#source: ops/eds

[marshmallowgoop]

And I'm just a little messed up I'm a little out of my head

[Song link] [YouTube link]

[cowboy-robooty]

im so glad i live under a rock and never look at anybodys posts ever bc omfg me when gus shows me her feed and i keep getting mad like every 9 things i see because i go "thats from the dears outro. does anybody know thats from the dears outro. do they care" and keep seeing people use anime ops/eds or niconico douga meme songs thinking its a tiktok song and not from the source LIKE OMG. IM GOING TO KILL EVERYBODY AND THEN MYSELF.

[auressea]

Bisexuals Win! We don't 'discriminate'. My adhoc theory that 'Bisexuality is the biological default for Mammals, and heterosexualism is a human cultural norm' is established!

"Same-sex attraction and behavior are widespread across the animal kingdom, from male gentoo penguins co-raising eggs, sex among all-male bachelor packs of gorillas and “seasonally bisexual” flying fox bats. "

including more than 1,500 species, according to a Nature Ecology and Evolution study.

“an ancestral condition of indiscriminate sexual behaviors directed towards all sexes.” (this is fancy talk for 'bisexual' behaviour)

[dragontatoes]

I'm trying not to use "hypothetical" in my peer review of someone's op-ed on nuclear energy but how else do I address: "but how about the elderly person that gets poisoned from growing a carrot in their contaminated ground?  Science at this point has not documented the long-term effects of nuclear energy and has left many questions unanswered."

yeah alright. let's go ahead and use the evidence of no evidence ig

[novemberthewriter]

since i can't even find the tcg volume that collects the final four books + i'm not in the mood to start digging through storage for it, i've finally narrowed my shit down for this project. it's gonna have to be 'showdown at the okie dokie' bc that's one of the stories i have on hand from galleria's pov

[punkbarbarian]

for folks who don’t follow them on instagram— ally beardsley wrote part of an op-ed in the washington post for the 50th dnd anniversary about a moment playing dnd that really stuck with them and i wanted to share it here!

“a character’s journey — and my own”

I was an aspiring comedian in Los Angeles and had just landed a salaried job at the comedy website CollegeHumor. My co-worker and friend Brennan Lee Mulligan was looking for six comedians to create a show that would be like an at-home game of D&D. Why not? “Dimension 20” became a weird punctuation to my day.

I remember there being too many rules to remember. I kept turning to my friend, Brian Murphy, to ask which dice I should be rolling. I wasn’t paid overtime, but I loved the group and was having a lot of fun.

For the second season, I had my sea legs. I created a character for the campaign who was transgender. I had started going by the gender neutral they/them pronouns at work and among friends, but sourcing hormones or getting surgery seemed equal parts expensive and invasive. A fun thing about fantasy is stripping away the crunchy, real-world limitations and asking yourself: “What would I do if I could do anything?”

That season’s arc for my character, Pete, was extremely euphoric for me. I had described him as a trans cowboy you might see at Burning Man, and the artist drew him dressed as a freaky Hunter S. Thompson in an open shirt to show his top surgery scars. He has wild magic — uncontrollable and dangerous in the game mechanics — which we used to explore the painful chaos of leaving a family that doesn’t accept you.

Since then, I’ve started testosterone HRT and had top surgery. It’s funny to listen back to myself playing a character who had transitioned in ways I hadn’t. It’s full of inaccuracies that make me smile. Pete takes a testosterone pill every day; I now know it’s a weekly injection or a topical gel. I see my face, one wrapped up in playing something so new but instantly right. It was like an oracle. A near-future me who has health insurance! Who’s talked to their mom about being trans and even spent a week post-top surgery on that mom’s couch in Temecula, Calif!

As I started transitioning my appearance, seeing that in front of the camera felt raw. I was starting hormones, and my voice was cracking. Realizing it was all being recorded felt naked at times, but it has been really nice to talk to fans and friends about how important it is to see someone that looks like you taking a big risk on themself.

With Pete, it was really important to me to tell a story other than the dramatic lead-up to a medical transition. So we started with him having just gotten out of surgery, but that’s all you see of that process. Part of his backstory is that he doesn’t have a relationship with his transphobic parents, and before shooting the first episode, I felt sick to my stomach. I’ve been on a journey with my parents, and our starting place didn’t have much common ground. When my character meets with his father, it felt as though I was actually running into my own on the street.

Brennan could sense that discomfort, and as my character’s dad was about to call Pete by his deadname, Brennan shut the interaction down, surrounding his dad with bubbles that carried him into the sky. Magic is the power and freedom to manipulate your reality, and you can banish the awful voices in your life — let them swirl away into the air.

[boysnberriespie]

NYT is a shit source for most news (can trace that all the way back to Kitty Genovese 😔) but I get it for free through my school and the breaking news everyday and every hour is getting a little out of hand

[agendercryptidlev]

now post the homicide statistics for trans demographics

Alright I'll post some violence stats o7

(From: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/assets/static/trevor01_2022survey_final.pdf)

(From: https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/07/23/op-ed-trans-men-experience-far-more-violence-most-people-assume )

(Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/nbc-out/transgender-day-remembrance-advocates-honor-lives-lost-violence-n938401)

(Stats above relate to fatal violence in 2023, source: https://www.hrc.org/resources/fatal-violence-against-the-transgender-and-gender-expansive-community-in-2023)

(Source: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/sexual-violence-and-suicide-risk-among-lgbtq-young-people/)

(Source: https://dailybruin.com/2021/04/08/ucla-study-finds-transgender-people-face-greater-rates-of-violent-victimization)

Most stats show the biggest indicator of a trans person's likelihood to be murdered in the united states is race, with Black Transgender Women having the highest rate of murder by far.

Of course murder is not the only form of violence that affects the transgender community, sexual violence is most commonly experienced by transgender men which is likely a leading cause of the disproportionately high transmasculine suicide rate.

Violence against transgender people of all kinds is under-reported, especially since if a transgender individual was misgendered by everyone in their life and got murdered there is no one around to affirm what their true gender identity is.

I will never, ever say any transgender identity has it easier than the others, because what makes life "easy" is defined by so many different factors, what we need is solidarity within the trans community because across the board transgender people face violence and discrimination at higher rates than cisgender people.

What we need as a community is to have the space to combat all forms of bigotry and oppression than trans people face, no matter which transgender identity faces that bigotry and violence at the highest rate.

[burins]

Other Appalachias: A Booklist

As requested, the anti-Hillbilly Elegy booklist, plus annotations! When possible I tried to include books that were by Appalachians and got at lesser-known aspects of Appalachian life and identity, especially modern Appalachian life. When creating the original list I was also limited by books that were in the library network I work at, which is a) a public library and b) not actually located in Appalachia. Y’all get some bonus titles that weren’t in my library - hopefully they’ll be in yours.

A note: I have not read every single book on this list! This is the nature of creating booklists as a librarian. I trust the sources I used to find them, but if there’s something on here that you’re like “oh I read this and it sucks actually,” let me know. And if there’s a particular aspect you’d like more books on, also let me know!

General

Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy (Anthony Harkins and Meredith McCarroll, eds)

What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte

If you read any two books on this list (especially if you aren’t from Appalachia!) make it these two. The first one is a collection of essays and photographs, the second by a single author, but both are fantastic for the basics of “hey was your entire idea of a huge stretch of the US defined by Deliverance and some NYT op-eds? perhaps it should not be” 

Appalachian Fall: Dispatches from Coal Country on What's Ailing America by Jeff Young

Leans a little more “plight of the white working class” than I absolutely love, but this talks a lot about contemporary workers’ rights and local activism in Appalachia and is a good counter to Vance’s narrative of “everybody sits on their ass all the time.”

Belonging: A Culture of Place by bell hooks

Hey did you know bell hooks was from Kentucky? bell hooks was from Kentucky! As always her writing is deeply insightful about who is allowed to claim a place and what it means to have roots. 

Rx Appalachia: Stories of Treatment and Survival in Rural Kentucky by Lesly-Marie Buer 

The opioid crisis has defined the region (much as alcoholism came to during Prohibition); unlike a lot of writing on the topic, this lets people tell their own stories. 

Race and Sexuality

Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place by Neema Avashia

Excellent counter to the narrative of Appalachia as unrelentingly white, and also painfully good writing on what happens when the folks you grew up counting on let you down. 

Loving Mountains, Loving Men: Memoirs of a Gay Appalachian by Jeff Mann

This 2005 memoir got a re-release in 2023, and thank god because it makes me cry. Really beautiful writing on what it means to come back to a place and carve out a space for yourself.

Y'all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia (Z. Zane McNeill, ed.) 

Another essay collection! There will be more; I like an essay collection for getting a sense of a subject beyond a single voice. Touches on everything from disability to race to Mothman. 

Deviant Hollers: Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future, Zane McNeill and Rebecca Scott, eds. 

This wide-ranging collection of essays wasn’t on the original list because it’s pretty hard to come by (academic queer theory is not a bastion of your average public library collection.) Just based on the table of contents I am going to try and get my hands on a copy ASAP. 

Gone Home: Race and Roots through Appalachia by Karida L. Brown

Focuses specifically on Harlan County, Kentucky, drawing on a ton of oral history interviews of Black residents to talk about the Great Migration, Blackness in Appalachia, and identity formation in the region and beyond.

Beginning Again: Stories of Movement and Migration in Appalachia, Katrina M. Powell, ed. 

This just came out in June! In a place so often defined by how many generations of your family have lived there, it’s worth considering who gets removed from that story.  

Their Determination to Remain: A Cherokee Community's Resistance to the Trail of Tears in North Carolina by Lance Greene

The history of Appalachia is pretty obviously incomplete without talking about the policies of Indian Removal. Greene tackles a tangled story of assimilation and cultural survival. 

Even As We Breathe by Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle

The only fiction book on this list, but the main goal of the list was to let Appalachia speak for itself. Clapsaddle is a member of the Eastern band of Cherokee; the novel, set in western NC during the 1940s, talks about (in)justice, assimilation, and belonging. 

History, Labor, and Environment

You can’t talk about the history of Appalachia without talking about coal, and you can’t talk about coal without talking about labor, and you also can’t talk about coal without talking about the environment. 

Ramp Hollow: The Ordeal of Appalachia by Steven Stoll 

An economic/environmental overview of Appalachia covering the shift from homesteading to resource extraction. To understand what’s happening economically in 2024 you need to understand what happened economically in 1750-1850, and this gives a general and fairly accessible throughline. 

The Battle of Blair Mountain: The Story of America's Largest Labor Uprising by Robert Shogan

An older book on the most famous event of the West Virginia Mine Wars, but is a very readable narrative that also touches on Blair Mountain’s wider context.  

Written in Blood: Courage and Corruption in the Appalachian War of Extraction, Wess Harris, ed. 

A much more in-depth look at specific aspects of the Mine Wars and labor history, rather than a general overview, but worth reading for its coverage of more recent events (it didn’t end with Blair!)

To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice by Jessica Wilkerson

Focusing on the 60s-70s and LBJ’s War on Poverty, a good discussion of historical grassroots organizing.

Digging Our Own Graves: Coal Miners & the Struggle Over Black Lung Disease by Barbara Allen Smith

Seminal text! First published in 1987, with an updated edition released in 2020. 

Soul Full of Coal Dust: A Fight for Breath and Justice in Appalachia by Chris Hamby

After being mad about black lung in the 80s, you can also be mad about black lung today, because it didn’t go anywhere. 

Desperate: An Epic Battle for Clean Water and Justice in Appalachia by Kris Maher

Very “legal thriller focused on one guy,” but extremely readable. A great book to get your liberal mom fired up.  

Mountains Piled upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene, Jessica Cory, ed.

This list has been almost entirely nonfiction, so here is some lovely prose about what folks love about the region with both literary nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. It’s got a wide geographic focus to boot. 

Food and Culture

Appalachia on the Table: Representing Mountain Food and People by Erica Adams Locklear

Great deconstruction of how we talk about mountain food and culture (scandal! Sometimes great-grandmas used Bisquick.) Will make you hungry and also question what authenticity means and where your family recipes actually come from. 

Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia by Emily Hilliard

West Virginia state folklorist Emily Hilliard talks about pro wrestling, Fallout 76, songwriting, and coal camps. Appalachia in the 21st century. 

(Finally, a shoutout to the various bookstores whose lists I used as jumping-off points, especially Appalachian Mountain Books, City Lights Bookstore, Firestorm Books, and the Museum of the Cherokee People.)

[marshmallowgoop]

ShinRan Week 2023: Day 5 | "I wish I could tell you that I love you"

I wish that I could tell you I wish that I could run into your arms

[Song link] [YouTube link]

[kiefbowl]

I was reading an opinion piece on Kate Middleton's cancer diagnosis on CNN by Jamal Baig about the increasing rates of cancer in patients under 50. As far as 5 minutes of googling and JSTORing can lend me to believe, there's nothing illegitimate about Dr. Baig. However, I found this bit in his opinion interesting:

Now, I'm always dubious when reading anything that attributes a very broad generalized idea that changes in diets have caused an increased in cancer, because more often than not it's not pointing to an exploration of, say, increased pesticide use, but the author's personal bias against the quote unquote "unhealthy", especially those who are deemed "fat" by the medical industry.

That being said, I was curious what source he linked, half expecting it to lead to just another op-ed from some other doctor from who knows when, but I was pleasantly surprised! Written by a man named Michael Donaldson, it was an evidentiary review published in a scientific journal called "Nutrition and cancer: A review of the evidence for an anti-cancer diet."

Now I wasn't going to give the whole thing a read, but I stopped in each section, gave a quick skim to get a general vibe, moved on to the next section, etc. I was immediately suspicious that the very first line in the abstract was "It has been estimated that 30–40 percent of all cancers can be prevented by lifestyle and dietary measures alone" as that seems to be a bananas statistic to just posit, but it still had the air of scientific integrity, so I did my skim.

The first handful of sections had things that gave me some moments of pause, that this article was in fact another doctor simply cherry picking data to confirm his own biases, but nothing so egregious as to do a spit take. That comes in a few minutes. The first section that made really go hold the phone was when we got to his Flax Seed section.

Compare how he writes about Red Meat...:

(that's all he wrote, btw)

...with how he starts writing about Flax Seed:

Did I just enter a Flax Seed commercial? Does this guy work for BIG FLAX SEED? on and on he writes about Flax Seed, and I start getting a sense that perhaps this man has a Flax Seed Agenda. In any case, he eventually moves on and I quickly skim to get to the end (because it's boring among other things).

So, who exactly is Michael Donaldson?

Girl are you kidding me

The Hallelujah Acres Foundation is a FOR PROFIT company that sells a """biblical""" based diet program called the hallelujah diet and also sells supplements on said site.

Now, in case you forgot where I started with this, this was the link provided as a "source" to a legitimate doctor's claim in an op-ed about cancer that "at least part of the answer" of why cancer is increasing in under 50 patients are the "changes to nutrition and lifestyle that took hold in middle of the last century." Dr. Baig did not read this article, or if he did was not concerned that it was written by the employee of a company that profits from unscientific research it uses to sell supplements and diets. Which is worse, I don't know.

The point I'm making is that you absolutely need to be vigilant all the time. You need to understand that doctors can not only have biases, but agendas. Researchers can have biases and agendas. Scientists can have biases and agendas. And that magical thinking about real health issues that can affect your future can permeate the scientific community because weirdos write convincing enough evidence that support their already determined world view.

This kind of shit is the reason why women go into doctor offices complaining about pain in their abdomen and get told to go lose weight and come back in 6 months. This is why ideas like moralizing eating have huge effects on women's health and influence medical misogyny, and why it's a feminist issue.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Zack Beauchamp at Vox:

I met Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), Donald Trump’s new choice for vice president, in the summer of 2022. I was covering a conservative conference in Israel, and Vance was the surprise VIP attraction. We chatted for a bit about the connections between right-wing movements across the world, and what American conservatives could learn from foreign peers. He was friendly, thoughtful, and smart — much smarter than the average politician I’ve interviewed. Yet his worldview is fundamentally incompatible with the basic principles of American democracy.

Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have carried out Trump’s scheme for the vice president to overturn the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about Trump. After last week’s assassination attempt on Trump, he attempted to whitewash his radicalism by blaming the shooting on Democrats’ rhetoric about democracy without an iota of evidence. This worldview translates into a very aggressive agenda for a second Trump presidency. In a podcast interview, Vance said that Trump should “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat” in the US government and “replace them with our people.” If the courts attempt to stop this, Vance says, Trump should simply ignore the law. “You stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it,” he declares.

The President Jackson quote is likely apocryphal, but the history is real. Vance is referring to an 1832 case, Worcester v. Georgia, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US government needed to respect Native legal rights to land ownership. Jackson ignored the ruling, and continued a policy of allowing whites to take what belonged to Natives. The end result was the ethnic cleansing of about 60,000 Natives — an event we now call the Trail of Tears. For most Americans, this history is a deep source of shame: an authoritarian president trampling on the rule of law to commit atrocities. For Vance, it is a well of inspiration. J.D. Vance is a man who believes that the current government is so corrupt that radical, even authoritarian steps, are justified in response. He sees himself as the avatar of America’s virtuous people, whose political enemies are interlopers scarcely worthy of respect. He is a man of the law who believes the president is above it.

[...] The Vance of Hillbilly Elegy was very different politically. Back then, he took a conventional conservative line on poverty, describing the working class as beset by a cultural pathology encouraged by federal handouts and the welfare state. 2016 Vance was also an ardent Trump foe. He wrote a New York Times op-ed titled “Mr. Trump Is Unfit For Our Nation’s Highest Office,” and wrote a text to his law school roommate warning that Trump might be “America’s Hitler.” Eight years later, Vance has metamorphosed into something else entirely. Today, he pitches himself as an economic populist and cosponsors legislation with Sen. Elizabeth Warren curtailing pay for failed bankers. In an even more extreme shift, he has morphed into one of Trump’s leading champions in the Senate — backing the former president to the hilt and even, at times, outpacing him in anti-democratic fervor.

[...] And it is clear that Vance is deeply ensconced in the GOP’s growing “national conservative” faction, which pairs an inconsistent economic populism with an authoritarian commitment to crushing liberals in the culture war. Vance has cited Curtis Yarvin, a Silicon Valley monarchist blogger, as the source of his ideas about firing bureaucrats and defying the Supreme Court. His Senate campaign was funded by Vance’s former employer, Peter Thiel, a billionaire who once wrote that “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” He’s a big fan of Patrick Deneen, a Notre Dame professor who recently wrote a book calling for “regime change” in America. Vance spoke at an event for Deneen’s book in Washington, describing himself as a member of the “postliberal right” who sees his job in Congress as taking an “explicitly anti-regime” stance.

Vance is also an open admirer of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, a right-wing politician who has systematically torn his country’s democracy apart. Vance praised Orbán’s approach to higher education in particular, saying he “made some smart decisions there that we could learn from in the United States.” The policies in question involve using national dollars to impose state controls over universities, turning them into vehicles for disseminating the government line.

Donald Trump's pick of J.D. Vance to be his ticketmate is about doubling down on MAGA authoritarianism and the "postliberal" worldview.

See Also:

The Dean's Report: JD Vance is worse and more dangerous than you know

The Guardian: JD Vance once worried Trump was ‘America’s Hitler’. Now his own authoritarian leanings come into view

[olderthannetfic]

https://www.tumblr.com/olderthannetfic/749333039047442432/httpsolderthannetfictumblrcompost74884185043?source=share

Sorry, long rant incoming.

Someone in the replies said it, but I think it needs to be said again where everyone can see it: I think a lot of the attitude that anon is somehow secretly pro-censorship because they think certain preferences are skeevy, and strenuously insisting that bad attitudes can NEVER be media's fault.... idk, maybe take it out of the context of debates about sexually explicit/pornographic media for a moment?

There are works of media that had pretty direct effects on activist and political movements, good and bad. Uncle Tom's Cabin inspired a lot of people to fight against slavery. The movie Birth of a Nation, which showed a history of the U.S. with the KKK as heroic, is considered by most historians to be a major contributor to the revival of the KKK in the 1920s. The Nazis used films, books, music, art, and so on in their propaganda, knowing it would help their ideas go down more easily. The Soviets did too. Every dictatorship did. Even democratic countries have done it as well, usually but not always in more subtle ways.

Do none of those count, because "oh, people who were going to be convinced by Birth of a Nation would be racist anyway"? "Good, non-racist people wouldn't be convinced by it"? I mean, the latter is true: there were plenty of people, especially black Americans but plenty of white allies too, who boycotted the film at the time. The NAACP led a boycott. But do you really think NO ONE was convinced? (What about people who previously didn't feel any way about it one way or the other? Were they just innately more evil, even if it might've just been that they weren't aware? Do supposedly progressive people in fandom realize how much this sounds like Christian original sin rhetoric...) And does it matter purely about media fully changing minds, or also how it galvanizes people who already think one way? If it gives them new talking points, new ways of thinking about it and convincing others? If it helps them believe their cause is more important and worth fighting for?

So why does this all suddenly change when we're talking about sex? Is porn really this special class of media where somehow all the rules about how we can both like things and also be critical of how media (fiction, news media, whatever) influences us - "be critical of the media you love," as a tote bag sold by Feminist Frequency said - just stop applying for some reason? Or maybe if something is bypassing your rational brain entirely and going directly for the pleasure centers, there's all the more reason to think critically about what it's saying? Propaganda is designed to bypass all that, too.

Also, if media really has NOTHING to do with it, that just wouldn't explain why it's disproportionately anime that feature these specific elements that seem to attract more people arguing for why it's wrong to be upset by rape or child exploitation in real life. I don't believe that everyone who watches slavery isekai or lolicon approves of those things irl - I think for the vast majority of people, it IS a fantasy and that's the point - but I have noticed that in places like the Anime News Network or Crunchyroll forums, the comments become a cesspool of creepy people arguing for why ages of consent should be lowered and mean feminists who don't like watching media with rape in it just need to get over themselves, in a way they just don't when you're talking about Attack on Titan or My Hero Academia or Shoujo Romance #4891 or whatever.

As another person in the notes said, abusers ARE opportunistic. They'll use something like Twilight as easily as they'll use the most uwu, soft, "non problematic" ship to argue for why they're allowed to abuse you. But I don't think that means we can't be critical (not calling for censorship, of course! but like, writing op-eds and stuff) of media that makes their arguments a little easier, maybe even directly makes their arguments for them.

You can believe both that everyone has the opportunity to read, watch, listen to, play what they want and make up their own minds about it, and that it's wrong for the government to ever decide what media is and isn't "acceptable," and also believe that media often is saying things that aren't apparent on the surface and that you should be critical of those messages, *especially* with the stuff you like.

The point is just that porn isn't like, fundamentally different from other fictional media in this way. (Or, hell, I would argue that fictional media isn't functionally different from other mass media in this way. If anything, fiction's politics are often more insidious in a way that makes it easier for them to reach people who might not otherwise be open to those messages in the form of, say, blatantly right-wing news media.)

It's particularly strange to me when people jump all over someone for expressing how something can be insidiously creepy in a more mundane way. The line people are upset about that used the word "unpack" was just making the point that even if we can agree lolicon isn't outright advocating pedophilia, even if we agree the point is that it's a fantasy and they're not like real children at all and that's what people like, it's still working within an idealization/fetishization of helplessness, innocence, and dependence, and that still has a lot that you can critique from a feminist perspective. It's still a thing that plays into some crappy societal ideas about who women are supposed to be, and is selling that to men as a romantic ideal. There's still a lot we can talk about there! And it's still totally fair for women to be wary of men where that seems to be all they're into - because for some (and I believe this was what anon was initially trying to say was their experience), it does impact how they treat real women. It doesn't have to be everyone for it to have an impact.

There's a lot of anime that presents women that way, even way outside of lolicon. A lot of it's anime I like! I'm still critical of that aspect of it. I still wish that particular part of it were different.

I still don't see how this makes me "pro censorship" unless I believe some kind of institution should mandate that that not be included. And whether that's the government, or the industry itself (people do kind of narrowly focus on "the government" in a way that would make a lot of industry-run censorship that was still very harmful, e.g. the Hollywood Hays Code, not "count"), or anyone, I very much disagree with that. Creators should be able to create what they want. A lot of what creators are doing with this is unconscious, is reflecting societal biases they learned but haven't thought deeply about.... which is precisely the point of critiquing how those show up in a work.

People love to talk about "secretly 'anti' attitudes" but at the end of the day, support or opposition to censorship is pretty straightforward. You believe someone should be stopped from making a particular kind of media, or you don't. If you don't, you're not pro-censorship, no matter how much you personally may not like that that media or a particular aspect of it exists. Most people who care about media have some media they wish didn't exist. It's about what they do about it that makes them pro or anti censorship. Talk to people who donate to or even work for the ACLU or other anti censorship groups; most of them don't like racist or sexist stuff, but they also don't believe it should be banned and that's the point.

Bringing it back to the discussion at hand, I think the point was just that you can't be blind to how power dynamics influence this stuff. I wouldn't even say specifically cishet men are at fault here, since some people who read this blog seem to think that anyone saying that is automatically talking about bioessentialism as opposed to like, societal stuff (don't ask me why, this has been explained on here enough times in enough different discourses over the years, I think). I'd just say anyone with power in that particular context. There's a reason why it's specifically mainstream media, aimed at groups in power, that tends to draw in creeps excusing the real thing... in a way that just similarly is not true of people in fanfiction fandom, who are usually a member of one or more oppressed categories, exploring that in their own marginal work. Fans of rape fanfiction just don't act the way that fans of slavery rape isekai do. It's because there is fundamentally a difference both when you're someone whom society tells you are entitled to everything you want in this particular arena, and also when a work is mainstream, broadening its reach, and speaking a particular message from the lens of people with economic and social power (who are making these mainstream works) and given approval by publishers/media studios/etc. in a way that is not the case with amateur work with tiny audiences. And, frankly, there's a difference between something that eroticizes rape from the point of view of the perpetrator vs. the victim.

Not a difference in terms of how legal it should be. Not a difference in whether every single person who watches it or likes it is bad. But a difference in terms of what it's saying, how it's saying that, and often the effects they have as a result. That, too, is true with every topic, not just sex.

I feel like a lot of people getting mad at these do fundamentally agree with this, but just have a weird blind spot when it's put in any sort of terminology that reminds them of certain bad arguments they've seen in fandom, uses any words that can be dismissed as "radfem" or "anti" or whatever, and so just refuse to engage with the actual meat of what is being said.

If you do actually believe though that it's wrong to EVER think media can have a negative effect on what people believe about irl issues, because there was always something "already there" that was going to "come out anyway" if it affects you that way (again, people: this is "original sin" rhetoric), and if you ever privately judge people for the media they like you're secretly pro-censorship. You do have to recognzie that both you personally come up short and also most peopel doing real concrete real world things to fight censorship would also come up short!

I think sometimes of an editorial that said "if you love Return of the Jedi but hated the Ewoks you understand feminist criticism" in terms of how you can be bothered by the sexism of a piece of media in a way you'd be bothered by any one individual element of it, and still overall like the whole. And also, you can be offended by something, even wish it didn't exist (don't we as nerds all have entries in some franchise we like or another that we wish didn't exist for fannish reasons?), without believing that it should be officially made to stop existing or have never existed in the first place. That last part does actaully matter as like, its own thing. It is in fact separable from just being able to have personal judgey feelings about media and about the people who liked it.

And opposing it does not mean in any way that we have to just stop thinking critically about the media we love, or that we have to act like media can never have any influence on people. We on the left tend to talk about sexism, racism, homophoia and so on as being influenced by culture and society. Well, guess what is part of society and culture? Fictional (and other kinds of) media. That's part of that societal programming we get. It's why you'll see some of it even from people whose parents very much tried to resist teaching them certain things, because they get it from media anyway. I was raised by strenuously feminist parents: it was the media that taught me what gender roles were and how I was expected to adhere to them.

--

Look, I realize it's a bit rich of me to say this, but people are not going to engage with your actual points if you cannot be more succinct.

[hollandorks]

haven

battinson! bruce wayne x f! reader

chapter four

Summary: After the sudden deaths of your mother and grandmother, you’re forced to return home to Gotham…and to the man who broke your heart three years ago. Back in Bruce Wayne’s inescapable orbit, you vow to get to the bottom of your former best friend’s new cold personality. But Bruce’s secrets aren’t what you’re expecting. a

a/n: had today off work so I wrote two chapters while watching the film for the *checks notes* millionth time. Anyways, in this chapter we get to see why the reader hasn't figured out Batman's identity...and it's because she as one (1) braincell to her name.

Series Masterlist

word count: 2.6k

“No,” he said. He went to walk away, the lines of his body rigid, but paused. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said over his shoulder. 

She wondered if it was true.

The next morning, y/n woke up to good news in the form of an email from her editor granting her a leave of absence and temporary assignment at the Gotham Tribune. The editor there had been cc’d and asked her to call at her earliest convenience.

Then she saw the small package on her nightstand, delivered by Alfred sometime while she’d slept. Her phone had been returned and his short note told her to check to make sure everything was in order.  

She immediately called the editor of the Gotham Tribune. 

“Jansen,” he said in a gruff voice. 

“Hi, this is y/n, we emailed about my temporary assignment?” She absently spread the articles about Batman across her bed. One of them was a huge picture of some sort of…light signal against the night sky. Her brain turned that picture over while she spoke. It looked like a bat. She almost laughed. Subtle. 

“Oh, right!” She could practically hear the editor, Jansen, sitting up eagerly. “We heard about your attack, but your identity is being protected by Gotham police. What are you proposing? A tell-all?” 

“Well, I’m glad they’re tight-lipped. You heard one of them got away?” A noise of assent. “And a tell-all is only part of it. Part tell-all, part investigative report, part vigilante op-ed. I want to investigate who was murdered and why. I have a hunch that this was…not your run of the mill hit. There were four of them, two victims bound and gagged. And then this bat guy–I assume you know plenty about him–he steps in and tells me to run.” 

Jansen paused for so long she was afraid he would tell her no and hang up. “That’s a lot of work,” he finally said. “But if you do it right…hell of a piece. Front page, at least.” 

“You’re not going to tell me my hunch is made up? Or tell me not to go after the Batman?” She raised her eyebrows. Part of being an investigative journalist was getting the boss to believe in it enough to pursue the story–and part was pursuing it even after being told no. 

Jansen scoffed and said, “Fuck no. My source at GCPD is thinking the same thing about the murders. One suspect may have ties to the Gallo family in New York. All three who were caught lawyered up real quick without a word. And the Batman? Three years this guy has been around, even made national news last year, and you know what I have on him? Squat.” 

Y/n scrambled for a pen and flipped over the picture of the light signal to scribble notes. “Can you get me that source’s name?” She wrote out a note about the Gallo family and underlined it twice. 

“Nope.” He popped his lips on the P. “But I heard that Gordon took a shine to you. Batman’s right hand man.” 

She hummed and wrote another hasty note. “I preemptively asked for an interview but he told me to shove it.” 

“Sounds about right.” 

“Listen–can I work from home? Since the fourth suspect got away, I…don’t really want to be out and about in the city if I don’t have to be.” She would go into the Tribune offices if she had to, though, but working from home would also offer her a lot more freedom with the article. She was concerned about her safety, sure, but really she needed free reign to do what she wanted. 

Jansen chuckled darkly. “I get it. Sure. Send me updates as you get them and weekly summaries of your work. If I come across any leads, I’ll send them your way. Are you in protective custody right now?” 

She glanced around her room and thought about all of the security Wayne Tower offered. “Yes,” she said, and it wasn’t a lie. It just wasn’t the police protecting her. It was the Wayne legacy. 

“Well, be careful. If it is the Gallo family and they’re trying to set up here in Gotham….” He didn’t need to finish the sentence. 

“I will be. I have a lot to research right now anyways. And thanks–this helps me out a lot.” 

Jansen outright laughed this time. “Listen, kid, if you turn out right about any of this–or even manage to get more information about our friendly neighborhood vigilante–it helps me out a lot. I’m not being altruistic here.” 

“Thanks anyway,” she said with her own laugh. She had known as much when he had agreed to the assignment. It was a big thing, and she was willing to tackle it. She knew how the business worked. She could make the paper and its editor look really good if it worked out. “I’ll be in touch.” 

“I’d tell you to be safe, but we both know you investigative types aren’t like that. So I’ll just say this: don’t die before you get me a story.” 

They hung up. 

Y/n immediately opened her laptop and typed up everything she’d learned from the phone call. Then she made a list of research topics: the Gallo family and their potential ties to Gotham, how to get the GCPD to feed her information, the Batman, and a whole lot of other things that may or may not be connected. 

Her eyes fell again on the picture of the light signal–to the bat in its center. 

She chewed her bottom lip as she stared at her phone on the bed. Gordon wouldn’t give her an interview, at least not yet. 

The idea was a flash of lightning. 

Officer Martinez, with his mustache and wide eyed wonder at the home of Bruce Wayne. 

She did a quick internet search but couldn’t find any contact information for him specifically. There was, however, a general call number for the GCPD station he worked at. 

“Hi, I, um, had you guys come out for a robbery not too long ago and this really cute–” She gave a fake giggle, “–officer came to take my report…I’d like to send him an e-giftcard, you know, to say thank you? So if you have an email or something I could use…I promise it isn’t a scam. This is so embarrassing, I’m sorry–” 

The woman on the other end of the call sounded like she mostly just wanted y/n to hurry and hang up. “What’s the name?” she interrupted. 

“Officer Martinez. Cute mustache and–”

“I know the one. Hang on.” The sound of a keyboard clicking filtered through the call. “Here’s his official work email. So no funny business, alright? Or we’ll trace it back to you.” 

Y/n typed the email address in as the woman gave it to her. “Oh thank you so much!” 

Before she even finished hanging up she was writing the email. 

Officer Martinez–

You came to Wayne Tower after I witnessed a murder, and I was just reaching out because you seem trustworthy. I know that one suspect got away and, honestly, I’m afraid. If you have any information you can give me it might help with my peace of mind. Another truth? Lieutenant Gordon intimidates me, so I definitely can’t ask him.

Anything you can give me would really help. 

Feel free to email me–I know giving out any more personal information would be unprofessional and I really respect what you do. I don’t want to get you in any trouble. 

Sincerely, 

Y/n 

She read through it and wondered if she was laying it on too thick. But she knew, the same way she knew this case was big, that Officer Martinez would be a willing source. Even if he didn’t know that that was what he was doing. 

–

Y/n spent the rest of the day in a deep research hole, her eyes aching by the time the sun set. She hadn’t seen Bruce or Alfred either time she’d left in search of food or caffeine. 

She was in the study again, feet bare against the chilly hardwood floors, staring at a spot that looked like faded…white paint? She frowned as she ate her sandwich one-handed. Since when had someone painted on the floors? She tried to make out what it said, but almost all of it was scrubbed away. Maybe it was leftover from the bombing investigation. There was a section of flooring and a window that were much newer than everything else. 

It was late again, nearly one in the morning. Time always passed quickly when she was deep into a story. Her back and eyes hurt, her wrists cramped, and her brain was mush. But she hadn’t thought about her grandmother all day, and the ache in her chest was a little better than it had been the day before.

She leaned against the nearest window. She wanted to go out, but she would be lying if she said she wasn’t still scared. 

She rested her forehead against the window as she finished the last bite of her late dinner. Something bright caught her eye.

The light signal. The one with the giant bat. 

She straightened. What had that article said? A way for the city to call the vigilante when in need? 

She stared at the light. It was cloudy, which made it almost easy to trace the path of the light down, down, down…

She could see the half-built tower in the distance. Wayne Tower had a perfect view of it, in fact. 

A thrill ran through her blood. 

Forget staying in–she needed to get to that light before it was turned off. 

She ran down the hallway, the sound of her footsteps reminding her of a million games of tag, half of which had ended with a sleepy Alfred scolding them for waking him. She slowed her steps automatically. She didn’t want to be caught now, either.  

She grabbed her shoes, jacket, phone, and pepper spray then ran back out again. 

The elevator ride felt like it would never end. She was afraid that she would step outside and the light would be gone. 

But no–when she stepped out to the chagrin of the security, whom she had to remind weren’t there to keep her prisoner–the light was still bright in the sky. 

She held a hand out for a taxi. Thankfully one was passing by. 

Maybe her luck was turning, she thought as she got in. Things had to go right after going wrong so often, right? Especially lately. That was one thing she believed in her life–things would always revert to the mean. A lot of bad meant a lot of good would come to even out the scales. Bruce had broken her heart…then she’d accepted an offer for her dream job in Bludhaven. 

“Where to?” the cabbie asked as he scrolled Instagram with one hand. 

“Um,” she said, smushing her face against the window and trying to estimate the distance. “Can you just take me like ten blocks straight that way?” She pointed.

The cabbie set his phone down and looked at her skeptically. “Whatever you say, lady.” 

The ride was quick, made quicker still by the lack of traffic. She paid and got out, eyes on the sky. The cabbie muttered about crazy rich people as the door shut. 

It was harder now that she was closer, but there was an entire city block nearby that seemed to be under construction. And there were two really tall buildings there, each still only half-finished. 

She jogged down the sidewalk. One hand clenched the pepper spray while the other held her keys between the fingers. It wouldn’t be enough if a murderer wanted to shoot her in the head, but it was all she had. Maybe it was stupid, coming out so late when she was probably the target of a mob hitman. But she couldn’t let it go. 

The block under construction was surrounded by a huge fence topped in barbed wire. The only way in, as far as she could see, was a gate that required a code for entry. She cursed under her breath, the words fogging in the chilly air. 

There was a roar from behind her. 

She whirled and ducked behind a trashcan in the same breath. Her heart stopped as the noise came again. 

Headlights pierced the air and a car sped straight up to the gate. 

Calling it a car was like calling a dinosaur a lizard. It had armor or something on it and an honest to god rocket on the back. It was less of a car and more of a tank. She could see the bones of it underneath, some type of semi-familiar sports car. Bruce would love a car like that, she thought. He loved adding ridiculous modifications to cars. 

She shoved away the thoughts of Bruce and quickly took out her phone to take a couple of pictures, just in case. She’d left her actual camera in her room and silently cursed herself for it. 

The gate slid open and the car sped through. The gates started to slide closed almost immediately. 

This was her chance. The signal light was still on for the moment and she doubted many other cars would drive into a construction zone at nearly two in the morning. 

She ran through the closing gates. 

They clanged shut behind her a second later. 

Okay, now what? she wondered, glancing around. One of the tallest towers was to the left, another one to the right. Now that she was almost directly below them, it was nearly impossible to tell where the light was coming from without circling the whole block. It looked like it was coming directly from the spot where she stood, but she knew it was only because it was coming from somewhere close. 

She chewed her lip and glanced around more carefully. And–there. That weird tank of a car was parked beneath the tower to the right. She heard soft clanking and then a caged elevator started to lift on the outside of the building. 

Bingo. 

She ran over, wishing she had more skills suited for being a secret agent. Her footsteps were anything but silent and her breath gasped through her teeth as she ran. She kept to the shadows as best she could, which was made easier by the lack of lights on the whole site. But if there was anyone else around, she wasn’t being that stealthy. 

She looked up. 

The light switched off right as the noises of the elevator faded. 

Double bingo. 

The elevator was descending, empty now. 

There was another car, too, half-hidden. 

An unmarked police car. 

She took a picture of that for good measure. She knew for sure now that she was on the right track.  

That fire was back within her. She was so close to finding out if her hunch had been correct. She was close to…well, something. She knew it. 

She went to the elevator and stepped inside. One button, and she was headed to the top. 

Her palms were sweating. The long ride up gave her time to think, which was bad. She had fucked up. She realized that now, but hitting the button to go back down did absolutely nothing. She really should have thought things through more. 

She had no idea what–or who–was at the top of the building. She had no idea if the Batman was actually a nice guy or not. He could very well take one look at her and toss her off the edge. Her mind spun with possibilities, including her death being ruled suicide, the trauma of the deaths of her family too much. 

Or what if the murderer who’d gotten away had lured Batman up there? Or what if they were in cahoots? What if that editor, Jansen, was in on it too? 

She really, really should have thought this through a bit more. 

The doors opened with a noise so loud she winced. 

When she looked up, she was face to face with a gun.

Next Chapter

taglist:

@ktficworld @grunge-n-roses5 @anon-cat-posts @projectdreamwalker @slovakshadow @warsaur @lachillona02 @crazyunsexycool @doetic @alexiris @that-girl-named-alex @harry-bowie-mercury @vaniasagitaa

[matan4il]

Most of the time, I don't bother talking about the hate and harassment I get, because I don't think haters deserve the attention. The person I'm gonna write about definitely doesn't deserve any, but they've started harassing others that I know of, not just me.

So this is basically a warning post for Jewish bloggers and bloggers who are allies to Jews, and a request for anyone who can, to report and block this person (if you want to warn other bloggers, then please consider a reblog, too). @staff, This is also for you, proof of a pattern of harassment and abuse. Please do something and protect your Jewish users and their allies.

They first commented here, denying the antisemitism of Hamas, with the url @grizzlyismyspiritanimal and they seem to change their url quite frequently. For now it's @fancowboy but expect that to change again. Since IDK if Tumblr will let the mention (@'ing their url) hyperlink to their blog, here's how you can check out what their current url is, so you can report and block them. Go to this post where they're tagged as @grizzlyismyspiritanimal and hover your mouse over their url, you'll see their blog pop up no matter what new url they changed to. Here's a screenshot of what that looks like:

Here's their first comment on my post, along with my reply. Tumblr arranges these comments with the oldest at the bottom, click to see the image better:

Of course they never provided a link sourcing their claim, instead they provided a link to an op ed, which was not written by anyone affiliated with Hamas. This link did not support their claim that "Hamas specifically stated," but that didn't stop them from ignoring the fact that they couldn't prove their claim. Next, they repeated an already refuted antisemitic conspiracy theory (and I linked them to a refuting source, which they just ignored), while using strawmen arguments (attacking statements I didn't make). Obviously, none of this addresses the point actually made in the post they were commenting on.

When I called them out on the antisemitism of their whole narrative, they pulled the "I can't be antisemitic, because I'm Jewish" line of defense, while also bragging in the same comment about not going the easy route by doing that:

I no longer believe people who say antisemitic things, and then use this defense, after several have been proven to have lied about being Jewish, but more importantly, and this is the point I made to @fancowboy, Jews are not immune to internalizing antisemitism, and repeating antisemitic narratives. But I was curious whether there was any sign of this person having any sense of a significant Jewish identity on their blog. When I went on there, one of the first posts I came acorss was an antisemitic one, claiming that Jews have stolen the Star of David from the Muslims... I know there are a lot of anti-Zionist Jews out there, and that many of them are very capable of saying antisemitic things, but I don't think even they would endorse this false claim.

What's ironic is that the post shares a screenshot from Wikipedia, which explicitly mentions that this Muslim kingdom that existed in the 13th century AD (roughly 700 years ago), adopted the six-pointed star, due to the Muslim belief that it was a symbol on the ring ("seal") of King Solomon, a Jewish king who lived about 3,000 years ago. In other words, this post literally points out that Muslims borrowed this symbol from Jews, not the other way around. And just for historical interest, the first archeological find of Jews using the Star of David is dated to the 6th century BC (around 2,600 years ago).

I pointed out to @grizzlyismyspiritanimal / @fancowboy that I no longer believe they're Jewish, because I don't believe any Jew would reblog this antisemitic lie. In response, not long after, this "I'm not a coward" and "you would've blocked me (aka fanatic)" person blocked me. Instead of addressing what I said, or taking responsibility for their wrongdoing, and deleting this antisemitic post. Our exchange started on Jan 5 IIRC, this post was reblogged by them on Jan 4, and as of Jan 25 it is still on their blog, as you can see here (post and current date highlighted in this screenshot):

A minute after they blocked me from the above blog, they commented on my pinned post with links to my fandom content from another blog, @verygardenerland and this comment made it clear that it was the same person. I made a mistake, I wanted my fandom space free from antisemitic harassment, so I deleted that comment, which means I don't have that piece of evidence that it's the same person, but I do have another bit of proof. Remember how this person claimed to be Jewish? This is how they presented it:

(again, using a strawmen, I never said all Muslims are terrorists, and never would, because it's simply not true, and if anyone made that claim to me, I would be correcting them)

Well, this is the VERY similar way @verygardenerland talked about their supposed Jewish identity, in a post they made solely to harass and DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender) me:

Jews were almost completely ethnically cleansed from Muslim majority countries, so the likelihood of a random online stranger being a Jew from a Muslim country is generally incredibly low to almost non-existent, and two who just so happen to both harass me on my blog one minute apart is probably less statistically likely than winning the lottery.

It's poetic irony that the one comment the above post got from another blogger, is someone else also calling this person out on the antisemitism of what they're saying:

Gotta love the bonus misogyny with "bitch."

I'm also going to offer you this following antisemitic comment (which distorts the Holocaust, and refers to Jews insultingly as "the chosen ones"), which I also don't believe any person with an actual Jewish identity would make:

And here's also one of the last comments this person made from @fancowboy before blocking me on that blog and continuing from @verygardenerland. Just notice how we have the same antisemitic abuse themes from both of these blogs:

Once more, extra touch of misogyny with "that much of a pussy."

(I have to address the white phosphorus claim. There are 2 ways of using it in battle, one legal, the other's not. Israel stated that when using it, that's only in the legal way. There is no record to show the contrary. People just exploit the fact it's used, to pretend it's automatically illegal. But I accept this is an antisemitic libel against the Jewish state, that sadly some Jews might repeat. The rest is what makes me think this person isn't Jewish)

@verygardenerland noticed I write fandom meta, and harassed me on these posts. Here's one example:

Then they searched related tag/s, and proceeded to harass me by calling me names in comments they left on random posts from other fandom members. These are posts that had nothing to do with me. One of the people on whose post they were calling me a Nazi is someone I have never even spoken to. The OP deleted the harassing comment, but this time I did get a screenshot before that, so here it is, as an example:

Now, on top of all of the above, @verygardenerland also started stalking my main blog at the same time they made their first comment from this url, as well as my two back up blogs. One's last post was on Mar 2022, the other's on Apr 2021, so it's completely pointless to follow them, other than as an intimidation tactic:

And they sent me anon hate. The thing is, they made it explicitly clear through what they said and the language they used, that it's them. They sent more than one message, but the one I'll attach here was obviously meant to freak me out the most, because it falsely starts out as a fandom ask, and then transitions into abusive language, as well as telling me there's more blogs they're stalking me from, basically making it clear that even if I block this url, I'll still not be safe from their stalking and abuse:

From a certain point on, I told them that whenever they make a comment to me, all I'll do is just remind them repeatedly that they're an antisemite, which is exactly what I've kept to. That's when I even bothered to respond. I postponed blocking their second blog, 'coz I wanted to put this post together first. Now I'm done with them.

To wrap this up, here are some final screenshots of their antisemitic abuse, how they obsessively comment on my posts, or posts that in their mind are related to me, and how they have started directly addressing random people who are commenting on my posts, telling them not to talk to "it," meaning they're also using de-humanizing language when referring to me, and of course once more employing the DARVO tactic by accusing me of that which they're guilty of:

My activity feed yesterday:

And not just yesterday. Love the bonus hateful language towards those who are disabled...

And this is just one of their comments on a post simply mourning the death of Israeli soldiers, and putting it in the context of multi-generational Jewish trauma:

To summarize again, please:

report and block this person

reblog this post if you feel comfortable to, in order to warn others

@staff please do something to stop the abuse. Thank you in advance!

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Don't know about divorce watch, but it does seem like their Diana arc is right on track. Those horribly awkward joint engagents that Charles and Diana did in the 80s, where they could barely contain their disdain for eachother... Uff! The latest CBS interview seems to be pretty much thesame thing. And for a change, I think this is genuinely the same.thimh, not just Diana cosplay.

There were a few years of this for Diana and Charles till it all came to a head. So if say another couple of years of this weird, awkward, barely contained resetment for them. The question is during the divorce who gets to do the Diana cosplay? Harry being her son, is the obvious conteder, and God knows, he has legit grounds to play the victim here. But Meghan, being Meghan, would probably put amber heardto shame.

That being said, do you think there is any credence to the billionaire boyfriend rumours? I just don't see her losing focus by getting a boytoy. Plus she looks too miserable and angry to be getting it on onthe side. If she was having an affair, she would have been able to put a better act with Harry. Her relationship with Cory was very rocky for nearly a year but she looked her best and acted so happy.

I think we need a tour with incredibly awkward, very visible "we're separated and not getting along" body language, like Charles and Diana in Korea. Don't get me wrong - the Sussexes' tours and foreign trips are cringe, but they're not cringe in a "divorce watch" kind of way. Not yet. Colombia could be it, though.

Whoever gets the Diana cosplay for the divorce (aka the victim edit) will be whoever files the paperwork and gets their story out first. But the caveat to that is also "whoever controls the narrative." For exactly the reason you mention - Amber Heard.

Amber intended to "win" the divorce with the victim edit and, for awhille, she was actually successful at it. Her mistake was the Washington Post editorial, which gave Johnny's team the opportunity to poke holes in a very public, very televised, very controlled way that eventually collapsed her narrative.

And this is 100% Meghan's blind spot. She loves editorializing how awful everything is, in interviews, op-eds, and books as an anonymous source. It's all but guaranteed that she will one day write something - or have something published that's attributed to her - that will give Harry's team something to use in a point-by-point rebuttal that turns her from victim to villain.

(I'm not worried about Harry having something in writing because, well, he doesn't write to begin with.)

Yes, her relationship with Cory was rocky but it looked much more stable than her marriage to Harry - and that's the power of illusion. I made a Wizard of Oz reference in an earlier post: "Pay no attention to the real lady behind the curtain, just worship the illusion that appears in front of you." That's applicable here too. With Cory, because that relationship was shown in public through Meghan's photographs and Meghan's stories on Meghan's blog, she controlled the illusion we saw; that they were stable and happy.

But with Harry, the curtain has been pulled back and we see the real relationship, warts and all. Their marriage is being shown in public through everyone else's photographs, everyone else's video footage, and everyone else's stories on everyone else's platform. Meghan can't control the illusion we see, so we see everything happening behind the curtain. That's why her platform includes censorship - so she can control what we see of her. That's why her tools include Sussex Squad and Christopher Bouzi - so she can control who says what, and what we say, of her.

As for the billionnaire rumors, I think it's just gossip. We know that she'll only leave Harry for something better, and the only thing that's better than him (according to her narcissm) is someone with a buttload of money who can finance her goals, aka billionnaires. But Meghan talks too much about money and private business for that to be attractive to billionnaires. Billionnaires don't talk publicly about money or their private business. Just look at Bezos and Lauren Sanchez - for as much as we see them in PR and as much as Lauren flaunts the relationship, she actually keeps her mouth shut about Bezos's money and his business. Meghan could never.

My feeling has always been that if there's a divorce, Meghan's next partner will be someone in tech. Tech is the only "industry" left that she hasn't tried (Trevor was acting, Cory was lifestyle and foodie, Harry was charity, society, and business. All that's left is tech and politics). Especially since in today's world, tech is the framework for almost everything. You want to get into content? You need tech. You want to be in media? You need tech. You want to be in politics? You need tech (big Tech is a huge donor and lobbyist in politics). You want to be in charity work? You need tech. You want money? It's all in tech.

Plus, there are dozens of centimillionnaires in/around tech than there are billionnaires in the world. It'll be so much easier for Meghan to meet, and get into a relationship with, one of those guys than it would be for her to get into the same room as a billionnaire.

(Just for the disclosure, since I am Rumor Tracking Anon, there's an astrologist who's seen Meghan marry a Middle Eastern billionnaire after leaving Harry. So it's not totally out of the question. I think it's implausible given everything, but never say never.)