Prem wrote yesterday about Miley Cyrus and Liamworth’s separation and how thestory has been evolving. Every day there are updates. The update since yesterday is that they each seem to be blaming the other for the split.

PEOPLE reportedthat it’s Liam’s “partying” that’s been the problem:

“Everyone always thinks Miley is problematic and immature and a hardcore partier while he’s this chill surfer dude, but that’s actually [not accurate],” a friend of the couple tells PEOPLE exclusively. “Liam parties with his friends, and Miley thinks he should’ve grown out of that by now.”

Another Cyrus source, who agrees Hemsworth’s personality is much more complicated than the “super easygoing” public image that’s presented, says the actor can get “moody.”

“She’s been supportive of him when things get dark, but it’s tough,” says the Cyrus source. “That’s something that has weighed on Miley and their relationship. He can also lash out at her, and he hates the attention their ups and downs bring.”

TMZ then followed用一篇文章援引消息人士麦莉说it was indeed Liam’s habits that came between them contrasting with sources close to Liam insisting that’s bullsh-t and that that narrative is “another attempt by Miley to distract from her infidelity and recent outrageous behaviour”. Miley was photographed kissing Kaitlynn Carter pretty much the same day they confirmed that they had separated.

So is this Miley throwing Liam under the bus when she’s the one who was unfaithful? Or is Liam the one leaning into her reputation and covering up his contributions to why their relationship is falling apart?

Miley is supposedly holding off fromfiling for divorceand PEOPLE’s sources are still insisting that a reconciliation might eventually be possible, especially since Miley has a “hard time letting go of Liam”.

You know what this reminds me of? With much lower stakes? It reminds me of Brange. The similarities lie in how Miley and Liam are perceived. Because of Miley’s past, how she behaved a few years ago, when they first broke up, with all the twerking and the provocation, she has a certain reputation, which means people might be more be inclined to be like, oh she’s just a f-cking tramp skank piece of sh-t. And, obviously, those photos of her with Kaitlynn seem to support that. On the other side there’s Liam, so goodlooking, doesn’t speak much, more reserved, he even looks like a younger Brad Pitt a little bit. The assumption is automatic.

Here’s the thing though – I don’t know that it would bother Miley for people to think of her the way they might be thinking of her right now, doing whatever she’s doing with Kaitlynn, and the “recent outrageous behaviour”. She didn’t care back in 2013 when practically all of the western world was judging her for her clothes and her tongue and her ass, why would she care now? If your answer to that is “because her career”, right now her career is back in bad girl gear. The vibe of her latest EP,She is Coming, is closer to the Miley Cyrus persona of 2013 than it is to “Malibu” Miley, all oatmeal and wholesome. That song, of course, was off the albumYounger Now, released in 2017, just after she and Liam reconciled, and the whole narrative around that, as I complained about at the time, was about how she had to get the wildness out of her system to earn him back. If wildness is the mood on the current tracks, wouldn’t that be what she’d be leaning into now, with her separation, instead of positioning it like she “has a hard time letting go” of Liam?

This is why there’s no clear read on this situation, at least not to me, not when you’re trying to get at the possible motivations here. It could simply be a case of amateur hour PR, as whoever’s putting these leaks out there, with “sources” talking to PEOPLE and TMZ and the rest, not really understanding what the messaging is and how to make it consistent. Or it could be a lot more layered than “Miley’s a mess and a trash whore”. I’ll go back to thereporting from PEOPLEon the situation, and these two paragraphs in particular:

Another Cyrus source, who agrees Hemsworth’s personality is much more complicated than the “super easygoing” public image that’s presented, says the actor can get “moody.”

“She’s been supportive of him when things get dark, but it’s tough,” says the Cyrus source. “That’s something that has weighed on Miley and their relationship. He can also lash out at her, and he hates the attention their ups and downs bring.”

Moody, dark, lashing out…

If it’s even possible that some of this is close to the truth, that Miley Cyrus, for the last decade has been on and off with someone who might want to tame her, who might have asked her to conform to a template of a partner that he wants to be with, then isn’t it also possible that she’s being gaslit?

Or, you know, is there only one version of Miley that we’re willing to believe – that she’s always going to be the villain?