#merger-she-wrote

[sundrop-writes]

Hiii !! I wanted to request a reaction for Derek, Emily and Spencer

When Single Parent! Reader (GN is fine !!) has to bring their daughter to the BAU for a little bit and she won't stop following the Character around and doesn't want to leave "her new friend" when its time to go? Thank you sm in advance if you write it !! 💕💕

i might swing by later with a dif request, this was the first thing my sleep ridden brain blessed me with ;p

I love this so much (I have been in such a parent fic mood since writing the Dad Spence fic, Star thank you so much) - I think this idea is so adorable, I love it!!!

(I wrote Derek's part and then trailed off and left this in my drafts for a few days, so sorry if there's a huge disconnect between the characters' parts. Ooops.)

Requests are currently - OPEN

How would Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss, and Spencer Reid react to your daughter becoming attached to them? (Derek, Emily, and Spencer x GN!Reader)

Warnings: mentions of corporate/white collar crimes (embezzlement, etc.); mentions of the reader being threatened by white collar criminals, mentions of criminals threatening to kill a child; as it says in the title, the reader has a daughter but the reader's gender is not described in any way; surprisingly, for this one, I didn't give the daughter a name. idk, I think that's it. (Edit: now fixed so that the reader is actually fully GN and I am so sorry about the mistake before!!!)

It was a pretty basic case. You were an attorney working on a large company merger - you had found evidence of millions of dollars being embezzled, and when you had copied the files with the intention of bringing them to the IRS, you had started receiving threatening letters. It weighed on your conscience - you knew that the men who ran the company had more than enough money and resources to make you disappear, likely leaving your daughter an orphan, leaving her to wonder what had happened to you for the rest of her life. When you received another letter with photos of your daughter at her preschool attached, now threatening her - you had made your decision fully.

You took your files and evidence to the BAU - you had met Rossi at a seminar he gave, talking about how sociopathy is incredibly common in corporate circles - how sociopaths do very well in corporate jobs due to their driven, goal oriented, emotionless nature. And warning signs to look out for if someone is using those traits to cross into dangerous territory. It was a seminar you had gone to out of curiosity, but you were glad that you had taken his card and you were able to contact him now.

He invited you to the BAU, and the team offered to take your case - to find out who was threatening you and bring them to justice.

Derek found you incredibly beautiful.

He was intrigued by your looks at first, and when Hotch mentioned that someone needed to interview you and get the full details from you in order for the team to get a better perspective on the case, Derek volunteered immediately. He hadn't gotten a full briefing - too eager to get to talk to you.

He came into the room with a bottle of water for you, looking to comfort you with his smile and his charms, and he was surprised when Penelope came back into the room and a small girl came barreling toward you, incredibly excited to tell you that she had gotten M&Ms from the vending machine (which Penelope had taken her to).

Typically, Derek didn't go for people who had kids. Any other time, with any other person - it would have immediately turned him off. It would have dampened your attractiveness in his eyes. He generally had a 'no single parents' policy, because he thought that dating someone with kids was just a lot of baggage. But seeing you - he was immediately taken with you. And seeing you with your daughter, somehow made you instantly more attractive.

And he thought the way that you scooped your daughter up into your lap and let her feed you M&Ms with her chubby little fingers was all too cute. It was unprofessional, but the case definitely wasn't the only thing on his mind that day.

Penelope took your daughter out of the room again while Derek interviewed you, and it was only when you spoke of the fear you felt for your daughter - the potential of her being her by the anonymous person, that you actually teared up. Derek couldn't help but to pull you in close, holding you tight in an effort to comfort you (secretly loving how tightly you hugged him back) - and it was in that moment that he vowed to himself that he would do whatever it took to protect you and your child. He would always keep the two of you out of harm's way.

And he certainly tried his hardest to accommodate your daughter when he found out that the two of you would be sticking around the office for the day - to ensure that you would be protected until the team found out who had sent the threats. He got her a kids meal with a toy when he ordered lunch, he knew there wasn't much in the office in the way of "toys" - but he swung by Garcia's office borrowed something she had that was fuzzy and lights up (with the promise of returning it) and he scrounged up a blank pad of paper and some coloured pens so your daughter could have something to do.

It wasn't surprising when she excitedly ran over to his desk and gave him a picture she had drawn of him - a very cartoonish muscled man with his same facial hair and an eggish bald head. His exaggerated features in the picture made you and Morgan laugh, and before you left the BAU for the day (when your safety was assured and the local police were on their way to arrest the men who had made the threats to you) - you found a different pen and wrote your number on the bottom corner of the picture for him.

He knew that something in you had changed him when he started thinking about taking you on a first date in the park - something your daughter could enjoy as well, rather than considering what bar or late night restaurant he was going to take you to.

Emily was surprised by the entire thing.

She hadn't been around children since, well - she was one. Due to events in her past, and due to the way her mother treated her, she never imagined herself being a parent. Ever. She was someone who thought that she was just naturally terrible with kids, like her own mom was. She hadn't met the person she thought that she could settle down with, so she never thought that kids were in the cards for her. So it definitely caught her off guard when your daughter seemed to take to her like a duck to water.

It was in her natural instinct to comfort you. You were so shaken up about the whole thing, the anonymous danger lurking in your life - and she took some extra time to assure you that things were going to be okay, that the team was the best, and they were going to catch whoever was doing this.

She thought it was a natural kindness to get down on your daughter's level and ask what she was playing with, to compliment her cute little doll and then take her down the hallway to grab a snack to give you a few minutes to breathe. The little girl was sweet and Emily didn't mind spending some extra time with her.

On their way back along, your daughter plucked a crossword puzzle book off Emily's desk and asked what it was, and Emily explained it - so then she took a few minutes to find some crosswords for children online and printed them out, and when she came to delivery them, alone with some pens, your daughter enthusiastically asked if Emily would sit and 'show her' - and while you said that Emily was busy and had other work to do, Emily shrugged and said she had a few minutes to spare. Again, she thought it was common manners, sitting with the girl on her lap while she guided her through the puzzles, praising her intellect when she got the answers right.

She didn't see the way you were looking at the pair, pure affection bubbling up in your eyes.

When the day was over, and it was cleared as safe for you and your daughter to return home, the little girl let out a loud complaint that she didn't want to leave her 'new friend Emily' - and Emily couldn't have predicted the way that those words tugged at something in her chest. She didn't know what led her to kneeling down at the girl's level, promising to see her that weekend when she had a free day - that was, if you didn't mind. Getting nothing but a bright smile from you, and feeling a certain spark there.

(She had to resist the urge to punch Morgan in the ribs when she walked back to her desk to nothing but teasing, how she was getting 'the whole family package' on 'her first date'.)

Spencer found the whole thing (secretly) adorable.

It is no secret that Spencer loves kids. He is very good with kids, and it's clear by the way he acts around kids that he definitely wants kids of his own someday. He hasn't met 'the one' yet - the person that he's going to have kids with. Whether that's through the natural, old-fashioned way or through adoption. But he did always imagine that if he raised kids of his own, it would be from infancy.

He never imagined that the person he was meant to be with would stumble into his life with a child that was already walking and talking - but when he met you and your daughter, it felt so right. Even if the circumstances were a bit dark.

He interviewed you about the whole situation, and when you apologized for crying and getting emotional, he was quick to assure you that it was natural - you were shaking, and though Spencer was usually someone to avoid touch, he found his need to hold you so overwhelming. He didn't regret his choice to wrap his arms around you when you hugged him back tightly.

When your daughter burst into the room (no longer occupied making paper airplanes with Emily and JJ), she was quick to ask why you were crying, extending out a small chubby finger to point at you, seemingly warbling with half-baked tears of her own at seeing you so upset. Spencer knelt down and assured her that everything was going to be okay, and then he moved to distract her by taking the little paper airplane out of her hand and telling her that he knew a trick to make it fly so much farther.

And he did. It was simple aerodynamics and folding techniques. And then they stood near the top of the bullpen, silently trying to get Morgan to look up by flying planes onto his desk - and the man couldn't bring himself to get too mad when he heard childish giggling coming from your daughter every few minutes.

You truly felt those butterflies for Spencer turn into more when he showed your daughter a trick that ended with a fake flower somehow coming out of his sleeve - something feathery and pink that he tucked behind her ear for her to keep, having her smiling and laughing brightly on a day where you had been wracked with worry, fearing for her life.

By the time the day was over and both of your safety was assured, you weren't surprised that she didn't want to leave him. And you made the bold move, telling him (rather than asking him) - that he should come over for dinner and a movie on Saturday, and then leaning over to gently whisper in his ear that the two of you could enjoy a another, more adult flick after your daughter was tucked into bed. Your daughter was too excited at the prospect of seeing Spencer again, tugging on his pant leg, waiting for him to agree - and he was speechless at the implications of what you had said.

He couldn't even think of the word 'no' if he tried.

So, it was a date, then.

Criminal Minds Masterlist

[lizardsfromspace]

So one fact from my investigation of the Matrix plagiarism case that drove me absolutely insane but I'm not sure I ever made a post about was her explanation for why the press didn't cover her "victory"

So for people who weren't around for that, look up "Sophia Stewart" on my blog, but long story short: there's a viral story claiming that the premise for The Matrix & The Terminator were stolen from a writer named Sophia Stewart, and that she won a billion dollars in a lawsuit. She actually lost her case, but a mistaken article from a Utah community college magazine spread online, and she still regularly does media appearances based on the idea she won. That's what fascinates me about the case: unfounded plagiarism accusations are a dime a dozen, but the bizarre fluke of a community college sophomore's journalism project making a mistake & that mistaken article going viral has elevated this one to being the most famous one

A major element of this is a narrative relating to race and gender, but that's a narrative she denies in that very Utah community college article. In her view, Hollywood isn't oppressing her for being black. They're oppressing her for being Christian.

Because I got my hands on a copy of her treatment (no, she never wrote an actual script) & I discovered that even most people who've debunked the story never read her pitch because it has nothing in common with The Matrix or The Terminator besides vague plot beats (a chosen one, robots used to rule over a society but not ruling the society themselves). It is, in fact, a new age-y evangelical Christian planet-hopping space opera filled with rants about the powers of the pyramids and the like. The treatment spends like seven pages raving about banks and the media before it introduces the hero, who is a literal, not figurative, Space Jesus. It ends with a mass sacrifice of his cultists followers to grant him power, an epic and stirring Jonestown moment, at which point the final battle happens over the course of a couple lines bc when writing a pitch for a movie five gazillion pages of lore is more important than detailing the climax of the film. There's a lot more to it than that (and tons of wild parts I never posted) but that's the gist

But every now and then in an interview, someone asks, "hey, why can't we find a story saying you won besides this dubious one?" And here is her explanation:

'The reason you have not seen any of this in the media is because Warner Brothers parent company is AOL-Time Warner... this GIANT owns 95 percent of the media... let me give you a clue as to what they own in the media business... New York Times papers/magazines, LA Times papers/magazines, People Magazine, CNN news, Extra, Celebrity Justice, Entertainment Tonight, HBO, New Line Cinema, DreamWorks, Newsweek, Village Roadshow and many, many more! They are not going to report on themselves. They have been suppressing my case for years.'"

So: Warner Bros owns the media. 95% of it. This explanation is wrong. But also it's...really funny.

The AOL-Time Warner merger had happened a few years before this, and it was already regarded as the worst merger in corporate history. Like. Historically bad. Far from ruling the world with corporate synergy up the wazoo, AOL-Time Warner was horribly disorganized, with most companies operating independently from one another and all of them at odds. There's a concentrated plan to destroy her from the dogshit company that couldn't do anything!

But it was never the case that they owned 95 percent of the media. They don't even own a lot of this list. Let's go one by one

New York Times: owned by the same family since forever

Los Angeles Times: owned at the time by Tribune Media, who owned several TV stations affiliated with The WB. Owning The WB affiliates never counted as "controlling the media" at any point, I think, but you know the old adage: "whoever controls the airing of One Tree Hill in the Los Angeles metro market controls the power........"

People Magazine: owned by Time, she's got this one

CNN: owned by Warner, she's got this one. Why MSNBC (owned by Microsoft and NBC at the time, though Microsoft was an absentee father already trying to sell it off) or Fox News (a network that spent like 25% of its time attacking Hollywood, often with claims that they target Christians!) never covered her story is left curiously unexplained. I don't know how far back Fox News' archives go, but I did search since I thought they'd be the most likely to cover this, and: no results

Extra: a celebrity gossip show owned by Warner Bros, she's got this one

Entertainment Tonight: owned by Paramount, a rival studio with every reason to report bad legal news for Warner Bros, and yet near as I can tell, they never covered this case. I'm starting to think it may not be true

Celebrity Justice: what the fuck is Celebrity Justice? It was...a short-lived & obscure celebrity gossip show that indirectly lead to TMZ?

HBO: owned by Warner Bros, she's got this one

New Line Cinema: so she's saying this one bc it had just produced Lord of the Rings. But while they're known for that now, we really should put it into context how much of an anomaly LotR was. New Line Cinema spent most of its history producing low-budget horror & comedy films, made Lord of the Rings, never produced another film with a similar scale, and were shut down a few years later. Actually, there's a whole story about how another film they released the same year as Fellowship of the Ring flopped so hard it effectively cancelled out its success & got the head of the company fired, but that's for another time. They were not so much Hollywood power players as a studio that accidentally lucked into the biggest film trilogy of all time in between Friday the 13th sequels, but they were owned by Warners, so

Dreamworks: never owned by Warner Bros at any point, it was straight up an independent studio at the time whose distribution deal was with Universal. It looks like they co-produced some films with Warner Bros, but they were never owned by them.

Newsweek: at the time owned by the Washington Post

Village Roadshow: they had a co-production and distribution deal with Warner Bros, but were an independent Australian company that made movies and theme parks. Again, a company collaborating with Warner Bros doesn't mean it owns them

"and many, many more!" She claimed the company owns 95% OF ALL MEDIA and she just gave up listing who they own after a dozen. And she was wrong about half of them! She had to resort to listing "Celebrity Justice" as a platform on par with the New York Times and just kind of shrugged at all the others. Clearly, you can't trust any press, besides Utah community college magazines

[misfitwashere]

ROBERT REICH

FEB 7

Friends,

I wanted to make sure you saw this piece by Lina Khan, who until a few days ago was chair of the Federal Trade Commission. IMHO — as someone who was once an official of the FTC — Khan was one of the wisest and most courageous of its leaders. She wrote the following in the February 4 edition of The New York Times.

Stop Worshiping the American Tech Giants

By Lina M. Khan

When Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek shocked Silicon Valley and Wall Street with its powerful new A.I. model, Marc Andreessen, the Silicon Valley investor, went so far as to describe it as “A.I.’s Sputnik moment.” Presumably, Mr. Andreessen wasn’t calling on the federal government to start a massive new program like NASA, which was our response to the Soviet Union’s Sputnik satellite launch; he wants the U.S. government to flood private industry with capital, to ensure that America remains technologically and economically dominant.

As an antitrust enforcer, I see a different metaphor. DeepSeek is the canary in the coal mine. It’s warning us that when there isn’t enough competition, our tech industry grows vulnerable to its Chinese rivals, threatening U.S. geopolitical power in the 21st century.

Although it’s unclear precisely how much more efficient DeepSeek’s models are than, say, ChatGPT, its innovations are real and undermine a core argument that America’s dominant technology firms have been pushing — namely, that they are developing the best artificial intelligence technology the world has to offer, and that technological advances can be achieved only with enormous investment — in computing power, energy generation and cutting-edge chips. For years now, these companies have been arguing that the government must protect them from competition to ensure that America stays ahead.

But let’s not forget that America’s tech giants are awash in cash, computing power and data capacity. They are headquartered in the world’s strongest economy and enjoy the advantages conferred by the rule of law and a free enterprise system. And yet, despite all those advantages — as well as a U.S. government ban on the sales of cutting-edge chips and chip-making equipment to Chinese firms — America’s tech giants have seemingly been challenged on the cheap.

It should be no surprise that our big tech firms are at risk of being surpassed in A.I. innovation by foreign competitors. After companies like Google, Apple and Amazon helped transform the American economy in the 2000s, they maintained their dominance primarily through buying out rivals and building anticompetitive moats around their businesses.

Over the last decade, big tech chief executives have seemed more adept at reinventing themselves to suit the politics of the moment — resistance sympathizers, social justice warriors, MAGA enthusiasts — than on pioneering new pathbreaking innovations and breakthrough technologies.

There have been times when Washington has embraced the argument that certain businesses deserve to be treated as national champions and, as such, to become monopolies with the expectation that they will represent America’s national interests. Those times serve as a cautionary tale.

Boeing was one such star — the aircraft manufacturer’s reputation was so sterling that a former White House adviser during the Clinton administration referred to it as a “de facto national champion,” so important that “you can be an out-and-out advocate for it” in government. This superstar status was such that it likely helped Boeing gain the regulatory green light to absorb its remaining U.S. rival McDonnell Douglas. That 1997 merger played a significant role in damaging Boeing’s culture, leaving it plagued with a host of problems, including safety concerns.

On the other hand, the government’s decision to enforce antitrust laws against what is now AT&T Inc., IBM and Microsoft in the 1970s through the 1990s helped create the market conditions that gave rise to Silicon Valley’s dynamism and America’s subsequent technological lead. America’s bipartisan commitment to maintaining open and competitive markets from the 1930s to the 1980s — a commitment that many European countries and Japan did not share — was critical for generating the broad-based economic growth and technological edge that catapulted the United States to the top of the world order.

While monopolies may offer periodic advances, breakthrough innovations have historically come from disruptive outsiders, in part because huge behemoths rarely want to advance technologies that could displace or cannibalize their own businesses. Mired in red tape and bureaucratic inertia, those companies usually aren’t set up to deliver the seismic efficiencies that hungry start-ups can generate.

The recent history of artificial intelligence demonstrates this pattern. Google developed the groundbreaking Transformer architecture that underlies today’s A.I. revolution in 2017, but the technology was largely underutilized until researchers left to join or to found new companies. It took these independent firms, not the tech giant, to realize the technology’s transformative potential.

At the Federal Trade Commission, I argued that in the arena of artificial intelligence, developers should release enough information about their models to allow smaller players and upstarts to bring their ideas to market without being beholden to dominant firms’ pricing or access restrictions. Competition and openness, not centralization, drive innovation.

In the coming weeks and months, U.S. tech giants may renew their calls for the government to grant them special protections that close off markets and lock in their dominance. Indeed, top executives from these firms appear eager to curry favor and cut deals, which could include asking the federal government to pare back sensible efforts to require adequate testing of models before they are released to the public, or to look the other way when a dominant firm seeks to acquire an upstart competitor.

Enforcers and policymakers should be wary. During the first Trump and then the Biden administrations, antitrust enforcers brought major monopolization lawsuits against those same companies — making the case that by unlawfully buying up or excluding their rivals, these companies had undermined innovation and deprived America of the benefits that free and fair competition delivers. Reversing course would be a mistake. The best way for the United States to stay ahead globally is by promoting competition at home.

[remae-freyae]

Title: To Whom It May Concern (It’s Me)

Sylus x Reader

Y/N had always made a strict habit of keeping her work life and her online life separated by a chasm roughly the size of the Mariana Trench. Work was where she delivered internal reports, fixed malfunctioning printers without credit, and somehow managed to survive being the only sane person in a building full of egos and black card suits. Tumblr—well, Tumblr was where she processed it. Through memes. Through venting. Through overly dramatic, heavily sarcastic posts fired off at midnight when the caffeine and irritation peaked just right.

She never used names. She never shared photos. She even went so far as to list her location as “Earth, unfortunately.” It was therapeutic. An anonymous little escape hatch. Until one day, it wasn’t.

The night before had been especially rough. A tech glitch. A surprise fire drill. A very tense boardroom meeting where her boss had somehow frozen in place for a full ten seconds because someone casually mentioned liking the tie he was wearing. Just—locked up. Stared. Said nothing. Blinked like a Windows 98 error screen. Then cleared his throat and walked off like nothing had happened.

That man could speak three languages, negotiate with world leaders, and pull a profit out of a failing market in under six hours, but compliments? Compliments turned him into scrambled eggs.

She’d had enough. And so she wrote.

Tumblest Post

Blog: @coffe-stained-chaos

Y/N: No matter how often it happens, it’s always a little jarring to realize someone you thought was composed and terrifying is actually just completely bag-of-rocks stupid when it comes to emotions.

Like yes, sir, you can survive a government audit. You can even recite merger clauses by memory. But the moment someone says they like your tie? You look like a pigeon got stuck in your soul.

Get it together.

---

She hit post. Didn’t tag it. Didn’t even check the notes. Closed the app, went to sleep, and started her next day like usual.

Until Rafayel glanced at her over the rim of his tea cup and said far too sweetly, “I love your writing. Very observational. Sharp. Honest.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said lightly. “Just enjoying a recent viral post. About emotionally constipated executives.”

Her blood ran cold. She pulled out her phone the second she hit the hallway, heart sinking fast.

There it was. Her post. Reblogged.

By @steel-strategy.

She knew that blog. Everyone in the upper circles did, if they were online long enough. It was subtle, curated. Full of ancient battle quotes, icy photography, minimalism, and strategy breakdowns that were just vague enough to sound hypothetical. Nobody ever said it outright, but if you worked at Stellar Apex long enough, you knew exactly who it belonged to.

Sylus. Her boss.

And he had reblogged her post.

With one single tag: “accurate.”

She stopped walking. Stared at the screen. Her soul left her body like a SIM in the pool.

She didn't post again until hours later, still shaken, still unsure whether she’d been caught or if he was just that oblivious.

Tumblest Post

Blog: @coffee-stained-chaos

Y/N: So uh. You know that post I wrote? The one obviously about my boss from my job?

He reblogged it.

He. Reblogged. It.

Tagged it ‘accurate’ like he’s confirming a murder weapon.

I have to go into work tomorrow and hand a folder to a man who might know I called him emotionally illiterate online and might not know. And somehow, both options are equally horrifying.

When she walked into the executive floor the next morning, everything looked normal. Too normal. Her desk was untouched. Her inbox was stacked, as usual. And then she passed Sylus’ office.

He looked up when she walked by. Smirked. Freakin' smirked before taking a slow sip from a sleek matte-black mug with custom white lettering that simply read:

BAG OF ROCKS CEO

She did not survive.

And the worst part?

It was kind of flattering.

She would never admit it.

But it was.

Sylus' POV under the (More) Link :)

Sylus prided himself on being three steps ahead of everything. Competitors. Acquisitions. Weakness. He didn’t miss things—not the small shifts in the market, not the tension before a bad quarter, and certainly not the quiet presence of the assistant who managed to operate under his radar for five years without once demanding attention.

That was the thing about Y/N. She didn’t need the spotlight. She functioned in the margins, dropped off reports no one read, fixed systems no one else could, and had the audacity to walk into a boardroom filled with CEOs and not look flustered. Just did her job. Walked away.

And she wasn’t scared of him.

Didn’t fawn. Didn’t flirt. Didn’t even look at him like the others did. And the first time she corrected Zayne’s system settings mid-meeting and solved a two-week software issue with one muttered suggestion, Sylus remembered watching her walk out and thinking, Who the hell is she? That curiosity had only grown.

Which is how he ended up, against all better judgment, stalking her digital footprint like a bored panther with a Wi-Fi connection.

It had taken effort. Y/N didn’t post selfies. Didn’t geotag. Didn’t even use her name. But he found her. The writing was unmistakable—sharp, observant, laced with sarcasm so dry it could sand wood. Half the things she wrote were so specific he could name the department she was referencing. The other half? Personal. Sharp little vent posts that told him more about her than any HR file ever could.

He didn’t mean to find that particular one. But the second he read it, he knew. He knew.

Tumblest post

Blog: @coffee-stained-chaos

No matter how often it happens, it’s always a little jarring to realize someone you thought was composed and terrifying is actually just completely bag-of-rocks stupid when it comes to emotions.

His jaw had locked before he even finished the next sentence.

Like yes, sir, you can survive a government audit... but the moment someone says they like your tie? You look like a pigeon got stuck in your soul.

He reread it three times.

There were no names. No tags. But the image was too vivid. Too him.

He remembered that moment. The tie. The compliment. How her voice had sounded—casual, sincere, like she hadn’t meant to hit a pressure point straight through his ribs. And yeah. He might’ve locked up.

He should’ve ignored it. Should’ve kept scrolling like a normal person.

Instead, he reblogged it.

Tagged it: accurate.

He didn’t say anything the next day. Watched her walk in like nothing had changed. Watched her glance at him, then at the mug on his desk—a matte black ceramic with fresh white lettering that read:

BAG OF ROCKS CEO.

He didn’t miss the way her mouth twitched. The way she paused like she was buffering. Like the universe had glitched.

She didn’t speak. Neither did he. Not about that, at least.

But later that night, he saw her post again.

“So uh. You know that post I wrote? The one obviously about my boss from my job?

He reblogged it.

He. Reblogged. It.

Tagged it ‘accurate’ like he’s confirming a murder weapon.”

Sylus leaned back in his chair, reading it again, then again, and finally let a slow smirk pull at his mouth.

She had fire. He liked fire.

And maybe—just maybe—it was time someone else stopped flying under her radar for once.

[sgiandubh]

What do you think of the theme “we’re all adults here” starz is using

Dear Theme Anon,

That is a beautiful question and I think this is your lucky day: with a tropical night ahead (35C/ 95F - nope, that is not a bra size 😱🤣), we simply live at night, like Superman. So, while I am slowly cooking my famed (but tedious) Circassian chicken recipe for tomorrow night's semiformal dinner, it is with great pleasure that I am answering it.

Please excuse the length. I know what I am able to do when I really like a question and yours got me immediately interested. Thank you for that.

Funnily enough, I was just having a very enriching conversation this afternoon, with a very, very good friend, who is way more intelligent than I, so she has no desire to write any blogs on Tumblr. On the very same topic you raised, Anon. With her permission, I am going to sum up the gist of it (et merci encore à toi 😘😘).

Let's look at that pic again:

The Craigh Na Dun Fateful Dance of Love and Death is one of the most moving pivotal moments of the entire series. Tens of thousands of women have shamelessly cried all around the world, while watching this (haven't you? I know I have and did it with no grace whatsoever, but pinky promise: don't tell anyone else, please). And then watched and rewatched and rewatched to oblivion, with or without that Kleenex box and that Ben and Jerry icecream at the ready.

You know, it's exactly like Shakespeare writes in Romeo and Juliet's Prologue ( I hope I still remember it...): ' A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life'. Love and Death blended together is one of the most powerful narrative tropes that ever existed. So much so, that a guy named Denis de Rougemont even famously noticed that in French, a single letter separates l'Amour (Love) and la Mort (Death), with seminal implications for our Western World mentality, ever since the Middle Ages. For some mysterious reason, we seem to always be caught completely unguarded when exposed to such ultimate injustice.

Tragic magic. This is exactly what also made OL a cult series, irrespective of its (many) unjustified lengths, its (many) moments of uneven acting and its (many, way too many) bullshit pills thrown at an increasingly jaded and bitterly divided fandom. Life imitating Art was just an unexpected blessing and a curse, that much we shippers know, and I am not planning to dwell on it.

But how long can you continue to sell this product almost exclusively to women, all around the world, especially when you are faced with the prospect of a dragging/delayed merger & acquisition (never a good sign) and an increasingly dwindling number of subscribers (never a good sign, either)? I'd think not for too long, really, even if OL still is one of ***'s biggest success stories ever. How long can you pretend to sell a high-end content to 'premium women viewers', when you know very well that you chose to discard that famed 'female gaze', which turned the series' first season into an instant media phenomenon?

Riddle me that: how to sell this product for a profit and expand that fan base while, at the same time, trying not to lose your loyal hardcore viewership?

This is ***'s first answer - I bet this will be followed by some more things, but let's see what it might mean.

On that poster, the focus is still on The Mythical Couple. Selling that good old famed, surreal chemistry - remind those old fans of that moment they felt all those feels (awww....). At the same time, try and create a need out of thin air - 'you need more'. More of what? Sex? Violence? Sexual Violence? Intrigue? Politics? Political intrigue? Ethics? Dilemmas? Ethical dilemmas? All of the above? None of the above? Stupid poster won't tell, but hey: buy me and I'll speak. Buy. Subscribe. We'll think of a way to keep you hooked - at least for the next season and a half. After all, Season Eight is a study in freestyle. After all, we conveniently leaked the info that 'Erself wrote the finale's script (why risk GoT's epic #shitshow?), so all is fine and dandy.

On par with our Mythical Couple, we have that sword. Oversized. Symmetrically featured. Action, with an intelligent twist - that is a finely wrought blade, after all. Uh-oh: that spells a new, more inclusive target. Male audience. 25 to 75, to be more exact , because the only promise the poster makes is a sobering one: 'more than fairy tales'- color me surprised.

After all, 'we're all adults, here'. Key operating words: 'all' (more inclusivity) and 'adults' (not like in X-rated, but more like in 'serious shite').

Well, then. That would require narrative chutzpah and bold choices. That would require a faster paced script, less of those never-ending side stories and borderline neurodiverse focus on irrelevant details (I am still not done with that Fiery Cross and not even ashamed of it, at this point in time) that do plague The Books. And throw rotten tomatoes at me if you wish (I don't care), that would require the end of that horribly robotic directing - we all know what the hell that means.

Will they be able to keep that high-maintenance standard? One thing I am sure of: when you treat your fandom like shite and drag along endless spells of Droughtlander without as little as a bone thrown in for diversion for months in a row, you'd better hone that blade, darlings and go for a kill. Bring it on. Bring that addictive spice back, stat.

It is my humble understanding *** wishes to create an OL universe. Wanna bet the farm that somewhere in their cartons they do entertain the possibility of (at least) a second season of BOMB? S and C cameos could be a breeze to arrange, after all ( we consider this in theory - I happen to think it could be more complicated than that). The story could be duplicated to oblivion - is it way too outlandish to imagine a season devoted to Mandy and Jem's story through several timelines?

[jm-2406]

Just a ring.

Pairing - Tommy Shelby X reader; Male OC x reader.

Summary - “he has asked me to marry him but I had to come here first. I need to know if you feel anything… anything at all for me.”

Word count - 2.1k (longest I ever wrote)

Note - flashback in italics.

Warnings - infidelity.

Cursive words made their way across the document as he led the pen from left to right, every movement a study in perfection. A famous business man like Thomas Shelby who hid his real business behind that of gin production and bookmaking, couldn't afford anything less than perfection. He pursed his lips as he focused on getting his signature just right, reading the already typed composition. Mergers, especially one as important as this one needed to be dealt with utmost care, and a very carefully crafted ‘brown nosing’ letter never hurt anyone.

He was feeling very pleased with his efforts when a loud noise from outside his office startled him. Throwing an angry glare towards the closed door, he cursed the person who disturbed him.

“You can't go in there Miss. He's very busy.” His secretary's voice reached his ears. “To hell with his schedule. I don't care.” The other voice responded sharply and he knew who that other person was. He mentally prepared himself for the upcoming drama, tiredly rubbing his eyes.

“I'm sorry Mr. Shelby, this—this Woman refused to make an appointment. Should I escort her out?”

Tommy eyed the girl in front of him; she stared back defiantly, challenging him. He wouldn't throw her out but that didn't mean that he couldn't make her sweat. The young woman in front of him started to fidget nervously the longer Tommy kept staring at her without a word. “It's okay George. You're excused.” The woman heaved a sigh of relief at his words.

Tommy turned to her and said coldly. “Now, to what do I owe the pleasure? What is it, [Y/L/N]? Say your piece and spare me. I am too busy right now.”

[Y/N] scoffed, wrapping her arms around herself as if she was trying to protect herself from his coldness. “Wow. So you can speak more than three words at a time and just my luck that you use them to dismiss me. ‘[Y/L/N]’, ‘my piece’... You are so intolerable Tommy.”

“Then why are you here, love?” He retorted flippantly but her next words made him stop his work.

“He knows…”

“Who knows what, [Y/N]?”

“Robert… he found your waistcoat under the bed… the one you forgot to put on because of some ‘important’ business.” She confessed, her voice shaky. She paused and then opened her mouth to continue, her voice cracking. “He didn't even ask who it belonged to. He said that it didn't matter. He blamed himself, you know…For being gone so often.”

Tommy kept staring at the papers on his desk, completely still. He didn't know what kind of response she was expecting but his mind went blank. He was about to say something when she dropped the final bomb. “He's asked me to marry him.”

Her eyes finally rose up from the floor. He could feel her willing him to look back at her; willing him to show any emotion. But the man kept staring at his desk, forcing himself to pick up the document and continue his letter.

“I haven't answered him yet.” She admitted, “I had to come here first. I had to see you, but you've been avoiding me and… I just need to know if you feel anything, anything at all for me.” She waited for him to respond, waited for any sign from him but he was as cold as ice and just as frozen as he signed his name at the end of his letter.

He continued his work robotically and took a breath only after hearing her footsteps shuffling closer to the door. “I meant what I said that night… I still do.” She whispered and then she was gone, missing the look that crossed his face.

After crying her heart out, [Y/N] kept staring at the end of the room blankly, her mind still stuck on everything that has happened in her life recently. “I am stronger than this.” She whispered to herself. Her head fell against the back of the couch, and she curled a leg up beside her, wrapping her arms around it as she glanced out the window.

It never should have happened, she knew that now, but she still couldn't bring herself to regret that it had. It had all started about six months ago, she and Robert had been having a lot of arguments around that time.

“You promised!” She raised her voice, fed up with his attitude.

“I know babe but this is urgent.” Robert said softly, trying to pacify her but it made her angrier instead.

“Fine. Go wherever you want to. Do whatever you want. But I am not going to keep changing my plans according to you every time. I am going to attend the Christmas Eve party… with or without you.”

“No. You can't do that [Y/N]. What will they say? My reputation will be thrashed.”

“Oh I can and I will. If you care about your ‘reputation’ then come to the event with me.” She asked one last time but only got a shake of head in return as Robert took his briefcase and left.

There at the party, [Y/N] found herself in the company of none other than Thomas Shelby, the Birmingham gangster turned businessman turned politician. Though she didn't trust him, she couldn't disagree that the man was charming. A few drinks later, she found herself up against a wall in one of the vast deserted hallways, moaning and thoroughly enjoying herself with a man that most definitely was not her boyfriend. That was how it all started.

Secret correspondence and casual meetings followed. Every time she would receive one of his notes or calls, she would hesitate and every time she gave in. She couldn't stop herself; he made her feel passionate, naughty, and desirable. It was everything she never felt with Robert thus she became addicted.

Over time, their Pattern seemed to change. It started with simple words after they were intimate and soon she found herself spending nights in his house. It went to a point where she would see Robert maybe once in two or three weeks for a date and spend almost every other day with Tommy.

After sometime she realized that her feelings for the two men had begun to change. Tommy had become her confidant and lover. On the other hand she found herself forgetting about the dates with Robert, arriving late when he called her, zoning out when he talked to her. She was figuring out what to do when the unexpected happened.

They were lying in his bed, quietly content after a night full of activity when her lips, engaged by a sleepy mind, betrayed her. “I think… I am falling for you.” Time froze. In one swift movement, her lover had stood from the bed and had placed his robe around his shoulders. He turned his back to her, making it clear that he didn't want to talk.

She remembered how she had sat there; hurt and humiliated beyond belief. It had taken all the strength and courage that she could muster to get dressed and leave that night. That was two weeks ago.

Truth to be told, when Robert had found Tommy's waistcoat under her bed, she felt relieved. Everything would be out in the open, she could move on but once again reality turned out to be quite different than her thoughts. Robert opened up to her about his behaviour and promised to work less, be with her more and that he wanted to marry her. Before she could blink, he was down on his knee, proposing to her.

“I… I need time, Robert.”

Now here she was, lamenting unrequited love and cursing her fate.

A week later -

[Y/N] pushed open the door of her flat with a tired sigh. She tossed her shoes into their space in her coat closet with one hand as she released the clip that held her hair with the other. Moving towards the kitchen cabinet, she uncorked the wine bottle and took a sip directly from the bottle.

“Long day?” A deep voice asked her.

She turned on her feet and observed the man in front of her. Tommy was sitting on the couch as if he owned the place. “What. Do. You. Want?” She asked slowly, proud of the bitterness in her voice. “Tommy…”

He didn't verbally respond; calling her to him with a gesture of his hands. She wanted to shout at him but she couldn't. He made her weak. He reached up with his fingers for her left hand, his thumb brushing over the diamond that sat there.

“I'm engaged…” She tried to stop the teasing fingertips from continuing their journey of exploring her body.

“Well… you're not married yet. It's just a ring.” He whispered, holding her face to make her look at him. She felt the pads of his fingertips gripping the ring on her third finger and slowly sliding it off. A metallic clink resonated in her ears as the ring fell to the floor.

The fight drained out of her as she sunk into her lover's arms. Her knees folding under her as his lips joined with hers. She knew that this night would be their final goodbye.

“Where is your engagement ring?”

“I… I must have forgotten it.”

“Forgotten it? On the night of our engagement party?” Robert questioned incredulously. They were interrupted by some other guests and they easily fell into the conversation, saving [Y/N] from trying to come up with more lies.

“How are you doing, Walker?” another voice interrupted the couple. Robert cursed seeing the person who disturbed his conversation with his fiancèe.

“How did you even enter Shelby? This is an invitation only party so kindly leave.”

Thomas smirked, raising his closed fist over [Y/N]'s glass of champagne. One by one he uncurled his fingers, dropping something small and shiny. Robert had a look of confusion and shock on his features as he realized that in the glass was [Y/N]'s engagement ring.

“I know I wasn't invited Walker, but I am here to collect what's mine… don't look so shocked. She hasn't been yours for a while.”

Before she could think, Robert punched Thomas, hard… and a fight started between the two. Robert's parents changed the topic and sent the guests on their way to save their image of respectful people. It wasn't until [Y/N] physically pulled Tommy back that he stopped. Even though Robert was a few centimetres taller than Tommy, he was no match for his muscles and strength.

“When did this… this thing start? Tell me everything, [Y/N]… honestly this time.” Robert pleaded.

“Six months ago. I was angry at you and I know it is wrong but… when I did go to the party, alone, no one paid any attention to me. Didn't even greet me with a simple ‘hello’. I felt as though I was only someone if I was with you. I felt so worthless. Tommy was at the party. He annoyed me and I took my anger out on him… I don't know how but the next thing I remember is kissing him; one thing lead to another and here we are… I am sorry Robert. I don't deserve you.”

Robert scoffed. He left immediately after throwing the ring down. His mouth did not say a word but his eyes conveyed the anger and hurt he was feeling.

[Y/N] turned to Tommy. “Well. It was a long day. Thank you for ruining my engagement party. Now I think we should go.” She stood from her chair but Tommy pulled her back by her wrist, making her sit on his lap. “What is it?” She asked him.

“You asked me that day, if I feel anything at all for you. The answer is, I don't. I feel everything for you, Miss [Y/N] [Y/L/N].” He said cupping her face in his hands and pressed his lips on hers.

She smiled in their kiss knowing for sure that the man whom she gave her heart to would do everything in his power to keep her safe and happy now that he finally realised what she meant to him.

THE END.

Find the Theo version here.

[thephantomcasebook]

I am sooo disappointed in S2 HOTD, and now I understand why you were warning us about S2 writing. I encourage you to watch Ben Shapiro's S2 review of HOTD. Everything he states hits the point as I feel of S2 writing. But I really feel that if Miguel was still on S2 he would basically steer the ship right, as in writing and direction of the story. Sara Hess needs to be fired definitely. But I don't understand why you don't like Miguel, once he gave us a solid S1. If you want audience to understand why Aemond turned evil from S1, then show us when he immediately returned from Storm's End and Alicent and Otto argue the stupidity in Aemond's decision to kill Luke, once Aegon was offering peace terms to Rhae Rhae. Please explain why you hate Miguel.

I hate Spotchnik because he is the sire of all the bullshit of Season 2.

People, fundamentally, don't understand this point. Sara Hess was not on the original writing staff of HOTD. There was no original writing staff for HOTD. There was Ryan Condal and GRRM that wrote all of the scripts for Season 1.

Sarah Hess was brought on by Spotchnik and his wife as a producer to hack up and rewrite Condal and GRRM's original scripts in order to fit with the overall narrative that Spotchnik (and mostly his wife) wanted to tell in the story.

Sara Hess rewrote and reworked elements of Condal and GRRM's scripts during shooting.

Things such as Criston Cole being a thug rather than the most dangerous man in Westros. Turning Alicent and Rhaenyra's rivalry in the original scripts into a closeted lesbian romance.

Example:

A.) In 1x08 there was no rape of a maid by Aegon. Aegon is introduced in the Condal and GRRM script as having to be collected from a brothel and dragged back to the Red Keep where Alicent scolds him for neglecting Helaena and embarrassing her by his frat boy antics in public.

Sara Hess is on record saying that she and Spotchnik did not jive with Aegon just being a whoring, lazy, drunk. And they wanted to make him more villainous in order to show how Alicent is perpetuating "The Patriarchy" by covering up a rape.

B.) There was no fighting pits in 1x09. In the original script by GRRM and Condal. Aegon is abducted from a tavern while drunk by Misaria and is used as leverage by Misaria for more privileges in Otto's service - not to stop the fighting pits.

Sara Hess wrote Aegon to be involved in fighting pits cause it was "Game of Thrones" - which is her excuse for every bad writing decision she made.

All of 1x09 was rewritten and restructured by Sara Hess at the behest of Spotchnik in order to make the Greens bad. From the awful scene between Alicent and Rhaenys, to Aegon's fighting pits, and the Dragon Pit Massacre.

Tom Glynn-Carney told the story about how he had it out with Sara Hess and Spotchnik when they added the rape scene in 1x08 that wasn't there during the table read. He told them them they were kneecapping Aegon and giving him nowhere to go. To this Spotchnik told him to shut up and do his job as he his told to do it.

My point is that Sara Hess was the hatchet woman of Miguel Spotchnik and his wife. She was brought in by them to purposefully fill HOTD with their sanctimonious bullshit political agenda.

Spotchnik was fired, not because of his wife, but because the new heads of HBO after the merger with Discovery and Warner sent back his Season 2 treatment and told him to start again. Spotchnik threw a massive tantrum because the previous heads of HBO gave him free reign to do whatever he wanted with Artistic Freedom. But the new heads of the studio did not agree to those terms. So he quit and cried like bitch on the way out. And HBO did him a solid by not telling anyone how bad his Season 2 treatments really were.

And since I've read them, I can tell you they're some of the most righteous trash you'll ever read.

Everything you hate about Season 2 is a symptom of a disease that Miguel Spotchnik bio-engineered and spread from bringing on Sara Hess to hiring Olivia Cooke and Emma D'Arcy for their identity and political activism rather than talent.

The taint of Spotchnik's and his wife's vision of HOTD remains long after they've been booted. Mostly because they never got rid of Sara Hess who was the main scribe to most of the bullshit in Season 1 that doomed Season 2.

Two heads of the Hydra were chopped off but one still remains to blight the countryside.

[idk-tbh-idk]

Yo— check out my dumb ahh fic I wrote about my delulu ship— it’s pre-asylum and this is part 1 /2, from Miles’s perspective (Galina’s is part 2/2). Without further ado, have:

Love letters 🎱⚙️

He wasn’t crazy. Probably.

Miles had never liked talking about his work. Sure, he’d explain things when necessary — to editors, to sources, to some poor bastard dumb enough to interrupt him mid-thought — but beyond that? No. People didn’t get it. They either didn’t care, or worse, couldn’t keep up. They’d stare at him like he’d forgotten his meds, like he was just another nutjob with a corkboard full of red yarn.

And speaking of medication — maybe he should start taking it.

Carl from the office had said it with all the subtlety of a Fitbit recommendation: “My cousin had apophenia. They gave him clozapine.”

Maybe. Who knows. Maybe that would help him stop driving six hours through frozen hell just to see Galina. Maybe then he could convince himself it was really about the case — the corruption in the mining town, the story clawing at the back of his skull like a dog with a mouthful of glass.

But that was bullshit.

Because when he wasn’t with her, he was thinking about her.

Not about them. He wasn’t that stupid. He knew better than to romanticize what this was — sharp edges, sex, and sleepless nights. But her? The way her brain cut through bullshit like a scalpel through cartilage? That haunted him.

He’d spend days connecting threads no one else saw, tying together lawsuits, corporate mergers, military contracts, and the cold rot of a town bleeding uranium and lies — and she’d just get it. Instantly. No hand-holding. No polite nodding. Just that flash in her eyes like she’d caught the scent of blood.

Fucking sexy.

She didn’t listen — she understood. Every niche, obscure and fucked up reference, every half-muttered conspiracy — she caught it midair, dissected it, reassembled it cleaner. And worse: she made his mind feel like the slower one.

“True, true,” she murmured that night, frowning slightly as she wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. Her voice was husky and ran down through his spine.

Miles watched her, of course. Her lips were still swollen, and her red hair, instead of being a mess, had only gotten fuller, as if logic didn't apply to her, as if even after he’d dug his fingers into it, pulled at it, and rubbed it against the pillow, it still refused to budge. Her skin still burned with the memory of his hands and teeth working on her like a dog licking a bone. She was a mess in the way ruins were — beautiful, intricate, dangerous.

“Basically,” she continued, almost absentmindedly, “they’re trying to pass a modern Enclosure Act, but with uranium instead of farmland.”

Miles smiled. A slow, hot bloom in his chest. “Exactly.”

And then she was gone again, lost in his report like everything else had ceased to exist. “Fucking parasites,” she muttered. “They should all rot.”

He leaned back, heart buzzing, caught somewhere between triumph and exhaustion. She got it. She always got it.

“I tell you this shit because everyone else just blinks at me. ‘Get some rest, Miles. You’re obsessed, Miles.’ But you…” He trailed off, eyes locked on her. “You see it.”

Galina exhaled smoke, that amused little smile tugging at her lips. “It’s just historical recycling. Same con, new century. We’re monkeys. We never learn. But you’re gonna get yourself killed, though”

He didn’t even argue. Just closed his eyes, sinking into the mattress, drunk on some unfamiliar kind of comfort. He might’ve dozed off, if not for the telltale creak — her weight shifting — and the sudden gust of smoke blown in his face in perfect rings.

He opened one eye. “Really?”

He caught her wrist — not hard, just enough to say stop. She didn’t resist. Just smirked like he was a monkey who’d learned to juggle. With his free hand, he took the cigarette and stubbed it against the wall.

She didn’t flinch. Didn’t yell. Didn’t so much as blink.

Just turned back to her page.

He would’ve preferred her to scream. Throw him out. Make a scene. But no — she just flipped to the next paragraph like it was a Wednesday.

A few seconds passed.

Then she tensed.

He saw it — a flicker of something sharp in her expression as she read.

“Is that the official explanation?” she scoffed, scanning the page. “Idiots.”

Miles propped himself up on his elbow, heart still beating too fast from the cigarette stunt. “You got a better theory? It’s not finished yet. I’m still anchoring threads, there’s a gap—”

She tossed the pages onto the nightstand.

“You’re thinking too small,” she said flatly. “It’s not just uranium. The land has history.”

And that was it. Click.

The final gear. Rusted, old, but there it was. The point hadn’t been the extraction — it was what came next. The land wasn’t dead. It was changing hands. They wanted to build. An oil plant? Cover one crime with another.

Bastards.

Miles felt it settle — that awful, inevitable truth in his chest.

It had never been about romance. He didn’t believe in that shit. That was for people who needed it — people with free weekends and common issues that weren’t worth reporting.

He wasn’t that guy.

He’d done the whole dance before — flowers, chocolates, all the dumb things people said when they didn’t know how to mean anything else. But this?

But this — damn it — something in him curled toward her like a stray.

He didn’t care if she felt the same. That wasn’t what mattered. She let him near. She let him stay. She didn’t ask for his feelings, didn’t try to shape them, didn’t even look at them too closely.

And somehow, that was everything.

She let him keep them. Like she knew they were his alone — like she understood that loving her didn’t mean he wanted to be possessed, only that he wanted to orbit close, quietly, dangerously, on his own terms.

He’d poured himself into stories for years. Chased down truths no one wanted to hear. Been beaten, locked up, called insane. And maybe he was. Only crazy people say they’re not crazy. But what the hell else could you call a world like this?

Still, lying half-naked in the bed of a woman who could out-argue, out-think, and out-burn him on any given day — maybe the meds wouldn’t help.

Because if he was sane, he wouldn’t feel like this every time she opened her mouth. Wouldn’t want to kiss her just to shut her up. Wouldn’t feel this twisted sense of awe at every bitter word she threw at the world.

It wasn’t just that she was beautiful. (She was, unfortunately.) It wasn’t even about sex. (Though, Jesus.) It was her.

Her reactions.

Her rage.

Her brutal intellect.

He’d describe some horror — Some cover-up rotting under NDAs, some human rights atrocity no one had the stomach to print— and she’d snarl. She’d hiss curses, as if she were ready to drag the guilty out of their graves and put them on trial herself.

And sometimes, God, sometimes he imagined writing just for her. Handing her his notes, letting her flip through them with that tight-lipped expression, hearing her mutter, “Burn in hell, you bastards,” under her breath.

He’d never been a romantic.

But if he was?

This would be his version of a love letter.

[mariacallous]

Media advocacy group Freedom of the Press Foundation has sent a warning letter to Paramount mogul Shari Redstone, outlining plans to file a lawsuit if the media company settles a suit brought by President Donald Trump against its subsidiary, CBS.

“Corporations that own news outlets should not be in the business of settling baseless lawsuits that clearly violate the First Amendment,” Freedom of the Press Foundation director of advocacy Seth Stern said in a statement.

Stern issued the warning by asking for a litigation hold on Friday afternoon, demanding that Paramount preserve any documents relating to a potential Trump deal and urging the company not to settle. The nonprofit is able to seek damages because it owns shares of Paramount. It plans to act on behalf of itself and other shareholders, alleging that the settlement would amount to the company’s executives “breaching their fiduciary duties and wasting corporate assets by engaging in conduct that US senators and others believe could amount to unlawful bribery that falls outside the scope of the business judgment rule.” The White House and Paramount did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Last October, President Trump sued Paramount subsidiaries CBS Broadcasting and CBS Interactive, alleging that an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that aired on longstanding CBS News program 60 Minutes was deceptively edited, in a manner that constituted election interference. Initially seeking $10 billion in damages, Trump amended the lawsuit in February to ask for $20 billion. Paramount Global has a market cap of roughly $8.5 billion.

Although Paramount previously called the lawsuit “an affront to the First Amendment” in legal filings to dismiss this March, it has reportedly sought to settle; the company has a potentially lucrative merger pending with Hollywood studio Skydance that would require the Trump administration’s signoff.

Last week, Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Ron Wyden sent a letter to Redstone seeking information about any potential settlement, raising concerns that it would amount to bribery. “If Paramount officials make these concessions in a quid pro quo arrangement to influence President Trump or other Administration officials,” they wrote, “they may be breaking the law.”

Talks of a potential settlement had roiled CBS for months. Longtime 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens abruptly resigned in April, and CBS News president and CEO Wendy McMahon resigned earlier this month. “It’s become clear the company and I do not agree on a path forward,” she wrote in a memo to staff at the time.

Trump’s lawsuit against Paramount isn’t an isolated attack on the media. He sued ABC News, owned by the Walt Disney Company, for defamation in March 2024 over comments from anchor George Stephanopoulos portraying the president as “liable for rape.” (A federal jury found President Trump liable for sexual assault in a 2023 civil case, but not rape.) The company settled the case in December. In late April, Trump posted comments on his social platform Truth Social that appeared to threaten The New York Times with the possibility of legal action in the future.

The type of lawsuit the Freedom of the Press Foundation plans to file, known as a shareholder derivative lawsuit, allows people and organizations who own shares of a publicly traded company to recover damages when executives harm the company. This is the same type of legal action that Tesla shareholders took to successfully fight CEO Elon Musk’s hefty $56 million compensation package, which Musk is now appealing. (Tesla also changed its corporate bylaws this month to make it harder for investors to pursue this type of lawsuit.)

Best known for its free speech advocacy for media organizations, the Freedom of the Press Foundation sees this action—which is unlike any legal challenge it’s mounted before—as an extension of that mission, even though it targets a media organization. (Disclosure: WIRED global editorial director Katie Drummond serves on the Freedom of the Press foundation board.)

If the Freedom of the Press Foundation does seek legal action and successfully sues Paramount over a proposed settlement, the damages would go to Paramount rather than the nonprofit itself. “You don't expect, as advocates for press freedom, to have to file lawsuits against executives of media publishers,” says Stern. “We're a press freedom organization trying to recover money for a media outlet from rogue executives.”

[dialalagirl]

👁️👁️

laito soulmates angst????

~LUMEN~

[I. Monument]

In this life, he was Mount Rushmore—a monument in America: tall, snow-crowned, and slowly crumbling beneath the deluge of time.

She was a brown bear climbing his ancient steps, gathering moths from cracks in stone—merger sustenance where once there might have been honey. The food had grown scarcer each year.

Typical, she thought. His love breadcrumbed, a starvation meant to prove her devotion to him alone.

She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—look elsewhere. Where else would the rocks tear her paws just the same?

She did not survive that winter.

[II. Singularity]

In another life, after Earth was long devoured by the red giant Sun, he was a black hole spinning in one of too many galaxies—a vortex of all-consuming emotion, yet invisible to the naked eye.

She was unbridled light, constant in speed, unyielding in her course toward him. A wave, a particle—what she was mattered little. She was destined to be ruined by anti-matter: him.

She crossed his event horizon, the only force strong enough to tear her energy into shreds of nothing.

Does pain teach, or merely prove redundant? She did not know, even as she was pulled into his singularity—into the point of infinite density—until she transformed into something else entirely: warming radiation, drifting outward from the ruins.

[III. Reflection]

In another life, they met again. He, gazing down at her as Narcissus. She, the water that reflected him.

He smiled, admiring the outward beauty he saw—using her unbearable stillness as proof of the ugliness within.

No, she thought. You are more Icarus to me: a boy who flew too close to the sun, drawn to the light—a desperate hope for innocence once lost in childhood—only to fall into me, and drown.

Even now, all he could do was smile, tears hiding behind his teeth.

[IV. Page]

In this life, she was a witch—a pianist, a poet, destitute in her pursuit of passion: for the written word, for music, for emotion and devotion.

Her family had written her off. No man would marry a woman married to her craft.

And he—he was merely the pages she wrote on, when the mood suited her.

He was used to being used by humans—by women, by men. He had once been a tree, chopped down, stripped of bark, pressed flat and bound to hold their stories.

He bore her handwriting with quiet endurance. His rings, once proud with age, now hidden in the disguise of clean white margins, blotted by her black pen.

[V. Pledge]

Now, in the present, he lays with his red head pressed to her barely-breathing chest—rigid, listening.

Even now, after everything, her heartbeat was the same. Still steady. Still stubborn. Still his mother’s.

Even after he’d torn open her throat with his fangs. Even after he’d tried to stop that rhythm—the rhythm that haunted him with its sameness.

Each kiss he stole from her lips, each desperate moan he coaxed from her throat—he kept hoping it would change. That her pain would sound different. That her cries would not echo the memory of her—that sultry, maternal monster who had once screamed with dispassionate pleasure, called it love, and used him as a stand-in for the man who never came home.

Sex, to him, had always meant being used.

So had death.

He tightened his grip on her waist. Her body barely flinched. Her eyes had gone distant—already slipping somewhere else, somewhere beyond him.

“…Ne, bitch-chan,” he whispered, voice too soft to match the blood between them. “You really are cruel.”

And still, he smiled—against all reason.

“You didn’t stop me.”

A pause. His voice cracked.

“I’ll fix it. I’ll make it better.”

“I love you,” he said—again. Again. Again. As if repeating it enough could change the shape of what it meant.

As if it had to mean something.

Didn’t it?

[tisaolin]

Okay but like IMAGINE previous timeline (mk9 and 11, since he’s a revenant in mkx) dating Kung Lao’s sister 😱 like they started dating in like middle/high school (because I said so) and they never really broke up but they started spending less time together because of Liu Kangs position as earthrealms champion, she could have been earthrealms defender but chose not too. So get this, when he meets Kitana he kinda forgets about Kung Lao’s sister (Lao is lowkey happy cuz he that brother thats like “my sister is not allowed to date” especially when its his BEST FRIEND) but then it comes time to find more allies for the battle against baldie and Kung Lao is just like “NAME” and Liu Kang beams and is all like yea omg I havent seen her in like forever, how is she, I hope she’s well, this that and the third, and Kitana is just like “who is that” and Kung Lao dumb ass is just like “my sister, she and Liu Kang used to date!” And just starts spilling and Liu Kang comes to the realization that…They never broke up😱and he admits that and now Kitana feels bad because she really likes Liu Kang but she doesn’t wanna ruin their relationship and she’s also happy for Liu Kang. Anyways, they go find his sister and OBVIOUSLY she’s much more older but she looks so young and Liu Kang is just like “wow😍you haven’t aged a bit” and he’s all ushy gushy like my pu-yea, he happy and shes all scared and confused like “WTF I THOUGHT YALL WERE DEAD”. Imma just end it here cuz im rambling but I have a whole fanfic in mind and had to share before I forget it then remember it but its too late because someone wrote it😭Also I am aware that Liu Kang is technically a revenant in mk11 but yknow, the time merger thing.

[wangxian-xianwang-shipper]

💙❤️ WANGXIAN FIC RECOMMENDATION 💙❤️

I would like to discuss a merger…

Liebing

Summary:

“Oh god, Lan Zhan, you’re so good at this,” Wei Ying moaned, gripping the sides of the lectern as Lan Zhan slammed into him from behind. Thank god it was nailed to the floor. “What if we break Lan Qiren’s precious lectern? Isn’t it an antique?”

“If Wei Ying breaks the lectern then he will be punished,” Lan Zhan growled, biting up Wei Ying’s neck.

“Oh so it would be all my fault?” Wei Ying teased, leaning his head to the side to give Lan Zhan better access.

“You are the one holding on to it,” Lan Zhan replied, tightening his grip on Wei Ying’s hips as if to prove his point.

“I can’t believe you won’t take any responsibility, that is so unfair…” Wei Ying whined.

Lan Zhan grasped Wei Ying’s chin and turned his head to kiss him deeply with a hell of a lot of tongue. “Wei Ying shut the fuck up and don’t break the fucking lectern,” he murmured when he pulled away.

(Lan Zhan and Wei Ying are bickering co-workers…until they’re not.)

Rating: Explicit

Archive Warning:nNo Archive Warnings Apply

Category: M/M

Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)

Relationship:.Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji/Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian

Characters: Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian, Nie Huaisang, Lan Huan | Lan Xichen, Jiang Cheng | Jiang Wanyin, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing (Modao Zushi), Wen Ning | Wen Qionglin, Lan Qiren, Su She | Su Minshan

Additional Tags:

Office AU, Company merger, office rivals, Don’t ask me what they do at this company I don’t know, HR Officer Wen Qing, Boss Lan Qiren, Funny, Soft, Sweet, Enemies to Lovers, For Lan Zhan it was love at first sight, For Wei Ying it takes a little longer, I apologise in advance for how much Wei Ying says but you hate me Lan Zhan in this fic, Lan Zhan in fact never hated him, I wrote actual explicit sex scenes into this fic, Be nice about them or I’ll never write sex scenes ever again, Business trip with only one bed, Wei Ying gets sick and Lan Zhan looks after him, Wei Ying lies about having a date, Kissing, TouchingSex Dreams, Parts of this plot are inspired by the movie the hating game, Fooling around in the photocopier room, Not Su She friendly, Su She is a little bitch in this fic, Nice Jiang Siblings, Bestie Huaisang, I would like to note that no lecterns were damaged in the making of this fic, Flirting, Dirty Talk, Anal Sex, Anal Fingering, Typical wangxian misunderstandings, Fuck buddy situation except that it very much is not that, There is some angst but not too bad, Happy Ending where Wangxian finally realise what everyone else knows they are destined to be

Language: English

Series: Part 68 of Wangxian fics

Stats:

Published: 2025-02-17

Completed: 2025-02-19

Words: 17,319

Chapters: 4/4

[this-game-has-themes]

MISERY LOVES COMPANY: chapter 2 (abe/oc)

while abe initially pities his new roommate, her not very scrub-like behavior is threatening to cut into productivity.

chapter cw: violence

[first]|[next]

-

“So do you know what, like, happened? To get you here?”

Howler paused from Abe’s question, and struggled to swallow a mouthful of ration paste. She hastily scribbled her answer with an uncertain hand; her grasp on writing wasn’t much better than an average scrub’s, despite her domestic training.

‘Merjur.’

“Oh, a merger, huh.” Abe clucked his tongue. “So your master couldn’t keep you around? Or was he-”

Howler mimed cocking a gun to her head, and firing it.

“Ohhh, that kind of merger. Um, I’m sorry?”

She rolled her eyes at him often, but he was starting to tell when those instances were from amusement.

Around them, other workers going on their lunch break occasionally stopped to stare at the rare sight of a female. A few risked a whistle or a stray comment, to which Howler had to be demurely pulled away from reacting to with violence. Abe pointed out where the Sligs were posted, and the ominous red security orbs that kept their oppressive eyes on them. It was safer to take the occasional blow to your dignity - take it from him.

Abe wasn’t very well liked amongst his factory floor peers, for what reasons he wasn't terribly sure of. He wasn’t that much softer, ruder or more miserable than the rest of them. If they thought he got special privileges from being a favored victim of their boss, they would be mistaken. But, there was always a pecking order even amongst the lowliest of fodder, and it seemed that Abe had been designated at the bottom upon his birth.

The mild derision of his co-workers was something he shut out during day-to-day tasks, like much of the uncomfortable din of the factory. They had new reasons to hate him now, after word got out that there was a female on the factory floor and that she had shacked up with Him, Of All People. This was less of an insulting accusation than previous claims that Molluck gave him double rations. It seemed to be more a blow to Howler’s pride, than anything.

If she was a rarity, and a relatively pampered one at that, then this life at the bottom of the workforce must have been miserably sobering for her. Abe choosing to help her get acclimated just made it worse; he didn’t need to be verbally chewed out to know she resented her new reliance on him and his experience. He understood; he wouldn’t want to be around himself this much, either.

Their respective duties often separated them, so for a while he only saw Howler when they were going back to their cots at night. Abe tried to keep questions to a minimum, knowing that writing was difficult for her and, well. They only had so much paper. But there was a lot he wanted to know, and there seemed to be a lot she wished she could simply say.

“How did you get that voice box, anyways?”

‘Vykers.’

“Yeah, that makes sense.” Abe looked over Howler’s shoulder as she wrote. After a moment of consideration, she continued.

‘They wantd my voys.’

She pointed to her throat and made that gesture again, briefly, denoting the ‘old rites’ that she had been born into.

‘Studyd me.’

“That’s rough,” was all Abe could say about that. One positive aspect of just being a scrub was that you rarely caught attention from tormentors like the Vykkers. Unless they wanted test subjects.

Howler watched him for a while, her intense stare unreadable as usual. She eventually pointed to him, then pointed to the notepad, pretending to use it. It took a moment for Abe to parse her question.

“How can I read and write? Well, we get some lessons to read machinery instructions… and I get desk duty sometimes. With… with my boss.”

He watched a realization come to her at that. She quickly grabbed his hand, and pointed intently at her scar. Abe paled at what she was implying.

“I don’t think I can ask him about that, Howler. I’m sorry.”

He withered under her glare. Her next words were pressed hard into the paper.

‘Cant or wont?’

Abe held his breath. There were a lot of things he could say he was afraid of Molluck doing to him, and he didn’t want to speak any of them to existence. “I… y-you know what it’s like, don’t you? To be their - to be their fav-favorite?”

That brought Howler to pause, at least. The anger in her expression faded into something more complicated. With a silent sigh, she wrote one more word before putting down the notepad. ‘Sorry.’

Their conversation was apparently over when she slumped back into the fetal position in her cot, her back turned to him, as it often was with no other way to give themselves privacy.

-

Abe went over what she asked of him in his head for the rest of the next day. He could, perhaps, find an opportunity to catch Molluck in a good mood, but that wasn’t likely while sales were down. He never actually asked a favor of his boss before, despite being in a position where he probably could have. If he ever did, it would probably be to just ask him to ‘stop’. Not that Molluck would acquiesce to that.

As his janitorial duties led to him visiting the bar to take the trash out, he found himself seeing Howler between shifts. The bar wasn’t usually a place where a scrub could just waltz right in for a brew, but that rule wasn’t very heavily enforced by the drunken Sligs that lounged there. A scrub also had the benefit of being invisible, inconsequential background fodder, and that alone was an advantage.

Howler, however, did not meld into the background. As a domestic slave - a corrective, no less - she stood out. Even amongst the other correctives that made up the new blood, as an intact female. People noticed that. Alf noticed that.

The bartender nearly dropped his glass at the sight of her. “Holy shit. The rumors are true.”

Howler faced him with a silent, terse stare. Fearing what she could do that would cause a scene, Abe opted to pause his trash collecting duties and check in on her.

Alf readjusted his fez like it was going to do him any favors. He leaned over the counter to try and get a better look at her figure. “So what is a uh, babe like you doing in a place like this? Other than, uh, the whole slave trade thing.”

Howler rolled her eyes, and pointed to one of the bottles behind him.

Alf glanced at it incredulously before shaking his head. “Nahh, sorry toots, that stuff’s not for scrubs. I can getcha a brew if you-”

Howler interrupted him with a sharp slap on the surface of the counter. It was a sudden, jarring sound that made a few of the present Mudokons - the grizzled, motley corrective transfers - suddenly bolt upright at attention. Wordlessly, Howler pointed at the bottle again.

The bartender crossed his arms, unyielding. “Ohh no, you’re not going to play tough guy with me, sister. I already fend off drunkard Sligs on the daily, you know. Just run along, and I won’t call in security.”

Abe was getting in reach of Howler to pull her away, at this point. Instead of lunging at the service mud like he expected her to, the mute woman considered the man before her for a moment, then unhooked one of the suspenders on her work overalls. She revealed part of her chest - still covered by her off-white undershirt, but still probably more semblance of a womanly body than most scrubs would ever see in their lifetime. She grabbed a topmost breast and gave Alf an expectant look.

Alf gawked at the sight, however meager it was. His hands shook as he sprung into action. “Right! Right - right away, miss. Uh - do you, uh, want a glass or like, the whole bottle?”

Howler pointed at a glass, thankfully. Alf could barely keep his eyes on the task of pouring, glancing back feverishly at her for the several tense seconds it took, as though she would vanish at a moment’s notice. His hand was trembling when he offered it to her, and she stilled him by gently taking him by the wrist.

The bartender took in a sharp gasp of breath when the woman guided his open palm to her chest. Abe, left on the sidelines, felt the heat rise in his face from the brazenness of the act. It was only a couple of seconds, and it was over the clothes, but it was still probably a more egregious misdemeanor than mere violence.

After granting him a momentary fondle, Howler removed Alf from her person. The service scrub reeled back to lean against the rack of bottles, seemingly dumbstruck by the contact. Abe watched Howler as she finally noticed his presence, flashed him a smug little smile, and took a sip.

When she offered him the glass, the scrub took a wary step back despite himself. “No thanks, I’m, ah, still on shift.”

Howler answered his hesitance with a shrug, and nothing more.

It was getting exhausting, feeling like he needed to keep an eye on her on top of everything else that had become his responsibilities in the factory. Not that she was his responsibility. Abe simply had no idea what it must have been like to have been captured into servitude, instead of born for it. Down to a genetic scale, he was more suited to this life than she was, and that made him… well. ‘Pity’ was a strong word that he imagined she would have some choice things to say about, if she could say them. Or spell them.

Howler took a quiet seat in the corner, making sure her back was to nobody. While he tried to mind his own business, Abe still glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. He watched as another mud approached her table.

This one’s back was straight, rather than bent by a lifetime of toil; he was a corrective, visibly larger and stronger looking than the factory stock around him. A ragged, whip-scarred Mudokon that had wild, bloodshot eyes trained on his target. Howler bristled as he closed in on her, but made no attempt to move.

“Well, well, well. The princess is finally in the cage with the rest of us.” The corrective sat at the seat across from her. The RuptureFarms uniform fit his frame poorly, and it only served to make him more menacing. “Looks like Vegh didn’t give you special treatment after all. I bet you really thought he would, didn’t you?”

Howler had backed away in her seat far enough for the back of her head to touch the wall behind her, but in her position she was essentially pinned. She kept up her usual aloof expression, and faced the Mudokon’s sneer with a cold eye as she slowly shook her head.

“Ohhh, it is great to see you here,” the corrective chuckled darkly, “I’ve waited so long for you to be on the other side of the chain-link fence. Finally, you’re gonna stop beating me long enough for me to ask: why? Why, Howler?”

The Mudokon knew full well she couldn’t talk back, though he wouldn’t have let her speak regardless before continuing, “Was it worth it? Was it all fucking worth it in the end, princess? All that boot licking and clasper gobbling, just to get your place at the foot of his bed? Just to get the privilege of holding the whip?”

Howler silently huffed, and pulled out her notepad. Abe, at his distance, couldn’t see what she wrote; all he could gather was that reading her reply made the larger mud seethe. The Mudokon standing abruptly made his chair clatter noisily on the metal floor, alerting everyone nearby. He pinned her against the wall when she tried to bolt in vain. One of the more sober Sligs looked over to see a worker out of line, and he reacted accordingly.

It only would have taken one shot, but Sligs never really stopped there. Workers and unprepared Sligs alike ducked instinctively to the floor. From there, Abe could see every other mud ducking alongside him, except for Howler.

When the gunfire stopped and the smoke cleared, the attacking corrective was left a limp, perforated corpse, draped unnaturally over the chair she sat in. Blood dripped from him to add to the splattered mess the rifle rounds painted in the corner. Abe resigned himself to the additional work piling up before him.

As everyone shakily tried to go back to what they were doing, a Slig made a couple of workers haul the corrective’s corpse out of the bar by his feet. The long, red trail of a bloodstain it made would also become overtime for the beleaguered janitor. He wasn’t thinking about that, though; what concerned him was that Howler had conveniently vanished without a trace, and left the corrective Mudokon to take the brunt of the punishment.

Alf wasn’t at the bar either, come to think of it. But during violent ‘bar fights’ like these, he tended to dip into the backroom; Abe’s suspicions were confirmed when he saw the door ajar.

He risked a peek through the narrow gap. From behind the door, he heard a familiar voice say, “you alright there, sister?”

A visibly shaken Howler flinched away from the taller mud when he made a move to get closer. Alf took a cautionary step back, hands held up to drive home no ill intent. “Hey, hey, it’s cool. Jus’ wanted to make sure you didn’t get hit.”

Howler squinted at him suspiciously. Her arms were folded defensively over her chest. At that point, Abe decided to step in; it felt like the right time, and the woman seemed, for once, to be happy to see him. Her hands trembled as she tried to write on her notepad.

Abe interrupted her. “What was all that about?”

The tattooed woman stopped, visibly pale under the dim fluorescent light. She reluctantly wrote down an answer.

…Then she stopped, discarded the thought, and turned the page to write something else she was more confident in showing him.

‘Dont wory abowt it’

“O-okay,” Abe said, uncertain. “I gotta… clean up the mess you made, I guess, so…”

Howler gave him the usual dismissive flick of her hand, directed at both of the men in the room. She shoulder-checked him yet again as she squeezed through the doorway.

Alf took off his fez to rub his feather-bare head, and watched her leave with a certain light in his eyes. “Wow, she’s a real ‘strong n’ silent’ type, isn’t she?”

Abe just sighed.

By now, the rest of the bar had more or less settled down. The gunner that executed the Mudokon ordered another round for him and his Slig peers. People stepped carelessly on the bloodstains, inured to gore and violence, and possibly just trying to give Abe more work to do on purpose. Blood, at least, was something he was accustomed to dealing with; and though he didn’t want to admit it, it was a nice change of pace to clean up the gore of a Mudokon that gave him no ill at ease. This wasn’t a fellow worker he grew up around, this was a complete stranger. A wild-caught bush-mud, different from him on a genetic level.

The body was mercifully intact when it was dragged away, so there were only minimal flesh chunks to scrape up after it. Amongst those bits and pieces, Abe noticed a page out of Howler’s notepad. It was sticky and soaked red with blood, but it was still barely legible.

It said, ‘I wantd to LIVE.”

[beardedmrbean]

Wendy McMahon announced on Monday that she was stepping down from her position as president and CEO of CBS News, noting that it had become clear in the past few months that she does “not agree on the path forward” with the company.

The move comes weeks after 60 Minutes executive producer Bill Owens resigned over what he described as a loss of independence at the network and flagship newsmagazine in the wake of settlement talks with President Donald Trump over a lawsuit that legal experts say is completely meritless.

“This has been one of the most meaningful chapters in my career,” McMahon wrote to staff in a letter obtained by The Independent. “Leading this extraordinary organization has been the honor of a lifetime because I got to work alongside all of you. Your commitment to truth, fairness and the highest standards is unassailable.”

She added: “Championing and supporting the journalism produced by the most amazing stations and bureaus in the world, celebrating the successes of our shows and our brands, elevating our stories and our people ... It has been a privilege and joy.”

Still, McMahon noted that she had butted heads with corporate leadership on the direction of the news network, almost certainly referencing the CBS parent company Paramount Global’s discussions to settle Trump’s lawsuit over a 60 Minutes interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris just before the 2024 election. The president has claimed that the interview was deceptively edited and constituted election interference, resulting in a $20 billion lawsuit that CBS News has said is “without merit.” However, Paramount’s top shareholder Shari Redstone has pushed to settle the case in order to get the Trump administration to greenlight the company’s massive merger with Skydance.

“At the same time, the past few months have been challenging. It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward. It’s time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership,” McMahon added. “I have spent the last few months shoring up our businesses and making sure the right leaders are in place; and I have no doubt they will continue to set the standard.”

In a separate letter sent out to CBS News staff, also obtained by The Independent, George Cheeks — co-CEO of Paramount and CEO of CBS — expressed his admiration for McMahon while noting who will now take her place in running the news broadcaster.

“Going forward, CBS News President Tom Cibrowski and CBS Stations President Jennifer Mitchell will each report directly to me,” he wrote. “For CMV, Scott Trupchak, who heads advertising sales, and John Budkins, who oversees programming and production, will report to Bryon Rubin, CBS’ Chief Operating Officer and CFO. Wendy will be with us for a few weeks to support the transition.”

“On a personal note, I want to thank Wendy for her partnership over the past four years,” Cheeks noted. “Under her leadership, the competitive position and culture at our television stations have improved dramatically, and we’ve expanded local news significantly. Our streaming news platforms – national and local – are stronger and growing, with digital extensions now in place for several of our flagship CBS News broadcasts.

He concluded: “In a rapidly changing world, Wendy and her teams have worked diligently to articulate a vision and lay a foundation that adapts our news operations for the future. This includes advancements in data journalism, community journalism, technology and centralizing editorial decisions to help teams move faster.”

McMahon, who took over as CBS News chief in 2023 after serving as president of Disney’s ABC stations, has been caught in the middle of a tumultuous past few months at the network amid Redstone’s attempts to cash in on a mega-merger with Skydance, which has also seen the top shareholder increasingly meddle in the network’s news coverage.

Even before the president sued CBS over the 60 Minutes interview, Redstone expressed frustration with McMahon and the news division’s leadership over the way they handled the fallout over CBS Mornings anchor Tony Dokoupil’s combative interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates. While McMahon found that Dokoupil had violated the network’s standards and practices with his aggressive questioning of Coates, which saw the morning host suggest the celebrated author was an extremist for his views on Gaza, Redstone —a longtime backer of pro-Israeli causes and charities — publicly supported Dokoupil.

Additionally, McMahon has faced questions over the recent overhaul of CBS Evening News, which has been met with dwindling ratings following a format change featuring co-anchors Maurice DuBois and John Dickerson.

Meanwhile, amid Paramount’s settlement discussions with Trump’s legal team, Owens and McMahon made it clear that they would not apologize for the way the Harris interview was edited or the show’s coverage of Trump and his administration. All the while, Redstone has looked to rein in the legendary news show, installing CBS veteran producer Susan Zirinsky as the new executive editor overseeing standards one day after the program ran a segment about those impacted by the war in Gaza because she viewed it as antisemitic.

Months later, the president once again blew up at 60 Minutes over two reports the show did on Trump’s Oval Office meltdown with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his attempt to take over Greenland, calling on his handpicked FCC chairman Brendan Carr to “impose the maximum fines and punishment” on Paramount and CBS “for their unlawful and illegal behavior.”

After the president’s tirade, Redstone asked Cheeks to keep her briefed about all politically sensitive topics covered by the Sunday night show for the rest of the season, which just ended this week. She even reportedly went so far as to ask Cheeks if “it would be possible to delay sensitive stories about Trump or his policies until after she had closed the Skydance deal.” Though 60 Minutes had not made any programming changes at that time as a result of Redstone’s requests, Owens felt that he had no choice but to step down over what he felt was corporate interference.

McMahon, for her part, made sure to signal her support for Owens internally throughout the increasing behind-the-scenes tension, saying at the time of the respected producer’s resignation that “standing behind” him “was an easy decision for me.”

“It’s clear that I’ve become the problem — I’m the corporation’s problem,” Owens told staff on the day he announced his resignation. He also pointed to “having a minder” on the show as another reason for stepping down, adding that previously, “the corporation didn’t know what was coming up” on the show. At the end of the first 60 Minutes broadcast after Owens announced his resignation, correspondent Scott Pelley issued an on-air rebuke of the corporate bosses while singing the executive producer’s praises.

“Paramount began to supervise our content in new ways. None of our stories has been blocked, but Bill felt he lost the independence that honest journalism requires,” Pelley concluded. “No one here is happy about it, but in resigning, Bill proved one thing. He was the right person to lead 60 Minutes all along.”

Incidentally, while recent episodes didn’t have any Trump-centric segments pulled or changed, the season finale of 60 Minutes was supposed to air a segment hosted by Anderson Cooper on the “recent large-scale firings at the Internal Revenue Service — part of President Trump's efforts to reduce the size of the federal workforce ��� and the impact they could have on the agency’s ability to collect taxes and crack down on tax fraud.” Just ahead of Sunday night’s broadcast, the network announced that the segment wouldn’t air due to recent developments.

“There have been late developments in our report that was scheduled to air Sunday night, May 18, about the roughly 7,000 probationary employees who were dismissed from their jobs at the Internal Revenue Service in February,” the network stated in an editor’s note sent on Sunday morning. “60 Minutes has learned that on Friday afternoon, IRS leadership informed senior staff it had decided to call probationary employees back to work by the end of this coming week. Our team will continue to report on these new details and will broadcast the story in the future.”

[jams-sims]

I'm still waiting for the official translation because the leaks were such a nothing burger, like none of these last chapters answer a gotdamn thing. Started some shit with Mei Mei, started a new case, a new curse technique or some shit with a secert society.

None of that shit mattered! NONE OF IT! Provide answers to questions no one was asking. Gege could have shown Gojo being cremated or something! Tie back into the fact Shoko is alone and she did have that whole moment where she said (its implied im being hyperbolic) that Gojo doesnt even think about how she was right beside him grieving the lost of Geto too. It would have been a fundmental tragic ending for the group of three. Contrast that with Nobara, Megumi and Yuji all laughing with eachother being idiots. She gets to see the next generation. But I guess nothing matters anymore and she helps with Megumi buriel of his sister. Which is good but damn could it be better.

I mean- shit I guess I win a little something because Kenjaku is back, fake or not. An Kenjaku was my favorite, and I love the idea that Takaba was so fucking smitten by Kenjaku that he used his technique to bring him back. Shit i would love more on that, is Takaba powers good eough to repluicate kenjaku fully? Will he have to keep remaking Kenjaku because he can never get it just right. That shit would be so interesting!

Then gege fumbled the easiet ass pull i would have forgiven if he just wrote a scene of Yuji and Kenjaku interacting out of no where and it was a 3 page flash back. In a fucking white void somewhere. Because why the fuck did Kenjaku act the way that he did. He made Yuji who was not "the prefect vessel" because at the end Kenjaku was like 'Sukana and Yuji can not both exist at the same time'. Kenjaku really made Yuji, Sukana OP and vese versa.

I GUESS if you wanna stretch it, Yuji was shown to not have his parent in his life at all, when he was about 7. Which mean they had to be around ealier and if so what the fuck happened!? What the fuck was up with Jin and why did Kenjaku do any of the shit he did-

Why save Yuji school friend, someone no one remember until he walked her out! Then said "Thank you for being a friend to my son".

Kenjaku its giving I love my youngest child, fuck all my other kids.

What happened to the Merger and Tengen, I dont care of they found where Tengens at! That doesnt stop what ever the merger was, shit it could have been cool to imply it had been already started as everyone was healing. Just the last chapter were so co fusing and bloated with shit no one wanted. I would have rathered the dream theory be real or the kill all of them ensing be real. It feels mega like a editor came in and started talking in geges ear.

I mean all of this could be forgiven if after the ending it was like BAM JJK Part 2 starting 2025. I could at least go "ooo more shit gonna be revealed in part 2." But nothing! The ending was just super frustrating. I hope the offical just has a little more of something!

[posttexasstressdisorder]

CNN 5/15/2025

BusinessMedia• 3 min read

FCC commissioner rips a “weaponized” agency punishing news outlets Trump dislikes

By Liam Reilly, CNN

Updated: 5:19 PM EDT, Thu May 15, 2025

Source: CNN

A Democratic commissioner on the Federal Communications Commission tore into the panel’s recent actions under its newchairman, without naming him, saying the agency has been “weaponized to chill speech and to punish the press.”

“We are witnessing a dangerous precedent: the transformation of an independent regulator into an instrument of political censorship,” Anna Gomez, a 2023 Biden appointee, said Thursday during a fiery speech at the 2025 Media Institute Communications Forum in Washington, DC.

Gomez did not directly name Brendan Carr, the Trump-appointed FCC chair who has used his authority to pressure media outlets President Donald Trumphas deemed unfavorable. Carr has opened investigations into PBS and NPR over their sponsorship practices; reopened a probe of CBS for “news distortion;” reinstated complaints against ABC for its handling of a presidential debate between Trump and then-Vice President Kamala Harris; and opened new probes into NBCUniversal and Disney, ABC’s parent company, over their promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

“This FCC has made clear that it will go after any news outlet that dares to report the truth if that truth is unfavorable to this administration,” Gomez said. In contrast, she applauded past FCC chairs who demonstrated “courage” by “refusing to wield the agency’s licensing authority as a weapon… even in the face of political pressure.”

Gomez said she will “refuse to stay quiet” as the federal government “weaponizes its regulatory tools” to violate the First Amendment and attack the news media. After fellow commissioner Geoffrey Starks resigns this spring, Gomez will be the lone Democrat on the five-seat commission, alongside Carr and another Trump appointee. The remaining slot currently sits vacant.

“Unfortunately, the administration efforts to censor and control appear to be working, at least for now,” Gomez said. “Some media outlets are finding it is easier to retreat in the face of government threats, veiled or otherwise, than to be responsive to their audiences.”

Gomez pointed to changes at CBS News and its flagship news program “60 Minutes” as examples of what gets lost when political pressure comes to bear on reporting the news.

CBS News is reportingly considering a settlement of a lawsuit brought by President Trump, which accuses the broadcaster of deliberately mis-editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Harris to manipulate the November election. While many experts have deemed the lawsuit to be bogus, CBS parent Paramount Global has begun discussing a settlement, especially as company chair Shari Redstone looks to complete a merger with Skydance Media — a deal that will require signoff from Carr’s FCC.

The pressure to settle the lawsuit and clear the way for a merger has trickled down to CBS News. In late April, longtime “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens stepped down because he felt he could no longer make “independent decisions based on what was right for 60 Minutes,” according to a memo he wrote to the show’s staff.

Days later, the newsmagazine’s host Scott Pelley said on-air that Paramount had begun “to supervise our content in new ways” amid the Trump pressure, leading Owens to feel “he had lost the independence that honest journalism requires.”

“Pardon my language, but that is a B.F.D.,” Gomez said on Thursday of the “60 Minutes” ordeal, using a shorthand for “big f**ing deal.” She continued: “Corporate parents should give journalists the independence they need. A free press requires free journalists.”

Gomez closed by saying that if she’s removed from her seat, “it wasn’t because I failed to do my job. It’s because I insisted on doing it.”

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