#deliberately siding w him and defending him in public and making sure he knows hes worth it

[llycaons]

I can and have xed out of fics that make lwj speak too much. in fact I just did. stop giving that man paragraphs!!

[omegaqueencas]

Take a Cue - Billiards Vingettes

1- John started teaching Dean to play pool as soon as he was tall enough to reach the felt, and Sam had early memories of sitting on the edge of the table in grimy bars, watching his father guide Dean’s hands on the cue, just like he guided them on a gun doing target practice. 

Once, Sam got his fingers crushed against the edge of the felt by the ball because he’d forgotten John’s admonition to be careful. Dean didn’t want to play for a while after that, until Dad snapped, “He’s gonna get hurt worse than that some day, do you want to be able to take care of him or not? Pool’s a good way to make money, in a pinch.” 

After that they played again, and Dean had a hard-eyed intensity that Sam was slowly becoming familiar with as his brother grew older. 

2- Sam’s earliest role in hustling pool was as the teary-eyed distraction. If Dad’s mark was making trouble about handing over the money, it was Sam’s job to come over sniffling and wide-eyed, asking if they were angry with his Daddy. Dean would stand protectively behind him, ready to drag him out of harm’s way in case it didn’t work. It always worked. 

3- Later, it was Dean who taught Sam to play. Night after night, whenever there was a diner or a bar with a pool table, they’d take down the cues and rack the balls. At first Sam just practiced hitting any ball into any pocket, and then, as he gradually improved, they played every variation of billiards on the books, and a few that he was pretty sure Dean made up. 

“You scratched the cue ball! You have to pick truth or dare.” 

“That’s not a real rule, Dean.” 

“How do you know? And don’t chalk the cue between every turn, it makes you look like an amateur.” 

Sam raised his eyebrows. “Isn’t looking like an amateur the point?” 

“Yeah but only when you want to. Pool is a dying art and w e have to be defenders of her honor. Come on, truth or dare Sammy?” 

“Don’t call me Sammy. Fine, truth.” 

“Were you jerking off last week, after you walked in on me and Carla Benetti?” 

“Ugh, you’re such a freak, Dean!” 

Dean waggled his eyebrows. “Answer the question, you can’t welch on truth or dare.” 

“Time to go, boys,” their dad called, and they had to put the cues away. 

Twenty miles down the highway, both curled to sleep in the back seat with streetlights flickering in magic-lantern shadows on the inside of the car, Sam leaned his head against Dean’s shoulder and whispered, “Yes.” 

“Huh?” Dean said, already thick with sleep. Dean could fall asleep anywhere, at any time. 

“I said yes,” Sam repeat, low enough to not be overheard by John beneath the roar of the engine and the rush of the road. “I was jerking off. After I walked in on you.” 

“Oh.” Dean breathed out, a little shakily, and his hand found Sam’s skinny knee, squeezing. 

The dark made Sam brave. He reached down and closed his own fingers around Dean’s, holding them in place. They fell asleep like that. 

4-John watched his boys circling the pool table. Sometime in the last six months, Sam had started to grow and didn’t look like he was stopping, and it was throwing off his game. It would take practice to get accustomed to his new reach and strength, and although it would eventually be an asset, it was clearly aggravating Sam now, as Dean beat him up and down, game after game. 

John was at the bar, waiting for a contact who was supposed to meet him. Despite spending most of their lives in a car or assorted motel rooms together, he didn’t often get a chance to just watch his boys together. Not without haranguing them to finish their drills, or do the dishes, or stop their damn fool arguing. Tonight he had nothing better to do, until his contact showed. 

Dean was teasing his brother, ragging on him, the kind of patter he never got to use on marks, not when he needed to keep them calm. Sam was not staying calm, going red-faced and pout-lipped, bangs in his eyes. It was affecting his playing. Steady breaths, John could have told him; just like aiming a gun - shoot on the exhale. But Sam was getting to that age where you couldn’t tell him anything, lanky and stubborn. 

As Sam leaned over to take a shot, Dean passed close behind him and ruffled his hair. Sam missed the shot badly, and straightened up, scowling. “Dean!” John heard, over the noise of the bar. Dean grinned, unrepentant. 

Beside John, someone cleared his throat, and John turned to shake hands with the tall, grizzled ex-hunter he’d been waiting for. At some point during the conversation, he lost track of the boys and when he glanced over, they were both gone, pool game abandoned with balls scattered across the table. 

Just as John’s heart jumped with adrenaline, wondering if something or someone could have snatched them right here under his nose, he spotted both of them coming back from the bathrooms. Sam was still red-faced, and Dean still looked smug. They didn’t finish the game. 

5- There was a stretch of time where they were too old to be shepherded into a bar innocently by their father, and too young to convincingly pass off fake IDs. They kept their skills up at billiards tables in all-ages restaurants and permissive dives all across the country, places that would turn a blind eye to a pair of teenagers playing pool as long as they didn’t drink. It was easy to hustle in places like that. Everyone underestimated a kid. 

Sometimes people looked at Dean’s mouth or Sam’s beanpole legs and thought they could hustle something else. Dean always sent them away firmly as long as Sam was in earshot. Occasionally, if money was really tight, he’d slip out after putting Sam to bed, come back near closing time, and make a little more on the side. 

6- Watching Sam’s ass as he bent over a pool table was Dean’s favorite kind of public masochism. His bubble butt was the one place he’d never lost his baby-boy softness, although Dean knew from touching it a thousand times that the plump roundness was all muscle when Sam flexed. 

Sam’s Levi’s strained over the generous curve and Dean knew he wasn’t the only one watching. It made him hot with jealousy and pride to have other people’s eyes hungry on Sam as they played. His arms flexed in his t-shirt as he lined up his next shot. It was a view good enough to sweeten the sting of the money marks lost.

Sam didn’t love the buzz of hustling like Dean did. During his teen years, Sam got more and more bitchy about how weird it was to count hustling pool as domestic budgeting, and he started the same tune right back up after Dean came to get him at Stanford. But he loved the game; had always loved mathematics and precision of it, the way Dean loved the art and music of the clacking balls. 

It never took much to cajole him into a game or two. Sometimes Sam even won, and always the competition, the posturing, the subtle exhibitionism left them both wound up and desperate to get off. 

Someday he was going to fuck Sam over a pool table. The opportunity just hadn’t presented itself yet. They sucked each other off in the car instead, taking the edge off enough to make it back to the motel. 

7- Sam could beat Dean sometimes, and Dean occasionally lost to an unlucky mistake with a stranger, but the first time Sam saw Dean get his ass whupped at pool by a girl was at the Roadhouse. Dean was excellent, professional caliber, but Jo had grown up in a bar with a pool table, spent every day of her life there. And Dean had underestimated her the first time. It was stupid of him, Sam reflected, when Dean himself had so often taken advantage of his blond good looks to lower a mark’s expectations. 

Jo won the second game on skill alone, Dean playing hard and focused against her. He won the third, though. She looked a little breathless, a little bright-eyed and turned on afterward. Sam could sympathize. Win or lose, playing Dean at pool was always a semi-sexual experience. That was part of what made him such a good hustler. The game was as much about domination of this cocky, beautiful, attention-seeking young man as it was about the billiards. It drew people in helplessly, like Jo. Like Sam. 

8- There was something unknowable about the Winchester brothers from the moment they first set foot in the Roadhouse - a mystery that went beyond Ellen’s strong reaction. Dean was mouthy and charming, Sam withdrawn and polite, but both of them were in some undefinable way, untouchable. Like everyone else in the world was slightly unreal, and only the Winchester brothers really existed for one another. It was at the pool table that she finally figured them out. 

Waking up in the middle of the night and padding down the hall to the bathroom Jo heard noises from the bar downstairs. Sometimes her mom would take weird meetings with hunters at odd hours, and Jo was always curious, so she crept to the top of the stairs where she could watch without being seen in the shadows. 

It was Sam and Dean, playing pool. The hard clacking sounds she’d heard weren’t beer glasses but balls. She understood insomnia. There were nights when she couldn’t sleep that she’d spent hours at that table, trying to lose herself and her grief in the patterns of the balls on the felt. 

They circled the table like a pair of graceful animals, not speaking at all, and watched each other with intense eyes. That was what caught her attention, held her in place wrapt instead of going back to her warm bed. She’d played Dean earlier that evening, beat his chauvinist ass twice, and she’d seen how he watched her as he played - first casually, then measuringly, and finally triumphantly. But he had never looked at her like he’d seen her, like she was real in his world, like he was looking at Sam now. 

He watched his brother like Sam was a work of art, a piece a theatre. Appreciative, ecstatic. And Sam was looking back, almost predatory. She’d written him off as the soft, hurt college boy to Dean’s brash edges, but there was nothing soft about the way he was looking at his brother. Dean leaned over the table, deliberately slow, and Sam’s eyes were hungry. 

The unnamed suspicion growing in Jo’s gut clicked into focus when Dean put a hand on Sam’s back, dragging it down to the curve of his ass. Sam didn’t flinch, as if they did this all the time, just took his shot and sank the ball. Then he stood and grinned at Dean, wolfish. 

When Sam pushed Dean back against the edge of the table, pressed up between his spread thighs, Jo slipped away. She didn’t actually want to see them kiss or fuck or whatever they were about to do. God knew hunting made you crazy and destroyed innocence fast. Jo wanted to keep a tiny piece of her sanity for herself, in blissful, plausible denial about the mystery of the Winchester brothers.

 HAPPY WINCESTMAS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR! xoxo Anon 

[theartofdreaming1]

The Taste of Something Stolen, Part 1: Beginning

Pairing: Batcat

Rating: T

Summary: Some people steal kisses. Selina Kyle is a thief by profession, she doesn’t have time for this touchy-feely stuff - if anything, she kisses in order to steal. However, whenever Bruce Wayne gets involved, her current theft usually ends up being a little bit of both.

A short series of loosely connected one-shots :)

It was Friday noon and seventeen-year-old Selina Kyle was observing the coming and goings of the Diamond District, Gotham’s financial district, her green eyes scanning the crowd for a target. So what if she was swiping some business shark’s wallets? They had their more than lucrative jobs to go to every day of their mundane lives - Selina, on the other hand, was going to be put out on the streets as soon as she was turning eighteen (not that the orphanage was a place she was gonna miss, but career opportunities were few and far between for an orphaned troublemaker from the East End - she was just making sure she had a financial cushion to fall back on when ‘Day X’ arrived.)

She had worked out a true and tested procedural method: with her backpack half open, she’d “accidentally” bump into her target (normally some boring middle-aged white man, as most of these suits were), the contents of her backpack would be sent flying across the ground, causing enough of a distraction for Selina to pick the (by now full on swearing) man’s pocket - by the time her target had finished cursing her out, Selina had safely stowed away Angry White Man’s money in her own pocket.

It wasn’t exactly the most fun method, but the satisfaction of a job well done as well as the fruits of her labor made it worth it.

This had been going on quite successfully for a couple of weeks now; so successful in fact, that Selina was getting a little bored if she was being honest with herself. Which is why Selina had decided to switch it up a little today.

Her newest mark was just now exiting Wayne Enterprises, wearing a simple, but very expensive-looking black coat and a brooding expression on his face. He appeared to be around Selina’s age and was already parading around the biggest companies in Gotham (the Rolex on his arm made it more than clear that he was not just some low-paid intern at WE) - the stark contrast between her own situation and Mr. Silver Spoon just affirmed Selina in her choice of a target: In a way, she was just leveling the playing field, if you really thought about it… She was simply… redistributing all that wealth a little among their age group...

As an added bonus, he was actually pretty handsome, something that would make the execution of her exit strategy, should she have to fall back on it, a little more bearable...

After making sure that everything was ready for her little maneuver, Selina shouldered her backpack determinedly and headed for the rich kid; apparently deep in thought, he didn’t seem aware of Selina gravitating closer and closer to him until - WHACK - they collided. Slightly stumbling backwards due to the force of their impact, Selina felt a strong, protective hand gripping her elbow - rich boy was actually making sure she wouldn’t fall (a nice, if superfluous gesture, Selina registered.) The stacks of loose papers and pens Selina had stuffed into her backpack practically exploded all over the ground. Rich boy took a closer look at her although not to see who he was going to yell at, as Selina expected him to, but to determine if she was okay. She must have looked alright to him, as he quickly withdrew his hand from her elbow, shot her a apologetic look and then went on to kneel down to gather her belongings...

Selina quickly dropped to her knees as well, grabbing for the useless notes and pencils scattered everywhere, making sure to keep up appearances.

Rich boy handed her a stack of papers, an apologetic look on his face.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t looking where I was going - did you just steal my wallet right now?”

The befuddled look on his face would have been amusing to Selina if this didn’t mean that she had been caught red-handed.

Before she could make a run for it, rich boy’s hand wrapped itself around her wrist - his grip this time a lot firmer than before.

“Give it back,” rich boy said - no, ordered; it wasn’t that Selina was surprised to find out that rich boy knew how to boss people around, but the authoritative tone in his voice, coupled with that steely look in his gray-blue eyes… it was a little unsettling.

But not enough to have Selina lose her composure; with a nonchalant shrug, she handed over rich boy’s wallet - it was then that she noticed the letters B and W that were engraved in the fine leather and something heavy settled in her chest.

And yet, that still didn’t keep her from getting her claws out instead of keeping her mouth shut:

“It’s not like you can’t afford it.”

Rich boy countered her provocative glare with an intensity she hadn’t been prepared for - it started off as a stern warning, but then turned into something more calculating, scrutinizing; she could feel his blue eyes scan every inch of her, taking note of her threadbare jacket and scuffed shoes.

As suddenly as it had come about, their staring contest ended.

“You’re right,” rich boy agreed calmly, opening his wallet to take out the bills inside - from what Selina could see, she would have assumed them to amount to about $500.

“I’d rather keep my wallet though - it’s a birthday gift,” rich boy told Selina sedately before holding the cash out, for her to take.

Selina just gave him a bewildered look. He was certainly the weirdest person she’d ever met. And his offer may be tempting, but she still had her pride:

“I don’t accept handouts,” she said simply, crossing her arms demonstratively.

Now it was rich boy’s turn to be perplexed.

“You would have just snagged it if I hadn’t noticed in time - but when I give it to you freely, you won’t take it?”

“I’m not just some charity case you can throw your money at, just so that you can feel like the great benefactor,” Selina replied disdainfully, “I’m not interested in money I haven’t earned.”

Rich boy seemed to consider her response earnestly. After a short moment of contemplation, he finally put his money back into his wallet and slipped it back into his coat pocket.

“Fair enough.”

Selina arched an eyebrow. She really couldn’t figure this guy out.

He gave her a shrug, “Well, don’t let me keep you from work.”

His sorry attempt at humor couldn’t conceal the disapproval embedded in his words.

Selina knew that there was no reason at all why she should care about some entitled rich kid’s opinion of her, but something about this guy just rubbed her the wrong way:

“Listen, Mr. High-And-Mighty: what I do is not so different from what all of these -” she gestured at the financial sharks roaming the plaza - “are doing here; at least I steal from the ones that can afford it.”

Rich boy put up his hands in a defensive gesture.

“I didn’t mean to be condescending and I’m not denying that you have a point about unethical business practices being a profound issue, especially in this city…”

He paused for a moment, then, an amused expression made its way unto his face:

“I guess I just don’t know what you say to a pickpocket when they decide to get back to “work”; - Break a leg?”

Selina raised an eyebrow again.

“Does this look like a theater performance to you?”

Rich boy only shrugged, a hint of a smile on his lips, before giving it another try: “Good luck?”

Now Selina was truly offended.

“I don’t need luck; I’m very good at what I do.”

He stared at her, quirking an eyebrow.

“You just got caught in the act,“ he pointed out incredulously.

Selina shrugged it off: “An outlier; doesn’t count.”

This time, a full-on smile played on his lips, “Oh, that’s how it is?”

Selina couldn’t help the pouty tone seep into her voice as she defended herself:

“People don’t just offer to help someone that ran into them! Your stupid niceness ruined my plan.”

“What was I supposed to be doing?” rich boy asked, his tone of voice indicating that he was both amused and curious.

Selina couldn’t believe that anyone could be that clueless, but she still decided to spell it out for him: “Yell at me that I should look where I’m going - add in a couple of insults and you are golden.”

“Even if I was the one who didn’t pay attention?”

Selina rolled her eyes.

“Of course.”

“Huh. I’ll keep that in mind for future reference, so as not to ruin your plan the next time around.”

Selina cocked her head to the side, the ghost of a grin on her face, “You really think I’m bold enough to attempt stealing from you again?”

Rich boy shrugged slightly, “You strike me as a very dauntless person,” he said quite matter-of-factly.

Selina smirked, taking a deliberate step forward, invading his personal space, “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

Rich boy appeared to be taken aback by her action, but he didn’t move away.

“It’s just an observation,” he said with a shrug, his voice wavering just the tiniest bit; but Selina knew that she was getting under his skin.

She tapped her chin in pretend thoughtfulness, her eyes glinting playfully.

“Hmh, there is an error in your reasoning, though.”

Rich boy knitted his brows, “What erro-”

But before he could finish his question, Selina cut him off by drawing him in for a kiss. She must have startled him for good, because it took rich boy a few seconds until hes started to respond to her lips.

Before he got too comfortable, Selina broke off the kiss, a wicked grin now adorning her face.

“You assumed I’d use the same trick twice.”

“Wha-”

His eyes flew to his coat pocket his hand fumbling for the fanciful engraved wallet. When rich boy finally managed to pry it out, a puzzled look appeared on his face.

“I still have my -”

When he looked up, Selina had already disappeared into the crowd.

“...wallet.”

His eyes scanned the plaza, searching for that mysterious, brazen girl who had just tried stealing from, and had ended up kissing him right here in public - but he couldn’t find her anywhere. With a curious feeling, he opened his wallet - to find that all the bills had been taken out.

Bruce couldn’t help the amused smile growing on his face, as he pocketed the wallet Alfred had given him for his eighteenth birthday.

“Hmh. Bold indeed.”

To be continued... here.

[rapeculturerealities]

The site where former Stanford student Brock Turner sexually assaulted a young woman known as Emily Doe in 2015 is a mulch-covered slope next to a basketball court, dotted by a few trees. It is still there, largely unchanged, though the area it abuts, where there used to be dumpsters enclosed by a wooden fence, has since been turned into a small commemorative park.

I was there on a beautiful spring day in March; a water feature now trickles next to two benches surrounded by landscaped vegetation and a low stone wall. A plaque bearing Doe’s words was to be installed there, too, an attempt at a sort of commemoration that did not materialize after the university and the victim could not agree on what it would say. If you didn’t know about Turner’s crimes, you might sit here and listen to the quiet fountain in the sunshine, looking out across the basketball court at Lake Lagunita, the mostly dry drainage basin around which members of the campus bike and jog, without knowing why this little park exists.

“I think when people hear ‘campus rape,’ some people, they have a mental picture that’s probably wrong, but it’s really wrong in this case,” Michele Dauber, a Stanford law professor and sociologist, said to me, as we walked over from the spot on the slope to a path on the other side of the basketball court, along the lake. From there, we looked back toward the crime scene from the approximate vantage point of the two Swedish graduate students who were biking in the area when, according to one of them, Carl-Fredrik Arndt, they saw the then-19-year-old Turner “thrusting,” over what appeared to be a motionless body. It was a disturbing enough sight that they ran over to Turner, who they say bolted, leaving his victim, still unconscious, lying in dirt and pine needles, naked from the waist down, save for her boots. “Whatever comes into your mind when you hear campus rape, this is not it,” Dauber continued. “This is the stranger-danger-in-the-bushes scenario that your mother warned you about.”

The assault occurred at around 1:00 a.m. on a January night in 2015, near a Kappa Alpha fraternity party that Turner and the victim had both attended; there were few lights in the area. (More have been added since.) According to the incident report, it was there on the ground that the then-22-year-old Doe’s dress was lifted up, her underwear removed, and her bra exposed. Police suspected that Turner had photographed her breast (evidenced, the prosecution said in its sentencing document, by a message he received in an app called GroupMe saying, “Whos [sic] tit is that”), and she was digitally penetrated, according to a police interview with Turner. Doe woke up in the hospital around 4:00 a.m. She had no memory of the assault, nor of the several hours preceding it, as recorded in the police report. Though Turner, at one point, while questioned by police, said that he couldn’t remember how he and Doe ended up on the ground, a year later he testified that Doe had uttered yes or sure three times, affirmatively consenting to various aspects of their encounter.

After two days of jury deliberations, in March of 2016, Turner was convicted of three felonies, including assault with intent to commit rape. He faced a maximum of 14 years in state prison; the prosecution asked for six.

If those convictions indicated a cut-and-dry version of the night’s events, the sentencing two months later blurred it: On June 2, 2016, Judge Aaron Persky sent Turner to county jail for only six months—of which he served just three—and gave him three years probation, citing the “severe impact” prison would have on the once heavily recruited athlete (who, the probation report also said, had already “surrendered a hard-earned swimming scholarship”). Turner was also required to register as a sex offender. Persky, himself a Stanford alum (and a former captain of the club lacrosse team), said that Turner had expressed remorse, and that “up to this point, he complied with social and legal norms sort of above and beyond what normal law-abiding people do.” That leniency inspired Doe to publicly release the victim’s impact statement she had read in court, a document detailing more than a year of her struggles with physical, psychological, and emotional trauma incurred by the assault and trial. It, and the outrage that it provoked, subsequently went viral.

It also inspired Dauber—a tenured law professor at Stanford, a family friend of Doe’s, and an outspoken critic of Stanford’s sexual assault disciplinary process—and a group of like-minded supporters to come together over one shared goal: to recall Judge Persky.

On June 5, Santa Clara County voters will have the chance to do just that, and to choose between two other candidates who are running to replace him: Cindy Hendrickson, currently an assistant district attorney, and Angela Storey, a civil attorney. This is an enormously rare occurrence: A recall is allowed under the California Constitution for elected officials (superior court judges serve six-year terms), but the movement against Persky marks the first judicial recall, in any state, to make it on a ballot in 36 years. (The last successful judicial recall in California was in 1932.)

For Dauber and the other volunteers who have spearheaded the effort, a vote for or against recall is a vote for or against the way that American society has normalized sexual violence against women, which is to say it’s a vote against rape culture itself. Critics of Persky’s sentencing say that he clearly identified with Turner as a white man (in a state where, as of 2014, the ratio of black to white prison inmates was 8.8 to 1), and as a former Stanford athlete, in determining whether or not to send Turner to prison and for how long. Persky gave Turner less than a tenth of the time desired by the prosecution, but it’s worth noting that Persky also sentenced Turner within the bounds of the probation report, which suggested “a moderate county jail sentence”; recall supporters believe that report was also biased toward Turner, and that the judge should have made a better final call. Both Persky and the probation officer cited Turner’s remorse as a reason to sentence him less harshly, despite a sentencing memo submitted by the prosecution that claimed Turner had misrepresented his own innocence and lied about being exposed to drugs and alcohol for the first time at Stanford. This was central to the remorse he expressed: In a letter to Persky, Turner said that he regretted the “party culture and risk taking behavior that I briefly experienced in my four months at school.”

“[Persky] saw a young man with a bright future,” said Dauber. “He didn’t see what was before him. He saw, instead, an image that was untrue and refracted through the lens of bias and privilege.” This sentiment, that Persky’s empathy lay more with Turner than with Doe, was also expressed by critics after a statement Turner’s father made in court w​as made public: he characterized the assault as “20 minutes of action,” and any time in prison as “a steep price to pay” for it.

The recall campaign has unearthed additional cases in which Persky, they say, also adjudicated leniently for defendants of similar social status—cases where the accused are all male, largely white, and/or connected to a university or to Silicon Valley, though a report by the California Commission on Judicial Performance, which the recall campaign dismisses as “one-sided,” concluded that there was insufficient proof of Persky’s judicial misconduct, including accusations of bias. And it has sparked a contentious battle not only between recall proponents and defenders of Persky, but also with members of the legal community, who worry that a recall threatens judicial independence, no matter whether the sentencing was fair or not; and with public defenders, who say that black and brown defendants will suffer the most from a rash of harsher sentencing, if judges start to fear they will be recalled for the opposite.

Yet the recall has vaulted over every hurdle it has faced so far, including gathering more than 90,000 signatures (far more than what was required to get the measure on the ballot) and seeing Persky’s attempt to block the election by citing a procedural error rejected by an appellate court. Its organizers are a cadre of mostly women volunteers, some of whom are sexual assault survivors themselves, who were outraged on behalf of Emily Doe in 2016, watched Donald Trump win the presidential election a few months later, and have since seen the #MeToo movement blaze through the halls of power elsewhere in America. They are now seeking a reckoning on their home turf, taking on two behemoth institutions: Stanford University and the law.

read more

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

Hers to Tame by Rhenna Morgan

NOLA Knights #2

Smiling as I think about this book. Kir was a hunk of a guy and his care and tenderness with Cassie, the woman that was to be “his” was heart warming. Cassie was an intelligent reporter who met Kir months before but stayed away when she heard rumors he was Russian Mafiya. The connection was too strong to keep them apart forever, though. I love this author’s books and loved this one, too!

What I liked:

* Cassie: focused on her work, a capable reporter but really wished she could be a photographer instead.

* Kir: my oh my...what a guy! Dapper dresser, lethal but loving. He is a man you would want at your side through thick and thin.

* The “family” - such a loving group and there for one another

* Frieda: a better mother figure to Cassie than her own mother

* Getting to see the group from the Haven series

* The writing, story and series – love these books!

* Knowing that Bonnie’s story is next and looking forward to reading it soon

What I didn’t like:

* The baddie – deserved to be caught and punished

* Knowing that I will have to wait till the next book is finished

Did I like this book? Definitely

Would I read more of this series? Without a doubt

Thank you to NetGalley and Harlequin-Carina Press for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

BLURB

As an avtoritet for the most powerful crime syndicate in New Orleans, Kir Vasilek doesn’t act without purpose, doesn’t speak without thought and never, ever loses his cool. The lives of his brothers, his family, depend on it. But then Cassie McClintock strolls back into his life, and staying cool is next to impossible. Cassie was the one who got away—and Kir is willing to break all his own rules to keep it from happening ever again.

It’s one thing to report on the Russian mafia; it’s quite another to sleep with one of them, especially one as dangerous, and as sinfully sexy, as Kir Vasilek. Even though the information he once provided helped make her career—and the memory of his touch still keeps her up at night—Cassie knows too much about his world to go down that path.

But when Kir reaches out for help after a rival family comes for one of his own, Cassie doesn’t want to say no, either to investigating a gruesome murder or to the heat that pulls her right back into his arms…and his heart. Taming Kir—and helping to save the family she’s come to call her own—is not the story she thought she’d write, but it’s the one she’s determined will get a happy ending.

Hers to Tame is the highly anticipated follow-up to His to Defend. And don’t miss Roman’s story in Mine to Keep, coming soon from Rhenna Morgan and Carina Press.

Buy Links

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1335962646

B&N: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hers-to-tame-rhenna-morgan/1133500058

iTunes: https://books.apple.com/us/book/hers-to-tame/id1479851710

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/hers-to-tame

Google: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Rhenna_Morgan_Hers_to_Tame?id=-yGvDwAAQBAJ

T itle: Hers to Tame

Author: Rhenna Morgan

Series: NOLA Knights, #2

Length: approx. 85,000 words

Genre: Contemporary Romance

Imprint: Carina Press

eBook On-Sale: March 16, 2020

eBook ISBN & Price: 9781488054167, $3.99 USD

MMP On-Sale: March 31, 2020

MMP ISBN & Price: 9781335962645, $8.99 USD

Book Description: Book two of NOLA Knights, the heart-stoppingly sexy spin-off series by Men of Haven author Rhenna Morgan

EXCERPT

“Please take this in the spirit it’s intended, but you work for a man who’s suspected of leading a growing crime family. I don’t think me telling you where I live is a good idea.”

“1023 South Franklin Avenue.”

Cassie stopped so hard she wobbled slightly in her heels. “How did you… I mean, I only just moved in there.”

His smile softened and his words were offered with gentle deliberateness. “I’m a very thorough man, Cassie. You can’t possibly think I wouldn’t learn everything I could about a person before I shared important information with them.”

Very thorough.

Frighteningly so.

She shook the foreboding off and resumed her trek to the station, albeit on slightly less stable legs. “All the more reason for us to meet someplace public.”

“All right. Then I’ll pick you up and take you somewhere.”

“Not necessary.” She checked both ways on the street and hurried across. “Just tell me where you want to talk, and I’ll meet you there.”

“I’m afraid my retrieving you and escorting you is nonnegotiable.”

She frowned at him, but kept going. “You’ve got a lot of points you won’t negotiate. Tell me why this one’s one of them.”

“Because while I’m very much interested in hearing what you have to share, I’m not interested in anyone else hearing. The best way to ensure our privacy is to make sure no one else knows where we’re going—including you.”

She stopped just six feet from the station’s front door. “You don’t trust me?”

“Should I?”

Hmm. He did kind of have a point. And given how she’d stiffed him after their second date, he still might be wondering if she’d simply used him. “Fine. Pick me up at my place tomorrow at eight. But don’t pick any place fancy. A coffee shop, or someplace simple. And not Starbucks either. It’s criminal what they charge for coffee.”

His mouth twitched as if it were all he could do to keep a wisecrack trapped behind his lips. “You seem determined to expose me to establishments with limited standards.” He nodded, the picture of gentility and confidence. “I’ll endeavor to pick a location that suits your expectations.” He held out his hand, palm up. “Until tomorrow, then.”

He had great hands. Not too smooth like someone trapped in an office, but a man’s hands. Slightly calloused, with long fingers and blunt fingertips. Of all the things she’d replayed from their time together, his touch had been the most frequent. Which was exactly why she’d be smart to avoid any and all physical contact with him going forward.

Glutton for punishment and well-mannered Texas girl that she was, she slipped her palm against his.

Oh, yeah.

Still amazing.

Electric and warm. Supercharged and bristling with promise.

And that was just her hand.

“Thank you again for the dinner. It wasn’t necessary, but I appreciate it all the same.” Hating the breathiness in her voice, she tried to release her hand.

Kir held it tight, the pad of his thumb subtly moving over the tender spot between her thumb and her forefinger. As if he were remembering other, more in­timate places he’d touched her. “I assure you. The pleasure was all mine.”

He gently released her, turned without the least amount of hesitation, and strolled toward the parking lot like he didn’t have a care in the world.

Watching him was something to relish. An indulgence she didn’t even realize she’d taken until he

stepped off the sidewalk and turned to open the door to his car.

Great. And now he’s busted you ogling him.

She swung one of the double glass doors open and strode into the arctic reception area.

“Girl, that dude was hot,” Bonnie said before Cassie’s eyes could adjust from the blinding sunshine outside. “He your boyfriend?”

“Oh, no.” She set the paper bag on the counter and shook her head. “Just a contact that helped me out on a few stories a while back.”

And ruined me for other men, but why quibble over details?

Bonnie took the bag and opened it, but the look on her face and her answering chuckle said she didn’t buy a word Cassie’d said. “Uh-huh. Looked to me like he was plotting how to peel you out of your professional getup.”

Yeah, it’d felt like that, too. But she wasn’t going to think about that now. Or ever, if she could help it. “Nope. Just talking business.” She waved toward the bag and headed back toward the newsroom.

“Good business, or bad business?”

Cassie swung the door to the hallway open and cast Bonnie one last look. “I haven’t decided yet. Could have been the lottery, or the biggest wrong turn of my life.”

Copyright © 2020 by Rhenna Morgan

AUTHOR BIO

A native Oklahoman, Rhenna Morgan is a certified romance junkie. Whether it’s contemporary, paranormal, or fantasy you’re after, Rhenna’s stories pack romantic escape full of new, exciting worlds, and strong, intuitive men who fight to keep the women they want. For advance release news and exclusive content, sign up for her newsletter at http://RhennaMorgan.com. You'll also find all of her social links there, along with her smoking hot inspiration boards.

Social Media Links

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Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8596977.Rhenna_Morgan

Q&A with Rhenna Morgan

Your latest release, HERS TO TAME, is the second book in the NOLA Knights series. What three words best describe HERS TO TAME?

Steamy, possessive, and colorful.

The NOLA Knights series is a spinoff from your Men of Haven series. Where did the inspiration for NOLA Knights come from?

A fellow writer friend of mine shared an article she’d read about what it was like to date Russian men. The more I read about their possessive—almost hunter/prey—approach to dating, the more I wanted to write a hero that embodied those characteristics. I was writing TEMPTED & TAKEN from Men of Haven at the time, and before I knew it, Sergei was on the page! I knew as soon as I “saw” him that I wanted to write a series for him and his men.

What is Cassie’s most surprising quality?

Many of my heroines have gotten themselves into some tricky situations—which makes it mighty handy for my possessive alpha heroes to step in and help. What’s different about Cassie’s story is that it’s less “life or death” and more of a work and ethics conundrum. I really like that aspect of her story because I think it’s more relatable to women who read my books.

What quality do you love most about your Kir?

I love his intelligence and refinement. (Though, Cassie does manage to strip a lot of his calm, cool collectedness rather quickly.) Where many of my heroes are edgy and on the darker side, Kir is smooth and classy. A businessman, if you will, who doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty when the time comes.

What would you like readers to take away from reading Cassie and Kir’s story?

As always for me, it’s the underpinning messages from the story that I hope touch people the most. Cassie’s always been the odd duck in her family. The misfit. Kir’s issue is the inability to trust women. Through the course of their story, they each address their individual hang ups and find healing. And of course, they do it within the confines of a family built by choice.

Writing about the Russian mafia (bratva) must have resulted in some interesting research for the NOLA Knights series. What’s the most interesting or surprising thing you’ve learned so far?

It’s the origins of the bratva that most captivated me and anchored the type of family Sergei would set out to build when he moved to New Orleans. Bratva first appeared during imperial times when the Tsar held everything. Those who were bratva (or brothers) were very anti-government, stealing and giving back to those who had little. A spin on the Robin Hood theme, if you will. That’s when I realized I wanted Sergei to base his actions on helping those under his care rather than forcing his way into a neighborhood.

Both HIS TO DEFEND (NOLA Knights, #1) and HERS TO TAME, have a bit of a Cinderella twist to them. What is it about Cinderella’s story that makes it so fun to use in your contemporary romances?

I love fairytales and I love happily ever after. I think the reason a Cinderella element always finds its way into my stories is because life is really hard. And, at the end of a rough or demanding day, I want to read about magical endings.

The NOLA Knights series features a trio of Alpha males conquering New Orleans. What do you love most about writing Alpha males?

My absolute favorite thing about all of my heroes is that, while they might be demanding, possessive and (sometimes) a little gruff, every single one of them have a tender spot for their women. For them, they are vulnerable and driven to keep them safe.

Your love for New Orleans shines in the NOLA Knights series! If you could go to New Orleans this weekend, what’s the first thing you would do or place you would visit?

Oh, that’s easy. Find a place with some fantastic Cajun food and stuff myself with gumbo, red beans and rice, and etouffee!

MINE TO KEEP, the next NOLA Knights book comes out later this year. What can readers expect from Roman’s story?

Oh, man. I just turned this one into my editor and I abso-freaking-lutely LOVE how it turned out. (Which is kind of funny, because the first third of the book, I wasn’t 100% sure if the characters were showing on the page the way I saw them in my head.)

Roman is gruff. A man of as few words as possible and deadly. Having seen Sergei and Kir find love, he believes it exists, but he doesn’t believe any woman would be able to accept him with the things he’s done in his past.

Bonnie is salt of the earth. A girl born into a den of liars, cheats, and thieves. To say that she knows what it means to eek by and live paycheck-to-paycheck is an understatement. But she’s determined, honest, and VERY spunky.

What happens when the two of them meet is absolute magic. A rags to riches Cinderella story with so much heart it makes me sigh a bit just thinking about it. I honestly cannot wait for everyone to meet them.

[reggierightsactivism]

cracks knuckles, puts on conspiracy hat, OKAY here I go dissecting some maple feud guilt™ theories... to include blossom witchery but bear with me, you know I always have evidence to back up even my most bonkers sounding speculation 👍 💅

so starting with the obvious: hal and clifford are suspicious as fuck, such as with hal:

hating jason

hating the blossoms

has personal reasons to have a grudge against fp

wasn’t at the dance and thus could have physically planted grundy’s gun in fp’s trailer

& naturally would have had access to the gun in the first place 

(especially since he was invited back into the house by betty) 

we saw him at the murder board in 1x12 promo (possibly as part of a flashback?)  

other stuff but I’m only getting into the most recent 

but then there’s also clifford: 

he was also weird af about the ring, particularly in validating that cheryl was right to get rid of it (whether or not she actually did) 

is becoming more vocally critical of jason “turning his back” on the family, acknowledging cheryl as his obvious heir but also having ostensibly tried to groom archie for it too 

might have deliberately let archie overhear that he got hiram lodge imprisoned, knowing it would get back to veronica/hermione and give hiram a motive for killing jason in retaliation 

we have only his word when it comes to him not knowing who bought the drive-in land, that might not be true 

and if he’s been aware that hiram lodge was doing business from prison for a while, I think we also can’t be 100% sure that all of what we’ve thought were hiram’s doings weren’t actually things clifford did pretending to be hiram

if he would have, for argument’s sake, wanted or been prepared to kill jason anyway, implicating hiram lodge (a man he already apparently got imprisoned) and fp (working “with”/for hiram in a way) makes sense 

other stuff?? probably but I’m just working from memory, having not rewatched again from the beginning 

BUT THEN I had a thought about betty based on the recent episode which led me to: 

her comment about archie’s songs makes it twice now that she’s personally gotten between archie and what grundy did to him becoming public

because as the beginning of the season and also the prequel comic (even though it gets some other details wrong) spell out, archie’s songwriting is heavily inspired and influenced by grundy and also jason’s death (so of course his songs are sad)

the other time being, of course, when grundy was being confronted in the first place and betty led the charge for them to not to report it

which means if grundy’s gun really is the murder weapon, that evidence has unreported this whole time because of said cover-up 

and of course when archie performed at the variety show, betty wasn’t actually there (except to glance at the overhead speakers when it came on in surprise) but that song was also the one he collaborated with valerie on, so it didn’t relate to his experiences in quite as directly 

but also at jughead’s party after dilton (who I’m still convinced was a more subtle part of team cheryl/chuck) brought up what he saw and what grundy was doing to archie came out in the open, betty didn’t actually defend archie but rather tried to discredit/even implicate dilton 

I’ve said before how I (as others have theorized too ofc) think the blossoms are a witch cult (or have ties to one w/e) and sabrina might end up being one of polly’s babies

and also bearing in mind there’s supposed to be a genre shift next season and betty/dark betty is meant to be a “point of interest” in the mystery, 

especially if the show goes in a more supernatural direction, maybe polly has been on the blossom’s side this whole time and has been benefiting from their powers, i.e. she could have actually been possessing betty at the time of the chuck incident™ but also maybe at other times, or other people (like hal)  

in which case I’m still not certain who would be the actual killer because if there’s merit to this train of thought, I feel like several of these people (if not all of them) would be working together, either actively (e.g. polly and clifford, maybe also penelope or rose to differing extents) or with the intent to help/protect the other(s) (e.g. hal and/or betty, which may or may not also be unwitting assistance depending on when or how possession might have come into play)   

I don’t know how betty covering up the grundy stuff/hiding the evidence would play into this exactly aside from that the sheer consistency is suspicious? but we know there’s a connection between grundy and jason so there might well also be a connection to polly we don’t know about yet  

or maybe it doesn’t relate! at least in quite so direct a way 

I’m sure there’s plenty of other moments/details I’m forgetting too or connections to be made with other current loose ends, so if people have anything to add definitely feel free!! a lot of this is just from the past couple days of thinking 🙌

[businessliveme]

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Responsibility Push Angers PewDiePie

(Bloomberg) –YouTube spent 2019 answering critics with some of the most drastic changes in its 15-year history. With each step, it gave those activists, regulators and lawmakers more reasons to attack its free-wheeling, user-generated business model.

Susan Wojcicki, YouTube’s chief executive officer, announced her goals in April. “My top priority,” she wrote, “is responsibility.” Her company spent the year trying to traverse an almost impossible tightrope: nurture a growing community of demanding creators, while pledging to police troubling videos and protect millions of underage users who officially shouldn’t even be watching. The efforts pleased almost no one and highlighted an existential quandary. Every time YouTube tries to fix something, the company, an arm of Alphabet Inc.’s Google, risks losing the neutrality that it needs to thrive.

“They know that every time they are successful catching problematic content or removing it, this just raises expectations,” said Mike Godwin, a senior fellow at think tank R Street Institute and a trustee of the Internet Society. “It’s a never-ending cycle of increasing demands for these dominant platforms to operate fairly.”

As 2020 begins, the largest online video service is being dragged deeper into political fights over privacy, copyright and content moderation. In response, YouTube is trying to preserve the sanctity of its status as an online platform with little liability for what happens on its site. Instead, that burden is increasingly falling on the shoulders of regulators, video creators and other partners.

Nowhere is that more evident than YouTube’s approach to kids. A landmark privacy settlement this year with the Federal Trade Commission is forcing YouTube to split its massive site in two. Every clip, starting in January, must be designated as “made for kids” or not. The overhaul puts billions of ad dollars at stake and has sparked panic among creators, who also now face new legal risk. The company isn’t offering creators legal advice or ways to salvage their businesses. It isn’t even defining what a “made for kids” video is on YouTube — and has argued to the government that it shouldn’t have to.

“Creators will make those decisions themselves,” Wojcicki said last week. “Creators know their content best.”

YouTube privately considered taking more control. Earlier this year, it assembled a team of more than 40 employees to brace for the FTC decision. The team was code-named Crosswalk — as in a way to guide kids across YouTube’s chaotic streets. Among its proposals was a radical one, at least by the standards of Silicon Valley: YouTube would screen every video aimed at kids under the age of 8 in its YouTube Kids app, ensuring that no untoward content crept into the feed of millions of tots around the world. A press release was even drafted in which Wojcicki said professional moderators would check each clip, according to people familiar with the plans. Yet at the last minute, the CEO and her top deputies ditched the plan, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private deliberations.

The rationale was clear to some at YouTube, one person involved in the project recalled. Hand-picking videos, even for kids, made YouTube look too much like a media company, not a neutral platform. A YouTube spokeswoman denied the idea was turned down because it put the company in charge of programming, but she declined to comment further on the decision. In a recent interview, Wojcicki made it clear that her content-moderation push only goes so far, telling CBS News that even being liable for video recommendations would destroy the essence of the service.

“If we were held liable for every single piece of content that we recommended, we would have to review it,” she said. “That would mean there would be a much smaller set of information that people would be finding. Much, much smaller.”

YouTube’s balancing act between media publisher or hands-off internet bulletin board has sparked intense debate internally. For some business partners and employees, this year’s decisions leaves them with the impression that the company is unable to take a serious stand.

“What is the mission of this company? People don’t even know,” said Claire Stapleton, a former YouTube marketing manager who left this year after clashing with Google over employee protests. “YouTube is so ill-equipped to manage these massive challenges.”

The YouTube spokeswoman said the company has made significant investments to better protect its online community. Over the last 18 months, the results of this effort include an 80% reduction in views of videos that violate its policies. YouTube also increased viewership on videos from “authoritative news publishers” by 60%, according to the spokeswoman. “While there will always be healthy debate around this work, we’ll continue to make the hard decisions needed to better protect the openness of the YouTube platform and the community that depends on it,” she added in a statement.

No episode in 2019 typified YouTube’s arduous search for middle ground more than the Maza affair. In June, gay journalist and YouTube creator Carlos Maza accused Steven Crowder, a conservative YouTuber, of repeated harassment. The Vox reporter put together a montage of clips from Crowder’s YouTube channel to highlight what Maza said were homophobic and racist insults.

So, I have pretty thick skin when it comes to online harassment, but something has been really bothering me.

— Carlos Maza 🌹 (@gaywonk) May 31, 2019

After saying it would review Maza’s complaints, YouTube concluded the comments were not in violation of its policies, angering some of its own employees. YouTube staff held a private call to explain its rationale to Maza, who remained unconvinced. “It was very awkward,” he recalled.

(3/4) As an open platform, it’s crucial for us to allow everyone–from creators to journalists to late-night TV hosts–to express their opinions w/in the scope of our policies. Opinions can be deeply offensive, but if they don’t violate our policies, they’ll remain on our site.

— TeamYouTube (@TeamYouTube) June 4, 2019

Crowder, meanwhile, devoted a 21-minute video to rehashing his comments. After days of criticism, YouTube removed ads from his videos, angering him.

At a conference about a week later, Wojcicki apologized to the LGBTQ community, but defended YouTube’s decision to keep Crowder’s videos on the site. Removing his clips, or banning him from YouTube, would have put the company in an untenable situation, with millions of viewers asking “what about this one?” for hundreds of comedy, hip-hop and late-night TV-show videos, the CEO said.

Two months later, a group of LGBTQ YouTube creators filed a class action lawsuit accusing the company of discrimination. The case mirrored similar charges from across the ideological aisle — a filing from PragerU, a conservative video channel, which has accused YouTube of censorship. In fact, the lawsuits were brought by the same attorney. “It just looks like YouTube is taking the maximum amount of time for a solution that pleases no one,” said Stapleton, the former employee.

YouTube spent the months after the Maza episode rewriting its harassment policy. The update, announced earlier this month, set new rules that would now treat Crowder’s videos as violations subject to removal. Like clockwork, the decision riled other creators. Felix Kjellberg, YouTube’s biggest star, who posts as PewDiePie, declared he was leaving the video site and blamed the new policy. “We have this anarchy system, okay,” he said. “If YouTube knows what’s good for them, they’ll keep their [expletive] hands out… Don’t come and ruin it for us.”

While criticism comes from all sides, YouTube’s challenge is practically insurmountable: More than 500 hours of footage are uploaded every minute. And the company’s software is still unable to gain a thorough understanding of the content before people start watching. “You are trying to keep free speech going and, at the same time, you’re trying to make sure crud doesn’t get in, and trying to make sure that people who watch aren’t getting affected. It’s a really, really, really hard problem,” said Diya Jolly, a former YouTube executive who left in 2017. “Susan is doing an awesome job.”

Wojcicki’s task is set to become even more difficult. The European Parliament has approved rules that make YouTube liable the moment anyone uploads a video that violates a copyright. That could force YouTube to take down content from popular creators, while hiking its legal bills and hurting ad sales. Wojcicki used Google’s political muscle and invited creators to lobby against the regulation, but she has failed to stop it. According to one former senior employee, the fight often claimed as much of the executive team’s attention in 2019 as the more-public battles over children’s privacy and inappropriate content.

Even in the U.S., the walls are closing in around YouTube. Republican and Democratic lawmakers have proposed peeling back protections that have shielded internet companies from liability for decades. YouTube’s dominance may draw antitrust scrutiny. Lawmakers are also considering tougher copyright laws, egged on by YouTube’s rivals in media and music. “That’s where there is a lot of money at stake, and people have valid objections,” said Jeff Kosseff, an assistant professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and an expert on internet law.

For now, though, YouTube’s biggest challenge is kids’ privacy. In September, the FTC fined Google for illegally tracking children for its ads business, forcing significant changes to YouTube’s operations. On Nov. 13, YouTube sent an email to tens of thousands of creators about the coming “made for kids” designation. If marked as “made for kids,” videos will lose lucrative personalized ads and other valuable features, including user comments. If clips aren’t labeled this way, and the government decides the footage is indeed reaching children, creators can be fined thousands of dollars.

“We know this won’t be easy for some creators, and that this required change is going to take some getting used to,” the company wrote in the email. YouTube has also advised many of them to “lawyer up,” according to partners. A recent regulatory filing went further, with Google estimating the changes will mean YouTube creators “who make mostly child-directed content will likely lose a majority of their revenue.”

In contrast, YouTube itself emerged relatively unscathed. Google paid a $170 million fine, a tiny sliver of its profit. The FTC settlement on the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, or COPPA, focused on YouTube, not other parts of Google. The internet giant worked hard to limit any broader impact on the rest of its businesses, according to one former executive. Best of all for YouTube, it doesn’t need to screen clips before they go up, nor is it liable for any infringing videos.

The FTC is now rewriting its COPPA rules and has invited public comment. In a filing, Google told the agency it was worried about any laws forcing it to “identify and police” videos aimed at kids. The company was, in effect, arguing it couldn’t know for sure the age of its audience and shouldn’t be punished for that.

Critics were appalled. Lindsey Barrett, a staff attorney at Georgetown Law’s Communications & Technology Clinic who worked with complainants in the FTC case, found it hard to imagine the contortions required for Google to make this argument. “Our entire business is based on being able to slice and dice our audience, and see who’s watching what,” she said. “But we couldn’t possibly tell you if there’s a child here!”

The YouTube spokeswoman said the company has done its best to comply with its COPPA obligations, as it understands them, and has asked the FTC for more clarification on the rules.

The company is “not answering the questions everyone wants,” said Greg Alkalay, chief executive officer of BatteryPOP, a children’s media company. “YouTube’s success comes from its creators. They built a beast and don’t know how to wrangle it.”

–With assistance from Ben Brody.

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