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Matt Rowan

@veryrealbatman.bsky.social
1.7K followers 826 following 7.3K posts

Dad, teacher, editor, student of the history of autocracy, anti-fascist, “Nazis ain’t got no humanity,” and author of HOW THE MOON WORKS. Stories in @bulbregion.bsky.social, @xraylitmag.bsky.social, @barrelhouse.bsky.social, @hexliterary.bsky.social, etc.

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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Any opportunity I get to give billionaires the metaphorical middle finger, I take.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Why is every egg roll in LA actually a spring roll?
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Man, I am wildly bored by a huge percentage of award-winning fiction out there. Why are you people so deeply unimaginative, and why do you keep rewarding each other for it?
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I have a new thing! It's about clowns showing up. It's called "Clowns Showed Up." It's in Ghost Harmonics! Thanks to Mike and William for masterminding this issue: www.ghostharmonics.com/magazine/iss...
ghostharmonics.com
Matt Rowan in Issue 02
Works by Matt Rowan in Oscillations
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
This is literally all ChatGPT is good for:
A ChatGPT Prompt reads: Do scholars agree on what Matt Rowan's greatest work is or is that still being decided? 

ChatGPT's Response: There isn't currently a scholarly consensus that one Matt Rowan story is definitively his “greatest.” More importantly, I found very little evidence of a sustained academic criticism of Rowan's fiction yet. What exists is primarily literary-magazine criticism, book reviews, blurbs from other writers, and reader reception.

That distinction matters because the available evidence points to recognition without a settled canon.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Too much goddamn evil in this country.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
It's insane how Trump just constantly falls asleep now in almost every situation, and we talked about Biden's mental fitness nearly nonstop for four years.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
So, uh, what is everyone prepared to do if (when) Trump tries to cancel our elections? Just want to do a temperature check.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I have a new thing! It's about clowns showing up. It's called "Clowns Showed Up." It's in Ghost Harmonics! Thanks to Mike and William for masterminding this issue: www.ghostharmonics.com/magazine/iss...
ghostharmonics.com
Matt Rowan in Issue 02
Works by Matt Rowan in Oscillations
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
I have to admit, I just now noticed Karl Sadtrombone is gonezo.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
They're taking the Alien franchise in a strange new direction.
Text from an email, pared down to include two discrete facts, reads: Ridley Scott Confirms Alien Movie & Rupert Grint Returns As Ron Weasley
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Not that I'm surprised, but Amazon is just letting people self-publish obviously AI-generated garbage without any requirements. Here's an example of what I'm talking about: www.amazon.com/THIS-REALLY-...
amazon.com
Amazon.com
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
SpaghettiOs: Oops! All Meatballs
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Big Woke One.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
This is the kind of gutter racism Trump genuinely believes in, by the way. He cosplays at caring about all of the culture war issues but when you see him smiling it up and just so proud of himself it's always denigrating language about Black people or other people of color.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
Look, no president is close to perfect, but wasn't it amazing when we had one who read multiple books a year? So frequently, in fact, that he had a reading list that he shared annually? He still does it. I miss it. I hate the sludge we have now.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
The worst person you know, etc.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I'm absolutely shocked. Shocked, I say! www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/b...
nytimes.com
Ross Douthat Joins ‘60 Minutes’ as a Correspondent
Mr. Douthat, an opinion columnist at The New York Times, will join the CBS News program, along with several other journalists.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Can you imagine being given a eulogy that's not even about you? This has *Homer at Frank "Grimey" Grimes's funeral nodding off and saying in his sleep 'Marge, change the channel' and everyone laughing* all over it. It's so humiliating. I love it.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
He's a war criminal, so yes.
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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
This is a good example of the fear that ICE has engendered in so many. A man here completely legally with nothing (on paper) to fear from ICE took off running when they showed up at a gas station and was struck by a passing truck. Awful.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 16/07/2026
Everything in moderation except coffee.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 12/07/2026
I only wish Graham had lived long enough to see the Republican Party fully destroyed, as he once correctly predicted.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Fucking of course. This is the biggest reason I didn't want Platner (obviously, all the other shit was bad enough, but I just knew that with enough time, some truly odious and likely criminal shit would emerge).
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Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
The entire city is on edge right now. It’s 96 degrees, we’re interrupted every 5 min by the sound of low-flying fighter jets, and the president has managed to ruin July 4th. Quietly muttering to myself: “just wait until IT happens. Everyone will be so happy when IT happens. It’ll be incredible…”
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Me to the waiter at a fancy restaurant, after sipping my Pinot Grigio: “And how is the cinnamon toast crunching this evening?”
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
A 5-4 decision on a right like birthright citizenship enshrined in the Constitution is not the major win for this Supreme Court that I’m sure John Roberts is trying to make it out to be.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Me to the waiter at a fancy restaurant, after sipping my Pinot Grigio: “And how is the cinnamon toast crunching this evening?”
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Reposted by Matt Rowan
Barred and Boujee aka Madiba Dennie @audrelawdamercy.blacksky.app · 30/06/2026
The more I had to say: I've said it now ballsandstrikes.org/scotus/trump...
ballsandstrikes.org
Supreme Court Rules Trump Can Fire Any Agency Head Who Doesn’t Make John Roberts Wealthier
It is very important for presidents to be able to fire agency heads at will, unless that agency is very important to John Roberts.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
And now this is one of my favorite things I've read recently. Just delightfully insane.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Man, nothing makes me hate creating art more than awards.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
The world keeps giving me reasons to return to reading the work of people who are definitely smarter than me and avoid talking to people who definitely are not.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
It's all so fucking infuriating. This is intense bullshit. Fucking Fascism without qualification.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
One thing I noticed after a day of being considered for jury duty, without revealing details of the specific case I was considered for, is that a sizeable number of people are unwilling to "take a police officer's word for it."
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
It's lunacy that our criminal justice system requires jurors to agree to go along with exactly the definitions of particular concepts and terms the judge of a given case sets forth. Each term should be framed in the context of the actual Constitutional understanding of these rights and guidelines.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
A five-alarm fire. We've had many of those in the last two years but this one is particularly loud and alarming.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
See, now this is pro-life.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
I love it
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Being civically responsible is all fine and good until you are told to report for jury duty.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Doing the math and realizing Seinfeld is to my daughters what I Love Lucy was to me.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
I can't believe I submitted a story to a publication called Black Scat Books. But to be fair to me, their flier for their anthology looked pretty solid. Still, advise you to stay away. They arbitrarily decided that my inadvertently sending a simultaneous submission was an unpardonable sin.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
It is and isn't crazy how stupid it all is.
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Better Things Are Possible @internethippo.bsky.social · 19/06/2026
Because the people in this government are gleefully malevolent you naturally assume they are more evil than stupid but they're stupid first. They think everyone who came before, everyone who built the world they've benefited from, was dumb. People like Musk and Trump both have this idiot's disease
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
So much of the hoarding of resources by American oligarchs is simply to keep those resources from the rest of us and encourage our compliance via our desperation.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Say what you will about the logic of starting a war with Iran, but at least the Iranian government now knows they can bring the global economy to heel with one relatively small assertion of their regional control.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
Bring back bullying exclusively for people who use AI without a shred of intellectual engagement.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
If you haven't lost a ton of respect for Curry Barker and the rest of the team behind obsession over how they've handled the bad Sally Choi PR, just admit that you don't care about working people. This system is such a scam.
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Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Criminalization is the fuel of fascism. And the people who have been saying this for decades are the PIC abolitionists so many deride.
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
How can we even pretend Black lives matter in a country where stuff as heinous as representatives of the state murdering a toddler happen regularly?
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Matt Rowan @veryrealbatman.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
Now I'm the one laughing (while marveling at the sheer waste and pointlessness of it all).
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