#i did a bit of reading up on legal proceedings that could be relevant to fis when i was publishing the epilogue but it was also like. 4am

[martynsimp69]

I'm being coherent now. I'm so obsessed with the implications of like what happens next. like the legal proceedings and on social media. I want to see fis in universe memes on the days after they find out. do they ever find out he fucked the fish because if I'm on twitter I'm assuming immediately he fucked the fish. does martyn get to like. testify? do they take a boat out there to interview him? much to think about

i kept neglecting to reply to this im so sorry but i understand you. i wish i had better answers for everything bc the idea of the fallout of everything is SO interesting but unfortunately i am not well-versed enough in relevant court cases to give a good answer yet. but i like to think doc starts vlogging with martyn from a boat or something a few years down the line. twitch livestream of gopro footage shot by martyn but its just really dark and incomprehensible shakycam of open ocean. my partners and i also have a handful of fake in-universe twitter posts that we've had for like. months. (some of these are more canon than others)

#sorry all i have are shitposts . My bad #fis au #ask #jmonsaord #i did a bit of reading up on legal proceedings that could be relevant to fis when i was publishing the epilogue but it was also like. 4am #i would REALLY like to do justice to the legal drama side of things if i ever explore that more. but i dont have much experience with that. #theres this vague idea of post-story short stories rattling around in my brain about other characters who are sirens/interact with sirens #and what doc and martyn get up to later in life #but thats a long ways out if i do that. it would be nice tho

[sapphicwhump]

Behind Bars

This piece is somewhat personal to me, as it deals with my own fears and thoughts on real-life political events. I wrote it over a year ago and have improved since then, so it may not be the finest example of my writing.

Fandoms: Original Work Tropes: implied prison whump, trans woman whumpee, trauma recovery, whumpee x caretaker fluff, parallels to real-life politics TWs: implied transphobia, referenced solitary confinement, potential to be read as implied noncon

        “Hello, this is Aveline Henry.”

        “Hey, Avi!”

        Even though the phone’s aged speaker and poor reception, she’d never fail to recognize the voice on the other end. “Oh my god, Tia!?”

        “Yup! How you been, girl?”

        She stands up from her seat on the couch and begins to pace the living room of her small apartment, her heart fluttering with delight and anxiety alike. This is a voice she hasn’t heard in over a year, and one she had never expected to hear again. “Good! Really great, actually. Uh, are you calling me from the prison?”

        “Yeah; where else would I be? This call is costing me a fuckload, so I’ve gotta make this quick. Tell me about your life! How’s the outside world treating ya?”

        Aveline is still slightly too surprised to be functioning at full capacity. It’s difficult to wrap her head around the fact that it really is Tia talking to her from the other end of the line. “Things have been pretty crazy for me. Very busy. A lot of it has been rough, but things are getting better every day.”

        “Mm, I wanna hear about all of it.”

        Aveline takes a moment to look back over the last year of her life. It’s been her most hectic one by far, largely because the preceding year had been her worst one by far. There’s so much to fill Tia in on; what should she even mention first?

        She elects to start with something big and relatively simple. “Probably the most major thing is that I finally got surgery…”

        “Oooh! Good for you!” Tia’s tone jumps up in delight. Aveline doesn’t need to specify which surgery; there’s only one that could be relevant to their formerly shared life. “Now if you decide to throw another molotov at a cop car, they won’t throw you in here with me again.”

        “How many times do I have to tell you, it was a brick, not a molotov!” The two women share a fit of laughter. “But yeah, I suppose you’re right.”

        She pauses for a moment, savoring the familiarity of Tia’s warm chuckle. “Also, I’m legally Aveline now. My birth certificate has an F on it.”

        The chuckling comes right back. “Well with that plus the surgery, maybe you should fuck up another cop car. I hear a lotta gay shit goes on on the other side.”

        “That is the worst idea I’ve heard in a long time.” Aveline lets out an amused exhale. “Plus, I wouldn’t want to cheat on my girlfriend.”

        “Oh, you found a girl! Nice! How’s it working out between you?”

        “Mostly good. I really never thought I’d find someone who would be cool with who I am, but she approached me nonetheless. We’ve been together for about six months now. She’s been helping me recover from the surgery. We’ve run into a few relationship problems due to, umm… mental health stuff, but she’s really good about everything.”

        “Oh, yeah…” Aveline’s skin crawls as she can practically feel Tia recalling something unpleasant. “How are you coping with that stuff?”

        She gnaws on her lower lip before proceeding. “A lot better, actually. I started seeing a therapist, which was… definitely very needed. I still get nightmares, but they don’t freak me out as much as they used to.”

        “Yeah, those were always a bitch to deal with when you’d wake me up with them. Good to hear that you’re getting better.” Tia’s voice falls a bit lower, but remains warmly comforting.

        “Speaking of which… I’m also filing a lawsuit against the prison for, uhh…” Her stomach swells with nausea as she tries to form the words. “...You know. They knew what would happen, and didn’t do anything.”

        Tia hums in understanding. “Well, they did move you in with me.”

        “Yeah, but it wasn’t nearly enough.” she frowns. “Either way, I doubt the case is gonna get very far. And even if it does, the whole… issue is a lot larger than just a few rotten prison officials. There won’t be justice until stuff like this can’t ever happen again.”

        Tia seems to have been thinking the same thing. “Mm, yeah. Well at least now they can’t hassle you for threatening legal action against their negligence.”

        As nice as it is to talk to Tia again, these are things that Aveline would prefer not to revisit. She wants to tell her old friend all about how she’s spent the last year turning her life around, not dwell on where she’s been.

        “Oh! That reminds me, on the subject of more systemic change, I’ve gotten really into activism now. A few human rights watches have asked for interviews, and an advocacy group recently hosted me as a speaker at one of their events, so I could talk to an audience about everything that happened. It was a super moving experience; I nearly broke down crying on stage.”

        “Oh, that’s really cool. You were always worse about holding your tears than me.”

        “Heh, yeah.”

        “You tell them about me?” Tia’s tone sounds amused, but the question still spikes Aveline’s anxiety.

        “...Yeah, but I omit your name. Uh, don’t worry; you’re still anonymous.”

        “Eh, I’m not worried about that; just curious if I’m a part in your stories.”

        Aveline is somewhat surprised at her friend’s uncertainty. To her, it’s not even a question. “Of course you are! You were the one thing that made my life even slightly tolerable for that year. You have way more experiences in there than I do; there’s no way I could justify not talking about you.”

        “Ah, alright.” Aveline can hear the contented smile on Tia’s lips coming out through her voice.

        If Tia and Aveline are catching up on each others’ lives, then that means Aveline should probably also ask some questions of her own. Her friend’s situation doesn’t seem to have changed much since they last saw each other, and worry grips her gut as she asks her next question.

        “You’ve asked a lot about me, but how have you been holding together?”

        There’s a pause that’s just a bit too long for Aveline’s comfort. “Same as usual, I suppose. Just trying to stay outta trouble.”

        Aveline grips her phone tighter. She knows what Tia’s “usual” is, and what hers used to be. Even for as long as she’s known Tia, she’s never been able to accept the normalization of it all. It’s one of the few issues that they had parted ways with a disagreement on.

        “No noteworthy incidents?”

.         ”Eh… I did another stint in solitary.”

        Aveline stops dead in her tracks where she’s pacing, her stomach abruptly falling into her feet. The drop in blood pressure is rapid enough to put black spots in her vision. “Oh my god, Tia… Holy shit are you okay?”

        Tia immediately realizes that bringing up solitary confinement around Aveline was definitely the wrong move. She quickly forces her tone into something more aloof. “Hey, relax... I’m fine. It was only for a few days. Nothing bad happened.”

        Nothing like what happened to you, Tia doesn’t add, but Aveline still knows it’s being said.

        “Alright.” Her jaw chenches, holding in her protests. Getting put in solitary in the first place is already something bad happening.

        Tia decides that now is a good time to veer the conversation away from herself. Aveline knows it’s a deflection, but she doesn't object. “So what are current events like in the outside world? I can’t usually afford internet time, so it can be kinda easy to miss it if the world is ending or something.”

        “Honestly, nothing that you wouldn’t be able to get from the radio or cable news. The presidential campaigns are heating up, although it’s still gonna be a corporate neolib either way; no hope for any real change. The protests are still going on, but I think they’re starting to fade out of public awareness again. It’s unfortunate; I would have liked to do more, but I’m too scared now.”

        “Yeah, that’s totally understandable. Don’t be too hard on yourself over it, okay?”

        Aveline groans internally. Tia knows her too well, but regardless, she’ll be as self-destructive as she pleases. “But that’s their suppression tactic, isn’t it? The cruelty is the fucking point. I haven’t gone to a single protest since the one where I threw that brick. I’m so terrified of going back that I haven’t been helping the cause. I never thought I’d be so weak that their bullshit would work on me.”

        Tia sounds annoyed, although she’d never get truly upset with Aveline. “Avi, don’t give me that shit. You were an activist before, and you’re even more of an activist now. Torture radicalizes, not pacifies, and from what I’m hearing, you’re a great example of that yourself.”

        “Mm... alright.”

        Tia isn’t finished yet. “And don’t let anyone ever tell you you’re weak for what you’ve been through. That includes yourself. Take it from someone who’s been in and out of the system for years: you’re amazingly strong to turn your life around after this.”

        Aveline is wise enough to know when she’s been beaten. “Yeah… I know you’re right. But still, it’s just… It’s really fucking difficult to feel like I somehow won after all of this, you know? I broke a car window, and for that I fucking got... “

        She stops before she gets choked up. She can’t even say it. She doesn’t need to; Tia was there for it all. “My human rights are worth less to this shithole country than a fucking sheet of glass.”

        Tia’s tone drops. “Now that you have a therapist, you better be talking to them about that stuff.”

        Aveline exhales heavily, feeling slightly more composed afterwards. “Yeah, I am. Sorry; I know I’ve given you this whole spiel before, but like… Of all the things that have stuck with me from that year, all the ways it fucked me up, that’s the biggest thing I took away from it. Just how fucking worthless we are to them.”

        “Aw, we’re not worthless! We make the prison-industrial complex billions every year for being locked up.”

        Aveline can’t laugh at that joke. Tia’s pitch-black humor is just as bitter to her ears as it’s always been, but hearing it again after so long brings her an odd, unexpected satisfaction. Under its bite, there’s a certain well-meaning warmth to it that she’s missed this past year.

        Tia sees Aveline’s lack of a response as a perfect opportunity to excuse herself. “Well, it’s great to hear from you again. I’m really running up the cost on this call, so I gotta go now.”

        That sparks an idea in Aveline’s mind. “I’ll send you some money! I know my parents sent me money for the commissary and phone calls while I was in. It’ll be way more than whatever you’re making from work or trading.”

        “Wait, you serious?”

        “Yeah! Of course!”

        “That’s… wow. Thank you.” There are only a few times she’s ever heard Tia be genuinely moved, and this is one of them. It takes Aveline a moment to realize that in Tia’s many years of imprisonment, she’ll be the first person to ever send her money.

        “No problem. It won’t be too financially stressful for me to make regular payments. Just call again soon, alright?”

        “Yeah, sure.”

        “Alright then—”

        Tia interrupts her before she can hang up. “Wait, before you go, Avi… Just remember how lucky you are. I know how much it sucked for you, but that year you were in with me was definitely the best year I’ve spent behind bars. It’s really, really great to hear that you’re doing better on the outside.”

        She has to blink away tiny tears from the corners of her eyes. “Yeah. I’ve got a pretty immense gratitude for you as well. I hope you have a comfortable rest of your sentence, for what it’s worth.”

        “Heh, thanks. Those payments will certainly help with that.” For a moment, she chuckles again, before her tone suddenly falls to something almost mournful. “Y’know, I’ll be an old woman by the time I get out, but you still got a full life to live. Make the most of it, okay?”

        Aveline closes her eyes and smiles through a small sigh.

        “Okay, Tia.”

#my writing #whump #lady whump #prison whump #trans whumpee #female whumpee

[doc-pickles]

i won’t hesitate (for you) ch. 9

Jo is happy, at least she feels like she is. When someone from her past shows up, will her and her daughter’s world ever go back to normal? Or will things change for good?

Me? Updating? It's more likely than you think apparently. I struggled, s t r u g g l e d. through this chapter but I think the rest will come a bit easier. S/O to Ren for proofing the first half of this and to Nat for demanding the second half hahaha. Also I know that the plot for this whole child support thing is totally out of left field, but I'm going with the Grey's motto of "enough logic to be believable but probably not real world" so there's that. Anyways enjoy! PS: In the interest of me not sending myself to an early grave, there's no flashback in the beginning of this chapter!

+

“Can’t believe we have to go to court, this is a waste of my time and my good suit,” Alex grumbled as he tightened this tie. “I had to pull it out of the boxes and then get it dry cleaned, I should freaking bill her for this.”

“This’ll be over with in a few days and we can go back to our normal lives, well as normal as living in a loft overrun with cardboard boxes is,” Jo exited the bathroom and navigated around a stack of boxes before finally making it over to Alex, moving his hands and helping with his tie. “You look so handsome, if we didn’t have somewhere to be I would drag you back to bed.”

“Well our bed isn’t even here for you to drag me to,” Alex moved his lips to kiss along Jo’s neck, a soft giggle coming from her as he did so. “Movers are coming in 45 minutes and we have to be out the door in 15.”

“That’s enough time for a quickie in the bathroom,” Jo’s proposition caused Alex to pull back and look her up and down with an amused expression. “What? I’m seriously horny all the time and you look good in a suit. I can’t help all the hormones running through my body. In fact! It’s your fault for getting me pregnant!”

Alex rolled his eyes, pressing one last kiss to Jo’s lips before pulling back from her.

“If I remember correctly, there were two of us in that elevator,” grabbing his keys and coat, Alex held his hand out for Jo to grab. “And I wasn’t the one gasping and moaning and practically begging the whole time.”

“If you keep using verbs like that you’re gonna make us late,” Jo swatted at Alex’s ass before grabbing his outstretched hand, following him out of the loft.

As they locked the doors and headed downstairs, Alex let his hands fall to Jo’s growing bump, showcased by her form fitting black dress. At almost 18 weeks pregnant now, Jo couldn’t attempt to hide her bump anymore. She’d been nervous that her pregnancy would impact the court case one way or another, but Alex had reassured her that he just wanted her there with him, consequence be damned. Things had moved quickly though, and in the end, Jo had been called to testify as a character witness so her protests didn’t matter.

The speed of the case making it to court probably had something to do with the fact that Izzie hadn’t bothered to fly back home to file a claim, instead calling the first paternity lawyer she could find on google and starting up the legal process in Washington. While it was a minor relief that Alex wouldn’t have to split time between Seattle and Kansas, both he and Jo were worried about how seriously Izzie had taken things.

Getting into the car and pulling on her seatbelt, Jo begins to ramble nervously. “How’s this going to work? I mean… they’re not yours, right? How is Izzie even allowed to do this?”

A loud groan left Alex as he settled into the driver's seat of his car. He’d wondered the same thing, but he knew that him signing all those papers when he moved to Kansas three years ago had definitely helped Izzie’s case. Even back then, he’d thought in the back of his mind that he should have asked more questions, demanded a paternity test, but he hadn’t. All he could focus on were these two perfect children standing in front of him, children that he now knew weren’t even his. Alex’s blood began to boil with anger at the thought of Izzie lying to him for so long, but he let out a deep breath and began to drive towards the courthouse instead.

“I don’t know, but I saw those blood test results myself and there’s no damn way those kids are mine,” Jo’s fingers rubbed against Alex’s arm, calming him slightly. He looked to her briefly before speaking again. “I’m sorry you had to get dragged into this, I wish I could protect you from it all.”

He could feel Jo’s gaze on him as his eyes stayed on the road. Alex could almost hear her thinking of how much she wanted to make Izzie pay for what she’d done to him. He was almost certain that pregnant or not, she’d fight Izzie if she came at her again. As if reading his mind Jo let out a chuckle and squeezed his arm reassuringly.

“I’m a big girl, I can stand up to bullies on the playground,” Jo squeezed Alex’s arm once more before bringing her hand to rest on her growing bump. “Let’s just get through today, this isn’t going to go longer than a day once they figure out you’re not those kids dad.”

But it did end up lasting longer… Once they got to the courthouse, Alex realized with a sense of horror that Izzie wasn’t messing around. She had two lawyers and was wearing a dress that looked like it cost more than his paycheck. And she wasn’t holding back anything, her lawyers showed that loud and clear.

“My client went through multiple rounds of chemotherapy, there’s no possible way that she could conceive without the help of artificial insemination and the sample that Doctor Karev provided,” Izzie’s lawyer was a short, pudgy man whose voice echoed through the courtroom unforgivingly. “We’re asking for Doctor Karev to back pay child support for the three years he knew about and took parental responsibility for both children as well as therapy for the children in the wake of his sudden departure.”

“Your Honor, these claims are absurd! Doctors Karev and Stevens performed a blood test that showed that one of the children has a genetic disorder that neither of them have, meaning that if Doctor Stevens did indeed give birth to both children, that Doctor Karev could not be their biological father,” Alex’s lawyer fought back, eyeing Izzie and her lawyers as she spoke. “All we’re asking for is Doctor Karev to be released of all parental responsibility for both children and for Doctor Stevens to repay him the legal fees for these proceedings, as well as cover any other expenses he’s incurred while being involved in this trial.”

A quick and calculated silence followed the statement, Alex’s eyes flitting nervously from Izzie to her lawyer to Jo, who sat behind him with her hands nervously running over her bump. He’d seen Izzie watching her with a venomous expression earlier, Alex’s grip around her waist tightening as they’d shuffled into the courtroom.

“Your Honor, we’d like to call Doctor Josephine Brooke Karev to the stand before we proceed,” Izzie’s other lawyer, a tall woman named Eleanor Krause, stood and gestured towards the witness stand. She wore an almost permanent scowl on her thin face, her dark eyes staring menacingly around the courtroom. “I have a few questions for the other Doctor Karev.”

Jo rose and quietly made her way towards the stand, eyes meeting Alex’s briefly before swearing in and turning to face Miss Krause.

“Doctor Karev, are you and Doctor Alexander Michael Karev still married?”

“No we are currently divorced,” Jo’s voice was clear and stoic as she answered, staring directly at the lawyer questioning her. “We’ve been divorced for almost three years now.”

“And the dissolution of your marriage occurred when separated he moved to Kansas to be with Doctor Stevens?”

“Correct…,” then quickly adding, “after learning of their existence, Alex determined he needed to sever all ties with Seattle to be there completely for his children. At least who he thought were his children.”

Krause’s eyes lit up suddenly, a wicked smile appearing on her face as she stared down Jo. Alex could feel his stomach drop, knowing that whatever the woman was going to say next would not be friendly or civil.

“And you also have a child fathered by Doctor Alexander Michael Karev, is that right?”

“Yes, my daughter Harper Josephine Karev, who is two, and the child I’m carrying now are both Alex’s,” Jo’s brow furrowed, hand settling onto her abdomen as she watched the woman take a step closer to her. “I don’t see what that has to do with the case at hand though.”

“I just want to know if the other Doctor Karev paid you child support during your first pregnancy and the two years of your daughter’s life that he wasn’t present,” Krause’s voice was practically dripping with malice as she stared Jo down. “I mean, we are here to make sure that he’s doing his duty as a father, whether he’s in the same state as his children or not, right? So, has he been paying child support to you, Doctor Karev?”

Jo’s eyes flitted to Alex nervously, his own telling her that it was okay to tell the truth. To be honest, he was scared what Jo’s answer would affect in the case, but he knew that at the end of the day he wouldn’t have to pay a dime to Izzie because her kids were not his.

“No he hasn’t, but he didn’t know he had a daughter until four months ago,” Jo argued, turning momentarily to the judge. “He’s been a present and wonderful father since he’s known about Harper.”

“Doctor Karev, are you sure beyond a reasonable doubt that both of your children are indeed Alex’s children? Did you not have your daughter shortly after your now ex husband left you?”

“What’s the relevance here,” Alex’s lawyer finally stood and challenged the woman accosting Jo. “Doctor Josephine Karev’s children shouldn’t have any effect on her ex husband's child support case! It’s cruel and malicious to be questioning her like this on the stand.”

Alex turned to glare at Izzie, angered that she wore the same expression as her shifty lawyer. She knew about what Krause was plotting, he would put money on the fact that she’d planted the seed of whatever cruel idea it was in her head.

“I’m just questioning Doctor Alexander Karev’s intentions when it comes to his children, however many that may be,” Krause shrugged, eyes narrowing in Jo’s direction. “You’ve filed papers to move forward with adding Alexander to your daughter’s legal paperwork, is that correct?”

That all too familiar feeling of horror flooded Alex’s senses again, overtaking everything as he watched Jo answer affirmatively, her eyes moving to him again. There were tears welling up in them now, the fear he felt in the room spreading to her as well. His breathing hitched as he listened to Izzie’s lawyer prattle on once more, her biting voice breaking through his mental fog.

“I’d like to request a hold on any formal paternity proclamations concerning Doctor Alexander Michael Karev’s alleged children until their paternity can be confirmed via DNA testing,” Krause moved her line of sight to Jo once more, a sharp note ringing through the courtroom as she delivered her final, jarring blow. “I’d like to request that all four of Doctor Karev’s alleged children are tested, I believe that Josephine here is still well within the window to have an amniocentesis performed.”

“No, hell no!” Alex stood from his chair, eyes blazing as he stared down Krause. “I am not letting you poke and prod my wife just for a damn child support case, especially one she’s not directly involved in.”

Both Alex and his lawyer turned pleadingly towards the judge, who was eyeing both Izzie and Alex warily. He was never one to feel anxious, but he couldn’t help the worry mounting in his chest. Finally, the judge spoke, his words directed towards Izzie’s lawyers.

“How long would this process take?”

“If we proceeded with the amniocentesis, we’d have results in as soon as three weeks,” Krause’s eyes moved to Alex, a sick look of delight glowing in them. “If you’re uncomfortable with that though, we can draw this case out until the baby is born.”

“I’ll do it,” Jo’s voice rang out before anyone else could answer, making all eyes in the courtroom turn to her. Alex felt his heart constrict as he watched her speak. “I’ll do the amnio, I don’t mind.”

“With Doctor Josephine Karev’s confirmation, I’m adjourning this case until the DNA results for Alexis Isobel Stevens, Eli George Stevens, Harper Josephine Karev, and Doctor Josephine Karev’s unborn child come back. Court adjourned, you may leave now,” the judge rose and left the courtroom quickly, not bothering to witness the pure mayhem that descended upon the room.

“You did this on purpose,” Alex was up and out of his seat before anyone could stop him, feet heading towards Izzie who wore a smug expression as she looked him over. “You disgust me, you’ve weaponized your own children against me and now you’re trying to jeopardize the health of my unborn child and wife?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Alex,” Izzie batted her eyelashes in Alex’s direction, her self satisfied smirk growing as she watched him become more angry. “Looking forward to seeing you again!”

Before he could respond to Izzie, a gentle hand pressed into Alex’s back and ushered him towards the exit. Jo’s presence, even if he hadn’t looked into her eyes yet, was an instant calming effect over him.

As soon as they stepped into the hallway, Jo and Alex were in each other’s embrace, steadying breaths matching the others as they tried to come to terms with what had just happened. Her face pressed against his chest, Alex could feel the slow shuddering breaths that left Jo as he held her. He knew the questions Izzie's lawyer had posed were ones that were a sore spot for Jo, ones she’d begged him not to believe as she’d cried into his arms just a few weeks earlier.

“Just one punch,” Jo mumbled the words against Alex’s chest, looking up to make sure he heard her. “Please? I just wanna punch her one time.”

Alex chuckled, looking down at Jo with a glint in his eye, “You know I can’t let you do that, even though it would make me happier than I care to admit.”

“You kept calling me your wife in there,” Jo pressed her hands against the lapels of Alex’s suit, avoiding his stare as she fixed her gaze on her hands. “I don’t hate hearing you say that again.”

The words made Alex’s heart stutter under Jo’s gentle touch, his mind racing as he took in fully what she was saying. Did she really want to be his wife again? After years of him being away, of her raising their daughter on her own? After he had all but abandoned her and told her via letter?

Watching Jo for another moment, Alex brought his fingers under her chin and met her eyes, “You wanna marry me again? After all the shit we’ve been through?”

“For some reason I do, you make me better,” Jo finally lifted her gaze back to Alex’s face, eyes welling with tears as she spoke. “You’ve given me the best things in my life, you’ve made me a better person. And if we can get through some of the things that have been thrown at us, then I truly think we can get through everything. I love you Alex, more than I can ever say to you. I know you think you’ve fucked up, but through the past few months you’ve shown me how much you’ve grown.”

Not knowing what to say, Alex leaned down and captured Jo’s lips with his own. If there was one thing that was almost always blaringly clear for him, it was that he didn’t deserve the woman in his arms. He couldn’t begin to fathom how much it had taken to forgive him, to even trust him again after what he’d done. But just as she’d always done, Jo saw him for who he really was underneath all of his layers of bullshit.

“We can go right now, we are in the courthouse,” Alex joked, prompting Jo to roll her eyes and gently slap his chest before walking towards the exit. “What? Not a funny joke? We had fun last time and the SUV has a bigger backseat than the Audi did.” “Mmm yeah, you know we made a baby that night, right?,” Jo raised her eyebrows, a mischievous grin lighting up her face as she took in Alex’s shocked expression. “You have really good luck, you know? You made one baby in the backseat of a car and another on the floor of an elevator.”

A peel of laughter escaped Jo as she tried to unsuccessfully move away from Alex’s grip on her hips, instead falling back into his arms as his lips grazed her neck.

“You’re gonna be the death of me, woman,” Alex whispered the words as he turned Jo around in his arms. “Weren’t you just trying to jump me in the bathroom a few hours ago? Is the car not up to your standards?”

“No, I’m just thinking that Link is keeping Harper overnight and our bed probably got to the new house already,” Jo smirked in satisfaction at the dark look that fell over Alex’s eyes at her suggestion. “Now's as good a time as any to start christening the place. Unless you can’t keep up with a younger woman?”

“Josephine Karev, you know I can keep up with you any day of the week,” Alex’s lips ghosted Jo’s ear as he lowered his voice, pressing her closer to him and making his aroused state perfectly clear for her. “Let’s go, before we have no choice but to finish things up in the car.”

+

Twenty four hours after leaving the courthouse, Alex and Jo find themselves in an exam room on the OB floor. With the amniocentesis being court ordered and both of them wanting to get things over as quickly as possible, they’d booked the first appointment that was available.

“How are you not nervous,” Alex sat beside Jo, her hand in his as Carina ran an ultrasound wand over Jo’s stomach. “I mean I’m not trying to make you nervous, but you know what happens here!”

“Can’t be any worse than a 15 hour unmedicated labor that ended with a 9 pound baby making its way out of your vagina,” Jo shrugged, Carina chuckling quietly next to her. “I came up with some very interesting curse words that day.”

Alex and Jo both watched the ultrasound screen intently, their baby reaching one leg up to kick at the probe. Carina furrowed her brow, watching the baby move languidly on the screen, “You’re going to have to get them to calm down, I cannot go in while they’re kicking all around like that.”

“Talk to them, they always calm down when you talk to them,” Jo turned to Alex and raised her eyebrows. “Go on! I don’t have all day to lay here Alex.” Alex looked between Jo and Carina before leaning down and speaking in the same mellow tone that Jo had become so used to hearing while they laid in bed at night, “Hey kiddo, you gotta slow down in there. Your mom and I are tangled up in this stupid ass thing-”

“Alex!”

“And we’d really appreciate it if you cooperated so we could get this done,” Alex glanced to the ultrasound screen, noticing that the erratic movements had lessened and the baby had calmed. “See, that’s more like it. You know your sister is very excited to meet you, she keeps running around talking about how she’s gonna be a ‘big shitser’ which is super adorable if not the most inappropriate thing to come out of a two year olds mouth.

“She wants to name you Elsa or Hei Hei, those are the options I was presented with a few nights ago anyways. I don’t think she really gets it, but she’s gonna be great,” Jo’s eyes closed quickly as Carina pulled out the needle, her hand squeezing Alex’s. “Okay you gotta be super still now, mom’s got a big needle in her-”

“You are not helping me, Alex.” “And she’s all done! Look at that, easy peasy,” Alex pressed a kiss to Jo’s forehead, following the once again active baby on the screen. “Hey look at that, baby’s flashing us!”

Jo sat up quickly, eyes scanning the screen as well with a laugh, “Well that’s one way to do a gender reveal.”

Alex leaned up to kiss Jo, laughter bubbling from both of them as they let the realization sink in. They had a house, they had two healthy kids, they had the promise of a great big future ahead of them. Court case be damned, they were happy and things were going right between them for once.

#jolex #alex karev #jo wilson #jo karev #greys anatomy #jo x alex #jolex fanfic #greys anatomy fanfic #nina writes #hesitate

[princessmadafu]

Summary of Warby’s Judgment, 5th August 2020

For those of you who don’t have time to read all 65 paragraphs in full:

Introduction

(1) MM's "Five Friends" only spoke to People if they could remain anonymous.

(2) The 5F are not sources for anything published by DM/ANL, just the People article of 18th Feb 2019.

(3) Warby grants MM protection of the 5F, "which at this stage is necessary in the interests of the administration of justice. This is an interim  decision." In other words, witness protection; it will prevent the tabloids hounding the 5F and publishing things that may prejudice the case. He also notes that the case has been going on 10 months, is going slowly, and is still far from trial, and his judgment may change with circumstances, "if and when there is a trial at which one or more of the sources gives evidence." (I like the "if and when" here!)

(4) Warby tells MM's team to get a move on. He wants witness statements and a Costs and Case Management Conference so further pre-trial steps can be taken.

The Procedural Background

(5) MM is suing ANL over The Letter on the grounds of "misuse of private information, breach of duty under the GDPR [General Data Protection Regulation], and copyright infringement." Further details as per his judgment on 1st May 2020, the Strike-Out Judgment.

The relevant issues:

(6) In the S-OJ, ANL says the contents of The Letter were not private or confidential, MM had no resonable expectation that they would be, and their publication was a defence of the right of freedom of expression of ANL, readers and Thomas Markle.

(7) ANL claims MM's own conduct forfeited or weakened any expectation of privacy, and she had knowingly allowed The Letter and contents to enter the public domain.

(8) Six pages of details submitted by ANL; the publication of the People article was "sought and intended", "caused or permitted" and "acquiesced in" by MM. This is inferred because (i) the article contained detailed personal information that could only have come from MM herself (ii) the silence of Kensington Palace and MM on whether MM had consented to the 5F talking to People (iii) MM has not complained to People about publishing the article.

(9) This is the bit where MM claims she didn't authorise the article, didn't know what the 5F were doing, only later discovered it, didn't know they'd talk about The Letter or its contents, only 1F made a passing reference to The Letter and that the summary of the contents of The Letter was wrong anyway.

(10) Since the S-OJ, MM's case has been amended, and more information has been provided by her team. More relevantly, ANL has requested further information:

(11) ANL requested that MM identify the 1F who made the passing reference to the Letter and the other 4F who spoke to People.

The Response and attendant publicity:

(12) "The Response": MM's lawyers responded in a Confidential Schedule, and the 1F is now Friend A, and the others are Friends B to E. The 5F "deliberately chose to speak anonymously."

(13) The bit where she claims her wedding generated £1billion, which far outweighed the public funds spent on security.

(14) At one minute to midnight on 30th June 2020 MM's lawyers emailed a letter and attached documents to ANL's lawyers, received at midnight, claiming the docs had been filed at court. They had not. These docs were The Response, an Appendix of press articles, and the Confidential Schedule.

(15) ANL's solicitors immediately forwarded the email to ANL.

(16) At 4.58pm UK time 1st July 2020, the Mail Online published an article headed "Meghan Markle names the five friends behind People article". Brief description of the article, and we first hear of the "long-time friend, former co-star, a friend from LA, a one-time colleague and a close confidante."

(17) At 5.09pm 1st July, Mail Online publishes another article about the £1billion tourism windfall, according to "documents released as part of her High Court battle against the Mail on Sunday".

(18) Around 11pm 1st July, there followed another article about how MM was left "unprotected" by the monarchy, according to "leaked court documents". It also referred to docs seen by the Press Association news agency about the identification of the 5F.

(19) On 2nd July 2020, the paper-version DM ran with "Meghan: The Palace Hung Me Out To Dry" on the front page, plus pp 2-3; MM says she did discuss The Letter with close friends but never authorised them to talk, and more on the £1billion.

(20) All these articles were clearly based on The Response, but not on copies obtained from the court. A non-party can obtain copies, but only after the docs have been submitted, processed and accepted for filing. Which these weren't. They weren't accepted for filing until 11am on 2nd July 2020.

(21) The docs were submitted for filing as confidential and not for third parties without permission of the court, as they contained private information. They were accepted for filing on this basis. Only The Response is available to third parties, but it wasn't available until 11am on 2nd July, after the articles had already been published.

(22) Widespread international coverage before 11am on 2nd July. ANL's suggested third party seems improbable, whereas MM suggests all third party reporting comes from ANL. Warby did a little digging himself, eg Newsweek, and concludes that all third party reporting came from ANL.

(23) MM says ANL "had been astute to publicise its own case" even before this; cites article from 16th Jan 2020 about MM's private texts with the now ex-BFF JM.

(24) On 6th July 2020, ANL lawyers assert that using a Confidential Schedule as part of The Response is illegitimate, and the Schedule should be fully reportable. If no application for an injunction was made by 9th July, they would presume that MM accepted that the Schedule was not confidential.

The Application and attendant publicity:

(25) On 9th July, MM's lawyers made the application now being ruled on about the confidential nature of the Schedule and the privacy of the 5F: no publishing, communicating or disclosing anything in the Schedule or anything that might identify the 5F; no third party applications without permission of the court; and MM must be allowed in proceedings to refer to the 5F as ABCDE, not by their names.

(26) The application comes with two witness statements, one from MM's solicitor containing evidence about Friend C, the other from MM herself containing the bit about each of these women being a private citizen, young mother, etc blah blah clickbait, emotional and mental well-being...

(27) ANL lawyers suggest MM briefed the press about this application before they had received their own copy. Application filed at 8.32am, served on ANL at 8.30am; 8.45am Sky News already asking ANL for a comment; 9.30am title page of MM's witness statement "posted on the Twitter feed of someone called Omid Scobie" who quoted a "close source"... (I love the "someone called Omid Scobie"!) and the quote about the five innocent women, young mother blah blah... (I can imagine the pages of word salad poor Warby had to go through to condense all this politely; the blah blahs are purely my own.)

(28) Evidence supports ANL that MM's team "have been energetically briefing the media about these proceedings from the outset." Warby quotes emails to media representatives from James Holt, Sussex Royal's Head of Engagement and Communication, including a confidential summary note and a "crib sheet".

Relevant Procedural Law

(29) This is mostly technical stuff that Legal Anons will explain much better, but very basically, it starts with a list of who is allowed to see what, who needs the court's permission to see it, and who can be prevented from seeing it.

(30) "The records of the court": The Court has broad powers beyond those noted under (29) supra, and can provide access to the records of the court under the common law principle of open justice. (This is Warby telling MM that he's in charge, not her!)

(31) Parties may request further information, the Court may order information to be handed over; provision is made whereby information may not be used for any other purpose than court proceedings.

The evidence

(32) On 23rd July 2020, a third witness statement was submitted by MM's lawyers, this from Friend B. Three statements from ANL lawyers were followed on 27th July by a further statement from Friend B in reply.

(33) MM's evidence:

(1) B says she and the other 4F spoke on condition of anonymity, and it was B who organised the interviews after speaking with Jess Cagle (editor of People). She gave two reasons for anonymity (i) to avoid media intrusion into their privacy and (ii) to avoid the appearance of seeking publicity for themselves. MM played no part in this, wasn't aware of it and didn't know until after publication. B and the other 4F want to remain anonymous and refer to how media intrusion will impact on their kids.

(2) MM's lawyers say evidence and hearsay evidence from Friend C (as per (26) supra)

(3) MM's statement is short on facts and gives no good reason why her 5F's anonymity should be preserved.

(4) MM's lawyers give four reasons for anonymity: (i) to protect MM's privacy (ii) to protect the 5F's reasonable expectation of confidentiality (iii) none of 5F have been identified or confirmed as talking to People (iv) none of 5F is a party to the action and none is a witness. They are concerned 5F will be intimidated by the publicity and will not agree to be witnesses in support of MM at trial.

(5) MM's lawyers say ANL is exploiting its position as a major media presence, running MM articles to whip up interest in the case, boost revenue and gain litigation advantage.

(34) ANL's evidence:

(1) MM did not impose restrictions on what could be done with The Response, there was no commercial advantage, publishers are allowed to publish stories about any litigation they're involved in, there is no litigation advantage, and no need for ANL to whip up interest in the case as MM is doing it already, all by herself.

(2) MM's concerns and criticisms have no evidential support, there is "scant evidence" for her privacy concerns for the 5F, the 5F were always going to be drawn into the court case, and there's no justification for giving evidence anonymously.

(3) Press cuttings show that Friend B has previously publicised her friendship with MM, the inference being it was to raise her public profile.

(35) Friend B's second witness statement in response to the press cuttings, puts the cuttings in context and denies that it undermines her first statement.

Some matters that are not in dispute

(36) Three matters:

(1) The importance of the common law principle of open justice. Anonymity must only be granted if justified and necessary for the administration of justice.

(2) 5F only gave interviews on the promise of confidentiality from People.

(3) None of 5F has yet been publicly named, and it is not part of ANL's case that knowledge of their identities is already in the public domain.

(37) ANL has not put forward any justification of it being in the public interest to know who 5F are at this stage.

The rival contentions

(38) MM claims the Confidential Schedule is justified to protect 5F anonymity.

(39) Legalese paragraph citing previous cases where breach of confidence has occurred.

(40) More legalese about who should be allowed use of disclosed documents, ANL are trying to maximise publicity and make money from revealing 5F, and the Schedule is part of the statement of case and therefore only available to MM, ANL and their legal teams.

(41) ANL says in this particular case, anonymity is "a derogation from the open justice principle", and the need for anonymity has not been established by "clear and cogent evidence".

(42) Legalese from ANL lawyers about hearings held in private and the  limited circumstances that this is allowed; three paragraphs citing previous cases.

(43) Legalese about when a private individual can expect privacy, even if the private individual at the same time has a public persona.

(44) ANL's lawyers insist that the Schedule is part of the Response, not part of the statement of case, and should therefore be available to anyone, without the need to request permission from the court.

Assessment

CPR 5.4C

(45) (I'm presuming this means rule 5.4C of the Civil Procedure Rules.) Warby questions why 5.4C distinguishes between a "statement of case" and "documents filed with or attached to the statement of case". He says the "procedural archeology has not been carried out", meaning that it's a bit in the rules that no-one knows why it's there.

(46) Not persuaded that the issue of anonymity is decided by the definition of "statement of case", and Warby sides with MM lawyers that the rule was probably there to exclude from automatic inspection any documents that didn't form part of the body of the case.

(47) "The definition seems to me designed simply to make clear for the avoidance of doubt that "statement of case" does not just cover the main pleadings (particulars of Claim, Defence and Reply) but also Further Information about any of those documents." So in other words, MM technically can separate from the main body of the statement of case anything, Appendix, Schedule or other doc, that she doesn't want a third party to see; an application by a third party will have to have a valid reason before the court will give permission to make it available.

(48) "It is true that a party might abuse the process by placing information in a Schedule or Appendix without any justification for doing so. But such abuse is open to scrutiny and could quite easily be controlled and put right by the Court." In other words, Warby is warning MM - if she's abusing the process, he'll put his foot down and squash her hard. Cites a previous case where the judge decided to "revisit the appropriateness of maintaining confidentiality."

(49) The Schedule, by virtue of it being a "document filed with or attached to the statement of case" was already inaccessible to a third party without permission, and there was no need to make it a Confidential Schedule. It remains closed to public inspection without permission.

(50) This case has two other Confidential Schedules attached, to which no objection has been made so far.

(51) Is the factual and legal status of the Schedule justified? Warby thinks so, and approaches it "through the prism of confidentiality":

(1) ANL does not dispute that the information is confidential in nature, just that MM cannot rely on privacy rights, given her public behaviour. ANL is aware of the need to preserve the confidentiality of sources.

(2) ANL has information that requires an obligation of confidence, "subject only to any public interest that overrides that obligation."

(3) The information is not in the public domain, therefore the obligation remains.

(4) "It is clear enough that ANL is threatening to disclose the information, unless restrained. It invited this application, making it plain that it would consider itself free to publish the names if no application was made." (This strikes me as ANL covering its own back, forcing the principle of confidentiality so that they can't be accused of witness intimidation of 5F. ANL's lawyers have thought this through very carefully.)

(52) This is a procedural application for the protection of witnesses, not an injunction. Cites other similar legal cases.

(53) ANL criticises the lack of evidence that 5F need anonymity. Warby disagrees, as B and C have both made statements; B that she coordinated interviews subject to confidentiality, and C that she would suffer if the evidence and hearsay were to be made public. Warby states that the evidence supplied by and about MM and 5F is "credible and persuasive".

(54) How to reconcile anonymity with open justice.

(55) Open justice has two strands: (i) Human Rights Act`confers the right to a "fair and public hearing". This is concerned with trials at which final decisions are made, not interim or pre-trial processes. ANL has not invoked this. Rather ANL lawyers have chosen (ii) the established common law principle of open justice, which goes beyond the Human Rights Act, in that it does apply to interim processes. Cites other previous cases.

(56) "Open justice tends to foster public confidence in the impartial and fair administration of justice, to deter inappropriate behaviour by the Court, to ensure that evidence becomes available, and to limit the risk of ininformed and inaccurate comment about the proceedings." Not all these factors apply here. Cites similar cases.

(57) Open justice exists to "allow the public to scutinise the workings of the Law." However the Court needs to scrutinise applications for the disclosure of information and weed out anything that does not advance public understanding of the legal process.

(58) Warby slates both parties. In full:

"It is in this context that the parties’ tit-for-tat criticisms of one another for publicising details of this case in and through the media are of some relevance. Each side has overstated its case about the conduct of the other. The defendant has not made good, for present purposes, Mr Mathieson’s contention that the “real motivation” of the claimant and her husband is “to afford them an opportunity to wage their own campaign against the press rather than to obtain the remedies at which the proceedings are ostensibly directed”. Nor does the evidence persuade me that the similarly hyperbolic assertions in the claimant’s witness statement are soundly based. It is however tolerably clear that neither side has, so far, been willing to confine the presentation of its case to the courtroom. Both sides have demonstrated an eagerness to play out the merits of their dispute in public, outside the courtroom, and primarily in media reports."

(59) Ditto:

"This approach to litigation has little to do with enabling public scrutiny of the legal process, or enhancing the due administration of justice. Indeed, in some respects it tends to impede both fairness and transparency. This will be a judge-alone trial, not a trial by jury. But to fight proceedings in court and through litigation PR or sensational reporting at one and the same time is not designed to enhance understanding of the legal process. For a party to file and immediately publicise prejudicial and partisan characterisations of the other’s litigation conduct in the media before a hearing certainly does not assist. Equally, the defendant’s coverage of this litigation has provided readers with a good deal of information about the claimant, her views and her attitudes towards the Royal family, which is no doubt interesting to the public, but it has done relatively little to provide insight into the “workings of the law”.  The coverage has selectively highlighted aspects of the defendant’s case and features of the claimant’s case that are novel and interesting to the public. The focus is on sensational reporting of information that happens to be contained in the claimant’s statements of case. There are references to to the proceedings, but some of these involve speculation about what disclosure might be given, and who might or might not be a witness."

(60) ANL haven't explained convincingly why it is necessary to name 5F. In Warby's judgment "at this stage", public disclosure would have little value as there is no guarantee that any of 5F will be winesses.

(61) Confidentiality can enhance freedom of expression or protect a whistle-blower from attack. In this case 5F sought to defend MM from hostile media coverage, and their anonymity not only protected them from adverse consequences but also increased the information available to the public about MM. (LOL, try disinformation! It was mostly lies and we all knew it!)

(62) "At this stage", continued anonymity is fine by Warby, as it upholds the agreement made with People and shields 5F from the "glare of publicity". However, "at trial, that is a price that may have to be paid in the interests of transparency." Disclosure could "undermine fairness and due process". Press articles can be misleading and inaccurate, citing a press article about JM and whether a "named individual" will still back MM in court after their recent falling out; this is the sort of pressure 5F would be under were their identities revealed.

(63) For these reasons Warby grants the application.

(64) Other things Warby is not prepared to address at this time.

The form of order

(65) These orders will remain in place until trial or further order. They will be kept under review, and re-considered at the Pre-Trial Review. Changes will be made as required in the light of changing circumstances.

[buckyownsmyheart]

Duty [1/12]

CHAPTER 1: Reaching an Understanding

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x reader

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: None! Maybe baby swear words

Series Summary: Ex-army doctor, and now on-mission-for-the-Avengers doctor, Major (Y/n) (Y/l/n), had prepared herself for anything. That was, of course, until she met a devastatingly charming Sergeant from Brooklyn with a quick wit and a kind smile. I wonder what will happen.

Series Masterlist

Prologue

The next day, things in the briefing room were a little tense. A feeling of unease spread through you as you walked into the room, trying to ignore the subdued murmurs and eyes tracking your movements from agents, healthcare professionals and Avengers alike. You steeled yourself against their gazes, daring anyone to question your integrity before Nick Fury quietened the chatter from beside you. 

“Some of you have already met your new on-mission doctor, Major (Y/n) (Y/l/n), and those who haven’t will have heard about her. She will be helping us keep healthy from now on. There will still be the same team here in the medical bay, but she’s the needed add-on. Any questions?” 

Before anyone had the chance to form a thought that might lead to a question, he continued. “Alright, dismissed. Avengers I need you to remain behind for further briefing and report clarification.” There is a jostling and scraping of chairs as the agents leave the room. 17 gives you a wink on their way out before the room becomes quiet once more.

Fury eyed the room. “Your recent infiltration into the HYDRA camp was successful in giving us insight into their new project, but that’s as far as the success goes. I don’t want a fuck up like this again.” He distributed updated files around the table, and you took the closest seat, next to Black Widow. Looking down at the classified file, you weren’t sure you were meant to be reading this but opened it anyway, your curiosity beating your wish to abide by any rules. And you read.

********

S.H.I.E.L.D CLASSIFIED

PROJECT: MOONSHINE, (accessory to HYDRA), 05 SEPT 2019

Named after the technically legal, but often lethal, home-brewed alcohol, HYDRA have created a facility now known to be located within the EUREKA RESEARCH FACILITY in ELLESMERE ISLAND, 79°59′20″N 085°56′27″W. The base, previously owned by the Canadians before HYDRA took over, is secluded and only reachable by jet, with food, fuel and other supplies brought every 6 months.

Recent information has shown their proceedings, including images [see page 3 through 5] of their testing on human subjects, in an attempt to produce the same effect as the serum, successfully trialled on Steven G. Rogers, but by forms of mutilation and pain endurance, as recreating the serum, as shown on James B. Barnes, was deemed unsuccessful in producing the desired effect.

The methods include electrotherapy, fire exposure, exhaustion and debilitation techniques. These hope to push the cells within the body to mutate themselves to survive the conditions. 

TOP SECRET SPECIAL HANDLING ONLY

1

********

You looked up to Fury, reeling a little from the information. You shifted in your seat as it felt too hard and your feet placed uncomfortably on the floor. You hadn’t reached the pictures yet but had a good enough guess as to what they contained.

“We’re working with the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI-6, on this.” Fury reported and looked to you as he said it, “They’re working with our team to find out more. Until then we can only wait. Major, you’re dismissed.”

You stood up, maybe a little too quickly, and walked out the door before you were given any more files. You walked to your quarters and flopped onto the bed. Rubbing the heels of your palms into your eyes to try to try and rid them of tiredness, and make your brain deal with the new information. There had always been people capable of causing such pain, but the thought of people intentionally inflicting that sort of torture on many people was enough to make your stomach turn, and you considered yourself to have a pretty strong stomach. In an attempt to distract yourself, you decided to head down to the medical bay, trying to familiarise yourself with your new surroundings and try and lessen the stares people had given you being the new girl. You rolled out of bed, not daring to look in the mirror and walked back out of your room.

Two flights of stairs and several corridors filled with loud colourful art later, you found the bay. The set up was much like a normal hospital ER, with a bleak looking desk at the front. Someone was scribbling frantically behind it, the bags under her eyes indicating their understaffing and overworking, a permanent feature of any healthcare professional, apparently even if they worked for billionaires. She looked up as you approached and gently returned the smile you gave her. 

“Hi Major, what can I help you with?” Her voice carried a slight roughness to it, but not in an unpleasant way. It was an oddly comforting husk that made you feel like she would have perfect control of any situation that arose.

“Hi Angie,” you smiled, reading her name badge. “I wanted to get acquainted with everything, see what’s what and how you guys run things. I’d love to help out as much as possible.”

“Would you meet the people who run the show?” she drummed her fingers on top of the now closed folder, “Dr Cho is currently with someone, but I can find some of the team?" 

Before you could answer, her eyes flickered to something behind you, causing you to turn and see what she was looking at. Your eyes met with piercing blue ones and you couldn’t help but give a sigh.

“Hey Doc,” Bucky Barnes grinned sheepishly, “Been given orders to have my arm re-looked at, would you be able to help?”

Narrowing your eyes at him you turned back to Angie to ask for her opinion, but she was already holding out a file that had a printed ‘James B. Barnes’ on the top.

“Room 4 is empty,” Angie gesturing to a room with the same unbothered air as she busied herself with other tasks, but you thought you could see the trace of a smile. You realised you weren’t going to get any more help on this one, and so opened his file, pretending it had something to do with his current injury. In reality it was a record of his previous injuries, and had zero relevance at the moment, but it kept your hands busy and felt it made you look important and not like you would rather be anywhere else but stuck in a room with him. You made the short walk into room 4, not looking to see if he had followed you, and sat in the chair in front of the computer. When you had fortified your composure, you turned to him. He was sitting on the bed, idly playing with sheet covering it, and now seeing his open face and off-guard composure, there was no ignoring how good-looking he was. He had changed from his tactical gear into a plain red Henley that stretched over his chest, and you could see the strain of the trousers he wore, their blue bringing out his eyes in a way that should be illegal. You averted your eyes and coughed a little, trying to rid the frog that had managed to wind its way into your throat.

He interrupted your train of thoughts, “I’m sorry for yesterday.” You looked back at him with surprise, not expecting an apology. “I was rude to you and I didn’t give you a chance before immediately dismissing you.” He didn’t break eye contact, and in an attempt to distract yourself from the unusual things your stomach was doing, you tried to drop your rigid glare into something you hoped was more comforting and busied yourself washing your hands. 

“It’s alright. I’ve been underestimated my whole life; I’ve now learnt not to take it personally.” You looked up and met his gaze. “C’mon Sergeant, let me see how much I hashed up that arm,” you saw his shoulders drop a few inches. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all, you knew you had a tendency to be a little defensive at times. After peeling the bandage back, you couldn’t help but murmur a few exclamations as all you saw was faint pink section of skin. A small yellowing scab and peeling of the skin around the edges were the only indicators of any injury.

“Perhaps you’re a better doctor than you think,” Bucky said, giving a small laugh. A small smile wormed its way onto your face.

“Mind if I poke around it a bit?” You glanced up at Bucky, “Why did they even send you down here? It’s healed perfectly.”

“Not at all, all yours.”

You worked your fingers around the edges of the wound, massaging the skin and seeing it whiten and then pink, showing signs of healthy tissue and vessels. You felt Bucky’s eyes on you, but had to resist the temptation to look up, otherwise you might fall right into them.

“It’s amazing,” you confessed to him, “I can still feel the dissolvable stitches I put in there but everything else has healed completely. You would expect this sort of recovery within 12 weeks, not 14 hours.” 

“I’ve never seen it heal as fast as this," He motioned to his arm. "Steve and I would have been a little less uptight at the whole situation if we knew.” 

He nodded to the desk, where you had placed his file.

“All the information on my healing and other enhancements,” he said, his tone had hardened slightly, “Are all in there,”

“Oh, the doctors here have already tested you for this sort of thing?”

“Not the doctors here.”

You looked up at him and your face fell with realisation, of course HYDRA had kept records on him. Sympathy and pity gripped your heart, and you felt your cheeks heat up.

He snapped at you suddenly, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. “Don’t look at me like that, I’m not broken, and I don’t need your pity.” You knew he wasn’t pissed off at you, he was pissed at the situation, but doesn’t mean his words didn’t sting you a little bit. Bucky yanked down his sleeve and stood up quickly.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.” You reached over and gathered the bandage from the bed next to where he had been sitting, “I don’t think you’re broken. You’re healing, there’s a difference.” You looked into his eyes, trying to convey the sincerity you felt with those words. When he didn’t move, you offered a truce, “Let me take out a few of those stitches on top. It might be a bit more comfortable for you.” He nodded and silently took one of the spare chairs. He did have the grace to look a little ashamed at his outburst, but you figured asking for a second apology in 10 minutes would be a bit too much.

You were quiet as you cut the offending sutures, and when you were done, Bucky pulled down his sleeve and spoke, his voice soft, “Umm, you uh-, you figured out how to use Stark’s coffee machines yet?”

“Not yet,” you laughed, “Haven’t been brave enough if I’m honest. Never seen so many damn buttons on a machine in my life!” 

He gave you a small chuckle, “How about I show you? To make up for being an ass. Today and yesterday. I know all doctors and soldiers have a sweet spot for coffee.”

You smiled, he was trying to make amends and you appreciated that. “Lead the way, Sarge.”

-

“You press this button, and then the water should come through this part, and you get your regular filter coffee. Tastes exactly like it did in the 40s, better even,” Bucky said as he pressed the button. Steaming hot air jetted out of one of the pipes on the side, singeing a hole in Bucky’s shirt and exposing the glint of his metal arm as he swore profusely at the machine, and then at his shirt for good measure. It had become apparent in the past 30 minutes that as much as Bucky claimed to be able to work the coffee machine, he actually had as much of an idea as you, potentially even less.

“Looks like it’s going really well for you Terminator,” Sam Wilson entered the kitchen, and as he caught sight of you, he smiled and extended out a hand. “Hi, we sort of met in the quinjet, but I’m Sam.”

You took it, “(Y/n), nice to meet you. You don’t by any chance know how to work this machine? Half-robot over here is about to blow something up.”

Sam laughed and wandered over to where you were stood, pressed a few buttons on the side, and coffee started dripping into the jug. He turned to you and quipped, “You’re really trusting old-man over here with showing you something technological? For someone quite intelligent, you don’t seem very smart.”

You leaned back and laughed at his comment, Bucky however, looked put-out.

He glared over at him, “What do you want, Wilson?” 

“Steve is looking for you down in the boxing ring, says he’s ready to kick your ass again.”

You looked at Bucky, “Steve beats you in a fight?” Then grinned over at Sam as annoyance crossed Bucky’s face.

“Not today he won’t,” Bucky grumbled as he trudged away from the coffee machine, muttering incoherently except for a few words that I’m not sure Steve would appreciate hearing. 

As you enjoyed the bitter and warm smell of fresh coffee, Dr Bruce Banner walked into the kitchen and gave you a warming smile. He too pressed a few buttons on the machine, and a green froth fell into his mug.

“It’s so good to have an actual medical doctor on the team, they all kept coming to me on the battlefield,” he gestured around him, as if the Avengers were all there, “With life-threatening injuries! Expecting me to patch them up and send them on their way! I only dealt with tropical diseases in India! It was an entirely different thing!”

Sam turned to him, “You’re meant to be a genius Banner, what’s the use of your 7 PhDs if you can’t do anything useful with them?”

You laughed at the interaction, “It’s a pleasure to be on the team, happy to help in any way I can.” You paused, contemplating your next words carefully. “This might be a bit invasive, but what’s the deal with Sergeant Barnes? Is he normally this grumpy?”

Sam looked up at you, but it was Bruce who answered. “He’s still getting used to being able to be the good guy. I think he feels he doesn’t deserve it and so lashes out before anyone else can push him away first. He doesn’t like letting people in. Took Sam a bit of time to figure that out too.”

Sam laughed softly, “He’s the biggest damn grump I’ve ever met, but underneath he’s also a softie and an idiot. Give him time, he’ll be more bearable.”

You just nodded, pondering what they had both said. It made sense, he was still decompressing and figuring things out, maybe you could let him off the hook for being such an ass. You stayed in the kitchen for an hour or so with Sam and Bruce, getting the inside knowledge on the Avengers, the ins-and-outs of the compound and where to find the best bagels nearby. If you were wondering, it’s the deli on the right as you exit the compound.

“Right,” You turned to the two men, “I've been avoiding my unpacking, so I should probably get going, but it was lovely meeting you both properly, and thanks for all the information, I reckon I’ve got enough to blackmail the whole team now.” You said with a wink before walking out the door, waving over your shoulder.

-

In your room, your bags stared at you, lying on the floor, daring you to open them. You stared right back at them. You had been caught in this gridlock for the past 10 minutes and couldn’t quite find it in yourself to begin the task. You reprimanded your lack of motivation, and you had just managed to open your bag and sat on the floor, trying to organise some of your junk. You looked at the photos you had brought along, and they made your insides smile. There were some of you and your brother, the rest of your family, and some of your old army section and other friends. You felt a twist of guilt as you realised you hadn’t rung them yet to let them know you had arrived. Your brother, being a hacker, probably could find out that information if he was really concerned, but you felt bad if it got to that. 

After a quick text letting them know you were safe and happy and that you would ring them later, you found yourself being drawn to your gym clothes. Maybe you should be checking out all the facilities that the compound had to offer. It would seem rude not to. Not because a certain someone who had captured your attention was probably still down there, sweating a little and most likely looking quite good. Not at all. You would never. Trying to move your thoughts away before they became slightly perverted, you pulled on some kit, letting your dog tags hang out in the open, clattering on your chest as you made your way down.

The gym was pretty standard, with weights and machines in one corner, cardio down the far wall, and free space with various mats and equipment dotted around. What drew you was the small boxing ring and punching bags dangling from the ceiling in the opposite corner. Unfortunately, no sign of Bucky. Not that he was the sole reason you were down here. You began to wrap your hands and after a quick warm-up you started jabbing at the bag, getting a feel for it again, before tightening your muscles and pushing yourself a bit harder.

“Not sure the bag is good enough for you Major,” Bucky spoke from behind you, appearing out of nowhere and making you jump, “think you might need a more challenging opponent.”

You let up on the bag, steadying it with one hand, “You offering yourself up, Sergeant? Is Steve that much better than you that you’re going to sink to my level?”

“Not sure the bag would agree with that statement, you were giving it a harder time than Steve and I put together,” He provoked, patting the bag with a pretend sympathetic gesture. “I would like to think I could put up a better fight than the bag though.”

Steve rounded the corner, from what you assumed was the changing rooms, and addressed Bucky. “I’ve seen her file Buck, let’s just say she would have had you nose-deep in mud in the 40s. And I’m not going to be putting my money on you today.” You grinned at Steve.

“Alright, it’s on.” You paused, straightening up and chucking him a pair of gloves from a nearby bench, “Don’t think I’m going to go easy on you just because you’ve got a pretty face.” And with that, you parted the ropes and jumped into the ring.

Chapter 2

tags:

@broco8 @nerd-without-a-cause @sebbbystaaan @mcubuckyandsteve @cutepiemimi13 @velvetwonderbucky

(strikethrough means I couldn’t tag you!) 

#duty #bucky x reader #bucky x y/n #bucky x you #bucky barnes fanfiction #b.b fanfic #bucky barnes imagine #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes fic

[crimsonfluidessence]

The Discovery Of The Withered Song

On a regular day in the Shroud, Esredes made his way into Gridania like usual on an errand run. He had a few things to purchase, a couple people to talk to, and most of all, another association meeting to attend. Life in such a decaying, dying world was busy as usual, but today the world’s decay was not visible. It was simply ordinary. With that in mind, once his other tasks had been taken care of, Esredes stopped in front of an unassuming building- circular just like all the others one in this city. He smiled to the man standing outside as he approached, and gave the man a little half bow with his hand on his chest. “Good day to you, Commander Esredes.” The man said with his usual polite title as he addressed Esredes by his previous title. “The meeting will be starting in just a few minutes. A couple people we’re not sure are coming today or not, so we’ll wait a couple extra minutes to see if they show up or not.” Esredes proceeded inside and took a quick look around. The interior was nothing special, consisting of a large, circular table in the middle with many seats around it. The group of people seated inside consisted of mostly Elezen and Hyur, with a few of other races scattered in. Several of them looked up and smiled at him, giving him a small wave. Yes, here was where the many former allies of his who did not choose to go to Ishgard met for discussion. Even in light of the war being over, many of them still felt the only place they could truly be themselves was among their own people, to hold onto shreds of the past that gave the power to traverse the present. In here, the world never decayed. Esredes came as often as he could manage to these meetings- he was technically an officer of both the Ishgardian and Gridanian branch of this harrier association, after all. It came with the territory of being decided the next closest thing they had to a leader after the Lady’s death. Here they could discuss amongst one another without prying eyes and look out for each other. Here, they could plan their movements. He took his usual seat at the head of the table- at least, what was declared it for an object that had none- and folded his hands in his lap. Once the meeting began, the group had its typical discussion- a mixture of catching up with one another, talking about old times, and discussing the current state of politics in both Ishgard and Gridania. Nowadays, the center of topic was usually the upcoming Restoration, and the positive effects it could net for their message. Everything proceeded according to plan, and once the meeting was officially called, Esredes stood up. He did not go immediately, not before he could talk a bit more individually to his fellow harriers, but he was waved over by a couple of them anyhow. So the man proceeded to walk over. “Good seeing you today,” he said with a faint smile. “You as well, Esredes.” An Elezen lady said with a nod of her head. “We wanted to talk to you about something that the whole group didn’t need to know about, if you can spare a few minutes of your time. You’re planning to stay around Gridania a few more hours, correct?” “That is in fact correct,” Esredes replied. “What of it? What do you have to bring up?” She motioned to the Midlander lady next to her, who looked up at Esredes with a slight nervous look in her eyes. “A few days ago, when I was out doing business as usual, I saw something strange. There was a man- a man wearing a very large hat- who passed me by. The hat was enough to grab my attention, but I noticed that his aether was... very off. Not in a draconic or void tainted way or anything like that- it was like it was.... suppressed.” Esredes crossed his arms as he listened, observing her face. “Suppressed? What exactly do you mean by that?” She shook her head. “I don’t know how else to describe it. It just looked very unnatural, and it sent a chill down my spine.” “She came to me and told me all about it.” The Elezen lady then adds. “And so like old times, I did some digging- first of all, this man with a strange hat and even stranger aether seems to have some form of legal protection from the state here, as some officials did not seem to take kindly to me asking about him. But I still managed to track down the rumors, and they were not what I was expecting.” She crossed her arms, and shifted her weight to one side. “According to the rumors, he’s a living Allagan.” At this, Esredes raised an eyebrow. “...I’m sorry, what? A living Allagan? Are you sure you didn’t just mishear that he was some kind of scholar that studied Allag? Because last I checked, there is no such thing as a living Allagan.” She shook her head. “No. That was what was said. A living, breathing ancient man. Here in the city, and the city doesn’t want anyone knowing.” “So what, then? There’s just an immortal being around for... some reason?” “His aether was unmistakably wrong.” The Hyur adds. “Something is wrong here. I can feel it.”

Esredes still looked doubtful as he listened. “Well, even if there was a chance that rumor was true- what do you want me to do about it? How is it relevant to anything?” “None of us are experts on Allag,” the Elezen woman said, “but we know one thing for certain. All of them despised dragons. And here we are, dragon people hiding in plain sight. If there were to be an Allagan in this city, it is a danger to all of us, and to you by extension.” “And Ambrose.” The Hyur lady adds with a frown. “Allagans obtained knowledge at any cost... what if he found about him? What if he tried to hurt him?” Esredes frowned. “I suppose all of that would not be wrong. But still. What do you want any of us to do about it?” “What you always do.” The Elezen lady replied. “You’re the best out of us at reading and assessing danger quickly- at prying into a psyche for answers. The man likes to perform in public. I wager to you that he’d be performing this evening at the Amphitheater. A perfect opportunity to find out the truth.” He looked between the both of them for a long moment. The doubt was still on his face. “...All right. I’ll talk to him, but only to prove that you have the completely wrong idea. There is no way he’s a real Allagan. He’s probably just a scholar with weird aether and a weird fashion sense.” She nods. “Thank you. It’s better we’re safe than sorry. The enemies of a true believer are numerous.”

As the sun sunk below the sky, the man made his way to the city’s Amphitheater and observed the collection of people around. There were certainly a decent amount out at this hour, as you’d come to expect. It did not take long for his ears to pick up on the sound of music, and for his eyes to spot a rather large and colorful hat. Ah, perfect. There was his given target for the night.

The man crossed his arms and stood there for a moment observing what he could make out of the scene. People were gathered around the man listening, as you’d expect. It looked like an ordinary scene. Certainly innocent from the surface. Well, time to get to work. The man loosened his arms and started toward the crowd, putting on a more neutral expression. For the moment, he would just be an idle listener, drawn in by the music. For there was no other role the commander needed to play at this given moment.

He only needed to prevent the world from decaying any faster.

---- @spotofmummery​ and also @ambroseffxiv​ for soft mention

#roleplay #amon #in action #mfw asks START A WHOLE THING #ambrose #post HW #hw spoilers #ffxiv hw spoilers #heavensward spoilers #screenshots

[readingraebow]

Les Misérables Section Seven

Part 4 - Books 1-5

1. What does Marius decide to do the day after the Thénardiers’ arrest and why? He moves. Marius packs up all of his belongings and returns to live with Courfeyrac. In fact, he moves so fast that when Javert comes back the next morning to question him, all he finds is an empty room and no forwarding address. Marius moves for two reasons: one, because he was now horrified to stay in that house because of all that had ensued and, because of these events, he's now fully aware of the evil poor and doesn't want a constant reminder of everything that happened. And he's afraid that if he stays, he would be involved in the legal proceedings and might have to testify against Thénardier. So. He moves.

2. Why did Jean Valjean decide to leave the convent? He was content to spend the rest of his life in the convent. He was so happy and comfortable there and being there meant he was never parted from Cosette. But, after a while he started to feel guilty because he was condemning Cosette to this life without giving her a say in the matter. Because, if they'd stayed, he didn't doubt that Cosette would've taken her vows and become a nun. But Jean Valjean came to realize that she should know something of the outside world before she decided to devote her life to God. If she saw the world and still wanted to be a nun, that would be her choice. But he didn't want to never give her the opportunity to see nothing but the convent, for her to take her vows and then grow to hate him because she'd never known any other life. So he left the convent and found a small house but also rented two apartments so that he had 3 residences in Paris if he ever again needed to evade the police.

3. Why does Jean Valjean not speak to Cosette about Fantine? When Cosette was a child, he talked openly about Fantine but as Cosette grew to be an adult, he found that he couldn't talk about Fantine at all. And he honestly didn't really know why? Part of it was because Cosette was so innocent and Fantine... wasn't. So he didn't want to shatter Cosette's illusions about her mother, especially because she grew up in a convent. He also felt as though Fantine's lack of shame in life had come back to guard her in death and, thus, wouldn't allow Jean Valjean to mention her and dredge her life back out of the shadows. So, basically he was saving Cosette from knowing what kind of life her mother lived and how Cosette had come to be born.

4. What do Jean Valjean and Cosette see that very much troubles both of them? They see one of the transports for felons condemned to hard labor. It's basically a bunch of men shackled together by neck collars, which were chained together, sitting on a vehicle with their legs dangling. And then guards are stationed on the vehicles, watching. And they're being taken along this route, through the country, because the king is in residence and so they can't take any main roads in case they run into one of the royal vehicles. And while Jean Valjean watches this go by, he remembers that he went on the same route when he was taken for hard labor. Cosette, on the other hand, knows nothing about her father's past life and so she merely sees criminals and is completely frightened and intrigued by their existence.

5. What does Gavroche witness happen to Montparnasse? He watches Montparnasse sneak up on an old man (Jean Valjean) to rob him but instead of the older man ending up on the ground, it's Montparnasse who does. So basically the guy talks to Montparnasse and tries to convince him that he doesn't have to be a thief and he could have a better life. He tells Montparnasse that if he continues to live the same life, the only path for him will be prison and he'll be an old man by fifty. But, of course, Montparnasse doesn't really listen and finally Jean Valjean just gives Montparnasse his purse and goes on his way. Montparnasse, however, does end up lost in thought, presumably about everything he just heard, and that's when Gavroche picks his pocket and takes his purse. Then he throws it over the hedge for Monsieur Mabeuf, who really needs it.

6. How do Cosette and Marius finally meet? Weird things keep happening around Cosette and she thinks she's being followed or spied on or something. And one night, she was sitting on the bench in the garden and she got up to walk around for a bit. When she returned to the bench, in the place where she'd just been sitting was a really big rock. It was too big to have gotten there any other way than by someone reaching through the hedge and placing it on the bench. So this absolutely terrified her and she spent the entire night in terror. Well, the next morning she went back out and this time saw things differently. This time, she picked up the rock and under it she found an envelope. It was open and unaddressed. In it she found a little book with a lot of little passages in it about love. She kept the little book in her dress, next to her heart. So, that night, Jean Valjean went out and Cosette dressed up and went out for a walk in the garden. While she was out there, Marius appeared and asked if she remembered him. Cosette ends up falling and Marius catches her and, when he does, he feels the book that he left for her through her dress. And he says that he loves her and asks if that means she loves him too. So then he ends up sitting on the bench with her and they end up talking and, finally, when they've exhausted all their subjects, they tell each other their names.

  Section Seven Reading Journal

So. Let’s talk about the beginning of this section. Because Hugo is wordy and loves to talk for 30 pages about things that basically have no actual relevance to the story. Though, honestly, I don’t really mind it anymore. Because, yes, a lot of those sections (and basically this book as a whole) are because of Hugo’s exile and his ranting against the system and his anger at the system in general. But reading this around 200 years later is fascinating. Because it’s a look at history in a way that’s different from history books. It gives history and name and a face and a reason to care. And those rants Hugo throws in? Those are usually about events that are real and the fictional world gives the real events context. And that’s one of the reasons why I love Hugo, crazy rants and all.

So, yes. I continue to love this book. And I continue to love reading it. Though it did take me a little longer than usual to get through this section because of the first 30 or so pages. And because this entire section was basically only Marius, Cosette and Jean Valjean? Don’t get me wrong, I love those characters. But I miss my Les Amis. A lot.

Honestly, I can’t wait to read this rest of this book. Because I am loving it so much and it’s easily becoming one of my favorites. And even though it’s a tome, it’s generally really interesting and really easy to read. So. Loving this story. Can’t wait to read more!!

#trcbooks #2015: les miserables #2015 reading challenge

[a-monthly-rumbelling]

The Couples' Retreat, Chapter 3: The Truthfulness Exercise

Submitted by @darcyfarrow2005

Archie had a secret. Not a very big one, certainly in comparison to the secrets unacknowledged in this very room, let alone in this town, but just the same, he’d prefer these people didn’t find out. He didn’t want them to lose confidence in him. So he tucked the two legal pads he’d been carrying under his arm, hooked his hands into his jeans pockets to hide the fingernails he’d bitten to the quick just now and plastering on an easy-going smile, he strolled into the game room.

Hook quirked an eyebrow and gave him a bit of a nod, but Emma, scowling at a quintet of playing cards spread out before her, didn’t break her concentration. Archie supposed he couldn’t blame her: judging by the cards facing up, she had a difficult decision to make. He leaned in the entrance, allowing her to make it undisturbed; he hazarded a guess as to what her choice would be. She sucked in a breath and announced her decision: “Hit me.” It was the choice Archie expected: she was an all-in kind of woman.

Hook lay a Jack atop her exposed cards. Groaning, she pushed back from the card table. “That’s three you owe me, love.” Hook winked at her. “I promise not to collect all at once.”

Archie sauntered over to the table and peered down at the game-breaking Jack. “What were the stakes?”

“You don’t want to know.” Emma flicked the air, knocking the topic aside.

Hook shifted a bit in his chair so he could face both his companions at the same time. “Did all go well with my future in-laws, Doctor?”

Emma gave his shoulder a shove. “You know he can’t talk about that. Confidentiality.”

“That’s correct. As agreed, this particular exercise is a private one. And entirely voluntary.” Archie distracted them from his wavering smile by seating himself across from them. He took a moment, seemingly to admire the spacious room with its many entertainment offerings, ranging from the traditional—a chess game set up in the quietest corner, an unfinished jigsaw puzzle taking up a dining table near the entrance, mahjong near the fireplace and pachisi at the windows—to, anachronistically, an X-box at the other end of the room. “It seems Merlin had wide-ranging interests,” he mused, and Hook murmured in the affirmative, but Emma pursed her lips slightly. He’d failed to take her in with his casual act. He supposed there would be no actual harm in revealing to her the reason for his discomfort—as close as mother and daughter had grown, Snow would probably tell Emma all anyway at lunch—but he’d laid down the confidentiality rule at the beginning of this exercise, so he needed to stick to it.

Besides, he expected to have to use it pretty quick.

Hook threw a glance over his shoulder at a miniature grandfather clock on the mantle. “This exercise must be a short one,” he estimated. “You were with David and Snow less than an hour.”

Truthfully, he’d been with David and Snow less than a half-hour, but after that, he’d retired to his bedroom to think—and chew his nails. Not that the exercise had gone badly—quite the opposite. It had turned out far better, he supposed, than he had prepared for. He’d kind of counted on his time with the Nolans as a chance for trial-and-error, to expose in a smaller and less dangerous way whatever bugs there were in the process, so he could fix them before he proceeded to the other two couples. The Nolans’ exercise had taught him something, true, but most likely not something he could apply here.

“Well, then, shall we proceed?” He emboldened his smile.

“We’re not going to get anything out of you about what David and Snow did, are we?” Hook surmised.

“Be glad of it,” Emma tossed at her fiance. “He’ll keep our secrets too.”

Hook shrugged. “I was hoping to have some basis of comparison.”

“So you could figure out how to win this round.”

“It’s not a contest,” Archie reminded them as he pressed a key on his phone. “None of these exercises are. There’s no right answer, no points to be assessed. That said, let’s review the rules. Rule one–”

Emma counted it off on her forefinger. “Everything that happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.”

Hook supplied the next. “Tell the truth or keep your mouth shut. No pressure to participate.”

“We gotcha, Arch. Let’s hear the details.”

A clattering in the hallway drew their attention. Using this distraction, Archie set the legal pads and a clutch of pencils in front of his clients, then hid his chewed fingernails under the poker table. “Just in time,” Archie stood as Ruby rolled in a chalkboard. “Thank you, Ruby.”

The waitress reached into her apron pocket for a box of chalk. “Here you go, Archie.” The box was unopened; he hadn’t had call to use the chalk during his time with the Nolans. “Lunch is in the oven. Ring me about twenty minutes before you want it served.”

“Sounds good.”

She paused on her way out to inform Emma, “Grilled cheese and tomato soup.”

“Thanks, Rubes.”

After she’d gone, Archie moved over to the chalkboard. “Shall we proceed? Remember, after you hear what this exercise is about, you can say no. I have to admit, it could be risky. And this is only my second go-round with it.”

“Ah ha,” Hook snapped his fingers. “That means the Nolans blew it.”

“Not at all,” Archie snapped. Then he straightened his shoulders and selected a stick of chalk from the box. “The exercise works like this. I’ll be posing a question. Well, an incomplete scenario, really. You’ll fill in the missing dialog. And then we’ll discuss ways that each couple can release those negative feelings and prevent them from returning.”

“An all-day exercise, huh?” Hook wondered. “For most couples.”

“It can certainly feel like it,” Archie admitted. “You’ll be emotionally drained and physically worn out by the end, but I think you’ll sleep very well tonight, with your consciences clear. And we’ll be taking a big step forward for the future.”

Emma smiled at him encouragingly. “It sounds worth a risk.”

“I’m putting up a sentence… a prompt… .I want you to read it, then think about it as it applies to your relationship. Take your time; think it through. In every relationship, no matter how close, no matter how loving, there are situations that never get dealt with. Perceived slights, unintentional insults, ill-phrased remarks that lead to hurt, and if the hurt isn’t dealt with, it can grow into resentment. Bitter feelings that are never brought out to the light and discussed in a calm, healing way can become time bombs that explode when neither of you is equipped to cope.”

Emma nodded, looking down at the pencils. “Sometimes when there’s no chance to say you’re sorry or that you forgive the other person.” Archie suspected she was thinking of Neal.

“That’s what I hope to accomplish here. If there are such time bombs in your relationship, to deal with one of them now, while we can focus on it and not muddle it up with other issues. I hope to teach you tools that you can use when you’re out there, on your own.”

“In the real world,” Emma muttered. “With the Tamaras and the Gregs and the Zelenas that steal people away from you.”

“So: read the sentence, think about it. Take all the time you need. Then on those pads, I want you to write out how you could finish the sentence.” He raised his hands in a halt gesture. There was no hiding his broken nails now, but perhaps they wouldn’t notice once he began to write on the chalkboard. “Again, if you find this becomes too uncomfortable, even painful, you can end the exercise at any time.”

“And then what, Doc?” Hook wondered.

“We’ll talk about something else. Something relevant but less dangerous.” He turned his back to them and began to write. “But I’d appreciate it if you’d start this and see if you can continue.”

The couple read the sentence aloud together: “’You have a lot of nerve saying “Hello” like nothing happened.’”

“Okay, so we’re going to use that as a conversation starter,” Hook affirmed, but his mouth fell open as his fiancee grabbed a pencil, hunched her shoulders and immediately began to write on her yellow pad. “Or, more like an argument starter.”

“Don’t think of it that way.” Archie couldn’t help himself: his thumb flew into his mouth and he began gnawing on the remainder of a fingernail as he too watched Emma scrawl sentence after sentence. “Think of it as a chance to fix things before they get irretrievably broken.”

Hook tore his eyes away from Emma’s flying pencil back to the chalkboard and he silently mouthed the prompt.

A crinkling of paper as Emma flipped to a second page.

With a long sigh, Hook picked up a pencil. He stared at his empty pad. He stared at the board. He stared at Emma again, trying to peer over her shoulder, until Archie cleared his throat in warning and Hook returned his attention to the chalkboard. Eventually he wrote a single word. He stared at it.

“There’s no rush,” Archie whispered to him. “It’s more important that you put a lot of thought in this.”

Hook’s forehead wrinkled as Emma turned another page. “Uh, you did say, just one scenario, right?”

“Just one.”

“I write big,” Emma sniffed.

Hook stared at his single word again. He bit the eraser. His frown smoothed out and his eyes glazed over as he submerged himself in memories. Slowly, a second word appeared on his page, then a third, then a full sentence. His head bowed as he centered himself on the words.

Quietly, Archie wandered away from the chalkboard to look out a window. His heart was pounding in his chest with both hope and dread. Behind him he heard pages crinkling and chairs scraping. At least, this time the exercise was producing some results.

Well, perhaps, the experiment with the Nolans had, too. He’d settled them in the never-used nursery (“Why do you suppose Merlin would want a nursery? He never had any children, did he?” Snow had wondered.), where he thought they’d feel most at home, and with a chalkboard behind them and yellow pads before them to remind Snow of school, he’d explained the project. After fifteen minutes of blank stares, Snow had tossed her pencil aside and David had shrugged apologetically. “Sorry, Arch, I’ve got nothin’.”

“Nothing?” Archie had echoed. He’d imagined all sorts of outcomes, but not this one.

“For me either,” Snow had admitted.

“Something he did that upset you. Something that took a lot of nerve–Something he should have known better—something that he did know better, but he did it anyway,” Archie had urged. “Every couple has them. Violations that, left unspoken, can build into resentments.”

“That’s just it, Arch,” David had volunteered. “Yeah, we have ‘em; of course we do. Small crap like leaving the cap off the toothpaste–”

“Dirty dishes in the sink–”

“Dirty diapers in the kitchen garbage pail–”

“And bigger stuff. Yeah, we’ve been through a hell of a lot of stuff that could’ve broke us up. Sleeping curses. Curses on the town line. Memory loss.”

“Our grandson being kidnapped. Finding out we have a grandson, at age thirty,” Snow had blinked. “Finding out we have a daughter as old as we are.”

“Finding out we belong in another realm. In another life.”

“That we’re the rulers of a kingdom of two thousand people who are waiting for us to figure out what to do. And that we have magical enemies crawling out of the woodwork. Dragons and giants and abominable snowmen.”

“There have no doubt been moments when each of you did something that the other resented–”

“Sure,” David stared at his hands in guilt. “I was a coward with Katherine. I knew what was the right thing to do and I didn’t do it. And I made it a hundred times worse when I didn’t stand up for Mary Margaret against that fake murder charge.” He grasped Snow’s hands. “I was a jerk and a coward and I’m sorry.”

“We talked it out, though. And I know that coward wasn’t really you. And when I went against what we’d decided together about Cora, and I cursed her and killed her, I was wrong and I paid the price for it. I should have listened to you. I’ll never again chase after revenge.”

“Me neither,” David confessed. “I went against your advice and chased after my father’s killer, and look how that turned out. But that was the last time, I promise.”

“It was, Archie,” Snow explained. “We learned our lesson. We’re so much better as a team than we are apart. We make each other better. Keep each other from falling off the edge into the dark. We know that now. We respect what we have together.”

“And we take care of our marriage. We talk things out. We apologize.”

“We forgive and move on. We don’t let resentments grow.” Snow had pushed her legal pad away. “So no, Archie, there’s nothing for me to write.”

David had done the same. “Me neither.”

After a long silence, Archie had gathered up the empty legal pads. “Snow, David, I’m happy to say, you have no need for this exercise. Perhaps all you really need today is just some peace and quiet together.”

Snow had linked her arm through her husband’s. “Do you know what I really want right now? Beyond the garden there, I saw the North Woods. I’d like to go for a long walk.”

“Just us,” David had agreed. They had stood up together. “If you’re through with us, Archie?”

“I think a walk in the woods is exactly the right prescription.”

“We’ll come back when we get hungry.”

“I think we’re finished,” Emma brought Archie back to the present.

He turned to find that while Hook had completed half a page in his small, sharp handwriting, Emma had worn down three pencils and filled her notebook with her large loops.

“Very good.” Archie came away from the window and seated himself at the poker table. “Captain, suppose we start with you.”

Plucking at his beard nervously, Hook read from his notes: “Okay. Now don’t be pissy, Emma, right? We’re uncovering the jetsam. So… . ’You have a lot of nerve saying “Hello” like nothing happened.’ Like you didn’t make me a Dark One and try to hide it from me by taking away my memories–”

Oh yes. Archie folded his hands as he listened, not only to each word, but to each word choice. Yes, there was work to do here.

And that was another of his secrets: Archie needed to be needed.

—————————————————————-

Lunch was three hours late. By the time Archie came round to the library to fetch them, Belle and Gold were both deep into books, hers Undaunted Courage and his Team of Rivals. They were sharing a couch, her bare feet propped in his lap, his hand resting idly on her ankle. When Archie interrupted them, Belle was about to sit up and point out to Gold a quotation in her book. They both looked a bit annoyed initially at the interruption, but their expressions soon softened. With his damp hair clinging to his forehead and the creases lining his eyes, Archie suspected he looked tired. Well, he should: he’d earned it. But he was also holding his chin up in pride (and relief) that his experiment had proven successful: downstairs, in the chandeliered dining room, at the twelve-seat mahogany table, Emma and Hook sat side by side, just as drained as Archie, but still talking to each other. Fortunately, as he led the Golds into the dining room, Hook and Emma weren’t talking about anything intimate or consequential.

Ruby was placing the last of the platters onto the dining table. By her suggestion, they would be eating family style, passing dishes back and forth and serving themselves. This egalitarian approach, along with the hearty American fare, would somewhat counteract the formality of the furniture. “Snow and Charming won’t be joining you,” Ruby said. “They packed a picnic.”

With the Golds on one side of the table and the Swan-Joneses on the other side, Archie felt a bit squeezed in the middle of this huge table, but after some fortification from soup and salad, he felt sufficiently revived to attempt to create a conversation between the opposing forces. “So, Belle, what plans do you have for the library? I heard something about new computers?”

Emma’s ears perked up at this news. ��Good idea. Those PCs you have now are no better than Apple II-E’s.”

“I’m planning a fundraiser for the computers. I hope to buy ten for the public, plus one for a catalog and one for the circ desk,” Belle was squirting ketchup onto her sandwich. “So after those arrive, we’ll be starting some basic computer classes for adults, taught by Henry and some kids from the high school. As for the collection, I plan to develop a college and career prep center.”

“With the curse lifted from the town line, our graduates will be wanting to move on to more opportunities in the big city,” Archie remarked. “I’ll be offering career counseling services.”

Emma shot a quick glance at Hook. “Henry. He’ll be graduating in two years.”

Around a mouthful of pickle, Hook suggested, “I’m sure the lad will find all sorts of new adventures out there in big wide world, as I did when I was young.”

Emma fiddled with her spoon. “I’m not sure I want him out there in big world.”

“As nature intended, love. Mothers wish to hold on, but sons must make their mark upon the world.”

Gold objected, “They don’t always have to leave town to do that.” Emma threw him a small smile. “I’m sure we could find plenty of opportunity for him here. But if he chooses to leave, he’ll have all the support he needs. Financial and otherwise.”

“Thank you, Gold.”

Gold looked down into his soup bowl. “It’s what I owe Bae.”

Hesitating slightly, Archie decided that, after his earlier success, he could venture back into risky territory. If a bridge of common interests could be built between Emma and Gold, perhaps the animosity between Gold and Hook could be diminished. “I never really got to know Neal. Mr. Gold, I’m sure you have some stories about his growing up.”

“Oh, yes, he has a thousand of them,” Belle giggled. “Tell them about the time Bae roped the neighbor’s bellwether.” She reached out to touch Emma’s hand. “It’s hilarious. The roots of Bae’s joy riding career.”

Emma’s eyes brightened and fixed on Gold. “I’d like to hear that. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” he answered softly. “I’d rather like to tell it. Perhaps, afterward, you could share some of your memories?”

“Yeah, I could.”

“Well, then.” Gold scooted back from the table and settled more comfortably in his chair. “In our village there was a farmer who owned a very large, very ill-tempered ewe… .”

———————————————————

Lunch had ended on laughter. Encouraged, Archie sent Hook and Emma out for an afternoon of recreation, but summoned the Golds back to the library, where he thought they’d be most comfortable. “Saved the best for last, Archie?” Belle teased, but her voice was a little shaky.

Pushing the chalkboard ahead of him, Archie ducked the question, which he recognized as halfway serious. What she needed to hear from him was that in his professional assessment, her relationship with Gold was salvageable. After positioning the board, Archie stood back and brushed his chalk-dusted hands against his trousers. He happened to feel Gold’s eyes upon him, and it made him nervous—Gold’s cold stare always did, even though Archie had come to learn that the coldness was a facade. But to retain their confidence, he had to exude confidence of his own. Quite possibly, he was their last hope. So he steeled his spine and turned his head to look Gold in the eyes, and what he read there—in the eyes, not in the straight line of the mouth or the set of the jaw, but in the creases around the eyes, the slight elevation of the brows, and a certain shine in the pupils that could be burgeoning tears—gave Archie all the confidence he needed.

“We can do this,” he assured them. “We will do this, one step at a time.” He motioned to the couch upon which he’d found them resting earlier; they accepted the implied invitation and sat down, somewhat primly (their posture, he noted, mirrored each other’s). He’d learned from their first session that tea was important to them, a held over social convention from their Enchanted Forest days, a relaxant and a subconscious communication prompt, so he’d had Ruby bring in a fully loaded, formal tray, which was waiting on the coffee table. He scooted a comfortable chair up to the table and leaned forward, his hand on the teapot. “Shall I pour?” He didn’t really need to ask; he always poured. It was part of the routine from their therapy.

“Thank you, Archie,” they both said, accepting the tea he’d prepared precisely how they liked it. He allowed them a few moments to sip, and when they sat back in the cushions, he knew they were ready to begin.

“Resentment is the emotional bacteria that, if not expelled, will infect a relationship, possibly kill it,” Archie began. “I believe that each of you harbors some powerful resentments. The two of you have hurt each other often enough.”

To their credit, neither offered a denial. Belle took the brave first step. “Do you think we’re strong enough to deal with this now? Our relationship, I mean; is it strong enough? Won’t digging up the hurts of the past just drive us apart?”

Surprisingly, it was Gold who answered. “Ignoring the shadows of the past will only make them loom larger in the future.” He stared into his teacup. “A lesson I learned from Milah, but all these years I’ve pretended didn’t apply to me.” So low Archie could barely hear him, he murmured, “Fear of what I might lose caused me to ignore the fact that I was losing everyone I loved.”

“Yes.” Archie leaned back in his chair. “You’re strong enough.” He stood up. “Although, yesterday’s rules still apply: you can refuse to participate, but if you do participate, you’ll tell the whole truth.”

“No twisted words,” Gold promised–in Archie’s mind, unnecessarily. The sorcerer knew what was at stake this time: Gideon’s kidnapping had been the flame that had burned down Gold’s house of fantasy. Archie believed Belle realized that too; it was why she’d picked up the pieces of their marriage.

He distributed the pencils and legal pads, then crossed over to the chalkboard. “You’ll be writing a continuation to a prompt.” Belle’s eyes brightened; they were in her wheelhouse now. “I’ll write a starter sentence on the board; you’ll finish it. The ‘you’ refers to your spouse.” He turned his back long enough to put up the assignment, then he stood aside, giving them time to read it.

“’You have a lot of nerve saying “Hello” like nothing happened.’” Belle cast a hasty glance at her husband, who nodded.

“A greeting I’ve deserved, too many times.” He handed her a pencil. “Go on, Belle.”

“’You have a lot of nerve… .’” Belle stared at the blank page.

“Please,” Gold urged.

Belle pressed the pencil to the paper.

As he had done for the other couples, Archie walked away to give them space. He strolled along the ceiling-high shelves, casually perusing the book titles, until he found one that caught his attention and he brought it down. He read the first paragraph; it kept his interest and he read a second. He’d just settled down in an armchair to begin the second chapter of The Personal Dreams of Carl Jung when Belle called him over. “I’m finished, Archie.”

He set the open book aside with the intention of returning to it at bedtime. A glance at her face prompted him to reach into his vest pocket for the package of Kleenex he always carried, but Gold had already beaten him to it, offering her his handkerchief. Her body language revealed her to be caught between anger and guilt; she needed to cry, but she drew upon her childhood lessons and held herself firm. Without urging, she picked up her notepad and read, “You have a lot of nerve saying ‘Hello’ like nothing happened. I know you love me. I don’t doubt that. I love you too. And I wanted so much to help you, after everything Zelena put you through, and after Bae—after she murdered Bae. When you proposed to me, I thought, this is the beginning of the healing. You’ll realize how much I love you and I’ll never leave you, and you’ll trust me, confide in me, and I can take care of you. But from the beginning the marriage was a lie. You swore your love for me on a fake dagger, so that you could go behind my back and kill Zelena. Did you really think I would never find out? Was the proposal even real? Did you really want to marry me, or was that a manipulation too? And while I was sleeping in ignorant bliss, you got up out of our honeymoon bed to plot how you could get more power. You made a deal, Rumple, a deal that would leave this entire town shattered by madness. You were going to snatch Henry away from his mothers and cart us off to New York, never to return. You would have even lied to us about how they all died, wouldn’t you? You imprisoned the fairies. You made a slave out of Hook. You would’ve stolen Emma’s magic if she’d let you. And all this time you left me sleeping, when all I ever wanted to do was to love you. I could’ve helped you, Rumple, but you wouldn’t let me. You hid yourself from me. None of the torment we’ve been through would’ve happened if your proposal had been real.”

She let the notepad drop to the coffee table.

Archie held his breath. She’d thrown down the gauntlet; they waited for Gold to respond. Gold had three choices: he could deny Belle’s interpretation of events. He could make excuses—lord knows, after all he’d been through, he had a warehouse of valid excuses. But neither of those two choices would be the one to move the couple a step towards closure. Gold had a history of wrong choices, a genealogy of wrong choices; he needed to fight the impulse to try to take the easy way out. If only he could realize that in the long run, the difficult way could prove to be the easy way.

Gold was staring at his hands as if they were foreign objects. Was he thinking about the magic they contained? The magic that had fed him, protected him, kept him alive all these years? Or was he thinking about the Dark voices behind the magic, Nimue’s and Zozo’s and the others, and the black voice of the bullied and twice-abandoned little boy who wanted to lash out in broken-hearted anger?

“I did.” They could barely hear him. He let his hands fall to his knees and looked up at Belle. “I did all those things,” he said more clearly. “I hurt you, I hurt Henry, I hurt Gideon and I dishonored Baelfire’s memory. I was wrong and I regret all the pain I caused you. And I know my promises are meaningless now, but I will fight with my last breath to be truthful with you.”

Archie released his breath. Whatever happened next, whatever choice Belle made, Gold would be better now. Not healed, not good, but better. And with each step his way would be easier.

“I think you have been. I forgive you.” Belle squeezed his hand, then looked to Archie. “It still hurts like hell.”

“It will, for a long time,” Archie said. “But it will get better.”

“I do mean it: I forgive you. But it’s kind of hard to feel it under all the anger and injured pride.”

“This is something we’ll work on,” Archie assured her. To give them a moment to decompress, he refilled their teacups, then he sat back and pointedly looked at Gold’s notepad. “Mr. Gold. You’ve written nothing.”

“I had thought I have nothing to resent.”

“Not even when I exiled you?” Belle pressed.

“It was a just punishment. And you made the town safe from a monster who had grown out of control. But I see now, this isn’t the whole truth.” He raised the legal pad. “It’s true that I was hurt by some of the things you did, but I never blamed you, sweetheart. I thought I deserved it all, and worse. Until… .” The first page of his legal pad suddenly filled with writing in a language neither Belle nor Archie could recognize. Gold lay the notebook onto the coffee table beside hers and took her hands in his. “In the Underworld, when I learned that we were going to be parents, I sincerely tried to change, to be truthful with you. Circumstances conspired against me; my past caught up with me and again I failed repeatedly to make the right decisions, but I was honest with you. As much as I could be, after three hundred years of deception. You wouldn’t listen. I understand why, but when you shut me down, I felt that I was alone again, that saving Gideon was all on my shoulders, and I fell back on lies and deals. It worked, Belle, didn’t it? I freed us from Hades. I couldn’t see why you wouldn’t listen to me, when it seemed my solutions were working. I could have freed Gideon from his fate too. I still think, if I’d used the Shears—but we didn’t discuss it or anything else. You ran away from me when we should have been working together to save our son. And in the end, rather than let me anywhere near him, you sent him away. You sent our son away.”

Archie held his breath again. This was Belle’s test; whether the relationship would take another step forward was up to her now. She was twisting the handkerchief instead of using it to cope with her tears. “I should have known you would never hurt him. I did know; after all you went through to rescue Bae, twice sacrificing yourself to keep him alive. You would have done no less for Gideon.

But I was hurt and angry and full of fear, and I listened to the darkness in me instead of looking into your heart. Please, Rumple, say it. For yourself, as well as our marriage, you need to say it.”

To Archie’s surprise, Gold blurted, “Yes, I’m angry. I’m angry at you, Belle, for sending our son away, and with her. Knowing how I feel about fairies, and why, yet you gave our son to her, to the Ruel Ghorm, and look what happened. We almost lost him forever. And we may never know the full extent of the lasting harm that his time with my mother did to him.” Archie had seen him angry, had seen him confused, had seen him aching, but he’d never seen Gold express such naked pain. “He’s my son too. He needs me too. You can’t shut me out of his life.”

“You’re right. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”

“That’s right, you weren’t. You could have easily protected him from everything–the Shears, from my mother, from me–just by driving out of Storybrooke, away from the magic, safe from all this crap. I’m angry, Belle, that you would have taken my son away from me.”

Bravely, she accepted his criticism and Archie could breathe again.“You have a right to be angry. I was wrong. And I will never again forget that Gideon needs you in his life just as much as he needs me.”

It was disconcerting, Archie thought, to see raw hope in the Dark One’s eyes. Few people even recognized the sorcerer as a man, with a heart as vulnerable as their own.“We’ll talk things out, from now on. I’ll let you in and you won’t shut me out. Can we do that, Belle? And if we can’t mend our marriage, at least we can give Gideon his best chance.”

“We have to try.” Belle offered a watery smile. “I want us to give us our best chance too.”

—————————————————

He had no idea where Gold had acquired a cell phone, but in the morning, as he joined the couples for a farewell breakfast, Archie spotted the pawnbroker out in the garden, flagrantly violating the no-phone rule. Ah well. The weekend was over, anyway. Archie walked into the kitchen, paused to sniff at Ruby’s special blend of coffee percolating on the stove, then reached into a cupboard for the box of confiscated electronics. He carried it on his hip back into the dining room.

“Ah, back to modern civilization, I see.” Hook fished his phone out first. “I’ve missed you, Angry Birds.”

Emma distributed the rest and she and David immediately checked their text messages. “Hey, the town survived without us.” She turned her phone around to show her father there were no messages. Then she frowned. “Nothing from Henry. Do you think he–”

“I think he’s been studying for his semester finals, like he was supposed to,” David assured her.

Snow had a finger poised to dial. “Archie, is it okay–”

“It’s okay. Tell them you’ll be home right after breakfast.”

Ruby backed into the dining room, her arms burdened with a fully loaded serving tray. “Doctor, there’s a helicopter coming.”

“A helicopter?” Archie scrambled over to a window to examine the skies. “Nope, I don’t see–”

Ruby set the tray down and tugged at her earlobe. “Yeah, but I hear. The wolf thing, you know. It’s about five miles off.”

The garden door swung open and Gold sauntered in. “That would be Mr. Dove with Gideon.”

David grunted. “You’re taking a helicopter back to Storybrooke? Gold, it’s only five miles.”

Snow finished her phone call. “A little over-anxious to see the baby, are you?”

Belle, with a suitcase in each hand, appeared in the dining room just in time to explain, “We’re not going home yet. We thought we’d extend our holiday and see Boston.” She set the suitcases down and came to her husband’s side, accepting his arm around her waist. “We have some catching up to do.”

Gold informed Archie, “We’ll be back on Thursday in time for our appointment.”

“You’ve got time for breakfast with us, don’t you?” Snow urged. “After Ruby went to all this effort.”

“Of course,” Belle said.

Emma reached across the table to snatch a strip of bacon from the platter. “Sounds like another winner, Doc. Three for three. We’ll have to do this retreat thing again sometime.”

“Maybe when the babies are a little older,” Snow suggested. “Hook, would you pass the toast?”

Archie leaned back as the bowls and plates started making their way around. He gave himself a mental pat on the back as the Golds sat down, side by side, and the sorcerer picked up the platter of pastries. “Bear claw, Ms. Swan?” After Emma had speared one, Gold offered the platter to Hook. “Captain?”

After a moment to recover from his shock, Hook helped himself to a Danish. “Thank you, C—Gold. Some toast?”

“Three for three,” Archie mused. “I do believe so.” The entire group laughed—even Gold chuckled—at a joke David shared, and Archie nodded to himself. “It’s a start. A very good start.”

#darcyfarrow2005 #a monthly rumbelling #april #submission

[schraubd]

“Can You Be a Zionist Feminist?” Who Knows!

"Can You Be A Zionist Feminist? Linda Sarsour Says No." blares the headline of The Nation. The Jewish press dutifully followed their lead, writing "Pro-Palestinian activist: Support for Israel and feminism are incompatible."

And so I thought "well apparently Sarsour's experiment with treating mainstream Jews respectfully has come to an end." But dig a little deeper and ... well, it's confusing. Because if you actually read The Nation interview, Sarsour never actually takes the position ascribed to her in the title. Now to be clear, she doesn't disavow it either. It's just ... not what she was asked, and not what she answered. Indeed, just compare the title and the subtitle:

Can You Be a Zionist Feminist? Linda Sarsour Says No 

The prominent Palestinian-American feminist responds to claims that anti-Zionism has no place in the feminist movement.

You'll notice that these are two very different statements -- the first affirming that Zionists have no place in feminism, the second affirming that anti-Zionists do have a place in feminism. Now, they could be reconciled: One side says Zionists, but not anti-Zionists, can be feminists; the other side saying anti-Zionists, but not Zionists, can be feminists. But this of course obscures a median position, which is that both can be feminists -- or, more conditionally, both can be feminists if they meet certain qualifications regarding respect for all women (including those women whose rights and security are often thought to be undervalued by the movement in question).

So what position does Sarsour take? Is she saying that yes, anti-Zionists have a place in the feminist movement? Is she saying that no, Zionists have no such place? Is she restricting her critique to "right-wing Zionists" (Sarsour actually never speaks of "Zionists" simpliciter, only "right-wing Zionists")? Or is she saying something different entirely, namely that Israel is a country, which does things criticizable, and therefore a feminist movement has to be open to criticism of Israel?

It's entirely unclear, and that unclearness is I think primarily attributable to The Nation. I honestly don't know if The Nation understands there is a difference between saying Zionists are categorically barred, saying that anti-Zionists should not be excluded, and saying that a feminist movement will sometimes entail criticism of Israel. These clearly distinct concepts are so consistently run together that I really have no idea if The Nation grasps that they're not the same thing. And so while it's entirely plausible that Sarsour does hold to the hardline position ascribed to her in the title, The Nation ends up obscuring more than it illuminates because when it comes to matters like Zionism, anti-Zionism, and Jewish inclusion, it's really, really not good at its job.

None of this is to say that there aren't elements of what Sarsour does (clearly) say which can be critiqued. Take her statement that "anyone who wants to call themselves an activist cannot be selective. There is no country in this world that is immune to violating human rights." Perfectly defensible in the abstract, but it elides the reality that there is in fact there is in these movements in fact quite a bit of "selectiveness." The Women's Strike Platform's characterization of the "decolonization of Palestine" as "the beating heart of the movement" is the only international controversy to gain any mention anywhere in the document (the reference to Mexico is, in context, clearly about American actions, not Mexican ones). It's like Curtis Marez's famously blithe defense of singling out Israel for boycotts -- "one has to start somewhere." It's a far less effective retort when one seems to end there too.

Still, it is quite right in principle that a feminist must be an advocate for all women, and a critic of all policies (national or otherwise) which act to exclude women. And I'll go further: Zionism is a diverse movement with many streams, including ones which are liberal in the criticism of malign Israeli policies and insistent on securing Palestinian equality (this is one of the reasons why a flat exclusion of "Zionists" from the feminist pantheon is unjustifiable). Yet it is undeniable that, in its primary political manifestation (that is, as state policy), Zionism has frequently resulted in severe injustices to Palestinians (men and women alike), of which the continued denial of Palestinian self-determination is only the most severe. It is not fair to impute that to all Zionists. It is fair to ask that persons who call themselves Zionists grapple with this history and practice in a way that demonstrates serious commitment to rectifying it.

Yet critically, the same goes for anti-Zionists. They, too, cannot be "selective"; they, too, must be open to critiques about countries and movements and practices that have served to oppress. And in doing so, they too must stand for all women, including Jewish women, including Jewish Israeli women. Anti-Zionism, too, has its gendered oppressions; its moments and practices where it leverages the vulnerability of Jewish or Israeli women or explodes into grotesque violence. We remember, after all, the feminist lawyer in Egypt who reportedly endorsed rape as a tool of anti-Zionist resistance; extolling to the Israeli women across the border "leave the land so we won't rape you."  And today offered a particularly vicious illustration of the intersection, as Ahmed Daqamseh -- a former Jordanian soldier who massacred seven Israeli eighth-grade girls visiting his country on a field trip -- was released from prison. Upon his release, he told reporters that "The Israelis are the human waste of people, that the rest of the world has vomited up at our feet. We must eliminate them by fire or by burial." When deciding whether someone who helped blow up two more Jews in a supermarket should take on a leading role in this new feminist movement, this practice should matter.

The easy move here is to dismiss the above cases as aberrations or, supposedly more damningly, as disconnected from power. But here, too, we must note that, while anti-Zionism is a diverse and variegated movement in how it manifests in academia or social circles, in its primary political manifestation as state policy it has frequently resulted in severe injustices to Jews (men and women alike). Anti-Zionism as a political form claims as its most decisive political action not the liberation of Palestinians but the mass oppression and expulsions of Jews from Middle Eastern countries, undertaken explicitly under an anti-Zionist banner. If it seems like anti-Zionism-as-politics does not currently manifest in this form of direct, unmediated danger to Jewish lives, that's primarily because there are virtually no Jews left in the locations where anti-Zionism manifests as politically dominant. Again, this does not mean that all anti-Zionists endorse these acts. It does mean that persons who call themselves anti-Zionists must grapple with this history and practice in a way that demonstrates serious commitment to rectifying it. Because feminism really cannot be selective, it cannot be concerned with the fates of only the right sorts of women.

We all have our blind spots and things we need to work on. It is perhaps relevant, then, to mention the occasion where I first encountered Linda Sarsour. It was after she spoke at the First Annual Jews of Color conference, telling Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) Jews that "We will welcome you and embrace you in your full complexity. We’re waiting for you at the Arab American Association." JIMENA (Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa) promptly asked her if she would be willing to partner with them, a predominantly Zionist organization.

@lsarsour Does your “embrace” of Mizrahi Jews in “our full complexity” include Zionists? Interested in partnering? https://t.co/eT0U1dPEck — JIMENA (@JIMENA_Voice) May 5, 2016

Sarsour proceeded to ignore them entirely. Some complexity. We weren't off to a good start.

Yet despite all of this and as cutting as I might seem here, it is important to emphasize also that there is a fair amount of rhetoric ginned up around Linda Sarsour that is -- without mincing words -- complete bullshit. The most grotesque is that which invokes her support of "Sharia law", using language that echoes in form and tone efforts to demonize observant Jews by reference to the most extreme iterations of Halacha (I can look favorably upon Jewish law and still find the Agunah doctrine execrable; likewise Sarsour can speak positively of Sharia while not endorsing crediting women half that of men. Only antisemites and Islamophobes think otherwise, or think it is fair to ascribe monolithic -- and reactionary -- uniformity to a pluralistic and contested legal tradition).

Likewise those who accuse her of opportunism when she helped raise funds to restore desecrated gravestones at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis. The raw fact is that she came through -- in deed, not just word -- when those Jews needed her, and I can be critical of problematic elements of her political profile without needing to look a gift horse in the mouth. Ditto her behavior as Women's March co-organizer, where in contrast to her flamethrower reputation she did not act in a way that would have functionally excluded the vast majority of Jews from participating (indeed, it was these steps that made what I initially took to be her statement to The Nation something disappointing, as opposed to predictable).

In any event.

Palestinian women are women. Israeli women are women. Muslim women are women. Jewish women are women. And, since we ought to be intersectional about it, Middle Eastern (Mizrahi) Jewish women are women. A feminism which does not stand with, protect, uphold, promote, elevate, and engage with all of these women is a feminism that fails. Because Linda Sarsour is absolutely right: feminism cannot be selective.

#antisemitism #arabs #linda sarsour #Israel #Palestine #feminism #gender #zionism #anti zionism #jews

[teeky185]

A group called The Satanic Temple went to court in their lawsuit against the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, for religious discrimination in January 2020.The city’s attorneys argued that they could not possibly be guilty of religious discrimination because The Satanic Temple is not a religion. This argument prompted the judge in the case, Justice David Campbell, to ask, “What is religion?”I am a professor of religious studies, and part of my job is getting students to think critically about the definition of religion. After studying The Satanic Temple for my book, “Speak of the Devil,” I find the most interesting thing about this group is the way it disrupts commonly held ideas about what religion is. History of the groupThe Satanic Temple was created in 2013 by two friends using the pseudonyms Malcolm Jarry and Lucien Greaves. Many members of The Satanic Temple use pseudonyms because of threats and hate mail that they receive.Members of The Satanic Temple do not believe in God or the devil. Its beliefs are articulated in “the seven tenets.” These tenets emphasize reason and science as well as values such as compassion and justice. The first tenet states, “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.” Other tenets address bodily autonomy, the freedom to offend and taking responsibility for one’s mistakes.It was a series of political actions invoking religious freedom that brought the group into the public eye. They demanded the same privileges for Satanists that many Christians take for granted, such as erecting religious monuments on government property and using government meetings to present sectarian prayers.Today there are 24 official chapters of the group throughout North America and Europe, ranging in membership from a dozen to over 100 people. Chapters can be found in coastal cities but also in the South and the Midwest. Texas is home to four chapters, more than any other state. There are also thousands of supporters with individual memberships or in unofficial chapters with names like “Friends of The Satanic Temple, Arkansas.” Political actionsOne of the group’s political goals is to advocate for the value of the separation of church and state. Their strategy is to remind the public that if Christians can use government resources to assert their cultural dominance, then Satanists are free to do the same.After Oklahoma installed a monument of the Ten Commandments at its State Capitol in 2012, the group demanded that their statue of a satanic deity, Baphomet, a winged-goat-like creature, be installed next to it. The group received US$30,000 in donations from people around the country to build the statue.The Oklahoma Supreme Court ordered the Ten Commandments monument removed. However, thousands of people extended their support to The Satanic Temple, leading to the creation of the group’s first few chapters. Prayer invocationsThe trouble in Scottsdale, Arizona, began in 2014 when the Supreme Court ruled in Greece v. Galloway that city councils and other government bodies may begin meetings with “invocations” that involve sectarian prayers. What this meant was that the government could invite a pastor to say, “We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” as long as they did not discriminate against religious groups who wanted to give the invocation.The Satanic Temple took the Supreme Court at their word. In 2016 they asked Scottsdale to open a city council meeting with the following prayer:> “Let us stand now, unbowed and unfettered by arcane doctrines born of fearful minds in darkened times. Let us embrace the Luciferian impulse to eat of the Tree of Knowledge and dissipate our blissful and comforting delusions of old.> > "Let us demand that individuals be judged for their concrete actions, not their fealty to arbitrary social norms and illusory categorizations. Let us reason our solutions with agnosticism in all things, holding fast only to that which is demonstrably true.> > "Let us stand firm against any and all arbitrary authority that threatens the personal sovereignty of One or All. That which will not bend must break, and that which can be destroyed by truth should never be spared its demise. It is Done. Hail Satan.” Backlash against the SatanistsInitially Scottsdale officials agreed. Satanist Michelle Shortt, a member of the Arizona chapter, was scheduled to speak before a council meeting that April.But then the Christian backlash began. In court, attorneys discussed how one church sent over 15,000 emails demanding the Satanists be uninvited, crashing the city’s email system. Scottsdale officials cancelled Shortt’s invocation and declared a new policy that all invocation speakers must have “a substantial connection to the Scottsdale community.”When the Satanists sued, Judge Campbell ruled there was insufficient evidence to prove Scottsdale officials acted out of religious prejudice. What is religion?However, an important outcome of the case was that Campbell rejected Scottsdale’s claim that The Satanic Temple is not a “real religion” or seeks only to mock actual religions.The debate over what constitutes religion is an old one. In 1961, the Supreme Court acknowledged in Torcaso v. Watkins that there are many religions like Buddhism, Confucianism and even expressions of Judaism that are just not interested in God. Torcaso v. Watkins did not define religion; it merely ruled that religion is not synonymous with theism.Scholars of religion have suggested that religion is not reducible to theism or indeed any one element. They have noted that the word religion is used differently in different contexts.For example, religion scholar Catherine Albanese, in her 1981 book “America: Religions and Religion,” presented religions as systems consisting of “four ‘c’s.” These include creed, or a set of beliefs; code, or rules; cultus, meaning rituals; and community. In other words, religion is much more than the sum of its parts.Religion can also be redefined to serve certain political interests. For example, in 2012 the state of Florida could not legally execute paranoid schizophrenic and convicted murderer John Errol Ferguson because the Florida Supreme Court ruled that the mentally ill must understand they will die when they are executed. Ferguson stated he could not die because he was an immortal “prince of God.” The state circumvented this law by ruling that Ferguson’s delusions were a religious conviction and proceeded with the execution.The word religion lends itself to such creative legal uses precisely because it has no set definition. As religion scholar Russell McCutcheon says, religion’s “utility is linked to its inability to be defined.” The Satanic Temple is significant because it renders this sort of verbal slipperiness less tenable. If this group can no longer be dismissed as a “hoax,” people might be forced to think a bit more about what religion is.[You’re too busy to read everything. We get it. That’s why we’ve got a weekly newsletter. Sign up for good Sunday reading. ]This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.Read more: * The changing nature of America’s irreligious explained * Giving thanks, but to whom? Fewer Americans embrace organized religionJoseph P. Laycock does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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[maxwellyjordan]

Census symposium: A place for pretext in administrative law?

Jennifer Nou is Professor of Law and Ronald H. Coase Teaching Scholar at University of Chicago Law School.

With Department of Commerce v. New York, the Trump administration continues its losing streak in court under the Administrative Procedure Act. Many have ascribed this poor record to some combination of incompetence, vacancies, and a greater interest in tweeting policies, rather than implementing them. In this case, the government lost because it invoked a rationale that was simply implausible: It needed to add a census-citizenship question to enforce the Voting Rights Act. But the record was painfully clear that Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross had clumsily manufactured this story — cajoling the Department of Justice to make the request. The Supreme Court thus affirmed the district court and remanded the case back to the agency.

Chief Justice John Roberts, for a fractured court, upheld the plaintiffs’ standing, the suit’s reviewability, and Ross’ constitutional and statutory authority to include the citizenship question. But when it came to APA arbitrariness review, Roberts was Solomonic. On the one hand, he agreed with the conservatives that the agency had not been arbitrary under the traditional standards: The secretary “considered the relevant factors, weighed risks and benefits, and articulated a satisfactory explanation for his decision.” On the other hand, Roberts sided with the liberals in concluding that, nevertheless, the agency’s action was ultimately arbitrary because its “sole” voting-rights-related reason was pretextual.

But is there a proper role for pretext in administrative law? It would be easy to interpret the Supreme Court’s answer as a firm no. Agencies, in this view, must reveal their genuine motivations to survive judicial review. This case hardly stands for the proposition, however, that bureaucratic honesty is the best policy. Agencies can still give reasons that obfuscate the political machinations behind them. In Roberts’ words, “a court may not set aside an agency’s policymaking decision” only because it was informed by unstated “political considerations or prompted by an Administration’s priorities.” To the contrary, he continues, “typical” agency decisions can and do rest on both “stated and unstated” reasons.

Indeed, as Katherine Watts notes, agencies under arbitrariness review have long had an incentive “to dress up” their explanations “in technocratic terms and to hide political influences.” In other words, agencies often provide expertise-based rationales, even when their genuine motivations are political. More recently, Thomas McGarity and Wendy Wagner document the ways in which appointees imperceptibly skew scientific work to justify deregulatory ends. Similar accounts abound of cost-benefit analyses written to support preferred outcomes. However pervasive these phenomena, these practices are arguably forms of pretext — rationales masking the genuine motivations for decisions.

The perception of charade only persists when agencies reimpose the same policies after remand, which the Department of Commerce seems likely to attempt here. One study, for example, found that agencies in its sample were able to pursue the same policy in about 80 percent of the rulemakings sent back after arbitrariness determinations. In other words, agencies simply carried on with their decisions after better dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s.

Why has the law allowed, perhaps even encouraged, this state of affairs? The likely answer has something to with the administrative state’s well-known struggle to reconcile politics and expertise. Perhaps a bit of pretext allows agencies to maintain public legitimacy at a time when political accountability is more suspect (think low voter information or partisan gerrymandering). Or perhaps a little required pretext ultimately helps agencies make better decisions, at least some of the time.

Whatever the explanation, administrative law has and will likely continue to tolerate some forms of pretext. A potentially new principle introduced in this case, however, is the idea that such pretext must at least be plausible. How else to give legal content to the idea that courts are “not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free?” In other words, Roberts — quoting Judge Henry Friendly — refuses to accept a wholly implausible rationale, one that is not credible. On this view, the kinds of pretext that agencies normally provide to meet the expertise-driven demands of arbitrariness review are fine because they are plausible; there is generally enough in the administrative record to justify them. By contrast, when the available evidence suggests that the only stated rationale is implausible, not credible, then agencies run afoul of the APA.

To be sure, the concept of plausibility itself is ill-defined, but it is not foreign to the law. Civil pleadings, for example, must state “plausible” claims, which the Supreme Court distinguishes from those that are merely “conceivable.” This is not to suggest that another body of law be imported here, but rather to search for some analogous concept in an effort to distinguish between proper and improper administrative pretext. As applied here, the pretext provided by the Department of Commerce was conceivable, but it was not plausible: There was just too much evidence that DOJ did not sincerely seek citizenship data. The secretary was trying to pull a fast one. Roberts makes clear that Ross would have been justified in adding the citizenship question had the trial proceedings suggested otherwise.

Of course, this now raises the related question of whether those trial proceedings were appropriate: What evidence can a reviewing court properly consider? The APA provides that courts must engage in arbitrariness review based on the “whole record,” the administrative record. Different agencies have varying conceptions of what should go into that record. In Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe, however, the Supreme Court recognized that agency-furnished records can be insufficient for judicial review. There, the Department of Transportation allowed a highway to be built through a park without generating any contemporaneous record at all. The court thus remanded to the district court to figure out what to do. In passing, the Overton Park court noted that a “strong showing of bad faith or improper behavior” could justify extra-record testimony by agency officials.

Based on that language, in the case at hand, Roberts rightly endorsed the district court’s decision to allow for additional discovery from the Commerce Department. The government’s constant need to supplement and clarify the record demonstrated its bad faith in constructing the record in the first place. But, going forward, just how much of a showing of bad faith would be necessary for courts to look beyond the initial record? A whiff, a “reasonable” amount, more? Both Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas in partial dissent are unclear on this question.

There is a good argument, however, that Thomas was right to emphasize that whatever the standard is, it should be high. As he writes: “Virtually every significant agency action is vulnerable to the kinds of allegations the Court credits today.” The majority thus “enables partisans to use the courts to harangue executive officers through depositions, discovery, delay, and distraction.” The more discovery is allowed, in turn, the more litigants will be able to sift through depositions in search of any evidence of pretext. Such fears justify the general presumption of regularity, the normal rule against probing the mental states of busy executive-branch actors.

In the final analysis, Department of Commerce v. New York contains several ideas in danger of being read too broadly. One is to demand full administrative candor. Another is to allow discovery at the slightest trace of subterfuge. As Roberts concedes, such approvals should be “rare.” Allowing litigants to pounce at any hint of substantive or procedural bad faith threatens ossification and delay. Lower courts should therefore cabin this precedent’s principles, either to the case’s extraordinary facts or to its narrow context. As proposed elsewhere, perhaps this form of harder-look review should apply only in election-related decisions.

After all, some forms of pretext already have a place in administrative law. The pressing questions now are what kinds of pretext are tolerable, which are not, and why. The answers may determine whether the citizenship question ultimately appears on the 2020 census. This court may very well accept any plausible pretext from the Trump administration if called upon to review this case again. Only time — and the census printing deadlines — will tell.

The post Census symposium: A place for pretext in administrative law? appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

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#law #justice

[pinkpeccary]

tldr: i have a philosophy assignment to work with a partner to lead a discussion on Janet Halley’s  “The Move to Affirmative Consent”, a piece that i think is well argued and articulates a lot of things about the movement that i struggle with, as well as going into why radfem influences in this are dangerous and conservative, specifically in the legal context. my partner has opposing opinions to mine which i don’t want to deal with because they feel like they come from a place of emotionally charged kneejerk reaction rather than actually considering the argument. (i might be being harsh here, idk i’m tired and annoyed). 

under readmore bc it got long enough i don’t want to make people scroll

in my philosophy class we got paired up at the beginning of the semester to do a seminar presentation, meaning each pair picked one of the readings to research and present on during the day we were discussing it in class. my partner picked Janet Halley’s “The Move to Affirmative Consent” and i didn’t really have a preference so that’s what we ended up with.

i like this piece a lot. the main argument is basically that the push for affirmative consent policies is coming from the radfem desire for social control through punishment by reducing the definition of consent to the subjective concept of “desire” or “unwantedness”, which is pretty much impossible to gauge in a court of law, and that parts of the definition given by the California laws specifically are heading dangerously close to the realm of “guilty until proven innocent.” Halley is a legal scholar, and as such is approaching this issue from a legal standpoint, questioning the desire to make the law the decider of what is consent especially when the definitions given can be interpreted in so many different ways and the concept of unwantedness alone is too subjective to be used as the sole basis for legal proceedings.*

i do get that this is a hot-button issue. parts of her argument really are her saying “these policies make it easier for men* to get convicted of crimes they didn’t commit” which is easy to misinterpret as “we need to protect poor innocent rapists whose lives will be ruined by these accusations”. but really what’s going on is she’s saying it’s not okay to set a legal precedent for putting the burden of persuasion on the defendant, and that the push for it is not out of genuine goodwill but comes from the radfem belief that because of the patriarchy if a woman ever has sex with a man it’s coerced by societal norms and therefore all men who have sex with women are evil rapists. (she does a much better job of arguing this than i am in summarizing it)

anyways. i skimmed this piece a month or two ago to get a sense for it leading up to the presentation and my initial response was “cool, this seems like good thoughts? would have to read more in-depth tho.” then i ignored it for a while. but tuesday is our presentation day, so we decided to meet up to work on it today. so i did a very close reading of it while waiting for my partner to tell me when she was free, and realized that i really do agree with most of what she’s arguing, and that she’s putting into words a lot of things i’ve struggled to express about my feelings towards consent***

so i came out of this thinking, “great! i can talk about this!” but we need to give a critical response, which includes both what we found compelling and what we disagree with (or why we don’t disagree with anything). so i started trying to come up with something to disagree with, but the problem was at that point any potential counterclaims i could come up with were too easy for me to rebut.

then my partner arrived 30 minutes late, and first off: clearly had not read the entire piece. which was annoying. but she had opinions about it. and she found opinions about it on reddit. and her opinions were very counter to mine. 

basically, she was upset that Halley was criticizing affirmative consent because it’s such an important thing. we have to have a practical connection to some sort of event or something that we analyze through the lens of the piece, and her suggestion was “maybe we could find an example of a case where affirmative consent was necessary, to show she’s wrong about it”. at one point i brought up the bit about how since consent is defined so loosely and subjectively it often comes down to he-said-she-said, and it’s problematic to put the burden of persuasion on either party, and she said it was better to have the law set up to be manipulated against the accused rather than the victims because “women wouldn’t do that.” and the big one that really bugged me is she said something about “why is this even a conversation we need to be having” because obviously this isn’t relevant in the current social climate because the issue is too much sexual assault going unchecked (when actually that’s precisely why it’s a conversation that’s happening, she’s saying that affirmative consent as a response to that issue is problematic in its current implementation from a legal standpoint and we should maybe talk about that but yknow whatever)

and this is not a fight i want to get into. i don’t like confrontation and i especially don’t like confrontation where i’m on the side that doesn’t have the fun buzzwords that make people side with you regardless. and i have no idea how the rest of my class feels and my school is small enough that i don’t want to rock the boat too hard and it’s just. aaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

like i wish so hard that i had a partner who agreed with me because i would love to talk about this piece i have a lot of feelings about it. but i’m having to compromise my feelings about it with her opposite feelings about it and pretend to be much more neutral than i am which, also, is likely going to lead to the fun unintended side effect of me being more defensive of the piece than i should be. it’s not flawless. but i know that if i have to lead a discussion in which we pick apart all the terrible evil things she says about defendants have rights and how dare we not immediately believe an allegation of sexual assault immediately no questions asked in a court of law, i’m going to start getting a lot less willing to acknowledge those flaws.

* i’m not summarizing it super well but that’s the gist of it

** the piece is responding to the typical narrative of male perpetrator and female victim, so throughout the piece the genders of each party is indicated as such. 

*** this is a whole nother post that i might have already talked about but basically the big thing is i’m super uncomfy with the definition of consent at my school specifically including the phrase “enthusiastic yes” because i am neutral towards a lot of things and have a complicated relationship with attracted and if my partner (sexual partner not project partner) wants to do something and i’m fine either way than if i agree unenthusiastically it’s still consent and to claim otherwise is to push me towards performing enthusiasm i don’t have and subsequently questioning whether or not i’m actually consenting bc it feels fake; anyways she doesn’t go into that specifically but it relates a lot to what she’s saying throughout

#assault cw #philosophy #ollie talks #late at night #pp

[neilchax]

TRUTH OF FEELING

When my daughter Nicole was an infant, I read an essay suggesting that it might no longer be necessary to teach children how to read or write, because speech recognition and synthesis would soon render those abilities superfluous. My wife and I were horrified by the idea, and we resolved that, no matter how sophisticated technology became, our daughter’s skills would always rest on the bedrock of traditional literacy.

It turned out that we and the essayist were both half correct: now that she’s an adult, Nicole can read as well as I can. But there is a sense in which she has lost the ability to write. She doesn’t dictate her messages and ask a virtual secretary to read back to her what she last said, the way that essayist predicted; Nicole subvocalizes, her retinal projector displays the words in her field of vision, and she makes revisions using a combination of gestures and eye movements. For all practical purposes, she can write. But take away the assistive software and give her nothing but a keyboard like the one I remain faithful to, and she’d have difficulty spelling out many of the words in this very sentence. Under those specific circumstances, English becomes a bit like a second language to her, one that she can speak fluently but can only barely write.

It may sound like I’m disappointed in Nicole’s intellectual achievements, but that’s absolutely not the case. She’s smart and dedicated to her job at an art museum when she could be earning more money elsewhere, and I’ve always been proud of her accomplishments. But there is still the past me who would have been appalled to see his daughter lose her ability to spell, and I can’t deny that I am continuous with him.

It’s been more than twenty years since I read that essay, and in that period our lives have undergone countless changes that I couldn’t have predicted. The most catastrophic one was when Nicole’s mother Angela declared that she deserved a more interesting life than the one we were giving her, and spent the next decade criss-crossing the globe. But the changes leading to Nicole’s current form of literacy were more ordinary and gradual: a succession of software gadgets that not only promised but in fact delivered utility and convenience, and I didn’t object to any of them at the times of their introduction.

So it hasn’t been my habit to engage in doomsaying whenever a new product is announced; I’ve welcomed new technology as much as anyone. But when Whetstone released its new search tool Remem, it raised concerns for me in a way none of its predecessors did.

 Millions of people, some my age but most younger, have been keeping lifelogs for years, wearing personal cams that capture continuous video of their entire lives. People consult their lifelogs for a variety of reasons—everything from reliving favorite moments to tracking down the cause of allergic reactions—but only intermittently; no one wants to spend all their time formulating queries and sifting through the results. Lifelogs are the most complete photo album imaginable, but like most photo albums, they lie dormant except on special occasions. Now Whetstone aims to change all of that; they claim Remem’s algorithms can search the entire haystack by the time you’ve finished saying “needle.”

Remem monitors your conversation for references to past events, and then displays video of that event in the lower left corner of your field of vision. If you say “remember dancing the conga at that wedding?”, Remem will bring up the video. If the person you’re talking to says “the last time we were at the beach,” Remem will bring up the video. And it’s not only for use when speaking with someone else; Remem also monitors your subvocalizations. If you read the words “the first Szechuan restaurant you ate at,” your vocal cords will move as if you’re reading aloud, and Remem will bring up the relevant video.

There’s no denying the usefulness of software that can actually answer the question “where did I put my keys?” But Whetstone is positioning Remem as more than a handy virtual assistant: they want it to take the place of your natural memory.

It was the summer of Jijingi’s thirteenth year when a European came to live in the village. The dusty harmattan winds had just begun blowing from the north when Sabe, the elder who was regarded as chief by all the local families, made the announcement.

Everyone’s initial reaction was alarm, of course. “What have we done wrong?” Jijingi’s father asked Sabe.

Europeans had first come to Tivland many years ago, and while some elders said one day they’d leave and life would return to the ways of the past, until that day arrived it was necessary for the Tiv to get along with them. This had meant many changes in the way the Tiv did things, but it had never meant Europeans living among them before. The usual reason for Europeans to come to the village was to collect taxes for the roads they had built; they visited some clans more often because the people refused to pay taxes, but that hadn’t happened in the Shangev clan. Sabe and the other clan elders had agreed that paying the taxes was the best strategy.

Sabe told everyone not to worry. “This European is a missionary; that means all he does is pray. He has no authority to punish us, but our making him welcome will please the men in the administration.”

He ordered two huts built for the missionary, a sleeping hut and a reception hut. Over the course of the next several days everyone took time off from harvesting the guinea-corn to help lay bricks, sink posts into the ground, weave grass into thatch for the roof. It was during the final step, pounding the floor, that the missionary arrived. His porters appeared first, the boxes they carried visible from a distance as they threaded their way between the cassava fields; the missionary himself was the last to appear, apparently exhausted even though he carried nothing. His name was Moseby, and he thanked everyone who had worked on the huts. He tried to help, but it quickly became clear that he didn’t know how to do anything, so eventually he just sat in the shade of a locust bean tree and wiped his head with a piece of cloth.

Jijingi watched the missionary with curiosity. The man opened one of his boxes and took out what at first looked like a block of wood, but then he split it open and Jijingi realized it was a tightly bound sheaf of papers. Jijingi had seen paper before; when the Europeans collected taxes, they gave paper in return so that the village had proof of what they’d paid. But the paper that the missionary was looking at was obviously of a different sort, and must have had some other purpose.

The man noticed Jijingi looking at him, and invited him to come closer. “My name is Moseby,” he said. “What is your name?”

“I am Jijingi, and my father is Orga of the Shangev clan.”

Moseby spread open the sheaf of paper and gestured toward it. “Have you heard the story of Adam?” he asked. “Adam was the first man. We are all children of Adam.”

 “Here we are descendants of Shangev,” said Jijingi. “And everyone in Tivland is a descendant of Tiv.”

“Yes, but your ancestor Tiv was descended from Adam, just as my ancestors were. We are all brothers. Do you understand?”

The missionary spoke as if his tongue were too large for his mouth, but Jijingi could tell what he was saying. “Yes, I understand.”

Moseby smiled, and pointed at the paper. “This paper tells the story of Adam.”

“How can paper tell a story?”

“It is an art that we Europeans know. When a man speaks, we make marks on the paper. When another man looks at the paper later, he sees the marks and knows what sounds the first man made. In that way the second man can hear what the first man said.”

Jijingi remembered something his father had told him about old Gbegba, who was the most skilled in bushcraft. “Where you or I would see nothing but some disturbed grass, he can see that a leopard had killed a cane rat at that spot and carried it off,” his father said. Gbegba was able to look at the ground and know what had happened even though he had not been present. This art of the Europeans must be similar: those who were skilled in interpreting the marks could hear a story even if they hadn’t been there when it was told.

“Tell me the story that the paper tells,” he said.

Moseby told him a story about Adam and his wife being tricked by a snake. Then he asked Jijingi, “How do you like it?”

“You’re a poor storyteller, but the story was interesting enough.”

Moseby laughed. “You are right, I am not good at the Tiv language. But this is a good story. It is the oldest story we have. It was first told long before your ancestor Tiv was born.”

  Jijingi was dubious. “That paper can’t be so old.”

“No, this paper is not. But the marks on it were copied from older paper. And those marks were copied from older paper. And so forth many times.”

That would be impressive, if true. Jijingi liked stories, and older stories were often the best. “How many stories do you have there?”

“Very many.” Moseby flipped through the sheaf of papers, and Jijingi could see each sheet was covered with marks from edge to edge; there must be many, many stories there.

“This art you spoke of, interpreting marks on paper; is it only for Europeans?”

“No, I can teach it to you. Would you like that?”

Cautiously, Jijingi nodded.

As a journalist, I have long appreciated the usefulness of lifelogging for determining the facts of the matter. There is scarcely a legal proceeding, criminal or civil, that doesn’t make use of someone’s lifelog, and rightly so. When the public interest is involved, finding out what actually happened is important; justice is an essential part of the social contract, and you can’t have justice until you know the truth.

However, I’ve been much more skeptical about the use of lifelogging in purely personal situations. When lifelogging first became popular, there were couples who thought they could use it to settle arguments over who had actually said what, using the video record to prove they were right. But finding the right clip of video often wasn’t easy, and all but the most determined gave up on doing so. The inconvenience acted as a barrier, limiting the searching of lifelogs to those situations in which effort was warranted, namely situations in which justice was the motivating factor.

Now with Remem, finding the exact moment has become easy, and lifelogs that previously lay all but ignored are now being scrutinized as if they were crime scenes, thickly strewn with evidence for use in domestic squabbles.

 I typically write for the news section, but I’ve written feature stories as well, and so when I pitched an article about the potential downsides of Remem to my managing editor, he gave me the go-ahead. My first interview was with a married couple whom I’ll call Joel and Deirdre, an architect and a painter, respectively. It wasn’t hard to get them talking about Remem.

“Joel is always saying that he knew it all along,” said Deirdre, “even when he didn’t. It used to drive me crazy, because I couldn’t get him to admit he used to believe something else. Now I can. For example, recently we were talking about the McKittridge kidnapping case.”

She sent me the video of one argument she had with Joel. My retinal projector displayed footage of a cocktail party; it’s from Deirdre’s point of view, and Joel is telling a number of people, “It was pretty clear that he was guilty from the day he was arrested.”

Deirdre’s voice: “You didn’t always think that. For months you argued that he was innocent.”

Joel shakes his head. “No, you’re misremembering. I said that even people who are obviously guilty deserve a fair trial.”

“That’s not what you said. You said he was being railroaded.”

“You’re thinking of someone else; that wasn’t me.”

“No, it was you. Look.” A separate video window opened up, an excerpt of her lifelog that she looked up and broadcast to the people they’ve been talking with. Within the nested video, Joel and Deirdre are sitting in a café, and Joel is saying, “He’s a scapegoat. The police needed to reassure the public, so they arrested a convenient suspect. Now he’s done for.” Deidre replies, “You don’t think there’s any chance of him being acquitted?” and Joel answers, “Not unless he can afford a high-powered defense team, and I’ll bet you he can’t. People in his position will never get a fair trial.”

I closed both windows, and Deirdre said, “Without Remem, I’d never be able to convince him that he changed his position. Now I have proof.”

  “Fine, you were right that time,” said Joel. “But you didn’t have to do that in front of our friends.”

“You correct me in front of our friends all the time. You’re telling me I can’t do the same?”

Here was the line at which the pursuit of truth ceased to be an intrinsic good. When the only persons affected have a personal relationship with each other, other priorities are often more important, and a forensic pursuit of the truth could be harmful. Did it really matter whose idea it was to take the vacation that turned out so disastrously? Did you need to know which partner was more forgetful about completing errands the other person asked of them? I was no expert on marriage, but I knew what marriage counselors said: pinpointing blame wasn’t the answer. Instead, couples needed to acknowledge each other’s feelings and address their problems as a team.

Next I spoke with a spokesperson from Whetstone, Erica Meyers. For a while she gave me a typically corporate spiel about the benefits of Remem. “Making information more accessible is an intrinsic good,” she says. “Ubiquitous video has revolutionized law enforcement. Businesses become more effective when they adopt good record-keeping practices. The same thing happens to us as individuals when our memories become more accurate: we get better, not just at doing our jobs, but at living our lives.”

When I asked her about couples like Joel and Deirdre, she said, “If your marriage is solid, Remem isn’t going to hurt it. But if you’re the type of person who’s constantly trying to prove that you’re right and your spouse is wrong, then your marriage is going to be in trouble whether you use Remem or not.”

I conceded that she may have had a point in this particular case. But, I asked her, didn’t she think Remem created greater opportunities for those types of arguments to arise, even in solid marriages, by making it easier for people to keep score?

  “Not at all,” she said. “Remem didn’t give them a scorekeeping mentality; they developed that on their own. Another couple could just as easily use Remem to realize that they’ve both misremembered things, and become more forgiving when that sort of mistake happens. I predict the latter scenario will be the more common one with our customers as a whole.”

I wished I could share Erica Meyers’ optimism, but I knew that new technology didn’t always bring out the best in people. Who hasn’t wished they could prove that their version of events was the correct one? I could easily see myself using Remem the way Deirdre did, and I wasn’t at all certain that doing so would be good for me. Anyone who has wasted hours surfing the internet knows that technology can encourage bad habits.

Moseby gave a sermon every seven days, on the day devoted to resting and brewing and drinking beer. He seemed to disapprove of the beer drinking, but he didn’t want to speak on one of the days of work, so the day of beer brewing was the only one left. He talked about the European god, and told people that following his rules would improve their lives, but his explanations of how that would do so weren’t particularly persuasive.

But Moseby also had some skill at dispensing medicine, and he was willing to learn how to work in the fields, so gradually people grew more accepting of him, and Jijingi’s father let him visit Moseby occasionally to learn the art of writing. Moseby offered to teach the other children as well, and for a time Jijingi’s age-mates came along, mostly to prove to each other that they weren’t afraid of being near a European. Before long the other boys grew bored and left, but because Jijingi remained interested in writing and his father thought it would keep the Europeans happy, he was eventually permitted to go every day.

Moseby explained to Jijingi how each sound a person spoke could be indicated with different marks on the paper. The marks were arranged in rows like plants in a field; you looked at the marks as if you were walking down a row, made the sound each mark indicated, and you would find yourself speaking what the original person had said. Moseby showed him how to make each of the different marks on a sheet of paper, using a tiny wooden rod that had a core of soot.

  In a typical lesson, Moseby would speak, and then write what he had said: “When night comes I shall sleep.” Tugh mba a ile yo me yav. “There are two persons.” Ioruv mban mba uhar. Jijingi carefully copied the writing on his sheet of paper, and when he was done, Moseby would look at it.

“Very good. But you need to leave spaces when you write.”

“I have.” Jijingi pointed at the gap between each row.

“No, that is not what I mean. Do you see the spaces within each line?” He pointed at his own paper.

Jijingi understood. “Your marks are clumped together, while mine are arranged evenly.”

“These are not just clumps of marks. They are… I do not know what you call them.” He picked up a thin sheaf of paper from his table and flipped through it. “I do not see it here. Where I come from, we call them ‘words.’ When we write, we leave spaces between the words.”

“But what are words?”

“How can I explain it?” He thought a moment. “If you speak slowly, you pause very briefly after each word. That’s why we leave a space in those places when we write. Like this: How. Many. Years. Old. Are. You?” He wrote on his paper as he spoke, leaving a space every time he paused:Anyom a ou kuma a me?

“But you speak slowly because you’re a foreigner. I’m Tiv, so I don’t pause when I speak. Shouldn’t my writing be the same?”

“It does not matter how fast you speak. Words are the same whether you speak quickly or slowly.”

“Then why did you say you pause after each word?”

“That is the easiest way to find them. Try saying this very slowly.” He pointed at what he’d just written.

Jijingi spoke very slowly, the way a man might when trying to hide his drunkenness. “Why is there no space in between an and yom?”

“Anyom is one word. You do not pause in the middle of it.”

“But I wouldn’t pause after anyom either.”

Moseby sighed. “I will think more about how to explain what I mean. For now, just leave spaces in the places where I leave spaces.”

What a strange art writing was. When sowing a field, it was best to have the seed yams spaced evenly; Jijingi’s father would have beaten him if he’d clumped the yams the way the Moseby clumped his marks on paper. But he had resolved to learn this art as best he could, and if that meant clumping his marks, he would do so.

It was only many lessons later that Jijingi finally understood where he should leave spaces, and what Moseby meant when he said “word.” You could not find the places where words began and ended by listening. The sounds a person made while speaking were as smooth and unbroken as the hide of a goat’s leg, but the words were like the bones underneath the meat, and the space between them was the joint where you’d cut if you wanted to separate it into pieces. By leaving spaces when he wrote, Moseby was making visible the bones in what he said.

Jijingi realized that, if he thought hard about it, he was now able to identify the words when people spoke in an ordinary conversation. The sounds that came from a person’s mouth hadn’t changed, but he understood them differently; he was aware of the pieces from which the whole was made. He himself had been speaking in words all along. He just hadn’t known it until now.

The ease of searching that Remem provides is impressive enough, but that merely scratches the surface of what Whetstone sees as the product’s potential. When Deirdre fact-checked her husband’s previous statements, she was posing explicit queries to Remem. But Whetstone expects that, as people become accustomed to their product, queries will take the place of ordinary acts of recall, and Remem will be integrated into their very thought processes. Once that happens, we will become cognitive cyborgs, effectively incapable of misremembering anything; digital video stored on error-corrected silicon will take over the role once filled by our fallible temporal lobes.

What might it be like to have a perfect memory? Arguably the individual with the best memory ever documented was Solomon Shereshevskii, who lived in Russia during the first half of the twentieth century. The psychologists who tested him found that he could hear a series of words or numbers once and remember it months or even years later. With no knowledge of Italian, Shereshevskii was able to quote stanzas of The Divine Comedy that had been read to him fifteen years earlier.

But having a perfect memory wasn’t the blessing one might imagine it to be. Reading a passage of text evoked so many images in Shereshevskii’s mind that he often couldn’t focus on what it actually said, and his awareness of innumerable specific examples made it difficult for him to understand abstract concepts. At times, he tried to deliberately forget things. He wrote down numbers he no longer wanted to remember on slips of paper and then burnt them, a kind of slash-and-burn approach to clearing out the undergrowth of his mind, but to no avail.

When I raised the possibility that a perfect memory might be a handicap to Whetstone’s spokesperson, Erica Meyers, she had a ready reply. “This is no different from the concerns people used to have about retinal projectors,” she said. “They worried that seeing updates constantly would be distracting or overwhelming, but we’ve all adapted to them.”

I didn’t mention that not everyone considered that a positive development.

“And Remem is entirely customizable,” she continued. “If at any time you find it’s doing too many searches for your needs, you can decrease its level of responsiveness. But according to our customer analytics, our users haven’t been doing that. As they become more comfortable with it, they’re finding that Remem becomes more helpful the more responsive it is.”

But even if Remem wasn’t constantly crowding your field of vision with unwanted imagery of the past, I wondered if there weren’t issues raised simply by having that imagery be perfect.

“Forgive and forget” goes the expression, and for our idealized magnanimous selves, that was all you needed. But for our actual selves the relationship between those two actions wasn’t so straightforward. In most cases we had to forget a little bit before we could forgive; when we no longer experienced the pain as fresh, the insult was easier to forgive, which in turn made it less memorable, and so on. It was this psychological feedback loop that made initially infuriating offences seem pardonable in the mirror of hindsight.

What I feared was that Remem would make it impossible for this feedback loop to get rolling. By fixing every detail of an insult in indelible video, it could prevent the softening that’s needed for forgiveness to begin. I thought back to what Erica Meyers said about Remem’s inability to hurt solid marriages. Implicit in that assertion was a claim about what qualified as a solid marriage. If someone’s marriage was built on—as ironic as it might sound—a cornerstone of forgetfulness, what right did Whetstone have to shatter that?

The issue wasn’t confined to marriages; all sorts of relationships rely on forgiving and forgetting. My daughter Nicole has always been strong-willed; rambunctious when she was a child, openly defiant as an adolescent. She and I had many furious arguments during her teen years, arguments that we have mostly been able to put behind us, and now our relationship is pretty good. If we’d had Remem, would we still be speaking to each other?

I don’t mean to say that forgetting is the only way to mend relationships. While I can no longer recall most of the arguments Nicole and I had—and I’m grateful that I can’t—one of the arguments I remember clearly is one that spurred me to be a better father.

It was when Nicole was sixteen, a junior in high school. It had been two years since her mother Angela had left, probably the two hardest years of both our lives. I don’t remember what started the argument—something trivial, no doubt—but it escalated and before long Nicole was taking her anger at Angela out on me.

“You’re the reason she left! You drove her away! You can leave too, for all I care. I sure as hell would be better off without you.” And to demonstrate her point, she stormed out of the house.

I knew it wasn’t premeditated malice on her part—I don’t think she engaged in much premeditation in anything during that phase of her life—but she couldn’t have come up with a more hurtful accusation if she’d tried. I’d been devastated by Angela’s departure, and I was constantly wondering what I could have done differently to keep her.

Nicole didn’t come back until the next day, and that night was one of soul searching for me. While I didn’t believe I was responsible for her mother leaving us, Nicole’s accusation still served as a wake-up call. I hadn’t been conscious of it, but I realized that I had been thinking of myself as the greatest victim of Angela’s departure, wallowing in self-pity over just how unreasonable my situation was. It hadn’t even been my idea to have children; it was Angela who’d wanted to be a parent, and now she had left me holding the bag. What sane world would leave me with sole responsibility for raising an adolescent girl? How could a job that was so difficult be entrusted to someone with no experience whatsoever?

Nicole’s accusation made me realize her predicament was worse than mine. At least I had volunteered for this duty, albeit long ago and without full appreciation for what I was getting into. Nicole had been drafted into her role, with no say whatsoever. If there was anyone who had a right to be resentful, it was her. And while I thought I’d been doing a good job of being a father, obviously I needed to do better.

I turned myself around. Our relationship didn’t improve overnight, but over the years I was able to work myself back into Nicole’s good graces. I remember the way she hugged me at her college graduation, and I realized my years of effort had paid off.

Would those years of repair have been possible with Remem? Even if each of us could have refrained from throwing the other’s bad behavior in their faces, the opportunity to privately rewatch video of our arguments seems like it could be pernicious. Vivid reminders of the way she and I yelled at each other in the past might have kept our anger fresh, and prevented us from rebuilding our relationship.

Jijingi wanted to write down some of the stories of where the Tiv people came from, but the storytellers spoke rapidly, and he wasn’t able to write fast enough to keep up with them. Moseby said he would get better with practice, but Jijingi despaired that he’d ever become fast enough.

Then, one summer a European woman named Reiss came to visit the village. Moseby said she was “a person who learns about other people” but could not explain what that meant, only that she wanted to learn about Tivland. She asked questions of everyone, not just the elders but young men, too, even women and children, and she wrote down everything they told her. She didn’t try to get anyone to adopt European practices; where Moseby had insisted that there were no such thing as curses and that everything was God’s will, Reiss asked about how curses worked, and listened attentively to explanations of how your kin on your father’s side could curse you while your kin on your mother’s side could protect you from curses.

One evening Kokwa, the best storyteller in the village, told the story of how the Tiv people split into different lineages, and Reiss had written it down exactly as he told it. Later she had recopied the story using a machine she poked at noisily with her fingers, so that she had a copy that was clean and easy to read. When Jijingi asked if she would make another copy for him, she agreed, much to his excitement.

The paper version of the story was curiously disappointing. Jijingi remembered that when he had first learned about writing, he’d imagined it would enable him to see a storytelling performance as vividly as if he were there. But writing didn’t do that. When Kokwa told the story, he didn’t merely use words; he used the sound of his voice, the movement of his hands, the light in his eyes. He told you the story with his whole body, and you understood it the same way. None of that was captured on paper; only the bare words could be written down. And reading just the words gave you only a hint of the experience of listening to Kokwa himself, as if one were licking the pot in which okra had been cooked instead of eating the okra itself.

Jijingi was still glad to have the paper version, and would read it from time to time. It was a good story, worthy of being recorded on paper. Not everything written on paper was so worthy. During his sermons Moseby would read aloud stories from his book, and they were often good stories, but he also read aloud words he had written down just a few days before, and those were often not stories at all, merely claims that learning more about the European god would improve the lives of the Tiv people.

One day, when Moseby had been eloquent, Jijingi complimented him. “I know you think highly of all your sermons, but today’s sermon was a good one.”

“Thank you,” said Moseby, smiling. After a moment, he asked, “Why do you say I think highly of all my sermons?”

“Because you expect that people will want to read them many years from now.”

“I don’t expect that. What makes you think that?”

“You write them all down before you even deliver them. Before even one person has heard a sermon, you have written it down for future generations.”

Moseby laughed. “No, that is not why I write them down.”

“Why, then?” He knew it wasn’t for people far away to read them, because sometimes messengers came to the village to deliver paper to Moseby, and he never sent his sermons back with them.

“I write the words down so I do not forget what I want to say when I give the sermon.”

‘How could you forget what you want to say? You and I are speaking right now, and neither of us needs paper to do so.”

“A sermon is different from conversation.” Moseby paused to consider. “I want to be sure I give my sermons as well as possible. I won’t forget what I want to say, but I might forget the best way to say it. If I write it down, I don’t have to worry. But writing the words down does more than help me remember. It helps me think.”

“How does writing help you think?”

“That is a good question,” he said. “It is strange, isn’t it? I do not know how to explain it, but writing helps me decide what I want to say. Where I come from, there’s a very old proverb: verba volant, scripta manent. In Tiv you would say, ‘spoken words fly away, written words remain.’ Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Jijingi said, just to be polite; it made no sense at all. The missionary wasn’t old enough to be senile, but his memory must be terrible and he didn’t want to admit it. Jijingi told his age-mates about this, and they joked about it amongst themselves for days. Whenever they exchanged gossip, they would add, “Will you remember that? This will help you,” and mimic Moseby writing at his table.

On an evening the following year, Kokwa announced he would tell the story of how the Tiv split into different lineages. Jijingi brought out the paper version he had, so he could read the story at the same time Kokwa told it. Sometimes he could follow along, but it was often confusing because Kokwa’s words didn’t match what was written on the paper. After Kokwa was finished, Jijingi said to him, “You didn’t tell the story the same way you told it last year.”

“Nonsense,” said Kokwa. “When I tell a story it doesn’t change, no matter how much time passes. Ask me to tell it twenty years from today, and I will tell it exactly the same.”

Jijingi pointed at the paper he held. “This paper is the story you told last year, and there were many differences.” He picked one he remembered. “Last time you said, ‘the Uyengi captured the women and children and carried them off as slaves.’ This time you said, ‘they made slaves of the women, but they did not stop there: they even made slaves of the children.’”

“That’s the same.”

“It is the same story, but you’ve changed the way you tell it.”

“No,” said Kokwa, “I told it just as I told it before.”

Jijingi didn’t want to try to explain what words were. Instead he said, “If you told it as you did before, you would say ‘the Uyengi captured the women and children and carried them off as slaves’ every time.”

 For a moment Kokwa stared at him, and then he laughed. “Is this what you think is important, now that you’ve learned the art of writing?”

Sabe, who had been listening to them, chided Kokwa. “It’s not your place to judge Jijingi. The hare favors one food, the hippo favors another. Let each spend his time as he pleases.”

“Of course, Sabe, of course,” said Kokwa, but he threw a derisive glance at Jijingi.

Afterwards, Jijingi remembered the proverb Moseby had mentioned. Even though Kokwa was telling the same story, he might arrange the words differently each time he told it; he was skilled enough as a storyteller that the arrangement of words didn’t matter. It was different for Moseby, who never acted anything out when he gave his sermons; for him, the words were what was important. Jijingi realized that Moseby wrote down his sermons not because his memory was terrible, but because he was looking for a specific arrangement of words. Once he found the one he wanted, he could hold on to it for as long as he needed.

Out of curiosity, Jijingi tried imagining he had to deliver a sermon, and began writing down what he would say. Seated on the root of a mango tree with the notebook Moseby had given him, he composed a sermon on tsav, the quality that enabled some men to have power over others, and a subject which Moseby hadn’t understood and had dismissed as foolishness. He read his first attempt to one of his age-mates, who pronounced it terrible, leading them to have a brief shoving match, but afterwards Jijingi had to admit his age-mate was right. He tried writing out his sermon a second time and then a third before he became tired of it and moved on to other topics.

As he practiced his writing, Jijingi came to understand what Moseby had meant; writing was not just a way to record what someone said; it could help you decide what you would say before you said it. And words were not just the pieces of speaking; they were the pieces of thinking. When you wrote them down, you could grasp your thoughts like bricks in your hands and push them into different arrangements. Writing let you look at your thoughts in a way you couldn’t if you were just talking, and having seen them, you could improve them, make them stronger and more elaborate.

Psychologists make a distinction between semantic memory—knowledge of general facts—and episodic memory—recollection of personal experiences. We’ve been using technological supplements for semantic memory ever since the invention of writing: first books, then search engines. By contrast, we’ve historically resisted such aids when it comes to episodic memory; few people have ever kept as many diaries or photo albums as they did ordinary books. The obvious reason is convenience; if we wanted a book on the birds of North America, we could consult one that an ornithologist has written, but if we wanted a daily diary, we had to write it for ourselves. But I also wonder if another reason is that, subconsciously, we regarded our episodic memories as such an integral part of our identities that we were reluctant to externalize them, to relegate them to books on a shelf or files on a computer.

That may be about to change. For years parents have been recording their children’s every moment, so even if children weren’t wearing personal cams, their lifelogs were effectively already being compiled. Now parents are having their children wear retinal projectors at younger and younger ages so they can reap the benefits of assistive software agents sooner. Imagine what will happen if children begin using Remem to access those lifelogs: their mode of cognition will diverge from ours because the act of recall will be different. Rather than thinking of an event from her past and seeing it with her mind’s eye, a child will subvocalize a reference to it and watch video footage with her physical eyes. Episodic memory will become entirely technologically mediated.

An obvious drawback to such reliance is the possibility that people might become virtual amnesiacs whenever the software crashes. But just as worrying to me as the prospect of technological failure was that of technological success: how will it change a person’s conception of herself when she’s only seen her past through the unblinking eye of a video camera? Just as there’s a feedback loop in softening harsh memories, there’s also one at work in the romanticization of childhood memories, and disrupting that process will have consequences.

The earliest birthday I remember is my fourth; I remember blowing out the candles on my cake, the thrill of tearing the wrapping paper off the presents. There’s no video of the event, but there are snapshots in the family album, and they are consistent with what I remember. In fact, I suspect I no longer remember the day itself. It’s more likely that I manufactured the memory when I was first shown the snapshots and over time, I’ve imbued it with the emotion I imagine I felt that day. Little by little, over repeated instances of recall, I’ve created a happy memory for myself.

Another of my earliest memories is of playing on the living room rug, pushing toy cars around, while my grandmother worked at her sewing machine; she would occasionally turn and smile warmly at me. There are no photos of that moment, so I know the recollection is mine and mine alone. It is a lovely, idyllic memory. Would I want to be presented with actual footage of that afternoon? No; absolutely not.

Regarding the role of truth in autobiography, the critic Roy Pascal wrote, “On the one side are the truths of fact, on the other the truth of the writer’s feeling, and where the two coincide cannot be decided by any outside authority in advance.” Our memories are private autobiographies, and that afternoon with my grandmother features prominently in mine because of the feelings associated with it. What if video footage revealed that my grandmother’s smile was in fact perfunctory, that she was actually frustrated because her sewing wasn’t going well? What’s important to me about that memory is the happiness I associated with it, and I wouldn’t want that jeopardized.

It seemed to me that continuous video of my entire childhood would be full of facts but devoid of feeling, simply because cameras couldn’t capture the emotional dimension of events. As far as the camera was concerned, that afternoon with my grandmother would be indistinguishable from a hundred others. And if I’d grown up with access to all the video footage, there’d have been no way for me to assign more emotional weight to any particular day, no nucleus around which nostalgia could accrete.

And what will the consequences be when people can claim to remember their infancy? I could readily imagine a situation where, if you ask a young person what her earliest memory is, she will simply look baffled; after all, she has video dating back to the day of her birth. The inability to remember the first few years of one’s life—what psychologists call childhood amnesia—might soon be a thing of the past. No more would parents tell their children anecdotes beginning with the words “You don’t remember this because you were just a toddler when it happened.” It’ll be as if childhood amnesia is a characteristic of humanity’s childhood, and in ouroboric fashion, our youth will vanish from our memories.

Part of me wanted to stop this, to protect children’s ability to see the beginning of their lives filtered through gauze, to keep those origin stories from being replaced by cold, desaturated video. But maybe they will feel just as warmly about their lossless digital memories as I do of my imperfect, organic memories.

People are made of stories. Our memories are not the impartial accumulation of every second we’ve lived; they’re the narrative that we assembled out of selected moments. Which is why, even when we’ve experienced the same events as other individuals, we never constructed identical narratives: the criteria used for selecting moments were different for each of us, and a reflection of our personalities. Each of us noticed the details that caught our attention and remembered what was important to us, and the narratives we built shaped our personalities in turn.

But, I wondered, if everyone remembered everything, would our differences get shaved away? What would happen to our sense of selves? It seemed to me that a perfect memory couldn’t be a narrative any more than unedited security-cam footage could be a feature film.

When Jijingi was twenty, an officer from the administration came to the village to speak with Sabe. He had brought with him a young Tiv man who had attended the mission school in Katsina-Ala. The administration wanted to have a written record of all the disputes brought before the tribal courts, so they were assigning each chief one of these youths to act as a scribe. Sabe had Jijingi come forward, and to the officer he said, “I know you don’t have enough scribes for all of Tivland. Jijingi here has learned to write; he can act as our scribe, and you can send your boy to another village.” The officer tested Jijingi’s ability to write, but Moseby had taught him well, and eventually the officer agreed to have him be Sabe’s scribe.

After the officer had left, Jijingi asked Sabe why he hadn’t wanted the boy from Katsina-Ala to be his scribe.

“No one who comes from the mission school can be trusted,” said Sabe.

“Why not? Did the Europeans make them liars?”

“They’re partly to blame, but so are we. When the Europeans collected boys for the mission school years ago, most elders gave them the ones they wanted to get rid of, the layabouts and malcontents. Now those boys have returned, and they feel no kinship with anyone. They wield their knowledge of writing like a long gun; they demand their chiefs find them wives, or else they’ll write lies about them and have the Europeans depose them.”

Jijingi knew a boy who was always complaining and looking for ways to avoid work; it would be a disaster if someone like him had power over Sabe. “Can’t you tell the Europeans about this?”

“Many have,” Sabe answered. “It was Maisho of the Kwande clan who warned me about the scribes; they were installed in Kwande villages first. Maisho was fortunate that the Europeans believed him instead of his scribe’s lies, but he knows of other chiefs who were not so lucky; the Europeans often believe paper over people. I don’t wish to take the chance.” He looked at Jijingi seriously. “You are my kin, Jijingi, and kin to everyone in this village. I trust you to write down what I say.”

“Yes, Sabe.”

Tribal court was held every month, from morning until late afternoon for three days in a row, and it always attracted an audience, sometimes one so large that Sabe had to demand everyone sit to allow the breeze to reach the center of the circle. Jijingi sat next to Sabe and recorded the details of each dispute in a book the officer had left. It was a good job; he was paid out of the fees collected from the disputants, and he was given not just a chair but a small table too, which he could use for writing even when court wasn’t in session. The complaints Sabe heard were varied—one might be about a stolen bicycle, another might be about whether a man was responsible for his neighbor’s crops failing—but most had to do with wives. For one such dispute, Jijingi wrote down the following:

Umem’s wife Girgi has run away from home and gone back to her kin. Her kinsman Anongo has tried to convince her to stay with her husband, but Girgi refuses, and there is no more Anongo can do. Umem demands the return of the £11 he paid as bridewealth. Anongo says he has no money at the moment, and moreover that he was only paid £6.

Sabe requested witnesses for both sides. Anongo says he has witnesses, but they have gone on a trip. Umem produces a witness, who is sworn in. He testifies that he himself counted the £11 that Umem paid to Anongo.

Sabe asks Girgi to return to her husband and be a good wife, but she says she has had all that she can stand of him. Sabe instructs Anongo to repay Umem £11, the first payment to be in three months when his crops are saleable. Anongo agrees.

It was the final dispute of the day, by which time Sabe was clearly tired. “Selling vegetables to pay back bridewealth,” he said afterwards, shaking his head. “This wouldn’t have happened when I was a boy.”

Jijingi knew what he meant. In the past, the elders said, you conducted exchanges with similar items: if you wanted a goat, you could trade chickens for it; if you wanted to marry a woman, you promised one of your kinswomen to her family. Then the Europeans said they would no longer accept vegetables as payment for taxes, insisting that it be paid in coin. Before long, everything could be exchanged for money; you could use it to buy everything from a calabash to a wife. The elders considered it absurd.

“The old ways are vanishing,” agreed Jijingi. He didn’t say that young people preferred things this way, because the Europeans had also decreed that bridewealth could only be paid if the woman consented to the marriage. In the past, a young woman might be promised to an old man with leprous hands and rotting teeth, and have no choice but to marry him. Now a woman could marry the man she favored, as long as he could afford to pay the bridewealth. Jijingi himself was saving money to marry.

Moseby came to watch sometimes, but he found the proceedings confusing, and often asked Jijingi questions afterwards.

“For example, there was the dispute between Umem and Anongo over how much bridewealth was owed. Why was only the witness sworn in?” asked Moseby.

“To ensure that he said precisely what happened.”

“But if Umem and Anongo were sworn in, that would have ensured they said precisely what happened too. Anongo was able to lie because he was not sworn in.”

Anongo didn’t lie,” said Jijingi. “He said what he considered right, just as Umem did.”

“But what Anongo said wasn’t the same as what the witness said.”

“But that doesn’t mean he was lying.” Then Jijingi remembered something about the European language, and understood Moseby’s confusion. “Our language has two words for what in your language is called ‘true.’ There is what’s right, mimi, and what’s precise, vough. In a dispute the principals say what they consider right; they speak mimi. The witnesses, however, are sworn to say precisely what happened; they speak vough. When Sabe has heard what happened can he decide what action is mimi for everyone. But it’s not lying if the principals don’t speak vough, as long as they speakmimi.”

Moseby clearly disapproved. “In the land I come from, everyone who testifies in court must swear to speak vough, even the principals.”

Jijingi didn’t see the point of that, but all he said was, “Every tribe has its own customs.”

“Yes, customs may vary, but the truth is the truth; it doesn’t change from one person to another. And remember what the Bible says: the truth shall set you free.”

“I remember,” said Jijingi. Moseby had said that it was knowing God’s truth that had made the Europeans so successful. There was no denying their wealth or power, but who knew what was the cause?

In order to write about Remem, it was only fair that I try it out myself. The problem was that I didn’t have a lifelog for it to index; typically I only activated my personal cam when I was conducting an interview or covering an event. But I’ve certainly spent time in the presence of people who kept lifelogs, and I could make use of what they’d recorded. While all lifelogging software has privacy controls in place, most people also grant basic sharing rights: if your actions were recorded in their lifelog, you have access to the footage in which you’re present. So I launched an agent to assemble a partial lifelog from the footage others had recorded, using my GPS history as the basis for the query. Over the course of a week, my request propagated through social networks and public video archives, and I was rewarded with snippets of video ranging from a few seconds in length to a few hours: not just security-cam footage but excerpts from the lifelogs of friends, acquaintances, and even complete strangers.

The resulting lifelog was of course highly fragmentary compared to what I would have had if I’d been recording video myself, and the footage was all from a third-person perspective rather than the first-person that most lifelogs have, but Remem was able to work with that. I expected that coverage would be thickest in the later years, simply due to the increasing popularity of lifelogs. It was somewhat to my surprise, then, that when I looked at a graph of the coverage, I found a bump in the coverage over a decade ago. Nicole had been keeping a lifelog since she was a teenager, so an unexpectedly large segment of my domestic life was present.

I was initially a bit uncertain of how to test Remem, since I obviously couldn’t ask it to bring up video of an event I didn’t remember. I figured I’d start out with something I did remember. I subvocalized, “The time Vince told me about his trip to Palau.”

My retinal projector displayed a window in the lower left corner of my field of vision: I’m having lunch with my friends Vincent and Jeremy. Vincent didn’t maintain a lifelog either, so the footage was from Jeremy’s point of view. I listened to Vincent rave about scuba diving for a minute.

Next I tried something that I only vaguely remembered. “The dinner banquet when I sat between Deborah and Lyle.” I didn’t remember who else was sitting at the table, and wondered if Remem could help me identify them.

Sure enough, Deborah had been recording that evening, and with her video I was able to use a recognition agent to identity everyone sitting across from us.

After those initial successes, I had a run of failures; not surprising, considering the gaps in the lifelog. But over the course of an hour-long trip survey of past events, Remem’s performance was generally impressive.

Finally it seemed time for me to try Remem on some memories that were more emotionally freighted. My relationship with Nicole felt strong enough now for me to safely revisit the fights we’d had when she was young. I figured I’d start with the argument I remembered clearly, and work backwards from there.

I subvocalized, “The time Nicole yelled at me ‘you’re the reason she left.’”

The window displays the kitchen of the house we lived in when Nicole was growing up. The footage is from Nicole’s point of view, and I’m standing in front of the stove. It’s obvious we’re fighting.

“You’re the reason she left. You can leave too, for all I care. I sure as hell would be better off without you.”

The words were just as I remembered them, but it wasn’t Nicole saying them.

It was me.

My first thought was that it must be a fake, that Nicole had edited the video to put her words into my mouth. She must have noticed my request for access to her lifelog footage, and concocted this to teach me a lesson. Or perhaps it was a film she had created to show her friends, to reinforce the stories she told about me. But why was she still so angry at me, that she would do such a thing? Hadn’t we gotten past this?

I started skimming through the video, looking for inconsistencies that would indicate where the edited footage had been spliced in. The subsequent footage showed Nicole running out of the house, just as I remembered, so there wouldn’t be signs of inconsistency there. I rewound the video and started watching the preceding argument.

Initially I was angry as I watched, angry at Nicole for going to such lengths to create this lie, because the preceding footage was all consistent with me being the one who yelled at her. Then some of what I was saying in the video began to sound queasily familiar: complaining about being called to her school again because she’d gotten into trouble, accusing her of spending time with the wrong crowd. But this wasn’t the context in which I’d said those things, was it? I had been voicing my concern, not berating her. Nicole must have adapted things I’d said elsewhere to make her slanderous video more plausible. That was the only explanation, right?

I asked Remem to examine the video’s watermark, and it reported the video was unmodified. I saw that Remem had suggested a correction in my search terms: where I had said “the time Nicole yelled at me,” it offered “the time I yelled at Nicole.” The correction must have been displayed at the same time as the initial search result, but I hadn’t noticed. I shut down Remem in disgust, furious at the product. I was about to search for information on forging a digital watermark to prove this video was faked, but I stopped myself, recognizing it as an act of desperation.

I would have testified, hand on a stack of Bibles or using any oath required of me, that it was Nicole who’d accused me of being the reason her mother left us. My recollection of that argument was as clear as any memory I had, but that wasn’t the only reason I found the video hard to believe; it was also my knowledge that—whatever my faults or imperfections—I was never the kind of father who could say such a thing to his child.

Yet here was digital video proving that I had been exactly that kind of father. And while I wasn’t that man anymore, I couldn’t deny that I was continuous with him.

Even more telling was the fact that for many years I had successfully hidden the truth from myself. Earlier I said that the details we choose to remember are a reflection of our personalities. What did it say about me that I put those words in Nicole’s mouth instead of mine?

I remembered that argument as being a turning point for me. I had imagined a narrative of redemption and self-improvement in which I was the heroic single father, rising to meet the challenge. But the reality was…what? How much of what had happened since then could I take credit for?

I restarted Remem and began looking at video of Nicole’s graduation from college. That was an event I had recorded myself, so I had footage of Nicole’s face, and she seemed genuinely happy in my presence. Was she hiding her true feelings so well that I couldn’t detect them? Or, if our relationship had actually improved, how had that happened? I had obviously been a much worse father fourteen years ago than I’d thought; it would be tempting to conclude I had come farther to reach where I currently was, but I couldn’t trust my perceptions anymore. Did Nicole even have positive feelings about me now?

I wasn’t going to try using Remem to answer this question; I needed to go to the source. I called Nicole and left a message saying I wanted to talk to her, and asking if I could come over to her apartment that evening.

It was a few years later that Sabe began attending a series of meetings of all the chiefs in the Shangev clan. He explained to Jijingi that the Europeans no longer wished to deal with so many chiefs, and were demanding that all of Tivland be divided into eight groups they called ‘septs.’ As a result, Sabe and the other chiefs had to discuss who the Shangev clan would join with. Although there was no need for a scribe, Jijingi was curious to hear the deliberations and asked Sabe if he might accompany him, and Sabe agreed.

Jijingi had never seen so many elders in one place before; some were even-tempered and dignified like Sabe, while others were loud and full of bluster. They argued for hours on end.

In the evening after Jijingi had returned, Moseby asked him what it had been like. Jijingi sighed. “Even if they’re not yelling, they’re fighting like wildcats.”

“Who does Sabe think you should join?”

“We should join with the clans that we’re most closely related to; that’s the Tiv way. And since Shangev was the son of Kwande, our clan should join with the Kwande clan, who live to the south.”

“That makes sense,” said Moseby. “So why is there disagreement?”

“The members of the Shangev clan don’t all live next to each other. Some live on the farmland in the west, near the Jechira clan, and the elders there are friendly with the Jechira elders. They’d like the Shangev clan to join the Jechira clan, because then they’d have more influence in the resulting sept.”

“I see.” Moseby thought for a moment. “Could the western Shangev join a different sept from the southern Shangev?”

Jijingi shook his head. “We Shangev all have one father, so we should all remain together. All the elders agree on that.”

“But if lineage is so important, how can the elders from the west argue that the Shangev clan ought to join with the Jechira clan?”

“That’s what the disagreement was about. The elders from the west are claiming Shangev was the son of Jechira.”

“Wait, you don’t know who Shangev’s parents were?”

“Of course we know! Sabe can recite his ancestors all the way back to Tiv himself. The elders from the west are merely pretending that Shangev was Jechira’s son because they’d benefit from joining with the Jechira clan.”

“But if the Shangev clan joined with the Kwande clan, wouldn’t your elders benefit?”

“Yes, but Shangev was Kwande’s son.” Then Jijingi realized what Moseby was implying. “You think our elders are the ones pretending!”

“No, not at all. It just sounds like both sides have equally good claims, and there’s no way to tell who’s right.”

“Sabe’s right.”

“Of course,” said Moseby. “But how can you get the others to admit that? In the land I come from, many people write down their lineage on paper. That way we can trace our ancestry precisely, even many generations in the past.”

 “Yes, I’ve seen the lineages in your Bible, tracing Abraham back to Adam.”

“Of course. But even apart from the Bible, people have recorded their lineages. When people want to find out who they’re descended from, they can consult paper. If you had paper, the other elders would have to admit that Sabe was right.”

That was a good point, Jijingi admitted. If only the Shangev clan had been using paper long ago. Then something occurred to him. “How long ago did the Europeans first come to Tivland?”

“I’m not sure. At least forty years ago, I think.”

“Do you think they might have written down anything about the Shangev clan’s lineage when they first arrived?”

Moseby looked thoughtful. “Perhaps. The administration definitely keeps a lot of records. If there are any, they’d be stored at the government station in Katsina-Ala.”

A truck carried goods along the motor road into Katsina-Ala every fifth day, when the market was being held, and the next market would be the day after tomorrow. If he left tomorrow morning, he could reach the motor road in time to get a ride. “Do you think they would let me see them?”

“It might be easier if you have a European with you,” said Moseby, smiling. “Shall we take a trip?”

Nicole opened the door to her apartment and invited me in. She was obviously curious about why I’d come. “So what did you want to talk about?”

I wasn’t sure how to begin. “This is going to sound strange.”

“Okay,” she said.

I told her about viewing my partial lifelog using Remem, and seeing the argument we’d had when she was sixteen that ended with me yelling at her and her leaving the house. “Do you remember that day?”

“Of course I do.” She looked uncomfortable, uncertain of where I was going with this.

“I remembered it too, or at least I thought I did. But I remembered it differently. The way I remembered it, it was you who said it to me.”

“Me who said what?”

“I remembered you telling me that I could leave for all you cared, and that you’d be better off without me.”

Nicole stared at me for a long time. “All these years, that’s how you’ve remembered that day?”

“Yes, until today.”

“That’d almost be funny if it weren’t so sad.”

I felt sick to my stomach. “I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

“Sorry you said it, or sorry that you imagined me saying it?”

“Both.”

“Well you should be! You know how that made me feel?”

“I can’t imagine. I know I felt terrible when I thought you had said it to me.”

“Except that was just something you made up. It actually happened to me.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Fucking typical.”

That hurt to hear. “Is it? Really?”

“Sure,” she said. “You’re always acting like you’re the victim, like you’re the good guy who deserves to be treated better than you are.”

“You make me sound like I’m delusional.”

“Not delusional. Just blind and self-absorbed.”

I bristled a little. “I’m trying to apologize here.”

“Right, right. This is about you.”

“No, you’re right, I’m sorry.” I waited until Nicole gestured for me to go on. “I guess I am…blind and self-absorbed. The reason it’s hard for me to admit that is that I thought I had opened my eyes and gotten over that.”

She frowned. “What?”

I told her how I felt like I had turned around as a father and rebuilt our relationship, culminating in a moment of bonding at her college graduation. Nicole wasn’t openly derisive, but her expression caused me to stop talking; it was obvious I was embarrassing myself.

“Did you still hate me at graduation?” I asked. “Was I completely making it up that you and I got along then?”

“No, we did get along at graduation. But it wasn’t because you had magically become a good father.”

“What was it, then?”

She paused, took a deep breath, and then said, “I started seeing a therapist when I went to college.” She paused again. “She pretty much saved my life.”

My first thought was, why would Nicole need a therapist? I pushed that down and said, “I didn’t know you were in therapy.”

“Of course you didn’t; you were the last person I would have told. Anyway, by the time I was a senior, she had convinced me that I was better off not staying angry at you. That’s why you and I got along so well at graduation.”

So I had indeed fabricated a narrative that bore little resemblance to reality. Nicole had done all the work, and I had done none.

“I guess I don’t really know you.”

She shrugged. “You know me as well as you need to.”

That hurt, too, but I could hardly complain. “You deserve better,” I said.

Nicole gave a brief, rueful laugh. “You know, when I was younger, I used to daydream about you saying that. But now…well, it’s not as if it fixes everything, is it?”

I realized that I’d been hoping she would forgive me then and there, and then everything would be good. But it would take more than my saying sorry to repair our relationship.

Something occurred to me. “I can’t change the things I did, but at least I can stop pretending I didn’t do them. I’m going to use Remem to get a honest picture at myself, take a kind of personal inventory.”

Nicole looked at me, gauging my sincerity. “Fine,” she said. “But let’s be clear: you don’t come running to me every time you feel guilty over treating me like crap. I worked hard to put that behind me, and I’m not going to relive it just so you can feel better about yourself.”

“Of course.” I saw that she was tearing up. “And I’ve upset you again by bringing all this up. I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right, Dad. I appreciate what you’re trying to do. Just…let’s not do it again for a while, okay?”

“Right.” I moved toward the door to leave, and then stopped. “I just wanted to ask…if it’s possible, if there’s anything I can do to make amends…”

“Make amends?” She looked incredulous. “I don’t know. Just be more considerate, will you?”

And that what I’m trying to do.

At the government station there was indeed paper from forty years ago, what the Europeans called “assessment reports,” and Moseby’s presence was sufficient to grant them access. They were written in the European language, which Jijingi couldn’t read, but they included diagrams of the ancestry of the various clans, and he could identify the Tiv names in those diagrams easily enough, and Moseby had confirmed that his interpretation was correct. The elders in the western farms were right, and Sabe was wrong: Shangev was not Kwande’s son, he was Jechira’s.

One of the men at the government station had agreed to type up a copy of the relevant page so Jijingi could take it with him. Moseby decided to stay in Katsina-Ala to visit with the missionaries there, but Jijingi came home right away. He felt like an impatient child on the return trip, wishing he could ride the truck all the way back instead of having to walk from the motor road. As soon as he had arrived at the village, Jijingi looked for Sabe.

He found him on the path leading to a neighboring farm; some neighbors had stopped Sabe to have him settle a dispute over how a nanny goat’s kids should be distributed. Finally, they were satisfied, and Sabe resumed his walk. Jijingi walked beside him.

“Welcome back,” said Sabe.

“Sabe, I’ve been to Katsina-Ala.”

“Ah. Why did you go there?”

Jijingi showed him the paper. “This was written long ago, when the Europeans first came here. They spoke to the elders of the Shangev clan then, and when the elders told them the history of the Shangev clan, they said that Shangev was the son of Jechira.”

Sabe’s reaction was mild. “Whom did the Europeans ask?”

Jijingi looked at the paper. “Batur and Iorkyaha.”

“I remember them,” he said, nodding. “They were wise men. They would not have said such a thing.”

Jijingi pointed at the words on the page. “But they did!”

“Perhaps you are reading it wrong.”

“I am not! I know how to read.”

Sabe shrugged. “Why did you bring this paper back here?”

“What it says is important. It means we should rightfully be joined with the Jechira clan.”

“You think the clan should trust your decision on this matter?”

“I’m not asking the clan to trust me. I’m asking them to trust the men who were elders when you were young.”

“And so they should. But those men aren’t here. All you have is paper.”

“The paper tells us what they would say if they were here.”

“Does it? A man doesn’t speak only one thing. If Batur and Iorkyaha were here, they would agree with me that we should join with the Kwande clan.”

“How could they, when Shangev was the son of Jechira?” He pointed at the sheet of paper. “The Jechira are our closer kin.”

Sabe stopped walking and turned to face Jijingi. “Questions of kinship cannot be resolved by paper. You’re a scribe because Maisho of the Kwande clan warned me about the boys from the mission school. Maisho wouldn’t have looked out for us if we didn’t share the same father. Your position is proof of how close our clans are, but you forget that. You look to paper to tell you what you should already know, here.” Sabe tapped him on his chest. “Have you studied paper so much that you’ve forgotten what it is to be Tiv?”

Jijingi opened his mouth to protest when he realized that Sabe was right. All the time he’d spent studying writing had made him think like a European. He had come to trust what was written on paper over what was said by people, and that wasn’t the Tiv way.

The assessment report of the Europeans was vough; it was exact and precise, but that wasn’t enough to settle the question. The choice of which clan to join with had to be right for the community; it had to be mimi. Only the elders could determine what was mimi; it was their responsibility to decide what was best for the Shangev clan. Asking Sabe to defer to the paper was asking him to act against what he considered right.

“You’re right, Sabe,” he said. “Forgive me. You’re my elder, and it was wrong of me to suggest that paper could know more than you.”

Sabe nodded and resumed walking. “You are free to do as you wish, but I believe it will do more harm than good to show that paper to others.”

Jijingi considered it. The elders from the western farms would undoubtedly argue that the assessment report supported their position, prolonging a debate that had already gone too long. But more than that, it would move the Tiv down the path of regarding paper as the source of truth; it would be another stream in which the old ways were washing away, and he could see no benefit in it.

“I agree,” said Jijingi. “I won’t show this to anyone else.”

Sabe nodded.

Jijingi walked back to his hut, reflecting on what had happened. Even without attending a mission school, he had begun thinking like a European; his practice of writing in his notebooks had led him to disrespect his elders without him even being aware of it. Writing helped him think more clearly, he couldn’t deny that; but that wasn’t good enough reason to trust paper over people.

As a scribe, he had to keep the book of Sabe’s decisions in tribal court. But he didn’t need to keep the other notebooks, the ones in which he’d written down his thoughts. He would use them as tinder for the cooking fire.

We don’t normally think of it as such, but writing is a technology, which means that a literate person is someone whose thought processes are technologically mediated. We became cognitive cyborgs as soon as we became fluent readers, and the consequences of that were profound.

Before a culture adopts the use of writing, when its knowledge is transmitted exclusively through oral means, it can very easily revise its history. It’s not intentional, but it is inevitable; throughout the world, bards and griots have adapted their material to their audiences, and thus gradually adjusted the past to suit the needs of the present. The idea that accounts of the past shouldn’t change is a product of literate cultures’ reverence for the written word. Anthropologists will tell you that oral cultures understand the past differently; for them, their histories don’t need to be accurate so much as they need to validate the community’s understanding of itself. So it wouldn’t be correct to say that their histories are unreliable; their histories do what they need to do.

Right now each of us is a private oral culture. We rewrite our pasts to suit our needs and support the story we tell about ourselves. With our memories we are all guilty of a Whig interpretation of our personal histories, seeing our former selves as steps toward our glorious present selves.

But that era is coming to an end. Remem is merely the first of a new generation of memory prostheses, and as these products gain widespread adoption, we will be replacing our malleable organic memories with perfect digital archives. We will have a record of what we actually did instead of stories that evolve over repeated tellings. Within our minds, each of us will be transformed from an oral culture into a literate one.

It would be easy for me to assert that literate cultures are better off than oral ones, but my bias should be obvious, since I’m writing these words rather than speaking them to you. Instead I will say that it’s easier for me to appreciate the benefits of literacy and harder to recognize everything it has cost us. Literacy encourages a culture to place more value on documentation and less on subjective experience, and overall I think the positives outweigh the negatives. Written records are subject to every kind of error and their interpretation is subject to change, but at least the words on the page remain fixed, and there is real merit in that.

When it comes to our individual memories, I live on the opposite side of the divide. As someone whose identity was built on organic memory, I’m threatened by the prospect of removing subjectivity from our recall of events. I used to think it could be valuable for individuals to tell stories about themselves, valuable in a way that it couldn’t be for cultures, but I’m a product of my time, and times change. We can’t prevent the adoption of digital memory any more than oral cultures could stop the arrival of literacy, so the best I can do is look for something positive in it.

And I think I’ve found the real benefit of digital memory. The point is not to prove you were right; the point is to admit you were wrong.

Because all of us have been wrong on various occasions, engaged in cruelty and hypocrisy, and we’ve forgotten most of those occasions. And that means we don’t really know ourselves. How much personal insight can I claim if I can’t trust my memory? How much can you? You’re probably thinking that, while your memory isn’t perfect, you’ve never engaged in revisionism of the magnitude I’m guilty of. But I was just as certain as you, and I was wrong. You may say, “I know I’m not perfect. I’ve made mistakes.” I am here to tell you that you have made more than you think, that some of the core assumptions on which your self-image is built are actually lies. Spend some time using Remem, and you’ll find out.

But the reason I now recommend Remem is not for the shameful reminders it provides of your past; it’s to avoid the need for those in the future. Organic memory was what enabled me to construct a whitewashed narrative of my parenting skills, but by using digital memory from now on, I hope to keep that from happening. The truth about my behavior won’t be presented to me by someone else, making me defensive; it won’t even be something I’ll discover as a private shock, prompting a reevaluation. With Remem providing only the unvarnished facts, my image of myself will never stray too far from the truth in the first place.

Digital memory will not stop us from telling stories about ourselves. As I said earlier, we are made of stories, and nothing can change that. What digital memory will do is change those stories from fabulations that emphasize our best acts and elide our worst, into ones that—I hope—acknowledge our fallibility and make us less judgmental about the fallibility of others.

Nicole has begun using Remem as well, and discovered that her recollection of events isn’t perfect either. This hasn’t made her forgive me for the way I treated her—nor should it, because her misdeeds were minor compared to mine—but it has softened her anger at my misremembering my actions, because she realizes it’s something we all do. And I’m embarrassed to admit that this is precisely the scenario Erica Meyers predicted when she talked about Remem’s effects on relationships.

This doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind about the downsides of digital memory; there are many, and people need to be aware of them. I just don’t think I can argue the case with any sort of objectivity anymore. I abandoned the article I was planning to write about memory prostheses; I handed off the research I’d done to a colleague, and she wrote a fine piece about the pros and cons of the software, a dispassionate article free from all the soul-searching and angst that would have saturated anything I submitted. Instead, I’ve written this.

The account I’ve given of the Tiv is based in fact, but isn’t precisely accurate. There was indeed a dispute among the Tiv in 1941 over whom the Shangev clan should join with, based on differing claims about the parentage of the clan’s founder, and administrative records did show that the clan elders’ account of their genealogy had changed over time. But many of the specific details I’ve described are invented. The actual events were more complicated and less dramatic, as actual events always are, so I have taken liberties to make a better narrative. I’ve told a story in order to make a case for the truth. I recognize the contradiction here.

As for my account of my argument with Nicole, I’ve tried to make it as accurate as I possibly could. I’ve been recording everything since I started working on this project, and I’ve consulted the recordings repeatedly when writing this. But in my choice of which details to include and which to omit, perhaps I have just constructed another story. In spite of my efforts to be unflinching, have I flattered myself with this portrayal? Have I distorted events so they more closely follow the arc expected of a confessional narrative? The only way you can judge is by comparing my account against the recordings themselves, so I’m doing something I never thought I’d do: with Nicole’s permission, I am granting public access to my lifelog, such as it is. Take a look at the video, and decide for yourself.

And if you think I’ve been less than honest, tell me. I want to know.

#TRUTH OF FEELING

[goldeagleprice]

Gustav Vasa took charge of Sweden

While more southerly European countries were starting to use larger silver and gold coins up in Scandinavia, it was still mostly pennies and local equivalents. This coin, a half ortug, was struck for Swedish King Charles II (now VIII), made in his seat of power, Abo, now called Turku, in Finland. (Photos courtesy Spink & Son, London, UK, www.spink.com)

By Bob Reis

There is a kind of temper of the times when similar kinds of things happen all over the place. I look at history a lot as part of my job. There are these general tendencies that develop over time and one day, in retrospect, things are obviously different. And then, occasionally, there are these pivotal periods of a few years when something changes, then something else, then more change, sometimes disorder maybe, then afterwards everything is different. Like you’re driving through the mountains in the rain and you come around a bend and there’s the valley with the big city in front of you.

The first years of the 16th century were like that.

I was reading Josephus, the first century historian of the Jewish people. He wrote about how the general concept of governance in the world was absolute personal dictatorship, that the desire for other people’s stuff was a sufficient justification for offensive war. Josephus pointed out that his religion had laws that treated everyone the same, king to beggar, and demanded that people treat each other nicely while other people had actual gods of meanness and cruelty.

Conflict between haves and have-nots has been going on at least as long as the start of the bureaucratic states around 6,000 years ago.

I’m thinking about why/how the European “thing,” maybe the word “outlook” is a reasonable way of thinking about it, came to dominate the world until this very moment. There is the scientific element of course, yielding better weapons, but I am thinking that there was also a political element. I’m going to go out on a limb and call it “me too-ism.” The idea that the boss is not absolute, that his (rarely her) personal will is the only relevant factor, that other people, the general populace, must be considered.

In 16th century Europe, a new power-wielding class had fully emerged and become practically independent of the old military noble structure evolved from Roman times. That was the merchants, united for lobbying purposes into guilds and leagues. Mercantile activity is by nature outwardly directed, where there are more opportunities, the old military noble outlook was defensive/offensive, and reasons for offensive activity were somewhat bound by the laws of the religion they happened to have, which happened to be Christianity, which prohibited predatory wars, wars had to be defensive only. Other religions, some of them, didn’t have that particular moral stricture, and to the Europeans it was often only a formal requirement that the war starter had to come up with a story of how the other side had caused an injury that had to be redressed, rather than just wanting to own that port or something.

Nobles, with their local tolls, were a problem for merchants, who would rather deal with one set of rules. Merchants tended to seek assistance for their enterprises from kings, who had a longer reach than local nobles. The kings, in response to the greater needs and larger budgets required of facilitation of trade, began to dust off the old monarchical concepts of infallibility, divine right, absolute authority. Nobles of course resisted the proposed reduction of their status but the flow of events was going in the direction of larger enterprises. Resistance was futile.

Let’s see some of what was happening in a certain year in the 16th century. How about 1521?

China was inward looking, the emperor was calling his reign Jia Jing. We know his coins but he was a recluse. China was corrupt and inward looking. India was fragmented. Iran, after centuries of foreign occupation, was unified under the Shia shah Ismail I Safavi, who, I found in my research, was a descendant on his mother’s side of Byzantine emperors. He, it turns out, was one of those modernizing absolute monarchs of the time, founder, in a sense, of “modern” Iran. Turkey, or, as known then, the Ottoman Empire, was ruled by Suleiman the Magnificent, another of those larger than life 16th century rulers. Who remembers anything about his father? But we remember Suleiman, if only by name.

In Europe a guy named Charles Hapsburg was simultaneously king of Spain and Holy Roman emperor. Under his auspices Cortez conquered the Aztec emperor in Mexico, acquiring thereby a big pile of gold to send back to Spain. 1521 is the year that Martin Luther came on the world scene. Francis I, in some ways as big a shot as Charles, was king of France, obtained an alliance with the Ottoman Suleiman in his struggles against Hapsburg. And of course in England there was Henry VIII, another of those hyper-famous figures of history. Quick, what did his very active father, Henry VII, do? But you know something about Henry VIII, don’t you?

Two years later, up in Sweden, on the edge of the wilderness, as it were (savage Finland to the east, beyond that darkest Russia), yet another of those great figures of history came to power. His name: Gustav Vasa.

And, before looking more closely at our guy Gustav, a quick note on some developments in social activities of the period:

• world-capable boats

• firearms in general use by organized militaries, in 1521 mostly cannons and special small units of small arms specialists, but in the “civilized” zone, from Ireland to China, there were guns on both sides of most conflicts

• printing

• double entry bookkeeping

• expanded use of credit and interest, leading to an increased need for tokens of trade, and therefore

• bigger coins and more of them

• better visual and plastic arts techniques

• I don’t know, maybe there was something about the change of fashion; European guys showing more leg

• but still, like in ancient Rome, the most popular public entertainment was executions.

OK then, in 1521 there are all these egotistical, talented, visionary, charismatic, ruthless kings in greater Eurasia: English Henry, French Francois, Spanish/Austrian Charles, Swedish Gustav, Ottoman Suleiman, Iranian Ismail, that’s six of them, all of them ruling differently than their predecessors, with larger dreams and new control systems. At least that’s how we’d describe it today. And we’re numismatists. They all made monetary reforms that resulted in new coins in new styles that we can collect.

Gustav Eriksson Vasa was born into a family of high nobility. His family was generally what could be described as anti-Danish and pro-Swedish independence. The king of the three Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway and Denmark) was the Dane, Christian II. Christian was known as a double-crosser in diplomacy, and was cruel. There was war. During a negotiation session Christian kidnapped the Swedish envoys, including Gustav. The story is he flipped all of them save Gustav, who escaped. That was 1518. Gustav would have been about 22 years old. Christian, meanwhile, won the war, for the time being. After the crowning of the Danish king several days of festive merrymaking were concluded with the seizure and execution of about 100 of Christian’s enemies, including Gustav’s father. This being Europe, a legal excuse had to be produced to cover political murders, most were convicted in kangaroo court proceedings of heresy.

Much of Gustav’s reform coinage featured his portrait. This is a silver 2 ore of Stockholm dated 1540. (Images courtesy of The Coin Cabinet Ltd, London, www.thecoincabinet.com)

Gustav pulled together an army and mounted a rebellion. Things went well for him and them. The Danish king was deposed in Denmark. The new Danish king failed to win the war. Gustav was elected king of Sweden in 1523. Further ventures occurred involving negotiations and maneuvers that produced an agreement with Denmark, with the Hansa city of Lubeck, supporter of Gustav, by 1524 the way was cleared, Gustav was crowned in 1524.

Immediately he got into trouble with the pope over naming of archbishops. Funny thing, that. All of a sudden these kings were all having problems with the pope, Henry VIII, etc. In Sweden there was a fair bit of that Renaissance “new thinking” going on. A popular priest got married. The Bible got translated. In the end Gustav told the pope: “Don’t worry about the Church in Sweden, I’ll take care of it.”

Sweden under Gustav went most of the way in reforming the church. But not all the way. They didn’t actually proscribe Catholicism. But church properties were seized, pretty much all of them, and put under crown control.

Some big noble donors were allowed to take their donations back, a team building strategy by the king. In most ways though the new political thinking tended to reduce the power of nobles, so it didn’t hurt to give a few power people a few crumbs. Oh, this is topical: big overhaul of the tax system, mostly taking the nobles out of the collection business and depriving them of one of their tools of oppression of their commoners. It was supposed to be a fairer system but there were winners and losers, and the overall take for most people increased. There was a big external debt to the backers of Gustav’s war of liberation to pay off.

Some armed rebellions grew out of perceived economic inequities, though of course, like everything else during the Reformation, there was a religious element. The peasants, mostly, as always, were conservative, and weren’t interested in being anything other than Catholic. Today we yell about stuff. Back then they stabbed each other. Neighbors, about whether to pray in Latin or Swedish.

Gustav’s big international preoccupations were the German Hansa business conglomerate and Denmark. The Hansa city of Lubeck had been a big backer of Gustav in his insurgent days and they had received in due course such extremely nice business conditions in Sweden as to positively oppress, annoy and keep down the natives. Gustav eventually worked out a deal with Denmark to diplomatically gang up on Lubeck and change its rules of engagement in Sweden, and, more importantly perhaps, its waters. Sweden was fully in control of its borders and economy.

No major foreign wars in Gustav’s time, only a bit of exploratory raiding in Russia late in his reign. Ivan the Terrible was the first “tsar of the Russias,” Gustav thought he smelled a potential adventuring conqueror. But Ivan didn’t do the Alexander the Great kind of thing, rather, he oppressed his people at home and wrecked the economy. Gustav nevertheless sent a few thousand troops into Russia to mess around. Russians tromped around in Finland. Nothing came of it. They signed a treaty agreeing to forget about it.

Gustav died in 1560, kind of in the middle of things, politically speaking. He is a George Washington kind of figure in Swedish history. They have him on the money there, or have until recently. And, like most of us can’t tell you much about what Washington actually accomplished in eight years of presidency, yet his, as it were, moral influence endures, so too with Gustav. His bureaucratic reforms have of course evolved over time, but the government and polity of Sweden trace the way they are back to the foundations he laid.

Gustav’s coinage, typically for the period, was varied. Outside of Scandinavia Europe had moved beyond small silver coins into standard gold coins and different sizes of silvers, including big ones. There was getting to be a lot more business. They needed more coinage to do it with. They were more and more using paper to indicate transfers, an idea they got from the Chinese by way of the Mongols. Gustav believed in progress, immediately started making larger silver coins.

There is a book that is usually quoted as a reference for “modern” Swedish coins: Sveriges Mynt 1521-1977, by Bjarne Ahlstrom. It was published in 1977, apparently hasn’t been reprinted. I found a PDF version online.

There are silver coins, undated, of the Liberation War period, imitating Danish coins, planchets cut with shears and usually squarish, in the name of Gustav Eriksson. They seem to be very rare.

The pre-reform coinage was all billon or silver. The basic denomination was the penning. The period 1523-1531 saw some messing around with exchange rates between billon and silver, essentially the billon kept getting its value lowered which had the effect of incrementally robbing the lower class people who used it. The billon Gustav coins were the fyrk of 4 penningar, and the ortug of 20. Then there were silver coins, the ore, call it a dime if you wish, and the gyllen (gulden) and its half, call it a heavy half dollar. At different times and in different places in Sweden the silver/billon rates varied by more than 100 percent, to the annoyance of businesspeople everywhere.

Pre-reform mints were Stockholm. Vasteras, Uppsala, Arboga, and Abo. The billon types were typically but not exclusively the royal arms of three crowns and a large letter, “G” for instance, for the king, or “S” for Stockholm. Traditional designs. The basic type of the silvers was a standing facing king, various versions of the royal arms on the reverse.

Like most European rulers of his era, Gustav believed in the civilizing power of art and put some of that progressive social vision into the coinage. This daler of Stockholm has a beautiful depiction of Christ as Salvator Mundi. (Photos courtesy Myntkompaniet / AB Philea, Stockholm, http://www.philea.se/)

The coinage reform of 1534 involved the introduction of the mark as a money of account, everything else fixed against it, and the daler. 1 mark = 8 ore = 24 ortugar = 192 penningar. 2-1/2 mark = a daler. Coins of 1, 2, and 4 penningar exist, 2 ore, 1/2 marks, 1 and 2 marks. Various types, most with portraits of the king, Mark coins and ores for use in Sweden. The dalers, halves, and quarters, were made ostensibly for the German trade.

Mints were Stockholm, Vasteras, Svartsjo (notable reverse type of Jesus as Salvator Mundi), and Abo.

There were square “klipping” coins struck in Svartsjo in 1543 and in Abo in 1556 and 1557. What happened in 1543? The Dacke peasant uprising was defeated. How about 1556? That was the middle of the Russo-Swedish war. I wish I had more time to research the klippings, which are usually, in the 16th century, emergency money of some kind. Doesn’t matter from a collecting point of view, they are hardly ever for sale.

I went looking to buy a Gustav Vasa coin for a month. I saw more than a few, many denominations and price levels. The most common were the 4 penningar, 2 ore, 1 mark, but there are expensive dalers showing up in auctions. With the exception of a few surprisingly cheap coins that got away, prices ranged from quite robust to outrageous. Multiple hundreds of dollars will get you some small coin in not too bad shape. Or you could wait to get lucky. I found a portrait 2 ore 1540, fine, not so nice, they wanted $1,000. I offered $250. They told me I could have it for $850, I declined.

What do I think about that? That Sweden in Gustav’s time was still mostly using foreign coins, and was mostly making their own coins as a kind of fiscal flag waving, “Look, we make money too.”

  This article was originally printed in World Coin News. >> Subscribe today.

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[thedeadshotnetwork]

The so-called 'Trump of Georgia' is raining lawsuits on short sellers around the country YouTube, CNBC Pete Petit, the CEO of MiMedx, which makes wound-care products, is filing lawsuits against short-sellers to try to learn the identity of a pair of anonymous bloggers. The bloggers published reports pointing to whistleblower allegations of fraud at MiMedx and what they claim are clues of government inquiries into MiMedx. The company says the allegations are meritless, and that short-sellers are sharing fake information in their campaign. Petit's tactics may backfire, says Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business: "Suing short sellers is unlikely to scare them away. It's more likely to attract more short sellers." A flamboyant CEO critics calls the "Trump of Georgia" is engaged in a legal war with the nation's short-sellers — traders who bet a stock price will fall — and searching for the analysts who wrote anonymous blog posts about his small pharmaceutical company, MiMedx Group. His name is Parker H. "Pete" Petit. He's a self-made millionaire with a university football field named after him and ties to high-level GOP officials. Over the past few months, Petit has taken to conference calls and press releases to obsess over the idea that a "wolf pack" of "naked short sellers" is hell-bent on destroying his company. There's a section of the company's website dedicated to addressing claims and reports , and he's spending enough on legal fees that he had to acknowledge the rising expense to investors on the company's last earnings call. He wants to make sure his investors understand that short sellers have a vested interest in making his company look bad. But of course that doesn't mean they're wrong. One of the reports that set off this legal war was published on a site called Aurelius Value. It lists no author. It highlighted claims of "channel stuffing" — in this case, the practice of using distributors to artificially inflate sales — filed in a public whistleblower lawsuit last year. Another report, also anonymously authored, from a shop called Viceroy, suggested that the SEC is looking into the claims, something that's also claimed in another lawsuit against the company. Not all critics of MiMedx remain anonymous, though. UBS, for example, told clients that the company's products — used to heal wounds — aren't as effective as the company says and face serious competition that investors aren't yet considering. UBS thinks the company is worth about 40% below its current stock price. Regardless, it's the way Petit is hunting for the anonymous writers that has grabbed Wall Street's attention. "It's unusual and it's dangerous because if you sue someone solely on the basis of finding someone else you could be countersued for abuse of process," said Erik Gordon, a lawyer turned professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "You can't sue people and put them at the expense of defending themselves in court when you have no basis for suing them other than that you're looking for someone." Aurelius and Viceroy Everything you read about Petit is larger than life. He flies planes. He is friendly with Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. The Georgia State University football field was named for him after he gave a $10 million gift to the university to support the athletics program. He donated $3.3 million to Georgia Tech , his alma mater, for an engineering building. He was Donald Trump's finance chair in Georgia too. His critics have tried to make something out of his ties to Price, who was overseeing the FDA for a few months this year. It's fairly standard political brawling that's not so relevant now that Price has been sent packing. MiMedx turns human placenta into wound-healing treatment, and, according to Piper Jaffray, it enjoys the largest share of the wound-healing market in the US at 27% of sales. Its shares were breaking records until August. Then the short sellers began to pile in — as indicated by the blue line in the chart below. Business Insider / Joe Ciolli, data from IHS Markit After that, Aurelius and Viceroy showed up. They're anonymous bloggers with an unknown readership. On September 20, Aurelius, whoever he or she is, wrote a blog post titled "MiMedx: Flying Too Close To The Sun. " Aurelius went over some issues at MiMedx — namely, allegations of channel stuffing levied against the company by two former employees. The allegations weren't new. They were made in a lawsuit filed against MiMedx last December. Channel stuffing is when a company moves a bunch of its inventory around, parking it with some unit that investors don't even know exists, and then books that hidden inventory as a sale. The former employees, Jess Kruchoski and Luke Tornquist, allege that MiMedx was doing this through a now shuttered distributor called AvKare. Allegedly, AvKare would “provide sales documentation falsely documenting the bogus VA sales.” That is, sales to hospitals belonging to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Sometimes, according to the suit, MiMedx wouldn't even use AvKare. MiMedx employees would simply ship their product, EpiFix, to VA hospitals around the country "without a purchase order from the VA or the VA even knowing about the shipment. In some cases, the shipments were even unbeknown to the representatives covering the accounts." All this is public record, and was so for nine months before Aurelius's report. But Aurelius went a bit further: But our research has also identified deep undisclosed entanglements between MiMedx and multiple other distributors . Two of these distributors, CPM Medical and SLR Medical, are specifically identified in Florida court documents filed by one of MiMedx’s whistleblowers as having special undisclosed agreements along with an unidentified third having a “house account” . The allegations ( here ) that MiMedx’s channel stuffing scheme extends significantly beyond the VA appear to have gone largely unnoticed by investors. Viceroy's post — titled "MiMedx’s ... employment of kickback bribery scheme inducers makes it uninvestable" — is pretty self-explanatory . In it, Viceroy claims evidence that the SEC may be conducting an investigation into MiMedx, something that has also been raised in legal filings. Viceroy's evidence for this is that the SEC responded to a Freedom of Information Act request from Viceroy by claiming, as it's allowed to, that it doesn't have to release records that are being collected for "law enforcement" purposes or if the release could "interfere with enforcement proceedings." Petit responded with a press release the very same day Aurelius published his or her report: "The articles include several items that have virtually no basis in fact, are littered with innuendo and contain many statements that are simply not correct. This has all the markings of a concerted short seller attack by numerous entities attempting to short our stock and profit from fictitious information and innuendos." "We believe that Viceroy Research and Aurelius Value are relying on misinformation from former MiMedx employees terminated for cause. Unfortunately, neither organization appears to have done adequate due diligence and fact-finding before publishing their so-called 'research reports.'" Earlier in the year, he told Kaiser Health News that Kruchoski and Tornquist were " lying ." He has also released letters written to one short-seller in particular, in which he claims what the sellers are doing is unlawful and unethical. There are a few parts to that claim. One is that they're releasing bad, even false, information into the market to manipulate the stock price. In particular, Petit claims that a letter from a Mimedx employee one short seller released is actually fake. The other claim is that short sellers are doing what's called "naked short selling" — which is selling shares you don't own, without borrowing them from someone who does own them first. It is, in fact, illegal. Sue. Them. All. After all that, Petit began to sue a bunch of people, and that's when people on Wall Street took notice, because it's not every day a CEO sues a lineup of hedge funds and a research group to find two anonymous bloggers. Now, before I continue, I need to make some disclosures. Within one of the press releases railing against a short seller named Marc Cohodes, MiMedx claimed I interviewed Cohodes at a conference (I did not, but I've published his ideas before ). In response to my questions about the allegations in the whistleblower suit, Petit declined to address any of the specifics and instead took to calling me a "shill" in a colorful letter that you can find at the end of this article. I do often speak to short-sellers, and sometimes give air to their ideas when I think they're smart. I don't know who Aurelius and Viceroy are, though. Neither does New York-based firm called Sparrow Fund Management, which was forced to respond to MiMedx's request for request for emergency discovery with a 30-page motion to dismiss that said, basically, "We're not Aurelius, and even if we were, Aurelius' speech is protected under the First Amendment." From the motion: The crux of MiMedx’s complaint targets a variety of statements made by named and unnamed defendants—none of which is actually Sparrow—conveying opinions about MiMedx and discussing various widely disseminated public reports. But as Sparrow has repeatedly informed MiMedx since the filing of this lawsuit, including by sworn affidavit, MiMedx’s claims against Sparrow are wrongly premised on a simple yet dispositive defect: Sparrow is not behind the anonymous blogger “Aurelius Value.” That being the case, and with no factual allegations to support any connection between Sparrow and “Aurelius Value,” MiMedx’s case against Sparrow evaporates at the pleading stage. MiMedx's lawsuit against investigative research firm The Capitol Forum (TCF) is a bit different. TCF is a DC outfit known for its deep dives into potentially fraudulent companies. In August, it published a note on the channel-stuffing allegations against MiMedx. Then in September, after Aurelius and Viceroy published their pieces, Capitol Forum published the government's response to an FOIA request it filed requesting information on MiMedx and the VA. The government responded, saying, “The records you requested are part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation and are not releasable at this time.” MiMedx issued a press release in September saying that it was aware of a VA investigation but that it was not the target and said it had told The Capitol Forum as much. "To the extent there has been any innuendo by The Capitol Forum or others that somehow MiMedx is a target, that is simply incorrect based on available information," the release says . Anyway, now MiMedx is suing The Capitol Forum for libel — not in its story, but in an email to MiMedx. "Defendants' conduct herein, and specifically, the false and malicious statement in the August 21, 2017 e-mail concerning Defendants' article of the same day and allegations of wrongful conduct against MiMedx by "customers," constituted actionable libel," says MiMedx's complaint. YouTube, CNBC 'Parker the Barker' Again, I probably wouldn't know any of this if it weren't for Cohodes, a particularly loud short seller who lives on a California chicken farm. Cohodes is one of the most infamous short sellers on Wall Street, known for bombastic language and RSVP'ing "will attend" to any fight he's invited to. He got wind of what was going on at MiMedx and started a site called PetiteParkerTheBarker.com , which documents Petit's "bullying." On the site you can also view Cohodes' presentation at Grant's Interest Rate Observer Conference. MiMedx says I interviewed Cohodes at that conference where he said: “I always say bet the jockey not the horse. So I look for inept and/or dishonest management who has a track record of running companies into the ground. Telling a lie or two along the way also helps. I also look for balance sheet stress and financial engineering to make the business look stronger than it truly is.” The thing is, I wasn't at Grant's this year. And that quote is from an interview I did with Cohodes last year about two completely unrelated stocks. So I was compelled to make some calls — including one to Sen. Isakson's office. His representative said the senator was in no way involved with a VA investigation into MiMedx, since the VA investigative unit is totally independent. His office had, however, put Petit in touch with the VA at Petit's request — something it would do for any constituent. I also dug through the legal filings and sent a bunch of pointed questions to Petit regarding the lawsuits, the whistleblower allegations, UBS' research, and his relationships with powerful politicians. Here's a smattering of what I sent: Can the company say on the record that Aurelius, Viceroy, or Capitol Forum make false statements about the company? Which statements are false? Can MDXG confirm that it is not under investigation by federal authorities, including the SEC as well as the VA Office of the Inspector General? Can the company comment on UBS research that suggests its products have a lower efficacy rate than the 90% rate the company claims? In one of your public disclosures, you say that I interviewed Marc Cohodes at a Grant's Interest Rate Observer Conference. I did not, and have never interviewed Cohodes publicly. Where did you get your information? I knew we weren't going to have frank discussion when I read the first sentence of Petit's response. "First your statement that you never wrote an article about Marc Cohodes is incorrect," it said. He's right, I had written about Cohodes — but that wasn't my question. You can read the full letter below, but here's the meaty part. "Now I read your questions. It appears to me they have all come directly from Marc Cohodes, Aurelius, Viceroy, or others who are seeking to bring down MiMedx's stock price to gain a financial advantage for themselves. Therefore, if you publish an article addressing these questions, you are going to be acting as their "Shill". Indeed, some of your questions seemed to be aimed at obtaining information from MiMedx for this group to use in their pending litigation." Petit suggested that I discuss this with an attorney, which I have done. "He can call himself the Donald Trump of Georgia or the Kim Kardashian of Atlanta — anything he wants ... if you drag people into court with no basis you should expect trouble and you deserve trouble," said Gordon, who has also taught at the University of Michigan's law school. "Short sellers lead a precarious life," he added. "What scares short sellers away is evidence that the short is going to bite them, but suing short sellers is unlikely to scare them away. It's more likely to attract more short sellers." Well, after Cohodes and Capital Forum got involved, Citron Research, helmed by short seller Andrew Left, put out a YouTube video on the channel-stuffing allegations against the company. A third former MiMedx employee filed a retaliation claim against the company. His name is Michael Fox, and he was a supervisor for the two first whistleblowers. He says that after they filed their claim, he refused to engage in MiMedx's fraudulent scheme. He says he went to the SEC and that the SEC then subpoenaed MiMedx. After that MiMedx withheld his wages and sued him. MiMedx's stock has fallen 27% in less than three months. Read Petit's full letter to me below. NOW WATCH: Here are your chances of winning at popular casino games November 10, 2017 at 12:51PM

#Blogger

[tortuga-aak]

The so-called 'Trump of Georgia' is raining lawsuits on short sellers around the country

YouTube, CNBC

Pete Petit, the CEO of MiMedx, which makes wound-care products, is filing lawsuits against short-sellers to try to learn the identity of a pair of anonymous bloggers.

The bloggers published reports pointing to whistleblower allegations of fraud at MiMedx and what they claim are clues of government inquiries into MiMedx.

The company says the allegations are meritless, and that short-sellers are sharing fake information in their campaign.

Petit's tactics may backfire, says Erik Gordon, a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business: "Suing short sellers is unlikely to scare them away. It's more likely to attract more short sellers."

A flamboyant CEO critics calls the "Trump of Georgia" is engaged in a legal war with the nation's short-sellers — traders who bet a stock price will fall — and searching for the analysts who wrote anonymous blog posts about his small pharmaceutical company, MiMedx Group.

His name is Parker H. "Pete" Petit. He's a self-made millionaire with a university football field named after him and ties to high-level GOP officials. 

Over the past few months, Petit has taken to conference calls and press releases to obsess over the idea that a "wolf pack" of "naked short sellers" is hell-bent on destroying his company. There's a section of the company's website dedicated to addressing claims and reports, and he's spending enough on legal fees that he had to acknowledge the rising expense to investors on the company's last earnings call. He wants to make sure his investors understand that short sellers have a vested interest in making his company look bad.

But of course that doesn't mean they're wrong.

One of the reports that set off this legal war was published on a site called Aurelius Value. It lists no author. It highlighted claims of "channel stuffing" — in this case, the practice of using distributors to artificially inflate sales — filed in a public whistleblower lawsuit last year. Another report, also anonymously authored, from a shop called Viceroy, suggested that the SEC is looking into the claims, something that's also claimed in another lawsuit against the company.

Not all critics of MiMedx remain anonymous, though. UBS, for example, told clients that the company's products — used to heal wounds — aren't as effective as the company says and face serious competition that investors aren't yet considering. UBS thinks the company is worth about 40% below its current stock price.

Regardless, it's the way Petit is hunting for the anonymous writers that has grabbed Wall Street's attention.

"It's unusual and it's dangerous because if you sue someone solely on the basis of finding someone else you could be countersued for abuse of process," said Erik Gordon, a lawyer turned professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business. "You can't sue people and put them at the expense of defending themselves in court when you have no basis for suing them other than that you're looking for someone."

Aurelius and Viceroy

Everything you read about Petit is larger than life.

He flies planes. He is friendly with Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price. The Georgia State University football field was named for him after he gave a $10 million gift to the university to support the athletics program. He donated $3.3 million to Georgia Tech, his alma mater, for an engineering building. He was Donald Trump's finance chair in Georgia too.

His critics have tried to make something out of his ties to Price, who was overseeing the FDA for a few months this year. It's fairly standard political brawling that's not so relevant now that Price has been sent packing.

MiMedx turns human placenta into wound-healing treatment, and, according to Piper Jaffray, it enjoys the largest share of the wound-healing market in the US at 27% of sales. Its shares were breaking records until August.

Then the short sellers began to pile in — as indicated by the blue line in the chart below.

Business Insider / Joe Ciolli, data from IHS Markit

After that, Aurelius and Viceroy showed up. They're anonymous bloggers with an unknown readership. On September 20, Aurelius, whoever he or she is, wrote a blog post titled "MiMedx: Flying Too Close To The Sun."

Aurelius went over some issues at MiMedx — namely, allegations of channel stuffing levied against the company by two former employees. The allegations weren't new. They were made in a lawsuit filed against MiMedx last December.

Channel stuffing is when a company moves a bunch of its inventory around, parking it with some unit that investors don't even know exists, and then books that hidden inventory as a sale. The former employees, Jess Kruchoski and Luke Tornquist, allege that MiMedx was doing this through a now shuttered distributor called AvKare. Allegedly, AvKare would “provide sales documentation falsely documenting the bogus VA sales.”

That is, sales to hospitals belonging to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Sometimes, according to the suit, MiMedx wouldn't even use AvKare. MiMedx employees would simply ship their product, EpiFix, to VA hospitals around the country "without a purchase order from the VA or the VA even knowing about the shipment. In some cases, the shipments were even unbeknown to the representatives covering the accounts."

All this is public record, and was so for nine months before Aurelius's report. But Aurelius went a bit further:

But our research has also identified deep undisclosed entanglements between MiMedx and multiple other distributors.

Two of these distributors, CPM Medical and SLR Medical, are specifically identified in Florida court documents filed by one of MiMedx’s whistleblowers as having special undisclosed agreements along with an unidentified third having a “house account”.

The allegations (here) that MiMedx’s channel stuffing scheme extends significantly beyond the VA appear to have gone largely unnoticed by investors.

Viceroy's post — titled "MiMedx’s ... employment of kickback & bribery scheme inducers makes it uninvestable" — is pretty self-explanatory. In it, Viceroy claims evidence that the SEC may be conducting an investigation into MiMedx, something that has also been raised in legal filings.

Viceroy's evidence for this is that the SEC responded to a Freedom of Information Act request from Viceroy by claiming, as it's allowed to, that it doesn't have to release records that are being collected for "law enforcement" purposes or if the release could "interfere with enforcement proceedings."

Petit responded with a press release the very same day Aurelius published his or her report:

"The articles include several items that have virtually no basis in fact, are littered with innuendo and contain many statements that are simply not correct. This has all the markings of a concerted short seller attack by numerous entities attempting to short our stock and profit from fictitious information and innuendos."

"We believe that Viceroy Research and Aurelius Value are relying on misinformation from former MiMedx employees terminated for cause. Unfortunately, neither organization appears to have done adequate due diligence and fact-finding before publishing their so-called 'research reports.'"

Earlier in the year, he told Kaiser Health News that Kruchoski and Tornquist were "lying." He has also released letters written to one short-seller in particular, in which he claims what the sellers are doing is unlawful and unethical.

There are a few parts to that claim. One is that they're releasing bad, even false, information into the market to manipulate the stock price. In particular, Petit claims that a letter from a Mimedx employee one short seller released is actually fake.

The other claim is that short sellers are doing what's called "naked short selling" — which is selling shares you don't own, without borrowing them from someone who does own them first. It is, in fact, illegal.

Sue. Them. All.

After all that, Petit began to sue a bunch of people, and that's when people on Wall Street took notice, because it's not every day a CEO sues a lineup of hedge funds and a research group to find two anonymous bloggers.

Now, before I continue, I need to make some disclosures. Within one of the press releases railing against a short seller named Marc Cohodes, MiMedx claimed I interviewed Cohodes at a conference (I did not, but I've published his ideas before).

In response to my questions about the allegations in the whistleblower suit, Petit declined to address any of the specifics and instead took to calling me a "shill" in a colorful letter that you can find at the end of this article. I do often speak to short-sellers, and sometimes give air to their ideas when I think they're smart. I don't know who Aurelius and Viceroy are, though.

Neither does New York-based firm called Sparrow Fund Management, which was forced to respond to MiMedx's request for request for emergency discovery with a 30-page motion to dismiss that said, basically, "We're not Aurelius, and even if we were, Aurelius' speech is protected under the First Amendment."

From the motion:

The crux of MiMedx’s complaint targets a variety of statements made by named and unnamed defendants—none of which is actually Sparrow—conveying opinions about MiMedx and discussing various widely disseminated public reports.

But as Sparrow has repeatedly informed MiMedx since the filing of this lawsuit, including by sworn affidavit, MiMedx’s claims against Sparrow are wrongly premised on a simple yet dispositive defect: Sparrow is not behind the anonymous blogger “Aurelius Value.” That being the case, and with no factual allegations to support any connection between Sparrow and “Aurelius Value,” MiMedx’s case against Sparrow evaporates at the pleading stage.

MiMedx's lawsuit against investigative research firm The Capitol Forum (TCF) is a bit different.

TCF is a DC outfit known for its deep dives into potentially fraudulent companies. In August, it published a note on the channel-stuffing allegations against MiMedx. Then in September, after Aurelius and Viceroy published their pieces, Capitol Forum published the government's response to an FOIA request it filed requesting information on MiMedx and the VA.

The government responded, saying, “The records you requested are part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation and are not releasable at this time.”

MiMedx issued a press release in September saying that it was aware of a VA investigation but that it was not the target and said it had told The Capitol Forum as much.

"To the extent there has been any innuendo by The Capitol Forum or others that somehow MiMedx is a target, that is simply incorrect based on available information," the release says.

Anyway, now MiMedx is suing The Capitol Forum for libel — not in its story, but in an email to MiMedx.

"Defendants' conduct herein, and specifically, the false and malicious statement in the August 21, 2017 e-mail concerning Defendants' article of the same day and allegations of wrongful conduct against MiMedx by "customers," constituted actionable libel," says MiMedx's complaint.

YouTube, CNBC

'Parker the Barker'

Again, I probably wouldn't know any of this if it weren't for Cohodes, a particularly loud short seller who lives on a California chicken farm. Cohodes is one of the most infamous short sellers on Wall Street, known for bombastic language and RSVP'ing "will attend" to any fight he's invited to. He got wind of what was going on at MiMedx and started a site called PetiteParkerTheBarker.com, which documents Petit's "bullying."

On the site you can also view Cohodes' presentation at Grant's Interest Rate Observer Conference. MiMedx says I interviewed Cohodes at that conference where he said:

“I always say bet the jockey not the horse. So I look for inept and/or dishonest management who has a track record of running companies into the ground. Telling a lie or two along the way also helps. I also look for balance sheet stress and financial engineering to make the business look stronger than it truly is.”

The thing is, I wasn't at Grant's this year. And that quote is from an interview I did with Cohodes last year about two completely unrelated stocks.

So I was compelled to make some calls — including one to Sen. Isakson's office. His representative said the senator was in no way involved with a VA investigation into MiMedx, since the VA investigative unit is totally independent. His office had, however, put Petit in touch with the VA at Petit's request — something it would do for any constituent.

I also dug through the legal filings and sent a bunch of pointed questions to Petit regarding the lawsuits, the whistleblower allegations, UBS' research, and his relationships with powerful politicians.

Here's a smattering of what I sent:

Can the company say on the record that Aurelius, Viceroy, or Capitol Forum make false statements about the company? Which statements are false?

Can MDXG confirm that it is not under investigation by federal authorities, including the SEC as well as the VA Office of the Inspector General?

Can the company comment on UBS research that suggests its products have a lower efficacy rate than the 90% rate the company claims?

In one of your public disclosures, you say that I interviewed Marc Cohodes at a Grant's Interest Rate Observer Conference. I did not, and have never interviewed Cohodes publicly. Where did you get your information?

I knew we weren't going to have frank discussion when I read the first sentence of Petit's response. "First your statement that you never wrote an article about Marc Cohodes is incorrect," it said. He's right, I had written about Cohodes — but that wasn't my question.

You can read the full letter below, but here's the meaty part.

"Now I read your questions. It appears to me they have all come directly from Marc Cohodes, Aurelius, Viceroy, or others who are seeking to bring down MiMedx's stock price to gain a financial advantage for themselves. Therefore, if you publish an article addressing these questions, you are going to be acting as their "Shill". Indeed, some of your questions seemed to be aimed at obtaining information from MiMedx for this group to use in their pending litigation."

Petit suggested that I discuss this with an attorney, which I have done.

"He can call himself the Donald Trump of Georgia or the Kim Kardashian of Atlanta — anything he wants ... if you drag people into court with no basis you should expect trouble and you deserve trouble," said Gordon, who has also taught at the University of Michigan's law school.

"Short sellers lead a precarious life," he added. "What scares short sellers away is evidence that the short is going to bite them, but suing short sellers is unlikely to scare them away. It's more likely to attract more short sellers."

Well, after Cohodes and Capital Forum got involved, Citron Research, helmed by short seller Andrew Left, put out a YouTube video on the channel-stuffing allegations against the company.

A third former MiMedx employee filed a retaliation claim against the company. His name is Michael Fox, and he was a supervisor for the two first whistleblowers. He says that after they filed their claim, he refused to engage in MiMedx's fraudulent scheme. He says he went to the SEC and that the SEC then subpoenaed MiMedx. After that MiMedx withheld his wages and sued him.

MiMedx's stock has fallen 27% in less than three months.

Read Petit's full letter to me below.

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