I grew up in the aftermath of Watergate, and a lot of entertainment written in the 1980s and 1990s, and even some in the 2000s, had a charming faith in the power of the press. There was the unspoken assumption that if even one trusted publisher gets some solid info about the bad guys’ doings, the bad guys will be sent to jail and go away forever while the reporters throw a champagne party in their office. I mean, that’s not quite what happened to Nixon, but close enough.

Even before Trump, this faith was eroding, and both writing this scene and looking back on it involves asking some hard questions about the press’s role today. The result is grim: Shanna more or less has to think like a kamikaze pilot even to have a hope of righting this injustice. And even then, her Plan A is just to uncover enough dirt for others to steal without crediting her, not to get played posthumously by Emma Stone in a movie called Courage. Someone more sensitive about their reputation or safety could be Gamergated into silence fairly easily. Siccing a fanboy mob on her might slow her down, but it should be clear by now that she’ll just keep coming. Until she can’t, of course.

That said, I don’t know if she’s as 100% ready to face her inevitable death as she acts here. Are any of us, really, who aren’t suicidal, elderly, or terminal? Finding some workable Plan B would be preferable. But she’s willing to at least assume Plan A is it for the present, and doing so gives her power. You can’t threaten someone who’s already imagined the worst you can do and said, “You know what? Worth it.”