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OTW reprimands & punishes volunteer of color for speaking out against racist practices

If you at all care about the working conditions of OTW volunteers, then you must be made aware of what OTW just did to one of their volunteers of color.

You can view the entire piece here - which I highly encourage you to - as it's the letter sent to volunteer, Dhobi Ki Kutti, as apart of the first steps of Constructive Corrective Action Procedure (CCAP). In effect, it is OTW punishing Kutti for speaking out against the racist practices of OTW towards their own volunteers.

dhobikikutti | Copy of CCAP sent to me by OTW Chairs, and My Response to It
dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org

Please read the full letter if you can for the full context. I'll post a few excerpts from the letter + Kutti's response. It should go without saying, but what OTW has sent to Kutti is deeply inappropriate given that Kutti has been speaking out against the racist treatment of their volunteers of color. To reprimand and punish Kutti for speaking out against this is extremely telling of where OTW stands in regards to anti-racist practices, and have shown that they are willing to maintain a space that is hostile towards their volunteers of color for the sake of their white volunteers' and board members' comfort.

For the letter itself, key highlights include:

-Accusing Kutti of publishing confidential internal documents:

Several volunteers have also reached out to us with concerns that you have shared the contents of internal communications publicly in violation of the Wrangling Communication Policy.
As you agreed when joining the Tag Wrangling team,  [Link to How_to_talk_about_wrangling_in_public redacted] specifically prohibits the posting of internal communications externally which have not been made available to the public.
"Broad topic discussion is acceptable, but giving specific details or copy/pasting quotes from mailing list e-mails or Slack rooms to public spaces is not. Doing so may be subject to CCAP or immediate dismissal.”
This includes quoting internal conversations or emails directly. It seems that you've been in violation of this policy a number of times over the last month or so in posts where you have made a point of referencing and posting internal communications or quoting conversations externally. The specific incident cited to us in several reports is in regards to the comment you made on this post: https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otws-commitment-to-safety-responding-to-recent-concerns-about-ao3/
The concerns that have been relayed to us include the way that particular violation of policy has impacted the volunteers' well-being. Your willingness to share internal details publicly has made them feel disconcerted and unsafe. Some have also said that they feel their privacy has been invaded.

-Made volunteers "uncomfortable" for discussing "tense topics" (it's clear that they mean racism)

Additionally, while this is not a policy violation, a number of volunteers have informed us they feel that the way you have repeatedly brought up tense discussions in public rooms has made the work environment unpleasant. While we agree that the issues you’ve highlighted are important, many are things that can’t be addressed quickly, and will require a lot of time and effort from the org. We don’t want you to feel that conversations about change are unwelcome, but we would ask that you be more understanding of the fact that not everyone wants to participate in them. We also want you to understand that the changes you’re asking for require an immense amount of work from volunteers who already have an existing workload.
All in all, these aspects of your behavior of late have generally made other volunteers feel unsafe, stressed, and uncomfortable. It has also made Slack a considerably less pleasant environment for those who have reached out to us, making it more difficult for your fellow volunteers to communicate on the platform, and impacting both their mental well-being and their desire to actively volunteer with the OTW while it continues.

-Actions against Kutti:

Actions:

- Due to an abundance of caution, cease linking to social media posts which may, however unintentionally, link the fannish and real identities of volunteers within the OTW together.
- Do not quote or cut and paste sections of documents, email communications, or internal conversations into external conversations or public forums.
- Do not summarize internal communications for external spaces. Internal communications are not, and should not be, considered material that can be shared elsewhere (even in summary form) if they have not been released publicly by the OTW. The fact that this is something you have been doing consistently over the past month or so is a large part of what is contributing to some of your fellow volunteers feeling unsafe.
- If you wish to ask a question about a particular social media post or comment on a post, and feel it is necessary to link the post or comment for reference, email committee chairs rather than posting in the Slack public rooms.
- Be more cautious about how you link things, and consider whether links to other posts are really necessary when asking your questions.
You will not be welcome to continue to volunteer with the tag wrangling committee if you cannot be considerate and respectful of the needs of your fellow volunteers.
We hope you will take the concerns of your fellow volunteers seriously and adjust your approach going forward to take those concerns and their well-being into account. We also hope you will strive to be respectful of your fellow volunteers’ time and boundaries.

Kutti's response:

-Permission to repost and quote:

I am waiving my right to confidentiality and posting the entirety of the CCAP text below this, so that other volunteers can decide for themselves whether your actions are warranted or not. I also give permission for anyone to share this text and my response to it here, along with my org handle, in any public internet location they wish to disseminate it to.

-Response to the actions taken against them:

For my part, I had not expected the organisation would provide me such a blatant example of racist retaliation, but clearly, I had not set the bar low enough.
I reject the authority of white people in positions of structural power in this organisation to punish me—a volunteer of colour trying to hold you accountable for your structural racism—by intimidating me and placing restrictions regarding my participation in OTW communication channels.

-Regarding the accusations of breaking the confidentiality policy:

I reject a cultist confidentiality policy that denies volunteers any opportunity to provide citations to back up claims of abusive organisational practises. The only quotes I have publicly posted are from official statements made by the Board and Chairs to all volunteers, and I shared them in response to a post where the official organisation statement was denying an accusation of insufficiently protecting its volunteer base. As a member of said volunteer base, I have the right to provide proof of my own experience.
You have accused me of violating the confidentiality policy a number of times, without providing any other citations. Because I have been entirely focussed on demanding accountability within the organisation, it is very easy for me to enumerate any public comments I have made (copies of which I have recorded here: https://dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org/). If you consider me citing my own words, voiced in internal channels, to be violating my own confidentiality then... you have overstepped, because I gave myself permission to ‘violate’ my own privacy.

-Regarding OTW referring to Kutti's discussions of racism as a "threat" to volunteers:

I reject your framing of my actions as a threat to individual volunteers. Anyone who will look at the history of my comments will understand immediately where the false accusation of me ‘outing’ a volunteer comes from, and can also find the evidence of the volunteer themselves linking the identity in question. I can say much more about the racialised double standards that this accusation is a part of, but it is obvious that you don’t actually think I outed anyone.
Because, as the CCAP makes a point to reiterate, this is cumulative action being taken for everything I have said over the past month. That my comments have made the atmosphere ‘tense’ and ‘unpleasant’. That I have made multiple volunteers feel ‘stressed,’‘disconcerted and unsafe’, to the extent that I have affected their mental well-being. I am not ‘considerate and respectful’ enough to be welcome as a volunteer.

-Regarding Kutti's actions going forward:

I will make no statement of victim impact regarding what my experience as a hypervisible person of colour speaking out against racism in this organisation has been, because I know that you do not care. For the record, I have filed no complaint against any individual volunteer because my focus has always been calling out the institutional patterns of racialised inequity and hostility.
I will continue to document this organisation’s racism till you suspend me, and afterwards. I will always be open to hearing from current and former volunteers of colour, and I will continue to maintain the confidences of people who trusted me.

-Important final words:

The Organisation for Transformative Works has been weaponising its incompetence since its inception to argue that it is not racist, merely hapless. This CCAP is evidence that despite all the issues that plague the official machinery— when it feels a sense of urgency and desperation to lash out at someone, it is, in fact, right up there with the best of liberal white institutions at performing racism masked in policing.

Again: please see the full letter & response.

dhobikikutti | Copy of CCAP sent to me by OTW Chairs, and My Response to It
dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org

This is deeply inappropriate behavior on the part of OTW. To the people insisting that if fans of color should volunteer if they want to see/make any substantial change: this is what happens when volunteers of color try to make substantial change to the organization. Their volunteers are already at risk because they don't do a good job of ensuring their safety in a general sense, but their VOCs are at an increased risk of racist harassment within the organization from white volunteers, attacks from people outside of the organization, and apparently from the organization itself!

OTW has made its stance known that it will not support its more vulnerable volunteers, and will side with white volunteers who report VOCs because they feel "threatened" by discussions of racism. Telling FOCs to just volunteer is asking them to be subjected to the same reprimanding and punishment that Kutti has just experienced.

phoenixyfriend
writing-prompt-s

Since birth you could see a counter above people’s heads. It doesn’t count down to their death. It goes up and down randomly. You’re desperate to find out what it means.

britcision

You learn that other people can’t see the counter when you’re around five, and ask your mother what it means because hers just dropped suddenly to three and you don’t know why.

She looks confused, the number slowly ticking up and down, and asks what game you’re playing. She seems distracted, and now you’re confused too, because you’ve been telling people their numbers for years.

You can’t see your own, not even in a mirror, and the fact that everyone gave you different answers wasn’t all that odd since you couldn’t see a pattern in how their numbers changed.

It does explain why you sometimes got answers in the millions though, when you never saw anyone else with a number higher than a few hundred. And here you’d thought you were special.

You’re more circumspect when asking if other people see them after that year, because while your mom was nice, the kids on the playground weren’t. You had to pretend it was a game, and they were stupid for not playing along.

You reach your teen years, get really into all those romantic ideas about a countdown to death, and it makes you scared of watching the counters drop for a few years.

But you comfort yourself that it’s clearly not a countdown, every time a friend hits one, or zero. It goes up and down, by jumps and starts, and seems so random.

Of course you become obsessed with math. You watch your one friend, a girl with yellow hair whose number jumps more and faster than anyone you’ve ever met. You track the numbers, log them for days and weeks, and try to find an equation to explain them.

There’s nothing, of course. Even when you think you see a pattern, it breaks in a matter of hours.

You look for the slowest changer instead, factor in the time between switches, and it’s still no good. You’re an irredeemable nerd now, but you need to know.

You get yourself a scholarship, pursue calculus and theoretical math, and your fellow students are almost as passionate as you. But none of them can see the numbers, none of them have the mystery you’ve never solved.

The scholarship doesn’t fully cover the cost of textbooks, so you take a job as a barista nearby. That’s interesting, because you see so many people all at once and can do more little studies of the numbers.

The answer definitely isn’t “time since last meal”, or “last cup of coffee”.

The presence of such a large and diverse sample lets you spot new things you hadn’t considered before too; you always knew most peoples’ counters changed at different speeds, but you’ve never seen anyone consistent before.

There’s a kid with green hair and piercings all up both ears and brows, and their number is never lower than twenty. They’re never rude, but they’re loud in spite of themselves, and you find yourself liking to see them.

A control for your experiments, a regular and reliable face.

There’s an old man who sits in the back whose number never changes and who never speaks. He hands you a napkin with a coffee order every time, and some of your coworkers are scared touching the napkins will make you sick.

You aren’t. The old man might be homeless or might not be; none of you actually know. He sits bundled in coats all through the summer, always has the same red scarf, always has the same seven sat above his head.

You’ve never seen him sat or napping in the street, but he’s never pulled out a key and you haven’t followed him to see if he goes to a home.

Whether he’s unhoused or not, you’re not about to treat him like a plague rat. He’s just quiet, and for all you know he’s fully mute.

You talk slowly and clearly back, making sure your mouth is easy to follow because you can’t be sure he can hear you in the first place. He watches your lips instead of your eyes, never replies, but always pays in exact change, and then puts the exact same tip in the jar.

One day, on a whim, you join a sign language club at university. It takes some practice to get the signs down, and you have to ask for some specific phrases, but a week later you try wishing him a good day in ASL.

His eyes light up, a tremulous smile half hidden in the scarf. He doesn’t sign back, but you know the secret now. He just doesn’t have much to say, but he was happy you made the effort.

His number is eight now.

You wondered if it might have been changing all along and you just didn’t notice, but it doesn’t go back down. Or up any further.

You have the strongest feeling you are that number eight, but you can’t prove it. It didn’t change while you were watching, or while he was in the store.

You take statistics class, get permission from your manager to run out a few projects at work. Things like two tip jars, each with a different sign and a note behind them explaining the project.

That gets much more results than a single tip jar, as you expected, people are firm in their opinions and pick sides quickly.

The other baristas insist on keeping the two jar method even once you’ve gotten an A on your findings. They’re for competing sports teams on game days, music genres over the summer when the concerts come through, silly things like “cake or pie” when nothing more serious is going on.

There’s no correlation between the counters and how much people donate, or which side they choose.

You don’t realize that other people don’t have your memory for numbers and faces until you comment that your dear regular always donates to the jar on the left. Your coworker looks surprised and asks how you know.

Apparently other people don’t really keep numbers in their heads, but it’s second nature to you by now. You don’t always have time to grab the notepad you used to track them in.

University is interesting, and you find your way to chaos theory, which is fun in so many ways. One thing you do notice is that the numbers of your professors are almost always in motion, ticking up and down by tens at a time.

It doesn’t match the attendance sheets, you checked, with some excuses from your statistics class. You’re taking a seemingly random array of math specialties, but they all help each other.

The puzzle continues, all through your degrees (two full masters, and neither of them help). You learn to think of the world, of numbers, in a different way. You leave the cafe, move on to a couple of think tank positions.

You’ve never found anyone else who can see the numbers either. That’s okay though; you don’t want to just be given the answer anymore. This is a challenge now, a test of your worth, a constant companion.

Crunching numbers, applying analytics for work is good practice and keeps you sharp, but it isn’t your passion. Your passion is the mystery, but now you have access to the kinds of computers you can start running a broader analysis on.

You have decades of data now, and you feed it all in after work. Set the machines analyzing, using as much information about each person as you have, looking for variables.

It runs for months, but you’re not exactly surprised by the results; you need more data. No correlation detected.

It’s still a disappointment, and for a few days you feel down. You stop thinking about the counters. Just focus on your work, doing your job, making a play at socializing and reminding yourself you have a life outside your quest.

Kind of.

And then one day you’re in a coffee shop, grabbing a hit on your way to morning classes, and the cashier is a real sweet looking kid with earnest brown eyes and neatly tied back cornrows.

He looks conflicted as you make your order, you’ve been coming here since he started but you’ve never really talked. He takes your order, takes your money, and you move back.

You’re expecting someone else to bring you the drink, but he switches out and leans over the counter to give you the cup and cookie you definitely didn’t order. You’re confused; you didn’t pay for it, there’s no promotion.

He gives you a small empathetic smile.

“You look like you need it. Your…. Uh…. Your colour’s washed out,” he says in a hurry, clearly expecting you to think nothing of it, but your heart stops.

He doesn’t mean your face. You know that. If anything, your natural tan has gotten darker now that you spend more time outside. Just. Sitting in the park. Pretending you’re not thinking about the numbers.

But the way he says it, the furtive glances, the way you suddenly realize he’s been looking just a little above your face almost every time you see him.

You don’t grab his hand, even though you desperately want to. He’s already turning, rushing back to work, and you need to know.

“Wait,” you call as quietly as you can, and he stops. Glances back.

There’s something in those brown eyes now, a wariness and a kind of squashed down hope you know you’re showing too.

Wetting your lips you try and work out how to ask. What to say. It isn’t numbers, clearly. But you’ve never known your own number, always desperately wondered, and if there’s even a tiny chance…

“What… what colour was I?” You ask quietly, and he takes a quick glance around.

It’s not busy. You came after the rush, not wanting to be overwhelmed by counters you just can’t figure out.

He gives you a thoughtful look, from that spot on your forehead down to your eyes, still guarded but hoping.

“Blue,” he says softly, coming back to lean on the counter, “but it was very bright. Cyan, almost glowing. You’re… more grey now. Powder blue.”

You take a moment trying to think about the difference, then pull your phone up to look. He stifles a chuckle, then pulls himself up. Looks at you cautiously, hopefully.

“You don’t see them, do you?” He asks softly, watching you examine the two colours. It snaps you back and you look up, a small smile on your face.

“Not colours. I see counters. Not like, death counters,” you add quickly when he looks suddenly alarmed, wondering how to make it seem reassuring. “They go up and down and I’ve spent my whole life trying to work out what they’re for, but it’s definitely not that.”

You pause for a moment, looking at him with a slight frown on your face. His isn’t especially high or low, and he did tell you what he saw.

“Yours is forty-six,” you tell him softly, and stifle a laugh when it promptly changes. “Fifty-two.”

It seems to settle him a little, his eyes tracking your face, noting where you’re looking. You meet his eyes again.

“Do you know what the colours mean?” You ask softly, and he gives an awkward shrug.

“Not really. Just… never seems to be a good thing when they’re fading. Most people stay in one colour but change hue and saturation.”

They’re not terms you’re super familiar with, you’re not an artist, but you know in your heart that this is it. Your big break. A second data point.

All you have to do is not scare him away.

“I finally finished running a full computer analysis on all the counters I’ve seen,” you admit softly, gaze slipping down to the free cookie. “It didn’t find anything.”

He makes a soft, sympathetic noise, and the first smile you’ve actually felt since tugs at your lips. You give him a hopeful look.

“If you wouldn’t mind… you could email me the colours you see, and I could add them to the dataset? No names or anything, just…” and suddenly you realize that this project is creepy as hell, and super invasive, and he looks surprised and you should definitely leave.

This time he calls you back, glancing around the mostly empty store. And he quietly tells you the colours he sees above each head, and you note that along with their counters.

You’re already thinking of possible connections, maybe something in the precise wavelength of light, it’s wonderful that he’s so specific and knows so many colour names.

He’s an art student. Of course he is. And he agrees to help, if you come in at the end of the day he can finish out his shift and tell you all the colours he sees of the people still there.

Finally, finally, you have some help. Someone who understands, even if they don’t see what you do. And sure, you’ve got about fifteen years of life over him, but you always wanted a little brother.

He gawks at your work laptop when you bring it in; it’s big enough that it looks a century out of date, but that’s because you built it yourself to run like a supercomputer. Its fans roar like engines when you boot it up, and you have a whole gaggle of fascinated baristas by the time closing comes.

It can’t handle the full scope of the data set, but it connects on a private VPN to the big computer at work and can handle chunks at a time.

And convert video to 3D, but that was just to see if you could.

Your friend’s name is Dillan, and you give him yours because it’s not his fault you don’t wear a name tag. He’s got a good head for data analysis, and you know if his art doesn’t pan out he’ll do well anyway.

His art is wonderful though; reminiscent of time-lapses of cityscapes lit in blurred headlights and neon, but you know each soft line of colour is a person. He does smaller spaces too, a room, a corner of the park.

Portraits sometimes, peoples faces painted in the shades of their colour as it changes. It’s almost perfectly photorealistic, and you know he’s a prodigy in the same way you are.

You hope he can make the art he loves forever, even when he’s frustrated that a piece isn’t coming out quite right.

There isn’t an easy answer, even with his help and your new data sets. It takes years, with monthly meetings first in his coffee shop, and then at the library when he moves on.

You help with any homework that involves math, and once with a sympathetic shoulder and gentle advice when a TA is trying to drive his grades down. You know first hand how unforgiving the education system is to kids of colour, but you also remember how older students protected you.

There’s channels to report, if you know for sure they won’t take the TA’s side. There’s evidence gathering, witnesses, making sure you aren’t alone with them.

His family is far away, his parents unable to stand in his corner, so you pose as a distant cousin when he decides to make the complaint. Having an adult there, especially one with your qualifications, cuts the whole process off at the knees.

Seeing the TA’s eyes widen as you walk in in your best suit sends a little thrill through the kid in you who once sat in Dillan’s seat. Their counter jumps three times during the meeting, and this time you’re certain it’s not a good sign for them.

With the evidence Dillan and his friends have collected, the TA loses their position and gets a month of mandatory bias training. It might not change them, but you don’t care.

Dillan bounces like he’s walking on the moon as you leave, his own counter ticking steadily higher in a way you’re just as sure can’t be bad. His counter ticks up and down for the next few days, seemingly at random, and while he doesn’t know his own colour any more than you can see your counter, something in your heart tells you he’s a bright sunshine yellow.

His parents are a little concerned, of course. You meet at Dillan’s graduation, especially since you’ve got him an intern position at your work to keep him on his feet while he looks for work he actually loves.

They’re grateful, a pair of large Black men whose whole stance is a challenge for you to comment. You’re half expecting a shovel talk of some kind, and ready for it, when Dillan leans in eagerly and whispers that you’re the one who sees the numbers.

His father’s eyes soften, though his dad is still wary. You tell them both their own numbers, the only way you can try and prove it.

His father’s younger sister saw the numbers, you learn, and your heart stops all over again.

Someone else. A third person.

But she died long ago, and you’re startled to learn that she saw decimals. You never thought about it, never really wondered, but your counters are always whole numbers.

Dillan’s father doesn’t know all of the details, but he seems to feel better speaking about her. She never knew what the numbers were either, and he doesn’t know if she ever recorded them, but it fills you with relief.

You’d stopped looking for anyone else.

Told yourself you didn’t want to just be given the answer.

Liked being the only one to solve the puzzle.

But now that it’s possible, that you really know there are other people, first one and now two and who knows how many more?

It settles around your shoulders like a blanket, and Dillan is grinning at you in a way that tells you something has happened to your colour. You’ll add it to the dataset later.

No one else in Dillan’s family really see anything, on either side, but that’s okay. You have a goal now, and Dillan finally convinces you to do the one thing you’ve always avoided.

His dad’s a web designer. You spend about a month together, the two of you and occasionally Dillan when he isn’t painting, working out how to pose the invitation. What to show, how to format the site, how to filter out the false replies that always kept you from trying before.

Dillan does a bunch of art for the site too, pictures of what he sees that you can hardly believe aren’t just photos of people with a small circle of colour just around the hairline.

Pictures of what you see, the plain white numbers floating just above their heads. Gifs that show the way they change, the number ticking up and down like those old fashioned flap cards they used to roll through at ballgames before LED screens replaced the analog.

It’s always been funny to you, how archaic your counters are. Outdated before you were born, and the only reason you know the flip cards existed is because your mother showed you when you tried to explain what you saw.

But the white numbers fold themselves in half to show the new number unfolding down just like that, and Dillan laughs about it with you while you make the gif.

You spend long minutes with Dillan and his dad once it’s all ready, just looking at the button that’ll send the whole thing live.

Are you ready?

There’s a new email address just for this, but you know it’ll keep all three of you busy if enough people find the site. There’ll be people making fun of you, just like when you were little, and people pretending to feel special.

But there might be someone else too, someone as lost and confused as you were. What else might others see? Shapes? Scribbly lines that get more and more jagged like your counter climbs?

You can’t even imagine it, and it steals the breath from your lungs.

Dillan steals the mouse and hits the button for you, then runs away with it so you can’t panic and undo it. His dad laughs until tears run down his cheeks as you do indeed panic, leaping up to chase your little brother.

But it’s done now, and you can breathe again.

You still don’t know the answer. You know that at the end of it all, Dillan’s colours may have nothing at all to do with your counters.

But you’re not alone.

You saw your shadow in this sweet, funny kid, reached out the way you wish someone had reached for you, and now you’ve both reached out to the whole world.

It’ll be a pain in the ass sorting it all out, but you have work friends who can make you a program to filter the openly aggressive messages.

Because somewhere in the world, there’s a five year old kid who was just told no one else sees the world the way they do, and they’ll be able to see that it’s not true. They’re not alone. Someone will help them solve the mystery.

You’re no closer to the answer than you were as a fresh graduate yourself, can’t imagine what it could be.

But it turns out you were wrong, back when you were the fresh graduate who wanted to solve the world all alone. Answers aren’t as important as not being alone.

hellsite-hall-of-fame
writing-prompt-s

At 18, everyone receive a superpower. Your childhood friend got a power-absorption, your best friends got time control, and they quickly rise into top 100 most powerful superheroes. You got a mediocre superpower, but somehow got into the top 10. Today they visit you asking how you did it.

inkskinned

“Power absorption?” you ask him over your pasta, which you are currently absorbing powerfully. in the background, a tv is reading out what the Phoenix extremeist group has done recently. bodies, stacking.

tim nods, pushing his salad around. “it’s kind of annoying.” he’s gone vegan ever since he could talk to animals. his cheeks are sallow. “yesterday i absorbed static and i can’t stop shocking myself.”

“you don’t know what from,” shay is detangling her hair at the table, even though it’s not polite. about a second ago, her hair was perfect, which implies she’s been somewhere in the inbetween. “try millions of multiverses that your powers conflict with.” 

“did we die in the last one?” you grin and she grins and tim grins but nobody answers the question.

now she has a cut over her left eye and her hair is shorter. she looks tired and tim looks tired and you look down at your 18-year-old hands, which are nothing. 

they ship out tomorrow. they go out to the frontlines or wherever it is that superheroes go to fight supervillains; the cream of the crop. the starlight banner kids. 

“you both are trying too hard,” you tell them, “couldn’t you have been, like, really good at surfing?”

“god,” shay groans, “what i’d give to only be in the olympics.”

xxx

in the night, tim is asleep. on the way home, he absorbed telekinesis, and hates it too. 

shay looks at you. “i’m scared,” she says.

you must not have died recently, because she looks the same she did at dinner, cut healing slowly over her eye the way it’s supposed to, not the hyper-quickness of a timejump. just shay, living in the moment when the moment is something everyone lives in. her eyes are wide and dark the way brown eyes can be, that swelling fullness that feels so familiar and warm, that piercing darkness that feels like a stone at the back of your tongue.

“you should be,” you say.

her nose wrinkles, she opens her mouth, but you plow on.

“they’re going to take one look at you and be like, ‘gross, shay? no thanks. you’re too pretty. it’s bringing down like, morale, and things’. then they’ll kick you out and i’ll live with you in a box and we’ll sell stolen cans of ravioli.”

she’s grinning. “like chef boyardee or like store brand?”

“store brand but we print out chef boyardee labels and tape them over the can so we can mark up the price.”

“where do we get the tape?” 

“we, uh,” you look into those endless dark eyes, so much like the night, so much like a good hot chocolate, so much like every sleepover you’ve had with the two of your best friends, and you say, “it’s actually just your hair. i tie your hair around the cans to keep the label on.”

she throws a pillow at you. 

you both spend a night planning what you’ll do in the morning when shay is kicked out of Squadron 8, Division 1; top rankers that are all young. you’ll both run away to the beach and tim will be your intel and you’ll burn down the whole thing. you’re both going to open a bakery where you will do the baking and she’ll use her time abilities to just, like, speed things up so you don’t have to wake up at dawn. you’re both going to become wedding planners that only do really extreme weddings.

she falls asleep on your shoulder. you do not sleep at all.

in the morning, they are gone.

xxx

squadron 434678, Division 23467 is basically “civilian status.” you still have to know what to expect and all that stuff. you’re glad that you’re taking extra classes at college; you’re kind of bored re-learning the stuff you were already taught in high school. there are a lot of people who need help, and you’re good at that, so you help them. 

tim and shay check in from time to time, but they’re busy saving the world, so you don’t fault them for it. in the meantime, you put your head down and work, and when your work is done, you help the people who can’t finish their work. and it kind of feels good. kind of.

xxx

at twenty, squadron 340067, division 2346 feels like a good fit. tim and you go out for ice cream in a new place that rebuilt after the Phoenix group burned it down. you’ve chosen nurse-practitioner as your civilian job, because it seems to fit, but you’re not released for full status as civilian until you’re thirty, so it’s been a lot of office work.

tim’s been on the fritz a lot lately, overloading. you’re worried they’ll try to force him out on the field. he’s so young to be like this.

“i feel,” he says, “like it all comes down to this puzzle. like i’m never my own. i steal from other people’s boxes.”

you wrap your hand around his. “sometimes,” you say, “we love a river because it is a reflection.”

he’s quiet a long time after that. a spurt of flame licks from under his eyes.

“i wish,” he says, “i could believe that.”

xxx

twenty three has you in squad 4637, division 18. really you’ve just gotten here because you’re good at making connections. you know someone who knows someone who knows you as a good kid. you helped a woman onto a bus and she told her neighbor who told his friend. you’re mostly in the filing department, but you like watching the real superheroes come in, get to know some of them. at this level, people have good powers but not dangerous ones. you learn how to help an 18 year old who is a loaded weapon by shifting him into a non-violent front. you get those with pstd home where they belong. you put your head down and work, which is what you’re good at. 

long nights and long days and no vacations is fine until everyone is out of the office for candlenights eve. you’re the only one who didn’t mind staying, just in case someone showed up needing something. 

the door blows open. when you look up, he’s bleeding. you jump to your feet. 

“oh,” you say, because you recognize the burning bird insignia on his chest, “I think you have the wrong office.”

“i just need,” he spits onto the ground, sways, collapses. 

well, okay. so, that’s, not, like. great. “uh,” you say, and you miss shay desperately, “okay.”

you find the source of the bleeding, stabilize him for when the shock sets in, get him set up on a desk, sew him shut. two hours later, you’ve gotten him a candlenights present and stabilized his vitals. you’ve also filed him into a separate folder (it’s good to be organized) and found him a home, far from the warfront.

when he wakes up, you give him hot chocolate (god, how you miss shay), and he doesn’t smile. he doesn’t smile at the gift you’ve gotten him (a better bulletproof vest, one without the Phoenix on it), or the stitches. that’s okay. you tell him to take the right medications, hand them over to him, suggest a doctor’s input. and then you hand over his folder with a new identity in it and a new house and civilian status. you take a deep breath. 

he opens it and bursts into tears. he doesn’t say anything. he just leaves and you have to clean up the blood, which isn’t very nice of him. but it’s candlenights. so whatever. hopefully he’ll learn to like his gift.

xxx

squadron 3046, division 2356 is incredibly high for a person like you to fit. but still, you fit, because you’re good at organization and at hard work, and at knowing how to hold on when other people don’t see a handhold.

shay is home. you’re still close, the two of you, even though she feels like she exists on another planet. the more security you’re privy to, the more she can tell you. 

you brush her hair as she speaks about the endless man who never dies, and how they had to split him up and hide him throughout the planet. she cries when she talks about how much pain he must be in.

“can you imagine?” she whispers, “i mean, i know he’s phoenix, but can you imagine?” 

“one time i had to work retail on black friday,” you say.

she sniffles.

“one time my boss put his butt directly on my hand by accident and i couldn’t say anything so i spent a whole meeting with my hand directly up his ass,” you say.

her eyes are so brown, and filling, and there are scars on her you’ve never noticed that might be new or very, very, very old; and neither of you know exactly how much time she’s actually been alive for. 

“i mean,” you say, “yeah that might hurt but one time i said goodbye to someone but they were walking in the same direction. i mean can you imagine.”

she laughs, finally, even though it’s weakly, and says, “one time even though i can manipulate time i slept in and forgot to go to work even though i was leading a presentation and i had to look them in the face later to tell them that.”

“you’re a compete animal,” you tell her, and look into those eyes, so sad and full of timelines you’ll never witness, “you should be kicked out completely.”

she wipes her face. “find me in a box,” she croaks, “selling discount ravioli.”

xxx

you don’t know how it happens. but you guess the word gets around. you don’t think you like being known to them as someone they can go to, but it’s not like they’ve got a lot of options. many of them just want to be out of it, so you get them out, you guess.

you explain to them multiple times you haven’t done a residency yet and you really only know what an emt would, but they still swing by. every time they show up at your office, you feel your heart in your chest: this is it, this is how you die, this is how it ends. 

“so, like, this group” you say, trying to work the system’s loopholes to find her a way out of it, “from ashes come all things, or whatever?”

she shrugs. you can tell by looking at her that she’s dangerous. “it’s corny,” she says. another shrug. “i didn’t mean to wind up a criminal.”

you don’t tell her that you sort of don’t know how one accidentally becomes a criminal, since you kind-of-sort-of help criminals out, accidentally. 

“i don’t believe any of that stuff,” she tells you, “none of that whole… burn it down to start it over.” she swallows. “stuff just happens. and happens. and you wake up and it’s still happening, even though you wish it wasn’t.”

you think about shay, and how she’s covered in scars, and her crying late at night because of things nobody else ever saw.

“yeah,” you say, and print out a form, “i get that.”

and you find a dangerous woman a normal home.

xxx

“you’re squadron 905?” 

“division 34754,” you tell him. watch him look down at your ID and certification and read your superpower on the card and then look back up to you and then back down to the card and then back up at you, and so on. he licks his chapped lips and stands in the cold.

this happens a lot. but you smile. the gatekeeper is frowning, but then hanson walks by. “oh shit,” he says, “it’s you! come right on in!” he gives you a hug through your rolled-down window.

the gatekeeper is in a stiff salute now. gulping in terror. hanson is one of the strongest people in this sector, and he just hugged you.

the gate opens. hanson swaggers through. you shrug to the gatekeeper. “i helped him out one time.” 

inside they’re debriefing. someone has shifted sides, someone powerful, someone wild. it’s not something you’re allowed to know about, but you know it’s bad. so you put your head down, and you work, because that’s what you’re good at, after all. you find out the gatekeeper’s name and send him a thank-you card and also handmade chapstick and some good earmuffs.

shay messages you that night. i have to go somewhere, she says, i can’t explain it, but there’s a mission and i might be gone a long time.

you stare at the screen for a long time. your fingers type out three words. you erase them. you instead write where could possibly better than stealing chef boyardee with me?

she doesn’t read it. you close the tab. 

and you put your head down. and work.

xxx

it’s in a chili’s. like, you don’t even like chili’s? chili’s sucks, but the boss ordered it so you’re here to pick it up, wondering if he gave you enough money to cover. things have been bad recently. thousands dying. whoever switched sides is too powerful to stop. they destroy anyone and anything, no matter the cost.

the phoenix fire smells like pistachios, you realize. you feel at once part of yourself and very far. it happens so quickly, but you feel it slowly. you wonder if shay is involved, but know she is not.

the doors burst in. there’s screaming. those in the area try their powers to defend themselves, but everyone is civilian division. the smell of pistachios is cloying. 

then they see you. and you see them. and you put your hands on your hips.

“excuse me, tris,” you say, “what are you doing?”

there’s tears in her eyes. “i need the money,” she croaks.

“From a chili’s?” you want to know, “who in their right mind robs a chili’s? what are you going to do, steal their mozzarella sticks?”

“it’s connected to a bank on the east wall,” she explains, “but i thought it was stupid too.”

you shake your head. you pull out your personal checkbook. you ask her how much she needs, and you see her crying. you promise her the rest when you get your paycheck.

someone bursts into the room. shouts things. demands they start killing. 

but you’re standing in the way, and none of them will kill you or hurt you, because they all know you, and you helped them at some point or another, or helped their friend, or helped their children.

tris takes the money, everyone leaves. by the time the heroes show up, you’ve gotten everyone out of the building.

the next time you see tris, she’s marrying a beautiful woman, and living happily, having sent her cancer running. you’re a bridesmaid at the wedding.

xxx

“you just,” the director wants to know now, “sent them running?” 

hanson stands between her and you, although you don’t need the protection.

“no,” you say again, for the millionth time, “i just gave her the money she needed and told her to stop it.”

“the phoenix group,” the director of squadron 300 has a vein showing, “does not just stop it.”

you don’t mention the social issues which confound to make criminal activity a necessity for some people, or how certain stereotypes forced people into negative roles to begin with, or how an uneven balance of power punished those with any neurodivergence. instead you say, “yeah, they do.”

“i’m telling you,” hanson says, “we brought her out a few times. it happens every time. they won’t hurt her. we need her on our team.”

your spine is stiff. “i don’t do well as a weapon,” you say, voice low, knowing these two people could obliterate you if they wished. but you won’t use people’s trust against them, not for anything. besides, it’s not like trust is your superpower. you’re just a normal person.

hanson snorts. “no,” he says, “but i like that when you show up, the fighting just… stops. that’s pretty nice, kid.”

“do you know… what we are dealing with…. since agent 25… shifted….?” the director’s voice is thin.

“yeah,” hanson says, “that’s why i think she’d be useful, you know? add some peace to things.”

the director sits down. sighs. waves her hand. “whatever,” she croaks, “do what you want. reassign her.”

hanson leads you out. over your shoulder, you see her put her head in her hands. later, you get her a homemade spa kit, and make sure to help her out by making her a real dinner from time to time, something she’s too busy for, mostly.

at night, you write shay messages you don’t send. telling her things you cannot manage.

one morning you wake up to a terrible message: shay is gone. never to be seen again.

xxx

you’re eating ice cream when you find him.

behind you, the city is burning. hundreds dead, if not thousands.

he’s staring at the river. maybe half-crying. it’s hard to tell, his body is shifting, seemingly caught between all things and being nothing.

“ooh buddy,” you say, passing him a cone-in-a-cup, the way he likes it, “talk about a night on the town.”

the bench is burning beside him, so you put your jacket down and snuff it out. it’s hard sitting next to him. he emits so much.

“hey tim?” you say. 

“yeah?” his voice is a million voices, a million powers, a terrible curse. 

“can i help?” you ask.

he eats a spoonful of ice cream. 

“yeah,” he says eventually. “i think i give up.”

xxx

later, when they praise you for defeating him, you won’t smile. they try to put you in the media; an all-time hero. you decline every interview and press conference. you attend his funeral with a veil over your head.

the box goes into the ground. you can’t stop crying.

you’re the only one left at the site. it’s dark now, the subtle night.

you feel her at your side and something in your heart stops hurting. a healing you didn’t know you needed. her hands find yours.

“they wanted me to kill him,” she says, “they thought i’d be the only one who could.” her hands are warm. you aren’t breathing.

“beat you to it,” you say. 

“i see that,” she tells you. 

you both stand there. crickets nestle the silence.

“you know,” she says eventually, “i have no idea which side is the good one.”

“i think that’s the point of a good metaphor about power and control,” you say, “it reflects the human spirit. no tool or talent is good or bad.”

“just useful,” she whispers. after a long time, she wonders, “so what does that make us?”

xxx

it’s a long trek up into the mountains. shay seems better every day. more solid. less like she’s on another plane.

“heard you’re a top ten,” she tells me, her breath coming out in a fog. you’ve reclassed her to civilian. it took calling in a few favors, but you’ve got a lot. 

“yeah,” you say, “invulnerable.”

“oh, is that your superpower?” she laughs. she knows it’s not.

“that’s what they’re calling it,” you tell her, out of breath the way she is not, “it’s how they explain a person like me at the top.”

“if that means ‘nobody wants to kill me’, i think i’m the opposite.” but she’s laughing, in a light way, a way that’s been missing from her.

the cabin is around the corner. the lights are already on. 

“somebody’s home,” i grin.

tim, just tim, tim who isn’t forced into war and a million reflections, opens the door. “come on in.”

xxx

squadron one, division three. a picture of shay in a wedding dress is on my desk. she looks radiant, even though she’s marrying little old me.

what do i do? just what i’m best at. what’s not a superpower. what anyone is capable of: just plain old helping.

the-aro-ace-arrow-ace
unfuckablebogtroll

And also the way Barbie and Ken are role playing heterosexuality without any inherent sexuality of their own, without any understanding of what it means, or even any genitals at all! Just pretty-girl + handsome-guy = obviously a couple. And the way it fucks them both up! Because they’re both stereotypes, neither of them is a specialist version, no brain surgery or pilots license or Nobel prize for either of them. They’re just assigned the roles of Every Man and Every Woman. And Ken ends up doing Way Too Much because he’s hanging his entire self-worth on being important to Barbie. And Barbie just isn’t interested in him, she was assigned a boyfriend she didn’t ask for and doesn’t want and doesn’t know what to do with, just because that’s what society expects of men and women, that they will necessarily couple up and fall in love because… that’s what they do. Regardless of any personal quality of either party.

It’s about heteronormativity and amatonormativity and the unrealistic expectations society sets boys and girls up for from infancy. Barbie and Ken are every pair of toddlers sharing a sandbox while the adults around them call them each other’s little “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” even though neither party understands or is capable of understanding the implied meaning of that. Or wants to.

It’s a literal funhouse mirror of that weird pressure put on kids to perform heterosexuality from an early age. It examines how that leaves us unprepared for the complicated reality of actual relationships even if it turns out that you are heterosexual and do want sex and romance. Boys and girls aren’t really allowed to be just kids on the same team, so they grow up into men and women who generally want very different things from each other and are trained to look for it in everybody because anybody is better than nobody, and try to force it to work.

Barbie and Ken letting each other go in the end was perfect. Barbie the Every Woman realizing that she doesn’t have to be special, she just has to be, and Ken the Every Man realizing he has to seek validation elsewhere and lean on his fellow Kens for emotional support, WHICH THEY GIVE.

Truly a movie of all time.