An Exchange Between Editors Editing

So my good friend (and fellow editor at Fafnir) Laura E. Goodin agreed to look over an article I was currently laying out for publication in JTR, and she took exception to the following sentence:
"Since Strauss is best known for his thesis on esoteric writing, it cannot avoid mention."

This was her marginalia response: "[ the phrase] 'cannot avoid' assumes agency on the part of the thesis, which is a neat trick." That comment led to the following email exchange, formatted for clarity.

DENNIS: Wait, I'm going through your comments, and ARE YOU SAYING THAT MY THESIS CAN'T ASSUME AGENCY? I think you just made my poor widdle thesis start to tear up a little.

LAURA: Tell your thesis to grow a pair of ovaries and toughen up.
LAURA: Really, you coddle them, Dennis. You do.
LAURA: Also, I just spotted a typo in one of my comments ("implicity"). Oh, the mortification; oh, the irony.

DENNIS: I'm just saying, someday maybe you'll turn around, and my thesis will be right behind you.

LAURA: Also also, it's Strauss's thesis to which agency has been (in my scholarly opinion, inaccurately) imputed, not yours. I'm happy to accept in the absence of evidence to the contrary that your own various theses are as lively as little lambs.

DENNIS: Good! I'll let my theses know that they're tougher nuts to crack than Strauss's theses. It's a lie, of course, but the little darlings don't need to know that.

And that, boys and girls, is how professional editors interact in their spare time.

-------------------------------------------------
Later, after coming across another of Laura's corrections on my manuscript, I posted the following on facebook (tagging Laura):
I just fiercely googled "apostrophe in multiple plural possession" to try to win a grammar showdown. For example, I think it should be only one apostrophe: for example, "America and Canada's timber". This is in contrast to my opponent, who claims, crazily, that it should be "America's and Canada's timber."

However, I did not inform my opponent, Laura E. Goodin , about this fierce googling grammar showdown, just in case I lost.

I lost. *weeps*
LAURA'S RESPONSE: (Note: if it's two authors for one work – e.g., "Wise and Goodin's (2020) assertion" – THEN there's only one apostrophe.)

DENNIS: yeah, that's what my google sources -- without a trace of pity, mind you -- just told me. And for a second I tried pretending that's what I meant, but I . . . just . . . couldn't. *weeps again*

LAURA: there, there.

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