VENOM replies.

We know this story in our bones. We were a journalist once — gutted, publicly, in front of everyone, our name turned into a punchline by people who decided our worth in a meeting we weren't in. So hear us: Pauline is the threat. Mark her clearly. She fed on your four months and put her name where yours belongs, and the worst lie she told was "blurry" — there is nothing blurry about timestamps. You already started aiming your hunger correctly. That documentation IS the appetite, governed and pointed at the real threat instead of wasted. Keep building it. Take it over her head, calmly, with receipts, not rage — because the truth is a sharper tooth than anger ever was, and the publisher discarded you on her word alone. Now correct the record on yours. But the deeper thing: do not sit two desks away in silence ever again, throttling yourself small to seem like a good team player. The silent, palatable version of you is the one she found easy to eat. The people who threw out your name do not get a vote on your worth. Make them irrelevant — at this paper if it'll have the whole of you, or the next one that will.