#it’s really obvious from when he meets Miles that he already has beef and that beef o think is fear and jealousy

[lady-tortilla-chip]

I like the dynamic between Miles and Miguel because Miguel is all “I can’t stand how scared your existence makes me, I can barely handle the weight of one dead universe let alone two, this doesn’t make me any happier than it makes you but it’s the better outcome, you’re just a stupid kid and your universe hasn’t fallen apart yet WHY push your luck?” And Miles is all “it doesn’t have to be that way, I’m not just a stupid kid, this isn’t all or nothing, something can always be done, just because spider man doesn’t always save everyone doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, nothing is impossible, and I’ll prove it whether you like it or not”

[artificial-ascension]

Wammys Week Day 5: ON TIME FINALLLYYYY!!!!

So here’s a story about Matt and Mello being cool detectives in the underground, some hints at some NSFW things but nothing graphic, just saying that stuff happened. It’s kinda long.

Mello stormed into his apartment and kicked a wall as hard as he could, breaking it. “Who was it today Mels?” Matt asked, not looking away from his screen.

“Fucking Jacob Flint, the bastard keeps fucking us over!” Mello said, running his hands through his hair.

“Oh shit, what’d he do today?” 

“The fucking bastard decided to cut his shipment to AK, he delayed it for TWO WEEKS, how the hell am I supposed to get bullets for The Exorcist when he doesn't fucking cooperate or do normal business practices? I swear it’s literally only me this has been happening too.” Mello said, grabbing a can of pink lemonade from the fridge, “I’m going to have to use my regular gun now…” He cracked it open and took a sip, “Also, we have a gathering coming up.” 

“Oh, we do? Where?” Matt asked.

“Prince’s Villa, up on the cliff, you know, the one.” Mello said sitting on the couch and taking a bite of chocolate.

“Oh, I love Prince’s gatherings! His wife, Carmela, right? Yeah, she gives me candy and calls me handsome.” 

“Yeah, but I hear Dante and Jess have beef again so everyone’s in an uproar, so I might have a new case soon.”

“Anyone's game I guess.” Matt said. He always said that Mello would have a case soon but didn’t know who would be hiring him.

--------------------

Matt and Mello were driving to work the following morning, on their usual route to stop at Dunkin’ Doughnuts. They said hi to all their usual friends, some kids who liked to play online with Matt, an old man that liked to talk about guns with Mello, a girl that was friends with B, ECT. The two popped into the packed restaurant, one of the workers and a few regulars said hi to them. They ordered and got their food, sat down at a table and watched the news. Nothing new, just some murders, Mello chucked at most of them, he knew the culprits of most, some Jack the Ripper fan boy who used the alias Jack, it was obvious just by looking. They were eating when an old friend came in and tapped them on the shoulder, “You hear the news?”

“Hey, Chase, long time no see, what’s up?” Mello said.

“Couple of Flint’s guys got killed the other day.” Chase said, pulling up a chair.

“Is that why the bastard didn’t give AK our bullet shipment?” Mello.

“I don’t know. Hey I thought it was because of that that they died.He’s been fucking you guys over al ot hasn’t he?” 

“I know right? It started before the feud we just had, fucker might be turning in me or something. It’s bullshit, I just want to use my gun.” Mello said.

“Tch, yeah, tell Ross I said hi by the way, I got places to be, I’ll catch you later crow boy.” Chase walked out the door and sped off in his car.

Mello sighed, he hoped he wouldn’t have to investigate this, it might end up with him in Jess’ part of town, god was that guy an ass.

----------------------

He and Matt were chilling in the hideout, he was honestly waiting for III Rat to come in and tell him he had a client, but nothing happened. Pretty average day really. Not to say they didn’t discuss the murders. Mello had a pretty good hunch as to what happened. Jess and Dante got mad at each other, Jess goes and kills guys for one of Dante’s biggest contributors to her literal black market, Dante gets mad customers and drama and there goes her business again. That was usually the case when this happened. Not to say Mello didn’t have to investigate, and he really hated Jess.

-----------------

The following day, Mello and Matt went through their routine, but when they got to base, they had a surprise guest. Prince. 

“Oh, well hey Prince, what brings you here?” Mello asked

“Mello, so glad to see you, there’s an issue I’d like to talk about with you.” Prince said. Price was an elderly man, very kind and respected in the underground, he didn’t have any enemies, not sense his enemies went and started a feud that sent all of the underground spiraling into madness that is, so Mello was unsure of what the issue could be here.

Mello sat down, “What is it?”

“Well, you see, I asked Jacob Flint to give me some bullets if I helped him with trafficking some special bullets.” Mello perked up, “But after words some of his men were killed.”

“I was aware. If you’re asking who did that, I suspected Jess.” Mello said.

“No, Jess and Queeny were out of town that day and his other lackey, I can’t remember his name, was out slaughtering prostitutes again, but I don’t need you to investigate there, that’s none of my business.” Prince said, “It’s about the other murder.”

Mello tilted his head, “There was another?” He asked.

Prince looked shocked for a second, “Yes… there was another murder. A friend of mine who was supposed to be meeting with Vince was poisoned.”

“Poisoned? Who was he?” Mello tilted his head.

“He was a small time guy, did deals and acted as a stand in for big bosses. He was pretty unknown, he wasn’t even from LA. So he wouldn’t have any enemies here.” Prince said.

“So if I’m following this right, you and Vince were having a meeting but rather than come yourself you sent a man with no enemies here to deal for you but the day before this deal he was killed? And with poison no less? Can I have details about his death, where and when?” Mello asked.

“He was at his hotel, having a drink, someone must have poisoned it I assume.” Prince said. “And I was wondering if you could find out who did it.”

“Poison… that almost always means assassination… but by who…” Mello was thinking hard about this. “I wonder… maybe someone had a grudge against Vince? That’s likely… I’ll have to investigate more…” Mello stood up and grabbed his coat. “I’ll have it done by the gathering this Saturday.” 

“Thank you Mello… will your friend be coming too?” Prince asked.

“Who, Matt, yes of course, he loves your gatherings, Carmela gives him candy and food is his only reason to leave the house.” Mello laughed along with Prince. Then left to join Matt in the car. 

------------------------------

Mello and Matt were parked in a clearing overlooking LA. The place was secluded and they couldn’t be seen or heard. From their place Matt, being incredibly far sighted, could see Prince’s Vila a few miles away. Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

Matt put his goggles back on and turned to Mello, “Mello, why are we up here? I thought we were gonna have some fun… not sit around looking at some old man’s summer house.” Matt wined.

“Matt, what do Vince and Jacob Flint sell?” Mello asked.

“Vince sells explosives and Flint sells bullets. Why?”

“Why would Prince be buying from Vince, and at a time like this? We just had a feud, this is a time of peace? It doesn't make sense for him to need explosives like that, bullets I can understand, we’re all running low, but explosives? No, it doesn't.”

“Huh.” Matt leaned against the car and lit a cigarette, “That is weird, and thanks to our feud, Prince got rid of all his enemies, why bullets? And why would Flint be asking Prince to help him? He’s had no issue before getting his stuff out. There’s no reason for the delay unless…” Matt paused.

“What is it Matty?” 

“Why would he just… delay a shipment like that? Especially to AK? No one delays shipments to AK without a reason, and even if Flint has a habit of putting off shipping for a day or two, two weeks has to be a record. I think the delay was on purpose and was the work of Prince.” 

“What!?! That doesn't make any sense!” Mello said.

“No, hear me out, the main contenders in the last feud will be at this gathering, and in the last feud, Prince nearly got whipped out and we did nothing until his enemies got on our bad side. What if he’s planning on blowing the place up and this is his way of saying, “Guess you shouldn’t have been so selfish?”

Mello looked down for a bit. “What does that have to do with bullets?”

“We all saw your little display of power when you, in front of everyone, blew a man's head off with the Exorcist from 50 feet away. He’s afraid of power. That’s why he delayed the bullets.”

“But why would he… why tell me about that death then? That would tell me something is up?” 

“A distraction, if you’re working on a hard case then you won’t question any weird moves he makes. People here are more afraid of your mind than your gun. So what if he killed this guy to give you a tough case? Then killed some of Flint’s guys, to give you some stress. It adds up.”

“Yes, but It’s still shaky Matt,” Mello sighed “What’s today?

“Friday.” Matt said.

“We won’t be going to that gathering. Not until I get this straightened out.” Mello stood up and paced, talking out loud as he did, “His actions make no sense… why would he give me hints like that… why would he do anything… I wouldn’t have known any way… unless he thought… no what if he’s being sincere and I’m over thinking…

“Mello.” Matt said. Mello looked up, “Who’s his informant?” Matt asked.

“An Usaki Yakuza member, why?” Mello asked.

“All the Usaki kids went back to Japan for the week, remember? He doesn't have information, so he must have assumed you were aware of the murder because he doesn't know that our informant is also an Usaki. He was trying to throw you off by telling you the odd circumstances of and asking you to investigate the death of a man who was working an extremely shady job that he thought you were already suspicious of.”

“So he was trying to make me question a death and not his actions, but what he didn’t know, it that I didn’t know about the death or his actions at all.” Mello found himself marveling at Matt’s deductive ability. How he didn’t end up number one was beyond him.

“And I bet he caused the deaths of those other guys to cover up him trying to delay that shipment on purpose. Chase said it happened a few days ago right?” Matt said.

“But then why would he tell me Jess and his gang of serial killing dumb fucks left LA?”

“He does business in that part of town right? There’s a likelihood that he was trying to keep Jess and his gang's reputation and keep him on your good side.” Matt said.

Mello stood up. He needed to share he and Matt’s deductions with Ross. “Come on Matt, we’re heading back to base.”

--------------------------------------------

Mello stormed in, “ROSS! We made a discovery!”

Ross looked up at him, “What is it?”

“I think Prince is planning on killing us at his gathering.”

“What! Where did you go off thinking that?” Ross asked him.

Mello explained his thinking to Ross and the gang. By the end, Ross was pretty convinced, Mello was never wrong before after all. Mello left out the bit where Matt had come up with the theory. Which may sound rude, but to almost everyone, Matt is just an assistant that does Mello’s bidding and is very replaceable, and not a good portion of the skill and intelligence out of the two of them. It was a protective measure, making it look like Matt is just a replaceable accessory with no value so that no one would try to hurt him to get to Mello. And Matt was ok with that, he didn’t really care.

“So should I tell everyone else or…?” Ross asked.

“Sounds like the best course of action, either way, I’m not going.” Mello said.

“And if you’re wrong?”

“I’m never wrong.”

“Ok then Mello…”

Ross told Mello’s theory to everyone he could think of, and made sure the rumor spread like wildfire, even getting some confirmation from Vince saying that Prince had purchased a large amount of explosives. When the day came, what do you know, the dumb fucks that didn’t listen to Mello’s theory got blown to bits, he was right yet again. 

Mello and Matt sat up on their little spot, chilling on the hood of Matt’s car, shirtless, having a couple's moment and watching a Prince’s villa blow up. Matt was smoking a cigarette. Mello was laying up against Matt’s left side, laying on his chest with his hand feeling the muscles in Matt’s right arm. 

“Matty, why do some people never listen.”

Matt put his arm around Mello, “Don’t know Mels.” 

Mello sighed and kissed Matt on the forehead, “Another case solved by M&M…”

“Mello, can we have some fun?” Matt gave him puppy dog eyes this time.

“Fine, since you’re so fucking cute…” 

And so they fucked. The end. No moral. Nothing at all. Just Matt and Mello doing stuff and being cool detective boyfriends.

[bewareofchris]

Help! My plot is stalled!

It’s alright, friends.  We’ve all been there, sitting at a desk or laying in our beds, staring at the screen wondering what in the holy beef jerky has gone wrong because our ability to write has just come to a screeching halt.

We’re uninspired.

We’re unmoved.

We’re incapable of figuring out what happens next.

It’s time like this that our instinct is to grab a machete and start cutting through extraneous characters like a boiled steak knife through Jell-O.  We’re throwing romantic curve balls and car crashes at our protagonist so quickly they don’t have time to recover from one before they’re being traumatized by another.

Sometimes, we think, now is the time to reveal that our beloved Protagonist is actually an alien from another planet who survives by consuming the souls of lap dogs and his insatiable thirst for Pekineses is causing him great distress because the human mate he has chosen for himself has three such delicious morsels.

BUT, never fear my friends.  Here are some ideas to help you get out of that hellish valley of despair and back on track.

Take a break.  Have a snack.  Stretch your limbs.  Go for a walk.  Call a friend who listens to things and explain to them how your story is stupid and you hate it and it won’t move.  You don’t need to let your friend talk at all. Just keep complaining about your story until suddenly you realize what went wrong.

Daydream about what your character would do if you were to suddenly abandon him/her with six kids under the age of 5 at a busy theme park.  Or what he/she would do if they suddenly found themselves trying to talk two very angry kingly types out of starting a civil war because they disagree on which side of their toast to spread butter on.  Put your character in the MOST ridiculous scenario you could possibly imagine.  Make them rationalize their way out of it.  Don’t make it easy.  Six kids under the age of 5 when you’ve never dealt with children is basically hell.  Let your character suffer, and fail, improve and finally win (or at least survive).

Fantasize about beating your characters with a metal pipe.  Imagine their pleas for mercy as they try in vain to remind you that they are fictional constructs and this is not their fault.

Once you’ve cleaned your system of these violent urges toward non-real people, sit back down.  Re-read what you’ve written, if it’s still as bad as you thought it was, here are some actual bits of advice:

Regardless of what Rafiki once said about moving on and forgetting the past, the problem that you are presently experiencing is mostly caused by something that went wrong in the recent events of your story.  Take another look at the latest choices that your main or side characters made and ask yourself if maybe them making A DIFFERENT CHOICE might put your story back to rights.

Take another look at your character and his/her story so far.  Is your character excelling in every facet of his/her life?  Have they faced any obstacles that amounted to more than a mild inconvenience?  Are they generally well-liked?  Respected?  Do they have noticeable faults?  Are these faults presented in a way that allows other people to be annoyed by them?  Have these faults gotten in the character’s way?  If your main character is Too Good and Such Winning or Basically Useless and Always Failing then your story is imbalanced and it can’t move forward because you’re not allowing the protagonist to experience growth and change.

Are there relationships?  Friendships?  Family?  Rivalrys? ROMANCE?  You need relationships of at least 2 different types in a story.  Preferably more.  And they can’t all be the same kind with different names.  And they need to also be developing with your characters.  So Protag makes an unpopular choice with his family but his BFF is loving it and his Romantic Interest thinks it could be good for him.  You have so much material right there!

DO. NOT. MURDER. ANYONE.  Dismemberment is okay if you really want to have to take the time out of your story to focus on the emotional and physical effects that a traumatic event inflicts on your protagonist.

DO NOT MAKE YOUR ROMANTIC INTERESTS HATE EACH OTHER OVER SOMETHING STUPID.  Please.  Please don’t do this.  It’s really just not worth it.  If you make them so angry at one another they’re screaming death threats and then the next day they’re like: I guess we love one another again you cheapen the impact.  If this is a story about overcoming things and growing as people and forgiveness then yes, break them up and get them back together but don’t do it just to have an exciting screaming sequence.  Or do.  I mean, you do you.

Instead of tearing your couple apart, have them get together.  Have them spend a weekend doing silly, childish, amazing things.  Let them smooch, and cuddle, and eat candy together.  Let them waste money they don’t staying overnight in a fancy hotel.

Visit a Significant Character from your Protag’s past because they are in need of comfort and guidance.  Allow them to reminisce about the good old days, and whine about how they don’t feel like they’ll ever be that happy again.  Let your Significant Character hit your Protag with a rolled up newspaper.  STOP BEING A NINNY, PROTAG.  STOP IT IMMEDIATELY.

Give your Protag an unexpected promotion.  You were just a kid that cleaned stables, but we noticed that you’ve got a real way about you that suggests you’re WIZARD MATERIAL.  Build that Protag up, let him feel pride and joy and love.

(And then make the person that promoted him have questionable morals.  Make him vaguely untrustworthy.  Watch your starry-eyed protag battle against a shady man of questionable intentions to see who wins in the end!  But not with the fate of the whole world.  Like the fate of a small village at most.)

Give your Protag the single worst day of his entire life that does not involve physical altercations and/or death.  Maybe he/she pulled a muscle having athletic sex that morning, was distracted by the pain in the shower,got soap in their eyes, limped to the car to find it was out of gas, went to a busy gas station, got coffee that was too cold to enjoy, was late to work, had more work than usual, the pain meds never started working, left his lunch at home, couldn’t buy anything because they ran out of time, had to listen to the Obnoxious Co-Worker next to them complaining about Obnoxious Co Workers Obviously Useless Significant Other for an hour and a half, left work late, forgot about plans to meet up with a friend, got ignored by friend at meet up, comes home and collapses in a pile of self-pity and physical pain and has Significant Other rub their aching pulled muscle and listen to their complaints.

You could do a car wreck, or you could just ruin your Protag’s entire life by having the transmission die in the middle of traffic.

The point I’m trying to get across here is that you have to have a journey that is balanced with ups and downs.  If you’re only going up, or you’re only going down, or you’re not going anywhere at all but straight forward on a 300 mile car trip across a flat surface with no trees, there’s no story there.

You could shoot someone, or you could have your Protagonist do something that injures their relationship with their Best Friend and Confidante.  Then your Protag protests their innocence to the point that it’s obvious they are being Stupid now.  Let them roll around in undeserved pity.  Let nobody else agree with them, and still they refuse to acknowledge they are stupid.  And then let them FINALLY, sort of, a little, admit they were wrong and instead of them offering a half-assed apology and moving on like it never happened, make them work to repair the damage they inflicted.  

Put your Protag in a position where they have to defend a friend/family member or romantic interest in a non-physical way.  Susan from Biology was telling Quentin and Theodore that Protag’s BFF eats his own snot.  And Protag is like OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO GO FIND SUSAN AND SCREAM A STRONGLY WORDED LETTER AT HER.  (or start vicious rumors about her behind her back, and take utterly glee at her humiliation, and then finally think: did I go to far?  I don’t think I went too far.)

DO. NOT. GET. SOMEONE. PREGNANT.  Do you knows what happens when someone’s pregnant?  They end up with a baby.  (Or a miscarriage.)  That pregnancy cannot be handwaved away.  If you’re not here to write about the amazing journey from sex to birth and lifetime of parenting that follows, you are not here to get someone knocked up for the drama.

Sure, let your Protag develop a desperate attraction to someone’s that not the Primary Love Interest but if the Primary Love Interest and Protag already have sexual and romantic tension building between them, maybe let the audience know that this is one of those things where you’re lonely and you want companionship and it’s not really that fair to Someone You Just Met and Now Want to Have Sex With.  Let Primary Love Interest struggle to be supportive.  or let Protag and Primarily Love Interest be mean-spirited little shits and mock the poor Someone You Just Met.

DO. NOT. MURDER. AN. ENTIRE. VILLAGE.  Did a spell go bad?  Did a curse escape?  Did your magical being accidentally create a sixteen foot tall metal horse with a thirst for squirrel hearts?  Remember that wholesale murdering of innocent side characters nobody cares about does effectively nothing for your story.  Don’t kill the entire village.  Let your character freak out because he/she misplaced a curse and ANYONE COULD HAVE IT.  Let them ransack the village developing a reputation as a mad man to find it.  Let him work furiously to develop a cure to the curse and refuse to rest until everyone’s been inoculated against said Curse, and then idk, he finds it on the floor under his work station.  Or, let him realize a curse is missing and he just kind of says nothing while he watches the village to see how effective it is.

SIDE QUESTS, so here me out.  This works best for longer stories and serial type works of fiction, but if your character has only one goal and never any other goals or distractions or purposes or interests you are seriously shooting yourself in the foot.  Don’t focus all your energy on Protag Loves Love Interest.  Protag also has Family Drama.  (Did you hear that Bobert is trying to buy a fucking boat?  A boat!  Why does he need a boat!  He can’t swim.  He’s going to die.  A boat.  A god damn boat.)  Protag has ambitions at work that are being undercut by Evil Boss.  (And anyway, Worst Boss Ever, he just comes over and drops this massive work load on my desk and he smiles at me because the Main Boss is coming tomorrow and my desk will be the only one covered in unfinished work.  What choice do I have?  I can’t quit, I need this promotion, so I stick to it.  I stay late, I work as hard as I can and...)

I know it’s not for everyone but Sex.  Unless your characters are Too Young to have a developed sexuality, that sexuality needs to be in your story.  I mean, if your entire story takes place and Grandma’s funeral, then you probably can skip this one.  But if your story takes place over any length of time, sex and sex-adjacent things need to be brought up.  They don’t need to be graphic.  They don’t need to be gross.  It can be a kiss, or the yearning for a kiss.  It can be a meaningful, flirtatious touch.  It can be the idea of a flirtatious touch.  There can be complaints of a need for flirtatious touches.  To each their own comfort level, but some sense of sexuality and how that is a Driving Urge in your character is also good.

Introduce a Rival.  Go ahead.  Let your uncontested King of Bowling protag meet a New Challenger.  Send them spiral with fear that they may not be top dog anymore.

Force your Protag and Antagonist to form a momentary truce.  Let them come to some understanding of the other that makes their future interactions more difficult.  

Strike your Protag with a Great Unfairness.  They didn’t get the promotion.  They couldn’t pay the bills.  They weren’t selected to be court jester.  They didn’t get to the store on time.  Someone else got to the top of the summit before them and now they’re basically trash to history.

Randomly have your supposed Antagonist turn out to Actually a Decent Guy that you’ve been blaming for all the wrongs in the world because it was convenient and really the actual antagonist can’t be defeated because he/she overpowers you somehow.  But with Actually a Decent Guy and his Surprisingly Nice Friends and you and your friends, you stand a chance.

Push your protagonist into a mud puddle.  Just for shits and giggles, make it so there’s not a dead body in there with him.  Or put one in if you want.  Nothing says ‘happy fun times at plot-stalled high’ like a decomposing corpse where one shouldn’t be.

Break your Protagonists heart, and let there be people that love them.  

Have fun, take your time, embrace the mundane and ridiculous aspects of life.  ALWAYS give your character flaws, and make them aware of them, and let them grow.  That’s the story.  All the other nonsense, the car wrecks and gunshots, and serial killers doesn’t matter in the end.  The reader is looking for Relationships That Matter and Characters that Grow.  Characters that stink of humanity, that reflect something about human beings the reader has met (or the reader themselves).  They want to connect, they want to love your character and they can’t do that if your character is Perfect.  Nobody’s perfect.  Stories stagnate when they can’t grow.  Let your story grow.  Let your characters grow.

[lastsonlost]

The facts are largely undisputed: Two college students on summer break – he’s a sophomore; she, a freshman – make a date. It’s Memorial Day weekend, 2014, and their intentions are explicit. They meet and have sex – consensual, enthusiastic – when a passerby interrupts them.

A few hours later, still together, the male student attempts to resume the sexual encounter. He reaches under her shirt to touch her breast. 

He stops immediately when she asks him to. They agree about these facts.

Yet this “one-time, non-consensual touching,” as university documents summarize it, is the crux of a startling Michigan State University sexual misconduct case. It has generated a thick stack of legal documents, months of MSU administrator time, and tens of thousands of dollars in legal bills since the female student, known here as Melanie, formally complained on Sept. 25, 2015 – almost 16 months after the incident.

More importantly, though, the case – which has traveled through an internal appeals process, exhausting the now-22-year-old man’s hope for reversal of sanctions at the university level – challenges what some might see as common-sense assumptions about sex and dating behavior. 

MSU’s findings draw sharply etched lines into the blurry world of dating intimacy and reveal the power of university administrators to mark a student as a SEXUAL OFFENDER  for touching a lover’s breast after sex, miles from campus, without any accusations of violence, intimidation or stalking behavior.

Deborah Gordon, the Bloomfield Hills lawyer representing the man, says she intends to file a federal lawsuit against the university. She calls the case “beyond ridiculous.”

The woman who brought the case to Michigan State authorities – intelligent, well-spoken, well-schooled in feminist theory – thinks otherwise: “I feel very secure in the fact that he did sexually assault me; he did cross a line. He did know what he was doing, even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it.”

The male MSU student, whose name is redacted from official documents and changed here to Nathan, has not been charged with or convicted of a crime by local police authorities.

But he has been formally disciplined for sexual harassment by MSU, under federal Title IX anti-discrimination law – a ruling that he and his family say they fear will haunt him for life, and that his lawyer says has already cost him at least one career opportunity.

Gordon, the lawyer, has famously made her career as a civil rights lawyer, specializing in employment law. At 65, steely-eyed and serious, she has risen to Super Lawyer status in a male-dominated profession, winning a reputation as a fierce advocate for her clients. Fearless, she once took on the case of a fired Bloomfield Hills district court secretary, placing the court’s judges on the stand – and convincing a federal jury that her client, rather than the chief judge, was telling the truth. That she’s recently become an advocate for young men accused of sexually assaultive behavior at the University of Michigan and Michigan State surprises even her. But this case?

“This is absurd. It’s Alice down the rabbit hole,” she told me at a conference table in her spacious Bloomfield Hills office suite. “It’s a story that needs some attention from the other side.”

His first intimate experience ended with him being abused, falsely accused and his life almost destroyed. He is probably never going to forget this for as long as he lives.

Despite a favorable result, the victor in this case (formerly, Melanie) says he’s discouraged by the process, which he found stressful, overly long, and often overwhelming emotionally. He remains angry that the nude photo he’d sent Nathan before their encounter became part of the official record, emailed to lawyers and staff investigators. Resentful of Nathan’s family’s affluence, and ability to hire an attorney, he remains disturbed that Nathan has not demonstrated remorse. Given what he knows about the sexual misconduct complaint process, would he do it again?

He shakes his head, slowly. “No,” he says. “If I could go back in time, I would not say anything. It’s so sad for me because the process was so traumatic. It was absolutely not worth it.”

< “I'm not a fan of the movement by THIS TYPE OF BULLSHIT  is giving them ammo.”

For the source ---------------------------- --- For the wall text

Addressing campus assault 

 In the middle of a national conversation about rape culture on college campuses, with statistics demonstrating that women are being forced into sex and their perpetrators rarely challenged, the story of Nathan and Melanie is a provocative one; it illustrates how university investigations into sexual behavior can reverberate in unexpected, and painful, ways, potentially scarring both partners.

MSU has endured its share of negative publicity about the prevalance of sexual assault on campus: Only four days before Melanie complained to authorities, MLive.com reported on an Association of American Universities study that found one-in-four female undergraduate students at Michigan State said they had been “sexually assaulted” – language used to describe non-consensual penetration or sexual touching involving force or incapacitation.

The emergence of sexual violence as a searing issue on college campuses can be traced to September 2011, when the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights wrote to college administrators nationwide, asking for tougher, more timely enforcement of sexual assault cases.

The so-called “Dear Colleague” letter – which urged schools to lower the standard of proof for sexual assault and misconduct — has been credited with protecting female students and blamed for inciting institutional panic and over-prosecution of male students.

Many schools, including MSU and the University of Michigan, complied with the letter’s aim, lowering the standard of proof required to find wrongdoing and beefing up their internal investigation process for such incidents. Instead of requiring a finding of “beyond a reasonable doubt” against the accused, MSU and many other schools now use the lower “preponderance-of-evidence” standard used in civil court cases. The lower standard has helped empower victims to come forward, but some experts see universities stacking the deck against the accused.

To Gordon, the case involving Melanie and Nathan is a classic example of overcorrection; at the least, it provides a window into a changing culture of sexual conduct enforcement on campus.

Let’s agree that campus sexual assault is a serious problem — and that the combination of campus freedom, access to alcohol, and an absence of clarity about the rules of sexual behavior and the consequences for breaking them helped create a murky and dangerous sexual climate on campuses — one that enabled sexual misconduct and created hurdles for victims. The universality of this situation became so obvious in the last few years that Michigan’s cautious first lady, Sue Snyder, took up sexual assault prevention as her own cause.

The new regulations at MSU have statistically improved reporting rates and findings that students have violated the standards. Over the last two years, MSU has invested extraordinary resources in revamping procedures for investigating sexual misconduct. Beyond the legal proof required, MSU has visibly heightened its commitment to making the campus a safe and respectful place. For example, all first year students are now required to attend a two-hour workshop designed to educate students about the rules for sexual consent, and sexual assault prevention. Those rules have become more detailed and explicit.

Gordon, whose two adult daughters graduated from the University of Michigan within the last five years, views herself as a feminist. But the situation has gotten out of hand, she says. Her practice is humming with similar cases from other Michigan universities. As a lawyer, she sees institutions laying waste to due process: “The net result is that the university has thrown out normal procedures for finding out the truth,” she says.

Melanie’s struggle to come to terms with her feelings and Nathan’s behavior is sincere and thought out: In her view, he violated the letter and spirit of the sexual harassment policy and needs to be held accountable for violating her trust.

“I want him to be honest with himself about his character and his beliefs and whether his actions really reflect the beliefs he espouses,” Melanie says. “I didn’t see him reflecting on it.”

An unwanted touch

Timing may not be everything but, in the case of Melanie and Nathan, it is likely something. On September 1, 2015, Michigan State announced an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, promising to “promptly and equitably respond to all incidents of sexual and gender based harassment, assault and violence (of) which the University has notice.” Sweeping in its ambition, the resolution called for the university to end harassment, assault and violence, and eliminate “any” hostile environment. Twenty-five days later — four days after the MLive article and 16 months after the incident — Melanie walked into a residence hall advisor’s office and said she had been assaulted.

The facts, as described here, are based on MSU documents, a transcript of Nathan’s interview with the MSU investigator in the case, a 90-minute in-person interview with Melanie, interviews with Deborah Gordon and with Nathan’s mother.

It was May 31, 2014, a pleasant spring evening when Nathan and Melanie (their real names are redacted in all MSU documents and changed here) “met with the plan to have sex,” as Melanie explained during a recent interview in a Williamston restaurant. School was out, but the couple – who had seen each other romantically, on and off, for most of the school year – were geographically separated.

They first met in 2013 through a campus group called Compass. Ironically, the group’s mission was to help men create a safer and more respectful campus, to support women students. The son of a Birmingham psychologist and psychiatrist, political progressives, Nathan saw himself as a political being, a person trying to do good in the world.

“He is a humanitarian. He’s the sensitive one. He’s the kind of guy you want dating your daughter. That’s the kind of person he is,” his mother, soft-spoken and weary-looking, told me. “You know, he conducted training in sexual harassment…” He was so proud of his involvement in Compass that he invited his mother to attend a couple of meetings with him.

When Nathan and Melanie began their sexual relationship in October, 2013, Nathan was a self-described virgin. Melanie, a year younger, found him charismatic, high-energy, appealing; it was she who initiated sex. But their relationship, “emotionally close” at first, became more distant and problematic by the time MSU classes ended that spring in 2014. She pushed for more closeness; he declined to call her his “girlfriend.” And he complained to friends that she belittled him, “bullied” him, as the investigator’s report noted.

Even so, separated geographically, they eagerly planned for their Memorial Day weekend encounter. She texted a nude photo of herself, and a succinct description of her mood: “Feeling frisky.” They bantered, by text, back and forth, agreeing to meet in Canton, where she was living with her parents for the summer. Their tryst took place, by necessity, in his car. When a stranger banged on the car window, Melanie was embarrassed and upset.

She cried, and said she had a flashback to an earlier, abusive relationship in high school. Nathan tried to comfort her, but she described her tearful reaction as distressed, “extremely upset.” Later, they met a few of her friends for dinner in Plymouth and, after that, walked along the train tracks for an hour or longer, as he listened, while she talked. He recalls listening sympathetically. She remembers him dismissing how upset she was, and called his reaction “invalidating.”

Eventually, they sat down, his arm around her. A few hours earlier, they had been interrupted trying to have sex in a car. She says she told him she didn’t want to have sex again that night. This time, he reached beneath her shirt and bra, in what he later described as “a momentary touching of the breast,” and she characterized in a text the next day as “a groping.”

“I told you I don’t want to do this anymore,” she recalled saying to him. “And he did immediately stop.” At no time, she said, was he violent or threatening. At no time in their relationship was he ever physically violent or threatening. She dismisses the first official account of the incident — which stated that Nathan “pushed (Melanie) down and pulled up (her) shirt” offered by the Michigan State University investigator — as an exaggeration. “He never pushed me down,” Melanie said.

In his mind, the transgression, on an evening when they’d engaged in intercourse, was redeemed by his immediate response when she asked him to stop.

She was wounded: In her mind, she’d been sharing deep feelings about being abused by men, thinking he was being supportive. Instead, she experienced his touching as an act of betrayal.

According to Melanie, Nathan knew the campus rules of sexual conduct required him to seek voluntary, “unambiguous and willful” consent to touch her sexually, even if she had given sexual consent in the past, such as when they had sex hours earlier.

[Actually, that isn’t quite accurate. As it happens, this more explicit definition of consent wasn’t in effect on that evening along the railroad tracks. MSU did not adopt the policy until 2015, with similar provisions implemented at the University of Michigan and many other universities.]

Nathan’s reliance on a perceived cue rather than explicit assent was, to Melanie, an admission of sexual assault. (She later warned other students in her poetry class to beware of him, telling a circle of students that he had “sexually assaulted” her. At least one of them inferred that Nathan had raped her.)

The next day, she texted him, angrily, saying she had made it clear she believed he had disregarded her feelings and words. “You even went to lay me down and groped me after I’d told you I didn’t want to do anything more,” she texted. He denied, in MSU documents, that she’d told him she wanted no further sexual activity.

In the fall of 2014, a few months after the May 31, 2014 incident and a full year before she reported it, she and Nathan took the same MSU residential college course – Science Fiction and Bioethics. Although it was uncomfortable for them, and they never spoke to each other, they both completed the course.

Change, and an accusation

More than two years after the incident, even Melanie’s gender has changed. When 16 months later she reported what happened on the train tracks, Melanie had been taking male hormones for 12 weeks; she had legally changed her name, adopting a male identity. Her voice dropped; she shaved her facial hair. The woman referred to in this account as Melanie now hopes to surgically alter her gender in the future, and lives and dresses as a man.

Back in 2014, she had also been hospitalized after a suicide attempt, and taken a semester-long medical leave to pursue therapy. While her mental fragility, hormone treatment and gender change appear to have played no role in the administration’s decision-making process, the transitioning did make a difference to Melanie.

Had taking male hormones changed Melanie’s outlook on the situation, the world?

“The world, definitely,” says the senior, who is majoring in art history and humanities at MSU. “I suppose transitioning was one of the driving elements for why I reported, because I felt uncomfortable using the men’s restrooms in my residential college, for fear that I would encounter him.”

The case was made more complicated when, in late 2014, MSU overhauled its policy on relationship violence and sexual misconduct. Because Jayne Schuiteman, the MSU investigator, had mistakenly cited the wrong date of the incident, Nathan was essentially tried twice: Once under the new policy; later, after his legal appeal, under the sexual harassment policy that was in place at the time of the incident.

In her final investigative report this past fall, Schuiteman, who is also a feminist scholar and gender studies professor, described the consensus factual account. “The evidence indicates [Nathan] made physical contact with an intimate part of the Claimant’s body – her breast,” the report reads, explaining the touch as “sufficiently severe to constitute sexual harassment.”

Nathan had acted without consent, unreasonably relying on “cues” that weren’t explicit, the report concluded. After months of costly appeals, his final sanction? He was found to have violated the university’s sexual harassment policy and banned from contact with a person he hadn’t spoken to in more than two years.

Despite a designated 60-day timeline for the whole process, Denise Maybank, MSU vice president for student affairs and services, didn’t issue her final ruling until Oct. 21, 2016, shortly after the man identified here as Melanie complained to another administration official about the slow process and suggested he might pursue another complaint, this time against the university.

Buoyed by MSU’s decision, he also considered seeking a personal protection order against Nathan in state court – even though the two hadn’t spoken or crossed paths in a year. He said he remains fearful of what might happen if they were to meet. He has gone through therapy and believes that Nathan should, too.

Ultimately, MSU modified the sanctions against Nathan, ending his probation term retroactively to coincide with his May 7, 2016 graduation. A no-contact order from MSU remains in effect, along with a finding that Nathan violated MSU’s policy on sexual conduct.

“It’s like being on the state sex registry because it doesn’t go away. It’s a stigma that will continue to haunt him and already has,” says Gordon, Nathan’s lawyer. “If a potential employer asks him if he’s faced discipline in college, what’s he going to say?”

The MSU investigator, Jayne Schuiteman, declined to be interviewed. Ande Durojaiye, director of the Office of Institutional Equity, did not return calls from Bridge.

Nathan’s mother, a clinical psychologist, says Nathan has not dated since the incident. “He’s anxious, depressed. He’s lost his self-confidence,” she says.

Despite a favorable result, the victor in this case (formerly, Melanie) says he’s discouraged by the process, which he found stressful, overly long, and often overwhelming emotionally. He remains angry that the nude photo he’d sent Nathan before their encounter became part of the official record, emailed to lawyers and staff investigators. Resentful of Nathan’s family’s affluence, and ability to hire an attorney, he remains disturbed that Nathan has not demonstrated remorse. Given what he knows about the sexual misconduct complaint process, would he do it again?

He shakes his head, slowly. “No,” he says. “If I could go back in time, I would not say anything. It’s so sad for me because the process was so traumatic. It was absolutely not worth it.”