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longlivefiction · 1 month

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Jerome and Jeremiah are, for practical purposes, The JOKER. But with the "THE" in capital letters.

Criminal Jerome: Experienced in crime, with the desire to leave a recognized name behind him, first user of laughing gas, he disguised himself as a police officer at some point, and was also resurrected at some point thanks to his followers. ! (The difference is that in the comics, The Joker planned the resurrection of him, but eh.. details).

Criminal Jeremiah: Similar to the Joker in his first appearances, Jeremiah is... A cold and calculating mind focused on his objective above all things, but that is not an impediment to taking the opportunity to magnify his work through theater, he leads the dark horse. and well-groomed, he usually has an unnaturally wide smile despite the grimness in which he appears.

Clown Jerome: Like The Clown, Jerome lives on spectacle, animosity and macabre humor, he loves to cause suffering for the simple sake of fun, and uses weapons such as a water gun.

Clown Jeremiah: At some point, Jeremiah shows how he is capable of being as sadistic and a showman as his brother, only he seems to perceive himself more as featured entertainment than as a town jester, in addition to the fact that, like The Clown, he is an inventor of intricate artifacts. , as seen in the plans that appear in his lair, or his own battery bomb that gets energy from the environment (Reference to Laughmeter from the Joker from TAS), bombs with a countdown gyroscope, a maze bunker, bombs in the shape of gifts whose counter They are smiling faces spinning around each other, chemical fireworks...

Comedian Jerome: Just like the Comedian, Jerome shows a pseudo-nihilistic vision of the world, and I say pseudo because although he says that order and sanity are a deception, and that people's actions do not matter, the truth is that the Comedian He is determined to show that it matters what HE does, calling himself a messiah at one point, and declaring that even in death, he will continue to live in the discontent of Gotham. (And no, Jerome did not intend to prove that just 1 bad day drives people crazy, he just believed that people were blind for not seeing how in reality the rules only limited what "freedom to have fun" should be.) He never cared. Nothing about taking people of high morals, like for example Bruce or Gordon, at most he expressed his thought, but made no effort to defend it.) Jerome at one point even gave a part of the line from One Bad Day to Jeremiah, as well as prepared a great macabre fair.

Comedian Jeremiah: Like The Comedian, Jeremiah presents the most twisted and strong obsession with Batman, (Yes, Batman, Bruce was just the means that Jeremiah had to communicate with The Bat), he made plans similar to what The Comedian did in Killing Joke, Death of The Family, Endgame and The Man Who Laughs. He is also the only Joker to date who said the premise of One Bad Day literally, and like The Comedian, he considers himself sane in a world of madness, feeling that everything he does is help. Bruce to become stronger, through loss and suffering, taking clear enjoyment in the agony of the people around him. He is emotionally empty, lacking any kind of real emotional signal besides the small flash of love for Batman. A love born from the fascination of finding someone who contradicts his notions about life, which little by little comes together with a hatred born from the frustration of finding someone who does not give in to his provocations, games and efforts, and who also He dared to minimize it, the very son of his dead parents.

#jeremiah valeska #jerome valeska #the joker #dc joker #gotham fox #gotham tv

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percheduphere · 5 months

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Hey! At first, I want to say that really adore your essays. I found your blog shortly after I joined tumblr and it was a great beginning.

My question is not only about Loki. Few times you mentioned that queer subtext always existed in cinema. So I wanted to know more about it. Are there any common tricks which artists use? How can we know that it isn't just our imagination?

And if you could give some literature recommendations on this topic I'd be thrilled :)

Hi Anon!

This is a really important question. I’m so glad you asked it, so I’ve bumped you to the front of my inbox queue.

Superhell (Destiel). Superheaven (Aziracrow). Supertime (Lokius). It’s not an accident these types of tragic queer endings are a pattern in our TV media. Though of the three, Good Omens is the most likely to deliver a happy ending eventually, the resources I provide below contextualize why queer subtext and queer tragedy persists. I believe the paper on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a particularly important read as it sheds light on tragic queer tropes and utilization of queer subtext from the 1950s that persist to this day.

I do need to clarify a few things:

1.) I’m not a formal scholar. I don’t have a Master’s, let alone a PhD. I would love to continue my education, but I only just finished paying off my student loans. This is to say, most of what I’ve learned is from self-guided reading, watching documentaries, and talking to literary and cinematic professionals and members of the LGBTQAI+ community.

2.) Subtext exists in all forms of art: literature, music, painting, sculptures, film, and so on. There is no 1-to-1 definition of what subtext could be because subtext, by its very definition, is the communicating of information and/or a feeling without communicating it directly. It’s also important to remember that we use subtext in everyday life without realizing it.

3.) It’s necessary to share foundational resources in order to provide a greater contextual understanding in response to your question. The resources I'll be sharing, which will go from broad foundational to specifically queer subtext in cinema, are as follows: A.) Using JSTOR, B.) Linguistics & Subtext, C.) Film History, D.) Queer Subtext in Literature, Theater, and Film.

USING JSTOR

JSTOR is an incredible academic journal article resource. You can sign-up as a user and have access to up to 100 articles per month online for free! If you don’t feel comfortable creating an account, you can also visit your local library, who more likely than not have a JSTOR membership.

When searching for articles, I recommend using these keywords: queer, homosexuality, subtext, literature, film, history.

LINGUISTICS & SUBTEXT

Pragmatics

-- Jerome Bruner’s “Pragmatics of Language and Language of Pragmatics” (Available on JSTOR; Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press)

-- Kristin Borjesson’s “The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface: The Role of Speak Intentions and Nature of Implicit Meaning Aspects” (Available on JSTOR; Published by Armand Colin)

Iceberg Theory and Theory of Omission

-- Silvia Ammary’s “Poe’s ‘Theory of Omission” and Hemingway’s ‘Unity Effect’” (Available on JSTOR; Published in the Edgar Allan Poe Review)

-- Charles J. Nolan, Jr’s “‘Out of Season’: The Importance of Close Reading’” (Available on JSTOR; Published in the Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature)

-- Paul Smith’s “Hemingway’s Early Manuscripts: The Theory and Practice of Omission” (Available on JSTOR; Published by Journal of Modern Literature)

Implicature

-- Catherine Abell’s “Pictorial Implicature” (An important read as it provides academic context on interpretation of the visual medium, which is connected to interpretation of film; Available on JSTOR; Published by The American Society for Aesthetics)

-- Eric Swanson’s “Omissive Implicature” (Linguistic study on implied communication through omission) Available on JSTOR; Published by University of Arkansas Press)

-- Jacques Moeshcler’s “On the Pragmatics of Logical Connectives” (Published in the book: “Aspects of Linguistic Variation)

Exformation

-- David Foster Wallace’s “Laughing with Kafka” (Yes, the same writer of the book, Infinite Jest! A quick 4-page read that explains exformation in literature using Kafka as an example; Available on JSTOR; Published in Log by Anyone Corporation)

-- Stephen J. Burn’s “Reading the Multiple Drafts Novel” (23 pages; can be a slog to read, but it addresses the issues of “canon”; Available on JSTOR; Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press)

FILM HISTORY

Generally, I recommend looking up Hollywood History pre-code (Hays Code aka the Motion Picture Production Code from 1930-1967). Notice that the code’s abandonment was gradual in the 60s, which was when the U.S.’s sexual revolution occured. The MPAA Film Rating System went into effect in 1968.

Sin if Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood by Mark A. Vieira

Available in hard cover on Amazon (looks like there’s only 1 copy left); no digital version that I can find. You may be able to find this at your library.

Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934): When Sin Rules the Movies by Mark A. Vieira

Available on Kindle. Similar to Vieira’s first book but considered inferior.

The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies by Vito Russo

Published in the 1980s, a groundbreaking work and the first of its kind. It’s dated but still considered critical reading.

Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies by Parker Tyler

Available in hardcover and paperback. This is also considered critical reading to be paired with Celluloid Closet.

Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video by Raymond Murray

Available in paperback on Amazon (1 copy left); likely to be in the library as well.

QUEER SUBTEXT IN LITERATURE, THEATER, AND FILM

Queerbaiting and Fandom: Teasing Fans through Homoerotic Possibilities

The first book of its kind, published in 2019. A must-read as contributing articles include analysis on Supernatural, Sherlock, and Merlin, among many others. I highly recommend reading the entire book, but it is expensive. You may be able to find this at your library.

My recommended articles from this book:

-- Joseph Brenann’s “Introduction: A History of Queerbaiting” is critical to understanding the Loki series specific place in queer fandom and media history.

-- Monique Franklin’s “Queerbaiting, Queer Readings, and Heteronormative Viewing Practices”

-- Guillaume Sirois’s “Hollywood Queerbaiting and the (In)Visibility of Same-Sex Desire

-- Christoferr Bagger’s “Multiversal Queerbaiting: Alan Scott, Alternate Universes, and Gay Characters in Superhero Comics”

Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World

About half the price of Queerbaiting and Fandom but significantly more broad in scope.

My recommended articles from this book:

-- Cornel Sandvoss’s The Death of the Reader? Literary Theory and the Study of Texts in Popular Culture

-- Derek Johnson’s “Fantagonism: Factions, Institutions, Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom”

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Reading of epic poem recommended)

-- David L. Boyd’s “Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (available on JSTOR; from Arthuriana published by Scriptorium Press)

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (Reading the novel recommended)

-- Jeff Nunokawa’s “Homosexual Desire and the Effacement of the Self in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’” (available on JSTOR; Published by The Johns Hopkins University)

-- Ed Cohen’s “Writing Gone Wilde: Homoerotic Desire in the Closet of Representation” (available on JSTOR; Published by Cambridge University Press)

-- Sandra Mayer’s “‘A Complex Multiform Creature’: Ambiguity and Limitation Foreshadowed in the Early Critical Reception of Oscar Wilde” (available on JSTOR; Published in AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik)

Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Reading the short story [“Three Players of a Summer Game” and stage play and watching the film adaptation highly recommended)

-- Dean Shackelford’s “The Truth That Must Be Told: Gay Subjectivity, Homophobia, and Social History in “‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’”. (A must-read, in my opinion. You see a lot of patterns that continue in our subtextual queer stories to this day, concerning since Williams’s play was written in the early 1950s. Available on JSTOR; published in The Tennessee Williams Annual Review)

I hope these resources are helpful and interesting to you! Happy reading!

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annoyedlord · 10 months

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I found you on Pinterest, with a whole thread of conversations you had with your therapist, Jerome! Really hope I got the right user… just wanted to say hi, Jerome seems like an absolute rockstar. Hope you’re doing well :).

Oh hi it's me indeed!! Well, I don't see the man until the end of the month, but I'll say hi for you! :D

I'm doing-............. well, i'm doing. That's good enough haha!

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howaboutwedont · 9 months

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#house of anubis

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hoodievixen · 11 months

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With My Own Eyes - Part 8 (Dream of the Endless x OC)

Based off of this

Summary: Morpheus just wanted to keep his soulmate safe. She just wanted to make her own decisions. Doesn't help that he doesn't show her his face.

Words Count: ~ 2.7 K

Warnings: swearing, mentions of blood, witchcraft, bad grammar and even worse spelling, !Comic Spoilers!

A/N: This is it, the end. (Almost forgot to upload it today... oops) Prepare for some angst.

Tag List: @intothesoul @ poemfreak306

Master List

Her bed was too soft. Instead she clambered to the ground, curling herself into a ball, backed into a corner, walls pressing into both her shoulders. Sibyl mumbled descriptors of everything she saw, ignoring the tears running down her face. She should lose herself to her emotions, she might start another fire. She didn't need to deal with that at the moment.

Even her tactic of keeping in the physical and not the mental was not working. As she was describing any item she saw in great detail, more items appeared. She swear they came in puffs of sand. The first was her bag she had left in her room in the Dreaming, then the paintings she made in the Dreaming, and every sketchbook she dared scribble in. Even notes of grimores she left in the library. Anything that could remind him of her he sent away.

Soon Lily was clenched into as small of a ball that she could get. Her breathing out of control, as the only thing she felt was lonelyness, complete and utter lonelyness.

----

Johanna wasn't sure what she was expecting for the loud banging at her door in the middle of the day. Defiently not Lily, drunk off her ass and crying. "You do know it's only three," Johanna commented, letting the closest thing to a friend she had lean into her.

It wasn't strange for Lily to disappear for days on end without so much of a word. However returning drunk was indeed new. "Heart break knows no time but sorrow," the witch sighed.

Johanna hated how she'd get poetic when drunk. Luckily Lily rarely gets drunk. "Did you get back tk get her with Jerome?" she wondered dragging in the drunkard. "You know that never ends well."

With uneven balance Lily stood up straight staring at her arm. Rarely did Lily walk around with her arms bare. Johanna knew Lily got annoyed with how people would come and touch her cause of her tattoos, but also that she was hiding her soulmate's name, something the magic user hasn't even seen, until then.

Johanna felt pitty for her friend. There scralled on her arm in pretentious writing was Dream of the Endless. She felt bad for Lily, connected to that prik by date. Clearly she didn't have good feeling a about it either, as the skin it was on was red and irritated with small scabs developing. Lily had been vigorously scratching at it, as if to remove it. Even in that moment she dug her nails in the raw skin.

"I'm guessing that prick's the reason your like this," Johanna commented, bringing in the witch to have her sit on her couch.

Lily glared at her arm. "I don't even know what he looks like," she said softly.

Johanna sat down, letting her sad friend lay down in her lap. "You aren't missing much," she commented, picking at Lily's hair. By the looks of it it hadn't been washed in days. "His hair's a mess, eyes are creepy, and personally his cheeks are bit too sharp for my taste."

Lily looked up to her friend, wide eyed and with fresh tears. "You know what he looks like?" she asked in disbelief. Silent tears ran down her face.

-----

Lily woke up with a hwad ache and a show back. "How much did you drink?" a annoyed voice asked.

She peaked up to find a familiar person, and in a familiar place. "I think like... too much,"she answered, though mind elsewhere. While she had grown used to not having dreams with being in the Dreaming, sh hadn't had one since she got back.

Johana stoop up from her desk, coming to sit down next to her friend." Are you going to tell me what happened, or are you going to try and skin your arm again?" She handed back Lily's dager.

Lily took it back, before throwing it in the pile of her jacket and shoes. It was then she noticed she had a thick bandage over her arm, where her soul mark was. She hated it now more than ever. "What have you figured out from my drunken rambling?" she wondered, placing a cold hand against her forehead.

"Well the oh so lovely Dream of the Endless sis somehow your soulmate, and refused to show you his face," Johana explained, "Which confuses me."

Sibyl sighed. "Basically dude kidnapped me, and we made an agreement I'd stay in his realm for about a month, before deciding if I'd stay or go."

"Did you try the teleportation spell?" she questioned her friend. Sibyl didn't have a long streak of being the most clever.

"Oh yeah," Lily assured her, "And I should have just finished it.

But I stayed, begrudgingly at first. Then I grew to not mind being there, than I liked it that, and..." There were words Lily wanted to say but couldn't bring herself to. Her eyes stung and heart ached at the thought of it.

She let out a deep breath. "The entire time he had on this monstrous helm, like seriously, spine trunk. He refused to show me his face. I was patient, but I couldn't let him continue to do what he wants without showing me he trusts me. I went to remove it myself, cause it was either taking that thing off or being done with our relationship. I thought he'd see logic and reason. Instead he took ending it not his own hands, sending me away... I haven't even had a dream since."

Lily looked to the floor, meloncholic. By some miracle, or dehydration, she wasn't crying. "I'm angry, sad, and so frustrated," she groaned, finanly getting to voice her feelings. "I don't even want to acknowledge we're soulmates. I don't even want to be soulmates. I'd do anything to get this fucking name off of me."

-----

Ripples through the universe are not common, but they do happen. So two happening within such quick succession of eachother was something to take interest in.

The second one struck sunthing deep within Dream. Something he had long since ignored and tired to forget. No matter what he had to go a see what it was, knowing nothing good will come from the visit.

It had been centuries since he last visited the Mediterranean island. He had never thought he would step foot on it ever again. The care takers asked no questions, but kept their haze to the ground, moving out of the Endless' path.

Dream stepped into the small build that had been his son's home for most of his deathless life. Or what had expected to be deathless. The caretakers had already prepared the head of Orpheus for burial.

There was only a handful of being that could bring about the end of Orpheus. Dream knew it was no of his siblings, none would do such a thing. Even Desire, after all his son was a means to an ends for his sibling. He had to wonder who, no what has killed Orpheus.

It could have eazily been missed. Tucked in the corner of the window sill was a flash of reflected sunlight. It was a large metal knife, no dagger. Dream kne that Dager, from one side being solver while the other iron, the worn and loved leather gril, and the protective charm carved in the pommel. The fish time he had seen it, it had been pull on him, the next it was covered in it's owners blood. Now it was clean, not a single drop of crimson. Red however, there was a strand. Near the blade was a strand of red thread, cut red thread.

Sibyl had been there, and somehow involved with the death of Orpheus. While she had powers more so than the average human, no witch would have the power to undo the deal between Death and her nephew. Something wasn't right. Not in the slightest.

Dream pulled up his sleeve, and urge that pricked at the back of his mind. He hadn't known what feelings he felt anymore for that name on his arm. He once loved it, bringing him hope, and was something he protected. But now it left a sour taste in his mouth. He had believed that Sibyl had been different, different for his past lovers, different from all other humans. She was the same as the rest. He knew that the moment she tried taking off his helm. Dispite his best effort to forget them, her words of trust did ring in his ears, causing a sliver of guilt. Had she had a point?

It did not matter anymore, as his arm was baren.

-------

Johanna thought she was finally done with all that. It had been a couple days since Lily last called her in tears or in anger. She couldn't blame her, but it was getting to be a lot. When the magic user felt a precense in her flat, she assumed the witch had somehow gotten in on her own again. Turning on the lights revealed otherwise.

There ein the middle of the room was something she did not want to see again. Even if only in her dreams. "Why are you here?" she asked Dream of the Endless.

"Constantine," he said in a low tone. "I need your assistance with finding someone."

Johana gave him a look of questioning. "Can't you just wait until they fall asleep?"

Dream's eyebrows furrowed ever so slightly. "They have somehow managed to disconnect themselves for myself and realm entirely."

Johana noticed how his gaze lingered down at his arm. She scoffed. "If it's Sibyl Crow you are looking for," she started, "You entirely deserve what she's done."

Dream glared at the woman. "How do you know Sibyl?"

Johana rolled her eyes, "You really think a magic user and a witch living in the same city wouldn't at least be aware of eachother."

"You appear to be more than acquaintances," Dream continued to push.

"That's cause Lily's a clinging bitch," Johanna groaned, "She's so lonely she'd befriend a rabid dog..." No matter what she had tried, she couldn't get rid of the witch. She just gave up after a while.

She had already pulled out her phone to call the witch. Maybe he'd go away if Lily herself told him to fuck off. It went straight to voicemail. Johanna let out a sigh of annoyance, though not concerning.

"Have you tried her flat?" Johanna asked. It was still early into summer break, there wouldn't be a reason for her to be working yet.

"It is warded against my entry," he explained.

"Well lucky for you, I got a key," she answered, pulling said key from a drawer. Sybil had put it on a rediculous key chain of a pink puff ball, as to prevent Johanna from loosing it.

--------

Sibyl's flat was a mess. Not that it usually wasn't. However there was the makings of a pyramid of empty cans, both of energy drink and alcoholic. Lily wasn't much a fan of either, never consumes the in large quantities. Take out Containers filled the trash can, as well as plenty of counter space. Usually she kept her witchcraft neatly packed away in the small dresser that was her alter, yet scattered about her entire apartments were books on anything mildly unnatural in subject, maps of laylines and other things Johanna didn't understand.

Something caused her heart to stop. "She wouldn't," Johanna mumbled, grabbing at the pages of scarred notes about the apartment. She barely payed attention she Lily called her, thinking the witch just needed someone to rant to. Still Constantine caught it in bits and pieces, Sibyl was looking for a way to sever her fate from Dream's. "Lily's dramatic, but she wouldn't pay that price," she tried to reason with herself.

"What do you know Constantine?" the Endless demanded.

"Please tell me her names still on you," Johanna pleaded. She would deny it to anyone who asked, but Sibyl was her friend, someone she could trust her life with. She didn't want to loose her just like everyone else.

Dream looked away, giving the exrocist all the answer she needed. Johanna dropped the pages, which would take her too long to understand at all. "Fuck," she groaned, "Sibyl, what did you do?"

------------

Sibyl had severed her fate from his. It fit right in with all other failures of relationships he has had. This one had the most promise, but had lasted the shortest. Dream would teuely never love again. Still Sibyl payed a price because of his actions. If he couldn't pay part of it, he would at least want to know what it was.

Destiny may have had it written in his book, but he wouldn't share it with anyone, nor even his brother unless it said he would. There was a much more for sure way to learn what occurs in fate. To talk to the Fates themselves.

"I, Lord Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, summon the fates," he called to the universe. He had gathered his offerings, prepared to pay the price. "The three who are one, the one who is three." Something was different, there wasn't the same reaction of the world around him to the called of The Three.

"I'm gonna stop you there," some called from behind him, "It's one who is one now."

Dream turned around not believing his ears. There stood Sibyl, though not the same as before. Her arms were bare, of both his name and her tattoos. Her clothes shifted colors like an aurora boreal is, her hair floating in a breeze that was not there. Her eyes....

-----------

Sibyl stood in the circle of her own making. Chalk of frowned calf bones, spores from a mushroom grown on the corpse of a deer, and the blood spilled from the womb. Those were just in the outline, Sibyl was not proud to tell what took her to gather everything for the spell. She held her bleeding arm out before her, calling to the universe. "The three who are one, the one who is three, the Hecate."

The wind and rain which had gradually grown around her was all but silent in that moment. "We haven't been summoned by one such as you in a long while, child," a voice beyond years croaked.

Sibyl turned around to find three woman standing before her. She was quick to fall to her knee, stoll holding the offering of her own blood to them. "Please I ask of you, sperate my fare from his," she pleaded, "I do not wish to be bound to someone who can't trust me with the most simplest of things."

"Child, raise your head," a soft voice called out to her. Sibyl hesitantly looked up.

"Oh lovely," the maiden cooed, "We gave you a hard fate, that would come with many reward of you shall over come it."

"We over you this advice for what you have given," the crone continued, "Have hope."

Sibyl gribded her teeth. She was sick and tired of supernatural beings thinking less of her. "I didn't ask for advice," she hissed, "I gave you a sacrafice, just get this name off of me."

The mother reached out and stroked Sibyl's cheek. "You know better than to seek tk your elder than that, your auntie taught you better."

The maiden replaced the mother, her had on the young witch's cheek. "Your blood may be special, but no amount of it will be the price to do what you want."

Sibyl let out a deep breath. "I will pay whatever price," she confessed.

"Your soul," all three said at once. The crone stepped away from the girl. "You're human soul." The wind started to pick up once again.

"It binds you to this world," the maiden said.

"It binds you to the ones you love," the mother.

"To unbind you, we must take it," the croan.

The wind had became much worse than it had before, picking up dirt and howling in the night.

"We three will become one, and you will become we," the unified voice of three bellowed over the wind. "All magic come with a price. You know that well. A price for a price, only for something great. What it will be up to you, and not me."

------

Her eyes held no color, just white. Though she was looking at him, she wasn't seeing him. "Do you need to ask?" she said sarcastically, "As you can clearly see what price I payed." Sibyl gave up her sight to become the physical embodiment of fate, which she did to sever herself from him. He wonders of that was the plan all along. Him fated to be alone, for ever.

#Sandman #sandman x reader #sandman x oc #dream of the endless #dream of the endless x reader #sandman x y/n #morpheus #morpheus x reader #morpheus x original character

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mariacallous · 6 months

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Before Google’s disastrous social network Google+ came the less remembered Google Buzz. Launched in 2010, Buzz survived less than two years. But its mishandling of people’s personal data motivated the first in a series of legal settlements that, though imperfect, are to this day the closest the US has come to establishing extensive rules for protecting privacy online.

When users set up a Buzz account, Google automatically created a friend network made up of people they email, horrifying some people by exposing private email addresses and secret relationships. Washington regulators felt compelled to act, but Google had not broken any national privacy law—the US didn’t have one.

The Federal Trade Commission improvised. In 2011 Google reached a 20-year legal settlement dubbed a consent decree with the agency for allegedly misleading users with its policies and settings. The decree created a sweeping privacy standard for just one tech company, requiring Google through 2031 to maintain a “comprehensive privacy program” and allow external assessments of its practices. The next year, the FTC signed Facebook onto a near-identical consent decree, settling allegations that the company now known as Meta had broken its own privacy promises to users.

WIRED interviews with 20 current and former employees of Meta and Google who worked on privacy initiatives show that internal reviews forced by consent decrees have sometimes blocked unnecessary harvesting and access of users’ data. But current and former privacy workers, from low-level staff to top executives, increasingly view the agreements as outdated and inadequate. Their hope is that US lawmakers engineer a solution that helps authorities keep pace with advances in technology and constrain the behavior of far more companies.

Congress does not look likely to act soon, leaving the privacy of hundreds of millions of people who entrust personal data to Google and Meta backstopped by the two consent decrees, static barriers of last resort serving into an ever-dynamic era of big tech dominance they were never designed to contain. The FTC is undertaking an ambitious effort to modernize its deal with Meta, but appeals by the company could drag the process out for years and kill the prospect of future decrees.

While Meta, Google, and a handful of other companies subject to consent decrees are bound by at least some rules, the majority of tech companies remain unfettered by any substantial federal rules to protect the data of all their users, including some serving more than a billion people globally, such as TikTok and Apple. Amazon entered its first agreement this year, and it covers just its Alexa virtual assistant after allegations that the service infringed on children’s privacy.

Joseph Jerome, who left privacy advocacy to work on Meta’s augmented reality data policies for two years before being laid off in May, says he grew to appreciate how consent decrees force companies to work on privacy. They add “checks and balances,” he says. But without clear privacy protection rules from lawmakers that bind every company, the limited scope of consent decrees allows too many problematic decisions to be made, Jerome says. They end up providing a false sense of security to users who might think they have more bite than they really do. “They certainly haven't fixed the privacy problem,” he says.

The FTC has sometimes strengthened consent decrees after privacy lapses. In the wake of Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica data-sharing scandal, in 2020 the agency agreed to stepped-up restrictions on the company and extended Meta’s original consent decree by about a decade, to 2040. In May this year, the FTC accused Meta of failing to cut off outside developer access to user data and protect children from strangers in Messenger Kids. As a remedy, the agency wants one of its judges to impose the most drastic restrictions ever sought in a privacy decree, spooking the broader business community. Meta is fighting the proposal, calling it an “obvious power grab” by an “illegitimate decision maker.”

There is more agreement between FTC officials, Meta, Google, and the wider tech industry that a federal privacy law is overdue. Proposals raised and debated by members of Congress would set a standard all companies have to follow, similar to US state and European Union privacy laws, with new rights for users and costly penalties for violators. “Consent decrees pale in comparison,” says Michel Protti, Meta’s chief privacy officer for product.

Some key lawmakers are on board. “The single best way to increase compliance for different business models and practices is by Congress enacting a comprehensive statute that establishes a clear set of rules for collecting, processing, and transferring Americans' personal information,” says Republican Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the chair of the House committee that has studied potential legislation for years. Until she can rally enough fellow legislators, the privacy of every American on the internet is reliant on the few safeguards offered by consent decrees.

Innocence Lost

At the time Buzz launched in 2010, Google fostered a companywide culture of freewheeling experimentation in which just a couple of employees felt they could launch ideas to the world with few precautions, according to four workers who were there during that time. The search company’s idealistic founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin closely oversaw product decisions, and head count was one-eighth of the nearly 190,000 it is today. Many of the employees “were in a utopia of trying to make information accessible and free,” says Giles Douglas, who started at Google in 2005 as software engineer and left in 2019 as head of privacy review engineering.

During the earlier era, some former employees recall privacy practices as informal, with no dedicated team. Company spokesperson Matt Bryant says it’s not true that reviews were looser before, but both sides acknowledge that it wasn’t until the FTC settlement that Google started documenting its deliberations over privacy hazards and making a clear commitment to addressing them. “The Buzz decree forced Google to think more critically,” Douglas says.

The settlement required Google to be upfront with people about the collection and use of personal data, including names, phone numbers, and addresses. The former employees, some speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential practices, say Google established a central privacy team for the first time. The company learned early that the FTC’s new invention had sting. It paid $22.5 million, then the agency’s highest-ever penalty, to settle a 2012 charge that Google had violated the Buzz agreement by overriding a cookie-blocking feature on Apple’s Safari browser to track people and serve targeted ads.

Google now has an extensive bureaucracy dedicated to privacy. Its central team has hundreds of employees who oversee privacy policies and procedures, three people who worked with the unit say, like the company’s public privacy principles that promise people control over use of their data. A web of hundreds of privacy experts scattered across Google’s many divisions reviews every product launch, from a minor tweak to the debut of an entirely new service like the AI chatbot Bard to a marketing survey sent to less than a thousand people.

Though a public agency forced many of those changes, there is diminishing transparency about how Google’s consent decree operates. The agreement requires an outside consulting firm such as EY (commonly known as Ernst & Young) to certify in an FTC filing every two years that Google’s guardrails are reasonable. Yet public copies of the filings have been increasingly redacted by the agency to protect company “trade secrets,” preventing any insight into the results of the assessments or the recent evolution of Google’s safeguards. Google’s Bryant says the assessments have led to program improvements, process discipline, and well-informed feedback but declines to provide details.

Unredacted segments of older filings show that Google’s compliance with the FTC has involved measures such as training employees on best practices, expanding data-related user settings, and, most importantly in the view of former employees, analyzing the implications of everything the company releases into the world.

Inside Google today, the privacy and legal review is the only step that a team cannot remove or mark as optional in the company’s main internal tracking system for project launches, commonly referred to as Ariane, the former employees say—unlike for security assessments or quality assurance. And only someone from Google’s privacy team can mark the privacy review as completed, the people say.

Reviewers must pore through an internal management tool known as Eldar to compare product code and documentation against company guidelines about uses and storage of data. With tens of thousands or more product launches annually, many updates Google considers “privacy non-impacting” or “privacy trivial” get only a cursory examination, former employees say, and Google is trying to automate triaging of the most important reviews.

Privacy reviewers have considerable power to shape Google’s products and business, according to five people who formerly held the role. One of their most common actions is to block projects from retaining user data indefinitely without any justification beside “because we can,” the sources say. More exhaustive reviews, according to the sources, have prevented YouTube from displaying viewing statistics that threatened to reveal the identities of viewers from vulnerable populations, and required workers involved in developing Google Assistant to justify every time they play back users’ audio conversations with the chatbot.

Entire acquisitions have died at the hands of Google’s privacy reviewers, former employees say. The company evaluates the privacy risks of potential targets such as data retained unnecessarily or collected without permission, and sometimes commissions independent assessments of software code. If the privacy risks are too high, Google has canceled purchases, sources say, and efforts are underway to apply a similar process to divestitures and strategic investments.

For some Google employees, the changes demanded by privacy reviewers can be frustrating, the former reviewers say, delaying projects or limiting improvements. After a review restricted access to location data on users of Google Assistant, engineers struggled to assess the technology, one former employee involved says. For instance, they could no longer be sure whether the virtual helper’s responses to queries involving ambiguous street names, like Brown or Browne, were accurate.

Proponents of consent decrees say the roadblocks and dead ends show the settlements working as intended. “Google and its users are better off for the decree,” says Al Gidari, an attorney who handled the FTC’s Buzz deal for Google. “One might say but for it, nothing would be left of our privacy.”

For some of the Google sources and privacy experts more critical of the decrees, the sprawling compliance apparatus Google developed over the past decade is privacy theater—activity that fulfills the FTC’s demands without providing public proof that people who use its services are better off. Some former employees say that while staffing and funds for the consent decree’s “comprehensive privacy program” have ramped up, more technical projects that would give people greater protection or transparency have withered.

For instance, the Google Dashboard, which shows the type of data people have stored with different services, like the total number of emails in their Gmail account, has gotten little investment as engineers have had to focus elsewhere, two former company privacy managers say. A privacy-focused “red team,” distinct from a similar squad for cybersecurity issues, that has snuffed out unintended over-collection of data and inadequate anonymization in services available to users is still staffed by just a handful of employees, three sources claim.

New Threats

Meta’s privacy scandals show the limited power of consent decrees to encourage good behavior. The company signed its first agreement with the FTC in 2012 after disclosing some users’ friends’ lists and personal details to partner apps or the public without notice and consent. Like Google, the company pledged to establish a “comprehensive privacy program.” But it took a different tack to Google and didn’t have sufficient staff and tools to review everything it does today, says Protti, the product-focused chief privacy officer. The decree-mandated assessments didn’t catch the shortcomings.

In 2018, through media reports it became clear that Facebook for years allowed partner apps to misuse personal information. Personal data such as users’ interests and friends got into the hands of election consultancies such as Cambridge Analytica, which attempted to create psychological profiles marketed to political campaigns. Facebook re-settled with the FTC and agreed to a $5 billion penalty in 2020. The updated consent decree imposed firm new requirements, including making privacy central to the work of many more employees, tightening security around personal data, and limiting the company’s use of sensitive technologies such as facial recognition. Meta has spent $5.5 billion to comply with the revised deal, including growing staff focused on privacy to 3,000 people from hundreds, representing “a step change for the company in terms of the importance, the investment, the prioritization of privacy,” Protti says.

Meta is now required to conduct a privacy review of every launch that affects user data, conducting more than 1,200 each month and deploying automation and audits to increase their consistency and rigor while ensuring orders are followed post-launch, Protti says.

Each unit of the company has to certify internally on a quarterly basis how it's protecting users’ data. After the $5 billion fine, people don’t take these certifications lightly, the former employees say. New hires have to review and agree to the consent decree before they can even get to work. Failing to complete regular privacy training locks employees out of corporate systems indefinitely, employees say. “I don't think you will find an employee that doesn't believe that privacy is absolutely mission critical for Meta,” Protti says.

The FTC contends that Meta has failed on that mission. In May, the agency alleged that Meta misled its users about the meaning of privacy settings on the Messenger Kids chat app and failed to block its business partners’ access to Facebook data as quickly as promised. The FTC wants to ban Meta from profiting off the data of people under 18 years old and require it to apply privacy commitments to companies it acquires, so no unit escapes scrutiny. Protti says the accusations and demands are unfounded.

No matter the outcome, the legal battle could be the breaking point for consent decrees.

FTC chair Lina Khan has made taking on big tech a priority, and if she wins the case the agency may feel emboldened to pursue more consent decrees and to successively tighten them to keep companies in line. But an FTC win could also weaken decrees by making companies more likely to take the chance of going to court instead of signing an agreement that could later be unilaterally revised, says Maureen Ohlhausen, an FTC commissioner from 2012 to 2018 and now a section chair at the law firm Baker Botts who has represented Meta and Google in other matters. “That changes the calculus of whether to enter a settlement,” she says.

If Meta stops the FTC’s updates to the consent decree, it might encourage other companies to try to fight the agency instead of settling. Either result in the Meta case will likely increase the pressure on US lawmakers to establish universal restrictions and precisely define the agency’s power. In the process, they could empower Americans for the first time with rights beyond the consent decrees, like to delete, transfer, and block sales of personal data held by internet giants.

Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic representative from Illinois in the congressional talks, says though the FTC has forced reform at “formerly lawless companies” through consent decrees, “a comprehensive privacy law is needed to improve Americans’ privacy across the internet and from new types of threats.” Even so, there are no clear signs that years of inaction in Congress on privacy are set to end, despite vocal support from companies including Meta and Google for a law that would not only cover their competitors but also prevent a patchwork of potentially conflicting state privacy rules.

The FTC agrees that a federal privacy law is long overdue, even as it tries to make consent decrees more powerful. Samuel Levine, director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, says that successive privacy settlements over the years have become more limiting and more specific to account for the growing, near-constant surveillance of Americans by the technology around them. And the FTC is making every effort to enforce the settlements to the letter, Levine says. “But it's no substitute for legislation," he says. "There are massive amounts of data collected on people not just from these biggest tech companies but from companies not under any consent decree.”

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