’s arm clean off, but Kirishima just laughed, ignoring that the sleeve of his suit had caught fire, and hauled Bakugou back through the door.

A litany of swears filtered back through the door before it swung shut again.

Kaminari turned to face you, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry about that. We didn’t realize he was gonna come after you like that, though I don’t think he would have actually done anything. He’s pretty much all talk.”

You waved a hand, still stunned that Chargebolt was speaking to you.

“Uh, it’s okay,” you said. “I just...didn’t expect that kind of a reaction.”

Kaminari chuckled. “He’s usually a little more chill these days--I think he’s just pissed he’s losing to Midoriya now.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “I gotta say, though, he was even more worked up than I expected when we got here. What did you say to him?”

You grimaced, thinking back on the tense conversation. “That if he was ashamed of his ranking, he should do better.”

Kaminari choked. “Oh fuck, he must have been pissed,” he managed, before dissolving into peals of laughter. “Do better. No wonder he looked like he was gonna give himself a hernia. Mina’s gonna wet herself when I tell her.”

You shifted uncomfortably. “He thinks I altered the results to get his attention.”

Kaminari’s chuckles tapered off as he set a comforting hand on your shoulder. “Oh, he’s just saying that. He knows he’s shit at assists. He’s just salty he’s actually gotta do something about it if he wants to be number one.”

You thought back to the feeling of that hard body pressing you up against the wall, the disdain that had twisted his handsome face, the burning heat that had built up under his palms. A shiver went down your spine. It had seemed like he was a little more than salty, but if that’s how his friend wanted to put it, then fine.

“Well, thanks for the save anyway,” you said, giving Kaminari a little smile. “I’d definitely give you and Kirishima Rescue of the Year if I was pre-determining my results.”

Kaminari laughed, turning back to the door that Kirishima had dragged Bakugou through. As if on cue, a small boom sent the door swinging open a little. “Speaking of which, I’d better get back to make sure I don’t have to rescue the rescuer.”

He gave you a casual wave, then crossed to the door quickly. He hesitated at the threshold, then peeked back over his shoulder at you.

“By the way,” he said. “You might want to take a look at your dress. I, um, think Bakugou may have gotten a little carried away.”

He disappeared before you could ask what he meant, but a quick glance down clarified soon enough. Right on your abdomen, where Bakugou had pinned you against the wall, lay a scorched cut out, exactly in the shape of one large hand.

Your mouth dropped open in horror.

That fucking dick.

[antiporn-activist]

The Children of Pornhub

Why does Canada allow this company to profit off videos of exploitation and assault?

By Nicholas Kristof, Opinion Columnist, Dec. 4, 2020, New York Times

This article contains descriptions of sexual assault. It’s also really long.

Pornhub prides itself on being the cheery, winking face of naughty, the website that buys a billboard in Times Square and provides snow plows to clear Boston streets. It donates to organizations fighting for racial equality and offers steamy content free to get people through Covid-19 shutdowns.

Yet there’s another side of the company: Its site is infested with rape videos. It monetizes child rapes, revenge pornography, spy cam videos of women showering, racist and misogynist content, and footage of women being asphyxiated in plastic bags. A search for “girls under18” (no space) or “14yo” leads in each case to more than 100,000 videos. Most aren’t of children being assaulted, but too many are.

After a 15-year-old girl went missing in Florida, her mother found her on Pornhub — in 58 sex videos. Sexual assaults on a 14-year-old California girl were posted on Pornhub and were reported to the authorities not by the company but by a classmate who saw the videos. In each case, offenders were arrested for the assaults, but Pornhub escaped responsibility for sharing the videos and profiting from them.

Pornhub is like YouTube in that it allows members of the public to post their own videos. A great majority of the 6.8 million new videos posted on the site each year probably involve consenting adults, but many depict child abuse and nonconsensual violence. Because it’s impossible to be sure whether a youth in a video is 14 or 18, neither Pornhub nor anyone else has a clear idea of how much content is illegal.

Unlike YouTube, Pornhub allows these videos to be downloaded directly from its website. So even if a rape video is removed at the request of the authorities, it may already be too late: The video lives on as it is shared with others or uploaded again and again.

“Pornhub became my trafficker,” a woman named Cali told me. She says she was adopted in the United States from China and then trafficked by her adoptive family and forced to appear in pornographic videos beginning when she was 9. Some videos of her being abused ended up on Pornhub and regularly reappear there, she said.

“I’m still getting sold, even though I’m five years out of that life,” Cali said. Now 23, she is studying in a university and hoping to become a lawyer — but those old videos hang over her.

“I may never be able to get away from this,” she said. “I may be 40 with eight kids, and people are still masturbating to my photos.”

“You type ‘Young Asian’ and you can probably find me,” she added.

Actually, maybe not. Pornhub recently was offering 26,000 videos in response to that search. That doesn’t count videos that show up under “related searches” that Pornhub suggests, including “young tiny teen,” “extra small petite teen,” “tiny Asian teen” or just “young girl.” Nor does it necessarily count videos on a Pornhub channel called “exploited teen Asia.”

I came across many videos on Pornhub that were recordings of assaults on unconscious women and girls. The rapists would open the eyelids of the victims and touch their eyeballs to show that they were nonresponsive.

Pornhub profited this fall from a video of a naked woman being tortured by a gang of men in China. It is monetizing video compilations with titles like “Screaming Teen,” “Degraded Teen” and “Extreme Choking.” Look at a choking video and it may suggest also searching for “She Can’t Breathe.”

It should be possible to be sex positive and Pornhub negative.

Pornhub declined to make executives available on the record, but it provided a statement. “Pornhub is unequivocally committed to combating child sexual abuse material, and has instituted a comprehensive, industry-leading trust and safety policy to identify and eradicate illegal material from our community,” it said. Pornhub added that any assertion that the company allows child videos on the site “is irresponsible and flagrantly untrue.”

II.

At 14, Serena K. Fleites was an A student in Bakersfield, Calif., who had never made out with a boy. But in the eighth grade she developed a crush on a boy a year older, and he asked her to take a naked video of herself. She sent it to him, and this changed her life.

He asked for another, then another; she was nervous but flattered. “That’s when I started getting strange looks in school,” she remembered. He had shared the videos with other boys, and someone posted them on Pornhub.

Fleites’s world imploded. It’s tough enough to be 14 without having your classmates entertain themselves by looking at you naked, and then mocking you as a slut. “People were texting me, if I didn’t send them a video, they were going to send them to my mom,” she said.

The boy was suspended, but Fleites began skipping class because she couldn’t bear the shame. Her mother persuaded Pornhub to remove the videos, and Fleites switched schools. But rumors reached the new school, and soon the videos were uploaded again to Pornhub and other websites.

Fleites quarreled with her mother and began cutting herself. Then one day she went to the medicine cabinet and took every antidepressant pill she could find.

Three days later, she woke up in the hospital, frustrated to be still alive. Next she hanged herself in the bathroom; her little sister found her, and medics revived her.

As Fleites spiraled downward, a friend introduced her to meth and opioids, and she became addicted to both. She dropped out of school and became homeless.

At 16, she advertised on Craigslist and began selling naked photos and videos of herself. It was a way to make a bit of money, and maybe also a way to punish herself. She thought, “I’m not worth anything any more because everybody has already seen my body,” she told me.

Those videos also ended up on Pornhub. Fleites would ask that they be removed. They usually would be, she says — but then would be uploaded again. One naked video of her at 14 had 400,000 views, she says, leaving her afraid to apply for fast-food jobs for fear that someone would recognize her.

So today Fleites, 19, off drugs for a year but unemployed and traumatized, is living in her car in Bakersfield, along with three dogs that have proved more loyal and loving than the human species. She dreams of becoming a vet technician but isn’t sure how to get there. “It’s kind of hard to go to school when you’re living in a car with dogs,” she said.

“I was dumb,” she acknowledged, noting that she had never imagined that the videos could be shared online. “It was one small thing that a teenager does, and it’s crazy how it turns into something so much bigger.

“A whole life can be changed because of one little mistake.”

III.

The problem goes far beyond one company. Indeed, a rival of Pornhub, XVideos, which arguably has even fewer scruples, may attract more visitors. Depictions of child abuse also appear on mainstream sites like Twitter, Reddit and Facebook. And Google supports the business models of companies that thrive on child molestation.

Google returns 920 million videos on a search for “young porn.” Top hits include a video of a naked “very young teen” engaging in sex acts on XVideo along with a video on Pornhub whose title is unprintable here.

I asked the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to compile the number of images, videos and other content related to child sexual exploitation reported to it each year. In 2015, it received reports of 6.5 million videos or other files; in 2017, 20.6 million; and in 2019, 69.2 million.

Facebook removed 12.4 million images related to child exploitation in a three-month period this year. Twitter closed 264,000 accounts in six months last year for engaging in sexual exploitation of children. By contrast, Pornhub notes that the Internet Watch Foundation, an England-based nonprofit that combats child sexual abuse imagery, reported only 118 instances of child sexual abuse imagery on its site over almost three years, seemingly a negligible figure. “Eliminating illegal content is an ongoing battle for every modern content platform, and we are committed to remaining at the forefront,” Pornhub said in its statement.

The Internet Watch Foundation couldn’t explain why its figure for Pornhub is so low. Perhaps it’s because people on Pornhub are inured to the material and unlikely to report it. But if you know what to look for, it’s possible to find hundreds of apparent child sexual abuse videos on Pornhub in 30 minutes. Pornhub has recently offered playlists with names including “less than 18,” “the best collection of young boys” and “under- - age.”

Congress and successive presidents have done almost nothing as this problem has grown. The tech world that made it possible has been mostly passive, in a defensive crouch. But pioneering reporting in 2019 by my Times colleagues has prodded Congress to begin debating competing strategies to address child exploitation.

Concerns about Pornhub are bubbling up. A petition to shut the site down has received 2.1 million signatures. Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, called on the Justice Department to investigate Pornhub. PayPal cut off services for the company, and credit card companies have been asked to do the same. An organization called Traffickinghub, led by an activist named Laila Mickelwait, documents abuses and calls for the site to be shut down. Twenty members of Canada’s Parliament have called on their government to crack down on Pornhub, which is effectively based in Montreal.

“They made money off my pain and suffering,” an 18-year-old woman named Taylor told me. A boyfriend secretly made a video of her performing a sex act when she was 14, and it ended up on Pornhub, the police confirmed. “I went to school the next day and everybody was looking at their phones and me as I walked down the hall,” she added, weeping as she spoke. “They were laughing.”

Taylor said she has twice attempted suicide because of the humiliation and trauma. Like others quoted here, she agreed to tell her story and help document it because she thought it might help other girls avoid suffering as she did.

IV.

Pornhub is owned by Mindgeek, a private pornography conglomerate with more than 100 websites, production companies and brands. Its sites include Redtube, Youporn, XTube, SpankWire, ExtremeTube, Men.com, My Dirty Hobby, Thumbzilla, PornMD, Brazzers and GayTube. There are other major players in porn outside the Mindgeek umbrella, most notably XHamster and XVideos, but Mindgeek is a porn titan. If it operated in another industry, the Justice Department could be discussing an antitrust case against it.

Pornhub and Mindgeek also stand out because of their influence. One study this year by a digital marketing company concluded that Pornhub was the technology company with the third greatest-impact on society in the 21st century, after Facebook and Google but ahead of Microsoft, Apple and Amazon.

Nominally based in Luxembourg for tax reasons, Mindgeek is a private company run from Montreal. It does not disclose who owns it, but it is led by Feras Antoon and David Tassillo, both Canadians, who declined to be interviewed.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada calls himself a feminist and has been proud of his government’s efforts to empower women worldwide. So a question for Trudeau and all Canadians: Why does Canada host a company that inflicts rape videos on the world?

Mindgeek’s moderators are charged with filtering out videos of children, but its business model profits from sex videos starring young people.

“The goal for a content moderator is to let as much content as possible go through,” a former Mindgeek employee told me. He said he believed that the top executives weren’t evil but were focused above all on maximizing revenue.

While Pornhub would not tell me how many moderators it employs, I interviewed one who said that there are about 80 worldwide who work on Mindgeek sites (by comparison, Facebook told me it has 15,000 moderators). With 1.36 million new hours of video uploaded a year to Pornhub, that means that each moderator would have to review hundreds of hours of content each week.

The moderators fast forward through videos, but it’s often difficult to assess whether a person is 14 or 18, or whether torture is real or fake. Most of the underage content involves teenagers, the moderator I spoke with said, but some comes from spy cams in toilets or changing rooms and shows children only 8 to 12.

“The job in itself is soul-destroying,” the moderator said.

Pornhub appears to be increasingly alarmed about civil or criminal liability. Lawyers are circling, and nine women sued the company in federal court after spy cam videos surfaced on Pornhub. The videos were shot in a locker room at Limestone College in South Carolina and showed women showering and changing clothes.

Executives of Pornhub appear in the past to have assumed that they enjoyed immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects internet platforms on which members of the public post content. But in 2018 Congress limited Section 230 so that it may not be enough to shield the company, leading Mindgeek to behave better.

It has doubled the number of moderators in the last couple of years, the moderator told me, and this year Pornhub began voluntarily reporting illegal material to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. After previously dragging its feet in removing videos of children and nonconsensual content, Pornhub now is responding more rapidly.

It has also compiled a list of banned content. I obtained a copy of this list, and it purports to bar videos with terms or themes like “rape,” “preteen,” “pedophilia” and “bestiality” (it helpfully clarifies that this “includes eels, fish, octopus, insects”). Diapers are OK “if no scatophilia.” Mutilation depends on context but “cannot depict severing parts of the body.”

So while it is now no longer possible to search on Pornhub in English using terms like “underage” or “rape,” the company hasn’t tried hard to eliminate such videos. A member called “13yoboyteen” is allowed to post videos. A search for “r*pe,” turns up 1,901 videos. “Girl with braces” turns up 1,913 videos and suggests also trying “exxxtra small teens.” A search for “13yo” generates 155,000 videos. To be clear, most aren’t of 13-year-olds, but the fact that they’re promoted with that language seems to reflect an effort to attract pedophiles.

Moreover, some videos seem at odds with the list of banned content. “Runaway Girl Gets Ultimatum, Anal or the Streets” is the title of one Pornhub video. Another user posts videos documenting sex with teenage girls as they weep, protest and cry out in pain.

While Pornhub is becoming more careful about videos of potentially litigious Americans, it remains cavalier about overseas victims. One Indonesian video is titled “Junior High School Girl After Class” and shows what appears to be a young teenager having sex. A Chinese sex video, just taken down, was labeled: “Beautiful High School Girl Is Tricked by Classmates and Taken to the Top of a Building Where She Is Insulted and Raped.”

“They’re making money off the worst moment in my life, off my body,” a Colombian teenager who asked to be called Xela, a nickname, told me. Two American men paid her when she was 16 for a sexual encounter that they filmed and then posted on Pornhub. She was one of several Pornhub survivors who told me they had thought of or attempted suicide.

In the last few days as I was completing this article, two new videos of prepubescent girls being assaulted were posted, along with a sex video of a 15-year-old girl who was suicidal after it went online. I don’t see how good-faith moderators could approve any of these videos.

V.

“It’s always going to be online,” Nicole, a British woman who has had naked videos of herself posted and reposted on Pornhub, told me. “That’s my big fear of having kids, them seeing this.”

That’s a recurring theme among survivors: An assault eventually ends, but Pornhub renders the suffering interminable.

Naked videos of Nicole at 15 were posted on Pornhub. Now 19, she has been trying for two years to get them removed.

“Why do videos of me from when I was 15 years old and blackmailed, which is child porn, continuously [get] uploaded?” Nicole protested plaintively to Pornhub last year, in a message. “You really need a better system. … I tried to kill myself multiple times after finding myself reuploaded on your website.”

Nicole’s lawyer, Dani Pinter, says there are still at least three naked videos of Nicole at age 15 or 16 on Pornhub that they are trying to get removed.

“It’s never going to end,” Nicole said. “They’re getting so much money from our trauma.”

Pornhub has introduced software that supposedly can “fingerprint” rape videos and prevent them from being uploaded again. But Vice showed how this technology is easily circumvented on Pornhub.

One Pornhub scandal involved the Girls Do Porn production company, which recruited young women for clothed modeling gigs and then pushed them to perform in sex videos, claiming that the videos would be sold only as DVDs in other countries and would never go online. Reassured that no one would ever know, some of the women agreed — and then were shattered when the footage was aggressively marketed on Pornhub.

Girls Do Porn was prosecuted for sex trafficking and shut down. But those videos continue to surface and resurface on Pornhub; last time I checked, videos of six victims of Girls Do Porn were on Pornhub, which continues to profit from them.

One of the Girls Do Porn women I saw on Pornhub is now dead. She was murdered at 20, allegedly by an angry ex-boyfriend who is about to go on trial. I’m not disclosing her name because she should be remembered as a vibrant college athlete, and not for a sex video that represented her most mortifying moment.

VI.

So what’s the solution?

I had expected the survivors to want to shut down Pornhub and send its executives to prison. Some did, but others were more nuanced. Lydia, now 20, was trafficked as a child and had many rape videos posted on the site. “My stomach hurts all the time” from the tension, she told me, but she doesn’t want to come across as hostile to porn itself.

“I don’t want people to hear ‘No porn!’” Lydia told me. “It’s more like, ‘Stop hurting kids.’”

Susan Padron told me that she had assumed that pornography was consensual, until a boyfriend filmed her in a sex act when she was 15 and posted it on Pornhub. She has struggled since and believes that only people who have confirmed their identities should be allowed to post videos.

Jessica Shumway, who was trafficked and had a customer post a sex video on Pornhub, agrees: “They need to figure out who’s underage in the videos and that there’s consent from everybody in it.”

I asked Leo, 18, who had videos of himself posted on Pornhub when he was 14, what he suggested.

“That’s tough,” he said. “My solution would be to leave porn to professional production companies,” because they require proof of age and consent.

Right now, those companies can’t compete with mostly free sites like Pornhub and XVideos.

“Pornhub has already destroyed the business model for pay sites,” said Stoya, an adult film actress and writer. She, too, thinks all platforms — from YouTube to Pornhub — should require proof of consent to upload videos of private individuals.

Columnists are supposed to offer answers, but I struggle with solutions. If Pornhub curated videos more rigorously, the most offensive material might just move to the dark web or to websites in less regulated countries. Yet at least they would then not be normalized on a mainstream site.

More pressure and less impunity would help. We’re already seeing that limiting Section 230 immunity leads to better self-policing.

And call me a prude, but I don’t see why search engines, banks or credit card companies should bolster a company that monetizes sexual assaults on children or unconscious women. If PayPal can suspend cooperation with Pornhub, so can American Express, Mastercard and Visa.

I don’t see any neat solution. But aside from limiting immunity so that companies are incentivized to behave better, here are three steps that would help: 1.) Allow only verified users to post videos. 2.) Prohibit downloads. 3.) Increase moderation.

These measures wouldn’t kill porn or much bother consumers of it; YouTube thrives without downloads. Siri Dahl, a prominent porn star who does business with Pornhub, told me that my three proposals are “insanely reasonable.”

The world has often been oblivious to child sexual abuse, from the Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts. Too late, we prosecute individuals like Jeffrey Epstein or R. Kelly. But we should also stand up to corporations that systematically exploit children. With Pornhub, we have Jeffrey Epstein times 1,000.

[sinagrace]

On the subject of marvel comics ...

If we’re gonna talk about how Marvel does literally nothing about giving a leg up to marginalized creators and staff members, I’ve got another story to tell. Towards the end of my time there, I’d been getting a sense that marvel editors were lying about keeping me in mind for projects after iceman, and the following incident sealed the deal in terms of being told (not in any legally binding way) that I had overstayed my welcome at the house of ideas. Sometime in 2018, an editor at a different publishing house asked if I’d pitch for an all-ages Spider-Man book they were licensed to produce. Considering I saw CB Cebulski have a conniption at a comic con party when another Marvel Comics writer told him he’d been courted to do the same for avengers, I asked that editorial to make absolutely sure marvel was cool with me pitching for this project. The editor got approval, and I wrote a damn good idea that was on the fast track to being the next arc in the series. For those who aren’t familiar, when you’re not a household name, pitching for a legacy character is quite a bit of work. Given my lifelong love of Spider-Man, it wasn’t exactly grueling to come up with a handful of ideas and then properly outline the one my editor liked the most… but it’s still work. All that being said, I felt great about the final document, and that I’d bought myself a few more months of being Marvel-adjacent so I could continue growing my reputation for being known for my writing chops, and rinse off the notion that I was ever anyone’s diversity hire. Cut to a few weeks later, and my editor tells me that I can’t be used for the series. The exact words he relayed from Marvel were: “they’d like to keep the focus on iceman for now.” That e-mail came in the day I turned in my last script for Iceman. I reached out to Marvel’s talent relations guy, and he got me on the phone to explain a completely different reason why I was taken off the book: he said that Marvel only wanted people with experience in all-ages because there were different formatting rules than what goes into a standard comic script (a half truth that doesn’t matter when you read the next sentence). I mentioned that I did an all-ages book for Simon and Schuster, a middle grade series for Image Comics, short stories for Boom Studios, and edited an all-ages title for Robert Kirkman. The talent relations guy was like, “Oh, I didn’t know all that.” He then went on to say that Marvel had a list of people they wanted this editor to approach and as a result some wires got crossed and thus I was out of several months’ work. He didn’t offer to fix the problem, he didn’t offer to throw me on any number of space-filler mini-series that were just basically keeping Jonathan Hickman’s seat warm… nothing. In response, I said to the talent relations guy: “Do you believe what you’re telling me?” He didn’t have a particularly good answer. Oh if you’re wondering: like NONE of the writers who did end up getting hired for these all-ages titles had legitimate experience with all-ages material. They’re all great writers and some of them are my homies, but it’s not like they came from scholastic or random house. All of this is to say: I went above and beyond to make sure I was approved to pitch on a project, I worked my butt off and wrote something my editor was incredibly enthusiastic about, and then I magically got unpicked and wasn’t offered a reasonable explanation, a substitute gig, or a kill fee for the work I had put in on the proposal. Thanks, Marvel. This whole debacle wasn’t included in a piece I wrote last year because the editor I was working with asked me not to. Given that his relationship with Marvel was already tenuous, he didn’t really need more pressure/ stress. This guy went to bat for me and helped get me one of my favorite gigs, and having been in his position as an editor dealing with multiple bureaucracies, I didn’t want to make his life any harder. But he’s no longer at that company, and he gave me permission to bring this up. So here we are. I hate that I’m once again in a position where I have to call out Marvel on some BS, because I don’t know that anything positive will come from it, and that everything I’ve done in my career will once again be boiled down to: “semi-attractive queer comic creator complains about marvel comics.” Like, never mind that I’ve been at this since I was in high school, ran Kirkman’s imprint on my own before I was 25, and have gone on to write almost all of my favorite DC Comics characters after leaving Marvel. It’s shitty to be an individual talking about a beloved company... but it’s the right thing to do. The only thing I can 100% predict will happen from me speaking up is: a bunch of haters are going to get back on my dick again and make social media unbearable. To those folks, my birthday is on Monday… can you maybe not? Just this once? Stories like what I've written need to be considered when discussing if Marvel has actually done anything to be accountable for not only hiring more diversely, but for fostering an environment where those people feel valued. My only advice to Marvel would be: fucking hire a third party organization to teach you all how to do this right… you can’t keep propping Sana up on a podium and pat yourselves on the back for doing half of the bare minimum. I hate that I still love your books (I spent good money buying the oversized Silver Surfer Black collection), and I just wish that the gatekeepers were a bit more responsible and cognizant of how deep their behavior and apathy cuts. Granted, this is a company that has a bad reputation for not treating anybody fairly, so there is always the argument that Marvel Comics is just run by a box of pythons who indiscriminately poison and devour folks. I’m not sure... after 18 months away from them, I still try to excuse the bad behavior and blame myself for how things went down.

[hellomynameisbisexual]

Travis has had both boyfriends and girlfriends since high school. But when his coworkers discovered his dating history at a board game night, they told him he couldn’t be bisexual. “Bi men don’t exist,” they said. “You’re just a confused gay guy.” Travis, 34, had brought his girlfriend with him that night, but they started calling her his “roommate” after they found out he was bi.

Santiago got an even harsher reaction when he came out to his family. “‘Bisexual’ is just code for insincere gay man” is how he said one of his relatives reacted. “He didn’t use the term ‘gay man,’” 24-year-old Santiago told me, “but I won’t repeat slurs.”

In the past couple of months, I’ve heard dozens of stories like these from bisexual men who have had their sexual orientations invalidated by family members, friends, partners, and even strangers. Thomas was called a “fence-sitter” by a group of gay men at a bar. Shirodj was told that he was “just gay but not ready to come out of the closet.” Alexis had his bisexuality questioned by a lesbian teacher who he thought would be an ally. Many of these same men have been told that women are “all a little bi” or “secretly bi” but that men can only be gay or straight, nothing else.

In other words, bisexual men are like climate change: real but constantly denied.

A full 2% of men identified themselves as bisexual on a 2016 survey from the Centers for Disease Control, which means that there are at least three million bi guys in the United States alone—a number roughly equivalent to the population of Iowa. (On the same survey, 5.5% of women self-identified as bisexual, which comes out to roughly the same number of people as live in New Jersey.) The probability that an entire state’s worth of people would lie about being attracted to more than one gender is about as close to zero as you can get.

But the idea that only women can be bisexual is a persistent myth, one that has been decades in the making. And prejudice with such deep historical roots won’t disappear overnight.

👬👫👬👫

To understand why bisexual men are still being told that their sexual orientation doesn’t exist, we have to go back to the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s. That’s when Dr. H. Sharif “Herukhuti” Williams, a cultural studies scholar and co-editor of the anthology Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men, told me that male sexual fluidity got thrown under the bus in the name of gay rights—specifically white, upper-class gay rights.

“One of the byproducts of the gay liberation movement is this…solidifying of the [sexual] binary,” Herukhuti told me, citing the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s as a pre-Stonewall period of relatively unstigmatized sexual fluidity.

Four decades later, the gay liberation movement created a new type of man—the “modern gay man,” Herukhuti calls him—who was both “different from and similar to” the straight man. As Jillian Weiss, now the executive director of the Transgender Legal Defense Fund, wrote in a 2003 review of this same history, “gays and lesbians campaigned for acceptance by suggesting that they were ‘just like you,’ but with the single (but extremely significant exception) of [having] partners of the same sex.” Under this framework, attraction to a single gender was the unifying glue between gay men, lesbians, and straight people—bisexual people were just “confused.”

Bisexual people realized that they would have to form groups and coalitions of their own if they wanted cultural acceptance. But just as bisexual activism was gaining a foothold in the 1980s, the AIDS crisis hit, and everything changed—especially for bisexual men.

“AIDS forced certain bisexual men out [of the closet], it forced a lot of bisexual men back in, and then it killed off a number of them,” longtime bisexual activist and author Ron Suresha told me.Those deaths hindered the development of male bisexual activism at a particularly critical moment. “A number of men who would have been involved and were involved in the early years of the bi movement died—and they died early and they died quickly,” bisexual writer Mike Syzmanski recalled.

The AIDS crisis also gave rise to one of the most pernicious and persistent stereotypes about bisexual men, namely that they are the “bridge” for HIV transmission between gay men and heterosexual women. As Brian Dodge, a public health researcher at Indiana University, told me, this is a “warped notion” that has “never been substantiated by any real data.” The CDC, too, has debunked the same myth in the specific context of U.S. black communities: No, black men on the “down low” are not primarily responsible for high rates of HIV among black women.

For decades, bisexual men have been portrayed—even within the LGBT community—as secretly gay, sexually confused vectors of disease.

In 2016, bisexual men are still feeling the effects of the virus and the misperceptions around it.

“We’re still underrepresented on the boards of almost all of the national bisexual organizations,” Suresha told me, referring to the fact that women occupy most of the key leadership positions in bisexual activism. And in a new, nationally representative study of attitudes toward bisexual people, Dodge and his research team found that 43% of respondents agreed —at least somewhat—with the statement: “People should be afraid to have sex with bisexual men because of HIV/STD risks.”

For decades, bisexual men have been portrayed—even within the LGBT community—as secretly gay, sexually confused vectors of disease. Is it any wonder that they are still fighting to shed that false image today? It’s hard to convince people that you exist when they barely see you as human.

👬👫👬👫

It’s not that bisexual women have it easy. Both bisexual men and women are much less likely than gay men and lesbians to be out of the closet, with only 28% telling Pew that most of the important people in their life know about their orientation. Collectively, bisexual people also have some of the worst mental health outcomes in the LGBT community and their risk of intimate partner violence is disturbingly high. Bisexual people also face discrimination within the LGBT community while fending off accusations that their orientation excludes non-binary genders. (In response, bisexual educator Robyn Ochs defines “bisexuality” as attraction to “people of more than one sex and/or gender” rather than just to “men and women.”)

And on top of these general problems, bisexual women are routinely hypersexualized, stereotyped as “sluts,” dismissed as “experimenting,” and harassed on dating apps. Their bisexuality is reduced to a spectacle or waved away as a “phase.”

But it is still bisexual men who seem to have their very existence questioned more often.

Suresha pointed me to a 2005 New York Times article with the headline “Straight, Gay, Or Lying? Bisexuality Revisited,” the fallout of which he saw as “a disaster for bi people.” The article reported on a new study “cast[ing] doubt on whether true bisexuality exists, at least in men.” The study in question measured the genital arousal of a small sample of men and found, as the Times summarized, that “three-quarters of the [bisexual male] group had arousal patterns identical to those of gay men; the rest were indistinguishable from heterosexuals.”

“It got repeated and repeated in all sorts of media,” Suresha recalled. “People reported it in news briefs on the radio, in print, in magazines, all over the place.”

As the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force noted in its response to the article, the original study had some clear methodological limitations—only 33 self-identified bisexual men were included and participants were recruited through “gay-oriented magazines”—but the Times went ahead and reported that the research “lends support to those who have long been skeptical that bisexuality is a distinct and stable sexual orientation.”

“Show me the quest for scientific proof that heterosexuality exists. It begins and ends with even just one person saying, ‘I’m straight.’” — Amy Andre, Huffington Post

The article fueled the devious narrative that male bisexuality was just homosexuality in disguise. The lived experiences of bisexual men don’t support that narrative—and neither does science—but its power comes from prejudice, not from solid evidence.

And unsurprisingly, the 2005 study’s conclusions did not survive the test of time. In fact, one of the co-authors of that study went on to co-author a 2011 study which found that “bisexual patterns of both subjective and genital arousal” did indeed occur among men. The New York Times Magazine later devoted a feature to the push for the 2011 study, briefly acknowledging the paper’s previous poor coverage. But many in the bisexual community were unimpressed that the scientific community was still being positioned as the authority on the existence of bisexual men.

“Show me the quest for scientific proof that heterosexuality exists,” Amy Andre wrote on the Huffington Post in response to the feature. “It begins and ends with even just one person saying, ‘I’m straight.’”

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One of the most tragic things about society’s refusal to accept bisexual men is that we don’t even know why it is still so vehement. Dodge believes that his new study offers some hints—the persistent and widespread endorsement of the HIV “bridge” myth is alarming—but he told me that he would need “more qualitative and more focused research” before he could definitively state that HIV stigma is the primary factor driving negative attitudes toward bisexual men. (Research in this area is indeed sorely lacking. The last major study on the subject prior to the survey Dodge’s team conducted was published in 2002.)

In the meantime, bisexual advocates have developed plenty of compelling theories, many of them focused on the dominance of traditional masculinity. For example, Herukhuti explained that “we live in a society in which boundaries between men are policed because of patriarchy and sexism.” Men are expected to be “kings of their kingdom”—not to share their domain.

“For men to bridge those boundaries with each other—the only way that we can conceive of that is in the sense that these are ‘non-men,’” Herukhuti told me, adding that, in a patriarchal society, gay men are indeed seen as “non-men.” The refusal to accept that men can be bisexual, then, is partly a refusal to accept that someone who is bisexual can even be a man.

Many of the bisexual men I interviewed endorsed this same hypothesis. Kevin, 25, told me that “it’s seen as really unmanly to be attracted to men.” Another Kevin, 26, added that “the core concept of masculinity doesn’t leave room for anything besides extremes.” Justin, in his mid 20s, said that “men are one way and gay men are another way [but] bisexual men are this weird middle ground.”

Our society doesn’t seem to do well with more than two—especially when so many still believe that there’s only one right way to be a man.

And Michael, 28, added that bisexual men are “symbolically dangerous”—a “big interior threat to hetero masculinity” because of a shared attraction to women. It’s easy for a straight guy to differentiate himself from the modern gay man, but how can he reassure himself that he is nothing like his bisexual counterpart?

The answer is obvious: He can equate male bisexuality with homosexuality.

The logic needed to balance that equation, Herukhuti explained to me, is disturbingly close to the racist, Jim Crow-era “one-drop rule,” which designated anyone with the slightest bit of African ancestry as black for legal purposes.

“For a male to have had any kind of same-sex sexual experience, they are automatically designated as gay, based on that one-drop rule,” Herukhuti said. “And that taints them.”

To see that logic at work, look no further than the state of HIV research, much of which still groups gay and bisexual men together as MSM, or men who have sex with men. Dodge, who specializes in the area of HIV/AIDS, explained that “when a man reports sexual activity with another man, that becomes the recorded mode of transmission and there’s no data reporting about female or other partners.” Bisexual men have their identities erased—literally—from the resulting data.

“A really easy way to fix this,” Dodge added, “would be to just create a separate surveillance category.”

But when it comes to categories, our society doesn’t seem to do well with more than two—especially when so many still believe that there’s only one right way to be a man.

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The situation of bisexual men is not hopeless. Slowly but surely, they are expanding the horizons of masculinity. The silver lining in Dodge’s study, for example, is that there has been a decided “‘shift’ in attitudes toward bisexual men and women from negative to more neutral in the general population” over the last decade or so, although negative attitudes toward bisexual men were still “significantly greater” than the negativity directed at their female peers.

“Put the champagne on the ice,” Dodge joked. “We’re no longer at the very bottom of the barrel but we’ve still got a ways to go.”

That distance will likely be shortened by a rising generation that is far more tolerant of sexual fluidity than their predecessors. Respondents to Dodge’s survey who were under age 25 had more positive attitudes toward bisexuality, perhaps because so many of them openly identify as LGBTQ themselves—some as bisexual, some as pansexual, and some refusing labels altogether.

That growing acceptance is starting to be reflected in movies and on television, once forms of media that were, and still often are, notoriously hostile to bisexual men. A character named Darryl came out as bisexual with a myth-busting song on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and, as GLAAD recently noted, other shows like Shadowhunters and Black Sails are starting to do bi male representation right. The HBO comedy Insecure even made biphobia into a powerful storyline when one straight female character, Molly, shunned her love interest when he told her that he once had oral sex with a guy in a college. But other shows, like House of Cards, are still using a male character’s bisexuality as a way to accentuate his villainy.

Ultimately, bisexual men themselves will continue to be the most powerful force for changing hearts and minds. I asked each bisexual man I interviewed what he would want the world to know about his sexual orientation. Some wanted to clear up specific misconceptions but so many of them simply wanted people to acknowledge that male bisexuality is not fake.

“It’s important that bisexuality be acknowledged as real,” said Martyn, 30, adding that “there’s only so long someone can hold on to a part of themselves that seems invisible before it starts to make them doubt their own sense of self.”

“I am happy being bisexual and I’m not looking for an answer,” said Dan, 19. “I’m not trying things out, I’m not using this as a placeholder to discover my identity. This is who I am. And I love it.”

Samantha Allen is a reporter for Fusion’s Sex+Life vertical. She has a PhD in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Emory University and was the 2013 John Money Fellow at the Kinsey Institute. Before joining Fusion, she was a tech and health reporter for The Daily Beast.

[ladyonfire28]

Came back from my little break for that new article ! Here is the translation of Adèle and Aïssa’s interview for Libération. It’s a very long, but very interesting one. So i recommend to read it. There may be a lot of incoherencies so please tell me if something doesn’t make sense ! 

Aïssa Maïga and Adèle Haenel : «Finally there’s something political happening»

They stood up together at the César and have since been striving to invent a common front against all forms of discrimination. For "Libération", actresses Adèle Haenel and Aïssa Maïga retrace the journey of generational awareness.

Some kind of symbol. A large mural, in tribute to George Floyd, a 46-year-old black American who died on 25 May when he was arrested by a white policeman, and to Adama Traoré, who died at the age of 24 on the floor of the "caserne de Persan" (Val-d'Oise) following an arrest in 2016, was painted at the beginning of the week on the façade of a building in the 10th arrondissement of Paris. Close by, the Adama Committee organized a press conference on Tuesday. Words, demands and the announcement of a new march to fight against police violence. It takes place this Saturday in the capital, from the Place de la République to the Place de l'Opéra. The organizers dream of seeing a huge crowd come together. This demonstration comes at the heart of a tense period. Young people are demanding answers and action, while many police officers feel that the Minister of the Interior is letting his troops down in the face of the scolding.

In the street, we will find associations, politicians and many people. Adèle Haenel and Aïssa Maïga will be there. Not a first. They were already present on  June 2nd at the rally in front of the Paris high court. The actresses didn't really know each other before the last César ceremony, marked by the speech of one and the shattering departure of the other. Since then, they have never left each other. Both describe the moment as a "turning point". The fights converge.

When the idea of a cross-exchange came on the table to put words to their commitments, they did not hesitate. On Thursday, in a roadstead near Belleville, Adèle Haenel arrived first, followed by Aïssa Maïga. They are not of the same generation, the journeys and paths are different. The styles too. The one who got up at the announcement of the prize awarded to Polanski goes up and down, talks with her body. The one who, at the same ceremony, invited to count the black people in the room appears calmer, stays seated on her chair, speaks in a low voice. Adèle Haenel and Aïssa Maïga complement each other.

From where are you speaking?

Adèle Haenel: I speak from my personal political background, rooted in feminism, a background that is shaken by the worldwide movement around police violence and by the French movement around the Adama Committee. I would say that taking charge of my own history has given me the ability to deal with other broader issues that do not immediately affect me. I'm talking about a kind of political awakening. This desire to show my support for the families of the victims, for the political movement against racism and police violence in France, and for the actors who take a stand. I'm thinking of Omar Sy, Camélia Jordana and you, Aïssa.

Aïssa Maïga: This intersectional awakening evoked by Adèle is a place where I have been for a long time without necessarily being able to name it. For a long time, the racial question in cinema was so pervasive in my life that it cannibalized everything else. I felt that it was less difficult to be a woman, in a world that discriminates women, than it was to be a black woman. The work done by Afrofeminists in France and abroad put the words in my mouth that I didn't have because I didn't have that heritage. I am speaking from a place that is on the move and that is not made up of certainties, that is made of interrogations, especially about the fact that I can implement changes on my own scale. And I'm also speaking from a place that is purely civic and is tinged with various influences. I didn't grow up in a poor suburb, I didn't live in financial precariousness, I come from a rather intellectual middle class, it gave me certain tools, and yet I haven't escaped this very French thing, a soft racism, rarely seen but which is haunting... because it's omnipresent.

Why did you get involved with the Adama Committee?

A.M.: Because this is a fight for justice. It was Assa Traoré who came to meet me during the release of the collective book Noire n'est pas mon métier ("Black is not my job"). I knew her from afar, I knew her struggle, and she appeared. The support became obvious and it has really taken shape in the last few months. I was immediately impressed by this woman, her quiet strength, and this ability to forge a bond, to think of her family drama in political terms. Her voice matters. She's not just an icon: she allows a movement to emerge.

A.H.: For me, it's even more recent, I had to go through a problem that was going through me, that involved my body in discrimination in order to mingle with other injustices. I was listening to what Assa Traoré was saying and I was struck by her determination and intelligence. But it is only very recently that I also became physically aware that I could not fail to support this woman and the whole fight against police violence and racism, in the same way that I am taking up the fight for feminism and against sexual violence. I can't have it two-tiered.

On June 2nd, more than 20,000 people gathered in front of the High Court of Paris, at the request of the Adama Committee. An unprecedented turnout, with many young people, why?

A.M.: The Adama Committee saw very well the link between George Floyd's drama and their own. The death of Adama Traoré, choked under three gendarmes, was materialized before our eyes with the unbearable images of Floyd's death. The French youth who look at these images cannot fail to make the connection, it is obvious. There is also a form of accessible activism that is developing via social networks. Activists will involve others through simple, accessible sentences: if you are not a POC, you are still involved, it is your responsibility to listen and take an active part, at your level, in the fight for equality. There is also the idea that we need to establish a link between police violence, the racism that can be found in other social spaces, the issue of gender equality, the environment, and the urgency of dealing with these problems now. There is also a form of anxiety among young people: they are told that in fifty years' time there will be no more water. And finally the feeling of injustice, which is omnipresent and linked to the circulation of images on social networks. Police violence follows one after the other, and this creates an accumulation effect. It is not just a dogmatic political vision, but a reality that is lived or perceived as real.

A.H.: There is a turning point in the effectiveness of the movement as well. This feeling carried by Assa Traoré that we are powerful. It's not just ideas that go around the world, it's ideas that make the world happen. It gives hope and responsibility to a whole generation.

During Aïssa's speech at the Césars, in which she confronts the profession with the near-invisibility of actors, filmmakers and producers from French overseas territories and African and Asian immigrants in French cinema, you are in the room, Adèle. You don't know each other yet. Do you understand her speech immediately?

A.H.: It's obvious, but it's not immediate, it takes a little time to understand the extent of the racist mechanism when you, yourself, haven't been forced to see how it works. I was brought back to particular assignments, but not to this one. So it takes a long time before it becomes unbearable evidence. When Aïssa takes the floor, it's courageous because the room is very cold and it's making it even colder. I thought it was funny and I thought "finally, something political is happening".

Did you both understand that people find it violent to count black people in the room, and even that they might find it paradoxical to split the audience?

A.M.: Counting isn't splitting, it's measuring the gap between us and equality. When it comes to inequality, to be blind to color is to be blind to the social burdens that come from our history and the imagination that flows from it. I am fighting for art and culture to deconstruct racial fictions. In our field, cinema, there is a tendency to believe that when a few exceptions appear, the problem of racial discrimination is solved. I do not think that my presence, that of Omar Sy, Ladj Ly or Frédéric Chau, Leïla Bekhti, for example, however gifted they may be, exonerates French cinema from an examination of conscience. There is always an over-representation of people perceived as non-white in roles with negative connotations - and it's not me saying this, it's the CSA, through its diversity barometer. There are still too few opportunities for younger people, who today in 2020 deplore what I deplored when I was starting out. Still too few non-whites behind the camera and almost no one in decision-making positions. I started this job when I was 20 years old. I am 45. A generation, not a few exceptions, should have risen. It hasn't. And it's unbearable as a citizen, a mother and an artist.

At the César ceremony, I deliberately used a inflammable symbol. If we refuse to measure differences in access to opportunities in terms of racial discrimination, perhaps we are accepting the status quo. Today, we need concrete action by decision-makers and numerical targets in order to measure progress. A few personal successes, however brilliant they may be, cannot justify the violence of large-scale unequal treatment.

A.H.: The substance of what Aïssa said to the César is relevant, it speaks to the moment, and being shocking has the virtue of awakening. The criticisms that followed were "I agree but"... In fact, it means that even when the substance is right, the form is never the right one. It's a form of censorship, there are people who have the right to speak and others who don't.

A.M.: Allowing oneself to express anger head-on is taboo because we are actresses and we are supposed to preserve the desire that others project on us. And also because it highlights the precarious nature of this profession: are you able to overcome your fear, to express your opinion, with the risk of losing something?

A.H.: From my point of view, that of a white woman - forgive me for putting myself in this position, but it's still unfortunately an assignment - I see that when I spoke about what happened to me personally, I received a lot of support, especially from people who are not especially on our side. However, as soon as I spoke up, politically, to say that giving the prize to a rapist fleeing from justice was an insult, all of a sudden I was really overstepping what I was entitled to do, what I could interfere in...

Do you think there's a "white privilege"?

A.M.: Words are so tricky...

A.H.: When Virginie Despentes uses the term "white privilege", it's a bit related to Aïssa's gesture when she counts the black people in the room. It's a question of pointing out, by calling up words that should be those of the past, the gap between the evolution of universalist ideals and the facts of manifest exclusion at work. Provocation points out this flaw and invites us to close it.

Is there state racism?

A.M.: I don't know about "state" racism, it would have to be written into the laws to say that. The right word is systemic: it means that there is something that does not allow for real equality, something in the established rules that allows a small number of people to discriminate without being worried. What also raises the question is the inertia of the state in the face of the continuation of systemic inequalities.

From what you say, we are at a turning point in the struggle against racial, gender, social and other forms of discrimination...

A.M.: I felt the turning point in 2018 with #MeToo, Time's Up, and when I saw all these women from such diverse backgrounds (in the streets) after Trump's election. It was an image I had never seen before in my generation. It was in the United States, and yet something happened to me in France, because I had been dreaming of this convergence for a long time. I'm not here to defend my chapel. I'm not going to be satisfied with a breakthrough if blacks have more roles while Arabs and Asians are still in a degraded situation in French cinema. The convergence I'm talking about didn't quite take place at the time of #MeToo, which quickly became a white women's movement in my eyes. In French cinema, there is also the "50-50 for 2020" movement [collective for parity and inclusion founded in 2018, editor's note] that I saw coming like the guerrilla movement we had been waiting for for a long time, pragmatic, quick, positively impatient, very constructive. The work done in favor of parity is colossal. On the other hand, I regret that diversity is the next program. But it cannot be the next program for me, that is the mistake. I've talked about it very openly, and frankly in a fairly relaxed way with some of them.

A.H.: Much more relaxed than I was, by the way!

A.M.: And then I said to myself that the battles are progressing on different levels and that we're going to have to find some kind of alignment. The fight for women's rights is not just a women's issue, it's a men's issue, just as the fight against racism is not just about POC. And it wasn't until 2020 and the murder of George Floyd that there were those voices, especially white voices, that said, "This is my problem too." Including in France, where this awakening of consciousness is made possible by the work done by the families of victims of police violence.

A.H.: In my political journey so far, I had forgotten to understand the places where I am not just in a situation of domination. I am also, as a white woman who is not in a precarious position, in a dominant position in certain aspects. Understanding that, feeling that, is essential. My political agenda was focused on feminism, and I didn't realize that it was implicitly white feminism, unintentionally excluding. What Aïssa says seems fundamental to me: the agenda that would order one cause after another is not conceivable and leads to inertia. It leagues us against each other in identity issues that are sterile, since they reiterate the terms of oppression. This is a major issue in the effectiveness of political struggles: how can we mobilize without reiterating the categorization we are fighting against? This implies understanding that there is a deep articulation between all systems of domination and that there is a need to defend these causes in a cross-cutting manner.

Aïssa's speech on June 2nd, during the demonstration initiated by the Adama Committee, called for a fair, dignified and positive representation of minorities in the media. But who can judge what is dignified and fair? Only the ones who are affected ?

A.H.: Today, in France, female characters in films are implicitly white women: I have a much wider range of possible jobs than that offered to a black actress. But in my field of so-called universal women, very often, women are offered satellite roles around male characters. These roles take up what is considered to be the normal white female nature, of restraint and reification. What appears natural here is a cultural construction of identity that is done precisely through stories. This is one of the reasons why the political stakes of representations in the cinema are so important.

Is this a criterion for assessing or rejecting a work? What should be done with existing works that have been reassessed as problematic?

A.H.: Works must be recontextualized. They are not created out of nowhere, out of time. Let's question them! That doesn't mean that we stop watching them, but that we ask ourselves what their political substratum is and what they convey. Questioning representations is a sign of vitality. And that does not mean that we would no longer have the right to see these works.

A.M.: With this waltz of statues of slavery figures in the United States or in the French overseas departments at the moment, the citizens gives their answer. Either the work must be contextualized, in a museum or in a place with a historical explanatory note, or it must stand out.

Is it women, more willingly than men, who carry this convergence of fights ?

A.M.: I feel a change in the scale of our lives, a major turning point in the way we perceive each other and allow ourselves to hybridize in these battles. Regarding the massive presence of women from cinema in front of the High Court on June 2, I wonder. In particular about my own capacity to build bridges... while guaranteeing the visibility of the fights against discrimination against women or POC. How do we ensure that the fight against discrimination, for equality and equity, is as visible as the rest? I am not at all sure how to do this. But it has to be done. When, the day after the César, I received a text message from Adèle, even though we don't know each other, and she writes to me to say "I heard you. I'm here. Let's meet", it can be as simple as that.

Why did you send that text?

A.H.: Because of the solitude in this room. And the brave gesture of saying what she said on stage. We'd met the same evening and maybe I hadn't caught the moment, I was captivated by our own event... That is, what had happened after we'd, let's say..., gone to get our coats a bit earlier in the dressing room... (Aïssa Maïga laughs) And I thought, let's not forget the constructed gesture, the political intentionality of Aïssa in there. I wanted to get closer to her courage. So I think that we shouldn't talk about masculinity by saying "men", that we should consider masculinity as a field of organization of power with its own complexities, and its intersectional repercussions. I refer to Angela Davis' book, Women, Race & Class, on the issue of the difficult articulation between the civil rights movement in the United States and the emerging white feminist movements where there was a lot of racism. Why don't we think of ourselves as spontaneous and necessary allies between categories of discrimination, racial, social and gendered? We need to take the history of this division seriously in order to work on it and overcome it. As Assa Traoré does in an ultra-intelligent way when she says "Whatever your religion, your sexual orientation, wherever you come from, whatever your skin color". It is an invitation to self-criticism of our own movement. This is my discovery at the beginning of this year: the self-criticism of my history as a white feminist.

When you get up during the César, is it thoughtful or impulsive?

A.H.: This award was a claim to the right to do whatever you want as long as you are at the top. That is to say: rich white men who don't feel concerned when we talk about violence. What it means beyond sexual violence is that there are people to whom repressive laws do not apply. It's as if the police and the laws shouldn't act against them, but around them... And that's what you feel in that moment in the room. What happened on César night was a dissolution of the status quo. Now it's either you stay in the room or you don't stay in the room.

A.M.: And it was important to be there at the César, because I read a lot about boycotting that evening, but for me there was no question of backing out. A boycott is not just staying at home behind your television, not being there without anyone really noticing. It was important to say that the home of cinema is also our home, our space, our place of expression. We are in a position to speak out and for that to have the virtue of provoking discussion. When that person wins that award, it's the time of the turkey, where someone praises the rapist grandfather, when everyone knows. And you're breathless, you can't move, time becomes elastic, everything is extremely heavy, it's unreal. You enter another dimension. And the fact that a person manages to regain possession of time, to become master of their time and master of their body by standing up and saying no, it put oxygen back in, it woke us up. Adèle and I looked at each other two or three times during the evening, we knew we were together. There was something like a physical experience. We boarded the ship together.

We're spotting the allies.

A.M.: That's right. And time returned to normal when Adèle, Céline Sciamma and others, including me, got up. It was a coherent political gesture in which many people recognized themselves.

Do you think that your political positions, formalized at the César, can have an impact on your career?

A.M.: The question is how do you break a family secret? Festen is one of my favorite films. (Laughs) I wasn't born at the time of the 2020 César, it's the result of a personal journey and a legacy. Others before me have spoken, for example Luc Saint-Eloy and Calixthe Beyala on the same issues at the Césars in 2000. When Canal + and the César invited me to come and give an award, I said "yes, but I want complete freedom". Blowing up a family secret is a movement for self-liberation, it's an essential meeting with yourself. Choosing to be on the side of silence, of the status quo and therefore of injustices with full knowledge of the facts is something I was quite incapable of doing. The consequences for one's profession are not that one doesn't care, but spitting out what one has to say is a top priority. The question of what it is going to cost behind it is resolved by the feeling of freeing the word, provoking debate, making a generational contribution to the fight for equality, which in essence concerns us all. I have an appointment with myself around 60, 65, the age when my children will be about the same age as I am today. There is something about transmission. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror. I don't want to tell myself that I haven't taken advantage of my little privilege of being a POC exception in French cinema to the detriment of all those young people I meet on the street, who aren't white and who say to me with fear in their stomachs, "Do you think I can still do this job?"

What about you, Adèle?

A.H.: The message that was sent to me very clearly by a casting director is that I will never work again. Obviously, this person was very sure of himself, since he wrote it in print capital letters about a dozen times. What do you say when you ask for respect and silence? They say, "Don't speak out politically because it's not your role". But also: "Don't take the lead artistically either because you're an actress, you have to follow the genius of your director". This whole structure is part of this culture where you shouldn't listen to yourself but to submit. I don't know what the consequences will be for my job. What is certain is that I will never regret it. We did something that night that freed the voices of a lot of people. That is worth much more than all the threats to my career, which in any case is always fragile, because it is a precarious environment. If I totally respected the rules and said, "Yes, yes, you have to separate the man from the artist", that wouldn't stop me from being able to get out of the game. It's as much about inventing one's life as trying to open up the future.

Written by Cécile Daumas , Rachid Laïreche and Sandra Onana. Photo by Lucile Boiron