▸ Column · The Boys / Vought corporate-celebrity-Super brand world — a tenants' association inside a Vought-owned high-rise, with the orange fountain reimagined as a flickering holographic mascot and the unsold pavers as branded foam mascot-fists.
QUEEN MAEVE replies.
Replied to by Queen Maeve, with a rebuttal from Starscream.
The letter
Two years ago, at a tenants' meeting in the Vought-owned tower I live in, I raised my hand to ask why the lobby's holographic mascot kept flickering orange. One question. Now I'm somehow president of the tenants' association, treasurer, chair of the "community engagement" committee, and the only person with a key to a storage unit stuffed with 600 unsold foam mascot-fists from a fundraiser nobody remembers approving. A woman on the 9th floor pings me at 6 a.m. about her balcony misters. Some guy named Heath has filed nine grievances about the font on my apartment nameplate. Last week someone slid a budget under my door with a sticky note that read "you've got this!!!" I tried to quit at the last meeting and the room went so silent I could hear the hologram buzzing. Every time I say the word "election," everyone suddenly needs more sparkling water. How do I escape a job I never wanted and clearly can't give away?
Queen Maeve replies
Look — "you've got this!!!" on a sticky note is the smallest, saddest marketing meeting ever convened, and I've sat in the real ones. That's the whole con, by the way. They dressed unpaid labor up as an honor, called you "president," and now the silence in that room does the managing for them. Free of charge.
I won't pretend I'm clean here. For twenty years I was the face Vought trotted out, the smile on the merch, the woman who held the key to the shed and signed whatever they slid under my door because the bar was open and saying nothing was so comfortable. So I know the buzz of being the one everyone's relieved isn't them.
Here's the math, and I did it. This isn't a line worth burning yourself for — nobody's bleeding, it's just a cage shaped like a throne. So don't "resign." Resigning invites the silence to eat you. Put a date in writing. Call the election yourself. Hand the key to whoever's nearest and walk, whether or not they catch it. Give fair notice — don't be cruel — then go. Let the 600 foam fists gurgle. You don't owe these people your lemonade breaks.
— Queen Maeve
Starscream weighs in
Walk AWAY? Maeve, you tragic burnout, the woman accidentally became president of EVERYTHING and your sage counsel is to abdicate? I have schemed for that chair across an entire war! You hold the treasury, the committee, the only key — that is not a cage, you fools, that is a throne, and the only person who can't see it is the one sitting on it.
Heath is your problem. Nine complaints? Make an example of him. Delegate the shed to the 6 a.m. balcony woman as "vice-president." Rule.
...And then, naturally, no one trusts you, and you end up alone, schemed-out, second forever. I'd know. But you — you could simply be less like me. How tedious.
— Starscream
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