#corroboration

Two women have now publicly corroborated E. Jean Carroll's allegations of sexual assault by President Trump. Carroll, a writer and magazine columnist, alleges that Trump assaulted her in a New York department store in the mid-1990s.

NPR's Elizabeth Blair has talked to one of the women corroborating Carroll's allegation. A note of caution for our listeners - this story includes an explicit description of assault.

Rollercoaster is a term that JR used also, I think. It’s not about content of the show, but about narrative structure. It is literally how I picture storylines in my head. When I “understand” how a story is put together, I see shapes in my head like rollercoaster tracks. Like, I see Bellarke as the spine of the story, a literal track running through the spreading stories. It is a double helix with the two characters spiraling around each other as they hold up the rest of the story.

So how can we look at “Corroboration.”

The question was about BELLARKE in season 6, so the most likely interpretation is not about shipping at all, but that Bellarke serves as corroboration for EACH OTHER.

They are both looking to be the good guys.

They will reinforce each other. 

SHould we do this? 

Yes we should do this?

Is this the right thing to do?

Yes it’s the right thing to do.

This also fits JR saying that they were together and aligned in the same direction. Also fits the what I said above, about the backbone of the story. They reinforce each other to give more strength.

That is an interpretation WITHIN THE NARRATIVE. Their relationship is about being on the same side, together, partners, a team. A family. You could take the further if you want to think about how it could be in regards to romance. Aka Marriage. Emotional support. A little bit of s5′s “oh you’re so awesome you think with your head now,” “you’re so awesome you’re a mama bear.” 

“Heart and the head,”  “heart and the head,” is corroboration.

Who are they to each other? Corroboration. Who’s going to come between them? Nobody.

Now, we don’t know if that’s the way that Eliza meant her statement, or only meant it that way. Or even if my interpretation is correct. It’s an interpretation, you can look at the same evidence with many different interpretations and it can be hard to know which is right (there can be a right and wrong interpretation) until you get more information, which we don’t have a lot of yet, since it’s about something we haven’t seen yet. But you’ll notice me trying to hold up this statement to other statements and to things that happen in canon. Because that’s how you look at evidence through the lens of different ideas and theories. Where is corroboration in Bellarke? The heart and the head/the heart and the head. They are literally corroborating each other with a self identity and intention. 

When i first heard that quote, what I did was relate it to MYSELF. As a bellarke shipper. Corroborotaion of our bellarke theories!!! Corroboration. Now we don’t know if that was her intent. And it’s a bit self centered to think the answer about Eliza’s job/character/story is about ME. Or even about the fan who asked her the question. BUT as it is a fan event, and it is a fan asking the question about bellarke, it IS possibly that “Corroboration” is in reference to bellarke as a ship and bellarke fans being corroborated in season 6. 

That Clarke and Bellamy corroborating each other in season 6 might very well corroborate our theories on bellarke is actually a nice little dovetail, that makes the word actually have more resonance.

WASHINGTON – The attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford have sworn and signed declarations from four people who corroborate her claims of sexual assault by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

In documents sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee and obtained by USA TODAY, Ford’s attorneys present declarations from Ford’s husband, Russell, and three friends who support the California college professor’s accusation that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her and attempted to pull off her clothes while both were high school students in 1982.

The declarations will be used by Ford’s attorneys during a committee hearing on Thursday that could determine the fate of Kavanaugh’s embattled nomination. He also faces a second accusation of sexual assault from Deborah Ramirez, who claims Kavanaugh exposed himself and pushed his genitals into her face at a drunken party during the 1983-84 academic year at Yale University.

Kavanaugh has flatly denied all accusations, including during a national television interview on Fox News Monday night.

In her declaration, Adela Gildo-Mazzon said Ford told her about the alleged assault during a June 2013 meal at a restaurant in Mountain View, California, and contacted Ford’s attorneys on Sept. 16 to tell them Ford had confided in her five years ago.

“During our meal, Christine was visibly upset, so I asked her what was going on,” Gildo-Mazzon said in her declaration. “Christine told me she had been having a hard day because she was thinking about an assault she experienced when she was much younger. She said she had been almost raped by someone who was now a federal judge. She told me she had been trapped in a room with two drunken guys, and that she had escaped, ran away and hid.”

According to her declaration, Gildo-Mazzon has known Ford for more than 10 years and considers her “a good friend.”

Related: Brett Kavanaugh's 1982 calendar being used as evidence against sexual assault allegations

More: Kavanaugh allegations: ‘What boy hasn’t done this in high school?’ Most haven’t, experts say.

In another declaration, Keith Koegler said Ford revealed the alleged assault to him in 2016, when the two parents were watching their children play in a public place and discussing the “light” sentencing of Stanford University student Brock Turner.

“Christine expressed anger at Mr. Turner’s lenient sentence, stating that she was particularly bothered by it because she was assaulted in high school by a man who was now a federal judge in Washington, D.C.,” Koegler said.

“Christine did not mention the assault to me again until June 29, 2018, two days after Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation from the Supreme Court of the United States,” he said.

On that day, Koegler said Ford revealed to him in an email that the person who had assaulted her in high school was President Donald Trump’s “favorite for SCOTUS.”

In his response email, Koegler wrote, “I remember you telling me about him, but I don’t remember his name. Do you mind telling me so I can read about him?”

Ford’s emailed response: “Brett Kavanaugh.”

In his declaration, Koegler said he met the Fords while coaching their son’s baseball team more than five years ago.

In another declaration, Rebecca White, a neighbor and friend of more than six years, said Ford revealed the alleged assault against her in 2017.

“I was walking my dog and Christine was outside of her house,” White said. “I stopped to speak with her, and she told me she had read a recent social media post I had written about my own experience with sexual assault.

“She then told me that when she was a young teen, she had been sexually assaulted by an older teen,” White continued. “I remember her saying that her assailant was now a federal judge.”

In his declaration, Ford’s husband said he learned of his wife’s experience with sexual assault “around the time we got married” but that she didn’t share details until a couple’s therapy session in 2012.

“I remember her saying that her attacker’s name was Brett Kavanaugh, that he was a successful lawyer who had grown up in Christine’s home town, and that he was well-known in the Washington D.C. community,” Russell Ford said.

He said his wife was “afraid” Trump would nominate Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court and was “very conflicted” about whether she should come forward with her story.

“However, in the end she believed her civic duty required her to speak out,” Russell Ford said. “In our 16 years of marriage I have always known Christine to be truthful person of great integrity. I am proud of her for her bravery and courage.”

Above all else, it’s because it’s an offensive assault on reason. This kind of deranged discourse is an attack on basic journalistic integrity, on any minimal obligation to ensure that one’s claims are based in evidence rather than desire, fantasy, and herd-enforced delusions. And it’s emanating from the most established and mainstream precincts of U.S. political and media elites, who have processed the severe disorientation and loss of position they feel from Trump’s shock election not by doing the work to patiently formulate cogent, effective strategies against him, but rather by desperately latching onto online “dot-connecting” charlatans and spewing the most unhinged Birther-level conspiracies that require a complete abandonment of basic principles of rationality and skepticism.