VELVETEEN vs. The Retroactive Continuity
The four women were locked in an uneasy standoff, none of them willing to be the first to move and hence kick off the fight.
On one side, a woman in a battered velvet leotard and tights, with a rabbit-eared headband and a domino mask completing the impression that she’d dressed herself out of the back of the nearest Halloween store.
Next to her, a white-haired woman in clothes that were better suited to a ski holiday than a superhuman smackdown, a snow globe in each hand and a distressed expression on her face.
Not exactly the sort of figures who struck fear into the hearts of evildoers.
On the other side, Iris, co-captain of The Super Patriots, living rainbow, champion for justice, and person responsible for the condo’s safety deposit, which probably explained why she had yet to move.
She was still dressed for work, in a sleek white bodysuit that shimmered with rainbows every time she shifted her weight even slightly.
She had a rainbow sash tied around her waist, and rainbow eyeshadow framing her big blue eyes.
Behind her, in jeans and a tank top, stood a woman with green and purple hair and a small storm cloud hovering over her left shoulder: Hyacinth, weather-controller and seriously annoyed superheroine on her day off.
Really, she was probably the scariest person in the room. No one with the ability to sling lightning bolts should ever look that aggravated.
“I’m Velveteen,” said the woman in the rabbit ears. “I don’t know who your fourth team member was in this world, but in my world, you and I—”
“My Velveteen and I were recruited at the same time,” snapped Iris. “We grew up together, which is not some big secret you can use to manipulate me. It’s been in every official bio.”
“And a lot of the fanfic,” said Hyacinth. “Sparkle Bright Velveteen slash is one of the biggest Super Patriots RPF categories on AO3.”
“All of those words were words but I don’t think any of them made any sense at all,” said the white-haired woman, looking baffled.
“Be glad,” said Velveteen. She raised her hands, palms outward, and said, “If you and your Velveteen grew up together, then you know who I am. I’m her.
Or rather, I’m who she would have grown up to be if things had gone a little differently.
I don’t know much about this reality, so I don’t know whether things were better or worse for me, but I know that no version of Yelena would attack me without hearing me out. ”
Iris’s eyes narrowed. “You know my secret identity?” She looked toward the white-haired woman. There was something familiar about her, something in the way she held herself. “You’re saying it out loud, in front of a stranger?”
“My name is Jacqueline Claus,” said the white-haired woman hurriedly. “I’m Santa’s daughter. I promise you, she’s telling the truth. She’s the Velveteen from another reality, and I’m her guide, and you’re actually our version of Yelena. We lost track of you when we came through the mirror.”
“Oh, good, it’s getting seriously weird,” said Hyacinth. “Here I was worried that this was just another fangirl home invasion, but no, now it’s dimensional-hopping and body snatching and mistaken identities. This is exactly what I wanted.”
“Cin…” said Iris.
“It’s my day off,” Hyacinth snapped. “It wasn’t bad enough that you had to work, that we couldn’t do something normal, but now you’re bringing work home with you on my day off. I thought we talked about this.”
“Could we maybe not have this fight in front of the people who are either from another dimension or trying to mess with our heads?” asked Iris plaintively. “I did not bring work home on purpose. I was talking about retirement, remember? They just sort of showed up.”
“Magic snow globe,” said Jack. She held one up, with an apologetic shrug. “They get me where I need to go. And since where I needed to go was to our Yelena, and the snow globe brought me here, that means you’re really our Yelena.”
“We’re not supposed to be here,” said Velveteen.
“You got that right,” said Hyacinth. The storm cloud over her left shoulder began dumping rain onto her shirt. “What are you doing in our apartment?”
“We need to find a door so we can find whatever the hell it is that Santa sent us to find, or there’s a chance our world is going to be ruined forever,” said Velveteen.
Iris and Hyacinth both blinked. “Oh,” said Iris finally. “Is that all.”
* * *
When considering the multiverse, even within the context of a localized divergence (i.e.
, a multiversal plane in which all individuals existing in world A will have been at minimum conceived in world B, if not allowed to live to a fruitful adulthood), it must be considered possible for there to be more than one potential “good” outcome for any given situation.
Take, for example, the matter of Yelena Batzdorf, known, depending on the parallel world in which she is found, as “Sparkle Bright,” “Iris,” “Polychrome,” or “Prism.”
Born to a highly conservative family, the young Miss Batzdorf has expressed an early attraction to members of the same gender in virtually all known parallels (in those which she did not, she was either born male or assigned male at birth; in the three where she was assigned male at birth, she was still attracted to women, but was not recognized as a lesbian until after her actual gender became publicly known).
This conflict between her family’s values and her heart has led, almost inevitably, to her being surrendered to The Super Patriots, Inc.
for training and “rehabilitation.” The fact that such rehabilitation is not possible, and is in fact harmful to those individuals who have been subjected to it, has never yet been known to change her family’s decision.
World after world, they have chosen the same irresponsible solution, leaving their daughter to be raised by people who saw her more as potential profit than person.
In some worlds, Miss Batzdorf has become the perfect face of the corporation, burying her desires under her dedication to the people who raised her.
In others, she has been the one to walk out at the age of eighteen, choosing freedom over living someone else’s script.
And in other, rarer worlds, she and her friends have been able to seize control of the corporation, ushering in an era of superheroic honesty and openness, where she has not been required to conceal herself under anything more than a mask.
In many worlds, she has been happy. She has been loved.
She has made a home for herself, and she has had few regrets.
But Victoria Cogsworth, code name “Victory Anna,” exists in only one world.
While few who have met Miss Cogsworth will deny that she has been a positive influence on Miss Batzdorf, her absence from the rest of the multiverse must be taken as an indication that more than one match ideal enough to result in a truly “happy ending” must be available.
In some worlds, Sparkle Bright and Velveteen have found a way to grow together, instead of growing apart.
In other worlds, Iris and Jacqueline Claus have provided one another with the greatest gifts of all.
In still others, she has found love with a weather-controller named Hyacinth who has yet to manifest in our world.
Happiness can be found anywhere. Who is to say that the status quo we believe to be ideal is the “right” one, or indeed, even the most common in an unending multiverse? Every happy ending denies another. It always has.
* * *
The four of them gathered in an uneasy peace around the coffee table, Iris on the couch with Hyacinth standing behind her, while Velveteen and Jack squashed onto the loveseat like a pair of teens on prom night.
The only way it could have been any more uncomfortable would have been if someone had asked about someone else’s intentions, and in a way, that was the entire thrust of the conversation.
Why were they here; what did they want to do to Yelena; did they have any right to do it.
“Okay, slow down and let me try to unpack this a little bit,” said Iris, pinching the bridge of her nose with one hand.
“Basically you’re saying that I am who I think I am, but I’m also a version of myself who goes by ‘Polychrome,’ and is supposed to be helping you find this door because I’m really a mirror ghost? ”
“Neither of us said ‘mirror ghost,’” said Velveteen. “We said ‘psychic reflection.’ When we crossed into this world, you and Aaron both got overlain on your local cognates, because you haven’t spent enough time outside the Calendar Country to have any actual resistance.”
“I said ‘mirror ghost,’ because it sounds vaguely less completely stupid than ‘psychic reflection,’” said Hyacinth. “I would know if she weren’t my girlfriend, okay? And there is nothing about her that isn’t my Iris. Also, what the hell is a ‘Calendar Country’?”
“Hasn’t your Jack Claus ever taken you to the North Pole?” asked Jack, carefully. “To see Papa—I mean, to see Santa?”
“Santa Claus is a construct of the collective unconscious, and I have no idea how he’s real, but he doesn’t prove the existence of whatever a ‘Calendar Country’ is,” said Hyacinth primly.
Jack took a deep breath before launching into an explanation of the Seasonal Lands, how they interacted with the “real” world, and why the Spirits of the Season called anyplace that wasn’t an anthropomorphic representation of metaphor the “Calendar Country.” Velveteen, who had heard all this before, turned her out in favor of focusing on Iris, looking carefully at the other woman, searching for some sign that her version of Yelena was still in there.