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levans44 · 1 year

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Damage Control - Chapter 6

Each time the elevator stops, she feels every new stare pierce into her back like white-hot daggers. A couple of snickered remarks from the back sends an ice-cold shiver down her spine.

Who does she think she is, arguing with Cap?

What do you expect from an exec? You know how they are.

I’d like to see her try and save us from the blip.

Her blood boils. She has half a mind to tell them off, but manages to keep it inside until the wretched metal doors finally ding open, E.D.I.T.H. announcing her floor.

She storms off hurriedly, grinding her teeth and curling her fists until she can feel the sharp crescent marks burn into her palm.

Amy’s familiar smile greets her at the receptionist’s desks, before it quickly turns into a frown in sympathy at the evident anger on her face.

��Hey, Amy.”

“Hi, how are ya-” Amy is interrupted by a couples of their coworkers, sauntering their way past the desk while pointing and whispering amongst themselves.

Amy rolls her eyes “Just ignore ‘em, they don’t know any better.”

“God, how did people even hear about it anyway?” She leans forward, running a frustrated hand through her hair before toying with a yellow-and-black-striped pen stationed at Amy’s desk to distract herself.

‘Bee positive,’ it read. She drops it back down, lips pressed in a bitter line.

“I think some intern was sitting in at the meeting. You know how… eager they can get.”

Eager wan’t exactly the term she would have used, but Amy was the kind of person who didn’t have a bad thing to say about anyone.

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. It should die down real soon.”

She nods with a small sigh, stretching her arms with a low groan.

“Oh, and before you go, there’s a…. client here who’s been waiting to see you.” She frowns at the delay in Amy’s sentence, but nods anyway, thanking the receptionist before turning around to head to her corner of the office.

She purposefully walks slowly, fixing her hair and fidgeting with the corners of her blouse. She slides into her chair, booting up the client database before glancing over at the set of chairs lined up near her desk.

Strange. Amy usually refers new walk-ins to wait there. She look around in confusion, before suddenly, her vision is blocked by a large pair of hands, covering her eyes from behind.

She catches a whiff of expensive Hermès, and realizes who it is even before she’s turned around.

“Ya miss me?”

“Harry! Jesus don’t scare me like that.”

Her ‘client’ spins her around in her chair with a charming smile, revealing a perfect set of pearly-whites.

He gives her an over-exaggerated frown, dark eyebrows creased over a pair of affectionate, brown eyes. “Harry? Who’s that?”

She rolls her eyes, small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth as she returns her focus to her laptop, absentmindedly closing old tabs and loading her emails.

“You seem stressed, sweetheart” A warm pair of hands snake around her shoulders, and she starts to shake her head, though her eyes were already sliding shut at the firm pressure he was putting on the tight spots near the base of her neck.

“Harry, not… not now.”

“I told you, it’s Hercul—“

“—You know why I can’t call you that.” She gives him a pointed look, glaring up at him through her lashes.

Hercules. Rarely goes by his alias Harry Cleese, no matter how much she insists on it.

Biceps and an ego twice as big as Thor Odinson’s (who just so happened to be his biggest rival), but an even bigger heart beneath all that greek-godly bravado. She had first met him while working at a giant cleanup site, post Avengers battle. She normally wouldn’t have cast a second glance at someone like Harry, what with the whole attractive CEO look he had going on, tight button-down rolled up to his forearms and all. But Harry had surprised her with his genuine interest in helping out, working to lift debris all day and even sticking around for the paperwork after. He started dropping by the Damage Control building to volunteer his time, occasionally sauntering up to her table with a coffee and a chat. Over time, she’s come to appreciate the genuine interest which he took to her menial problems, and the warm ease he carried when interacting with anyone around the office.

She’d also be lying if she said she wasn’t flattered that someone like Harry was so keen on regularly visiting her, being so forward about his intentions. She sometimes wondered why he even bothers to, seeing just how much he was out of her league. Yet, no matter how much she tells herself to stop indulging in the vat of warm chocolate and caramel and all things good and that was Harry Cleese, she can’t help but miss his visits on the toughest work days.

Even now, with all the shitty events of last week weighing her down, only his fingers working their magic on her tense shoulders is enough to help her feel infinitely better.

With Harry, she’s made it clear in her mind that she doesn’t want to complicate things by being more than good work buddies. But nonetheless, dreams do feel sweet, don’t they?

“You know, I think I might have a job for you if the whole Olympian god thing doesn’t works out.” She mutters quietly with a smile, involuntarily leaning into his hands as he gives her one last squeeze before stepping back.

“Oh yeah? You’re gonna hire me as your private masseuse?”

She laughs, giving him a coy shrug. “Maybe.”

“Why’re you so tense? Something botherin’ ya?” He drags up the nearest chair, straddling it before resting his elbows against the back. She feels his warm gaze on her, as he listens, chin in hand.

“You haven’t heard?” She raises a sharp eyebrow in disbelief, feeling the tension return to her shoulders.

“No, what’s up?”

“It’s…” She purses her lip, hesitating for a moment before shaking her head dismally. “Nothing. Just… typical work bullshit.” She sighs. Casts a bitter glance at the emails stacked in her inbox and lets out another frustrated huff, giving up all together.

She swivels her chair toward him, noticing his unreadable gaze on her.

“You here for Anne?”

It takes him a second to snap out of whatever trance he seemed to be in. Then, he clears his throat, leaning back with a nod.

“Yeah, I need to uh, talk to her about that demolished bar in Williamsburg. They classified it as civilian damage but it reeks of Kree activity.”

“Huh. Well, she’s not here, but I’ll let her know.”

“Thanks.”

She nods, pulling up a new note on her computer. Harry stands up slowly, making his way back toward reception.

“See ya Harry.” She waves distractedly, eyes focused on the screen as she finishes typing up her memo.

“I’ll pick you up at 6.” She glances over from where Harry had called out from the entrance of her office, her fingers halting over the keyboard.

“For what?” She frowns.

“A drink. Looks like you could use one.”

She tries not to let the smile tug too hard at her lip as she leans back in her chair, hands folded.

“How do you know I don’t have other plans?”

“Well, you always make an exception for me, right?” He leans against the glass frame of the elevator with his arms crossed, no doubt flexing through his ridiculously tight black shirt.

Damn him.

She can’t contain the smile from breaking out then.

“Bye, Harry.” Rolling her eyes, she returns her attention back to the screen. The corners of her mouth still tugging annoying at her lips, she tries to stop the blush from overtaking her entire face.

Fast forward to the end of the day, and she’s still chained to her desk, halfway through writing an (extremely) passive-aggressive email to the relocation department about a client’s situation, when she hears someone approach her desk. Rolling her eyes, she throws her hands in the air, swiveling around in her seat. If this was another intern asking her a useless question just so they could stare at her, she was going to-

“Oh, thank god it’s you.”

“Who else would it be?” Robin frowns, one hand on her hip, the other leaning on the massive stack of paperwork piled up on her desk.

“Another goddamn intern.” She groaned, taking her fingers off the keyboard and dragging her hands down her face exasperatedly.

“They’ve been whispering behind my back all fucking week.”

“Well, I mean, that’s what you get for getting in a public argument with Captain America.”

“What can I help you with Robin?” She announces loudly with a sarcastic smile, folding her hands on the desk in front of her.

Robin lets out a small chuckle, adding another yellow case report to the top of her pile.

“Anne needs us at an HQ meeting at 5. She can’t make it cause of some emergency conference in Washington.”

“Emergency conference? 'Bout what?”

“You didn’t hear about that crash in Times Square? Size four with a Chitauri vehicle.”

She freezes, ice-cold shock shooting down her spine. She grips the edge of the able as inconspicuously as she can, trying to subside the panic rising in her throat.

“Size four? Must’ve been a big crash.” She mutters, distracting herself by typing up the event details on her computer.

“Has the rescue team been sent?” She hits enter, quickly scanning the articles that flood her screen.

120 Injured, 23 Dead in Times Square Alien Accident: Are the Avengers to Blame?

“Yup.”

“And what’s this stuff about the Avengers?”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Robin shake her head. “Couldn’t get there in time.”

She made a disgruntled sound, rolling her eyes “Great, less paperwork for us then.”

Robin gives her a look that read ‘really?’ before pointing an emphatic finger to the case file.

“Just be there.”

“Mmhm” She responds half-heartedly, returning her attention to the article on her screen.

“Oh, and ask him to fuck you already.”

“What?” Eyebrows furrowed, she whips around.

“Hercules. Don’t think I didn’t see you two fonduing at your desk earlier.”

She gives Robin a look, quickly glancing around to ensure that no one had overheard. (She doesn’t really know why, seeing as how his identity wasn't particularly well-hidden within the department anyway.)

“It’s Harry.” She whisper-shouts.

“And he’s just a friend. From work. Nothing more.” She adds, tucking a piece of hair behind her ear innocently.

“Mhmm. And remind me who put those flowers there by reception again?”

She follows Robin’s finger to notice a giant, and no-doubt expensive, arrangement of orchids displayed on the receptionist's desk, twice as large as Amy’s head.

“Oh I’m gonna kill that son of a bitch.” She mutters under her breath, but Robin’s quick to retort.

“Or you could just… fuck him.”

“Fuck off.”

Robin cackles loudly on her way out.

“Love you too!”

Damage Control Masterlist

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ilydeku · 2 years

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flufftober except it gets progressivley later bc i'm busy - no.1

ceo deku things

- It's the way he's so into his work, dedicated to finishing it up days before their deadlines. What a workaholic. But as his secretary, it's your duty to assist. Not only are you there to manage databases and arrange appointments for him, you're there to support him and help him learn to take a break for himself once and a while. Though you can't but admire his concentration, sitting behind his large desk and typing away at his computer.

"Uhm excuse me, Mr. Midoriya." You stand idle next to his desk, piled with folders and other work material. He continues typing at his computer, too absorbed to notice your presence. "Mr. Midoriya." You place a gentle hand on his shoulder, which almost startles him.

"Oh, I'm so sorry Miss Y/n!" He turns his rolling chair towards you, now giving you his full attention. "Did you need something?" His hands are crossed on his lap, eyes gazing up at you.

"No sir. I just think it would be wise for you to take a break as of now. Staring at the screen for so long isn't good for the eyes. You should go outside for a walk maybe. Get some fresh air." Your hands and crossed loosely in front of you. Deku smiles.

"You're right, Miss Y/n. I'll be taking a break now." He stands up from his chair and heads for the door. As he's about to exit, he stops at the doorway and turns his head to you. "...a walk you said...Would you care to join me then? On a walk I mean."

"Oh. I'd love to, sir. Really I would, but.." You gaze shifts down to the paperwork on your desk.

"No, don't worry about that. Just...come with me."

- Ok but the way Deku sends business is emails is oddly...attractive? The way the sentences are constructed so professionally, the ranges of vocabulary. What's funny is that the same way he emails higher-ups is the same way he texts, sending a paragraph on something much less needed.

Izuku: Miss Y/n,

What are your thoughts between polyester suits and cotton suits? I am currently looking forward to purchase one for the upcoming presentation. Cotton suits may go swimmingly for the nice feel, but the material may not be so strong as the so said polyester. I'm afraid it would me unmatched against my laundry machines. Polyester is unbearable to wear for me, especially in suits. There is no breathability in the fabric, the unnatural chemicals are not made for constant skin contact. Though polyester lacks in comfort, it makes up in its designated design. I find myself struggling between the two. Do you mind as to giving your personal input for which I should purchase?

Thank you,

Izuku Midoriya

Y/n: what sir 💀

Intelligence is awfully attractive ain't it.

- Deku has always been easy on the eyes, not like the other top ranking corporates you've met at occasional at meetings. It does good on his part, easily winning the hearts and okays of collaborators. Though it does make you a bit jealous though, seeing them all head over heels around him. But that doesn't stop you from asserting yourself.

"Excuse me ladies. We're in the middle of something important here. Please pay close attention." You say taking their ogling stares off of Deku. They go back to chatting about the forms in front of them. He smiles, resting a gentle hand on your back. You tense up as he leans down to your ear, thinking he was going to tell you to come to his office after. Thinking he was going to lecture you later about not interfering with his presentation, but it something completely different.

"Don't worry, Miss Y/n. They won't do anything scandalous when you're around me." Deku says in a low whisper. You can't help but feel embarrassed with how close he is to you.

"Sorry, Mr. Midoriya. I- What?" It took a minute. for his sentence to register. "Can I ask why, sir?" At that moment he takes your hands in his and faces you towards him. You feel your face heat up as he holds them close to his chest.

"I told them that we're together." He smiles again, gazing down upon your flushed state.

"You what!?" You turn from Deku to meet the killer glints of the jealous ladies. Fortunately, they can't harm you since it's a professional environment. "But I'm your secretary!"

"Mhm. You're my secretary and my significant other." You find it a bit funny that that's how he refers to it.

"Mr. Midoriya." You pull your hands away from him and lead him to the far corner of the room. You cross your arms over your chest. As much as you loved Deku and wanted to play along, no strings attached, it didn't sit right with you. "The press will think it's abnormal. The company will. And we're not even together to start with. Do you think the chairman would be okay seeing the CEO and his secretary together? Do you think he'd believe you're doing you best work in the office?"

"..."

"I'm sorry, sir, but this is a highly unprofessional way just to keep scandals away from you. You-"

"Look at you. Always watching out for me and knowing what's best for me." He smiles once more resting both hands on your tense shoulders. "Listen, Miss Y/n. I don't care about what the people say. They can go ahead and stop representing our company and cut our contributors and such. But that wouldn't stop me from loving you. Secretary or not.-" You forcefully push his hands off of you. He looks hurt from the action and you regret it, but you have to be serious.

"There you go with the "love" "significant other" thing again." You frown, your voice growing louder with each word. I'm not playing with you, sir. I'm talking about you getting security or bodyguards Mr. Midoriya. This has nothing to do with me and you."

"Oh this has plenty to do with you, Miss Y/n." He has this cheeky grin on his face. "Because I love you." You blush.

"Ugh. Stop saying that!"

"No, I love you. I'll never get tired of saying it." At this point, you can't say anything to him at how silly he's being. You've never seen him act this way in such an important environment. You cross your arms and frown at him in disappointment. He then takes your hands again and holds them close to his chest. "I'm confessing my love to you right now, Y/n."

"..do-don't be silly, Mr. Midoriya you couldn't possibly be-" The chairman slide his chair out, creating an awful noise, and stands up in annoyance.

"Are you serious, Miss L/n!? Why are you being so dense!? He loves you!" He yells, his tone sounding frustrated. You were so confused. A million questions filled your mind, but only one muttered from your lips.

"...what?"

"I set this all up, Y/n. This meeting you arranged, the papers and signatures you're in possession of as of today, they're all fake. I set this all up for you." Deku closes his eyes and takes a steady breath, in and out and rests his eyes on your face. "Y/n, you've done so much for me throughout these years of working together. And it's not just the paper work I'm talking about. You've taught me how to love myself more and helped me through times I've really needed someone. Even the little things like telling me to take a break and keeping me from over working. That really means a lot to me. You care so much about me. Even now when you were just talking about the idea of security and guards and such...You're really sweet, Y/n." Once again, he takes your hands in his and holds them close to his chest. "I want to be the same for you. I want to keep you close and be there for you, tell you things you want to hear, so...will you um...go out with me?"

"..." He takes your silence in concern. "Sorry. I'm still in disbelief on how this was all put together. That has to be the most unprofessional confession my ears have had accustomed to listen to." Deku looks like he's about to cry. You smile. "Yes, of course. I love you too, Izuku."

Now you were definitely not expecting that. You were just so in shock about Deku being blind to the question. But in the end, it all came together. You were happy.

support me? :)

#w.midizu #deku x reader #drabbles #izuku x reader #midoriya x reader #oneshot #bnha x reader #fanfiction #fluff #midoriya izuku #flufftober #w.midtober

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thewramblingwebcomicreview · 2 months

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Automattic Thoughts

I've gone ahead and turned off sharing data with third party companies here. I've also done the same for what's left on my WordPress.com accounts. That said, I've decided I'm going to go ahead and sever the connection between my three self-hosted WordPress sites/blogs and WordPress.com. That means getting rid of Jetpack, Gravatar, and allowing people with WordPress.com accounts to leave comments and likes. (They can still comment with email verification.) As some developers have revealed on Mastodon/the greater Fediverse, installing Jetpack on a self-hosted WordPress site does send database information back to WordPress.com.

From what I've learned, WordPress.org (which provides the open source WordPress software) isn't affiliated with WordPress.com. They just have the rights to use the WordPress name in order to provide managed hosting. However, the questionable CEO of Automattic is a co-founder of WordPress.org. So it might be worth keeping an eye on future WordPress software updates, and looking into software forks depending on how much influence he holds.

And yes, ClassicPress is one software fork that was created in response to the Gutenberg editor update that most people hated.

#WordPress #Tumblr #Automattic

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mariacallous · 9 months

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Hari Kunzru wasn’t looking for a fight. On August 7, the Brooklyn-based writer sat on the subway, scrolling through social media. He noticed several authors grumbling about a linguistic analysis site called Prosecraft. It provided breakdowns of writing and narrative styles for more than 25,000 titles, offering linguistic statistics like adverb count and ranking word choices according to how “vivid” or “passive” they appeared. Kunzru pulled up the Prosecraft website and checked to see whether any of his work appeared. Yep. There it was. White Tears, 2017. According to Prosecraft, in the 61st percentile for “vividness.”

Kunzru was irked enough to add his own voice to the rising Prosecraft protest. He wasn’t mad about the analysis itself. But he strongly suspected that the founder, Benji Smith, had obtained his catalog without paying for it. “It seemed very clear to me that he couldn’t have assembled this database in any legal way,” he says. (And Kunzru is no stranger to thinking about these issues; in addition to his successful career as a novelist, he has a past life as a WIRED writer.)

“This company Prosecraft appears to have stolen a lot of books, trained an AI, and are now offering a service based on that data,” Kunzru tweeted. “I did not consent to this use of my work.”

His message went viral. So did a plea from horror writer Zachary Rosenberg, who addressed Benji Smith directly, demanding that his work be removed from the site. Like Kunzru, he’d heard about Prosecraft and found himself upset when he discovered his work analyzed on it. “It felt rather violating,” Rosenberg says.

Hundreds of other authors chimed in. Some had harsh words for Smith: “Entitled techbro.” “Soulless troll.” “Scavenger.” “Shitstain.” “Bloody hemorrhoid.”

Others pondered legal action. The Author’s Guild was inundated with requests for assistance. “The emails just kept coming in,” says Mary Rasenberger, its CEO. “People reacted really strongly.” Prosecraft received hundreds of cease-and-desist letters within 24 hours.

By the end of the day, Prosecraft was kaput. (Smith deleted everything and apologized.) But the intense reaction it provoked is telling: The great AI backlash is in full swing.

Prosecraft’s founder didn’t see the controversy coming.

On Monday, Benji Smith had recently returned to his home in a small town just outside of Portland, Oregon.

He’d spent the weekend at a gratitude meditation conference, and he was excited to return to work. Until this past May, Smith had held a full-time job as a software engineer, but he’d quit to focus on his startup, a desktop word processor aimed at literary types, called Shaxpir. (Yes, pronounced “Shakespeare.”) Shaxpir doesn’t make much money—not enough to cover its cloud expenses yet, Smith says, less than $10,000 annually—but he’d been feeling optimistic about it.

Prosecraft, which Smith launched in 2017, was a side hustle within a side hustle. As a stand-alone website it offered linguistic analysis on novels for free. Smith also used the Prosecraft database for tools within the paid version of Shaxpir, so it did have a commercial purpose.

Although he was anointed the ur-tech bro of the week, Smith doesn’t have much VC slickness. He’s a walking Portlandia stereotype, with piercings and bird tattoos and stubble; he talks effusively about the art of storytelling, like he’s auditioning for the role of a superfan of The Moth. A self-described theater kid, Smith dabbled in playwriting before getting his first tech gig at a computational linguistics company.

The idea for Prosecraft, he says, came from his habit of counting the words in books he admired while he was working on a memoir about surviving the 2012 Costa Concordia shipwreck. (“Eat Pray Love is 110,000 words,” he says.) He thought other authors might find this type of analysis helpful, and he developed some algorithms using his computational linguistics training. He created a submissions process so writers could add their own work to his database; he hoped it would someday make up the bulk of his library. (All in all, around a hundred authors submitted to Prosecraft over the years.) It did not occur to Smith that Prosecraft would end up enraging many of the very people he wanted to impress.

Prosecraft did not train off any large language models. It was not a generative AI product at all, but something much simpler. More than anything else, it resembled the kind of tool an especially devoted and slightly corny computational linguistics graduate student might whip up as an A+ final project. But it appears to share something crucial with most of the AI projects making headlines these days: It trained on a massive set of data scraped from the internet without regard to possible copyright infringement issues.

Smith saw this as a grimy means to a justifiable end. He doesn’t defend his behavior now—“I understand why everyone is upset”—but wants to explain how he defended it to himself at the time. “What I believed would happen in the long run is that, if I could show people this thing, that people would say, ‘Wow, that's so cool and it's never been done before. And it's so fun and useful and interesting.’ And then people would submit their manuscripts willfully and generously, and publishers would want to have their books on Prosecraft,” he says. “But there was no way to convey what this thing could be without building it first. So I went about getting the data the only way that I knew how—which was, it's all there on the internet.”

Smith didn’t buy the books he analyzed. He got most of them from book-pirating websites. It’s something he alluded to in the apology note he posted when he took Prosecraft down, and it’s something he’ll admit if you ask, although he seems bewildered about how mad people are about it. (“Would people be less angry with me if I bought a copy of each of these books?” Smith wonders out loud as we talk over Zoom. “Yes,” I say.) The practice of using shadow libraries to conduct scholarly work has been debated for years, with projects like Sci-Hub and Libgen disseminating academic papers and books to the applause of many researchers who believe, as the old adage goes, that information wants to be free.

Many of the authors who chastised Smith, like Kunzru, disapprove primarily of this pirated database. Or, more specifically, they hate the idea of trying to make money off work derived from a pirated library as opposed to simply conducting research. “I’m not against all data scraping,” Devin Madson says. “I know a lot of academics in digital humanities, and they do scrape a lot of data.” Madson was one of the first people to contact Smith to complain about Prosecraft last week. What rubbed her the wrong way was the attempt to profit from the analytical tools developed with scraped data. (Madson also more broadly disapproves of AI writing tools, including Grammarly, for, as she sees it, encouraging the homogenization of literary style.)

Not every author opposed Prosecraft, despite how it appeared on social media. MJ Javani was delighted when he saw that Prosecraft had a page about his first novel. “As a matter of fact, I dare say, I may have paid for this analysis if it had not been provided for free by Prosecraft,” he says. He does not agree with the decision to take the site down. “I think it was a great idea,” Daniela Zamudio, a writer who submitted her work, says.

Even supporters have caveats about that pirated library, though. Zamudio, for instance, understands why people are upset about the piracy but hopes the site will come back using a submissions-based database.

The moral case against Prosecraft is clear-cut: The books were pirated. Authors who oppose book pirating have a straightforward argument against Smith’s project.

But did Smith deserve all that blowback? “I think he needed to be called out,” Kunzru says. “He maybe didn't fully understand the sensitivity right now, you know, in the context of the WGA strike and the focus on large language models and various other forms of machine learning.”

Others aren’t so sure. Publishing industry analyst Thad McIlroy doesn’t approve of data scraping, either. “Pirate libraries are not a good thing,” he says. But he sees the backlash against Prosecraft as majorly misguided. His term? “Shrieking hysteria.”

And some copyright experts have watched the furor with their jaws near the ground. While the argument against piracy is simple to follow, they are skeptical that Prosecraft could’ve been taken to court successfully.

Matthew Sag, a law professor at Emory University, thinks Smith could’ve mounted a successful defense of his project by invoking fair use, a doctrine allowing use of copyrighted materials without permission under certain circumstances, like parody or writing a book review. Fair use is a common defense against claims of copyright infringement within the US, and it’s been embraced by tech companies. It’s a “murky and ill-defined” area of the law, says intellectual property lawyer Bhamati Viswanathan, who wrote a book on copyright and creative arts. Which makes questions of what does or does not constitute fair use equally murky and ill-defined, even if it’s derived from pirated sources.

Sag, along with several other experts I spoke with, pointed to the Google Books and HathiTrust cases as precedent—two examples of the courts ruling in favor of projects that uploaded snippets of books online without obtaining the copyright holders’ permission, determining that they constituted fair use. “I think that the reasons that people are upset really don't have anything to do with this poor guy,” says Sag. “I think it has to do with everything else that’s going on.”

Earlier this summer, a number of celebrities joined a high-profile class action against OpenAI, a suit that alleges that the generative AI company trained its large language model on shadow libraries. Sarah Silverman, one of the plaintiffs, alleges OpenAI scraped her memoir Bedwetter in this way. While the emotional appeal behind the lawsuit is considerable, its legal merits are a matter of debate within the copyright community. It’s not widely viewed as a slam dunk by any means. It’s not even clear a court will find that the source of the books is relevant to the fair-use question, in the same way that you couldn’t sue a writer for copying your plot on the grounds that they shoplifted a copy of your book.

Rasenberger strongly supports enforcing copyright protections for authors. “If we don't start putting guardrails up, then we will diminish the entire publishing ecosystem,” she says. Rasenberger cites the recent US Supreme Court decision on whether some of Andy Warhol’s artwork infringed on copyright as evidence that the legal system may be reining in its interpretation of fair use. Still, she sees the legal question as unsettled. “What feels fair to an author isn't always going to align with the current fair-use law,” Rasenberger says.

“Prosecraft is a little guy who got swept up in a much bigger thing—he’s collateral damage,” says Bill Rosenblatt, a technologist who studies copyright.

Rosenblatt is fascinated by how far public opinion on copyright and data has shifted since the days of Napster. “Twenty years ago, Big Tech positioned this as ‘it's us against the big evil book publishers, movie studios, record labels,’” Rosenblatt says. Now the dynamic is strikingly different—the tech companies are the Goliaths of business, with artists, musicians, and writers attempting to rein them in. While Prosecraft might’ve been viewed more sympathetically in an earlier era, today it is seen as ideologically aligned with Big Tech, no matter how small it actually is.

Smith offered the same service for five years without issue—but at a moment when writers and artists are deeply wary of artificial intelligence, Prosecraft suddenly looked suspicious in this new context. An AI company only in the loosest sense of the term, Prosecraft wasn’t so much low-hanging fruit as it was a random cucumber on the ground near the fruit tree. Was there something rotten about it? Yes, sure. But describing it as collateral damage isn’t inaccurate. The real targets of the AI backlash that swept Prosecraft away are the generative AI companies that are currently the toast of Silicon Valley, as well as the corporations planning to use those generative AI tools to replace human creative work.

A year from now, it’s unlikely people will remember this particular social-media-fueled controversy. Smith acquiesced to his critics quickly, and a little-used, small-potatoes analytics tool is now defunct. But this incident is illustrative of a larger cultural turn against the unauthorized use of creative work in training models. In this specific case, writers scored an easy victory against one dude in Oregon with a shaky grasp on the concept of passive voice.

I suspect the reason so many prominent voices celebrated so loudly is because the larger ongoing fights will be much longer, and much harder to win. The Hollywood writer’s strike, with the Writers Guild of America demanding that studios negotiate over the use of AI, is the longest strike of its kind since 1988. The OpenAI lawsuit is another attempt to wrest back control; as mentioned, it is likely to be a far harder fight to win considering fair-use precedence.

In the meantime, writers are also moving to create their own individual guardrails for how generative AI can use their work. Kunzru, for example, recently negotiated a publishing contract and asked to add a clause specifying that his work not be used to train large language models. His publisher cooperated.

Kunzru is far from the only author interested in gaining control over how LLMs train on his work. Many writers negotiating contracts are asking to include AI clauses. Some aren’t having the smoothest experiences. “There's been a huge amount of pushback against AI clauses in contracts,” Madson says.

Literary agent Anne Tibbets has seen a surge in interest from writers in recent months, with many clients in contract negotiations asking to include an AI clause. Some publishers tend to be slow to respond, debating the most appropriate language.

Others aren’t interested in any form of compromise for this potential new revenue stream: “There are some publishers who are flat-out refusing to include language at all,” Tibbets says. Meanwhile, agencies are already hiring consultants specifically to guide their AI policies—a sign that they are well-aware that this conflict isn’t going away.

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ginza-division · 1 year

Text

Eiji's Thoughts on Shinagawa Division

Ritsuko Okada

"...I know my family is a bit skeptical when it comes to my dealings with Chuohku. But I always assure them, my meetings with them are strictly professional and for business's sake. Truthfully, I don't like dealing with them any more than I have to. If having the Prime Minister stare at me with her cold, dead eyes wasn't bad enough, I also have to put up with Kadenokoji glaring at me as we talk, as if begging me to set one foot out of line."

"But as bad as the two of them are, they are nothing compared to this woman here, Ritsuko Okada. I made the mistake of accepting an invitation to this woman's laboratory once, and it is a mistake that I regret to this day. The things I've seen in that lab... let's just say, they are the things that nightmares are made of. And what's more, she heard about the condition that my daughter, Isuzu, was suffering from and offered to cure her, free of charge. How she heard about it, I don't know, and I didn't ask."

"As much as I wanted to tell her where she could shove her offer, I knew I had to be the modicum of professionalism, so I thanked her kindly for her offer, but refused. After that, I bid her farewell and exited her lab as quickly as I could. I'm still shaking at the thought of that place..." Eiji shakes his head, a bit anxious.

Miho Kobayashi

"Miho Kobayashi, one of the CEOs of the well-known pharmaceutical company, E.L. Medical Co. I've seen her on T.V. numerous times, during press conferences and interviews. We've spoken on occasion, but it was nothing memorable. Truthfully though, I do respect her and her company for work. I don't buy the medicine I need for my daughter from them, but I do think it is good that they are working hard to put out new medicines each day. Believe it or not, E.L. Medical Co. is actually one of the companies I donate money to so they can someday find a cure for Isuzu. I hope that day comes soon..."

"Besides that, as stated, I don't really know much about Kobayashi-san. I know she and Arakawa-san don't exactly have a good relationship. I hope someday I can mend it. If the three of us worked together, we could do a lot of good, I think. Besides that, she also seems to have a PROFILE set up. It's mainly just photos and updates of her company, but she does have a few detailing a younger girl; possibly, her sister. I don't know if she is around or not, but if she isn't, then she has my condolences."

Sumire Shinomiya

Eiji looks at the photo of the anarchist and sighs. "Is it bad to say that I know this young girl? Not personally, of course, but... well, let's just say there are a lot of people out there that don't seem to care much for PROFILE or what we do here at Sigma Inc. Truthfully, this young girl and her band of miscreants have been giving me no end of trouble the past year. I can't count the number of times they've tried to hack their way into my database and disrupt everything. Can you believe they actually tried to stop the gaming tournament I hosted? Fortunately, I've got some of the greatest computer geniuses on my side and they've managed to keep this young girl and her friends from doing any permanent damage."

"Still, it is very annoying to have to fix some errors just because this girl doesn't seem to like CEOs or something. I've tried to contact her and see if there is any way the two of us can work together, or at least stay out of each other's way. However, she always ignores my messages and emails." Eiji sighs. "It really is a shame. I've seen what this girl can do just from the pictures on her PROFILE. She has a genius and a mind for technology that you don't normally see in most people. If she put that mind to good use, there's no telling what she could do."

"I did some digging and I found out, she and her friends call themselves 'Player One Studios'. Apparently, they feel threatened by the fact that my company makes video games or something. If they're worried about me outshining them, then I assure you, that is not at all what I am trying to do."

"...To be honest, I'm actually hoping I can talk to her and see if she can do anything to help my daughter. If she found some way to cure her, I'd do anything she asks... within reason, of course. ...But, from the way things stand, that seems to be nothing more than a pipe dream..."

CodeX

"'CodeX'. If you lowercase the 'x' in their name, then they'd be called 'codex', which is basically the ancestor to the modern book you can find anywhere. In video games, the codex is usually where one goes on RPGs to find out the lore on a video game. ...It makes me wonder if the young girl had something to do with this name, and Ritsuko just altered it to make it sound more... 'scientific'.

"But besides that, I think Masa grossly underestimates the power this team has. Ritsuko, by herself, is dangerous enough, as is Kobayashi-san and the young girl. Together, however, I can't imagine what they could do. Even if they haven't had any battles, they still are dangerous. If we face them, we should be careful not to underestimate them. If we do, we will have lost before we even started."

#hypnosis microphone #hypnosis mic #hypmic #hypnosis mic oc #hypmic oc #eiji noguchi #ginza division #last judgment #shinagawa division #ritsuko okada #miho kobayashi #sumire shinomiya

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coochiequeens · 2 years

Text

Ladies register to vote and check with your town or city’s Registrar of Voters to make sure your still eligible to vote.

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Women in Ohio are signing up to vote at “jaw-dropping” rates, new reports show.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court issued its June ruling that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, Ohio women have outregistered men to vote by at least 8%, according to two separate analyses of state voter files. Threats to reproductive health care and the “sweepingness” of Ohio’s six-week abortion ban, experts said, are fueling women to add their names to the voter rolls.

“We’re hearing from women that this is absolutely motivating why they’re registering, why they’re volunteering to get out the vote, but also for men who are concerned about what this could mean for the health of their loved ones,” Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said.

An investigation into Ohio’s voter files, supplemented by consumer databases, by U.S. political data analytics firm TargetSmart revealed an 11% gender gap existed between new voter registrants since June 24, with women taking the lead. A separate New York Times analysis put it at 8%.

That number is up significantly from TargetSmart showing that women outpaced men in registering to vote by 0.75% in 2018 and 0.25% in 2020, according to CEO Tom Bonier, a political science professor at Howard University.

“All signs point to a fired up female electorate around the country in states where abortion rights are under immediate threat,” Bonier said in a news release.

Gender gap in voter registration, by percentage: U.S. states where women out-register men post-Dobbs

A TargetSmart analysis of state voter files revealed a surge in new women voter registrants in several U.S. states since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion on June 24. Women are outpacing men in registering to vote by wide margins, the analysis found.

TargetSmart placed Ohio at No. 7 nationally for widest margins between men and women new voter registrants.

As Ohio attests, Bonier said it’s not only blue states that are seeing more women register to vote. The gender gap becomes more pronounced, he said, in states that have near-total or total abortion bans, including in Ohio, where the procedure is effectively banned after six weeks.

One caveat to the data: Ohio does not ask people registering to vote to disclose their gender, meaning the state’s voter files don’t say whether a voter is a man or woman, a spokesperson for Secretary of State Frank LaRose’s office said. Bonier said in an email that for states where gender is not provided, TargetSmart matches a person’s voter files with a “broad range of consumer databases” to determine the individual’s gender.

A New York Times investigation also found a “pronounced surge” in Ohio women voter registrants, with an 8% gender gap between men and women new voters.

#Ohio #election 2022 #women and the vote #Know your rights as a voter

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elsanna-shenanigans · 2 years

Text

April Contest Submission #26: Brazen

Words: ca. 5,000 Setting: mAU Lemon: no Content: mild drug references, implied homophobia

It was a regular, sunny Thursday morning when the whole debacle started. Nothing out of the ordinary. The train was on time. My blueberry and cream-cheese bagel was fresh and delicious, and I shovelled it down at my desk, clicking away through banal emails about company fun-runs, goodbye-parties for employees I’d never met and rambling updates from the CEO.

I was working out the front with Hans, which was never ideal. Still irritated by his comment last week about women being natural manipulators, I told myself he was just “compassion fatigued”, grit my teeth, and chose to face the day with a positive attitude. That’s all I could do, right?

Hans set his enormous protein shake down on the desk and leaned back in his chair, sighing loudly. “Oh my god, you’ll never guess what happened at the gym this morning.”

I put on my best smile and began to click through random pages on our database, looking at yesterday’s notes, trying to look a bit busy and hoping he would get the hint. Listening to Hans’ gym-bro stories was more tedious than uploading invoices into the finance system.

“So, there I was, just wiping down my bench, and this ridiculously hot chick comes up to me, like, seriously, you would not believe the honka-bazonkas on this bird-”

His story was mercifully cut short by the buzzer signalling to us that someone had entered. We both leaned back to see a girl in the entry-way, looking lost and confused. They all look like that when they’re new, and judging by the school uniform, tear stains on her cheeks, and the way her eyes flickered around in uncertainty, this was most definitely her first rodeo.

“Check out Little Miss Grammar School over there.”

I sighed, disappointed but not surprised that he couldn’t even wait five minutes before judging the poor kid. “She looks pretty upset.”

“Probably because Daddy won’t buy her a new pony.”

I looked over at Hans, irritated with him before it was even nine o-clock. Typical. “Didn’t you go to Trottington Boys College?”

“Yeah, that’s how I know.” He gave me a smirk, and I just wanted to punch his stupid face. “She’ll be back home before lunchtime. Guarantee it.”

I sighed again, not in the mood to bother arguing, and went to greet the girl. Her bright red hair dangled in girlish plaits over her shoulders, and her school-bag was practically bursting at the seams. A planned runaway, perhaps? Or possibly just stuffed full with school stuff. Laptop, textbooks, maybe sports-gear. She looked young, and I prayed she was over eighteen, and it wouldn’t end up being a matter for police and child protection. That’s always such a gruelling process.

“Hey there.” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Hi.” She reminded me of a little baby fox, or a kitten or something criminally innocent with those big, wide eyes. Secretly, I hoped Hans was right, as irritating as it would be. The homelessness system would chew this girl up and spit her right out. “I’m Anna.”

“What brings you in here so bright and early this morning, Anna?”

“My parents kicked me out.” She sniffled and wiped her nose on her sleeve. Up close, I could see that her fancy uniform was in fact quite dirty. Her skirt was crumpled, like she might have slept in it. There were a few sauce stains on her jumper and she didn’t smell too crash-hot, either. This girl, it seemed, was the real deal. “On Monday.”

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.” I told her, and I meant it. I always did. It never ceased to baffle me how quick parents could be to cast out their own flesh and blood. My own included. Ten years later, it still stings. “Can you tell me a bit about what’s happened?”

“They told me not to come back, that they couldn’t even look at me. They won’t even let me get my clothes or my charger or anything!” Anna broke down into tears at this point, as they often do. I brought her into one of our small, cosy counselling rooms and sat with her while the tears poured, and my curiosity piqued. What could have caused such a dramatic family breakdown? She seemed like a nice kid. Drugs, perhaps? Pregnancy?

I made her a bowl of Coco Pops, and offered her a coffee but she didn’t drink coffee apparently. Only hot chocolate.

Bless.

After she was fed and watered, and the tears had stopped at least for a moment, I had to get down to business. I sat across from her and took out my notebook, “So my name is Kristoff, and I’ll be doing your assessment today.”

I found out she had just turned eighteen - thank goodness - and had been sleeping in a cheap motel for the last few nights, paid for by her girlfriend’s leftover Christmas money. Immediately, my heart went out. I have a soft spot for the queer kids. I know how hard it can be.

She even showed me the text messages from her parents. Heart breaking, but good to know, should Hans come trying to pick her story apart.

Dad: We don’t know where we went wrong as parents but we cannot have you under our roof, especially with the younger kids around. They don’t need to see that filth.

Where am I supposed to go???

Dad: If you two are so grown up, you can figure it out yourselves.

Are you seriously kicking me out in the street?? Over a KISS??

Dad: Actions have consequences.

Yikes. I couldn’t believe there were people in this day and age who were still so closed-minded. I was determined to help her. To keep both of them safe. “So where’s your girlfriend staying? Does she need emergency accommodation as well?”

“She’s at uni today.”

“Yeah?” Damn, I hoped I hadn’t been too quick to make assumptions. Maybe the reason the parents had reacted so badly was due to age, rather than gender. “How old is she?”

“Twenty.”

Whew.

“She’s studying music down at Southbank. She has class this morning, but she’ll meet me here after. She’s, like, a music prodigy. She studies so hard and composes amazing songs. And she plays about sixteen instruments. She picks them up so easily, it’s like magic.”

Her face lit up when she talked about her girlfriend. Eyes shining like a cartoon character stumbling across a treasure chest. Noticing that the tears were gone, I encouraged her to continue, “How did you guys meet?”

“We met at church, actually.” Anna chuckled to herself, acknowledging the irony. “Our families know each other. I’ve loved her since I can remember.”

=x=

The girlfriend, Elsa, arrived in the afternoon. I recognised her straight away standing from Anna’s waxing poetic descriptions. The long, pale-blonde braid. Eyes “the colour of an ocean storm”. Okay, so the violin case might have also been a clue. Unlike her rambling lover, she gave short, curt answers. Part of my job is to make young people feel safe, to get a general story of their lives, but all I managed to discern was that her parents were religious. Fairly well off - she’d gone to the same private school as Anna. Didn’t seem particularly worldly. No job. Not a lot of friends or much of a support network. Poor thing was obviously anxious. She played with her braid throughout the whole appointment and looked down at her lap, shoulders hunched like they were carrying the weight of the world. She told me she was diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder and took medication daily. Pretty normal stuff. We were just about finished when she burst into tears, and told me, “It’s all my fault. I’ve let her down. I’ve let her down. How could I let this happen!”

“It’ll be okay,” I tried to reassure her. “We’ll sort something out. None of this is your fault, Elsa.”

“It is.” She looked at me with pleading eyes. “It is my job to look after her.”

I didn’t bother arguing. Not now. It was first love - it was going to be a little melodramatic.

After Anna had collected some less conspicuous clothes, and the two of them took some food and toiletries for the road, I booked them in one of the less seedy hotels for the night and hoped for the best.

And that’s how it went for the next few weeks as they cycled through the system, like any other kids, slowly crawling their way up the waitlists for youth refuge.

They came in now and then for food, toothpaste, to wash their clothes, and collect their mail. As relaxed as anyone in their situation could be. Well, Anna was. She was a ray of sunshine, once she got over the initial shock, and we all enjoyed chatting to her and hearing about all her escapades. Hopes and dreams. She managed to transition to TAFE rather cheerfully, and was cautiously confident about finishing her high school certificate. Sometimes she even serenaded us with the little old ukulele we keep in reception. I suspected she may have tried marijuana a few times in the alley behind our building with the other kids. I had to gently redirect her, on one of these occasions, from eating Nutella out of the jar. Apart from that there were no incidents.

Anna was freer with her affection. A more expressive person in general, I figured. Elsa was more… businesslike. Tense and serious, a girl of few words. Her back was straight as a board, and she only smiled when she was looking at her girlfriend. She sometimes stiffened, gulped, and looked from side to side as though someone might catch and punish them.

I couldn’t help but wonder just how badly her parents had reacted.

=x=

“There’s something fishy about them.”

Hans was truly getting on my last nerve. He was from a youth justice background, and brought more punitive values with him. Always poking holes in clients’ stories, turning them away because they called up too late, or had a meltdown, or used another service. Or because they had a nice watch or a pair of shoes or a hat, something special to them they hadn’t hocked yet. Heaven forbid they keep one piece of their identity, one nice thing, before being deserving of help.

“What’s fishy about them?” I asked, not particularly engaged.

“Well, they went to the same school, right?”

“Yeah, that’s…” I rolled my eyes, “a pretty common way for kids to meet each other.”

“So, they come from these nice, middle-class families and went to this nice school, but they don’t have a single friend or relative between them who can help them out?”

It took all I had to bite my tongue. I didn’t want to just shout ‘homophobia!’ at the drop of a hat, being the only gay dude in the organisation.

But he really seemed to have it in for these poor girls.

“Obviously not,” I said, trying not to clench my jaw, “or they wouldn’t be here. Do you think it’s fun bouncing from one shitty hotel or short-term refuge to another for months on end? Do you think they just do it for kicks?”

“Maybe.” He shrugged and chugged his protein shake.

I came to the conclusion that he was jealous. Poor dude was constantly bulking and curling and getting facial peels or whatever, reading books and watching tutorials about how to pick up women. Swiping Tinder and Bumble and Match every spare minute. To no avail.

And these girls had just found each other without even trying. They were always so affectionate. Not in a gross, horny-teen, eating-each-other’s faces-way. But stolen kisses on cheeks, heads in each other’s laps, stroking each other’s faces and gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes kind of way.

It was so cute I almost died.

=x=

Elsa was late to her appointment, which was unlike her. She’d been crying, as well, which very much was like her.

I took her into a counselling room, where she explained she’d had to defer from university. Lost her scholarship, which was supposed to be paid to her in a month - her grades permitting. She’d been planning on using it for a rental deposit. The school had been letting her use hire-instruments to practise but it just wasn’t practical. She couldn’t cart them around. The hotels weren’t safe - a violin she’d been using had been stolen, and now she had a debt.

“I’m so sorry that happened to you, Elsa.” I felt responsible. It’s the hardest part of this job, the lack of options, the feeling of letting these kids down, constantly. But I swallowed it down and tried to reassure her. “It’ll be okay, though. You’ve got your whole future ahead of you. This isn’t the end.”

“That was our way out!” She was prone to catastrophizing. But in her defence, I guess, she was homeless. “I’ve sent my resume out to a hundred places in the last two weeks and heard nothing! We were counting on this money- I was counting on this money. I’m the worst- I feel like I’m ruining her life.”

I glanced over my shoulder, through the window, to the front space. Anna was smiling, pointing to the TV, chatting away with another client with a hot chocolate in hand. The situation wasn’t ideal, but ruining her life may have been a bit dramatic.

“Anna’s family are the ones to blame for putting her in this situation. They’re the ones who should be looking after her.” I said, with a bubble of irritation swelling in my chest, trying not to project my own feelings from my own life. “It’s not your responsibility. You’re only twenty. You’re doing great, supporting each other.”

“You don’t understand.” She looked down at her lap, tears dripping from her eyes. Nothing unusual. Of course we don’t understand, us silly workers. No one understands. She wiped her eyes, sobbed a little more, and repeated, “you don’t understand.”

I thought I understood. But she was right. I didn’t. Not yet.

=x=

Neither Elsa nor Anna was at the top of the refuge waitlist yet, but when the spots came up - 2x female, low mental health needs, low or no alcohol or drug use - I couldn’t help myself. I sent off two referrals, quickly, without getting the okay from my team or boss.

It was busy as usual. No one would notice. And I’m allowed to have favourites, okay? It’s not like they’re my kids. And how often do we get two spots in the same refuge?

Suzie noticed. She looked over at me, scrolling through the daily referrals and sipping on a mug of tea, and pointed out that we don’t usually house young couples together. It’s policy. Most of them are too unstable, then there’s all the drama if they break up. In general, it’s a recipe for disaster.

“Yeah,” I scratched the back of my head, trying not to look guilty.

But they’re so cute together, I didn’t say.

“But I think it’s probably one of the healthier relationships we’ve seen come through these doors.”

Suzie agreed with a chuckle, and Dave, too, who had been eavesdropping in the next cubicle, apparently. They wouldn’t be cycling through this system, month after month, year after year, with no end in sight. Like so many of our clients. This would just be a blip on the radar. They had bright futures ahead of them.

The only one who didn’t agree was Hans.

=x=

I didn’t hear from them for a couple of months. In my line of work, this is a good thing. I assumed it meant things were going well at the refuge. I didn’t see why they wouldn’t be. Anna was engaged in education. Elsa spending every waking hour looking for work. Neither using hard drugs, which, in this sector, is short of a miracle.

I hadn’t exactly forgotten about them. You don’t just forget about favourites, in this job. You always wonder what happened to them, how they’re doing, and usually you never find out. But let’s say, they weren’t at the forefront of my mind. The only thing was a phone call that Suzie took, I only heard briefly about it. The refuge called, asking for our health team to write a quick script for Elsa. Her refills had run out, or something, and she apparently didn’t know how to contact her psychiatrist. Looking back, I guess, it did seem a bit out of character, given how conscientious she came across. But she’d been through a lot. Psychiatrists take leave, or move to different practices. Her parents might have dealt with all that stuff before. All sorts of reasonable explanations. Suzie was following up, and I put them out of my mind again, hoping they were doing well. No reason to think they weren’t.

=x=

“Sisters.”

Hans stood in front of me, arms crossed, a stupid smirk on his face like the cat who ate the canary. I’d been in the middle of writing a long-ass case note and truthfully, I had no fucking clue what he was talking about. Probably another one of his weird fetishes. A made up gym story. “What do you want, Hans?”

“They’re sisters.” He said again, as though that meant anything, slamming a few sheets of paper onto my desk. “I told you there was something fishy about them. I knew it in my bones. And I thought it was weird that Elsa didn’t know how to contact her own psychiatrist, I mean, we know she’s not stupid.”

“You’re the one who sounds stupid right now. Or- or crazy! I’ve scanned their ID into the system, they have different last names. Anna Aren. Elsa-”

“-So anyway,” he cut me off, “I did some digging. Found a record at Southeast Mental Health services-”

“-Elsa didn’t sign the consent form for us to contact other services-”

“-Elsa Aren. She took her mother’s name, Frost, after the parents divorced. Cheeky little shit only gave us her school ID. It’s still Aren on all her official records. I even called the school, because I thought it had to be a mistake, but apparently it was a whole thing. Everyone knew about it. That’s why they have no friends or anything. I knew something didn’t add up.”

My heart sank. My stomach dropped. I didn’t know what to think. I got up, wordlessly, and headed to the kitchen. It was too early for this shit. I needed coffee, and a minute to think.

At first, I felt betrayed, I’ll admit. I know you can’t get too invested in the clients, but it’s a matter of pride in the job. I thought I’d built a connection. I thought they trusted me. I thought I’d made them feel safe. But they’d lied to me for months-

“Yeah, I know! Sisters! Gross, right?” Hans had followed, apparently, and was sharing this new juicy gossip with the whole goddamn office. Suddenly, the omission felt a lot less personal.

“Hans.” I stopped him in the kitchen, blocking the door. “What are you doing? This is confidential information, not one of your stupid gym stories.”

“My gym stories are fucking lit-”

“-I’m serious! Do you think this is funny? That kind of stigma’s no joke. The story spreads around and it could really fuck things up for them.”

“I kinda think it already has, bro. Maybe they should have thought about that before bumping donuts.”

I breathed out angrily through my nose, with any potential replies crashing into each other in my head, still kind of in shock. Still not sure how I felt about the whole thing. A bit grossed out, to be honest, and then a bit shitty with myself because my job is specifically to not judge young people with all sorts of strange and uncomfortable life stories.

“Hans, they’re my clients. Just, promise me you’ll tone it down, okay? Don’t go blabbing all about this. Or I’ll tell the boss you watch porn on the clock.”

“Yeah, alright, whatever.”

I saw a flicker of recognition in his eyes. That I meant business. He was already on a series of warnings from HR for constantly eating Suzie’s food out of the fridge, and making fun of Dave’s male pattern baldness, and probably a bunch of other stuff I didn’t know about. He couldn’t afford another.

But I still couldn’t shake the unease.

=x=

Unease bubbled into a panic in my throat the next time I saw Anna, in reception, arguing with Hans. Her voice was rising higher and higher with stress, as he stood there with his weight on one hip, that smug look on his stupid face. From what I could gather, he was turning her away.

My heart sank as I took in the details. She’d lost weight. Had dark circles under her eyes. Hair was a bit greasy, shoved into a messy ponytail and her clothes had that worn-for-a-few-days look. “Kristoff!” She budged past him, toward me, with pleading eyes, “I really need a housing appointment. We only need a few nights somewhere, Elsa’s getting paid on Thursday, she’s just started a job in a house factory! I mean, a box-house. A warehouse where they make boxes-”

“-Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down,” I told her, but she didn’t slow down. She kept rambling on at a million miles an hour, a stress response for her. I reverted to our default question. Bringing it back to basics. The reason we’re here. “Where did you sleep last night?”

“McDonalds.”

I gave Hans a scathing look and took her aside for a quick chat. She told me she and Elsa had been kicked out of the refuge, and claimed she didn’t know why - but in my heart, in my bones, I knew.

And in her eyes, I knew she knew.

Still, it seemed a little harsh to kick them out onto the street. Of course, some kind of therapeutic intervention would be expected, but I know for a fact they’d dealt with much more challenging behavioural problems than sisters dating each other. Both girls had been nothing but polite, friendly and agreeable in my experience. A little heavy on the PDA, sometimes (in hindsight, rather brazen), but they’d sprung apart whenever I’d cleared my throat pointedly at them. So I decided to call the refuge and have a chat. Suss it out. See if they wouldn’t rethink it.

Just as I suspected. They were contacted by “one of our workers,” (no guesses who) who told them about the… the nature of the girls’ relationship. They were concerned, obviously. Referred them both to BrighterWays Family Therapy Centre and created a plan to transition Elsa to an adult refuge, when a spot eventually came up. In the meantime, they’d booked her into Sandy Shore Motel.

Yikes. Colloquially known as “stabby-shore”, it wouldn’t have been my first choice for her. Or for anyone, really. But there are only so many places that take bookings from a homelessness service. Most prefer to avoid the risk.

So Elsa packed her bags contritely, the refuge-worker told me, and Anna stood there in tears, like her sister-lover was going off to war or something. Distraught. Begging them to reconsider. Standing in the rain as Elsa’s bus rolled away. She almost stayed behind. Almost. She lasted two nights after that, then she was gone.

In between one client punching a hole in the wall and another nodding off on smack, I struggled to find the time for her appointment and could see Anna growing more restless. Pacing around and texting furiously. Drinking cheap coffee after cheap coffee in our little paper cups - she drank coffee, now, apparently. “Sorry it’s taken me so long,” I said to her, and I truly was sorry. “Why don’t you head downstairs with some fresh clothes and take a shower. I’ll just finish up this handover with the health team and then we’ll do your appointment, okay?”

“You have showers here?” She was stunned, as though I’d just told her we have dragons here.

“Sure do.” I led her downstairs and opened a cabinet full of soaps, shampoos, body washes, moisturisers and the likes, and she stared like it was a pot of gold. “Take whatever you like.”

After her shower, Anna looked (and smelled) much fresher. But she was still agitated. Picking at her chipped nail polish and shifting in her seat. Eyes darting around the counselling room which suddenly felt very small.

“Anna, you’re still welcome at the refuge.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I just spoke to the worker, they’ll have you back-”

“-No, you don’t understand! I can’t go back there. They… they see me differently, now.”

“Yeah?” Honestly, at this point, I was just curious if she would come out and say it. “Why’s that?”

She was balled up in the chair, looking as small and vulnerable as the day we met. Worse, in fact, because she looked ashamed now. “I think you already know.”

“About you and Elsa?” I said. “Yeah. Look, Anna, I can’t imagine what it’s been like carrying this secret. And after the way it was received back home, I totally get why you’re having some reservations. But the workers aren’t going to judge you-”

“-you say that, but you weren’t there, Kristoff! You didn’t see the way they look at me now, with revulsion and disgust in their eyes. And how they talk to me, all careful, like I’m some kind of ticking time-bomb.”

I nodded, hoping that wasn’t true. Knowing it probably was.

“Would you be open to looking at other refuges?”

“I can’t leave Elsa there in that shitty place all by herself. It’s scary! And it’s…” Anna sighed. Her jaw tightened. There was none of the previous light in her eyes. None of the cheekiness in her face. “It’s hard for us to be apart.”

I went to argue, having heard this sentiment so many times before from young couples who felt like the world would end if they couldn’t be joined at the hip twenty-four-seven. But something stopped me. The fact that they were sisters, not just girlfriends, is what stopped me. My brain was still imploding, to be fair. Trying to make sense of it.

“We shared a room, back home.” Anna continued. “Not because the house was small. There was a spare room. Two spare rooms, actually. And a sunroom. We just… preferred it that way. I’ve spent all of two nights without her in my whole life and I-” she paused and shook her head, “It was like I couldn’t breathe. And knowing she felt the same, just…”

She trailed off.

“Anna…” I waited for her to meet my eyes, and I could see that any trust left was hanging by a thread. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

“I know.” All traces of teen melodrama now faded away, there was only solemn understanding in her voice. A wisdom beyond her years. “But it’s true love.”

I pursed my lips, listening. It wasn’t that I approved of it exactly. And I didn’t understand, not really. But I could see that there was a devotion there. A willingness to make sacrifices, to give up everything for each other, to take this path less trodden. The path of uncertainty. Of risk. And what can I say? Something about that, well, it moved me.

Unfortunately, I knew my boss would make no concessions for true love. If they kept using the service there would have to be some kind of meeting about it. They would be booked separately, would be expected to engage in some kind of therapy, the likes. I told her this. I didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep.

In the end, I booked her for three nights, like she asked, and practically begged her to come in next week, anyway, even if they had a place to stay. For a welfare check. I even promised her a Target voucher. The kids love Target vouchers.

“Yeah, yeah.” She said without looking me in the eye. Checking her phone. “For sure. We’ll keep in touch. Anyway, I’d better go figure out how to find this hotel. Elsa’s finished work. It’s cold. She’s waiting for me.”

Of course she was

I never heard from them again.

Not for lack of trying. I called the other housing services, refuges, everywhere, trying to follow up. I called SouthEast Mental Health. I called the BrighterWays family therapy centre, and all the other family therapy centres, too. I called their phones, of course, but Elsa never picked up and I think Anna changed her number.

I won’t lie, it haunts me a little. Two girls, out there, in the big scary city. One meagre income. No support. Shit all street smarts. The only solace, I guess, is that I know they’ve got each other.

=x=

“Well, Mr Bjorgman, you’re quite the storyteller.” The CEO of CityCare looks down briefly at his bulky, expensive-looking watch, sitting across from me in a small, soundproof room, in his crisp, pressed suit.

“Well, it was quite a story.” I say, wondering if that’s a dig at my truthfulness. Wondering if I’ll be reprimanded for bumping the girls up the waitlist. Suddenly feeling the urge to scrutinise all my decisions. Should I have done more digging? Noticed that something was off? Showed less favouritism? “I still don’t know if they’re, like, still alive? Or…”

“Have there any other breaches in client-confidentiality that you know of?” He ignores my question, as his hard-faced assistant keeps typing on her little laptop.

“No.” I shake my head. “Is there a reason why you’re looking into this, now? Has something happened, have they made a complaint?”

“We can’t reveal anything about the investigation at this point.”

“Right.” My heart thumps. I have a sinking feeling in my gut. I want to ask again, if they’re okay, but I bite my tongue.

“Mr Bjorgman, you mentioned Mr Westergaard accessing pornogrphic material on the job. Can you tell us more about that?”

I take a deep sigh, and a sip of my water. It’s going to be a long afternoon.

#elsanna #april 2022 contest #prompt: home #submission #cw: homophobia

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